The Stories of
Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
in Munsey’s Magazine
1920-1928

CONTENTS
[The Married Man]
[The Foreign Woman]
[Hanging’s Too Good for Him]
[Like a Leopard]
[The Aforementioned Infant]
[It Seemed Reasonable]
[Old Dog Tray]
[The Matador]
[A Hesitating Cinderella]
[The Postponed Wedding]
[The Marquis of Carabas]
[Out of the Woods]
[Benedicta]
[Nickie and Pem]
[His Remarkable Future]
[His Own People]
[Who Is This Impossible Person?]
[Mr. Martin Swallows the Anchor]
[Too French]
[The Good Little Pal]
[Flowers for Miss Riordan]
[Sometimes Things Do Happen]
[Miss What’s-Her-Name]
[The Wonderful Little Woman]
[As Patrick Henry Said]
[The Worst Joke in the World]
[As Is]
[That’s Not Love]
[The Thing Beyond Reason]
[Dogs Always Know]
[Highfalutin’]
[Bonnie Wee Thing]
[Vanity]
[The Compromising Letter]
[Miss Cigale]
[Blotted Out]
[Human Nature Unmasked]
[Home Fires]
[The Old Ways]
[By the Light of Day]
[For Granted]
[Incompatibility]
[Derelict]
[Inches and Ells]

[Pg 1]

MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE

DECEMBER, 1921
Vol. LXXIV NUMBER 3

[Pg 2]

The Married Man
A MODERN COMEDY OF ENLIGHTENED THOUGHT

By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Author of “Angelica”

SHE had got used to Andrew’s forgetting all sorts of important anniversaries. In fact, she rather liked him to do so. It gave her something to forgive, and fed her measureless indulgence. All his eccentricities, his absurdities, his brilliant and explosive energy, his terrible exactions, constituted “Andy’s ways,” which she loved with a deep and pitying love.

Even if he was clever and successful and attractive, he couldn’t do the things she could do so easily and so well. He couldn’t darn his own socks or cook a dinner or make a bed. She insisted that he was helpless—that all men were helpless. She was the sort of woman who would have pitied Julius Cæsar because he couldn’t make an omelet.

Something of this kindly indulgence was reflected upon her nice face as she sat in the library sewing and waiting for Andrew. She was a handsome, dignified, good-tempered woman of thirty-five, who was never to be taken by surprise. No matter what might happen, she would raise her eyebrows and smile and say, “Well?”—which was her nice, kind way of saying, “I told you so!”

And generally she had told you so, because, like so many other unimaginative people, she could almost always foresee ordinary consequences. Her prognostications were based, not upon probabilities, but upon experience.

It was the tenth anniversary of their wedding—an important day in a household. And yet, knowing Andrew as she did, Marian had made no preparations for festivity, because he was as likely as not to forget or to neglect even a special dinner. She would remind him when he came in, and smile at him, and he would be startled and contrite. She would not acknowledge the little wound that was there, even to herself.

Nor would she acknowledge what she really knew quite well—that Andy wasn’t happy, as she was. Hadn’t she provided him with all the materials for happiness—a lovely, peaceful home, three pretty, healthy children, and just the social background he required?

What is more, she knew that no just man could find a fault in her as a wife. She was thrifty, conscientious, sympathetic, a correct and popular hostess, an excellent mother. She was never irritable, never gloomy, never exacting. She was handsome, and understood how to dress. There was really nothing within the domestic cosmos to which a sane man could object.

That may have been the trouble. Andrew was a man who did not approve of happiness. He wanted and required to be forever struggling and rebelling and resenting. Marian had often, with amusement, noticed him trying to provoke a quarrel with her; but of course he never could, for she never quarreled.

The clock struck eleven. She sighed a little, laid down her sewing, and picked up a book. It had been a very trying day. Andrew had vanished, without the least regard for appointments he himself had made, or office hours, and she had had to placate all sorts of people without knowing at all the cause of his delinquency. It was simply another of “Andy’s ways,” and a very troublesome one in a doctor.

She recognized it as part of a wife’s duties to smooth the path of her husband—above all, of a husband who was the next thing to a genius. She was accustomed to hearing him spoken of as “brilliant.” She was proud of it, and secretly a little proud of his eccentricities. He was an extraor[Pg 3]dinary man, no doubt about it, and he required a wife of extraordinary tact.

He was a physician, but not satisfied with that. He liked to write articles and give lectures, and he had a reputation as a very daring if not very sound investigator along sociological lines. He had proclaimed and printed office hours; but if he were busy writing, he wouldn’t see any one who came, and it was Marian, of course, who did have to see these people and get them away not too grossly offended.

At other times there would be some patient who interested him, and he would shut himself up with him or her; and again in this case Marian had to soothe and placate the other patients who had seen the favored one admitted, and who naturally resented being kept waiting so outrageously. There was not a trace of jealousy, or of curiosity, in Marian. She smiled at his interest in a pretty woman.

She wasn’t too much interested in anything—certainly not in the book she had taken up, for she put it down again with a yawn within a very few minutes, to look at the clock and to give a small sigh. She couldn’t help wishing that Andrew had remembered what day it was, at least to the extent of an extra kiss. Even the most able and placid woman might wish that.

Then, at last, he did come in, in a mood she knew well; and her faint hope that perhaps he had remembered, and would bring her flowers, fell stone dead. He flung himself into a chair, hot and tired and rather pale, with his red hair ruffled up, giving him the look of a sulky and earnest child.

“Well!” said Marian, with a nice smile. “Here you are! Such a day as I’ve had, Andy! People telephoning and insisting that they had appointments and refusing to be put off; and poor me without the least idea where you were or when you’d come back! There was that poor woman with the albino twins—”

He frowned impatiently.

“That doesn’t matter. I don’t want the case, anyway. No! See here, Marian. I want to talk to you.”

She said “Yes?” inquiringly, with her kind and pleasant face turned toward him, but he didn’t look at her. He sat staring at the ground, huddled down in his chair, rumpled, disheveled.

“What is there about him so attractive?” Marian reflected, not for the first time.

He was not handsome, he was very untidy, he was casual, rude, distrait; a slender, wiry red-haired fellow of thirty-five, with a sharp-featured, rather pale, freckled face and restless, bright brown eyes.

At last he looked up at his wife, still frowning.

“Don’t be hurt!” he said “And try to understand!”

“Of course I will, Andy.”

“I’ve been walking,” he went on, “for hours—almost all day—thinking it out. This lecture that I’m to give, you know, to-morrow—”

“Oh, yes—before the Moral Courage Club.”

“I’d made fairly comprehensive notes of what I was going to say; but it’s been growing on me, every day, how weak and cowardly it is—how evasive. I hadn’t dared to be frank, I never have dared. I’ve compromised. I’ve lied. I’ve kept it up for ten years—ten years to-day, Marian!”

“Kept up what?” she asked, startled.

“This damnable hypocrisy!” he cried. “This wretched, revolting pretense! Do you know that it’s the anniversary to-night of that horrible ceremony—that perjury—that mockery we called our marriage?”

Marian had grown quite white.

“Why, Andy!” she faltered. “I never thought—I thought—I always hoped you were—happy!”

He sprang up and began to pace the room.

“I can’t stand it any longer!” he cried. “I’m at the end of my tether. Oh, this marriage!”

“Is it—me, Andy?” Marian asked rather pitifully.

“No! No! It’s simply marriage—marriage with any one. It’s this base, disgusting monotony, this abominable pettiness, this eternal talk about servants and children and coal-bills and neighbors and card-parties. It stifles me. It sickens me. I can’t live any more unless I’m free!”

“Do you mean that you—want a divorce, Andy?” she asked, with a gallant effort to disguise her terror and distress.

“No,” he answered, “not necessarily. I shouldn’t like to lose you altogether, Marian—unless, of course, you’d like to form another connection. Would you?”

“No—no, Andy, I wouldn’t!”

“I didn’t think so. What I want, Marian, is simply to ignore our marriage. I want to be released from its petty restric[Pg 4]tions and obligations. Will you do that, Marian? Will you absolve me from all these preposterous ‘vows,’ and so on?”

“Yes,” she answered promptly. “I will—if you like.”

“And you won’t be hurt? You won’t be petty? You won’t think I’m not fond of you, Marian?”

She shook her head.

“You see, don’t you, that we can be just as fond of each other, and yet go our separate ways?”

“Are we—does that mean—that we’re to—part?” she asked.

He came over and laid a hand on her shoulder.

“My dear girl,” he said, “I can’t live with you any longer.”

She couldn’t restrain a sob.

“Oh, Andy! Oh! Is there—some one else?”

“No! Can’t you see? I want to be alone—to live alone—in freedom. I’ll take a house for myself somewhere, and you’ll go on here, just as usual; except that I’d like to have the children part of the time. I won’t be unreasonable, though.”

“I don’t think I’d—like to—go on here, without you,” she said in a trembling voice. “I’d be—lonely.”

“Nonsense! Not after a day or so. You’d enjoy the freedom, too. I’ve got my eye on a little house that will suit me very well. And really, Marian, I’d very much prefer you and the children keeping on here in the same way. Of course, I should make you the same housekeeping allowance, and so on.”

“I would like a little freedom, too,” she said. “I—can’t stop here—without you, Andrew.”

“Well, of course,” he answered, rather disconcerted, “I’ve no right to dictate to you.”

“You can stay here,” she said, “with the children, and I’ll go and stop with mother for a few days, where I can think it over quietly. Then I’ll send for the babies. I—you see, I want to—get used to this. It’s—rather sudden.”

It was no longer possible to conceal the fact that she was weeping. Her husband was really distressed. He patted her lovely, shining hair with a careless hand, while he scowled anxiously before him.

“My dear girl! Please! This isn’t a tragedy, by any means. Simply let’s be two sensible, modern people who refuse to be bound by certain conventions. Do be your own sensible self, won’t you?”

“I—will—try!” she sobbed. “Only—you’ll have to give me—a little time.”

He looked at the clock; it was a little after midnight.

“Perhaps I’d better leave you alone,” he said. “I’ll be going now.”

“Going? Where? At this hour?”

“Well, you see—that lecture to-morrow. It’s to be ‘Marriage from the Man’s Point of View.’ I can’t, with any dignity, any decency, say what I wish to say—be really honest—in the character of a domestic man. It would be a farce. I must be able to say that I’m a free man, do you see?”

“Yes,” she said, wiping her eyes. “But—does that mean it’s got to begin now?”

“What?”

“The—living apart?”

“I’m afraid so. I thought I’d go to a hotel for the night, and send after my things in the morning.”

“Oh, no, Andy, please! I couldn’t explain—to the servants. No! That’s the only thing I ask you. Let me be the one to go. You can say it’s a telegram from mother.”

“Nonsense, my dear girl! I won’t hear of it! Turning you out of the house at this hour of the night! Let me go!”

“No, Andrew, I’d rather; really I would! I’d like to go. I—need a change. If you’ll call a taxi while I pack my bag—”

“You’re quite sure?” he asked anxiously, and again she assured him that she really wished to go.

She went up to the big, lamp-lit bedroom, so immaculate, so charming, with its two brass beds, the dressing-table and bureau gleaming with silver, the soft gray rug on the floor, her dear little sewing-table, all the photographs—

“Oh, why?” she cried. “Oh, why do I have to leave it?”

She went about in her brisk, sensible way, selecting things out of one drawer and another and packing them neatly into a bag; but long before she had finished a sudden spasm of pain overcame her. She sat down in her own particular wicker chair, and sobbed bitterly.

“I don’t understand!” she cried. “I don’t! I don’t! Not a bit!”

II

She was her usual calm self when she came down-stairs again, and was able to[Pg 5] give her husband a great many directions and suggestions as they rode to the station.

“I’ll send a night letter to Miss Franklin to come and take care of the children till I send for them,” she said. “I happen to know that she’s free now. She’s such a capable girl! You’ll have nothing to worry about with her in the house.”

Anxiously, but timidly, afraid that it was a reactionary and contemptible insistence, but resolute to save herself in the eyes of her world, contemptible or not, she added:

“And you’ll be sure to say that I got a telegram from mother, won’t you, Andrew?”

She kissed him good-by kindly, pleasantly, and succeeded in getting into the train with her nice smile still on her lips. Andrew was reassured, and went home to spend what was left of the night in completing his lecture notes.

He fell asleep toward morning on the sofa in his office. He would no doubt have slept peacefully on till noon, as he had often done before, if it hadn’t been for an unusual noise in the dining-room at breakfast-time. He was a little indignant, for he had never been disturbed before, and he was curious, too. His children—even the four-year-old Frank—were singing lustily, in unison, a jubilant sort of chant, led by a very fresh, clear, loud young female voice.

“Hail! Hail!” they shouted.

All ruffled and rumpled as he was, he entered the room, to find a strange spectacle. His three children were standing on the window-seat, with arms outspread and face upturned. Behind them stood a young woman in the same yearning attitude, while they all cried their invocation:

“To the glorious sun that gives us life, all hail!”

That must have been the end of it, for the children got down and made a rush at him.

“Oh, daddy! Mother’s gone to grandma’s!” the eldest little girl told him eagerly. “Miss Franklin’s going to take care of us. I’m going to write to mother every single day, but not Jean and Frank. They only scribble. She couldn’t possibly read it!”

He was not attending. He was looking at the young woman who stood beside him, smiling. She was a short, sturdy blonde with a very pretty and impudent face, a wide, jolly mouth, and queer gray eyes, which were at the same time immensely candid and quite mysterious.

“I’m Christine Franklin,” said she. “I’m the originator of the Franklin method of child care. I dare say you’ve heard of me. Your wife sent me a night letter to come and take charge of your little family for a time. That’s what I do, you know—go from house to house, and liberate.”

“Liberate?”

“That’s how I put it. I always insist that there shall be no interference from parents or relatives or servants. Then I begin to set the children free—to let them express themselves—to be natural.”

“I see!” said Andrew. “Is breakfast over?”

It was not, and after a brief toilet he sat down to enjoy it with his family. He felt that he rather liked Miss Franklin.

“Nothing clinging and hyperfeminine about her!” he thought. “A man could make a friend of a girl like that.”

He decided to study her. Now that he was free and couldn’t be misunderstood, he had decided to make a comprehensive study of woman in general. He knew that there were points about them that he didn’t understand. He couldn’t really generalize upon the effects of marriage without a better knowledge of females—he admitted that. Why not, he asked himself, begin with this interesting specimen?

“What is the Franklin method?” he asked her.

“It’s not really a method at all,” she said. “It would be better to call it a theory. It’s simply nature and art, hand in hand. I don’t believe in directing or controlling a child. I simply help it along the road it indicates itself. My mission is solely to point out beauty to it.”

“That’s likely to make it very much more difficult for them to become accustomed to discipline and self-restraint when they’re old enough to be held responsible.”

“But, you see, I don’t believe either in discipline or self-restraint, in children or in adults. The natural impulses are sufficient. No, Dr. Nature implants in us only right and beautiful desires. I look upon self-restraint as superfluous, if not absolutely wrong, in a wholesome person.”

“Social interdependence requires—” Andrew began.

“We shouldn’t interdepend. We should each be a law unto himself. Let us be healthy, in mind and in body; then let desire be the sole rule, the sole conscience. Personally, I know that if I want to do a[Pg 6] thing, it is right to do it. If I want to have a thing, it is a right thing for me to have.”

Andrew contested that, but she merely smiled at his arguments.

“Well!” she said. “As for me, when I want something, I go after it—and I generally get it.”

Andrew met her clear, shameless glance, and an unaccountable shudder ran through him. What a girl! What an enemy she would make—or what a pursuer!

She was undoubtedly an interesting and convenient subject for his new study, but he didn’t study her. On the contrary, he avoided her. He shut himself up in his study and tried to write, but the new freedom for his children entailed such a distressing amount of noise and quarreling that he accomplished very little.

He wished to write a long and careful letter to Marian. He was afraid that she hadn’t fully understood, that she was a little hurt, in spite of what she had said; but he found it a remarkably difficult thing to explain to a woman that you are very fond of her and yet wish to be rid of her. He was not the first man who has essayed such a task.

The noise in the dining-room became intolerable. He tore up his third attempt at a letter and went in there, in a very bad temper.

“Why the devil do you stay in here?” he shouted to his young family. “Why aren’t you out in the garden, or at school, or wherever it is your mother sends you? Don’t you know that I’m trying to work?”

Miss Franklin had entered from the kitchen, eating a slice of bread and sugar.

“Ask the cook for some!” she suggested, and the children vanished. “What are you writing?” she inquired frankly.

He didn’t care to mention the letter, so he said:

“My lecture. I’m giving one this afternoon, you know.”

“What on?”

“‘Marriage from the Man’s Point of View.’”

She pricked up her ears.

“What is a man’s point of view?” she asked.

“For a man,” he said, “marriage is moral death. It is slavery—bondage of the worst sort. It is a handicap which prevents any effective progress. It is, of course, an invention of woman’s, to safeguard herself and her offspring. She has found it necessary to provide herself with a refuge, and she has ruthlessly taken advantage of her sinister influence over the more sensitive and conscientious man to impress him with a mass of false and pernicious ideas about the ‘home.’ Man has not one single advantage to gain from marriage, yet he has actually been taught, by mothers, by women teachers, by all the females who surround young children, to think of it as a privilege. He secures a home. What is a home? A nest for the woman, a cage for the man. What is a wife? The most unprincipled, exacting slave-driver ever yet developed. For her and her children he is required to give all the fruit of has labor, and, in addition, a fantastic and debasing reverence and flattery—”

“You poor thing!” said Miss Franklin.

He stopped short, in surprise.

“Why?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

“You must have been so wretched with your wife,” said she.

His face turned crimson.

“I wasn’t,” he said, with an immense effort at self-control. “Quite the contrary. One doesn’t apply general remarks to—specific cases.”

“Oh, yes, one does indeed!” Miss Franklin insisted.

III

He went off quite in the wrong frame of mind to deliver his lecture. When he had taken a stealthy peep at his audience, he became actually nervous. The Moral Courage Club seemed to be made up almost entirely of women—rows and rows of earnest faces. It would be very unpleasant to wound and distress them, as his words were sure to do, especially as they had all contributed toward the fee he was to receive. For a minute he was almost tempted to soften some of his remarks, but his reformer’s ardor flamed up again, and he went out upon the platform bravely.

The sight of their feathers and furs and earrings helped him. After all, they were nothing but barbarians, who must be enlightened at any cost. He began. He told than, as kindly as possible, how selfish, how greedy, how uncivilized they were, how unpleasant they looked in their skins of dead animals and feathers of dead birds, with all their savage and unesthetic finery; how brutally they preyed upon man.[Pg 7]

“Marriage ruins a man,” he said. “It stifles his ambitions; it coarsens him, it debases him. It outrages his manly self-respect. He is debarred from wholesome and essential experiences. He is shamefully exploited. He is forced into hypocrisy and deceit. Partly from his native kindliness, partly from his woman-directed training, he never dares to tell the truth to the opposite sex.”

And so on, directly into those earnest faces, framed by all their barbaric plumes and furs and jewels. To his surprise and dismay, none of them changed, grew abashed or angry or stern. They were only interested, all of them.

They came up in a body when he had finished, and congratulated him.

“You are always so stimulating!” said one.

“You brush aside the non-essentials!” said another.

“It gives one a new outlook!”

“I hope to see it in print. It is so suggestive, dear doctor!”

Only one of the earnest horde made any sort of individual impression, and that was a slender, dark, elegant woman who approached him after every one else had gone.

“Doctor!” she said in a low, thrilling voice. “I feel that I must speak to you. Let me take you home in my car, won’t you?”

She was interesting, distinguished, and, he fancied, intelligent; so he was quite willing to follow her to her waiting motor-car and to seat himself beside her.

“Your lecture,” she began. “It’s such a startling idea to me—that of man being the victim in marriage.”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s not the conventional, romantic idea, of course.”

“Nor the true one,” she cried. “Oh, doctor, your brain may be right, but your heart is wrong! There is so much that you don’t seem to know—to understand! You don’t seem to realize how hideously we suffer—what we endure. I cannot pretend to be impersonal. I want to tell you the truth—a side of it that you don’t know. I want to tell you of one case. Then you must tell me what you think.”

She laid her hand on his arm and looked earnestly into his face.

“I want you to hear my story, and then tell me frankly whether or not my husband was a victim!”

It was a very long and very harrowing story. It obliged them to go to the lady’s house and to have tea there, and to sit in her charming little sitting-room until dark, in order that it should all be told.

She was Mrs. Hamilton, she said, known to Marian, as to all other women of any social pretentions in that particular suburb, as the martyr wife of a fiendish husband. What she had suffered no one knew—except the twenty or thirty people whom she had told. She ended in tears.

Andrew comforted her with kindly words and complete exonerations. He said that she was blameless. The clock struck six, and he rose to take leave.

“Good-by!” said Mrs. Hamilton, giving him her slender hand. “Doctor, you’ve helped me. You’ve understood. Mayn’t I see you again? You don’t know what sympathy means to a lonely, heart-broken woman.”

He assured her that he would be delighted to come again, as soon as he had a free moment.

IV

He had declined the use of Mrs. Hamilton’s motor; he preferred to walk home and to reflect upon this new type. He was not altogether a fool. In spite of the fact that she was a very attractive woman, he had made up his mind that he would never go to her house again—not even to study her.

“No!” he was saying to himself. “She’s morbid—irresponsible. They’re really dangerous, that reckless sort!”

A hand clutched his sleeve and a breathless voice cried:

“Oh, doctor, I’ve been rushing after you for miles and miles!”

It was little Mavis Borrowby, daughter of an old patient. Always in the past Andrew had taken Mavis for granted as part of old Borrowby’s background. He was quite disconcerted to see her, this spring evening, as a detached individuality, and a very vivid one.

She took his arm and hung on it, looking up into his face with babyish violet eyes.

“Oh, doctor!” she cried. “I went to your lecture. It was simply wonderful! But it depressed me awfully. Please let me walk along with you and ask you some questions!”

“Child, you shouldn’t go to my lectures,” said Andrew indulgently. “You’re too young. They’re not for you.”

“Oh, but they are, doctor! Why, [Pg 8]I’m engaged, you know—at least, I was engaged, but I sha’n’t be any longer. I wouldn’t for worlds do all that harm to a helpless man. I’m going to tell Edward so to-night.”

Andrew was a little taken aback. He said something about thinking things out for oneself—not accepting another person’s ideas.

“Oh, no!” said little Mavis confidently. “I know you can think ever so much better than me. I like to get my ideas from wonderful men like you!”

The innocent, naive, violet-eyed little thing touched him with pity. What, he thought, was there in life for her except marriage? He couldn’t imagine her engaged in any work, any profession, any art. Would it not perhaps be better if some man were enslaved and sacrificed for the sake of this poor little baby-girl?

“Look here, Mavis,” he said; “this won’t do. You mustn’t throw over this fellow, you know, without a great deal of serious reflection. You might ruin your life and his, too.”

“But you said I’d ruin him by marrying him—”

“Never mind that. You—you’re too young to grasp it. And there are always exceptions. If you care for this chap—”

“I don’t really think I do, much,” she said thoughtfully. “Anyway, I simply couldn’t stand making a martyr of him, and having him be the one to do all the sacrificing. But, doctor, what are we to do, if men mustn’t get married?”

He couldn’t answer. To tell the truth, he had thought of marriage so exclusively from a man’s point of view that he had quite overlooked the woman’s. Freedom was all very well, but it wasn’t for the little Mavises of this world. He began to deliberate whether there weren’t certain men who should be set apart for marriage and martyrdom for the sake of the really nice young girls.

He was about to suggest this theory to Mavis, when he found himself before his own door.

“Hurry off home now, won’t you?” he said. “It’ll be dark soon. And see here, Mavis, don’t say anything to your Edward just yet—don’t do anything until we’ve talked it over. Come into the office some afternoon.”

She said she would, and hurried off, in the sunset.

As he let himself in, he heard from the dining-room the uproar which seemed an inevitable accompaniment of the Franklin method. Because playing in the dining-room had formerly been an unimaginable thing rather than a forbidden joy, it was now the rule. The doctor didn’t like it. He wanted his dinner in peace. It was not the sort of dinner he liked, either, and Miss Franklin distressed him by incessantly crunching lumps of sugar.

He retired to his study, where he swore furiously to himself; but for some reason which he didn’t care to analyze, he dared not tell Miss Franklin to take away the children. Nor was he surprised when she knocked at the door, and, being told to enter, did so, and sat down opposite him, prepared to spend the evening.

Crashes, screams, and slaps from the dining-room disturbed her not at all. She said she didn’t believe in supervising children; it hampered them.

She talked persistently about free love, which Andrew didn’t like. When spoken of as the relation of the sexes, it was quite proper and scientific; but directly one introduced that idea of love, it was entirely changed. It became sensational and distinctly alarming.

He was thankful when an accident occurred in the dining-room which could not be ignored. Little Frank had climbed into a drawer of the sideboard and broken through, and in the course of his struggles he upset everything within reach.

Once he had got Miss Franklin out, Andrew took good care that she should not get in again.

V

He had forgotten all about Mavis, and he was pleasantly surprised when she came into his office the next afternoon.

“I pretended that I had a sore throat,” she said, “so I could come and see you. You see, Edward came last night, and oh, doctor, he did seem so awfully flat, after you!”

“You mustn’t be so extreme,” he said. “There are some men who aren’t at all unhappy in marriage.”

“I know. Ordinary little men aren’t. It’s only the wonderful men like you. But, doctor dear, I couldn’t be happy with an ordinary man. I—I want a man like you!”

It wouldn’t do, of course, to tell her that there were mighty few men of this sort, and[Pg 9] that they wouldn’t care for naive little girls, anyway. Andrew wasn’t even much flattered by her admiration; it was too indiscriminate.

“Suppose you don’t marry,” he said. “What will you do?”

“I thought you could tell me. I thought, of course, you had some perfectly wonderful sort of plan for women.”

Well, he hadn’t, and he saw that he must make one. It seemed that his first step toward the settlement of this specific case would be to make an analysis, and he at once began. Mavis answered all his questions readily and fully, but he had a suspicion that she told him what she thought he would like to hear, instead of keeping to facts. Still, even at that, he learned a great deal, for she was too ignorant and young to deceive a trained observer. Of course it took a very long time; his other office patients had to be sent away.

He went politely to the door with Mavis, and he was surprised to see Miss Franklin standing in the hall—the little private hall which was only for outgoing patients, and in which she had no possible business to be.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked.

“I was just wondering what you were doing,” she retorted, “shut up in there with that girl all this long time!”

“I was writing an analysis of her.”

“Let’s see your analysis!”

“It’s not finished. Besides—”

“Do let me see it! Perhaps I can help you.”

“You don’t know Miss Borrowby—”

“Oh, yes, I do know Miss Borrowby!” said Miss Franklin. “I know her better than you do!”

Andrew didn’t like her tone, but he let it pass, with a meekness quite new to him. Miss Franklin smiled and went away.

He intended to spend the evening perfecting his analysis in peace; but scarcely had he got well started when Miss Franklin opened the door.

“A patient!” she said.

It was a lady. She sat down beside Andrew’s desk, without raising her veil, and at once began to sob.

“Oh, doctor!” she cried. “I don’t know what to do! Oh, my suffering! What shall I do?”

He felt quite sure that this was a drug addict, and his manner, though kind, was one of thorough sophistication.

“Now, now, my dear madam!” he said. “Don’t excite yourself!”

“You don’t even know me!” she cried, pushing up her veil.

“I do!” he protested guiltily. “It’s Mrs. Hamilton. I knew your voice; but it’s dark here in the corners of the room when there’s only the lamp lighted.”

She smiled bitterly.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s it. I’m lost in the darkness, outside the circle of lamplight!”

“This chair—”

“I’m speaking figuratively, doctor. I’m in such trouble. I wish I were dead!”

Reluctantly, but in duty bound, he said:

“Tell me about it.”

She began to weep again.

“You’re the only one I can tell. You showed such an interest in me the other day. You cared, didn’t you?”

“Yes, certainly I did; but please don’t cry.”

“Oh, dear doctor, it is your own great trouble that makes you so sympathetic to others, I am sure!”

“My own great trouble?”

“I heard of it indirectly—through Miss Franklin. She mentioned it to some one I know. She said that your wife”—Mrs. Hamilton dropped her voice, and ended with the greatest delicacy: “That your wife has left you. I am so sorry!”

“Nothing of the sort!” Andrew began angrily.

Then it occurred to him that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to explain so modern a situation to so romantic a creature; so instead he encouraged her to tell him her own sad story.

He never learned what her trouble was, because she didn’t tell him. “My husband” and “a woman’s sensitive heart,” and “disgusting intoxication,” had something to do with it. She cried forlornly, and he tried to stop her. Common sense and all that he had learned from experience of her type warned him not to be too sympathetic, but it was difficult. She was exquisite. She had a sort of morbid charm about her—a sensibility at once dangerous and pitiful.

He rose, went over to her, and laid his hand on her shoulder.

“It’s hard,” he said. “Life is bound to be hard for people like you; but you must try to see it in a more robust way, with more humor, more indifference.[Pg 10]”

“I do! No one knows how I try!” she said, looking up into his face with her dark eyes, luminous with tears.

Suddenly the door opened, without warning. Miss Franklin looked in, and disappeared again. Mrs. Hamilton rose.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“That’s Miss Franklin.”

“Oh! I didn’t know she was so young. Does she stay here as late as this?”

“She lives here.”

“Lives here—with your wife away?”

Mrs. Hamilton was moving toward the door.

“Good night, doctor!” she said, and there was a decided coolness in her voice.

VI

Peculiarly disturbed, Andrew returned to his office, to find Miss Franklin there, waiting for him. He was about to reprove her sharply for her outrageous intrusion, but she spoke first.

“Who was that?”

“A patient; and you must never, under any circumstances, come into this room when I have a patient here.”

“It’s long after office hours. I didn’t know it was a patient. She was ‘a lady to see the doctor,’ and I wondered what you were doing shut up here.”

“You needn’t constitute yourself my mentor!” he cried angrily.

“Why, doctor, I never thought of such a thing!”

“Then please don’t do it again.”

“But, if she wasn’t a patient, what was she here for?”

He stared at her, astounded at her effrontery—and uneasy.

“As I told you once before, I am making a series of analyses. I was making a study of—that lady.”

“You only analyze women, don’t you?”

“Certainly not!” he answered with a frown. “Only they happen to be about—”

“Yes, they do!” Miss Franklin agreed warmly. “They certainly do happen to be about!” She sat down. “I’ve been analyzing you,” she said.

Again instinct warned him, and he would have fled.

“Not worth it!” he said lightly.

“I can analyze you,” she went on; “but I can’t understand myself. I don’t quite see why you should affect me so. I’m not at all inclined to sentimentality. I’ve never felt like this before.”

He sat in frozen silence.

“And as a perfectly free woman,” went on, “I’m not ashamed to tell you that I want you.”

“Want me to what?” he asked stupidly.

“I’d be even willing to marry you,” she said, “as soon as you get a divorce. I can see that you’re timid and conventional, like most men.”

“Good God!” cried Andrew. “Please—”

“Why not? If you don’t love me now, you will later. I’ll make you. I’ve set my mind on you. I think you’re a fascinating creature!”

“You don’t know me!” he protested feebly.

“I do. I know that I’m in love with you, anyway, and that you’re lonely and need me.”

“Lonely!” thought the wretched man. “Not exactly!”

Aloud he said nothing, but sat silent, conscious of the steady gaze of her fierce, candid eyes.

“I hadn’t intended to tell you to-night,” she went on. “I know you’re very shy, and I’d intended to win you over little by little. Not by any feminine trickery or illusion, you understand. I’d just reveal myself. I’m sure that if you knew me, you’d love me. We’re so perfectly matched,” she ended, a bit impatiently. “I wish there weren’t all this fuss and trouble! I wish you’d make up your mind promptly!”

“But—” he began.

“Don’t answer me now, when you’re in this contrary, obstinate humor. I’ll wait till to-morrow evening. Now let’s talk about something else.”

“No!” said Andrew. “I’m going to bed. Good night!”

He went off with a quick step and a frown; but his going was not effective. It was too much like flight, and it was spoiled by the grin on Miss Franklin’s face.

Alone in his room he gave up the effort to hide his alarm.

“That woman’s got to go!” he cried. “I’m not going to be hounded and bothered by her like this! How am I to do any work? How can I get rid of her?”

Reflection convinced him that he could not.

“Then I’ll get myself called away, and I’ll stay away until—”

Until what? What was to save him? Where could he find a refuge from feminine persecution?[Pg 11]

He went to bed, but he could not sleep. He was quite worn and haggard in the morning, and Miss Franklin observed it at the breakfast-table.

“You look awfully tired,” she said. “Why don’t you take a rest to-day?”

“Never was busier!” he answered hastily. “I haven’t a free moment all day. Please see that I’m not disturbed.”

“How am I to know which women disturb you and which ones you’re—studying?” Miss Franklin asked with outrageous impudence. “Better give me a list.”

He strode into his office, closed the door, and tried to resume that unfinished letter to Marian. He hadn’t got well started when the bell rang and the parlor-maid ushered in little Mavis Borrowby, flushed and out of breath.

“Oh, doctor!” she cried. “Such a row! Imagine! I’ve had to run away! Papa is in the most awful rage!” She sank into a chair. “You see,” she said, “I told Edward last night that I wouldn’t marry him—ever. I said I didn’t believe in marriage. And he—nasty little sneak!—ran off to papa and told him. You can imagine how papa took it, with his old-fogy ideas. He roared and stamped and swore. He wanted to know where I got such ideas from; and I said, very calmly, from you. Then he said I must never speak to you again, and all sorts of nonsense. Of course I said I would speak to you, and I would never, never renounce you for any one—”

“Renounce me! Really, Mavis, isn’t that a bit—”

“I told him that you were the most wonderful man I’d ever seen, and that I would not give you up. But, doctor dear, where are you going to hide me? He’ll be here after me any minute!”

“I’m not going to hide you at all!” cried Andrew. “It’s all nonsense!”

“Oh, but you must!” she cried. “You can’t be so horrible, when I’ve been so loyal to you.”

“There’s no reason for hiding, you silly child! You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Oh, but papa thinks so! He told me not to dare to see you again. He says it’s all your fault that I won’t marry Edward. He says you’ve put all sorts of awful ideas in my head. Oh, doctor! There’s the door-bell now! I know it’s father! Oh, don’t let him get me! He says he’ll send me to a convent!”

She had clutched his arm frantically and was looking into his face with brimming eyes.

“Oh, please, please hide me!” she cried. “Just till I can think of some sort of plan!”

He faltered and weakened. At last he opened the door of a clothes-closet.

“Lock the door and keep quiet,” he said. “I’ll see if I can get him away.”

After an earnest look around to see that she had not left any trace of herself—hat, gloves, or other incriminating articles—the doctor opened his office door, and there stood Mrs. Hamilton. She looked very pale and ill.

“Just an instant!” she said, with an odd smile. “I won’t keep you a minute. I only came to say good-by.”

“Where are you going?” he asked kindly.

She smiled again.

“It doesn’t matter. I thought if I came early, before your office hours, I might catch you alone for a few minutes; but it doesn’t matter.”

“But you have caught me alone,” he answered cheerfully. “Sit down, Mrs. Hamilton. I’m in no hurry.”

“Please don’t try to deceive me,” she said coldly. “I know all about that girl who came in here. That nursery governess—that Franklin person—told me in the hall. I have no claim on you, doctor. There’s no reason for deceiving me. You’re quite, quite free to do as you please. You won’t be troubled with me again. I’m going away.”

“Where?” he asked, wretchedly scenting some new and obscure trouble.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said again. “Nothing matters. My husband insists upon my going out to Wyoming with him at once. Of course I refused; so here I am penniless, alone in the world—”

“Your children?”

“He’s going to take them. They’re better without me, anyway. I’m a weak and indulgent mother. I love too intensely. That’s my nature—to be intense. I give—I ask nothing, I expect nothing, I simply give and give. I’m not complaining. I only wish,” she ended, with a pitiful little break in her voice, “that there were some one—just one person in the world—who cared! I’m not strong enough to stand alone. I’m not complaining. I know one can’t command the heart; but for a little while I did think[Pg 12]—”

He felt like a brute.

“Good-by!” she said, holding out her slender hand and smiling pitifully. “Good-by, my dear!”

He grasped her hand.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

She looked at him steadily.

“Good-by!”

“No—look here! You won’t do anything reckless?”

“I shall have to carry out my plans. Good-by!”

“I sha’n’t let you go like this!”

“Please let go of my hand! There’s some one coming!”

VII

As Mrs. Hamilton went out, there came brushing by her, bursting into the room, a stout, middle-aged man. It was Mr. Borrowby, in a terrible fury. He resembled a heavy, solid little dog. One could imagine the impact of his body against the furniture, how he might hurl himself about and always rebound unhurt. His talk was like barking, growling, and snapping, and his bloodshot eyes were fixed unwaveringly upon his enemy. He was terrific.

“Where’s my girl?” he bellowed.

“Don’t shout like that!” said Andrew. “I can’t stand it. I’m worn out.”

“I’ll wear you out! Where’s my girl?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t lie to me, you dirty, low-lived, degenerate hound! You vile, treacherous Bolshevist!”

“You’re going too far!” cried Andrew. “You’ll behave yourself, or I’ll put you out!”

“No, you won’t! I’ll have my daughter, or I’ll call in the police. Don’t you dare!” he shouted, shaking his fist in Andrew’s face. “Don’t you dare deny it! That young woman who opened the door for me told me Mavis was in here.”

It occurred to the desperate Andrew that the only possible course was that of complete candor.

“What if she is?” he replied “I’m not—”

“I know what you are! Didn’t the girl herself tell me that since she’d known you, she could never marry? Good God! I could kill you, you scoundrel! Where is she?”

“In there,” said Andrew. “I sha’n’t deny it. There’s nothing to be ashamed of—absolutely nothing wrong.”

He was really afraid, for an instant, that the angry little dog was about to launch itself upon him. Instead, to his relief, Borrowby began to pound upon the closet door.

“Open the door!” he roared.

“No, I sha’n’t!” came Mavis’s calm response.

“I’ll break in the door!”

“All right! Begin! There’s a window in here, and I’ll jump out of it and run away; and every one will see me from the street!”

In the midst of this pounding and shouting the telephone rang.

“Keep quiet!” Andrew roared. “Stop your infernal noise! It may be something important!”

Mr. Borrowby desisted for an instant. Andrew took up the receiver, to hear the voice of Mrs. Hamilton.

“I want to say good-by to you,” she said in a calm and bitter voice. “It’s the last word you will ever hear from me. This is really good-by, to you and to all the world. I have something here that will end it all, all my sufferings—”

“No!” he cried. “No! What are you thinking of?”

“Don’t worry!” she said. “It is the best way, my dear!”

The doctor gave vent to such a strange and terrible howl that even Mr. Borrowby was startled.

“What is it?” asked a quiet voice beside him.

He was not surprised to see Marian there. He was past surprise.

“Mrs. Hamilton!” he explained “Going to take poison!”

“Speak to her,” whispered Marian. “Tell her you’re coming at once.”

He did so, and hung up the receiver.

“Now, go up-stairs and lie down, dear,” said Marian. “You’re worn out. I’ll send your lunch up to you. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll manage.”

“There’s Mavis Borrowby shut up in the closet,” he told her wearily; “and Mrs. Hamilton—and something worrying about Miss Franklin—I’ve forgotten just what.”

“Poor boy!” she murmured. “I’m so sorry! Go on, dear, and lie down. Try not to worry.”

He went up-stairs to his room and lay down on the bed, quite exhausted, trying to think, but unable to do so. A long time passed. He watched the trees moving in[Pg 13] the April wind, and the clouds slipping across the gay blue sky.

VIII

At last Marian came, bringing a lunch-tray well laden with the proper things. She set it down on a table at the bedside, and drew up two chairs.

“Now, Andy dear!” she said in her old pleasant way. “Come on! You need food, you know. It’s after three o’clock!”

He was really very hungry. He began to eat without delay, while Marian watched him indulgently.

“I telephoned to Dr. Gryce. He’ll take your patients to-day,” she said. “You need a rest, don’t you? Miss Franklin’s gone home. Mr. Borrowby took Mavis home, and left a note, apologizing for his mistake. I explained to him about your theories, you know. I sent for Mr. Hamilton, and I stayed with his wife until he came. They had a perfectly beautiful reconciliation. They’re going out to Wyoming with the children, to start a new life; so there’s nothing to trouble you, is there?”

“Marian,” he said gravely, “I’ll tell you all about it later on. Just now I can’t think of anything but the relief—”

The parlor-maid knocked at the door.

“There’s a young gentleman from the Daily Review, sir,” she said. “He says the doctor promised him an interview.”

“The doctor is resting—” Marian began.

Andrew sat up.

“No!” he said. “I’ll see him. Bring him up, Sarah!”

“I’ll go,” said Marian.

“I’d rather you stayed,” said Andrew. “I’d like you to hear what I’m going to say.”

He was sitting up in bed, more rumpled and excited than ever, when the young man entered. The interviewer was surprised and a little embarrassed by the presence of a wife, because the opinions which the doctor was reputed to hold on marriage were not the sort of views that most wives like. However—

“We thought it would be of great interest to our readers if you would give us a few words on ‘Marriage from a Man’s Point of View,’” he began; “along the lines of the address you gave before the Moral Courage Club one afternoon last week, you know.”

“I said that marriage hampered and degraded a man, didn’t I? I said that marriage was slavery for my sex—don’t take that down, that’s only what I said last week. Now, please get this properly. I offer, as my earnest conviction, based upon experiment, that marriage is man’s only safeguard. Without its protection man could not survive. This is a woman’s world, dominated and developed by women. Every man imperatively requires the protection of a wife. Without it, he—he would be hounded to death.”

“Andrew!” murmured Marian, rather shocked.

The young man wrote it all down as faithfully as he could.

“That’s all. You can enlarge on that. I suppose you would, anyway. You might head it ‘Marriage Man’s Only Hope.’”

The young man thanked the doctor, took up his hat, and left.

Andrew looked at Marian, and she smiled affectionately at him.

“I shall never know,” said he, “whether you had any hand in all this, or whether it just happened; but I’m beaten, absolutely, and you are supremely vindicated. That’s what women always do. They’re able to prove a man wrong and make him see it himself, in spite of the fact that he’s right![Pg 14]”

The Foreign Woman
NO WONDER THE SOUL OF RUSSIA IS ONE OF THE GREAT ENIGMAS OF THE WORLD

By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Author of “Angelica,” “The Married Man,” etc.

HE sat in the small, hot room, in a state of pleased expectancy. He awaited the entrance of something exotic and highly interesting, probably with a beard. The catalogue of the Institute of Foreign Languages had promised him a “native teacher,” and what could a native Russian be but a bearded and mysterious creature?

He looked again through the pages of the unintelligible little red book—all in Russian—and thought with delight of the time to come, when it should be plain as day to him, when he should be able to say, with a casual air, that he could read and speak Russian.

He was anxious, poor young fellow, for some claim to distinction. He was only too well aware of his own ordinariness—a pleasant, friendly sort of mediocrity which distressed him profoundly. He was slight, sandy-haired, wiry, not unattractive, but certainly not fascinating. People liked him but didn’t remember him.

He was not an idiot. He knew well enough that he had no brilliant or remarkable qualities, and therefore, sure that he could not be anything extraordinary, he had decided to do something extraordinary. He had decided, in short, to go to Russia, live there for a long time, and write amazing books about it all.

Why not? He was a journalist; he could and did write articles about everything; he wrote with facility and a certain skill. He had, moreover, a naïve and innocent journalistic point of view. He saw the “human interest” in things. He felt that he would very easily discern the “human interest” in this Russian situation and present it to America in moving terms. His paper was willing to buy the special articles he intended to write, and on the pay for them he would live, Bolshevist fashion, while he collected his material.

He took out his watch. He had paid for an hour, and fifteen minutes of it had already passed. He frowned. After all, you know, he was somebody. He was a newspaper man, and a graduate of Columbia University, and he had paid cash for his twenty lessons, and people had no business to keep him waiting.

He got up, opened the door, and walked about, hoping that his restlessness might be observed from the corridor, and assuaged; but no one passed. All the other doors along the corridor were closed, and he heard a diligent hum, with now and then a French or German word familiar to him, from other teachers and other pupils, properly employed. He had decided to return to the office and “make a row,” and had got himself into the proper mood for one, when he saw a figure hastening along the corridor, and he went back and sat down.

She came in, breathless, sat down beside him, closed her eyes, and placed both hands above her heart. He waited for her to speak with some alarm, she gasped so. She was a plump little woman of indefinite age—forty-five, he imagined—dressed in clothes such as he hadn’t seen for fifteen years. All that she wore was dainty and fresh, with a pitiful sort of elegance—little ruffles of fine lace about her wrists, a bit of black velvet about her high collar. Her very shape was old-fashioned—a succession of curves, a round, tight look, a sort of dowdy neatness.

Nothing more foreign could be imagined. She didn’t stir, and he ventured a look at her face. With her eyes thus closed, her[Pg 15] soft, plump visage had a look of profound sadness and immense wisdom. It impressed him, it almost hypnotized him.

Suddenly she opened her eyes—pale gray eyes, clear and blank.

“My heart!” she said, in excellent English. “I suffer very much!” She picked up the book. “Do you know any Russian words?” she asked, with a shadowy smile.

“No,” he said; “not one.”

“A beautiful, beautiful language!” said she. “Only listen!”

She began reading him something from the middle of the book. Of course he couldn’t comprehend a word, but he liked to hear it. Her voice was charming, and the foreign sounds entertained him. She turned a page and went on.

“This is an extract from a most beautiful Russian tale,” she explained. “You would surely admire it.”

She continued. Her voice became sad, she made soft, slow gestures with her small dimpled hand.

“Ah, how very sad this is!” she said. “All that is best in Russia is so sad!”

“What’s the story about?” he asked, with curiosity.

“It is about two young men who are in an inn—” she began, when suddenly a bell rang loudly in the room. “My God!” she said mildly. “What is this?”

“I don’t know,” he replied.

“It must be that the lesson is ended,” said she. “One would not believe how the time flies! You have not had your full time—I was so late. I think I must go with you to the office and ask if I cannot make this up to you.”

“Never mind,” said he. “Please don’t bother—it doesn’t matter!”

“Ah, but it does!” said she. “You have paid, and it is very important that one should secure what one has paid for.”

She had risen, and went walking briskly along the corridor, an odd little figure in a long, trailing skirt. He followed her into the quiet office, where a severe director sat writing at a desk. He looked up with a surprised air.

“I was late for this gentleman’s lesson,” said the stout little woman. “He has missed much of it.”

“Then why do you waste more time in coming here?” cried the director, with a frown. “Go back, madame, and finish it. Make the best of the time that is left.”

“I thought the hour finished.”

“But on the contrary—the half-hour bell has just rung.”

“Ah!” said she, with a pleased smile. “I did not understand!”

And they walked back again, down the corridor, to the hot little room.

“I don’t understand everything of this,” she explained to him. “This is my first lesson that I give. This position of Russian professor belongs to my husband, but he is ill, and they kindly permit me to take his place for this little while. Now we must not waste more time!”

She opened the book again, and studied it with serious regard.

“A difficult language,” she said; “but so very beautiful! The English and Americans can never learn to pronounce our consonant sounds—never! Could you say this?”

She uttered a sound, and he tried to imitate her, but failed. She smiled with a sort of benevolent triumph.

“Ah, it cannot be done—not ever! Now, on the contrary, we Russians have no difficulty whatsoever with any of the English words. I don’t know—it is the Russian soul, perhaps. We have so great a sympathy. Nothing is strange to us, nothing is foreign—nothing at all. We are at home in all languages, in all countries. It is our mystery.”

“You speak English very well,” he said.

“Why not? I lived for years in England; but in this country, only three months.”

She fell silent.

“Why is it that you wish to learn Russian?” she asked suddenly.

“Well, I thought of going to Russia, you know—to study the people and write a book.”

“Useless!” she said calmly.

“Why?”

“Never can you know our people—above all things, now, in our time of trouble. Oh,” she cried, “it is so terrible! I cannot bear that strange people should go there now—to our Holy Russia, to see our agony! If you knew!”

She covered her eyes with her hand.

“If you knew! We have left everything there, all we had on this earth. We have no news of our friends. Perhaps they are dead; certainly they are ruined. Such wonderful people—real Russian souls! We, too, are ruined. We have lost everything we had.[Pg 16]”

He was deeply impressed by the tragic note in her voice.

“I know,” he said; “but perhaps things will improve before long.”

“For Russia, yes—for us, no. We are ruined. We are finished,” she said quite simply. “We are torn up by the roots. We are not young enough to begin again. Above all, such a man as my husband—one of the greatest minds of Russia. A wonderful man! Imagine you, he is an artist, he paints, composes music, writes poetry, all in the most charming taste, and he is also a marvelous financier. Ah, what is one to say to comfort such a man? And that now he must teach Russian in this place!”

Again she was silent, and he didn’t like to interrupt her. He was deeply interested in her—her fine voice, her passionate gesture, the extreme novelty of her. He was aware of a depth and variety of feeling in her which amazed him. She was like a woman in a novel; and with it all she had a simplicity such as he had never seen before. It was impossible to doubt the sincerity of a single word she uttered.

She began to speak again.

“What is it that you think you will see in Russia?” she asked. “I tell you, nothing! You will never see the Russian soul. You will stay there a year, five years, ten years, and never will you know a single Russian. No; we do not wear our hearts on our sleeves. Shall I tell you something of us?”

“Yes, please do!” he said earnestly.

She began to tell him of Petrograd—of shops there, more elegant, she said, than anything to be found in Paris. She described a certain confectioner’s shop. When you went in, you were invited to sample all the sweets displayed there, and there were hundreds of different sorts—hundreds, she assured him! She described forty to him, lingering in ecstasy over their perfections.

She told him of the houses, warm, full of flowers, in the bitterest winter weather; and the women—the kindest women in all the world. She talked of the court, but only briefly. She began to speak of the Czarina, but she could not go on. The words strangled her.

“And all that is gone!” she said. “All that—my God!”

He carefully concealed his American disapproval of courts and sovereigns. He even felt sorry, on her account, that it had gone.

“I do not think that you know in this country what social life is,” she said. “Here it is so formal, so without heart. With us, it is so different. It may be that on a certain day I am tired, ill, lazy. I do not wish to dress. I am in negligee. My friends come, and I receive them just in this fashion. No one is surprised.

“‘For God’s sake, do not apologize, Anastasie!’ they say. ‘It is you we come to see, not your fine clothes!’”

And here the bell rang again, unmistakably for the lesson’s end. Again she was surprised.

“Ah!” she said. “It has been very pleasant for me to talk to you! You are of a sympathetic nature, there is no doubt of that!”

He hadn’t learned a word, not a syllable of Russian, but he was entirely satisfied. He felt that he had met with something even more truly Russian than the language. He walked out of the building, feeling decidedly more cosmopolitan.

II

Two days later he returned for his next lesson, in the dusk of a snowy February afternoon. This time he found her waiting for him, sitting before the table in the little room. They smiled in friendly fashion.

“I was thinking, as I came,” he said, “that this must be like a Russian winter afternoon.”

“Oh, no!” she said. “It isn’t! It has not the—the feeling. There is—how shall I tell you?—a sort of excitement about our snowy days. But I must not waste your time. Let us begin!”

For ten minutes or so she worked industriously, teaching him Russian words for chair, table, wall, floor, ceiling.

“You are really learning now?” she asked solicitously.

“Yes,” he answered, very much pleased.

“It seems, however, that as a teacher I am not successful,” she said, with a melancholy little smile. “To you I give my first lesson, and to you I give my last. After this I have finished.”

“Why? Is your husband coming back?”

“No,” she said. “He is not well—yet.”

She got up, went over to the window, and stood there looking out. He couldn’t help thinking, as he regarded her round form in profile, that she looked like the[Pg 17] little wooden figures of Noah’s wife in the arks that children play with. And then he saw her face, and was sorry for his fancy. She was gazing out across the dark, snow-covered expanse of Madison Square, wonderfully misty in the falling snow, and she was silently weeping.

“No,” she said. “He is not coming back. He is very ill.”

He felt terribly sorry for her, but he could think of nothing at all to say. She came back and sat down in the full glare of the electric light. She looked intolerably pitiful, her scanty eyebrows red with weeping, her mouth compressed and trembling a little.

“And they tell me this morning that there will be no more lessons for me. It seems that I talk too much English to the pupils, and that must not be. I must talk only in Russian, and I always forget.”

She shrugged her shoulders, while she wiped her eyes, quite unaffectedly, with an elaborate little lace handkerchief.

“And now,” she said, “do you remember the word for ‘table’?”

But he couldn’t bear that.

“About your husband,” he began respectfully. “Are you sure you have a good doctor? Being in a strange country, you know—”

“I don’t need a doctor, my friend!” she told him, with a stern smile. “I have seen too much of illness and death. A doctor can tell me nothing and can do nothing for me.”

“But,” he said, “in other ways—if you’re leaving here, can’t I help you to find some other sort of—occupation? I’m a newspaper man; I know all sorts of people. I should be more than happy to help you.”

She bowed her head gravely.

“Thank you! I know enough of the world to appreciate kindness. You are very good—very kind. I had a little plan. I thought perhaps I would give private lessons in my home, if I could find pupils.”

“I’d like to come, very much.”

“Oh, no! With you that is not possible. At least, not now. You have paid for a course of twenty lessons here.”

“I’d rather take them from you.”

“But you have paid!” she cried, with a sort of horror. “You must not waste that money!”

He smiled, with a slight feeling of superiority toward this foreign thrift.

“I’ll arrange it,” he said.

So before the end of the lesson she gave him a card on which was engraved:

MME. PAUL SENSOBIAREFF

“The French form of the name,” she explained. “It would be impossible for any one in this country to pronounce the Russian form.”

He felt a fleeting doubt of this. He would have liked a try at it.

“And your name?” she asked.

“Hardy,” he said. “Winslow Hardy.”

She repeated it, and in spite of Russian ease in foreign tongues, she certainly said “Vinslow.”

They arranged for an afternoon the next week, and they settled the terms, which were high. Hardy was by no means well off, and his heart sank a little at the thought of this expense; but a fine pity swayed him. He would have made many sacrifices for this unhappy woman.

He had never before been conscious of this chivalry in himself. He had been in love from time to time, but it had not been a disinterested passion. He had always sought for the advantage. He had always been kind, generous, a little idealistic in his dealings with his fellows; but never before had he been really moved by pity.

He thought time and again of the poor Russian lady. In fact, he hardly ever forgot her. He imagined the unhappy soul, with all her little elegancies, living in squalor and anxiety, and his mind was busy with schemes for her salvation. He planned to force or persuade every one he knew to study Russian.

III

Imagine Hardy’s surprise when he reached the address given him, and found it to be an imposing apartment house, with a palm-bedecked entrance and two negro boys in uniform to receive him and inspect him with a hostile air. He went up on the lift to the top floor, and found her there in a splendidly furnished sort of double salon, high-ceilinged, bright with sunshine, with flowers and plants all about. She herself was dressed in a short white garment suspiciously like a wrapper, worn over a voluminous black skirt. Over her soft, mouse-colored hair was tied a bit of lace.

He could scarcely avoid staring at her; she didn’t look dressed. It took him a long time to get used to her domestic costume.

The room, too, disconcerted him. It[Pg 18] was no sort of room to have a lesson in. The elegance, the airy charm of it, destroyed his serious intent. He wanted to sit there and chat with his hostess; and in fact that is what he did.

She offered him Russian cigarettes from a little lacquer box, and while he smoked she instructed him for a few minutes; but they were interrupted by the entrance of a gaunt young girl who brought them weak, fragrant tea and a plate of biscuits. After that there was no more lesson. They talked—or, rather, Mme. Sensobiareff talked and he listened.

The hour passed very agreeably. When he saw by his watch that it was finished, he got up to take his leave.

“One minute, if you please!” she said, and went out of the room.

He waited, looking about him, wondering how it was that a woman existing in such comfort should either need or wish to give lessons for a living. Though it increased the illusion of aristocratic refinement there was about her, it filled him with some misgiving. They couldn’t be entirely ruined!

There was the sound of footsteps in the hall, the curtains parted, and she came in again, followed by a man.

“My husband,” she said. “Paul, this is the gentleman who has been so very kind to me.”

Oh, no doubt that he was ruined, poor devil! His face was like wax, his eyes sunken and extinguished, all his bearing hopeless and despairing. He was a slender, high-shouldered man, younger than she by some years, with fair hair and a light mustache—an upcurled mustache, bitterly at variance with his utter despondency. She was right—no doctor was needed to read his fate. Whatever mysterious malady he had, it had progressed beyond any earthly check.

He shook hands with Hardy. He offered him cigarettes again, and insisted upon giving him a glass of sherry. He was very polite, very nervous. He spoke English beautifully, but so fast, so volubly, that it was difficult to follow him.

Hardy couldn’t get away; he had to stay and talk for a long time. The poor chap was marvelously well informed upon American affairs, and it delighted him to talk. He said that he was “considering financial opportunities”; he asked questions about the stock market.

All the time he talked, Hardy was conscious of the stout little woman beside him, watching her husband’s ghastly face with a terrible fervor. It was as if she wanted to remember every one of his looks and his words forever.

It was a devotion of absolute simplicity. He was her sole object in life, her one interest. At the next lesson she began talking about him, and she never stopped. She felt obliged to interpret this great mind of Russia for her American friend. She showed his paintings, she played his music on the piano, she read aloud his Russian poems, and she explained his surroundings.

“Paul is dying of nostalgia,” she said. “He loved his country so! He is used to big, beautiful rooms and light and air. Ah, I never thought they could cost so dear! I have got the best I could for him, but at what a cost—what a cost! It is draining us of every penny. I am taking it, little by little, all we had put away, only to give him these few little things. He is so ill he doesn’t know how I manage. It is the last I can ever do for him. At least he shall die in peace and quiet!”

She did, inevitably, teach Hardy a little Russian. He was presently able to speak to the servant and to be comprehended; but he learned other things of greater value to him. He had before him a lesson in fortitude, in sublime unselfishness, which touched him to the heart. He was beginning to learn something of the charm and the magic that lie in utter sincerity, in spontaneous and artless intercourse.

However, his lessons were abruptly terminated. He found a new position on a Middle Western newspaper, and he left New York.

He parted from Mme. Sensobiareff with real regret. She listened to his plans with an actually motherly interest. He had decided, after all, that he would write a book about the Middle West, which he had heard was replete with atmosphere, and she approved his plan.

“Write, by all means!” she said. “I am sure that you will do well. You Americans are so clever! With us, it is so different. We feel—my God, we feel so deeply, but we are dumb!”

He hadn’t found her or her husband noticeably dumb; however, he didn’t say so. He said that he would write to her, and he went away, filled with hope and his own special and touching enthusiasm. It was[Pg 19] not that he particularly liked writing, but it seemed to him the readiest way to distinguish himself, and that was his great desire.

IV

Hardy’s book was never written. In fact, his Middle Western career was brief and very unpleasant. He didn’t suit his editor at all. He was perpetually criticized and badgered, and his air of sophistication and cynic wisdom was resented as an affectation from the execrated metropolis. He came back to New York in midsummer, terribly disappointed and sorely perplexed. He couldn’t understand his failure, both professional and personal.

He had saved a little money, and he used it to give himself a vacation before applying to his old newspaper. He went on a fishing trip with two other men, to a beautiful, remote mountain spot, far from all noise and turmoil, and far from any supervised source of water supply.

When he came back to the city, he wondered that his vacation had done him so little good. He felt so tired, so wretched, so despondent, that he couldn’t think of going to work. He sat in his furnished room, in a stupor of misery, scarcely able to drag himself out for meals, waiting with alarm and anxiety for his physical and mental condition to improve.

“I hope I’m not going to be ill!” he thought, in despair.

His money was all gone, and what was he to do?

He tried to fight it off. He insisted to himself that it was nothing. He couldn’t lay a finger on any alarming symptom, except this weariness, this chill dread. He couldn’t eat, but he slept a great deal.

It was a sweltering August afternoon, and his room was like an oven. He awakened from a long nap, and sprang up, dizzy and confused, but filled with sudden activity. He wanted to go out, he wanted to talk to somebody, at once. He was in great haste. He brushed his hair with the greatest precision, but he didn’t observe that he had on no collar or tie.

He found it difficult to get down the stairs, and when he reached the street he had to walk very rapidly to keep from staggering. The fierce glare of the sun was intolerable.

Suddenly there came to his distracted brain the thought of Mme. Sensobiareff and her cool, airy rooms, the kindness of her voice. He felt that if he could have a cup of her weak, fragrant tea, and sit quietly listening to her for a little while, his malady would leave him. He needed to talk to her. He was so anxious to talk that he muttered to himself as he walked.

She said, afterward, that he had been guided to her. Perhaps he was; certainly he never quite understood how he got there. He arrived at the hottest hour of that intolerable day, a disheveled and sinister figure. The hall boy didn’t want to let him in, but Hardy pushed him aside with a melodramatic scowl, and began ascending the seven flights of stairs. It didn’t occur to him to use the lift.

He went on at a terrific gait, with his heart pounding madly and his head almost bursting. He didn’t rest once. He reached her door and rang the bell. She opened the door herself, and he lurched in, gasping, his face crimson. He couldn’t speak. He waved his hands feebly and flung himself down on the sofa and cried.

He didn’t faint, he didn’t actually lose consciousness, for he was aware of talking volubly for a long time; yet he didn’t know what was going on about him. At last he came to himself, and gradually became aware that he was lying in bed in a darkened room, with his shoes and coat off, and a damp towel about his forehead. The dark green shades at the windows were flapping with a gentle, pleasing sound. There was an agreeable fresh fragrance in the air—a feeling of wonderful peace and calm. He felt very sick and inert, and he made no effort to move, although he heard voices at his bedside. He looked with languid interest at a big bureau facing him, on which were two framed photographs and a silver toilet service.

“He ought to go to the hospital,” said a deep, buzzing voice.

“Never!” came the voice of Mme. Sensobiareff. “That shall not be!”

“Then you’ll have to get two nurses, one for the day and one for the night. You’ll have to turn your house upside down. It’ll cost you a great deal—a very great deal; and it’s unnecessary and foolish. Put him in the hospital, and—”

“Never! As for two nurses, that cannot be arranged. I shall take care of him myself.”

“Nonsense! He’ll have to be looked after constantly. There are all sorts of[Pg 20] things to be done for him which an inexperienced—”

“Ah! Inexperienced, you tell me?” she whispered fervently. “There is no one in the world who can nurse better than I. I have a genius for nursing. I was at Port Arthur during the most awful days, and I nursed—my God!—perhaps five hundred men. I shall take care of him. My servant will help me.”

“Impossible! You’ll kill the fellow between you. And you’ll be held responsible for—”

“Enough!” she said curtly. “This is my affair. I take it upon myself. Give your instructions; they will be carried out to the letter.”

“You realize that this is a very serious illness?”

“It is the typhoid fever,” said she. “I know very well.”

“Yes,” said the other. “I see you do know something. Well—”

They walked quietly away, and Hardy fell asleep.

In the night he awoke, or grew conscious again, and he saw sitting bolt upright beside his bed the gaunt young servant, in a red calico dressing jacket and a tremendous braid of dark hair. Her flat face looked so immobile, so inhuman, that he suddenly became terrified.

“Madame!” he called. “Quick! Come here! A dead woman! Quick!”

Mme. Sensobiareff hurried into the room almost at once. She soothed him, gave him something to drink, and brought an ice cap for his head. He grew calmer and presently quite lucid.

“Don’t keep me here,” he said, in a weak whisper. “Send me to the hospital. This is too much for you!”

“Hush! Hush! Be quiet! You are not to talk!”

And he gave up completely and resigned himself to her miraculous care.

V

For two weeks Hardy was very ill, often delirious. Then he began little by little to improve, to enter into a delightful period of rest and peace. The two women devoted their lives to him. They waited upon him with the most passionate seriousness. There was no annoying fuss, no superfluous attention, but one or the other of them was at hand every minute, and they divined his every want.

The quiet, beautiful order of the room, the odd and touching delicacy of his nurses, sank into his spirit. In spite of his weakness, in spite of the minor pains and discomforts of his malady, he was happy.

But he couldn’t help worrying. One morning, while Mme. Sensobiareff was busy about the room, he spoke to her about his anxiety.

“It isn’t right!” he said, in a feeble, plaintive tone. “Your husband is ill, too, and I’m taking up all your time and upsetting everything. He won’t—”

“It makes no difference to him,” she said. “He is not here. Only rest and be tranquil, my dear!”

“But I feel like a beast!” he protested. “To come here like this, and to let you do all this! And the expense! I haven’t a cent to repay you. You can’t imagine how it makes me feel. I’m ashamed!”

“That is foolish, my dear—very foolish. I understand how it is with you.” She paused for a moment. “I do not think there is any one on this earth who can understand better the troubles of others,” she said; “because I have felt them all—all! You must believe me!”

As she looked at him, still smiling, her pale, clear eyes grew misty.

“I have the most sorrowful heart in the world,” she said. “He is dead!”

“Your husband?” he cried, shocked.

She bowed her head.

“Three months ago. But we will not speak of that, if you please. You will see now what a blessing it is for me that I can help you.”

As he grew stronger they talked more and more together—or, rather, she talked and he listened. It was a sort of monologue made up of her own vast experience. She had seen so much, traveled so much, suffered so much. She had seen plagues, famine, battles, she had lived in alien and hostile countries, she who lived so much through her friends had seen so many of them suffer; and now, past her youth, she found herself utterly alone, poor, friendless, thousands of miles from her home.

Hardy would sit propped up in a chaise longue near the window, and, while he smoked the five cigarettes he was permitted daily, he would listen to her charming voice, talking and talking. Sometimes he grew sleepy, but he concealed it.

There was one thing that puzzled him. She never sat with him in the evening.[Pg 21] After they had had dinner, which he now took in the dining room, he was always conducted back to his own room, and Anna would come in, with her sewing, to keep him company. This was not very entertaining, for she didn’t know a dozen words of English, and he didn’t like to read and entirely ignore her.

What on earth did Mme. Sensobiareff do with herself? He heard the doorbell ring, time after time, every evening, but he heard no sounds to indicate social activity, no voices, no moving about. Who came? He couldn’t ask Anna, and he didn’t care to ask her mistress; but he thought about it a great deal, and he didn’t like it.

The time came when he was declared well, and the doctor made his last visit.

“Now I’ll have to be thinking about going away,” he said.

“Oh, no!” she protested. “I have this beautiful lodging, all paid for five months to come. You must stay here until you have found a position.”

“I can’t do that,” he said. “It wouldn’t—you see, it’s awfully kind of you, but it wouldn’t look—you see, you’re here all alone. People would talk.”

“These people, who are they? I have no friends. No one will know or care. Don’t trouble yourself, my friend!” she said, smiling. “There will be no difficulty. I am a thousand years old!”

In the end he decided that he would stay, for a time at least, as much for her sake as for his own, until he could find work and in that way be able to help her. He resolved to protect her and care for her all his life.

An amazing existence! It continued for six weeks, for even after he had found a place as copy writer for a mail order house, she insisted upon his taking his earnings to buy clothes.

“Without clothes one can do nothing,” she said. “It is always necessary to present a good appearance.”

She was truly like a mother to him. She looked after his clothes, she wanted to hear every detail of his day, and she dearly loved to give him advice, which was always sensible, but sometimes a little irritating, because it was so obvious. Never was there such a wonderful friend, so unfailingly kind, so loyal, so delicate.

And yet—would you believe it?—all his natural affection for her was poisoned by suspicion, because of those mysterious evenings. He bitterly resented being shunted off into his own room after dinner. He resented the secrecy and the mystery. He would sit there, listening to the sound of the doorbell, the front door opening and closing, and then nothing further. The room she had given him was at the back of the flat, because it was quiet there. It was very quiet.

One evening he went into the kitchen, to try to talk with Anna. Since he had been declared well, the maid no longer sat with him in the evenings, and he felt that even her silent company would be better than none.

He found her sitting by the table, her head in her hands, the picture of a despondent exile; but when he entered she looked up with a friendly, anxious smile.

“You eat?” she asked.

“No, thanks,” he said.

She shrugged her shoulders, to show her despair at not understanding, and kept on smiling.

Suddenly the swing door from the dining room was opened, and Mme. Sensobiareff came in. She looked at Hardy gravely; then, without a word, she drew herself a glass of water and went out again, leaving him astounded and distressed, a prey to the most disagreeable suspicions. What in Heaven’s name was she doing, dressed like that, in evening dress, with bare arms and neck and so elaborate a coiffure?

He went back to his own room and walked up and down in the dark, angry, terribly humiliated. After all, what did he know about her, except that she had been kind? Women of a certain sort were often kind, with a facile, lavish kindness. He felt that he comprehended the mystery now, that he knew what sort of house this was, and the thought of all that he had accepted was intolerable to him.

She had no right to force her kindness on him! It was shameful; she had degraded him. If any one should ever hear of it, that he had been supported—yes, certainly supported for weeks by this woman, out of her disgraceful earnings!

She thought him a little moody and ill-humored the next morning at breakfast; but with her unfailing generosity, she made allowances. She sat there in her crisp white wrapper, a very model of domesticity, and smiled at him over the pretty little bouquet of flowers that she always arranged on the table. She went to the[Pg 22] front door with him, and bade him good-by; and with constraint, in misery, he replied to her, and hurried off. He had decided never to return.

He fully intended to write to her, but he never did. He found it too difficult. He couldn’t reproach her, for her conduct was none of his business, and he could think of no plausible lie. He put off writing for day after day, and little by little the pain of the thing wore off and his regret and shame grew faint.

However, he wasn’t ungrateful. He tried to compute the cost of his illness and his long stay, and he made a magnificent effort to save enough to repay the disconcerting total; but it wasn’t possible. It would take many months. He had got back into newspaper work again, doing special articles, and his earnings were not imposing.

When he had scraped together a small part of his debt, he decided to take the money to her. He trusted to her tact and good sense to avoid the necessity of an awkward explanation.

He arrived at the apartment house, and was about to enter the lift when the boy stopped him.

“The madam’s gone,” he said, with a grin.

“Gone? Moved away?”

“Yes, sir—moved away.” He chuckled. “She certainly did move away. She wuz moved away. Seems she’d borrowed some money on that furniture of hers, and couldn’t pay it. One day the people came and took it away. Ah thought Ah’d never get over laughin’. There she stood, watching it go; and she didn’t have a stick left in the place!”

“Do you know where she went?” asked Hardy.

“No, sir, Ah do not. She didn’t invite me to call,” said the boy.

Hardy went away, heavy-hearted. For many, many nights she came to haunt him—that poor, friendless foreign woman, so wonderfully kind, so wise and so sad. He blamed himself bitterly for losing track of her. She hadn’t investigated his morals, she hadn’t blamed, she hadn’t judged—she had simply helped. His scruples now appeared petty and cruel. He thought that he would give anything he had if he could only see her again, in her beruffled white wrapper, sitting before the samovar and talking.

He remembered her devotion to her husband. What if she had taken a wrong way, in order to live? Who was he, whom she had so greatly benefited, to despise her?

VI

Hardy owed many of his special articles to a detective friend of his named Clendenning—a big, magnificent creature with a princely air and a marvelous wardrobe. When there was something interesting to be “pulled off,” Clendenning used to “tip off” Hardy; and when it was possible, the detective would take his friend along, to witness his exploits.

He was a very useful man for a certain sort of work, for his gentlemanly air made it possible for him to go without arousing suspicion into places where some of his colleagues would have been conspicuous. He was an adroit fellow, full of guile and ironic humor. Nothing in life gave him such pleasure as his “little surprises,” his neat traps for knaves of all sorts.

“If you’re around such and such a corner, at such and such a time,” he would say, “you might see something you could work into a story, old man.”

Hardy always followed such suggestions, and was always rewarded.

One evening Clendenning came into the little restaurant where Hardy almost always ate his dinner, and sat down at the table beside him.

“Want to see something interesting?” he asked.

“I do,” said Hardy.

“There’s a poor old feeble ass of a man who’s been complaining of a mysterious Persian woman,” he said. “He says she’s bewitched him, and he can’t keep away from her. He goes every night to get a psychic consultation, and she gives him advice about the stock market. He’s lost thousands already, but he says he thought he hadn’t interpreted her advice right, and kept going back for more. At last he came to headquarters with a complaint—says she’s a fraud. He says her place is crowded every evening with people clamoring for a chance to press ten dollars into the mysterious Persian’s hand and get a psychic message. Of course, it’s a pretty plain case for the police; but from what he said I thought it might be funny. I like to see how those things are done. It’s wonderful to see how easy it is to fool people. I like[Pg 23] to watch ’em work. She calls herself the Princess Zoraide. Ready?”

They rose and strolled out into the mild October night. They lighted cigars and sauntered uptown to a street of grim and moribund stone houses, given over to more or less mysterious enterprises. They stopped at one, rang the bell, and were admitted to a little drawing room furnished in moldy satin and poorly illuminated by a gas chandelier. Almost every seat was occupied, and the dreary light revealed a set of figures so dramatic, so interesting, that Hardy’s professional instincts were at once aroused.

He saw two women, probably a mother and daughter, sitting side by side, hand in hand, on a sofa, both weeping. He saw a white-bearded old man with his head thrown back and his dim eyes staring raptly at the ceiling. He saw a man who appeared to be on the brink of delirium tremens, his body twitching, his face contorted. He saw a great, fat blond woman in diamonds and silks and feathers, with a false, distrait smile on her painted face. In shadowy corners he saw other women whispering together. He was impressed by the atmosphere of pain, of terrible anxiety, that surrounded these people who came to receive relief and assuagement from the Princess Zoraide.

He sat down near the door with Clendenning, to await his turn. One by one he watched these people receive their summons, vanish into an inner room, and reappear again as shadows hastening through the dark hall to the front door. He would have liked to see their faces then, to see if the psychic consultation had in any way altered them.

The room had filled again, but Hardy was no longer observant. He was thinking. He was thinking of the immeasurable human longing after hope, and it occurred to him that perhaps even a charlatan might satisfy this.

The young woman who gave the summons to the waiting clients once more appeared before the curtains, and repeated her formula:

“The princess is ready for the next seeker!”

“You go first,” said Clendenning, and Hardy rose.

He walked across the room, past all those strained faces, opened the curtains, and entered a room completely dark, filled with a heavy perfume. A hand guided him to a chair, and he vaguely discerned a white form opposite him.

“What is your trouble?” asked a low voice.

He hesitated a moment. He hadn’t prepared anything to say.

“A love affair,” he said at last.

He knew that more questions would follow, but he was unable to arm himself, to set himself to invent something plausible. He was troubled, unhappy; he sat there in the dark with a blank and apprehensive mind.

“And what is the difficulty?” asked the Princess Zoraide. “What is it that you wish to know?”

He said nothing at all.

“Come, my friend!” she said a little impatiently. “Can you expect that I should enter into your heart and know its secrets? I have the most sympathetic nature in the world, but—”

He rose suddenly. He knew that phrase, that voice!

“What? Is it you?” he cried.

“I? Who? What is it that you mean?” she faltered.

“Mme. Sensobiareff!”

She gave a sigh that was like a groan.

“Yes,” she said. “See how I am obliged to gain my living! Ah, well! But why do you come here? Have you some trouble, my dear?”

“No! Listen! Don’t you know how dangerous this is? It’s illegal—it’s not allowed.”

“I do no harm.”

“But it’s against the law.”

“No one will trouble about me, so obscure, so—”

“The man who came with me is a detective. You’ll be arrested.”

“My God!” she cried. “My God! I—arrested?”

To him, an American, her alarm seemed exaggerated. To be arrested had not the same terrible meaning that it had for her. The hand that had clutched his arm trembled violently.

“Arrested? No, no! I do no harm. I help many people. I am very psychic. I am very sympathetic. I comprehend the troubles of others. If you knew! So many people bring their friends to me, because I have helped them! Oh, no! I cannot be arrested! Oh, my friend! At my age! And I am so alone here, in a[Pg 24] foreign land! It will kill me! I shall die!”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Wait! Let me think! Can you slip out without being seen? I will wait for you on the corner of Fifth Avenue. Hurry!”

He went stealthily down the dark hall, opened the front door, and went out. He didn’t know whether the formidable Clendenning had seen him or not. He expected every moment to feel a hand on his shoulder, to see that handsome and ironic face; and then he would be lost. He felt himself absolutely incapable of deceiving Clendenning, or of outwitting him.

But no one came. Hardy stood in the shadow, nervous as a cat, watching the quiet street. He saw some one go up the steps of the house, and enter, but no one came out. Why didn’t she hurry? Had Clendenning already seized her?

He stopped a passing taxi and told the driver to wait, and once more he looked down the silent street. Certainly Clendenning would be growing impatient; if she didn’t come soon—

He was startled to hear her voice behind him.

“I left by the back door and went through the yards to the next street,” she whispered. “I am sure that no one saw me. Oh, my friend!”

He hurried her into the taxi.

“Be quick!” he said to the driver.

He took her to his lodging house, where they entered unobserved and went upstairs to his little room. He locked the door behind them and sat down on the bed, trying to smile, to reassure her; but he expected every moment to hear a knock at the door, and the detective’s voice, demanding satisfaction for this outrageous betrayal. What in Heaven’s name was he to do with her?

“Now, you know,” he said, with a distorted smile, “it wouldn’t be such a serious matter, even if you were arrested. Perhaps a fine—”

“No!” she said firmly. “I should die. If they come to arrest me, I shall kill myself. I have a pistol here in my hand bag!”

“Nonsense!” he cried impatiently. “Don’t be so absurd!”

“Do you think, then, that I have so much to live for?” she asked. “I have nothing—nothing at all. When you went away, without a word—I had thought I should always have you. Well, never mind; let us not speak of it. I am a foolish old woman. Let us say no more.”

He stared at her with a new idea dawning upon him. She wasn’t old. She wasn’t much over forty, he imagined, and she had certainly not renounced the intention to charm. He observed her queer little hat, made up of odds and ends of jet, lace, and satin, her carefully powdered face, her earrings, her drab hair artfully disposed, all her harmless coquetry. He recalled all that she had done for him, how she had nursed him and provided for all his wants. He thought of his base suspicions with shame. The poor soul had simply been holding her psychic consultations to earn money—so much of which she had used for him.

Why hadn’t he seen it before? She loved him—it must be that! For what other reason would a woman do all that she had done?

What sublime sacrifices she had made, and how brutally he had rewarded her! He thought he had never heard of so generous and noble a nature before. He felt crushed and immeasurably humiliated before her—her who had almost undoubtedly saved his life.

“Why shouldn’t I make a sacrifice?” he asked himself. “What better could I do with my life than to try to make her happy? I’m not much good. I’ll never be much use any other way.”

He began to walk up and down the room.

“Of course she’s at least twelve years older than I; but she’s a charming, intelligent woman, and I respect her.”

And then the unworthy thought came to him—what a startling and distinguished thing it would be to marry her!

He stopped short.

“Mme. Sensobiareff,” he said, with dignity, “will you marry me?”

“What?” she asked with a frown.

“I know I’ve acted badly, but I—at the time I didn’t understand. I didn’t really appreciate you; but now—if you will—”

“Marry you!” she said, with a look that amazed him. “Are you mad?”

“But—”

“Is it possible that you didn’t know?” she said. “Couldn’t you see? That man—that saint—”

She began to weep, holding a tiny lace handkerchief to her eyes.

“One of the master minds of Russia—a noble soul—the kindest and best of men!” she sobbed. “Is it possible that[Pg 25] you think—oh, how little you know of women! You think I would replace him?”

“Replace him by you,” her tone implied.

Hardy was completely taken aback. He couldn’t speak.

“No,” she said, drying her eyes. “I have thought of nothing but him. Only help me to get away, where I shall be safe, and then forget me! I am the most unhappy wretch in the world. I have wished only to gain my living, and it seems that I have become a criminal. Only save me from this disgrace!”

“Yes, of course!” he said hurriedly. “Let me see!”

He fancied he heard a footstep on the stairs. He turned pale.

“Have you any money?” he cried. “If you could go to Canada—”

“Yes, I have money. In time, if it had not been for this, I should have become rich. But why are you so pale? Is there danger?”

“There’s no time to lose. Are you ready?”

She rose, adjusted her queer little hat before his mirror, and carefully patted her eyes.

“I am ready,” she said.

They went down the stairs and through the sleeping house with noiseless steps.

“Wait!” said Hardy. “Let me look first!”

He went out into the street and looked carefully up and down. No one there! He returned to fetch her. She took his arm with a pathetic, appealing gesture, and they went off through the quietest and darkest streets, both filled with haste and dread, unable to speak.

She was terribly out of breath when they reached the Grand Central Station. While he bought her ticket, she sat panting on a bench, her face concealed by a thick veil, but her little plump hands clasped passionately. A more forlorn, utterly foreign figure couldn’t be imagined.

They had nearly an hour to wait. He sat down beside her and tried to reassure her.

“You needn’t worry,” he said. “I’m sure there won’t be much of a search for you, and probably there’s no fear of further trouble. Only—you’ll never do that again, will you?”

“Never!”

“What will you do? Write me as soon as you reach Montreal. I’ll be anxious until I hear from you.”

“Yes, I shall write,” she said.

“How will you manage there?”

“I shall find a way.”

He persuaded her to take a cup of coffee and a sandwich at the lunch counter. Then he bought her some magazines and a box of chocolates.

“It’s time for you to go now,” he said. “I want you to know that never, as long as I live, shall I forget what you did for me. It was—”

“Hush!” she said. “You are repaying me, my dear. I only hope I have not brought you any trouble.”

The image of Clendenning rose up before him, but he answered valiantly:

“Certainly not! But when I think of what you did for me—a stranger—”

He could no longer repress the question which tormented him.

“But why did you do it? Why were you so good to me?”

She raised her veil and smiled at him.

“Ah, my dear!” she said “It is the Russian heart![Pg 26]”

MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE

SEPTEMBER, 1922
Vol. LXXVI NUMBER 4

[Pg 27]

Hanging’s Too Good for Him
THE PATHETIC STORY OF TOMMY ELLINGER, OF NEW YORK, AND AN INNOCENT YOUNG GIRL FROM THE COUNTRY

By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

HE first emerged from obscurity at his father’s funeral. He was the only son and the heir to everything, and therefore, of course, the center of interest; but immediately and forever he destroyed all the tepid sympathy and good will of the assembled relatives by his curious air of immense carelessness, his foppish nonchalance.

He hadn’t even the decency to wear a dark suit, they observed. He was dressed in light gray, evidently quite new, and he kept his hands in his pockets. It never occurred to any of them that his indifference might be a clumsy effort to conceal an immeasurable embarrassment. Neither did any one else remember what he remembered—that his father had detested any sort of formal mourning. And it was Tommy’s destiny always to do a thing in the wrong way, always to antagonize, invariably to blunder.

It was not regret for the loss of his father, or any great regard for his opinions, that caused Tommy to remember and to respect his wishes. It was nothing more than a naïve and kindly sentimentality. His father had been a horrible bully to him, the great bogey of his childhood. His mother had died when he was very little, and he had been sent off to boarding school at once.

It seemed to the family that Tommy had always been at school, winter and summer. Once in a great while he had emerged at some cousin’s Christmas party, a rather silly blond boy in military uniform, always spoken of as “poor little Tommy Ellinger.” There were no family rumors or traditions about him, no reports of his behavior at school.

Now, however, that he had definitely come to life, it was necessary for the family to decide upon him, and they decided unfavorably. He got, then and there, the name of being “defiant” and “conceited.”

His father’s elder brother was to be his guardian until he was twenty-one—a task which disgusted and appalled Uncle James. He was an old bachelor lawyer, living in a hotel. Naturally his first thought for Tommy was college, which would remove the boy for all his minority, and even longer; but Tommy fought desperately against that. His hatred for books, for herding with other young males, for all the bullying and chaffing which terrified his awkward innocence, for the competition which dazed his lumbering mind, made him unusually resolute. Business, too, he summarily repudiated.

“Then what do you intend to do?” his uncle demanded, with false patience.

“Well,” said Tommy desperately, “why couldn’t I be a lawyer, like you?”

His uncle looked at him with a grim smile, and answered nothing. The subject was dropped for the time being, and Tommy went to live at his uncle’s hotel, to make up his mind about his very important future. He lived a wretched sort of life, forever hanging about the lobby, or sitting through vaudeville shows and musical comedies. He ate breakfast with his exasperated old uncle every morning, and dinner almost every evening.

There was something peculiarly and intolerably irritating about Tommy—some quality which, in spite of his invariable good temper and his ingratiating manners, infuriated his uncle. A perfect young ass, the old lawyer called him.

Why was it that the qualities which would have been so endearing in a girl of eighteen were so maddening in Tommy? Why was he, with his youth, his boundless good will,[Pg 28] his plaintive innocence, really nothing on earth but a young ass?

He was a great lanky boy with a naïve, good-humored face and a preposterous foppish air, a man-of-the-world air; wearing clothes ostentatiously correct and an amazing eyeglass with a broad black ribbon. He imagined that he looked like a foreign diplomat, while at the bottom of his heart he was quite conscious of being and looking a puppy. He swaggered, but without any self-assurance.

He devoted great thought to his clothes, and he could not refrain from mentioning his sartorial inventions and improvements to his uncle.

“What do you think of the cut of this coat?” he would ask. “Do you notice this shoulder? Rather good, eh?”

“Beautiful!” his uncle would say. “I never saw such grace and elegance—a regular Beau Brummel! You’re fascinating. There’s nothing that interests me like the cut of your coats!”

Then Tommy would open the evening paper and laugh loudly and ostentatiously at something in it, to show how undisturbed he was.

“Why don’t you go out?” the old gentleman used to ask, often and often, when, their dinner finished, they went up together in the lift to the little sitting room they shared. “What’s the matter with you, Thomas? A boy of your age, sitting at home here with an old fellow like me, night after night! Why don’t you go out somewhere and enjoy yourself? Haven’t you any friends?”

Well, he hadn’t. All the boys he had known and liked in the military academy up the Hudson had come from the farthest ends of the country—from Texas, from California, from Maine. He had never been particularly popular, anyhow, and he was too shy and too ridiculous to make friends now.

His uncle attached great importance to this, for he himself had scores of friends. He wished Tommy to be a sort of creature the like of which is no longer to be found—the traditional, old-fashioned beau, the arbiter of elegance, welcomed everywhere, affable, agreeable, but forever unattached, the society man of a past generation. He supplied the boy with spending money, and introduced him to a few charming young married women and a great many old bachelors.

“Now go ahead!” he told him. “Make yourself popular! Make yourself liked! A young man of your age, of good family, with a little money in your pockets, with good prospects!”

He was invited to one or two sedate houses, for his uncle’s sake, but nothing came of it. The society life toward which his uncle urged him forever eluded him. In fact, he had no life of any sort. He was only waiting, hanging about in innocent and dreary idleness, unable to believe that life should so cheat him of every joy, every excitement.

It was spring when Tommy’s father died and he left the military academy. He spent a horrible summer with his uncle, in a hotel in town, or at other similar hotels in the mountains, on the coast, anywhere and everywhere. Then came a still worse winter, during which the old gentleman’s exasperation rose to a fury.

They would go now and then to a musical comedy of the liveliest sort, this being the Uncle James’s idea of what the boy ought to like. When the old man saw him sitting there not liking it, when he saw him not caring for or comprehending wines, a barbarian as to food, absolutely indifferent to the arts, and hopeless in regard to sport, he became almost homicidal.

“Go away!” he shouted at him. “Go and spend this summer by yourself! I won’t waste the money on taking you to a decent place. Go on a farm! Go to some cheap, miserable, damnable little country boarding house, where you can sit and gape all day, like the booby you are!”

Tommy felt that it would be paradise now to get away from his uncle, no matter where. The idea of going off alone, unbullied, unthwarted, quite dazzled him. He was only too ready to go anywhere his uncle suggested.

So Uncle James answered several newspaper advertisements, and at last found a place which he felt would be suitable. He wrote and made all arrangements, and then gave Tommy his directions, money that was to last him for a month, and the following advice:

“Don’t make a fool of yourself about any of the girls there. Remember, you haven’t a penny for the next three years except what I choose to allow you; and if you get yourself mixed up or compromised, I won’t help you. I won’t recognize any responsibility of that sort![Pg 29]”

Tommy turned scarlet.

“Not in my line, Uncle James!” he replied, with extreme jauntiness. And off he went.

II

His uncle almost forgot about Tommy for some time. He had a letter from the boy every week—a stupid, schoolboy letter which he hardly bothered to read. “The weather had been very hot. I guess you are glad not to be here, aren’t you? There is a lot of hay fever around now. It is certainly a lucky thing that you didn’t come”—and that sort of thing.

Then, while Uncle James was enjoying his little breakfast at the corner table in the grill room, which he had occupied for years and years, just as he was about to taste that invariable bowl of oatmeal with cream and powdered sugar, his eye was caught by a headline on the front page of his paper. He dropped his spoon on the floor.

FATHER SHOOTS GIRL’S BETRAYER—TRAGEDY NARROWLY AVERTED AT THE HOTEL TRESSILLON—SON OF THE LATE THOMAS ELLINGER WOUNDED

He stared and stared at the thing. The paper crackled in his trembling hands, the letters swam before his eyes. Nonsense! “Son of the late Thomas Ellinger”—must be a mistake!

He read the story with a furious sort of incredulity. It was a nasty story of a young city man going out to a little country town for a vacation, boarding in the house of a decent farmer, and running off one night with the poor little sixteen-year-old daughter. He had taken her to a disreputable hotel and registered as man and wife, which they weren’t. And the decent farmer, the outraged, the desperate father, had tracked them, and, standing in the doorway of the crowded and noisy restaurant, had fired two shots at the girl’s betrayer—at Tommy! At the boy who a few months ago had been sitting opposite Uncle James at this very table!

“No! Nonsense!” he cried, crumpling up the paper and throwing it under the table. “One of those beastly newspaper stories! Damned lies, all of them!”

He went up to his room, got his hat and stick, and hurried out, furtive, terrified, afraid that every one was pointing him out as the uncle of that fellow. He wanted to telephone, where he would not be seen or heard, somewhere outside of his hotel. He went into a booth in a cigar store, and called for the Hotel Tressillon.

“Mr. Ellinger,” he demanded.

In a moment he heard that familiar young voice, with its exaggerated accent.

“This is Mr. Ellinger speaking.”

“Thomas!” cried the old gentleman.

The boy gave a sort of gasp. Then, with his unfailing genius for doing the wrong thing, he assumed an airy and offhand tone.

“Hello, Uncle James!” he said jauntily. “I didn’t know that you were back in town again.”

“See here!” shouted the old gentleman, in a tremendous voice. “Is it true—this abominable thing I saw in the papers? Is it you?”

“Yes,” replied Tommy.

“Yes?” repeated his uncle’s voice, incredulous. “Yes? You did a thing like that? Good God! Explain yourself, Thomas!”

“I can’t!” said Tommy.

There was a brief silence.

“You—you young cur!” The old man’s voice was trembling. “Don’t ever come near me again. Don’t let me see you. I’d like to shoot you! You miserable, dastardly cur! You’ve disgraced the whole family. You’ve disgraced your father’s name. I’d like to see you hanged—only hanging’s too good for you!”

III

Tommy’s face was scarlet, as if he had been struck. He went across the room, as far as he could get from the telephone, sat down, tried to smoke a cigarette, and tried to smile carelessly. He had to give it up. He hid his hot face in his arms, and sat there, amazed, confounded, utterly overwhelmed, at his own deed and at the awful consequences of it.

His uncle’s voice he recognized as the voice of the world in general. That was how he was to be regarded in the future—a cad, a cur, hanging too good for him. A pariah—he who so valued the good opinion of others! It was the sort of thing one couldn’t live down, ever. His life was blasted at its very beginning.

He knew that he could never justify himself. There were the facts in the newspapers, and he couldn’t deny any of them. How explain, even try to explain, what lay[Pg 30] behind them? He himself didn’t comprehend it. He was more surprised, more shocked, than any one else could possibly have been.

He looked at his wrist watch, which lay on the table because it couldn’t be put on over his bandaged wrist, and saw with dismay that it was only ten o’clock in the morning. The thought of the hours he would have to pass, shut up there alone, overwhelmed him. He was ashamed to go out, even into the corridor. He had already had to face a doctor and the waiter who had brought up his breakfast, and his raw sensibilities had made each of these encounters an ordeal.

He imagined a quite preposterous hostility. He was already an outcast, he was deserted, no one would come or telephone; he had nothing whatever to do now, or in the future. He looked around the ugly little hotel bedroom, and he felt that he was in prison, judged and convicted by his fellow men, and already banished from them.

Nothing to do, but plenty to think of, to recollect, and to examine. He leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, and tried his honest best to retrace all the steps of the affair and to discover the true measure of his guilt.

He remembered every minute detail. He saw himself getting on the train at the Grand Central, saw himself in the train reading magazines, hoping that the other passengers admired his clothes and his luggage, and fearing that they didn’t. He remembered the dust and the heat and the tedium.

It was late afternoon when he reached Millersburg, and he was gratified to see from the window that a fair proportion of the population was assembled to see the New York train arrive. He was confident that he was causing more or less of a sensation as he descended, with his irreproachable tweed suit, his imposing eyeglass, and the latest thing in traveling bags.

He walked leisurely over to a solitary old carriage, climbed in, and directed the driver to take him to Mr. Van Brink’s. Then he leaned back carelessly, prepared to review the landscape, when the jolting old vehicle stopped. They were not yet out of sight of the station, from whence the natives were still watching his progress.

“Well, what’s wrong?” he asked the old driver. “Horse given out already?”

“Here ye be!” the driver answered dryly. “Here’s Van Brink’s!”

Tommy knew very well that he was being laughed at by the loungers at the station, as well as by the old driver, and he liked it no better than any one else would have liked it; but he was a genuinely good-natured sort of devil, and he grinned, in spite of a very real chagrin at so unimposing an arrival.

Having paid the driver lavishly, he walked along the little garden path before him, and up some steps to a little veranda. The door opened at once, and a hand reached for his bag.

“Come right in!” entreated a gentle young voice. “This way, please!”

The little house was cool and very dark, every shade pulled down, every shutter closed. Tommy followed the white dress that was ascending the stairs, and was presently led into a dim, breezy room, smelling of verbena.

The white dress flitted over to the window and threw open the shutters.

“There!” she said, looking back over her shoulder and smiling.

That smile! Tommy looked at her, enchanted.

You could see that she was very young, although her figure was almost matronly—short, full, agreeably rounded. She had calm, clear gray eyes, fair hair neatly arranged, a rather pale, chubby face with blunt features, pretty enough; but what was she but a nice, ordinary little country girl in a calico dress? What was there, or could there be, in such a young person to arouse the faintest interest in a man of the world like Tommy?

Ah, it was something to which far more sophisticated souls than his must have succumbed—a lure so flamboyant, a charm so candidly voluptuous!

She was serenely aware of her carnal fascinations. She was ignorant, but not without a certain experience, and she had a fatal sort of instinct. She knew her power, and knew how to employ it.

She looked at Tommy with complete self-possession. She was not in any way awed by his clothes, his eyeglass, or his magnificent air. Indeed, it was he who grew red and confused before the calm gaze of the girl in the calico dress.

“Is there anything you’d like to have, Mr. Ellinger?” she asked politely. “There’s towels[Pg 31]—”

“No, not at all!” protested Tommy, in his best manner. “Thanks awfully, but there’s nothing.”

The little thing in the white dress went out.

Tommy unpacked his bag, and then, restless and hungry, wandered about the room, looked out of the window, yawned, whistled, brushed his hair again, wondered what was expected of him. At last a knock at the door, and the gentle young voice said:

“Supper’s ready, Mr. Ellinger!”

She was waiting to show him the way to the dining room. She behaved, in fact, like a very nice little hostess, properly concerned with his comfort. He liked that, of course, and he liked the supper, too. It was a novel sort of meal to Tommy—cold meat, fried potatoes, little glass dishes of preserves and pickles, cakes, pies, strawberries, and coffee, all on the table together.

Old Van Brink and his wife made no impression on him at all. They were what he had expected—what they ought to be. He talked to them in his best manner, genial, very much at ease. He was ingenuously sure that they were kind and honest people, and that they admired him. All his interest centered on the calm little thing across the table.

Supper over, Van Brink retired to a rocking-chair with the newspaper, and his wife began to carry the dishes into the kitchen. The little thing looked at Tommy.

“Would you like to take a little walk?” she asked. “‘Most every one does—down to the village.”

“Charmed!” he assured her, with his inane magnificence. “Will you wait till I get my stick?”

So they set off together down the dark, tree-bordered street. It was cool and very quiet, with a wistful little breeze stirring in the leaves.

“Peaceful, isn’t it?” said Tommy contentedly.

“Oh, yes! I hope it will do you good,” the little thing answered benevolently.

Thanks, said Tommy, there wasn’t much wrong with him—he needed a rest, that was all.

“Well, you’ll get it, here!” said she, with a deep sigh.

“Why? Not much excitement?”

“Oh, you can’t imagine! Year after year!”

He was sorry for her.

“But you’ll be getting married one of these days,” he assured her gallantly.

“There’s no one here to marry,” she said.

They had come into the brightly lighted Main Street, and Tommy became somewhat distrait. He was wondering what sort of impression he was producing on the natives. They were observing him. He saw girls turn to stare after him, and a group of youths on a corner snickered as he passed.

All this pleased him. He swung his stick and strolled on with exquisite indifference. The little thing, he fancied, must be admiring him tremendously.

But she wasn’t. He was undoubtedly causing a sensation, this lofty stranger from the city with his remarkable clothes; but his smooth face was too innocent, his manner, for all its swagger, too ridiculously boyish. He was more or less stupid to this maiden accustomed to the loutish gallantries of the corner loafer, to facile caresses and furtive advances. He was insipid—“slow,” she called him to herself; but of course he could be taught.

Coming to Egbert’s Drug Store, they went in, at Tommy’s suggestion, and each of them had a glass of soda. She did feel a certain triumph then, at his manners and his handful of change.

It was dark when they returned to the house.

“Would you like to sit on the porch?” she asked. “All right! Let’s bring the hammock around.”

So they brought the hammock from the little back garden and slung it on the veranda. They were hidden from the street by a tangle of honeysuckle. The window behind them was unlighted, and there wasn’t a sound from the house. They might have been alone in the universe. No one disturbed them, no one came into sight. There they sat, in the sweet-scented dark, Tommy on the railing, the little white figure swaying in the hammock.

“Don’t you want to smoke?” she asked.

“Thanks!” he answered. “Yes, I will, if you don’t mind.”

“If it’s cigarettes, I’d like to have one, please.”

He was surprised and rather offended, because this wasn’t according to his idea of her.

“Sure it won’t make you sick?” he asked.[Pg 32]

“Oh, no!” she answered pleasantly. “We used to smoke at boarding school, you know.”

He proffered a lighted match, and in its glare he caught a glimpse of her face, quietly smiling. Again he was fascinated, suddenly, unexpectedly.

They smoked for some time in silence. Tommy could see her curled up in the hammock, swinging just a little. All of a sudden she sighed.

“Oh, dear!”

“What is it?”

“Nothing much. For goodness’ sake, Mr. Ellinger, how old are you?”

He tried to laugh in an amused way, but he was chagrined and puzzled by her tone.

“Why do you want to know?” he inquired.

“Never mind, if you’d rather not say.”

“I’ve no objection to telling you, my—my dear young lady,” he answered, nettled. “I’m—eighteen.”

“Are you? I’m only sixteen. We’re only kids, aren’t we?”

He didn’t like that. Moreover, he perceived something sinister beneath the words.

“I suppose so,” he assented, in a tone of paternal indulgence.

“Call me ‘Esther,’” said she. “Don’t let’s be silly! What’s your name?”

He hesitated, and finally decided upon “Tom”; but she, like every one else, saw the inevitability of “Tommy.”

There was a long silence. Then out of the dark came her calm little voice.

“Tommy,” she said, “you’re a funny boy!”

“Am I?” he said, with an uneasy laugh.

The situation was quite out of hand now. He didn’t know what was expected of him as a man of the world. He did know, though, that he was failing.

“Tommy,” said she, again, “come and sit here, beside me.”

With a quite artificial alacrity he jumped up, went over to her, and sat down in the hammock, close to her. He called himself a fool, an imbecile, a contemptible ass.

“I ought to kiss her,” he said to himself, “or put my arm around her, or at least hold her hand!”

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t even talk to her. He wanted, above everything else in the world, to run away. He was not flattered or in any way stirred or excited—only miserably ill at ease and instinctively alarmed. He dared not move, even to turn his head.

At last Esther got up with a sigh.

“Good night, Tommy,” she said. “I hope you’ll sleep well!”

“Thanks,” he answered, feeling utterly foolish and miserable.

IV

He did not sleep well. He lay in bed, his hands clasped under his head, looking out at the summer sky.

“She’s a queer girl,” he thought, with a sort of resentment. “She’s bold—runs after a fellow; and yet you can see she doesn’t care two straws for him.”

In long imaginary conversations with Esther he regained his lost advantage. He was affable but cool—very cool. He could see her round little face quite clearly before him, her serene eyes, her neat fair hair.

He awoke after his restless night to a hot, still morning. He could not find a bath tub. Dressing reluctantly, unrefreshed and a bit irritable, he went downstairs. It was a few minutes after eight by his watch—a very decent, early hour, he thought; but, looking into the dining room, he saw only one place laid on the long table.

Mrs. Van Brink hurried in from the kitchen, limp, hot, and painfully anxious.

“Set down to the table, Mr. Ellinger,” she cried in her shrill voice. “I’ll bring your breakfast right off. We’re all done. You won’t have to wait more’n a minute.”

He ate alone, a little resentful that Esther didn’t appear. Then he went out on the porch. No one there—the shady street was quiet and empty. He went around the house to the sun-baked little yard at the back, where he discovered Mrs. Van Brink hanging dish towels on a line in terrible haste. Her face became positively convulsed with worry at the sight of his listlessness.

“Now, then!” she cried. “You don’t know what to do with yourself, I’ll be bound! And I haven’t got a minute to spare, with the dinner I have to get up for Mr. Van Brink at noon. His farm’s four miles off, you know.”

She stared at him, frowning, until an inspiration came.

“Maybe you’d enjoy to play on the harmonium,” she suggested. “Esther’s got some real sweet music.[Pg 33]”

Tommy did not know what a harmonium was; but she showed him a queer little organ in the parlor, and he sat before it all the rest of that intolerable morning, picking out tunes and experimenting with the stops.

At noon old Van Brink came driving home in his buggy, and his hot and anxious wife began hurrying back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room, bringing in an enormous hot dinner. The farmer had nothing to say to Tommy. He sat there with his napkin tucked in his collar, consuming one dish after the other as fast as his wife brought them in, absorbed and ravenous, like a feeding animal. Now and again Tommy caught the old man’s small blue eyes surveying him with an expression which he could not comprehend, but which he didn’t like.

Van Brink drove off directly after eating, and his wife withdrew to the kitchen again. With growing resentment, Tommy seized his hat and went out, followed the route of the night before, and reached the village. Entering the only hotel, the Gilbert House, he ordered a cocktail and bought a newspaper; but the drink was shockingly bad, and he couldn’t endure the stale dullness of the place long enough to read the paper there.

He had never before in his life suffered from such boredom. He went back to the house, determined to write at once to his uncle and say he couldn’t stand it any longer.

And there, rocking on the porch and enjoying the cool of the afternoon, sat Esther.

“Hello!” she said cheerfully.

“Good afternoon,” he replied stiffly.

“Well! What makes you look so cross?”

“I’ve had a rotten day.”

“I’m sorry; but it wasn’t my fault, was it? You needn’t be cross at me.”

“It was your fault, in a way. You might have told me what there is to do in this place.”

“Oh, but there isn’t anything! I’ll take you for a walk after supper, if you want.”

So after supper, when Mrs. Van Brink had gone back to the kitchen, and her husband, in stocking feet, sat reading his newspaper, Esther and Tommy set out again.

“Shall we go right out in the country?” Esther asked him. “Or would you rather go through the village and see some of the fine houses?”

Tommy preferred the country.

They turned north, followed the dark and quiet street past all the little houses, and into a road soft with dust, under the black shadow of great trees, with a sweet breeze blowing from the meadows.

“One day’s enough for you,” said Esther. “How would you like to spend years here?”

“By Jove! How do you stand it?”

“Well, I won’t, any longer than I can help!”

They were going uphill steadily. The fields were left behind, and the pine forest was closing in on them, dark and fragrant.

“This is my favorite walk,” said Esther. “I often come here by myself.”

“Rather lonely, isn’t it?”

“I’m never lonely.”

Again that vague alarm came over the boy. He felt defenseless, lost. He dreaded to go farther; but, chattering pleasantly, Esther went on and on, and he had to answer and to follow.

The road grew rougher, and his little comrade stumbled often.

“Hadn’t we better turn back?” suggested Tommy. “You’ll be tired.”

“Oh, no! I don’t call this far!”

“And it’s getting late. Your mother and father—”

She laughed.

“You needn’t worry about them! Let’s sit down and rest a few minutes, if you like.”

There was a great flat rock a little way up the bank from the roadway. Sitting there, they could catch a glimpse of an enormous orange-colored moon through the branches.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” said Esther. “And doesn’t my ring look pretty in the moonlight?”

She held up a plump little hand for him to see.

“Are you engaged?” he asked, for even he knew that the question was expected of him.

“Yes—to the young man you saw last night in the drug store. It’s a secret, though; mommer and popper don’t know.”

“I hope you’ll be happy,” said Tommy, after a pause.

“I don’t see how I can be,” she answered plaintively. “I don’t really like him; but oh, dear, what else can I do? Why, I’ve only seen one real refined man in all my life. He was a traveling salesman. He wanted to marry me and go and live in New[Pg 34] York; but popper wouldn’t let me. He said I was too young.”

“Well, you know, you are, rather. You don’t want to be hasty, my dear young lady!”

She sighed.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this; but I’m so unhappy!”

He felt very sympathetic, but could think of nothing to say.

“I’m going to take off this ring now, while I’m with you,” Esther went on. “I want to forget all about Will for a while.” She slipped her warm little hand into his. “Oh, Tommy!” she said coaxingly. “Be nice, won’t you?”

The light of the moon shone clearly on her pretty upturned face, her white throat. He stared and stared at her. She leaned back, more and more, until her head was resting on his breast and her smooth hair brushed his lips.

The first wave of some immense and terrible emotion, something he had never before experienced, came rushing over him. He clenched his hands, struggling against a fierce desire to push her away.

“What are you doing to me?” he wanted to shout. “What’s happening to me? Go away! Get out!”

But she did not stir. She rested against him, contented as a kitten, soft, gentle, and still. Little by little his mood changed, his panic was allayed, and he bent over and kissed her. Then he wanted never to let her go again. He kissed her violently, time after time. He couldn’t stop.

A sort of madness possessed him. A terror greater than ever assailed him—a terror of himself. He knew he wasn’t to be trusted. He put her aside brusquely and got up.

“Come on!” he said. “It’s late. Let’s go back!”

V

He sat at the open window of his room that night, oppressed by guilt and dread.

“I shouldn’t have kissed her,” he said to himself. “Now she’ll think I’m in love with her.”

He knew well enough that he was not. He disliked her—almost loathed her; she was so soft and clinging, so irresistible and so inferior. He didn’t want to see her again.

He hadn’t yet been able to devise a suitable attitude when he met her the next morning. Seeing her so perfectly unmoved helped him, and they sat down to breakfast in friendly accord.

“It’s another hot day,” she said. “Mommer thought maybe you’d enjoy a picnic.”

“A picnic—just you and me?” he asked suspiciously.

She nodded, and waited for his reply, watching his face with candid eyes. He grew red and hot.

“Very nice idea,” he said loftily.

He was racking his brains for some means of avoiding the excursion.

“Not if I know it!” he said to himself. “She won’t get me alone again!”

But his reflection in a distant mirror caught his eye. What? Here he was, six feet tall, dressed in absolutely the latest fashion, a thorough man of the world, and yet uneasy in the presence of this sixteen-year-old country girl! “Dumpy,” he called her—stolid, ignorant, rustic, in a cheap cotton frock.

His good humor came back. He smiled down upon her kindly, all alarm gone. Let her make love to him if she liked—there was no harm in it.

They started directly after breakfast, walked mile after mile through the fields in the full glare of the hot August sun, up stony hills, through bramble-lined woodland paths, until Tommy, carrying the big lunch basket and a walking stick, and wearing a rather heavy Norfolk jacket—the only correct thing for picnics—was dazed and tired. Not Esther, though; she was as fresh and cheerful as ever.

In the course of time they reached the place predestined by her for lunching—a little clearing on the slope of the pine-covered mountain, a sort of sunny nest in the forest, where a brook ran by, rapid and cool.

When he had at last satisfied his appetite—a strangely hearty and indiscriminate one for such a man of the world—Tommy lay back against a sun-warmed stone, smoking a cigarette and looking up at the bright sky. It was nice to have Esther there, he admitted to himself. It was nice to see her, contented and blessedly quiet, sitting beside him.

He turned his head to see her better. What a round, pretty, white throat she had! And her lashes were almost dark against her cheeks. He was annoyed by a sudden great longing to kiss her again. He tried to put[Pg 35] the thought out of his mind—tried desperately; but in some inexplicable way, even as she sat there with her eyes closed and her little face so tranquil, she conveyed the fact to him that she was waiting to be kissed.

He did it, with a violence surprising to them both. She struggled half-heartedly, then settled down, close to his side, with his arm about her, and said no more. He kissed her again and again, stroked her hair, looked at her in delight. Dear, gentle, ardent little soul! Truly it was an afternoon on Olympus!

Tommy was done for now. She had awakened his innocent, primitive manhood, had aroused in him a feeling which he was too immature to appraise. He believed that he was, that he must be, in love with her. How otherwise explain his joy in kissing her, his immeasurable admiration for her charms?

“By Jove!” he said to himself. “I’m in love!”

He said it with amazement, with pride, with profound distress, because his passion tormented him. He was ashamed of it. He knew very well that it was not spontaneous; Esther had forced its growth. He had not wooed and won her; he had been captured in a most obvious way. He was a slave, and he knew and resented it.

Not that Esther was at all a difficult lady to serve. She had no whims, no caprices. She was neither jealous nor exacting. Indeed, she required nothing at all of Tommy. She let him alone. She was very affectionate, whenever he was; but if he were moody or anxious, she was peacefully silent.

There was always an air of content about her. She might have been the personified ideal of the man of forty—the woman who is always responsive, and yet who exacts nothing. Very, very different from the ideal of generous eighteen!

Precious little joy did poor Tommy find in this his first love. He was perplexed and confused; he couldn’t imagine any sort of end to it. He couldn’t contemplate marrying Esther, and the idea of any other sort of arrangement never occurred to him. In his eyes she was simply a respectable young girl, under her father’s roof, not good enough, or not suitable, to be the wife of a man of the world, but far too good to be thought of in any improper way.

He didn’t even know what he wanted—whether he wanted to leave her, or whether he couldn’t live without her. He was weary beyond measure, those hot and sleepless August nights.

VI

At last, one evening, there came a sort of crisis. It was a sultry, rainy night, and they were in the little parlor, bored and constrained by the presence of old Van Brink in the next room, with the door open. Esther had been playing hymn tunes on the harmonium, and Tommy had been watching her, feverishly impatient to kiss her. She had stopped playing, and they sat in silence, listening to the squeak of the old man’s rocking-chair and the rustle of his newspaper.

The room irritated Tommy by its amazing tastelessness. Even Esther looked different in it, he thought. Outside, under the summer sky, alone with him, she was a goddess. In here, what was she more than the plump, phlegmatic Esther Van Brink?

A door opened, and Mrs. Van Brink came in to her husband, her work in the kitchen finished until the next sunrise. She looked exhausted. It occurred to Tommy, not for the first time, that Esther was not a remarkably kind daughter. He had never yet seen her do any sort of work for her mother.

Immediately, with artless tact, Mrs. Van Brink closed the door. Tommy sprang up and caught Esther in his arms.

“My!” she cried, laughing. “Aren’t you in a hurry, though?”

Tommy reddened, painfully aware of his disadvantage.

“I don’t know what you’ll do to-morrow evening,” Esther went on. “Will Egbert’s coming to see me.”

Tommy could scarcely grasp the idea. An evening without Esther! Another man! He was silent for some time. He realized then that he would rather marry Esther than lose her, than be supplanted by any Will Egbert.

“Look here, Esther!” he said at last. “I know I haven’t any right to complain. I’m not—anything to you; but I’d like you to know something. Before I came here, my uncle—”

He paused so long that Esther frowned.

“Yes?” she said. “What about your uncle, Tommy?”

“He warned me—told me I couldn’t get engaged, or anything of that sort. You understand, don’t you, Esther? You see,[Pg 36] I haven’t any income. I depend on him, and I know, very well, that he’d never consent to—to anything.”

She didn’t answer.

“I’ve thought it over a great deal,” he went on; “but I don’t know what to do exactly.”

To his chagrin and surprise, Esther got up and, going back to the harmonium, began to play loud, triumphant hymns. He could not guess her mood. He was afraid he had offended her; and with that a shade of the old magnificence returned.

“Esther darling, you’re not angry, are you?” he asked.

“Oh, no,” she replied cheerfully; “but I want to think. Let’s sing.”

She had a book of “College Songs,” ugly and tasteless, like everything else in her life, and they sang them, one after the other, until bedtime. In the next room the mother and father listened, proud and pleased.

“Hark to sis!” said old Van Brink. “Sings and plays pretty good, hey, mother?”

“My, yes! It’s real sweet!”

“I’ll bet you that young man don’t see many girls like sis, city or country, hey, mother? He’s no call to turn up his nose at our gal, hey?”

“He don’t,” she answered thoughtfully.

The next morning, at breakfast, as soon as they were alone for a minute, Esther whispered:

“Tommy, I’ve got a plan! Let’s go out on the porch,” she suggested aloud, as her mother came in to clear the table.

“Well!” said Tommy, when they were alone again.

“Well!” she repeated. “Come on—sit down and listen. I want you to take me to the city to see your uncle.”

“No!” cried Tommy, startled. “No, my dear girl! That wouldn’t do at all!”

“It would! I’ll be so nice he’ll have to like me. I thought and thought about it last night. Please do, Tommy!”

“But, my dear child, don’t you see that you couldn’t go off with me that way? You’d—you’d compromise yourself!”

“Not if we got married right away.”

“But suppose Uncle James said no?”

“But he wouldn’t—especially when he sees how I trust you.”

Tommy put forward all the objections he could think of, but she was able to answer them all.

“I’ll manage him,” she insisted. “Only let me see him! And then, Tommy,” she went on, “it’s getting horrid for me here. Egbert is jealous. He says he won’t give me up, and won’t take back his old ring. And”—amazing invention!—“mommer and popper say that you’re just trifling with me, and they want me to take back Will. Every one says I’m a silly little fool to think so much of you!” Tears came into her gray eyes.

“Oh, do, Tommy, please, take me away! I’m so miserable here!”

And at last, because she wept, and because he could see no other way, he agreed to take her.

VII

Reluctant and harassed as he was, he couldn’t help a certain delight in the adventure. He hadn’t yet lost a boyish relish for running away; and this getting up after the others were asleep, stealing downstairs, bag in hand, and meeting Esther in the dark little hall, thrilled him to the marrow.

They hurried through the empty streets, black beneath the shadow of the old trees, and entered the station, where an oil lamp burned. The ticket office was closed; there wasn’t a soul in sight. They sat down side by side on a bench, to wait for the New York train.

In her usual way, Esther put her hand in Tommy’s. He turned to look down at her in the dim lamplight, and the sight of her flushed, excited little face, combined with the pressure of her hand, nearly brought tears to his eyes. How she trusted him, poor little girl! Leaving her home and her parents and going off with him this way! He swore to himself that she should never be sorry for it; that, even if she were not quite the wife he would have chosen, he would respect her forever for this generous, this noble trust in him.

He had, in short, never in his life been so overwhelmingly asinine. His fair, infantile face was pale from the intense seriousness of his resolutions and the weight of his responsibility. He would at that moment have been ready to assure you that it was he who had implored and persuaded Esther to run away with him—that it was his idea and his wish.

It was midnight when they arrived at the Grand Central. The moment they stepped off the train, a realization of his colossal folly rushed over the boy. The[Pg 37] subtle excitement of the hurrying crowds, the sophistication of this environment, suddenly destroyed his rustic romance, and he grew cold with fright.

What was this that he had done? What was he to do with Esther? He couldn’t marry her without a license. He had thought of taking her at once to Uncle James, to convince him on the spot of Esther’s desirability as a wife. Uncle James might be asleep; or, if he were awake, he would surely need some preparation. He was courtly toward ladies—ladies with money; but one never knew—

“Oh, Lord!” he thought. “Oh, Lord! What can I do with her?”

They had eloped from the girl’s home. He was now and forever responsible for little Esther. There she sat, waiting for his wise decision.

They sat down on a bench in the immense hall, he with his latest thing in traveling bags, Esther with a shabby little wicker suit case. Forlorn, young, weary, they sat in silence—waiting, both of them, for Tommy to become a man.

“I know!” he cried suddenly. “Esther, you go into the ladies’ waiting room while I telephone. I have a cousin. I think she’d be willing to do something. At least she’ll put you up overnight.”

But in the telephone booth his courage fled. He couldn’t explain all this over the wire. He ran out and got a taxi, and at one o’clock he arrived at his cousin’s little flat uptown.

She was a charming, gracious, good-natured young widow. She got up, put on a dressing gown, and sat listening with angelic patience to Tommy’s story; but she could not conceal her horror.

“Oh, Tommy, my dear boy! You’re so young! Don’t be hasty! Oh, Tommy, don’t rush into—anything!”

“Now, look here!” said Tommy, sick with nervousness and alarm. “Don’t lecture me, Alison. It’s done. Just suggest something. She can’t go back now. I’ll have to see Uncle James about getting married; but what shall I do now? I can’t leave the poor kid sitting there in the Grand Central Station all night.”

“No, of course you can’t,” Alison agreed. “Bring her here, Tommy—and hurry: I’ll wait up for her.”

She set about making preparations for this most unwelcome guest, thinking and hoping all the time that Tommy might be saved—that this distressing thing might blow over without hurting him.

She pictured Esther as a poor innocent little rustic, as simple as Tommy. She never saw the girl, and so was never enlightened. She waited for two hours, but no one came. Then, worried, heavy-hearted, she went back to bed.

VIII

Tommy had hurried back to Esther, and found her just as he had left her—a model of patience and propriety, with her little bag beside her. Though she was pale and heavy-eyed with sleep, she was as neat and fresh as ever. He told her his plan.

“Come on,” he said. “Hurry up! Alison said she’d wait for you.”

“I’m not going there,” she said. “I can’t, Tommy.”

“You’ll have to, dear!”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“I can’t! I can’t! I just couldn’t face a strange woman now. What would she think of me, running away with you like this?”

“But what can I do with you, Esther?”

She clasped his arm and looked up into his face with streaming eyes.

“Oh, Tommy! Please don’t leave me! I’m so frightened and so lonely! Don’t send me away!”

“But you must be reasonable, sweetheart,” he implored. He began to realize how terribly he had mismanaged this affair. He cursed himself. Why hadn’t he made plans? “You know we’ve got to consider your reputation,” he said.

“Oh, that doesn’t matter!” she cried. “No one’ll ever know about it. Only don’t go away from me, Tommy! I couldn’t bear it!”

He yielded. He was so distressed, so confused, so alarmed, that he had no moral strength to withstand her. He took her to the Tressillon, a quiet, dingy place where he had once or twice had dinner. He took two rooms for them, on different floors, and he registered as “Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Ellinger, Jr.” What else could he have done?

He slept soundly, although he hadn’t expected to close an eye. The first thing he thought of upon waking was to telephone to Esther’s room. He was told that she wasn’t there.

He dressed and hurried down to look for her everywhere—in the dining room, the[Pg 38] grill, the lounge; but he couldn’t find her. He was seized with panic.

When he found that her bag was still in her room, he resigned himself to wait; but he was angry—more angry than he had ever been in his life.

She came back at lunch time, composed and smiling. He was sitting on the lounge when she entered. He got up, took her arm with a nervous grip, and led her into a quiet corner.

“Look here, Esther!” he said. “You mustn’t act like this! Where have you been?”

“Oh, nowhere special—just for a walk.”

“I’d planned for us to go to the City Hall and get the license this morning, and get married.”

“Oh, Tommy!” she said, with a pout. “I don’t want to get married. I’m too young!”

“Don’t be silly!” he said impatiently. “We’ll have a bite of lunch and then we’ll hurry down town.”

“I think it’s silly to get married. We’re too young. What could we live on?”

“You needn’t worry about that,” he said, wounded. “I dare say I can manage to take care of you.”

“I don’t think you could, Tommy. We’d only be miserable. No, let’s not be married.”

“Esther!” he cried, appalled. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I think we’ve made a mistake. Let’s not be silly and make it any worse. The best thing would be for us to part. I can look out for myself perfectly well. I know a man here in the city—I dropped in to see him this morning, and he said he’d get me an engagement to go on the stage. He’s an advance agent, or something. I met him out in Millersburg. He has lots of pull.”

“Don’t talk that way!” he thundered. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done? Haven’t you enough sense to see that you’re compromised?”

“No one knows anything about it, and there’s no harm done. I’ll write to mommer and tell her I ran away to go on the stage.”

“No, you won’t!” said Tommy. “I sent them a telegram this morning to say that we were married. I thought we would really be by the time they got the message.”

She looked at him in silence.

“Well!” she said at last. “You are a fool!”

“I suppose I am,” he replied bitterly. “However, it’s done now. They know you’re here with me, and they think you’re my wife, so you’ll have to see it through.”

“Not I!” she said cheerfully. “I’m not going to marry a kid like you!”

“For God’s sake, why did you come away with me?” he cried.

She smiled.

“I guess I liked you,” she said.

“Don’t you like me now?”

“Don’t be silly!” she said. “Of course I do; but I think we’re too young to think of marriage. It was a mistake.”

She was absolutely incomprehensible to him; but she could read him through and through, and the better she knew him, the greater grew her contempt.

“It was only a joke,” she said.

“Is that your idea of a joke? It’s a pretty dangerous one.”

She shook her head.

“No, it isn’t. I knew you were a nice boy. I knew I could trust you. I’ll always remember you, Tommy—always. You’re the nicest—”

“What do you propose to tell your parents? They’ll write to you here, or they may come.”

“They won’t find me. I’ll leave to-morrow morning. Mr. Syles told me of a nice boarding house. You’ll go back to your uncle. He’ll never know about it, and we’ll both forget the whole thing, won’t we?”

They went up into her room, and they argued all afternoon. Tommy tried to show her the enormity of her conduct, but she insisted upon regarding it as an escapade. She emphasized her sixteen years. She behaved with an airy childishness which she had never shown before, and which he knew to be false.

He had played the part she had determined he should play, and there was an end to him. Her modest little pocketbook was well stuffed with his money. She was in the city where she wished to be.

Sixteen? Esther sixteen? Preposterous idea! She was as old as the earth.

At last she said she was hungry, and reluctantly he took her downstairs to the dining room, crowded and noisy, with dancing going on to the music of a fiendish orchestra. Gone was his pride, gone was his kindly protectiveness. He was overwhelmed with shame; he saw himself a dupe, when he had fancied himself a hero.[Pg 39]

He couldn’t eat. He sat there across the table, in sullen wretchedness, keeping his eyes off her detestable face, listening to her calm voice, telling him that it was “better for them both to part now.” She was affable, but she made no effort to be kind. She had nothing to say about love, about grief at parting. She placidly ignored their romance. She urged him to be “sensible,” and a “good boy.” And with every word she made a fresh wound in his quivering, childish soul—scars never to be healed.

He was sitting with his back to the door, and he hadn’t seen old Van Brink enter. He had looked up in alarm at a shriek from Esther, and there was that face, convulsed with hatred—hatred for him! Then the shot, the crowd, the atrocious sense of unreality, of insane confusion, the pain in his wrist.

Some one had hurried him off in a taxi. He had looked back blankly from the doorway at the brightly lighted room, at an old man held by force from following him. It wasn’t, it couldn’t be real!

Once again he picked up the newspaper and looked at that shameful headline:

TRAGEDY NARROWLY AVERTED AT
HOTEL TRESSILLON

It occurred to young Thomas Ellinger that perhaps the tragedy had not, after all, been averted.

IX

“Everything passes,” runs the old saying, and the contrary is also true. Nothing passes.

If you had looked at that stalwart and serious gentleman in the box, correct, evidently prosperous, with his honest and rather blank gaze, you would certainly have imagined him to be one of those fortunate creatures without a history, a soul without a scar. He was there with an agreeable, well-bred wife and a pretty young daughter, and he was apparently enjoying the play with a temperate and sedate enjoyment—interested, but not very much interested, you know.