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diff --git a/40648-0.txt b/40648-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ea868d3 --- /dev/null +++ b/40648-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5502 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40648 *** + +On the Lightship + +BY + +Herman Knickerbocker Vielé + +AUTHOR OF "THE INN OF THE SILVER MOON," "MYRA OF +THE PINES," "THE LAST OF THE KNICKERBOCKERS," +"HEARTBREAK HILL," ETC. + +Introduction by +THOMAS A. JANVIER + +[Illustration: Logo] + +NEW YORK +DUFFIELD & COMPANY +1909 + + +COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY +DUFFIELD & COMPANY + +_Published September, 1909_ + +THE PREMIER PRESS +NEW YORK + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE +INTRODUCTION 9 + +THE STORY OF IGNATIUS, THE ALMONER 19 + +THE DEAD MAN'S CHEST 41 + +THE CARHART MYSTERY 83 + +THE MONSTROSITY 107 + +THE PRIESTESS OF AMEN RA 135 + +THE GIRL FROM MERCURY 167 + +THE UNEXPECTED LETTER 213 + +THE MONEY METER 233 + +THE GUEST OF HONOR 263 + +THE MAN WITHOUT A PENSION 287 + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +"On Board the Light-Ship" is the title--retained in loving deference to +his intention--that would have been given to this collection of stories +by their author. Had Vielé lived but a little while longer, he would +have justified it by placing them in a setting characteristically +fantastic and characteristically original. + +He had planned to frame them in an encircling story describing, and duly +accounting for, the chance assemblage aboard a vessel of that unusual +type of a heterogeneous company; and--having in his own fanciful way +convincingly disposed of conditions not precisely in line with the +strictest probability--so to dovetail the several stories into their +encirclement that the telling of them, in turn, would have come easily +and naturally from those upcasts of the sea. + +It was a project wholly after his own heart. I can imagine the pleasure +that he would have found in working his machinery--always out of sight, +and always running with a silent smoothness--for getting together in +that queer place his company of story-tellers. He would have used, of +course, the Light-ship and the light-keepers as his firmly real +ground-work. Ship and crew would have been presented in a matter-of-fact +way, in keeping with their recognized matter-of-fact existence, that +subtly would have instilled the habit of belief into the minds of his +readers: and so would have led them onward softly, being in a way +hypnotized, to an equal belief--as he slipped lightly along, with +seemingly the same simplicity and the same ingenuousness--in what +assuredly would not have been matter-of-fact explanations of how those +story-tellers happened to be at large upon the ocean before they were +taken on board! + +That far I can follow him: but the play of fancy that he would have put +into his explanations--as he accounted in all manner of quite probable +impossible ways for such flotsam being adrift, and for its salvage +aboard the Light-ship--would have been so wholly the play of his own +alert individual fancy that it is beyond my ken. All that I can be sure +of--and be very sure of--is that his explanations of that marine +phenomenon, and of the coming of its several members up out of the sea +and over the ship's rail, would have been very delightfully and very +speciously satisfying. That the explanations might have been less +convincing when critically analyzed is a negligible detail: the only +essential requirement of a fantastic tale being that it shall be +convincing as it goes along. + +Even my bald outline of this story--that now never will be told--shows +how harmoniously in keeping it is with Vielé's literary method. He +delighted in creating delicately fantastic conditions lightly bordering +upon the impossible; and, having created them, in so re-solving their +elements into the seemingly commonplace and the apparently probable that +the fine art with which he worked his transmutations was veiled by the +very perfection of its accomplishment. + +Such was the method that he employed in the making of what I cherish as +his master-piece: "The Inn of the Silver Moon"--a story told so simply +and so directly, and with such a color of engaging frankness, that each +turn in its series of airily-adjusted impossible situations is accepted +with an unquestioning pleasure; and that leaves upon the mind of the +reader--even when released from the spell that compels belief throughout +the reading of it--a lasting impression of verity. It was the method, +precisely, of an exquisite form of literary art that has not flowered +more perfectly, I hold with submission, since the time of the so-called +Romantic School in Germany: when de la Motte Fouqué created "Undine," +and Eichendorff created the "Good-for-Nothing," and all the world went +at a gay quick-step to bright soft music that had been silent for nearly +three hundred years. + +Beyond recognizing the fact that it is of the same genre, to class "The +Inn of the Silver Moon" with "Undine" is to belittle it by an +over-claim; but to class it with "Aus dem Leben eines Tongenichts" is to +make a comparison in its favor: since Eichendorff's happy ending is a +little forced and a little tawdry; while Vielé's happy ending is as +inevitable as it is gracious--a result flowing smoothly from all the +precedent conditions, and so deftly revealed at the crisic culminating +moment that a perfecting finish is given to the delightingly perfect +logic of its surprise. + +The manner of the making of the two stories is identical; and so is +their peculiar charm. In his preface to his translation of the +"Good-for-Nothing," forty years and more ago, Charles Godfrey Leland +wrote: "Like a bird, the youthful hero flits along with his music over +Austria and Italy--as semi-mysterious in his unpremeditated course, fed +by chance, and as pleasing in his artless character"; which is close to +being--if for artless we read sophisticated artlessness--an accurate +description of the joint journeying of _Monsieur Vifour_ and +_Mademoiselle de Belle Isle_. And Leland added: "It is strikingly +characteristic of the whole book that it abounds in adroitly-hidden +touches of art which produce an effect without betraying effort on the +part of the writer. We are willing to declare that we never read a story +so light and airy, or one betraying so little labor; but critical study +soon tells us _quant' é difficile questa facilità_! All this ease is the +grace of a true genius, who makes no false steps and has carefully +estimated his own powers." That description fits "The Inn of the Silver +Moon" to a hair! + +In part, it applies only a little less closely to "Myra of the +Pines"--in which is much the same gay irresponsibility of motive and of +action; the same light touch, so sure that each delicate point is made +with a firm clearness; and the same play--save for the jarring note +struck by the "pig-man"--of a gently keen and a very subtle humour: that +maintains farce on the plane of high comedy by hiding artful contrivance +under a seeming artlessness; and that sparklingly crystallizes into +turns of phrase so seemingly spontaneous in their accurate appositeness +that the look of accident is given to them by their carefully perfected +felicity. + +"The Last of the Knickerbockers" has this same humour and this same +happiness of phrasing; and in its serious midst is set the fantastic +episode of "The Yellow Sleigh"--that needs only to be amplified to +become another "Inn of the Silver Moon." But there its resemblance to +Vielé's other stories ends. Least of all has "The Inn of the Silver +Moon" anything in common with it. That delectable thistle-down romance +goes trippingly over sunbeams in a straightaway course that has no +intricacies: with all the interest constantly focussed upon a heroine +and a hero to whom all the other characters are minor and accessory; and +with never a break in the light-hearted note that is struck at the +start. "The Last of the Knickerbockers," a blend of comedy and +semi-tragedy, is far away from all this--both in spirit and in form. It +is the most largely and the most seriously conceived of Vielé's works: +not a romance, but a novel with a substantial plot carefully developed +in intricate action; and while the main interest is centred--as properly +it should be--upon a wholly charming heroine and a wholly satisfying +hero, these pleasing young people are made to know, and to keep, their +place in a crowd of strong characters strongly drawn. + +It is a good story to read simply as a story; but it is more than that, +it is a document: an ambered preservation of a phase of New York society +that already almost has vanished, and that soon will have vanished +absolutely--when the last Mrs. and Mr. Bella Ruggles shall have closed +to decayed aristocracy the last shabbily pretentious boarding house in +the last dingy Kenilworth Place; and when decayed aristocracy, so +evicted, shall be forced to dwell in apartment-houses of the +bell-and-speaking-tube type, and to dine (as _Alida_ prophetically put +it) "at Italian tables-d'hôte--like the Café Chianti, in grandfather's +old house, where they have music and charge only fifty cents, including +wine"! + +So true a presentment as this story is of New York's old-time strait +faiths and straiter social customs will outlive long, I am confident, +the great mass of the fiction of Vielé's day. It will be actively alive +while even a faint memory of those faiths and customs is cherished by +living people; and when all of such ancients shall have retired (with +the final befitting dignity attendant upon a special license) to their +family homes beneath the shadows of St. Mark's and Trinity, carrying +their memories with them, it will become, as I have said, a document: +preserving the traditions which otherwise would have been buried with +them; and so linking permanently--as they linked temporarily--New York's +ever-increasingly ardent present with its ever-paling less strenuous +past. + +As to "The Inn of the Silver Moon," I can see no end to the lastingness +of it: since in the very essence of it is that which holds humanity with +an enduringly binding spell. The luring charm of a happy +love-story--charged with gay fantasy and epigrammatic grace and gently +pungent humour--is a charm perpetual and irresistible: that must hold +and bind while ever the world goes happily in ever-fresh sunshine, and +happily has in it ever-fresh young hearts. + + +THOMAS A. JANVIER. + +NEW YORK, +_June 20, 1909_. + + + + +THE STORY OF IGNATIUS, THE ALMONER + + +Though this happened at the Butler Penfields' garden party, the results +concern Miss Mabel Dunbar more than any one else, except, perhaps, one +other. Mabel had been invited, as she was invited everywhere, partly +because she was a very pretty girl, and helped to make things go, and +partly through public policy. + +"So long as the dear child remains unmarried," Mrs. Fessenden had said, +"we must continue to buy our tea from her." + +For Mabel owed her amber draperies to the tea she sold and everybody +bought because her grandmother had lived on Washington Square. In +society, to speak of tea was to speak of Mabel Dunbar; to look in +Mabel's deep brown eyes was to think of tea, and, incidentally, of cream +and sugar. + +"I used to consider her clever," Mrs. Fessenden remarked, "until she +became so popular with clever men.... It is really most discouraging.... +See, there is Lena Livingston, who has read Dante, pretending to talk to +her own brother-in-law, while Mabel, who is not even married, walks off +with Archer Ferris and Horace Hopworthy, one on each side." + +"I do wonder what she talks to them about," speculated Mrs. Penfield, +and Mrs. Fessenden replied: + +"My dear, you may depend, they do not let her talk." + +Mrs. Penfield reflected, while three backs, two broad and one slender +and sinuous as a tea-plant, receded toward the shrubbery. + +"I wonder which one Mabel will come back with?" she said. + +"If Jack were here, he would give odds on Mr. Hopworthy," replied Jack's +wife. + +"Of course, Mr. Hopworthy is the coming man," observed Mrs. Penfield. +"But Mr. Ferris has 'arrived.'" + +"Yes," assented Mrs. Fessenden, "as Jack says, he has arrived and taken +all the rooms.... But, then, I have great faith in Mr. Hopworthy. You +know Jack's aunt discovered him." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Penfield, "I remember, but, Clara, it was you that +introduced him." + +"Oh, that was nothing," murmured Clara. "We were very glad----" + +"My two best men!" sighed Mrs. Penfield, her eyes upon the shrubbery, +where nothing now was to be seen. + +"Yes," acquiesced her friend, "but think how badly that last Ceylon +turned out." + +Meanwhile, the three had found a cool retreat, an arbour sheltered from +the sun and open to the air, wherein a rustic garden seat, a table and a +chair extended cordial invitations. + +"Ah, this is just the place!" cried Archer Ferris. "By shoving this seat +along a trifle, and putting this chair here, we can be very +comfortable." + +It was noticeable that Mr. Ferris retained possession of the chair. As +for the vacant place beside her on the bench, Mabel's parasol lay upon +it. Mr. Ferris beamed as only the arrived can beam. + +"With your permission, I will take the table," said Mr. Hopworthy, +looking to Miss Dunbar, who smiled. Mr. Ferris became overcast. + +"I fear our conversation may not interest you," he told the other man. +"You know, you do not write short stories." + +And this was not the first time in the last half hour that Mr. Ferris +had offered Mr. Hopworthy an opportunity to withdraw. The latter smiled, +a broad, expansive smile. + +"Oh, but I read them," he persisted, perching on the table. "That is," +he added, "when there is plot enough to keep one awake." + +Here Mr. Ferris smiled, or, rather, pouted, for his mouth, contrasted +with that of Mr. Hopworthy, seemed child-like, not to say cherubic. + +"Plots," he observed, "are quite Victorian. We are, at least, decadent, +are we not, Miss Mabel?" + +Mabel smoothed her amber skirt, and tried to look intelligent. + +"Oh, yes, indeed," she said. + +"Now, there was a story in last week's _Bee_ called 'Ralph Ratcliffe's +Reincarnation,'" continued the gentleman on the table. "Did you read it, +Miss Dunbar?" + +"I laid it aside to read," she answered, with evasion. + +"Pray don't. It's in my weakest vein," remonstrated Mr. Ferris. "One +writes _down_ for the _Bee_, you know." + +"Pardon me," said Mr. Hopworthy, "I did not recognize the author's name +as one of yours." + +"No one with fewer than twelve names should call himself in literature," +the other said, a little vauntingly. + +Mr. Hopworthy embraced his knee. + +"The plot of that story----" he had begun to say, when Mr. Ferris +interrupted. + +"There are but seven plots," he explained, "and thirty situations. To +one that knows his trade, the outcome of a story should be from the very +beginning as obvious as a properly opened game of chess." + +"How interesting it must be to write," put in Miss Dunbar +appreciatively. Perhaps, in her simple way, she speculated as to where +the present situation came among the thirty, and whether the sunbeam she +was conscious of upon her hair had any literary value. + +"Do you ever see the _Stylus_?" inquired Mr. Hopworthy, from whose +position the sunbeam could be observed to best advantage. + +"Sir," said Mr. Ferris, through his Boucher lips, "I may say I _am_ the +_Stylus_." + +"Really!" cried the lady, though she could not have been greatly +surprised. + +In truth, her exclamation veiled the tendency to yawn often induced in +the young by objective conversation. If clever people only knew a +little more, they would not so often talk of stupid things. + +"Ah, then it is to you we owe that spirited little _fabliau_ called 'The +Story of Ignatius, the Almoner'?" remarked Mr. Hopworthy, almost +indifferently. + +"A trifle," said the other; "what we scribblers call 'hack.'" + +Mr. Hopworthy's broad mouth contracted, and he might have been observed +to suffer from some suppressed emotion. + +"But you wrote it, did you not?" he asked, beneath his breath. + +"I dashed it off in twenty minutes," said the other. + +"But it was yours?" insisted Mr. Hopworthy. + +"When I wrote that little story----" said Mr. Archer Ferris. + +"'The Story of Ignatius, the Almoner?'" prompted Mr. Hopworthy, with +unnecessary insistence. + +"'The Story of Ignatius, the Almoner,'" repeated Mr. Ferris, flushing +slightly, while Mr. Hopworthy seemed to clutch the table to keep himself +from bounding upward. + +"I was convinced of it!" he cried. "No other hand could have penned it. +The pith, the pathos, passion, power, and purpose of the tale were +masterly, and yet it was so simple and sincere, so logical, so +convincing, so inevitable, so----" + +"Spare me," protested Mr. Ferris, not at all displeased. "But it had a +sort of rudimentary force, I own." + +"And have you read it, Miss Dunbar?" inquired Mr. Hopworthy, almost +letting slip one anchor. + +"No," she replied, "but I have laid it aside to read. I shall do so now +with added pleasure." + +"Unless the author would consent to tell it to us in his own inspired +words----" said Mr. Hopworthy, regarding his boot toe with interest. +Miss Dunbar caught at the suggestion. + +"Oh, do!" she pleaded. "I should so love to hear a story told by the +author." + +"An experience to remember," murmured Mr. Hopworthy. + +"I am afraid it would be rather too long to tell this afternoon," +demurred the author, with a glance of apprehension toward the sky. + +"But you dashed it off in twenty minutes," the other man reminded him. + +"That is another reason," said the writer. "Work done with such rapidity +is apt to leave but a slight impression on the memory." + +"Perhaps a little turn about the grounds----" suggested Mr. Hopworthy. + +Miss Dunbar had put up her amber parasol, and the lace about it fell +just across her eyes. This left the seat beside her free. + +"Perhaps a little turn----" urged Mr. Hopworthy again. Mr. Ferris +regarded him defiantly. + +"As you have read my story, sir," he said, "I can scarcely hope to +include you in my audience." + +"But it is not at all the sort of thing one is satisfied to hear but +once," Mr. Hopworthy declared, in a tone distinctly flattering. Mr. +Ferris moved uneasily. + +"I really forget how it began," he asserted. "Perhaps another time----" + +"If I might presume to jog your memory----" said Mr. Hopworthy, with +deference. + +"Oh, that would be delightful!" exclaimed Miss Dunbar. "With two such +story-tellers, I feel just like Lalla Rookh." + +Mr. Ferris was upon his feet at once. + +"I suggest we adjourn to the striped tent," he said; "they have all +sorts of ices there." + +"Oh, but I mean the Princess, not frozen punch," declared Mabel, +settling herself more securely in the corner of the garden seat. "Please +sit down, and begin by telling me exactly what an almoner is." + +Mr. Ferris hesitated, cast one glance toward the open lawn beyond the +shrubbery, another to the amber parasol, and sat down in the other +corner. Mr. Hopworthy slipped from the table to the vacant chair. + +"An almoner," explained the _Stylus_, in as nearly an undertone as the +letter of courtesy permitted, "is a sort of treasurer, you know.... In a +monastery, you understand.... The monk who distributes alms and that +sort of thing." + +"Oh, then it is a mediæval story!" cried Mabel. "How delightful!" + +"No, modern," corrected Mr. Hopworthy. + +"Modern in setting, though mediæval in spirit," said Mr. Ferris, taking +off his hat. + +"Ah, that, indeed!" breathed Mr. Hopworthy. "I shall not soon forget +your opening description; that picture of the old cathedral, lighted +only by the far, faint flicker of an occasional taper, burning before +some shrined saint. I can see him now, _Ignatius_, the young monk, as he +moves in silence from one to another of the alms-boxes, gathering into +his leathern bag the offerings that have been deposited by the +faithful." + +"I think he had a light," suggested the author of short stories, who +was listening, critically. + +"Of course; a flaming torch." + +"How sweet of him!" Mabel murmured, and Mr. Hopworthy went on. + +"There were twelve boxes--were there not?--upon as many pillars, and in +each box, in addition to the customary handful of copper _sous_, there +lay, as I recall it, a silver coin----" + +"You will perceive the symbolism," the author whispered. + +"It is perfect," sighed Mabel. + +"Never had such a thing occurred before," continued Mr. Hopworthy, who +appeared to know the story very well, "and in the solitude of his cell, +_Ignatius_ sat for hours contemplating the riches that had so strangely +come into his hand. His first thought was of the poor, to whom, of +right, the alms belonged; but, when he recalled the avarice of _The +Abbot_, his heart misgave him----" + +"Rather a striking situation, I thought," remarked the writer. "Go on a +little further, please." + +"I wish I could," said Mr. Hopworthy, "but this is where your keen +analysis comes in, your irresistible logic. I confess you went a shade +beyond my radius of thought." + +"Perhaps," admitted the other. "Very likely." But he had now caught the +spirit of his own production, and, turning to his neighbor, he went on +to explain: + +"My purpose was to present a problem, to suggest a conflict of emotions, +quite in the manner of Huysmans. Should _The Abbot_, who is but the type +of sordid wisdom, be consulted, or should _The Almoner_, symbolizing +self, obey the higher call of elementary impulse?" + +"And which did _Ignatius_ do?" Mabel asked. + +"I fear you fail to catch my meaning," said the author. "It is the +soul-struggle we are analyzing----" + +"But he must have come to some conclusion?" + +"Not necessarily," said Mr. Ferris, gravely. "A soul-struggle is +continuous, it goes on----" Mr. Ferris waved his white hand toward +infinity. + +"But did not _Ignatius_ decide to put the money where it would do the +most good?" inquired Mr. Hopworthy. + +"The phrase is yours," responded Mr. Ferris, "but it conveys my meaning +dimly." + +"As I recall the story," the other went on, "he resolved to sacrifice +his own prejudices to the service of his fellow-creatures. But, when he +thought of all who stood in need--the peasants tilling the fields, the +sailors on the sea, the soldiers in the camp--he decided that it would +be better to confine the benefit to one deserving object." + +"A very sensible decision," Mabel opined, and Mr. Ferris muttered: + +"Yes, that was my idea." + +As the voices of the garden came to them on the summer breeze, he made a +movement to consult his watch. + +"You see my little problem," he observed. "The rest is immaterial." + +"But I so liked the part where the young monk, filled with his noble +purpose, stole from the monastery by night," said Mr. Hopworthy. "Ah, +there was a touch of realism." + +"I'm glad you fancied it," replied the author, relapsing into silence. + +Mabel tapped the gravel with her foot; it is strange how audible a +trifling sound becomes at times. + +"Please tell me what he did," she begged. "I never heard a story in +which so little happened." + +The writer of short stories bit his full red lip, and sat erect. + +"The young monk waited till the house was wrapped in sleep," he said, +almost defiantly, it seemed. "Then, drawing the great bolt, he went out +into the night. The harvest moon was in the sky, and----" + +"It rained, I think," suggested Mr. Hopworthy. + +"No matter if it did," rejoined the other. "Unmindful of the elements, +he wound his cowl about him, and pressed on, fearlessly, into the +forest, hearing nothing, seeing nothing. Mile after mile he strode--and +strode--and strode--until--until--it was time to return----" + +"You forget the peasant festival," prompted Mr. Hopworthy. + +"Festival?" said Mr. Ferris. "Ah, that was a mere episode, intended to +give a sense of contrast." + +"Of course," Mr. Hopworthy assented. "How frivolous beside his own +austere life appeared these rustic revels. How calm, by contrast, was +the quiet of the cloister----" + +"Yes," Mr. Ferris took up the screed, "and, as from a distance he +watched their clumsy merriment, he--he--he----" + +"He determined to have just one dance for luck," assisted Mr. Hopworthy. + +Perhaps the author, thus hearing the story from another, detected here +some flaw of logic, for he did not proceed at once, although Miss +Dunbar waited with the most encouraging interest. The momentary pause +was put to flight by Mr. Hopworthy. + +"Ah, Zola never did anything more daring," he declared. "Even Zola might +have hesitated to make _Ignatius_ change clothes with the intoxicated +soldier, and leaping into the middle of the ballroom, shout that every +glass must be filled to the brim." + +"Hold on!" gasped Mr. Ferris. "There must be some mistake. I swear I +never wrote anything like that in my life." + +"But you have admitted it!" the other cried. "You cannot conceal it from +us now. You are grand. You are sublime!" + +"I deny it absolutely," returned Mr. Ferris. + +"Please stop discussing, and let me hear the rest," Mabel pouted. "Do go +on, Mr. Ferris." + +"I can't," said Mr. Ferris, sadly. "My story has been garbled by the +printer." + +"But the waltz," urged Mr. Hopworthy. "Surely, that waltz was yours." + +Perhaps once more the irresistible logic of events became apparent, +for, with an effort, Mr. Ferris said: + +"Oh, yes, that waltz was mine. Enraptured by its strains, and giddy with +the fumes of wine, _The Almoner_ floated in a dream of sensuous delight +till suddenly he recalled--suddenly he recalled----" + +"If you will pardon another interruption," put in Mr. Hopworthy, "he did +nothing of the sort. Suddenly, as you must remember, word was brought +that _The Abbot_ was dead, and that _Ignatius_ had been elected in his +place." + +"You spoil my climax, sir," the author cried. "Dashing the wine cup from +his lips, _Ignatius_ then rushed into the night----" + +"But he could not find the soldier anywhere," Mr. Hopworthy interposed. + +"Why should he want to find the confounded soldier?" demanded the +narrator, fiercely. + +"Why, to get his cowl, of course." + +"Splendid!" exclaimed Mabel, clapping her hands. + +"He--he----" the author stammered, and again the other lent a friendly +tongue to say: + +"_Ignatius_ returned to the monastery at once. And what should he +discover there but _The Soldier_, seated in the chair of office, +presiding at the council. But, see here, old chap, perhaps you had +better finish your own story yourself?" + +"Sir!" cried the author, springing to his feet. "I detect your perfidy, +and I call this about the shabbiest trick one gentleman ever attempted +to play upon another. I shall not hesitate to denounce you far and wide +as one capable of the smallest meanness!" + +"That is what _The Almoner_ told _The Soldier_," Mr. Hopworthy explained +to Mabel, in a whisper, but the other, becoming almost violent, went on: + +"You are unfit, sir, to associate with people of refinement, and, when I +meet you alone, it will give me a lively satisfaction to repeat the +observation!" + +"That is what _The Soldier_ replied to _The Almoner_," Mr. Hopworthy +again explained. But the other gentleman had lifted his hat, and was +moving rapidly toward the striped tent, where ices were to be had. + +"I shall never forgive him for leaving the story unfinished," announced +the lady of the bench. "And, don't you think his manner toward the end +was rather strange?" + +Mr. Hopworthy sighed, and shook his head. + +"Those magazine men are all a trifle odd," he said. "Does not that +parasol fatigue your hand?" + +"Yes, you may hold it, if you like," she answered. "I am glad everybody +does not tell stories." + + + + +THE DEAD MAN'S CHEST + + +One May morning in the brave year 1594, Mistress Betty Hodges, from the +threshold of the narrowest house in the narrowest of the narrow streets +in the ancient parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, observed with more +than passing interest the movements of a gentleman in black. + +"Whist, neighbor!" she called out to Mistress Judd, whose portly person +well-nigh filled a kindred doorway just across the street. "Yonder +stranger should be by every sign in quest of lodgings, and by my +horoscope this is a day most favorable for affairs of business. I pray +thee, get thy knitting, lest he take us for no better than a pair of +idle gossips." + +"In faith," retorted Mistress Judd, folding her arms complacently after +a side glance in the loiterer's direction, "an he should ever lodge +with thee let us hope his shillings prove more nimble than his feet." + +The gentleman indeed advanced with much deliberation, pausing from time +to time to look about him as a man who balances advantages and +disadvantages one against the other. It was a quaint old-mannered +thoroughfare he moved in; a crooked street of overhanging eaves and +jutting gable ends which nearly met against the sky; a shadowy, sunless, +damp, ill-savored street, paved with round pebbles and divided in the +middle by a trickling stream of unattractive water. For London, still in +happy, dirty infancy, had yet to learn her lessons at the hands of those +grim teachers, plague and fire. + +"A proper man enough!" Mistress Judd added, "though I'll warrant +over-cautious and of no great quality. To me he looks a traveling +leech." + +"Better a country student of divinity," suggested Mistress Hodges. + +"Or better, a minor cleric, or at best some writing-master," Mistress +Judd opined. + +"Please God, then he can read," rejoined her neighbor, already debating +within herself a small advance of rent. "Mayhap he might acquaint me +whether those rolls of paper left by Master Christopher in his oaken +chest be worth the ten shillings he died owing me." + +"An they would fetch as many pence," sniffed Mistress Judd, "our master +poet had long ago resolved them into Malmsey." + +"Nay, speak not harshly of the dead," protested Mistress Hodges, +conveying furtively a corner of her apron to one eye. + +"Marry, if Master Kit did sometimes sing o' nights 'twas but to keep the +watch awake. I'd wipe my shutter clean and willingly to hear his merry +catch again. Ah, he was ever free with money when he had it. And 'twas a +pleasure to see him with his bottle. In faith, he'd speak to it and kiss +it as a woman would her child." + +"And kiss it he did once too often, to my thinking," murmured Mistress +Judd unsympathetically, "the night he got to brawling in the street and +met his death." + +"Marry, he was no brawler," Mistress Hodges protested warmly, "but ever +cheerfullest when most in drink. They were thieving knaves who set upon +him, and, God be good to sinners, ran him through the heart before the +poor young man could so much as recite a couplet to prove himself a +poet." + +"How thinkst thou poetry would save him?" Mistress Judd demanded curtly. + +"Marry, come up! What thief would kill a poet for his purse?" cried +Mistress Hodges. "Quick, neighbor, get thy knitting!" she added +hurriedly, and catching up a pewter plate began to polish with her apron +as the stranger, attracted by their chatter, quickened his pace. + +He was a slight man, apparently of thirty or thereabout, with deep-set, +penetrating eyes and a lean face ending in the short, sharp, pointed +beard in fashion at the time. + +"Give you good-morrow, dames," he said, when within speaking distance; +"can you direct me to some proper lodging here-about?" + +Mistress Hodges dropped a deeper courtesy to draw attention to herself +as the person of most importance. + +"In truth an't please you, sir," she said, "'tis my good fortune to have +this moment ready for your worship the fairest chambers to be had in all +the town at four and six the week. Gentility itself could ask no better, +for doth not the Lord Mayor live around the corner in his newly +purchased Crosby Hall, the tallest house in London, and near at hand do +not the gardens of Sir John Gresham stretch from Bishopsgate to Broad +Street like a park? And if one would seek recreation, 'tis not five +minutes to Cornhill, which is amusing as a fair o' pleasant evenings, +with the jugglers and peddlers and goldsmiths and----" + +"Ah, by my faith," the stranger interrupted gravely, "I should seek +elsewhere, for I am not a man born under Sol, that loveth honor, nor +under Jupiter, that loveth business, for the contemplative planet +carrieth me away wholly." + +"An you be disposed toward contemplation," interposed Mistress Hodges, +quickly, "there can be found no purer place in London for such diversion +than is my second story back. From thence one may contemplate at will +either the almshouse gardens and the woodland beyond Houndsditch, or the +turrets of the Tower itself, in winter when the leaves are gone." + +"Please Heaven the leaves are thick at present!" said the stranger with +a grim half smile. "Nevertheless, I have a mind to look from your back +windows. The almshouse gardens may at least teach one resignation." + +"Enter an't please you, sir," replied the landlady with a low obeisance. + +The stranger made a close inspection of the chamber, peering into +cupboards, testing the bed and stools and chairs, and finally pausing +before a small oak box secluded in a corner. + +"'Tis but a chest of papers left by my last lodger, one Master +Christopher," Mistress Hodges explained, adding, "A poet, sir, an't +please you, who was slain by highwaymen, and I know not if his lines be +fitted for honest ears to hear, though, an one might believe it, they +have been spoken in the public play-house. Think you," she added, +raising the lid of the chest to disclose a dozen manuscripts or more, +bound together with bits of broken doublet lacing, "the lot would bring +as much as ten shillings at the rag fair?" + +The stranger laughed and shook his head. + +"'Tis a great price for any dead man's thoughts," he said, taking up a +package at random and hastily turning over the leaves, while Mistress +Hodges regarded him anxiously. His interest deepened as he read, and +presently his eyes devoured page after page, oblivious of the other's +presence. + +"In truth," he said at length, "there be lines not wholly without +merit." + +"And pray you, sir, what is the matter they set forth?" the landlady +ventured to inquire. + +"This seems the story of a ghost returned to earth to make discovery of +his murder--" the stranger was beginning to explain, but Mistress Hodges +checked him. + +"Marry!" she cried, "such things be profanations and heresy against the +Protestant religion, which Heaven defend. Marry, 'twould go ill with the +poor woman who should offer such idolatries for sale." + +More protestations followed, prompted, no doubt, by fear lest disloyalty +to the dominant party be charged against her; to prove her detestation +of the documents she declared her purpose to burn the last of them +unread. + +"Still better, shift responsibility to me," suggested the stranger, +smiling grimly at her zeal. "Sell me the lot for two shillings and +sixpence, and my word for it the transaction shall be kept a secret. +The reading of these idle fancies will serve as a relaxation from my own +employment." + +"Marry, they shall be yours and willingly," cried the woman, glad to be +rid of dangerous property on such generous terms. And it was thus that +the stranger became possessor of the chest of manuscripts. His +bargaining for the lodgings proved him a man of thrift to the point of +meanness, a quality not to be despised in lodgers, for, as Mistress +Hodges often said to Mistress Judd, "Gentlemen are ever most liberal who +least mean to pay." In answer to reasonable inquiries he would say no +more than, "My predecessor was known as Master Christopher; let me be, +therefore, Master Francis, a poor scholar who promises only to take +himself off before his purse is empty." + +The new lodger entered into possession of his chamber on the afternoon +of the day on which he saw it first. His luggage, brought thither by two +porters on a single barrow, and consisting chiefly of books and +manuscripts, proved him to be the humble student he had represented +himself, and in a week his neighbors were agreed in rating him a rather +commonplace recluse. His days were spent in reverie by the open window +or in writing at the parchment-littered table. If he stirred abroad at +all it was but for an hour in the long twilight after supper, and his +candle rarely burned later than ten o'clock. It was not until a +fortnight had gone by that Mistress Hodges had the satisfaction of +announcing a visitor. + +"Come in!" cried Master Francis, responding to her knock at his chamber +door, and not a little surprised by a summons so unusual, for the +remnants of his supper had been removed, and he was himself preparing +for his evening stroll. + +"A gentleman attends below, an't please you, sir," she announced, +entering hurriedly. + +"Impossible!" her lodger protested, "for how should a visitor inquire +for one who has no name?" + +"By your description, an't please you, sir," replied the woman. "He +drew you to the life. By my faith, there could be no mistake, and when +he said you might be known as Master Francis how could I but admit him? +Grand gentleman that he is, with a servant at his heels and half a score +of varlets waiting within call!" + +Master Francis bit his lip and moved impatiently about the room. + +"Go tell this grand gentleman that you were wrong," he said. "Tell him I +was requested out to supper at half an hour before seven. Tell him what +falsehood slips most easily from your tongue, and as you are a woman, +tell it truthfully." + +"'Twould not avail, for even now your visitor, grown impatient, mounts +the stair," replied the hostess, while a heavy footfall coming every +moment nearer testified to the truth of her assertion. + +"Then off with you and let us be alone," commanded Master Francis, +stopping resolutely in his walk, while Mistress Hodges in the doorway +found herself thrust unceremoniously aside to give place to a dignified +man in middle life. The visitor's dress was black, relieved only by a +broad white ruff, yet of so rich a quality that the appointments of the +room descended in the scale from homeliness to shabbiness by contrast. +But apparently he concerned himself no more with the apartment than with +Mistress Hodges. + +"How now, nephew?" he began at once. "What means this hiding like a +hedgehog in a hole?" + +Master Francis bowed with almost servile deference and clasped his +hands, making at the same time a gesture with his foot intended to +convey to Mistress Hodges an intimation that she was free to go. + +"My uncle, this is far too great an honor that you pay me," he said, +when the landlady had closed the door behind her. + +"Odsblood! For once, I hear the truth from you. Why have you left your +chambers in Gray's Inn for this?" the other answered with a movement of +the nostrils as though the whole environment was comprehended in a +whiff of Mistress Hodges' mutton broth. + +"In truth, most gracious kinsman," the younger man rejoined, "since my +exclusion from the Court some certain greasy bailiffs have favored me +with their company a trifle over often, nor had I otherwhere to go while +waiting for a fitting opportunity to recall myself to your lordship's +memory." + +"And pray you, to what end?" the other asked impatiently. + +"You are not ignorant, uncle, of the state of my poor fortune," said the +scholar. + +"No," was the answer, "nor can you be forgetful, nephew, of my efforts +in the past to mend that fortune." + +"For all of which believe me truly grateful," responded Master Francis +with a touch of irony. "'Tis to your gracious favor that I owe my +appointment to the reversion of the Clerkship of the Star Chamber, worth +sixteen hundred pounds a year, provided that I, a weak man, survive in +poverty a strong affluence. 'Tis like another man's ground buttaling +upon his house, which may mend his prospect but does not fill his barn." + +The other, crossing to the open window, half seated himself upon the +sill, folding his arms while fixing disapproving eyes on his nephew's +face. + +"This attitude becomes you not at all," he said. "Through me you were +returned to Parliament, and through me you might have been advanced to +profitable office had you not seen fit to antagonize the Ministry, +opposing, for the sake of paltry public favour, that four years' subsidy +of which the Treasury stood in dire need to meet the Popish plots." + +"I sought to shield the Ministry and Crown from public disapproval," +replied Master Francis. "The country in my judgment was not able to +endure the tax." + +"'Twas most presumptuous to set up your judgment against that of your +betters," said the other. "Your part is plain. This act of yours must +be forgotten. It must be known that you have once for all abandoned +public life for study. Publish some learned disquisition upon what you +will. Absent yourself from town, and in a twelvemonth, perhaps, or less +if things go well----" + +"A twelvemonth!" cried Master Francis. "Unless my pockets be replenished +I shall have starved to death by early summer." + +The gentleman upon the window-sill remained for a space silent with +knitted brows. Presently he said: + +"I shall arrange to pay you an allowance, small, but sufficient for your +needs, upon condition that you go at once to France, where you already +have acquaintances." + +"It may be you are right, my lord," responded Master Francis, "but it +suits my humor not at all to exile myself, and before accepting your +offer grant me permission to speak to the Earl of Essex. He has the +favor of the Queen." + +The other laughed a scornful laugh, and rising deliberately drew on a +glove he had been holding in one hand. + +"Enough!" he said. "Depend on Essex's favor with the Queen and follow +him to the Tower in good time." + +"But, uncle, give me your kind permission at least to speak with him." + +"My kind permission and my blessing!" the uncle answered suavely, moving +toward the door. With his hand upon the latch he stood to add, across +his shoulder, "You are behind the times in news, nephew. Three days ago +my Lord of Essex departed somewhat suddenly for his estates--upon a +hunting expedition, it is said, though beldame Rumor will insist that +our most gracious Queen hath turned the icy eye at last upon his +fawning." + +"A morning frost!" cried Master Francis with a gesture. "A frost that +the recurring sun of pity turns full soon to tender dew. But 'tis a +chill of which to take advantage. Let me but follow my peevish lord to +his retirement, lock in my humble cause with his, and in due season +claim the meet reward of faithful service." + +His manner had grown so earnest that the other turned to listen, albeit +with a smile of contempt. + +"Look you, uncle," the younger man went on, "were I to start at once, +travelling in modest state, yet as befitting the nephew of the Lord +Treasurer of England, well mounted and attended by a single man-servant, +the whole adventure might be managed for a matter of one hundred +pounds." + +"Good!" cried the other with suspiciously ready acquiescence. "Thou art +in verity a diplomat. By all means put your fortunes to the test, and +when you have, acquaint me with the issue." + +He turned and once more laid a hand upon the latch. + +"But," protested Master Francis, "I have still to find the hundred +pounds----" + +"A riddle for diplomacy to solve!" replied the Lord Treasurer of +England, laughing sardonically. "I can tell you no more than that you +shall not find it in my purse!" And so saying, he strode from the room, +leaving the door wide open. + +For many minutes Master Francis paced the floor, muttering to himself, +now angry imprecations at his own folly, now curses on the relentless +arrogance of the Lord Treasurer. As the long twilight of the season fell +he caught up his wide-brimmed hat and hurried from the house. + +He took his way through narrow winding streets, and after several +turnings came at length to one much wider, a thoroughfare lined with +little shops, whose owners when not occupied with customers stood on +their thresholds soliciting the patronage of passers-by. + +"What do you lack?" they cried; "hats, shoes, or hosiery; gloves, ruffs, +or farthingales?" each setting forth the value of his wares in frantic +effort to outshout competitors. Along the pavement worthy citizens +sauntered with wives and sweethearts, or stood in interested groups +about some mountebank or maker of music performing upon several +ill-tuned instruments at once. On a patch of trodden grass young men +played noisy games of bowls until a gilded coach in passing wantonly +destroyed their goal. Here a bout with single-stick was in progress, +there a contest with bare fists which must have grown serious had not +the watch arrived in time to separate the belligerents with their pikes. +But the centre of most interest was a seafaring man who smoked a +long-stemmed pipe with rather ostentatious unconcern. The men regarded +him with furtive admiration, the women disapprovingly, while children +ran to catch a whiff of the strange aromatic scent. When he blew puffs +of vapor from his nostrils everybody laughed. + +Master Francis, moving hastily aside to make way for the smoker and his +escort, came into collision with a man of his own age, whose broad +good-humored face showed due appreciation of the scene. + +"What think you, friend?" the stranger asked, laughing. "Will this new +savagery become an institution? Have we been at such pains to banish +smoke from our churches only to turn our heads into censers? Mayhap this +be another Popish plot?" + +"It seems to me a bit of arrant folly," Master Francis answered somewhat +listlessly, "and as such, certain to become the rage." + +"They tell us it will prolong the life," went on the other, "for it is +well known a herring when smoked outlasts a fresh one." + +"Say rather he who smokes will live the longer because the wise die +young," retorted Master Francis, pleased by the conceit. + +"At least," remarked the stranger, "the fashion will make trade for +fairy chimneysweeps." + +Some further conversation followed naturally, for Master Francis, weary +of his own society, was in the mood to welcome any companionship, and, +moreover, the newcomer, who seemed a man of understanding, met another's +eyes too frankly to leave the question of his honesty in doubt. They +spoke of tobacco as a possible feature in social life, and both agreed +that a whiff of the new herb might be an interesting experiment. + +"Let us go then to the Bull," the stranger suggested, "where in a small +room behind the tap one may smoke a pipe for threepence under the +tutelage of this very seaman, who acquired the art in our Virginia +colonies." + +"Agreed!" cried Master Francis willingly; though at another time he +might have rejected such an offer. "'Twill be an experience to +remember." + +"Marry," replied the other, "'tis he who lags behind the cavalcade who +must take the dust. For my part I like not to be outfaced by any idle +boaster who may lisp--'Ah, 'tis an art to keep the bowl aglow! Ah, +shouldst see me fill my mouth with smoke, and blow it out in rings! +Odd's bodkin, the Duke himself said bravo!'" + +The stranger's mimicry of the mincing gallants of the day was to the +life, and as they turned their steps toward the tavern, Master Francis +laughed with satisfaction at finding himself in such good company. When +presently his companion quoted Horace, he ventured to inquire at what +school he had read the classics. + +"At none," was the reply. "Let those who will perform the threshing. I +am content to pick up kernels here and there like a sleek rat in a +farmer's barn. Your tippling scholar of the taproom will set forth a +rasher of lean Xenophon with every cup of sack, and as for +churchmen--they be all unnatural sons who so bedeck their mother tongue +in scraps and shreds of foreign phrase, the poor beldame walks abroad as +motley mantled as a fiddler's wanton." + +"But surely--_Justitia eum cuique distribuit_--as Cicero hath it," +Master Francis cried in protest against such heresy. "You will not deny +that an apt quotation lends grace to our too barren English." + +"'Tis a thin sauce to a rich meat," replied the other; adding modestly, +"I am, an't please you, sir, but one who, having little Latin and less +Greek, must make a shift with what is left to him." + +"Your speech belies you, sir," retorted Master Francis courteously, "for +it proclaims a man of nice discrimination. I could swear you are a +doctor of the law." + +"Then would you be forsworn," replied the other, laughing, "for, by the +grace of God, I am near kinsman to the dancing poodle of a country fair. +Come any afternoon at three o'clock to the Curtain Play-house at +Shoreditch, and there for sixpence you may see my antics." + +"Ah, then you are a player!" Master Francis cried, well pleased. + +"For the lack of a more honest calling," his companion answered with a +gesture as who should say, "Tell me where can be found an honester?" + +"Then we are in like case," laughed Master Francis. "_Fere totus mundus +exercet histrionem_, says Phædrus; or as one might put it bluntly, 'All +the world's a stage.'" + +"Methinks our English hath the better jingle," commented the player. +"Would that some wordsmith might e'en recoin these ancient mintages to +fill the meager purses of our mouths!" + +They had come now to the broad low archway leading to the courtyard of +the Bull, and passing in beneath its shadow, Master Francis recalled the +plays he had witnessed there in boyhood. + +"Ah," said his companion, "'tis not so long since we poor players hung +our single rag of curtain where we might. Now we have playhouses of our +own, and when the servants of the Lord Chamberlain shall occupy the +Globe at Bankside, you shall see how plays may be presented. But _Navita +de ventis de tauris narrat orator_, as thy gossip Propertius hath it, +though I like best the homely adage, 'A tinker will talk of his +trade.'" + +They found the seaman in the little room behind the tap, a veritable +high priest of some mystic cult in dignity. He bowed a hearty welcome to +the visitors and presently made clear to them the true relationship +between his pot of dried tobacco and the earthen pipe bowls at the ends +of hollow reeds. He cautioned them to have a care, when the coal of fire +was applied, not to draw the smoke into their mouths too suddenly and +fall to coughing. He was a swarthy man, with brass rings in his ears and +long hair braided in a queue behind, and his account of the savage king +held captive until the inner secrets of the art of smoking were revealed +by way of ransom was in itself a yarn well worth his fee. + +"I pray you, gentlemen, hold not the pipe too lightly lest it be overset +and mar your garments," he instructed them. "And, by your leave, it must +be grasped between the thumb and second finger, nicely balanced that +the forearm grow not weary. Should the brain become afflicted by the +vapor it is well to pause and inhale some breaths of common air. Extend +the little finger carelessly and compose the face as though the flavor +were agreeable, for to spit and grimace at the pipe were most +inelegant." + +"Out upon you for an arrant knave!" cried Master Francis, springing to +his feet, exasperated by the solemn affectation of superior wisdom. +"'Tis but an indifferent entertainment at the best, and as for the art, +I know of none too great a fool to compass it." + +He had grown a trifle pale about the lips and his nerves tingled. + +"Nay, then," protested his fellow investigator, "were the taste less +vile and the savor less like a smithy 'twould make an excellent good +physic for one afflicted with too much health." + +The sailor was a man of evil disposition, who had not only sailed with +Raleigh's godless mariners but, had the truth been known, in other +service still less creditable. Hearing his enterprise thus flouted, his +anger rose, and with a mighty oath he turned upon his clients. + +"A pest upon such horse boys!" he exclaimed. "Get back to the stables +whose smells best suit you. Leave elegant accomplishments to your +betters." + +Master Francis, grown fearful lest his knees give way beneath him, and +blinded by a film which swam before his eyes, moved unsteadily toward +the door, half throwing, half dropping his pipe upon the oaken table, +where the red clay bowl fell shattered in a dozen fragments. + +"Hold!" cried the sailor. "Not another step, my gallant, till you have +paid me ten shillings for my broken pipe." + +He sprang upon the slighter man and, grasping him by the shoulders, +would have done him violence had not the other smoker interposed a +doubled sinewy fist beneath his irate nose and bade him let go his hold. +As the command was not instantly obeyed, a sharp blow followed. + +"Beshrew my blood!" the pirate roared, turning to strike at random. + +"Gadslid!" returned the player, facing him and bringing both fists into +action with such good effect that presently the table groaned beneath +the weight of the struggling freebooter, while pipes, jug, and precious +weed went flying. + +The uproar brought the company from the taproom at a run, customers, +servants, the drawer, the pot-boy, a brace of hostlers, until the small +room filled to suffocation. Swords were drawn, cudgels brandished, above +the din the seaman's oaths boomed like the cannon of a sloop of war in +action. + +"Good friends," the player bawled out, springing to a stool to command +attention, "behold to what a pass the smoking of this weed will bring a +man. I pray you bind this fellow fast and get him safe to Bedlam before +some mischief happens." + +Master Francis sank down into the corner of a high-backed seat, too ill +for much concern with what passed about him, and it was not till some +moments later, in the open air and propped against a wall, that +consciousness returned. His champion in the late encounter stood beside +him. + +"Sir," said the student, "it is to you I owe my preservation, though, by +my honor, I should have cut a better figure in the skirmish had not the +vapors of that vile weed overpowered me. How made you our escape?" + +"Even as Æneas with Anchises on his back," replied the other, laughing. +"'Twas high time to take ourselves away, being but two against so many, +though, by my faith, I've rarely seen a merrier opening for a game of +skull cracking." + +The player, whether actuated by humor or generosity, seemed disposed to +make light of the whole affair. Grasping his companion's arm he +supported that gentleman's still uncertain steps in the direction of the +lodging-house of Mistress Hodges. He spoke of broils and frays as though +such pastimes were of every-day occurrence with men of spirit, whether +the sport were putting a pinnace crew of drunken sailors to their heels, +or by some trickery outwitting the watch. At the door Master Francis +could do no less in hospitality than invite so stanch an ally to enter. + +"Come to my chambers and rest awhile," he said, adding regretfully, +"though they be plain indeed, and offer no better entertainment than my +poor company." + +"Good cheer enough," replied the other, stepping back for a better view +of the house. "By my estates in Chancery!" he cried, "yon bristling roof +that sets its lance against the very buckler of the moon hath met mine +eyes before. 'Twas here, unless my memory be a lying kitchen wench, our +noble Christopher did lodge, the prince and potentate of pewter pots." + +"And knew you Master Christopher?" asked Master Francis with increasing +interest. + +"Marry, I knew him well," replied the player. "Marry, a poet. Marry, a +rimester to couple you a couplet while your Flemish fighter quaffs a +mug of sack, and pay the reckoning with a sonnet to his landlord's +honesty. 'The first line,' he would say, 'shall tell the weight of it.' +And here he did set down a naught. 'So likewise with the second, which +doth sing its breadth; the third proclaims its depth'--another naught, +and thus until the measure of the verse was writ. 'Now add them for +thyself,' he bids the rum-fed Malmsey monger, 'and by the thirst of +Tantalus, the sum shall blazon both thine honor and my debt.'" + +"Methinks 'twas but a scurvy trick," protested Master Francis, laughing +tolerantly. "What said the host to it?" + +"In faith," replied the player, "he found the meter falling short and +clamored for money. 'Money!' quoth Kit. 'Think well on't! for if, as men +of reason all agree, naught is better than money, you are overpaid in +getting naught!'" + +"His was a pretty wit indeed," assented Master Francis. "Enter!" he +urged with a gesture of hospitality. + +"Nay!" cried the other. "As I am a just man it is perilous to enter +into a writer's castle where one without offense is often lashed with +lyrics or--what is more fearful--pilloried in prose. And furthermore, +this Hebe of all Hodges, I have heard, this Helen of Houndsditch, hath a +stout broomstick hid behind her door for players," he added, making a +pretense of looking about him warily as he followed his host up the +stairs, Master Francis going first to light a candle with a flint and +steel. + +"Come in," he said as the flame flickered up, "and welcome to my +chambers, though this poor farthing dip is little better than a glowworm +that doth serve to make the darkness visible." + +"So shines a good deed in a naughty world," returned the other, throwing +himself into a seat. + +"You are yourself a poet!" Master Francis cried, "for you temper the +cold iron of rough speech with oil of metaphor." + +"Nay," said the player, "I am no rimester, but like a scissors-grinder +I sometimes put a keener edge on better men's inventions. Faith," he +continued, looking about him with approval, "I knew not that our Kit was +housed so well. This is a very bower in which to woo the Muse. Friend, +had I your table and your chair, your inkwell and your wit, it would not +take me long to be the owner of one hundred pounds." + +"One hundred pounds?" gasped Master Francis. "Believe me, it is not from +inkwells that such miraculous drafts are made." He waved his hand toward +the scattered papers on the table. "Look," he said, "it hath taken me a +year to make that much fair paper valueless." + +"You waste your time," replied the player lightly. "Instead of learned +discourses, treatises, and theses, in which our age will not believe and +the next most certainly prove false, you should devise a mask, a +mummery, a play to set the groundlings' munching mouths agape, and make +the gentle ladies of the boxes mince and murmur to their cavaliers, +'Ah, me, 'tis such a sweet death! Oh, la! and 'twould be pure to be so +undone!'" + +"A play!" exclaimed the scholar in surprise. "That's a task for poets, +not for men of learning." + +"Say not so!" the other interposed. "For learning is but poetry turned +prude. Coax her with kisses, cozen her with a sigh, give her a broidered +girdle and a fan, and call me Cerberus if thy staid Minerva will not +tread a merry measure to Orpheus's lute." + +"An' should she play the wanton thus for me, how should advantage +follow?" Master Francis asked with growing interest, as he leaned +forward in the candle-light to catch the answer. + +"'Tis simplicity itself," replied the player. "Look you, this new-built +play-house of the Globe is shortly to be opened, and the town is at the +very finger pricks of curiosity to behold its marvels. The players +stand like greyhounds in their gyves, the counters wait the welcome +buffets of the coin, and Burbage, madder than a hare in March, bounds +doubling on his track hither and thither to find a play." + +"Sure London hath as many playwrights as a cheese hath mites," commented +Master Francis. + +"True," the other answered, "but look you, here's a case when mite and +wright agree not. For one is mad, and one hath lost his cunning, and one +will spend in drink the money given him for ink, and Kit, the master of +them all, is writing comedies for shades in Pluto's courtyard. In troth, +there seems no better market for a hundred pounds than 'twere a +huckster's hat of rotten cherries." + +"An hundred pounds!" gasped Master Francis. "The sum doth spell for me +ambition gratified." + +"Ah, ha, my lean scholar!" cried the player. "Is not the matter worth +considering?" + +"Marry, it is," admitted Master Francis, "if one had but the fancy." + +"Oh, as to that," returned the other, "I'll warrant when your blood ran +hot from the full caldron of lip-scalding youth, thy fancy played you +many a pretty mask, for young imagination dreams more dreams than waking +age doth have the wit to write. These conjure up again, unbar your +closet, unlock your treasure chest--" Here Master Francis gave a start, +but the player went on heedlessly: "By my faith, yon rascal coffer well +might be the grave wherein the best of thee lies buried." + +He made a motion of the hand toward the box of the departed Christopher, +and Master Francis's visage in the candle-light turned pale. + +"What ails you, man?" the other inquired. "Have you a memory of that +last tobacco pipe?" + +"Sir," cried Master Francis, rising slowly to his feet, "is it the truth +that a play can be sold for so much money?" + +"In the Queen's coin," the other answered. "So that it be worth the +playing, so it be such a play as Kit could have written." + +Master Francis, taking up the candle, moved toward the chest. + +"I'll take you at your word," he said. "Like one who creeps with +shrouded lanthorn and with muffled spade to force the moldering hinges +of the gate of Death, I'll bring you back a play." + +He stooped, and lifting the lid seized the first manuscript that met his +hand and waved it triumphantly at his companion sitting on the table. + +"A play!" cried the other, catching at the roll. "Ah, then I guessed +aright. 'Tis a dull writer, fitted best for slumber-wooing churchmen's +homilies, who has not in his time chucked blushing Thalia under her fair +chin.... What have we here?" he demanded, spreading the pages open +before him. "A play, indeed! A comedy, i' faith! Gadslid, a tragedy! A +miracle of masterpieces, a masterpiece of miracles! 'Twill be the talk +of London town and in the ages yet to come, when stately playhouses +shall stand where now the painted savage cleaves his enemy, your play +shall win the coy and cautious coin of nations yet unborn, your fame--" + +"Peace, peace!" protested Master Francis, with a smile that would have +done credit to his uncle, the Lord Treasurer, "you are like a paid +praisemonger who bawls loudest to extol the book he has not read." + +"'Tis my prophetic soul," returned the player merrily, and waving the +scroll above his head he went on: "Hear ye, hear ye, good servants of +the Queen, here's meat for your digestions, matter for your minds; +here's wit and wisdom, prose and poetry, to make ye swear that brave Kit +Marlowe walks the earth again.... Come, gossip, write your name upon the +title sheet. You are too modest." + +"My name I may not sell," said Master Francis, holding back. + +"Unnatural parent!" roared the other. "Would you thus turn your +offspring loose upon the world without parentage?" + +"I'll not be father to a brat so ill-begotten," replied Master Francis. + +"How shall I answer then to Burbage should he ask the writer?" demanded +the player. + +"As you may," returned Master Francis with a shrug. "An't please you, +say it was yourself. I care not, so my name be not revealed." + +"'Twill be a jest," the player cried, laughing, "a jest which, should +the play find favor, may be at any time corrected." + +And taking up a pen he dipped it in the ink-horn to write across the +page: + + + THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET + BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE + + +"A proper title, surely!" commented the scholar, looking across his +shoulder. "Your name, friend Will, should lure the public eye more +cunningly than that of Francis Bacon." + + + + +THE CARHART MYSTERY + + +The conversation had grown reminiscent, as conversations will when old +acquaintance stirs its coffee after dinner and the blue wreaths of good +tobacco-smoke float ceilingward, like pleasant specters, in the subdued +light of the shaded lamps. + +Barton and I, in following back some winding paths of memory now +well-nigh overgrown, were in danger of forgetting our good manners till +Willoughby reminded us of his presence. + +"I might as well embrace this opportunity for a nap," he said, +stretching his long legs to the fire, and sinking back into one of +Barton's most engaging armchairs. "Just wake me up when you fellows hit +upon a subject I know something of. I happen to have been living in +India during the time the thrilling tea-and-tennis episodes you recall +so fondly were taking place, and, to tell the truth, they bore me." + +Barton laughed. + +"Oh, we have done with recollections, and now you shall have a chance to +bore us with an Indian tale or so by way of recompense," he said, with +the candor permissible only between men who know each other well. "Make +clear to us the difference between a maharajah and a pongee pajama, and +go ahead." + +"At least, my stories do not deal with duels that ended in Delmonico's, +and flirtations which fell flat," asserted Willoughby, blowing a cloud +of fragrant incense into space. "I've no idea of wasting occult material +on a brace of rank Philistines, but if I were so disposed----" + +"Dear boy!" I put in, rather testily; for I dislike fatuous patronage +even in fun. "Either Barton or I could relate to you an incident which +occurred in this very room, within a yard of where you sit, remarkable +enough to make your Kiplingest jungle-tale seem as tame as 'Mother +Hubbard's Dog!'" + +"Indeed!" he said, sinking still farther into his chair, with something +very like a yawn; and Barton, as he arose and moved to the mantelpiece, +cast a look of remonstrance toward me which I was careful not to +recognize. + +"Ah, here comes Nathan with fresh coffee," our host announced, clearly +to change the subject, as the round-shouldered figure of his worthy +valet appeared in the lamplight. "Pray let him fill your cups, and, if +it is not strong enough, don't hesitate to tell him." + +"It'th not the coffee gentlemen dethired when I wath young," commented +Nathan, a trifle sadly, and with the amusing lisp which made him +something of a character, albeit he was rather a dull man even for a +valet. + +"I never take a second cup," Willoughby declared, adding: "But, if it's +all the same, I might be tempted by a sip of soda later, say in half an +hour or so." + +This struck me as an excellent suggestion, and Barton evidently thought +the same. + +"Bring soda in half an hour," he instructed the servant, "and mind you +have it cold." + +"It'th never any other way you've had your thoda a thingle night for +fifteen yearth, thir," retorted Nathan, with quite sufficient truth, no +doubt, to justify the protest; and as he shuffled from the room, "Jim" +Barton's guests chuckled. + +"I move we give the half-hour to your yarn," said Willoughby, crossing +his legs. "That is, if it can be told in thirty minutes." + +"It's not worth half that time if it were told at all," replied our +host. "The story is not worth much at best, but to give old Joe here the +chance to intimate a too-elaborate dinner." + +My name is Joseph, by the way. + +"Oh, if you will admit that explanation----" I began, to draw him on, +for I was anxious Willoughby should understand that interesting things +could happen elsewhere than in India. + +"I don't admit it in the least!" cried Barton, interrupting. "I assure +you, Willoughby, upon my word, as sure as I stand here, I had tasted +nothing more potent than a glass or two of Burgundy that night." + +"What night?" inquired Willoughby. + +"The night young Carhart disappeared," I interposed impressively. "The +night a fellow six feet high and heavier than any one of us vanished as +completely from this room as a puff of smoke dissolves in air." + +"I have seen a puff of smoke go flying through a window," Willoughby +suggested, laughing, though his interest had evidently been aroused, for +he glanced toward the bay of leaded glass which made one of the +pleasantest features of Barton's cozy smoking-room. + +"But no man ever went through this particular window," I replied, +taking the burden of enlightenment upon myself, in spite of my host's +very apparent disapproval. "This window looks out upon a neighbor's +yard, and ever since the house was built it has been barred as heavily +as you see it now." + +I sprang up, and, when I had pressed a button which set a dozen electric +bulbs aglow in the four corners of the room, drew the light curtains to +one side. + +"Examine for yourself!" I cried, much in the manner of a showman. + +"I'll take your word for it the iron in that grille is genuine," said +Willoughby, without rising. "And I will admit that no fasting Yogi could +worm himself through interstices so small. But how about the door?" + +"The door," I hastened to assure him, "was then just as you see it now, +an opening three feet wide, and Barton himself stood before it in the +hall, a single step beyond the threshold." + +I should have gone on in my eagerness to call attention to the walls +and ceiling and floor, all obviously free from secret openings, had not +Barton interrupted. + +Shifting uneasily on his feet before the mantelpiece, he said: "Our +friend Joe has not explained that he knows nothing of the circumstances +beyond what I have told him." + +"But not in confidence," I protested. + +"No," admitted Barton, "not in confidence." And to his other guest he +said: "I have made no secret of this strange occurrence, Willoughby, and +my reluctance to discuss it arises from a doubt that long familiarity +with the circumstances has not made it impossible for me to give to each +its proper weight. I am in constant fear of coming upon a weakness which +I have overlooked in the chain, and yet it would be a relief to discover +such a flaw. I should have called in an expert at once. I should have +sought the counsel of detectives; and such would unquestionably have +been my course had not those most interested dissuaded me, Young +Carhart's father telegraphed me: 'Say nothing to authorities. +Disappearance satisfactorily explained.' And, at the time, that was +enough. It was not till some months later that I learned the family were +theosophists, a sect to which nothing is so satisfactory as the +inexplicable. I have, myself, no theory to advance. The man, my guest, +was here one moment, and the next he had gone from a room where the only +openings were a grilled window and a guarded door. His overcoat and hat +are still in my possession; and, from all I have been able to learn, he +has not been heard of since." + +"I beg that you will not think it necessary to tell me more of the story +if it distresses you," protested Willoughby, courteously; for Barton's +face had grown grave, and I had begun to feel my introduction of the +subject ill-timed. But our host was quick to reassure him with a +gesture. + +"On the contrary," he said, "you have but just returned from India, +where, as I have heard, mysterious disappearances are not uncommon, and +occult matters are better understood. Your opinion will be of the +greatest service." + +"In that case," Willoughby replied, becoming instantly, judicially +alert, "let us begin at the beginning. Who was Carhart? How came he +here? What was the manner of his going?" + +"That's just the mystery," I interposed. + +"Joe, please don't interrupt," said Barton, making an effort to collect +his thoughts. + +"Sit down, old man," Willoughby suggested. "We'll choke Joe if he speaks +again. Now let us have the facts--I'm deeply interested. Do sit down." + +Barton complied in so far as to perch himself upon the broad arm of a +leather chair. + +"I shan't be tragic," he began; "for, as I said, there may be--in fact, +there must be--some purely natural explanation. Of course, you never met +young Carhart; for he came here while you were away. He had but few +acquaintances in New York; for, although he brought good letters from +Boston, where his people lived, he had not chosen to present them. He +was a most attractive sort--half-back at Harvard, stroke-oar and all the +rest. Great fellow in the Hasty Pudding Club, and poet of his class, but +just a trifle--shall I say--susceptible and--" + +"Soft," I suggested. + +"No," contradicted Barton; "though, to tell the truth, he never could +resist a pretty face. That was his failing." + +"Remarkable man!" Willoughby commented, with fervor. + +"He was," assented Barton. "In that respect, at least. He carried it too +far. He wanted to marry every good-looking girl he met. He would have +been married a dozen times before he graduated, had not his friends +interfered." + +"Thank heaven for friends!" commented Willoughby, with still more +fervor. + +"Till at last," continued Barton, now sufficiently himself to punctuate +his narrative with occasional whiffs of his cigar, "at last Carhart +fell under the influence of a widow." + +"A designing widow," I put in, to make the situation clearer. + +"Attractive?" Willoughby inquired. + +"Oh, decidedly." + +"Encumbrances?" + +"No," answered Barton. "Not exactly. There were rumors of a husband in +the background somewhere, but he was not produced." + +"A pretty widow is beyond the habeas corpus act," mused Willoughby. + +"Quite so," Barton admitted. "But, at all events, there was nothing +really known against the lady except a maiden aunt, and this +objectionable relative was, by the way, quite as much opposed to the +match as were Carhart's own people." + +"And why were they opposed to it?" + +"Oh, you see, with his proclivities for poetry and acting, they were +afraid an unhappy marriage would drive him to the stage, and, +naturally, they took every measure to prevent it." + +Here Barton paused to light a fresh cigar, while we others sipped our +coffee thoughtfully. + +"And what were these preventive measures?" Willoughby inquired. + +"Oh, the usual thing," said Barton. "Threats, badgering, advice and +promises. All these failed to move him; he was determined to make her +his wife, and, as a last resource, his father wrote to me, putting the +matter in my hands without reserve. Our ancestors came over on the same +boat, so it appeared." + +"The _Mayflower_," I breathed, but that was scarcely necessary. + +"Quite so," he admitted; "and that, of course, entailed a certain +obligation." + +"Of course," we both assented, and the narrative continued. + +"An elopement had been planned, as we had every reason to believe, for a +certain evening; and the elder Carhart kept the Boston wires hot all +day with appeals to me to save his son." + +"And did you?" Willoughby inquired. + +"Yes," answered Barton, cautiously, "in a way." + +"How?" + +"I began by inviting him to dinner." + +"And, of course, he did not accept?" + +"Oh, yes, he did. He both accepted and arrived on time, and I must say I +never saw a man confront a filet mignon bordelaise with more outward +satisfaction; and, though we spoke upon indifferent topics, his spirits +seemed exuberant beyond all bounds. But you may be sure I kept an eye +upon his every movement. I was determined he should not escape. In an +extremity, I was prepared to administer a harmless sleeping-potion in +his coffee." + +"Indeed!" said Willoughby, as he set down his cup, and ran an +investigating and suspicious tongue along the edges of his lips. + +"A drastic measure, I admit," continued Barton, "but one which I should +have considered justifiable, could I have foreseen the miscarriage of my +other plan. You know my eldest sister, Emily?" + +We bowed, for it was a duty to know Emily. + +"And you know her eldest daughter, Emeline?" + +We bowed again; it was a pleasure to know Emeline. + +"Well," went on Barton, "it so happened that they were to dine that +evening in the neighborhood, and I arranged with them to drop in upon me +in an offhand way soon after their dinner, which was a small, informal +one. I was convinced, you see, that Carhart could not fail to fall +desperately in love with Emeline, which would have simplified affairs at +once." + +Of course, we both assented--I through civility, but Willoughby, as I +fancied, with a somewhat heightened color. + +"I presume you did not take Miss Emeline into your confidence," he said, +a trifle stiffly. + +"No," answered Barton, "but I have often wished since that I had been +more frank. It's just the sort of thing she's good at." + +Willoughby tossed his excellent cigar, half smoked, into the grate, with +what appeared unnecessary violence. + +"You were saying that your plan fell through," he prompted. + +"It did," rejoined the host. "It fell through completely, as you shall +see. I kept my young friend at the table as long as possible, and +Nathan--to his credit I will say it--was never more deliberate; but when +Carhart had declined almonds and raisins rather pointedly for the third +time, we rose from the table, as the clock struck ten, and came in here +to smoke. The lights were low, as they were before our friend Joe tried +to blind us." + +"I beg your pardon!" I exclaimed, and, hastening to the button, I +reduced the room again to semi-darkness. + +"Ah, that's more like it," said Barton. "I much prefer the light +subdued. Well, here we were--Carhart before the mantelpiece, where I +stood just now, smoking composedly enough, and I between him and the +door, listening for the sound of the bell which might at any moment +announce the arrival of the ladies. I remember perfectly that we were +discussing setter-dogs; and, as you may well believe, I was never so put +to it for anecdotes in my life, when at last the welcome summons came." + +"I thought you said your plan fell through," Willoughby interposed. + +"It did," retorted Barton. "The bell, which echoed through the house, +was not rung by Emily at all, but by a servant with a note from her to +say that, being indisposed, my sister had decided to drive directly +home. Emeline, she added, was going on to some infernal dance. I had +given Carhart no intimation of my sister's coming, and, naturally, I did +not reveal the contents of her note. In fact, I made the dim light an +excuse for stepping into the brighter hall, and this enabled me to +conceal from him my first chagrin. As I stood not two feet from the +threshold, debating what my course should be, I observed that Nathan +closed the front door upon the messenger; and presently he passed me, +going to his pantry, as I thought. I must have remained standing there +before the door nearly a minute, though it seemed much less, for, when I +turned, Nathan was at my elbow again, holding in his hand a tray of +cups. + +"'You served the coffee not a minute ago, you idiot!' I said, betraying +the irritation which I felt; and, furthermore, I will confess, the smell +of coffee brought back to me most painfully the only plan which then +remained. + +"'I thought you might be ready for thum more,' persisted Nathan, with +his most aggravating lisp. 'I did not know the gentleman had gone.' + +"'Gone!' I exclaimed. 'You must be blind. The gentleman, Mr. Carhart, is +in the smoking-room.' + +"'I beg your pardon, thir; but he'th not,' retorted Nathan, moving from +me as though to avoid a blow. 'The gentleman ain't in the +thmoking-room.' + +"'Fool!' I cried, and darted from him, but the next moment I had found +his words too true. Carhart had vanished, disappeared, melted, as one +might say, into the element of air." + +"Strange!" I reflected, lowering my voice as an aid to Barton's climax. + +"Strange enough!" cried Willoughby, less impressed than I had hoped. +"And so your servant was the first to make the discovery?" + +"Yes," answered Barton; "although I have never allowed him to know of my +astonishment. I did my best to pass it off as a joke. I allowed him to +believe that Carhart had taken leave of me before the stupid blunder of +the second coffee." + +"Athking your pardon, thir," came in injured, lisping accents from the +gloom. "I never brought no thecond coffee that night, becauth the cat +upthet the coffee-pot, nor did I thay, thir, that the gentleman had +gone." + +Barton, concealing his annoyance, sat regarding his domestic for a +moment with assumed indifference. + +"And pray, what did you say, then, when you stood there beside me at the +door?" he demanded. + +"Nothing at all, thir," answered Nathan. "I wathn't there. I went back +to my pantry when I had let out the methenger, and there I thtayed until +I heard you hammering on the wallth and floor with the fire-shovel." + +"That will do, Nathan," returned Barton stiffly; and I perceived an odd +expression on the face of Willoughby. + +"Thoda, thir?" inquired Nathan of the other guest. + +"Yes," was the answer. "And please fill it up." + +We settled down into an awkward silence, while Nathan fidgetted with +soda-water bottles, Barton fingering his cigar, I toying with a +paper-weight, and Willoughby intent upon the fire. + +"Carhart," he kept repeating, almost to himself. "Where have I heard +that name before? Carhart!" + +"Carhart?" said Barton inquiringly. + +"Carhart!" repeated Willoughby, with still more abstraction. "Carhart!" + +"Yes, Carhart!" I put in, by way of keeping up the train of thought. + +"Carhart!" roared Barton, springing to his feet. "Can't anybody say +anything but Carhart?" + +"And what became of the widow?" Willoughby demanded meditatively. + +"I never knew nor cared to know," replied our host. + +"Pretty, I think you said," continued Willoughby. "And auburn-haired?" + +"Yes, deuced pretty, deuced auburn-haired. What are you driving at?" + +Willoughby held up a soothing hand. "Just let me think," he said. "I +used to know a man once in Calcutta. An American from Boston; sold +canned goods, calico and caramels at wholesale; had a pretty wife. +Clever fellow, too; and great at giving imitations--could mimic +anything. Used to do an old domestic with a lisp in a way that would +make your sides ache. I wish I could recall that fellow's name. By Jove, +it was--it was!--it was!----" + +"Was what?" I asked. + +"Why, 'Carhart'!" + +Barton, before the fire, swayed on his feet unsteadily, and clutched the +mantelpiece for support. Old Nathan shuffled to his side. + +"Thoda, thir?" the servant asked. + +"Yes," said the master absently. "If you please, one lump of sugar and a +little cream." + + + + +THE MONSTROSITY + + +Fifteen minutes after Mr. and Mrs. Lemuel Livermore, accompanied by +their daughter Selma, had driven away from their comfortable West Side +residence, for the purpose of attending an annual family gathering at +the house of Mrs. Livermore's widowed mother, Mrs. Pease, on the +opposite side of Central Park, the Livermore domestics were stirred by a +more than usually imperative ring at the front door-bell. It was +Christmas Eve, a season when mercantile delivery wagons may appear at +any hour. Presents had been arriving all the afternoon, and the sight of +a large van backed up against the curbstone occasioned no surprise. + +"What are they bringing us now?" inquired Bates, the butler, who rarely +condescended to open the door in the absence of the family, from his +pantry. + +"It looks to me something like a sofa," replied the smiling housemaid, +who generally knew by instinct when the ringer was to be young and +good-looking, "and the delivery gentlemen want to know where to put it." + +"A sofa, is it?" exclaimed the butler, coming forward. "I'd like to know +who has been silly enough to make a present of a sofa to a family who +have already more household goods than they know what to do with. +They'll be sending in a porcelain bath-tub next," he added with a grunt, +as he unbolted the second half of the front door to make room for a +cumbrous piece of furniture, just then ascending the steps apparently +upon four lusty legs. "Here, you fellows, wipe your feet and put it in +the parlor, and when the family comes home I bet somebody'll get a +blessing." + +The sofa was, in point of fact, a well-fed lounge, corpulent and plushy +and be-flowered, and when, its wrappings removed, it occupied the +center of the Livermore pink and white drawing-room, the Livermore +bric-à-brac and bibelots and bijouterie appeared to turn a trifle pale +and to shrink within themselves, as though a note of discord had +distressed them. + +"Lord!" said the housemaid frankly, as she regarded the latest unwelcome +acquisition, "but it is a beast!" + +"Sets the room off, don't it?" remarked the fattest and most optimistic +of the furniture men, as he consulted a memorandum in his hat. "Come in +handy, won't it, when the missus wants to snatch a nap in the +afternoon?" + +The butler and the housemaid exchanged a glance of tolerant pity, but +such benighted ignorance of social use was beyond enlightenment. + +"Best give it a good brush-up to bring out the colors," the optimist +admonished, surveying his late burden admiringly. + +"I wouldn't touch it with the tongs," declared the housemaid, and the +butler prophesied, "It won't stop long to gather dust where it is when +the missus sets eyes on it once." + +"Well," moralized the other, with a comprehensive glance about the room, +"it's certainly a fact that rich folks does come in for all the luck." + +And so saying he withdrew, accompanied by his mate, and the bolts were +shot behind them. + +"Our dinner will be getting cold," observed the butler. "Go down, Mary +Anne, and tell the cook I'm coming, and I'll bring down the decanters. +That sherry's hardly fit to serve upstairs again." + +The housemaid sniffed. + +"Be careful, Mr. Bates," she cautioned him. "The old butler, Auguste, +was discharged because he found so many bottles of champagne that were +unfit to serve upstairs." + +"Auguste," rejoined the butler, "was a French duffer. He ought to have +known that even broad-minded gentlemen always count champagne." + +"Shall we leave the lights all burning in the parlor?" asked the +housemaid. + +"Certainly," replied Bates; "it wouldn't do for the missus to stumble +over that thing in the dark." + +"Lord!" said the housemaid, with a parting glance across her shoulder. +"Lord! but it _is_ a beast." + +"An out and out monstrosity," the butler agreed. + +Time passed; the servants went their ways; the parlor gas purred +soothingly; the bric-à-brac engaged in whispered consultation. Whatever +happened, the monstrosity should be made to feel its isolation--and it +did. It stood a thing apart from its environment; it seemed to sigh, and +presently its plebeian breast began to heave as with emotion. A crack +developed in its tufted side, a pair of eyes appeared within the crack. +The gas purred on; sounds from the servants' hall below suggested that +the sherry had begun to express itself in terms of merriment. The crack +grew wider until the sofa opened like a fat and flowery trunk. The eyes +became a head, the head a man, who sat upon the sofa's edge and looked +about him. + +"All zings is the same," he murmured to himself in broken English. +"Nothing is changed except that ze arrangements are in less taste zan in +my time. Ah, people do not know when zay have ze good fortune." + +He sighed, and, rising, ventured one large foot, encased in a felt shoe, +upon the rug. He stood and gazed about him lovingly, as one who +contemplates inanimate things once dear. He moved with noiseless caution +to the nearest door and disappeared. Presently he returned, bearing a +salver laden with pieces of silver from the dining-room--an ice-pitcher, +an epergne, some dishes; these he proceeded deftly to roll in flannel +bags, depositing each with loving care in the interior of the +Monstrosity. Another expedition resulted in an equally attractive lot +of plate, to be bestowed as carefully. Next, stepping to the +mantel-piece, he selected a modest pair of Dresden images from the +assortment there displayed. + +"These," he soliloquized, "are mine undoubtedly. I might have broken +them a thousand times and did not, and, therefore, they are mine." + +He laid the figures tenderly and almost with a sigh beside the silver +and closed the heavy tufted lid upon them. + +"I will go upstairs for ze last time," he mused, a trace of sadness on +his Gallic features, "and behold if Madame is still as careless with her +jewel-box as in old days. I will ascertain for myself if Monsieur still +sticks his scarf-pins in ze pin-cushion.... Ah, but it is depressing to +revisit once familiar scenes. It makes one shed ze tear." + +The tall clock in the hall struck half-past eight. + +Even as the clock struck the butler below was rising to propose a toast. + +"'Here's to those that love us,'" it began, and went on: "'Here's to us +that love those,'"--but as this was not the way it should have gone on, +the butler paused and blinked in disapproval at the cook, who laughed. + +"'Here's to those that love those that love those that love those,'" he +persisted solemnly, and might have continued the hierarchy still further +had not an electric summons from the front door interrupted him. + +"Sakes!" cried the cook, "what can that be?" + +"More presents," the housemaid suggested. + +"Another monstrosity, I'll be bound," the butler chuckled, stumbling +from the room. "Let'sh all go shee about it." + +He climbed the stairs unsteadily, and made his way along the hall with +noticeable digressions from an even course. + +"'Here's to those that love us that love them,'" he caroled cheerily, +and when, with fumbling fingers, he had thrown the front door open, his +eyes, still blinking, failed to perceive for the moment that Mr. +Livermore himself stood on the threshold, surrounded by some half a +score of muffled figures. + +"Bates," began Mr. Livermore, "I forgot my latch-key, and ..." + +"Get away with you," cried cheerful Mr. Bates; "we've got all the +monstrosities we want already. 'Here's to them that love them that we +love' ..." + +"Bates," said Mr. Livermore, "you're drunk." + +"Shir," said Bates; "shir, I ashure you sherry was not fit to sherve +upstairs." + +"Bates," said Mr. Livermore, "you are very drunk." + +"Shir," said Bates, "shir, I ashure you it's all owing to that +monstrosity. Monstrosity not fit to sherve upstairs." + +Meanwhile Mrs. Livermore had lost no time in pushing past her husband +into the hall, followed by Selma, followed by her widowed mother, Mrs. +Pease, and Mr. Bertram Pease, her brother, and Miss McCunn, to whom Mr. +Pease was supposed to be attentive, and Cousin Laura Fanshaw, and the +two Misses Mapes, and Mr. Sellars, and Doctor Van Cott, all old friends, +and a young gentleman by the name of Mickleworth, whom nobody knew much +about, except Selma, who, for reasons of her own, kept her knowledge to +herself. He had been invited to the family party as a chum of Cousin +Dick Busby's, and was to have come with Dick, but the latter gentleman, +at the last moment having received a more promising invitation, had sent +word that he was ill. + +While Mr. Livermore drew Bates aside, the housemaid busied herself with +the ladies' wraps. + +"You're through dinner early, ma'am," she said to Mrs. Livermore. + +"We haven't had any dinner, Mary Anne," replied her mistress. "Mother's +range exploded, or something awful happened to the pipes just after we +sat down, and everything was ruined. So we brought the entire party here +in cabs. Tell cook she must give us some sort of a meal at once ... +canned tomato soup to begin with, followed by cold canned tongue, and ..." + +"The breakfast fishballs," suggested Mary Anne. + +"Excellent!" exclaimed her mistress. "And after that we might have ..." + +"Marmalade," suggested Mary Anne. + +"And buckwheat cakes," Selma interrupted. + +"Of course," her mother acquiesced, "that will have to do ... with lots +of bread and butter.... And now," she added cheerfully, turning to her +guests, "we'll all go into the drawing-room and guess conundrums till +dinner is ready. How fortunate it was that we had had our oysters before +the accident!" + +"My dear," said Mr. Livermore in a whisper, "I fear that Bates is +hopelessly intoxicated." + +"Oh, Lemuel, what are we to do?" gasped the hostess, clutching the +hat-rack for support. + +They were alone together in the hall and face to face with a dilemma. + +"I give it up," said Mr. Livermore. + +"You can't," rejoined his wife. "You'll have to think of something." + +"Perhaps," suggested the gentleman foolishly, "an angel might be induced +to come down from heaven...." + +But his words were truer than he thought; a figure which had been +creeping unobserved down the stairs now stood before them. + +"Auguste!" gasped Mrs. Livermore, with an almost superstitious start. + +"Yes, Madame," replied her former servant, while his benignant smile +brought reassurance; "it is I. I have taken ze liberty of dropping in to +wish Madame a merry Christmas." + +"Thank Heaven!" cried the Hostess, restraining her impulse to fall upon +his neck. "Now you must stay and help us out of our difficulties. You +know exactly where all the silver is." + +"Perfectly," replied the man respectfully, "and it will give me great +pleasure to once more serve Madame." + +"Auguste," said Mr. Livermore, "let bygones be forgotten. Go quickly and +set the table, and put on everything to make it look attractive." + +"Pardon, Monsieur," Auguste protested, "might it not seem out of place +to display too much silver at such a simple meal?" + +"He is right," declared Mrs. Livermore, "Auguste is right. His taste was +always perfect--even in champagne." + +Further discussion was prevented for the time by Selma's appearance at +the drawing-room door, convulsed with mirth. Close at her side stood Mr. +Mickleworth, also laughing. + +"Oh, mamma!" cried the daughter of the house, "will you come and see +what somebody has sent us as a present? The ugliest thing conceivable, +an absolute monstrosity." + +But the Livermores were thankful for the sofa, and the diversion which +it brought. As no one present could possibly have made such a choice, +they felt at liberty to abuse it to their hearts' content, and they +stood just then in dire need of something to abuse ... until the +fishballs filled the atmosphere with welcome fragrance. + +Later, after Auguste had compounded his celebrated punch, they said some +most amusing things about the lounge. + +"It would make a capital wedding gift," laughed Mr. Livermore, with a +sly glance at Mr. Bertram Pease, and Miss McCunn declared that she would +die single rather than begin married life in the society of the +monstrosity. + +As time went on the spirit of the joyous season filled the company, and +Yule-tide pastimes were suggested. + +"In my young days," said Mrs. Pease, growing distinctly sporty, "we used +to play hide-and-seek all over the old homestead, and whoever found the +person hiding was entitled to a kiss." + +"Capital!" pronounced Doctor Van Cott, debating which of the Misses +Mapes a prosperous practitioner would be most fortunate in finding. + +"Let's play it now," cried Uncle Bertram, knowing quite well whom he +himself should seek most diligently. + +"Good!" put in Mr. Mickleworth, "I'll be It first. All go into the +little smoking-room, and when I say 'Coo' come out and look for me." To +Selma he added, in a whisper, "If you, while searching, should hum 'In +the Gloaming' softly, may I scratch to let you know where I am?" + +Miss Livermore blushed. + +Now, of course, the game was all a joke, not to be taken seriously, and +to make the situation funnier, Mr. Mickleworth, who, in his +boarding-house commonly kept his evening clothes in a divan box, went +direct to the monstrosity and climbed in, closing the lid upon himself. +But, as it happened, Mr. Mickleworth's box was old-fashioned and +unprovided with the latest patent catch, impregnable to those +unacquainted with the combination. His position, therefore, in the +lounge's dark interior must have been alarming for a moment, had he not +discovered an ample breathing hole, concealed from outward observation +by a fringe. Some bundles, hard and angular, occasioned but a trifling +inconvenience at his feet. + +"Coo!" cried Mr. Mickleworth through the hole, when he had allowed +sufficient time to mystify his fellow players. But for a moment it +seemed to him that the others had not been playing fair, for there were +voices speaking close to him. + +"Say, you're a slick one, Frenchy," somebody remarked in unfamiliar +accents. "You'll have your picture in the Gallery yet." + +"Zat is all right," a foreign voice replied, "I know my business." + +Now others appeared to join in the conversation, and it became evident +that the entire company had entered. + +"Let me out!" cried Mr. Mickleworth, but in the general Babel no one +heard, and presently Mrs. Livermore's silvery notes were audible above +the rest. + +"It was a very stupid mistake," she said. "You should have known such an +ugly thing could not be for us. Please take it away at once, and another +time be more careful about reading the address." + +"I'm sorry, mum," retorted somebody, "but I do hope you won't go for to +report us to the firm? We're just pore workingmen." + +"You have probably been drinking," put in Mr. Livermore magnanimously, +"and as it is Christmas we will overlook the error. Auguste, see that +they do not scratch the wood-work." + +"Hurrah!" cried Selma joyfully. "It's going. The Monstrosity is being +taken away. I hope whoever gets it will appreciate its merits more than +we did." + +"Let me out! Let me out!" cried Mr. Mickleworth, but by this time all +the guests were chattering louder than ever. + +Doctor Van Cott and the two Misses Mapes joined hands and danced as King +David did before the Ark. Mr. Bertram Pease at the piano began to play +the first selection that occurred to him, which chanced to be the +Wedding March. The others clapped their hands and cheered. + +"Let me out!" cried Mr. Mickleworth for the last time from his prison, +but an oily apron was now pressed tight against the hole, and he caught +the whispered observation: + +"Say, Frenchy, you must have chucked the cat in by mistake." + +He felt himself raised, jolted, tipped; he felt the chill of cold night +air as it found access through the crack. He realized that he was being +thrust feet first into a van and driven rapidly, he knew not where. + + +"And now," said Mr. Sellars, "I think we had better look for Mr. +Mickleworth." + +"Let us begin in the butler's pantry," suggested Cousin Laura Fanshaw, +not loud enough for anyone else to hear. + +The Christmas party sought high and low; they penetrated to the upper +floors, and not until Selma had sung "In the Gloaming" before every +closet door did they give up the quest. + +"It's most mysterious," asserted the host. + +"It's worse," his wife corrected him; "it's most ill-bred." + +"Oh, we must look again," cried Selma, now in real distress; "he may be +lying somewhere faint and ill." + +"Nonsense!" rejoined Mrs. Pease. "Leave him alone, and, my word for it, +he will make his appearance in a little while looking silly enough. +Lemuel, a glass of water, if you please." + +While the good lady sank exhausted to a chair, her devoted son-in-law +hastened to the dining-room to supply her want. + +"The ice-pitcher is not there," he said, returning. "I'll ring." + +"But the pitcher must be in its usual place on the sideboard with the +other silver," his wife protested. + +"But all the same, it isn't," he insisted. "There is nothing on the +sideboard; not a thing. Come see for yourself." + +This gave occasion for the playful aphorism concerning the inability of +man to see beyond his nose, but presently a scream from Mrs. Livermore +confirmed her husband's statement. + +"My pitcher!" she cried piteously. "My silver dishes! My epergne! Where +have they gone? Where is Auguste?" + +"Auguste," said Mary Anne, who, scenting an excitement, now ran up the +kitchen stairs, "has also gone. He drove off with the sofa in the van." + +"With the sofa?" + +"Yes, ma'am; sitting on it." + +"Robbed!" cried Mr. Livermore, with a lightning flash of keen +conviction, and the entire company repeated in a hollow chorus: + +"Robbed!" + +But Mr. Livermore's lightning, after the manner of such fluids, was not +satisfied to score a single bull's-eye. + +"It was a deep conspiracy," he went on, becoming clairvoyant, "and ten +to one that Mickleworth young man was in the plot." + +"You shall not say such horrid things of him, papa," cried Selma. + +"A thief!" persisted Mr. Livermore, disregarding her. "A villain in +disguise! I don't believe that this impostor was ever Cousin Dick's old +chum." + +"Oh, papa," Selma interrupted, trembling; "Dick himself introduced Mr. +Mickleworth to me at Southampton last summer. I did not tell you about +it till you could know him and see how nice he is." + +"Nice?" gasped her mother. "Nice?" + +"Yes, mamma," Selma cried, sobbing, but still undaunted; "awfully nice, +and he can write the most respectful little notes." + +"Notes?" screamed her mother. "Selma, you stand there and tell me you +have corresponded with a burglar? Oh, that I should have lived to see +this day!" + +Miss McCunn, much disturbed, had retired to the smoking-room, where Mr. +Bertram Pease did all he could to comfort her. Doctor Van Cott on the +stairs had put an impartial arm about each of the Misses Mapes. Cousin +Laura Fanshaw, behind a screen, wept copiously on Mr. Sellars's left +lapel. + +"In my young days," said Mrs. Pease, "we kept a closer watch on both our +children and our silverware." + +"Mother," cried Mrs. Livermore, "don't make things worse by being +aggravating. Poor Selma is suffering enough." + +"I am not suffering at all," protested Selma stoutly. "My faith in +George remains unshaken." + +"George!" ejaculated her mother. "Lemuel, do you hear?" + +"I do," replied Mr. Livermore, "and I'll attend to George's case just as +soon as I can get Mulberry Street on the telephone." + +"Stop!" cried his wife; "we must avoid a scandal." + +The doorbell, which had taken such an active part in this eventful +evening, now rang again. A silence followed, while the form of Bates was +seen to pass through the hall. Then, almost with his accustomed dignity, +though somewhat pale and wet about the head, he reappeared. + +"Mr. Mickleworth!" he announced. + +"I knew it!" Selma cried, with jubilation. + +And Mr. Mickleworth it was, in truth, though much disheveled as to +dress. A streak of mud lay on his rumpled shirtfront, and his evening +coat suggested active combat. From each shoulder hung a nosebag, such as +teamsters use for feeding horses in the street, and each bag bulged with +priceless silver heirlooms. Behind him came a stalwart minion of the +law, bearing the family ice-pitcher on a massive salver. + +"Ah, ha!" cried Mr. Livermore complacently. "So, ho! 'Caught with the +goods on,' as you say officially. You have done well, officer, and this +night's work shall not go unrewarded." + +"It wasn't me," the policeman protested ungrammatically; "this here +young feller did it all himself." + +"That we already know," said Mrs. Livermore. + +"Be quiet, my child, until we hear the story," put in Mrs. Pease, who +usually objected to her daughter's methods. + +And the policeman told his tale. + +"This here young chap," he said, with generous fervor, "must be a +regular Herculaneum. He burst the lock and stopped the van and knocked +two of the robbers out of time. When I came up he had the Frenchman by +the throat, a-rolling of him in the mud. All I had to do was to ring for +the patrol, and help him bring the stuff right back to you for +recognition." + +"Ahem!" said Mr. Livermore. "Ahem! Ahem!" + +"Papa," cried Selma, while tears of triumph made her eyes more bright, +"aren't you going to shake hands with George?" + +And thereupon Mr. Livermore cordially enough did shake hands with +George. + +"Papa," said Selma, "won't you tell George that his part in this night's +work shall not go unrewarded?" + +"Oh, tell him that yourself," cried old Mrs. Pease impatiently. + +In the drawing-room Mr. Bertram Pease was playing the Wedding March. + + + + +THE PRIESTESS OF AMEN RA + + +In the cold light from the tall studio window Frank Morewood's face +seemed almost haggard, and certainly the right hand which held the +little square of photographic paper trembled perceptibly. His left hand +still retained its glove, although he had been George Dunbarton's guest +for fully half an hour; his hat was pushed back on his head, his cane +beneath his arm, as though he had forgotten everything except the +negative before his eyes. + +"Dunbarton," he demanded, with an obvious effort at unconcern, "is this +some silly trick you have been playing me?" + +The other, openly impatient, shrugged his shoulders beneath the velvet +painter's jacket, and took a step toward the Frisian cabinet upon which +lay a box of cigarettes. + +"A trick, indeed!" he repeated across the flaming match. "You must +think I have very little on my mind!" Then, under the inspiring +influence of the Melachrino, his just resentment of the charge expressed +itself more vehemently. "You break in upon me like a wild man; you +insist that I stop in my serious work to develop your wretched little +film; you watch every step of the process with the most unflattering +suspicion, and now, by Jove, you're not satisfied!" + +"Dunbarton," Morewood calmly replied, holding the print above his head, +"you cannot realize what this may mean to me; the thing is too strange, +too weird." + +Dunbarton blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling, thoughtfully. "These +amateur snap-shots are usually a trifle weird," he admitted, "they +seldom do the subject justice, especially in the eyes of ardent +admiration. Better keep your treasure covered up, old man, if you don't +want it to fade out altogether. It isn't fixed, you know; it's just a +negative." + +"It's the most positive thing that ever came into the world," his +visitor asserted; "the truest, the most wonderful." + +"And so have twenty other pretty faces been for you, my dear boy," the +confidant urged. "Each wonder commonly endures about a month." + +"This wonder has endured three thousand years and more," retorted +Morewood, once more regarding the photograph with reverent awe. + +"A case of re-incarnation, I suppose?" the other suggested lightly, with +a glance at his neglected easel that might have been accepted as a hint. +"You'll excuse me if I daub a little on the masterpiece while the light +lasts?" he added. "Going; no? Well, I'm glad to have you stay. Trouble? +Oh, none at all. Always happy to oblige a friend. Of course, if you mean +to follow up photography you ought to learn how to do these little +things for yourself. And, by the way, do get a decent camera instead of +a Cheap Jack department store affair such as every Seeing New Yorker +has slung across his shoulder. Get out of the light, please. Sit down, +do! Take off your hat; have a cigarette; make yourself comfortable, +confound you!" + +"Thanks, old man," Morewood answered, "I won't smoke; and, as for work +this afternoon, I mean to tell you something which shall put all other +thoughts out of your head for a while. I mean to tell you presently of +the most wonderful thing that ever happened in the world." + +"Great Scott!" the artist groaned; "is it as bad as that? Please keep +your stick a little farther from my canvas, if you don't mind." + +"It's quite a long story," Morewood admitted, disposing of the cane. + +"Most of yours are!" his friend interjected. + +Already the shadows were beginning to invade the painter's spacious +studio; lurking in the folds of Flemish tapestry and Oriental stuffs, +and filling distant corners where the glint of steel and copper arms +and arabesques suggested the twinkling eyes of impish and unearthly +listeners. If there is a time for everything, the early twilight is the +season for story-telling, and the painter felt far less reluctance than +he feigned when he resigned himself to listen. Throwing himself upon a +divan and clasping his hands about an elevated knee, he said, "Begin +your yarn, old fellow, I'm all attention." + +Morewood took off his hat, bestrode a chair, and rested both elbows on +its back. + +"Dunbarton," he remarked, by way of introduction, "I don't suppose you +have ever so much as heard of the college of Amen Ra?" + +"Never in my life!" the other admitted frankly. "Where under the sun may +be the college of Amen Ra?" + +"No longer anywhere beneath the sun," Morewood replied, "but it used to +be in Thebes about sixteen hundred years before Christ, as nearly as I +can remember." + +"Quite near enough," Dunbarton assented amiably. "We will not let a +century or so retard a narrative which is to comprehend three thousand +years." + +"Don't jump too quickly at conclusions!" protested Morewood. "The story +as I know it goes no farther back than the early sixties, when a party +of five friends from Philadelphia----" + +"Quakers?" inquired the painter. + +"I don't know!" replied the other, not without a touch of irritation. +"Five acquaintances, men of cultivation and means, who in the course of +travel ascended the Nile as far as the first cataract. At Luxor they +rested for a week, with a view to visiting the site of the great city of +Thebes, and especially its marvelous and mystic temple of Amen Ra, +unequaled upon earth for the sublimity of its ruined magnificence----" + +"For further particulars, see Baedeker!" Dunbarton muttered. + +"Upon the night of their arrival," continued the narrator, unheeding the +interruption, "a fête was given in their honor by the Consul, Mustapha +Aga. It was in the middle of this festivity, and during a dance by the +Gaivasi girls of Luxor, that a strange nomad from the desert made his +appearance unexpectedly. The Sheik Ben Ali, he was called, and his +errand was to inform Mustapha Aga of the discovery, near a certain +oasis, of an object of unusual interest, nothing less than a mummy case +of surpassing beauty which had once held the body of a high priestess of +Amen Ra." + +"Hold on!" Dunbarton interrupted, relinquishing his grasp upon his knee. +"Your local color is so intense that I feel myself in danger of becoming +interested." + +"Just wait until I get a little farther," answered Morewood, with a +touch of triumph; "I only wish you could hear the story as it was told +to me." + +"By whom, if one might ask?" inquired Dunbarton, and his friend replied +impressively: + +"By a venerable man whom I met by the merest chance late one afternoon +in the Egyptian room of the Metropolitan Museum--a strange old man, +poorly dressed, but who had evidently seen better days, for he had +traveled much in the East and knew the country well." + +"I recognize the type," Dunbarton commented, "and make no doubt your +learned friend was in the end prevailed upon to accept a trifling +loan----" + +"That has nothing to do with the story," Morewood retorted. "How far had +I got?" + +"You were in Luxor, at the last reports," the other prompted, "attending +an informal little dance of Gaivasi ladies." + +"Yes, yes," cried Morewood, taking up his thread again. "It was, indeed, +a scene to captivate the traveler's fancy." + +"Never mind the scene!" + +"I don't intend to. Escorted by Mustapha Aga and his guard, they left +the revels and followed the mysterious sheik out into the desert to a +grove of palm-trees, where, bathed in the Egyptian moonlight, lay the +marvelous mummy-case." + +"What had become of the mummy?" asked Dunbarton. + +"Hush!" Morewood whispered reverently. "Hear the story. The case, though +decorated throughout with a surpassing skill, was most remarkable for +the extreme beauty of the woman's face portrayed upon its upper end, in +colors which had defied the ravages of time." + +"I know the kind!" the painter put in. "Flat nose, wide mouth, two +staring eyes, that might be either rights or lefts." + +"The art of that period was, as we know, conventional," returned +Morewood, "and it was that very fact which made this particular painting +so remarkable, for it was realistic, vivid; it conveyed, indeed, a +distinct impression of personality." + +"Oh, amazing!" Dunbarton murmured. + +"The most amazing thing in the world, as you yourself will presently +admit," continued the story-teller. "You may believe the travelers were +overjoyed to be the first outsiders to whom the treasure had been shown. +They were not only men of talent and cultivation, but each was +abundantly able to pay the very moderate price demanded by the sheik, +and they lost no time in closing the bargain. To avoid contention, they +drew lots among themselves for the privilege of becoming the owner of +the mummy-case." + +Here the narrator made an effective pause, and Dunbarton took the +opportunity to light another cigarette. + +"At first," pursued Morewood, "good fortune seemed to favor the eldest +of the party, who was designated to me simply as Mr. X., though I +strongly suspect him to have been no other than my old acquaintance of +the Museum. But he had a generous disposition, and, touched by the keen +disappointment of another member of the party, he relinquished his +rights in favor of the second highest number, after an ownership of +barely thirty seconds. Mr. P. forthwith became the sole possessor of the +coveted object. I need not now recount the circumstances which led in +the course of a few months to the transfer of the property to each in +turn of the remaining members of the company, Mr. G. and Mr. Q. But here +begins the mystery." + +Another dramatic pause and the speaker's voice deepened. + +"Within the year, P. lost his life by the explosion of a fowling piece +without visible cause; G. disappeared while bathing in the Nile in the +vicinity of a crocodile pool, and Q., after a period of captivity among +hostile Arabs, died of a snake bite. Mr. X. alone survived, and arrived +in Cairo broken in health, only to learn that the greater part of his +fortune had been lost through the knavery of an agent. Truly, the +priestess of Amen Ra had signified her displeasure in a most convincing +manner." + +"Who the deuce was she?" demanded Dunbarton. + +"Why, the mummy, as I should have told you." + +"But you didn't," remarked the painter. "And why do you suppose she was +displeased?" + +"Because," the other replied, with conviction, "she had been accustomed +in life to veneration, worship, love, and naturally she did not like to +have her coffin knocked about from place to place." + +"I see," Dunbarton admitted gravely, but with the suspicion of a yawn +suppressed. "What became of the coffin?" + +"It had been shipped meanwhile to Germantown as a gift to the aunt of +the last owner, a lady of so far unblemished reputation, who almost +immediately acquired the cocaine habit." + +"What? Cocaine in the sixties?" cried the painter captiously. + +"Perhaps it may have been opium," Morewood admitted. "At all events she +took to something pernicious, lost everything she had, and finally sold +the precious relic to a Mrs. Meiswinkle, of Tuckahoe, who gave it a +conspicuous place in her baronial hall." + +"Which promptly burnt down without insurance," Dunbarton supplemented at +a venture. + +"As it happens, it didn't," Morewood answered with spirit. "But from +that day misfortune following misfortune fell upon the family--troubles, +disappointments, losses. I have all the details, if you care to hear +them." + +Dunbarton made a sweeping gesture of negation, and his friend resumed: +"It so happened that this Mrs. Meiswinkle, who was something of an +amateur in occultism, received one day a visit from a noted adept in +theosophy. This gentleman, who had newly come from Thibet and was in +consequence highly sensitive, had scarcely set foot in the house when he +announced the presence of a sinister influence. 'There is something +here,' he cried, 'that simply radiates misfortune.'" + +"Extraordinary acumen!" Dunbarton murmured, having got the better of +the yawn. + +"Of course," Morewood proceeded, "it did not take an expert long to +identify the mummy-case, and of course a weight of evidence to support +the adept's assertion was not long in accumulating. All the misfortunes +which had befallen its recent owners were quickly traced in some direct +way to the possession of the mysterious coffin, and in the end Mrs. +Meiswinkle needed no great persuasion to rid herself of the thing +forever." + +"How?" Dunbarton asked. + +"She made a present of it to the city of New York." + +"Noble woman!" cried the painter. "That simple act of patriotism may +account for much!" + +It was a frivolous remark, but more than once Morewood had noticed that +his companion glanced over his shoulder when a breeze from the open +windows stirred some bit of drapery, although the studio was still well +lighted by a golden sunset. The storyteller's manner would have made a +stoic nervous. His muscles twitched, his eyes had brightened, and his +bearing was that of one determined to throw off the burden of a mighty +secret. + +"Dunbarton," he said solemnly, "that mummy-case stands at this moment in +the uptown corner of the first Egyptian room, numbered 22,542 in the +catalogue, which reads, 'Lid of Egyptian coffin, unearthed at Thebes,' +and the name of the donor; nothing more. No word to tell that this poor +shell of papier-maché once contained the mortal body of a priestess of +Amen Ra; no hint of her surpassing loveliness except the lineaments you +painters sneer at, and the ill-drawn hands crossed on her breast. She is +gone; she is forgotten--she that was the most beautiful of Nature's +works!" + +"Frank," said Dunbarton, "has this story of yours anything to do with +your Kodak film?" + +"Yes, everything!" Morewood declared, speaking rapidly. "Listen. To-day +I smuggled my camera into the Museum, and stood before the mummy-case +undetected. But scarcely had I pressed the button when I was arrested by +an official, who confiscated the machine and took it to the parcel room. +I lost no time in finding the Director, gave my name and yours for +surety for my respectability, and, after some delay and red tape, got +back my property." + +"You were lucky," the other commented coolly. "The rules are very +strict. Well? Is that the end?" + +"No!" exclaimed Morewood, "only the beginning, as I firmly believe. I am +now about to tell you of an extraordinary fact, which I have so far +purposely kept back." Dunbarton sighed. + +"I am going to startle you," went on Morewood. "While the casket was +still in the possession of Mrs. Meiswinkle, she, acting under the +theosophist's direction, sent for an expert and had a photograph taken +of the lid, with every possible safeguard against deception or mistake." + +He spoke with tremulous deliberation; now he rose to his feet, and his +eyes, fixed upon the wall above his listener's head, seemed to gaze +beyond its limits. + +"George, I should not tell you this, had I not the proof of its truth +which even a scoffer like yourself can hardly question. When the plate +was developed it was not the painted features of the mummy-case that +looked from the negative, but--the face of a living woman! The face of +the priestess of Amen Ra, unchanged through three thousand years, and +_alive_!" + +"That must have jarred them!" Dunbarton commented irreverently. "It was +going it pretty strong, even for Thibet." But his cigarette dropped to +the floor unheeded. + +"And mark me, George," Morewood said, very gravely, "it was the same +face, I have not the slightest doubt, that you and I beheld to-day +appear before us, the same strange, wonderfully beautiful face that I +hold now in my hand." + +"By Jove!" ejaculated Dunbarton, alive at once to the arcane +significance of the statement. "But you can't really believe----" + +"I believe nothing that I have not seen," asseverated Morewood. "Nothing +that you have not seen yourself. I, too, was incredulous at first; I +laughed at the story of the photograph as the figment of a disordered +brain; but it took possession of me, haunted me night and day, until I +determined to prove its wild impossibility to myself. I bought a camera, +took it to the Museum, as I have told you, and came directly here with +the result. You yourself developed the film; you saw the face appear; if +you can suggest any other explanation of the mystery, in Heaven's name +let us discuss it reasonably." + +"Let me look at the glass film again," Dunbarton suggested, below his +breath. He picked up the smoldering cigarette and, coming to his +friend's side, looked long and gravely at the glass film. Both men were +silent for a time, so silent that they could hear their own hearts +beating. + +"She is indeed beautiful," said the painter, finally. "To our eyes she +seems about twenty years old, though Eastern women reach perfection +early. That diadem upon her brow is, I think, the two-horned crown of +Isis. The drapery falling down on either side is certainly Egyptian and +probably of a period antedating the Pharaohs, but the type of feature is +scarcely Oriental." + +"Yet Cleopatra was a blonde," Morewood suggested. + +"True," assented the other, "and possibly the race three thousand years +ago differed materially from the degenerate Sphinx-like personalities of +the hieroglyphics. We must get Biggins of the Smithsonian to give us his +opinion." + +"Never!" cried Morewood, thrusting the negative in his breast. + +"But in the interest of science----" protested Dunbarton. + +"Science?" Morewood returned scornfully; "what has science to do with +this? What right have I to betray a lady's confidence?" + +Dunbarton made a sign of impatience. "Your lady has been dead a matter +of three thousand years or more," he remarked. + +"That's not true!" the other contradicted, warmly. "I tell you, man, +that woman is alive to-day. Don't ask me to explain the unexplainable. I +simply know that she lives, as young and innocent as every feature of +her face proclaims her. For years, for centuries, perhaps, she has been +trying to make herself known to the stupid brutes who have been +incapable of comprehending. But now, thank heaven, she has selected me +to do her will--whatever it may be--and I shall consecrate my life to +her!" + +He grew very pale as he spoke, but there was a rapt joy in his face. + +"See here, old man," Dunbarton remonstrated kindly, with a hand on his +shoulder, "you're rather overwrought just now, and I don't blame you. +But take a friend's advice, and don't get spoony on a girl so very much +older than yourself. It never turns out well." + +"That's my affair!" Morewood said, doggedly. + +"Of course, of course!" Dunbarton assented. "She's awfully pretty, I +admit, and no doubt well connected; but, even if we overlook her playful +little way of killing people, think of the difficulties about meeting, +and that sort of thing." + +"I'm willing to leave it all to her," Morewood said. "A priestess of +Amen Ra must have learned by this time every mystery of life and death, +and I am confident that in the proper time and place I shall meet her +face to face." + +"Old chap," Dunbarton pronounced with conviction, "what you need is a +good night's rest." + +But Morewood did not reply to this, for the gentle swaying of an +Eastern curtain just then caught his eye. It hung before the open door +of the studio, and the movement might have come from some breath of air. +But immediately it occurred again, and this time accompanied by the +vision of a human hand, clearly in search of something on which to rap. + +"There's someone there," said the painter, whose eyes had followed the +other's, and he spoke lower: "Possibly a model in search of work." Then +he raised his voice in an encouraging "Come in!"--the tone that painters +use to models who are often pretty and sometimes timid. + +Morewood paid no attention; he stood transfixed, watching the swaying +curtain. His finger tips tingled with a strange electric current and his +pulses beat with an unreasoning hope. Then Dunbarton said, a little +louder: + +"Come in; please come in." + +"I think the curtain must be caught," replied a low, melodious voice +without. Dunbarton took three strides across the room, seized the +drapery, and, with a single movement of his arm, swept it aside. + +"Oh!" he cried, starting back, while Morewood clutched the table for +support. Then, instantly recovering themselves, both men bowed as in the +presence of a queen. And well they might. + +Against the background of green velvet curtain with its embroidery of +dull gold, there stood a lady all in poppy red, crowned with a headdress +seemingly of the flowers themselves. It was not the dress of any period +of time, for since the beginning of time flowers have grown for women to +wear, and the two onlookers, being masculine, knew only that she wore +them, and cared not whether they had bloomed in Eden or the Rue de la +Paix. Time was for the moment eliminated, disregarded: the centuries +rolled away like dewdrops from a rose, for, by the grace of Isis and +Osiris, were they not bowing before the peerless priestess of the rites +of Amen Ra? It was she and none other--the mistress of the mummy-case, +the mystery of the Kodak film; the lady of Thebes three thousand years +ago. + +Morewood passed his hand across his brow and caught his breath; +Dunbarton was the first to recover the power of speech. + +"Madam," he said, and his voice shook a little, "you do me far too great +an honor. What is your will? You have but to command me." + +"I venture to assert a prior claim to do your bidding," put in Morewood, +coming forward quickly. + +The priestess of Amen Ra tried to control a little laugh, and failed +bewitchingly. "I am looking for a Mr. Dunbarton," she explained. + +The painter drew himself erect and bowed with dignity. "I have the good +fortune to bear that name," he said, taking a sidewise step which left +his friend a trifle in the background. + +"Oh, I am so glad!" cried the lady. "Then perhaps you can tell me where +to find a Mr. Morewood?" + +"Your humble and devoted servant!" the other man pronounced himself, +executing a maneuver which totally eclipsed Dunbarton. + +"Really?" asked the lady, her face radiant with pleasure. "How very +fortunate!" + +At this Morewood fairly beamed with satisfaction, but she went on +rapidly, in a silvery ripple of feminine narrative: + +"Do you know, Mr. Morewood, that you have something of mine and I have +something of yours? It was not my fault and it wasn't yours, either; it +was the stupid person in the parcel room of the Museum. Of course two +Kodaks are exactly alike, if one of them hasn't got a name scratched on +the bottom with a pin; but I don't suppose he ever thought of looking, +so he gave you mine and me yours, and I should never have found out who +you were if you hadn't been arrested. Of course it wouldn't have made +very much difference, after all, if my Cousin Jack hadn't snapped me in +a most ridiculous Egyptian fancy dress." + +Dunbarton gave a groan as of agony suppressed, and Morewood's face might +have been in color a fragment of the sacerdotal robe of Ra. + +"Oh!" moaned the painter, "if I could only howl!" + +"Don't mind him, please!" the other man pleaded. "You see, I, too, had +used a film, and we were rather interested in seeing how it came out." + +"Oh, but yours came out beautifully!" she reassured him. "My Cousin Jack +developed it after lunch. That's the way we discovered the mistake, and +here it is. We made up our minds that you must be at least seventy-five +years old to want to photograph a hideous mummy-case." + +It was then that Dunbarton mastered himself and became once more +conscious of the duties of hospitality. + +"A thousand pardons!" he protested, "for not offering you a seat. This +is a painter's workshop, as you see, and therefore public property in a +way. Might I suggest a cup of tea? It won't take me a minute to +telephone for a chaperon." + +The priestess was graciously pleased to laugh. + +"I should like tea," she said, with an approving glance about the room, +flooded with the last of a long sunset; "but, if you don't mind, I +detest chaperons. You see, I'm from Oklahoma." + +There was an instant's hesitation, then: + +"My friend, Mr. Morewood," remarked the painter, "has just been telling +me the strangest story in the world. Perhaps you can induce him to +repeat it for you." + +He laughed a mocking laugh and turned to busy himself with the silver +tea-service standing on an Adams table, while Morewood drew forward a +low chair for the lady. + +"Is your story romantic?" she asked, as she settled her poppy-colored +ruffles; "has it a heroine?" + +"Oh, yes, indeed," he answered, by no means including Dunbarton in the +confidence. "No less a personage than the priestess of Amen Ra." + +She looked at him suspiciously, while the veriest suggestion of a blush +suffused her cheek. + +"Is there anything about photographs in it?" she demanded, regarding him +defiantly. + +"Yes," he replied, "there is; a lot!" + +"Then I don't care to hear it, for it's certain to be stupid," she +protested, pouting. + +"It is," he told her, frankly; "and I shall not inflict it on you now. +But some day, when we know each other better." + +"We start for Boston to-morrow morning early," she interrupted; "and +from there we go to Bar Harbor for mamma's hay fever. We're staying at +the Waldorf." + +"Then I shall return the camera this evening," said Morewood. + +"If you do," she said, "my Cousin Jack will be very glad to talk +photographs with you." + +"How old is your Cousin Jack?" Morewood demanded. + +"Twelve," replied the lady, with just the shadow of a smile. + + + + +THE GIRL FROM MERCURY + +AN INTERPLANETARY LOVE STORY + + Being the interpretation of certain phonic vibragraphs recorded by + the Long's Peak Wireless Installation, now for the first time made + public through the courtesy of Professor Caducious, Ph. D., + sometime secretary of the Boulder branch of the association for the + advancement of interplanetary communication. + + It is evident that the following logograms form part of a + correspondence between a young lady, formerly of Mercury, and her + confidential friend still resident upon the inferior planet. The + translator has thought it best to preserve as far as possible the + spirit of the original by the employment of mundane colloquialisms; + the result, in spite of many regrettable trivialities will, it is + believed, be of interest to students of Cosmic Sociology. + + + + +THE GIRL FROM MERCURY + +THE FIRST RECORD + + +Yes, dear, it's me. I'm down here on the Earth, and in our Settlement +House, safe and sound. I meant to have called you up before, but really +this is the first moment I have had to myself all day.--Yes, of course, +I said "all day." You know very well they have days and nights here, +because this restless little planet spins, or something of the sort.--I +haven't the least idea why it does so, and I don't care.--I did not come +here to make intelligent observations like a dowdy "Seeing Saturn" +tourist. So don't be Uranian. Try to exercise intuitive perception if I +say anything you can't understand.--What is that?--Please concentrate a +little harder.--Oh! Yes, I have seen a lot of human beings already, and +would you believe it? some of them seem almost possible--especially +_one_.--But I will come to that one later. I've got so much to tell you +all at once I scarcely know where to begin.--Yes, dear, the One happens +to be a man. You would not have me discriminate, would you, when our +object is to bring whatever happiness we can to those less fortunate +than ourselves? You know success in slumming depends first of all upon +getting yourself admired, for then the others will want to be like you, +and once thoroughly dissatisfied with themselves they are almost certain +to reform. Of course I am only a visitor here, and shall not stay long +enough to take up serious work, so Ooma says I may as well proceed along +the line of least resistance.--If you remember Ooma's enthusiasm when +she ran the Board of Missions to Inferior Planets, you can fancy her now +that she has an opportunity to carry out all her theories. Oh, she's +great! + +My transmigration was disappointing as an experience. It was nothing +more than going to sleep and dreaming about circles--orange circles, +yellow circles, with a thousand others of graduated shades between, and +so on through the spectrum till you pass absolute green and get a tone +or two toward blue and strike the Earth color-note. Then with me +everything got jumbled together and seemed about to take new shapes, and +I woke up in the most commonplace manner and opened my eyes to find +myself externalized in our Earth Settlement House with Ooma laughing at +me. + +"Don't stir!" she cried. "Don't lift a finger till we are sure your +specific gravity is all right." And then she pinched me to see if I was +dense enough, because the atmosphere is heavier or lighter or something +here than with us. + +I reminded her that matter everywhere must maintain an absolute +equilibrium with its environment, but she protested. + +"That's well enough in theory; you must understand that the Earth is +awfully out of tune at present, and sometimes it requires time to +readjust ourselves to its conditions." + +--I did not say so, but I fancy Ooma may have been undergoing +readjustment.--My dear, she has grown as pudgy as a Jupitan, and her +clothes--but then she always did look more like a spiral nebula than +anything else. + +(_The record here becomes unintelligible by reason of the passage of a +thunderstorm above the summit of Long's Peak._) + +--There must be star-dust in the ether.--I never had to concentrate so +hard before.--That's all about the Settlement House, and don't accuse me +again of slighting details. I'm sure you know the place now as well as +Ooma herself, so I can go on to tell what little I have learned about +human beings. + +It seems I am never to admit that I was not born on Earth, for, like all +provincials, the humans pride themselves on disbelieving everything +beyond their own experience, and if they understood they would be +certain to resent intrusions from another planet. I'm sure I don't blame +them altogether when I recall those patronizing Jupitans.--And I'm told +they are awfully jealous and distrustful even of one another, herding +together for protection and governed by so many funny little tribal +codes that what is right on one side of an imaginary boundary may be +wrong on the other.--Ooma considers this survival of the group-soul most +interesting, and intends to make it the subject of a paper. I mention it +only to explain why we call our Settlement a Boarding-House. A +Boarding-House, you must know, is fundamentally a hunting pack which one +can affiliate with or separate from at will.--Rather a pale yellow idea, +isn't it? Ooma thinks it necessary to conform to it in order to be +considered respectable, which is the one thing on Earth most +desired.--What, dear?--Oh, I don't know what it means to be respectable +any more than you do.--One thing more. You'll have to draw on your +imagination! Ooma is called here Mrs. Bloomer.--Her own name was just a +little too unearthly. Mrs. signifies that a woman is +married.--What?--Oh, no, no, no, nothing of the sort.--But I shall have +to leave that for another time. I'm not at all sure how it is myself. + +By the way, if _any one_ should ask you where I am, just say I've left +the planet, and you don't know when I shall be back.--Yes, you know who +I mean.--And, dear, perhaps you might drop a hint that I detest all +foreigners, especially Jupitans.--Please don't laugh so hard; you'll get +the atmospheric molecules all woozy.--Indeed, there's not the slightest +danger here. Just fancy, if you please, beings who don't know when they +are hungry without consulting a wretched little mechanism, and who +measure their radius of conception by the length of their own feet.--Of +course I shall be on hand for the Solstice! I wouldn't miss that for an +asteroid!--Oh, did I really promise that? Well, I'll tell you about him +another time. + + + THE SECOND RECORD--THOUGH PROBABLY THIRD COMMUNICATION + +--I really must not waste so much gray matter, dear, over unimportant +details. But I simply had to tell you all about my struggles with the +clothes. When Ooma came back, just as I had mastered them with the aid +of her diagrams, the dear thing was so much pleased she actually hugged +me, and I must confess the effect made me forget my discomfort. Really, +an Earth girl is not so much to be pitied if she has becoming dresses to +wear. As you may be sure I was anxious to compare myself with others, I +was glad enough to hear Ooma suggest going out. + +"Come on," she said, executively, "I have only a half-hour to devote to +your first walk. Keep close beside me, and remember on no account to +either dance or sing." + +"But if I see others dancing may I not join them?" I inquired. + +"You won't see anybody dancing on Broadway," she replied, a trifle +snubbily, but I resolved to escape from her as soon as possible and find +out for myself. + +I shall never forget my shock on discovering the sky blue instead of the +color it should be, but soon my eyes became accustomed to the change. In +fact, I have not since that first moment been able to conceive of the +sky as anything but blue. And the city?--Oh, my dear, my dear, I never +expected to encounter anything so much out of key with the essential +euphonies. Of course I have not traveled very much, but I should say +there is nothing in the universe like a street they call +Broadway--unless it be upon the lesser satellite of Mars, where the poor +people are so awfully cramped for space. When I suggested this to Ooma +she laughed and called me clever, for it seems there is a tradition that +a mob of meddling Martians once stopped on Earth long enough to give +the foolish humans false ideas about architecture and many other +matters. But I soon forgot everything in my interest in the people. Such +a poor puzzle-headed lot they are. One's heart goes out to them at once +as they push and jostle one another this way and that, with no +conceivable object other than to get anywhere but where they are in the +shortest time possible. One longs to help them; to call a halt upon +their senseless struggles; to reason with them and explain how all the +psychic force they waste might, if exerted in constructive thought, +bring everything they wish to pass. Mrs. Bloomer assures me they only +ridicule those who venture to interfere, and it will take at least a +Saturn century to so much as start them in the right direction. Our +settlement is their only hope, she says, and even we can help them only +indirectly. + +Not long ago, it appears, they had to choose a King or Mayor, or +whatever the creature is called who executes their silly laws, and our +people so manipulated the election that the choice fell on one of us. + +I thought this a really good idea, and supposed, of course, we must at +once have set about demonstrating how a planet should be managed. But +no! that was not our system, if you please. Instead of making proper +laws our agent misbehaved himself in every way the committee could +suggest, until at last the humans rose against him and put one of +themselves in his place, and after that things went just a little better +than before. This is the only way in which they can be taught. But, dear +me, isn't it tedious? + +Of course, I soon grew anxious for an exchange of thought with almost +anyone, but it was a long while before I discovered a single person who +was not in a violent hurry. At last, however, we came upon a human drawn +apart a little from the throng, who stood with folded arms, engaged +apparently in lofty meditation. His countenance was amiable, although a +little red. + +Saying nothing to Ooma of my purpose, I slipped away from her, and +looking up into the creature's eyes inquired mentally the subject of his +thoughts; also, how he came to be so inordinately stout, and why he wore +bright metal buttons on his garment. But my only answer was a stupid +blink, for his mentality seemed absolutely incapable of receiving +suggestions not expressed in sounds. I observed farther that his aura +inclined too much toward violet for perfect equipoise. + +"G'wan out of this, and quit yer foolin'," he remarked, missing my +meaning altogether. + +Of course I spoke then, using the human speech quite glibly for a first +attempt, and hastened to assure him that though I had no idea of +fooling, I should not go on until my curiosity had been satisfied. But +just then Ooma found me. + +"My friend is a stranger," she explained to the brass-buttoned man. + +"Then why don't you put a string to her?" he asked. + +I learned later that I had been addressing one of the public jesters +employed by the community to keep Broadway from becoming intolerably +dull. + +"But you must not speak to people in the street," said Ooma, "not even +to policemen." + +"Then how am I to brighten others' lives?" I asked, more than a little +disappointed, for several humans hurrying past had turned upon me looks +indicating moods receptive of all the brightening I could give. + +I might have amused myself indefinitely, studying the rapid succession +of varying faces, had not Bloomer cautioned me not to stare. She said +people would think me from the country, which is considered +discreditable, and as this reminded me that I had as yet seen nothing +growing, I asked to be shown the gardens and groves. + +"There is one," she said, indicating an open space not far away where +sure enough there stood some wretched looking trees which I had not +recognized before, forgetting that, of course, leaves here must be +green. I saw no flowers growing, but presently we came upon some in a +sort of crystal bower guarded by a powerful black person. I wanted so to +ask him how he came to be black, but the memory of my last attempt at +information deterred me. Instead, I inquired if I might have some roses. + +"Walk in, Miss," he replied most civilly, and in I walked through the +door, past the sweetest little embryonic, who wore the vesture of a +young policeman. + +"Boy," I said, "have you begun to realize your soul?" + +"Nope," he replied. "I ain't in fractions yet." + +--Some stage of earthly progress, I suppose, though I did not like a +certain movement of his eyelid, and one never can tell, you know, how +hard embryonics are really striving. So I made haste to gather all the +roses I could carry, and was about to hurry after Ooma, when a person +barred my way. + +"Hold on!" he cried. "Ain't you forgetting something? Why don't you +take the whole lot?" + +"Because I have all I want for the present," I answered, rather +frightened, perceiving that his aura had grown livid, and I don't know +how I could have soothed him had not Ooma once more come to my relief. I +could see that she was annoyed with me, but she controlled herself and +placed some token in the being's hand which acted on his agitation like +a charm. + +As I told you, Bloomer had given me with the other things, a crown of +artificial roses which, now that I had real flowers to wear, I wanted to +throw away, but this she would not permit, insisting that such a +proceeding would make the humans laugh at me--though to look into their +serious faces one would not believe this possible. The thoughts of those +about me, as I divined them, seemed anything but jocular. They came to +me incoherent and inconsecutive, a jumble of conditional premises +leading to approximate conclusions expressed in symbols having no +intrinsic meaning.--Of course, it is unfair to judge too soon, but I +have already begun to doubt the existence of direct perception among +them.--What did you say, dear?--Bother direct perception?--Well, I +wonder how _we_ should like to apprehend nothing that could not be put +into words? You, I'm sure, would have the most confused ideas about +Earthly conditions if you depended entirely upon my remarks.--Now +concentrate, and you shall hear something really interesting. + +--No, not the One yet.--He comes later.-- + +We had not gone far, I carrying my roses, and Bloomer not too well +pleased, as I fancied, because so many people turned to look at us +(Bloomer has retrograded physically until she is at times almost +Uranian, probably as the result of wearing black, which appears to be +the chromatic equivalent of respectability), when suddenly I became +sensible of a familiar influence, which was quite startling because so +unexpected. Looking everywhere, I caught sight of--who do you suppose? +Our old friend Tuk.--Mr. Tuck, T-u-c-k here, if you please. He was about +to enter a--a means of transportation, and though his back was towards +me, I recognized that drab aura of his at once, and projected a +reactionary impulse which was most effective. + +In his surprise he was for the moment in danger of being trampled upon +by a rapidly moving animal.--Yes, dear, I said "animal."--I don't know +and I don't consider it at all important. I do not pretend to be +familiar with mundane zoölogy.--Tuck declared himself delighted to see +me, and so I believe he was, though he controlled his radiations in the +supercilious way he always had. But upon one point he did not leave me +long in doubt. Externally, at least, my Earthly Ego is a-- + +(NOTE: _The word which signifies a species of peach or nectarine +peculiar to the planet Mercury is doubtless used here in a symbolic +sense._) + +--I caught on to that most interesting fact the moment his eyes rested +on me. + +"By all that's fair to look upon!" he cried, jumping about in a manner +human people think eccentric, "are you astral or actualized?" + +"See for yourself," I said, holding out my hand, which it took him +rather longer than necessary to make sure of. + +"Well, what on Earth brings you here? Come down to paint another planet +red?" he rattled on, believing himself amusing. + +"Now haven't I as much right to light on Earth as on any other bit of +cosmic dust?" I asked, laughing and forgetting how much snubbing he +requires in the delight of seeing anyone I knew. + +Then he insisted that I had a "date" with him.--A date, as I discovered +later, means something nice to eat--and hinted very broadly that Bloomer +need not wait if she had more important matters to attend to. I must +confess she did not seem at all sorry to have me taken off her hands, +for after cautioning me to beware of a number of things I did not so +much as know by name, she shot off like a respectable old aerolite with +a black trail streaming out behind. If she remains here much longer she +will be coming back upon a mission to reform _us_. As for Tuck, he +became insufferably patronizing at once. + +"Well, how do you like the Only Planet? and how do you like the Only +Town? and how do you like the Only Street?" he began, waving his hands +and looking about him as though there were anything here that one of +_us_ could admire. But, of course, I refused to gratify him with my +crude impressions. I simply said: + +"You appear very well pleased with them yourself." + +"And so will you be," he replied, "when you have realized their +possibilities. Remark that elderly entity across the street. I have to +but exert my will that he shall sneeze and drop his eyeglasses, and +behold, there they go."--Yes, my dear, eyeglasses. They are worn on the +nose by people who imagine they cannot see very well. + +"I consider such actions cruel and unkind," I said, at the same time +willing an embryonic girl to pick the glasses up, and though the child +was rather beyond my normal circle, I was delighted to see her obey. But +I have an idea Tuck regretted an experiment which taught me something I +might not have found out, at least for a while. + +I had now been on Earth several hours, and change of atmosphere gives +one a ravenous appetite. You see, I had forgotten to ask Ooma how, and +how often, humans ate, so when Tuck suggested breakfast as a form of +entertainment I put myself in sympathy with the idea at once. Besides, +it is most important to know just where to find the things you want, and +you may be sure I made a lot of mental notes when we came, as presently +we did, to a tower called Astoria. + +I understand that the upper portions of the edifice are used for study +of the Stars, but we were made welcome on the lower story by a stately +being, who conducted us to honorable seats in an inner court. There were +small trees growing here, green, of course, but rather pretty for all +that; the people, gathered under their shade in little groups, were much +more cheerful and sustaining than any I had seen so far, and an +elemental intelligence detailed to minister to our wants seemed +well-trained and docile. + +"Here you have a glimpse of High Life," announced Tuck, when he had +written something on a paper. + +"The Higher Life?" I inquired, eagerly, and I did not like the flippant +tone in which he answered: + +"No, not quite--just high enough." + +I was beginning to be so bored by his conceit and self-complacency that +I cast my eyes about and smiled at several pleasant-looking persons, +who returned the smile and nodded in a friendly fashion, till I could +perceive Tuck's aura bristle and turn greenish-brown. + +"You can't possibly see anyone you know here," he protested, crossly. + +"All the better reason why I should reach out in search of affinities," +I retorted. But after that, though I was careful to keep my eyes lowered +most of the time, I resolved to come some day to the Astoria alone and +smile at every one I liked. I don't believe I should ever know a human +if Tuck could have his way. + +Presently the elemental brought us delicious things, and while we ate +them Tuck talked about himself. It appears he has produced an opera here +which is a success. People throng to hear it and consider him a great +composer. At all of which, you may believe, I was astonished--just fancy +our Tuck posing as a genius!--but presently when he became elated by the +theme and hummed a bar or two, I understood. The wretch had simply +actualized a few essential harmonies--and done it very badly. I see now +why he likes so much being here, and understand why his associates are +almost altogether human. I don't remember ever meeting with such deceit +and effrontery before. I was so indignant that I could feel my astral +fingers tremble. I could not bear to look at him, and as by that time I +had eaten all I could, I rose and walked directly from the court without +another word. I am sure he would have pursued me had not the elemental, +divining my wish to escape, detained him forcibly. + +Once in the street again, I immediately hypnotized an old lady, willing +her to go direct to Bloomer's Boarding-House while I followed behind. It +may not have been convenient for her, I am afraid, but I knew of no +other way to get back.--Dear me, the light is growing dim, and I must be +dressing for the evening. Good-by!--By the way, I forgot to tell you +something else that happened--remind me of it next time! + + +THE THIRD RECORD + +--Yes, I remember, and you shall hear all about it before I describe an +evening at the Settlement, but it doesn't amount to much.--I told you +how cross and over-bearing Tuck was at the Astoria tower, and of the +mean way in which he restricted my observations. Well, of all the people +in the grove that day there was only one whom I could see without being +criticized, and he sat all alone and facing me, just behind Tuck's back. +Some green leaves hung between us, and whenever I moved my head to note +what he was doing he moved his, too, to look at me. He seemed so lonely +that I was sorry for him, but his atmosphere showed him to be neither +sullen nor Uranian, and I could not help it if I was just a little bit +responsive. Besides, Tuck, once on the subject of his opera, grew so +self-engrossed and dominant that one had either to assert one's own +mentality or become subjective. + +--No, dear, that is not the _only_ reason. There may be such a thing as +an isolated reason, but I have never met one--they always go in packs. I +confess to a feeling of interest in the stranger. Nobody can look at you +with round blue eyes for half an hour steadily without exercising some +attraction, either positive or negative, and I felt, too, that he was +trying to tell me something which would have been a great deal more +interesting than Tuck's opera, and I believe had I remained a little +longer we could have understood each other between the trees just as you +and I can understand each other across the intervals of space. But then +it is so easy to be mistaken.--I had to pass quite close to him in going +out, and I am not sure I did not drop a rose. + +--There may be just a weenie little bit more about the Astorian, but +that will come in its proper place. Now I must get on to the +evening.--It was not much of an occasion, merely the usual gathering of +our crowd, or rather of those of us who have no special assignment for +the time in the large Council Room I have described to you. + +The President of the Board of Control at present is Marlow, Marlow the +Great, as he is called, the painter whose pictures did so much to +elevate the Patagonians.--No, dear, I never heard of Patagonia before, +but I'm almost sure it's not a planet.--With Marlow came a Mrs. Mopes, +who is engaged in creating schools of fiction by writing stories under +different names and then reviewing them in her own seven magazines. +Next, taking the guests at random, was Baxter, a deadly person in his +human incarnation, whose business it is to make stocks fly up or tumble +down.--I don't know what stocks are, but they must be something very +easily frightened.--Then there was a Mr. Waller, nicknamed the Reverend, +whom the Council allows to speak the truth occasionally, while the rest +of the time he tells people anything they want to hear to win their +confidence. And the two Miss Dooleys, who sing so badly that thousands +who cannot sing at all leave off singing altogether when they once hear +them. And Mr. Flick, who misbehaves at funerals to distract mourners +from their grief, and a Mr. O'Brien, whose duty it is to fly into +violent passions in public places just to show how unbecoming temper is. + +There were many others, so many I cannot begin to enumerate them. Some +had written books and were known all over the planet, and some who were +not known at all had done things because there was nobody else to do +them. And some were singers and some were actors, and some were rich and +some were poor to the outside world, but in the Council Room they met +and laughed and matched experiences and made jokes; from the one who had +built a battleship so terrible that all the other ships were burnt on +condition that his should be also, to the ordinary helpers who applaud +stupid plays till intelligent human beings become thoroughly disgusted +with bad art. + +In the world, of course, they are all serious enough, and often know +each other only by secret signs, while every day and night and minute +our poor earth-brothers come a little nearer the light--pushed toward +it, pulled toward it, wheedled and tricked and bullied and coaxed, and +thinking all the while how immensely clever they are, and what a +wonderful progressive, glorious age they have brought about for +themselves.--At all events, this is the rather vague composite +impression I have received of the plans and purposes of the Board of +Directors, and doubtless it is wrong. + +I suppose with a little trouble I might have recognized nearly everyone, +but the fancy took me to suspend intuition just to see how Earth girls +feel, and you know when one is hearing a lot of pleasant things one does +not much care who happens to be saying them. + +I fancy Marlow thought less of me when I confessed that I am here only; +for the lark, and really do not care a meteor whether the planet is ever +elevated or not. But he is a charming old fellow all the same, and the +only one of the lot who has not grown the least bit smudgy. + +Marlow announced that the evening would be spent in harmony with the +vibrations of Orion, and set us all at work to get in touch. I love +Orion light myself, for none other suits my aura quite so well, and I +was glad to find they had not taken up the Vega fad.--The light here? My +dear, it is not even filtered.--Some of us, no doubt for want of +practice, were rather slow about perfecting, but finally we all caught +on, and when O'Brien, no longer fat and florid, and the elder Miss +Dooley, no longer scrawny, moved out to start the dance, there was only +one who had not assumed an astral personality. Poor fellow, though I +pitied him, I did admire his spunk in holding back. It seems that as an +editor he took to telling falsehoods on his own account so often that +the Syndicate is packing him off as Special Correspondent to a tailless +comet. + +Tuck never came at all; either he realizes how honest people must regard +him and his opera, or else the elementals at the Astoria are still +detaining him. + +We had a lovely dance, and while we rested Marlow called on some of us +for specialties. Mrs. Mopes did a paragraph by a man named Henry James, +translated into action, which seemed quite difficult, and then a person +called Parker externalized a violin and gave the Laocoon in terms of +sound. To me his rendering of marble resembled terra-cotta until I +learned that the copy of the statue here is awfully weather-stained. +After this three pretty girls gave the Aurora Borealis by telepathic +suggestion rather well, and then I sang "Love Lives Everywhere"--just +plain song. + +--I know this must all sound dreadfully flat to you, quite like +"Pastimes for the Rainy Season in Neptune," but Bloomer says she +doesn't know what would happen if we should ever give a really +characteristic jolly party. + +We wound up with an Earth dance called the Virginia Reel, the quickest +means you ever saw for descending to a lower psychic plane. That's all I +have to tell, and quite enough, I'm sure you'll think.--What? The +Astorian? I have not seen him since.--But there is a little more, a very +little, if you are not tired.--This morning I received a gift of roses, +just like the one I dropped yesterday, brought me by the same small +embryonic I had seen in the flower shop. I asked the child in whose +intelligence the impulse had originated, and he replied: + +"A blue-eyed feller with a mustache, but he gave me a plunk not to +tell." + +I understood a plunk to be a token of confidence, and I at once +expressed displeasure at the boy's betrayal of his trust. I told him +such an act would make dark lines upon his aura which might not fade +for several days. + +"Say, ain't you got some message to send back?" he asked. + +"Boy!" said I, "don't forget your little aura." + +"All right," he answered, "I'll tell him 'Don't forget your little +Aura.' I'll bet he coughs up another plunk." + +I don't know what he meant, but I am very much afraid there may be some +mistake.--Oh, yes, I am quite sure to be back in time for the +Solstice.--Or at least for the Eclipse. + + +THE FOURTH RECORD + + (NOTE.--Between this logogram and the last the Long's Peak + Receptive Pulsator was unfortunately not in operation for the space + of a fortnight, as the electrician who took the instrument apart + for adjustment found it necessary to return to Denver for oil.) + + +--Yes, dear, it's me, though if I did not know personality to be +indestructible I should begin to have my doubts. I have not made any +more mistakes, that is, not any bad ones, since I went to the Astoria +alone for lunch, and the elementals were so very disagreeable just +because I had no money. I know all about money now, except exactly how +you get it, and Tuck assures me that is really of no importance. I never +told Ooma how the blue-eyed Astorian paid my bill for me, and her +perceptive faculties have grown too dull to apprehend a thing she is not +told. Fresh roses still come regularly every day, and of course I can do +no less than express my gratitude now and then.--Oh, I don't know how +often, I don't remember.--But it is ever so much pleasanter to have some +one you like to show you the way about than to depend on hypnotizing +strangers, who may have something else to do. + +--I told you last week about the picnic, did I not? The day, I mean, +when Bloomer took me into the country, and Tuck so far forgave my +rudeness to him as to come with us to carry the basket.--Oh, yes, +indeed, I am becoming thoroughly domesticated on Earth. And, my dear, +these humans are docility itself when you once acquire the knack of +making them do exactly as you wish, which is as easy as falling off a +log.--A _log_ is the external evidence of a pre-existent tree, +cylindrical in form, and though often sticky, not sufficiently so to be +adhesive. + +--That picnic was so pleasant--or would have been but for Bloomer's +anxiety that I should behave myself, and Tuck's anxiety that I should +not--that I determined to have another all by myself--and I have had it. + +I traveled to the same little dell I described before, and I put my feet +in the water just as I wasn't allowed to do the other day. And I built a +fire and almost cooked an egg and ate cake (an egg is the bud of a bird, +and cake is edible poetry) sitting on a fence.--Fences grow horizontally +and have no leaves.--Don't ask so many questions! + +After a while, however, I became tired of being alone, so I started off +across some beautiful green meadows toward a hillside, where I had +observed a human walking about and waving a forked wand. He proved the +strangest-looking being I have met with yet, more like those wild and +woolly space-dwellers who tumbled out when that tramp comet bumped +against our second moon. But he was a considerate person, for when he +saw me coming and divined that I should be tired, he piled up a quantity +of delicious-scented herbage for me to sit on. + +"Good-morning, mister," I said, plumping myself down upon the mound he +had made, and he, being much more impressionable than you would suppose +from his Uranian appearance, replied. + +"I swan, I like your cheek." + +"It's a pleasant day," I said, because one is always expected to +announce some result of observation of the atmosphere. It shows at once +whether or not one is an idiot. + +"I call it pretty danged hot," he returned, intelligently. + +"Then why don't you get out of the sun?" I suggested, more to keep the +conversation fluid than because I cared a bit. + +"I'm a-goin' to," he answered, "just as soon as that goll-darned wagon +comes." (A "goll-darned" wagon is, I think, a wagon without springs.) + +"What are you going to do then?" I asked, beginning to fear I should be +left alone again after all my trouble. + +"Goin' home to dinner," he replied, and I at once said I would go with +him.--You see, I had placed a little too much reliance on the egg. + +"I dunno about that, but I guess it will be all right," he urged, +hospitably, and presently the goll-darned wagon arrived with another +man, who turned out to be the first one's son and who looked as though +he bit. + +Together the two threw all the herbage into the wagon till it was heaped +far above their heads. + +"How am I ever to get up?" I asked, for I had no idea of walking any +farther, and I could see the man's white house ever so far away. + +"Who said you was goin' to get up at all?" inquired the biter, +disagreeably, but the other answered for me. + +"I said it, that's who, you consarned jay," he announced, reprovingly. + +When I had made them both climb up first and give me each a hand, I had +no difficulty at all in mounting, but I was very careful not to thank +the Jay, which seemed to make him more morose than ever. Then they slid +down again, and off we started. + +Once when we came to some lovely blue flowers growing in water near the +roadside I told the Jay to stop and wade in and pick them for me. + +"I'll be dogged if I do," he answered; so I said: + +"I don't know what being 'dogged' means, but if it is a reward for being +nice and kind and polite, I hope you will be." + +Whereupon he bit at me once and waded in, while the older man, whose +name, it seems, was Pop, sat down upon a stone and laughed. + +"Gosh! If this don't beat the cats," he said, slapping his knee, which +was his way of making himself laugh harder. + +I put the flowers in my hair and in my belt and wherever I could stick +them. But there was still a lot left over, and whenever we met people I +threw them some, which appeared to please Pop, but made the Jay still +more bite-y. + +Presently we came to a very narrow place and there, as luck would have +it, we met an automobile.--Thank goodness, I need not explain +automobile.--And who should be at the lever all alone but--the Astorian. + +I recognized him instantly, and he recognized me, which was, I suppose, +his reason for forgetting to stop till he had nearly run us down. In a +moment we were in the wildest tangle, though nothing need have happened +had not the Jay completely lost his temper. + +"Hang your picture!" he called out, savagely, "What do you want?--The +Earth?" + +And with that he struck the animals--the wagon was not +self-propelling--a violent blow, and they sprang forward with a lurch +which made the hay begin to slip. I tried to save myself, but there was +nothing to catch hold of, so off I slid and--oh, my dear, my dear, just +fancy it!--I landed directly in his lap.--No, not the Jay's.--Of course, +I stayed there as short a time as possible, for he was very nice about +moving up to make room for me on the seat, but I am afraid it did seem +frightfully informal just at first. + +"It was all the fault of that consarned Jay," I explained, as soon as I +had recovered my composure, "and I shall never ride in his goll-darned +wagon again." + +"I sincerely hope you will not," replied Astoria, looking at me with the +most curious expression. "It would be much better to let me take you +wherever you wish to go." + +"That's awfully kind of you," I said, "but I don't care to go anywhere +in particular this afternoon, except as far as possible from that +objectionable young man." + +The Astorian did not speak again till he had turned something in the +machine to make it back and jerk, and, once free from the upset hay, go +on again. + +"Say, Sissy, I thought you was comin' to take dinner," Pop called out +from under the wagon, where he had crawled for safety, and when I +replied as nicely as I could, "No, thank you, not to-day," he said +again, quite sadly as I thought, "Gosh blim me, if that don't beat the +cats!" and also several other things I could not hear, because we were +moving away so rapidly. + +When we had gone about a hundred miles--or yards, or inches, whichever +it was--the Astorian, who had been sitting very straight, inquired if +those gentlemen--meaning Pop and Jay--were near relations. + +I showed him plainly that I thought his question Uranian, and explained +that I had not a relative on Earth. Then I told him exactly how I had +come to be with them, and about my picnic and the egg. I am afraid I did +not take great pains to make the story very clear, for it was such fun +to perplex him. He is not at all like the Venus people, who have become +so superlatively clever that they are always bored to death. + +"Were you surprised to see me flying through the air?" I asked. + +"Oh, no," he said; "I have always thought of you as coming to Earth in +some such way from some far-distant planet." + +"Oh, then, you know!" I gasped. + +The Astorian laughed. + +"I know you are the one perfect being in the world, and that is quite +enough," he said, and I saw at once that whatever he had guessed about +me he knew nothing at all of the Settlement. + +"Miss Aura," he went on,--he has called me that ever since that little +embryonic made his stupid blunder, and I have not corrected him--here it +is almost necessary to have some sort of a name--"Miss Aura, don't you +think we have been mere acquaintances long enough? I'm only human----" + +"Yes, of course," I interrupted, "but then that is not your fault----" + +"I'm glad you look upon my misfortune so charitably," he said, a trifle +more puzzled than usual, as I fancied. + +"It is my duty," I replied. "I want to elevate you; to brighten your +existence." + +"My Aura!" he whispered; and I was not quite sure whether he meant me or +not. + +We were moving rapidly along a broad road beside a river. There were +hills in the distance and the air from them was in the key of the +Pleiades. There were gardens everywhere full of sunlight translated into +flowers, and without an effort one divined the harmony of growing +things. I felt that something was about to happen; I knew it, but I did +not care to ask what it might be. Perhaps if I had tried I could not +have known; perhaps for that hour I was only an Earth girl and could +only know things as they know them, but I did not care. + +We were going faster, faster every moment. + +"Was it you who willed me to come out into the country?" I asked. "Have +you been watching for me and expecting me?" + +We were moving now as clouds that rush across a moon. + +"I think I have been watching for you all my life and willing you to +come," he said, which shows how dreadfully unjust we sometimes are to +humans. + +"While I was on another planet?" I inquired. "While we were millions and +millions of miles apart? Suppose that I had never come to Earth?" + +We were moving like the falling stars one journeys to the Dark +Hemisphere to see. + +"I should have found you all the same," he whispered, half laughing, +but his blue eyes glistened. "I do not think that space itself could +separate us." + +"Oh, do you realize that?" I asked, "and do you really know?" + +"I know I have you with me now," he said, "and that is all I care to +know." + +We were flying now, flying as comets fly to perihelion. The world about +was slipping from us, disintegrating and dissolving into cosmic thoughts +expressed in color. Only his eyes were actual, and the blue hills far +away, and the wind from them in the key of the Pleiades. + +"There shall never any more be time or space for us," he said. + +"But," I protested, "we must not overlook the fundamental facts." + +"In all the universe there is just one fact," he cried, catching my hand +in his, and then-- + +(NOTE: _Here a portion of the logogram becomes indecipherable, owing, +perhaps, to the passage of some large bird across the line of +projection. What follows is the last recorded vibragraph to date._) + +--Yes, dear, I know I should have been more circumspect. I should have +remembered my position, but I didn't. And that's why I'm engaged to be +married.--You have to here, when you reach a certain point--I know you +will think it a great come-down for one of us, but after all do we not +owe something to our sister planets?-- + + + + +THE UNEXPECTED LETTER + + +As much as I dislike superlatives, I must confess that nothing in my +life has given me greater surprise than that letter addressed to me in a +firm but unfamiliar hand, face upward on the counter of a small +curiosity shop in an insignificant by-street of a strange city. + +I have a weakness for such small shops, where one is commonly permitted +to roam at will amid a multitude of attractive objects without the +slightest obligation to buy, and the proprietors are often men of +intelligence and education. When I have leisure I rarely resist the +temptation to enter, and in this case the impulse had been almost +mandatory. + +It was my first visit to Selbyville, and I may say that it will probably +be my last; for I have never seen a duller, less interesting place. A +bad connection had left me stranded at the railway station there, with +several hours to be disposed of, as I feared, in aimless wanderings +along streets and avenues each one more crude and commonplace than the +last; but the chance discovery of a favorite haunt filled me at once +with lively satisfaction. + +A dark and musty little shop, it proved to be, and its owner all I could +have wished--a mild old Dickens person who had a virtuous pride in his +collection, and at once divined in me a sympathetic listener. At first I +followed him from case to case with unaffected interest and attention; +but presently, I own, his conversation grew a trifle wearisome, and I +allowed my thoughts to stray. + +He had produced, as I remember well, a tray of antique cameos, and to +make room for it upon the counter brushed aside a litter of disordered +papers. Neglected bills, they seemed to be, and circulars such as a +careless man forgets to throw away. But I noted nothing more; for +suddenly amid the trash my own familiar name confronted me, bold, clear, +and unmistakable, across a large and square envelope of a bluish tint: +"Josiah Brunson Dykefellow, Esq., 109 South Ninth Street, City." + +Now, I am not a man to jump at rash conclusions. The address, of course, +was one that might be found in almost any city; but as it happened to be +mine in Masonburg, and as my name was not a common one, to say the +least, the letter seemed so clearly meant for me that I should have +taken it without compunction, could I have done so unobserved. But the +merchant never left me for a moment, and though most amiable I gave him +credit for too much good sense to deliver a sealed communication on the +unsupported statement of a perfect stranger; for I had left my card-case +in my satchel at the station, and as I am a bachelor my linen is +unmarked. However the letter came to be there, it was evident that I +should have to exercise diplomacy to gain possession of my own. And so, +continuing our circuit of the shop, I weighed the matter nicely. My +final resolution was, I shall always think, little short of inspiration. + +We had reached an ancient rosewood wardrobe of enormous size and hideous +design before I found the opportunity to put my plan in operation. + +"Ah! this is something I should like to own," I cried, "provided that my +new rooms are large enough to hold it. And," I added carelessly, +"perhaps you can direct me to the address"--I feigned to consult a +memorandum--"109 South Ninth Street." + +The worthy dealer turned on me a look of half-amused surprise. "That's +here," he said--"right here, this street and house." + +"Indeed!" I cried, though I had not been wholly unprepared for such an +answer. "That's really odd! for this, my dear sir, is the very place +where I was told to seek lodgings." + +"There must be some mistake," replied the dealer civilly; "for as it is +the house is too small to accommodate my family." + +At this I must have feigned the signs of extreme annoyance rather +cleverly; for the dealer joined in condemnation of officious friends in +general, and especially of one McPherson, a second auditor, who had so +misled me. + +"That ass McPherson," I explained, "has put me to the greatest +inconvenience! For, feeling certain of the rooms, I have actually given +this address to correspondents. But," I hastened to assure my courteous +listener, "I shall, of course, write at once and save you any trouble on +that score. Please save the wardrobe for a day or two. My name is Josiah +Brunson Dykefellow." + +As I pronounced each syllable with distinctness, I could perceive the +dealer's kindly face expand with pleasure. "Why, Mr. Dykefellow!" he +exclaimed, "a letter came for you this morning. I was about to return it +to the carrier. Here it is." + +I thanked him, gave the square envelope only a casual glance before +slipping it into an inner pocket, and then bought a curio, scarcely +knowing what I did. I could hardly wait to see my purchase wrapped in +newspaper. I feared the dealer might think better of his confidence and +make demands on me for identification. I felt the prick of conscience +that an honest man must feel who gains even a righteous victory by +disingenuous means. + +When the door had closed behind me and I was free to stride up Ninth +Street with my curio beneath my arm, I dreaded at every step to hear the +hue and cry of "Stop thief!" at my heels. Once safe beyond the nearest +corner, I actually ran. Up one street, down another, now running, and +now short of breath, proceeding at a rapid walk, I came at length to a +small, well-nigh deserted public square, and here, seated on a retired +bench, I cautiously took out my blue envelope, and for the first time +scrutinized its inscription. + +The writer was evidently a person of decided character; but whether man +or woman it was impossible to guess. There was something masculine about +the stationery, which suggested a well-appointed club; but on the other +hand, the seal of violet wax, the rather blurred impression of what +might have been a dainty crest, the smell of orris, I fancied, spoke of +a lady's boudoir. As for the postmark, it was non-committal as to place, +but the hour and date were clearly nine-thirty P. M. the previous day, +which seemed rather late for a lady; but again, few men ever write "In +haste" across the corner of a letter. Of course it would have been a +simple matter to have solved the mystery then and there; but a mystery +solved can never be itself again, and for the moment I determined to +prolong the pleasures of anticipation. I chuckled to myself, and cast a +friendly glance about me, vaguely imagining what Selbyville might mean +to me in after years. Assuming an easy attitude upon the bench, I gazed +into the sky. + +"Ah, Fate!" I was beginning to soliloquize, when a rude voice beside me +interrupted. + +"Say, kape yer feet offen the grass, unless ye own the earth!" it said, +and looking up I saw before me the sinister visage of a minion of the +law. "And what are ye doin' here anyway?" the voice went on while the +visage turned with undisguised suspicion toward my curio, which did look +something like an infant wrapped in newspaper. + +I said that I was waiting for my train, and asked with all humility to +be directed to the station. + +I was answered with contumely. I was commanded to "Get a move on!" I was +told with scant civility that the Union Station was only one block away. +"Even you can't miss it," my informant said. "Follow South Ninth +Street." + +I rose and thanked the man with all the dignity at my command. I also +gave him a cigar, which seemed to mollify him; but if my random flight +had brought me once more to the far end of Ninth Street, I should have +let every train that ever cleared from Selbyville depart without me +rather than have risked another meeting with the curiosity man. As I +sauntered nonchalantly in the wrong direction, I am sure that I caught a +vulgar idiom muttered by official lips. + +But the experience had taught me that one who has a secret to conceal +should avoid above all things making himself conspicuous. So, carrying +my curio--which was of bronze and growing every moment heavier--as +though it was a package from the laundry, I struck into a swinging gait, +and hummed a popular refrain. My single wish now was to seem absolutely +sane; for to be "bug-house" (such was the policeman's phrase), though +not a crime, may lead to inquiries, perhaps examination, and I was by no +means certain what incriminating matter my hidden letter might contain. +Thus reasoning, I became doubtful all at once of my right to the blue +envelope. And the more I thought about it, the weaker grew my +confidence in the course I had pursued. What if after all I had +appropriated some one's else business, some one's else secret, the +hideous clue to some one's else misdemeanor? + +It had been my half-formed purpose to walk until the town was far behind +me, out into the quiet country where there were surely haystacks and +deserted barns, or at least, if nothing better offered, trees to climb. +But now the thought occurred to me that it might be safer to read my +letter in broad daylight and the open street, than in uncertain and +suspicious solitude. + +The decision was a wise one, and I lost no time in turning it into +action; for my surroundings at the moment could scarcely have been more +favorable. I stood before what appeared to be a public building, tightly +closed and to all appearance unused, and right at hand there was a most +convenient newel-post on which to rest my curio, which had for some time +been threatening to shed its wrappings altogether. I can't remember now +just what it was--some Eastern object, doubtless--but scarcely had it +left my hands when all the air grew resonant with yells as though the +fiends of Tophet were released from durance; the great doors of the +building opened, and children, innumerable children, issued forth. I +have never in my life beheld so many children all at once. They swarmed +about me and my curio, uttering uncouth cries, and pointing with their +horrid little fingers urged their young companions far and near to join +in the affray. I yield to no one in my love for childhood--properly +conducted childhood--but Selbyville is not the place to find it. + +With one disheartened cry, I grabbed my property, and started whither I +neither knew nor cared, the children pursuing like a pack of misbehaved +young wolves. I crossed a crowded thoroughfare, doubled on my tracks, +overturned a push-cart full of oranges, threw a matinee audience into +wild alarm, and everywhere I seemed to hear two fatal words. And when +at last I threw myself upon a trolley-car the stupid vulgarism still +rang in my ears. + +I am sure the conductor eyed me with suspicion; but I did not care; for +I was moving every moment farther from the scenes of my discomfiture, my +curio out of sight beneath the seat, and my letter safely in my inside +pocket. I picked up an abandoned paper, and read it, or appeared to do +so, with composure, though all the while the fingers of my left hand +never ceased to pinch the blue envelope, making fresh discoveries. + +Within the sheet of folded note-paper there was unquestionably an +inclosure of a smaller size and softer texture, perhaps a bank-note, +perhaps a draft. Of course I held my imagination well in check, and +tried to think of nothing more important than a newspaper cutting; but +even this allowed a certain scope for fancy. Advertisements for missing +heirs are not uncommon, and even poems when embalmed in orris may have +deep significance. Ah! What if I were rich? What if I were loved? What +if both at once? The thing is not impossible. Soon I should know all, +beneath my haystack, in my barn, or, bird-like, swinging in my tree. I +was so certain now that what had cost so much inconvenience must be all +my own, that I would have parted from the blue envelope only with my +life. + +It was a shock to have my dreaming interrupted by the conductor's +cheerful call, "All out!" and to find that the thrice accursed trolley +had all the while been flying, not toward the country, but into the +depths of darkest Selbyville, where gasworks, rolling-mills, and docks +compete for grimy precedence. But if by that time I had not grown used +to disappointment, the opportunity to abandon my curio beneath the seat +would have made up for much. + +I have often wondered since my afternoon in Selbyville where the man who +wrote in praise of solitude obtained his information. I feel convinced +that Crusoe never sat down for a quiet pipe without black Friday butting +in to ask what time it was. But this is idle speculation. + +Once freed from my incumbrance, my heart beat high with hope, and +crawling through a broken fence I found myself within a lumber-yard. On +every hand well-ordered planks were piled reposefully, and under foot +the ground was soft with sawdust. And here I lost no time in taking out +my letter. As I did so, a new and most absorbing possibility flashed +upon me. The smaller inclosure might be a photograph, one of those +unmounted carbon prints taken by amateurs, and so frankly truthful that +only good-looking people care to send them to their friends. I felt my +pulses flutter at the thought and pressed the blue envelope to my lips, +secure from observation, as I fancied. + +But such was not the case. A large check-jumpered person, with a +protruding jaw, perched on a heap of railway ties, had been regarding +me with tolerant amusement all the while. "Well, what in Paradise are +you up to anyhow?" he drawled complacently. + +"I trust that you will pardon the intrusion," I replied politely; "but I +have taken the liberty of stepping in to read a letter." + +"Then you can just step out again," returned the man with a deliberation +in itself a rudeness. "This ain't no reading-room." + +"But," I protested, "surely you will not grudge me a modicum of solitude +and quiet?" + +"I guess we ain't got what you want in stock to-day. I guess you'd +better inquire up at the jail; they make a sort of specialty of just +them things." + +I left, unwilling to expose myself to further incivility; and presently +I quitted the gas-house region altogether; but not before I had been +driven from a brewery by a dog, and from a canal-boat by a woman +bargeman; a stevedore had challenged me to fight, and an intoxicated +roustabout had given me an apple. And nowhere, nowhere, did I find a +spot to read my letter. + +Time passed; how much I shall never know, for I had lost all track of +it. Nor could I find to-day the little bridge where, weary and +disheartened, I sank down upon the broad stone coping to rest. Below, +the waters tumbled foaming through a raceway toward the turbines of a +power-house, with a sound that mingled pleasantly with the whir of +wheels and dynamos within. In contrast with the sordid sights and sounds +of Selbyville, the place was grateful and refreshing to the eye and ear, +and looking from the coping I was pleased to perceive a shelf of masonry +projecting below, wide enough to form a comfortable seat, and easily +reached by a short drop from the bridge. Here, indeed, was an oasis, a +refuge, a retreat. But unfortunately the place had been preëmpted by a +negro, who appeared to be asleep. + +"Hello!" I shouted, for nothing short of manslaughter could now balk me +of my purpose. "Hello, my colored friend! Would you not like to earn a +dollar?" + +"Sure, boss!" he answered, waking instantly. + +"Then go," I said, "directly to the City Hall and find out if the Mayor +is in town." + +The man demurred, until the actual contact of the dollar with his palm +convinced him of my good faith. And presently he clambered to the +bridge, while I lost little time in dropping to his place. + +"Say, boss," he called down to me in a nervous whisper, "if youse done +goin' to drown yourself, won't you please wait till I get off where I +cain't hear you splash?" + +At last I was alone, at last secure from interruption! And scarcely +daring to believe in such good fortune, I crouched against the wall and +held my breath. So minutes went by, each one an agony of fear that some +fresh difficulty might yet confront me. Then, gaining strength, I +cautiously drew forth once more the treasured blue envelope. + +My hands were tremulous, my nerves tingling with emotion; but I had +schooled myself to bear whatever good or evil Fate might have in store. +The strong cool wind from beneath the bridge brought me new courage, and +the very machinery seemed to murmur promises. I pressed my blue envelope +to my heart; I laid it on my knee for one brief instant, to experience +again the tantalizing delights of anticipation. + +The breeze became a gale. It threatened to dislodge my hat, and in one +mad moment I raised both hands. In the next--I know not how it +happened--in the next, I saw my letter far below where the wild waters +whirled. For an instant it leaped and danced before me, lighter than the +foam, and then with one last flash of blue it disappeared in the black +waters of the turbine pit.-- + + + "Continued on page 14," _Sunday Magazine_, April 1, '07. + + +Much as I dislike superlatives, I may say that never have I been so +disappointed and annoyed. + + + ("If you have read this story, it may be well to remind you that + this is April 1st."--ED. _Sunday Magazine_.) + + + + +THE MONEY METER + + +Hiram Clatfield, upon the threshold of his office, peered out into the +counting-room in a manner difficult to associate with the inscriptions +on the plate-glass door half open at his back. "Private" was printed +there in gilded letters, and "President," but the tone of the president +was almost that of one who asks a favor as he said: + +"Mr. Wattles, if you should happen to be disengaged, I should like to +speak with you a moment." + +The cashier, wheeling on his lofty-legged stool, gave one regretful +glance toward a regiment of figures, a marching column six abreast from +which he had been casting out the nines, and replied resignedly: + +"I'm disengaged at present." + +"Then please come in," said Mr. Clatfield, accepting the untruth with +gratitude. "Come in and shut the door." + +The room marked "President," paneled in quartered oak much like the +state apartment of a private car, contained a polished desk, six chairs +with red morocco seats, a Turkish rug, and the portrait of a former +president done in oil. Beneath the picture, upon a pedestal and +protected by a dome of glass, stood a small machine which, from time to +time, emitted jerky, nervous clicks, and printed mystic characters upon +an endless paper tape. + +The former president upon the wall smiled perpetually, with eyes +directed to the plate-glass door, as though it pleased him to observe +through it the double row of neat young men on lofty stools so well +employed. Perhaps it pleased him better still to watch the little, +brass-barred windows farther on, where countless faces came and went all +day from ten till three--thin faces and fat, and old and young, and +hands, innumerable hands, some to carry and some to fetch, but all to +leave a tribute for whomever might be sitting at the polished desk. + +"Please read this item, Mr. Wattles," said the president, indicating +with a well-kept finger-nail a paragraph in the _Morning Mercury_, and, +putting on his glasses, Mr. Wattles read: + +"Conservative estimates place the fortune of Hiram Clatfield at seven +million dollars." + +At the same moment the small machine appeared to rouse itself. + +"Con-ser-vat-ive--est-i-ma-tes--place--the--for-tune--of--Hi-ram-- +Clat-field--at----" it seemed to repeat deliberately, as for dictation, +and stopped. + +"S.e.v.e.n.m.i.l.l.i.o.n.d.o.l.l.a.r.s," concluded a typewriter in the +counting-room beyond the plate-glass doors, and the sentence ended in +the tinkle of the little bell which gives warning that a line is nearly +finished. + +Mr. Wattles, having laid the paper on the table, wiped his glasses with +a pocket-handkerchief and held them to the light. + +"Do you propose to take action in the matter?" he inquired. "Is there +anything I can do?" + +Mr. Clatfield moved to the center of the rug and thrust both hands into +his trousers' pockets. + +"Wattles," he said, "is that thing true?" + +"Not altogether," said the other, betraying nothing in his tone beyond a +wish for accuracy. "I think it would be safe to say at least--allowing +for fluctuations--ten million dollars." + +"Al-low-ing--for--fluc-tua-tions----" repeated the ticker. + +"T.e.n.m.i.l.l.i.o.n.d.o.l.l.a.r.s," the typewriter concluded. + +Between the two men on the Turkish rug there was so little to choose +that, with straw cylinders to protect his cuffs and a left coat sleeve +somewhat marred by wiping pens, either might have been cashier, and +without these tokens either might very well have been president. The +banker was a trifle bald and gray about the temples. The other's hair +was still erect and of a hue which had suggested "Chipmunk" as a fitting +nickname in his school days. + +"Wattles," said the banker slowly, "what is ten million dollars?" + +"Why, it's--it's a heap of money," faltered the cashier. + +The other took a turn towards the margin of the rug and back. + +"That doesn't help me," he protested. "That doesn't give me an idea. You +used to be so full of fancies," he went on, somewhat pettishly; "you +used to bring a book of poetry to read at lunch when we were kids +outside there"--he nodded toward the counting-room. "You used to laugh +at me for puzzling over discounts, and say I went about with blinders, +like a horse, to shut out everything that was not right ahead. I never +could imagine anything--I can't imagine ten millions now. How long would +it be if it were all in dollar bills placed end to end? How big would +it be if it were in two-cent postage stamps?" + +"It would take a little time to work that out," replied the other man +respectfully, though not without a twinkle in his eye. "I can let you +have a statement in half an hour." + +"Don't do it, then," rejoined the banker. "I'm sick of figures, and you +never needed them when you used to make up fairy tales as we went +roaming through the streets after the bank had closed." + +"I often make up fairy stories still," said Mr. Wattles, "after the bank +has closed." + +"Do you?" demanded the other. "Do you still? And do you still take walks +before going home to supper?" + +"Yes, when it does not rain." + +"And do you think it will be clear to-night?" + +Mr. Wattles laughed. + +"To-night I shall be late in getting off," he said, "because to-morrow +is a holiday." + +"What holiday?" inquired Mr. Clatfield. + +"Christmas," said Mr. Wattles. + +"I don't pretend to keep track of all the holidays," said Mr. Clatfield. + +"No," said Mr. Wattles, "I suppose not." + +It was a busy day at the bank, and the city clocks had sounded six +before the cashier set the time-locks in the vault and bade good-night +to the watchman at the door. But if he was surprised to find an old +companion waiting on the steps, his face did not betray the fact. + +"I thought I'd walk a little way with you," explained the banker, with +an attempt at carelessness that overshot the mark. + +"All right," said Mr. Wattles, buttoning up his serviceable coat and +bestowing a quick, chipmunk glance upon the weather. "You won't mind if +I stop to get my collars?" + +A misty rain was falling, and the streets were filled with people +hurrying home from work. As the two men fell in with the procession the +banker gave an awkward little hop to catch the step. + +"I don't suppose you take your laundry to the same place still?" he +speculated. + +"Oh, yes, the same old place," replied the other. "Mrs. Brennan's dead, +of course, but Mary Ann still carries on the business." + +"You don't mean little Mary Ann?" + +"Yes, she's big Mary Ann now, and has five children of her own. Her +husband was a switchman in the yards until he got run over by an engine +two years ago." + +Connected talk was difficult in the jostling crowd, and often the two +men proceeded for half a block in silence. Once Mr. Wattles dived into a +little shop to buy tobacco for his pipe. On his return he found the +banker occupied with landmarks. + +"Didn't there use to be a grocery over there?" asked Mr. Clatfield. + +"Yes, where the tall building now stands," replied the other. "Do you +remember the fat groceryman who used to sell us apples?" + +"Oh, yes," the banker rejoined, "and they were first rate apples, too. +Strange, but I can't eat apples now; they don't agree with me." + +"No," said Mr. Wattles, "I suppose not." + +The lighted windows of a great department store made an arcade of +radiance in the murky night, creating an illusion of protection so +strong that one might well believe oneself indoors. The rain was +changing into snow, which melted under foot but hung about the hair and +beards and shoulders of the passers-by. Along the curb a row of barrows +displayed cheap toys and Christmas greens for sale. + +"Do you remember how we used to linger at the shops, and pick out +presents and imagine we had lots of money?" Mr. Wattles asked. + +"That was your game," answered Mr. Clatfield. "I never could imagine +anything. I could see only the things you pointed out." + +It seemed to the banker that in the place of his middle-aged cashier +there walked beside him an odd, alert little boy, with bristling hair +and beady eyes, and he caught himself looking about him in an old, vain +hope of being able first to catch sight of something interesting. As +they turned into a less frequented street he asked: + +"What became of the old woman who made butterscotch?" + +"She made the last in '81," replied the other. "The penny-in-the-slot +machines broke up her business." + +"Really?" the banker commented. "It seems a pity." + +The air was growing colder and the dancing motes of snow made halos +about every street-lamp. + +"Don't they look like swarms of Mayflies?" remarked Mr. Wattles. "One +might almost believe it was summer." + +"Yes, so one might," assented Mr. Clatfield, "now that you speak of +it." + +A few steps up a slippery alley they stopped before a shabby little +house, the shabbiest of a row of little houses, each one of which +displayed the legend "Washing Done." + +"Come in," said the cashier, as he pushed open the door. + +Within, a tall spare woman stood with bare red arms before a washtub on +a backless wooden chair. Upon the floor, amid the heaps of linen waiting +for the tub, a litter of small children rolled and tumbled like so many +puppies. Festoons of drying shirts and handkerchiefs hung in an +atmosphere of steam and suds. + +At sight of Mr. Wattles the woman broke into a flood of explanation and +excuse. The water had been frozen all the week, the sun had refused to +shine, the baby had been sick. There were a dozen reasons why he could +not have his collars, as the speaker called on Heaven to bear witness. + +"You'd have 'em on your neck this minute," she declared, "if work could +put them there, for it's meself that needs the money for me rint." + +"Ahem!" said Mr. Wattles, "I fancied that your claim against the railway +had left you pretty comfortably off." + +"Claim, is it?" cried the laundress. "Claim against the railway? Faith, +after keeping me waiting for two years they threw me out of court. They +said that Mike contributed his negligence and that it served him right." + +"That seems a little hard," commented Mr. Clatfield guardedly, for he +was a director in the railway. + +"Small blame to you, but you're a gentleman!" exclaimed the washerwoman. + +"At least your husband left you quite a little family," the banker +ventured to suggest. + +"Contributory negligence again!" said Mr. Wattles under his breath. + +"It's all a body has to do to keep them fed," lamented Mary Ann, "as +maybe you know well yourself, sir, if you've childer of your own." + +"I have none," said the other. + +"God pity you!" returned big Mary Ann. + +"Ah, that reminds me," put in Mr. Wattles, and coming nearer to the +laundress, he explained: "My friend here is the banker, Mr. Clatfield." + +"It's proud I am this day," she answered, with a courtesy. + +"He has no children," went on Mr. Wattles, "but he is very anxious to +adopt one, and knowing that you have more than you really need----" + +"What are you saying?" began Mr. Clatfield, but his voice was drowned in +an outbreak from the woman. + +"Is it daft ye are?" she cried. Mr. Wattles continued, unheeding: + +"He is willing to give you ten thousand dollars for such a one as +this"--indicating with his cane an animated lump upon the floor. + +"Me Teddy, is it?" cried the mother, catching up the lump and depositing +it for safety in an empty tub. + +"Or what would you say to twenty thousand for this one here?" persisted +Mr. Wattles, again making use of his cane. + +"Sure that's me Dan," the woman almost shrieked, and another lump went +into the tub. + +"Well, we are not disposed to quarrel over trifles," went on Mr. Wattles +cheerfully. "You select the child and name the price--twenty, thirty, +forty thousand--all in cash." + +"Gwan out of this, and take your dirty money wid yez!" cried Mrs. +Murphy, ominously rolling a wet sock into a ball. + +"Of course, if you feel that way, we shall not urge the matter," said +Mr. Wattles coldly. "Good-evening, Mrs. Murphy." + +"Bad luck to yez for a pair of thavin' vipers!" she called after their +retreating figures. "If I had me strength ye'd not get far." + +"I am astonished at you, Wattles," said Mr. Clatfield when they were +safe beyond the alley. "I would not have given a dollar for the lot." + +"No," said Mr. Wattles, "I suppose not." + +The two men walked along in silence for a time, while Mr. Clatfield +occupied himself with efforts to divine the point of Mr. Wattles's +ill-timed jest. More than once he would have cut short the expedition +could he have thought of an excuse, and though the course was somewhat +devious, they were headed in a general way toward his own front door, +with its broad marble steps and iron lions. The people in the street +were few and uninteresting, the houses dull and monotonous, each with +its drawn yellow shades and dimly lighted transom, and the banker +welcomed the sight of what appeared to be a gathering of some sort up +ahead. + +They had come out upon a dreary square, surrounded by tall warehouses +and wholesale stores, now tightly closed and barred with iron shutters. +A line of vans and drays without their horses occupied an open space in +violation of the law. From one of these a man addressed a little group +of inattentive loiterers. + +The audience changed constantly as those whose passing curiosity was +satisfied moved off to be replaced by others, but the man did not appear +to care how few or many stayed to listen. He was a young man, and his +face, in the full glare of the electric light, was radiant with +enthusiasm for his theme, whatever it might be. The cashier pushed his +way into the crowd and Mr. Clatfield followed. + +"I should think he would prefer to speak indoors a night like this," +remarked the banker. + +The speaker's subject was an old one, old as the tree of Eden, but never +had the two newcomers heard a more effective speech. Perhaps the +setting of the bleak, deserted market-place created an illusion. + +"That man is getting rich," he cried, "who can every day add a little to +the surplus in his heart----" + +"What interest do you pay?" called out a bystander facetiously. + +"None," replied the young man. "Ours is a profit-sharing enterprise." + +"That don't mean anything," commented Mr. Wattles; "but it was a +first-rate answer all the same. It made the people laugh." + +"I wonder why?" demanded Mr. Clatfield. + +The discourse ended presently and the audience dispersed, some with +swinging dinner-pails and some with thin coats buttoned tightly at the +neck. + +"It does a fellow good to hear the world ain't going to the dogs," +remarked a burly laborer, "even if it is just a crank who says it." + +"Good-evening," said the young man, jumping from his dray and landing +within speaking distance of the two adventurers. "I'm glad to see you +here." + +"And we are glad to be here," answered Mr. Wattles. "We have been +greatly interested, especially my friend Mr. Clatfield, the banker." + +Mr. Clatfield drew himself erect, for he considered such an introduction +unnecessary. + +"I have heard of Mr. Clatfield often," said the other simply, "and I am +happy now to make his acquaintance. Good-evening, gentlemen; I hope +you'll come again." + +"One moment, please," the cashier interposed. "We will not detain you +long, but my friend here has a proposition to make you. He is about to +build a large church on the Heights, and he is anxious to secure a +preacher who entertains the views you have expressed so well. May I ask +you, sir, if you are free to undertake such a charge?" + +The young man's face blushed red with gratified amazement. + +"A church?--and on the Heights?" he stammered. + +"Yes," went on Mr. Wattles, "a large church--very large. I don't suppose +you would be sorry to give up this sort of thing." He made a motion of +his head toward the dray. + +"Would that be necessary?" the young man asked. + +"Naturally," rejoined the other. "The two could scarcely be combined." + +"In that case," said the preacher, "I am not free." + +"The salary, I should have told you, will be twenty thousand dollars." + +"You ought to get a first-rate man for that amount," replied the +preacher. "I should advise you to consult the Bishop." + +"Thank you," said Mr. Wattles, "and good-night." + +"Wattles," cried Mr. Clatfield, who had heard the conversation with +stupefied astonishment which deprived him of the power of speech; +"Wattles, I have not the slightest idea of building a church either on +the Heights or anywhere else." + +"No," said Mr. Wattles, "I suppose not." + +"I'm going home," announced the banker. + +"All right," agreed the other. "We'll strike through here to Main +Street." + +At Main Street they were detained for several minutes at the corner +where the trolleys cross, by the crowds waiting for the cars or flocking +about the transfer agent like so many sheep for salt. They seemed a +dull, bedraggled lot to Mr. Clatfield, just like every other lot who +waited every night there for blue or red or yellow trolley cars. But the +cashier's eyes went wandering from face to face, more in selection than +in search, and presently he nudged his companion to call attention to a +couple who stood apart a little from the rest under the shelter of a +small, inadequate umbrella. + +"What of them?" asked the banker crossly. "You need not look far to see +a fellow and a girl." + +The fellow in this case was tall and stoutly built, and the fact that he +wore no overcoat might have been set down to strenuous habits. But as +Mr. Wattles noted, he was the only man without an evening paper, and he +wore his derby hat reversed in order that a worn place on the rim might +be less conspicuous. + +"I'll bet that young man is terribly hard up," remarked Mr. Wattles. + +"You don't want me to adopt him, do you?" demanded Mr. Clatfield. + +"Oh, no, but just see how his shoulder is getting soaked with drippings +from the wet umbrella." + +"That's the girl's fault," said Mr. Clatfield. "I guess he wishes she +were home." + +She was a plain girl with freckles on her nose; she carried a lunch +basket and her gloves were white about the seams, but as the young man +whispered something in her ear even Mr. Clatfield thought that he had +never seen a more attractive smile. When a blue car came along the young +man helped her carefully to mount the step, and in shaking hands they +laughed and made a little secret of the act. As the car went on its way +the young man ran for cover to the awning beneath which stood the banker +and the cashier. + +"Good-evening, sir," said Mr. Wattles. "I have seen you often at the +bank." + +"Oh, yes, indeed," replied the other, highly gratified to be recognized +by one so great as Mr. Wattles. "I am there every day for my employers, +Pullman & Pushings." + +"An excellent firm," commented Mr. Wattles. "I understand they pay their +people handsomely." + +"Oh, as to that," responded the other, laughing, "it's rather handsome +to pay at all in times like these." + +"That's true," assented Mr. Wattles. "Times are dull, and more than +likely to get worse." + +"Oh, do you think so, really?" the young man asked rather wistfully. + +"Sure of it," answered the cashier, "and if you've any thought of asking +for a raise of salary, I should advise you not to do so." + +"I'm very much obliged for the advice," rejoined the other, "because I +have been thinking----" + +"Ahem!" coughed Mr. Wattles, interrupting. "I want to introduce you to +our president, Mr. Clatfield." + +The junior clerk took off his hat and put it on again the right way by +mistake. In his confusion he had not observed that Hiram Clatfield +looked frigidly above his head; he only heard the cashier's voice +continuing like enchanted music: + +"Mr. Clatfield has for some time been looking for a private secretary. +The salary would be commensurate with the responsibility from the first, +and should you prove the right man--but of course we would make no +promises. Do you think you would be disposed to consider such an +opening?" + +"Would I?" gasped the junior clerk. + +"And, by the way, you are not married, are you?" + +"No," said the young man, "I'm not, but----" + +"That's good," continued the cashier. "That's very fortunate, for Mr. +Clatfield prefers that his confidential secretaries should be single +men. In fact, he makes that an absolute condition." + +"The deuce he does!" replied the junior clerk. "Then he can give the +place to anyone but me. There comes my yellow car. Good-night, and much +obliged." + +"Wattles," cried Mr. Clatfield, "have you gone crazy? I do not want a +private secretary on any terms!" + +"No," answered Mr. Wattles, "I suppose not." + +The lighted trolley cars went shooting past. The wind had risen till the +big umbrella of the transfer agent threatened to go sailing skyward like +a yellow parachute. Already at the corners the ground was getting +white. A muffled clock somewhere struck seven. + +"Wattles," said Mr. Clatfield, "come home and dine with me. I'd like to +talk about our walk." + +"I can't to-night," replied the cashier. "I'm going to take dinner with +a man named Briggs." + +Mr. Clatfield tried to fancy what this Mr. Briggs was like and what his +dinner would be like, but in either case failed to make a picture +because he never could imagine anything. + +"At least come with me to the door," he said. + +It was not far to where the iron lions crouched, and presently the two +men stood before them shaking hands. + +"Good-night," said Mr. Clatfield. "This has been like old times. I +suppose you'll not be at the bank to-morrow?" + +"I shall be there for an hour perhaps to finish up some work," replied +the cashier. "Is there anything I can do?" + +He drew a memorandum book from his pocket. Holding the page in the +light of a street lamp, his eyes fell on some small, neatly penciled +figures. + +"By the way," he said, "I have figured out your problem. Ten million +one-dollar bills placed end to end would reach one hundred and ten +miles, forty-eight hundredths and a fraction." + +"Thank you," said Mr. Clatfield. + +"In two-cent stamps----" continued the cashier, but his employer +interfered. + +"Never mind the stamps," he said. "To-morrow, if you have time, I should +like you to draw three checks upon my private account." + +"Three checks----" repeated Mr. Wattles, preparing to make a note. + +"For twenty thousand each--no, make it fifty thousand each." + +"For fifty thousand dollars each--and payable to----" + +Mr. Clatfield hesitated an instant, then went on desperately: + +"One payable to big Mary Ann; one to the preaching fellow, and +one--make it out to the girl with the freckles on her nose." + +The cashier paused, and for the first time in his long service ventured +to dispute instructions. + +"Hiram," he said, "what harm have they done you?" + +Mr. Clatfield did not answer, but stood in silence, poking his cane into +the iron lion's open mouth. + + + + +THE GUEST OF HONOR + + +"Letters of introduction!" Clara sighed. "One can't help wishing they +were made misdemeanors like other lottery tickets." And this being her +third remark of kindred import, curiosity became at least excusable. So +Mrs. Penfield stroked a sable muff in silent sympathy. + +"We had one yesterday from Jack's Boston aunt," went on her charming +hostess, "a Mrs. Bates, who is continually sending us spiritualists or +people who paint miniatures, or Armenian refugees, just because we spent +a week or so with her one summer when the children had the mumps. In +Lent one does not mind, one rather looks for trials, but now one's +dinner-table is really not one's own. Maude, do let me give you another +cup of tea; it's awfully bad, I know; we have to buy it from the Dunbar +girls. If one's friends would only not sell things one has to drink!" + +"Such a delightful little tea-pot would make any tea delicious, I am +sure," murmured Mrs. Penfield, and the conversation rested while a +noiseless menial entered, put wood upon the fire, and illuminated an +electric bulb within an opalescent shell. An odor of cut flowers floated +in the air and an exotic whiff of muffin. + +Mrs. Fessenden, when she had made the tea, sank back once more among the +cushions and stretched her small feet to the blaze. + +"I am not at home, Pierre," she announced. + +"Perfectly, Madame," replied the menial, as though the absence were +self-evident. + +Mrs. Penfield mused and sipped. + +"Some women are so inconsiderate when they are old," she said +remindingly. + +"And so are most men when they are young," rejoined the lady of the +cushions, "and Jack, though nice in many ways, is no exception. When I +ask him to help by having unexpected men who must be fed to luncheon at +the club, he says champagne at midday gives him apoplexy. And so we have +to invite an unknown person to our very nicest dinner." + +"What unknown person?" inquired Mrs. Penfield, and Clara sighed. + +"A Mr. Hopworthy," she replied. "Fancy, if you can, a man named +Hopworthy." + +Mrs. Penfield tried and failed. + +"What is he like?" she asked. + +"I haven't an idea. He called here yesterday at three o'clock--fancy a +man who calls at three o'clock! and Jack insisted on inviting him for +to-morrow night--and I had to give so much thought to to-morrow night!" + +"Of course he is coming," put in Mrs. Penfield; "such people never send +regrets." + +"Or acceptances either, it would seem," returned her friend; "the +wretch has not so much as answered, and soon it will be too late to get +even an emergency girl." + +"Oh, one can always scare up a girl," the other said consolingly. + +Pierre entered with a little silver tray. + +"A note, if Madame pleases," he announced. Perhaps had Madame pleased a +pineapple or a guinea-pig might have been forthcoming. When he had +retired, Madame tore open the envelope. A flush of pleasure made her +still more charming. + +"Hopworthy has been seriously injured!" she cried almost in exultation. + +"And how much anxiety you have had for nothing, dear!" said Mrs. +Penfield, rising. "So often things turn out much better than we dare to +hope. What does he say?" + +"Oh, only this; he writes abominably," and Clara read: + + + DEAR MRS. FESSENDEN: + + I assure you, nothing less than a serious injury could prevent my + availing myself of your charming invitation for Wednesday + evening.... + + +"Oh, Maude, you can't think what a relief this is!" + +"But----" began Mrs. Penfield and paused, while Clara, folding the note, +tore it deliberately in twain. + +"I don't believe he has been seriously hurt at all," she said on second +thought. "He simply did not want to come. Fancy a man who invents such +an excuse!" + +"But----" began Mrs. Penfield once more, when Mrs. Fessenden interposed. + +"I shall hope never to hear his wretched name again," she said. "Maude, +dear, you won't forget to-morrow night?" + +"Not unless Butler forgets me," said Mrs. Penfield, whereat both ladies +laughed the laugh that rounds a pleasant visit. + + +"Jack," whispered Clara, "please count and see if everyone is here; +there should be twenty." + +It was Wednesday evening, and the Fessenden's Colonial drawing-room +housed an assembly to make the snowy breast of any hostess glow with +satisfaction, especially a hostess possessing one inch less of waist +and one inch more of husband than any lady present. + +"Exactly twenty," Jack announced; "that is, if we count the Envoy and +the Countess each as only one, which don't seem quite respectful." + +"Please don't try to be silly," said his wife, suspecting stimulant +unjustly. + +To her the function was a serious achievement, nicely proportioned, +complete in all its parts; from Mrs. Ballington's tiara--a constellation +never known to shine in hazy social atmospheres--to the Envoy +Extraordinary's extraordinary foreign boots. Even the Countess, who wore +what was in effect a solferino tea-gown with high-bred unconcern, was +not a jarring note. Everybody knew how the Countess's twenty priceless +trunks had gone to Capetown by mistake, and her presence made the pretty +drawing-room a _salon_, just as the Envoy's presence made the occasion +cosmopolitan. When the mandolin club in the hall struck up a spirited +fandango, no pointed chin in all the town took on a prouder tilt than +Clara Fessenden's. + +The Envoy Extraordinary had just let fall no less a diplomatic secret +than that, in his opinion, a certain war would end in peace eventually, +when Mrs. Penfield, who happened to be near, inquired: + +"Oh, Clara, have you heard anything more of that Mr. Hopworthy?" + +"Don't speak to me of him!" retorted Clara, clouding over. "When Jack +called at his hotel to leave a card, he had the effrontery to be out. +Just fancy, and we had almost sent him grapes!" + +"But----" began Mrs. Penfield. + +Pierre was at the door; one hand behind him held the orchestra in check. + +"Madame is served," he formed his lips to say, but having reached +"Madame," he found himself effaced by someone entering hurriedly--a tall +young man with too abundant hair and teeth, but otherwise permissible. + +The new arrival paused, took soundings, as it were, divined the hostess, +and advanced upon her with extended hand. Evidently it was one of those +amusing little incidents called "contretemps," which often happen where +front doors are much alike, and the people on the left have odd +acquaintances. + +"I trust I am not late," the blunderer began at once. "It was so kind of +you to think of me; so altogether charming, so delightful." His eyes +were dark and keen, his broad, unsheltered mouth, which seemed less to +utter than to manufacture words, gave the impression of astonishing +productive power, and Clara, though sorry for a fellow-creature doomed +to rude enlightenment, was glad he was not to be an element in her +well-ordered little dinner. But as her guests were waiting she gave a +slight impatient flutter to her fan. The other went on unobservant. + +"One can say so little of one's pleasure in a hurried note, but I assure +you, my dear Mrs. Fessenden, nothing short of a serious accident----" + +Where had she met this formula before? + +"Oh, Mr. Hopworthy!" she responded with a smile, an automatic smile, +self-regulating and self-adjusting, like the phrase that followed, "I am +so glad you were able to come." And turning to her husband, she +announced, too sweetly to leave her state of mind in doubt: + +"Jack, here is Mr. Hopworthy, your aunt's old friend." + +With her eyes she added: + +"Fiend, behold your work!" + +Jack grasped the stranger's hand and wrung it warmly. + +"I'm glad you're out again," he said. "Now tell my wife just how you +left Aunt Bates." And so saying he backed toward the door, for he could +be resourceful on occasion. Two minutes later when he reappeared his +face was wreathed in smiles. + +"It's all serene," he whispered to his wife. "They have crowded in +another place at your end. We'll make the best of it." + +Perhaps it occurred to Clara that things to be made the best of were +oftenest crowded in at her end, but she had no time to say so, for +Pierre had come into his own again--Madame was served. + +Jack led, of course, with scintillescent Mrs. Ballington, he having +flatly refused to take in the Countess. Jack's point of view was always +masculine, and often elementary. + +The Countess followed with a Mr. Walker, who collected eggs, and was +believed to have been born at sea, which made him interesting in a way. +Then came Maude Penfield, preceding Lena Livingston, according to the +tonnage of their husbands' yachts. In truth, the whole procession gave +in every rank new evidence of Clara's kindly forethought. For herself, +she had not only the Extraordinary, but, by perverse fate, another. + +"Mr. Hopworthy," she explained, bringing both dimples into play, "a very +charming girl has disappointed us. I hope you don't mind walking three +abreast." + +Clara's untruths were never compromises. When they should be told, she +told them, scorning to keep her score immaculate by subterfuge. "Though +the Recording Angel may be strict," she often said with child-like +faith, "I am convinced he is well-bred." + +The pleasant flutter over dinner cards ended as it should in each guest +being next the persons most desired--each guest, but not the hostess. +For Jack's resourcefulness having accomplished the additional place, +stopped short, and his readjustment of the cards, which had been by +chance, had brought the Envoy upon Clara's left and given to Mr. +Hopworthy the seat of honor. + +For a moment Clara hesitated, hoping against hope for someone to be +taken ill, for almost anything that might create an opportunity for a +change of cards. But while she stood in doubt the diplomat most +diplomatically sat down. Beyond him the Countess was already drawing off +her gloves as though they had been stockings, and further on the +gentleman born at sea seemed pleased to find his dinner roll so like an +egg. + +It was one of those unrecorded tragedies known only to woman. The +failures of a man leave ruins to bear testimony to endeavor; a woman's +edifice of cobweb falls without commotion, whatever pains its building +may have cost. + +"I gave you that seat," said Clara to the diplomat in dimpled +confidence, "because the window on the other side lets in a perfect gale +of draught." + +"A most kind draught to blow me nearer my hostess's heart," he answered, +much too neatly not to have said something of the sort before. + +Fortunately both the Envoy and the Countess appreciated oysters, and +before the soup came, Clara, outwardly herself again, could turn a +smiling face to her unwelcome guest. But Mr. Hopworthy was bending +toward Maude, who seemed very much amused. So was the man between them, +and so were several others. + +Already he had begun to make himself conspicuous. People with broad +mouths always make themselves conspicuous. She felt that Maude was +gloating over her discomfiture. She detected this in every note of +Maude's well-modulated laugh, and could an interchange of beakers with +the stranger have been sure of Florentine results, Clara would have +faced a terrible temptation. As it was, she asked the Envoy if he had +seen the Automobile Show. + +He had, and by good luck machinery was his favorite topic, a safe one, +leaving little ground for argument. From machinery one proceeds by +certain steps to things thereby created, silk and shoes and books, and +comes at length, as Clara did, to silverware and jewels, pearls and +emeralds. And here the Countess, who mistrusted terrapin, broke in. + +She had known an emerald larger than an egg--Mr. Walker looked up +hopefully. It had been laid by Royalty at the feet of Beauty--Mr. +Walker, who had been about to speak, resumed his research, and the +Countess held the floor. + +She wore a bracelet given her by a potentate, whose title suggested +snuff, as a reward for great devotion to his cause, and its exhibition +occupied a course. + +Meanwhile the hostess, as with astral ears, heard snatches of the +conversation all about her. + +"And do you think so really, Mr. Hopworthy?" + +"Oh, Mr. Hopworthy, were you actually there?" + +"Please tell us your opinion----" + +Evidently Jack's aunt's acquaintance was being drawn out, encouraged to +display himself, made a butt of, in point of fact! This came from taking +Maude Penfield into her confidence. There was always a streak of +something not exactly nice in Maude. As Clara, with her mind's eye, saw +the broad Hopworthian mouth in active operation, she felt--the feminine +instinct in such matters is unerring--that Butler Penfield cherished +every phrase for future retaliation at the club, and Lena Livingston, +who never laughed, was laughing. After all, if foreigners are often +dull, at least they have no overmastering sense of humor. + +"My Order of the Bull was given me at twenty-six," the Envoy was +relating, and though the story was a long one, Clara listened to it all +with swimming eyes. + +"Diplomacy is full of intrigue as an egg of meat," it ended, and once +more Mr. Walker looked up hopefully. + +Again the hostess forced herself to turn with semblance of attention to +her right. But Mr. Hopworthy did not appear to notice the concession. He +did not appear to notice anything. He was haranguing, actually +haranguing, oblivious that all within the hearing of his resonant voice +regarded him with open mockery. Jack in the distance, too far away to +apprehend the truth, exhibited his customary unconcern, for Jack's +ideals were satisfied if at his table people only ate enough and +talked. And perhaps it was as well Jack did not comprehend. + +"To illustrate," the orator was saying--fancy a man who says "to +illustrate." "This wine is, as we may say, dyophysitic"--here Mr. +Hopworthy held up his glass and looked about him whimsically--"possessed +of dual potentialities containing germs of absolute antipathies--" Even +Jack, could he have heard, must have resented the suggestion of germs in +his champagne. + +"Perhaps you would rather have some Burgundy with your duck," suggested +Mrs. Fessenden with heroic fortitude, and Mr. Hopworthy checked his +train of thought at once. + +"Aye, Madam," he rejoined, "there you revive an ancient controversy." + +"I am sure I did not mean to," Clara said regretfully, and Mr. Hopworthy +smiled his most open smile. + +"A controversy," drawled Lena Livingston, "how very odd!" + +"It was indeed," assented Mr. Hopworthy, and went on: "Once, as you +know, the poets of Reims and Beaune waged war in verse over the +respective claims of the blond wine and the brunette, and so bitter grew +the fight that several provinces sprang to arms, and Louis the +Fourteenth was forced to go to war to keep the peace." + +It was pure malice in Maude to show so marked an interest in a statement +so absurd, and it was fiendish in the rest to encourage Mr. Hopworthy. +Even the most insistent talker comes in time to silence if nobody +listens. + +"Oh, M. Hop--Hop--Hopgood," cried the Countess, "if you are a savant, +perhaps you know my Axel!" + +"And have you taken out a patent for your axel?" asked the diplomat, +whose mind reverted to mechanics. + +The Countess favored him with one glance through her lorgnettes--a +present from the exiled King of Crete--and straightway took her bag and +baggage to the hostile camp. For, of course, the young Count Axel was +known to Mr. Hopworthy, or at least he so declared. + +"Please tell me how you won your Order of the Bull," said Clara to the +diplomat, her one remaining hope. + +"I think I mentioned that just now," he answered, and conversation +perished. + +And thus the dinner wore away, a grim succession of demolished triumphs. +When after an æon or two Clara gave the signal for retreat, she sought +her own reflection in the glass to make sure her hair was still its +normal brown. + +"Clara," said Mrs. Penfield, when the ladies were alone, "you might at +least have warned us whom we were to meet." + +Mrs. Fessenden drew herself erect. Her breath came fast, her eyes were +bright, and she had nearly reached the limit of forbearance toward +Maude. + +"Mrs. Penfield--" she began with dignity, but Maude broke in. + +"I must have been a baby not to have recognized the name." + +Clara hesitated, checking the word upon her lips, for with her former +friend, to be inelegant was to be sincere. + +"I do not understand," she substituted prudently. + +"To think, my dear, of you being the first of us to capture Horace +Hopworthy and keeping it from me!" cried Maude. + +"I am sure I mentioned that we hoped to have him," murmured Mrs. +Fessenden. + +"So sweet of you to give us such a surprise, it was most delightful," +Lena Livingston drawled. + +"Your house is always such a Joppa for successful genius," declared Mrs. +Ballington, "or is it Mecca? I've forgotten which. How did you come to +know he was in town?" + +"Jack's relatives in Boston always send us the most charming people with +letters," answered Clara. "Shall we take coffee on the balcony? The men +are laughing so in the smoking-room we can't talk here with any +comfort." + +Later--an hour later--when the last carriage-door had slammed, Jack lit +a cigarette and said: + +"That Hoppy fellow seemed to make a hit." + +Clara yawned. + +"Yes, he was rather a fortunate discovery," she said, "but, Jack, we +really ought to take a literary magazine." + + + + +THE MAN WITHOUT A PENSION + + +He was a dapper little man with a gray pointed beard, and he wore +knickerbockers and russet hunting gaiters, nearly new. A jaunty Alpine +hat was perched upon his head, and as he pursued his cautious way along +the cañon's edge it would be hard to fancy anyone less in touch with his +surroundings. He seemed uncertain of the trail, mistrustful of himself, +or unaccustomed to mountain atmosphere, for within the last hundred +yards of the camp he paused in every dozen steps to listen or to recover +breath. + +There was no sound anywhere except the moan of pine trees, and no motion +but the perpetual trembling in the aspen undergrowth. The greater trees +nearly met above the cañon; the lesser clung along its brink, leaning +far out to catch the sun and send broken lights and colors to the water +far below. Contrasting with the unchanging twilight and boundless +solitude of the forest, the meadow where the tents were pitched seemed +to blaze with light, and the three small shelters took on the importance +of a settlement, whose visible inhabitants consisted of a pair of +mountain magpies possessed of an idle spirit of investigation. + +The little man coughed a dry inadequate cough to herald his approach, +while his foot dislodged a pebble which, rattling down the cañon, sent +the magpies to a tree top in affected terror. From under the shelter of +his hand he cast a glance about the camp which mastered its small array +of unimportant details; two tents, wide open to the air, disclosed +elementary sleeping quarters for half a score of men, coarse blankets +covering heaps of twigs and pine needles, the bare necessities of a +bivouac. The third tent was closed. + +Evidently perplexed, the visitor stood still. Had anyone been watching +him, say from behind the ragged canvas of the closed tent, he must have +seemed a nervous, apprehensive little man. There came a sound which +might have been a derisive chuckle and might have been a magpie in the +trees. The visitor controlled a start and clenched his hands as though +summoning courage. Then loudly as one who gives a challenge, he shouted, +"Is there anybody here?" + +The voice was resonant for so small a body, and the echoes caught the +last word eagerly, and sent it back, clear from the cañon, faint from +where the snow peaks cut the blue, deep from the hollow of the timber. +"Here! Here!" as though a scattered army answered to a roll call. +Immediately there followed another and louder "Here!" distinctly not an +echo, and a gruff ungracious laugh. + +The multitude of answers must have bewildered the stranger, for he +looked everywhere about him, almost stupidly, except toward the only +possible hiding place. It needed a second derisive laugh to guide him +to the tent whose half-closed flap concealed the only custodian of the +camp, a man so tall that in his little shelter he gave the impression of +a large animal inadequately caged or in a trap. His black hair fell +below the ears; his jaws were hidden by a heavy beard cut square, +through some freak of fancy, like the carved beards of human-headed +Assyrian beasts. + +"Ahem! I beg your pardon," began the little man after another cough. + +"What do you want?" returned the other without looking up. He bent above +a tin pan of dough, kneading the pliant stuff almost fiercely, with red +knotted knuckles and sinewy forearms. + +"My name," replied the visitor, "is Sands--Professor Sands of Charbridge +University." + +The man in the tent rolled his dough into a cannon ball and held it up +at arm's length. "Sands," he repeated. "Charbridge University?" And +striking his dough with his palm as though it could appreciate a joke, +he added, "Well, you look it!" + +He wiped his hands upon a strip of burlap bagging which served him as +apron, and deliberately surveyed the new comer. "How did you ever get so +far from home all by yourself?" he asked with open insolence. A fuller +view of his face disclosed incongruous tones of red about the roots of +hair and beard, and a long scar on the left cheek. + +"I am connected with our geological expedition," Professor Sands +explained concisely. "We are camping in the valley, and this morning I +ventured to explore the cañon on my own account, and have been tempted +farther than I intended." + +The large man put his hands upon his thighs and leaned against the tent +pole. "So that's it?" he commented patronizingly. "Well, if I was you, +I'd stick to camp, and not go roaming in the timber where you might get +lost." + +"Quite so," the little man assented readily; "but I was told I should +surely come upon the railway survey somewhere in the cañon, and I have +had your stakes to guide me. The engineers are doubtless working +somewhere near here?" he added, taking off his hat to cool his head with +its thin gray hair. + +The other spat and eyed his visitor with amused contempt. "We don't lay +out railroads sitting round the fire," he volunteered. "The boys are +working up near timber line, and won't be back till dark, and the +teamster's gone to Freedom City for more grub." + +"Ah!" remarked the scientist. "Then we are quite alone. I'll rest a +little, if I may." + +He deposited an army haversack that he carried slung about his shoulder +upon a flat boulder just outside the tent door and sat down beside it. +"My geological specimens are rather heavy," he went on, wiping his brow. +"With your permission I should like to label them before I forget their +identity." + +The other, with his hands in his overall pockets, took a slouching step +beyond the tent to overlook the sack's contents as they appeared--a +small steel sorting hammer, a heap of broken bits of float, and a large +flask with a silver top. He watched the geologist sort his specimens +with an idle interest mingled with contempt--for the trade he did not +understand, for the spotless handkerchief, for the physical weakness of +the man himself. + +"I suppose that's some sort of acid you've got in your bottle?" he +speculated presently. + +"I beg your pardon?" asked the professor, absorbed in his work; then +added as the question's meaning reached him, "Ah, the flask? No, that +contains whiskey. I always carry a supply in case of accident." +Whistling softly, he marked another specimen, ignoring his host's nearer +approach. + +"Partner," the latter suggested, "if you'd like a bite to eat, you've +only got to say so. That's mountain manners." + +The professor glanced up now and with an odd intentness in his look; no +doubt his mind was still with his specimens. "You're very kind, I'm +sure," he responded courteously; "but I have lunched already on my +sandwiches. Thank you, Mr.----" He paused for a name. + +The other chuckled with new-found amiability. "You needn't 'Mister' me," +he said. "I'm Budd, Jim Budd the Scorcher, and if any man in camp don't +like my grub he's got the privilege of going hungry." + +"Ah, quite so, quite so," rejoined the scientist. "I'm very sure your +cooking is excellent." + +"That's what the boys tell me," returned the scorcher; "but, by blood! +I've got 'em educated. I'll just set them biscuits to raise, and then +we'll have a chat." He re-entered the tent, limping noticeably, and +from the interior his voice was heard mingled with the clatter of +utensils in blasphemous denunciation of everything about him. During +this explosion the scientist from Charbridge made a rather singular +experiment. + +He rose, and after a cautious glance behind him he crept to the verge of +the precipice, looked down into the water swirling over jagged rocks far +below, and pulling up a sod of wire grass let it drop, and watched it +sink and reappear in single straws that circled and sank again. This +done, he went back to his specimens. + +The Scorcher's pibrock of vituperation had now changed to a tuneless +chant, scarcely less vindictive in its cadence: + + + Old John Rogers was burnt at the stake; + His poor wife cried until her heart did break! + + +he sang, and the professor's listening face took on an expression out of +keeping with the meaningless doggerel, the look of one who responds to +an inexorable call. + +"'Until her heart did break!'" he murmured. But when Budd appeared +again he only asked if he was interested in geology. + +"I am if it's the sort that's got silver in it," replied the cook. + +"One does not look for silver in sandstone formation," the professor +explained. + +"Do you mean to tell me the Almighty couldn't put silver in this here +red rock?" Jim demanded, from the stone on which he had seated himself. + +"No," replied the professor guardedly: "I say only that He did not. +However, here is a bit of quartz----" + +"Say!" interrupted the cook, "I'm a heap more interested in the specimen +you've got in that bottle." He was staring at the polished cap of the +flask. + +"Indeed, are you?" the other smiled a a tolerant smile. "Then perhaps +you will do me the honor----" + +Budd seized the flask without a second invitation and raised it to his +lips. He drank as dying men drink water, and when he stopped for lack +of breath his face was fiery but for the white scar. As he lowered the +bottle he met the professor's curious fixity of gaze, and wriggled +uneasily before it. + +"Say, partner," he remonstrated, "your whiskey's all right; but I'm +hanged if I like your eye! By blood! it goes ag'in me!" + +"I beg your pardon," said the professor without averting his look. "I +have the habit of close observation. And," he proffered the flask +afresh, "the more you drink of that, the less I'll have to carry home." + +Budd poured a generous portion into a tin cup and stared reflectively at +the bright cap. His next remark, mellowed by whiskey, had a genial +candor. "Say! if I'd a popped you over, as I had a mind to when you came +along the trail, just think what I'd a missed!" + +"And so you had a mind to pop me over?" queried the other. "May I ask +why?" Having finished his labeling, he was at leisure to regard his +companion still more closely. + +"There's fellers prowling in the timber I ain't got no use for," the +cook explained, drinking. "But you're all right! You haven't got a cigar +handy, now, have you?" + +The scientist was well supplied, and as the cook bit off the end of a +large and black cigar he sighed with satisfaction. + +"I get the horrors sometimes," he explained. "I get as scary as a +cottontail. Them quaking asps is enough to drive a feller crazy, +anyhow." + +"There's nothing like a little whiskey in such cases," remarked the +professor, filling the extended cup. + +"If this keeps up, one of us is liable to get drunk," remarked Budd. +"That's a handy flask of yours. Come all the way from New York?" + +"From Richmond, I believe," responded the other. "My brother found it on +a battle field and sent it home to me." + +"I take it you wasn't there yourself," the Scorcher chuckled. + +"No," said Professor Sands. "I was in bad health at the time." + +"So was a lot of others," sneered Budd. "I wasn't feeling what you might +call well myself; but I stuck to it till they biffed me in the leg--the +hounds!--and put me out of business." + +"Of course, you draw a pension," ventured the professor. + +"No," said the cook, "I never asked for no pension. They've given one to +about every feller what wasn't dead when the war broke out, but there +hasn't been a bill passed yet that takes me in." + +"Indeed?" His listener was politely observant. + +"Yes, that's the truth," went on the cook. "I declare I feel real dopy +or dotty or something. They pensioned every beat that came back with a +knapsack full of rebel watches, but they left out old Jim. He don't wear +no medals; he don't parade on Decoration Day to scatter posies; he +don't get no free beer while the band plays 'Georgia'--'Hurrah for the +flag that makes us free!'" he chanted hoarsely. "Hurrah for the Devil! +that's what I say. Hurrah for the man without a pension!" + +"You interest me," interposed Professor Sands. + +"Oh, do I?" cried the cook. "By blood! I've half a mind to interest you +more. But don't look at me like that--I tell you, I don't like your +eye!" He tried to shield himself from that unmoved gaze. "You're +interested, are you? You'd like to put my case before your influential +friends back East? You with your little bag of rocks and your little +hammer and your gloves! Did you ever in your life see anyone who wasn't +a nickel-plated angel? Did you ever run across a real live blackguard +out of a story paper? Did you ever see a man who couldn't show his face +in a settlement by the light of day, and had to take up any job that +kept him out of sight? I don't know why, but I've got to shoot my mouth +off now if it hangs me. I've got to blab or go stark mad!" + +"I understand," said the professor. + +"I was one of them patriots," Budd went on, speaking almost +mechanically, as though hypnotized, "who enlisted for the boodle and +then skipped out to work the racket somewhere else." + +"In point of fact, a bounty jumper," his listener put in. + +"Yes," agreed the cook, "that's what I was. They were paying three +hundred gold for likely men to go down South and head off bullets, and +that beat getting drafted, so I joined. Oh, those were great old days, +great old days!" + +"How long were you in the service?" + +"About an hour and a quarter the first time," Budd replied. "It happened +in New York, and when I'd signed the roll they put me in a squad to +march off somewhere to get our uniforms. The sergeant was a tall guy, +greener than spinach, who'd drifted down from Maine a week before, and +didn't know no more about New York than a bull calf knows about the New +Jerusalem; but he made a bluff and asked the feller next me, whose name +was Butch, to give him points at every corner. Well, Butch directed, and +His Nibs kept on commanding 'Column left!' and 'Column right!' till we +got down to the toughest sort of a district--gas works and lumber yards +and such. I didn't know the game, but I dropped to it quick enough when +Butch says in a whisper, 'Here's our chance!' and it happened to be the +neatest chance a new beginner ever had. You see, in those days when +there was a fire pretty near everybody was welcome to catch hold and +help pull the machine, and there was always a crowd that come along to +holler and keep up the excitement. Well, that's the sort of outfit we +come up against. They filled the whole street, yelling and pushing, and +a feller either had to turn and run with them or get knocked down. I +didn't stop to see what became of the balance of the squad. I sloped up +one street and down another, going like a jack rabbit, till I found +myself before a ferry boat. I paid my fare and crossed the river, just +to get a chance to think." + +"Quite so," the professor sympathized. + +"I never meant no harm," the cook protested--"not then. There wouldn't +have been much sense in going back, especially when there were other +recruiting offices right there in Jersey City. I got another three +hundred, but my new sojer clothes was spoiled when I fell off the +transport in the dark the night before we sailed--and got drownded. Oh, +it was easy enough those days, before a lot of duffers took to the +business. But it got so arter awhile that we professionals had to keep +away from cities and play the country stations--Citizens' Committees, +Women's Aid Associations, and the substitute racket. Sometimes I did the +farmer boy with cowhide boots and hayseed in my hair, and told about +the mortgage on the old place, and the kid that was expected; and there +wasn't anything they wouldn't do so I could leave the folks comfortable +when I went off to the war. Oh, those were great times. In one day, out +the next!" + +"And--and was the getting out as easy?" his hearer asked. + +"Not quite," Budd admitted; "but pretty near. Say you were at a camp of +instruction; then it might be a pass, or a little something to the +sentry, or a brickbat in the dark, if you could throw straight. I gave a +feller fifty to let me through once, and then the sucker peached on me, +the lowdown sneak! But I got even with him later on. So I went marching +out of Philadelphia with the band playing and the women crying and the +men what was too delicate to go themselves singing out 'God bless you, +boys!' I tell you what, professor, for a moment I come pretty near to +wishing I was playing square." + +"A passing sentiment, I'm sure," said the geologist. + +"Sure!" cried Budd, delighted with his hearer's sympathy. "I'd like to +see the sentiment that would hold out after a couple of nights building +intrenchments in the rain. How could I help it if when the sentry's back +was turned the pick flew out of my hand and clipped him right behind the +ear? It was the same cuss who had blocked my game the week before." + +"Good!" laughed the professor. + +"He dropped," went on the cook, "and that was all I wanted. I lit out +and lay around in barns and corn cribs, living on raw carrots and what +eggs I found in the straw, till I guessed they must be tired looking for +me, and then one morning early I crept out and scared an old black aunty +who was feedin' chickens into fits. But I reckon I wasn't the first +strange bird she'd seen that summer, for she fed me, and that night she +steered me to a friend of hers who was in the clothing business and did +a little bartering evenings. He charged a hundred for a suit of +hand-me-downs and twenty for a hair cut and a shave--we enlisters never +argued over trifles--and shipped me back to Pennsylvania. But maybe you +won't believe it--by that time I had sorter lost my nerve. I got a +notion in my head that every man who looked my way was spying on me. I +couldn't pass the time of day with anyone who didn't seem to talk about +deserters. I was afraid to get a gold piece changed, for all the gold +went out of sight about that time, and just to have one was suspicious. +So what do you think I did? I walked right into a recruiting station and +enlisted without getting a cent. 'Rah for the flag!' I says. 'Gimme a +gun. I want to fight.' That was in Pittsburgh." + +The professor's start was too slight to break the narrative, but if +possible his watchfulness deepened; he leaned forward and his eyes held +those of Budd. + +"Yes," the cook continued, "in Pittsburgh. Same old band; same old +handkerchiefs waving; same old 'God bless you, boys!' I thought at first +I was all right and 'twould be the same old game, but it wasn't. They +had me spotted with a lot of others, and they kept us guarded like a +parcel of wild beasts, for all we was enlisted regular in the 120th +Pennsylvania." + +"The 120th Pennsylvania?" repeated the professor slowly. + +"That's what I said!" Budd resented the interruption. "And I tell you it +was no way to treat men. There must have been forty of us shut up in a +baggage car with no light or air but from one door open at the end, and +there we was for days and nights, and a tough lot, too! Bounty men and +substitutes and drafted truck, slamming along to the front, cussing our +luck, and everyone of us ready to bolt at the first chance. I stood it +till I heard the guns roaring like sin, not five miles off. Say, did you +ever hear that sound? Did you ever hear a gun you knew was fired at +real men and sending them to Kingdom Come? I heard it once, and that +was enough. We was laying flat along the floor, side by side as though +we was dead already, and next me was a German-looking guy, what had been +praying and swearing, turn about, ever since we started. When he heard +the firing, he went clean off his nut; he'd have blown his brains out +rather than take the chance of letting somebody else do it for him; he'd +have fought the Union army single-handed sooner than listen to them +shots another minute. Well, to make a long story short, him and me we +fixed up a scheme." + +The speaker caught his breath to listen, for the forest seemed suddenly +alive with sound and motion. A cloud swept down the valley of the North +Fork, so low that shreds of scud were caught in the topmost branches. +Hail pattered on the wire grass. The tent curtains flapped noisily, and +in the shadow the aspen leaves flashed white as though a mailed army +sprang from ambush. + +"Go on!" the professor urged, and the cook held up a brawny fist and +shook it at the universe defiantly. + +"I'll tell it now," he cried, "and all the winds that ever blew sha'n't +shout me down! Here's how it was." He faltered, and the professor +prompted him. + +"There's where you lay," he said, making a gesture to indicate the ranks +of trembling men. + +"There's where we lay," Budd echoed dully. + +"And there was the door," said the professor softly. He pointed to a +tree at the cañon's brink. + +"Yes, yes!" cried Budd, "there was the door. The platform was outside, +and there were two on guard. I was to spring out first--so," he jumped +up--"and tackle the one farthest off. The Dutchman was to grab the other +from behind. Mine was a stout young feller." + +"A stout young fellow," repeated the professor. + +"Yes," and the cook stood motionless as though some vision rose before +him. "I can see him now, with straight back and crisp curly brown hair." + +"A little curly," murmured the other. + +"Percy, they called him," said Budd. + +"Percy?" echoed the professor. "You are sure it was Percy?" + +"Sure as you're sitting there!" cried Budd. "'Keep your eyes open, +Percy, they're a bad lot.' That's what the corporal told him when he +went on guard. Lord! but it was a pity!" He chuckled inanely, swaying on +his feet. + +"What then?" inquired the man from Charbridge, rising slowly. + +Budd cowered before his questioner's eyes as he might have cowered when +those long silent guns were booming had the tall young fellow turned. + +"Nothing!" he muttered sullenly. "Nothing, so help me God! I didn't do +it." + +"You lie!" retorted the small man quietly. + +Budd laughed a foolish laugh. "There's where we lay," he babbled, "just +where your foot is, me and the Dutchman and the balance of us, and here +was the door----" + +He lurched toward the aspen tree and laid a hand upon its trunk to keep +from falling. The professor followed and stood close behind. + +"What do you want?" cried Budd, wheeling in sudden panic. + +"To learn the manner of my brother's death," the other answered between +lips that scarcely moved. + +The voice of the pines was like the rumble of a railway train; the winds +boomed down from timber line like thunders of artillery; the hailstones +struck the aspens' leaves like bullets, and over all the laugh of Budd +rang in maniacal mirth. + +The professor held his eye steadily; then abruptly: "Turn out the +guard!" he shouted. + +"Choke him, you big Dutch fool!" Budd called back in response, as with +his bare arms he grappled with an invisible adversary. + +He of the straight back and curly hair had been a strong young fellow, +but, taken unawares, the contest was bound to go against him. Once, it +seemed, he had brought Budd to his knees; once he had nearly hurled him +from the rocking car; but his knapsack must have hampered him, and his +musket and heavy cartridge box. The bounty jumper fought in silence and +with desperate method, gaining advantage every moment; while one hand +pinioned a phantom forearm, the other closed with murderous clutch upon +a ghostly throat. Meanwhile the professor stood by with folded arms +watching critically, one would have thought impartially. + +It was over presently, and Budd stood breathing hard. Then-- + +"Jump for your life!" commanded the professor. + +Without an instant's hesitation, Budd crept to the cañon's brink and +peered below. + +"All right!" he whispered. "Good-by, Dutch! We're free!" + +And with a last grasp of the aspen tree he swung himself across the edge +and dropped. + +The boys were mad enough to find no supper ready when they came from +timber line; but not surprised, for Budd was never one to give long +notice when he changed his habitation. And if somewhere on a high shelf +in an Eastern university--not Charbridge, by the way--there is still a +cube of red rock labeled "North Fork Cañon," it is the only memorial +left of the man without a pension. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's On the Lightship, by Herman Knickerbocker Vielé + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40648 *** |