Transcriber’s Notes

This e-text is based on ‘The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine,’ from October, 1913. The [table of contents], based on the index from the May issue, has been added by the transcriber.

Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation have been retained, but punctuation and typographical errors have been corrected. Passages in English dialect and in languages other than English have not been altered. The footnote has been moved to the end of the corresponding article.

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LARGER IMAGE

THE CENTURY MAGAZINE

VOL. LXXXVI

OCTOBER, 1913

NO. 6

Copyright, 1913, by THE CENTURY CO. All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

VERSE

HOME

AN ANONYMOUS NOVEL

(TO BE COMPLETED IN FOUR LONG INSTALMENTS)

CHAPTER I

RED HILL drowses through the fleeting hours as though not only time, but mills, machinery, and railways were made for slaves. Hemmed in by the breathing silences of scattered woods, open fields, and the far reaches of misty space, it seems to forget that the traveler, studying New England at the opening of the nineteenth century through the windows of a hurrying train, might sigh for a vanished ideal, and concede the general triumph of a commercial age.

For such a one Red Hill held locked a message, and the key to the lock was the message itself: “Turn your back on the paralleled rivers and railroads, and plunge into the byways that lead into the eternal hills, and you will find the world that was and still is.”

Let such a traveler but follow a lane that leads up through willow and elderberry, sassafras, laurel, wild cherry, and twining clematis—a lane alined with slender wood-maples, hickory, and mountain-ash, and flanked, where it gains the open, with scattered juniper and oak, and he will come out at last on the scenes of a country’s childhood.

At right angles to the lane, a broad way cuts the length of the hill, and loses itself in a dip at each end toward the valleys and the new world. The broad way is shaded by one of two trees, the domed maple or the stately elm. At the summit of its rise stands an old church the green shutters of which blend with the caressing foliage of primeval trees. Its white walls and towering steeple dominate the scene. White, too, are the houses that gleam from behind the verdure of unbroken lawns and shrubbery—all but one, the time-stained brick of which glows blood-red against the black green of clinging ivy.

Not all these homes are alive. Here a charred beam tells the story of a fire, there a mound of trailing vines tenderly hides from view the shame of a ruin, and there again stands a tribute to the power of the new age—a house the shutters of which are closed and barred. White now only in patches, its scaling walls have taken on the dull gray of neglected pine.

For generations the houses of Red Hill have sent out men, for generations they have taken them back. Their cupboards guard trophies from the seven seas, paid for with the Yankee nutmeg, swords wrought from plowshares and christened with the blood of the oppressor, a long line of collegiate sheepskins, and last, but by no means least, recipes the faded ink and brittle paper of which sum the essence of ages of culinary wisdom.

Some of these clustered homes live the year round at full swing, but the life of some is cut down to a minimum in the winter, only to spring up afresh in summer, like the new stalk from a treasured bulb. Of such was the little kingdom of Red Hill. Upon its long, level crest it bore only three centers of life and a symbol: Maple House, the Firs, and Elm House, half hidden from the road by their distinctive trees, but as alive as the warm eyes of a veiled woman; and the church.

The supper call had sounded, and the children’s answering cries had ceased. Along the ribbon of the single road scurried an overladen donkey. Three lengths of legs bobbed at varying angles from her fat sides. Behind her hurried a nurse, aghast for the hundredth time at the donkey’s agility, never demonstrated except at the evening hour.

Half-way between Maple House and the Firs stood two bare-legged boys, working their toes into the impalpable dust of the roadway and rubbing the grit into their ankles in a final orgy of dirt before the evening wash. They called derisively to the donkey-load of children, bound to bed with the setting sun.

CHAPTER II

ON a day in early spring Alan Wayne was summoned to Red Hill. Snow still hung in the crevices of East Mountain. On the hill the ashes, after the total eclipse of winter, were meekly donning pale green. The elms of Elm House were faintly outlined in verdure, and stood like empty sherry-glasses waiting for warm wine. Farther down the road the maples stretched out bare, black limbs whose budding tufts of leaves served only to emphasize the nakedness of the trees. Only the firs, in a phalanx, scoffed at the general spring cleaning, and looked old and sullen in consequence.

The colts, driven by Alan Wayne, flashed over the brim of Red Hill to the level top. Coachman Joe’s jaw was hanging in awe, and so had hung since Mr. Alan had taken the reins. For the first time in their five years of equal life the colts had felt the cut of a whip, not in anger, but as a reproof for breaking. Coachman Joe had braced himself for the bolt, his hands itching to snatch the reins. But there had been no bolting, only a sudden settling down to business.

“Couldn’t of got here quicker if he’d let ’em bolt,” said he in subsequent description to the stable-hand and the cook. He snatched up a pail of water and poured it steadily on the ground. “Jest like that. He knew what was in the colts the minute he laid hands on ’em, and when he pulls ’em up at the barn door there wasn’t a drop left in their buckets, was there, Arthur?”

“Nary a drop,” said Arthur, stable-hand.

“And his face,” continued the coachman. “Most times Mr. Alan has no eyes to speak of, but to-day and that time Miss Nance stuck him with the hat-pin—’member, cook?—his eyes spread like a fire and eat up his face. This is a black day for the Hill. Somethin’ ’s going to happen. You mark me.”

In truth Mr. Alan Wayne had been summoned in no equivocal terms and, for all his haste, it was with nervous step he approached the house.

There was no den, no sanctuary beyond a bedroom, for any one at Maple House. No one brought work to Red Hill save such work as fitted into swinging hammocks and leafy bowers. Library opened into living-room and hall, hall into drawing-room, and drawing-room into the cool shadows and high lights of half-hidden mahogany and china closets. And here and there and everywhere doors opened out on to the Hill. It was a place where summer breezes entered freely and played, sure of a way out. Hence it was that Maple House as a whole became a tomb on that memorable spring morning when the colts first felt a master hand—a tomb where Wayne history was to be made and buried as it had been before.

Maple House sheltered a mixed brood. J. Y. Wayne, seconded by Mrs. J. Y., was the head of the family. Their daughter, Nance Sterling, and her babies represented the direct line, but the orphans, Alan Wayne and Clematis McAlpin, were on an equal footing as children of the house. Alan was the only child of J. Y.’s dead brother. Clematis was also of Wayne blood, but so intricately removed that her exact relation to the rest of the tribe was never figured out twice to the same conclusion. Old Captain Wayne, retired from the regular army, was an uncle in a different degree to every generation of Waynes. He was the only man on Red Hill who dared call for a whisky and soda when he wanted it.

Drawn by Reginald Birch

“ALONG THE RIBBON OF THE SINGLE ROAD SCURRIED AN OVERLADEN DONKEY”

When Alan reached the house, Mrs. J. Y. was in her garden across the road, surveying winter’s ruin, and Nance with her children had borne the captain off to the farm to see that oft-repeated wonder and always welcome forerunner of plenty, the quite new calf.

Clematis McAlpin, shy and long-limbed, just at the awkward age when woman misses being either boy or girl, had disappeared. Where, nobody knew. She might be bird’s-nesting in the swamp or crying over the “Idylls of the King” in the barn loft. Certainly she was not in the house. J. Y. Wayne had seen to that. Stern and rugged of face, he sat in the library alone and waited for Alan. He heard a distant screen-door open and slam. Steps echoed through the lonely house. Alan came and stood before him.

Alan was a man. Without being tall, he looked tall. His shoulders did not seem broad till you noticed the slimness of his hips. His neck looked too thin till you saw the strong set of his small head. In a word, he had the perfect proportion that looks frail and is strong. As he stood before his uncle, his eyes grew dull. They were slightly blood-shot in the corners, and with their dullness the clear-cut lines of his face seemed to take on a perceptible blur.

J. Y. began to speak. He spoke for a long quarter of an hour, and then summed up all he had said in a few words:

“I’ve been no uncle to you, Alan; I’ve been a father. I’ve tried to win you, but you were not to be won. I’ve tried to hold you, but it takes more than a Wayne to hold a Wayne. You have taken the bit with a vengeance. You have left such a wreckage behind you that we can trace your life back to the cradle by your failures, all the greater for your many successes. You’re the first Wayne that ever missed his college degree. I never asked what they expelled you for, and I don’t want to know. It must have been bad, bad, for the old school is lenient, and proud of men that stand as high as you stood in your classes and on the field. Money—I won’t talk of money, for you thought it was your own.”

For the first time Alan spoke.

“What do you mean, sir?” With the words his slight form straightened, his eyes blazed, there was a slight quivering of the thin nostrils, and his features came out clear and strong.

J. Y. dropped his eyes.

“I may have been wrong, Alan,” he said slowly, “but I’ve been your banker without telling you. Your father didn’t leave much. It saw you through junior year.”

Alan placed his hands on the desk between them and leaned forward.

“How much have I spent since then—in the last three years?”

J. Y. kept his eyes down.

“You know more or less, Alan. We won’t talk about that. I was trying to hold you, but to-day I give it up. I’ve got one more thing to tell you, though, and there are mighty few people that know it. The Hill’s battles have never entered the field of gossip. Seven years before you were born, my father—your grandfather—turned me out. It was from this room. He said I had started the name of Wayne on the road to shame and that I could go with it. He gave me five hundred dollars. I took it and went. I sank low with the name, but in the end I brought it back, and to-day it stands high on both sides of the water. I’m not a happy man, as you know, for all that. You see, though I brought the name back in the end, I never saw your grandfather again, and he never knew.

“Here are five hundred dollars. It’s the last money you’ll ever have from me; but whatever you do, whatever happens, remember this: Red Hill does not belong to a Lansing or to a Wayne or to an Elton. It is the eternal mother of us all. Broken or mended, Lansings and Waynes have come back to the Hill through generations. City of refuge or harbor of peace, it’s all one to the Hill. Remember that.”

He laid the crisp notes on the desk. Alan half turned toward the door, but stepped back again. His eyes and face were dull once more. He picked up the bills and slowly counted them.

“I shall return the money, sir,” he said and walked out.

He went to the stables and ordered the pony and cart for the afternoon train. As he came out he saw Nance, the children, and the captain coming slowly up Long Lane from the farm. He dodged back into the barn through the orchard and across the lawn. Mrs. J. Y. stood in the garden directing the relaying of flower-beds. Alan made a circuit. As he stepped into the road, swift steps came toward him. He wheeled, and faced Clem coming at full run. He turned his back on her and started away. The swift steps stopped so suddenly that he looked around. Clem was standing stock-still, one awkward, lanky leg half crooked as though it were still running. Her skirts were absurdly short. Her little fists, brown and scratched, pressed her sides. Her dark hair hung in a tangled mat over a thin, pointed face. Her eyes were large and shadowy. Two tears had started from them, and were crawling down soiled cheeks. She was quivering all over like a woman struck.

Alan swung around, and strode up to her. He put one arm about her thin form and drew her to him.

“Don’t cry, Clem,” he said, “don’t cry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

For one moment she clung to him and buried her face against his coat. Then she looked up and smiled through wet eyes.

“Alan, I’m so glad you’ve come!”

Alan caught her hand, and together they walked down the road to the old church. The great door was locked. Alan loosened the fastening of a shutter, sprang in through the window, and drew Clem after him. They climbed to the belfry. From the belfry one saw the whole world, with Red Hill as its center. Alan was disappointed. The Hill was still half naked, almost bleak. Maple House and Elm House shone brazenly white through budding trees. They looked as though they had crawled closer to the road during the winter. The Firs, with its black border of last year’s foliage, looked funereal. Alan turned from the scene, but Clem’s little hand drew him back.

Drawn by Reginald Birch

“HER SKIRTS WERE ABSURDLY SHORT. HER LITTLE FISTS, BROWN AND SCRATCHED, PRESSED HER SIDES”

Clematis McAlpin had happened between generations. Alan, Nance, Gerry Lansing, and their friends had been too old for her, and Nance’s children were too young. There were Elton children of about her age, but for years they had been abroad. Consequently, Clem had grown to fifteen in a sort of loneliness not uncommon with single children who can just remember the good times the half-generation before them used to have by reason of their numbers. This loneliness had given her in certain ways a precocious development while it left her subdued and shy even when among her familiars. But she was shy without fear, and her shyness itself had a flower-like sweetness that made a bold appeal.

“Isn’t it wonderful, Alan?” she said. “Yesterday it was cold and it rained and the Hill was black—black, like the Firs. To-day all the trees are fuzzy with green, and it’s warm. Yesterday was so lonely, and to-day you are here.”

Alan looked down at the child with glowing eyes.

“And, do you know, this summer Gerry Lansing and Mrs. Gerry are coming. I’ve never seen her since that day they were married. Do you think it’s all right for me to call her Mrs. Gerry, like everybody does?”

Alan considered the point gravely.

“Yes, I think that’s the best thing you could call her.”

“Perhaps when I’m really grown up I can call her Alix. I think Alix is such a pretty name, don’t you?”

Clem flashed a look at Alan, and he nodded; then, with an impulsive movement she drew close to him in the half-wheedling way of woman about to ask a favor.

“Alan, they let me ride old Dubbs when he isn’t plowing. The old donkey she’s so fat now she can hardly carry the babies. Some day when you’re not in a great hurry will you let me ride with you?”

Alan started down the ladder.

“Some day, perhaps, Clem,” he muttered. “Not this summer. Come on.” When they had left the church, he drew out his watch and started. “Run along and play, Clem.” He left her and hurried to the barn.

Joe was waiting.

“Have we time for the long road, Joe?” asked Alan as he climbed into the cart.

“Oh, yes, sir, especially if you drive, Mr. Alan.”

“I don’t want to drive. Let him go and jump in.”

The coachman gave the pony his head, climbed in, and took the reins. The cart swung out, and down the lane.

“Alan! Alan!”

Alan recognized Clem’s voice and turned. She was racing across a corner of the pasture. Her short skirts flounced madly above her ungainly legs. She tried to take the low stone wall in her stride. Her foot caught in a vine, and she pitched headlong into the weeds and grass at the roadside.

Alan leaped from the cart and picked her up, quivering, sobbing, and breathless.

“Alan,” she gasped, “you’re not going away?”

Alan half shook her as he drew her thin body close to him.

“Clem,” he said, “you mustn’t. Do you hear? You mustn’t. Do you think I want to go away?”

Clem stifled her sobs and looked up at him with a sudden gravity in her elfish face. She threw her bare arms around his neck.

“Good-by, Alan.”

He stooped and kissed her.

CHAPTER III

IF Alix Deering had not barked her pretty shins against the center-board in Gerry Lansing’s sailing-boat on West Lake, it is possible that she would in the end have married Alan Wayne instead of Gerry Lansing.

When two years before Alan’s dismissal Nance had brought Alix, an old school friend, to Red Hill for a fortnight, everybody had thought what a splendid match Alix and Alan would make. But it happened that Alan was very much taken up at the time with memory and anticipation of a certain soubrette, and before he awoke to Alix’s wealth of charms the incident of the shins robbed him of opportunity.

Gerry, dressed only in a bathing-suit, his boat running free before a brisk breeze, had swerved to graze the Point, where half of Red Hill was encamped, when he caught sight of a figure lying on the outermost flat rock. He took it to be Nance.

“Jump!” he yelled as the boat neared the rock.

The figure started, scrambled to its feet, and sprang. It was Alix, still half asleep, who landed on the slightly canted floor of the boat. Her shins brought up with a thwack against the center-board, and she fell in a heap at Gerry’s feet. Her face grew white and strained; for a second she bit her lip, and then, “I must cry,” she gasped, and cried.

Gerry was big, strong, and placid. Action came slowly to him, but when it came it was sure. He threw one knee over the tiller, and gathered Alix into his arms. She lay like a hurt child, sobbing against his shoulder.

“Poor little girl,” he said, “I know how it hurts. Cry now, because in a minute it will all be over. It will, dear. Shins are like that.” And then before she could master her sobs and take in the unconscious humor of his comfort, the boat struck with a crash on Hidden Rock.

The nearest Gerry had ever come to drowning was when he had fallen asleep lying on his back in the middle of West Lake. Even with a frightened girl clinging to him, it gave him no shock to find himself in the water a quarter of a mile from shore. But with Alix it was different. She gasped, and in consequence gulped down a large mouthful of the lake. Then she broke into hysterical laughter and swallowed more. Gerry held her up, and deliberately slapped her across the mouth. In a flash anger sobered her. Her eyes blazed.

“You coward,” she whispered.

Gerry’s face was white and stern.

“Put one hand on my shoulder and kick with your feet,” he said. “I’ll tow you to shore.”

“Put me on Hidden Rock,” said Alix; “I prefer to wait for a boat.”

“It will take an hour for a boat to get here,” answered Gerry. “I’m going to tow you in. If you say another word I shall slap you again.”

In a dead silence they plowed slowly to shore, and when Gerry found bottom, he stood up, took Alix in his arms, and strode well up the bank before he set her down.

During the long swim she had had time to think, but not to forgive. She stamped her sodden feet, shook out her skirts, and then looked Gerry up and down. With his crisp, light hair; blue eyes, wide apart and well open; and six feet of well-proportioned bulk, Gerry was good to look at, but Alix’s angry eyes did not admit it. They measured him scornfully; but it was not the look that hurt him so much as the way she turned from him with a little shrug of dismissal and started along the shore for camp.

Gerry reached out and caught hold of her arm. She swung around, her face quite white.

“I see,” she said in a low voice, “you want it now.”

Gerry held her with his eyes.

“Yes,” he answered, “I want it now.”

“Why did you yell at me to jump into your horrible boat?”

“I took you for Nance.”

“You took me for Nance,” repeated Alix with a mimicry and in a tone that left no doubt as to the fact that she was in a nasty temper. “And why,” she went on, her eyes blazing and her slight figure trembling, “did you strike me—slap me across the face?”

“Because I love you,” replied Gerry, steadily.

“Oh!” gasped Alix. Her slate-gray eyes went wide open in unfeigned amazement, and suddenly the tenseness that is the essence of attack went out of her body. Instead of a self-possessed and very angry young woman, she became her natural self—a girl fluttering before her first really thrilling situation.

There was something so childlike in her sudden transition that Gerry was moved out of himself. For once he was not slow. He caught hold of her and drew her toward him.

But Alix was not to be plucked like a ripe plum. She freed herself gently but firmly, and stood facing him. Then she smiled, and with the smile she gained the upper hand. Gerry suddenly became awkward and painfully aware of his bare arms and legs. He felt exceptionally naked.

“When did it begin?” murmured Alix.

“What?” said Gerry.

“It,” said Alix. “When—how long have you loved me?”

Gerry’s face turned a deep red, but he raised his eyes steadily to hers. “It began,” he said simply, “when I took you in my arms and you laid your face against my shoulder and cried like—like a little kid.”

“Oh!” said Alix again, and blushed in her turn. She had lost the upper hand and knew it. Gerry’s arms went around her, and this time she raised her face and let him kiss her.

Drawn by Reginald Birch

“‘CLEM,’ HE SAID, ‘DO YOU THINK I WANT TO GO AWAY?’”

“Now,” she said as they started for the camp, “I suppose I must call you Gerry.”

“Yes,” said Gerry, solemnly. “And I shall call you Little Miss Oh!”

So casual an engagement might easily have come to a casual end, but Gerry Lansing was quietly tenacious. Once moved, he stayed moved. No woman had ever stirred him before; he did not imagine that any other woman would stir him again.

To Alix, once the shock of finding herself engaged was passed, came full realization and a certain amount of level-headed calculation. She knew herself to be high-strung, nervous, and impulsive, a combination that led people to consider her lightly. On the day of the wreck Gerry had shown himself to be a man full grown. He had mastered her; she thought he could hold her.

Then came calculation. Alix was out of the West. All that money could do for her in the way of education and culture had been done, but no one knew better than she that her culture was a mere veneer in comparison with the ingrained flower of the Lansings’ family oak. Here was a man she could love, and with him he brought her the old homestead on Red Hill and an older brownstone front in New York the position of which was as unassailable socially as it was inconvenient as regards the present center of the city’s life. Alix reflected that if there was a fool to the bargain it was not she.

All Red Hill and a few Deerings gathered for the wedding, and many were the remarks passed on Gerry’s handsome bulk and Alix’s scintillating beauty; but the only saying that went down in history came from Alan Wayne when Nance, just a little troubled over the combination of Gerry and Alix, asked him what he thought of it.

Alan’s eyes narrowed, and his thin lips curved into a smile as he gave his verdict:

“Andromeda, consenting, chained to the rock.”

CHAPTER IV

TO the surprise of his friends, Alan Wayne gave up debauch and found himself employment by the time the spring that saw his dismissal from Maple House had ripened into summer. He was full of preparation for his departure for Africa when a summons from old Captain Wayne reached him.

With equal horror of putting up at hotels or relatives’ houses, the captain, upon his arrival in town, had gone straight to his club, and forthwith become the sensation of the club’s windows. Old members felt young when they caught sight of him, as though they had come suddenly on a vanished landmark restored. Passing gamins gazed on his short-cropped gray hair, staring eyes, flaring collar, black string tie, and flowing broadcloth, and remarked:

“Gee! look at de old spoit in de winder!”

Alan heard the remark as he entered the club, and smiled.

“How do you do, sir?”

“Huh!” grunted the captain. “Sit down.” He ordered a drink for his guest and another for himself. He glared at the waiter. He glared at a callow youth who had come up and was looking with speculative eye at a neighboring chair. The waiter retired almost precipitously. The youth followed.

“In my time,” remarked the captain, “a club was for privacy. Now it’s a haven for bell-boys and a playground for whipper-snappers.”

“They’ve made me a member, sir.”

“Have, eh!” growled the captain, and glared at his nephew. Alan took inspection coolly, a faint smile on his thin face. The captain turned away his bulging eyes, crossed and uncrossed his legs, and finally spoke. “I was just going to say when you interrupted,” he began, “that engineering is a dirty job. Not, however,” he continued after a pause, “dirtier than most. It’s a profession, but not a career.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Alan. “They’ve got a few in the army, and they seem to be doing pretty well.”

“Huh, the army!” said the captain. He subsided, and made a new start. “What’s your appointment?”

“It doesn’t amount to an appointment. Just a job as assistant to Walton, the engineer the contractors are sending out. We’re going to put up a bridge somewhere in Africa.”

“That’s it. I knew it,” said the captain. “Going away. Want any money?”

The question came like solid shot out of a four-pounder. Alan started, colored, and smiled all at the same time.

“No, thanks, sir,” he replied; “I’ve got all I need.”

The captain hitched his chair forward, and glared out on the avenue.

“The Lansings,” he began, like a boy reciting a piece, “are devils for drink, the Waynes for women. Don’t you ever let ’em worry you about drink. Nowadays the doctors call us non-alcoholic. In my time it was just plain strong heads for wine. I say, don’t worry about drink. There’s a safety-valve in every Wayne’s gullet. But women, Alan!” The captain slued around his bulging eyes. “You look out for them. As your great-grandfather used to say, ‘To women, only perishable goods—sweets, flowers, and kisses.’ And you take it from me, kisses aren’t always the cheapest. They say God made everything down to little apples and Jersey lightning, but when He made women the devil helped.” The captain’s nervousness dropped from him as he deliberately drew out his watch and fob. “Good thing he did, too,” he added as a pleasing afterthought. He leaned back in his chair. A complacent look came over his face.

Alan got up to say good-by. The captain rose, too, and clasped the hand Alan held out.

“One more thing,” he said. “Don’t forget there’s always a Wayne to back a Wayne for good or bad.” There was a suspicion of moisture in his eye as he hurried his guest off.

Back in his rooms, Alan found letters awaiting him. He read them, and tore all up except one. It was from Clem. She wrote:

Dear Alan: Nance says you are going very far away. I am sorry. It has been raining here very much. In the hollows all the bridges are under water. I have invented a new game. It is called “steamboat.” I play it on old Dubbs. We go down into the valley, and I make him go through the water around the bridges. He puffs just like a steamboat, and when he gets out, he smokes all over. He is too fat. I hope you will come back very soon.

CLEM.

That evening Clem was thrown into a transport by receiving her first telegram. It read:

You must not play steamboat again; it is dangerous.

ALAN.

She tucked it in her bosom and rushed over to the Firs to show it to Gerry.

Gerry and Alix were spending the summer at the Firs, where Mrs. Lansing, Gerry’s widowed mother, was still nominally the hostess. They had been married two years, but people still spoke of Alix as Gerry’s bride, and, in so doing, stamped her with her own seal. To strangers they carried the air of a couple about to be married at the rational close of a long engagement. No children or thought of children had come to turn the channel of life for Alix. On Gerry, marriage sat as an added habit. It was beginning to look as though he and Alix drifted together not because they were carried by the same currents, but because they were tied.

Where duller minds would have dubbed Gerry the Ox, Alan had named him the Rock, and Alan was right. Gerry had a dignity beyond mere bulk. He had all the powers of resistance, none of articulation. Where a pin-prick would start an ox, it took an upheaval to move Gerry. An upheaval was on the way, but Gerry did not know it. It was yet afar off.

To the Lansings marriage had always been one of the regular functions of a regulated life, part of the general scheme of things. Gerry was slowly realizing that his marriage with Alix was far from a mere function, had little to do with a regular life, and was foreign to what he had always considered the general scheme of things. Alix had developed quite naturally into a social butterfly. Gerry did not picture her as chain-lightning playing on a rock, as Alan would have done; but he did in a vague way feel that bits of his impassive self were being chipped away.

Red Hill bored Alix, and she showed it. The first summer after the marriage they had spent abroad. Now Alix’s thoughts and talk turned constantly toward Europe. She even suggested a flying trip for the autumn, but Gerry refused to be dragged so far from golf and his club. He stuck doggedly to Red Hill till the leaves began to turn, and then consented to move back to town.

On their last night at the Firs, Mrs. Lansing, who was complimentary Aunt Jane to Waynes and Eltons, entertained Red Hill as a whole to dinner. With the arrival of dessert, to Alix’s surprise, Nance said, “Port all around, please, Aunt Jane.”

Lansings, Waynes, and Eltons were heavy drinkers in town, but it was a tradition, as Alix knew, that on Red Hill they dropped it—all but the old captain. It was as though, amid the scenes of their childhood, they became children, and just as a Frenchman of the old school will not light a cigarette in the presence of his father, so they would not take a drink for drink’s sake on Red Hill.

So Alix looked on interestedly as the old butler set glasses and started the port. When it had gone the round, Nance stood up, and with her hands on the table’s edge leaned toward them all. For a Wayne, she was very fair. As they looked at her, the color swept up over her bare neck. Its wave reached her temples, and seemed to stir the clustering tendrils of her hair. Her eyes were grave and bright with moisture. Her lips were tremulous.

“We drink to Alan,” she said; “to-day is Alan’s birthday.”

She sat down. They all raised their glasses. Little Clem had no wine. She put a thin hand on Gerry’s arm.

“Please, Gerry! Please!”

Gerry held down his glass. Clematis dipped in the tip of her little finger, and, as they all drank, gravely carried the drop of wine to her lips.

CHAPTER V

AS Judge Healey, gray-haired, but erect, walked up the avenue his keen glance fell on Gerry Lansing standing across the street before an art dealer’s window. Gerry’s eyes were fastened on a picture that he had long had in mind for a certain nook in the library of the town house.

It was the second anniversary of his wedding, and though it was already late in the afternoon, Gerry had not yet chosen his gift for Alix. He turned from the picture with a last long look and a shrug, and passed on to a palatial jeweler’s farther up the street.

For many years Judge Healey had been foster-father to Red Hill in general and to Gerry in particular. With almost womanly intuition he read what was in Gerry’s mind before the picture, and acting on impulse, the judge crossed the street and bought it.

While the judge was still in the picture shop, Gerry came out of the jeweler’s and started briskly for home. He had purchased a pendant of brilliants, extravagant for his purse, but yet saved to good taste by a simple originality in design.

He waited until the dinner-hour, and then slipped his gift into Alix’s hand as they walked down the stairs together. She stopped beneath the hall light.

“I can’t wait, dear; I simply can’t,” she said, and snapped open the case.

“Oh!” she gasped. “How dear! How perfectly dear! You old sweetheart!”

She threw her arms about his neck and kissed him twice; then she flew away to the drawing-room in search of Mrs. Lansing and the judge, the sole guests at the little anniversary dinner. Gerry straightened his tie and followed.

Alix’s tongue was rippling, her whole body was rippling, with excitement and pleasure. She dangled her treasure before their eyes. She laid it against her warm neck and ran to a mirror. The light in her eyes matched the light in the stones. The judge took the jewel and laid it in the palm of his strong hand. It looked in danger of being crushed.

“A beautiful thing, Gerry,” he said, “and well chosen. Some poet jeweler dreamed that twining design, and set the stones while the dew was still on the grass.”

After dinner the four gathered in the library, but they were hardly seated when Alix sprang up. Her glance had followed Gerry’s startled gaze. He was staring at the coveted picture he had been looking at in the gallery that afternoon. It hung in the niche in which his thoughts had placed it. Alix took her stand before it. She glanced inquiringly at the others. Mrs. Lansing nodded at the judge. Alix turned back to the picture, and gravity stole into her face. Then she faced the judge with a smile.

“We live,” she said, “in a Philistine age, don’t we? But I’ve never let my Philistinism drive pictures from their right place in the heart. Pictures in art galleries—” she shrugged her pretty shoulders—“I have not been trained up to them. To me they are mounted butterflies in a museum, cut flowers crowded at the florist’s. But this picture and that nook—they have waited for each other. You see the picture nestling down for a long rest, and it seems a small thing, and then it catches your eye and holds it, and you see that it is a little door that opens on a wide world. It has slipped into the room and become a part of life.”

A strange stillness followed Alix’s words. To the judge and to Gerry it was as though the picture had opened a window to her mind. Then she closed the window.

“Come, Gerry,” she said, turning, “make your bow to the judge and bark.”

Gerry was excited, though he did not show it.

“You have dressed my thoughts in words I can’t equal,” he said, and strolled out to the little veranda at the back of the house. He wanted to be alone for a moment and think over this flash of light that had followed a dark day. For the first time in a long while Alix had revealed herself. He did not begrudge the judge his triumph. He knew instinctively that coming from him instead of from the judge the picture would not have struck that intimate spark.

The next day Gerry gave his consent to Alix’s plan for a flying trip abroad, but with a reservation. The reservation was that she should leave him behind.

Judge Healey heard of this arrangement only when it was on the point of being put into effect. In fact, he was only just in time at the steamer to wave good-by to Alix. Leaning over the rail, with her high color, moist red lips, and excited big eyes making play under a golden crown of hair and over a huge armful of roses, Alix presented a picture not easily forgotten.

The judge turned to Gerry.

“She ought not to be going without you, my boy.”

“Oh, it’s all right,” said Gerry, lightly. “She’s well chaperoned. It’s a big party, you know.”

But during the weeks that followed the judge saw it was not all right. Gerry had less and less time for golf and more and more for whisky and soda. The judge was troubled, and felt a sort of relief when from far away Alan Wayne cropped into his affairs and gave him something else to think about.

When Angus McDale of McDale & McDale called without appointment, the judge knew at once that he was going to hear something about Alan.

“Lucky to find you in,” puffed McDale. “It isn’t business exactly or I’d have ’phoned. I was just passing by.”

“Well, what is it?” asked the judge, offering his visitor a fresh cigar.

“It’s this. That boy, Alan Wayne—sort of protégé of yours, isn’t he?”

“Yes, in a way—yes,” said the judge, slowly, frowning. “What has Alan done now?”

“It’s like this,” said McDale. “Six months ago we sent Mr. Wayne out on contract as assistant to Walton. Walton no sooner got on the ground than he fell sick. He put Wayne in charge, and then he died. Now, this is the point. Mr. Wayne seems to have promoted himself to Walton’s pay. He had the cheek to draw his own as well. He won’t be here for weeks, but his accounts came in to-day. I want to know if you see any reason why we shouldn’t have that money back, to say the least.”

The judge’s face cleared.

“Didn’t he tell you why he drew Walton’s pay?”

“Not a word. Said he’d explain accounts when he got here, but that sort of thing takes a lot of explaining.”

“Well,” said the judge, “I can tell you. Walton’s pay went to his widow, through me. I’ve been doing some puzzling on this case already. Now will you tell me how Alan got the money without drawing on you?”

“Oh, there was plenty of money lying around. The job cost ten per cent. less than Walton’s estimate. If he’d come back, we’d have hauled him over the coals for that blunder. There was the usual reserve for work in inaccessible regions, and then the people we did the job for paid ten days’ bonus for finishing that much ahead of contract time.”

The judge mused.

“Was the job satisfactory to the people out there?” he asked.

“Yes, it was,” said McDale, bluntly; “most satisfactory. But there was a funny thing there, too. They wrote that while they did not approve of Mr. Wayne’s time-saving methods, the finished work had their absolute acceptance.”

The judge was silent for a moment.

“You want my advice?” he asked.

“Yes; not for our own sake, but for Wayne’s.”

“Well,” said the judge, “I’m going to give it to you for your sake. When you stumble across a boy that can cut ten per cent. off the working and time estimates of an old hand like Walton, you bind him to you with a long contract at any salary he wants. And just one thing more: when Alan Wayne steals a cent from you, or fifty thousand dollars, you come to me, and I’ll pay it.”

McDale’s eyes narrowed, and he puffed nervously at his cigar. He got up to take his leave.

“Judge,” he said, “your head is on right, and your heart’s in the right place, as well. I begin to see that widow business. Wayne sized us up for a hard-headed firm when it comes to paying out what we don’t have to, and we are. It wasn’t law, but he was right. Walton’s work was done just as if he’d been alive. Even a Scotchman can see that. You needn’t worry. A man that you’ll back for fifty thousand is good enough for McDale & McDale.”

CHAPTER VI

IT was Alix who discovered Alan as the Elenic steamed slowly down the Solent. He was already comfortably established in his chair, with a small pile of fiction beside him.

Drawn by Reginald Birch

“‘IN MY TIME,’ REMARKED THE CAPTAIN, ‘A CLUB WAS FOR PRIVACY. NOW IT’S A HAVEN FOR BELL-BOYS AND A PLAYGROUND FOR WHIPPER-SNAPPERS’”

She paused before she approached him. Alan had always interested her. Perhaps it was because he had kept himself at a distance; but, then, he had a way of keeping his distance from almost everybody. Alix had thought of him heretofore as a modern exquisite subject to atavic fits that, in times past, had led him into more than one barbarous escapade. It was the flare of daring in these shameful outbursts that had saved him from a suspicion of effeminacy. Now, in London she had by chance heard things of him that forced her to a readjustment of her estimate. In six months Alan had turned himself into a mystery.

“Well,” she said, coming up behind him, “how are you?”

Alan turned his head slowly, and then threw off his rugs and sprang to his feet.

“The sky is clear,” he said; “where did you drop from?” His eyes measured her. She was ravishing in a fur toque and coat which had yet to receive their baptism of import duty.

“Oh,” said Alix, “my presence is humdrum. Just the usual returning from six weeks abroad. But you! You come from the haunts of wild beasts, and from all accounts you have been one.”

“Been one! From all accounts!” exclaimed Alan, a puzzled frown on his face. “Just what do you mean?”

They started walking.

“I mean that even in Africa one can’t hide from Piccadilly. In Piccadilly you are already known not as Mr. Alan Wayne, a New York social satellite, but as a whirlwind in shirt-sleeves. Ten Per Cent. Wayne, in short.” She looked at him with teasing archness. She could see that he was worried.

“Satellite is rather rough,” remarked Alan. “I never was that.”

“All bachelors are satellites in the nature of things—satellites to other men’s wives.”

“Have you a vacancy?” said Alan.

The turn of the talk put Alix in her element. She had never been an ingénue. She had been born with an intuitive defense. Finesse was her motto, and artificiality was her foil. It had never been struck from her hands. On the other hand, Alan knew that every woman who accepts battle can be reached, even if not conquered. It is the approaches to her heart that a woman must defend. Once those are passed, the citadel turns traitor.

They both knew they were embarking upon a dangerous game, but Alix had played it often. No pretty woman takes her European degree without ample occasion for practice, and Alix had been through the European mill. She threw out her daintily shod feet as she walked. She was full of life. She felt like skipping. The light of battle danced merrily in her eyes. She made no other reply.

“I met lots of people we both know,” she said at last.

“Which one of them passed on the news that I had taken to the ways of a wild beast?”

“Oh, that was the Honorable Percy. I caught only a few words. He was telling about a man known as Ten Per Cent. Wayne and the only time he’d ever seen the shirt-sleeve policy work with natives. When I learned it was Africa, I linked up with you at once and screamed, and he turned to me and said, ‘You know Mr. Wayne?’ And I said I had thought I did, but I found I only knew him tiré à quatre épingles, and wouldn’t he draw his picture over again. But just then Lady Merle signaled the retreat, and when the men came out, somebody else snaffled Collingeford before I got a chance.”

“Oh, Collingeford,” said Alan. “I remember.” He frowned and was silent.

“Alan,” said Alix after a moment, “let me warn you. I see a new tendency in you, but before it goes any further than a tendency, let me tell you that a thoughtful man is a most awful bore. When I caught sight of you I thought, ‘What a delightful little party!’ But if you’re going to be pensive, there are others—”

Alan glanced at her.

“Alix,” he said, mimicking her tone, “I see in you the makings of an altogether charming woman. I’m not speaking of the painstaking veneer,—I suppose you need that in your walk of life,—but what’s under it. There may be others, as you say,—pretty women have taken to wearing men for bangles,—but don’t you make a mistake. I’m not a bangle. I’ve just come from the unclothed world of real things. To me a man is just a man, and, what’s more, a woman is just a woman.”

“How un-American!” said Alix.

“It’s more than that,” said Alan; “it’s pre-American.”

Alix was thoughtful in her turn. Alan caught her by the arm and turned her toward the west. A yawl was just crossing the disk of the disappearing sun. Alix felt a thrill at his touch.

“It’s a sweet little picture, isn’t it?” she said. “But you mustn’t touch me, Alan. It can’t be good for us.”

“So you feel it, too,” said Alan, and took his hand from her arm.

During the voyage they were much together, not in dark corners, but waging their battle in the open—two swimmers that fought each other, forgetting to fight the tide that was bearing them out to sea. Alan was not a philanderer to snatch an unrequited kiss. To him a kiss was the seal on surrender. But to Alix the game was its own goal. As she had always played it, nobody had ever really won anything. However, it did not take her long to appreciate that in Alan she had an opponent who was constantly getting under her guard and making her feel things—things that were alarming in themselves, like the jump of one’s heart into the throat or the intoxication that goes with hot, racing blood.

Alan’s power over women was in voice and words. If he had been hideous, it would have been the same. With his tongue he carried Alix away, and gave her that sense of isolation which lulls a woman into laxity. One night as they sat side by side, a single great rug across their knees, Alan laid his hand under cover on hers. A quiver went through Alix’s body. Her closed hand stirred nervously, but she did not really draw it away.

“Alan,” she said, “I’ve told you not to. Please don’t! It’s common—this sort of thing.”

Alan tightened his grip.

“You say it’s common,” he said, “because you’ve never thought it out. Lightning was common till somebody thought it out. I sit beside you without touching you, and we are in two worlds. I grip your hand like this, and the abyss between us is closed. While I hold you, nothing can come between.”

Alix’s hand opened and settled into his. Alan went on:

“Words talk to the mind, but through my hand my body talks to yours in a language that was old before words were born. If I am full of dreams of you and a desert island, I don’t have to tell you about it, because you are with me. The things I want, you want. There are no other things in life; for while I hold you, our world is one and it is all ours. Nothing else can reach us.”

For a while they sat silent, then Alix recovered herself.

“After all,” she said, “we’re not on a desert island, but on a ship, with eyes in every corner.”

Alan leaned toward her.

“But if we were, Alix! If we were on a desert island, you and I—”

For a moment Alix looked into his burning eyes. She felt that there was fire in her own eyes too—a fire she could not altogether control. She disengaged herself and sprang up. Alan rose slowly and stood beside her. He did not look at her parted lips and hot cheeks; he had suddenly become languid.

“That’s it,” he drawled—“eyes in every corner. I wonder how many morals would stand without other people’s eyes to prop them up?”

Alix left him. She felt baffled, as though she had tried desperately to get a grip on Alan, and her hand had slipped. She felt that it was essential to get a grip on him. She had never played the losing side before, and she was troubled.

Premonition does not come to a woman without cause. Toward the end of the voyage Alix faced, wide-eyed, the revelation that the stakes of the game she and Alan had played were body and soul.

“Alan,” she said one night, with drooping head, “I’ve had enough. I don’t want to play any more. I want to quit.” She lifted tear-filled eyes to him. The foil of artificiality had been knocked from her hand. She was all woman, and defenseless.

Alan felt a trembling in all his limbs.

“I want to quit, too, Alix,” he said in his low, vibrating voice, “but I’m afraid we can’t. You see, I’m beaten, too. While I was just in love with your body, we were safe enough; but now I’m in love with you. It’s the kind of love a man can pray for in vain. No head in it; nothing but heart. Honor and dishonor become mere names. Nothing matters to me but you.”

Drawn by Reginald Birch

“’HE’D SAIL FOR AFRICA TO-MORROW AND THINK FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE OF HIS ESCAPE FROM YOU AS A CLOSE SHAVE’”

Tears crawled slowly down Alix’s cheeks. She stood with her elbows on the rail and faced the ocean, so no one might see. Her hands were locked. In her mind her own thoughts were running. Somehow she could understand Alan without listening. If only Gerry had done this thing to her, she was thinking, the pitiless, wracking misery would have been joy at white heat. She was unmasked at last; but Gerry had not unmasked her. Not once since the day of the wreck and their engagement had Gerry unmasked himself.

Alan was standing with his side to the rail, his eyes leaving her face only to keep track of the promenaders, so that no officious friend could take her by surprise. He went on talking.

“Our judgment is calling to us to quit, but it is calling from days ago,” he said. “We wouldn’t listen then, and it’s only the echo we hear now. We can try to quit if you like; but when I am alone, I shall call for you, and when you are alone, you will call for me. We shall always be alone except when we are near each other. We can’t break the tension, Alix. It will break us in the end.”

The slow tears were still crawling down Alix’s cheeks. In all her life she had never suffered so before. She felt that each tear paid the price of all her levity.

“Alan,” she said with a quick glance at him, “did you know when we began that it was going to be like this?”

“No,” he answered. “I have trifled with many women, and I was ready to trifle with you. No one had ever driven you, and I wanted to drive you. I thought I had divorced passion and love. I thought perhaps you had, too. But love is here. I am not driving you. We are being driven.”

CHAPTER VII

ALIX and Alan were in the grip of a fever that is hard to break save through satiety and ruin. They were still held apart by generations of sound tradition, but against this bulwark the full flood of modern life, as they lived it, was directed. In Alan there was a counter-strain, a tradition of passion that predisposed him to accept the easy tenets of the growing sensual cult. As he found it more and more difficult to turn his thoughts away from Alix, he strove to regain the clear-headedness that only a year before had held him back from definite moral surrender.

With her things had not gone so far. From the security of the untempted she had watched her chosen world play with fire, and only now, when temptation assailed her, did she realize the weakness that lies in every woman once her outposts have fallen and her bare heart becomes engaged in the battle.

One early morning Nance sent for Alan. He found her alone. She had been crying. He came to her where she stood by the fire, and she turned and put her arms around his neck. She tried to smile, but her lips twitched.

“Alan,” she said, “I want you to go away.”

Alan was touched. He caught her wrists and took her arms from about his neck.

“You mustn’t do that sort of thing to me, Nance. I’m not fit for it.” He made her sit down on a great sofa before the fire and sat down beside her. “You remind me to-day of the most beautiful thing I ever heard said of you—by a spiteful friend.”

“What was it?” said Nance, turning her troubled eyes to him.

“She said, ‘She is only beautiful in her own home.’ I never understood it before. It’s a great thing to be beautiful in one’s own home.”

“Oh, Alan,” said Nance, catching his hand and holding it against her breast, “it is a great thing. It’s the greatest thing in life. That’s why I sent for you—because you are wrecking forever your chance of being beautiful in your own home. And worse than that, you are wrecking Alix’s chance. Of course you are blind. Of course you are mad. I understand, Alan, but I want to hold you close to my heart until you see—until the fever is cooled. You and Alix cannot do this thing. It isn’t as though her people and ours were of the froth of the nation. You and she started life with nothing but Puritan to build on. You may have built just play-houses of sand, but deep down the old rock foundation must endure. You must take your stand on that.”

Her eyes had been fixed in the fire, but now she turned them to his face. Alan sat with head hanging forward, his gaze and thoughts far beyond the confines of the room. Then he shook himself and got up to go.

“I wish we could, Nance,” he said gravely, and then added half to himself, half to her, “I’ll try.”

For some days Alan had been prepared to go away and take Alix with him, should she consent. Upon his arrival he had had an interview with McDale & McDale, in the course of which that firm opened its eyes and its pocket wider than it ever had before.

“You are out for money, Mr. Wayne,” had been the feeble remonstrance of the senior member.

“Just money,” replied Alan. “If you owed as much as I do, you would be out for it, too. Of course you’re not. What do you want? You’ve got my guaranty—ten per cent. under office estimates for work and time.”

When Alan left McDale & McDale’s offices he had contracted more or less on his own terms, and McDale, Jr., said to the senior:

“He’s only twenty-six—a boy. How did he beat us?”

“By beating Walton’s record first,” replied McDale, Sr. “And how he did that, time will show.”

As he walked slowly back from Nance’s, Alan was thinking that, after all, there was no reason why he should not cut and run—no reason except Alix.

He reached his rooms. As he crossed the threshold a premonition seized him. He felt as though some one were there. He glanced hurriedly about. The rooms were still in the disorder in which he had left them, and they were empty. Then he saw that he had stepped on a note that had been dropped through the letter-slip. He picked it up. A thrill went through him as he recognized Alix’s handwriting. There was no stamp. It must have been delivered by hand. He tore it open and read: “You said that a moment’s notice was all you asked. I will take the Montreal express with you to-day.”

Alan’s blood turned to liquid fire. The note conjured before him a vision of Alix. He crushed it, and held it to his lips and laughed, not jeeringly, but in pure, uncontrolled excitement.

IT was not a coincidence that Gerry had sought out Alix at the very hour that Nance was summoning Alan. Gerry and Nance were driven by the same forewarning of catastrophe. Gerry had felt it first, but he had been slow to believe, slower to act. He had no precedent for this sort of thing. His whole being was in revolt against the situation in which he found himself. It was after a sleepless night, a most unheard of thing with him, that he decided he could let things go no longer. He went to Alix’s room, knocked, and entered.

Alix was up, though the hour was early for her. Fresh from her bath, she sat in a sheen of blue dressing-gown before the mirror doing her own hair. Gerry glanced about him and into the bath-room, looking for the maid.

“Good morning,” said Alix. “She’s not here. Did you want to see her?”

Gerry winced at the levity. He wondered how Alix could play the game she was playing and be gay. Alix finished doing her hair.

“There,” she said with a final pat, and turned to face Gerry.

He was standing beside an open window. He could feel the cold air on his hands. He felt like putting his head out into it. His head was hot.

“Alix,” he said suddenly without looking at her, “I want you to drop Alan.”

“But I don’t want to drop Alan,” replied Alix, lightly.

Gerry whirled around at her tone. His nostrils were quivering. To his amazement, his hands fairly itched to clutch her beautiful throat. He could hardly control his voice.

“Stop playing, Alix,” he gulped. “There’s never been a divorcée among the Lansings nor a wife-beater, and one is as near this room as the other right now.”

Gerry regretted the words as soon as he had said them, but Alix was not angry. She looked at him through narrowed eyes. She speculated on the sensation of being once again roughly handled by this rock of a man. Only once before had she seen Gerry angry and the sight had fascinated her then, as it did now. There was something tremendous and impressive in his anger and struggle for control—a great torrent held back by a great strong dam. She almost wished it would break through. She could almost find it in her to throw herself on the flood and let it carry her whither it would. She said nothing.

Gerry bit his lips and turned from her.

“And Alan, of all men!” he went on. At the words the current of her thoughts was changed. She found herself suddenly on the defensive. “Do you think you are the first woman he has played with and betrayed?” Gerry’s lip was curved to a sneer. “A philanderer, a man who surrounds himself with tarnished reputations.”

A dull glow came into Alix’s cheeks.

“Philanderers are of many breeds,” she said. “There are those who have the wit to philander with woman, and those who can rise only to a whisky or a golf-club. Whatever else Alan may be, he is not a time-server.”

Once aroused, Alix had taken up the gantlet with no uncertain hand. Her first words carried the war into the enemy’s camp, and they were barbed.

“What do you mean?” said Gerry, dully. He had not anticipated a defense.

“I mean what you might have deduced with an effort. What are you but a philanderer in little things where Alan is in great? What have you ever done to hold me or any other woman? I respected you once for what you were going to be. That has died. Did you think I was going to make you into a man?”

Gerry stood, breathing hard, a great despondency in his heart. Alix went on pitilessly:

“What have you become? A monumental time-server on the world, and you are surprised that a worker reaches the prize that you can not attain! ‘All things come to him who waits.’ That’s a trite saying; but how about this? There are lots of things that come to him who only waits that he could do without. The trouble with you is that you have built your life altogether on traditions. It is a tradition that your women are faithful; so you need not exert yourself to holding yours. It is a tradition that you can do no wrong; so you need not exert yourself to doing anything at all. You are playing with ghosts, Gerry. Your party was over a generation ago.”

Alix had calmed down. There was still time for Gerry to choke her to good effect. The hour could yet be his. But he did not know it. Smarting under the lash of Alix’s tongue, he made a final and disastrous false step.

“You try to humiliate me by placing me back to back with Alan?” he said, with his new-born sneer. Alix appraised it with calm eyes, and found it rather attractive. “Well, let me tell you that Alan is so small a man that if I dropped out of the world to-day, he’d sail for Africa to-morrow and think for the rest of his life of his escape from you as a close shave.”

Alix sprang to her feet. She was trembling. Gerry felt a throb of exultation. It was his turn to wound.

“What do you mean?” said Alix, very quietly; but it was the quiet of suppressed passion at white heat.

“I mean that Alan is the kind of man who finds other men’s wives an economy. He would take everything you have that’s worth taking, but not you.”

Alix’s eyes blazed at him from her white face. “Please go away,” she said. He started to speak. “Please go away,” she repeated. Her lips were quivering, and her face twitched in a way that was terrifying to Gerry. He hurried out, repeating to himself over and over: “You have made Alix cry. You have made Alix cry.”

Alix toyed with the silver on her dressing-table until he had gone, and then she swept across the room to her little writing-desk and wrote the note that Alan had found half an hour later in his rooms.

CHAPTER VIII

GERRY stood in the hall outside Alix’s room for a moment, hoping to hear a sob, a cry, anything for an excuse to go back. Instead he heard the scratch of a pen; but he was too troubled to deduce anything from that. He went slowly down the stairs and out into the street. The biting winter air braced him. He started to walk rapidly. At the end of an hour he found himself standing on a deserted pier. He took off his hat and let the wind cool his head.

“I have been a brute,” he said to himself. “I have made a woman cry—Alix!” He turned and walked slowly back to the avenue and into his club, but he still felt uneasy. A waiter brought a whisky and soda and put it at his elbow. Gerry turned on him.

“Who told you to bring that?” Then he felt ashamed of his petulance. “It’s all right, George,” he said more genially than he had spoken for many a day; “but I don’t want it. Take it away.”

He sat for a long time, and at last came to a resolution. Alix loved roses. He would send her enough to bank her room, and he would follow them home. He went up the avenue to his florist’s, and stood outside trying to decide whether it should be one mass of blood red or a color scheme. Suddenly the plate glass caught a reflection and threw it in his face. Gerry turned. A four-wheeler was passing. He could not see the occupant, but on top was a large, familiar trunk marked with a yellow girdle. On the trunk was a familiar label. He stared at it, and the label stared back at him, and finally danced before his mazed eyes as the cab disappeared into the traffic.

Gerry stood for a long while, stunned. He saw a lady bow to him from a carriage, and afterward he remembered that he had not bowed back. Somebody ran into him. He looked back at the flowers massed in the window, remembered that he did not need them now, and drew slowly away. Two men hailed him from the other side of the street. Gerry braced himself, nodded to them, and hailed a passing hansom. From the direction Alix’s cab had taken he knew the station for which she was bound. As he arrived on the platform they were giving the last call for the Montreal express. He caught sight of Alix hurrying through the gates, and followed. As she reached the first Pullman, somebody rapped on the window of the drawing-room. Gerry saw Alan’s face pressed against the pane. He watched Alix stop, turn, and climb the steps of the car, and then he wheeled and hurried from the station.

Where could he go? Not to his club and Alan’s. His face would betray the scandal with which the club would be buzzing to-morrow. Not to his big, comfortable house. It would be too gloomy. Even in disaccord, Alix had imparted to its somber oak and deep shadows the glow of buoyant life. When she was there, one felt as though there were flowers in the house. Gerry was seized with a great desire to hide from his world, his mother, himself. He pictured the scare-heads in the papers. That the name of Lansing should be found in that galley! It was too much. He could not face it.

He bought a morning paper, full of shipping news, and, getting into a taxi, gave the address of his bank. On the way he studied the sailings’ column. He found what he wanted—the Gunter, due to sail that afternoon for Brazil, Pernambuco the first stop.

At the bank Gerry drew out the balance of his current account. It amounted to something over two thousand dollars. He took most of it in Bank of England notes. Then he started home to pack, but before he reached the house a vision of the servants, flurried after helping their mistress off, commiserating him to one another, pitying him to his face perhaps, or, in the case of the old butler, suppressing a great emotion, was too much for him. He drove instead to a big department store, and in an hour had bought a complete outfit. He lunched at one of the quiet restaurants that divide down-town from up-town.

He had avoided buying a ticket. As the Gunter warped out, the purser came to him.

“I understand you have no ticket.”

“No,” said Gerry, drawing a roll of bills. “How much is the passage to Pernambuco?”

The purser fidgeted.

“This is irregular, sir,” he said.

“Is it?” said Gerry, indifferently.

“I have no ticket-forms,” said the purser, weakening.

“I don’t want a ticket,” said Gerry. “I want a good room and three square meals a day.”

Long, quiet days on a quiet sea are a master sedative to a troubled mind. Gerry had a great deal to think through. He sat by the hour with hands loosely clasped, his eyes far out on the ocean, tracing the course of his married life, and measuring the grounds for Alix’s arraignment. Gerry was just and generous to others’ faults, but not to his own. He had forgotten the sting of Alix’s words, and, to his growing amazement, saw in himself their justification. A time-server he certainly had been.

The landfall of Pernambuco awoke him from reveries and introspection. He did not look upon this palm-strewn coast as a land of new beginnings; he sought merely a Lethean shore.

The ship crawled in from an oily sea to the long strip of harbor behind the reef. Above, the sun blazed from a bowl of unbroken blue; on land, the multicolored houses spread like a rainbow under a dark cloud of brown-tiled roofs. Beyond the trees was a line of high, stuccoed houses, each painted a different color, all weather-stained, and some with rusted balconies that threatened to topple on to the passer-by. One bore the legend, “Hôtel d’Europe.” There Gerry installed himself.

CHAPTER IX

BETWEEN the hour of writing her note to Alan and the moment when she stepped on the train Alix had had no time to think. She was still driven by the impulse of anger that Gerry’s words had aroused. She did not reflect that the wound was only to her pride.

Alan held open the door of the drawing-room. She passed in, and he closed it. She did not feel as though she were in a train. On the little table stood a vase. It held a single perfect rose. Under the vase was a curious doily, strayed from Alan’s collection of exotic things. A cushion lay tossed on the green sofa, not a new cushion, but one that had been broken in to comforting. Alix took in every detail of the arrangement of the tiny room with her first breath. What forethought, what a note of rest with which to meet a troubled and hurried heart! But how insidious to frame an ignoble flight in such a homelike setting! She felt a slight revolt at the travesty.

Alan was standing with blazing eyes and working face, like an eager hound in leash. Alix threw back her veil and looked at him. With a quick stride forward he caught her to him, and kissed her mouth until she gasped for breath. With a flash she remembered his own words, “If ever I kiss you, I shall bring your soul out between your lips.” To Alix’s amazement, she did not feel an answering fire. Her body was being lashed with a living flame, and her body was cold. In that instant this seemed a terrible thing. She had sold her birthright for a price, and the price was turning to dead leaves. She made an effort to kiss Alan in return, but with the effort shame came over her. There was so much in Alan’s kiss! The kiss had brought her soul out between her lips. Her soul stood naked before her, and one’s naked soul is an ugly thing. The kiss disrobed her, too, and from that last bourn of shame Alix suddenly revolted.

Gasping, she pushed Alan from her. Their eyes met. His were burning, hers were frightened. She moved slowly backward to the door, and with her hand behind her opened the latch. Alan did not move. He knew that if he could not hold her with his eyes, he could not hold her at all. The train started. Alix passed through the door and rushed to the platform. The porter was about to drop the trap on the steps. Alix slipped by him. With all her force she pushed open the door and jumped. The train was moving very slowly, but Alix reeled, and would have fallen had it not been for a passing baggageman. He caught her, and still in his arms, Alix looked back. Alan’s white face was at the window. He looked steadily at her.

“Ye almost wint with him, miss,” said the baggageman, with a full brogue and a twinkling eye.

Alix was tired and hungry when she got back home, but excitement kept her up. She felt that she stood on the threshold of new effort and a new life. After all, she thought, it was she who had made her dear old Gerry into a time-server. She could have made him into anything else if she had tried. She longed to tell him so. Perhaps he would catch her and crush her in his arms as Alan had done. She laughed at herself for wanting him to. She rang for the butler.

“Where’s your master, John?”

“I don’t know, ma’am. Mr. Gerry hasn’t come back since he went out this morning.” To John, Mr. Lansing was a person who had been dead for some time. His present overlords were Mr. and Mrs. Gerry and Mrs. Lansing when she was in town.

“Telephone to the club, and if he is there, tell him I want to see him,” said Alix, and turned to her welcome tea. The sandwiches seemed unusually small to her ravenous appetite.

Gerry was not at the club. Alix dressed resplendently for dinner. Never had she dressed for any other man with the care that she dressed for Gerry that night. But Gerry did not come. At half-past nine Alix ordered the table cleared.

“I’ll not dine to-night,” she said to John. “When your master comes, show him in here.” She sat on in the library, listening for Gerry’s step in the hall.

From time to time John came into the room to replenish the fire. On one of these occasions Alix told him he might go to bed; but an hour later he returned and stood in the door. Alix looked very small, curled up in a great leathern chair by the fire.

“It’s after one o’clock, ma’am,” said John. “Mr. Gerry won’t be coming in to-night.” Alix made no answer. John held his ground. “It’s time for you to go to bed, ma’am. Shall I call the maid?”

It was a long time since John had taken any apparent interest in his mistress. Alix had avoided him. She had felt that the old servant disapproved of her. More than once she had thought of discharging him, but he had never given her grounds that would justify her before Gerry. Now he was ordering her to bed, and instead of being angry, she was soothed. She wondered how she could ever have thought of discharging him. He seemed strong and restful, more like part of the old house than a servant. Alix got up.

“No, don’t call the maid. I won’t need her,” she said. Then she added, “Good night, John,” as she passed out.

John held wide the door, and bowed with a deference that was a touch more sincere than usual. “Good night,” he answered, as though he meant it.

Alix was exhausted, but it was long before she fell asleep. She cried softly. She wanted to be comforted. She had dressed so beautifully, she had been so beautiful, and Gerry had not come home. As she cried, her disappointment grew into a great trouble.

She awoke early from a feverish sleep. Immediately a sense of weight assailed her. She rang, and learned that Gerry had not yet come home. Then his words of yesterday suddenly came to her, “If I dropped out of the world to-day—” Alix stared wide-eyed at the ceiling. Why had she remembered those words? She lay for a long time, thinking. Her breakfast was brought to her, but she did not touch it. It was almost noon in the cloudy Sunday morning when she roused herself from apathy. She sprang from the bed. She summoned Judge Healey with a note and Mrs. Lansing with a telegram. The telegram was carefully worded:

Please come and stay for a while. Gerry is away.

The judge found Alix radiating the freshness of a beautiful woman careful of her person; but it was the freshness of a pale flower. Alix was grave, and her gravity had a sweetness that made the judge’s heart bound. He felt an awakening in her that he had long watched for. She told him all the story of the day before in a steady monotone that omitted nothing and gave the facts only their own weight.

When she had finished, the judge patted her hand. “You would make a splendid witness, my dear,” he said. “Now, what you want is for me to find Gerry and bring him back, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Alix, “if you can.”

“Nonsense! Of course I can. Men don’t drop out of the world so easily nowadays. But I still want to know a thing or two. Are you sure Gerry knew nothing of your—er—excursion to the station?”

Alix shook her head.

“From the time he left my room and the house he has not been back.”

“Has he been to the club?”

Alix colored faintly. “I see,” said the judge, quickly. “I’ll ask there. I’ll go now.” He went off, and all that day he sought in vain for a trace of Gerry. He went to all his haunts in the city; he had telephoned to those outside. At night he returned to Alix, but it was Mrs. Lansing who received him in the library.

The judge was tired, and his buoyancy had deserted him. He told her of his failure. Mrs. Lansing was thoughtful, but not greatly troubled.

“Gerry,” she said, “has a level head. He may have gone away, but that is all. He can take care of himself.” She went to tell Alix that there was no news. When she came back, the judge turned to her.

“Well,” he asked, “What did she say?”

“Nothing, except that she wanted to know if you had tried the bank.”

The judge struck his fist into his left hand. “Never thought of it,” he said. “That child has a head!” He went to the telephone. From the president of the bank he traced the manager, from the manager, the cashier. Yes, Gerry had been at the bank on Saturday. The cashier remembered it because Mr. Lansing had drawn a certain account in full. He would not say how much.

“There,” said the judge, with a sigh of relief, “that’s something. It takes a steady nerve to draw a bank-account in full. You must take the news up-stairs. I’m off. I’ll follow up the clue to-morrow.”

There was a new look of content mingled with the worry in Mrs. Lansing’s face that made the judge say, as he held out his hand in farewell, “Things better?”

Mrs. Lansing understood him.

“Yes,” she answered, and added, “we have been crying together.”

There had been strength in Mrs. Lansing’s calm. She had been waiting, and now the waiting was over. Alix had given herself, tearful and almost wordless, into arms that were more than ready, and had then poured out her heart in a broken tale that would have confounded any court of justice, but which between women was clearer than logic.

At the end Mrs. Lansing said nothing. Instead, she petted Alix, carried her off to bed, and kept her there for three days. In her waking hours Alix added spasmodic bits to her confession—sage reflections after the event, dreamy “I wonders” that speculated in the past and in the measure of her emotions.

On the fourth day Alix got up, but on the fifth she stayed in bed. Mrs. Lansing found her pale and frightened. She had been crying.

“Alix,” she whispered, kneeling beside the bed, “what is it?”

Alix told her amid sobs.

“Oh, my dear,” said Mrs. Lansing, throwing her arms about her, “don’t cry. Don’t worry. The strength will come with the need. In the end you’ll be glad. So will Gerry. So will all of us.”

“It isn’t that,” said Alix, faintly. “Oh, it isn’t that! I’m just thinking and thinking how terrible it would have been if I had run away—really run away! I keep imagining how awful it would have been. It is a nightmare.”

“Call it a nightmare if you like, sweetheart, but just remember that you are awake.”

Drawn by Reginald Birch

“’I USED TO THINK I COULD GO HOME, THAT IT WAS JUST A QUESTION OF BUYING A TICKET. BUT—’”

“Yes,” said Alix, softly, “I am awake now. Mother, I want to go to Red Hill. I know it’s early, but I want to go now. I want to watch the Hill come to life and dress up for the summer. It will amuse me. It’s long since I have watched for the first buds and the first swallows. I won’t mind the melting snow and the mud. It’s so long since I’ve seen clean country mud. I want to smell it.”

“You don’t know how bleak the Hill can be before spring,” objected Mrs. Lansing.

“Will it be any bleaker with me there than when you were alone?” asked Alix.

Mrs. Lansing came over to her and kissed her.

“No, dear,” she said.

CHAPTER X

IN the squalid Hôtel d’Europe Gerry occupied a large room that overlooked the quay. Even if there had been a better hotel in town, he would not have moved. Here he looked out on a scene of never-ceasing movement and color. The setting changed with the varying light. The false rains of the midsummer season came up in black horses of cloud, driven by a furious wind. They passed with a whirl and a veritable clatter of heavy drops hurled against the earth in a splendid volley. The long strip of the quay emptied at the first wet shot. The tatterdemalion crowd invaded every doorway and nook of shelter with screams and laughter. Then came the sun again, and back came the throng to the fresh-washed quay.

Gerry missed his club, but for that he found a substitute. Cluny’s, next door to the hotel, was a strange hall of convivial pleasure. A massive square door, the masonry of which centuries had hardened and blackened to stone, gave on to a long hallway that ended in a wider dungeon. Here stood a bar and half a dozen teak tables. The floor was of stone flags.

The clientele had the cleavage of oil and water. One part stood to their drink at the bar, had it, and went out. The other sat to their glasses at the tables, and sat late. Among these was a pale, thin man of about Gerry’s age, with a mouth slightly twisted to humor until toward evening drink loosened it to mere weakness. One afternoon he nodded to Gerry, and Gerry left the bar for the tables. After that they sat together. The man was an American—the American consul. Gerry liked him, pitied him, and forgot to pity himself. One night he invited the consul to his room. They sat in the balcony, a bottle of whisky and a siphon between them. Gerry started to put his glass on the rail.

“Don’t do it,” said the consul, with his twisted smile; “it might carry away.” He went on more seriously. “It’s rotten. The whole place is rotten. There’s a blight on the men and the women and on the children. God!”

Gerry put down his glass untouched. “Why don’t you go home?”

The consul took a long drink, eyed the empty glass, and spoke into it.

“I used to think just like that. ’Why don’t you go home?’ I used to think I could go home, that it was just a question of buying a ticket and climbing aboard a liner. But—” he broke off, and glanced at Gerry as he refilled his glass.

“But what?” said Gerry.

“Well,” said the consul, “I’m just drunk enough to tell you. I’m only proud in the mornings before I’m thoroughly waked up. I used to drive a pen for a Western daily at twenty-five dollars a week. It was good pay, and I married on it. I and the girl lived like the corn-fed hogs of our native State. Life was one sunshine, and when the baby came, we joined hands, and said good-by to sorrow forever. Then her people got busy and landed me this job. The pay was three thousand, and if you want to see how big three thousand dollars a year can look, just go and stand behind any old kind of plow in Kansas. I jumped at it. We sold out our little outfit and raked up just enough to see me out here. The girl and the kid went to visit her people. I was to save up out of the first quarter’s pay and send for them. That was three years ago.”

“Do you see that steamer out there?” said Gerry. “Well, she’s bound for home. I want to give you the chance that comes after the last chance. I want you to let me send you home.”

The consul looked around. His pendulous lip twisted into a smile.

“So you took all that talk for the preamble to a touch!” he said.

“No, I didn’t,” said Gerry, indignantly.

“Well, well, never mind,” said the consul. “There’s nothing left to go back to, and there’s nothing left to go back. That little account in the bank, and what it may do for some poor devil, is the only monument I’ll ever build.”

The whisky-bottle was almost empty, but Gerry’s glass was still untouched. The consul pointed at it.

“You can still leave it alone? I don’t know where you come from, or what you’re loafing in this haven of time-servers for, but I’m going to give you a bit of advice: you take that steamer yourself.”

Gerry colored.

“I can’t,” he stammered. “There’s nothing left for me either to go home to.” He said nothing more. The consul had suddenly turned drowsy.

CHAPTER XI

ALMOST a month had passed since Gerry landed on his Lethean shore, and it had served him well. But that night on the balcony woke him up. The world seemed to have time-servers in small regard. First Alix and now this consul chap. Gerry began to think of his mother. He strolled over to the cable station. The offices were undergoing repairs. The ground floor was unfurnished save for a table and one chair. In the chair sat a chocolate-colored employee with a long bamboo on the floor beside him. Gerry’s curiosity was aroused. He went in and wrote his message to his mother, just a few words telling her he was all right. The chocolate gentleman folded the message, slipped it into the split end of the bamboo, and stuck it up through a hole in the ceiling to the floor above.

Loaned by George Inness, Jr. Color-Tone, engraved for THE CENTURY by H. Davidson

SUNSET ON THE MARSHES

FROM THE PAINTING BY GEORGE INNES

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LARGER IMAGE

Gerry went out and rambled over the city. Night came on. He was restless. He wished he had not sent the message. It was forming itself into a link. He dined badly at a restaurant, and then wandered back to the quay. Arriving steamers were posted on a blackboard under a street lamp. The mail from New York was due to-morrow. The consul’s papers would be full of the latest New York society scandal—his scandal.

A long, raking craft was taking on its meager provisions. Gerry engaged its captain in a pantomime parley. The boat was bound for Penedo to take on cotton. Gerry decided to go to Penedo. Two of the crew went back with him to get his baggage. The hotel was closed. Gerry was the only guest, and he had his key. He had paid his weekly bill that day, so there was no need to wake any one up. In half an hour he and his belongings were stowed on the deck of the Josephina, and she was drifting slowly down to the bar.

Four days later they were off the mouth of the San Francisco. They doubled in, and tacked their way up to Penedo. There was no life in Penedo. It was desolate and lonely compared with the Hôtel d’Europe and the lively quay; so when a funny little stern-wheeler started up the river on its weekly trip to Piranhas, Gerry went with it.

Gerry chartered a ponderous canoe. At first he had a man to paddle him up and down and sometimes across the wide half-mile of water; but before long he learned to handle the thing himself. The heavy work soon trimmed his splendid muscles into shape. He supplied the hostelry with a variety of fish.

One morning he woke earlier than usual. The wave of life was running high in his veins. He sprang up and, still in his pajamas, hurried out for his morning swim. The break of day was gloriously chilly. A cool breeze, hurrying up from sea, was steadily banking up the mist that hung over the river. Gerry sprang into his canoe and pushed off. He drove its heavy length up-stream, not in the teeth of the current, for no man could do that, but skirting the shore, seizing on the help of every eddy, and keeping an eye out for the green, swirling mound that meant a pinnacle of rock just short of the surface. He went farther up the river than ever before. His muscles were keyed to the struggle. He passed the last jutting bend that the best boatmen on the river could master, and found himself in a bay protected by a spit of sand, rock-tipped and foam-tossed where it reached the river’s channel.

Gerry ran the canoe upon the shore and stepped on to the spit of sand. In that moment just to live was enough. Then the sun broke out, and helped the wind clear the last bank of mist from the river. As he looked, a sharp cry broke on his astonished ears.

Almost at the end of the tongue of sand stood a girl. Her hair was blowing about her slim shoulders. Over one of them she gazed, startled, at Gerry. He drew back, mumbling apologies that she could not have understood even if she could have heard them. Then she plunged with a clean, long dive into the river. But before she plunged she laughed. Gerry heard the laugh. With an answering call he threw himself into the water, and swam as he never swam before.

(To be continued)

THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY[1]

BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

THE National Progressive Party was born in Chicago, August 5, 1912, at a convention which nominated Roosevelt for the presidency. Since that time, though defeated in the national election, it has figured more and more in the legislative and political activities of State and Nation. In fact progressivism is the one altogether incalculable element in the political situation of this country at a time when all men are peering, puzzled and anxious, into the mists of the future. At THE CENTURY’S request Mr. Roosevelt prepared the following paper for the thoughtful attention of the people of this land. It is crowded with suggestion.—THE EDITOR.

FUNDAMENTALLY the reason for the existence of the Progressive party is found in two facts: first, the absence of real distinctions between the old parties which correspond to those parties and, second, the determined refusal of the men in control of both parties to use the party organizations and their control of the Government for the purpose of dealing with the problems really vital to our people.

As to the first fact, it is hardly necessary to point out that the two old parties to-day no longer deal in any real sense with the issues of fifty and sixty years ago. At that time there was a very genuine division-line between the Republicans and the Democrats. The Republicans of those years stood for a combination of all that was best in the political philosophies of both Jefferson and Hamilton; and under Lincoln they represented the extreme democratic movement which was headed by Jefferson and also that insistence upon national union and governmental efficiency which were Hamilton’s great contributions to our political life in the formative period of the republic. The Republicanism of that day was something real and vital, and the Republican party under Lincoln was the radical party of the country, abhorred and distrusted by the reactionaries and ultraconservatives, especially in the great financial centers, precisely as is now true of the Progressives. The Democratic party of that day, on the contrary, was no longer the party either of Jefferson or of Jackson, whose points of unlikeness were at least as striking as their points of likeness, and in the world of politics stood for slavery and for such development of the extreme particularistic doctrine euphoniously known as “States’ rights,” as to mean, when carried to its logical extreme, total paralysis of governmental functions and ultimately disunion.

The outbreak of the Civil War and its successful conclusion forced the majority of the conservative class of the North into the Republican ranks; for when national dissolution is an issue, or even when any serious disaster is threatened, all other issues sink out of sight when compared with the vital need of sustaining the National Government. There is no possibility of even approximating to social and industrial justice if the National Government shows itself impotent to deal with malice domestic and foreign levy.

On the other hand, after the Civil War, the Democratic party found its position one of mere negation or mere antagonism to the Republican party. The Democrats in the Northern States had very different principles in the East and the West, and both in the East and the West alike they had nothing in common with the Democrats of the South save the bond of hatred to Republicanism.

OLD PARTIES AND NEW ISSUES

UNDER such conditions it was inevitable that after the issues raised by the war were settled, and as year by year they tended more and more to become nebulous memories, the new issues which arose should divide the parties each within itself rather than serve as a basis for true party division. The bonds were those of name, custom, and tradition rather than of principle. Each party could pride itself on fervent fixity of opinion as regards the issues that were dead, but each party showed complete indecision of purpose in dealing with the problems that were living. A party which alternately nominated Mr. Bryan and Mr. Parker for President, and a party wherein Messrs. Penrose, La Follette, and Smoot stand as the three brothers of leadership, can by no possibility supply the need of this country for efficient and coherent governmental action as regards the really vital questions of the day. Each party contains within its leadership and membership men who are hopelessly sundered by whatever convictions they really hold and who act together simply for reasons of personal or party expediency. It is impossible to secure the highest service for the people from any party which, like the Democracy, is wedded to States’ rights, as against those peoples’ rights which can be obtained only by the exercise of the full power of the National Government. On the other hand it is utterly hopeless to expect any sincerity of devotion to any principle of concern to the people as a whole from a party the machinery of which is usurped and held by the powers that prey, in the political and business world; and this has been the case with the Republican party since the bosses in June, 1912, at Chicago stole from the rank and file their right to make their own platform and nominate their own candidates.

So much for the incongruous jumble of conflicting principles and policies within each party and the lack of real points of difference between them. Their showing on this point is so bad that by sheer force of habit our people have grown to accept as a matter of course and without surprise the situations to which it gives rise. For instance, in New York State there was very little genuine surprise among the people as a whole when in the legislature the Republican adherents of the Republican boss and the Democratic adherents of the Democratic boss, after deliberate caucus and conference, repudiated their preëlection pledges as to primary legislation, and joined with hearty good will to defeat the measure which both had promised to support. It would be difficult to imagine a better instance of the way in which our present party conditions insure the absolute powerlessness of the people when faced by a bipartizan combine of the two boss-ridden party machines, whose hostility each to the other is only nominal compared to the hostility of both to the people at large.

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES

THE second fundamental fact of the situation partly depends upon this first fact. Where neither party ventures to have any real convictions upon the vital issues of the day it is normally impossible to use either as an instrument for meeting these vital issues. Most of these issues, at least in their present form, have become such during the lifetime of the present generation. There are, of course, issues of which this is not true. The need of fortifying the Panama Canal and of building and maintaining a thoroughly efficient navy of adequate size, find their justification in the policy of Washington, for instance, and neither policy can be antagonized save by those who are the heirs of Washington’s bitterest and most insidious opponents. Again, the questions arising in connection with our international relations must to-day, as always, be settled exactly along the lines of general policy laid down by Washington, under penalty of risking grave national discredit and disgrace.

But most of the issues which nine times out of ten most concern the average man and average woman of our republic have reached their present form only within the lifetime of the men who are now of middle age. They are due to the profound social and economic changes of the last half-century, to the exhaustion of the soil and of our natural resources, to the rapid growth of manufacturing towns and great trading cities, and to the relative lowering of the level of life in many country districts, both from the standpoint of interest and the standpoint of profit. Whether we approach the problem having in view only the interests of the wage-worker or of the farmer or of the small business man, or having in view the interests of the public as a whole, we are obliged to face certain new facts. One is that in their actual workings the old doctrines of extreme individualism and of a purely competitive industrial system have completely broken down. Another is that if we are to grapple efficiently with the evils of to-day, it will be necessary to invoke the use of governmental power to a degree hitherto unknown in this country, and, in the interest of the democracy, to apply principles which the purely individualistic democracy of a century ago would not have recognized as democratic.

It is utterly useless to try to meet our needs by recreating the vanished conditions which rendered it possible for this vanished individualistic democracy to preach and practise what it did, and which preaching and practising of an extreme individualism, be it remembered, laid the corner of the very conditions against which we are in revolt to-day. The present-day need of our people is to achieve the purpose our predecessors in the democratic movement had at heart, even though it be necessary to abandon or reverse the methods by which they in their day sought to realize, and indeed often did realize, that purpose. The Progressive party is the only political instrumentality in existence to-day which recognizes the need of achieving this purpose by the new methods which under the changed industrial and social conditions are alone effective.

COLLECTIVE ACTION AND THE INDIVIDUAL

THIS means increased efficiency of governmental action. It does not mean in the slightest degree any impairment or weakening of individual character. The combination of efficient collective action and of individual ability and initiative is essential to the success of the modern state. It is in civil life as it is in military life. No amount of personal prowess will make soldiers collectively formidable unless they possess also the trained ability to act in common for a common end. On the other hand, no perfection of military organization will atone for the lack of the fighting edge in the man in the ranks. The same principle applies in civil life. We not merely recognize but insist upon the fact that in the life career of any man or any woman the prime factor as regards success or failure must be his or her possession of that bundle of qualities and attributes which in their aggregate we denominate as character; and yet that, in addition, there must be proper social conditions surrounding him or her.

Recognition of and insistence upon either fact must never be permitted to mean failure to recognize the other and complementary fact. The character of the individual is vital, and yet, in order to give it fair expression, it must be supplemented by collective action through the agencies of government. Our critics speak as if we were striving to weaken the strength of individual initiative. Yet these critics, who for the most part are either men of wealth who do not think deeply on subjects unconnected with the acquisition of wealth, or else men of a cloistered intellectualism, are themselves in practice the very men who are most ready to demand the exercise of collective power in its broadest manifestation; that is, through the police force, when there is danger of disorder or violence.

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The growth in the complexity of community life means the partial substitution of collectivism for individualism, not to destroy, but to save individualism. A very primitive country community hardly needs a constable at all. As it changes into a village and then into a city, it becomes necessary to organize a police force, and this not because the average man has deteriorated in individual initiative and prowess, but because social conditions have so changed as to make collective action necessary. When New York was a little village, a watchman with a lantern and a stave was able to grapple with the only type of law-breaker that had yet been developed. Nowadays, in place of this baggy-breeched, stave-and-lantern carrier, we have the complex machinery of our police department, with a personnel ranging from a plain-clothes detective to a khaki-clad mounted officer with an automatic-repeating pistol. As the complexity of life has grown, as criminals have become more efficient and possessed of a greater power of combined action, it has been necessary for the government to keep the peace by the development of the efficient use of its own police powers. It is just the same with many matters wholly unconnected with criminality. The government has been forced to take the place of the individual in a hundred different ways; in, for instance, such matters as the prevention of fires, the construction of drainage systems, the supply of water, light, and transportation. In a primitive community every man or family looks after his or its interest in all these matters. In a city it would be an absurdity either to expect every man to continue to do this, or to say that he had lost the power of individual initiative because he relegated any or all of these matters to the province of those public officers whose usefulness consists in expressing the collective activities of all the people.

THE SOCIAL GOAL

IN other words, the multiplication of activities in a highly civilized and complex community is such that the enormous increase in collective activity is really obtained not as a substitute for, but as an addition to, an almost similar increase in the sphere of individual initiative and activity. There are, of course, cases of substitution; but, speaking roughly and on the whole, the statement as above made is accurate. The increase of collective activity for social and industrial purposes does not mean in any shape or way a deadening of individual character and initiative such as would follow on the effort virtually to apply the doctrines of the Marxian socialists; for “socialist” is a term so vague, and includes so many men working wisely for justice, that it is necessary to qualify it in order to define it. We are striving in good faith to produce conditions in which there shall be a more general division of material well-being, to produce conditions under which it shall be difficult for the very rich to become so very rich, and easier for the men without capital, but with the right type of character, to lead a life of self-respecting and hard-working well-being. The goal is a long way off, but we are striving toward it; and the goal is not socialism, but so much of socialism as will best permit the building thereon of a sanely altruistic individualism, an individualism where self-respect is combined with a lively sense of consideration for and duty toward others, and where full recognition of the increased need of collective action goes hand in hand with a developed instead of an atrophied power of individual action.

Now, it is fairly easy to gain a more or less half-hearted acceptance of these views as right in the abstract. All that the Progressive party is endeavoring to do is to apply them in the concrete.

THE REPUBLICAN DIFFERENCE

WE are sundered from the men who now control and manage the Republican party by the gulf of their actual practices and of the openly avowed or secretly held principles which rendered it necessary for them to resort to these practices. The rank and file of the Republicans, as was shown in the spring primaries of 1912, are with us; but they have no real power against the bosses, and the channels of information are so choked that they are kept in ignorance of what is really happening. The doctrines laid down by Mr. Taft as law professor at Yale give the theoretical justification for the practical action of Mr. Penrose and Mr. Smoot. The doctrines promulgated by Mr. Nicholas Murray Butler, when he writes Mr. Barnes’s platform, serve to salve the consciences of those who, although they object to bossism on esthetic grounds, yet sincerely feel that governmental corruption is preferable to the genuine exercise of popular power. This acquiescence in wrong-doing as the necessary means of preventing popular action is not a new position. It was the position of many upright and well-meaning Tories who antagonized the Declaration of Independence and the movement which made us a nation. It was the position of a portion of the very useful Federalist party, which at the close of the eighteenth century insisted upon the vital need of national union and governmental efficiency, but which was exceedingly anxious to devise methods for making believe to give the people full power while really putting them under the control of a propertied political oligarchy.

The control of the Republican National Convention in June, 1912, in the interest of Mr. Taft was achieved by methods full of as corrupt menace to popular government as ballot-box stuffing or any species of fraud or violence at the polls. Yet it was condoned by multitudes of respectable men of wealth and respectable men of cultivation because in their hearts they regarded genuine control by what they called “the mob”—that is, the people—as an evil so great that compared with it corruption and fraud became meritorious. The Republican party of to-day has given absolute control of its destinies into the hands of a National Committee composed of fifty-three irresponsible and on the whole obscure politicians. It has specifically provided that these men, who have no responsibility whatever to the public, can override the lawfully expressed will of the majority in any state primary. It has perpetuated a system of representation at national conventions which gives a third of the delegates to communities where there is no real Republican vote, where no delegation for or against any man really represents anything, and where, in consequence, the National Committee can plausibly seat any delegates it chooses without exciting popular indignation. In sum, these fifty-three politicians have the absolute and unchallenged control of the National Convention. They do not have to allow the rank and file of the party any representation in that convention whatever, and, as has been shown in actual practice, they surrender to them any control whatever, on the occasion when they deem it imperatively necessary, merely as a matter of expediency and favor, and not as a matter of right or principle.

It is difficult to understand how under these conditions self-respecting men who in good faith uphold popular government can continue in the party. But it is entirely obvious why those in control of the party and its main supporters in the political, financial, and newspaper worlds advocate the system. They do it from precisely the same motives that actuate them in opposing direct primaries, in opposing the initiative and the referendum, in opposing the right of the people to control their own officials, in opposing the right of the people as against the right of the judges to determine what the Constitution, the fundamental law of the land, shall permit in the way of legislation for social and industrial justice. All persons who sincerely disbelieve in the right and the capacity of the people for self-rule naturally, and from their point of view properly, uphold a system of party government like that which obtains under the Republican National Committee. For precisely similar reasons they antagonize every proposal to give the people command of their own governmental machinery. For precisely similar reasons they uphold the divine right of the judiciary to determine what the people shall be permitted to do with their own government in the way of helping the multitudes of hard-working men and women of whose vital needs these well-meaning judges are entirely ignorant.

THE DEMOCRATIC DIFFERENCE

FROM the Democratic party as at present constituted we are radically divided both because of the utter incoherence within that party itself, and because the doctrines to which it is at present committed are either fundamentally false or else set forth with a rhetorical vagueness which makes it utterly futile to attempt to reduce them to practice. The Democratic party can accomplish nothing of good unless it deliberately repudiates its campaign pledges—unless it deliberately breaks the promises it solemnly made in order to acquire power. Such repudiation necessarily means an intellectual dishonesty so great that no skill in rhetorical dialectics can cover or atone for it. To win power by definite promises, and then seek to retain it by the repudiation of those promises, would show a moral unfitness such as not to warrant further trust of any kind. Therefore we must proceed upon the assumption that the leaders of the Democracy meant what they said when they were seeking to obtain office. Their only performance so far, at the time that this article is written, is in connection with the tariff and with a discreditable impotence in foreign affairs. As a means of helping to solve great industrial and social problems, the tariff is merely a red herring dragged across the trail to divert our people from the real issues. The present tariff bill has been handled by precisely the same improper methods by which the Payne-Aldrich law was enacted. The only safe way of treating the tariff, that of a permanent non-partizan, expert tariff commission, providing for a schedule by schedule reunion, was deliberately repudiated. The Payne-Aldrich tariff was a thoroughly bad bill; and therefore I am all the more sorry to see the principles of evil tariff-making which it crystallized repeated in the Underwood-Wilson bill.

The Democratic party specifically asserted that by correcting the evils of the tariff they would reduce the cost of living, help the wage-worker and farmer, and take the most important step necessary to the solution of the trust problem. So far, there has not been the smallest evidence that these results will follow their action; and unless such results do follow from it, the Democratic tariff policy will be proved an empty sham.

I have read with care Mr. Wilson’s chapter in the “New Freedom” in which he professes to set forth his attitude as regards the trusts. The chapter does not contain, as far as I can find, one specific proposal for affirmative action. It does contain repeated, detailed, and specific misrepresentations of the Progressive position—misrepresentations so gross that all that is necessary in order to refute them is to challenge Mr. Wilson to produce a single line from the Progressive National platform, or from the speeches of the men who stood on that platform, which will bear out his assertions. Aside from these specific misrepresentations, there are various well-phrased general statements implying, approval of morality in the abstract, but no concrete proposal for affirmative action. A patient and sincere effort to find out what Mr. Wilson means by the “New Freedom” leaves me in some doubt whether it has any meaning at all. But if there is any meaning, the phrase means and can mean only freedom for the big man to prey unchecked on the little man, freedom for unscrupulous exploiters of the public and of labor to continue unchecked in a career of cutthroat commercialism, wringing their profits out of the laborers whom they oppress and the business rivals and the public whom they outwit. This is the only possible meaning that the phrase can have if reduced to action. It is, however, not probable that it has any meaning at all. It certainly can have no meaning of practical value if its coiner will not translate it out of the realm of magniloquent rhetoric into specific propositions affecting the intimate concerns of our social and industrial life to-day. To discriminate against a very few big men because of their efficiency, without regard to whether their efficiency is used in a social or anti-social manner, may perhaps be included in Mr. Wilson’s meaning; but this would be absolutely useless from every aspect, and harmful from many aspects, while all the other big unscrupulous men were left free to work their wicked will. The line should be drawn on conduct, not on size. The man who behaves badly should be brought to book, whether he is big or little; but there should be no discrimination against efficiency, if the results of the efficiency are beneficial to the wage-earners and the public.

THE PEOPLE’S RIGHTS

WE have waited for a year to see such propositions made, and until they are made and put into actual practice, and until we see how they work, the phrase “New Freedom” must stand as any empty flourish of rhetoric, having no greater and no smaller value than all the similar flourishes invented by clever phrase-makers whose concern is with diction and not action. The problems connected with the trusts, the problems connected with child labor, and all similar matters, can be solved only by affirmative national action. No party is progressive which does not set the authority of the National Government as supreme in these matters. No party is progressive which does not give to the people the right to determine for themselves, after due opportunity for deliberation, but without endless difficulty and delay, what the standards of social and industrial justice shall be; and, furthermore, the right to insist upon the servants of the people, legislative and judicial alike, paying heed to the wishes of the people as to what the law of the land shall be. The Progressive party believes with Thomas Jefferson, with Andrew Jackson, with Abraham Lincoln, that this is a government of the people, to be used for the people so as to better the condition of the average man and average woman of the nation in the intimate and homely concerns of their daily lives; and thus to use the government means that it must be used after the manner of Hamilton and Lincoln to serve the purposes of Jefferson and Lincoln.

We are for the people’s rights. Where these rights can best be obtained by exercise of the powers of the State, there we are for States’ rights. Where they can best be obtained by the exercise of the powers of the National Government, there we are for national rights. We are not interested in this as an abstract doctrine; we are interested in it concretely. Wisconsin possesses advanced laws in the interest of labor. There are other States in this respect more backward, where wage-workers, and especially women and child wage-workers, are left at the mercy of greedy and unscrupulous capitalists. Wherever this operates unjustly to favor the capitalists of other less advanced States at the expense of Wisconsin, and therefore for business reasons to make state legislatures fearful of passing laws for the proper safeguarding of the life, health, and liberty of the wage-workers, then we believe that the National Government should step in and by national action secure in the interest of the wage-workers uniform conditions throughout the Union. We hold it to be the duty of the National Government to put all the governmental resources of our people, national and state, behind the movement for the wise and sane uplifting of the men and women whose lives are hardest.

We believe in the principle of a living wage. We hold that it is ruinous for all our people, if some of our people are forced to subsist on a wage such that body and soul alike are stunted. We believe in safeguarding the body of the wage-worker, and in providing for his widow and children if he falls a victim to industrial accident. We believe in shortening the labor day to the point that will tell most for the laborer’s efficiency both as wage-worker and as citizen. In the Progressive National platform we inserted the following plank:

SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE

The supreme duty of the nation is the conservation of human resources through an enlightened measure of social and industrial justice. We pledge ourselves to work unceasingly in state and nation for:—

Effective legislation looking to the prevention of industrial accidents, occupational diseases, overwork, involuntary unemployment, and other injurious effects incident to modern industry;

The fixing of minimum safety and health standards for the various occupations, and the exercise of the public authority of state and nation, including the federal control over interstate commerce and the taxing power, to maintain such standards;

The prohibition of child labor;

Minimum wage standards for working women, to provide a living scale in all industrial occupations;

The prohibition of night work for women and the establishment of an eight-hour day for women and young persons;

One day’s rest in seven for all wage workers;

The eight-hour day in continuous twenty-four-hour industries;

The abolition of the convict contract labor system; substituting a system of prison production for governmental consumption only; and the application of prisoners’ earnings to the support of their dependent families;

Publicity as to wages, hours and conditions of labor; full reports upon industrial accidents and diseases, and the opening to public inspection of all tallies, weights, measures and check systems on labor products;

Standards of compensation for death by industrial accident and injury and trade diseases which will transfer the burden of lost earnings from the families of working people to the industry, and thus to the community;

The protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use;

The development of the creative labor power of America by lifting the last load of illiteracy from American youth and establishing continuation schools for industrial education under public control and encouraging agricultural education and demonstration in rural schools;

The establishment of industrial research laboratories to put the methods and discoveries of science at the service of American producers.

We favor the organization of the workers, men and women, as a means of protecting their interests and of promoting their progress.

These propositions are definite and concrete. They represent for the first time in our political history the specific and reasoned purpose of a great party to use the resources of the government in sane fashion for industrial betterment.

COUNTRY PROBLEMS

WE do not believe in confining governmental activity to the city. We believe that the problem of life in the open country is well nigh the gravest problem before this nation. The eyes and thoughts of those working for social and industrial reform have been turned almost exclusively toward the great cities, and toward the solution of the questions presented by their teeming myriads of people and by the immense complexity of their life. Yet nothing is more certain than that there can be no permanent prosperity unless the men and women who live in the open country prosper. The problems of the farm, of the village, of the country church, and the country school, the problems of getting most value out of and keeping most value in the soil, and of securing healthy and happy and well-rounded lives for those who live upon it, are fundamental to our national welfare. The first step ever taken toward the solution of these problems was taken by the Country Life Commission appointed by me, opposed with venomous hostility by the foolish reactionaries in Congress, and abandoned by my successor. Congress would not even print the report of this commission, and it was the public-spirited, far-sighted action of the Spokane Chamber of Commerce which alone secured the publication of the report. The farmers must organize as business men and wage-workers have organized, and the Government must help them organize.

THE BUSINESS WORLD

IN dealing with business, the Progressive party is the only party which has put forth a rational and comprehensive plan. We believe that the business world must change from a competitive to a coöperate basis. We absolutely repudiate the theory that any good whatever can come from confining ourselves solely to the effort to reproduce the dead-and-gone conditions of sixty years ago—conditions of uncontrolled competition between competitors most of whom were small and weak. The reason that the trusts have grown to such enormous size is to be found primarily in the fact that we relied upon the competitive principle and the absence of governmental interference to solve the problems of industry. Their growth is specifically and precisely due to the practice of the archaic doctrines advocated by President Wilson under the pleasingly delusive title of the “New Freedom.”

We hold that all such efforts to reproduce dead-and-gone conditions are bound to result in failure or worse than failure. The breaking-up of the Standard Oil Trust, for example, has not produced the very smallest benefit. It has merely resulted in enormously increasing the already excessive profits of a small number of persons. Not the smallest benefit would accrue—on the contrary, harm would result—if in dealing with the Steel Corporation we merely substituted for one such big corporation four or five smaller corporations of the stamp of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company. The “Survey” published a study of the conditions of life and labor among the wage-workers of this company which it is not too much to describe as appalling. The effort to remedy conditions in connection with the trusts by the establishment, instead of one big company, of four such companies engaged in cutthroat competition, cannot work the smallest betterment, and would probably work appreciable harm. That kind of “new” freedom is nothing whatever but the old, old license for the powerful to prey on the feeble.

COMPETITION AND CORPORATIONS

THERE is a very real need of governmental action, but it should be action along a totally different line. The result of the unlimited action of the competition system is seen at this moment in the bituminous coal-mines of West Virginia, where the independent operators, in the ferocity of their unregulated competition, and partly because they are forbidden to combine even for useful purposes, seek their profit in the merciless exploitation of the wage-workers who toil for them. The law, in the strict spirit of the “new freedom,” forbids them to combine for a useful purpose, and yet offers no check upon their dealing with their employees in a spirit of brutal greed. What is needed is thoroughgoing, efficient, and, if necessary, drastic supervision and control of the great corporations doing an interstate business, by means of a Federal administrative body akin in its functions to the Interstate Commerce Commission. This body should have power not only to enforce publicity, but to secure justice and fair treatment to investors, wage-workers, business rivals, consumers, and the general public alike.

Such an industrial commission should do as the Interstate Commerce Commission should do, that is, remember always its dual duty, the duty to the corporation and individual controlled no less than to the public. It is an absolute necessity that the investors, the owners, of an honest, useful, and decently managed concern, should have reasonable profit. It is impossible to run business unless this is done. Unless the business man prospers, there will be no prosperity for the rest of the community to share. He must have certainty of law and opportunity for honest and reasonable profit under the law.

Experience has proved that we cannot afford to leave the great corporations to determine for themselves without governmental supervision how they shall treat their employees, their rivals, their customers, and the general public. But experience has no less shown that it is as fatal for the agents of government to be unjust to the corporation as to fail to secure justice from them. In dealing with railways, for example, it is just as important that rates should not be too low as that they should not be too high. The living wage and the living rate are interdependent. In dealing with useful, honestly organized, and honestly managed railways, rates must be kept high enough to permit of proper wages and proper hours of labor for the men on the railroad, and to permit the company to pay compensation for the lives and limbs of those employees who suffer in doing its business; and at the same time to secure a reasonable reward to the investors—a reward sufficient to make them desirous to continue in this type of investment. Precisely the same course of action which should be followed in dealing with the railroads should also be followed by the Interstate Industrial Commission in dealing with the great industrial corporations engaged in interstate business.

TAXATION

WE believe that great fortunes, even when accumulated by the man himself, are of limited benefit to the country, and that they are detrimental rather than beneficial when secured through inheritance. We therefore believe in a heavily progressive inheritance tax—a tax which shall bear very lightly on small or ordinary inheritances, but which shall bear very heavily upon all inheritances of colossal size. We believe in a heavily graded income tax, along the same lines, but discriminating sharply in favor of earned, as compared with unearned, incomes.

It would be needless and burdensome to set forth in detail all the matters, national, state, and municipal, to which we would apply our principles. We believe that municipalities should have complete self-government as regards all the affairs that are exclusively their own, including the important matter of taxation, and that the burden of municipal taxation should be so shifted as to put the weight of land taxation upon the unearned rise in value of the land itself rather than upon the improvements, the buildings; the effort being to prevent the undue rise of rent. We regard it as peculiarly the province of the government to supervise tenement-houses, to secure proper living conditions, and to erect parks and playgrounds in the congested districts, and to use the schools as social centers.

THE PEOPLE AND THE LAWS

WE hold that all the agencies of government belong to the people, that the Constitution is theirs, and that the courts are theirs. The people should exercise their power, not to overthrow either the Constitution or the courts, but to overthrow those who would pervert them into agents against the popular welfare. We believe that where a public servant misrepresents the people, the people should have the right to remove him from office, and that where the legislature enacts a law which it should not enact or fails to enact a law which it should enact, the people should have the right on their own initiative to supply the omission. We do not believe that either power should be loosely or wantonly used, and we would provide for its exercise in a way which would make its exercise safe; but the power is necessary, and it should be provided.

We hold, moreover, with the utmost emphasis, that the people themselves should have the right to decide for themselves after due deliberation what laws are to be placed upon the statute-books and what construction is to be placed upon the constitutions, national and state, by the courts, so far as concerns all laws for social and industrial justice. This proposal has nothing whatever to do with any ordinary case at law. It has nothing to do with the exercise by the judge of judicial functions, or with his decision in any issue merely between man and man. It has to do only with the exercise by the court of political and legislative functions. We believe that it is wise to continue the American practice of using the courts as a check upon the legislature in this manner, but only so long as it is possible, in the event of conflict between the legislature and the court, to call in as arbiter the people who are the masters of both legislature and court, and whose own vital interests are at issue. The court and the legislature alike are the servants of the people, and they are dealing with the interests of the people; and the people, the masters of both, have the right to decide between them when their own most intimate concerns are at stake.

The present process of constitutional amendment is too long, too cumbrous, and too uncertain to afford an adequate remedy, and, moreover, after the amendment has been carried, the law must once more be submitted to the same court which was, perhaps, originally at fault, in order to decide whether the new law comes within the amendment. Provision should be made by which, after due deliberation, the people should be given the right themselves to decide whether or not a given law passed in the exercise of the police power for social or industrial betterment and declared by the court to be unconstitutional, shall, notwithstanding this, become part of the law of the land. This proposal has caused genuine alarm and been treated as revolutionary; but opposition to it can proceed only from complete misunderstanding both of the proposal and of the needs of the situation. Of course, however, the selfish opposition of the great corporation lawyers and of their clients is entirely intelligent; for these men alone are the beneficiaries of the present reign of hidden, of invisible, government, and they rely primarily on well-meaning but reactionary courts to thwart the forward movement.

NO DIVINE RIGHT OF JUDGES

CONCRETELY to illustrate just what we mean, our assertion is that the people have the right to decide for themselves whether or not they desire a workmen’s compensation law, or a law limiting the number of hours of women in industry, or deciding whether in unhealthy bakeshops wage-workers shall be employed more than a certain length of time per day, or providing for the safeguarding of dangerous machinery, or insisting upon the payment of wages in cash, or assuming and exercising full power over the conduct of corporations—the power denied by the court in connection with the Knight Sugar Case, but finally secured to the people by the decision in the Northern securities case. Every one of these laws has been denied to the people, again and again, both by national and by state judges in various parts of the Union.

We hold emphatically that these matters are not properly matters for final judicial decision. The judges have no special opportunity and no special ability to determine the justice or injustice, the desirability or undesirability, of legislation of such a character. Indeed, in most cases, although not in all, the judges in the higher courts are so out of touch with the conditions of life affected by social and industrial legislation on behalf of the humble that they are peculiarly unfit to say whether the legislation is wise or the reverse. Moreover, whether they are fit or unfit, it is not their province to decide what the people ought or ought not to desire in matters of this kind. They are not law-makers; they were not elected or appointed for such purpose. They are not censors of the public in this matter. We do not purpose to exalt the legislature at their expense. We do not accept the view so common in other countries that the legislature should be the supreme source of power. On the contrary, our experience has been that the legislature is quite as apt to act unwisely as any other governmental body; and it is because of this fact that the experiment of so-called commission government in cities is being so widely tried. We respect the judges, we think that they are more apt on the whole to be good public servants than any other men in office; but we as emphatically refuse to subscribe to the doctrine of the divine right of judges as to the doctrine of the divine right of kings. We are not specially concerned with the question as to which of two public servants, the court or the legislature, shall have the upper hand of the other; but we are vitally concerned in seeing that the people have the upper hand over both. Any argument against our position on this point is merely an argument against democracy.

THE KEYSTONE OF PROGRESSIVISM

MOREOVER, any professed adherence to our other doctrines, while at the same time this doctrine is repudiated, means nothing. During the last forty years the beneficiaries of reaction have found in the courts their main allies; and this condition, so unfortunate for the courts, no less than for the people, has been due to our governmental failure to furnish methods by which an appeal can be taken directly to the people when, in any such case as the cases I have above enumerated, there is an issue between the court and the legislature. It is idle to profess devotion to our Progressive proposals for social and industrial betterment if at the same time there is opposition to the one additional proposal by which they can be made effective. It is useless to advocate the passing of laws for social justice if we permit these laws to be annulled with impunity by the courts, or by any one else, after they have been passed. This proposition is a vital point in the Progressive program.

To sum up, then, our position is, after all, simple. We believe that the government should concern itself chiefly with the matters that are of most importance to the average man and average woman, and that it should be its special province to aid in making the conditions of life easier for these ordinary men and ordinary women, who compose the great bulk of our people. To this end we believe that the people should have direct control over their own governmental agencies; and that when this control has been secured, it should be used with resolution, but with sanity and self-restraint, in the effort to make conditions of life and labor a little easier, a little fairer and better for the men and women of the nation.

[1] Copyright, 1913, by The Century Co. All rights reserved. The republication of this article, either in whole or in part, is expressly prohibited, except through special arrangement with The Century Co.

Half-tone plate engraved by C. W. Chadwick

ALPHONSE DAUDET

A PORTRAIT SKETCH, DRAWN FROM THE LIFE, BY JOHN ALEXANDER

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“DEY AIN’T NO GHOSTS”

BY ELLIS PARKER BUTLER

Author of “Pigs is Pigs,” “Long Sam ’Takes Out,’” etc.

WITH PICTURES BY CHARLES SARKA

ONCE ’pon a time dey was a li’l’ black boy whut he name was Mose. An’ whin he come erlong to be ’bout knee-high to a mewel, he ’gin to git powerful ’fraid ob ghosts, ’ca’se dat am sure a mighty ghostly location whut he lib’ in, ’ca’se dey’s a grabeyard in de hollow, an’ a buryin’-ground on de hill, an’ a cemuntary in betwixt an’ between, an’ dey ain’t nuffin’ but trees nowhar excipt in de clearin’ by de shanty an’ down de hollow whar de pumpkin-patch am.

An’ whin de night come’ erlong, dey ain’t no sounds at all whut kin be heard in dat locality but de rain-doves, whut mourn out, “Oo-oo-o-o-o!” jes dat trembulous an’ scary, an’ de owls, whut mourn out, “Whut-whoo-o-o-o!” more trembulous an’ scary dan dat, an’ de wind, whut mourn out, “You-you-o-o-o!” mos’ scandalous’ trembulous an’ scary ob all. Dat a powerful onpleasant locality for a li’l’ black boy whut he name was Mose.

’Ca’se dat li’l’ black boy he so specially black he can’t be seen in de dark at all ’cept by de whites ob he eyes. So whin he go’ outen de house at night, he ain’t dast shut he eyes, ’ca’se den ain’t nobody can see him in de least. He jes as invidsible as nuffin’. An’ who know’ but whut a great, big ghost bump right into him ’ca’se it can’t see him? An’ dat shore w’u’d scare dat li’l’ black boy powerful’ bad, ’ca’se yever’body knows whut a cold, damp pussonality a ghost is.

So whin dat li’l’ black Mose go’ outen de shanty at night, he keep’ he eyes wide open, you may be shore. By day he eyes ’bout de size ob butter-pats, an’ come sundown he eyes ’bout de size ob saucers; but whin he go’ outen de shanty at night, he eyes am de size ob de white chiny plate whut set on de mantel; an’ it powerful’ hard to keep eyes whut am de size oh dat from a-winkin’ an’ a-blinkin’.

So whin Hallowe’en come’ erlong, dat li’l’ black Mose he jes mek’ up he mind he ain’t gwine outen he shack at all. He cogitate’ he gwine stay right snug in de shack wid he pa an’ he ma, ’ca’se de rain-doves tek notice dat de ghosts are philanderin’ roun’ de country, ’ca’se dey mourn out, “Oo-oo-o-o-o!” an’ de owls dey mourn out, “Whut-whoo-o-o-o!” an’ de wind mourn out, “You-you-o-o-o!” De eyes ob dat li’l’ black Mose dey as big as de white chiny plate whut set on de mantel by side de clock, an’ de sun jes a-settin’.

So dat all right. Li’l’ black Mose he scrooge’ back in de corner by de fireplace, an’ he ’low’ he gwine stay dere till he gwine to bed. But byme-by Sally Ann, whut live’ up de road, draps in, an’ Mistah Sally Ann, whut is her husban’, he draps in, an’ Zack Badget an’ de school-teacher whut board’ at Unc’ Silas Diggs’s house drap in, an’ a powerful lot ob folks drap in. An’ li’l’ black Mose he seen dat gwine be one s’prise-party, an’ he right down cheerful ’bout dat.

So all dem folks shake dere hands an’ ’low “Howdy,” an’ some ob dem say: “Why, dere’s li’l’ Mose! Howdy, li’l’ Mose!” An’ he so please’ he jes grin’ an’ grin’, ’ca’se he ain’t reckon whut gwine happen. So byme-by Sally Ann, whut live up de road, she say’, “Ain’t no sort o’ Hallowe’en lest we got a jack-o’-lantern.” An’ de school-teacher, whut board at Unc’ Silas Diggs’s house, she ’low’, “Hallowe’en jes no Hallowe’en at all ’thout we got a jack-o’-lantern.” An’ li’l’ black Mose he stop’ a-grinnin’, an’ he scrooge’ so far back in de corner he ’mos’ scrooge frough de wall. But dat ain’t no use, ’ca’se he ma say’, “Mose, go on down to de pumpkin-patch an’ fotch a pumpkin.”

“I ain’t want to go,” say’ li’l’ black Mose.

“Go on erlong wid yo’,” say’ he ma, right commandin’.

“I ain’t want to go,” say’ Mose ag’in.

“Why ain’t yo’ want to go?” he ma ask’.

Drawn by Charles Sarka

“‘WHUT YO’ WANT TO SAY UNTO ME?’ INQUIRE’ LI’L’ BLACK MOSE”

“’Ca’se I’s afraid ob de ghosts,” say’ li’l’ black Mose, an’ dat de particular truth an’ no mistake.

“Dey ain’t no ghosts,” say’ de school-teacher, whut board at Unc’ Silas Diggs’s house, right peart.

“’Ca’se dey ain’t no ghosts,” say’ Zack Badget, whut dat ’fear’d ob ghosts he ain’t dar’ come to li’l’ black Mose’s house ef de school-teacher ain’t ercompany him.

“Go ’long wid your ghosts!” say’ li’l’ black Mose’s ma.

“Wha’ yo’ pick up dat nomsense?” say’ he pa. “Dey ain’t no ghosts.”

An’ dat whut all dat s’prise-party ’low: dey ain’t no ghosts. An’ dey ’low dey mus’ hab a jack-o’-lantern or de fun all sp’iled. So dat li’l’ black boy whut he name is Mose he done got to fotch a pumpkin from de pumpkin-patch down de hollow. So he step’ outen de shanty an’ he stan’ on de door-step twell he get’ he eyes pried open as big as de bottom ob he ma’s wash-tub, mostly, an’ he say’, “Dey ain’t no ghosts.” An’ he put’ one foot on de ground, an’ dat was de fust step.

An’ de rain-dove say’, “Oo-oo-o-o-o!”

An’ li’l’ black Mose he tuck anudder step.

An’ de owl mourn’ out, “Whut-whoo-o-o-o!”

An’ li’l’ black Mose he tuck anudder step.

An’ de wind sob’ out, “You-you-o-o-o!”

An’ li’l’ black Mose he tuck one look ober he shoulder, an’ he shut he eyes so tight dey hurt round de aidges, an’ he pick’ up he foots an’ run. Yas, sah, he run’ right peart fast. An’ he say’: “Dey ain’t no ghosts. Dey ain’t no ghosts.” An’ he run’ erlong de paff whut lead’ by de buryin’-ground on de hill, ’ca’se dey ain’t no fince eround dat buryin’-ground at all.

No fince; jes de big trees whut de owls an’ de rain-doves sot in an’ mourn an’ sob, an’ whut de wind sigh an’ cry frough. An’ byme-by somefin’ jes brush’ li’l’ Mose on de arm, which mek’ him run jes a bit more faster. An’ byme-by somefin’ jes brush’ li’l’ Mose on de cheek, which mek’ him run erbout as fast as he can. An’ byme-by somefin’ grab’ li’l’ Mose by de aidge of he coat, an’ he fight’ an’ struggle’ an’ cry’ out: “Dey ain’t no ghosts. Dey ain’t no ghosts.” An’ dat ain’t nuffin’ but de wild brier whut grab’ him, an’ dat ain’t nuffin’ but de leaf ob a tree whut brush’ he cheek, an’ dat ain’t nuffin’ but de branch ob a hazel-bush whut brush’ he arm. But he downright scared jes de same, an’ he ain’t lose no time, ’ca’se de wind an’ de owls an’ de rain-doves dey signerfy whut ain’t no good. So he scoot’ past dat buryin’-ground whut on de hill, an’ dat cemuntary whut betwixt an’ between, an’ dat grabeyard in de hollow, twell he come’ to de pumpkin-patch, an’ he rotch’ down an’ tek’ erhold ob de bestest pumpkin whut in de patch. An’ he right smart scared. He jes de mostest scared li’l’ black boy whut yever was. He ain’t gwine open he eyes fo’ nuffin’, ’ca’se de wind go, “You-you-o-o-o!” an’ de owls go, “Whut-whoo-o-o-o!” an’ de rain-doves go, “Oo-oo-o-o-o!”

He jes speculate’, “Dey ain’t no ghosts,” an’ wish’ he hair don’t stand on ind dat way. An’ he jes cogitate’, “Dey ain’t no ghosts,” an’ wish’ he goose-pimples don’t rise up dat way. An’ he jes ’low’, “Dey ain’t no ghosts,” an’ wish’ he backbone ain’t all trembulous wid chills dat way. So he rotch’ down, an’ he rotch’ down, twell he git’ a good hold on dat pricklesome stem of dat bestest pumpkin whut in de patch, an’ he jes yank’ dat stem wid all he might.

“Let loosen my head!” say’ a big voice all on a suddent.

Dat li’l’ black boy whut he name is Mose he jump’ ’most outen he skin. He open’ he eyes, an’ he ’gin’ to shake like de aspen-tree, ’ca’se whut dat a-standin’ right dar behint him but a ’mendjous big ghost! Yas, sah, dat de bigges’, whites’ ghost whut yever was. An’ it ain’t got no head. Ain’t got no head at all! Li’l’ black Mose he jes drap’ on he knees an’ he beg’ an’ pray’:

“Oh, ’scuse me! ’Scuse me, Mistah Ghost!” he beg’. “Ah ain’t mean no harm at all.”

“Whut for you try to take my head?” ask’ de ghost in dat fearsome voice whut like de damp wind outen de cellar.

“’Scuse me! ’Scuse me!” beg’ li’l’ Mose. “Ah ain’t know dat was yo’ head, an’ I ain’t know you was dar at all. ’Scuse me!”

“Ah ’scuse you ef you do me dis favor,” say’ de ghost. “Ah got somefin’ powerful important to say unto you, an’ Ah can’t say hit ’ca’se Ah ain’t got no head; an’ whin Ah ain’t got no head, Ah ain’t got no mouf, an’ whin Ah ain’t got no mouf, Ah can’t talk at all.”

An’ dat right logical fo’ shore. Can’t nobody talk whin he ain’t got no mouf, an’ can’t nobody have no mouf whin he ain’t got no head, an’ whin li’l’ black Mose he look’, he see’ dat ghost ain’t got no head at all. Nary head.

So de ghost say’:

“Ah come on down yere fo’ to git a pumpkin fo’ a head, an’ Ah pick’ dat ixact pumpkin whut yo’ gwine tek, an’ Ah don’t like dat one bit. No, sah. Ah feel like Ah pick yo’ up an’ carry yo’ away, an’ nobody see you no more for yever. But Ah got somefin’ powerful important to say unto yo’, an’ if yo’ pick up dat pumpkin an’ sot it on de place whar my head ought to be, Ah let you off dis time, ’ca’se Ah ain’t been able to talk fo’ so long Ah right hongry to say somefin’.”

So li’l’ black Mose he heft up dat pumpkin, an’ de ghost he bend’ down, an’ li’l’ black Mose he sot dat pumpkin on dat ghostses neck. An’ right off dat pumpkin head ’gin’ to wink an’ blink like a jack-o’-lantern, an’ right off dat pumpkin head ’gin’ to glimmer an’ glow frough de mouf like a jack-o’-lantern, an’ right off dat ghost start’ to speak. Yas, sah, dass so.

“Whut yo’ want to say unto me?” inquire’ li’l’ black Mose.

“Ah want to tell yo’,” say’ de ghost, “dat yo’ ain’t need yever be skeered of ghosts, ’ca’se dey ain’t no ghosts.”

An’ whin he say dat, de ghost jes vanish’ away like de smoke in July. He ain’t even linger round dat locality like de smoke in Yoctober. He jes dissipate’ outen de air, an’ he gone intirely.

So li’l’ Mose he grab’ up de nex’ bestest pumpkin an’ he scoot’. An’ whin he come’ to de grabeyard in de hollow, he goin’ erlong same as yever, on’y faster, whin he reckon’ he’ll pick up a club in case he gwine have trouble. An’ he rotch’ down an rotch’ down an’ tek’ hold of a likely appearin’ hunk o’ wood what right dar. An’ whin he grab’ dat hunk of wood—

“Let loosen my leg!” say’ a big voice all on a suddent.

Dat li’l’ black boy ’most jump’ outen he skin, ’ca’se right dar in de paff is six ’mendjus big ghostes, an’ de bigges’ ain’t got but one leg. So li’l’ black Mose jes natchully handed dat hunk of wood to dat bigges’ ghost, an’ he say’:

“’Scuse me, Mistah Ghost; Ah ain’t know dis your leg.”

An’ whut dem six ghostes do but stand round an’ confabulate? Yas, sah, dass so. An’ whin dey do so, one say’:

“’Pears like dis a mighty likely li’l’ black boy. Whut we gwine do fo’ to reward him fo’ politeness?”

An’ anudder say’:

“Tell him whut de truth is ’bout ghostes.”

So de bigges’ ghost he say’:

“Ah gwine tell yo’ somefin’ important whut yever’body don’t know: Dey ain’t no ghosts.”

An’ whin he say’ dat, de ghostes jes natchully vanish away, an’ li’l’ black Mose he proceed’ up de paff. He so scared he hair jes yank’ at de roots, an’ whin de wind go’, “Oo-oo-o-o-o!” an de owl go’, “Whut-whoo-o-o-o!” an’ de rain-doves go, “You-you-o-o-o!” he jes tremble’ an’ shake’. An’ byme-by he come’ to de cemuntary whut betwixt an’ between, an’ he shore is mighty skeered, ’ca’se dey is a whole comp’ny of ghostes lined up along de road, an’ he ’low’ he ain’t gwine spind no more time palaverin’ wid ghostes. So he step’ offen de road fo’ to go round erbout, an’ he step’ on a pine-stump whut lay right dar.

“Git offen my chest!” say’ a big voice all on a suddent, ’ca’se dat stump am been selected by de captain ob de ghostes for to be he chest, ’ca’se he ain’t got no chest betwixt he shoulders an’ he legs. An’ li’l’ black Mose he hop’ offen dat stump right peart. Yes, sah; right peart.

“’Scuse me! ’Scuse me!” dat li’l’ black Mose beg’ an’ plead’, an’ de ghostes ain’t know whuther to eat him all up or not, ’ca’se he step’ on de boss ghostes’s chest dat a-way. But byme-by they ’low they let him go ’ca’se dat was an accident, an’ de captain ghost he say’, “Mose, you Mose, Ah gwine let you off dis time, ’ca’se you ain’t nuffin’ but a misabul li’l’ tremblin’ nigger; but Ah want you should remimber one thing mos’ particular’.”

“Ya-yas, sah,” say’ dat li’l’ black boy; “Ah, ’ll remimber. Whut is dat Ah got to remimber?”

De captain ghost he swell’ up, an’ he swell’ up, twell he as big as a house, an’ he say’ in a voice whut shake’ de ground:

“Dey ain’t no ghosts.”

So li’l’ black Mose he bound to remimber dat, an’ he rise’ up an’ mek’ a bow, an’ he proceed’ toward home right libely. He do, indeed.

An’ he gwine along jes as fast as he kin, whin he come’ to de aidge ob de buryin’-ground whut on de hill, an’ right dar he bound to stop, ’ca’se de kentry round about am so populate’ he ain’t able to go frough. Yas, sah, seem’ like all de ghostes in de world habin’ a conferince right dar. Seem’ like all de ghosteses whut yever was am havin’ a convintion on dat spot. An’ dat li’l’ black Mose so skeered he jes fall’ down on a’ old log whut dar an’ screech’ an’ moan’. An’ all on a suddent de log up and spoke:

“Get offen me! Get offen me!” yell’ dat log.

So li’l’ black Mose he git’ offen dat log, an’ no mistake.

An’ soon as he git’ offen de log, de log uprise, an’ li’l’ black Mose he see’ dat dat log am de king ob all de ghostes. An’ whin de king uprise, all de congergation crowd round li’l’ black Mose, an’ dey am about leben millium an’ a few lift over. Yas, sah; dat de reg’lar annyul Hallowe’en convintion whut li’l’ black Mose interrup’. Right dar am all de sperits in de world, an’ all de ha’nts in de world, an’ all de hobgoblins in de world, an’ all de ghouls in de world, an’ all de spicters in de world, an’ all de ghostes in de world. An’ whin dey see li’l’ black Mose, dey all gnash dey teef an’ grin’ ’ca’se it gettin’ erlong toward dey-all’s lunch-time. So de king, whut he name old Skull-an’-Bones, he step’ on top ob li’l’ Mose’s head, an’ he say’:

“Gin’l’min, de convintion will come to order. De sicretary please note who is prisint. De firs’ business whut come’ before de convintion am: whut we gwine do to a li’l’ black boy whut stip’ on de king an’ maul’ all ober de king an’ treat’ de king dat disrespictful’.”

An’ li’l’ black Mose jes moan’ an’ sob’:

“’Scuse me! ’Scuse me, Mistah King! Ah ain’t mean no harm at all.”

But nobody ain’t pay no attintion to him at all, ’ca’se yevery one lookin’ at a monstrous big ha’nt whut name Bloody Bones, whut rose up an’ spoke.

Drawn by Charles Sarka

“’YERE’S DE PUMPKIN’”

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LARGER IMAGE

“Your Honor, Mistah King, an’ gin’l’min an’ ladies,” he say’, “dis am a right bad case ob lazy majesty, ’ca’se de king been step on. Whin yivery li’l’ black boy whut choose’ gwine wander round at night an’ stip on de king ob ghostes, it ain’t no time for to palaver, it ain’t no time for to prevaricate, it ain’t no time for to cogitate, it ain’t no time do nuffin’ but tell de truth, an’ de whole truth, an’ nuffin’ but de truth.”

An’ all dem ghostes sicond de motion, an’ dey confabulate out loud erbout dat, an’ de noise soun’ like de rain-doves goin’, “Oo-oo-o-o-o!” an’ de owls goin’, “Whut-whoo-o-o-o!” an’ de wind goin’, “You-you-o-o-o!” So dat risolution am passed unanermous, an’ no mistake.

So de king ob de ghostes, whut name old Skull-an’-Bones, he place’ he hand on de head ob li’l’ black Mose, an’ he hand feel like a wet rag, an’ he say’:

“Dey ain’t no ghosts.”

An’ one ob de hairs whut on de head ob li’l’ black Mose turn’ white.

An’ de monstrous big ha’nt whut he name Bloody Bones he lay he hand on de head ob li’l’ black Mose, an’ he hand feel like a toadstool in de cool ob de day, an’ he say’:

“Dey ain’t no ghosts.”

An’ anudder ob de hairs whut on de head ob li’l’ black Mose turn’ white.

An’ a heejus sperit whut he name Moldy Pa’m place’ he hand on de head ob li’l’ black Mose, an’ he hand feel like de yunner side ob a lizard, an’ he say’:

“Dey ain’t no ghosts.”

An’ anudder ob de hairs whut on de head ob li’l’ black Mose turn’ white as snow.

An’ a perticklar bend-up hobgoblin he put’ he hand on de head ob li’l’ black Mose, an’ he mek’ dat same remark, an’ dat whole convintion ob ghostes an’ spicters an’ ha’nts an’ yiver’thing, which am more ’n a millium, pass by so quick dey-all’s hands feel lak de wind whut blow outen de cellar whin de day am hot, an’ dey-all say, “Dey ain’t no ghosts.” Yas, sah, dey-all say dem wo’ds so fas’ it soun’ like de wind whin it moan frough de turkentine-trees whut behind de cider-priss. An’ yivery hair whut on li’l’ black Mose’s head turn’ white. Dat whut happen’ whin a li’l’ black boy gwine meet a ghost convintion dat-a-way. Dat’s so he ain’ gwine forgit to remimber dey ain’t no ghostes. ’Ca’se ef a li’l’ black boy gwine imaginate dey is ghostes, he gwine be skeered in de dark. An’ dat a foolish thing for to imaginate.

So prisintly all de ghostes am whiff away, like de fog outen de holler whin de wind blow’ on it, an’ li’l’ black Mose he ain’ see no ’ca’se for to remain in dat locality no longer. He rotch’ down, an’ he raise’ up de pumpkin, an’ he perambulate’ right quick to he ma’s shack, an’ he lift’ up de latch, an’ he open’ de do’, an’ he yenter’ in. An’ he say’:

“Yere’s de pumpkin.”

An’ he ma an’ he pa, an’ Sally Ann, whut live up de road, an’ Mistah Sally Ann, whut her husban’, an’ Zack Badget, an’ de school-teacher whut board at Unc’ Silas Diggs’s house, an’ all de powerful lot of folks whut come to de doin’s, dey all scrooged back in de cornder ob de shack, ’ca’se Zack Badget he been done tell a ghost-tale, an’ de rain-doves gwine, “Oo-oo-o-o-o!” an’ de owls am gwine, “Whut-whoo-o-o-o!” and de wind it gwine, “You-you-o-o-o!” an’ yiver’body powerful skeered. ’Ca’se li’l’ black Mose he come’ a-fumblin’ an’ a-rattlin’ at de do’ jes whin dat ghost-tale mos’ skeery, an’ yiver’body gwine imaginate dat he a ghost a-fumblin’ an’ a-rattlin’ at de do’. Yas, sah. So li’l’ black Mose he turn’ he white head, an’ he look’ roun’ an’ peer’ roun’, an’ he say’:

“Whut you all skeered fo’?”

’Ca’se ef anybody skeered, he want’ to be skeered, too. Dat’s natural. But de school-teacher, whut live at Unc’ Silas Diggs’s house, she say’:

“Fo’ de lan’s sake, we fought you was a ghost!”

So li’l’ black Mose he sort ob sniff an’ he sort ob sneer, an’ he ’low’:

“Huh! dey ain’t no ghosts.”

Den he ma she powerful took back dat li’l’ black Mose he gwine be so uppetish an’ contrydict folks whut know ’rifmeticks an’ algebricks an’ gin’ral countin’ widout fingers, like de school-teacher whut board at Unc’ Silas Diggs’s house knows, an’ she say’:

“Huh! whut you know ’bout ghosts, anner ways?”

An’ li’l’ black Mose he jes kinder stan’ on one foot, an’ he jes kinder suck’ he thumb, an’ he jes kinder ’low’:

“I don’ know nuffin’ erbout ghosts, ’ca’se dey ain’t no ghosts.”

So he pa gwine whop him fo’ tellin’ a fib ’bout dey ain’ no ghosts whin yiver’body know’ dey is ghosts; but de school-teacher, whut board at Unc’ Silas Diggs’s house, she tek’ note de hair ob li’l’ black Mose’s head am plumb white, an’ she tek’ note li’l’ black Mose’s face am de color ob wood-ash, so she jes retch’ one arm round dat li’l’ black boy, an’ she jes snuggle’ him up, an’ she say’:

“Honey lamb, don’t you be skeered; ain’ nobody gwine hurt you. How you know dey ain’t no ghosts?”

An’ li’l’ black Mose he kinder lean’ up ’g’inst de school-teacher whut board at Unc’ Silas Diggs’s house, an’ he ’low’:

“’Ca’se—’ca’se—’ca’se I met de cap’n ghost, an’ I met de gin’ral ghost, an’ I met de king ghost, an’ I met all de ghostes whut yiver was in de whole worl’, an’ yivery ghost say’ de same thing: ’Dey ain’t no ghosts.’ An’ if de cap’n ghost an’ de gin’ral ghost an’ de king ghost an’ all de ghostes in de whole worl’ don’ know ef dar am ghostes, who does?”

“Das right; das right, honey lamb,” say’ de school-teacher. And she say’: “I been s’picious dey ain’ no ghostes dis long whiles, an’ now I know. Ef all de ghostes say dey ain’ no ghosts, dey ain’ no ghosts.”

So yiver’body ’low’ dat so ’cep’ Zack Badget, whut been tellin’ de ghost-tale, an’ he ain’ gwine say “Yis” an’ he ain’ gwine say “No,” ’ca’se he right sweet on de school-teacher; but he know right well he done seen plinty ghostes in he day. So he boun’ to be sure fust. So he say’ to li’l’ black Mose:

“’T ain’ likely you met up wid a monstrous big ha’nt what live’ down de lane whut he name Bloody Bones?”

“Yas,” say’ li’l’ black Mose; “I done met up wid him.”

“An’ did old Bloody Bones done tol’ you dey ain’ no ghosts?” say Zack Badget.

“Yas,” say’ li’l’ black Mose, “he done tell me perzackly dat.”

“Well, if he tol’ you dey ain’t no ghosts,” say’ Zack Badget, “I got to ’low dey ain’t no ghosts, ’ca’se he ain’ gwine tell no lie erbout it. I know dat Bloody Bones ghost sence I was a piccaninny, an’ I done met up wif him a powerful lot o’ times, an’ he ain’ gwine tell no lie erbout it. Ef dat perticklar ghost say’ dey ain’t no ghosts, dey ain’t no ghosts.”

So yiver’body say’:

“Das right; dey ain’ no ghosts.”

An’ dat mek’ li’l’ black Mose feel mighty good, ’ca’se he ain’ lak ghostes. He reckon’ he gwine be a heap mo’ comfortable in he mind sence he know’ dey ain’ no ghosts, an’ he reckon’ he ain’ gwine be skeered of nuffin’ never no more. He ain’ gwine min’ de dark, an’ he ain’ gwine min’ de rain-doves whut go’, “Oo-oo-o-o-o!” an’ he ain’ gwine min’ de owls whut go’, “Who-whoo-o-o-o!” an’ he ain’ gwine min’ de wind whut go’, “You-you-o-o-o!” nor nuffin’, nohow. He gwine be brave as a lion, sence he know’ fo’ sure dey ain’ no ghosts. So prisintly he ma say’:

“Well, time fo’ a li’l’ black boy whut he name is Mose to be gwine up de ladder to de loft to bed.”

An’ li’l’ black Mose he ’low’ he gwine wait a bit. He ’low’ he gwine jes wait a li’l’ bit. He ’low’ he gwine be no trouble at all ef he jes been let wait twell he ma she gwine up de ladder to de loft to bed, too. So he ma she say’:

“Git erlong wid yo’! Whut yo’ skeered ob whin dey ain’t no ghosts?”

An’ li’l’ black Mose he scrooge’, and he twist’, an’ he pucker’ up de mouf, an’ he rub’ he eyes, an’ prisintly he say’ right low:

“I ain’ skeered ob ghosts whut am, ’ca’se dey ain’ no ghosts.”

“Den whut am yo’ skeered ob?” ask he ma.

“Nuffin’,” say’ de li’l’ black boy whut he name is Mose; “but I jes feel kinder oneasy ’bout de ghosts whut ain’t.”

Jes lak white folks! Jes lak white folks!

A GLIMPSE OF THE GABLED HOUSETOPS OF NEMOURS

NEMOURS: A TYPICAL FRENCH PROVINCIAL TOWN

BY ROGER BOUTET DE MONVEL

WITH PICTURES BY BERNARD B. DE MONVEL

IT is only a little provincial town, like many others in France. It has no famous monument, and the immediate neighborhood is neither imposing nor celebrated. And yet this little town, with its quiet streets, its modest houses, its limpid river, and its Champs de Mars, where in fine weather the prominent citizens come to discuss the events of the day, has a tranquil and intimate charm of its own, and the country thereabouts is so rich in smiling, changing views,—moist fields along the water’s-edge, wild heaths, and villages bathed in sunlight,—that the whole makes a picture that wins one’s heart at first sight.

Nemours lies in the department of Seine-et-Marne, that old part of France which used to be called La Brie, on the road leading from Fontainebleau to Montargis. As you approach the outlying houses, you come upon the first bridge that crosses the canal, on the sluggish waters of which glide unwieldy boats, heavily laden with wood, blocks of stone, or fine sand, and towed by mules or donkeys. Once over the bridge, to the right lies the main street, the Rue de Paris—naturally, for what town of the provinces is without its Rue de Paris? And what Rue de Paris has not, on one side, a window with a tempting display of delicacies, and on the other, the shops of the haberdasher, the grain-seller, the ironmonger, the harness-maker, and the barber, who, in his shirt-sleeves, stands at his door waiting for customers; and last, the Café du Progrès, where, gathered about little tables, the men drink, and hold forth on the future of France. Then you cross a second stream, bordered with old lime-trees and overshadowed by the high walls of the convent. Here is the Hôtel de l’Ecu, which still has the royal arms on its worn façade, and in front of which the mail-coaches used to stop; here is the market-place; the church, which dates from the thirteenth century; and, before the church, the statue of the great man of the neighborhood, Etienne Bezout, the distinguished mathematician.

If the truth must be told, Etienne Bezout’s fame is hardly world-wide; but since, in the matter of celebrities, one takes what one can get, for many long years the townspeople have been glad to have this old worthy—with his eighteenth-century wig, and his finger pointing heavenward in an attitude of wisdom and abstraction—preside over their weekly markets and the meetings of their fire-company, as well as at their outpourings from mass, from funerals, weddings, and christenings.

Beyond the market-place there is yet a third bridge, the great bridge overlooking the river Loing. A few steps farther, and you are amused by the droll sight of the washerwomen as they beat out their linen, gossiping and shrieking on the bank, like so many frogs at the edge of a marsh. Over there is the old pond, where the cows linger, and farther still stands the feudal castle, with its square tower. Beyond this we look down on the garden of M. le Curé, the tanneries, the convent, the town mill, and, last of all, on the river, which, though choked with weeds, is charmingly picturesque by reason of its tiny islands, its bubbling waterfalls, and its Normandy poplars. Just across the bridge lie the suburbs of the little town, with its working-men’s houses, quaint roofs, and farm-yards; and then again the open country and the green fields.

THE CANAL AT NEMOURS WITH ITS BORDER OF NORMANDY POPLARS

“AFTER ALL, EACH MAN ENJOYS LIFE IN HIS OWN WAY”

But to see Nemours as it should be seen, to catch the peculiar charm of this little corner of the provinces which Balzac has made famous in his “Ursule Mirouet,” we must retrace our steps. We must wander through certain fascinating old streets, with rough cobblestones and irregular sidewalks; the Rue du Prieuré, for instance, where the booths of the sabot-makers stand side by side with the tiny shops of the chair-caners; the Rue de l’Hospice, where old women in caps sit in their doorways knitting, and where the little orphan children march, two by two, under the guidance of the sisters of charity. We must glance at the gabled houses in the Place au Blé and the Place St.-Jean, or follow the Quai des Fosses, with its rows of flower-beds, where the trees make green arches along the edge of the river. Now we will steal into the courtyard of the old castle, which during the crusades was the fortress of the “great and mighty lords” of that part of the country, afterward the dwelling-place of the dukes of Nemours. Later, it was the bailiff’s court down to the time of the Revolution; since when it has gradually been transformed into a theater and dancing-hall, where nowadays traveling companies of actors stop to play “The Two Orphans” or “A Woman’s Punishment.” To-day the castle has a museum, for, just as any self-respecting town must have a “great man,” it must also have a museum, whether there is anything to put in it or not. Hence, it was an important day when the mayor of Nemours, adorned with his tricolored scarf, surrounded by the town councilors, and preceded by a flourish of trumpets, instituted this indispensable glory.

As we said before, the little town of Nemours has not been the scene of any startling event, but, like most of our provincial towns, it belongs to our past and is a part of our history. Its old walls have looked on some imposing ceremonies and have witnessed the arrival and departure of some celebrated personages. Did not Louis XIV himself condescend to enter Nemours in November, 1696? Later, in 1773, did not the Comtesse d’Artois choose it as a meeting-place with her sister, the Comtesse de Provence? One can imagine the militia of Nemours forming in line in the streets, the windows ablaze with lights, the thundering of cannon, the waving of flags, the sheriffs in their uniforms of state, and the townspeople, on bended knees, offering to these great personages their homage and the freedom of the city.

Indeed, this meeting between the sisters must still stand as the most memorable incident in the annals or Nemours, for although in our day politics play a more important part than formerly, we must yet admit that official ceremonies have lost much of their old-time grandeur.

A FRENCH COUNTRY CART RETURNING HOME ON MARKET-DAY FROM MARKET

If we wish to understand the charm of the tranquil life of the provinces, we must visit some of the townspeople of Nemours, and see them at their daily tasks in the privacy of their own homes. In common with the most important world capitals, this tiny town has its own manner of living, its own customs and traditions. We should follow yonder stout gentleman as, umbrella in hand, he takes his daily walk with deliberate steps along the quay; we should say “Good afternoon” to M. le Curé, whose cassock we see among the trees of his quiet garden; we should also have a chat with the shoemaker at the corner; and, above all, we should not fail to have our beard trimmed by the barber in the Rue Neuve. He is such a kindly fellow, this barber.

“THE ONE NOISY TIME IN THE WEEK IS MARKET-DAY”

Just beyond the barber’s shop is the hatter’s, and he too seems well content with his lot. Not that his shop is spacious or his customers abundant. One wonders how many hats he sells in a week, for, in the memory of man, no one has ever seen two customers at the same time in his shop. Nevertheless, whenever you go into the Chappellerie des Elégants, you are certain to find M. Baudoin at his post behind the counter, alert and smiling, eager to show you all the novelties of the season. Above all things, do not venture to hint that his hats are not the very latest creations as to shape and style, as you would only surprise him, and inflict pain without standing a chance of convincing him. M. Baudoin is confident that he can compete with the most fashionable hatters in Paris, for has he not the best hats that are made? Besides, can Paris compare with Nemours? You would never make him believe it. He is proud of his native town, and despite his varied experience with men and things, he has never seen a finer city. This is the true provincial spirit.

M. Baudoin is no longer young. A few years more, and he will sell out his business, and with the proceeds of that sale, combined with his savings (for, like all good Frenchmen, he has been thrifty), will be able to end his peaceful life in ease and comfort. A little house in the suburbs, very new and very white; a tiny garden, with three or four fruit-trees, flower-beds with trim borders, and the inevitable fountain—this is M. Baudoin’s dream of an ideal old age.

This is, likewise, the dream of M. Robichon, the clock-maker; of M. Troufleau, the tailor; and of M. Camus, the grain-merchant, all of whom have spent their lives quietly in their little shops, selling from time to time a hat, a watch, or a bag of grain. For the most part, they have been happy. Their sons will have a modest inheritance, and will carry on the trade of their fathers, unless one, fired with unusual ambition, should some day become a country doctor or lawyer’s clerk.

Color-Tone, engraved for THE CENTURY by H. Davidson

“THE LITTLE ORPHAN CHILDREN MARCH TWO BY TWO”

DRAWN BY BERNARD B. DE MONVEL

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

Such are the people, born in the little town or its immediate vicinity. In addition to this native population, there is a colony of residents who have come from Paris or elsewhere and, attracted by the charm of the place, have bought country houses in the neighborhood.

Although only two hours’ distance by rail from Paris, Nemours is a typical corner of the provinces, where members of the lower middle class, and even persons of independent means, come in search of rest and quiet; merchants who have retired from business, army officers on half-pay, professors grown gray in service, and, oddly enough, a large number of artists, painters, sculptors, and actors. Some come for the summer only; others live in or near Nemours all the year round.

It is not every French provincial town that can rival Nemours in one respect: beside one of the new and dreadful houses its owner has seen fit to erect a kind of ruin, an imitation in miniature of an old fortified castle, with simulated remains of battlements, sham doors of the middle ages, barred windows, etc. He has even taken the trouble to have a real bullet embedded in the wall of his precious ruin—a bullet fired, it is said, by the Prussians during their campaign in France! Above the bullet, the date of the memorable event is placed in large letters—1814! The bullet looks not unlike a tennis-ball; the ruin itself seems to be made of papier-mâché; and, with the new house by the side of the sham ruin, the tout ensemble of this delightful little property is a triumph of the grotesque. It is certain that it is not this new and expensive quarter which lends to Nemours its strange charm, any more than in other French towns, or in Paris itself, where the modern attempts at architecture are veritable eyesores.

After all, each man enjoys life in his own way; and so M. Chevillard, a retired lawyer, who does not own any ruins, and who, strange to say, does not desire any, has a passion of an entirely different kind. M. Chevillard’s passion is fishing. He has chosen Nemours as his abiding-place simply because its three watercourses abound in pike and roach; but that fact does not imply that M. Chevillard catches many of them. Nevertheless, every day we may see him seated placidly on his camp-stool, on the bank of the river, near the bridge, wearing an enormous straw hat, which the suns of many summers have tanned a rich golden-brown, the shade of well-toasted bread. He holds a fishing-rod in his hand; the line falls into the water, and its tiny red cork moves gently to and fro with the current. When this red cork drifts toward the dark shadows under the bridge, M. Chevillard jerks his rod up quickly, and we hear the line whistle in the air; then, in the twinkling of an eye, the cork falls back on the surface of the water, and the game begins again; and so it goes on all day and every day.

The strange thing is, however, that nearly every one in Nemours has this same passion for fishing. All along the river, the canal, and the smaller stream, we see rows of yellow hats, and, under them, any number of kindly men and women of all ages, who sit calmly from morning till night, watching their lines.

In addition to this large body of fishermen, there are sportsmen; but do not imagine that they are any more successful. Formerly, this part of the country abounded in game; but of late years, owing to the increasing number of these sportsmen, the pheasants have rapidly diminished. As the cost of a hunting license in France is moderate, the humblest grocer may have the privilege of stringing a cartridge-case across his chest, and, attired in brown linen, with his grandfather’s old gun on his shoulder, may revel in the joys of the chase. It is not the humble grocer alone, however, who is responsible for the terrible slaughter of birds. All the other grocers, his friends and neighbors, would feel themselves disgraced if they did not follow his example; so, along with the grocers come the ironmongers, the harness-makers, and the innkeepers, in such overwhelming numbers that within a week after the opening of the shooting season not a hair or a feather is left to tell the tale.

Greatly disturbed by this state of affairs, the sportsmen of Nemours decided to found a society for the protection of game. Alas! within a few months serious differences arose in the society, which was promptly divided into two rival factions. Each faction had its own territory; and from that moment bird-shooting was forgotten by both parties in their eagerness to chase each other. The chief idea of each faction was to guard jealously its own territory; and fierce injunctions were sent to those imprudent sportsmen who ventured to trespass on forbidden ground. As the respective shooting territories grow smaller each year, and the two societies show no signs of being reconciled, there is grave reason to fear that some fine day, not knowing how else to utilize their powder and shot, the sportsmen of Nemours may be forced to fire at one another!

For my own part, I do not imagine that these gentlemen have as yet any idea of resorting to such extreme measures; but, peaceful and serene as the little town is, it has its own private quarrels. Just as there are two sportsmen’s societies, so there are two clubs—two rival clubs, known, quite properly, as the Union Club and the Peace Club, where every evening, before dinner, the half-pay captains and the retired merchants come to play whist at a penny a point. The members are kindly men, honest and peaceful; but there is not one of them who is not firmly convinced that any other club but his own is the resort of ill-bred fellows, not fit associates for himself or his friends. There is an abundance of gossip in this little town, and gossip travels fast at card-tables as well as tea-tables. However, only a certain set among the residents care to lend an ear to the local small-talk.

During the summer, many artists come in quest of rest or an industrious solitude. They are the ones who really enjoy and appreciate more than any one else the strange, sweet charm of this little provincial town, where every house has its garden, and every garden its flowers; where the peaceful days go by with a slow and regular rhythm, and the silence is broken only by the sound of the angelus or the ring of the blacksmith’s anvil.

The one noisy time in the week is market-day, when the throngs of covered wagons, drawn by strong cart-horses, the peasant women in their white caps and the men in their blue blouses bringing in cattle, poultry, fruit, and vegetables, make a lively and attractive scene; when the air is full of the crack of whips and the tinkle of bells, and gay with songs, cries, and laughter. But it may not be long before the country carts will give way to automobiles, the white caps to beflowered hats, and the blouses to jackets of the latest cut.

THE AUTO-COMRADE

BY ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER

Author of “Romantic Germany,” “Romantic America,” etc.

HUMAN nature abhors a vacuum, especially a vacuum inside itself. Offer the ordinary man a week’s vacation all alone, and he will look as though you were offering him a cell in Sing Sing.

“There are a great many people,” says that wise and popular oracle, Ruth Cameron, “to whom there is no prospect more terrifying than that of a few hours with only their own selves for company. To escape that terrible catastrophe, they will make friends with the most fearful bore or read the most stupid story.... If such people are marooned a few hours, not only without human companionship, but even without a book or magazine with which to screen their own stupidity from themselves, they are fairly frantic.”

If any one hates to be alone with himself, the chances are that he has not much of any self to be alone with. He is in as desolate a condition as a certain Mr. Pease of Oberlin, who, having lost his wife and children, set up his own tombstone and chiseled upon it this epitaph:

“Here lies the pod.

The Pease are shelled and gone to God.”

Now, pod-like people are always solitary wherever other people are not; and there is, of course, nothing much more distressing than solitariness. These people, however, through sheer ignorance, fall into a confusion of thought. They suppose that solitude and solitariness are the same thing. To the artist in life there is just one difference between these two: it is the difference between heaven and its antipodes. For, to the artist in life, solitude is solitariness plus the Auto-comrade.

As it is the Auto-comrade who makes all the difference, I shall try to describe his appearance. His eyes are the most arresting part of him. They never peer stupidly through great, thick spectacles of others’ making. They are scarcely ever closed in sleep, and sometimes make their happiest discoveries during the small hours. Indeed, these hours are probably called small because the Auto-comrade often turns his eyes into the lenses of a moving-picture machine that is so entertaining that it compresses the hours to seconds. These eyes, through constant, alert use, have become sharp. They can pierce through the rinds of the toughest personalities, and even penetrate on occasion into the future. They can also take in whole panoramas of the past in one sweeping look. For they are of that “inner” variety through which Wordsworth, winter after winter, used to survey his daffodil-fields. “The bliss of solitude,” he called them.

The Auto-comrade has an adjustable brow. It can be raised high enough to hold and reverberate and add rich overtones to the grandest chords of thought ever struck by a Plato, a Buddha, or a Kant. The next instant it may easily be lowered to the point where Hy Mayer’s latest cartoon or the tiny cachinnation of a machine-made Chesterton paradox will not ring entirely hollow. As for his voice, it can at times be more musical than Melba’s or Caruso’s. Without being raised above a whisper, it can girdle the globe. It can barely breathe some delicious new melody; yet the thing will float forth not only undiminished, but gathering beauty, significance, and incisiveness in every land it passes through.

The Auto-comrade is an erect, wiry young figure of an athlete. As he trades at the Seven-League Boot and Shoe Concern, it never bothers him to accompany you on the longest tramps. His feet simply cannot be tired out. As for his hands, they are always alert to give you a lift up the rough places on the mountain-side. He has remarkable presence of body. In any emergency he is usually the best man on the spot.

A popular saw asserts that “looks do not count.” But in this case they do count. For the Auto-comrade looks exactly like himself. He is at once seer, creator, accomplisher, and present help in time of trouble. But his every-day occupation is that of entertainer. He is the joy-bringer—the Prometheus of pleasure. In his vicinity there is no such thing as ennui or lonesomeness. Emerson wrote:

“When I would spend a lonely day

Sun and moon are in my way.”

But for pals of the Auto-comrade, not only sun, moon, etc., are in the way, but all of his own unlimited resources. For every time and season he has a fittingly varied repertory of entertainment.

Now and again he startles you with the legerdemain feat of snatching brand-new ideas out of the blue, like rabbits out of a hat. While you stand at the port-hole of your cabin and watch the rollers rushing back to the beloved home-land you are quitting, he marshals your friends and acquaintances into a long line for a word of greeting or a rapid-fire chat, just as though you were some idol of the people, and were steaming past the Statue of Liberty on your way home from lion-slaughter in Africa, and the Auto-comrade were the factotum at your elbow who asks, “What name, please?”

After the friends and acquaintances, he even brings up your bêtes noires and dearest enemies for inspection and comment. Strangely enough, viewed in this way, these persons no longer seem so contemptible or pernicious or devilish as they once did. At this point your factotum rubs your eye-glasses bright with the handkerchief he always carries about for slate-cleaning purposes, and, lo! you even begin to discover hitherto unsuspected good points about the chaps.

Then there are always your million and one favorite melodies which nobody but that all-around musical amateur, the Auto-comrade, can so exquisitely whistle, hum, strum, fiddle, blat, or roar. There is also a universeful of new ones for him to improvise. And he is the jolliest sort of fellow-musician, because, when you play or sing a duet with him, you can combine with the exciting give-and-take and reciprocal stimulation of the duet the godlike autocracy of the solo, with its opportunity for uninterrupted, uncoerced, wide self-expression. Sometimes, however, in the first flush of escape with him to the wilds, you are fain to clap your hand over his mouth in order the better to taste the essentially folkless savor of solitude. For music is a curiously social art, and Browning was right when he said, “Who hears music, feels his solitude peopled at once.”

Perhaps you can find your entertainer a small lump of clay or modeling-wax to thumb into bad caricatures of those you love and good ones of those you hate, until increasing facility impels him to try and model not a Tanagra figurine, for that would be unlike his original fancy, but a Hoboken figurine, say, or a sketch for some Elgin (Illinois) marbles.

If you care anything for poetry and can find him a stub of pencil and an unoccupied cuff, he will be most completely in his element; for if there is any one occupation more closely identified with him than another, it is that of poet. And though all Auto-comrades are not poets, all poets are Auto-comrades. Every poem which has ever thrilled this world or another has been written by the Auto-comrade of some so-called poet. This is one reason why the so-called poets think so much of their great companions. “Allons! after the great companions!” cried old Walt to his fellow-poets. If he had not overtaken, and held fast to, his, we should never have heard the “Leaves of Grass” whispering “one or two indicative words for the future.” The bards have always obeyed this call. And they have known how to value their Auto-comrades, too. See, for example, what Keats thought of his:

Though the most beautiful Creature were waiting for me at the end of a Journey or a Walk; though the Carpet were of Silk, the Curtains of the morning Clouds; the chairs and Sofa stuffed with Cygnet’s down; the food Manna, the Wine beyond Claret, the Window opening on Winander mere, I should not feel—or rather my Happiness would not be so fine, as my Solitude is sublime. Then instead of what I have described, there is a sublimity to welcome me home—The roaring of the wind is my wife and the Stars through the window pane are my Children.... I feel more and more every day, as my imagination strengthens, that I do not live in this world alone but in a thousand worlds—No sooner am I alone than shapes of epic greatness are stationed around me, and serve my Spirit the office which is equivalent to a King’s body-guard.... I live more out of England than in it. The Mountains of Tartary are a favorite lounge, if I happen to miss the Alleghany ridge, or have no whim for Savoy.

This last sentence not only reveals the fact that the Auto-comrade, equipped as he is with a wishing-mat, is the very best cicerone in the world, but also that he is the ideal tramping companion. Suppose you are mountain-climbing. As you start up into “nature’s observatory,” he kneels in the dust and fastens wings upon your feet. He conveniently adjusts a microscope to your hat-brim, and hangs about your neck an excellent telescope. He has enough sense, as well, to keep his mouth shut. For, like Hazlitt, he “can see no wit in walking and talking.” The joy of existence, you find, rarely tastes more cool and sweet and sparkling than when you and your Auto-comrade make a picnic thus, swinging in a basket between you a real, live thought for lunch. On such an occasion you come to believe that Keats, on another occasion, must have had his Auto-comrade in mind when he remarked to his friend Solitude that

“... it sure must be

Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,

When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.”

The Auto-comrade can sit down with you in thick weather on a barren lighthouse rock and give you a breathless day by hanging upon the walls of fog the mellow screeds of old philosophies, and causing to march and countermarch over against them the scarlet and purple pageants of history. Hour by hour, too, he will linger with you in the metropolis, that breeder of the densest solitudes,—in market or morgue, subway, library, or lobby,—and hour by hour unlock you those chained books of the soul to which the human countenance offers the master key.

Something of a sportsman, too, is the Auto-comrade. He it is who makes the fabulously low score at golf—the kind of score, by the way, that is almost invariably born to blush unseen. And he will uncomplainingly, even zestfully, fish from dawn to dusk in a solitude so complete that there is not even a fin to break it. But if there are fish, he finds them. He knows how to make the flies float indefinitely forward through yonder narrow opening, and drop, as light as thistledown, in the center of the temptingly inaccessible pool. He knows without looking exactly how thick and prehensile are the bushes and branches that lie in wait for the back cast, and he can calculate to a grain how much urging the sulky four-pounder and the blest tie that binds him to the four-ounce rod will stand.

He is one of the handiest possible persons to have along in the woods. When you take him on a canoe-trip with others, and the party comes to “white water,” he turns out to be a dead shot at rapid-shooting. He is sure to know what to do at the supreme moment when you jam your setting-pole immutably between two rocks and, with the alternative of making a hole in the water, are forced to let it go and grab your paddle. And before you have time to reflect that the pale-face in the bow can be depended upon to do just one thing at such a time, and that is the exact opposite of what you are urging him to do, you are hung up on a slightly submerged rock at the head of the chief rapid just in time to see the rest of the party disappear around the lower bend. At such a time, simply look to the Auto-comrade. He will carry you through. Also there is no one like him at the moment when, having felled your moose, leaned your rifle against a tree, and bent down the better to examine him, the creature suddenly comes back to life.

In tennis, when you wake up to find that your racket has just smashed a lob on the bounce from behind the court, making a clean ace between your paralyzed opponents, you ought to know that the racket was guided by that superior sportsman; and if you are truly modest, you will admit that the miraculous triple play wherewith your team whisked the base-ball championship out of the fire in the fourteenth inning was pulled off by the unaided efforts of a certain Young Men’s Christian Association of Auto-comrades.

There are other games about which he is not so keen: solitaire, for instance. For solitaire is a social game that soon loses its zest if there be not some devoted friend or relative sitting by and simulating that pleasurable absorption in the performance which you yourself only wish that you could feel.

This great companion can keep you from being lonely even in a crowd. But there is a certain kind of crowd that he cannot abide. Beware how you try to keep him in a crowd of unadulterated human porcupines! You know how the philosopher Schopenhauer once likened average humanity to a herd of porcupines on a cold day, who crowd stupidly together for warmth, prick one another with their quills, are mutually repelled, forget the incident, grow cold again, and repeat the whole thing ad infinitum.

In other words, the human porcupine is the person considered at the beginning of this one-sided discussion who, to escape the terrible catastrophe of confronting his own inner vacuum, will make friends with the most hideous bore. This creature, however, is much more rare than the misanthropic Schopenhauer imagined. It takes a long time to find one among such folk as lumbermen, Gipsies, shirt-waist operatives, fishermen, masons, trappers, sailors, tramps, and teamsters. If the philosopher had only had the pleasure of knowing those teamsters who sent him into paroxysms of rage by cracking their whips in the alley, I am sure that he would never have spoken so harshly of their minds as he did. The fact is that porcupines are not extremely common among the very “common” people. It may be that there is something stupefying about the airs which the upper classes, the best people, breathe and put on, but the social climber is apt to find the human porcupine in increasing herds as he scales the heights. This curious fact would seem incidentally to show that our misanthropic philosopher must have moved exclusively in some of the best circles.

Now, if there is one thing above all others that the Auto-comrade cannot away with, it is the flaccid, indolent, stodgy brain of the porcupine. If people have let their minds slump down into porcupinishness, or have never taken the trouble to rescue them from that ignominious condition—well, the Auto-comrade is no snob; when all’s said, he is a rather democratic sort of chap, though he has to draw the line somewhere, you know, and he really must beg to be excused from rubbing shoulders with such intellectual rabble, for instance, as blocks upper Fifth Avenue on Sunday noons. He prefers instead the rabble which, on all other noons of the week, blocks the lower end of that variegated thoroughfare.

Such exclusiveness lays the Auto-comrade open, of course, to the charge of inhospitality. But “is not he hospitable,” asks Thoreau, “who entertains good thoughts?” Personally, I think he is. And I believe that this sort of hospitality does more to make the world worth living in than much conventional hugging to your bosom of porcupines whose language you do not speak, yet with whom it is embarrassing to keep silence.

If the Auto-comrade mislikes the porcupine, however, the feeling is returned with exorbitant interest. The alleged failings of auto-comradeship have always drawn grins, fleers, nudges, and jokes from the auto-comradeless. It is time the latter should know that the joke is really on him; for he is the most forlorn of mankind. The other is never at a loss. He is invulnerable, being one whom “destiny may not surprise nor death dismay.” But the porcupine is liable at any moment to be deserted by associates who are bored by his sharp, hollow quills. He finds himself the victim of a paradox which decrees that the hermit shall “find his crowds in solitude” and never be alone; but that the flocker shall every now and then be cast into inner darkness, where “there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

The laugh is on the porcupine; but the laugh turns almost into a tear when one stops to realize the nature of his plight. Why, the poor wretch is actually obliged to be near some one else in order to enjoy a sense of vitality! In other words, he needs somebody else to do his living for him. He is a vicarious citizen of the world, holding his franchise only by courtesy of Tom, Dick, and Harry.

All the same, it is rather hard to pity him very profoundly while he continues to feel quite so contemptuously superior as he usually does. Why, the contempt of the average porcupine for pals of the Auto-comrade is akin to the contempt which the knights of chivalry felt for those paltry beings who were called clerks because they possessed the queer, unfashionable accomplishment of being able to read and write.

I remember that the loudest laugh achieved by a certain class-day orator at college came when he related how the literary guy and the tennis-player were walking one day in the woods, and the literary guy suddenly exclaimed: “Ah, leave me, Louis! I would be alone.” Even apart from the stilted language in which the orator clothed the thought of the literary guy, there is, to the porcupine, something irresistibly comic in such a situation. It is to him as though the literary guy had stepped up to the nearest policeman and begged for the room at Sing Sing already referred to.

Indeed, the modern porcupine is as suspicious of pals of the Auto-comrade as the porcupines of the past were of sorcerers and witches—folk, by the way, who probably consorted with spirits no more malign than Auto-comrades. “What,” asked the porcupines of one another, “can they be up to, all alone there in those solitary huts? What honest man would live like that? Ah, they must be up to no good. They must be consorting with the Evil One. Well, then, away with them to the stake and the river!”

As a matter of fact, it probably was not the Evil One that these poor folk were consorting with, but the Good One. For what is a man’s Auto-comrade, anyway, but his own soul, or the same thing by what other name soever he likes to call it with which he divides the practical, conscious part of his brain, turn and turn about, share and share alike? And what is a man’s own soul but a small stream of the infinite, eternal water of life? And what is heaven but a vast harbor where myriad streams of soul flow down, returning at last to their Source in the bliss of perfect reunion? I believe that many a Salem witch was dragged to her death from sanctuary; for church is not exclusively connected with stained glass and collection-baskets. Church is also wherever you and your Auto-comrade can elude the starched throng and fall together, if only for a moment, on your knees.

Like the girl you left behind you, your Auto-comrade has much to gain by contrast with your flesh-and-blood associates, especially if this contrast is suddenly brought home to you after a too long separation from him. I shall never forget the thrill that was mine early one morning after two months of close, uninterrupted communion with one of my best and dearest friends. At the very instant when the turn of the road cut off that friend’s departing hand-wave, I was aware of a welcoming, almost boisterous shout from the hills of dream, and, turning quickly, beheld my long-lost Auto-comrade rushing eagerly down the slopes toward me.

Few joys may compare with the joy of such a sudden, unexpected reunion. It is like “the shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land.” No, this simile is too disloyal to my friend. Well, then, it is like a beaker full of the warm South when you are leaving a good beer country and are trying to reconcile yourself to ditch-water for the next few weeks. At any rate, similes or not, there were we two together again at last. What a week of weeks we spent, pacing back and forth on the veranda of our log cabin, where we overlooked the pleasant sinuosities of the Sebois and gazed out together over golden beech and ghostly birch and blood-red maple banners to the purple mountains of the Aroostook. And how we did take stock of the immediate past, chuckling to find that it had not been a quarter so bad as I had stupidly supposed. What gilded forest trails were those which we blazed into the glamourous land of to-morrow! And every other moment these recreative labors would be interrupted while I pressed between the pages of a note-book some butterfly or sunset leaf or quadruply fortunate clover which my Auto-comrade found and turned over to me. Between two of those pages, by the way, I afterward found the argument of this paper.

Then, when the first effervescence of our meeting had lost a little of its first, fine, carbonated sting, what Elysian hours we spent over the correspondence of those other two friends, Goethe and Schiller! Passage after passage we would turn back to re-read and muse over. These we would discuss without any of the rancor or dogmatic insistence or one-eyed stubbornness that usually accompany the clash of mental steel on mental steel from a different mill. And without making any one else lose the thread or grow short-breathed or accuse us passionately of reading ahead, we would, on the slightest provocation, out-Fletcher Fletcher chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. And we would underline and bracket and side-line and overline the ragged little paper volume, and scribble up and down its margins, and dream over its foot-notes, to our hearts’ content.

Such experiences, though, are all too rare with me. Why? Because my Auto-comrade is a rather particular person and will not associate with me unless I toe his mark.

“Come,” I propose to him, “let us go on a journey.”

“Hold hard,” says he, and looks me over appraisingly. “You know the rule of the Auto-comrades’ Union. We are supposed to associate with none but fairly able persons. Are you a fairly able person?”

If it turns out that I am not, he goes on a rampage, and begins to talk like an athletic trainer. The first thing he demands is that his would-be associate shall keep on hand a jolly good store of surplus vitality. You are expected to supply him exuberance somewhat as you supply gasolene to your motor.

Now, of course, there are in the world not a few invalids and other persons of low physical vitality whose Auto-comrades happen to have sufficient gasolene to keep them both running, if only on short rations. Most of these cases, however, are pathological. They have hot boxes at both ends of the machine, and their progress is destined all too soon to cease and determine. The rest of these cases are the rare exceptions which prove the rule. For unexuberant yet unpathological pals of the Auto-comrade are as rare as harmonious households in which the efforts of a devoted and blissful wife support an able-bodied husband.

The rule is that you have got to earn exuberance for two. “Learn to eat balanced rations right,” thunders the Auto-comrade, laying down the law; “exercise, perspire, breathe, bathe, sleep out of doors, and sleep enough, rule your liver with a rod of iron, don’t take drugs or nervines, cure sickness beforehand, do an adult’s work in the world, have at least as much fun as you ought to have.”

“That,” he goes on, “is the way to develop enough physical exuberance so that you will be enabled to overcome your present sad addiction to mob intoxication. And, provided your mind is not in as bad condition as your body, this physical over-plus will transmute some of itself into a spiritual exuberance. This will enable you to have more fun with your mind than an enthusiastic kitten has with its tail. It will enable you to look before and after, and purr over what is, as well as to discern, with pleasurable longing, what is not, and set forth confidently to capture it.”

But if, by any chance, you have allowed your mind to get into the sort of condition which the old-fashioned German scholar used to allow his body to get into, it develops that the Auto-comrade hates a flabby brain almost as much as he hates a flabby body. He soon makes it clear that he will not have much to do with any one who has not yet mastered the vigorous and highly complex art of not worrying. Also, he demands of his companion the knack of calm, consecutive thought. This is one reason why so many more Auto-comrades are to be found in crow’s-nests, Gipsy-vans, and shirt-waist factories than on upper Fifth Avenue. For, watching the stars and the sea from a swaying masthead, taking light-heartedly to the open road, or even operating a rather unwholesome sewing-machine all day in silence, is better for consecutiveness of mind than a never-ending round of offices, clubs, servants, committee meetings, teas, dinners, and receptions, to each of which one is a little late.

No matter what the ignorant or the envious may say, there is nothing really unsocial in a moderate indulgence in the art of auto-comradeship. A few weeks of it bring you back a fresher, keener appreciator of your other friends and of humanity in general than you were before setting forth. In the continuous performance of the psalm of life such contrasts as this of solos and choruses have a reciprocal advantage.

But auto-comradeship must not be overdone, as it was overdone by the medieval monks. Its delights are too delicious, its particular vintage of the wine of experience too rich, for long-continued consumption. Consecutive thought, though it is one of man’s greatest pleasures, is at the same time almost the most arduous labor that he can perform. And after a long spell of it, both the Auto-comrade and his companion become exhausted and, perforce, less comradely.

Besides the incidental exhaustion, there is another reason why this beatific association must have its time-limit; for, unfortunately, one’s Auto-comrade is always of the same sex as oneself, and in youth, at least, if the presence of the complementary part of creation is long denied, there comes a time when this denial surges higher and higher in subconsciousness, then breaks into consciousness, and keeps on surging until it deluges all the tranquillities, zests, surprises, and excitements of auto-comradeship, and makes them of no effect.

This is, perhaps, a wise provision for the salvation of the human digestion. For, otherwise, many a man, having tasted of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of auto-comradeship, might thereupon be tempted to retire to his hermit’s den hard by and endeavor to sustain himself for life on apple-sauce.

Most of us, however, long before such extremes have been reached, are sure to rush back to our kind for the simple reason that we are enjoying auto-comradeship so much that we want some one else to enjoy it with.

THE WHITE LINEN NURSE

HOW RAE MALGREGOR UNDERTOOK GENERAL HEARTWORK FOR A FAMILY OF TWO

BY ELEANOR HALLOWELL ABBOTT

Author of “Molly Make-Believe,” etc.

IN THREE PARTS: PART THREE

WITH PICTURES BY HERMAN PFEIFER

SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING INSTALMENTS

ON the day of her graduation from the training-school, the White Linen Nurse was overcome by hysteria. For weeks she had been working too hard, and two or three cases with which she had been connected having gone wrong, she had racked herself with an absurd sense of responsibility. Now, in her distracted state, the visible sign of her self-contempt was the perfectly controlled expression of her trained-nurse face.

From a scene in her room with her two room-mates, in which confidences are exchanged, she rushed to the office of the Superintendent of Nurses, and hysterically demanded her own face. The Senior Surgeon was sent for, and after tartly telling the girl she was a fool, finally took her with him and his little crippled daughter for a thirty-mile trip into the country, where he had been summoned on a difficult case.

On their return, the Senior Surgeon lost control of the machine on a steep hill, and the three were thrown out.

On recovering consciousness, the White Linen Nurse and the Child find the Senior Surgeon pinned under their motor-car, and after receiving instructions as to its management, the Nurse runs the car into a brook, and the Senior Surgeon becomes aware for the first time that the car is afire. Momentarily unnerved by the thought of the peril in which he has been, the Senior Surgeon clings to the White Linen Nurse, and finally proposes that, since she has decided to give up professional nursing, she take up General Heartwork for him and his daughter. The proposal is in fact a proposal of marriage, and after a frank discussion of the situation (which is one of the most significant and powerful pieces of work of the author), the White Linen Nurse accepts.

In the course of the discussion the Senior Surgeon confesses an inherited tendency for drink, and adds that he leaves liquor alone for eleven months in the year, but always goes off to Canada every June for a hunting-trip, on which he drinks heavily. She insists that he go this year and that they marry before his departure, and not on his return, as he wishes. She wins her way, and the Senior Surgeon goes alone. Disquieting letters from her recall him before the end of the month.

NOBODY looks very well in the dawn. Certainly the Senior Surgeon didn’t. Heavily, as a man wading through a bog of dreams, he stumbled out of his cabin into the morning. Under his drowsy, brooding eyes appalling shadows circled. Behind his sunburn, deeper than his tan, something sinister and uncanny lurked wanly like the pallor of a soul. Yet the Senior Surgeon had been most blamelessly abed and asleep since griddle-cake-time the previous evening.

Only the mountains and the forest and the lake had been out all night. For seventy miles of Canadian wilderness only the mountains and the forest and the lake stood actually convicted of having been out all night. Dank and white with its vaporous vigil, the listless lake kindled wanly to the new day’s breeze. Blue with cold, a precipitous mountain peak lurched craggedly home through a rift in the fog. Drenched with mist, bedraggled with dew, a green-feathered pine-tree lay guzzling insatiably at a leaf-brown pool. As monotonous as a sob, the waiting birch canoe slosh-sloshed against the beach.

There was no romantic smell of red roses in this June landscape; just tobacco smoke, and the faint reminiscent fragrance of fried trout, and the mournful, sizzling, pungent consciousness of a camp-fire quenched for a whole year with a tinful of wet coffee-grounds.

Gliding out cautiously into the lake as though the mere splash of a paddle might shatter the whole glassy surface, the Indian guide propounded the question that was uppermost in his mind.

“Cutting your trip a bit short this year, ain’t you, Boss?” he quizzed tersely.

Out from his muffling Mackinaw collar the Senior Surgeon parried the question with an amazingly novel sense of embarrassment.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he answered with studied lightness. “There are one or two things at home that are bothering me a little.”

“A woman, eh?” said the Indian guide, laconically.

“A woman?” thundered the Senior Surgeon. “A—woman? Oh, ye gods, no! It’s wall-paper.”

Then suddenly and unexpectedly in the midst of his passionate refutation the Senior Surgeon burst out laughing, boisterously, hilariously, like a crazy school-boy. Bluntly from an overhanging ledge of rock the echo of his laugh came mocking back at him. Down from some unvisioned mountain fastness the echo of that echo came wafting faintly to him.

The Senior Surgeon’s laugh was made of teeth and tongue and palate and a purely convulsive physical impulse; but the echo’s laugh was a fantasy of mist and dawn and inestimable balsam-scented spaces, where little green ferns and little brown beasties and soft-breasted birdlings frolicked eternally in pristine sweetness.

Seven miles farther down the lake, at the beginning of the rapids, the Indian guide spoke again. Racking the canoe between two rocks, paddling, panting, pushing, sweating, the Indian guide lifted his voice high, piercing, above the swirling roar of waters.

“Eh, Boss,” he shouted, “I ain’t never heard you laugh before!”

Neither man spoke again more than once or twice during the long, strenuous hours that were left to them. The Indian guide was very busy in his stolid mind trying to figure out just how many rows of potatoes could be planted fruitfully between his front door and his cowshed. I don’t know what the Senior Surgeon was trying to figure out.

It was just four days later, from a rolling, musty-cushioned hack, that the Senior Surgeon disembarked at his own front gate.

Even though a man likes home no better than he likes—tea, few men would deny the soothing effect of home at the end of a long, fussy railroad journey. Five o’clock, also, of a late June afternoon is a peculiarly wonderful time to be arriving home, especially if that home has a garden about it, so that you are thereby not rushed precipitously upon the house itself, as upon a cup without a saucer, but can toy visually with the whole effect before you quench your thirst with the actual draft.

Very, very deliberately, with his clumsy rod-case in one hand, and his heavy grip in the other, the Senior Surgeon started up the long, broad gravel path to the house. For a man walking as slow as he was, his heart was beating most extraordinarily fast. He was not accustomed to heart-palpitation. The symptom worried him a trifle. Incidentally, also, his lungs felt strangely stifled with the scent of June. Close at his right, an effulgent white-and-gold syringa-bush flaunted its cloying sweetness into his senses. Close at his left, a riotous bloom of phlox clamored red-blue-purple-lavender-pink into his dazzled vision. Multicolored pansies tiptoed velvet-footed across the grass. In soft, murky mystery a flame-tinted smoke-tree loomed up here and there like a faintly rouged ghost. Over everything, under everything, through everything, lurked a certain strange, novel, vibrating consciousness of occupancy—bees in the rose-bushes, bobolinks in the trees, a woman’s work-basket in the curve of the hammock, a doll’s tea-set sprawling cheerfully in the middle of the broad gravel path.

It was not until the Senior Surgeon had actually stepped into the tiny cream-pitcher that he noticed the presence of the doll’s tea-set. It was what the Senior Surgeon said as he stepped out of the cream-pitcher that summoned the amazing apparition from a ragged, green hole in the privet hedge. Startlingly white, startlingly professional,—dress, cap, apron, and all,—a miniature white linen nurse sprang suddenly out at him like a tricky dwarf in a moving-picture show. Just at that particular moment the Senior Surgeon’s nerves were in no condition to wrestle with apparitions. Simultaneously, as the clumsy rod-case dropped from his hand, the expression of enthusiasm dropped from the face of the miniature white linen nurse.

“Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear! have you come home!” wailed the familiar, shrill little voice.

Sheepishly the Senior Surgeon picked up his rod-case. The noises in his head were crashing like cracked bells. Desperately, with a boisterous irritability, he sought to cover also the lurching pound, pound, pound of his heart.

“What in hell are you rigged out like that for?” he demanded stormily.

With equal storminess the Little Girl protested the question.

“Peach said I could,” she attested passionately. “Peach said I could, she did! She did! I tell you, I didn’t want her to marry us that day. I was afraid, I was. I cried, I did. I had a convulsion; they thought it was stockings. So Peach said, if it would make me feel any gooderer, I could be the cruel new stepmother, and she’d be the unloved offspring, with her hair braided all yellow fluffikins down her back.”

“Where is—Miss Malgregor?” asked the Senior Surgeon, sharply.

Irrelevantly the Little Girl sank down on the gravel walk and began to gather up her scattered dishes.

“And it’s fun to go to bed now,” she confided amiably, “’cause every night I put Peach to bed at eight o’clock, and she’s so naughty always I have to stay with her. And then all of a sudden it’s morning—like going through a black room without knowing it.”

“I said, where is Miss Malgregor?” repeated the Senior Surgeon, with increasing sharpness.

Thriftily the Little Girl bent down to lap a bubble of cream from the broken pitcher.

“Oh, she’s out in the summer-house with the Wall-Paper Man,” she mumbled indifferently.

Altogether jerkily the Senior Surgeon started up the walk for his own perfectly formal and respectable brownstone mansion. Deep down in his lurching heart he felt a sudden most inordinate desire to reach that brownstone mansion just as quickly as possible, but abruptly even to himself he swerved off instead at the yellow sassafras-tree and plunged quite wildly through a mass of broken sods toward the rickety, no-account, cedar summer-house.

Startled by the crackle and thud of his approach, the two young figures in the summer-house jumped precipitously to their feet, and, limply untwining their arms from each other’s necks, stood surveying the Senior Surgeon in unspeakable consternation,—the White Linen Nurse and a blue-overalled lad most unconscionably mated in radiant youth and agonized confusion.

“Oh, my Lord, sir!” gasped the White Linen Nurse—“oh, my Lord, sir! I wasn’t looking for you for another week!”

“Evidently not,” said the Senior Surgeon, incisively. “This is the second time this evening that I’ve been led to infer that my home-coming was distinctly inopportune.”

Very slowly, very methodically, he put down first his precious rod-case and then his grip. His brain seemed fairly foaming with blood and confusion. Along the swelling veins of his arms a dozen primitive instincts went surging to his fists.

Then quite brazenly before his eyes the White Linen Nurse reached out and took the lad’s hand again.

“Oh, forgive me, Dr. Faber!” she faltered. “This is my brother.”

“Your brother? What? Eh?” choked the Senior Surgeon. Bluntly he reached out and crushed the young fellow’s fingers in his own. “Glad to see you, son,” he muttered, with a sickish sort of grin, and, turning abruptly, picked up his baggage again and started for the big house.

Half a step behind him his bride followed softly.

At the edge of the piazza he turned for an instant and eyed her a bit quizzically. With her big, credulous blue eyes, and her great mop of yellow hair braided childishly down her back, she looked inestimably more juvenile and innocent than his own little shrewd-faced six-year-old, whom he had just left domestically ensconced in the middle of the broad gravel path.

“For Heaven’s sake, Miss Malgregor,” he asked—“for Heaven’s sake, why didn’t you tell me that the Wall-Paper Man was your brother?”

Very contritely the White Linen Nurse’s chin went burrowing down into the soft collar of her dress, and as bashfully as a child one finger came stealing up to the edge of her red, red lips.

“I was afraid you’d think I was—cheeky, having any of my family come and live with us so soon,” she murmured almost inaudibly.

“Well, what did you think I’d think you were if he wasn’t your brother?” asked the Senior Surgeon, sardonically.

“Very economical, I hoped,” beamed the White Linen Nurse.

“All the same,” snapped the Senior Surgeon, with an irrelevance surprising even to himself—“all the same, do you think it sounds quite right and proper for a child to call her stepmother ’Peach’?”

Again the White Linen Nurse’s chin went burrowing down into the soft collar of her dress.

“I don’t suppose it is usual,” she admitted reluctantly. “The children next door, I notice, call theirs ’Crosspatch.’”

With a gesture of impatience, the Senior Surgeon proceeded on up the steps, yanked open the old-fashioned shuttered door, and burst quite breathlessly and unprepared upon his most amazingly reconstructed house. All in one single second chintzes, muslins, pale blond maples, riotous canary-birds stormed revolutionarily upon his outraged eyes. Reeling back utterly aghast before the sight, he stood there staring dumbly for an instant at what he considered, and rightly too, the absolute wreck of his black-walnut home.

“It looks like—hell!” he muttered feebly.

“Yes, isn’t it sweet?” conceded the White Linen Nurse, with unmistakable joyousness. “And your library—” Triumphantly she threw back the door to his grim workshop.

“Good God!” stammered the Senior Surgeon, “you’ve made it pink!”

Rapturously the White Linen Nurse began to clasp and unclasp her hands.

“I knew you’d love it,” she said.

Half dazed with bewilderment, the Senior Surgeon started to brush an imaginary haze from his eyes, but paused midway in the gesture, and pointed back instead to a dapper little hall-table that seemed to be exhausting its entire blond strength in holding up a slender green vase with a single pink rose in it. Like a caged animal buffeting for escape against each successive bar that incased it, the man’s frenzied irritation hurled itself hopefully against this one more chance for explosive exit.

“What—have—you—done—with the big—black—escritoire that stood—there?” he demanded accusingly.

“Escritoire? Escritoire?” worried the White Linen Nurse. “Why—why, I’m afraid I must have mislaid it.”

“Mislaid it?” thundered the Senior Surgeon. “Mislaid it? It weighed three hundred pounds!”

“Oh, it did?” questioned the White Linen Nurse, with great blue-eyed interest. Still mulling apparently over the fascinating weight of the escritoire, she climbed up suddenly into a chair, and with the fluffy, broom-shaped end of her extraordinarily long braid of hair went angling wildly off into space after an illusive cobweb.

Faster and faster the Senior Surgeon’s temper began to search for a new point of exit.

“What do you suppose the servants think of you?” he stormed, “running round like that, with your hair in a pigtail, like a kid?”

“Servants?” cooed the White Linen Nurse. “Servants?” Very quietly she jumped down from the chair and came and stood looking up into the Senior Surgeon’s hectic face. “Why, there aren’t any servants,” she explained patiently. “I’ve dismissed every one of them. We’re doing our own work now.”

“Doing ’our own work?’” gasped the Senior Surgeon.

Worriedly the White Linen Nurse stepped back a little.

“Why, wasn’t that right?” she pleaded. “Wasn’t it right? Why, I thought people always did their own work when they were first married.” With sudden apprehensiveness she glanced round over her shoulder at the hall clock, and, darting out through a side door, returned almost instantly with a fierce-looking knife.

Color-Tone, engraved for THE CENTURY by H. C. Merrill and H. Davidson

“‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?’ HE FAIRLY SCREAMED AT HER. ‘JUST KEEPING YOU COMPANY, SIR,’ YAWNED THE WHITE LINEN NURSE”

DRAWN BY HERMAN PFEIFER

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

“I’m so late now, and everything,” she confided, “could you peel the potatoes for me?”

“No, I couldn’t,” said the Senior Surgeon, shortly. Equally shortly he turned on his heel, and, reaching out once more for his rod-case and grip, went on up the stairs to his own room.

One of the pleasantest things about arriving home very late in the afternoon is the excuse it gives you for loafing in your own room while other people are getting supper. No existent domestic sound in the whole twenty-four hours is as soothing at the end of a long journey as the sound of other people getting supper.

Stretched out at full length in a big easy-chair by his bedroom window, with his favorite pipe bubbling rhythmically between his gleaming white teeth, the Senior Surgeon studied his new “solid-gold bed” and his new sage-green wall-paper and his new dust-colored rug, to the faint, far-away accompaniment of soft-thudding feet and a girl’s laugh and a child’s prattle and the tink, tink, tinkle of glass, china, silver,—all scurrying consciously to the service of one man, and that man himself.

Very, very slowly, in that special half-hour an inscrutable little smile printed itself experimentally across the right-hand corner of the Senior Surgeon’s upper lip.

While that smile was still in its infancy, he jumped up suddenly and forced his way across the hall to his dead wife’s room,—the one ghost-room of his house and his life,—and there, with his hand on the turning door-knob, tense with reluctance, goose-fleshed with strain, his breath gasped out of him whether or no with the one word, “Alice!”

And, behold! there was no room there!

Lurching back from the threshold as from the brink of an elevator-well, the Senior Surgeon found himself staring foolishly into a most sumptuous linen-closet, tiered like an Aztec cliff with home after home for pleasant, prosy blankets and gaily fringed towels and cheerful white sheets reeking most conscientiously of cedar and lavender. Tiptoeing cautiously into the mystery, he sensed at one astonished, grateful glance how the change of a partition, the readjustment of a proportion, had purged like a draft of fresh air the stale gloom of an ill-favored memory. Yet so inevitable did it suddenly seem for a linen-closet to be built right there, so inevitable did it suddenly seem for the child’s meager playroom to be enlarged just there, that to save his soul he could not estimate whether the happy plan had originated in a purely practical brain or a purely compassionate heart.

Half proud of the brain, half touched by the heart, he passed on exploringly through the new playroom out into the hall again.

Quite distinctly now through the aperture of the back stairs the kitchen voices came wafting up to him.

“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” wailed his Little Girl’s peevish voice, “now that—that man’s come back again, I suppose we’ll have to eat in the dining-room all the time!”

“‘That man’ happens to be your darling father,” admonished the White Linen Nurse’s laughing voice.

“Even so,” wailed the Little Girl, “I love you best.”

“Even so,” laughed the White Linen Nurse, “I love you best.”

“Just the same,” cried the Little Girl, shrilly—“just the same, let’s put the cream-pitcher ’way up high somewhere, so he can’t step in it.”

As though from a head tilted suddenly backward the White Linen Nurse’s laugh rang out in joyous abandon.

Impulsively the Senior Surgeon started to grin; then equally impulsively the grin soured on his lips. So they thought he was clumsy? Eh? Resentfully he stared down at his hands, those wonderfully dexterous, yes, ambidexterous, hands that were the aching envy of all his colleagues. Interruptingly as he stared, the voice of the young Wall-Paper Man rose buoyantly from the lower hallway.

“Supper’s all ready, sir!” came the clear, cordial summons.

For some inexplainable reason, at that particular moment almost nothing in the world could have irritated the Senior Surgeon more keenly than to be invited to his own supper, in his own house, by a stranger. Fuming with a new sense of injury and injustice, he started heavily down the stairs to the dining-room.

Standing patiently behind the Senior Surgeon’s chair with a laudable desire to assist his carving in any possible emergency that might occur, the White Linen Nurse experienced her first direct marital rebuff.

“What do you think this is, an autopsy?” demanded the Senior Surgeon, tartly. “For Heaven’s sake, go and sit down!”

Quite meekly the White Linen Nurse subsided into her place.

The meal that ensued could hardly have been called a success, though the room was entrancing, the cloth snow-white, the silver radiant, the guinea-chicken beyond reproach.

Swept and garnished to an alarming degree, the young Wall-Paper Man presided over the gravy and did his uttermost, innocent country-best to make the Senior Surgeon feel perfectly at home.

Conscientiously, as in the presence of a distinguished stranger, the Little Crippled Girl most palpably from time to time repressed her insatiable desire to build a towering pyramid out of all the salt-and pepper-shakers she could reach.

Once when the young Wall-Paper Man forgot himself to the extent of putting his knife in his mouth, the White Linen Nurse jarred the whole table with the violence of her warning kick.

Once when the Little Crippled Girl piped out impulsively, “Say, Peach, what was the name of that bantam your father used to fight against the minister’s bantam?” the White Linen Nurse choked piteously over her food.

Twice some one spoke about this year’s weather. Twice some one volunteered an illuminating remark about last year’s weather. Except for these four diversions, restraint indescribable hung like a horrid pall over the feast.

Next to feeling unwelcome in your friend’s house, nothing certainly is more wretchedly disconcerting than to feel unwelcome in your own house. Grimly the Senior Surgeon longed to grab up all the knives within reach and ram them successively into his own mouth, just to prove to the young Wall-Paper Man what a—what a devil of a good fellow he was himself. Grimly the Senior Surgeon longed to tell the White Linen Nurse about the pet bantam of his own boyhood days, that he bet a dollar could lick any bantam her father ever dreamed of owning. Grimly the Senior Surgeon longed to talk dolls, dishes, kittens, yes, even cream-pitchers, to his little daughter; to talk anything, in fact, to any one; to talk, sing, shout anything that would make him, at least for the time being, one at heart, one at head, one at table, with this astonishingly offish bunch of youngsters: but grimly instead, out of his frazzled nerves, out of his innate spiritual bashfulness, he merely roared forth, “Where are the potatoes?”

“Potatoes?” gasped the White Linen Nurse. “Potatoes? Oh, potatoes?” she finished more blithely. “Why, yes, of course. Don’t you remember you didn’t have time to peel them for me? I was so disappointed!”

“You were so disappointed?” snapped the Senior Surgeon. “You? You?”

Janglingly the Little Crippled Girl knelt right up in her chair and shook her tiny fist right in her father’s face.

“Now, Lendicott Faber,” she screamed, “don’t you start in sassing my darling little Peach!”

“Peach?” snorted the Senior Surgeon. With almost supernatural calm he put down his knife and fork and eyed his offspring with an expression of absolutely inflexible purpose. “Don’t you ever,” he warned her—“ever, ever, let me hear you call—this woman ‘Peach’ again!”

A trifle faint-heartedly the Little Crippled Girl reached up and straightened her absurdly diminutive little white cap, and pursed her little mouth as nearly as possible into an expression of ineffable peace.

“Why, Lendicott Faber!” she persisted heroically.

“Lendicott!” exclaimed the Senior Surgeon. “What are you ‘Lendicotting’ me for?”

Hilariously with her own knife and fork the Little Crippled Girl began to beat upon the table.

“Why, you dear silly!” she cried—“why, if I’m the new marma, I’ve got to call you Lendicott, and Peach has got to call you Fat Father.”

Frenziedly the Senior Surgeon pushed back his chair and jumped to his feet. The expression on his face was neither smile nor frown, nor war nor peace, nor any other human expression that had ever puckered there before.

“God!” he said, “this gives me the willies!” and strode tempestuously from the room.

Out in his own workshop, fortunately, whatever the grotesque new pinkness, whatever the grotesque new perkiness, his great free walking-spaces had not been interfered with. Slamming his door triumphantly behind him, he resumed once more the monotonous pace, pace, pace that for eighteen years had characterized his first night’s return to civilization.

Sharply around the corner of his battered old desk the little path started, wanly along the edge of his dingy book-shelves the little path furrowed, wistfully at the deep bay-window, where his favorite lilac-bush budded whitely for his departure, and rusted brownly for his return, the little path faltered, and went on again, on and on and on, into the alcove where his instruments glistened, up to the fireplace, where his college trophy-cups tarnished. Listlessly the Senior Surgeon began anew his yearly vigil. Up and down, up and down, round and round, on and on and on, through interminable ducks to unattainable dawns, a glutted, bacchanalian soul sweating its own way back to sanctity and leanness. Nerves always were in that vigil—raw, rattling nerves clamoring vociferously to be repacked in their sedatives. Thirst also was in that vigil; no mere whimpering tickle of the palate, but a drought of the tissues, a consuming fire of the bones. Hurt pride was also there, and festering humiliation.

But more rasping, this particular night, than nerves, more poignant than thirst, more dangerously excitative even than remorse, hunger rioted in him—hunger, the one worst enemy of the Senior Surgeon’s cause, the simple, silly, no-account, gnawing, drink-provocative hunger of an empty stomach. And one other hunger was also there—a sudden fierce new lust for life and living, a passion bare of love, yet pure of wantonness, a passion primitive, protective, inexorably proprietary, engendered strangely in that one mad, suspicious moment at the edge of the summer-house when every outraged male instinct in him had leaped to prove that, love or no love, the woman was his.

Up and down, up and down, round and round, eight o’clock found the Senior Surgeon still pacing.

At half-past eight the young Wall-Paper Man came to say good-by to him.

“As long as sister won’t be alone any more, I guess I’ll be moving on,” beamed the Wall-Paper Man. “There’s a dance at home Saturday night, and I’ve got a girl of my own,” he confided genially.

“Come again,” urged the Senior Surgeon. “Come again when you can stay longer.” With one honest prayer in stock, and at least two purely automatic social speeches of this sort, no man needs to flounder altogether hopelessly for words in any ordinary emergency of life. With no more mental interruption than the two-minute break in time, the Senior Surgeon then resumed his bitter-thoughted pacing.

At nine o’clock, however, patrolling his long, rangy book-shelves, he sensed with a very different feeling through his heavy oak door the soft, whirring swish of skirts and the breathy twitter of muffled voices. Faintly to his acute ears came the sound of his little daughter’s temperish protest, “I won’t! I won’t!” and the White Linen Nurse’s fervid pleading, “Oh, you must! you must!” and the Little Girl’s mumbled ultimatum, “Well, I won’t unless you do.”

Irascibly he crossed the room and yanked the door open abruptly upon their surprise and confusion. His nerves were very sore.

“What in thunder do you want?” he snarled.

Nervously for an instant the White Linen Nurse tugged at the Little Girl’s hand. Nervously for an instant the Little Girl tugged at the White Linen Nurse’s hand. Then with a swallow like a sob the White Linen Nurse lifted her glowing face to his.

“K—kiss us good night!” said the White Linen Nurse.

Telescopically all in that startling second, vision after vision beat down like blows upon the Senior Surgeon’s senses. The pink, pink flush of the girl; the lure of her; the amazing sweetness; the physical docility—oh, ye gods, the docility! Every trend of her birth, of her youth, of her training, forcing her now, if he chose it, to unquestioning submission to his will and his judgment! Faster and faster the temptation surged through his pulses. The path from her lips to her ear was such a little path; the plea so quick to make, so short, “I want you now!”

“K—kiss us good night!” urged the big girl’s unsuspecting lips. “Kiss us good night!” mocked the Little Girl’s tremulous echo.

Then explosively, with the noblest rudeness of his life, “No, I won’t!” said the Senior Surgeon, and slammed the door in their faces.

Falteringly up the stairs he heard the two ascending, speechless with surprise, perhaps, stunned by his roughness, still hand in hand, probably, still climbing slowly bedward, the soft, smooth, patient footfall of the White Linen Nurse and the jerky, laborious clang, clang, clang of a little dragging, iron-braced leg.

Up and down, round and round, on and on and on, the Senior Surgeon resumed his pacing. Under his eyes great shadows darkened. Along the corners of his mouth the lines furrowed like gray scars. Up and down, round and round, on and on and on and on.

At ten o’clock, sitting bolt upright in her bed, with her worried eyes straining bluely out across the Little Girl’s somnolent form into unfathomable darkness, the White Linen Nurse in the throb of her own heart began to keep pace with that faint, horrid thud, thud, thud in the room below. Was he passing the bookcase now? Had he reached the bay-window? Was he dawdling over those glistening scalpels? Would his nerves remember the flask in that upper desk drawer? Up and down, round and round, on and on, the harrowing sound continued.

Resolutely at last she scrambled out of her snug nest, and, hurrying into her great warm, pussy-gray wrapper, began at once very practically, very unemotionally, with matches and alcohol and a shiny glass jar, to prepare a huge steaming cup of malted milk. Beefsteak was vastly better, she knew, or eggs, of course; but if she should venture forth to the kitchen for real substantials the Senior Surgeon, she felt quite positive, would almost certainly hear her and stop her. So very stealthily thus, like the proverbial assassin, she crept down the front stairs with the innocent malted-milk cup in her hand, and then with her knuckles just on the verge of rapping against the grimly inhospitable door, went suddenly paralyzed with uncertainty whether to advance or retreat.

Once again through the somber, inert wainscoting, exactly as if a soul had creaked, the Senior Surgeon sensed the threatening, intrusive presence of an unseen personality. Once again he strode across the room and jerked the door open with terrifying anger and resentment.

As though frozen there on his threshold by her own bare little feet, as though strangled there in his doorway by her own great mop of gold hair, as stolid and dumb as a pink-cheeked graven image, the White Linen Nurse thrust the cup out awkwardly at him.

Absolutely without comment, as though she trotted on purely professional business and the case involved was of mutual concern to them both, the Senior Surgeon took the cup from her hand and closed the door again in her face.

At eleven o’clock she came again, just as pink, just as blue, just as gray, just as golden. And the cup of malted milk she brought with her was just as huge, just as hot, just as steaming, only this time she had smuggled two raw eggs into it.

Once more the Senior Surgeon took the cup without comment and shut the door in her face.

At twelve o’clock she came again. The Senior Surgeon was unusually loquacious this time.

“Have you any more malted milk?” he asked tersely.

“Oh, yes, sir!” beamed the White Linen Nurse.

“Go and get it,” said the Senior Surgeon.

Obediently the White Linen Nurse pattered up the stairs and returned with the half-depleted bottle. Frankly interested, she recrossed the threshold of the room and delivered her glass treasure into the hands of the Senior Surgeon as he stood by his desk. Raising herself to her tiptoes, she noted with eminent satisfaction that the three big cups on the other side of the desk had all been drained to their dregs.

Then very bluntly before her eyes the Senior Surgeon took the malted-milk bottle and poured its remaining contents out quite wantonly into his waste-basket. Then equally bluntly he took the White Linen Nurse by the shoulders and marched her out of the room.

“For God’s sake,” he said, “get out of this room, and stay out!”

Bang! the big door slammed behind her. Like a snarling fang, the lock bit into its catch.

“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse. Even just to herself, all alone there in the big black hall, she was perfectly polite. “Y-e-s, sir,” she repeated softly.

With a slightly sardonic grin on his face, the Senior Surgeon resumed his pacing up and down, round and round, on and on and on.

At one o’clock, in the dull, clammy chill of earliest morning, he stopped long enough to light his hearthfire. At two o’clock he stopped again to pile on a trifle more wood. At three o’clock he dallied for an instant to close a window. The new day seemed strangely cold. At four o’clock dawn, the wonder, the miracle, the long-despaired-of, quickened wanly across the east; then suddenly, more like a phosphorescent breeze than a glow, the pale, pale yellow sunshine came wafting through the green gloom of the garden. The vigil was over.

Stumbling out into the shadowy hall to greet the new day and the new beginning, the Senior Surgeon almost tripped and fell over the White Linen Nurse, sitting all huddled up and drowsy-eyed in a gray little heap on his outer threshold. The sensation of stepping upon a human body is not a pleasant one. It smote the Senior Surgeon nauseously through the nerves of his stomach.

“What are you doing here?” he fairly screamed at her.

“Just keeping you company, sir,” yawned the White Linen Nurse. Before her hand could reach her mouth again, another great childish yawn overwhelmed her. “Just—watching with you, sir,” she finished more or less inarticulately.

“Watching with me?” snarled the Senior Surgeon, resentfully. “Why should you watch with me?”

Like the frightened flash of a bird the heavy lashes went swooping down across the pink cheeks and lifted as suddenly again.

“Because you’re my—man,” yawned the White Linen Nurse.

Almost roughly the Senior Surgeon reached down and pulled the White Linen Nurse to her feet.

“God!” said the Senior Surgeon. In his strained, husky voice the word sounded like an oath. Grotesquely a little smile went scudding zigzag across his haggard face. With an impulse absolutely alien to him he reached out abruptly again and raised the White Linen Nurse’s hand to his lips. “Good God was what I meant—Miss Malgregor,” he grinned a bit sheepishly.

Quite bruskly then he turned and looked at his watch.

“I’d like my breakfast just as soon now as you can possibly get it,” he ordered peremptorily, in his own morbid, pathological emergency no more stopping to consider the White Linen Nurse’s purely normal fatigue than he in any pathological emergency of hers would have stopped to consider his own comfort, safety, or, perhaps, even life.

Joyously then like a prisoner just turned loose, he went swinging up the stairs to recreate himself with a smoke and a shave and a great splashing, cold shower-bath.

Only one thing seemed really to trouble him now. At the top of the stairs he stopped for an instant and cocked his head a bit worriedly toward the drawing-room, where from some slow-brightening alcove bird-carol after bird-carol went fluting shrilly up into the morning.

“Is that those damned canaries?” he asked briefly.

Very companionably the White Linen Nurse cocked her own towsled head on one side and listened with him for half a moment.

“Only four of them are damned canaries,” she corrected very gently. “The fifth one is a parrakeet that I got at a mark-down because it was a widowed bird and wouldn’t mate again.”

“Eh?” jerked the Senior Surgeon.

“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse, and started for the kitchen.

No one but the Senior Surgeon himself breakfasted in state at five o’clock that morning. Snug and safe in her crib up-stairs the Little Crippled Girl slumbered peacefully on through the general disturbance. And as for the White Linen Nurse herself, what with chilling and rechilling melons, and broiling and unbroiling steaks, and making and remaking coffee, and hunting frantically for a different-sized water-glass or a prettier-colored plate, there was no time for anything except an occasional hurried, surreptitious nibble half-way between the stove and the table.

Yet in all that raucous, early morning hour together neither man nor girl suffered toward the other the slightest personal sense of contrition or resentment; for each mind was trained equally fairly, whether reacting on its own case or another’s, to differentiate pretty readily between mean nerves and a mean spirit.

Only once, in fact, across the intervening chasm of crankiness did the Senior Surgeon hurl a smile that was even remotely self-conscious or conciliatory. Glancing up suddenly from a particularly sharp and disagreeable speech, he noted the White Linen Nurse’s red lips mumbling softly one to the other.

“Are you specially—religious, Miss Malgregor?” he grinned quite abruptly.

“No, not specially, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse. “Why, sir?”

“Oh, it’s only,” grinned the Senior Surgeon, dourly—“it’s only that every time I’m especially ugly to you, I see your lips moving as though in ‘silent prayer,’ as they call it; and I was just wondering if there was any special formula you used with me that kept you so everlastingly damned serene. Is there?”

“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.

“What is it?” demanded the Senior Surgeon, quite bluntly.

“Do I have to tell?” gasped the White Linen Nurse. A little tremulously in her hand the empty cup she was carrying rattled against its saucer. “Do I have to tell?” she repeated pleadingly.

A delirious little thrill of power went fluttering through the Senior Surgeon’s heart.

“Yes, you have to tell me,” he announced quite seriously.

In absolute submission to his demand, though with very palpable reluctance, the White Linen Nurse came forward to the table, put down the cup and saucer, and began to finger a trifle nervously at the cloth.

“Oh, I’m sure I didn’t mean any harm, sir,” she stammered; “but all I say is,—honest and truly all I say is,—’Bah! he’s nothing but a man, nothing but a man, nothing but a man!’ over and over and over. Just that, sir.”

Uproariously the Senior Surgeon pushed back his chair and jumped to his feet.

“I guess, after all, I’ll have to let the little kid call you ‘Peach’ one day a week,” he acknowledged jocosely.

With great seriousness then he tossed back his great, splendid head, shook himself free apparently from all unhappy memories, and started for his workroom, a great, gorgeously vital, extraordinarily talented, gray-haired boy, lusting joyously for his own work and play again after a month’s distressing illness.

From the edge of the hall he turned round and made a really boyish grimace at her.

“Now, if I only had the horns or the cloven hoof that you think I have,” he called, “what an easy time I’d make of it, raking over all the letters and ads. that are stacked up on my desk!”

“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.

Only once did he come back into the kitchen or dining-room for anything. It was at seven o’clock, and the White Linen Nurse was still washing dishes.

As radiant as a gray-haired god he towered up in the doorway. The boyish rejuvenation in him was even more startling than before.

“I’m feeling so much like a fighting-cock this morning,” he said, “I think I’ll tackle that paper on—that I have to read at Baltimore next month.” A little startlingly the gray lines furrowed into his cheeks again. “For Heaven’s sake, see that I’m not disturbed by anything!” he admonished her warningly.

It must have been almost eight o’clock when the ear-splitting scream from up-stairs sent the White Linen Nurse plunging out panic-stricken into the hall.

“Oh, Peach! Peach!” yelled the Little Girl’s frenzied voice, “come quick and see what Fat Father’s doing now, out on the piazza!”

Jerkily the White Linen Nurse swerved off through the French door that opened directly on the piazza. Had the Senior Surgeon hanged himself, she tortured, in some wild, temporary aberration of the “morning after”?

But stanchly and reassuringly from the farther end of the piazza the Senior Surgeon’s broad back belied her horrid terror. Quite prosily and in apparently perfect health he was standing close to the railing of the piazza. On a table directly beside him rested four empty bird-cages. Just at that particular moment he was inordinately busy releasing the last canary from the fifth cage. Both hands were smouched with ink, and behind his left ear a fountain-pen dallied daringly.

At the very first sound of the White Linen Nurse’s step the Senior Surgeon turned and faced her with a sheepish sort of defiance.

“Well, now, I imagine,” he said—“well, now I imagine I’ve really made you mad.”

“No, not mad, sir,” faltered the White Linen Nurse—“no, not mad, sir, but very far from well.” Coaxingly, with a perfectly futile hand, she tried to lure one astonished yellow songster back from a swaying yellow bush. “Why, they’ll die, sir!” she protested. “Savage cats will get them.”

“It’s a choice of their lives or mine,” said the Senior Surgeon, tersely.

“Yes, sir,” droned the White Linen Nurse.

Quite snappishly the Senior Surgeon turned upon her.

“For Heaven’s sake, do you think canary-birds are more valuable than I am?” he demanded stentoriously.

Most disconcertingly before his glowering eyes a great sad, round tear rolled suddenly down the White Linen Nurse’s flushed cheek.

“N-o-o, not more valuable,” conceded the White Linen Nurse, “but more c-cunning.”

Up to the roots of the Senior Surgeon’s hair a flush of real contrition spread hotly.

“Why—Rae,” he stammered, “why, what a beast I am! Why—why—” In sincere perplexity he began to rack his brains for some adequate excuse, some adequate explanation. “Why, I’m sure I didn’t mean to make you feel badly,” he persisted. “Only I’ve lived alone so long that I suppose I’ve just naturally drifted into the way of having a thing if I wanted it and—throwing it away if I didn’t. And canary-birds, now? Well, really—” He began to glower all over again. “Oh, hell!” he finished abruptly, “I guess I’ll go on down to the hospital, where I belong!”

A little wistfully the White Linen Nurse stepped forward.

“The hospital?” she said. “Oh, the hospital. Do you think that perhaps you could come home a little bit earlier than usual to-night, and—and help me catch just one of the canaries?”

“What?” gasped the Senior Surgeon. Incredulously with a very inky finger he pointed at his own breast. “What? I?” he demanded. “I? Come home early from the hospital to help you catch a canary?”

Disgustedly, without further comment, he turned and stalked back again into the house.

The disgust was still in his walk as he left the house an hour later. Watching his exit down the long gravel path, the Little Crippled Girl commented audibly on the matter.

“Peach! Peach!” she called, “what makes Fat Father walk so—surprised?”

People at the hospital also commented upon him.

“Gee!” giggled the new nurses, “we bet he’s a Tartar! But isn’t his hair cute? And, say, is it really true that that Malgregor girl was pinned down perfectly helpless under the car and he wouldn’t let her out till she’d promised to marry him? Isn’t it awful? Isn’t it romantic?”

“Why, Dr. Faber’s back!” fluttered the old nurses. “Isn’t he wonderful? Isn’t he beautiful? But, oh, say,” they worried, “what do you suppose Rae ever finds to talk with him about? Would she ever dare talk things to him,—just plain every-day things,—hats, and going to the theater, and what to have for breakfast?” They gasped. “Why, yes, of course,” they reasoned more sanely. “Steak? Eggs? Even oatmeal? Why, people had to eat, no matter how wonderful they were. But evenings?” they speculated more darkly. “But evenings?” In the whole range of human experience was it even so much as remotely imaginable that, evenings, the Senior Surgeon and Rae Malgregor sat in the hammock and held hands? “Oh, gee!” blanched the old nurses.

“Good morning, Dr. Faber,” greeted the Superintendent of Nurses from behind her austere office desk.

“Good morning, Madam,” said the Senior Surgeon.

“Have you had a pleasant trip?” quizzed the Superintendent of Nurses.

“Exceptionally so, thank you,” said the Senior Surgeon.

“And—Mrs. Faber, is she well?” persisted the Superintendent of Nurses, conscientiously.

“Mrs. Faber?” gasped the Senior Surgeon. “Mrs. Faber? Oh, yes; why, of course. Yes, indeed, she’s extraordinarily well. I never saw her better.”

“She must have been very lonely without you this past month,” rasped the Superintendent of Nurses, perfectly polite.

“Yes, she was,” replied the flushed Senior Surgeon. “She—she suffered keenly.”

“And you, too?” drawled the Superintendent of Nurses. “It must have been very hard for you.”

“Yes, it was,” replied the Senior Surgeon. “I suffered keenly, too.”

Distractedly he glanced back at the open door. An extraordinarily large number of nurses, internes, orderlies, seemed to be having errands up and down the corridor that allowed them a peculiarly generous length of neck to stretch into the Superintendent’s office.

“Great Heavens!” snapped the Senior Surgeon, “what’s the matter with everybody this morning?” Tempestuously he started for the door. “Hurry up my cases, please, Miss Hartzen!” he ordered. “Send them to the operating-room, and let me get to work.”

At eleven o’clock, absolutely calm, absolutely cool, as pure as a girl in his white operating-clothes; cleaner, skin, hair, teeth, hands, than any girl who ever walked the face of the earth, in a white-tiled room as free from germs as himself, with three or four small glistening instruments, and half a dozen breathless assistants almost as spotless as himself, with his sleeves rolled back the whole length of his arms, and the faintest possible little grin twitching oddly at one corner of his mouth, he “went in,” as they say, to a new-born baby’s tortured, twisted spine, and took out fifty years, perhaps, of hunchbacked pain and shame and morbid passions flourishing banefully in the dark shades of a disordered life.

At half-past twelve he did an appendix operation on the only son of his best friend; at one o’clock he did another appendix operation. Whom it was on didn’t matter; it couldn’t have been worse on any one. At half-past one no one remembered to feed him. At two, in another man’s operation, he saw the richest merchant in the city go wafted out into eternity on the fumes of ether taken for the lancing of a sty. At three o’clock, passing the open door of one of the public waiting-rooms, an Italian peasant woman rushed out and spat in his face because her tubercular daughter had just died at the sanatorium where the Senior Surgeon’s money had sent her. Only in this one wild, defiling moment did the lust for alcohol surge up in him again, surge clamorously, brutally, absolutely mercilessly, as though in all the world only interminable raw whisky was hot enough to cauterize a polluted consciousness. At half-past three, as soon as he could change his clothes again, he rebroke and reset an acrobat’s priceless leg. At five o’clock, more to rest himself than anything else, he went up to the autopsy amphitheater to look over an exhibit of enlarged hearts whose troubles were permanently over.

At six o’clock, just as he was leaving the great building, with all its harrowing sights, sounds, and smells, a peremptory telephone call from one of the younger surgeons of the city summoned him back into the stuffy office again.

“Dr. Faber?”

“Yes.”

“This is Merkley.”

“Yes.”

“Can you come immediately and help me with that fractured-skull case I was telling you about this morning? We’ll have to trepan right away!”

“Trepan nothing!” grunted the Senior Surgeon. “I’ve got to go home early to-night—and help catch a canary.”

“Catch a what?” gasped the younger surgeon.

“A canary,” grinned the Senior Surgeon, mirthlessly.

“A what?” roared the younger man.

“Oh, shut up, you damned fool! Of course I’ll come,” said the Senior Surgeon.