diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 4 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/51921-0.txt | 5840 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/51921-0.zip | bin | 123696 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/51921-8.txt | 5839 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/51921-8.zip | bin | 123214 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/51921-h.zip | bin | 131526 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/51921-h/51921-h.htm | 7307 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/51921.txt | 5839 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/51921.zip | bin | 123182 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/old/51921-h.htm.2021-01-24 | 7306 |
12 files changed, 17 insertions, 32131 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ae849c4 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #51921 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51921) diff --git a/old/51921-0.txt b/old/51921-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 16e5d56..0000000 --- a/old/51921-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5840 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lay Anthony, by Joseph Hergesheimer - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: The Lay Anthony - A Romance - -Author: Joseph Hergesheimer - -Release Date: May 1, 2016 [EBook #51921] -Last Updated: March 12, 2018 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAY ANTHONY *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by Google Books - - - - - - - - -THE LAY ANTHONY - -A Romance - -By Joseph Hergesheimer - -New York & London - -Mitchell Kennerley 1914 - - -“_... if in passing from this deceitful world into true life love is -not forgotten,... I know that among the most joyous souls of the third -heaven my Fiametta sees my pain. Pray her, if the sweet draught of Lethe -has not robbed me of her,... to obtain my ascent to her._” - ---Giovanni Boccaccio - - -TO - -DOROTHY - -THIS - -FIGMENT OF A PERPETUAL FLOWERING - -THE LAY ANTHONY - - - - -I--A ROMANCE - -NOT for the honor of winning the Vanderbilt Cup, nor for the glory of -pitching a major league baseball team into the world's championship, -would Tony Ball have admitted to the familiar and derisive group in the -drugstore that he was--in the exact, physical aspect of the word--pure. -Secretly, and in an entirely natural and healthy manner, he was ashamed -of his innocence. He carefully concealed it in an elaborate assumption -of wide worldly knowledge and experience, in an attitude of cynical -comprehension, and indifference toward _girls_. - -But he might have spared himself the effort, the fictions, of his -pose--had he proclaimed his ignorance aloud from the brilliantly lighted -entrance to the drugstore no one who knew him in the midweek, night -throng on Ellerton's main street would have credited Anthony with -anything beyond a thin and surprising joke. He was, at twenty, the -absolute, adventurous opposite of any conscious or cloistered virtue: -the careless carriage of his big, loose frame; his frank, smiling grey -eyes and ample mouth; his very, drawling voice--all marked him for a -loiterer in the pleasant and sunny places of life, indifferent to the -rigors of a mental or moral discipline. - -The accumulated facts of his existence fully bore this out: the number -of schools from which, playing superlative baseball, he had been still -obliged to leave, carrying with him the cordial good will of master -and fellow, for an unconquerable, irresponsible laxity; the number and -variety of occupations that had claimed him in the past three years, -every one of which at their inception certain, he felt confident, to -carry him beyond all dreams and necessity of avarice; and every one, in -his rapidly diminishing interest, attention, or because of persistent, -adverse conditions over which, he asseverated, he had no control, -turning into a fallow field, a disastrous venture; and, conclusively, -the group of familiars, the easy companions of idle hours, to which he -had gravitated. - -He met his mates by appointment at Doctor Allhop's drugstore, or by an -elaborate system of whistled formulas from the street, at which he would -rise with a muttered excuse from the dinner table and disappear.--He -was rarely if ever sought outright at his father's house; it was quite -another sort of boy who met and discoursed easily with sisters, who -unperturbed greeted mothers face to face. - -It would have been useless, had he known it, to protest his virtue -inside the drugstore or out; a curious chain of coincidents had -preserved it. Again and again he had been at the point of surrendering -his involuntary Eden, and always the accident, the interruption, had -befallen, always he had retired in a state of more or less orderly -celibacy. On the occasion of one of those nocturnal, metropolitan -escapades by which matured boys, in a warm, red veil of whiskey, assert -their manhood and independence, he had been thrust in a drunken stupor -into the baggage car of the “owl” train to Ellerton. Instances might -be multiplied: life, in its haphazard manner, its uncharted tides -and eddies sweeping arbitrarily up and down the world, had carelessly -preserved in him that concrete ideal which myriads of heroic and -agonized beings had striven terribly and in vain to ward. - -And so it happened, when Doctor Allhop turned with an elaborate -impropriety from the pills he was compounding in a porcelain pestle, -that Anthony's laugh was loudest, his gusto most marked, in the group -gathered at the back of the drugstore. A wooden screen divided them, -hid the shelves of bottles, the water sink, and the other properties and -ingredients of the druggist's profession, from the glittering and public -exhibition of the finished article, the marble slab and silver mouths of -the sodawater fountain, the uninitiated throng. - -He was sitting on a case of prepared food, his legs thrust out before -him, and a thread of smoke coiling bluely from the cigarette held in -his broad, scarred hand. There was a little gay song on his lips, and a -roving, gay glint in his direct gaze. At frequent intervals he surveyed -with approbation maroon socks and a pair of new and shining pumps; the -rest of his apparel was negligent. - -The sole chair was occupied by the plump bulk of Thomas Addington -Meredith, to whom a sharp nose in a moonlike countenance lent an -expression of constant inquiry and foxy caution. He was elaborately -apparelled in a suit which boasted a waistcoat draped with the gold -chain of an authentic timepiece; while, closing a silver cigarette case -scrolled large with his initials, a fat finger bore a ruby that, rumor -circulated, had been the gift of a married woman. - -Lounging against a shelf Alfred Craik gazed absently at his blackened -and broken fingernails, his greasy palms. He was Anthony's partner -in the current industry of a machine shop and garage, maintained in a -dilapidated stable on the outskirts of Ellerton. It was a concern -mainly upheld by a daily levy on the Ball family for necessary tools and -accessories. He was, as always, silent, detached. - -But William Williams amply atoned for any taciturnity on the part of the -others; he had returned a short while before from two checkered years -in the West; and, a broad felt hat cinched with a carved leather hand -pushed back from his brow, and waving the formidable stump of a cigar, -he expiated excitedly on the pleasures of that far, liberal land. - -“Why,” he proclaimed, “I owe a saloon keeper in San Francisco sixty-five -dollars for one round of drinks--the joint was full and it was up to -me... nothing but champagne went, understand! He knows he'll get it. -Why, I collared ten dollars a day overseeing sheep. I cleaned up three -thousand in one little deal; it was in Butte City; it lasted nine days. -But 'Frisco's the place--all the girls there are good sports, all the -men spenders.” - -“What did you come back East for?” Alfred Craik demanded; “why didn't -you stay right with it?” - -“I got up against it,” William grinned; “the old man wouldn't give -me another stake.” The thought of the glories he had been forced -to relinquish started him afresh. “I cleaned up enough in a week at -billiards,” he boasted, “to keep me in Ellerton a year.” - -“Didn't Bert Dingley take four bits from you last night at Hinkle's?” - Anthony lazily asked. - -“That farmer!” the other scoffed; “I had a rank cue; they are all rank -at Hinkle's. I'll match him in a decent parlor for any amount.” - -“How much will you put up?” Meredith demanded; “I will back Bert.” - -“How much have you got?” William queried. - -“How much have you?” - -“If this was San Francisco I could get a hundred.” - -“What have you got in real coin, Bill?” Tony joined in. - -“Three nickles,” William Williams admitted moodily. - -“I've got thirty-five cents,” Thomas added. “I wish I could get a piece -of change.” - -“How's the car?” Anthony turned to hiss partner in the lull that -followed. The “car,” their sole professional charge, had been placed in -their hands by an optimistic and benevolent connection of the Balls. - -“I had the differential apart again to-day,” Alfred responded, “but I -can't find that grinding anywhere. It will have to be all torn down,” he -announced with sombre enthusiasm. - -“You have had that dam' thing apart three times in the last four weeks, -and every time you put it together it's worse,” Anthony protested; “the -cylinder casing leaks, and God knows what you did to the gears.” - -“I wish I had a piece of change,” Thomas Meredith repeated, in a manner -patently mysterious. - -“A temporary sacrifice of your tin shop--” Doctor Allhop suggested, -tinning from the skilful moulding of the pills on a glass slab. - -“Not a chance! the family figurehead announced that he had taken my -watch 'out' for the last time.” - -“He wants to plaster it on some Highschool skirt,” Alfred announced -unexpectedly. - -“This robbing the nursery makes me ill,” William protested. “Out in -Denver there are real queens with gold hair--” - -His period was lost in a yapping chorus from the west-wearied circle. -“Take it to bed with you,” he was entreated. - -“Nothing in the Highschool can reach these,” Meredith assured them, -“this is the real thing--an all night seance. They have just moved in by -the slaughter house; a regular pipe--their father is dead, and the old -woman's deaf. Two sisters... one has got red hair, and the other can -kick higher'n you can hold your hand. The night I went I had to leave -early, but they told me to come hack... any night after nine, and bring -a friend.” - -“I'll walk around with you,” William Williams remarked negligently. - -“Not on three nickles. They told me to fetch around a couple of bottles -of port wine, and have a genuine party.” - -Anthony Ball listened with rapidly growing attention, while he fingered -three one dollar bills wadded into the bottom of his pocket. He felt his -blood stir more rapidly, beating in his ears: vague pictures thronged -his brain of girls with flaming hair, dexterous, flashing limbs, white -frills, garters. With an elaborate air of unconcern he asked: - -“Are they goodlookers?” - -“Oh, Boy! they have got that hidden fascination.” - -Anthony made a swift reckoning of the price of port; it would wipe out -the sum he was getting together for badly needed baseball shoes.--Red -hair!--He could count on no further assistance from his father that -month; the machine shop at present was an expense. - -“Got any coin?” Meredith demanded. - -“A few.” - -The other consulted with importance the ostentatious watch. “Just the -minute,” he announced. “Come along; we can get the port at the Eagle; -we'll have a Paris of a time.” - -Doctor Allhop offered an epigrammatic parallel between two celebrated -planets. - -“I need new ball shoes,” Anthony temporized; “I ripped mine the last -game.” - -Meredith rose impatiently. “Charge them to the family,” he ejaculated. -“But if you don't want to get in on this, there are plenty of others. -Two or three dollars are easy to raise in a good cause. Why, the last -night I spent in the city cost me seventeen bucks.” - -“I guess I'll come.” Anthony instinctively barred his sudden eagerness -from his voice. He rose, and was surprised to find that his knees were -trembling. His face was hot too.--he wondered if it was red? if it would -betray his inexperience? “If they hand me any Sundayschool stuff,” he -proclaimed bigly, “I'll step right on it; I'm considerably wise to these -dames.” - -“This is the real, ruffled goods.” Meredith settled a straw hat with a -blue band on his sleek head, and Anthony dragged a faded cap from his -pocket, which he drew far over his eyes. William Williams regarded them -enviously. Craik's thoughts had wandered far, his lips moved silently. -And Doctor Allhop had disappeared into the front of the drugstore. - - - - -II. - -LET'S get along,” Anthony said in a a thick, strange voice. He stumbled -forward; his eyes were hot, blurred; he tried in vain to wink clear his -vision. Suddenly his elbow struck sharply against a shelf, and there was -an answering crash, the splintering of glass smashing upon the floor. -Doctor Allhop hurried in to the scene of the disaster. “You young bull -among the bottles!” he exclaimed in exasperated tones; “a whole gross of -perfume, all the white lilac, lost.” - -Anthony Ball stood motionless, embarrassed and annoyed by the accident; -and great, heavy coils of the scent rose about him; they filled his -nostrils with wave on wave of pungent odor, and stung his eyes so that -he shut them. The scent seemed to press about him, to obstruct his -breathing, weigh upon his heart; he put out a hand as if to ward it -off. It seemed to him that great masses of the flower surrounded him, -shutting him with a white, sweet wall from the world. He swayed dizzily; -then vanquished the illusion with an expression of regret for the damage -he had wrought. - -The Doctor was on his knees, brushing together the debris; William -Williams guffawed; and Craik smiled idly. Meredith swore, tapping a -cigarette on his silver case. “You're a parlor ornament, you are,” he -told Anthony. - -A feeling of impotence enveloped the latter, a sullen resentment against -an occurrence the inevitable result of which must descend like a shower -of cold water upon his freshly-stirred desires. “I am sorry as hell, -Doctor,” he repeated; “what did that box cost you?” - -“Six seventy,” Allhop shot impatiently over his shoulder. - -Anthony produced his three dollars, and, smoothing them, laid the sum on -a table. “I will stop in with the rest to-morrow morning,” he said. The -Doctor rose and turned, partly mollified; but, to avoid the argument -which, he felt, might follow, Anthony strode quickly out into the -drugstore. There at the white marble sodawater fountain a bevy of youth -was consuming colorific cones of ice cream, drinking syrupy concoctions -from tall, glistening glasses. They called him by name, but he passed -them without a sign of recognition, still the victim of his jangling -sensibilities. - - - - -III - -BAY STREET was thronged; the shops displayed broad, lighted windows -filled with their various merchandise; in front of a produce store a row -of chickens hung bare, bright blue and yellow, head down; from within -came the grinding of a coffee machine, the acrid voices of women -bargaining. The glass doors to the fire-engine house stood open, the -machines glimmering behind a wide demilune of chairs holding a motley -assemblage of men. Further along, from above, came the shuffle of -dancing feet, the thin, wiry wail of violins. At the corners groups of -youths congregated, obstructing the passerby, smirking and indulging in -sudden, stridulous hursts of laughter. - -The sky was infinitely remote, intensely, tenderly blue, the stars white -as milk; from the immediately surrounding countryside came the scented -breaths of early summer--the trailing sweetness of locust blooms, of -hidden hedges of honeysuckle, of June roses, and all the pungent aroma -of growing grasses, leaves, of fragile and momentary flowers. - -Anthony made his way brusquely through the throng, nodding shortly to -the countless salutations that marked his progress. The youths all knew -him, and the majority of the men; women stopped in their sharp haggling -to smile at him; garlands of girls gay in muslins “Mistered” him with -pretty propriety, or followed him more boldly over their shoulders with -inviting eyes. - -He impatiently disregarded his facile popularity: the tumult within him -settled into a dull, unreasoning anger against the universe at large. He -still owed Doctor Allhop four dollars and seventy cents; he had told -the Doctor that he would pay to-morrow; and he would have to go to his -father. The latter was a rigorously just man, Anthony gladly recognized, -the money would be instantly forthcoming; but he was not anxious to -recall the deficiencies of his present position to his father just then. -He had passed twenty, and--beyond his ability to cause a baseball to -travel in certain unexpected tangents, and a limited comprehension of -the conduct of automobiles--he was totally without assets, and without -any light on the horizon. - -He had been willing to work, he reminded himself resentfully, but bad -luck had overtaken him at every turn. The venture before the machine -shop--a scheme of squabs, the profits of which, calculated from an -advertisement, soared with the birthrate of those prolific birds, had -been ruined by rats. The few occasions when he had neglected to feed the -pigeons, despite the frank and censorious opinion of the family, had -had little or nothing to do with that misfortune. And, before that, -his kennel of rabbit dogs had met with an untimely fate when a favorite -bitch had gone mad, and a careful commonwealth had decreed the death -of the others. If his mother could but be won from the negative she had -placed upon baseball as a professional occupation, he might easily rise -through the minor leagues to a prideful position in the ranks of the -national pastime--“Lonnie This” was paid fourteen hundred yearly for -his prowess with the leather sphere, “Hans That's” removal from one to -another club had involved thousands of dollars. - -He heard his name pronounced in a peremptory manner, and stopped to -see the relative whose automobile had been placed in his care cross the -street. - -“What in the name of the Lord have you young dunces done to my car?” the -older man demanded. - -“We have been trying to locate that grinding,” Anthony told him in as -conciliatory manner as he could assume. - -“Well,” the other proceeded angrily, “you have ruined it this time; the -gears slid around like a plate of ice cream.” - -“It was nothing but a pile of junk when we took it,” Tony exploded; “why -don't you loosen up and get a real car?” - -“I took it to Feedler's. You can send me a bill to-morrow.” - -“There will be no bill. I'm sorry you were not satisfied, Sam.” - -“You are the most shiftless young dog in the county,” the other told him -in kindlier tones; “why don't you take hold of something, Anthony?” - -Anthony swung on his heel and abruptly departed. He had taken hold, he -thought hotly, times without number, but everything broke in his grasp. - -The stores on Bay Street grew more infrequent, the rank of monotonous -brick dwellings closed up, family groups occupied the steps that led to -the open doors. The crowd grew less, dwindling to a few aimless couples, -solitary pedestrians. He soon stopped, before his home. Opposite the -gaunt skeleton of a building operation rose blackly against the pale -stars. The aged lindens above him, lushly leaved, cast an intenser -gloom, filled with the warm, musty odor of the sluiced pavement, about -the white marble steps. The hall, open before him, was a cavern of -coolness; beyond, from the garden shut from the street by an intricate, -rusting iron fence, he heard the deliberate tones of his sister Ellie. -Evidently there was a visitor, and he entered the hall noiselessly, -intent upon passing without notice to his room above. But Ellie had -been watching for him, and called before he had reached the foot of the -stairs. - - - - -IV - -HE made his way diffidently through a long window to the lawn; where -he saw his sister, a glimmering, whitish shape in the heavily overgrown -garden, conversing with a figure without form or detail, by a trellis -sagging beneath a verdurous weight. - -“Oh, Tony!” she called; “here's Mrs. Dreen.” - -He leaned forward awkwardly, and grasped a slim, jewelled hand. “I -didn't know you were back from France,” he told the indistinct woman -before him. - -“But you read that Mr. Dreen had resigned the consulship at Lyons,” a -delicate, rounded voice rejoined, “and you should have guessed that we -would come home to Ellerton. My dear Ellie,” she turned to the girl, -“you have no idea how delighted James is at being here once more. He has -given the farmer notice, and insists that he is going to cultivate his -own acres. He was up this morning at six; fancy, after France and -his late _déjeuner._ And Eliza adores it; she spends the day with a -gardener, planning flowerbeds.” - -Anthony slipped into an easy posture on the thick, damp sod. Although -he had not seen Mrs. James Dreen since his childhood, when she had -accompanied her husband abroad to a consular post, he still retained -a pleasant memory of her magnetic and precise charm, the memory of her -harmonious personality, the beauty of her apparel and rings. - -“How is Eliza?” he asked politely, and with no inward interest; “she -must be a regular beauty by now.” - -“No,” Mrs. Dreen returned crisply, “she is not particularly goodlooking, -but she has always told me the truth. Eliza is a dear.” Anthony lit a -cigarette, and flipped the match in a minute gold arc, extinguished in -the night. - -“I am decidedly uneasy about Eliza though,” she continued to Ellie; “to -tell the truth, I am not sure how she will take over here. She is a -serious child; I would say temperamental, but that's such an impossible -word. She is absolutely and transparently honest and outspoken--it's -_ghastly_ at times. The most unworldly person alive; with her thought -and action are one, and often as not her thoughts are appalling. All -that, you know, doesn't spell wisdom for a girl.” - -“Yet James and I couldn't bear to... make her harder. A great deal of -care... If she is my daughter, Ellie, she is exquisite--so sensitive, -sympathetic...” - -Anthony, absorbed in the misfortune that had overtaken the machine shop, -the impending, inevitable interview with his father, so justly rigorous, -hardly gathered the sense of Mrs. Dreen's discourse. Occasional phrases, -familiar and unfamiliar terms, pierced his abstraction.--“Colombin's.” - “James' siatica.” “Camille Marchais.” Then her words, centering about a -statement that had captured his attention, became coherent, significant. - -“Only a small affair,” Mrs. Dreen explained; “to introduce Eliza to -Ellerton. Nothing on a large scale until winter.... Dancing, or rather -what goes down for dancing to-day. I am asking our old intimates, and -have written a few informal cards.” - -An automobile drew up smoothly before the Balls; its rear light winked -like an angry red eye through the iron fence. Mrs. Dreen rose. In the -gloom her face was girlish; there was a blur of lace at her throat, a -glimmer of emeralds. “Mind you come,” she commanded Ellie. “And you too, -without fail,” to Anthony. “Now that Hydrangea House is open again we -must have our friends about us. Heavens! Howard Ball's children and -mine grown up!” She moved gracefully across to a garden gate. Anthony -assisted her into the motorcar; the door closed with a snap. - -Ellie had sunk back into her chair, and was idly twisting her fingers -in the grass at her side. At her back the ivied wall of the house beyond -stirred faintly with sparrows. A misshapen moon swung apparently up from -and through the building frame opposite, and faint shadows unfolded on -the grass. Anthony flung himself moodily by his sister. - -“Sam's taken his car from us,” he informed her; “that will about shut up -the shop.” - -“Then perhaps you will bring back the screwdrivers.” - -“To-morrow.” - -“What are you going to do, Tony?” - -“Tell me.” - -“A big strong fellow... there mast be something.” - -“Mother won't let me play ball in the leagues.” - -“Perhaps she will; we'll talk to her; it's better than nothing.” - -“I broke a box of rotten perfume at the drugstore, and owe the Doctor -four seventy.” - -“It's too bad--father is never free from little worries; you are -always getting into difficulties. You are different from other boys, -Anthony--there don't seem to be any place in life for you; or you don't -make a place, I can't tell which. You have no constructive sense, and no -feeling of responsibility. What do you want to do with yourself?” - -“I don't know, Ellie, honestly,” he confessed. “I try like the devil, -make a thousand resolutions, and then--I go off fishing. Or if I don't -things go to the rats just the same.” - -“Well,” she rose, “I'm going up. Don't bother father about that money, -I'll let you have it. It's perfectly useless to tell you to return it.” - -“I swear you will get it next week,” he proclaimed gratefully. “The -baseball association owes me for two games.” - -“Haven't you promised it?” - -“That's so!” he exclaimed ruefully. She laughed and disappeared into the -house. - - - - -V - -A BLACK depression settled over him; life appeared a huge conspiracy -against his success, his happiness. The future, propounded by Ellie, was -suddenly stripped of all glamor, denuded of all optimistic dreams; he -passed through one of those dismaying periods when the world, himself, -his pretentions, were revealed in the clear and pitiless light of -reality. His friends, his circumstances, his hopes, held out no promise, -no thought of pleasure. Behind him his life lay revealed as a series -of failures, before him it was plotted without security. The plan, the -order, that others saw, or said that they saw, presented to him only a -cloudy confusion. The rewards for which others struggled, aspired, which -they found indispensable, had been ever meaningless to him--to money -he never gave a thought; a society organized into calls, dancing, -incomprehensible and petty values, never rose above his horizon. - -He was happiest in the freedom of the open, the woods; in the easy -company of casual friends, black or white, kindly comment. He would -spend a day with his dogs and gun, sitting on a stump in a snowy field, -listening to the eager yelping in the distant, blue wood, shooting -a rare rabbit. Or tramping tirelessly the leafy paths of autumn. Or, -better still, swinging through the miry October swales, coonhunting -after midnight with lantern and climbers. - -But now those pleasures, in anticipated retrospect, appeared bald, -unprofitable. Prolonged indefinitely, he divined, they would pall; they -did not offer adequate material, aim, for the years. For a moment he -saw, grinning hatefully at him, the spectre of what he might become; he -passed such men, collarless and unshaven, on the street comers, flinging -them a scornful salutation. He had paid for their drinks, hearkening -negligently to their stereotyped stories, secretly gibing at their -obvious goodfellowship, their eager, tremulous smiles. They had been, in -their day, great rabbit hunters... detestable. - -The mood vanished, the present closed mercifully about him, leaving him -merely defiant. The townclock announced the hour in slow, jarring -notes. A light shone above from Ellie's room, and he heard his father's -deliberate footsteps in the hall, returning from the Ellerton Club, -where, as was his invariable nightly habit, he had played cooncan. The -moon, freed from the towering beams, was without color. - -Anthony rose, and flung away a cold, stale cigarette; the world was just -like that--stale and cold. He proceeded toward the house, when he heard -footfalls on the pavement; in the obscurity he barely made out a man and -woman, walking so closely as to be hardly distinguishably separate. They -stopped by the fence, only a few feet from where he stood concealed in -the shadows, and the man took the woman's hands in his own, bending over -her. Then, suddenly, clasping her in his arms, he covered her upturned -face with passionate kisses. With a little, frightened gasp she clung -to his shoulders. The kisses ceased. Their strained, desperate embrace -remained unbroken.--It seemed that each was the only reality for the -other in a world of unsubstantial gloom, veiled in the shifting, silvery -mist of a cold and removed planet. The woman breathed with a deep, -sobbing inspiration; and, when she spoke, Anthony realized that he was -eavesdropping, and walked swiftly and cautiously into the house. - -But the memory of that embrace; accompanied him up the stairs, into his -room. It haunted him as he lay, cool and nearly bare, on his bed. -It filled him with a profound and unreasoning melancholy, new to his -customary, unconscious animal exuberance. All at once he thought of the -redhaired girl who liked port wine; and, as he fell asleep, she stood -before him, leering slyly at the side of that other broken shape which -threatened him out of the future. - - - - -VI - -THE shed that held the machine shop and garage fronted upon an informal -lane skirting the verdurous border of the town. Beyond the fence -opposite a broad pasturage dipped and rose to the blackened ruins of -a considerable brick mansion, now tenanted by a provident colony of -Italians; further hill topped green hill, the orchards drawn like -silvery scarves about their shoulders, undulating to the sky. Back of -the shed ranged the red roofs and tree-tops of the town. - -When Anthony arrived at the seat of his industry the grass was flashing -with dew and the air a thrill with the buoyant piping of robins. He -found the door open, and Alfred Craik awaiting him. - -“She's gone,” Alfred informed him. - -“Sam told me last night; it was your infernal tinkering... you can't let -a machine alone,” Anthony dropped beside the other on the door sill. - -“Could we get another car, do you think?” Alfred demanded; “I had almost -finished a humming experiment on Sam's.” - -“This garage is closed,” Anthony pronounced; “it's out of existence. The -family are yelping for the screwdrivers. What do we owe?” - -“Three ninety to Feedler for 'gas,' and a month's rent.” - -“We're bankrupt,” the other immediately declared. He rose, and proceeded -to collect the tools that littered the floor; then he removed the sign, -“Ball and Craik. Machine Shop and Garage.”, from the door, and the shed -relapsed into its nondescript, somnolent decay. - -“There's a game with Honeydale to-day,” Anthony resumed his seat; “I'm -to pitch that, and another Saturday; and, hear me, boy, I need the -money.” - -Alfred gazed over the orchards, beyond the hills, into the sky, and made -no answer. It was evident that he was lost in a vision of gloriously -disrupted machinery. His silence spread to Anthony, who settled back -with a cigarette into the drowsy stillness. The minutes passed, hovering -like bees, and merged into an hour. They could hear a horse champing in -the pasture; the wail of an Italian infant came to them thinly across -the green; behind them sounded mellow the tin horn of the shad vendor. - -Anthony roused himself reluctantly, recalling the debt he had to -discharge at the drugstore. Elbe's crisp five dollar bill lay in his -pocket. “Later,” he nodded, and made his way over the shady brick -pavements, through the cool perspective of maple-lined streets, where -summer dresses fluttered in spots of subdued, bright color, to Doctor -Allhop's. The Doctor was absent, and Anthony tendered the money, with a -short explanation, to the clerk. The latter smartly rang the amount on -the cash register, and placed thirty cents on the counter. - -“Two packs of Dulcinas,” Anthony required, and dropped the cigarettes -into his pocket. He made his way in a leisurely fashion toward home and -the midday meal. At the table his mother's keen grey eyes regarded him -with affectionate concern. “How do you feel, Tony?” she asked. “You were -coughing last night... take such wretched care of yourself--” His father -glanced up from the half-masted sheet of the Ellerton _Bugle_. He was a -spare man, of few words, with a square-cut beard about the lower part -of an austere countenance. “What's the matter with him?” he demanded -crisply. - -“Nothing,” Anthony hastily protested; “you ought to know mother.” - -After lunch he extended himself smoking on the horsehair sofa in the -front room. It was a spacious chamber, with a polished floor, and -well-worn, comfortable chairs; in a corner a lacquered table bore old -blue Canton china; by the door a jar of roses dropped their pink petals; -over the fireplace a tall mirror held all in silvery replica. - -“Thirty cents, please,” Ellie demanded; “I must get some stamps.” - -A wave of conscious guilt, angry self condemnation, swept over him. “I'm -sorry, Ellie,” he admitted; “I haven't got it.” - -She stood regarding him for a moment with cold disapproval. She was a -slender woman, past thirty, with dark, regular features and tranquil -eyes; carelessly dressed, her hair slipped over her shoulder in a cool -plait. - -“I am sorry,” he repeated, “I didn't think.” - -“But it wasn't yours.” - -“You'll get every pretty penny of it.” He rose and in orderly discretion -sought his room, where he changed into his worn, grey playing flannels. - - - - -VII - -A HIGH board fence enclosed the grounds of the Ellerton Baseball -Association; over one side rose the rude scaffolding of a grandstand, -protected from sun and rain by a covering of tarred planks; a circular -opening by a narrow entrance framed the ticket seller; while around the -base of the fence, located convenient to a small boy's eye, ran a -girdle of unnatural knotholes, highly improved cracks, through which an -occasional fleeting form might be observed, a segment of torn sod, and -the fence opposite. - -A shallow flood of spectators, drawn from the various quarters of the -town, converged in a dense stream at the entrance to the Grounds; -troops of girls with brightly-hued ribbands about their vivacious arms, -boisterous or superior squads of young males, alternated with their more -sober elders--shabby and dejected men, out at elbows and work, in search -of the respite of the sun and the play; baseball enthusiasts, rotund -individuals with ruddy countenances, saturnine experts with scorecards. - -Anthony observed the throng indifferently as he drew near the scene of -his repeated, past triumphs, the metal plates in his shoes grinding into -the pavement. A small procession followed him, led by a colored youth, -to whose dilapidated garments clung the unmistakable straws and aroma of -the stable, bearing aloft Anthony's glove, and “softing” it vigorously -from a natural source; a boy as round and succulent as a boiled pudding, -with Anthony's cap beneath his arm, leaving behind him a trail of peanut -shells, brought up the rear of this democratic escort. - -There was little question in Anthony's mind of his ability to triumph -that afternoon over his opponents from a near-by town; their “battery,” - he told himself, was an open book to him--a slow, dropping ball here, a -speedy one across the fingers of that red-haired fielder who habitually -flinched... and yet he wished that it had not been so hot. He thought -of the game without particular pleasure; he was conscious of a lack of -energy; his thoughts, occupied with Elli's patent contempt, stung him -waspishly. - -A throng of players and hangerson filled the contracted dressing -quarters beneath the grandstand, and he was instantly surrounded by -vociferous familiars. The captain of the Ellerton team drew him aside, -and tersely outlined a policy of play, awaiting his opinion. Anthony -nodded gravely: suddenly he found the other's earnestness a little -absurd--the fate of a nation appeared to color his accents, to hang upon -the result of his decision. “Sure,” he said absently, “keep the field -in; they won't hit me.” - -The other regarded him with a slight frown. “Hate yourself to-day, don't -you?” he remarked. “Lay that crowd cold on the plate, though,” he added; -“there's a man here from the major league to look you over. Hinkle told -my old man.” - -A quickening of interest took possession of Anthony; they had heard of -him then in the cities, they had discovered him worthy of the journey to -Ellerton, of investigation. A vision of his name acclaimed from coast to -coast, his picture in the playing garb of a famous organization filling -the Sunday sheets, occupied his mind as he turned toward the field. The -captain called mysteriously, “Don't get patted up with any purple stuff -handed you before the game.” - -The opposing team, widely scattered, were warming; a pitcher, assuming -the attitudes of an agonising cramp, was indulging in a preliminary -practice; the ball sped with a dull, regular thud into the catcher's -mit. A ball was tossed to Anthony, a team mate backed against the fence, -and, raising his hands on high, he apparently overcame all the natural -laws of flight. He was conscious of Hinkle, prosperous proprietor of the -Ellerton Pool Parlor, at his back with a stranger, an ungainly man, -close lipped, keen of vision. There were intimations of approval. “A -fine wing,” the stranger said. “He's got 'em all,” Hinkle declared. -“Hundreds of lads can pitch a good game,” the other told him, “now and -again, they are amatoors. One in a thousand, in ten thousand, can play -ball all the time; they're professionals; they're worth money... I want -to see him act...” they moved away. - -The players were called in from the field, the captains bent over a -tossed coin; and, first to bat, the Ellerton team ranged itself on -benches. Then, as the catcher was drawing on his mask, Hinkle and -another familiar town figure, who dedicated his days to speeding weedy -horses in red flannel anklets from a precarious wire vehicle, stepped -forward from the grandstand. “Mr. Anthony Ball!” Hinkle called. A -sudden, tense silence enveloped the spectators, the players stopped -curiously. Anthony turned with mingled reluctance and surprise. -Something shone in Hinkle's hand: he saw that it was a watch. “As a -testimonial from your Ellerton friends,” the other commenced loudly. -Anthony's confused mind lost part of the short oration which followed -“... recognition of your sportsmanship and skill... happy disposition. -The good fame of the Ellerton Baseball team... predict great future on -the national diamond.” - -A storm of applause from the grandstand rippled away in opposite -directions along the line sitting by the fence; boys with their mouths -full of fingers whistled incredibly. Hinkle held out the watch, but -Anthony's eyes were fixed upon the ground. He shook the substantial mark -of Ellerton's approval, so that the ornate fob glittered in the sun, -but Anthony's arms remained motionless at his sides. “Take it, you -leatherkop,” a voice whispered fiercely in his ear. 'And with a start, -he awkwardly grasped the gift. “Thank you,” he muttered, his voice -inaudible five yards away. He wished with passionate resentment that the -fiend who was yelling “speech!” would drop dead. He glanced up, and the -sight of all those excited, kindly faces deepened his confusion until -it rose in a lump in his throat, blurred his vision, in an idiotic, -childish manner. “Ah, _call_ the game, can't you,” he urged over his -shoulder. - -The first half inning was soon over, without incident; and, as Anthony -walked to the pitcher's “box,” the necessity to surpass all previous -efforts was impressed upon him by the watch, by the presence of that -spectator from a major league who had come to see him “act.” He wished -again, in a passing irritation, that it had not been so hot. Behind the -batter he could see the countenance of “Kag” Lippit staring through the -wires of his mask. “Kag” executed a cabalistic signal with his left arm, -and Anthony pitched. The umpire hoarsely informed the world at large -that it had been a strike. A blast of derisive catcalls arose from the -Ellerton partisans; another strike, shriller catcalls, and the batter -retired after a third ineffectual lunge amid a tempest of banter. - -The second batter hit a feeble fly negligently attached by the third -baseman, who “put it over to first” in the exuberance of his contempt. -The third Anthony disposed of with equal brevity. - -He next faced the pitcher, and, succumbing to the pressure of -extraordinary events, he swung the bat with a tremendous effort, and the -flattened ball described a wide arc into the ready palms of the right -fielder. “You're _Out!_” the umpire vociferated. The uncritical portion -of the spectators voiced their pleasure in the homeric length of the -hit, but the captain was contemptuously cold as Anthony returned to the -bench. “The highschool hero,” he remarked; “little Willie the Wallop. If -you don't bat to the game,” he added in a different tone, “if you were -Eddie Plank I'd bench you.” - -That inning the Ellerton team scored a run: a youth hurtling headlong -through the dust pressed his cheek affectionately upon the dingy square -of marble dignified by the title of home, while a second hammered him -violently in the groin with the ball; one chorus shrieked, “out by -a block!” another, “safe! safe!” he was “safe as safe!” the girls -declared. The umpire's voice rose authoritatively above the tumult. -“Play ball! he's safe!” - -Anthony pitched that inning faultlessly; never had ball obeyed him so -absolutely; it dropped, swung to the right, to the left, revolved or -sped dead. The batters faded away like ice cream at a church supper. As -he came in from the “box” the close-lipped stranger strode forward and -grasped his shoulder. “I want to see you after the game,” he declared; -“don't sign up with no one else. I'm from--” he whispered his persuasive -source in Anthony's ear. The captain commended him pithily. “He's got -'em all,” Hinkle proclaimed to the assembled throng. - -When Anthony batted next it was with calculated nicety; he drove the -ball between shortstop and second base, and, by dint of hard running, -achieved a rapturously acclaimed “two bagger.” The captain then merely -tapped the ball--breathlessly it was described as a “sacrifice”--and -Anthony moved to the third base, and a succeeding hit sent him “home.” - Another run was added to the Ellerton score, it now stood three to -nothing in their favor, before Anthony returned to the dusty depression -from which he pitched. - -He was suddenly and unaccountably tired; the cursed heat was worse than -ever, he thought, wiping a wet palm on his grimy leg; above him the sky -was an unbroken, blazing expanse of blue; short, sharp shadows shifted -under the feet of the tense players; in the shade of the grandstand the -dresses, mostly white, showed here and there a vivid note of yellow -and violet, the crisp note of crimson. The throbbing song of a -thrush floated from a far hedge... it stirred him with a new unrest, -dissatisfaction... “Kag” looked like a damned fool grimacing at him -through the wire mask--exactly like a monkey in a cage. The umpire in -his inflated protector, crouching in a position of rigorous attention, -resembled a turtle. He pitched, and a spurt of dust rose a yard before -the plate. “Ball one!” That wouldn't do, he told himself, recalling the -substantially expressed confidence, esteem, of Ellerton. The captain's -sibilant “steady” was like the flick of a whip. With an effort which -taxed his every resource he marshalled his relaxed muscles into an -aching endeavor, centred his unstable thoughts upon the exigencies of -the play, and retired the batter before him. But he struck the next -upon the arm, sending him, nursing the bruise, to first base. He saw -the captain grimly wave the outfielders farther back; and, determined, -resentful, he struck out in machinelike order the remaining batters. But -he was unconscionably weary; his arm felt as though he had been pitching -for a week, a month; and he dropped limp and surly upon the sod at a -distance from the players' bench. - -He batted once more, but a third “out” on the bases saved him from the -fluke which, he had been certain, must inevitably follow. As he stood -with the ball in his hand, facing the batter, he was conscious of an air -of uncertainty spreading like a contagion through the Ellerton team; -he recognized that it radiated from himself--his lack of confidence -magnified to a promised panic. The centre fielder fumbled a fly directly -in his hands; there was a shout from Ellerton's opponents, silence in -the ranks of Ellerton. - -Anthony pitched with a tremendous effort, his arm felt brittle; it felt -as though it was made of glass, and would break off. He could put no -speed into the ball, his fingers seemed swollen, he was unable to grip -it properly, control its direction. The red-haired player whom he had -despised faced him, he who habitually flinched, and Anthony essayed to -drive the ball across his fingers. The bat swung with a vicious crack -upon the leather sphere, a fielder ran vainly back, back.... - -The runner passed first base, and, wildly urged by a small but -adequately vocal group of wellwishers, scorned second base, repudiated -third, from which another player tallied a run, and loafed magnificently -“home.” - -From the fence some one called to Anthony, “what time is it?” and -achieved a huge success among the opposition. His captain besought him -desperately to “come back. Where's your pep' went? you're pitching like -a dead man!” Confusion fell upon the team in the field, and, in its -train, a series of blunders which cost five runs. After the inning -Anthony stood with a lowered, moody countenance. “You're out of this -game,” the captain shot at him; “go home and play with mother and the -girls.” - -He left the field under a dropping fire of witticisms, feebly stemmed by -half-hearted applause; Hinkle frowned heavily at him; the man from the -major league had gone. Anthony proceeded directly through the gate -and over the street toward home. The taste of profound Humiliation, of -failure, was bitter in his mouth, that failure which seemed to lie at -the heart of everything he attempted, which seemed to follow him like -his shadow, like the malicious influence of a powerful spite, an enmity -personal and unrelenting. The sun centred its heat upon his bared head -with an especial fervor; the watch, thrust hastily in a pocket, swung -against his leg mockingly; the abrupt departure of that keeneyed -spectator added its hurt to his self pride. - - - - -VIII - -HE maintained a surly silence throughout dinner; but later, on -discovering a dress shirt laid in readiness on his bed, and recalling -the purport of Mrs. James Dreen's call, he announced on the crest of an -overwhelming exasperation that he would go to no condemmed dance. “Ellie -can't go alone,” his mother told him from the landing below; “and do -hurry, Tony, she's almost dressed.” The flaring gas jet seemed to coat -his room with a heavy yellow dust; the night came in at the window as -thickly purple as though it had been paint squeezed from a tube. He -slowly assembled his formal clothes. An extended search failed to reveal -the whereabouts of his studs, and he pressed into service the bone -buttons inserted by the laundry. The shirt was intolerably hot and -uncomfortable, his trousers tight, a white waistcoat badly shrunken; -but a collar with a frayed and iron-like edge the crowning misery. When, -finally, he was garbed, he felt as though he had been compressed into an -iron boiler; a stream of perspiration coursed down the exact middle -of his back; his tie hung in a limp knot. Fiery epithets escaped at -frequent intervals. - -On the contrary, Ellie was delightfully cool, orderly; she waved a lacy -fan in her long, delicate fingers. The public vehicle engaged to convey -them to the Dreens, a mile or more beyond the town, drew up at the door -with a clatter of hoofs. It was an aged hack, with complaining joints, -and a loose iron tire. A musty smell rose from the threadbare cushions, -the rotting leather. The horse's hoofs were now muffled in the dusty -country road; shadowy hedges were passed, dim, white farmhouses with -orange, lighted windows, the horizon outspread in a shimmering blue -circle under the swimming stars. - -Anthony smoked a cigarette in acute misery; already his neck felt -scraped raw; a button flew jubilantly from his waistcoat; and his -improvised studs failed in their appointed task. “I'm having the hell of -a good time, I am,” he told Ellie satirically. - -They turned between stone pillars supporting a lighted grill, advanced -over a winding driveway to Hydrangea House, where they waited for -a motor to move from the brilliantly-illuminated portal. A servant -directed Anthony to the second floor, where he found a bedchamber -temporarily in service as coat room, occupied by a number of _men_. -Most of them he knew, and nodded shortly in return to their careless -salutations. They belonged to a variety that he at once envied and -disdained: here they were thoroughly at ease, their ties irreproachable, -their shirts without a crease. Drawing on snowy gloves they discussed -women and society with fluency, gusto, emanating an atmosphere of -cocktails. - -Anthony produced his gloves in a crumpled wad from the tail of his coat -and fought his way into them. He felt rather than saw the restrained -amusement of his fellows. They spoke to him gravely, punctiliously -proffered cigarettes; yet, in a vague but unmistakable manner, he was -made to feel that he was outside their interests, ignorant of their -shibboleth. In the matter of collars alone he was as a Patagonian to -them. He recalled with regret the easy familiarity, the comfort, of -Doctor Allhop's drugstore. - -Then, throwing aside cigarettes, patting waistcoats into position, they -streamed down to the music. The others found partners immediately, and -swung into a onestep, but Anthony stood irresolutely in the doorway. -The girls disconcerted him with their formal smiles, their bright, ready -chatter. But Ellie rescued him, drawing him into the dance. After which -he sought the porch that, looped with rosevines, crossed the face of the -long, low house. There, with his back against a pillar, he found a cool -spot upon the tiles, and sought such comfort as he could command. - -Long windows opening from the ballroom were now segments of whirling -color, now filled with gay streams, ebbing and returning. Fragmentary -conversation, glowing cigarettes, surrounded him. Behind the pillar at -his back a girl said, softly, “please don't.” - -Then he saw Ellie, obviously searching for him, and he rose. At her -side was a slim figure with a cloud of light hair. “There he is!” Ellie -exclaimed; “Eliza... my brother, Anthony.” - -He saw that her eyes opened widely, and that her hair was a peculiar, -bright shade. Ginger-colored, he thought. “I made Ellie find you,” she -told him; “you know, you must ask me to dance; I won't be ignored at my -own party.” - -He muttered awkwardly some conventional period, annoyed at having -been found, intensely uncomfortable. In a minute more he found himself -dancing, conscious of his limp tie, his crumpled and gaping shirt. He -swung his partner heavily across the room, colliding with a couple -that he shouldered angrily aside. The animation swiftly died from Eliza -Dreen's countenance; she grew indifferent, then cold. And, when the -music ceased, she escaped with a palpable sigh of relief. He was -savagely mopping his heated face on the porch when, at his elbow, a -clear voice captured his attention. “A dreadful person,” it said, “... -like dancing with a locomotive... A regular Apache.” - -He turned and saw that it was Eliza Dreen, gathering from her swift -concern both that he had been the subject of her discourse, and that she -was aware that he had overheard it. Back at his post at the pillar -he promised himself grimly that never again would he be found in such -specified company. He stripped his gloves from his wet palms, and flung -them far across the lawn, then recklessly eased his collar. There was -a sudden whisper of skirts behind him, when Eliza seated herself on the -porch's edge, at his side. - - - - -IX - -I AM a loathsome person at times,” she informed him; “and to-night I -was rather worse than usual.” - -“I do dance like a--locomotive,” involuntarily. - -“It doesn't matter how you dance,” she proceeded, “and you mustn't -repeat it, it isn't generous.” Suddenly she laughed uncontrollably. -“You looked so uncomfortable... your collar,” it was lost in a bubbling, -silvery peal. “Forgive me,” she gasped. - -“I don't mind,” he assured her. All at once he didn't; the sting had -vanished from his pride; he smiled. He saw that she wore a honey-colored -dress, with a strand of pearls about her slim throat, and that her feet, -in satin, were even smaller than Ellie's. Her hair resembled more a -crown of light than the customary adornment. “I didn't want to come,” he -confided: “I hate, well--going out, dancing.” - -“It doesn't suit you,” she admitted frankly; “you are so splendidly -bronzed and strong; you need,” she paused, “lots of room.” - -For this Anthony had no adequate reply. “I have this with some one,” - she declared as the music recommenced, “but I hope they don't find me; -I hate it for the moment... I'll show you a place; it's very wicked of -me.” She rose and, waving him to follow, slipped over the grass. Beyond -the house she stopped in the shadowy vista of a pergola; vines shut out -the stars, walled them in a virid, still gloom. She sank on a low stone -bench, and he found the grass at her feet. A mantle of fine romance -descended upon his shoulders, of subtile adventure, prodigious daring. -Immaculate men, pearl-studded, were searching for her, and she -had hidden herself from them with him. A new and pleasant sense of -importance warmed him, flattered his self-esteem. He felt strangely at -ease, and sat in silent contentment. The faint sound of violins, a burst -of distant laughter, floated to him. - -“It seems as if the world were rushing on, out there, without us,” Eliza -finally broke the silence, “as if they were keeping a furious pace, -while we sat in some everlasting, quiet wood, like Fontainebleau. Don't -you adore nature?” - -“I knock about a lot outside,” he admitted cautiously, “often I stay out -all night, by the Wingohocking Creek. There's a sort of cave where -you can hear the falls, and the owls hunting about. I cook things in -clay--fish, chickens,” he paused abruptly at the latter item, recalling -the questionable source of his supply. “In winter I shoot rabbits with -Bert Woods, he's a barber, and Doctor Allhop, you know--the druggist.” - -“I am sure that your friends are very nice,” she promptly assured him. - -“Bert's crazy about girls,” he remarked, half contemptuously. - -“And you... don't care for them?” - -“I don't know anything about them,” he admitted with an abrupt, -unconscious honesty. - -“But there must have been--there must be--one,” she persisted. - -She leaned forward, and he met her gaze with unwavering candor. “Not -that many,” he returned. - -“It would be wonderful to care for just one person, _always_,” she -continued intently: “I had a dream when I was quite young.... I dreamed -that a marvellous happiness would follow a constancy like that. Father -rather laughs at me, and quotes Shakespeare--the 'one foot on land and -one on shore' thing. Perhaps, but it's too bad.” - -Anthony gravely considered this new idea in relation to his own, -hitherto lamented, lack of experience. It dawned upon him that the idea -of manly success he had cherished would appear distasteful to Eliza -Dreen. She had indirectly extolled the very thing of which he had been -secretly ashamed. He thought in conjunction with her of the familiar -group at the drugstore, and in this light the latter retreat suffered -a disconcerting change: Thomas Meredith appeared sly and trivial, and -unhealthy; Williams an empty braggard; Craik ineffectual, untidy. He -surveyed himself without enthusiasm. - -“You are different from any one I ever knew,” he told her. - -“Oh, there are millions of me,” she returned; “but you are different. -I didn't like you for a sou at first; but there is something about you -like--like a very clear spring of water. That's idiotic, but it's what -I mean. There is an early morning feeling about you. I am very sensitive -to people,” she informed him, “some make me uncomfortable directly they -come into the room. There was a curé at Etretat I perfectly detested, -and he turned out to be an awful person.” - -Her name was called unmistakably across the lawn, and she rose. “They're -all furious,” she announced, without moving further. Her face was pale, -immaterial, in the gloom; her wide eyes dark, disturbing. A minute gold -watch on her wrist ticked faintly, and--it seemed to Anthony--in furious -haste. Something within him, struggling inarticulately for expression, -hurt; an oppressive emotion beat upon his heart. He uttered a period -about seeing her again. - -“Some day you may show me the place where the fall sounds and the owls -hunt. No, don't come with me.” She turned and fled. - -An unreasoning conviction seized Anthony that a momentous occasion had -overtaken him; he was unable to distinguish its features, discover it -grave or gay; but, wrapped in the impenetrable veil of the future, -it enveloped and permeated him, swept in the circle of his blood's -circulation, vibrated in the cords of his sensitive ganglia. He returned -slowly to the house: the brilliantly-lit, dancing figures seemed the -mere figments of a febrile dream; but the music apparently throbbed -within his brain. - -Ellie's cool voice recreated his actual sphere. He found their hack, -the driver slumbering doubled on the seat. The latter rose stiffly, -and stirred his drowsing animal into a stumbling walk. Beyond the -illuminated entrance to Hydrangea House the countryside lay profoundly -dim to where the horizon flared with the pale reflection of distant -lightning. - -“Eliza's a sweet,” Ellie pronounced. Anthony brooded without reply upon -his opinion. The iron-like collar had capitulated, and rested limply -upon his limp shirt; at the sacrifice of a second button his waistcoat -offered complete comfort. “I am going to get a new dress suit,” he -announced decisively. Ellie smiled with sisterly malice. “Eliza is a -sweet,” she reiterated. - -“You go to thunder!” he retorted. But, “she's wonderful,” he admitted, -and--out of his conclusive experience, “there is not another girl like -her in all the world.” - -“I'll agitate for the new suit,” Ellie promised. - - - - -X - -THE following morning he reorganized his neckties, left a pair of white -flannels to be pressed at the tailor's; then, his shoulders swathed in a -crisp, sprigged muslin, sat circumspectly under the brisk shears of Bert -Woods. Bert hovered above him, and commented on yesterday's fiasco. “It -comes to the best of 'em,” Bert assured him: “'member how Ollie Stitcher -fell down in the world's series at Chicago.” He recited, for Anthony's -comfort, the names of eminent pitchers who had “fell down” when every -necessity demanded that they should have remained splendidly erect. - -His defeat still rankled in Anthony's mind, but the bitterness had -vanished, the sting salved by that other memory of the impulsive charm -of Eliza Dreen. He recalled all that she had said to him; her words, -thoughtfully considered, were just those employed by humdrum individuals -in their commonplace discourses; but, spoken by her, they were a -thrill with an especial, a significant, importance and beauty. It was -inevitable that she should have dreamed things immaculate, rare; things -like... white flowers. - -“Shampoo?” Bert inquired absent-mindedly. - -“_And_ singed, and curled, and sprinkled with violets,” Anthony promptly -returned. With a flourish, Bert swept aside the muslin folds. - -Then, in the pursuit of a neglected duty, he crossed the town to a -quiet corner, occupied by a small dwelling built of smooth, green stone, -crowned with a fantastic and dingy froth of wood. A shallow, untended -garden was choked with weeds and bushes, sprawling upward against -closely-shuttered windows. He had not been to see Mrs. Bosbyshell for -two weeks, he realized, with a stir of mild self-reproach. He was aware -that his visits to that solitary and eccentric old woman formed her -sole contact with a world she regarded with an increasing, unbalanced -suspicion. - -A minute or more after his knock--the bell handle was missing--a shutter -shifted a fraction, upon which he was admitted to a narrow, dark hall, -and the door bolted sharply behind him. A short, stout woman, in -a formless wrap of grotesquely gorgeous design, faced him with a -quivering, apprehensive countenance and prodigiously bright eyes. Her -scant, yellowish-white hair was gathered aloft in a knot that slipped -oddly from side to side; and, as she walked, shabby Juliet slippers -loudly slapped the bare floor. - -“Do you want some wood brought in?” Anthony inquired; “and how does the -washer I put on the hot water spigot work?” - -“A little wood, if you please; and the spigot's good as new.” She sat on -a chair, lifting a harassed gaze to his serious solicitation. “I've -had a dreadful time since you were here last--an evilish-appearing man -knocked and knocked, at one door and again at another.” - -Her voice sank to a shrill whisper, “he was after the money.” She nodded -so vigorously that the knot fell in a straggling whisp across her eyes. -“Cousin Alonzo sent him.” - -“Your cousin Alonzo has been dead ten years,” he interposed patiently, -going once more over that familiar ground. “Probably it was a man -wanting to sell gas stoves.” - -“You don't know Alonzo,” she persisted, unconvinced; “I should have to -see his corp'. He knows I've a comfortable sum put by, and's hard after -it for his wenching and such practices: small good, or bad, he'll get of -it when my time comes.” - -He passed through the hall to the kitchen, and, unchaining the back -door, brought a basket of cut wood from a shed, and piled it beside the -stove. Mrs. Bosbyshell inspected with a critical eye the fastening of -the door. There was a swollen window sash to release above, a mattress -to turn, when he was waved ceremoniously into a formal, darkened -chamber. The musty spice of rose pot-pourri lingered in the flat air; -old mahogany--rush bottomed chairs, flute-legged table, a highboy and -Dutch clock--glimmered about the walls. A marble topped stand bore -orderly volumes in maroon and primrose morocco, the top one entitled, -“The Gentlewoman's Garland. A Gift Book.” - -From a triangular cupboard, she produced a decanter with a carved design -of bees and cobalt clover, and a plate of crumbling currant cake. “A -sup of dandelion cordial,” she announced, “a bite of sweet. Growing boys -must be fed.” - -She sat, and with patent satisfaction watched Anthony consume the ropy -syrup and cake. - -“I met a girl last night,” he told her intimately; “she had hair -like--like a roman candle.” - -“Did you burn your heart up in it?” - -“She told me that I was like the early morning,” he confided with a -rush. - -Mrs. Bosbyshell nodded her approval. - -“An understandable remark; exactly what I should have said fifty years -ago; I didn't know the girls of to-day had it in 'em. You've got a good -heart, Anthony,” she enunciated. Anthony shuffled his feet. “A good -heart is a rare thing to find in the young. But I misdoubt, in a -world of mammon, you'll pay for it dear; I'm afraid you will never be -successful, so called. It's selling men that that success is got, and -buying women, and it's never in you to do those. _You_ wouldn't wish -an old woman gone for the sum she'd laid aside.” Her fancies had been -wilder than usual, he concluded, as the holt of the door at his hack -slid home. Alonzo and her money, one he considered as actual, as -imminent, as the other, occupied to the exclusion of all else her -dimming brain. He had hoped to converse with her more fully on the -inexhaustible subject of Eliza Dreen, but her vagaries had interrupted -him continuously. He decided that she was an antiquated bore, but made a -mental note to return before the store of wood was consumed. - - - - -XI - -IN the evening he stopped from force of habit at Doctor Allhop's -drugstore: the familiar group was assembled behind the screen at the -rear, the conversation flowed in the old channels. Anthony lounged and -listened, but his attention continually wandered--he heard other, -more musical, tones; his vision was filled with a candid face and -widely-opened eyes in the green gloom of a pergola. He passed out by the -bevy at the sodawater fountain to the street. - -In the artificial day of the electric lights the early summer foliage -was as virulently green as the toy trees of a miniature ark; the sky was -a breathless vault filled with blue mists that veiled the stars; under -the locust trees the blooms were spilled odorously, whitely, on the -pavement. He walked aimlessly to the outskirts of the town. Across the -dim valley, against the hills merged into the night and sky, he could -see glimmering the low lights of Hydrangea House. It would be pleasant, -he thought, to be closer to that abode of delight; and, crossing the -road, he vaulted a fence, and descended through a tangle of aromatic -grass to the brook that threaded the meadow below. A star swam imaged -on the black, wrinkled surface of the water: it suggested vague, happy -images--Eliza was the star, and he was the brook, holding her mirrored -in his dreams. - -He passed cows, blowing softly into the sod; a flock of sheep broke -before him like an argent cloud on the heaven of the fields; and, -finally, reached the boundary of James Dreen's acres. He forced his way -through the budding hedge from which the place had its name, and, in a -cup of the lawn like a pool of brimming, fragrant shadows, sat watching -the lights of the house. - -Indistinct shapes passed the windows, each--since it might be -she--carrying to him a thrill; indistinguishable voices reached him, -the vague tones--they might be hers--chiming like bells on his straining -senses. The world, life, was so beautiful that it brought an obstruction -into his throat; he drew the back of his hand across his eyes, and, to -his surprise, found that it was wet. - -Presently, the lights sank on the lower floor and reappeared above. The -blinding whiteness of the thought of Eliza sleeping seared his brain -like a flare of powder. When the house retreated unrelieved into the -gloom he rose and slowly retraced his steps. He lit a cigarette; the -match burned with a steady flame in the stillness; but, in an unnamed -impulse, he flung both aside, and filled his lungs with the elysian June -air. - - - - -XII - -THE next afternoon, returning from the unloading of a grain car at his -father's warehouse, he discovered a smartly saddled horse fast to the -marble hitchingpost before his door. It hardly required the glance at -the silver “D” on the headstall to inform him who was within. He found -Ellie and Eliza Dreen in the corner by the Canton tea service, consuming -Pekoe and gingerbread dicky birds. Eliza nodded and smiled over her -shoulder, and resumed an animated projection of an excursion in canoes -on the Wingohocking. She wore a severe coat over white breeches and -immaculate boots with diminutive gold spurs. Beneath a flat straw hat -her hair was confined by a broad ribband low upon her neck, while a pink -stock was held in position by a gaily-checked waistcoat. - -Anthony dropped with affected ease on the sofa, and covertly studied the -delicate line of her cheek. He now recalled indignantly that Mrs. Dreen -had said Eliza was not good-looking; while her reference to Eliza's -veracity had been entirely superfluous. She turned toward him, finally, -with an engaging query. He saw across her nose a faint trail of the most -delightful freckles in the world; her eyes were blue, that amazing blue -of bachelor's buttons; while her mouth--he would have sworn this the -first time such simile had been applied to that feature--was like a -roseleaf. He made a totally inadequate reply, when Ellie rose, and, -plate in hand, vanished in quest of a fresh supply of gingerbread. A -sort of desperate, blundering courage took possession of him: - -“I have been thinking a lot about you,” he told her; “last night I sat -on your grass and wondered which was your window.” - -“What a silly I--we were on the porch all evening.” - -“It wasn't that I wanted to talk to you so much,” he tried to explain -his instinctive impulses, desires, “as just to be near you.” - -“I think,” she said slowly, “yes, I know--that is the prettiest thing -that has ever been said to me. I thought about you... a little; really -more about myself. I haven't recognized myself at all very lately; I -suppose it's being home again.” She gazed at him candidly, critically. -“You have very unusual eyes,” she remarked unexpectedly; “they are so -transparent. Haven't you _anything_ to hide?” - -“Some chicken feathers,” he affirmed. He grew serious immediately. “Your -eyes are like--like--” the name of the flower so lately suggested by -her lucid vision had flown his mind. Suspenders, bachelor's suspenders, -exclusively occurred to him. “An awfully blue flower,” he temporized. - -She crossed the room, and bent over the tea roses, freshly placed in the -jar by the door. “I must go,” she said, her back to him; “I have been -here a terrific length of time... I thought perhaps you'd come in.... -Wasn't it shocking of me?” - -The knowledge that she had considered the possibility of seeing him -filled Anthony with incredulous joy. Then, sitting silently, gazing -fixedly at the floor, he became acutely miserable at the sudden -conviction of his worthlessness; shame prevented him from looking -at her--surely she must see that he, Anthony Ball, the unsuccessful, -without prospect, the truant from life, was an improper object for her -interest. She was so absolutely desirable, so fine. - -He recalled what she had said on the night of the dance... about -constancy: if the single devotion of his life would mean anything to -her, he thought grandiloquently, it was hers. He was considering the -possibility of telling her this when Ellie unnecessarily returned with -a replenished plate. He was grateful when neither included him in the -remarks which followed. And he speedily left the room, proceeding to -the pavement, where he stood with his palm resting on the flank of her -horse. - -In the slanting rays of the sun the street was a way of gold; when Eliza -appeared she was ringed in the molten glory. She placed her heel in his -hand, and sprang lightly into the saddle; the horse shied, there was -a clatter of hoofs, and she cantered away. Ellie stood on the steps, -graceful, unconcerned; he watched until the upright, mounted figure was -out of sight, then silently passed his sister into the house. - - - - -XIII - -HE was in his room when the familiar formula of a whistled signal -sounded from the darkening street. It was Alfred Craik, he recognized -the halt ending of the bar; he whistled like an old hinge, Anthony -thought impatiently. He made his way to the lawn, and called shortly, -over the crumbling iron fence. Alfred Craik was agog with weighty -information. - -“The circus is coming in at three-thirty tomorrow morning,” he -announced. “The station agent told me... old Giller's lot on Newberry -Street. 'Member last year we had breakfast with the elephant trainer!” - -Circuses, Anthony told him in large unconcern, were for infantile minds; -they might put their circus on top the Courthouse without calling forth -the slightest notice from him; horses were no better than old cows; and -as for clowns, the ringmaster, they made him specifically ill. - -The greater part of this diatribe Alfred chose to ignore; he impatiently -besought Anthony to “come off”; and warned him strenuously against a -tardy waking. Once more in his room Anthony smiled at the other's pretty -enthusiasm. Yet at half past three he woke sharply, starting up on his -elbow as though he had been called. He heard in the distance the faint, -shrill whistle of the locomotive drawing the circus into Ellerton. -He sank back, but, with the face of Eliza radiant against the gloom, -slumber deserted him. It occurred to him that he might, after all, rise -and witness from his rarer elevation the preparations that had once -aroused in him such immature joy. - -The circus ground was an apparently inexplicable tangle of canvas and -lumber, threaded by men like unsubstantial, hurrying shadows. At the -fence corner loomed the vague bulks of elephants, heaving ceaselessly, -stamping with the dull clank of chains; a line of cages beyond was still -indistinguishable. The confusion seemed hopeless--the hasty, desperate -labor at the edges of the billowing, grey canvas, the virulent curses as -feet slipped in the torn sod, the shrill, passionate commands, resembled -an inferno of ineffectual toil for shades condemned to never-ending -labor. The tent rose slowly, hardly detached from the thin morning -gloom, and the hammering of stakes uprose with a sharp, furious energy. -A wagonload of hay creaked into the lot; a horse whinnied; and, from a -cage, sounded a longdrawn, despondent howl. The fusillade of hammering, -the ringing of boards, increased. A harried and indomitable voice -maintained an insistent grip upon the clamor. It grew lighter; pinched -features emerged, haggard individuals in haphazard garbs stood with the -sweat glistening on their blue brows. - -The elephants, tearing apart a bale of hay, appeared ancient beyond all -computation, infinitely patient, infinitely weary. Out of the sudden -crimson that stained the east a ray of sunlight flashed like a pointed, -accusing finger and rested on the garish, gilded bars and tarnished -fringe of the cages; it hit the worn and dingy fur of an aged, gaunt -lioness, the dim and bleared topaz of her eyes blinking against the -flood of day; it fell upon a pair of lean wolves trotting in a quick, -constricted circle; upon a ragged hyena with a dry and uplifted snout; -upon a lithe leopard with a glittering, green gaze of unquenchable hate. - -“Take a hold,” a husky voice had urged Anthony; “help the circus men put -up the big tent, and get a free pass.” In the contagion of work he had -pulled upon the hard canvas, the stiff ropes that cut like scored -iron, and held stakes to be driven into the slushy sod. Thin shoulders -strained against his own, gasping and maculate breaths assailed him. -The flesh was tom from a man's palm; another, hit a glancing blow on the -head with a mall, wandered about dazed, falling over ropes, blundering -in paths of hasty brutality. - -Anthony rested with aching muscles in the orient flood of the sun. -The tent was erected, flags fluttered gaily aloft, the posters of the -sideshow flung their startling colors abroad. A musical call floated -upward from an invisible bugle: an air of gala, of triumphant and -irresponsible pleasure, permeated the scene. “She's all right, isn't -she?” Alfred Craik demanded at his side. He nodded silently, and turned -toward home, his pulses leaping with joy at the dewy freshness of the -morning, the knowledge of Eliza--a sparkling, singing optimism drawn -from the unstained fountain of his youth. - - - - -XIV - -LATER, engaged in repairing a shelf--at a super-union scale--for his -mother, he heard the steam shriek of a calliope announcing the parade. -From a window he could see the thronged sidewalks, the crudely fantastic -figures of the clowns, enveloped in a dusty haze of light. His thoughts -withdrew from that vapid spectacle to the rapt contemplation of Eliza -Dreen. He pictured Eliza and himself in the dramatic situations which -diversified the moving pictures of his nightly attendance: he rescued -her from the wiles of Mexicans, counts, weirdly-wicked Hindoos; now -he dragged her from the chimney into which she had been bricked by -a Brotherhood of Blood; now, driving a monoplane above the hurtling -express that bore her toward a fiendish revenge, he descended to halt -the train at a river's brink while the bridge sank dynamited into the -swirling stream--“Mercy, Tony!” his mother's practical voice rent the -resplendent vision; “don't crush your greatuncle's epaulets.” - -After the midday meal a minute review of the places where Eliza might -be found discovered the Ellerton Country Club to hold the greatest -possibility. Anthony was a virtual stranger to that focus of the -newer Ellerton; except for the older enthusiasts who played golf every -afternoon that it was humanly possible to remain outside it was the -stronghold of the species Anthony had encountered in the dressing room -at the Dreens' dance. The space at the back of the drugstore where he -had lounged held unbroken the elder tradition of Ellerton. There he -had cultivated a mild contempt for the studied urbanity, the formally -organized converse and games, of the Club. But as a setting for Eliza it -gained a compelling attraction. And, in his freshly-ironed flannels, he -ordered his steps toward that goal. The Club House overhung the rolling -green of the golf links; from a place of vantage he saw that Eliza was -not on the veranda; at one end a group of young men were drinking--teal -Beyond his father and three companions, followed by caddies, rose above -a hill. His father grasped a club and bent over the turf; the club -described a short arc, the ball flashed whitely through the air, and -the group trotted eagerly forward, mingling explanation, chagrin and -prediction with heated and simple sums in arithmetic. - -Then he saw Eliza... she was on the tennis court, playing with a -vigorous girl with a bare and stalwart forearm. He divined that the -latter was winning, and conceived a sweeping distaste for her flushed, -perspiring countenance and thickset ankles. “How beautiful you look!” - Eliza called, as he propped himself against the wire netting that, -overrun with honeysuckle, enclosed the courts. He watched her fleeting -form, heard her breathless exclamations, with warm stirs of delight. -When her opponent played the ball beyond her reach his dislike for that -efficiency became an obsession. The flying shadows lengthened on the -rolled, yellow surface of the court; the group on the porch emptied -their teacups and moved away; and the final set of games won by the -“beefsteak.” - -Eliza slipped into a formless chocolate-colored coat: racket in hand she -smiled at him. “I'm rather done,” she admitted. She hesitated, then: “I -wonder--are you doing anything?--if you would drive me home?” He assured -her upon that point with a celerity that wrought a momentary confusion -upon them. “The Meadowbrook and roan at the sheds,” she directed. In the -basketlike cart they swung easily over the road toward Hydrangea House. -Checked relentlessly into a walk the roan stepped in a dainty fume. - -Eliza's countenance was as tenderly hued as the pearly haze that overlay -the far hills; faint, mauve shadows deepened the blueness of her eyes; -her mouth, slightly parted, held the fragile pink of coral; a tinge of -weariness upon her bore an infinite appeal--her relaxed, drooping body -filled him with a gusty longing to put his arms about her shoulders -and hold her secure against all fatigue, against the assaults of time -itself. - -He had never before driven such an impatient and hasty animal; at the -slightest slackening of the reins the horse broke into a sharp trot; -and, beyond doubt, he could walk faster than any other brute alive. -Already they were at the entrance to the driveway; the house appeared -to hurry forward to intercept them. Eliza pressed a button, and a man -crossed the grass to the roan's head. They descended, and she lingered -on the steps with a murmur of gratitude. “Mrs. Dreen telephoned Ranke -to meet the eight-forty,” a servant in the doorway replied to Eliza's -query; “she's having dinner in town with Mr. Dreen.” - -Eliza turned with a gesture of appeal. “Save me from a solitary -pudding,” she petitioned Anthony; “you can go back with Ranke.... On the -porch, such fun--father detests candles.” The voicing of his acceptance -he felt to be an absurd formality. “Then if you can amuse yourself,” - she announced, “I'll vanish for a little... cigars in the library and -victrola in the hall.” - -He crossed the sod to the porch on the other face of the house, and -sat watching the day fade from the valley below. A violet blur of smoke -overhung the chimney of the Ellerton Waterworks, printed thinly on the -sky. A sense of detachment from that familiar scene enveloped him--the -base ball field, the defunct garage, places and details, customary, -normal, retreated into the distance, it seemed into the past, gathering -upon the horizon of his thoughts as the roofs of Ellerton huddled beyond -the hills, vanishing into shadows that inexorably deepened, blotted out -the old aspects, stilled the accustomed voices, sounds. - -A servant appeared, and placed a table upon the tiles, spreading a -blanched cloth, gleaming crystal and silver. A low bowl of shadowy wood -violets was ranged in the centre, and hooded candles lighted, spilling -over the table, the flowers, a pale, auriferous pool of light in the -purpling dusk. When Eliza followed, in filmy white, she seemed half -materialized from the haunting vision of poignant beauty at the back of -his brain. She was like moonlight, still and yet disturbing, veiled in -illusion, in strange, ethereal influences that set athrill within him -emotions immaterial, potent, snowy longing, for which he had no name. - -The last plate removed, Anthony stirred his coffee in a state of dreamy -happiness. The candlelight spread a wan gold veil over Eliza's delicate -countenance, it slid over the pearls about her slim throat, and fell -upon her fragile wrists. “It's been wonderful,” he pronounced solemnly. - -“I've been terribly rude,” she told him, “I have hardly spoken. I have -been busy studying you.” - -“There's not much to study,” he disclaimed; “Mrs. Bosbyshell thinks -I'm marked for failure.” In reply to her demand he gave a brief and -diffident account of that eccentric old woman. “But,” Eliza discerned -among the meagre details, “she trusts you, she lets you into her house. -And you are perfect to her, of course. - -“Any one could trust you, I think. Yet you are not a particle tiresome; -most trustworthy people are so--so unexciting. But monotony is far -as possible from your vicinity. What did you do, for instance, this -morning?” He described to her the advent of the circus, the labor in -the obscurity. “I was surprised to see the old thing up,” he ended: “it -seemed so hopeless at first.” - -“How wonderfully poetic!” she cried. - -Until that moment poetry had occupied in his thoughts a place analogous -to tea.--In his brief passage through the last school he had been -forcibly fed with Gray's Elegy, discovering it unmitigated and sickening -rot. When now, in view of her obvious pleasure, he would have to -reconsider his judgment. - -“That blind effort,” she continued, leaning forward, flushed with the -warmth of her image, “all those men struggling, building in the dark, -unable to see what they were accomplishing, or what part the others -had. And then--oh! don't you see!--the great, snowy tent in the morning -sun--a figure of the success, the reward, of all labor, all living.” - -“How about the ones that loafed--didn't pull, or were drunk?” - -“For all,” she insisted, “sober and drunk and shrinking. Can you think -that any supreme judgment would be cheaply material, or in need of -any of our penny abilities? do you suppose the supreme beauty has no -standard higher than those practical minds that hold out heaven as a -sort of reward for washed faces? Anthony,” it was the first time she had -called him that, and it rang in his brain in a long peal of rapture, “if -there isn't a heaven for every one, there isn't any at all. You, singing -an idle song, must be as valuable as the greatest apostle to any supreme -love, or else it isn't supreme, it isn't love.” - -“You are so wonderfully good,” he muttered, “that you think every one -else is good too.” - -“But I'm hardly a bit good,” she assured him, “and I wouldn't be good -if I could--in the Christian kind of way.” She gazed about with an -affectation of secretiveness, then leaned across her coffee cup. “It -would bore me horribly,” she confided, “that 'other cheek' thing; -I'm not a grain humble; and I spend a criminal amount of money on -my clothes. I have even put a patch upon my cheek to be a gin and -stumbling-block to a young man.” - -She had! - -He surveyed with absurd pleasure that minute black crescent on the pale -rose of her countenance. If she had been good before she was adorable -now: her confession had drawn her out of the transplendid cloud where -he had elevated her down to his side; she was infinitely more desirable, -more warmly and delightfully human. - -“I have been asking about you,” she told him later, with a slight frown; -“the accounts are, well--various. I don't mind your--your friends of the -stables, Anthony; they are, what Ellerton will never learn, the careless -choice of a born aristocrat; I don't care a Tecla pearl whether you are -'a steady young man' or not. And one doesn't hear a whisper of meanness -about you anywhere. But I have an exaggerated affection for things that -are beautiful, I suppose it's a weakness, really, and ugly people or -surroundings, harsh voices even, terrify me. The thought of cruelty -makes me cold. And, since you will come into my thoughts, and smile your -funny little smile at me out of walls and other impossible places, I -should like to picture you, not in pool rooms, but on the hills that you -know so well. I should like to think of your mind echoing with the rush -of those streams, the hunting of those owls, you told me about, and not -sounding with coarse and silly and brutal words and ideas.” - -“It echoes with you,” he replied, “and you are more beautiful than hills -and streams.” - -For a moment she held his gaze full in the blue depths of her vision; -then, with a troubled smile, evaded it. “I'm a patched jade,” she -announced. - -Ranke, the servant informed them, was ready to meet the train. - -“You're going... Elbe's affair on the Wingohocking?” - -“Absolutely.” She stood illusive against the saffron blur of the -candles, the sweeping hem of night. - -“I'll remember,” he blundered; “whatever you would wish... you have -changed everything. The dinner was--I don't remember what it was,” he -confessed; “but I remember an olive.” - -He left the automobile at the edge of Ellerton, and proceeded on foot, -passing the dully-shinning bulk of the circus tent. He heard the brassy -dissonance of the band within, the monotonous thud of horses' hoofs -on the tanbark; a raucous voice rose at the entrance to the side-show -dwelling unctuously on the monstrosities to be viewed within for the -price of a dime, of a dime, a dime. He recalled the spent lioness in her -painted cage, the haggard and sick hyena, the abject trot of the wolves -to nowhere.--A sudden exhalation of hatred swept over him for the -hideous inhumanity of circuses and men. Eliza had lifted him from the -meaningless babble of trivial and hard voices into a high and immaculate -region of shining space and quietude. He didn't want to come down again, -he protested, to _this_. - - - - -XV - -ANTHONY passed the few, intervening days to the excursion on the -Wingohocking in a state of rapt absorption: his brain sounded with -every tone of Eliza's voice; she smiled at him, in riding garb, over -that delicate trail of freckles; he saw her in the misty, amber dress of -the dance; in white, illusively lit by the candles against the shadowy -veranda. Now, for the first time, day that had succeeded haphazard -to day, without relation or plan, were strung together, bound into an -intelligible whole, by the thread of romance. He must get a firm grip -upon reality, construct a solid existence out of the unsubstantial -elements of his living; but, in his new felicity, he was unable to -direct his thoughts to details inevitably sordid; he was lost in the -miracle of Eliza Dreen's mere presence; material considerations might, -must, be deferred a short while longer. - -A stainless afternoon sky overspread finally the group gathered about -covered willow baskets on the green bank of the stream. Behind them the -meadow swept level, turning back the flood of the sun with a blaze of -aureate flowers, to a silver band of birch; the upstream reach, wrinkled -and dark, was lost between tangles of wild grapes; below, with a smooth, -virid rush, the water poured and broke over rocky shallows. - -Anthony launched his canoe from a point of crystalline sand, and, -holding it against the hank, gazed covertly at Eliza. She was once more -in white, with a broad apple-green ribband about her waist: she stood -above him, slenderly poised against the sky; and she was so rare, he -thought, so ethereal, that she seemed capable of floating off into -the blue. Then he bent, hastily rearranging a cushion, for she was -descending toward him. He stepped skilfully after her into the craft, -and they drifted silently over the surface of the stream. A thrust of -the paddle, in a swirl of white bubbles, turned them about, and they -advanced steadily against the sliding current. - -The still, watery facsimile of the banks were broken into liquid blots -of emerald and bronze by the bow of the canoe. The air rose coldly from -the surface to Anthony's face; from the meadows on either hand came the -light, dry fragrance of newly cut hay; before them trees, meeting above, -formed a sombrous reach, barred with dusty gold shafts of sunlight that -sank into the clear depths. He heard behind the distant dip of paddles, -and floating voices, worlds removed. - -Eliza trailed her hand in the water. An idyllic silence folded them -which he was loath to break.... He had rolled up his sleeves, and the -muscles of his forearms swelled rhythmically under the clear, brown -skin. - -“You are preposterously strong,” she approved. His elation, however, -collapsed at the condition following. “But strength is simply brutality -until it's wisely directed. Mazzini and not Napoleon was my ideal in -history.” Who, he wondered unhappily, was Mazzini? “I hated school,” he -told her briefly; “I don't believe I have ever read a book through; I'd -rather paddle about--with _you_.” - -“But you have read deep in the book of nature,” she reassured him; “only -a very favorite few open those pages. You are such a child,” she added -obliquely, “appallingly unsophisticated: that's what's nicest about you, -really.” That form of laudation left him cold, and he drove the canoe -with a vicious rush against the reflections. “A dear child,” she added, -without materially increasing his pleasure. - -“Words are rot!” he exploded suddenly; “they can't say any of the -important things. I could talk a year to you without telling you what -I feel--here,” he laid a hand momentarily on his spare, powerful chest; -“it's all mixed up, like lead and fire; or that feeling when ice cream -goes to your head. You see,” he ended moodily, “all rot.” - -“It's very picturesque... and apparently painful. Words aren't necessary -for the truly important things, Anthony.” - -“Then you know--what I think of you; you know... how everything else has -moved away and left only you; you know a hundred things, all important, -all about yourself.” - -She set an uncertain smile against the rush of his words. The stream -narrowed between high banks drawn against the sheer deeps of sky; the -water flowed swiftly, with a sustained whisper at the edges, and, for -a silent space, he paddled vigorously. Then a profound, glassy pool -opened, sodded bluely to the shores, with low, silvery clumps of willows -casting sooty shadows across the verd water; and, with a sharp twist, -he beached the canoe with a soft shock upon the shelving pebbles. As -he held the craft steady he felt the light, thrilling impact of Eliza's -palm as she sprang ashore. - -The others followed rapidly. The canoes were drawn out of the water, and -preparations for supper commenced. Eliza and Ellie Ball, accompanied by -a youth with a pail, proceeded to a nearby farmhouse in quest of milk. -Anthony lingered at the water's edge, ignoring the appeal for firewood. -The glow of the westering sun faded from the air, and the reflection -of the fire lighted behind him danced ruddy op the grass. At intervals -small fish splashed invisibly, and a kingfisher cried downstream. Then -he heard his sister's voice, and a familiar and moving perfume hovered -in his nostrils. He turned and saw Eliza with her arms full of white -lilacs. Her loveliness left him breathless, mingled with the low sun it -blinded him. She seemed all made of misty bloom--a fragrant spirit -of ineffable flowers. The scent of the lilacs stirred profound, -inarticulate emotions within him, like the poignant impression left by a -forgotten dream of shivering delight. - -He scorned the fare soon spread on the clothed sod, burning his throat -stoically with a cup of unsweetened coffee. Eliza sat beyond the -charring remains of the fire sinking from cherry-red embers to -impalpable white ash. He observed with secret satisfaction that she -too ate little: an appetite on her part, he felt, would have been a -calamity. - -'The meadows and distant woods were vague against the primrose west, -the cyanite curtain of the east, when the baskets were assembled for the -return. Anthony delayed over the arrangement of his craft until Eliza -and himself were last in the floating procession. Dense shadows, -drooping from the trees, filled the banks; overhead the sky was clear -green. They swept silently forward with the current, a rare dip of the -paddle. Eliza's countenance was just palely visible. The lilacs lay in a -pallid heap at their feet. On either hand the world floated back darkly -like an immaterial void through which an ebon stream bore them beyond -the stars. - -At a bend he reached up and caught hold of an overhanging branch, and -they swung into a shallow backwater. A deep shelf of stone lay under the -face of the bank, closed in by a network of wildgrape stems. “This is -where I sometimes stay at night,” he told her; “no one knows but you.” - - - - -XVI - -SHE rose, and, without warning, stepped out upon the rock. “Here's -where you build your fire,” she cried at the discovery of a blackened -heap of ashes. He secured the canoe and followed her. “Ideal,” she -breathed. The sound of the fall below was faintly audible; the quavering -cry of an owl, the beating of heavy wings, rose above the bank. “Don't -you envy the old pastoral people following their flocks from land to -land, setting up their tents by streams like this, waking with the dawn -on the world? or gipsies... you must read 'Lavengro.'” - -“I don't envy any one on God's little globe,” he asserted; “to be here -with you is the best thing possible.” - -“Something more desirable would soon occur to you.” - -“Than you!” he protested; “than you!” - -“But people get tired of what they have.” - -“It's what they don't have that makes them old and tired,” he told her -with sudden prescience; “when I think of what I am going to lose, of -what I can never have, it makes me crazy.” - -“Why do you say that?... How can you know?” - -She was standing close to him in the constricted space, the tangible -shock of her nearness sweeping over him in waves of heady emotion. The -water gurgling by the rock was the only sound in a world-stillness. - -“I mean you.” - -“Well, I'm not fairy gold; I'm not the end of the rainbow. I am just -Eliza.” - -“Just Eliza!” he scoffed. Then the possibility contained in her words -struck him dumb. The feeling irresistibly returned that because of -her heavenly ignorance, her charity, she mistook him to be worthy. The -necessity to guard her from her own divinity impelled him to repeat, -miserably, all that she had ignored. - -“I'm not much account,” he said laboriously; “you see, I never stuck at -anything, and, somehow, things have never stuck to me. It was that way -at school--I was expelled from four. I'm supposed to be shiftless.” - -“I don't care in the least for that!” she declared; “only one thing is -really important to me... something, oh, so different.” Suddenly she -laid her hand upon his sleeve, and, pitifully white, faced him. “I've -had the beautifullest feeling about you,” she whispered; “Anthony, tell -me truly, are you... good?” A sob rose uncontrollably in his throat, and -his eyes filled with tears that spilled over his cheeks. For a moment he -struggled to check them, then, unashamed, slipped onto his knees before -her and held her tightly in his arms. “No one in the world can say that -I am not--what you mean.” - -She stooped, and sat beside him on the stone, holding his hand close to -her slight body. “My dream,” she said simply. “I didn't understand it at -first; you see, I was only a child. And then when I grew older, and--and -heard things, it seemed impossible. That sort of goodness only bored -other girls... they liked men of the world, men with a past. I thought -perhaps I was only morbid, and lost trust in--in you.” - -“It was a kind of accident,” he admitted; “I never thought about it the -way you did. It seemed young to me.” - -“I don't believe it was an accident in the least,” she insisted. A mist -rose greyly from the darker surface of the stream, and settled cold and -clammy about Anthony's face. It drew about them in wavering garlands, -growing steadily denser. Eliza was sitting now pressed against him, and -he felt a shiver run through her. “You are cold!” he cried instantly, -and rose, lifting her to her feet. She smiled, in his arms, and he bent -down and kissed her. She clung to him with a deep sigh, and met his lips -steadily with her own. The mist slipped like a veil over Eliza's head -and drops of moisture shone in her hair. Anthony turned and unfastened -the canoe; and, suddenly conscious of the length of their delay, he -urged it with long sweeps over the stream. Beyond the lilacs, distilling -their potent sweetness in the dark, Eliza was motionless, silent, a -flicker of white in the gloom. - -They swept almost immediately into the broad reach where they had -started. The lights from the windows of a boat house, the voices of -the others, streamed gaily over the water. He felt Eliza tremble as he -lifted her ashore. - -“It's happiness,” she told him; “I am ever so warm inside.” - - - - -XVII - -BY his plate at the lunch table he discovered, the following day, a -small, lavender envelope stamped and addressed to Anthony Ball, Esq. -He slipped it hastily into his pocket, and managed but a short-lived -pretext of eating. Then, with the letter yet unopened, he left Ellerton, -and penetrated into the heart of the countryside. - -He stopped, finally, under a fence that crossed a hill, on a slope -of wild strawberries. The hill fell away in an unbroken sweep of -undulating, blue-green wheat; trees filled the hollow, with a roof and -thread of silver water drawn through the lush leaves; on either hand -chocolate loam bore the tender ripple of young com; and beyond, crossed -by the shifting shadows of slow-drifting clouds, hill and wood and -pasture spread a mellow mosaic of summer. - -He tore open the envelope with a reluctant delight. At the top of the -sheet E D was stamped severely in mauve. “My very dear,” he read. He -stopped, suddenly unable to proceed; the countryside swam in his vision; -he gulped an ecstatic, convulsive breath, and proceeded: - -“It's too wonderful--I can't realize that you exist, and that I have -found you in such a great world. Isn't it strange how real dreams are; -just now the real world seems the dream, and my dear home, my mother, -shadows compared to the thoughts that fill my brain of you, you, you. - -“But I am writing mostly to tell you something that, perhaps, you didn't -fully understand yesterday--and yet I think you must have--that, if you -really want me, I am absolutely your own. I couldn't help it if I wanted -to, and, oh, I don't want to! I let a man at Etretat kiss me, and I am -glad I did, for it made me understand that I must wait for you. - -“I won't write any more now because my head aches. From Eliza who loves -you utterly.” Then he saw that she had written on the following page: -“Don't worry about money and the future; I have my own, all we shall -need for years, and we can do something together.” - -He laid the letter beside him on the grass. The welling song of a -catbird sounded unsupportably sweet, and a peaceful column of smoke -rose bluely from the chimney below: it carried him in imagination to a -dwelling set in a still, green garden, where birds filled the branches -with melody, and Eliza and himself walked hand in hand and kissed. Night -would gather in about their joy, their windows would shine with the -golden lamp of their seclusion, their voices mingle... sink... sacred. - -He dreamed for a long while; the sunlight vanished from the slope below -him, from the darkling trees, touched only the farthest hills with a -rosy glow. As the sun sank an errant air whispered in the wheat, and -scattered the pungent aroma of the wild strawberries. A voice called -thinly from the swales, and cows gathered indistinctly about a gate. -Anthony rose. The world was one vast harmony in which he struck the -highest, happiest note. Beyond the near hills the lilac glitter of the -Ellerton lights sprang palely up on the blue dusk. As he made his way -home, Anthony's brain teemed with delightful projects, with -anticipation, the thought of the house in the hollow--abode of love, -steeped in night. - - - - -XVIII - -ELLIE was in the garden, and interrupted his progress toward a belated -dinner. “Father wants to see you,” she called; “at the Club, of course.” - He wondered absently, approaching the Club, what his father wanted. -The rooms occupied the second story of the edifice that housed the -administration of the county; the main corridor was choked by a crowd -that moved noisily toward an auditorium in the rear, but the Club was -silent, save for the click of invisible billiard balls. - -His father was asleep in the reading room, a newspaper spread upon his -knees, and one thin hand twisted in his beard. Through an open window -drifted the strains of a band on the Courthouse lawn. The older man -woke, clearing his throat sharply. “Well, Anthony,” he nodded. Anthony -found a chair. - -His father leaned forward, regarding him with a keen, kindly gaze. “I'm -told the garage has gone up,” he commenced. - -“Sam took his car away; it was Alfred's infernal tinkering; he can't -leave a machine alone.” - -“Did you close affairs satisfactorily, stop solvent?” - -“There's a little debt of about six dollars.” - -The other sought his wallet, and, removing a rubber band, counted six -dollars into Anthony's hand. “Meet that in the morning.” He leaned hack, -tapping the wallet with deliberate fingers. “I suppose you have no plan -for the immediate future,” he observed. - -“Nothing right now.” - -“I have one for you, though, as 'right now' as this week.” - -Anthony listened respectfully, his thoughts still dwelling upon the -beauty of the dusk without, of life. “You have tried a number of things -in the past few years without success. I have started you in a small -way again and again, only to observe the familiar course of a failure -inevitable from your shiftless habits. You are not a bad boy, but -you have no ability to concentrate, like a stream spread all over the -meadow--you have no course. You're a loiterer.” - -“Yes, sir,” said Anthony, from the midst of his abstraction. - -“You are too old for that now, either it must stop at once, or you will -become definitely worthless. I am going to make a determined effort--I -am going to send you to California, your brother-in-law writes that he -can give you something.” - -The term California sounded in Anthony's brain like the unexpected -clash of an immense hell. It banished his pleasant revery in disordered -shreds, filling him with sudden dismay. - -“I telegraphed Albert yesterday,” the even tones continued, “and have -his answer in my pocket. You are to go out to him immediately.” - -“But that's impossible,” Anthony interrupted; “it just can't be done.” - -“Why not?” - -He found himself completely at a loss to give adequate expression to -his reason for remaining in Ellerton. His joy was so new that he -had scarcely formulated it to himself, it evaded words, defied -definition--it was a thing of dreams, a vision in a shining garment, a -fountain of life at the bottom of his heart. - -“Come; why not?” - -“I don't want to go away from Ellerton... just now.” - -“That is precisely what you must do. I can understand your desire to -remain close by your mother--she has an excuse for you, assistance, at -every turn.” - -“That isn't the reason; it's... it's,” he boggled horribly, “a girl.” - -“Indeed,” his father remarked dryly. - -Anthony shrunk painfully from the unsympathetic voice of the elder. A -new defiance of his father welled hotly within him, corrupting the bonds -of discipline that had held him lovingly to his parent throughout the -past. A chasm opened between them; and, when Anthony spoke again, it was -with a voice of insipient insubordination. - -“It isn't the silly stuff you think,” he told the other; “I'm engaged!” - -“What on?” pithily came the inquiry. “Unfortunately I can't afford the -luxury of a daughter-in-law. I thought you were something more of a man -than to bring your wife into your mother's house.” - -“I sha'n't; we can get along until I... find work.” - -“Do you mean that your wife will support you?” - -“Not altogether; she will help until--until--” he stopped miserably -before the anger confronting him in the other's gaze: it was useless to -explain, he thought; But if his father laughed at him, at his love, he -would leave the room and never see him again. “I can't see why money is -so damned holy!” he broke out; “why it matters so infernally where it -comes from; it seems to me only a dirty detail.” - -“It is the measure of a man's honor,” the elder Ball told him -inexorably; “how it is made or got stamps you in the world. I am -surprised to hear that you would even consider taking it from a woman, -surprised and hurt. It shows all the more clearly the necessity for your -going at once into a hard, healthy existence. Your mother will get you -ready; a couple of days should do it.” - -“... all unexpected,” Anthony muttered; “I must think about it, see some -one. I'll--I'll talk to you to-morrow. That's it,” he enunciated more -hopefully, “to-morrow--” - -“Entirely unnecessary,” his father interrupted, “nothing to be gained by -delay or further talk. The thing's arranged.” - -“I think I won't go,” Anthony told him slowly. The other picked up the -paper, smoothing out the creases. “Very well,” he replied; “I dare say -your mother will do something for you.--Women are the natural source of -supplies for the sort of person you seem at the point of becoming.” A -barrier of paper, covered with print in regular columns, shut one from -the other. - -Anthony burned under a whelming sense of injustice. He decided that he -would leave the room, his father, forever; but, somehow, he remained -motionless in his chair, casting about in his thoughts for words with -which to combat the elder's scorn. He thought of Eliza; she smiled -at him with appealing loveliness; he felt her letter in his pocket, -remembered her boundless generosity. He couldn't leave her! The band in -the square below was playing a familiar operatic lament, and the refrain -beat on his consciousness in waves of despairing and poignant longing. -A sea of misery swept over him in which he struggled like a spent -swimmer--Eliza was the far, silver shore toward which he fought. It -wasn't fair--a sob almost mastered him--to ask him to go away now, when -he had but found her. - -“It's not Siberia,” he heard his father say, “nor a life sentence; if -this--this 'girl' is serious, you will be closer working for her in -California than idle in Ellerton.” - -“I don't want to go away from her,” he whispered; “the world's such -a hell of a big, empty place... things happen.” He dashed some bright -tears from his eyes, and, turning his back on the other, gazed through -the window at the tops of the maple trees--a black tracery of foliage -against the lights below. - -“Two or three years should set you on your feet, give you an opportunity -to return.” Eternity could scarcely have seemed more appalling than the -term casually indicated by his father, it was unthinkable! A club member -entered, fingering the racked journals on the long table, exchanging -trivial comments with the older Ball. It seemed incredible to Anthony, -in the face of the cataclysm which threatened him, that the world should -continue to revolve callously about such topics. It was an affront to -the gravity, the dignity, of his suffering. He swiftly left the room. - - - - -XIX - -IT was Saturday night, Bay Street was thronged, the stores brilliantly -lit. He saw in the distance the red and blue jars of illuminated water -that advertised Doctor Allhop's drugstore, and turned abruptly on his -heel. In the seclusion of his room he once more read Eliza's letter: it -was a superlative document of sweet commonsense, the soul of nobility, -of wisdom, of tenderness, of divine generosity. In its light all other -suggestions, considerations, courses, seemed tawdry and ignoble. The -boasted wisdom of a world of old men, of material experience, seemed -only the mean makeshifts for base and unworthy ends. The ecstasy -sweeping from his heart to his brain, the delicious fancies, the -rare harmonies, that haunted him, the ineffable perfume of invisible -lilacs--these were the true material from which to fashion life, these -were the high things, the important. And youth was the time to grasp -them: a swift premonition seized him of the coldness, the ineptitude, -the disease, of old age. - -For the first time in his life he thought of death in definite -connection with himself: he was turning out the gas, preparatory for -sleep; and, at the instantaneous darkness, he thought, with a gasp of -fear, it would be like that. He stood trembling as a full realization of -disillusion mastered him; all his hot, swinging blood, the instinctive -longing for perpetuation aroused in him by Eliza, in sick revolt. -Fearsome images filled his mind... the hole in the clay--closed; -putrefaction; the linked mass of worms. In feverish haste he lit the -gas; his body was wet with sweat; his heart pounding unsteadily. - -The familiar aspect of his room somewhat reassured him; the thought -dimmed, slowly conquered by the flooding tide of his living. Then he -realized that Eliza too must die, and his terrors vanished before a -loving pity for her earthly fragility. Finally, death itself assumed -a less threatening guise; peace stole imperceptibly into his heart. A -vague belief, new born of his passion, that dying was not the end of -all, rose within him--there must be a struggle, heights to win, gulfs -to cross, a faith to keep. With steady fingers he turned out the -gas.--Eliza was his faith: he fell into a sound slumber. - - - - -XX - -HE made no comment when, in the morning, his mother made tentative -piles of his clothing. He would see Eliza that afternoon, and then -announce their decision. His mother attempted to fathom his feeling -at the prospect of the journey, the separation from Ellerton; but, the -memory of his father's cutting words still rankling in his mind, he -evaded her questioning. - -“If you are going to be miserable out there,” she told him, enveloping -him in the affection of her steady, grey gaze, “something else might be -found. I can always help--” - -“You don't understand these things,” he interrupted her brusquely, -annoyed by his father's prescience. They were sitting in her sewing -room, a pile of his socks at her side. She wore her familiar, severe -garb, the steelbowed spectacles directed upon the needle flashing -steadily in her assured fingers. She was eternally laboring for her -children, Anthony realized with a pang of affection. His earliest -memories were charged with her unflagging care, the touch of her smooth -and tireless hands, the defense of her energetic voice. - -He must tell her about his engagement, but not until he had seen Eliza -again, when something definite would be agreed upon. It was immensely -difficult for him to talk about the subject nearest his heart-words -diminished and misrepresented it: he wanted to brood over it, secretly, -for days. - - - - -XXI - -LATER he dressed with scrupulous exactitude, and proceeded directly to -Hydrangea House. The afternoon was sultry, the air full of the soothing -drone of summer insects, the dust of the road rose in heavy puffs about -his feet. He crossed the stream and fields, saturated with sunlight, and -came to the pillared portico of his destination. - -“Miss Dreen,” Anthony said, stepping forward into the opening door. - -“Miss Dreen cannot see you,” the servant returned without hesitation. -Anthony drew back, momentarily repelled; but, before he could question -this announcement, he heard grinding wheels on the gravel drive. -Turning, he saw a motor stop, and Mrs. Dreen descend, followed by a man -with a somber, deeply-scored countenance. Anthony moved forward eagerly -as she mounted the steps. “Mrs. Dreen,” he asked; “can you tell me-” She -passed with a confused, blank face, without stopping or acknowledging -his salutation, and the door closed softly upon her and her companion. - -A momentary flame of anger within Anthony quickly sank to cold -consternation. Eliza had told her parents and they had dismissed the -idea and him. It was evident they had forbidden her to see him. He -walked indecisively down the steps, still carrying his hat, and stopped -mechanically on the driveway. He gazed blindly over a brilliant, scarlet -bed of geraniums, over the extended lawn, the rolling hills of Ellerton. -Then his courage returned, stiffened by the obstacles which apparently -confronted him: he would show them that he was not to be lightly -dismissed; no power on earth should separate him from Eliza. - -The servant had only obeyed Mrs. Dreen's direction; Eliza, he -was certain, had no choice in the matter of his reception. Then, -unexpectedly, he remembered his father's words, the latter's -contemptuous reference to all appeals to women. He must go to Mr. Dreen, -and straightforwardly state his position, tell him... _what?_ Why, that -he, Anthony Ball, loved Eliza, desired her, had come to take her away... -_where?_ In all the world he had no place prepared for her. He drove his -hand into his pocket, and discovered a quarter of a dollar and some -odd pennies--all that he possessed. Suddenly he laughed, a short, sorry -merriment that stopped in a dry gasp. He turned and ran, stumbling over -the grass, through the hot dust, toward Ellerton. Two years, he thought, -California; California and two years. - - - - -XXII - -ANTHONY sat late into the night composing an explanatory and farewell -letter to Eliza: - -“Your family would laugh at me,” he wrote; “I couldn't show them a -dollar. And although my father has done a great deal for me he wouldn't -do this. I couldn't expect him to. Mother might help, she is like you, -but I could not very well live between two women, could I? The only hope -is California for a couple of years. You know how much I want to stay -with you, how hard this is to write, when our engagement, everything, is -so new and wonderful. But it would only be harder later. If I had seen -you this afternoon I would never have left you. I am going to-morrow -night. This will come to you in the morning, and I will be home if you -send me a message. I would like to see you again before I go away in -order to come back to you forever. I would like to hear you say again -that you love me. Sometimes I think it never really happened. If I don't -see you again before I leave, remember I shall never change, I shall -love you always and not forget the least thing you said. I wish now I -had studied so that I could write better. Remember that I belong to you, -when you want me I will come to you if it's around the world, I would -come to you if I were dead I think. Good-bye, dear, dear Eliza, until -tomorrow anyhow, and that's a long while to be without seeing you or -hearing your voice.” - -At the announcement of his agreement to go West, the attitude of his -father had changed greatly; his hand continually sought Anthony's -shoulder; he consulted gravely, as it were with an equal, with regard -to trains, precautions, new climates. His mother busied herself over -his clothes, her rare speech brusque and hurried. To Anthony she seemed -suddenly old, _grey_; her hands trembled, and necessary stitches were -uneven. - -He was aware that the mail for Hydrangea House was collected before -noon, and he sat expectantly in the room overlooking the street. It was -dark and cool, there were creamy tea roses in the Canton jar now, -while in the street it was hot and bright. A sere engraving of Joseph -Bonaparte in regal robes gazed serenely from the wall. The hour for -lunch arrived without any message from Eliza. Throughout the afternoon -he dropped his pressing affairs find descended to the street... nothing. - -His heart grew heavy with doubts, with fears--his letter had been -intercepted; or, if Eliza had received it, her answer had been diverted. -Perhaps she had at last realized that he was unfit for her love. The -impulse almost mastered him to go once more to Hydrangea House, but -pride prevented; his unhappiness hardened, grew bitter, suspicious. Then -he again read her letter, and its patent sincerity swept away all doubt; -Eliza was unwavering; if not now he would find her at the end of two -years, unchanged, warm, beautiful. - -He was summoned to dinner, where he found the delicacies he especially -liked. The plates were liberally filled, all made a pretence at -eating, but, at the end, the food remained hardly touched. The forced -conversation fell into sudden, disturbing silences. His father sharpened -the carving knife twice, which, for shad roe, was scarcely necessary; -his mother scolded the servant without cause; even Ellie was affected, -and smiled at him with a bright tenderness. - -He was to leave Ellerton at midnight, when he would be enabled to -connect with a western express, and it was arranged for him to spend a -last hour at the Club with his father. Ellie and the servant stood upon -the pavement, his mother was upstairs in the sewing room... where he -entered softly. - -At the Club the billiard room was dark, the tables shrouded, but from -a room at the end of the hall came the murmur of the nightly coon-can -players. They seated themselves at a table, and his father ordered beer -and cigars. It was the first time that he had acknowledged Anthony to -possess the discretion of maturity, and he raised the stein to his lips -with the feeling that it was a sacrament of his manhood, an earnest and -pledge of his success. - -The midnight train emerged from the gloom of the station, passed through -the outskirts of Ellerton, detached rows of dark dwellings, by the -grounds of the Baseball Association, its fence still plastered with the -gaudy circus posters, into the dim fields and shining streams. Anthony -stood on the last, swinging platform, gazing back at the gloom that -enveloped Ellerton, at the place where Hydrangea House was hid by -the hills. An acute misery possessed him--the unsettled maimer of his -departure from Eliza, her silence, struggled in his thoughts with the -attempt to realize the necessity of the course he had adopted to bring -about a final and lasting joy. He wondered if Eliza would understand the -need for his going; but, assured of her wise sympathy, he felt that she -would; and a measure of content settled upon him. The engine swung about -a curve, disappearing into the obscurity of a wood. “Eliza,” he cried -aloud, “Eliza, be here when I come back to you!” - -He sat for the greater part of an hour on the deserted platform of the -junction, where signal lamps glistened on the steel rails that vanished -into the night, into the west, the inscrutable future. The headlight -of the massive locomotive flared unexpectedly, whitely upon him; the -engine, with a brief glimpse of a sanguinary heart of fire illuminating -a sooty human countenance, gleaming, liquid eyeballs, passed and -stopped; and Anthony hastily mounted the train. He made his way through -the narrow passage of buttoned, red curtains, and found his berth, when -he sank into a weary, dreamless sleep. - - - - -XXIII - -IN the morning his was the last berth made up for the day; the car, -shaded against the sun, was rolling slightly, and he braced himself as -he made his way toward breakfast. The tables were all occupied; but, at -a carelessly hospitable nod, he found a place with two men. They were, -he immediately saw, Jews. One was robustly middle aged, with a pinkly -smooth countenance, a slightly flattened nose, and eyes as colorless as -clear water in a goblet. He was carefully dressed in shepherd's plaid, -with a gay tie that held a noticeably fine pearl. His companion was -thin and dark, with a heavy nose irritated to rawness by the constant -application of a blue silk handkerchief. The latter, Anthony discovered -in the course of the commonplaces which followed, was sycophant and -henchman of the first--a never failing source of applause for the -former's witticisms. - -“How far out are you bound?” queried the owner of the pearl. Then, when -Anthony had told him his destination, “no business opportunities in -California for a young man without capital behind him; only hard work -and a day laborer's wages. Nothing West but fruit, land and politics on -a large scale. My chauffeur at a hundred a month does better than eighty -per cent, of the young ones in the West.” - -This information fell like a dark cloud over Anthony's sanguine hopes -for a speedy and opulent return. A sense of imminent misfortune pressed -upon him, a sudden, unreasoning dread of what might be in store for -Eliza and himself, of the countless perils of a protracted delay. At the -end of two years he might be no better off than he was at present. His -brother-in-law, he knew, would only pay him a nominal amount at first. -The two years stretched out interminably in his imagination. - -The more prosperous of his companions selected a cigar from a silk case, -and, cutting it with a gold penknife, they removed to the smoking car. -“I drove a car for a while,” Anthony informed them later, mingling the -acidulous smoke of a Dulcina with the more fragrant clouds of Habana; -“it was a Challenger six.” - -“Hartmann here is a director in the Challenger factory,” the sycophant -told him. “The factory's in our home city, where we are going. It's -a great car.” Hartmann examined Anthony with a new and more personal -interest. “Did you like it?” he demanded. - -“It's all right, for the price,” Anthony assured him; “it's the most -sporting looking car on the American market.” - -“That's the thing,” the other declared with satisfaction; “big sales and -a quick return on investment. A showy car is what the public want, the -engine's unimportant, it's paint that counts.” - -“Do you have any radiator trouble?” Anthony demanded. The other regarded -him shrewdly. “I run a Berliet,” he announced; “I was discussing a -popular article.” He arranged himself more comfortably in his leather -chair, and prepared for sleep. - -Anthony returned to his place in the coach, where he brooded dejectedly -upon what he had heard about California. He thought of the distance -widening at a dizzy rate between Eliza and himself, and plunged into a -vast pit of loneliness... he had made a terrible mistake in leaving her. -It seemed to him now that he had deserted her, perhaps she was suffering -on account of him--had expected him to free her from an intolerable -condition. Again he cursed in his heart the prudent counsel of old -men, the cold sapience of the world, that had betrayed him, that had -prevailed over him against his instinct, his longing. - - - - -XXIV - -AT lunch he was progressing toward an empty table when Hartmann waved -him imperiously to a place at his side. “Have a drink,” he advised -genially; “this is my affair.” Beer followed the initial cocktail, -and brandy wound the meal to a comfortable conclusion. A Habana in the -smoking car completed Anthony's bodily satisfaction. - -“California's no place for a young man without capital,” Hartmann -reiterated; “you work like a dog for two and a half a day; no future.” - He paused, allowing this to be digested, then: “I have a little plan to -propose, you can take it or not--or perhaps you are not competent.--My -chauffeur is laid up with a broken wrist, a matter of a month or more; -how would you like to run my car until he returns? Then, if you are -satisfactory, you can go into the Challenger factory, with something -ahead of you, a future. Or you can go on to California... say -seventy-five dollars richer.” Anthony shook his head regretfully. “Don't -answer now,” Hartmann advised; “Spring City is three hours off. Think it -over; seventy-five dollars; a chance, if you are handy, in the factory.” - -Anthony was suddenly obsessed by the thought that, at Spring City, he -would be only a day removed from Eliza. He wondered what his father -would say to this new possibility? At worst he would only be delayed in -his arrival in California, and with seventy-five dollars in consequence. -At best--the Challenger factory: he expanded optimistically the -opportunities offered by the latter. If he could show his father -immediate fruits from a change of plan, the elder, he was certain, -would add his approval. In a passing, sceptical mood he speculated upon -Hartmann's motive in this offer to an entire stranger; but his doubts -speedily vanished--any irregularity must be immediately visible. - -“You can make a stop over on your ticket for a couple of days and try -it,” the other interjected; “it will cost you nothing.” - -Only a day removed from Eliza! he would write to his father, his -brother-in-law, and explain! he had decided that it would do no harm to -try it. “Good!” the Jew exclaimed; “see the conductor about your ticket. -If you decide to remain you can send for your trunk.” He offered his -cigar case to his companion, but, now, neglected to include Anthony. -Imperceptibly their relations had changed; Hartmann's geniality -decreased; his colorless gaze wandered indifferently. Anthony found the -conductor, and arranged a stop-over at Spring City. He collected his -belongings; and, not long after, he stood on a station platform beside -his bag, watching with sudden misgivings the rear of the train he had -left disappearing behind a bulk of factories and clustered shanties. - -Hartmann handed him a card, with a written direction and address. “The -garage,” he explained; “have the car ready to-morrow at nine. I'll allow -you an expense of five dollars until a definite arrangement.” - -Anthony quickly found the garage--a structure of iron and glass, with -a concrete floor where cars were drawn up in glistening rows. A line -of chairs fronted upon the pavement, occupied by mechanics in greasy -overalls, smarter chauffeurs, and garrulous, nondescript hangerson. The -foreman was within, busy with the compression tanks. He was short in -stature, with a pale, concerned countenance. “Fourth on the right from -the front,” he directed, reading Hartmann's card; “there's a bad shoe -on the back.... So the old man's ready for another little trip,” he -commented. - -“His chauffeur has a broken wrist,” Anthony explained. “He's offered me -the job for a month.” - -“Wrist hell! Hartmann fired him, he knew too much--about sprees with -Kuhn. He's a sharp duck; I'll bet he picked you up outside Spring City.” - -“I met him on the Sunset Limited,” Anthony continued; “I understood he -was a director in the Challenger Motorcar Company--” - -“He's that, right enough; the rottenest car and shop in America; they're -so dam' mean they won't provide their men with drinking water; they have -to bring labor from the East, scabs and other truck.” The conviction -settled heavily upon Anthony that, after all, he had made a mistake in -listening to Hartmann, in falling in with his suggestion. If there had -been another train through Spring City that night for California he -would have taken it. But, as there was not, and he had committed himself -for the next twenty-four hours, he made his way to the Berliet car -indicated. There he took off his coat, and busied himself with replacing -the damaged shoe. When that was accomplished the dusk had thickened to -evening, the suspended gas globes in the garage had been lighted, -and shone like lemon-yellow moons multiplied in the lilac depths of a -mirrored twilight. - -He saw, across the street, a creamery, and, at a bare table, consumed a -quart of milk and a plate of sugared rusk. Then, on a chair in the line -before the garage, he sat half intent upon the conversation about him, -half considering the swift changes that had overtaken him in the past, -few days. His fingers closed upon Eliza's letter in his pocket, and -he gazed at the callous and ribald faces at his side, he heard the -truculent laughter, with wonderment that they existed in the same world -with her delicate beauty. She smiled at him, out of his memory, over -a mass of white bloom, and the present seemed like an ugly dream from -which he must awake in her presence. Or was the other a dream, a vision -of immaterial delight spread before his wondering mind, and this harsh -mirth, these mocking faces, Hartmann's smooth lies, the hateful reality? - -The night deepened, one by one the chairs before the garage were -deserted, the sharp pounding of a hammer on metal sounded from within, -the disjointed measures of a sentimental song. A sudden weariness swept -over Anthony, a distaste for the task of seeking a room through the -strange streets; and, arranging the cushions in Hartmann's car, he slept -there until morning. He awoke to the flooding of the concrete floor with -a sheet of water flashing in the crisp sunlight. It was eight o'clock, -and he made a hurried toilet at a convenient spigot, breakfasting at the -creamery. - -Hartmann appeared shortly after nine: his countenance glowed from a -scented massage, his yellow boots shone with restrained splendor, and -a sprig of geranium was drawn through an ironed buttonhole. He nodded -briefly to Anthony, and narrowly watched the latter manouvre the Berliet -from its place in the row onto the street. They sped smoothly across -town to what, evidently, was the principal shopping thoroughfare; and, -before a glittering plateglass window that bore the chaste design, -“Hartmann & Company” drew up, and Hartmann prepared to descend. - -“I think I'll go on West,” Anthony informed him; “this afternoon.” - -Annoyance was plainly visible upon the other's countenance. “I was just -congratulating myself on a find,” he declared; “you must at least stay -with me until I get some one else.” He paused; Anthony made no comment. -“Now, listen to what I will do,” he pronounced finally; “if you will -stay with me for a month I'll give you a hundred dollars and your -expenses--it will be clear money. I... I had thought of taking a little -trip in the car, I'm feeling the store a little, and I need a discreet -man. Think it over--a hundred in your pocket, and you may be able to -get off in three weeks.” He left hurriedly, without giving Anthony an -opportunity for further speech. It was an alluring offer, a hundred -dollars secured for the future, for Eliza. He speculated about the -prospective trip, Hartmann's wish to secure a “discreet” man, the -foreman's insinuations. However, the motive didn't concern him, the wage -was his sole consideration, and that, he decided, he could not afford -to lose. He whistled to a newsboy, and, studying the baseball scores, -waited comfortably for his employer. - -Later he drove Hartmann, now accompanied by Kuhn, out of town, through -a district of suburban villas, smooth, white roads and green lawns, into -the farmland and pasturage beyond. They finally stopped at an inn of -weathered grey stone set behind a row of ancient elms. A woman was -sitting on the portico, and she rose and came forward sinuously as -the men descended from the motor car. Anthony saw that she had a full, -voluptuous figure, lustreless, yellow hair, and sleepy eyes. Hartmann -patted her upon the shoulder, and the three moved to the portico, where -they sat conversing over a table of whiskies and soda. Occasional shrill -bursts of laughter, gross terms, reached Anthony. The woman lounged -nonchalantly in her chair; she wore a transparent white waist, through -winch was visible a confused tracery of purple ribband, frank rubicund -flesh. When the men rose, Hartmann kissed her. “Thursday,” he reminded -her; “shortly after three.” - -“And I'll depend on you,” Kuhn added,--“a good figger and a loving -disposition. We don't want any dead ones on this trip.” - -“Laura's all right,” she assured him; “she's just ready for something of -this sort; she goes off about twice a year.” - -When they had started, Hartmann leaned forward. “Going Thursday... that -little trip I spoke to you about.--No talking, understand. Look over the -tires, get what you think-necessary for five or six hundred miles.” He -tended Anthony a crisp, currency note. “Here's the five. Your salary -starts to-morrow.” - -That night Anthony wrote a letter of explanation to his father, a note -to California in reference to his trunk, and a short communication to -Eliza.--He was not certain that she would receive it. Her parents, -he was convinced, were opposed to him--they were ignorant of the -singleness, the depth, the determination, of his love. - - - - -XXV - -IT. was nearly four, when, on Thursday, Anthony stopped the car before -the inn by the elms. The woman with the yellow hair, accompanied by -a figure in a shapeless russet silk coat, were waiting for them. The -latter carried a small, patent-leather dressing case, and a large bag -reposed on the portico, which Anthony strapped to the luggage rack. -Kuhn, animated by a flow of superabundant animal spirits, bantered each -member of the party: he gave Anthony a cigar that had been slightly -broken, tipped off Hartmann's cap, and assisted the woman with profound -gallantry into the car. Hartmann discussed routes over an unfolded map -with Anthony; then, the course laid out, they moved forward. - -Their way led over an old postroad, now between walls, trees, dank and -grey with age and dust, now rising steadily into a region of bluish -hills. Scraps of conversation fell upon Anthony's hearing: the woman -in the russet coat, he learned, was named Laura Dallam. Kuhn talked -incessantly, and, occasionally, she replied to his sallies in a cool, -detached voice. She differed in manner from the others, she was a little -disdainful, Anthony discovered. Once she said sharply, “Do let me enjoy -the country.” - -They slipped smoothly through the afternoon to the end of day. The -sun had vanished beyond the hills when they stopped at an inn on the -outskirts of an undiscovered town. It was directly on the road, and, -built in a flimsy imitation of an Elizabethan hostelry, had benches at -either side of the entrance. - -There Anthony sat later, while, from a balcony above him, fell the -tones of his employer and his companions. He could hear them clearly, -distinguish Hartmann's heavy jocularity, the yellow-haired woman's -syrupy voice, Laura Dallam's crisp utterances. Kuhn's labored wit had -drooped with the afternoon, an accent of complaint had grown upon him. -Occasionally there was a thin, clear tinkle of glasses and ice. As -the night deepened, the conversation above grew blurred, peals of -inconsequential laughter more frequent; a glass fell on the balcony, and -broke with a small, sudden explosion. Some one--it was the Dallam woman, -exclaimed, “don't!” She leaned over the railing above Anthony's head, -and said despairingly, “I can't get drunk!” Kuhn pressed to her side, -and she moved away impatiently. He became enraged, and they commenced a -low, bitter wrangling. Finally Hartmann insinuated himself between them; -the two women disappeared; and Kuhn complained aloud of the manner in -which he had been treated. - -“She's all right,” Hartmann assured him; “you went at it too heavy; take -your time; she's not a flapper from the chorus.” They tramped heavily -across the balcony, whispering tensely, into the hotel. - -The morning following they failed to start until past eleven: Hartmann's -countenance was pasty from the night's debauch, greenish shadows -hung beneath his colorless eyes, his mouth was a leaden line; the -yellow-haired woman was haggard, she looked older by ten years since the -day previous. Kuhn was savagely, morosely, silent. But Mrs. Dallam was -as fresh, as sparkling, as the morning itself. She nodded brightly at -Anthony as she took a seat forward, by his side. A heavy veil was draped -back from her face, and he saw that it was finely-cut; an intensely -black bang fell squarely across her low, white forehead, beneath which -eyes of a sombre, velvety blue were oddly compelling; and against the -blanched oval of her face her mouth was like a print of blood. It was a -potent, vaguely disturbing countenance; and, beneath the voluminous -silk coat, he saw narrow black slippers with carelessly tied bows that, -stinging his imagination, reminded him of wasps. - -As he drove the car he was frequently aware of her exotic gaze resting -speculatively upon him. On a high, sunny reach of road there was a -shrill rush of escaping air, and he found a rear tire flat. Hartmann and -his mate explored the road, Kuhn gloomed aloof, while Mrs. Dallam seated -herself on a nearby bank, as Anthony replaced the inner tube. It was -hot, and he removed his coat, and soon his shirt was clinging to -the rippling, young muscles of his vigorous torso. Once, when he -straightened up to wipe the perspiration from his brow, Mrs. Dallam -caught his glance, and held it with a slow smile. - -Their progress for the day ended at a small hotel maintained upon the -roof of a ridge of hills. As the dusk deepened the valley beyond swam -with warm, scattered lights, while above, in illimitable space, gleamed -stars near, only a few millions of miles away, and stars far, millions -upon millions of miles distant. - -The ground floor of the hotel was divided by a passage, on one side the -bar, and the other a dining and lounging room, lit with kerosene lamps -swung below tin reflectors. When Anthony was ready for supper the others -had disappeared above. He was served by the proprietor, a short, rotund -man with a glistening red face and hands like swollen pincushions. He -breathed stentoriously amid his exertions, muttering objurgations -in connection with the name of an absent servitor, hopelessly drunk, -Anthony gathered, in the stable. - -A bell sounded sharply from above, and he disappeared abruptly, shouting -up the stair. Then, shortly after, he reappeared in the dining room with -a tray bearing a pitcher of water, glasses, and a bottle labelled with -the name of a popular brand of whiskey. “Can you run this up to your -folks?” he demanded, in a storm of explosive breaths; “I got enough to -stall three men down here.” Anthony balanced the tray, and moved toward -the stair. - -He stopped in the hallway to redispose his burden, when he heard the -changing gears of a second automobile without. He moved carefully -upward, conscious of lowered voices at his back, then the sound of -footsteps following him. He turned as he had been directed in the hall -above, and knocked upon a closed door. Kuhn's sullen voice bade him -enter. He had opened the door, when, almost upsetting the tray, a small -group at his back pushed him aside, and entered Hartmann's room. - - - - -XXVI - -THE flaring gas jet within shone on Hartmann, in his shirt sleeves, -reclining collarless on a bed, while the yellow-haired woman, in a -short, vividly green petticoat, but otherwise normally garbed, sat by -him twisting her fingers in his hair. Mrs. Dallam, her waist open at the -neck, was cold-creaming her throat, while Kuhn was decorating her bared -arms with pats of pink powder from a silver-mounted puff. He turned at -the small commotion in the doorway.... His jaw dropped, and his glabrous -eyes bulged in incredulous dismay. The powder puff fell to the floor; he -wet his dry lips with his tongue. “Minna!” he stammered; “Minna!” - -The woman in the door had grey hair streaked and soiled with sallow -white, and a deeply scored, harsh countenance. Her gnarled hands were -tightly clenched, and her tall, spare figure shook from suppressed -excitement and emotion. At her back were two men, one unobtrusive, -remarkable in his lack of salient feature; the other stolidly, heavily, -Semitic. - -Hartmann hastily scrambled into an upright position; the woman at his -side gave vent to a startled, slight scream, desperately arranging -her scant draperies; Mrs. Dallam, with a stony face, continued to rub -cold-cream into her throat. - -“Now, Mrs. Kuhn,” Hartmann stuttered, “everything can he satisfactorily -explained.” The woman he addressed paid not the slightest attention -to him, but, advancing into the room, gazed with mingled hatred and -curiosity at Mrs. Dallam. The two women stood motionless, tense, -oblivious to the others, in their silent, merciless battle. The latter -smiled slightly, with coldly-contemptuous lips, at the grotesque figure, -the ill-fitting dress upon the wasted body, the hat pinned askew on the -thin, time-stained hair, before her. And the other, painfully rigid, -worn, brittle, gazed with bitter appraisal at the softly-rounded, -graceful figure, the mature youth, that mocked her. - -“Minna,” Kuhn reiterated, “come outside, won't you, I want to see you -outside. Tell her to go out, Abbie,” he entreated the stolid figure -at the door; “it ain't fit for her to be here. I will see you all down -stairs.” He laid a shaking hand upon his wife's shoulder. “Come away,” - he implored. - -But still, unconscious apparently of his presence, she gazed at Mrs. -Dallam. - -“You gutter piece!” she said finally; “you thief!” - -Mrs. Dallam laughed easily. “Steal that!” she exclaimed, indicating -Kuhn, “that... beetle! If it's any consolation to you--he hasn't put -his hand on me. It makes me ill to be near him. I should be grateful if -you'd take him home.” - -“That's so, Mrs. Kuhn,” Hartmann interpolated eagerly, “nothing's went -on you couldn't witness, nothing.” - -Tears stole slowly over the inequalities of Mrs. Kuhn's countenance. -She trembled so violently that the man called Abbie stepped forward -and supported her. Now tears streamed copiously over Kuhn's narrow -countenance. “Oh, Minna!” he cried, “_can_ I go home with you? can I go -_now?_ These people don't mean anything to me, not like you do.--I get -crazy at times, and gotta have excitement; I hate it,” he declared; -“but I can't somehow stand out against it. But you must give me another -try.... Why, I'd be nothing in the world without you; I'd go down to -hell alive without you, Minna.” - -Mrs. Kuhn became unmanageable; she uttered a series of short, gasping -cries, and wilted into the arm about her. “Take her out, Abbie,” Kuhn -entreated, “take her out of this.” Anthony, with the tray still balanced -in his grasp, stood aside. The man without characteristics was making -rapid notes in an unostentatious wallet. Then Mrs. Kuhn, supported and -followed by her husband and the third, disappeared into the hall. - -“Shut the door,” Hartmann commanded sharply; “and give me a drink.” - Anthony set the tray on a table. “God!” the yellow-haired woman -ejaculated, “me too.” Mrs. Dallam returned to the mirror, and surveyed -the effects of the cold cream. With an expression of distaste she -brushed the marks of the powder from her arm. “The beetle!” she -repeated. - -“Minna Kuhn won't bring action,” Hartmann declared, with growing -confidence; “she'll take him back; nothing will come out.” The other -woman drank deeply, a purplish flush mantelled her full countenance. -A strand of metallic hair slipped over her eyes. “Let her talk,” she -asseverated; “we're bohemians.” She clasped Hartmann to her ample bosom. - -Mrs. Dallam moved to the half opened door to the room beyond. “Bring in -the pitcher of water, Anthony,” she directed. He followed her with the -water, and she bolted the door behind them. The door to the hall was -closed too. She stopped and smiled at him with narrowed, enigmatic eyes. -The subtle force of her being swept tingling over him. She laid her -hand, warm, palpitatingly alive, upon his. - -“The swine,” she said; “how did we get into this, you and I?” - - - - -XXVII - -THE patent-leather dressing case lay open on a bureau, spilling a small -cascade of ivory toilet implements, a severely-plain black dinner gown -lay limp, dully shimmering, over the back of a chair, and, on the bed, a -soft, white heap of undergarments gave out a seductive odor of lavender. -“Cigarettes in the leather box,” she indicated; “take some outside.” A -screened door opened upon a boxlike balcony, cut into the angle of the -roof; and Anthony, conscious of the warm weight of a guiding arm, found -himself upon it. He seated himself on the railing, and lit a cigarette. -He must go in a minute, he thought. - -The lights had vanished from the valley, at his back the risen moon -dimmed the stars, turned the leaves silver grey. A wan ray fell upon -a clump of bushes below--lilacs, but the blooms had wilted, gone. The -screen door opened, and Mrs. Dallam was at his side; she sank into a -chair, the rosy blur of a cigarette in her fingers; she wore a loose -wrap of deep green silk, open at her throat upon the white web beneath; -in the obscurity her eyes were as black, as lustreless, as ebony, her -mouth was a purple stain. - -She smoked silently, gazing into the night. He would go now, he decided, -and moved from his place on the rail. But with clinging fingers she -caught his wrist, reproachfully lifting a velvety gaze. “I will not be -left alone,” she declared; “I simply must have some one with me... you, -or I will get despondent. You are--no, I won't say young, that would -make you cross; you are like that fabulous fountain the Spaniards hunted -in Florida, I want to drink deep, deep.” - -Anthony's resolution wavered; it was early; it pleased him that so fine -a creature should desire his presence; an unhappy note in her voice -moved him to pity. She was lonely, and he was alone--here; why should -they not support each other? He leaned, close to her, upon the sloping -roof. She talked little; she laughed once, a low, silvery peal whose -echo ran up and down his spine. - -They heard a servant closing the shutters, the doors, below them, -and the sound linked Anthony to Mrs. Dallam in a feeling of pervading -intimacy. She rose, and stood pressed against his side, and his heart -beat instantly unsteady. The night grew strangely oppressive, there was -a roll of distant, muffled thunder; he turned to her with a commonplace -about the heat, when her arms went about his neck, and she kissed him -full, slowly, upon the lips. Unconsciously he held her supple body to -him. She leaned back against his arms, her eyes shut and lips parted. A -terrible and brute tyranny of desire welled up within him, sweeping away -every vestige of control, of memory. The sky whirled in his vision, the -substantial world vanished in a smother of flaming mists. - -Then he released her so suddenly that she fell against the rail, -recovering her poise with difficulty. Anthony stumbled back, drawing -his hand across his brow. “What... what damned perfume's on you?” he -demanded hoarsely. - -“None at all,” she assured him, “I never... Why, Anthony, are you ill?” - -Wave after wave of sweetness enveloped him, choking, nauseating, -stinging his eyes, extinguishing the fire within him, turning the lust -to ashes. He too supported himself upon the rail, and his gaze fell -below, to the bushes. Was it the moonlight, or were they, where they had -been bare a few minutes before, now covered with great misty masses of -lilacs? - -The perfume of the flowers came up to him breath on breath: he could see -them clearly now.... White lilacs! An overwhelming panic swept over him, -a sudden dread of his surrounding, of the silken figure of the woman -before him. He must get away. He pushed her roughly aside, swung back -the screen door, and clattered through the room and down the stair. He -fumbled for a moment with a bolted door, and then was outside, free. -Without hesitancy he fled into the night, the secretive shadows. He -ran until he literally fell, with bursting lungs and shaking, powerless -knees, upon a bank. - - - - -XXVIII - -THE hotel was lost; the silence, the peace of nature, unbroken. A -drowsy flutter of wings stilled in a hedge. The moon sailed behind a -cloud that drooped low upon the earth, and great, slow drops of rain -fell to a continuous and far reverberation. They struck coolly upon -Anthony's face, pattered among the grass, dropped with minute explosions -of dust upon the road. The shower passed, the cloud dissolved, and the -crystal flood of light fell once more into the cup of the valley. - -It spread like a balm over Anthony: Hartmann, Mrs. Dallam, the weeping -face of Mrs. Kuhn, were like painted figures in a distasteful act upon -which he had turned his back, from which he had gone forth into the -supreme spectacle of the spheres, the presence of Eliza Dreen. Every -atom thrilled with the thought of her. “Oh, my very dear,” he whispered -to the sleeping birds, the dead, white disk of the moon: “I will come -back to you... good.” - -After the rain the night was like a damp, sweet veil upon his face; -the few stars above him were blurred as though seen through tears; the -horizon burned in a circle of flickering, ruddy light. He took up his -way once more over the soft folds of the road; now, accustomed to the -dark, he could distinguish the smooth pebbles by the way, separate, grey -blades of grass. He walked buoyantly, tirelessly, weaving on the loom -of the dim miles mingled visions of future and past, dominated by the -serene presence of Eliza. - -He felt in a pocket the wallet containing his ticket to California and -the generous sum added by his father. There must be no more delay in -arriving at his western destination! His excursion with Hartmann had -been a grave error; he saw it clearly now, one of those faults--so -fatally easy for him to commit--which, if his life was to spell success, -if he was to come finally into his heritage of joy, he must scrupulously -avoid. In the future he would drive directly, safely, toward his goal; -he would become part of that orderly pattern of life plotted in streets -and staid occupations: at the end of day he would return to his small, -carefully-tended garden to weed and water, and sit with Eliza on his -portico--a respectable, an authentic, member of society. On Sunday -morning they would go to the Episcopal Church, they would join the -sober, festivally-garbed procession moving toward the faint thunder of -the organ. And, at dinner, he would carve the roast. Thus, quietly, -they would grow old, grey, together. They would have a number of -children--all girls, he decided. - -Imperceptibly the morning was born about him, faint shadows grew under -the hedges, the sweet, querulous note of a robin sounded from the -sparkling sod. A wind stirred, as immaculate, as dewly fresh, as though -it were the first breath blown upon a new world of virginal and lyric -beauty. The molten gold of the sun welled out of the east and spilled -over the wooded hills and meadows; the violet mists drawn over the -swales and streams dissolved; Anthony met a boy driving cows to pasture. - - - - -XXIX - -HE rapidly overtook a bent and doggedly tramping figure; no common -wanderer, he recognized, as he drew nearer. The others decent suit was -eminently presentable, his felt hat brushed, his shoes comparatively -new. He turned upon Anthony a countenance as expressionless, as -darkly-stained, as a chipped and rusted effigy of iron; deep lines fell -back across the dingy cheeks; his lipless mouth was, apparently, another -such line; and his eyes, deeply sunk in the skull, were the eyes of a -dead man. Yet they were not blind; they saw. - -He halted, and surveyed Anthony with a lowered, searching curiosity, -clenching with a strained and surprising force the knob of a black -stick. Anthony met his scrutiny with the salutation of youth and the -road; but the other made no reply; his countenance was as blank as -though no word had been spoken. Then a sudden flicker of hot light -burned in the dull depths of his gaze, his worn face quivered with -a swift malignancy, an energy of suspicion, of hatred, that touched -Anthony's heart with a cold finger of fear. - -“What's your name?” he demanded, his entire being strained in an agony -of attention. - -Anthony informed him with scrupulous exactitude. - -He seemed, for a moment, to doubt Anthony's identity; then the fire -died, his eyes grew blank; his grasp relaxed on the stick, and, bent, -dogged, he continued on his way. - -The repellent contraction of Anthony's heart expanded in a light and -careless curiosity, youthful contempt mingled with the gayety of his -morning mood, and he hastened his steps until he had again overtaken his -inquisitor. - -“That's a good cane you've got,” he observed of the stout shaft and -rounded head. - -Its owner grasped it by the lower end, and swung the head against his -hand. “Lead,” he pronounced somberly. “It would crumble your skull like -an egg.” - -Again fear stirred vaguely in Anthony: the entire absence of emotion -in the sanguinary, the dull, matter-of-fact voice were inhuman, tainted -with madness; the total detachment of those deliberate words had been -appalling. - -“I thought,” he continued, “that you might have been Alfred Lukes, -but you're too young.” As he pronounced that name his grasp tightened -whitely about the lead knob. The conviction seized Anthony that it was -fortunate he was not the individual in question. - -“You want Alfred?” he asked in an attempted jocularity. - -“He murdered my boy,” the other answered simply. “Him and another. They -asked James into a boat to go fishing. Boys will always go fishing; he -was only eleven.” He stopped in the middle of the road, and produced a -small package folded in oiled silk. It proved to be a derringer, of an -old-fashioned model, with two, short black barrels, one atop the other. -“Loaded,” he said, “to put against his face.” Then he rewrapped the -weapon and returned it to its place of concealment. “I've been looking -for Alfred Lukes for nineteen years,” he recommenced his dogged -progress, “in trains and saloons and stores. Nineteen years ago James -was found in the river.” He was silent for a moment, then, “One eye was -torn out,” he added in his weary voice. He turned his blank and terrible -gaze upon Anthony, upon the sparkling morning. The derringer dragged -slightly upon his coat, the stick--that stick which could crush a skull -like an egg--made its trailing signature in the dust. A mingled loathing -and pity took possession of Anthony; he recoiled from the corroding and -secret horror of that nineteen year Odyssey of a torturing and impotent -spirit of revenge, from the infinite black tide that had swept over the -stooping figure at his side, the pitiless memory that had destroyed its -sanity. - -“It was on Sunday; James had on his nice blue suit and a new, red silk -necktie... they found it knotted about his throat... as tight as a big -man could make it.” - -A sudden impulse overcame Anthony to run, to leave far behind him this -sinister, animated speck on the sunny road, under the dusty branches -burdened with ripening fruit, thrilling with the bubbling notes of -birds. But, as his gaze fell again upon his companion, he saw only -an old man, gaunt with suffering, hurrying toward the noon. A deep, -cleansing compassion vanquished the dread, and, spontaneously, he spoke -of his own lighter affairs, of California, his destination. - -“I have never been west of Chicago,” the other interposed. “I hadn't the -money; the walking is dreadfully hard; the sun on those plains hurt my -head. Do you suppose James Lukes is in California?” he asked, pausing -momentarily in his rapid shamble. - -In his careless, youthful egotism, Anthony ignored the query. He -wondered aloud where he could board a through train to the West. - -“Have you got your ticket?” - -Anthony tapped complacently upon the pocket that held the wallet. They -were walking now through a wood that flowed to the rim of the road, and -a turn hid either vista. A stream ran through the rank greenery of the -bottom, crossed by a bridge of loosely bolted planks. Anthony paused, -intent upon the brown, sliding water beneath him, the minute minnows -balancing against the stream. In that closed place of broken light the -cool stillness was profound. The stream fled past its weeds without a -gurgle, the leaves hung motionless, as though they had been stamped from -metal... he might have been, with his companion, within a charmed circle -of everlasting tranquillity. Then: - -“I wonder if Alfred Lukes is in California?” the latter resumed; “I've -never got there, the fare... too expensive, the sun hurt my head.” - Anthony lit a Dulcina, and expelled a cloud of blue smoke that rose -compactly in the motionless air. “California,” he repeated, sunk in -thought; “I wonder--” - -“California's a big place,” Anthony hazarded. - -“If he was there I'd find him.” Then, in his mechanical and -dispassionate voice, he cursed Alfred Lukes with the utmost foulness. -One heated word, the slightest elevation of his even tones, would have -made the performance human, intelligent, but the deadly monotony, the -impersonal accents, were as harrowing as though a mummy had ground out -of its shrunken and embalmed interior a recital of prehistoric hatred -and wrong; it resembled a phonograph record of incalculable depravity. -He stood beyond the bridge, resting upon his stick, with his unmoved -face turned toward Anthony. His hat cast a deep shade over his eyes; -but, below, in a wanton patch of sunlight, his lipless mouth trembled -greyly. - -“California,” he repeated still again, then, “I must get there.” He -shifted his hand lower upon the stick, and moved nearer to Anthony by a -step; the patch of sunlight shifted up to his hat and fled. - -“You could try the freight cars,” Anthony suggested. The stooping, -neatly-brushed figure, the stony countenance, had become, in an -intangible manner, menacing, obscurely dangerous. The fingers were drawn -like a claw about the club. Then the arm relaxed, he seemed to shrink -into hopeless resignation. Beyond the leafy arcade Anthony could now -see the countryside spread out in sunny fields, fleecy, white clouds -shifting in the sea of blue.... Suddenly a great flame shot up before -his eyes, a stunning shock fell upon his head, and the flame went out -in a whirling darkness that swept like a black sea over a continent of -intolerable pain. He heard, as if from an immense distance, a thin voice -pronounce the single word, “California.” - - - - -XXX - -A GRIPPING wave of nausea recalled Anthony to consciousness; a deathly -sickness spreading from the pit of his stomach through his entire being; -his prostrate head, seeming stripped of its skull, was tortured by the -dragging fronds of the ferns among which he lay. He sat up dizzily. -Through the leafy opening the fleeting forms of the clouds shifted -over the sunny hills. The stream slipped silently through the grass. He -staggered down the slight incline, and, falling forward upon the ground, -let the water flow over his throbbing head. The cool shock revived him, -and he washed away a dark, clotted film from his forehead and cheek. - -His wallet, with his ticket to California and store of money were gone. -He started in instant, unsteady pursuit of the man who had struck him -down and robbed him. But, at the edge of the wood he paused--how long -had he lain among the ferns? the sun was now high over his head, the -morning lapsed, the other might have had three, four hours' start. -He might now be entrained, bound for California, searching for Alfred -Lukes. A sudden weakness forced him to sit at the roadside; he lost -consciousness again for a moment. Then, summoning his youth, his -vitality, he rose, and walked unsteadily in search of assistance. - -He had proceeded an intolerable mile, wiping away a thin trickle of -blood that persisted in crawling into his eye, when he saw a low roof -amid a tangle of greenery. He stopped with a sobbing breath of relief. -He was delirious, he thought, for peering at him through the leaves he -saw the countenance and beautiful, bare body of a child, as dark and -tense as bronze. A cloud of black hair overhung a face vivid as a -flower; her crimson lips trembled; then, with a startled cry, the figure -vanished. - -He made his way with difficulty over a short path, overgrown with vines -and twisted branches, and came abruptly upon a low, white house and -wide, opened door. An aged and shapeless woman sat on a chair without a -back, cutting green beans into a bright tin basin. When she saw him -she dropped the pan with a clatter, and an unfamiliar exclamation of -surprise. - -“I've been hurt,” Anthony explained; “knocked silly and robbed.” - -“Gina!” she called excitedly; “Dio mio! _Gina!_” A young woman, large -and loosely molded, with a lusty baby clasped to her bared breast, -appeared in the doorway. When she saw Anthony she dropped the baby into -the elder's arms. “Poverino!” she cried; “come in the house, little -mister.” She caught him by the arm, almost lifting him over the doorstep -into a cool, dark interior. He had a brief glimpse of drying vegetables -strung from the ceiling, of a waxen image of the virgin in faded pink -silk finery against the wall; then, with closed eyes, he relaxed -into the charge of soothing and skilled fingers. His head rested on a -maternal arm while a soft bandage was fixed about his forehead. - -“Ecco!” she ejaculated, her ministration successful. She led him to a -rude couch upon the floor, and gently insisted upon his lying down. He -attempted to thank her, but she laid her large, capable hand over his -mouth, and he sank into an exhausted, semi-conscious rest. Once she bent -over him, dampening the bandage, once he saw, against the light of the -door, the shape, slim and beautiful as an angel, of the child. Outside -a low, liquid murmur of voices continued without a break, strange and -quieting. - -He slept, and woke up refreshed, strengthened. The dusk had thickened in -the room, the strings of vegetables were lost in the shadows, a dim -oil lamp cast a feeble glow on rude walls. He lay motionless for a few, -delightful seconds, folded in absolute peace, beneficent quietude. The -amazing idea struck him that, perhaps, he had died, and that this was -the eternal tranquillity of the hymn books, and he started vigorously -to his feet in an absurd panic. The homely figure of a man entering -dispelled the illusion--he was a commonplace Italian, one of the -multitude who labored in the ditches of the country, stood aside in -droves from the tracks as trains whirled past. - -“What hit your head?” he asked, his mobile face displaying sympathetic -interest, concern. - -“A leaded stick,” Anthony explained. “I was knocked out, robbed.” - -“Birbanti!” he laid a heavy hand upon Anthony's shoulder. “You feel -better now, gia?” The latter, confused by such open attention, shook -the hand from its friendly grip. “He was crazy,” he awkwardly explained; -“and looking for a man who had killed his son; he wanted to get to -California and I told him I had a ticket west.” - -The laborer led Anthony to a room where a rude table was spread with -homely fare--a great, rough loaf of bread, a deep bowl of steaming, -green soup, flakey white cheese, and a bottle of purple wine. An open -door faced the western sky, and the room was filled with the warm -afterglow; it hung like a shining veil over the man, the still, maternal -countenance of the woman, like an aureole about the baby now sleeping -against her breast, and graced the russet countenance of an aged -peasant. The child that Anthony had seen first, now in a scant white -slip, seemed dipped in the gold of dreams. - -As he consumed the savory soup, the creamy cheese and wine, the scene -impressed him as strangely significant, familiar. He dismissed an idle -effort of memory in order to consider the unfortunate aspect assumed by -his immediate affairs. Concerning one thing he was determined--he would -ask his father to assist him no further toward his western destination. -He must himself pay for the initial error, together with all its -consequences, of having followed Hartmann: California was his object, -he would not write to Ellerton until his westward progress was once more -assured. - -Two courses were open to him--he could “beat” his way, getting meals -when and how he was able, riding, when possible, on freight cars, doing -casual jobs on the way. That he dismissed in favor of a second, which -in the end, he judged, would prove more speedy. He would make his way -to the nearest city, find employment in a public or private garage as -chauffeur or mechanic, and, in a month at most, have the money necessary -for the continuation of his journey. - -The household conversed vigorously in their native idiom, giving his -thoughts full freedom. The glow in the west faded, sank from the room, -but, suddenly, he recognized the familiar quality of his surroundings. -It resembled a picture of the Holy Family on the wall of his mother's -room; the bare interior was the same, the rugged features of Joseph the -carpenter, the brooding beauty of Mary. He almost laughed aloud at the -absurd comparison of the exalted scene of Christ's infancy with this -commonplace but kindly group, the laborer with soiled and callous hands -and winestained mouth, the material young woman with the string of cheap -blue beads. - -The meal at an end the chairs were pushed back and the old woman noisily -assembled the dishes. Anthony's head throbbed and burned. In passing, -the mother's fingers rested upon his brow. “Not too hot,” she nodded -contentedly. - -A consultation followed. Anthony might remain there for the night; or, -if he insisted, he might drive into the city with “Nono,” who left in -a few hours with a wagonload of greens for the morning market. He chose -the latter, with a clumsy expression of gratitude, impatient to resume -active efforts in his rehabilitation in his own mind. - -“Niente!” they disclaimed in chorus. - - - - -XXXI - -HE fell into an instant slumber on the hospitable heap in the corner, -and was awakened while it was still dark. In the flicker of the oil lamp -the old man's face swam vaguely against the night. Without the wagon was -loaded, a drooping horse insecurely harnessed into patched shafts. The -world was a still space of blue gloom, of indefinite forms suspended -in the hush of color, sound; it seemed to be spun out of shadows like -cobwebs, out of vapors, scents. A pale, hectic glow on the horizon -marked the city. They ambled noiselessly, slowly, forward, under the -vague foliage of trees. There was a glint of light in a passing -window, the clatter of milk pails; a rooster crowed, thin and clear and -triumphant; on a grassy slope by the road they saw a smoldering fire, -recumbent forms. - -They entered the soiled and ragged outskirts of the city--isolated -ranks of hideous, boxlike dwellings amid raw stretches of clay, rank -undergrowth. The horse's hoofs rang on a bricked pave, and the city -surged about them. Overhead the elevated tracks made a confused, black -tracing rippling with the red and white and green fire of signals. A -gigantic truck, drawn by plunging horses whose armored hoofs were ringed -in pale flame, passed with a shattering uproar of its metallic load. A -train thundered above with a dolorous wail, showering a lurid trail -of sparks into the sky, out of which a thick soot sifted down upon -the streets. On either hand the blank walls of warehouses shut in the -pavements deserted save for a woman's occasional, chalky countenance in -the frosty area of the arc lights, or a drunkard lurching laboriously -over the gutters. The feverish alarm of firebells sounded from a distant -quarter. A heavy odor of stagnant oil, the fetid smoke of flaring -chimneys, settled over Anthony, and gratefully he recalled the pastoral -peace of the house he had left--the house hidden in its tangled verdure -amid the scented space of the countryside. - -They stopped finally before a shed open upon the street, where -bluish-orange flames, magnified by tin reflectors, illuminated busy -groups. Silvery fish with exposed carmine entrails were ranged -in rows; the crisp, green spoil of the countryside was spread in the -stalls--the silken stalks of early onions, the creamy pink of carrots, -wine-red beets; rosy potatoes were heaped by cool, crusty cantaloupe, -the vert pods of peas, silvery spinach and waxy, purple eggplant. Over -all hung the delicate aroma of crushed mint, the faint, sweet tang of -scarlet strawberries, the spicy fragrance of simple flowers--of cinnamon -pinks and heliotrope and clover. - -Anthony assisted the other to transfer his load to part of a stall -presided over by a woman with bare, powerful elbows, shouting in a -boisterous voice in perfect equality with her masculine neighbors. - -High above the dawn flushed the sky; the flares dimmed from a source of -light to mere colored fans, and were extinguished. Early buyers arrived -at the market with baskets and pushcarts. - -Anthony remained at the old man's side; it was too early to start -in search of work; and, at his companion's invitation, he shared the -latter's breakfast of cheese and bread, with a stoup of the bitter wine. -As the market became crowded, in the stress of competition, bargaining, -the vendor forgot Anthony's presence; and with a deep breath of -determination, he started in search of employment; he again faced the -West. - -He had no difficulty in discovering the section of the city given over -to the automobile industry, a broad, asphalt way with glittering show -windows, serried ranks of cars, by either curb. There was, however, -no work to be obtained here; a single offer would scarcely pay for his -maintenance; in its potentialities California was the merest blur upon -the future. Then for a second and more lucrative position he lacked the -necessary papers. Midday found him without a prospect of employment. He -had almost two dollars in change that had remained intact; and, lunching -sparingly, he continued his inquiries. - -It was late when he found himself before a sign that proclaimed the -ability within to secure positions for competent chauffeurs. And, -influenced largely by the chairs which he saw ranged against the wall, -he entered and registered. The fee for registration was a dollar, and -that left him with scant supplies as he took a place between three other -men awaiting skeptically the positions which they had been assured they -might confidently expect. With a casual nod to Anthony, a small man -with watery blue eyes, clad in a worn and greasy livery, continued -a dissertation on methods of making money additional to that of mere -salary, of agreements with tiremen, repairs necessary and otherwise, the -proper manner in which to bring a car's life quickly and gracefully to -a close, in order, he added slyly to the indifferent clerk, to encourage -the trade. - -The afternoon wasted slowly but surely to a close; no one entered and -the three rose with weary oaths and left in search of a convenient -saloon. They waved to Anthony to follow them, but he silently declined. - -A profound depression settled over him, a sense of impotence, of -failure. His wounded head fretted him with frequent hot pains. He was -enveloped by a sense of desolating loneliness which he endeavored to -dispel with the thought of Eliza; but she remained as far, as faintly -sweet, as the moon of a spring night. It seemed incredible that she -had once been in his arms; surely he had dreamed her voice--such voices -couldn't exist in reality--telling him that she loved him. Her letter -had gone with his wallet, his ticket to California. He had not written -her... she would be unable to penetrate the reason for his silence, -his shame for blundering into such a blind way, his lack of anything -reassuring to tell her. He could not write until his feet were once more -firmly planted upon the only path that led to success, to happiness, to -her. - - - - -XXXII - -THE clock on the wall above the clerk's head indicated half past five, -and Anthony, relinquishing hope for the day, rose. Now he regretted the -apparently fruitless expenditure of a dollar. “Leave an address?” the -clerk inquired mechanically. “Office open at nine.” - -“I'll be back,” Anthony told him. He turned, and collided with a man -entering suddenly from the street. He was past middle age, with a long, -pallid countenance, drooping snuff-colored mustache, a preoccupied gaze -behind bluish glasses, and was clad in correct brown linen, but wore an -incongruously battered and worn soft hat. - -“I want a man to drive my car,” he announced abruptly. “I don't -particularly care for a highly expert individual, but his habits--” he -broke off, and muttered, “superficial adjustment to environment--popular -conception of acquired characteristics.” Then, “must be moderate,” he -ended unexpectedly. - -Anthony lingered, while the clerk assured the other that several highly -desirable individuals were available. “In fact,” he told him, “one left -the office only a few minutes ago; I will have him call upon you in the -morning.” - -“What's this?” he replied, indicating Anthony; “is he a chauffeur?” - The clerk nodded. “But,” he added, “the man I refer to is older, more -experienced... sure to satisfy you.” - -“What references have you?” the prospective employer demanded. - -“None,” Anthony answered directly. The clerk dismissed his chances with -a gesture. - -“What experience?” the other persisted. “Driving on and off for four or -five years, and I am a fair mechanic.” - -“Fair only?” - -“That's all, sir.” - -The older man drew nearer to Anthony, scrutinizing him with a kindly -severity. “What's the matter with your head?” he demanded. - -“I was knocked down and robbed on a country road.” - -“Lose much?” - -“Everything.” - -“Drinking?” - -“No, sir.” - -“Familiar with prehistoric geological strata?” Anthony admitted that he -was not. - -“I had hoped,” the other murmured, “to get a driver who could assist me -with my indices.” He renewed his close inspection, then, “Elemental,” he -pronounced suddenly; “I'll take you.” - -“Five dollars, please,” interpolated the clerk. Outside his new employer -took Anthony by the shoulder, glancing over his suit. “You can get your -things, and then go out to my house.” - -“I can go sooner than that,” Anthony corrected him. “I have no things.” - -“Nothing but those clothes! Why... they will hardly do, will they? You -must get something, take it out of your salary. But, hang it, a man must -have a change of clothes! You must allow me--you are only a boy. I'll -come along; no--impossible.” He took a long wallet from his pocket and -placed it in Anthony's hands. “I don't know what such things cost,” - he said. “I think there's enough; get what you need. I must be off... -Mousterian deposits. Customs House.” Before Anthony could reply he -had started away in a long, quick stride, but he stopped short. “My -address,” he cried, “clean forgot.” He gave Anthony a street and number. - -“Rufus Hardinge,” he called, hurrying away. - -Anthony stood gazing in incredulous surprise at the polished, brown -wallet in his hand. He turned to hurry after the other, to protest, but -already he was out of sight. Anthony slipped the wallet in his pocket, -and, his head in a whirl, walked slowly over the street until he found -himself opposite a large retail clothing establishment. After a brief -hesitation he entered, pausing to glance hastily at his resources. In -the leather pocket which contained the paper money he saw a comfortable -number of crisp yellow bills; the rest of the space was taken up by -bulky and wholly unintelligible notes. - -He purchased a serviceable suit, stout shoes, a cap, and, after a short -consideration, two flannel shirts. If this were not satisfactory, he -concluded, he could pay with a portion of his salary. The slip of the -total amount, which he carefully folded, registered thirty-one dollars -and seventy cents. - -At a small tobacco shop, where he drew upon his own rapidly diminishing -capital, he discovered from the proprietor that it would be necessary -to take a suburban car to the address furnished him. He rolled rapidly -between rows of small, identical, orderly brick dwellings; on each -shallow portico a door exhibited an obviously meretricious graining; -dingy or garish curtains draped the single lower windows; the tin eaves -were continuous, unvaried, monotonous. Occasionally a greengrocer's -display broke the monotony of the vitreous way, a rare saloon or -drugstore held the corners. Farther on the street suffered a decline, -the line of dwellings was broken by patches of bedraggled gardens, set -with the broken fragments of stone ornaments; small frame structures, -streaked by the weather and blistered remnants of paint, alternated with -stables, stores heaped with the sorry miscellanies of meager, disrupted -households. Imperceptibly green spaces opened, foliage fluttered in the -orange light of the declining sun; through an opening in the habited -wall he caught sight of a glimmering stream, cows wandering against a -hill. - -He left the car finally at a lane where the houses, set back solidly in -smooth, opulent lawns, were somberly comfortable, reserved. The place -he sought, a four-square ugly dwelling faced with a tower, the woodwork -painted mustard yellow, was surrounded by gigantic tulip poplars. At the -front a cement basin caught the spray from a cornucopia held aloft -by sportive cherubs balanced precariously on the tails of reversed -dolphins, circled by a tan-bark path to the entrance and a broad side -porch. He was about to ring the bell when a high, young voice summoned -him to the latter. There he discovered a girl with a mass of coppery -hair, loosely tied and streaming over her shoulder, in a coffee-colored -wicker chair. She was dressed in white, without ornaments, and wore pale -yellow silk stockings. A yellow paper book, with a title in French, -was spread upon her lap; and, gravely sitting at her side, was a large -terrier with a shaggy yellow coat. - -“I suppose,” she said without preliminary, “that you are the person -who took father's money. It was really unexpected of you to appear with -_any_ of it. Give me the wallet,” she demanded, without allowing him -opportunity for a reply. - -He gave it to her without comment, a humorous light rising in his clear -gaze. “I warn you,” she continued, “I know every penny that was in it. I -always give him a fixed amount when he goes out.” She emptied the money -into her lap, and counted it industriously: at the end she wrinkled her -brow. - -“Here is a note of what I spent,” he informed her, tendering her the -slip from the store. She scanned it closely. “That's not unreasonable,” - she admitted finally, palpably disappointed that no villainous -discrepancy had been revealed; “and it adds up all right.” Then, with an -assumption of business despatch, “It must come out of your salary, of -course; father is frightfully impractical.” - -“Of course,” he assented solemnly. - -“Your references--” - -“I haven't any.” - -She made an impatient gesture of dismay; the terrier rose and surveyed -him with a low growl. “He promised me that he would do the thing -properly, that I positively need not go. What experience have you had?” - -He told her briefly. - -“Dreadfully unsatisfactory,” she commented, “and you are oceans too -young. But... we will try you for one week; I can't promise any more. -Would you be willing to help a little in the house--opening boxes, -unwrapping bones--?” - -“Certainly,” he assured her cheerfully, “any little thing I can do....” - -“The car's at the bottom of the garden, it has to be brought around by -the side street. There's a room overhead, and a bell from the house. You -must come up very quickly if, in the night, it rings three times, for -that,” she informed him, “will mean burglars. My father and I are quite -alone here with two women. I can't think of anything else now.” The -terrier moved closer to Anthony, sniffing at his shoes, then raised his -golden eyes and subjected him to a lengthy, thoughtful scrutiny. “That -is Thomas Huxley,” she informed him; “he is a perfectly wonderful -investigator, and detests all sentimentality. You will come up to the -kitchen for meals,” she called, as Anthony turned to descend the lawn; -“the bell will ring for your dinner.” - - - - -XXXIII - -HE found the automobile in the semi-gloom of a closed carriage house. -On the right, separated by a partition, were three loose stalls, -apparently long unoccupied; their ornamental fringe of straw had -moldered, and dank, grey heaps of feed lay in the troughs. A ladder -fixed vertically against a wall disappeared into cobwebby shadows above; -and mounting, Anthony found the room to which he had been directed. It, -too, was partitioned from the great, bare space of the hay-loft; the -musty smell of old hay and heated wood hung dusty, heavy, about the -corners, where sounded the faint squeaks of scattering mice. The space -which he was to occupy had been rigorously swept and aired; print -curtains hung at the small dormer window that overlooked the lawn, -while, above the washstand, was the bell which, he had been warned, -would appraise him of the possible presence of burglars above. A bright -metal clock ticked noisily on a deal bureau, and, on a table beside a -pitcher and glass, two books had been arranged with precise disarray; -they proved, upon investigation, to be a volume of the Edib. Rev. LXIX, -and a bound collection of the proceedings of the Linean Society. - -He saw by the noisy clock that it was nearly seven, and, hastily -washing, responded immediately to the summons of the bell. A small, -covered porch framed the kitchen door, where he entered to find a long -room dimly lit, and a dinner set at the end of a table. A bulky woman -with a flushed countenance and massive ankles in white cotton stockings -set before him half a broiled chicken, an artichoke with a bowl of -yellow sauce, and a silver jug of milk. - -“God knows it's a queer meal to put to a hearty young lad,” she -observed; “but it's all was ordered. There's not a pitata in the house,” - she added in palpable disgust. A younger woman in a frilled apron -appeared from within, carrying a tray of used dishes. She had a trim -figure, and a broad face glowing with rude vitality, which, with an -assumption of disdain, she turned upon Anthony. “I'd never trust myself -with him in the machine,” she observed to the older woman, “and him not -more than a child.” - -“Be holding your impudent clatter,” the other commanded, “you're not -required to go out with him at all.” - -“Mr. Hardinge says, will you see him in the library when you have -done,” the former shot at Anthony over a shapely shoulder. “You can walk -through the dining room to where he is beyond.” - -The library was a somber chamber: its long windows were draped with -stiff folds of green velvet, its walls occupied by high bookcases with -leaded glass doors and ornamental Gothic points under the ceiling. -A massive desk was piled with papers, pamphlets, printed reports, -comparative tables of figures, an hundred and one huddled details; the -table beneath a glittering crystal chandelier was hardly better; even -the floor was stacked with books about the chair where Anthony found his -employer. The latter looked up absently from a printed sheet as Anthony -entered. - -“Positively,” he pronounced, “there are not enough dominants to secure -Mendel's position.” His expression was profoundly disturbed. - -“Yes, sir,” Anthony replied non-committally. “The consequences of that,” - the other continued, “are beyond prediction.” Silence descended -upon him; his fixed gaze seemed to be contemplating some unexpected -catastrophe, some grave peril, opened before him in the still chamber. -“I am at a temporary loss!” he ejaculated suddenly; “we are all at a -loss... unless my experiments in pure descent warrant--” Suddenly he -became aware of Anthony's presence. “Oh!” he said pleasantly; “glad you -got fixed up. Say nothing more to Annot--it's all nonsense, taking it -out of your salary. That's what I wanted to see you for,” he added; -“what salary do you require? what did you get at your last place?” - -Anthony made a swift calculation of the distance to California, the -probable cost of carriage. “I should like seventy-five,” he pronounced -finally. His conscience suddenly and uncomfortably awoke in the presence -of the other's unquestioning generosity. “Perhaps I'd better tell -you that I don't intend to stay here long.... I am anxious to get to -California.” - -But Rufus Hardinge had already forgotten him. “Seventy-five,” he had -murmured, with a satisfied nod, and once more concentrated his attention -upon the sheet in his hand. As Anthony returned through the dining room -he found Annot Hardinge arranging a spray of scarlet verbena in a glass -vase. - -“Has father spoken to you about the salary you are to get?” she asked. -He paused, cap in hand. “I told him that you were positively not to get -above eighty.” - -“I told him seventy-five. He seemed contented.” - -“He would have been contented if you had said seven hundred and fifty.” - Then, to discountenance any criticism of her father's intelligence, she -added: “He is a very famous biologist, you know. The people about here -don't understand those things, but in London, in Paris, in Berlin, he -is easily one of the greatest men alive. He is carrying the Mendelian -theory to its absolute, logical conclusion.” - -“He said something about that to me,” Anthony commented; “it seemed to -upset him.” - -A cloud appeared upon her countenance; then, coldly, “That will do,” she -told him. - -Once more in the informal garage he lit the gas jet on either wall, and, -in the bubbling, watery light, found the automobile caked with mud and -grease, the tires flat, the wires charred and the cylinders coated with -carbon. A pair of old canvas trousers were hanging from a nail, and, -donning them and connecting a length of hose to a convenient faucet, he -began the task of putting the machine in order. It was past eleven -when he finished for the night, and mounting with cramped and stiffened -muscles to his room, he fell into immediate slumber. - - - - -XXXIV - -ON the following morning he wrote a brief, reassuring note to his -father; then, over another page, hesitated with poised pen. “Dear -Eliza,” he finally began, then once more fell into indecision. “I wish -I were back on the Wingo-hocking with you,” he' embarked. “That was -splendid, having you in the canoe, with no one else; the whole world -seemed empty except for you and me. It's no joke of an emptiness without -you. - -I have been delayed in reaching California, but I'll soon be out there -now, working like thunder for our wedding. - -“Mostly I can't realize it, it's too good to be true--you seem like -a thing I dreamed about, in a dream all full of moonlight and white -flowers. It's funny but I smell lilacs, you know like you picked, -everywhere. Last night, cleaning a car just soaked in dirt and greasy -smells, that perfume came out of nothing, and hung about so real that it -hurt me. And all the time I kept thinking that you were standing beside -me and smiling. I knew better, but I had to look more than once. - -“Love's different from what I thought it would be; I thought it would be -all happy, but it's not that, it's blamed serious. I am always flinching -from blows that might fall on you, do you see? Before I went away I -saw a man kiss a woman, and they both seemed scared; I understand that -now--they loved each other.” - -He broke off and gazed out the narrow window over the feathery tops of -maples, the symmetrical, bronze tops of a clump of pines. The odor of -lilacs came to him illusively; he was certain that Eliza was standing at -his shoulder; he could hear a silken whisper, feel an intangible thrill -of warmth. He turned sharply, and faced the empty room, the bright, -stentorious clock, the table with the pitcher and glass and serious -volumes. “Hell!” he exclaimed in angry remonstrance at his credulity. -Still shaken by the reality of the impression he wondered if he were -growing crazy? The bell above the washstand rang sharply, and, putting -the incomplete letter in a drawer, he proceeded over the tanbark path -that led to the house. - -Annot Hardinge beckoned to him from the porch, and, turning, he passed a -conservatory built against the side of the dwelling, where he saw small, -identical plants ranged in mathematical rows. - -“What is your name?” she demanded abruptly, as he stopped before her. -“Anthony,” he told her. - -She was dressed in apricot muslin, with a long necklace of alternate -carved gold and amber beads, dependent amber earrings, and a flapping -white hat with broad, yellow ribbands that streamed downward with her -hair. In one hand she held a pair of crumpled white gloves and a soft -gold mesh bag. - -“You may bring around the car... Anthony,” she directed. “I want to go -into town.” - -In the heart of the shopping district they moved slowly in an unbroken -procession of motor landaulets, open cars and private hansoms, a -glittering, colorful procession winding through the glittering, colorful -cavern of the shop windows. The sidewalks were thronged with women, -brilliant in lace and dyed feathers and jewels, the thin, sustained -babble of trivial voices mingled with the heavy, coiling odors of costly -perfumes. - -When a small heap of bundles had been accumulated a rebellious -expression clouded An-not Hardinge's countenance. “Stop at that -confectioner's,” she directed, indicating a window filled with candies -scattered in a creamy tide, bister, pale mauve, and citrine, over -fluted, delicately green satin, against a golden mass of molasses bars. -She soon emerged, with a package tied in silver cord, and paused upon -the curb. “I want to go out... out, into the heart of the country,” she -proclaimed; “this crowd, these tinsel women, make me ill. Drive until I -tell you to stop... away from everything.” - -When they had left the tangle of paved streets, the innumerable stone -façades, she directed their course into a ravine whose steep sides were -covered with pines, at the bottom of which a stream foamed whitely over -rocky ledges. Beyond, they rose to an upland, where open, undulating -hills burned in the blue flame of noon; at their back a trail of dust -resettled upon the road, before them a glistening flock of peafowl -scattered with harsh, threatening cries. By a gnarled apple tree, whose -ripening June apples overhung the road, she called, “stop!” - -The motor halted in the spicy, dappled shadow of the tree; at one side a -cornfield spread its silken, green tapestry; on the other a pasture was -empty, close-cropped, rising to a coronal of towering chestnuts. The -road, in either direction, was deserted. - -Anthony heard a sigh of contentment at his back: relaxed from the -tension of driving he removed his cap, and, with crossed legs, -contemplated the sylvan quiet. He watched a flock of blackbirds wheeling -above the apple tree, and decided that they had been within easy shot. - -“Look over your head!” she cried suddenly; “what gorgeous apples.” - -He rose, and, measuring the distance in a swift glance, jumped, and -caught hold of a limb, by means of which he drew himself up into the -tree. He mounted rapidly, filling his cap with crimson apples; when his -pockets were full he paused. Down through the screen of leaves he -could see her upturned countenance, framed in the broad, white hat; -her expression was severely impersonal; yet, viewed from that informal -angle, she did not appear displeased. And, when he had descended, she -picked critically among the store he offered. She rolled back the gloves -upon her wrists, and bit largely, with youthful gusto. On the road, -after a moment's hesitation, Anthony embarked upon the consumption of -the remainder. He strolled a short distance from the car, and found a -seat upon a low stone-wall. - - - - -XXXV - -SOON, he saw, she too left the car, and passed him, apparently ignorant -of his presence. But, upon her return, she stopped, and indicated -with her foot some feathery plants growing in a ditch by the road. -“Horsetails,” she declared; “they are Paleozoic... millions of years -old.” - -“They look fresh and green still,” he observed. She glanced at him -coldly, but his expression was entirely serious. “I mean the species -of course. Father has fossils of the Devonian period... they were trees -then.” She chose a place upon the wall, ten feet or more from him, and -sat with insolent self-possession, whistling an inconsequential tune. -There was absolutely no pose about her, he decided; she possessed a -masculine carelessness in regard to him. She leaned back, propped upon -her arms, and the frank, flowing line of her full young body was like -the June day in its uncorseted freedom and beauty. - -“If you will get that package from the confectioner's--” she suggested -finally. She unfolded the paper, and exposed a row of small cakes, which -she divided rigorously in two; rewrapping one division she held it out -toward him. - -“No, no,” he protested seriously. “I'm not hungry.” - -“It's past two,” she informed him, “and we can't possibly be back in -time for luncheon. I'd rather not hold this out any longer.” He relieved -her without further words. “Two brioche and two babas,” she enumerated. -He resumed his place, and then consumed the cakes without further -speech. - -“The study of biology,” she informed him later, with a gravity -appropriate to the subject, “makes a great many small distinctions seem -absurd. When you get accustomed to thinking in races, and in millions -of years, the things your friends fuss about seem absurd. And so, if you -like, why, smoke.” - -It was his constant plight that, between the formal restrictions of his -position, and the vigorous novelty of her speech, Anthony was constantly -at a loss. “Perhaps,” he replied inanely; “I know nothing about those -things.” - -She flashed over him a candid, amber gaze that singularly resembled her -father's. “You are not at all acquisitive,” she informed him; “and it's -perfectly evident that you are the poorest sort of chauffeur. You drive -very nicely,” she continued with severe justice. “One could trust you -in a crisis; but it is little things that make a chauffeur, and in the -little things,” she paused to indicate a globe of cigarette smoke that -instantly dissolved, “you are like--that.” - -He moodily acknowledged to himself the truth of her observation, but -such acumen he considered entirely unnecessary in one so young; he did -not think it becoming. He contrasted her, greatly to her detriment, with -the elusive charm of Eliza Dreen; the girl before him was too vivid, too -secure; he felt instinctively that she was entirely free from the bonds, -the conventions, that held the majority of girls within recognized, -convenient limits. Her liberty of mind upset a balance to which both -heredity and experience had accustomed him. The entire absence of a -tacitly recognized masculine superiority subconsciously made him uneasy, -and he took refuge in imponderable silence. - -“Besides,” she continued airily, “you are too physically normal to -think, all normal people are stupid.... You are like one of those wood -creatures in the classic pastorals.” - -A faint grin overspread Anthony's countenance; among so many -unintelligible words he had regained his poise--this was the usual, the -familiar feminine chatter, endless, inconsequential, by means of which -all girls presented the hopeless tangle of their thoughts and emotions; -its tone had deceived him only at the beginning. - -In the stillness which followed other blackbirds, equally within shot, -winged over the apple tree; the shadow of the boughs crept farther -and farther down the road. She rose vigorously. “I must get back,” she -announced. She remained silent during the return, but Anthony, with the -sense of direction cultivated during countless days in the fields and -swales, found the way without hesitation. - -When she left the car he slowly backed and circled to the carriage -house. As he splashed body and wheels with water, polished the metal, -dried and dusted the cushions, the crisp, cool voice of Annot Hardinge -rang in his ears. He divined something of her isolated existence, her -devotion to the absorbed, kindly man who was her father, and speculated -upon her matured youth. She recalled his sister Ellie, for whose -inflexible integrity he cherished a deep-seated admiration; but both -left him cold before the poignant tenderness of Eliza... Eliza, the -unforgettable, who loved him. - - - - -XXXVI - -AFTER an unsubstantial dinner of grilled sweetbreads and mushrooms, and -a frozen pudding, he continued his interrupted letter: “But there isn't -any use in my trying to write my love in words; it won't go into words, -even inside of me I can't explain it--it seems as if instead of its -being a part of me that I am a part of it, of something too big for me -to see the end of.” Then he became practicable, and wrote optimistically -of the things that were soon to be. - -There was a letter box at the upper corner of the street, and, passing -the porch, he saw the biologist sunk in an attitude of profound -dejection. His daughter sat with bare arms and neck at his side; her -hair was bound in a gleaming mass about her ears, and one hand was laid -upon the man's shoulder, while she patted Thomas Huxley with the other. -The dog rose, growling belligerently at the unfamiliar figure, but sank -again beneath a sharp command. When he returned Rufus Hardinge greeted -him, and turned to his daughter with a murmured suggestion, but she -shook her head in decisive negation. A light shone palely in the long -windows at their back. The sun, at its skyey, evening toilette, seemed, -in the rosy glow of westering candles, to scatter a cloud of powdered -gold over the worn and huddled shoulders of the world. - -Suddenly, seemingly in reconsideration of her decision, she called, “Oh, -Anthony!” and he retraced his steps to the porch. “My father suggests -that you sit here,” she told him distantly. “He says that you are very -young, and that solitude is not good for you.” - -“Annot,” the older man protested humorously, “you have mangled my intent -beyond any recognition.” With an unstudied, friendly gesture he tended -Anthony his cigar case. A deep preoccupation enveloped him; he sat with -loose hands and unseeing eyes. In the deepening twilight his countenance -was grey. Anthony had taken a position upon the edge of the porch, his -feet in the fragrant grass, out of which fireflies rose glimmering, -mounting higher and higher, until, finally, they disappeared into the -night above, in the pale birth of the stars. - -A deep silence enfolded them until in an unexpected, low voice, Rufus -Hardinge repeated mechanically aloud lines called, evidently, out of a -memory of long ago: - - ''Within thy beams, Oh, Sun! or who could find, - - While fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed, - - That too,” he paused, groping in his memory for - - the words: - - “That too such countless orbs thou madst us - - blind.” - -The girl rose, and drew his head into her warm, young arms. “Don't, -father,” she cried, in a sudden, throbbing apprehension; “please... -please. You have the clearest, most beautiful eyes in the world. Think -of all they have seen and understood--” He patted her absently. Anthony -moved silently away. - - - - -XXXVII - -NOT long after, at breakfast, the young and disdainful maid conveyed to -Anthony a request to proceed, when he had finished, to the conservatory. -There he discovered Annot Har-dinge, with her sleeves rolled up above -her vigorous elbows, dusting with a fine, brown powder the rows of -monotonous, potted plants. She directed him to follow her with a -slender-nosed watering pot. He wondered silently at the featureless -display of what he found to be ordinary bean plants, some of the dwarf -variety, others drawn up against the wall. They bore in exact, minute -inscriptions, strange names and titles, cryptic numbers; some, he saw, -were labelled “Dominants,” others, “Recessives.” - -“The 'cupids' are doing wretchedly, poor dears!” she exclaimed before a -row of dwarf sweet peas. “This is my father's laboratory,” she told him -briefly. - -“I thought he had something to do with Darwin and the missing link.” - -She gazed at him pityingly from the heights of a vast superiority. -“Darwin did some valuable preliminary work,” she instructed him; -“although Wallace really guessed it all first. Now Mendel, Bateson, are -the important names. They were busy with the beginnings; and, among the -beginnings, plants are the most suggestive.” She indicated a small row -of budding sweet peas. “Perhaps, in those flowers, the whole secret of -the universe will be found; perhaps the mystery of our souls will be -explained; isn't it thrilling! The secret of inheritance may sleep in -those buds--if they are white it will prove... oh, a thousand things, -and among them that father is the most wonderful scientist alive; it -will explain heredity and control it, make a new kind of world possible, -a world without the most terrible diseases. What church, what saint, -what god, has really done that?” she demanded. “Stupid priggish figures -bending out of their gold-plated heavens!” - -Her enthusiasm communicated a thrill to him as he regarded the still, -withdrawn mystery of the plants. For the first time he thought of them -as alive, as he was alive; he imagined them returning his gaze, his -interest, exchanging--critically, in their imperceptible, chaste -tongue--their unimpassioned opinions of him. It was a disturbing -possibility that the secret of his future, of life and death, might lurk -in the flowers to unfold on those slender stems. He was oppressed by -a feeling of a world crowded with invisible, living forms, of fields -filled with billions of grassy inhabitants, of seas, mountains, made up -of interlocking and contending lives; every breath, he felt, absorbed -races of varied individuals. He thought, too, of people as plants, as -roses--Oh, Eliza!--as nettles, rank weeds, crimson lilies. And, vaguely, -this hurt him; something valuable, something sustaining, vanished from -his unformulated, instinctive conception of life; the world of men, -their aims, their courage, ideals, lost their peculiar beauty, their -importance; the past, rising from the mold through those green tubes -and vanishing into a future of dissolving gases, shrunk, stripped of its -glamor, to an affair of little moment. - -Outside, as he descended the lawn, the sun had the artificial glitter of -an incandescent light; the trees waved their arms at him threateningly. -Then, with a shrug of his normal young shoulders, he relinquished the -entire conception; he forgot it. He recklessly permeated a universe of -airy atoms with the smoke of a Dulcina. “That's a woolly delusion,” he -pronounced. - -That evening he burnished the car, and mounted the ladder to his room -late. But the evening following, detained to perform a trivial task, -found him seated upon the porch, enveloped in the fragrant clouds of -Habana leaf. - - - - -XXXVIII - -ANNOT, as now he mentally termed her, dressed in the inevitable yellow, -was swinging a satin slipper on the point of her foot; her father was, -if possible, more greyly withdrawn than before. - -“To-night,” the biologist finally addressed his daughter, “your mother -has been dead eighteen years.... She hated science; she said it had -destroyed my heart. Impossible--a purely functionary pump. The illusions -of emotions are cerebro-spinal reflexes, only that. She said that I -cared more for science than--than herself.” He raised his head sharply, -“I was forced to tell her the truth, in common honor: science first.... -Tears are an automatic escapement to protect the vision. But women -have no logic, little understanding; hopelessly romantic, a false -quantity--romance, dangerous. I was away when she died ... Borneo, -Aurignacian strata had been discovered, a distinct parallel with the -Maurer jaw. Death is only a change of chemical activity,” he shot at -Anthony in a voice not entirely steady, “the human entity a passing -agglomeration, kinetic.... Love is a mechanical principle, categorically -imperative,” his voice sank, became diffuse. “Absolute science, -selfless. - -“People found her beautiful, I didn't know,” he added wistfully; “beauty -is a vague term. The Chapelle skull is beautiful, as I understand it, as -I understand it. In a letter to me,” after a long pause, “she employed -the term 'frozen to death'; she said that I had frozen her to death. -Only a figure, romantic, inexact.” - -“Stuff!” Annot exclaimed lightly, but her anxious countenance -contradicted the spirit of her tones. “You mustn't stir about in old -troubles. Everything great demands sacrifice; mother didn't quite -understand; and I expect she got lonely, poor dear.” - -Anthony rose, and made his way somberly toward the stable, but running -feet, his name called in low, urgent tones, arrested his progress. -An-not approached with the trouble deepening in her gaze. “Does he seem -entirely himself to you?” she asked, but, before he could answer,--“of -course, you don't know him well enough. You see, he is working too much -again, an average of sixteen hours for the ten days past. I haven't said -anything because the most difficult part of his work is at an end. -If his last conclusions are right he will have only to scribble the -reports, put a book together.... I can always tell when he is overworked -by the cobwebs--he tries to brush them off his face,” she explained. -“They don't exist, of course. - -“But I really wanted to say this,” she lifted her candid gaze to his -face. “Could you be a little more about the house? we might need you; -we'll use the car very little for a while.” The apprehension was clearly -visible now. “Would you mind helping him with his clothes; he gets them -mixed? It isn't regular, I know,” she told him; “but we have a great -deal of money; anything you required--” - -“Perhaps I'd be better at that,” he suggested. “You know, you said I was -a rotten chauffeur.” - -For a moment, appealing, she had seemed nearer to him, but now she -retreated spiritually, slipped behind her cold indifference. “There will -be nothing more to-night; if he grows worse you will have to move into -the house.” She left him abruptly, gathering her filmy skirt from the -grass, an elusive shape with gleams on her hair, her arms and neck white -for an instant and then veiled in the scarf of night. - -In his room he could still hear, mingled with the faint, muffled -squeaking of the mice in the empty hayloft, Hardinge's voice, jerky, -laborious, “a categorical imperative... categorical imperative.” He -wondered what that meant applied to love? An errant air brought him the -unmistakable odor of white lilacs, an ineffable impression of Eliza. - - - - -XXXIX - -THE day following found him installed in the house, in a small chamber -formed where the tower fronted upon the third story. At luncheon a -place was laid for him at the table with Annot and her father, where the -attentions of the disdainful and shapely maid positively quivered with -suppressed scorn. Anthony had found in his room fifty dollars in an -envelope, upon which Annot had scribbled that he might need a few -things; and, at liberty in the afternoon, he boarded an electric car -for the city, where he invested in fresh and shining pumps, and other -necessities. - -The house was dark when he inserted his newly acquired latchkey in the -front door and made his way softly aloft. But a thread of light was -shining under the door of Rufus Har-dinge's study. Later--he had just -turned out the light--a short knock fell upon his door. - -“Me,” Annot answered his instant query. “I am going to ask you to dress -and come to my father. It may be unnecessary; he may go quietly to bed; -but go he must.” - -He found her in a dressing gown that fell in heavy, straight folds of -saffron satin, her feet thrust in quaint Turkish slippers with curled -points; while over her shoulders slipped and slid the coppery rope -of her hair. She led the way to the study, which she entered without -knocking. Anthony saw the biologist bent over pages spread in the -concentrated light of a green shaded globe. In a glass case against -the wall some moldy bones were mounted and labelled; fragmentary and -sinister-appearing casts gleamed whitely from a stand; and, everywhere, -was the orderly confusion of books and papers that had distinguished the -library. - -“Come, Rufus,” Annot laid her hand upon his shoulder; “it's bedtime for -all scientists. You promised me you would be in by eleven.” - -He gazed at her with the hasty regard directed at an ill-timed, casual -stranger. “Yes, yes,” he ejaculated impatiently, “get to bed. I'll -follow... some crania tracings, prognathic angles--” - -“To-morrow will do for those,” she insisted gently, “you are making -yourself ill again--” - -“Nonsense,” he interrupted, “never felt better in my life, never--” his -voice dwindled abruptly to silence, as though a door had been closed -on him; his lips twisted impotently; beads of sweat stood out upon his -white, strained forehead. His whole body was rigid in an endeavor to -regain his utterance. He rose, and would have fallen, if Annot's arm -had not slipped about his shoulders. Anthony hurried forward, and, -supporting him on either side, they assisted him into the sleeping -chamber beyond. There, at full length on a couch, a sudden, marble-like -immobility fell upon his features, his mouth slightly open, his hands -clenched. Annot busied herself swiftly, while Anthony descended into -the dark, still house in search of ice. When he returned, Hardinge was -pronouncing disconnected words, terms. “Eoliths,” he said, “snow line... -one hundred and thirty millimeters.” He was silent for a moment, then, -struggling into a sitting posture, “Annot!” he cried sharply, “I've -frightened you again. Only a touch of... aphasia; unfortunately not new, -my dear, but not serious.” - -Later, when Anthony had assisted him in the removal of his clothes, and -lowered the light, he found Annot in the study assembling the papers -scattered on the table. “I am glad that you are here,” she said simply. -“Soon he can have a complete rest.” She sank into a chair; he had had no -idea that she could appear so lovely: her widely-opened eyes held flecks -of gold; beneath the statuesque fall of the dressing gown her bare -ankles were milky-white. - - - - -XL - -HE felt strangely at ease in a setting so easily strange. There was -a palpable flavor of unreality in the moment, of detachment from the -commonplace round of existence; it was without connection, without -responsibility to yesterday or to to-morrow; he was isolated with the -informal vision of Annot in an hour which seemed neither day nor night. -He felt--inarticulately--divorced from his customary daily personality; -and, with no particular need for speech, lit a cigarette, and blew -clouds of smoke at the ceiling. It was his companion who interrupted -this mood. - -“The life that people think so tremendously important,” she observed, -“the things one does, are hardly more real than a suit of clothes, with -religion for a nice, prim white collar, gloves for morals, and a hidden -red silk handkerchief for a rare revolt. And all the time, politely -ignored, decently covered, our bodies are underneath. Now and then some -one slips out of his covering, and stands bare before his shocked -and protesting friends, but they soon hurry something about him, a -conventional shawl, a moral sheet. Do you happen to remember a wonderful -caricature of Louis XIV--simply a wig, a silk suit, buckled shoes and a -staff?” - -The mordant humor of that drawing penetrated Anthony's understanding: -he saw rooms, streets, a world full of gesticulating suits, dresses, -nodding hats, bonnets; he saw the unsubstantial concourse haughtily -erect, condescending, cunningly deceptive, veiling in a thousand -subterfuges their essential emptiness. The thought evaporated -in laughter at the obvious humor of such a spectacle; its social -significance missed him totally, happily. - -“What an unthinking person you are,” she told him; “you just--live. It's -rather remarkable--one of Bacchus' company caught in the modern streets. -It is all so different now,” she added plaintively; “men get drunk in -saloons or at dinner, and the purple stain of the grape centers in -their noses. I tried myself,” she confessed, “in Geneva. I was with a -specialist who had father. The café balcony overhung the lake; it was at -night, and the villages looked like clusters of fireflies about a black -mirror; and you simply never saw so many stars. We were looking for -a lyric sensation, but it was the most awful fizzle; he insisted on -describing an operation with all the grey and gory details complete, and -I fell fast asleep.” - -The outcome of her experiment tallied exactly with that of his own -more involuntary efforts in that field. It established in his mind -a singularly direct sympathy with her; the uneasy element which her -attitude had called up in him disappeared entirely, its place taken by a -comfortable sense of freedom, a total lack of _rot_. - -She rose, vanishing into her father's room, then, coming to the door, -nodded shortly, and left for the night. - -He found on the bureau in his tower room what remained of the fifty -dollars--it had been reduced to less than eight. Suddenly he remembered -his purpose there, his supreme need of money, the imperative westward -call.... He bitterly cursed his lax character as he recalled the cigars -he had purchased, the silk shirt too, and an unnecessary tie. A deep -gloom settled upon his spirit. He heard in retrospect his father's -clear, high voice--“shiftless, no sense of responsibility.” He sat -miserably on the edge of the bed in the dark, while the petty, unbroken -procession of past failures wheeled through his brain. Then the shining -vision of Eliza, compassionate, tender, folded him in peace; one by one -he would subdue those rebellious elements in himself, of fate, that held -them apart. - - - - -XLI - -AT a solitary breakfast the incident of the preceding night seemed -fantastic, unreal; he retained the broken, vivid memory of the scene, -the thrill of vague words, that lingers disturbingly into the waking -world from a dream. And, when he saw Annot later, there was no trace of -a consequent informality in her manner; she was distant, hedged about by -an evident concern for her father. “I have sent for Professor Jamison.” - She addressed Anthony with blank eyes. “Please be within call in case--” - -He saw the neurologist as the latter circled the plaster cupids to the -entrance of the house--a heavy man with a broad, smooth face, thinlipped -like a priest, with staring yellow gloves. Anthony remained in the lower -hall, but no demand for his assistance sounded from above. When the -specialist descended, he flashed a glance, as bitingly swift and cold as -glacial water, over Anthony, then nodded in the direction of the garden. - -“Miss Annot tells me that you are sleeping in the house,” he said -when they were outside; “on the chance that she might need you for -her father... she will. He is at the point of mental dissolution.” An -involuntary repulsion possessed Anthony at the detached manner in which -the other pronounced these hopeless words. “Nothing may be done; that -is--it is not desirable that anything should. I am telling you this so -that you can act intelligently. Rufus Hardinge knows it; there was a -consultation at Geneva, which he approved. - -“He is,” he continued with a warmer, more personal note, “a very -distinguished biologist; his investigations, his conclusions, have been -invaluable.” He glanced at an incongruous, minute, jewelled watch on his -wrist, and continued more quickly. “Ten years ago he should have stopped -all work, vegetated--he was burning up rapidly; merely a reduced amount -of labor would have accomplished little for his health or subject. And -we couldn't spare his labor, no mere prolongation of life would have -justified that loss of knowledge, progress. It was his position; he -insisted upon it and we concurred... he chose... insanity. - -“Miss Annot is not aware of this; he must have every moment possible; -every note is priceless. The end will come--now, at any time.” He had -reached the small, canary yellow Dreux landaulet waiting for him, and -stepped into it with a sharp nod. “You may expect violence,” he added, -as the car gathered momentum. - -But that evening in the dim quietude of the piazza the biologist seemed -to have recovered completely his mental poise. He spoke in a buoyant -vein of the great men he had known, celebrated names in the world of -the arts, in politics and science. He recalled Braisted, the astronomer, -searching relaxation in the Boulevard school of French fictionists. “I -told him,” he chuckled at the mild, scholastic humor, “that he had been -peeping too long at Venus.” - -Annot was steeped in an inscrutable silence. - -For the first time, Anthony was actually aware of her features: she had -a broad, low brow swept by the coppery hair loosely tied at the back; -her eyes resembled her father's, they were amber-colored, and singularly -candid in their interest in all that passed before them; while her nose -tilted up slightly above a mouth frankly large. It was the face of a -boy, he decided, but felt instantly that he had fallen far short of -the fact--the allurement, the perfection, of her youthful maturity hung -overwhelmingly about her the challenge of sex. - -Rather, she was all girl, he recognized, but of a new variety. A vision -of _the nice_ girls he had known dominated his vision, flooded his mind, -all smiling with veiled eyes, clothed in a thousand reserves, fluttering -graces, innocent wiles, with their gaze firmly set toward the shining, -desirable goal of matrimony. Eliza was not like that, it was true; but -she, from the withdrawn, impersonal height of her cool perfection, was -a law to herself. There was a new freedom in Annot's acceptance of life, -he realized vaguely, as different as possible from mere license; no one, -he was certain, would presume with Annot Hardinge: her very frankness -offered infinitely less incentive to unlawful thoughts than the -conscious modesty of the others. - -When the biologist left the piazza Annot turned with a glad gesture to -her companion. “He hasn't seemed so well--not for years; his little, -gay fun again... it's too good to be true. I should like to -celebrate--something entirely irresponsible. I have worried, oh, -dreadfully.” The night was still, moonless; the stars burned like opals -in the intense purple deeps of the sky. The air, freighted with the rich -fruitage of full summer, hung close and heavy. “It's hot as a blotter,” - Annot declared. “I think, yes--I'm sure, I should like to go out in the -car.” She rose. “Will you bring it around, please?” - -He drove slowly over the deserted lane by the lawn, and found her, -enveloped in the lustrous folds of a black satin wrap, at the front -gate. Over her hair she had tied a veil drawn about her brow in a webby -filament of flowers “I think I'll sit in front,” she decided; “perhaps -I'll drive.” He waited, at the steering wheel, for directions. - -“Go west, young man,” she told him, and would say nothing more. A -distant bell thinly struck eleven jarring notes as they moved into the -flickering gloom of empty streets with the orange blur of lamps floating -unsteadily on dim boughs above, and the more brilliant, crackling -radiance of the arc lights at the crossings. - -The headlights of the automobile cut like white knives through the -obscurity of hedged ways; at sudden turnings they plunged into gardens, -flinging sharply on the shadowy night vivid glimpses of incredible -greenery, unearthly flowers, wafers of white wall. They drove for a -long, silent period, with increasing momentum as the way became more -open and direct; now they seemed scarcely to touch the uncertain surface -below, but to be wheeling through sheer space, flashing their stabbing -incandescence into the empty envelopment beyond the worlds. - -They passed with a muffled din through the single street of a sleeping -village, leaving behind a confusion of echoes and the startled barking -of a dog. Anthony could see Annot's profile, pale and clear, against -the flying and formless countryside; the lace about her hair fluttered -ceaselessly; and her wrap bellowed and clung about her shoulders, about -her gloveless hands folded upon her slim knees. She was splendidly, -regally scornful upon the wings of their reckless flight; the throttle -was wide open; they swung from side to side, hung on a single wheel, -lunged bodily into the air. In the mad ecstasy of speed she rose; but -Anthony, clutching her arms, pulled her sharply into the seat. Then, -decisively, he shut off the power, the world ceased to race behind them, -the smooth clamor of the engine sank to a low vibratone. - -“You did that wonderfully,” she told him with glowing cheeks, shining -eyes; “it was marvellous. A moment like that is worth a life-time -on foot... laughing at death, at everything that is safe, admirable, -moral... a moment of the freedom of soulless things, savage and -unaccountable to God or society.” - -The illuminated face of the clock before him indicated a few minutes -past one, and, tentatively, he repeated the time. “How stupid of you,” - she protested; “silly, little footrule of the hours, the conventional -measure of the commonplace. For punishment--on and on. Like Columbus' -men you are afraid of falling over the edge of--propriety.” She turned -to him with solemn eyes. “I assure you there is no edge, no bump or -brimstone, no place where good stops and tumbles into bad; it's all -continuous--” - -He lost the thread of her mocking discourse, and glanced swiftly at her, -his brow wrinkled, the shadow of a smile upon his lips. “Heavens! but -you are good-looking,” she acknowledged, her countenance studiously -critical, impersonal. After that silence once more fell upon them; -the machine sang through the dark, lifting over ridges, dropping down -declines. - -Anthony had long since lost all sense of their position. The cyanite -depths of the sky turned grey, cold; there was a feeling in the air of -settling dew; a dank mist filled the hollows; the color seemed suddenly -to have faded from the world. He felt unaccountably weary, inexpressibly -depressed; he could almost taste the vapidity of further existence. -Annoys hard, bright words echoed in his brain; the flame of his -unthinking idealism sank in the thin atmosphere of their logic. - - - - -XLII - -SHE had settled low in the seat, her mouth and chin hidden in the folds -of the satin wrap; her face seemed as chill as marble, her youth cruel, -disdainful. But her undeniable courage commanded his admiration, the -unwavering gaze of her eyes into the dark. He wondered if, back of her -crisp defenses, she were happy. He knew from observation that she led an -almost isolated existence... she had gathered about her no circle of her -own age, she indulged in none of the rapturous confidences, friendships, -so sustaining to other girls. The peculiar necessities of her father -had accomplished this. Yet he was aware that she cherished a general -contempt for youth at large, for a majority of the grown, for that -matter. Contempt colored her attitude to a large extent: that and -happiness did not seem an orderly pair. - -He felt, rather than saw, the influence of the dawn behind him; it was -as though the grey air grew more transparent. Annot twisted about. “Oh! -turn, turn!” she cried; “the day! we are driving away from it.” A sudden -intoxicating freshness streamed like a sparkling birdsong over the -world, and Anthony's dejection vanished with the gloom now at their -backs. Delicate lavender shadows grew visible upon the grass, the color -shifted tremulously, like the shot hues of changeable silks, until the -sun poured its ore into the verdant crucible of the countryside. - -“I am most frightfully hungry,” Annot admitted with that entire -frankness which he found so refreshing. “I wonder--” On either hand -fields, far farmhouses, reached unbroken to the horizon; before them the -road rose between banks of soft, brown loam, apparently into the sky. -But, beyond the rise, they came upon a roadside store, its silvery -boards plastered with the garish advertisements of tobaccos, and a -rickety porch, now undergoing a vigorous sweeping at the hands of an -old man with insecure legs, upon whose faded personage was stamped -unmistakably the initials “G. A. R.” - -Anthony brought the car to a halt, and returned his brisk and curious -salutation. “Shall I bring out some crackers?” he asked from the road. -But she elected to follow him into the store. The interior presented the -usual confusion of gleaming tin and blue overalls, monumental cheeses -and cards of buttons, a miscellany of ludicrously varied merchandise. -Annot found a seat upon a splintered church pew, now utilized as a -secular resting place, while Anthony foraged through the shelves. He -returned with the crackers, and a gold lump of dates, upon which they -breakfasted hugely. “D'y like some milk?” the aged attendant inquired, -and forthwith dipped it out of a deep, cool and ringing can. - -Afterward they sat upon the step and smoked matutinal cigarettes. The -day gathered in a shimmering haze above the vivid com, the emerald of -the shorn fields; the birds had already subsided from the heat among -the leaves. Anthony saw that the lamps of the car were still alight, a -feeble yellow flicker, and turned them out. He tested the engine; and, -finding it still running, turned with an unspoken query to Annot. She -rose slowly. - -The wrap slipped from her bare shoulders and her dinner gown with its -high sulphur girdle, the scrap of black lace about her hair, presented -a strange, brilliantly artificial picture against the blistered, gaunt -boards of the store, with, at its back, the open sunny space of pasture, -wood and sky. - -“It's barely twenty miles back,” she told him, once more settled at his -side. The old man regarded them from under one gnarled palm, the -other tightly clasped about the broom handle; his jaw was dropped; -incredulity, senile surprise, claimed him for their own. - -With Annot, Anthony reflected, he was everlastingly getting into new -situations; she seemed to lift him out of the ordinary course of events -into a perverse world of her own, a front-backward land where the -unexpected, without rule or obligation, continually happened; and, what -was strangest of all, without any of the dark consequences which he -had been taught must inevitably follow such departures. He recalled the -incredulous smiles, the knowing insinuations, that would have greeted -the exact recounting of the past night at Doctor Allhop's drugstore. -He would himself, in the past, have regarded such a tale as a flimsy -fabrication. And suddenly he perceived dimly, in a mind unused to such -abstractions, the veil of ugliness, of degradation, that hung so -blackly about the thoughts of men. He gazed with a new sympathy -and comprehension at the scornful line of Annot's vivid young lips; -something of her superiority, her contempt, was communicated to him. - -She became aware of his searching gaze, and smiled in an intimate, -friendly fashion at him. “You are the most comfortable person alive,” - she told him. There was nothing critical in her tones now. “I said that -you were not a good chauffeur, and--” the surroundings grew familiar, -they had nearly reached their destination, and an impalpable reserve -fell upon her, but she continued to smile at him, “and... you are not.” - That was the last word she addressed to him that day. - -As, later, he sluiced the automobile with water, he recalled the strange -intimacy of the night, her warm and sympathetic voice; once she had -steadied herself with a clinging hand upon his shoulder. These new -attributes of the person who, shortly, passed him silently and with cold -eyes, stirred his imagination; they were potent, rare, unsettling. - - - - -XLIII - -Notwithstanding, in the days which followed there was a perceptible -change in Annot's attitude toward him: she became, as it were, conscious -of his actuality. One afternoon she read aloud to him a richly-toned, -gloomy tale of Africa. They were sitting by a long window, open, but -screened from the summer heat by stiff, darkly-drooping green folds, -where they could hear the drip of the fountain in its basin, a cool -punctuation on the sultry page of the afternoon. Annot proceeded rapidly -in an even, low voice; she was dressed in filmy lavender, with little -buttons of golden velvet, an intricately carved gold buckle at her -waist. - -Anthony listened as closely as possible, the faint smile which seldom -left him hovering over his lips. The bald action of the narrative--a -running fight with ambushed savages from a little tin pot of a steamer, -a mysterious affair in the darkness with a grim skeleton of a fellow, -stakes which bore a gory fruitage of human heads, held him; but the -rest... words, words. His attention wavered, fell upon minute, material -objects; Annot's voice grew remote, returned, was lost among his -juggling thoughts. - -“Isn't it splendid!” she exclaimed, at last closing the volume; “the -most beautiful story of our time--” She stopped abruptly, and cast a -penetrating glance at him. “I don't believe you even listened,” she -declared. “In your heart you prefer, 'Tortured by the Tartars.'” - -His smile broadened, including his eyes. - -“You are impossible! No,” she veered suddenly, “you're not; if you cared -for this you wouldn't be... you. That's the most important thing in -the world. Besides, I wouldn't like you; everybody reads now, it's -frightfully common; while you are truly indifferent. Have you noticed, -my child, that books always increase where life runs thin? and you are -alive, not a papier-mâché man painted in the latest shades.” - -Anthony dwelt on this unexpected angle upon his mental delinquencies. -The approval of Annot Hardinge, so critical, so outspoken, was not -without an answering glow in his being; no one but she might discover -his ignorance to be laudable. - -She rose, and the book slipped neglected to the floor. “The mirror of my -dressing table is collapsing,” she informed him; “I wonder if you -would look at it.” He followed her above to her room; it was a large, -four-square chamber, its windows brushed by the glossy leaves of an -aged black-heart cherry tree. Her bed was small, with a counterpane of -grotesque lace animals, a table held a scattered collection of costly -trifles, and a closet door stood open upon a shimmering array from -deepest orange to white and pale primrose. An enigmatic lacy garment, -and a surprisingly long pair of black silk stockings, occupied a chair; -while the table was covered with columns of print on long sheets of -paper. “Galleys,” she told him. “I read all father's proof.” - -He moved the dressing table from the wall, and discovered the bolt -which had held the mirror in place upon the floor. As he screwed it into -position, Annot said: - -“Don't look around for a minute.” There was a swift whisper of skirts, -a pause, then, “all right.” He straightened up, and found that she had -changed to a white skirt and waist. Fumbling in the closet she produced -a pair of low, brown shoes, and kicking off her slippers, donned the -others, balancing each in turn on the bed. - -“Let's go--anywhere,” she proposed; “but principally where books are not -and birds are.” At a drugstore they purchased largely of licorice root, -which they consumed sitting upon a fence without the town. - - - - -XLIV - -I SAID that instinctively, back in my room,” Annot remarked with a -puzzled frown. “It was beastly, really, to feel the necessity... -as though we had something corrupt to hide. And I feel that you are -especially nice--that way. You see, I am not trying to dispose of myself -like the clever maidens at the balls and bazaars, my legs and shoulders -are quite uncalculated. There is no price on... on my person; I'm not -fishing for any nice little Christian ceremony. No man will have to pay -the price of hats at Easter and furs in the fall, of eternal boredom, -for me. All this stuff in the novels about the sacredness of love and -constancy is just--stuff! Love isn't like that really; it's a natural -force, and Nature is always practical: potato bugs and jimson-weed and -men, it is the same law for all of them--more potato bugs, more men, -that's all.” - -Anthony grasped only the larger implications of this speech, its -opposition to that love which he had felt as a misty sort of glory, as -intangible as the farthest star, as fragrant as a rose in the fingers. -There was an undeniable weight of solid sense in what Annot had said. -She knew a great deal more than himself, more--yes--than Eliza, more -than anybody he had before known; and, in the face of her overwhelmingly -calm and superior knowledge, his vision of love as eternal, changeless, -his ecstatic dreams of Eliza with the dim, magic white lilacs in her -arms, grew uncertain, pale. Love, viewed with Annot's clear eyes, was a -commonplace occurrence, and marriage the merest, material convenience: -there was nothing sacred about it, or in anything--death, birth, or -herself. - -And was not the biologist, with his rows of labelled plants and bones, -his courageous questioning of the universe, of God Himself, bigger than -the majority of men with their thin covering of cant, the hypocrisy in -which they cloaked their doubts, their crooked politics and business? -Rufus Hardinge's conception of things, Annot's reasoning and patent -honesty, seemed more probable, more convincing, than the accepted -romantic, often insincere, view of living, than the organ-roll and -stained glass attitude. - -In his new rationalism he eyed the world with gloomy prescience; he had -within him the somber sense of slain illusions; all this, he felt, -was proper to increasing years and experience; yet, between them, they -emptied the notable bag of licorice. - -Annot rested a firm palm upon his shoulder and sprang to the ground, -and they walked directly and silently back. “It's a mistake to discuss -things,” Annot discovered to him from the door of her room, “they should -be lived; thus Zarathustrina.” - - - - -XLV - -LATER they were driven from the porch by a heavy and sudden shower, -a dark flood torn in white streamers and pennants by wind gusts, and -entered through a long window a formal chamber seldom occupied. A -thick, white carpet bore a scattered design in pink and china blue; oil -paintings of the Dutch school, as smooth as ice, hung in massive gold -frames; a Louis XVI clock, intricately carved and gilded, rested upon -a stand enamelled in black and vermilion, inlaid with pagodas and -fantastic mandarins in ebony and mother-of-pearl and camphor wood. -At intervals petulant and sweet chimes rang from the clock: trailing, -silvery bubbles of sound that burst in plaintive ripples. - -Rufus Hardinge sat with bowed head, his lips moving noiselessly. Annot -occupied a chair with sweeping, yellow lines, that somehow suggested to -Anthony a swan. “Father has had a tiresome letter from Doctor Grundlowe -at Bonn,” she informed the younger man. - -“He disagrees with me absolutely,” Hardinge declared. “But Caprera at -Padova disagrees with him; and Markley, at Glasgow, contravenes us all.” - -“It's about a tooth,” Annot explained. - -“The line to the anterior-posterior diameter is simian,” the biologist -asserted. “The cusps prove nothing, but that forward slope--” he half -rose from his chair, his eyes glittering wrathfully at Anthony, but fell -back trembling... “simian,” he muttered. - -“A possible difference of millions of years in human history,” Annot -added further. - -“But can't they agree at all!” Anthony exclaimed; “don't they know -anything? That's an awful long time.” - -“A hundred million years,” the elder interrupted with a contemptuous -gesture, “nothing, a moment. I place the final glacial two hundred -and seventy million after Jenner, and we have--, agreed to dismiss it; -trifling, adventitious. There are more fundamental discrepancies,” he -admitted. “Unless something definite is discovered, a firm base -established, a single ray of light let into a damnable dark,” he stopped -torn with febrile excitement, then, scarcely audible, continued, “our -lives, our work... will be of less account than the blood of Oadacer, -spilt on barbaric battle-fields.” - -The rain ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Anthony followed Annot to -the porch. In the black spaces between the swiftly shifting clouds -stars shone brilliantly; there was a faint drip from the trees. “He gets -dreadfully depressed,” she interpreted her parent to him. “They wrangle -all the time, exactly like a lot of schoolgirls. You have no idea of -the bitterness, the jealousy, the contemptuous personalities in the -Quarterlies. Really, they are as fanatical, as narrow, as the churches -they ignore; they are quite like Presbyterian biologists and Catholic.” - She sighed lightly. “They leave little for a youngish person to dream -on. You are so superior--to ignore these centessimo affairs. Will you -lean from the edge of your cloud and smile on a daughter of the earth in -last year's dinner gown?” - -It was, he told himself, nonsense; yet he was moved to make no -easy reply, something in her voice, illusive and wistful, made that -impossible. “It's very good-looking,” he said impotently. - -“I'm glad you like it,” she told him simply. “M'sieur Paret fitted it -himself while an anteroom full of women hated me. Oh, Anthony!” she -exclaimed, “I'd love to wander with you down that brilliant street and -through the Place Vendôme to the Seine. Better still--there's a -little shop on the Via Cavour in Florence where they sell nothing but -chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, the most heavenly cakes with black -hearts and the most heavenly smell. And you'd like Spain, so fierce -and hot against its dusty hills; and Cortina, green beneath its red -mountains. We could get a porter and rucksacks, and walk--” she broke -off, her hands pressed to her cheeks, a dawning dismay in her eyes. Then -she was gone with a flutter of the skirt so carefully draped by M'sieur -Paret. - - - - -XLVI - -THE pictures of far places had stirred him but slightly: but to travel -with Annot, to see anything with Annot, would offer continual amusement -and surprise; her vigorous candor, her freedom from sham and petty -considerations, enveloped the most commonplace perspectives in an -atmosphere of high novelty. The trace of the vagabond, the detachment -of the born dweller in tents, woven so picturesquely through his being, -responded to her careless indifference to the tyranny of an established -and timid scheme of existence. - -The following day her old, bright hardness had returned: she railed at -him in French, in German, in Italian; she called him the solemn shover, -Sir Anthony Absolute. And, holding Thomas Huxley's head directed toward -him, recommended that resigned quadruped to emulate Anthony's austere -and inflexible virtues. - - - - -XLVII - -BUT there was no trace of gayety in the excited and subdued tones in -which, later, she called him into the hothouse. He found her bending -tense with emotion over the row of plants upon whose flowering such -incalculable things depended. “Look!” she cried, taking his hand and -drawing him down over the green shoots, where his cheek brushed her -hair, where he felt the warm stir of her breathing. “Look! they are in -full bud, to-morrow they will burst open.” She straightened up, his hand -still held in hers, and a shadow fell upon her vivid countenance. “If -his reasoning is wrong, this experiment... like all the others, it will -kill him. They _must_ be white, it would be too cruel, too senseless -not. I am afraid,” she said simply; “nature is so terrible, a -Juggernaut, crushing everything to dust beneath its wheeling centuries. -I am glad that you are here, Anthony.” She drew closer to him; her -breast swelled in a sharp, tempestuous breath. - -“I have been lonelier than I--I realized. I am dreadfully worried about -father. They have lied to me; things are worse, I can see that. You -have to dress him like a child; I know how considerate you are; you are -bright, new gold with the clearest ring in the world. - -“We must get a real chauffeur; you have never been that... in my -thoughts. You know,” she laughed happily, “I said in the beginning that -you were a miserable affair in details of that kind.” - -A feeling of guilt rose swiftly within him, which, unwilling to -acknowledge, he strove to beat down from his thoughts. But, above his -endeavor, grew the clear conviction that he should immediately tell -Annot his purpose in driving Rufus Hardinge's car. He must not victimize -her generosity, nor take profit from the friendship she offered him so -unreservedly. He was dimly conscious that the revelation of his design -would end the pleasant intimacy growing up between them; the mere -mention of Eliza must destroy their happy relations; girls, even Annot, -were like that. - -He wondered, suddenly cold, if this spelled disloyalty to Eliza! but he -angrily refuted that whispered insinuation. His love for Eliza was -as un-assailably above all other considerations as she herself shone -starlike over a petty, stumbling humanity. White and withdrawn and fine -she inhabited the skies of his aspirations. He endeavored now to capture -her in his imagination, his memory; and she smiled at him palely, as -from a very great distance. He realized that in the past few days he had -not had that subtle sense of her nearness, he had not been conscious of -that drifting odor of lilacs; and suddenly he felt impoverished, alone. - -Annot smiled, warm and near. - -“You are awfully kind,” he temporized; “but hadn't we better let the -thing stand as it is? You see--I want money.” - -“But you may have that now; whatever you want.” - -“No. You are so good, it's hard to explain--I want money that I earn; -real money; I couldn't think of taking any other from you.” - -“Anthony, my good bourgeois! I had thought you quite without that -sort of tin pride. Besides, I am not giving it to you; after all it's -father's to use as he likes.” - -“But I must give him something for it--” - -“Do you suppose you are giving us nothing?” she interrupted him warmly; -“you have brought us your clear, beautiful spirits, absolutely without -price. Why, you can make father laugh; have you any idea how rarely he -did that? When you imitate Margaret absolutely I can see her fat, white -stockings. And your marvellous unworldliness--” she shook her head -mournfully. “I fear that this is mere calculation; surely you must know -the value of your innocent charms.” Anthony stood with a lowered head, -floundering mentally among his warring inclinations; when, almost with -relief, he saw that she had noiselessly vanished. - - - - -XLVIII - -HE slept uneasily, and woke abruptly to a room flooded with sunlight, -and an unaccountable sense of something gone wrong. He dressed -hurriedly, and had opened his door, when he heard his name called from -below. It was Annot, he knew, but her voice was strange, terrified--a -helpless cry new to her accustomed poise. “Anthony! Anthony!” she called -from the conservatory. - -Rufus Hardinge, who, it was evident from his clothes had not been in -bed, was standing rigidly before the row of plants upon whose flowering -they had so intently waited. And, in a rapid glance, Anthony saw -that they had blossomed in delicate, parti-colored petals--some pale -lavender, others deep purple, still others reddish white. Annoys yellow -wrap was thrown carelessly about her nightgown, her feet were bare, and -her hair hung in a tangle about her blanched face. - -When Anthony entered she clung to his arm, and he saw that she was -trembling violently. For a tense moment they were silent: the sun -streamed over the mathematical plant ranks and lit the white or blue -tickets tied to their stems; a bubbling chorus of birds filled the world -of leaves without. “It's all wrong,” she sobbed. - -“So!” the biologist finally said with a wry smile; “you see that I have -not solved the riddle of the universe; inheritance in pure line is not -explicated.... A life of labor as void as any prostitute's; not a single -fact, not a supposition warranted, not a foot advanced.” - -With a sudden and violent movement for which they were entirely -unprepared he swept the row of plants crashing upon the floor; where, -in a scattered heap of brown loam, broken pottery, smeared bloom, their -tenuous, pallid roots quivered in air. “Games with plants and animals -and bones for elderly children; riddles without answer... blind ways.” - His expression grew furtive, cunning. “I have been trifled with,” he -declared, “I have been deliberately misled; but I desire to say that -I see through--through Him: I comprehend His little joke. It's in bad -taste... to leave a soul in the dark, blundering about in the cellar -with the table spread above. But in the end I was not completely -bamboozled. He was not quick enough... the hem of His garment. - -“Your mother saw Him clear. She was considered beautiful, but beauty's a -vague term. Perhaps if I saw her now it would be clearer to me. But I'll -tell you His little joke,” he lowered his voice confidentially--“it's -all true--that apocalyptical heaven; there's a big book, trumpets, -angels all complete singing Gregorian chants. What a sell!” He laughed, -a gritty, mirthless performance. - -“Come up to your room, father,” Annot urged; “his arm, Anthony.” Anthony -placed his hand gently upon the biologist's shoulder, but the latter -wrenched himself free. Suddenly with a choked cry and arms swinging like -flails he launched himself upon the orderly plants. Before he could be -stopped row upon row splintered on the floor; he fought, struggled -with them as though they were animate opponents, cursed them in a high, -raving voice. Anthony quickly lifted him, pinning his arms to his sides. -Annot had turned away, her shoulders shaking with sobs. - -Rufus Hardinge's struggling unexpectedly ceased, his countenance -regained completely its habitual quietude. “I shall begin once more, -at the beginning,” he whispered infinitely wistful. “The little ray of -light... germ of understanding. The scientific problem of the future,” - his speech became labored, thick, “scientific... future. Other avenue of -progress: - -“Gentlemen, the Royal Society, a paper on, on--Tears, gentlemen... -not only automatic,” his voice sank to a mere incomprehensible -babble. Anthony carried him to his bed, while Annot telephoned for the -neurologist. - -After the specialist had gone Annot came in to where Anthony waited -in the study. Her feet were thrust in the Turkish slippers, her hair -twisted into a hasty knot, but otherwise she had not changed. She came -swiftly, with pale lips and eyes brilliantly shining from dark hollows, -to his side. “His wonderful brain is dead,” she told him. “Professor -Jamison thinks there will be only a few empty years to the end. But -actually it's all over.” In a manner utterly incomprehensible to him she -was crying softly in his arms. - -He must lead her to a chair, he told himself, release her at once. Yet -she remained with her warm, young body pressed against him, the circle -of her arms about his neck, her tears wet upon his cheek. He stepped -back, but she would have fallen if he had not continued to support -her. His brain whirled under the assault, the surrender, of her dynamic -youth. Their mouths met; were bruised in kissing. - - - - -XLIX - -HE stood with bowed shoulders, twisting lips; and, after a momentary -pause, she fled from the room. Cold waves of self-hatred flowed over -him--he had taken a despicable advantage of her grief. The pleasant -fabric of the past, unthinking days, the new materialism with its -comfortable freedom from restraint, crumbled from an old, old skeleton -whose moldering lines spelled the death of all--his heart knew--that was -high, desirable, immaculate. He wondered if, like Rufus Hardinge, his -understanding had come too late. But, in the re-surge of his adoration -for Eliza, infinitely more beautiful and serene from the pit out of -which he sped his vision, he was possessed by the conviction that -nothing created nor void should extinguish the bright flame of his -passion, hold them separate. - -In the midst of his turmoil he recalled Eliza with relief, with delight, -with tumultuous longing. He soared on the wings of his ecstasy; but -descended abruptly to the practical necessities which confronted him. He -must leave the Hardinges immediately; with a swift touch of the humorous -spirit native to him, he realized that again he would be without money. -Then more seriously he considered his coming interview with Annot. - -The house was charged with the vague unrest, the strange aspect of -familiar things, wrought by serious illness. Luncheon was disorganized, -Annot was late. She was pale, but, under an obvious concern, she -radiated a suppressed content. She laid a letter before Anthony. -“Registered,” she told him. “I signed.” It was, he saw, from his father, -and he slipped it into his pocket, intent upon the explanation which -lay before him. It would be more difficult even than he had anticipated: -Annot spoke of the near prospect of a Mediterranean trip, if Rufus -Hardinge rallied sufficiently. “He is as contented and gentle as a nice -old lady,” she reported; then, with a subtle expansion of manner, “it -will be such fun--I shall take you by the hand, 'This, my good infant, -is one of Virgil's final resting places....'” - -“That would be splendid,” he acknowledged, “but I'm afraid that I -sha'n't be able to go. The fact is that--that I had better leave you. I -can't take your money for... for....” - -She glanced at him swiftly, under the shadow of a frown, then shook her -head at him. “That tiresome money again! It's a strange thing for you -to insist on; material considerations are ordinarily as far as possible -from your thoughts. I forbid you absolutely to mention it again; every -time you do I shall punish you--I shall present you with a humiliating -gold piece in person.” - -“I should be all kinds of a trimmer to take advantage of your goodness. -No, I must go--” The gay warmth evaporated from her countenance as -abruptly as though it had been congealed in a sudden icy breath; she -sat motionless, upright, enveloping him in the bright resentment of her -gaze. - -“And I must ask you to forgive me for... for this morning,” he stumbled -hastily on. - -The resentment burned into a clear flame of angry contempt. “'For this -morning!' because I kissed you?” - -He made a vehement gesture of denial. “Oh, no!” But she would not allow -him to finish. “But I did,” she announced in a hard, determined voice. -“It isn't necessary for you to be polite; I don't care a damn for -that sickening sort of thing. I did, and you are properly and modestly -retreating. I believe that you think I am--'designing,' isn't that -the word? that you might have to marry me. A kiss, I am to realize, is -something sacred. Bah! you make me ill, like almost everything else in -life. - -“If you think for a minute that it was anything more than the expression -of a passing impulse you are beyond words. And, if it had been more, -you--you violet, I wouldn't marry you; I wouldn't marry any man, ever! -ever! ever! I might have gone to Italy with you, but probably come home -with some one else--will that get into your pretty prejudices?” - -“If you had gone to Italy with me,” he declared sullenly, “you would -never have come home with anybody else.” - -“That sort of thing has been dismissed to the smaller rural towns and -the cheap melodramas; it's no longer considered elevated to talk like -that, but only pitiful. You will start next on 'God's noblest creation,' -and purity, and the females of your family. Don't you know, haven't you -been told, that the primitive religious rubbish about marriage has been -laughed out of existence? Did you dream that I wanted to _keep_ you? -or that I would allow you to keep me after the thing had got stale? -It makes me cold all over to be so frightfully misunderstood. Oh, its -unthinkable! Fi, to kiss you! wasn't it loose of me?” - -Her contemptuous periods stung him in a thousand minute places. “I told -you,” he retorted hotly, “that I wanted to make money; I don't want it -given to me; it's for my wedding.” - -“Of course, how stupid of me not to have guessed--the lips sacred to -her,” her own trembled ever so slightly, but her scornful attitude, her -direct, bright gaze, were maintained, “A knight errant adventuring for -a village queen with her handkerchief in his sleeve and tempted by the -inevitable Kundry.” - -He settled himself to weathering this feminine storm; he owed her all -the relief to be found in words. “I wanted the money to go West,” he -particularized further. “There's a position waiting for me--” - -“It's all very chaste,” she told him, “but terribly commonplace. I think -that I don't care to hear the details.” She addressed herself to what -remained of the luncheon. “Have some more sauce,” she advised coolly, -then rang. “The pudding, Jane,” she directed. - -“You have been wonderfully kind--” he began. But she halted him -abruptly. “We'll drop all that,” she pronounced, and deliberately lit a -cigarette. - -A genuine admiration for her possessed Anthony; he recognized that she -was extraordinarily good to look at; he had had no idea that so vigorous -a spirit could have burned behind a becoming dress by Paret. He realized -with a faint regret, eminently masculine, that other men, men of moment, -would find her irresistibly attractive. Already it seemed incredible -that she had ever been familiar, intimate, tender, with him. - -“You will be wanting to leave,” she said, rising; “--whenever you -like. I have written for a--a chauffeur. I think you should have, it's -twenty-five dollars, isn't it?” - -“Not twenty-five cents,” he returned. - -“I shouldn't like to force your delicate sensibilities.” She left the -room. He caught a last glimpse of her firm, young profile; her shining, -coppery hair; her supple, upright carriage. - - - - -L - -IN his room he assembled the battered clothing in which Rufus Hardinge -had discovered him, preparatory to changing from his present more -elaborate garb, but a sudden realization of the triviality of that -course, born of the memory of Annot's broad disposition, halted him -midway. Making a hasty bundle of his personal belongings he descended -from the tower room. Through an open door he could see the still, white -face of the biologist looming from a pillow, and the trim form of a -nurse. - -Thomas Huxley lay somnolently on the porch, beside Annot's -coffee-colored wicker chair and a yellow paper book which bore a title -in French. He paused on the street, gazing back, and recalled his first -view of the four-square, ugly house in its coat of mustard-colored -paint, the grey, dripping cupids of the fountain, the unknown girl with -yellow silk stockings. Already he seemed to have crossed the gulf which -divided it all from the present: its significance faded, its solidity -dissolved, dropped behind, like a scene viewed from a car window. He -turned, obsessed by the old, familiar impatience to hurry forward, the -feeling that all time, all energy, all plans and thoughts, were vain -that did not lead directly to---- - -A sudden and unaccountable sensation of cold swept over him, a profound -emotion stirring in response to an obscure, a hidden cause. Then, with -a rush, returned the feeling of Eliza's nearness: he _heard_ her, the -little, indefinable noises of her moving; he felt the unmistakable -thrill which she alone brought. There was a vivid sense of her hand -hovering above his shoulder; her fingers _must_ descend, rest warmly.... -God! how did she get here. He whirled about... nothing against the -low stone-wall that bounded a sleepy garden, nothing in the paved -perspective of the sunny street! He stood shaken, half terrified, -miserable. He had never felt her nearness so poignantly; her distant -potency had never before so mocked his hungering nerves. - -Then, with the cold chilling him like a breath from an icy vault, he -heard her, beyond all question, beyond all doubt: - -“Anthony!” she called. “Anthony!” From somewhere ahead of him her tones -sounded thin and clear; they seemed to reach him dropping from a window, -lingering, neither grave nor gay, but tenderly secure, upon his hearing. -He broke into a clattering run over the bricks of the unremarkable -street, but soon slowed awkwardly into a walk, jeering at his fancy, -his laboring heart, his mad credulity. And then, drifting across his -bewildered senses, came the illusive, the penetrating, the remembered -odor of lilacs, like a whisper, a promise, a magic caress. - - - - -LI - -IT was with a puzzled frown that Anthony halted in the heart of the -city and considered his present resources, his future, possible plans. -He had three dollars and some small silver left from the Hardinges, and -he regarded with skepticism the profession of chauffeur; he would rather -adventure the heavier work of the garages. As the afternoon was far -advanced he decided to defer his search until the following morning; and -he was absorbed within the gaudy maw of a moving picture theater. - -Later, he entered an elaborate maze of mirrors, where, apparently, a -sheaf of Susannas unconsciously exhibited their diminishing, anatomical -charms to a procession of elders advancing two by two through a -perspective of sycamores.--At the bar, his glass of beer supported -by two fried oysters, a sandwich and a saucer of salted almonds, he -reflected upon the slough of sterility that had fastened upon his feet: -something must be accomplished, decisive, immediate. - -He was proceeding toward the entrance when the familiar aspect of a back -brought him to a halt. The back moved, turned, and resolved into the -features of Thomas Addington Meredith. The mutual, surprised recognition -was followed by a greeting of friendly slaps, queries, the necessity for -instant, additional beers, and they found a place at a small, polished -table. - -He was surprised to discover Tom Meredith the same foxy-faced boy he -had left in Doctor Allhop's drugstore... it seemed to Anthony that -an incalculable time had passed since the breaking of the bottles of -perfume; he felt himself to be infinitely changed, older, and the other -his junior by decades of experience and a vast accumulation of worldly -knowledge, contact with men, women, and events. Tom's raiment did not -seem so princely as it had aforetime; the ruby reputed to be the gift of -a married woman, was obviously meretricious, the gold timepiece merely -commonplace. But Anthony was unaffectedly glad to see him, to discuss -homely, familiar topics, repeat affectionately the names of favorite -localities, persons. - -“I'm in a bonding house here,” Tom explained upon Anthony's query. -“Nothing in Ellerton for _me_. What are you doing?” - -“Nothing, until to-morrow, when I think I'll get something in one of the -garages.” He thrust his hands negligently into his pockets, and came -in contact with his father's forgotten letter. He opened it, gazing -curiously at the words: “My dear Son,” when Tom, with an exclamation, -bent and recovered a piece of yellow paper that had fallen from the -envelope. “Is this all you think of these?” he demanded, placing a fifty -dollar bill upon the table. - -Anthony read the letter with growing incredulous wonder and joy. He -looked up with burning cheeks at his companion. “Remember old Mrs. -Bosbyshell?” he questioned in an eager voice. “I used to carry wood, -do odd jobs, for her: well, she's dead, and left me--what do you -think!--father says about forty-seven thousand dollars. It's there, -waiting for me, in Ellerton.” - -Suddenly he forgot Thomas Meredith, the glittering saloon, the -diminishing perspective of Susannas--he saw Eliza smiling at him out of -the dusk, with her arms full of white lilacs. With an unsteady -pounding of his heart, a tightening of the throat, he realized that, -miraculously, the happiness which he had imagined so far removed in the -uncertain future had been brought to him now, to the immediate present. -He could take a train at once and go to her. The waiting was over. The -immeasurable joy that flooded him deepened to a great chord of happiness -that vibrated highly through him. He folded the letter gravely, -thoughtfully. It was but a few hours to Ellerton by train, he knew, but -he doubted the possibility of a night connection to that sequestered -town. He would go in the morning. - -“Thomas,” he declared, “I am about to purchase you the best dinner that -champagne can shoot into your debased middle. Oh, no, not here, but in a -real place where you can catch your own fish and shoot a pheasant out of -a painted tree.” - -Thus pleasantly apostrophized that individual led Anthony to the Della -Robbia room of an elaborate hostelry, where they studied the _carte de -jour_ amid pink tiling and porphyry. There was a rosy flush of shaded -lights over snowy linen in the long, high chamber, the subdued passage -of waiters like silhouettes, low laughter, and a throbbing strain -of violins falling from a balcony above their heads. They pondered -nonchalantly the strange names, elaborate sauces; but were finally -launched upon suave cocktails and clams. Anthony settled back into -a glow of well-being, of the tranquillity that precedes an expected, -secure joy. He saluted the champagne bucket by the table; when, -suddenly, the necessity to speak of Eliza overcame him, he wished to -hear her name pronounced by other lips... perhaps he would tell Tom all; -he was the best of fellows.... - -“Are the Dreens home?” he asked negligently. “Have you seen Eliza Dreen -about--you know with that soft, shiny hair?” - -Thomas Meredith directed at him a glance of careless surprise. “Why,” he -answered, “I thought you knew; it seemed to me she died before you left. -Anyhow, it was about the same time, it must have been the next week. -Pneumonia. This soup's great, Anthony.” - - - - -LII - -HE joy that had sung through Anthony shrunk into an intolerable pain -like an icicle thrust into his heart; he swallowed convulsively a -spoonful of soup, tasteless, scalding hot, and put the spoon down with -a clatter. He half rose from the chair, with his arms extended, as if by -that means he could ward off the terrible misfortune that had befallen -him. Thomas Meredith, unaware of Anthony's drawn face, his staring -gaze, continued to eat with gusto the unspeakable liquid, and the waiter -uncorked the champagne with a soft explosion. The wine flowed bubbling -into their glasses, and Tom held his aloft. “To your good luck,” he -proclaimed, but set it down untouched at Anthony's pallor. - -“What's the matter--sick? It's the beer and cocktail, it always does -it.” - -“It's not that,” Anthony said very distinctly. - -His voice sounded to him like that of a third person. He was laboring to -adjust the tumult within him to the fact of Eliza's death; he repeated -half aloud the term “dead” and its whispered syllable seemed to fill the -entire world, the sky, to echo ceaselessly in space. From the -stringed instruments above came the refrain of a popular song; and, -subconsciously, mechanically, he repeated the words aloud; when he heard -his own voice he stopped as though a palm had been clapped upon his -mouth. - -“What is it?” Tom persisted; “don't discompose this historical banquet.” - The waiter replaced the soup with fish, over which he spread a thick, -yellow sauce. “Go on,” Anthony articulated, “go on--” he emptied his -champagne glass at a gulp, and then a second. “Certainly a fresh quart,” - his companion directed the waiter. - -Eliza was dead! pneumonia. That, he told himself, was why she had -not answered his letter, why, on the steps at Hydrangea House, Mrs. -Dreen--hell! how could he think of such things? Eliza... dead, cold who -warm had kissed him; Eliza, for whom all had been dreamed, planned, -undertaken, dead; Eliza gone from him, gone out of the sun into the -damned and horrible dirt. Tom, explaining him satisfactorily, devoted -himself to the succession of dishes that flowed through the waiter's -skillful hands, dishes that Anthony dimly recognized having -ordered--surely years before. “You're drunk,” Thomas declared. - -He drank inordinately: gradually a haze enveloped him, separating him -from the world, from his companion, a shadowy shape performing strange -antics at a distance. Sounds, voices, penetrated to his isolation, rent -thinly the veil that held at its center the sharp pain dulled, expanded, -into a leaden, sickening ache. He placed the yellow bank note on a -silver platter that swayed before him, and in return received a crisp -pile, which, with numb fingers, he crowded into a pocket. He would have -fallen as he rose from his chair if Tom had not caught him, leading him -stumbling but safely to the street. - -“Don't start an ugly drunk,” Thomas Meredith begged. Without a word, -Anthony turned and, with stiff legs, strode into the night. Eliza was -dead; he had had something to give her, a surprise, but it was too -late. A great piece of good fortune had overtaken him, he wanted to tell -Eliza, but... he collided with a pedestrian, and continued at a tangent -like a mechanical toy turned from its course. His companion swung him -from under the wheels of a truck. “Wait,” he panted, “I'm no Marathon -runner, it's hotter'n Egypt.” - -The perspiration dripped from Anthony's countenance, wet the clenched -palms of his hands. He walked on and on, through streets brilliantly -lighted and streets dark; streets crowded with men in evening clothes, -loafing with cigarettes by illuminated playbills, streets empty, silent -save for the echo of his hurried, shambling footsteps. Eliza was lost, -out there somewhere in the night; he must find her, bring her back: but -he couldn't find her, nor bring her back--she was dead. He stopped to -reconsider dully that idea. A row of surprisingly white marble steps, of -closed doors, blank windows, confronted him. “This is where I retire,” - Thomas Meredith declared. Anthony wondered what the fellow was buzzing -about? why should he wait for him, Anthony Ball, at “McCanns”? - -He considered with a troubled brow a world empty of Eliza; it wasn't -possible, no such foolish world could exist for a moment. Who had -dared to rob him? In a methodical voice he cursed all the holy, all -the august, all the reverent names he could call to mind. Then again -he hurried on, leaving standing a ridiculous figure who shouted an -incomprehensible sentence. - -He passed through an unsubstantial city of shadows, of sudden, -clangoring sounds, of the blur of lights swaying in strings above his -head, of unsteady luminous bubbles floating before him through ravines -of gloom; bells rang loud and threatening, throats of brass bellowed. -His head began to throb with a sudden pain, and the pain printed clearly -on the bright suffering of his mind a stooping, dusty figure; leaden -eyes, a grey face, peered into his own; slack lips mumbled the story -of a boy dead long ago--Eliza, Eliza was dead--and of a red necktie, a -Sunday suit; a fearful figure, a fearful story, from the low mutter of -which he precipitantly fled. Other faces crowded his brain--Ellie with -her cool, understanding look, his mother, his father frowning at him in -assumed severity; he saw Mrs. Dreen, palely sweet in a starlit gloom. -Then panic swept over him as he realized that he was unable, in a sudden -freak of memory, to summon into that intimate gallery the countenance of -Eliza. It was as though in disappearing from the corporeal world she had -also vanished from the realm of his thoughts, of his longing. He paused, -driving his nails into his palms, knotting his brow, in an agony of -effort to visualize her. In vain. “I can't remember her,” he told an -indistinct human form before him. “I can't remember her.” - -A voice answered him, thin and surprisingly bitter. “When you are sober -you will stop trying.” - -And then he saw her once more, so vivid, so near, that he gave a sobbing -exclamation of relief. “Don't,” he whispered, “not... lose again--” He -forgot for the moment that she was dead, and put out a hand to touch -her. Thin air. Then he recalled. He commenced his direct, aimless -course, but a staggering weariness overcame him, the toylike progress -grew slower, there were interruptions, convulsive starts. - - - - -LIII - -AT the same time the haze lightened about him: he saw clearly his -surroundings, the black, glittering windows of stores, the gleaming -rails which bound the stone street. His hat was gone and he had long -before lost the bundle that contained his linen. But the loss was of -small moment now--he had money, a pocketful of it, and forty-seven -thousand dollars waiting in Ellerton: his father was a scrupulous, -truthful and exact man. - -Eliza and he would have been immediately married, gone to a little green -village, under a red mountain; Eliza would have worn the most beautiful -dresses made by a parrot; but that, he recognized shrewdly, was an -idiotic fancy--birds didn't make dresses. And now she was dead. - -He entered a place of multitudinous mirrors reflecting a woman's -flickering limbs, sly and bearded masculine faces, that somehow were -vaguely familiar. - -“Champagne!” he cried, against the bar. - -“Your champagne'll come across in a schooner.” - -But, impatiently, he shoved a handful of money into the zinc gutter. -“Champagne!” he reiterated thickly. The barkeeper deduced four dollars -and returned the balance. “Sink it,” he advised, “or you'll get it -lifted on you.” - -With the wine, the mist deepened once more about him; the ache--was it -in his head or his heart?--grew duller. He had poured out a third glass -when a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and whirling suspiciously, he -saw a uniform cap, a man's gaunt face and burning eyes. - -“Brother,” the latter said, “brother, shall we leave this reeking sink, -and go out together into God's night?” - -Blinking, Anthony recognized the livery, the accents, of the Salvation -Army. A sullen anger burned within him--this man was a sort of official -connection of God's, who had killed Eliza. He smoothed out his face -cunningly, moved obediently toward the other, and struck him viciously -across the face. Pandemonium rose instantly about him, an incredible -number of men appeared shouting, gesticulating, and formed in a ring of -blurred, grinning faces. The jaw of the Salvation Army man was bright -with blood, dark drops fell on his threadbare coat. His hand closed -again on Anthony's shoulder. - -“Strive, brother,” he cried. “The Mansion door is open.” - -Anthony regarded him with insolent disdain. “Ought to be exposed,” he -articulated, “whole thing... humbug. Isn't any such--such... Eliza's -dead, ain't she?” - -A ripple of merriment ran about the circle of loose, stained lips; the -curious, ribald eyes glittered with cold mirth; the circle flattened -with the pressure of those without, impatient for a better view. Anthony -surveyed them with impotent fury, loathing, and they met his passionate -anger with faces as stony, as inhuman, as cruel, carved masks. He -heard _her_ name, the name of the gracious and beautiful vision of his -adoration, repeated in hoarse, in maculate, in gibing tones. - -“She's dead,” he repeated sharply, as though that fact should impose -silence on them; “you filthy curs!” But their approbation of the -spectacle became only the more marked. - -The Salvation Army man fastened his hectic gaze upon Anthony; he was, -it was evident, unaware of the blood drying upon his face, of the throng -about them. “There is no death,” he proclaimed. “There is no death!” - -“But she _is_ dead,” Anthony insisted; “pneumonia... with green eyes -and foggy hands.” They began an insane argument: Eliza was gone, Anthony -reiterated, the other could not deny that she was lost to life, to the -sun. He recalled statements of Rufus Hardinge's, crisp iconoclasms of -Annot's, and fitted them into the patchwork of his labored speech. -Texts were flung aloft like flags by the other; ringing sentences in the -incomparable English of King James echoed about the walls, the bottles -of the saloon and beat upon the throng, the blank hearts, the beery -brains, of the spectators. “Blessed are the pure in heart,” he orated, -“for they... for they...” - - - - -LIV - -THAT word--purity, rang like a gong in Anthony's thoughts: Eliza had -emphasized it, questioning him. The term became inexplicably merged -with Eliza into one shining whole--Eliza, purity; purity, Eliza. A swift -impression of massed, white flowers swept before him, leaving a delicate -and trailing fragrance. He had a vision of purity as something concrete, -something which, like a priceless and fragile vase, he guarded in -his hands. It had been a charge from her, a trust that he must keep -unspotted, inviolable, that she would require--but she was gone, she was -dead. - -“... through the valley of the shadow,” the other cried. - -She had left him; he stood alone, guarding a meaningless thing, useless -as the money in his pocket. - -A man with bare, corded arms and an apron, broke roughly through the -circle; and with a hand on Anthony's back, a hand on the back of -his opponent, urged them toward the door. “You'll have to take this -outside,” he pronounced, “you're blocking the bar.” - -An arm linked within Anthony's, and swung him aside. “Unavoidably -detained by merest 'quaintance,” Thomas Meredith explained with -ponderous exactitude. Unobserved, they found a place at the table they -had occupied earlier in the evening. The latter ordered a fresh bottle, -but was persuaded by Anthony to surrender the check which accompanied -it. - -A sudden hatred for the money that had come too late possessed him: if -he had had the whole forty-seven thousand dollars there he would have -torn it up, trampled upon it, flung it to the noisome corners of the -saloon. It seemed to have become his for the express purpose of mocking -at his sorrow, his loss. His hatred spread to include that purity, that -virtue, which he had conceived of as something material, an actual -possession.... That, at any rate, he might trample under foot, destroy, -when and as it pleased him. Eliza was gone and all that was left was -valueless. It had been, all unconsciously, dedicated to her; and now he -desired to cast it into the mold that held her. - -He fingered with a new care the sum in his pocket, an admirably -comprehensive plan had occurred to him--he would bury them both, the -money and purity, beneath the same indignity. Tom Meredith, he was -certain, could direct his purpose to its fulfillment. Nor was he -mistaken. The conversation almost immediately swung to the subject of -girls, girls gracious, prodigal of their charms. They would sally forth -presently and “see the town.” Tom loudly asseverated his knowledge of -all the inmates of all the complacent quarters under the gas light. -Before a cab was summoned Anthony stumbled mysteriously to the bar, -returning with a square, paper-wrapped parcel. - -“Port wine,” he ejaculated, “must have it... for a good time.” - - - - -LV - -A SEEMINGLY interminable ride followed, they rattled over rough stones, -rolled with a clacking tire over asphalt. A smell unnamable, fulsome, -corrupt, hung in Anthony's nostrils; the driver objurgated his horse in -a desperate whisper; Tom's head fell from side to side on his breast. -The mists surged about Anthony, veiling, obscuring all but the sullen -purpose compressing his heart, throbbing in his brain. - -There was a halt, a rocking pavement and unctuous tones. Then a hall, a -room, and the tinny racket of a piano, feminine voices that, at the same -time, were hoarsely sexless, empty, like harsh echoes flung from a rocky -void. A form in red silk took possession of Anthony's hand, sat by his -side; a hot breath, a whisper, flattened against his ear. At times he -could distinguish Tom's accents; he seemed to be arguing masterfully, -but a shrill, voluble stream kept pace with him, silenced him in the -end. - -Anthony strove against great, inimical forces to maintain his sanity of -action, ensure his purpose: he sat with a grim, haggard face as rigid -as wood, as tense as metal. The cloudy darkness swept over him, -impenetrable, appalling; through it he seemed to drop for miles, for -years, for centuries; it lightened, and he found himself clutching the -sides of his chair, shuddering over the space which, he had felt, gaped -beneath him. - -In moments of respite he saw, gliding through the heated glare, -gaily-clad forms; they danced; yet for all the dancing, for all the -colors, they were more sinister than merry, they were incomparably more -grievous than gay. A tray of beer glasses was held before him, but he -waved it aside. “Champagne,” he muttered. The husky voices commended -him; a bare arm crept around his neck, soft, stifling; the red silk form -was like a blot of blood on the gloom; it spread over his arm like a -tide of blood welling from his torn heart. - -He thought at intervals, when the piano was silent, that he could -distinguish the sound of low, continuous sobbing; and the futility of -grief afforded a contemptuous amusement. “It's fierce,” a shrill voice -pronounced. “They ought to have took her somewhere else; this is a -decent place.” A second hotly silenced this declaration. In the -jumble of talk which followed he heard the title “captain” pronounced -authoritatively, conclusively imposing an abrupt lull. Men entered. With -an effort which taxed his every resource of concentration he saw that -there were two; he distinguished two tones--one deliberate, coldly -arrogant, the other explosive, iterating noisy assertions. Peering -through the film before his eyes, Anthony saw that the first, -insignificant in stature, exactly and fashionably dressed, had a -countenance flat and dark, like a Chinaman's; the other was a fleshy -young man in an electric blue suit, his neck swelling in a crimson fold -above his collar, who gesticulated with a fat, white hand. - -Anthony felt the attention of the room centered upon himself, he heard -disconnected periods; “... to the eyes. Good fellow... threw friend -out--one of them lawyer jags, too dam' smart.” A voice flowed, thick -and gummy like molasses, from the redness at his side, “He's my fellow; -ain't you, Raymond?” - -A wave of deathly sickness swept up from the shuddering void and -enveloped him. He summoned his dissipated faculties, formed his cold -lips in readiness to pronounce fateful words, when he was diverted -by the sharp impact of a shutting door, he heard with preternatural -clearness a bolt slip in its channel. The young man in the blue suit had -disappeared. Again the sobbing, low and distinct, rose and fell upon his -hearing. - -There was a general stir in the room; the form beside him rose; and he -was lunging to his feet when, in the act of moving, he became immovable; -he stood bent, with his hands extended, listening; he turned his head -slowly, he turned his dull, straining gaze from side to side. Then he -straightened up as though he had been opened by a spring. - -“Who--who called?” he demanded. “Who called me--Anthony?” - -In the short, startled silence which followed the room grew suddenly -clear before him, the mist dissolved before a garish flood of gaslight -that fell upon a grotesque circle of women in shapeless, bright apparel; -he saw haggard, youthful countenances on which streaks of paint burned -like flames; he saw eyes shining and dead like glass marbles; mouths -drawn and twisted as though by torture. He saw the fragile, fashionably -dressed youth with the flat face. No one of them could have called him -in the clear tone that had swept like a silver stream through the miasma -of his consciousness. - -Again he heard it. “Anthony!” Its echo ran from his brain in thrills of -wonder, of response, to the tips of his fingers. “Anthony!” Oh, God! -he knew now, beyond all question, all doubt, that it was the voice -of Eliza. But Eliza was dead. It was an inexplicable, a cunning and -merciless jest, at the expense of his love, his longing.... “Anthony!” - it came from above, from within. - -A double, sliding door filled the middle of the wall, and, starting -forward, he fumbled with its small, brass handles. A sudden, subdued -commotion of curses, commands, arose behind him; hands dragged at -his shoulders; an arm as thin and hard as steel wire closed about his -throat. He broke its strangling hold, brushed the others aside. The door -was bolted. Yes, it came from beyond; and from within came the sobbing -that had hovered continuously at the back of his perception. - -He shook the door viciously; then, disregarding the hands tearing at him -from the rear, burst it open with his shoulder. He staggered in, looking -wildly about.... It had, after all, been only a freak of his disordered -mind, an hallucination of his pain. The room was empty but for the young -man in electric blue, now with his coat over the back of a chair, and -a girl with a torn waist, where her thin, white shoulder showed dark, -regular prints, and a tangle of hair across her immature face. - -The man in shirt sleeves rose from the couch, on which he had been -sitting, with a stream of sudden, surprised oaths. The girl who stood -gazing with distended eyes at Anthony turned and flashed through the -broken door. “Stop her!” was urgently cried; “the hall door--” Anthony -heard a chair fall in the room beyond, shrill cries that sank, muffled -in a further space. - -The two men faced him in the silent room: the larger, with an empurpled -visage, bloodshot eyes, shook with enraged concern; the other was as -motionless as a piece of furniture, in his wooden countenance his -gaze glittered like a snake's, glittered as icily as the diamond that -sparkled in his crimson tie folded exactly beneath an immaculate collar. -Only, at intervals, his fingers twitched like jointed and animated -straws. - -An excited voice cried from the distance: “She's gone! Alice's face -is tore open... out the door like a devil, and up the street in her -petticoat.” - -The man with the flushed face wilted. “This is as bad as hell,” he -whimpered. “It will come out, sure. You--” he particularized Anthony -with a corroding epithet. “The captain is in it deep... this will do for -him, we'll all go up--” - -“Why?” the other demanded. He indicated Anthony with his left hand, -while the other stole into his pocket. “He brought her here... you heard -the girl and broke into the room; there was a fight--a fight.” He drew -nearer to Anthony by a step. - - - - -LVI - -ANTHONY gazed above their heads. There, again, clear and sweet, his -name shaped like a bell-note. The familiar scent of a springtide of -lilacs swept about him; the placid murmur of water slipping between -sodded banks, tumbling over a fall; the querulous hunting cry of owls -hovered in his hearing, singing in the undertone of that pronouncement -of his name out of the magic region of his joy. - -“No good,” a voice buzzed, indistinct, immaterial. “Who'll shut this--? -who'll get the girl?” - -“The girl can't reach us alone....” - -An intolerable scarlet hurt stabbed at Anthony out of a pungent, whitish -cloud. There was a fretful report. A flat, dark face without expression, -without the blink of an eyelid, a twitch of the mouth, loomed before him -and then shot up into darkness. The hurt multiplied a thousand fold, it -poured through him like molten metal, lay in a flashing pool upon his -heart, filled his brain. He opened his lips for a protest, put out his -hands appealingly. But he uttered no sound, his arms sank, grew stiff... -the light faded from his eyes.... imponderable silence. Frigid night.... - -Far off he heard _her_ calling him, imperative, confident, glad. Her -crystal tones descended into the abyss whose black and eternal walls -towered above him. He must rise and bear to her that gift like a -precious and fragile vase which he held unbroken in his hands. An -ineffable fragrance deepened about him from the massed blooms rosy in -the glow where she waited, drawing him up to her out of the chaotic wash -beyond the worlds where the vapors of corrupted matter sank and sank in -slow coils, falling endlessly, forever. - - -THE END - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lay Anthony, by Joseph Hergesheimer - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAY ANTHONY *** - -***** This file should be named 51921-0.txt or 51921-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/9/2/51921/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by Google Books - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive -specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this -eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook -for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, -performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given -away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks -not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the -trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. - -START: FULL LICENSE - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project -Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full -Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at -www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or -destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your -possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a -Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound -by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the -person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph -1.E.8. - -1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this -agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the -Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection -of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual -works in the collection are in the public domain in the United -States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the -United States and you are located in the United States, we do not -claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, -displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as -all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope -that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting -free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm -works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the -Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily -comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the -same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when -you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are -in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, -check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this -agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, -distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any -other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no -representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any -country outside the United States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other -immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear -prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work -on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the -phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, -performed, viewed, copied or distributed: - - This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and - most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no - restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it - under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this - eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the - United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you - are located before using this ebook. - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is -derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not -contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the -copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in -the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are -redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project -Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply -either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or -obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any -additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms -will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works -posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the -beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including -any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access -to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format -other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official -version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site -(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense -to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means -of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain -Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the -full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -provided that - -* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed - to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has - agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid - within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are - legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty - payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in - Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg - Literary Archive Foundation.” - -* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all - copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue - all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm - works. - -* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of - any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of - receipt of the work. - -* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than -are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing -from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The -Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project -Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may -contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate -or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other -intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or -other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or -cannot be read by your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right -of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium -with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you -with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in -lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person -or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second -opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If -the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing -without further opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO -OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT -LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of -damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement -violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the -agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or -limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or -unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the -remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in -accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the -production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, -including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of -the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this -or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or -additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any -Defect you cause. - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of -computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It -exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations -from people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future -generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see -Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at -www.gutenberg.org Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by -U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the -mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its -volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous -locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt -Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to -date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and -official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact - -For additional contact information: - - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND -DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular -state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To -donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project -Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be -freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and -distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of -volunteer support. - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in -the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. - diff --git a/old/51921-0.zip b/old/51921-0.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 205e861..0000000 --- a/old/51921-0.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/51921-8.txt b/old/51921-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index b2f5a3a..0000000 --- a/old/51921-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5839 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lay Anthony, by Joseph Hergesheimer - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: The Lay Anthony - A Romance - -Author: Joseph Hergesheimer - -Release Date: May 1, 2016 [EBook #51921] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAY ANTHONY *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by Google Books - - - - - - - - -THE LAY ANTHONY - -A Romance - -By Joseph Hergesheimer - -New York & London - -Mitchell Kennerley 1914 - - -"_... if in passing from this deceitful world into true life love is -not forgotten,... I know that among the most joyous souls of the third -heaven my Fiametta sees my pain. Pray her, if the sweet draught of Lethe -has not robbed me of her,... to obtain my ascent to her._" - ---Giovanni Boccaccio - - -TO - -DOROTHY - -THIS - -FIGMENT OF A PERPETUAL FLOWERING - -THE LAY ANTHONY - - - - -I--A ROMANCE - -NOT for the honor of winning the Vanderbilt Cup, nor for the glory of -pitching a major league baseball team into the world's championship, -would Tony Ball have admitted to the familiar and derisive group in the -drugstore that he was--in the exact, physical aspect of the word--pure. -Secretly, and in an entirely natural and healthy manner, he was ashamed -of his innocence. He carefully concealed it in an elaborate assumption -of wide worldly knowledge and experience, in an attitude of cynical -comprehension, and indifference toward _girls_. - -But he might have spared himself the effort, the fictions, of his -pose--had he proclaimed his ignorance aloud from the brilliantly lighted -entrance to the drugstore no one who knew him in the midweek, night -throng on Ellerton's main street would have credited Anthony with -anything beyond a thin and surprising joke. He was, at twenty, the -absolute, adventurous opposite of any conscious or cloistered virtue: -the careless carriage of his big, loose frame; his frank, smiling grey -eyes and ample mouth; his very, drawling voice--all marked him for a -loiterer in the pleasant and sunny places of life, indifferent to the -rigors of a mental or moral discipline. - -The accumulated facts of his existence fully bore this out: the number -of schools from which, playing superlative baseball, he had been still -obliged to leave, carrying with him the cordial good will of master -and fellow, for an unconquerable, irresponsible laxity; the number and -variety of occupations that had claimed him in the past three years, -every one of which at their inception certain, he felt confident, to -carry him beyond all dreams and necessity of avarice; and every one, in -his rapidly diminishing interest, attention, or because of persistent, -adverse conditions over which, he asseverated, he had no control, -turning into a fallow field, a disastrous venture; and, conclusively, -the group of familiars, the easy companions of idle hours, to which he -had gravitated. - -He met his mates by appointment at Doctor Allhop's drugstore, or by an -elaborate system of whistled formulas from the street, at which he would -rise with a muttered excuse from the dinner table and disappear.--He -was rarely if ever sought outright at his father's house; it was quite -another sort of boy who met and discoursed easily with sisters, who -unperturbed greeted mothers face to face. - -It would have been useless, had he known it, to protest his virtue -inside the drugstore or out; a curious chain of coincidents had -preserved it. Again and again he had been at the point of surrendering -his involuntary Eden, and always the accident, the interruption, had -befallen, always he had retired in a state of more or less orderly -celibacy. On the occasion of one of those nocturnal, metropolitan -escapades by which matured boys, in a warm, red veil of whiskey, assert -their manhood and independence, he had been thrust in a drunken stupor -into the baggage car of the "owl" train to Ellerton. Instances might -be multiplied: life, in its haphazard manner, its uncharted tides -and eddies sweeping arbitrarily up and down the world, had carelessly -preserved in him that concrete ideal which myriads of heroic and -agonized beings had striven terribly and in vain to ward. - -And so it happened, when Doctor Allhop turned with an elaborate -impropriety from the pills he was compounding in a porcelain pestle, -that Anthony's laugh was loudest, his gusto most marked, in the group -gathered at the back of the drugstore. A wooden screen divided them, -hid the shelves of bottles, the water sink, and the other properties and -ingredients of the druggist's profession, from the glittering and public -exhibition of the finished article, the marble slab and silver mouths of -the sodawater fountain, the uninitiated throng. - -He was sitting on a case of prepared food, his legs thrust out before -him, and a thread of smoke coiling bluely from the cigarette held in -his broad, scarred hand. There was a little gay song on his lips, and a -roving, gay glint in his direct gaze. At frequent intervals he surveyed -with approbation maroon socks and a pair of new and shining pumps; the -rest of his apparel was negligent. - -The sole chair was occupied by the plump bulk of Thomas Addington -Meredith, to whom a sharp nose in a moonlike countenance lent an -expression of constant inquiry and foxy caution. He was elaborately -apparelled in a suit which boasted a waistcoat draped with the gold -chain of an authentic timepiece; while, closing a silver cigarette case -scrolled large with his initials, a fat finger bore a ruby that, rumor -circulated, had been the gift of a married woman. - -Lounging against a shelf Alfred Craik gazed absently at his blackened -and broken fingernails, his greasy palms. He was Anthony's partner -in the current industry of a machine shop and garage, maintained in a -dilapidated stable on the outskirts of Ellerton. It was a concern -mainly upheld by a daily levy on the Ball family for necessary tools and -accessories. He was, as always, silent, detached. - -But William Williams amply atoned for any taciturnity on the part of the -others; he had returned a short while before from two checkered years -in the West; and, a broad felt hat cinched with a carved leather hand -pushed back from his brow, and waving the formidable stump of a cigar, -he expiated excitedly on the pleasures of that far, liberal land. - -"Why," he proclaimed, "I owe a saloon keeper in San Francisco sixty-five -dollars for one round of drinks--the joint was full and it was up to -me... nothing but champagne went, understand! He knows he'll get it. -Why, I collared ten dollars a day overseeing sheep. I cleaned up three -thousand in one little deal; it was in Butte City; it lasted nine days. -But 'Frisco's the place--all the girls there are good sports, all the -men spenders." - -"What did you come back East for?" Alfred Craik demanded; "why didn't -you stay right with it?" - -"I got up against it," William grinned; "the old man wouldn't give -me another stake." The thought of the glories he had been forced -to relinquish started him afresh. "I cleaned up enough in a week at -billiards," he boasted, "to keep me in Ellerton a year." - -"Didn't Bert Dingley take four bits from you last night at Hinkle's?" -Anthony lazily asked. - -"That farmer!" the other scoffed; "I had a rank cue; they are all rank -at Hinkle's. I'll match him in a decent parlor for any amount." - -"How much will you put up?" Meredith demanded; "I will back Bert." - -"How much have you got?" William queried. - -"How much have you?" - -"If this was San Francisco I could get a hundred." - -"What have you got in real coin, Bill?" Tony joined in. - -"Three nickles," William Williams admitted moodily. - -"I've got thirty-five cents," Thomas added. "I wish I could get a piece -of change." - -"How's the car?" Anthony turned to hiss partner in the lull that -followed. The "car," their sole professional charge, had been placed in -their hands by an optimistic and benevolent connection of the Balls. - -"I had the differential apart again to-day," Alfred responded, "but I -can't find that grinding anywhere. It will have to be all torn down," he -announced with sombre enthusiasm. - -"You have had that dam' thing apart three times in the last four weeks, -and every time you put it together it's worse," Anthony protested; "the -cylinder casing leaks, and God knows what you did to the gears." - -"I wish I had a piece of change," Thomas Meredith repeated, in a manner -patently mysterious. - -"A temporary sacrifice of your tin shop--" Doctor Allhop suggested, -tinning from the skilful moulding of the pills on a glass slab. - -"Not a chance! the family figurehead announced that he had taken my -watch 'out' for the last time." - -"He wants to plaster it on some Highschool skirt," Alfred announced -unexpectedly. - -"This robbing the nursery makes me ill," William protested. "Out in -Denver there are real queens with gold hair--" - -His period was lost in a yapping chorus from the west-wearied circle. -"Take it to bed with you," he was entreated. - -"Nothing in the Highschool can reach these," Meredith assured them, -"this is the real thing--an all night seance. They have just moved in by -the slaughter house; a regular pipe--their father is dead, and the old -woman's deaf. Two sisters... one has got red hair, and the other can -kick higher'n you can hold your hand. The night I went I had to leave -early, but they told me to come hack... any night after nine, and bring -a friend." - -"I'll walk around with you," William Williams remarked negligently. - -"Not on three nickles. They told me to fetch around a couple of bottles -of port wine, and have a genuine party." - -Anthony Ball listened with rapidly growing attention, while he fingered -three one dollar bills wadded into the bottom of his pocket. He felt his -blood stir more rapidly, beating in his ears: vague pictures thronged -his brain of girls with flaming hair, dexterous, flashing limbs, white -frills, garters. With an elaborate air of unconcern he asked: - -"Are they goodlookers?" - -"Oh, Boy! they have got that hidden fascination." - -Anthony made a swift reckoning of the price of port; it would wipe out -the sum he was getting together for badly needed baseball shoes.--Red -hair!--He could count on no further assistance from his father that -month; the machine shop at present was an expense. - -"Got any coin?" Meredith demanded. - -"A few." - -The other consulted with importance the ostentatious watch. "Just the -minute," he announced. "Come along; we can get the port at the Eagle; -we'll have a Paris of a time." - -Doctor Allhop offered an epigrammatic parallel between two celebrated -planets. - -"I need new ball shoes," Anthony temporized; "I ripped mine the last -game." - -Meredith rose impatiently. "Charge them to the family," he ejaculated. -"But if you don't want to get in on this, there are plenty of others. -Two or three dollars are easy to raise in a good cause. Why, the last -night I spent in the city cost me seventeen bucks." - -"I guess I'll come." Anthony instinctively barred his sudden eagerness -from his voice. He rose, and was surprised to find that his knees were -trembling. His face was hot too.--he wondered if it was red? if it would -betray his inexperience? "If they hand me any Sundayschool stuff," he -proclaimed bigly, "I'll step right on it; I'm considerably wise to these -dames." - -"This is the real, ruffled goods." Meredith settled a straw hat with a -blue band on his sleek head, and Anthony dragged a faded cap from his -pocket, which he drew far over his eyes. William Williams regarded them -enviously. Craik's thoughts had wandered far, his lips moved silently. -And Doctor Allhop had disappeared into the front of the drugstore. - - - - -II. - -LET'S get along," Anthony said in a a thick, strange voice. He stumbled -forward; his eyes were hot, blurred; he tried in vain to wink clear his -vision. Suddenly his elbow struck sharply against a shelf, and there was -an answering crash, the splintering of glass smashing upon the floor. -Doctor Allhop hurried in to the scene of the disaster. "You young bull -among the bottles!" he exclaimed in exasperated tones; "a whole gross of -perfume, all the white lilac, lost." - -Anthony Ball stood motionless, embarrassed and annoyed by the accident; -and great, heavy coils of the scent rose about him; they filled his -nostrils with wave on wave of pungent odor, and stung his eyes so that -he shut them. The scent seemed to press about him, to obstruct his -breathing, weigh upon his heart; he put out a hand as if to ward it -off. It seemed to him that great masses of the flower surrounded him, -shutting him with a white, sweet wall from the world. He swayed dizzily; -then vanquished the illusion with an expression of regret for the damage -he had wrought. - -The Doctor was on his knees, brushing together the debris; William -Williams guffawed; and Craik smiled idly. Meredith swore, tapping a -cigarette on his silver case. "You're a parlor ornament, you are," he -told Anthony. - -A feeling of impotence enveloped the latter, a sullen resentment against -an occurrence the inevitable result of which must descend like a shower -of cold water upon his freshly-stirred desires. "I am sorry as hell, -Doctor," he repeated; "what did that box cost you?" - -"Six seventy," Allhop shot impatiently over his shoulder. - -Anthony produced his three dollars, and, smoothing them, laid the sum on -a table. "I will stop in with the rest to-morrow morning," he said. The -Doctor rose and turned, partly mollified; but, to avoid the argument -which, he felt, might follow, Anthony strode quickly out into the -drugstore. There at the white marble sodawater fountain a bevy of youth -was consuming colorific cones of ice cream, drinking syrupy concoctions -from tall, glistening glasses. They called him by name, but he passed -them without a sign of recognition, still the victim of his jangling -sensibilities. - - - - -III - -BAY STREET was thronged; the shops displayed broad, lighted windows -filled with their various merchandise; in front of a produce store a row -of chickens hung bare, bright blue and yellow, head down; from within -came the grinding of a coffee machine, the acrid voices of women -bargaining. The glass doors to the fire-engine house stood open, the -machines glimmering behind a wide demilune of chairs holding a motley -assemblage of men. Further along, from above, came the shuffle of -dancing feet, the thin, wiry wail of violins. At the corners groups of -youths congregated, obstructing the passerby, smirking and indulging in -sudden, stridulous hursts of laughter. - -The sky was infinitely remote, intensely, tenderly blue, the stars white -as milk; from the immediately surrounding countryside came the scented -breaths of early summer--the trailing sweetness of locust blooms, of -hidden hedges of honeysuckle, of June roses, and all the pungent aroma -of growing grasses, leaves, of fragile and momentary flowers. - -Anthony made his way brusquely through the throng, nodding shortly to -the countless salutations that marked his progress. The youths all knew -him, and the majority of the men; women stopped in their sharp haggling -to smile at him; garlands of girls gay in muslins "Mistered" him with -pretty propriety, or followed him more boldly over their shoulders with -inviting eyes. - -He impatiently disregarded his facile popularity: the tumult within him -settled into a dull, unreasoning anger against the universe at large. He -still owed Doctor Allhop four dollars and seventy cents; he had told -the Doctor that he would pay to-morrow; and he would have to go to his -father. The latter was a rigorously just man, Anthony gladly recognized, -the money would be instantly forthcoming; but he was not anxious to -recall the deficiencies of his present position to his father just then. -He had passed twenty, and--beyond his ability to cause a baseball to -travel in certain unexpected tangents, and a limited comprehension of -the conduct of automobiles--he was totally without assets, and without -any light on the horizon. - -He had been willing to work, he reminded himself resentfully, but bad -luck had overtaken him at every turn. The venture before the machine -shop--a scheme of squabs, the profits of which, calculated from an -advertisement, soared with the birthrate of those prolific birds, had -been ruined by rats. The few occasions when he had neglected to feed the -pigeons, despite the frank and censorious opinion of the family, had -had little or nothing to do with that misfortune. And, before that, -his kennel of rabbit dogs had met with an untimely fate when a favorite -bitch had gone mad, and a careful commonwealth had decreed the death -of the others. If his mother could but be won from the negative she had -placed upon baseball as a professional occupation, he might easily rise -through the minor leagues to a prideful position in the ranks of the -national pastime--"Lonnie This" was paid fourteen hundred yearly for -his prowess with the leather sphere, "Hans That's" removal from one to -another club had involved thousands of dollars. - -He heard his name pronounced in a peremptory manner, and stopped to -see the relative whose automobile had been placed in his care cross the -street. - -"What in the name of the Lord have you young dunces done to my car?" the -older man demanded. - -"We have been trying to locate that grinding," Anthony told him in as -conciliatory manner as he could assume. - -"Well," the other proceeded angrily, "you have ruined it this time; the -gears slid around like a plate of ice cream." - -"It was nothing but a pile of junk when we took it," Tony exploded; "why -don't you loosen up and get a real car?" - -"I took it to Feedler's. You can send me a bill to-morrow." - -"There will be no bill. I'm sorry you were not satisfied, Sam." - -"You are the most shiftless young dog in the county," the other told him -in kindlier tones; "why don't you take hold of something, Anthony?" - -Anthony swung on his heel and abruptly departed. He had taken hold, he -thought hotly, times without number, but everything broke in his grasp. - -The stores on Bay Street grew more infrequent, the rank of monotonous -brick dwellings closed up, family groups occupied the steps that led to -the open doors. The crowd grew less, dwindling to a few aimless couples, -solitary pedestrians. He soon stopped, before his home. Opposite the -gaunt skeleton of a building operation rose blackly against the pale -stars. The aged lindens above him, lushly leaved, cast an intenser -gloom, filled with the warm, musty odor of the sluiced pavement, about -the white marble steps. The hall, open before him, was a cavern of -coolness; beyond, from the garden shut from the street by an intricate, -rusting iron fence, he heard the deliberate tones of his sister Ellie. -Evidently there was a visitor, and he entered the hall noiselessly, -intent upon passing without notice to his room above. But Ellie had -been watching for him, and called before he had reached the foot of the -stairs. - - - - -IV - -HE made his way diffidently through a long window to the lawn; where -he saw his sister, a glimmering, whitish shape in the heavily overgrown -garden, conversing with a figure without form or detail, by a trellis -sagging beneath a verdurous weight. - -"Oh, Tony!" she called; "here's Mrs. Dreen." - -He leaned forward awkwardly, and grasped a slim, jewelled hand. "I -didn't know you were back from France," he told the indistinct woman -before him. - -"But you read that Mr. Dreen had resigned the consulship at Lyons," a -delicate, rounded voice rejoined, "and you should have guessed that we -would come home to Ellerton. My dear Ellie," she turned to the girl, -"you have no idea how delighted James is at being here once more. He has -given the farmer notice, and insists that he is going to cultivate his -own acres. He was up this morning at six; fancy, after France and -his late _djeuner._ And Eliza adores it; she spends the day with a -gardener, planning flowerbeds." - -Anthony slipped into an easy posture on the thick, damp sod. Although -he had not seen Mrs. James Dreen since his childhood, when she had -accompanied her husband abroad to a consular post, he still retained -a pleasant memory of her magnetic and precise charm, the memory of her -harmonious personality, the beauty of her apparel and rings. - -"How is Eliza?" he asked politely, and with no inward interest; "she -must be a regular beauty by now." - -"No," Mrs. Dreen returned crisply, "she is not particularly goodlooking, -but she has always told me the truth. Eliza is a dear." Anthony lit a -cigarette, and flipped the match in a minute gold arc, extinguished in -the night. - -"I am decidedly uneasy about Eliza though," she continued to Ellie; "to -tell the truth, I am not sure how she will take over here. She is a -serious child; I would say temperamental, but that's such an impossible -word. She is absolutely and transparently honest and outspoken--it's -_ghastly_ at times. The most unworldly person alive; with her thought -and action are one, and often as not her thoughts are appalling. All -that, you know, doesn't spell wisdom for a girl." - -"Yet James and I couldn't bear to... make her harder. A great deal of -care... If she is my daughter, Ellie, she is exquisite--so sensitive, -sympathetic..." - -Anthony, absorbed in the misfortune that had overtaken the machine shop, -the impending, inevitable interview with his father, so justly rigorous, -hardly gathered the sense of Mrs. Dreen's discourse. Occasional phrases, -familiar and unfamiliar terms, pierced his abstraction.--"Colombin's." -"James' siatica." "Camille Marchais." Then her words, centering about a -statement that had captured his attention, became coherent, significant. - -"Only a small affair," Mrs. Dreen explained; "to introduce Eliza to -Ellerton. Nothing on a large scale until winter.... Dancing, or rather -what goes down for dancing to-day. I am asking our old intimates, and -have written a few informal cards." - -An automobile drew up smoothly before the Balls; its rear light winked -like an angry red eye through the iron fence. Mrs. Dreen rose. In the -gloom her face was girlish; there was a blur of lace at her throat, a -glimmer of emeralds. "Mind you come," she commanded Ellie. "And you too, -without fail," to Anthony. "Now that Hydrangea House is open again we -must have our friends about us. Heavens! Howard Ball's children and -mine grown up!" She moved gracefully across to a garden gate. Anthony -assisted her into the motorcar; the door closed with a snap. - -Ellie had sunk back into her chair, and was idly twisting her fingers -in the grass at her side. At her back the ivied wall of the house beyond -stirred faintly with sparrows. A misshapen moon swung apparently up from -and through the building frame opposite, and faint shadows unfolded on -the grass. Anthony flung himself moodily by his sister. - -"Sam's taken his car from us," he informed her; "that will about shut up -the shop." - -"Then perhaps you will bring back the screwdrivers." - -"To-morrow." - -"What are you going to do, Tony?" - -"Tell me." - -"A big strong fellow... there mast be something." - -"Mother won't let me play ball in the leagues." - -"Perhaps she will; we'll talk to her; it's better than nothing." - -"I broke a box of rotten perfume at the drugstore, and owe the Doctor -four seventy." - -"It's too bad--father is never free from little worries; you are -always getting into difficulties. You are different from other boys, -Anthony--there don't seem to be any place in life for you; or you don't -make a place, I can't tell which. You have no constructive sense, and no -feeling of responsibility. What do you want to do with yourself?" - -"I don't know, Ellie, honestly," he confessed. "I try like the devil, -make a thousand resolutions, and then--I go off fishing. Or if I don't -things go to the rats just the same." - -"Well," she rose, "I'm going up. Don't bother father about that money, -I'll let you have it. It's perfectly useless to tell you to return it." - -"I swear you will get it next week," he proclaimed gratefully. "The -baseball association owes me for two games." - -"Haven't you promised it?" - -"That's so!" he exclaimed ruefully. She laughed and disappeared into the -house. - - - - -V - -A BLACK depression settled over him; life appeared a huge conspiracy -against his success, his happiness. The future, propounded by Ellie, was -suddenly stripped of all glamor, denuded of all optimistic dreams; he -passed through one of those dismaying periods when the world, himself, -his pretentions, were revealed in the clear and pitiless light of -reality. His friends, his circumstances, his hopes, held out no promise, -no thought of pleasure. Behind him his life lay revealed as a series -of failures, before him it was plotted without security. The plan, the -order, that others saw, or said that they saw, presented to him only a -cloudy confusion. The rewards for which others struggled, aspired, which -they found indispensable, had been ever meaningless to him--to money -he never gave a thought; a society organized into calls, dancing, -incomprehensible and petty values, never rose above his horizon. - -He was happiest in the freedom of the open, the woods; in the easy -company of casual friends, black or white, kindly comment. He would -spend a day with his dogs and gun, sitting on a stump in a snowy field, -listening to the eager yelping in the distant, blue wood, shooting -a rare rabbit. Or tramping tirelessly the leafy paths of autumn. Or, -better still, swinging through the miry October swales, coonhunting -after midnight with lantern and climbers. - -But now those pleasures, in anticipated retrospect, appeared bald, -unprofitable. Prolonged indefinitely, he divined, they would pall; they -did not offer adequate material, aim, for the years. For a moment he -saw, grinning hatefully at him, the spectre of what he might become; he -passed such men, collarless and unshaven, on the street comers, flinging -them a scornful salutation. He had paid for their drinks, hearkening -negligently to their stereotyped stories, secretly gibing at their -obvious goodfellowship, their eager, tremulous smiles. They had been, in -their day, great rabbit hunters... detestable. - -The mood vanished, the present closed mercifully about him, leaving him -merely defiant. The townclock announced the hour in slow, jarring -notes. A light shone above from Ellie's room, and he heard his father's -deliberate footsteps in the hall, returning from the Ellerton Club, -where, as was his invariable nightly habit, he had played cooncan. The -moon, freed from the towering beams, was without color. - -Anthony rose, and flung away a cold, stale cigarette; the world was just -like that--stale and cold. He proceeded toward the house, when he heard -footfalls on the pavement; in the obscurity he barely made out a man and -woman, walking so closely as to be hardly distinguishably separate. They -stopped by the fence, only a few feet from where he stood concealed in -the shadows, and the man took the woman's hands in his own, bending over -her. Then, suddenly, clasping her in his arms, he covered her upturned -face with passionate kisses. With a little, frightened gasp she clung -to his shoulders. The kisses ceased. Their strained, desperate embrace -remained unbroken.--It seemed that each was the only reality for the -other in a world of unsubstantial gloom, veiled in the shifting, silvery -mist of a cold and removed planet. The woman breathed with a deep, -sobbing inspiration; and, when she spoke, Anthony realized that he was -eavesdropping, and walked swiftly and cautiously into the house. - -But the memory of that embrace; accompanied him up the stairs, into his -room. It haunted him as he lay, cool and nearly bare, on his bed. -It filled him with a profound and unreasoning melancholy, new to his -customary, unconscious animal exuberance. All at once he thought of the -redhaired girl who liked port wine; and, as he fell asleep, she stood -before him, leering slyly at the side of that other broken shape which -threatened him out of the future. - - - - -VI - -THE shed that held the machine shop and garage fronted upon an informal -lane skirting the verdurous border of the town. Beyond the fence -opposite a broad pasturage dipped and rose to the blackened ruins of -a considerable brick mansion, now tenanted by a provident colony of -Italians; further hill topped green hill, the orchards drawn like -silvery scarves about their shoulders, undulating to the sky. Back of -the shed ranged the red roofs and tree-tops of the town. - -When Anthony arrived at the seat of his industry the grass was flashing -with dew and the air a thrill with the buoyant piping of robins. He -found the door open, and Alfred Craik awaiting him. - -"She's gone," Alfred informed him. - -"Sam told me last night; it was your infernal tinkering... you can't let -a machine alone," Anthony dropped beside the other on the door sill. - -"Could we get another car, do you think?" Alfred demanded; "I had almost -finished a humming experiment on Sam's." - -"This garage is closed," Anthony pronounced; "it's out of existence. The -family are yelping for the screwdrivers. What do we owe?" - -"Three ninety to Feedler for 'gas,' and a month's rent." - -"We're bankrupt," the other immediately declared. He rose, and proceeded -to collect the tools that littered the floor; then he removed the sign, -"Ball and Craik. Machine Shop and Garage.", from the door, and the shed -relapsed into its nondescript, somnolent decay. - -"There's a game with Honeydale to-day," Anthony resumed his seat; "I'm -to pitch that, and another Saturday; and, hear me, boy, I need the -money." - -Alfred gazed over the orchards, beyond the hills, into the sky, and made -no answer. It was evident that he was lost in a vision of gloriously -disrupted machinery. His silence spread to Anthony, who settled back -with a cigarette into the drowsy stillness. The minutes passed, hovering -like bees, and merged into an hour. They could hear a horse champing in -the pasture; the wail of an Italian infant came to them thinly across -the green; behind them sounded mellow the tin horn of the shad vendor. - -Anthony roused himself reluctantly, recalling the debt he had to -discharge at the drugstore. Elbe's crisp five dollar bill lay in his -pocket. "Later," he nodded, and made his way over the shady brick -pavements, through the cool perspective of maple-lined streets, where -summer dresses fluttered in spots of subdued, bright color, to Doctor -Allhop's. The Doctor was absent, and Anthony tendered the money, with a -short explanation, to the clerk. The latter smartly rang the amount on -the cash register, and placed thirty cents on the counter. - -"Two packs of Dulcinas," Anthony required, and dropped the cigarettes -into his pocket. He made his way in a leisurely fashion toward home and -the midday meal. At the table his mother's keen grey eyes regarded him -with affectionate concern. "How do you feel, Tony?" she asked. "You were -coughing last night... take such wretched care of yourself--" His father -glanced up from the half-masted sheet of the Ellerton _Bugle_. He was a -spare man, of few words, with a square-cut beard about the lower part -of an austere countenance. "What's the matter with him?" he demanded -crisply. - -"Nothing," Anthony hastily protested; "you ought to know mother." - -After lunch he extended himself smoking on the horsehair sofa in the -front room. It was a spacious chamber, with a polished floor, and -well-worn, comfortable chairs; in a corner a lacquered table bore old -blue Canton china; by the door a jar of roses dropped their pink petals; -over the fireplace a tall mirror held all in silvery replica. - -"Thirty cents, please," Ellie demanded; "I must get some stamps." - -A wave of conscious guilt, angry self condemnation, swept over him. "I'm -sorry, Ellie," he admitted; "I haven't got it." - -She stood regarding him for a moment with cold disapproval. She was a -slender woman, past thirty, with dark, regular features and tranquil -eyes; carelessly dressed, her hair slipped over her shoulder in a cool -plait. - -"I am sorry," he repeated, "I didn't think." - -"But it wasn't yours." - -"You'll get every pretty penny of it." He rose and in orderly discretion -sought his room, where he changed into his worn, grey playing flannels. - - - - -VII - -A HIGH board fence enclosed the grounds of the Ellerton Baseball -Association; over one side rose the rude scaffolding of a grandstand, -protected from sun and rain by a covering of tarred planks; a circular -opening by a narrow entrance framed the ticket seller; while around the -base of the fence, located convenient to a small boy's eye, ran a -girdle of unnatural knotholes, highly improved cracks, through which an -occasional fleeting form might be observed, a segment of torn sod, and -the fence opposite. - -A shallow flood of spectators, drawn from the various quarters of the -town, converged in a dense stream at the entrance to the Grounds; -troops of girls with brightly-hued ribbands about their vivacious arms, -boisterous or superior squads of young males, alternated with their more -sober elders--shabby and dejected men, out at elbows and work, in search -of the respite of the sun and the play; baseball enthusiasts, rotund -individuals with ruddy countenances, saturnine experts with scorecards. - -Anthony observed the throng indifferently as he drew near the scene of -his repeated, past triumphs, the metal plates in his shoes grinding into -the pavement. A small procession followed him, led by a colored youth, -to whose dilapidated garments clung the unmistakable straws and aroma of -the stable, bearing aloft Anthony's glove, and "softing" it vigorously -from a natural source; a boy as round and succulent as a boiled pudding, -with Anthony's cap beneath his arm, leaving behind him a trail of peanut -shells, brought up the rear of this democratic escort. - -There was little question in Anthony's mind of his ability to triumph -that afternoon over his opponents from a near-by town; their "battery," -he told himself, was an open book to him--a slow, dropping ball here, a -speedy one across the fingers of that red-haired fielder who habitually -flinched... and yet he wished that it had not been so hot. He thought -of the game without particular pleasure; he was conscious of a lack of -energy; his thoughts, occupied with Elli's patent contempt, stung him -waspishly. - -A throng of players and hangerson filled the contracted dressing -quarters beneath the grandstand, and he was instantly surrounded by -vociferous familiars. The captain of the Ellerton team drew him aside, -and tersely outlined a policy of play, awaiting his opinion. Anthony -nodded gravely: suddenly he found the other's earnestness a little -absurd--the fate of a nation appeared to color his accents, to hang upon -the result of his decision. "Sure," he said absently, "keep the field -in; they won't hit me." - -The other regarded him with a slight frown. "Hate yourself to-day, don't -you?" he remarked. "Lay that crowd cold on the plate, though," he added; -"there's a man here from the major league to look you over. Hinkle told -my old man." - -A quickening of interest took possession of Anthony; they had heard of -him then in the cities, they had discovered him worthy of the journey to -Ellerton, of investigation. A vision of his name acclaimed from coast to -coast, his picture in the playing garb of a famous organization filling -the Sunday sheets, occupied his mind as he turned toward the field. The -captain called mysteriously, "Don't get patted up with any purple stuff -handed you before the game." - -The opposing team, widely scattered, were warming; a pitcher, assuming -the attitudes of an agonising cramp, was indulging in a preliminary -practice; the ball sped with a dull, regular thud into the catcher's -mit. A ball was tossed to Anthony, a team mate backed against the fence, -and, raising his hands on high, he apparently overcame all the natural -laws of flight. He was conscious of Hinkle, prosperous proprietor of the -Ellerton Pool Parlor, at his back with a stranger, an ungainly man, -close lipped, keen of vision. There were intimations of approval. "A -fine wing," the stranger said. "He's got 'em all," Hinkle declared. -"Hundreds of lads can pitch a good game," the other told him, "now and -again, they are amatoors. One in a thousand, in ten thousand, can play -ball all the time; they're professionals; they're worth money... I want -to see him act..." they moved away. - -The players were called in from the field, the captains bent over a -tossed coin; and, first to bat, the Ellerton team ranged itself on -benches. Then, as the catcher was drawing on his mask, Hinkle and -another familiar town figure, who dedicated his days to speeding weedy -horses in red flannel anklets from a precarious wire vehicle, stepped -forward from the grandstand. "Mr. Anthony Ball!" Hinkle called. A -sudden, tense silence enveloped the spectators, the players stopped -curiously. Anthony turned with mingled reluctance and surprise. -Something shone in Hinkle's hand: he saw that it was a watch. "As a -testimonial from your Ellerton friends," the other commenced loudly. -Anthony's confused mind lost part of the short oration which followed -"... recognition of your sportsmanship and skill... happy disposition. -The good fame of the Ellerton Baseball team... predict great future on -the national diamond." - -A storm of applause from the grandstand rippled away in opposite -directions along the line sitting by the fence; boys with their mouths -full of fingers whistled incredibly. Hinkle held out the watch, but -Anthony's eyes were fixed upon the ground. He shook the substantial mark -of Ellerton's approval, so that the ornate fob glittered in the sun, -but Anthony's arms remained motionless at his sides. "Take it, you -leatherkop," a voice whispered fiercely in his ear. 'And with a start, -he awkwardly grasped the gift. "Thank you," he muttered, his voice -inaudible five yards away. He wished with passionate resentment that the -fiend who was yelling "speech!" would drop dead. He glanced up, and the -sight of all those excited, kindly faces deepened his confusion until -it rose in a lump in his throat, blurred his vision, in an idiotic, -childish manner. "Ah, _call_ the game, can't you," he urged over his -shoulder. - -The first half inning was soon over, without incident; and, as Anthony -walked to the pitcher's "box," the necessity to surpass all previous -efforts was impressed upon him by the watch, by the presence of that -spectator from a major league who had come to see him "act." He wished -again, in a passing irritation, that it had not been so hot. Behind the -batter he could see the countenance of "Kag" Lippit staring through the -wires of his mask. "Kag" executed a cabalistic signal with his left arm, -and Anthony pitched. The umpire hoarsely informed the world at large -that it had been a strike. A blast of derisive catcalls arose from the -Ellerton partisans; another strike, shriller catcalls, and the batter -retired after a third ineffectual lunge amid a tempest of banter. - -The second batter hit a feeble fly negligently attached by the third -baseman, who "put it over to first" in the exuberance of his contempt. -The third Anthony disposed of with equal brevity. - -He next faced the pitcher, and, succumbing to the pressure of -extraordinary events, he swung the bat with a tremendous effort, and the -flattened ball described a wide arc into the ready palms of the right -fielder. "You're _Out!_" the umpire vociferated. The uncritical portion -of the spectators voiced their pleasure in the homeric length of the -hit, but the captain was contemptuously cold as Anthony returned to the -bench. "The highschool hero," he remarked; "little Willie the Wallop. If -you don't bat to the game," he added in a different tone, "if you were -Eddie Plank I'd bench you." - -That inning the Ellerton team scored a run: a youth hurtling headlong -through the dust pressed his cheek affectionately upon the dingy square -of marble dignified by the title of home, while a second hammered him -violently in the groin with the ball; one chorus shrieked, "out by -a block!" another, "safe! safe!" he was "safe as safe!" the girls -declared. The umpire's voice rose authoritatively above the tumult. -"Play ball! he's safe!" - -Anthony pitched that inning faultlessly; never had ball obeyed him so -absolutely; it dropped, swung to the right, to the left, revolved or -sped dead. The batters faded away like ice cream at a church supper. As -he came in from the "box" the close-lipped stranger strode forward and -grasped his shoulder. "I want to see you after the game," he declared; -"don't sign up with no one else. I'm from--" he whispered his persuasive -source in Anthony's ear. The captain commended him pithily. "He's got -'em all," Hinkle proclaimed to the assembled throng. - -When Anthony batted next it was with calculated nicety; he drove the -ball between shortstop and second base, and, by dint of hard running, -achieved a rapturously acclaimed "two bagger." The captain then merely -tapped the ball--breathlessly it was described as a "sacrifice"--and -Anthony moved to the third base, and a succeeding hit sent him "home." -Another run was added to the Ellerton score, it now stood three to -nothing in their favor, before Anthony returned to the dusty depression -from which he pitched. - -He was suddenly and unaccountably tired; the cursed heat was worse than -ever, he thought, wiping a wet palm on his grimy leg; above him the sky -was an unbroken, blazing expanse of blue; short, sharp shadows shifted -under the feet of the tense players; in the shade of the grandstand the -dresses, mostly white, showed here and there a vivid note of yellow -and violet, the crisp note of crimson. The throbbing song of a -thrush floated from a far hedge... it stirred him with a new unrest, -dissatisfaction... "Kag" looked like a damned fool grimacing at him -through the wire mask--exactly like a monkey in a cage. The umpire in -his inflated protector, crouching in a position of rigorous attention, -resembled a turtle. He pitched, and a spurt of dust rose a yard before -the plate. "Ball one!" That wouldn't do, he told himself, recalling the -substantially expressed confidence, esteem, of Ellerton. The captain's -sibilant "steady" was like the flick of a whip. With an effort which -taxed his every resource he marshalled his relaxed muscles into an -aching endeavor, centred his unstable thoughts upon the exigencies of -the play, and retired the batter before him. But he struck the next -upon the arm, sending him, nursing the bruise, to first base. He saw -the captain grimly wave the outfielders farther back; and, determined, -resentful, he struck out in machinelike order the remaining batters. But -he was unconscionably weary; his arm felt as though he had been pitching -for a week, a month; and he dropped limp and surly upon the sod at a -distance from the players' bench. - -He batted once more, but a third "out" on the bases saved him from the -fluke which, he had been certain, must inevitably follow. As he stood -with the ball in his hand, facing the batter, he was conscious of an air -of uncertainty spreading like a contagion through the Ellerton team; -he recognized that it radiated from himself--his lack of confidence -magnified to a promised panic. The centre fielder fumbled a fly directly -in his hands; there was a shout from Ellerton's opponents, silence in -the ranks of Ellerton. - -Anthony pitched with a tremendous effort, his arm felt brittle; it felt -as though it was made of glass, and would break off. He could put no -speed into the ball, his fingers seemed swollen, he was unable to grip -it properly, control its direction. The red-haired player whom he had -despised faced him, he who habitually flinched, and Anthony essayed to -drive the ball across his fingers. The bat swung with a vicious crack -upon the leather sphere, a fielder ran vainly back, back.... - -The runner passed first base, and, wildly urged by a small but -adequately vocal group of wellwishers, scorned second base, repudiated -third, from which another player tallied a run, and loafed magnificently -"home." - -From the fence some one called to Anthony, "what time is it?" and -achieved a huge success among the opposition. His captain besought him -desperately to "come back. Where's your pep' went? you're pitching like -a dead man!" Confusion fell upon the team in the field, and, in its -train, a series of blunders which cost five runs. After the inning -Anthony stood with a lowered, moody countenance. "You're out of this -game," the captain shot at him; "go home and play with mother and the -girls." - -He left the field under a dropping fire of witticisms, feebly stemmed by -half-hearted applause; Hinkle frowned heavily at him; the man from the -major league had gone. Anthony proceeded directly through the gate -and over the street toward home. The taste of profound Humiliation, of -failure, was bitter in his mouth, that failure which seemed to lie at -the heart of everything he attempted, which seemed to follow him like -his shadow, like the malicious influence of a powerful spite, an enmity -personal and unrelenting. The sun centred its heat upon his bared head -with an especial fervor; the watch, thrust hastily in a pocket, swung -against his leg mockingly; the abrupt departure of that keeneyed -spectator added its hurt to his self pride. - - - - -VIII - -HE maintained a surly silence throughout dinner; but later, on -discovering a dress shirt laid in readiness on his bed, and recalling -the purport of Mrs. James Dreen's call, he announced on the crest of an -overwhelming exasperation that he would go to no condemmed dance. "Ellie -can't go alone," his mother told him from the landing below; "and do -hurry, Tony, she's almost dressed." The flaring gas jet seemed to coat -his room with a heavy yellow dust; the night came in at the window as -thickly purple as though it had been paint squeezed from a tube. He -slowly assembled his formal clothes. An extended search failed to reveal -the whereabouts of his studs, and he pressed into service the bone -buttons inserted by the laundry. The shirt was intolerably hot and -uncomfortable, his trousers tight, a white waistcoat badly shrunken; -but a collar with a frayed and iron-like edge the crowning misery. When, -finally, he was garbed, he felt as though he had been compressed into an -iron boiler; a stream of perspiration coursed down the exact middle -of his back; his tie hung in a limp knot. Fiery epithets escaped at -frequent intervals. - -On the contrary, Ellie was delightfully cool, orderly; she waved a lacy -fan in her long, delicate fingers. The public vehicle engaged to convey -them to the Dreens, a mile or more beyond the town, drew up at the door -with a clatter of hoofs. It was an aged hack, with complaining joints, -and a loose iron tire. A musty smell rose from the threadbare cushions, -the rotting leather. The horse's hoofs were now muffled in the dusty -country road; shadowy hedges were passed, dim, white farmhouses with -orange, lighted windows, the horizon outspread in a shimmering blue -circle under the swimming stars. - -Anthony smoked a cigarette in acute misery; already his neck felt -scraped raw; a button flew jubilantly from his waistcoat; and his -improvised studs failed in their appointed task. "I'm having the hell of -a good time, I am," he told Ellie satirically. - -They turned between stone pillars supporting a lighted grill, advanced -over a winding driveway to Hydrangea House, where they waited for -a motor to move from the brilliantly-illuminated portal. A servant -directed Anthony to the second floor, where he found a bedchamber -temporarily in service as coat room, occupied by a number of _men_. -Most of them he knew, and nodded shortly in return to their careless -salutations. They belonged to a variety that he at once envied and -disdained: here they were thoroughly at ease, their ties irreproachable, -their shirts without a crease. Drawing on snowy gloves they discussed -women and society with fluency, gusto, emanating an atmosphere of -cocktails. - -Anthony produced his gloves in a crumpled wad from the tail of his coat -and fought his way into them. He felt rather than saw the restrained -amusement of his fellows. They spoke to him gravely, punctiliously -proffered cigarettes; yet, in a vague but unmistakable manner, he was -made to feel that he was outside their interests, ignorant of their -shibboleth. In the matter of collars alone he was as a Patagonian to -them. He recalled with regret the easy familiarity, the comfort, of -Doctor Allhop's drugstore. - -Then, throwing aside cigarettes, patting waistcoats into position, they -streamed down to the music. The others found partners immediately, and -swung into a onestep, but Anthony stood irresolutely in the doorway. -The girls disconcerted him with their formal smiles, their bright, ready -chatter. But Ellie rescued him, drawing him into the dance. After which -he sought the porch that, looped with rosevines, crossed the face of the -long, low house. There, with his back against a pillar, he found a cool -spot upon the tiles, and sought such comfort as he could command. - -Long windows opening from the ballroom were now segments of whirling -color, now filled with gay streams, ebbing and returning. Fragmentary -conversation, glowing cigarettes, surrounded him. Behind the pillar at -his back a girl said, softly, "please don't." - -Then he saw Ellie, obviously searching for him, and he rose. At her -side was a slim figure with a cloud of light hair. "There he is!" Ellie -exclaimed; "Eliza... my brother, Anthony." - -He saw that her eyes opened widely, and that her hair was a peculiar, -bright shade. Ginger-colored, he thought. "I made Ellie find you," she -told him; "you know, you must ask me to dance; I won't be ignored at my -own party." - -He muttered awkwardly some conventional period, annoyed at having -been found, intensely uncomfortable. In a minute more he found himself -dancing, conscious of his limp tie, his crumpled and gaping shirt. He -swung his partner heavily across the room, colliding with a couple -that he shouldered angrily aside. The animation swiftly died from Eliza -Dreen's countenance; she grew indifferent, then cold. And, when the -music ceased, she escaped with a palpable sigh of relief. He was -savagely mopping his heated face on the porch when, at his elbow, a -clear voice captured his attention. "A dreadful person," it said, "... -like dancing with a locomotive... A regular Apache." - -He turned and saw that it was Eliza Dreen, gathering from her swift -concern both that he had been the subject of her discourse, and that she -was aware that he had overheard it. Back at his post at the pillar -he promised himself grimly that never again would he be found in such -specified company. He stripped his gloves from his wet palms, and flung -them far across the lawn, then recklessly eased his collar. There was -a sudden whisper of skirts behind him, when Eliza seated herself on the -porch's edge, at his side. - - - - -IX - -I AM a loathsome person at times," she informed him; "and to-night I -was rather worse than usual." - -"I do dance like a--locomotive," involuntarily. - -"It doesn't matter how you dance," she proceeded, "and you mustn't -repeat it, it isn't generous." Suddenly she laughed uncontrollably. -"You looked so uncomfortable... your collar," it was lost in a bubbling, -silvery peal. "Forgive me," she gasped. - -"I don't mind," he assured her. All at once he didn't; the sting had -vanished from his pride; he smiled. He saw that she wore a honey-colored -dress, with a strand of pearls about her slim throat, and that her feet, -in satin, were even smaller than Ellie's. Her hair resembled more a -crown of light than the customary adornment. "I didn't want to come," he -confided: "I hate, well--going out, dancing." - -"It doesn't suit you," she admitted frankly; "you are so splendidly -bronzed and strong; you need," she paused, "lots of room." - -For this Anthony had no adequate reply. "I have this with some one," -she declared as the music recommenced, "but I hope they don't find me; -I hate it for the moment... I'll show you a place; it's very wicked of -me." She rose and, waving him to follow, slipped over the grass. Beyond -the house she stopped in the shadowy vista of a pergola; vines shut out -the stars, walled them in a virid, still gloom. She sank on a low stone -bench, and he found the grass at her feet. A mantle of fine romance -descended upon his shoulders, of subtile adventure, prodigious daring. -Immaculate men, pearl-studded, were searching for her, and she -had hidden herself from them with him. A new and pleasant sense of -importance warmed him, flattered his self-esteem. He felt strangely at -ease, and sat in silent contentment. The faint sound of violins, a burst -of distant laughter, floated to him. - -"It seems as if the world were rushing on, out there, without us," Eliza -finally broke the silence, "as if they were keeping a furious pace, -while we sat in some everlasting, quiet wood, like Fontainebleau. Don't -you adore nature?" - -"I knock about a lot outside," he admitted cautiously, "often I stay out -all night, by the Wingohocking Creek. There's a sort of cave where -you can hear the falls, and the owls hunting about. I cook things in -clay--fish, chickens," he paused abruptly at the latter item, recalling -the questionable source of his supply. "In winter I shoot rabbits with -Bert Woods, he's a barber, and Doctor Allhop, you know--the druggist." - -"I am sure that your friends are very nice," she promptly assured him. - -"Bert's crazy about girls," he remarked, half contemptuously. - -"And you... don't care for them?" - -"I don't know anything about them," he admitted with an abrupt, -unconscious honesty. - -"But there must have been--there must be--one," she persisted. - -She leaned forward, and he met her gaze with unwavering candor. "Not -that many," he returned. - -"It would be wonderful to care for just one person, _always_," she -continued intently: "I had a dream when I was quite young.... I dreamed -that a marvellous happiness would follow a constancy like that. Father -rather laughs at me, and quotes Shakespeare--the 'one foot on land and -one on shore' thing. Perhaps, but it's too bad." - -Anthony gravely considered this new idea in relation to his own, -hitherto lamented, lack of experience. It dawned upon him that the idea -of manly success he had cherished would appear distasteful to Eliza -Dreen. She had indirectly extolled the very thing of which he had been -secretly ashamed. He thought in conjunction with her of the familiar -group at the drugstore, and in this light the latter retreat suffered -a disconcerting change: Thomas Meredith appeared sly and trivial, and -unhealthy; Williams an empty braggard; Craik ineffectual, untidy. He -surveyed himself without enthusiasm. - -"You are different from any one I ever knew," he told her. - -"Oh, there are millions of me," she returned; "but you are different. -I didn't like you for a sou at first; but there is something about you -like--like a very clear spring of water. That's idiotic, but it's what -I mean. There is an early morning feeling about you. I am very sensitive -to people," she informed him, "some make me uncomfortable directly they -come into the room. There was a cur at Etretat I perfectly detested, -and he turned out to be an awful person." - -Her name was called unmistakably across the lawn, and she rose. "They're -all furious," she announced, without moving further. Her face was pale, -immaterial, in the gloom; her wide eyes dark, disturbing. A minute gold -watch on her wrist ticked faintly, and--it seemed to Anthony--in furious -haste. Something within him, struggling inarticulately for expression, -hurt; an oppressive emotion beat upon his heart. He uttered a period -about seeing her again. - -"Some day you may show me the place where the fall sounds and the owls -hunt. No, don't come with me." She turned and fled. - -An unreasoning conviction seized Anthony that a momentous occasion had -overtaken him; he was unable to distinguish its features, discover it -grave or gay; but, wrapped in the impenetrable veil of the future, -it enveloped and permeated him, swept in the circle of his blood's -circulation, vibrated in the cords of his sensitive ganglia. He returned -slowly to the house: the brilliantly-lit, dancing figures seemed the -mere figments of a febrile dream; but the music apparently throbbed -within his brain. - -Ellie's cool voice recreated his actual sphere. He found their hack, -the driver slumbering doubled on the seat. The latter rose stiffly, -and stirred his drowsing animal into a stumbling walk. Beyond the -illuminated entrance to Hydrangea House the countryside lay profoundly -dim to where the horizon flared with the pale reflection of distant -lightning. - -"Eliza's a sweet," Ellie pronounced. Anthony brooded without reply upon -his opinion. The iron-like collar had capitulated, and rested limply -upon his limp shirt; at the sacrifice of a second button his waistcoat -offered complete comfort. "I am going to get a new dress suit," he -announced decisively. Ellie smiled with sisterly malice. "Eliza is a -sweet," she reiterated. - -"You go to thunder!" he retorted. But, "she's wonderful," he admitted, -and--out of his conclusive experience, "there is not another girl like -her in all the world." - -"I'll agitate for the new suit," Ellie promised. - - - - -X - -THE following morning he reorganized his neckties, left a pair of white -flannels to be pressed at the tailor's; then, his shoulders swathed in a -crisp, sprigged muslin, sat circumspectly under the brisk shears of Bert -Woods. Bert hovered above him, and commented on yesterday's fiasco. "It -comes to the best of 'em," Bert assured him: "'member how Ollie Stitcher -fell down in the world's series at Chicago." He recited, for Anthony's -comfort, the names of eminent pitchers who had "fell down" when every -necessity demanded that they should have remained splendidly erect. - -His defeat still rankled in Anthony's mind, but the bitterness had -vanished, the sting salved by that other memory of the impulsive charm -of Eliza Dreen. He recalled all that she had said to him; her words, -thoughtfully considered, were just those employed by humdrum individuals -in their commonplace discourses; but, spoken by her, they were a -thrill with an especial, a significant, importance and beauty. It was -inevitable that she should have dreamed things immaculate, rare; things -like... white flowers. - -"Shampoo?" Bert inquired absent-mindedly. - -"_And_ singed, and curled, and sprinkled with violets," Anthony promptly -returned. With a flourish, Bert swept aside the muslin folds. - -Then, in the pursuit of a neglected duty, he crossed the town to a -quiet corner, occupied by a small dwelling built of smooth, green stone, -crowned with a fantastic and dingy froth of wood. A shallow, untended -garden was choked with weeds and bushes, sprawling upward against -closely-shuttered windows. He had not been to see Mrs. Bosbyshell for -two weeks, he realized, with a stir of mild self-reproach. He was aware -that his visits to that solitary and eccentric old woman formed her -sole contact with a world she regarded with an increasing, unbalanced -suspicion. - -A minute or more after his knock--the bell handle was missing--a shutter -shifted a fraction, upon which he was admitted to a narrow, dark hall, -and the door bolted sharply behind him. A short, stout woman, in -a formless wrap of grotesquely gorgeous design, faced him with a -quivering, apprehensive countenance and prodigiously bright eyes. Her -scant, yellowish-white hair was gathered aloft in a knot that slipped -oddly from side to side; and, as she walked, shabby Juliet slippers -loudly slapped the bare floor. - -"Do you want some wood brought in?" Anthony inquired; "and how does the -washer I put on the hot water spigot work?" - -"A little wood, if you please; and the spigot's good as new." She sat on -a chair, lifting a harassed gaze to his serious solicitation. "I've -had a dreadful time since you were here last--an evilish-appearing man -knocked and knocked, at one door and again at another." - -Her voice sank to a shrill whisper, "he was after the money." She nodded -so vigorously that the knot fell in a straggling whisp across her eyes. -"Cousin Alonzo sent him." - -"Your cousin Alonzo has been dead ten years," he interposed patiently, -going once more over that familiar ground. "Probably it was a man -wanting to sell gas stoves." - -"You don't know Alonzo," she persisted, unconvinced; "I should have to -see his corp'. He knows I've a comfortable sum put by, and's hard after -it for his wenching and such practices: small good, or bad, he'll get of -it when my time comes." - -He passed through the hall to the kitchen, and, unchaining the back -door, brought a basket of cut wood from a shed, and piled it beside the -stove. Mrs. Bosbyshell inspected with a critical eye the fastening of -the door. There was a swollen window sash to release above, a mattress -to turn, when he was waved ceremoniously into a formal, darkened -chamber. The musty spice of rose pot-pourri lingered in the flat air; -old mahogany--rush bottomed chairs, flute-legged table, a highboy and -Dutch clock--glimmered about the walls. A marble topped stand bore -orderly volumes in maroon and primrose morocco, the top one entitled, -"The Gentlewoman's Garland. A Gift Book." - -From a triangular cupboard, she produced a decanter with a carved design -of bees and cobalt clover, and a plate of crumbling currant cake. "A -sup of dandelion cordial," she announced, "a bite of sweet. Growing boys -must be fed." - -She sat, and with patent satisfaction watched Anthony consume the ropy -syrup and cake. - -"I met a girl last night," he told her intimately; "she had hair -like--like a roman candle." - -"Did you burn your heart up in it?" - -"She told me that I was like the early morning," he confided with a -rush. - -Mrs. Bosbyshell nodded her approval. - -"An understandable remark; exactly what I should have said fifty years -ago; I didn't know the girls of to-day had it in 'em. You've got a good -heart, Anthony," she enunciated. Anthony shuffled his feet. "A good -heart is a rare thing to find in the young. But I misdoubt, in a -world of mammon, you'll pay for it dear; I'm afraid you will never be -successful, so called. It's selling men that that success is got, and -buying women, and it's never in you to do those. _You_ wouldn't wish -an old woman gone for the sum she'd laid aside." Her fancies had been -wilder than usual, he concluded, as the holt of the door at his hack -slid home. Alonzo and her money, one he considered as actual, as -imminent, as the other, occupied to the exclusion of all else her -dimming brain. He had hoped to converse with her more fully on the -inexhaustible subject of Eliza Dreen, but her vagaries had interrupted -him continuously. He decided that she was an antiquated bore, but made a -mental note to return before the store of wood was consumed. - - - - -XI - -IN the evening he stopped from force of habit at Doctor Allhop's -drugstore: the familiar group was assembled behind the screen at the -rear, the conversation flowed in the old channels. Anthony lounged and -listened, but his attention continually wandered--he heard other, -more musical, tones; his vision was filled with a candid face and -widely-opened eyes in the green gloom of a pergola. He passed out by the -bevy at the sodawater fountain to the street. - -In the artificial day of the electric lights the early summer foliage -was as virulently green as the toy trees of a miniature ark; the sky was -a breathless vault filled with blue mists that veiled the stars; under -the locust trees the blooms were spilled odorously, whitely, on the -pavement. He walked aimlessly to the outskirts of the town. Across the -dim valley, against the hills merged into the night and sky, he could -see glimmering the low lights of Hydrangea House. It would be pleasant, -he thought, to be closer to that abode of delight; and, crossing the -road, he vaulted a fence, and descended through a tangle of aromatic -grass to the brook that threaded the meadow below. A star swam imaged -on the black, wrinkled surface of the water: it suggested vague, happy -images--Eliza was the star, and he was the brook, holding her mirrored -in his dreams. - -He passed cows, blowing softly into the sod; a flock of sheep broke -before him like an argent cloud on the heaven of the fields; and, -finally, reached the boundary of James Dreen's acres. He forced his way -through the budding hedge from which the place had its name, and, in a -cup of the lawn like a pool of brimming, fragrant shadows, sat watching -the lights of the house. - -Indistinct shapes passed the windows, each--since it might be -she--carrying to him a thrill; indistinguishable voices reached him, -the vague tones--they might be hers--chiming like bells on his straining -senses. The world, life, was so beautiful that it brought an obstruction -into his throat; he drew the back of his hand across his eyes, and, to -his surprise, found that it was wet. - -Presently, the lights sank on the lower floor and reappeared above. The -blinding whiteness of the thought of Eliza sleeping seared his brain -like a flare of powder. When the house retreated unrelieved into the -gloom he rose and slowly retraced his steps. He lit a cigarette; the -match burned with a steady flame in the stillness; but, in an unnamed -impulse, he flung both aside, and filled his lungs with the elysian June -air. - - - - -XII - -THE next afternoon, returning from the unloading of a grain car at his -father's warehouse, he discovered a smartly saddled horse fast to the -marble hitchingpost before his door. It hardly required the glance at -the silver "D" on the headstall to inform him who was within. He found -Ellie and Eliza Dreen in the corner by the Canton tea service, consuming -Pekoe and gingerbread dicky birds. Eliza nodded and smiled over her -shoulder, and resumed an animated projection of an excursion in canoes -on the Wingohocking. She wore a severe coat over white breeches and -immaculate boots with diminutive gold spurs. Beneath a flat straw hat -her hair was confined by a broad ribband low upon her neck, while a pink -stock was held in position by a gaily-checked waistcoat. - -Anthony dropped with affected ease on the sofa, and covertly studied the -delicate line of her cheek. He now recalled indignantly that Mrs. Dreen -had said Eliza was not good-looking; while her reference to Eliza's -veracity had been entirely superfluous. She turned toward him, finally, -with an engaging query. He saw across her nose a faint trail of the most -delightful freckles in the world; her eyes were blue, that amazing blue -of bachelor's buttons; while her mouth--he would have sworn this the -first time such simile had been applied to that feature--was like a -roseleaf. He made a totally inadequate reply, when Ellie rose, and, -plate in hand, vanished in quest of a fresh supply of gingerbread. A -sort of desperate, blundering courage took possession of him: - -"I have been thinking a lot about you," he told her; "last night I sat -on your grass and wondered which was your window." - -"What a silly I--we were on the porch all evening." - -"It wasn't that I wanted to talk to you so much," he tried to explain -his instinctive impulses, desires, "as just to be near you." - -"I think," she said slowly, "yes, I know--that is the prettiest thing -that has ever been said to me. I thought about you... a little; really -more about myself. I haven't recognized myself at all very lately; I -suppose it's being home again." She gazed at him candidly, critically. -"You have very unusual eyes," she remarked unexpectedly; "they are so -transparent. Haven't you _anything_ to hide?" - -"Some chicken feathers," he affirmed. He grew serious immediately. "Your -eyes are like--like--" the name of the flower so lately suggested by -her lucid vision had flown his mind. Suspenders, bachelor's suspenders, -exclusively occurred to him. "An awfully blue flower," he temporized. - -She crossed the room, and bent over the tea roses, freshly placed in the -jar by the door. "I must go," she said, her back to him; "I have been -here a terrific length of time... I thought perhaps you'd come in.... -Wasn't it shocking of me?" - -The knowledge that she had considered the possibility of seeing him -filled Anthony with incredulous joy. Then, sitting silently, gazing -fixedly at the floor, he became acutely miserable at the sudden -conviction of his worthlessness; shame prevented him from looking -at her--surely she must see that he, Anthony Ball, the unsuccessful, -without prospect, the truant from life, was an improper object for her -interest. She was so absolutely desirable, so fine. - -He recalled what she had said on the night of the dance... about -constancy: if the single devotion of his life would mean anything to -her, he thought grandiloquently, it was hers. He was considering the -possibility of telling her this when Ellie unnecessarily returned with -a replenished plate. He was grateful when neither included him in the -remarks which followed. And he speedily left the room, proceeding to -the pavement, where he stood with his palm resting on the flank of her -horse. - -In the slanting rays of the sun the street was a way of gold; when Eliza -appeared she was ringed in the molten glory. She placed her heel in his -hand, and sprang lightly into the saddle; the horse shied, there was -a clatter of hoofs, and she cantered away. Ellie stood on the steps, -graceful, unconcerned; he watched until the upright, mounted figure was -out of sight, then silently passed his sister into the house. - - - - -XIII - -HE was in his room when the familiar formula of a whistled signal -sounded from the darkening street. It was Alfred Craik, he recognized -the halt ending of the bar; he whistled like an old hinge, Anthony -thought impatiently. He made his way to the lawn, and called shortly, -over the crumbling iron fence. Alfred Craik was agog with weighty -information. - -"The circus is coming in at three-thirty tomorrow morning," he -announced. "The station agent told me... old Giller's lot on Newberry -Street. 'Member last year we had breakfast with the elephant trainer!" - -Circuses, Anthony told him in large unconcern, were for infantile minds; -they might put their circus on top the Courthouse without calling forth -the slightest notice from him; horses were no better than old cows; and -as for clowns, the ringmaster, they made him specifically ill. - -The greater part of this diatribe Alfred chose to ignore; he impatiently -besought Anthony to "come off"; and warned him strenuously against a -tardy waking. Once more in his room Anthony smiled at the other's pretty -enthusiasm. Yet at half past three he woke sharply, starting up on his -elbow as though he had been called. He heard in the distance the faint, -shrill whistle of the locomotive drawing the circus into Ellerton. -He sank back, but, with the face of Eliza radiant against the gloom, -slumber deserted him. It occurred to him that he might, after all, rise -and witness from his rarer elevation the preparations that had once -aroused in him such immature joy. - -The circus ground was an apparently inexplicable tangle of canvas and -lumber, threaded by men like unsubstantial, hurrying shadows. At the -fence corner loomed the vague bulks of elephants, heaving ceaselessly, -stamping with the dull clank of chains; a line of cages beyond was still -indistinguishable. The confusion seemed hopeless--the hasty, desperate -labor at the edges of the billowing, grey canvas, the virulent curses as -feet slipped in the torn sod, the shrill, passionate commands, resembled -an inferno of ineffectual toil for shades condemned to never-ending -labor. The tent rose slowly, hardly detached from the thin morning -gloom, and the hammering of stakes uprose with a sharp, furious energy. -A wagonload of hay creaked into the lot; a horse whinnied; and, from a -cage, sounded a longdrawn, despondent howl. The fusillade of hammering, -the ringing of boards, increased. A harried and indomitable voice -maintained an insistent grip upon the clamor. It grew lighter; pinched -features emerged, haggard individuals in haphazard garbs stood with the -sweat glistening on their blue brows. - -The elephants, tearing apart a bale of hay, appeared ancient beyond all -computation, infinitely patient, infinitely weary. Out of the sudden -crimson that stained the east a ray of sunlight flashed like a pointed, -accusing finger and rested on the garish, gilded bars and tarnished -fringe of the cages; it hit the worn and dingy fur of an aged, gaunt -lioness, the dim and bleared topaz of her eyes blinking against the -flood of day; it fell upon a pair of lean wolves trotting in a quick, -constricted circle; upon a ragged hyena with a dry and uplifted snout; -upon a lithe leopard with a glittering, green gaze of unquenchable hate. - -"Take a hold," a husky voice had urged Anthony; "help the circus men put -up the big tent, and get a free pass." In the contagion of work he had -pulled upon the hard canvas, the stiff ropes that cut like scored -iron, and held stakes to be driven into the slushy sod. Thin shoulders -strained against his own, gasping and maculate breaths assailed him. -The flesh was tom from a man's palm; another, hit a glancing blow on the -head with a mall, wandered about dazed, falling over ropes, blundering -in paths of hasty brutality. - -Anthony rested with aching muscles in the orient flood of the sun. -The tent was erected, flags fluttered gaily aloft, the posters of the -sideshow flung their startling colors abroad. A musical call floated -upward from an invisible bugle: an air of gala, of triumphant and -irresponsible pleasure, permeated the scene. "She's all right, isn't -she?" Alfred Craik demanded at his side. He nodded silently, and turned -toward home, his pulses leaping with joy at the dewy freshness of the -morning, the knowledge of Eliza--a sparkling, singing optimism drawn -from the unstained fountain of his youth. - - - - -XIV - -LATER, engaged in repairing a shelf--at a super-union scale--for his -mother, he heard the steam shriek of a calliope announcing the parade. -From a window he could see the thronged sidewalks, the crudely fantastic -figures of the clowns, enveloped in a dusty haze of light. His thoughts -withdrew from that vapid spectacle to the rapt contemplation of Eliza -Dreen. He pictured Eliza and himself in the dramatic situations which -diversified the moving pictures of his nightly attendance: he rescued -her from the wiles of Mexicans, counts, weirdly-wicked Hindoos; now -he dragged her from the chimney into which she had been bricked by -a Brotherhood of Blood; now, driving a monoplane above the hurtling -express that bore her toward a fiendish revenge, he descended to halt -the train at a river's brink while the bridge sank dynamited into the -swirling stream--"Mercy, Tony!" his mother's practical voice rent the -resplendent vision; "don't crush your greatuncle's epaulets." - -After the midday meal a minute review of the places where Eliza might -be found discovered the Ellerton Country Club to hold the greatest -possibility. Anthony was a virtual stranger to that focus of the -newer Ellerton; except for the older enthusiasts who played golf every -afternoon that it was humanly possible to remain outside it was the -stronghold of the species Anthony had encountered in the dressing room -at the Dreens' dance. The space at the back of the drugstore where he -had lounged held unbroken the elder tradition of Ellerton. There he -had cultivated a mild contempt for the studied urbanity, the formally -organized converse and games, of the Club. But as a setting for Eliza it -gained a compelling attraction. And, in his freshly-ironed flannels, he -ordered his steps toward that goal. The Club House overhung the rolling -green of the golf links; from a place of vantage he saw that Eliza was -not on the veranda; at one end a group of young men were drinking--teal -Beyond his father and three companions, followed by caddies, rose above -a hill. His father grasped a club and bent over the turf; the club -described a short arc, the ball flashed whitely through the air, and -the group trotted eagerly forward, mingling explanation, chagrin and -prediction with heated and simple sums in arithmetic. - -Then he saw Eliza... she was on the tennis court, playing with a -vigorous girl with a bare and stalwart forearm. He divined that the -latter was winning, and conceived a sweeping distaste for her flushed, -perspiring countenance and thickset ankles. "How beautiful you look!" -Eliza called, as he propped himself against the wire netting that, -overrun with honeysuckle, enclosed the courts. He watched her fleeting -form, heard her breathless exclamations, with warm stirs of delight. -When her opponent played the ball beyond her reach his dislike for that -efficiency became an obsession. The flying shadows lengthened on the -rolled, yellow surface of the court; the group on the porch emptied -their teacups and moved away; and the final set of games won by the -"beefsteak." - -Eliza slipped into a formless chocolate-colored coat: racket in hand she -smiled at him. "I'm rather done," she admitted. She hesitated, then: "I -wonder--are you doing anything?--if you would drive me home?" He assured -her upon that point with a celerity that wrought a momentary confusion -upon them. "The Meadowbrook and roan at the sheds," she directed. In the -basketlike cart they swung easily over the road toward Hydrangea House. -Checked relentlessly into a walk the roan stepped in a dainty fume. - -Eliza's countenance was as tenderly hued as the pearly haze that overlay -the far hills; faint, mauve shadows deepened the blueness of her eyes; -her mouth, slightly parted, held the fragile pink of coral; a tinge of -weariness upon her bore an infinite appeal--her relaxed, drooping body -filled him with a gusty longing to put his arms about her shoulders -and hold her secure against all fatigue, against the assaults of time -itself. - -He had never before driven such an impatient and hasty animal; at the -slightest slackening of the reins the horse broke into a sharp trot; -and, beyond doubt, he could walk faster than any other brute alive. -Already they were at the entrance to the driveway; the house appeared -to hurry forward to intercept them. Eliza pressed a button, and a man -crossed the grass to the roan's head. They descended, and she lingered -on the steps with a murmur of gratitude. "Mrs. Dreen telephoned Ranke -to meet the eight-forty," a servant in the doorway replied to Eliza's -query; "she's having dinner in town with Mr. Dreen." - -Eliza turned with a gesture of appeal. "Save me from a solitary -pudding," she petitioned Anthony; "you can go back with Ranke.... On the -porch, such fun--father detests candles." The voicing of his acceptance -he felt to be an absurd formality. "Then if you can amuse yourself," -she announced, "I'll vanish for a little... cigars in the library and -victrola in the hall." - -He crossed the sod to the porch on the other face of the house, and -sat watching the day fade from the valley below. A violet blur of smoke -overhung the chimney of the Ellerton Waterworks, printed thinly on the -sky. A sense of detachment from that familiar scene enveloped him--the -base ball field, the defunct garage, places and details, customary, -normal, retreated into the distance, it seemed into the past, gathering -upon the horizon of his thoughts as the roofs of Ellerton huddled beyond -the hills, vanishing into shadows that inexorably deepened, blotted out -the old aspects, stilled the accustomed voices, sounds. - -A servant appeared, and placed a table upon the tiles, spreading a -blanched cloth, gleaming crystal and silver. A low bowl of shadowy wood -violets was ranged in the centre, and hooded candles lighted, spilling -over the table, the flowers, a pale, auriferous pool of light in the -purpling dusk. When Eliza followed, in filmy white, she seemed half -materialized from the haunting vision of poignant beauty at the back of -his brain. She was like moonlight, still and yet disturbing, veiled in -illusion, in strange, ethereal influences that set athrill within him -emotions immaterial, potent, snowy longing, for which he had no name. - -The last plate removed, Anthony stirred his coffee in a state of dreamy -happiness. The candlelight spread a wan gold veil over Eliza's delicate -countenance, it slid over the pearls about her slim throat, and fell -upon her fragile wrists. "It's been wonderful," he pronounced solemnly. - -"I've been terribly rude," she told him, "I have hardly spoken. I have -been busy studying you." - -"There's not much to study," he disclaimed; "Mrs. Bosbyshell thinks -I'm marked for failure." In reply to her demand he gave a brief and -diffident account of that eccentric old woman. "But," Eliza discerned -among the meagre details, "she trusts you, she lets you into her house. -And you are perfect to her, of course. - -"Any one could trust you, I think. Yet you are not a particle tiresome; -most trustworthy people are so--so unexciting. But monotony is far -as possible from your vicinity. What did you do, for instance, this -morning?" He described to her the advent of the circus, the labor in -the obscurity. "I was surprised to see the old thing up," he ended: "it -seemed so hopeless at first." - -"How wonderfully poetic!" she cried. - -Until that moment poetry had occupied in his thoughts a place analogous -to tea.--In his brief passage through the last school he had been -forcibly fed with Gray's Elegy, discovering it unmitigated and sickening -rot. When now, in view of her obvious pleasure, he would have to -reconsider his judgment. - -"That blind effort," she continued, leaning forward, flushed with the -warmth of her image, "all those men struggling, building in the dark, -unable to see what they were accomplishing, or what part the others -had. And then--oh! don't you see!--the great, snowy tent in the morning -sun--a figure of the success, the reward, of all labor, all living." - -"How about the ones that loafed--didn't pull, or were drunk?" - -"For all," she insisted, "sober and drunk and shrinking. Can you think -that any supreme judgment would be cheaply material, or in need of -any of our penny abilities? do you suppose the supreme beauty has no -standard higher than those practical minds that hold out heaven as a -sort of reward for washed faces? Anthony," it was the first time she had -called him that, and it rang in his brain in a long peal of rapture, "if -there isn't a heaven for every one, there isn't any at all. You, singing -an idle song, must be as valuable as the greatest apostle to any supreme -love, or else it isn't supreme, it isn't love." - -"You are so wonderfully good," he muttered, "that you think every one -else is good too." - -"But I'm hardly a bit good," she assured him, "and I wouldn't be good -if I could--in the Christian kind of way." She gazed about with an -affectation of secretiveness, then leaned across her coffee cup. "It -would bore me horribly," she confided, "that 'other cheek' thing; -I'm not a grain humble; and I spend a criminal amount of money on -my clothes. I have even put a patch upon my cheek to be a gin and -stumbling-block to a young man." - -She had! - -He surveyed with absurd pleasure that minute black crescent on the pale -rose of her countenance. If she had been good before she was adorable -now: her confession had drawn her out of the transplendid cloud where -he had elevated her down to his side; she was infinitely more desirable, -more warmly and delightfully human. - -"I have been asking about you," she told him later, with a slight frown; -"the accounts are, well--various. I don't mind your--your friends of the -stables, Anthony; they are, what Ellerton will never learn, the careless -choice of a born aristocrat; I don't care a Tecla pearl whether you are -'a steady young man' or not. And one doesn't hear a whisper of meanness -about you anywhere. But I have an exaggerated affection for things that -are beautiful, I suppose it's a weakness, really, and ugly people or -surroundings, harsh voices even, terrify me. The thought of cruelty -makes me cold. And, since you will come into my thoughts, and smile your -funny little smile at me out of walls and other impossible places, I -should like to picture you, not in pool rooms, but on the hills that you -know so well. I should like to think of your mind echoing with the rush -of those streams, the hunting of those owls, you told me about, and not -sounding with coarse and silly and brutal words and ideas." - -"It echoes with you," he replied, "and you are more beautiful than hills -and streams." - -For a moment she held his gaze full in the blue depths of her vision; -then, with a troubled smile, evaded it. "I'm a patched jade," she -announced. - -Ranke, the servant informed them, was ready to meet the train. - -"You're going... Elbe's affair on the Wingohocking?" - -"Absolutely." She stood illusive against the saffron blur of the -candles, the sweeping hem of night. - -"I'll remember," he blundered; "whatever you would wish... you have -changed everything. The dinner was--I don't remember what it was," he -confessed; "but I remember an olive." - -He left the automobile at the edge of Ellerton, and proceeded on foot, -passing the dully-shinning bulk of the circus tent. He heard the brassy -dissonance of the band within, the monotonous thud of horses' hoofs -on the tanbark; a raucous voice rose at the entrance to the side-show -dwelling unctuously on the monstrosities to be viewed within for the -price of a dime, of a dime, a dime. He recalled the spent lioness in her -painted cage, the haggard and sick hyena, the abject trot of the wolves -to nowhere.--A sudden exhalation of hatred swept over him for the -hideous inhumanity of circuses and men. Eliza had lifted him from the -meaningless babble of trivial and hard voices into a high and immaculate -region of shining space and quietude. He didn't want to come down again, -he protested, to _this_. - - - - -XV - -ANTHONY passed the few, intervening days to the excursion on the -Wingohocking in a state of rapt absorption: his brain sounded with -every tone of Eliza's voice; she smiled at him, in riding garb, over -that delicate trail of freckles; he saw her in the misty, amber dress of -the dance; in white, illusively lit by the candles against the shadowy -veranda. Now, for the first time, day that had succeeded haphazard -to day, without relation or plan, were strung together, bound into an -intelligible whole, by the thread of romance. He must get a firm grip -upon reality, construct a solid existence out of the unsubstantial -elements of his living; but, in his new felicity, he was unable to -direct his thoughts to details inevitably sordid; he was lost in the -miracle of Eliza Dreen's mere presence; material considerations might, -must, be deferred a short while longer. - -A stainless afternoon sky overspread finally the group gathered about -covered willow baskets on the green bank of the stream. Behind them the -meadow swept level, turning back the flood of the sun with a blaze of -aureate flowers, to a silver band of birch; the upstream reach, wrinkled -and dark, was lost between tangles of wild grapes; below, with a smooth, -virid rush, the water poured and broke over rocky shallows. - -Anthony launched his canoe from a point of crystalline sand, and, -holding it against the hank, gazed covertly at Eliza. She was once more -in white, with a broad apple-green ribband about her waist: she stood -above him, slenderly poised against the sky; and she was so rare, he -thought, so ethereal, that she seemed capable of floating off into -the blue. Then he bent, hastily rearranging a cushion, for she was -descending toward him. He stepped skilfully after her into the craft, -and they drifted silently over the surface of the stream. A thrust of -the paddle, in a swirl of white bubbles, turned them about, and they -advanced steadily against the sliding current. - -The still, watery facsimile of the banks were broken into liquid blots -of emerald and bronze by the bow of the canoe. The air rose coldly from -the surface to Anthony's face; from the meadows on either hand came the -light, dry fragrance of newly cut hay; before them trees, meeting above, -formed a sombrous reach, barred with dusty gold shafts of sunlight that -sank into the clear depths. He heard behind the distant dip of paddles, -and floating voices, worlds removed. - -Eliza trailed her hand in the water. An idyllic silence folded them -which he was loath to break.... He had rolled up his sleeves, and the -muscles of his forearms swelled rhythmically under the clear, brown -skin. - -"You are preposterously strong," she approved. His elation, however, -collapsed at the condition following. "But strength is simply brutality -until it's wisely directed. Mazzini and not Napoleon was my ideal in -history." Who, he wondered unhappily, was Mazzini? "I hated school," he -told her briefly; "I don't believe I have ever read a book through; I'd -rather paddle about--with _you_." - -"But you have read deep in the book of nature," she reassured him; "only -a very favorite few open those pages. You are such a child," she added -obliquely, "appallingly unsophisticated: that's what's nicest about you, -really." That form of laudation left him cold, and he drove the canoe -with a vicious rush against the reflections. "A dear child," she added, -without materially increasing his pleasure. - -"Words are rot!" he exploded suddenly; "they can't say any of the -important things. I could talk a year to you without telling you what -I feel--here," he laid a hand momentarily on his spare, powerful chest; -"it's all mixed up, like lead and fire; or that feeling when ice cream -goes to your head. You see," he ended moodily, "all rot." - -"It's very picturesque... and apparently painful. Words aren't necessary -for the truly important things, Anthony." - -"Then you know--what I think of you; you know... how everything else has -moved away and left only you; you know a hundred things, all important, -all about yourself." - -She set an uncertain smile against the rush of his words. The stream -narrowed between high banks drawn against the sheer deeps of sky; the -water flowed swiftly, with a sustained whisper at the edges, and, for -a silent space, he paddled vigorously. Then a profound, glassy pool -opened, sodded bluely to the shores, with low, silvery clumps of willows -casting sooty shadows across the verd water; and, with a sharp twist, -he beached the canoe with a soft shock upon the shelving pebbles. As -he held the craft steady he felt the light, thrilling impact of Eliza's -palm as she sprang ashore. - -The others followed rapidly. The canoes were drawn out of the water, and -preparations for supper commenced. Eliza and Ellie Ball, accompanied by -a youth with a pail, proceeded to a nearby farmhouse in quest of milk. -Anthony lingered at the water's edge, ignoring the appeal for firewood. -The glow of the westering sun faded from the air, and the reflection -of the fire lighted behind him danced ruddy op the grass. At intervals -small fish splashed invisibly, and a kingfisher cried downstream. Then -he heard his sister's voice, and a familiar and moving perfume hovered -in his nostrils. He turned and saw Eliza with her arms full of white -lilacs. Her loveliness left him breathless, mingled with the low sun it -blinded him. She seemed all made of misty bloom--a fragrant spirit -of ineffable flowers. The scent of the lilacs stirred profound, -inarticulate emotions within him, like the poignant impression left by a -forgotten dream of shivering delight. - -He scorned the fare soon spread on the clothed sod, burning his throat -stoically with a cup of unsweetened coffee. Eliza sat beyond the -charring remains of the fire sinking from cherry-red embers to -impalpable white ash. He observed with secret satisfaction that she -too ate little: an appetite on her part, he felt, would have been a -calamity. - -'The meadows and distant woods were vague against the primrose west, -the cyanite curtain of the east, when the baskets were assembled for the -return. Anthony delayed over the arrangement of his craft until Eliza -and himself were last in the floating procession. Dense shadows, -drooping from the trees, filled the banks; overhead the sky was clear -green. They swept silently forward with the current, a rare dip of the -paddle. Eliza's countenance was just palely visible. The lilacs lay in a -pallid heap at their feet. On either hand the world floated back darkly -like an immaterial void through which an ebon stream bore them beyond -the stars. - -At a bend he reached up and caught hold of an overhanging branch, and -they swung into a shallow backwater. A deep shelf of stone lay under the -face of the bank, closed in by a network of wildgrape stems. "This is -where I sometimes stay at night," he told her; "no one knows but you." - - - - -XVI - -SHE rose, and, without warning, stepped out upon the rock. "Here's -where you build your fire," she cried at the discovery of a blackened -heap of ashes. He secured the canoe and followed her. "Ideal," she -breathed. The sound of the fall below was faintly audible; the quavering -cry of an owl, the beating of heavy wings, rose above the bank. "Don't -you envy the old pastoral people following their flocks from land to -land, setting up their tents by streams like this, waking with the dawn -on the world? or gipsies... you must read 'Lavengro.'" - -"I don't envy any one on God's little globe," he asserted; "to be here -with you is the best thing possible." - -"Something more desirable would soon occur to you." - -"Than you!" he protested; "than you!" - -"But people get tired of what they have." - -"It's what they don't have that makes them old and tired," he told her -with sudden prescience; "when I think of what I am going to lose, of -what I can never have, it makes me crazy." - -"Why do you say that?... How can you know?" - -She was standing close to him in the constricted space, the tangible -shock of her nearness sweeping over him in waves of heady emotion. The -water gurgling by the rock was the only sound in a world-stillness. - -"I mean you." - -"Well, I'm not fairy gold; I'm not the end of the rainbow. I am just -Eliza." - -"Just Eliza!" he scoffed. Then the possibility contained in her words -struck him dumb. The feeling irresistibly returned that because of -her heavenly ignorance, her charity, she mistook him to be worthy. The -necessity to guard her from her own divinity impelled him to repeat, -miserably, all that she had ignored. - -"I'm not much account," he said laboriously; "you see, I never stuck at -anything, and, somehow, things have never stuck to me. It was that way -at school--I was expelled from four. I'm supposed to be shiftless." - -"I don't care in the least for that!" she declared; "only one thing is -really important to me... something, oh, so different." Suddenly she -laid her hand upon his sleeve, and, pitifully white, faced him. "I've -had the beautifullest feeling about you," she whispered; "Anthony, tell -me truly, are you... good?" A sob rose uncontrollably in his throat, and -his eyes filled with tears that spilled over his cheeks. For a moment he -struggled to check them, then, unashamed, slipped onto his knees before -her and held her tightly in his arms. "No one in the world can say that -I am not--what you mean." - -She stooped, and sat beside him on the stone, holding his hand close to -her slight body. "My dream," she said simply. "I didn't understand it at -first; you see, I was only a child. And then when I grew older, and--and -heard things, it seemed impossible. That sort of goodness only bored -other girls... they liked men of the world, men with a past. I thought -perhaps I was only morbid, and lost trust in--in you." - -"It was a kind of accident," he admitted; "I never thought about it the -way you did. It seemed young to me." - -"I don't believe it was an accident in the least," she insisted. A mist -rose greyly from the darker surface of the stream, and settled cold and -clammy about Anthony's face. It drew about them in wavering garlands, -growing steadily denser. Eliza was sitting now pressed against him, and -he felt a shiver run through her. "You are cold!" he cried instantly, -and rose, lifting her to her feet. She smiled, in his arms, and he bent -down and kissed her. She clung to him with a deep sigh, and met his lips -steadily with her own. The mist slipped like a veil over Eliza's head -and drops of moisture shone in her hair. Anthony turned and unfastened -the canoe; and, suddenly conscious of the length of their delay, he -urged it with long sweeps over the stream. Beyond the lilacs, distilling -their potent sweetness in the dark, Eliza was motionless, silent, a -flicker of white in the gloom. - -They swept almost immediately into the broad reach where they had -started. The lights from the windows of a boat house, the voices of -the others, streamed gaily over the water. He felt Eliza tremble as he -lifted her ashore. - -"It's happiness," she told him; "I am ever so warm inside." - - - - -XVII - -BY his plate at the lunch table he discovered, the following day, a -small, lavender envelope stamped and addressed to Anthony Ball, Esq. -He slipped it hastily into his pocket, and managed but a short-lived -pretext of eating. Then, with the letter yet unopened, he left Ellerton, -and penetrated into the heart of the countryside. - -He stopped, finally, under a fence that crossed a hill, on a slope -of wild strawberries. The hill fell away in an unbroken sweep of -undulating, blue-green wheat; trees filled the hollow, with a roof and -thread of silver water drawn through the lush leaves; on either hand -chocolate loam bore the tender ripple of young com; and beyond, crossed -by the shifting shadows of slow-drifting clouds, hill and wood and -pasture spread a mellow mosaic of summer. - -He tore open the envelope with a reluctant delight. At the top of the -sheet E D was stamped severely in mauve. "My very dear," he read. He -stopped, suddenly unable to proceed; the countryside swam in his vision; -he gulped an ecstatic, convulsive breath, and proceeded: - -"It's too wonderful--I can't realize that you exist, and that I have -found you in such a great world. Isn't it strange how real dreams are; -just now the real world seems the dream, and my dear home, my mother, -shadows compared to the thoughts that fill my brain of you, you, you. - -"But I am writing mostly to tell you something that, perhaps, you didn't -fully understand yesterday--and yet I think you must have--that, if you -really want me, I am absolutely your own. I couldn't help it if I wanted -to, and, oh, I don't want to! I let a man at Etretat kiss me, and I am -glad I did, for it made me understand that I must wait for you. - -"I won't write any more now because my head aches. From Eliza who loves -you utterly." Then he saw that she had written on the following page: -"Don't worry about money and the future; I have my own, all we shall -need for years, and we can do something together." - -He laid the letter beside him on the grass. The welling song of a -catbird sounded unsupportably sweet, and a peaceful column of smoke -rose bluely from the chimney below: it carried him in imagination to a -dwelling set in a still, green garden, where birds filled the branches -with melody, and Eliza and himself walked hand in hand and kissed. Night -would gather in about their joy, their windows would shine with the -golden lamp of their seclusion, their voices mingle... sink... sacred. - -He dreamed for a long while; the sunlight vanished from the slope below -him, from the darkling trees, touched only the farthest hills with a -rosy glow. As the sun sank an errant air whispered in the wheat, and -scattered the pungent aroma of the wild strawberries. A voice called -thinly from the swales, and cows gathered indistinctly about a gate. -Anthony rose. The world was one vast harmony in which he struck the -highest, happiest note. Beyond the near hills the lilac glitter of the -Ellerton lights sprang palely up on the blue dusk. As he made his way -home, Anthony's brain teemed with delightful projects, with -anticipation, the thought of the house in the hollow--abode of love, -steeped in night. - - - - -XVIII - -ELLIE was in the garden, and interrupted his progress toward a belated -dinner. "Father wants to see you," she called; "at the Club, of course." -He wondered absently, approaching the Club, what his father wanted. -The rooms occupied the second story of the edifice that housed the -administration of the county; the main corridor was choked by a crowd -that moved noisily toward an auditorium in the rear, but the Club was -silent, save for the click of invisible billiard balls. - -His father was asleep in the reading room, a newspaper spread upon his -knees, and one thin hand twisted in his beard. Through an open window -drifted the strains of a band on the Courthouse lawn. The older man -woke, clearing his throat sharply. "Well, Anthony," he nodded. Anthony -found a chair. - -His father leaned forward, regarding him with a keen, kindly gaze. "I'm -told the garage has gone up," he commenced. - -"Sam took his car away; it was Alfred's infernal tinkering; he can't -leave a machine alone." - -"Did you close affairs satisfactorily, stop solvent?" - -"There's a little debt of about six dollars." - -The other sought his wallet, and, removing a rubber band, counted six -dollars into Anthony's hand. "Meet that in the morning." He leaned hack, -tapping the wallet with deliberate fingers. "I suppose you have no plan -for the immediate future," he observed. - -"Nothing right now." - -"I have one for you, though, as 'right now' as this week." - -Anthony listened respectfully, his thoughts still dwelling upon the -beauty of the dusk without, of life. "You have tried a number of things -in the past few years without success. I have started you in a small -way again and again, only to observe the familiar course of a failure -inevitable from your shiftless habits. You are not a bad boy, but -you have no ability to concentrate, like a stream spread all over the -meadow--you have no course. You're a loiterer." - -"Yes, sir," said Anthony, from the midst of his abstraction. - -"You are too old for that now, either it must stop at once, or you will -become definitely worthless. I am going to make a determined effort--I -am going to send you to California, your brother-in-law writes that he -can give you something." - -The term California sounded in Anthony's brain like the unexpected -clash of an immense hell. It banished his pleasant revery in disordered -shreds, filling him with sudden dismay. - -"I telegraphed Albert yesterday," the even tones continued, "and have -his answer in my pocket. You are to go out to him immediately." - -"But that's impossible," Anthony interrupted; "it just can't be done." - -"Why not?" - -He found himself completely at a loss to give adequate expression to -his reason for remaining in Ellerton. His joy was so new that he -had scarcely formulated it to himself, it evaded words, defied -definition--it was a thing of dreams, a vision in a shining garment, a -fountain of life at the bottom of his heart. - -"Come; why not?" - -"I don't want to go away from Ellerton... just now." - -"That is precisely what you must do. I can understand your desire to -remain close by your mother--she has an excuse for you, assistance, at -every turn." - -"That isn't the reason; it's... it's," he boggled horribly, "a girl." - -"Indeed," his father remarked dryly. - -Anthony shrunk painfully from the unsympathetic voice of the elder. A -new defiance of his father welled hotly within him, corrupting the bonds -of discipline that had held him lovingly to his parent throughout the -past. A chasm opened between them; and, when Anthony spoke again, it was -with a voice of insipient insubordination. - -"It isn't the silly stuff you think," he told the other; "I'm engaged!" - -"What on?" pithily came the inquiry. "Unfortunately I can't afford the -luxury of a daughter-in-law. I thought you were something more of a man -than to bring your wife into your mother's house." - -"I sha'n't; we can get along until I... find work." - -"Do you mean that your wife will support you?" - -"Not altogether; she will help until--until--" he stopped miserably -before the anger confronting him in the other's gaze: it was useless to -explain, he thought; But if his father laughed at him, at his love, he -would leave the room and never see him again. "I can't see why money is -so damned holy!" he broke out; "why it matters so infernally where it -comes from; it seems to me only a dirty detail." - -"It is the measure of a man's honor," the elder Ball told him -inexorably; "how it is made or got stamps you in the world. I am -surprised to hear that you would even consider taking it from a woman, -surprised and hurt. It shows all the more clearly the necessity for your -going at once into a hard, healthy existence. Your mother will get you -ready; a couple of days should do it." - -"... all unexpected," Anthony muttered; "I must think about it, see some -one. I'll--I'll talk to you to-morrow. That's it," he enunciated more -hopefully, "to-morrow--" - -"Entirely unnecessary," his father interrupted, "nothing to be gained by -delay or further talk. The thing's arranged." - -"I think I won't go," Anthony told him slowly. The other picked up the -paper, smoothing out the creases. "Very well," he replied; "I dare say -your mother will do something for you.--Women are the natural source of -supplies for the sort of person you seem at the point of becoming." A -barrier of paper, covered with print in regular columns, shut one from -the other. - -Anthony burned under a whelming sense of injustice. He decided that he -would leave the room, his father, forever; but, somehow, he remained -motionless in his chair, casting about in his thoughts for words with -which to combat the elder's scorn. He thought of Eliza; she smiled -at him with appealing loveliness; he felt her letter in his pocket, -remembered her boundless generosity. He couldn't leave her! The band in -the square below was playing a familiar operatic lament, and the refrain -beat on his consciousness in waves of despairing and poignant longing. -A sea of misery swept over him in which he struggled like a spent -swimmer--Eliza was the far, silver shore toward which he fought. It -wasn't fair--a sob almost mastered him--to ask him to go away now, when -he had but found her. - -"It's not Siberia," he heard his father say, "nor a life sentence; if -this--this 'girl' is serious, you will be closer working for her in -California than idle in Ellerton." - -"I don't want to go away from her," he whispered; "the world's such -a hell of a big, empty place... things happen." He dashed some bright -tears from his eyes, and, turning his back on the other, gazed through -the window at the tops of the maple trees--a black tracery of foliage -against the lights below. - -"Two or three years should set you on your feet, give you an opportunity -to return." Eternity could scarcely have seemed more appalling than the -term casually indicated by his father, it was unthinkable! A club member -entered, fingering the racked journals on the long table, exchanging -trivial comments with the older Ball. It seemed incredible to Anthony, -in the face of the cataclysm which threatened him, that the world should -continue to revolve callously about such topics. It was an affront to -the gravity, the dignity, of his suffering. He swiftly left the room. - - - - -XIX - -IT was Saturday night, Bay Street was thronged, the stores brilliantly -lit. He saw in the distance the red and blue jars of illuminated water -that advertised Doctor Allhop's drugstore, and turned abruptly on his -heel. In the seclusion of his room he once more read Eliza's letter: it -was a superlative document of sweet commonsense, the soul of nobility, -of wisdom, of tenderness, of divine generosity. In its light all other -suggestions, considerations, courses, seemed tawdry and ignoble. The -boasted wisdom of a world of old men, of material experience, seemed -only the mean makeshifts for base and unworthy ends. The ecstasy -sweeping from his heart to his brain, the delicious fancies, the -rare harmonies, that haunted him, the ineffable perfume of invisible -lilacs--these were the true material from which to fashion life, these -were the high things, the important. And youth was the time to grasp -them: a swift premonition seized him of the coldness, the ineptitude, -the disease, of old age. - -For the first time in his life he thought of death in definite -connection with himself: he was turning out the gas, preparatory for -sleep; and, at the instantaneous darkness, he thought, with a gasp of -fear, it would be like that. He stood trembling as a full realization of -disillusion mastered him; all his hot, swinging blood, the instinctive -longing for perpetuation aroused in him by Eliza, in sick revolt. -Fearsome images filled his mind... the hole in the clay--closed; -putrefaction; the linked mass of worms. In feverish haste he lit the -gas; his body was wet with sweat; his heart pounding unsteadily. - -The familiar aspect of his room somewhat reassured him; the thought -dimmed, slowly conquered by the flooding tide of his living. Then he -realized that Eliza too must die, and his terrors vanished before a -loving pity for her earthly fragility. Finally, death itself assumed -a less threatening guise; peace stole imperceptibly into his heart. A -vague belief, new born of his passion, that dying was not the end of -all, rose within him--there must be a struggle, heights to win, gulfs -to cross, a faith to keep. With steady fingers he turned out the -gas.--Eliza was his faith: he fell into a sound slumber. - - - - -XX - -HE made no comment when, in the morning, his mother made tentative -piles of his clothing. He would see Eliza that afternoon, and then -announce their decision. His mother attempted to fathom his feeling -at the prospect of the journey, the separation from Ellerton; but, the -memory of his father's cutting words still rankling in his mind, he -evaded her questioning. - -"If you are going to be miserable out there," she told him, enveloping -him in the affection of her steady, grey gaze, "something else might be -found. I can always help--" - -"You don't understand these things," he interrupted her brusquely, -annoyed by his father's prescience. They were sitting in her sewing -room, a pile of his socks at her side. She wore her familiar, severe -garb, the steelbowed spectacles directed upon the needle flashing -steadily in her assured fingers. She was eternally laboring for her -children, Anthony realized with a pang of affection. His earliest -memories were charged with her unflagging care, the touch of her smooth -and tireless hands, the defense of her energetic voice. - -He must tell her about his engagement, but not until he had seen Eliza -again, when something definite would be agreed upon. It was immensely -difficult for him to talk about the subject nearest his heart-words -diminished and misrepresented it: he wanted to brood over it, secretly, -for days. - - - - -XXI - -LATER he dressed with scrupulous exactitude, and proceeded directly to -Hydrangea House. The afternoon was sultry, the air full of the soothing -drone of summer insects, the dust of the road rose in heavy puffs about -his feet. He crossed the stream and fields, saturated with sunlight, and -came to the pillared portico of his destination. - -"Miss Dreen," Anthony said, stepping forward into the opening door. - -"Miss Dreen cannot see you," the servant returned without hesitation. -Anthony drew back, momentarily repelled; but, before he could question -this announcement, he heard grinding wheels on the gravel drive. -Turning, he saw a motor stop, and Mrs. Dreen descend, followed by a man -with a somber, deeply-scored countenance. Anthony moved forward eagerly -as she mounted the steps. "Mrs. Dreen," he asked; "can you tell me-" She -passed with a confused, blank face, without stopping or acknowledging -his salutation, and the door closed softly upon her and her companion. - -A momentary flame of anger within Anthony quickly sank to cold -consternation. Eliza had told her parents and they had dismissed the -idea and him. It was evident they had forbidden her to see him. He -walked indecisively down the steps, still carrying his hat, and stopped -mechanically on the driveway. He gazed blindly over a brilliant, scarlet -bed of geraniums, over the extended lawn, the rolling hills of Ellerton. -Then his courage returned, stiffened by the obstacles which apparently -confronted him: he would show them that he was not to be lightly -dismissed; no power on earth should separate him from Eliza. - -The servant had only obeyed Mrs. Dreen's direction; Eliza, he -was certain, had no choice in the matter of his reception. Then, -unexpectedly, he remembered his father's words, the latter's -contemptuous reference to all appeals to women. He must go to Mr. Dreen, -and straightforwardly state his position, tell him... _what?_ Why, that -he, Anthony Ball, loved Eliza, desired her, had come to take her away... -_where?_ In all the world he had no place prepared for her. He drove his -hand into his pocket, and discovered a quarter of a dollar and some -odd pennies--all that he possessed. Suddenly he laughed, a short, sorry -merriment that stopped in a dry gasp. He turned and ran, stumbling over -the grass, through the hot dust, toward Ellerton. Two years, he thought, -California; California and two years. - - - - -XXII - -ANTHONY sat late into the night composing an explanatory and farewell -letter to Eliza: - -"Your family would laugh at me," he wrote; "I couldn't show them a -dollar. And although my father has done a great deal for me he wouldn't -do this. I couldn't expect him to. Mother might help, she is like you, -but I could not very well live between two women, could I? The only hope -is California for a couple of years. You know how much I want to stay -with you, how hard this is to write, when our engagement, everything, is -so new and wonderful. But it would only be harder later. If I had seen -you this afternoon I would never have left you. I am going to-morrow -night. This will come to you in the morning, and I will be home if you -send me a message. I would like to see you again before I go away in -order to come back to you forever. I would like to hear you say again -that you love me. Sometimes I think it never really happened. If I don't -see you again before I leave, remember I shall never change, I shall -love you always and not forget the least thing you said. I wish now I -had studied so that I could write better. Remember that I belong to you, -when you want me I will come to you if it's around the world, I would -come to you if I were dead I think. Good-bye, dear, dear Eliza, until -tomorrow anyhow, and that's a long while to be without seeing you or -hearing your voice." - -At the announcement of his agreement to go West, the attitude of his -father had changed greatly; his hand continually sought Anthony's -shoulder; he consulted gravely, as it were with an equal, with regard -to trains, precautions, new climates. His mother busied herself over -his clothes, her rare speech brusque and hurried. To Anthony she seemed -suddenly old, _grey_; her hands trembled, and necessary stitches were -uneven. - -He was aware that the mail for Hydrangea House was collected before -noon, and he sat expectantly in the room overlooking the street. It was -dark and cool, there were creamy tea roses in the Canton jar now, -while in the street it was hot and bright. A sere engraving of Joseph -Bonaparte in regal robes gazed serenely from the wall. The hour for -lunch arrived without any message from Eliza. Throughout the afternoon -he dropped his pressing affairs find descended to the street... nothing. - -His heart grew heavy with doubts, with fears--his letter had been -intercepted; or, if Eliza had received it, her answer had been diverted. -Perhaps she had at last realized that he was unfit for her love. The -impulse almost mastered him to go once more to Hydrangea House, but -pride prevented; his unhappiness hardened, grew bitter, suspicious. Then -he again read her letter, and its patent sincerity swept away all doubt; -Eliza was unwavering; if not now he would find her at the end of two -years, unchanged, warm, beautiful. - -He was summoned to dinner, where he found the delicacies he especially -liked. The plates were liberally filled, all made a pretence at -eating, but, at the end, the food remained hardly touched. The forced -conversation fell into sudden, disturbing silences. His father sharpened -the carving knife twice, which, for shad roe, was scarcely necessary; -his mother scolded the servant without cause; even Ellie was affected, -and smiled at him with a bright tenderness. - -He was to leave Ellerton at midnight, when he would be enabled to -connect with a western express, and it was arranged for him to spend a -last hour at the Club with his father. Ellie and the servant stood upon -the pavement, his mother was upstairs in the sewing room... where he -entered softly. - -At the Club the billiard room was dark, the tables shrouded, but from -a room at the end of the hall came the murmur of the nightly coon-can -players. They seated themselves at a table, and his father ordered beer -and cigars. It was the first time that he had acknowledged Anthony to -possess the discretion of maturity, and he raised the stein to his lips -with the feeling that it was a sacrament of his manhood, an earnest and -pledge of his success. - -The midnight train emerged from the gloom of the station, passed through -the outskirts of Ellerton, detached rows of dark dwellings, by the -grounds of the Baseball Association, its fence still plastered with the -gaudy circus posters, into the dim fields and shining streams. Anthony -stood on the last, swinging platform, gazing back at the gloom that -enveloped Ellerton, at the place where Hydrangea House was hid by -the hills. An acute misery possessed him--the unsettled maimer of his -departure from Eliza, her silence, struggled in his thoughts with the -attempt to realize the necessity of the course he had adopted to bring -about a final and lasting joy. He wondered if Eliza would understand the -need for his going; but, assured of her wise sympathy, he felt that she -would; and a measure of content settled upon him. The engine swung about -a curve, disappearing into the obscurity of a wood. "Eliza," he cried -aloud, "Eliza, be here when I come back to you!" - -He sat for the greater part of an hour on the deserted platform of the -junction, where signal lamps glistened on the steel rails that vanished -into the night, into the west, the inscrutable future. The headlight -of the massive locomotive flared unexpectedly, whitely upon him; the -engine, with a brief glimpse of a sanguinary heart of fire illuminating -a sooty human countenance, gleaming, liquid eyeballs, passed and -stopped; and Anthony hastily mounted the train. He made his way through -the narrow passage of buttoned, red curtains, and found his berth, when -he sank into a weary, dreamless sleep. - - - - -XXIII - -IN the morning his was the last berth made up for the day; the car, -shaded against the sun, was rolling slightly, and he braced himself as -he made his way toward breakfast. The tables were all occupied; but, at -a carelessly hospitable nod, he found a place with two men. They were, -he immediately saw, Jews. One was robustly middle aged, with a pinkly -smooth countenance, a slightly flattened nose, and eyes as colorless as -clear water in a goblet. He was carefully dressed in shepherd's plaid, -with a gay tie that held a noticeably fine pearl. His companion was -thin and dark, with a heavy nose irritated to rawness by the constant -application of a blue silk handkerchief. The latter, Anthony discovered -in the course of the commonplaces which followed, was sycophant and -henchman of the first--a never failing source of applause for the -former's witticisms. - -"How far out are you bound?" queried the owner of the pearl. Then, when -Anthony had told him his destination, "no business opportunities in -California for a young man without capital behind him; only hard work -and a day laborer's wages. Nothing West but fruit, land and politics on -a large scale. My chauffeur at a hundred a month does better than eighty -per cent, of the young ones in the West." - -This information fell like a dark cloud over Anthony's sanguine hopes -for a speedy and opulent return. A sense of imminent misfortune pressed -upon him, a sudden, unreasoning dread of what might be in store for -Eliza and himself, of the countless perils of a protracted delay. At the -end of two years he might be no better off than he was at present. His -brother-in-law, he knew, would only pay him a nominal amount at first. -The two years stretched out interminably in his imagination. - -The more prosperous of his companions selected a cigar from a silk case, -and, cutting it with a gold penknife, they removed to the smoking car. -"I drove a car for a while," Anthony informed them later, mingling the -acidulous smoke of a Dulcina with the more fragrant clouds of Habana; -"it was a Challenger six." - -"Hartmann here is a director in the Challenger factory," the sycophant -told him. "The factory's in our home city, where we are going. It's -a great car." Hartmann examined Anthony with a new and more personal -interest. "Did you like it?" he demanded. - -"It's all right, for the price," Anthony assured him; "it's the most -sporting looking car on the American market." - -"That's the thing," the other declared with satisfaction; "big sales and -a quick return on investment. A showy car is what the public want, the -engine's unimportant, it's paint that counts." - -"Do you have any radiator trouble?" Anthony demanded. The other regarded -him shrewdly. "I run a Berliet," he announced; "I was discussing a -popular article." He arranged himself more comfortably in his leather -chair, and prepared for sleep. - -Anthony returned to his place in the coach, where he brooded dejectedly -upon what he had heard about California. He thought of the distance -widening at a dizzy rate between Eliza and himself, and plunged into a -vast pit of loneliness... he had made a terrible mistake in leaving her. -It seemed to him now that he had deserted her, perhaps she was suffering -on account of him--had expected him to free her from an intolerable -condition. Again he cursed in his heart the prudent counsel of old -men, the cold sapience of the world, that had betrayed him, that had -prevailed over him against his instinct, his longing. - - - - -XXIV - -AT lunch he was progressing toward an empty table when Hartmann waved -him imperiously to a place at his side. "Have a drink," he advised -genially; "this is my affair." Beer followed the initial cocktail, -and brandy wound the meal to a comfortable conclusion. A Habana in the -smoking car completed Anthony's bodily satisfaction. - -"California's no place for a young man without capital," Hartmann -reiterated; "you work like a dog for two and a half a day; no future." -He paused, allowing this to be digested, then: "I have a little plan to -propose, you can take it or not--or perhaps you are not competent.--My -chauffeur is laid up with a broken wrist, a matter of a month or more; -how would you like to run my car until he returns? Then, if you are -satisfactory, you can go into the Challenger factory, with something -ahead of you, a future. Or you can go on to California... say -seventy-five dollars richer." Anthony shook his head regretfully. "Don't -answer now," Hartmann advised; "Spring City is three hours off. Think it -over; seventy-five dollars; a chance, if you are handy, in the factory." - -Anthony was suddenly obsessed by the thought that, at Spring City, he -would be only a day removed from Eliza. He wondered what his father -would say to this new possibility? At worst he would only be delayed in -his arrival in California, and with seventy-five dollars in consequence. -At best--the Challenger factory: he expanded optimistically the -opportunities offered by the latter. If he could show his father -immediate fruits from a change of plan, the elder, he was certain, -would add his approval. In a passing, sceptical mood he speculated upon -Hartmann's motive in this offer to an entire stranger; but his doubts -speedily vanished--any irregularity must be immediately visible. - -"You can make a stop over on your ticket for a couple of days and try -it," the other interjected; "it will cost you nothing." - -Only a day removed from Eliza! he would write to his father, his -brother-in-law, and explain! he had decided that it would do no harm to -try it. "Good!" the Jew exclaimed; "see the conductor about your ticket. -If you decide to remain you can send for your trunk." He offered his -cigar case to his companion, but, now, neglected to include Anthony. -Imperceptibly their relations had changed; Hartmann's geniality -decreased; his colorless gaze wandered indifferently. Anthony found the -conductor, and arranged a stop-over at Spring City. He collected his -belongings; and, not long after, he stood on a station platform beside -his bag, watching with sudden misgivings the rear of the train he had -left disappearing behind a bulk of factories and clustered shanties. - -Hartmann handed him a card, with a written direction and address. "The -garage," he explained; "have the car ready to-morrow at nine. I'll allow -you an expense of five dollars until a definite arrangement." - -Anthony quickly found the garage--a structure of iron and glass, with -a concrete floor where cars were drawn up in glistening rows. A line -of chairs fronted upon the pavement, occupied by mechanics in greasy -overalls, smarter chauffeurs, and garrulous, nondescript hangerson. The -foreman was within, busy with the compression tanks. He was short in -stature, with a pale, concerned countenance. "Fourth on the right from -the front," he directed, reading Hartmann's card; "there's a bad shoe -on the back.... So the old man's ready for another little trip," he -commented. - -"His chauffeur has a broken wrist," Anthony explained. "He's offered me -the job for a month." - -"Wrist hell! Hartmann fired him, he knew too much--about sprees with -Kuhn. He's a sharp duck; I'll bet he picked you up outside Spring City." - -"I met him on the Sunset Limited," Anthony continued; "I understood he -was a director in the Challenger Motorcar Company--" - -"He's that, right enough; the rottenest car and shop in America; they're -so dam' mean they won't provide their men with drinking water; they have -to bring labor from the East, scabs and other truck." The conviction -settled heavily upon Anthony that, after all, he had made a mistake in -listening to Hartmann, in falling in with his suggestion. If there had -been another train through Spring City that night for California he -would have taken it. But, as there was not, and he had committed himself -for the next twenty-four hours, he made his way to the Berliet car -indicated. There he took off his coat, and busied himself with replacing -the damaged shoe. When that was accomplished the dusk had thickened to -evening, the suspended gas globes in the garage had been lighted, -and shone like lemon-yellow moons multiplied in the lilac depths of a -mirrored twilight. - -He saw, across the street, a creamery, and, at a bare table, consumed a -quart of milk and a plate of sugared rusk. Then, on a chair in the line -before the garage, he sat half intent upon the conversation about him, -half considering the swift changes that had overtaken him in the past, -few days. His fingers closed upon Eliza's letter in his pocket, and -he gazed at the callous and ribald faces at his side, he heard the -truculent laughter, with wonderment that they existed in the same world -with her delicate beauty. She smiled at him, out of his memory, over -a mass of white bloom, and the present seemed like an ugly dream from -which he must awake in her presence. Or was the other a dream, a vision -of immaterial delight spread before his wondering mind, and this harsh -mirth, these mocking faces, Hartmann's smooth lies, the hateful reality? - -The night deepened, one by one the chairs before the garage were -deserted, the sharp pounding of a hammer on metal sounded from within, -the disjointed measures of a sentimental song. A sudden weariness swept -over Anthony, a distaste for the task of seeking a room through the -strange streets; and, arranging the cushions in Hartmann's car, he slept -there until morning. He awoke to the flooding of the concrete floor with -a sheet of water flashing in the crisp sunlight. It was eight o'clock, -and he made a hurried toilet at a convenient spigot, breakfasting at the -creamery. - -Hartmann appeared shortly after nine: his countenance glowed from a -scented massage, his yellow boots shone with restrained splendor, and -a sprig of geranium was drawn through an ironed buttonhole. He nodded -briefly to Anthony, and narrowly watched the latter manouvre the Berliet -from its place in the row onto the street. They sped smoothly across -town to what, evidently, was the principal shopping thoroughfare; and, -before a glittering plateglass window that bore the chaste design, -"Hartmann & Company" drew up, and Hartmann prepared to descend. - -"I think I'll go on West," Anthony informed him; "this afternoon." - -Annoyance was plainly visible upon the other's countenance. "I was just -congratulating myself on a find," he declared; "you must at least stay -with me until I get some one else." He paused; Anthony made no comment. -"Now, listen to what I will do," he pronounced finally; "if you will -stay with me for a month I'll give you a hundred dollars and your -expenses--it will be clear money. I... I had thought of taking a little -trip in the car, I'm feeling the store a little, and I need a discreet -man. Think it over--a hundred in your pocket, and you may be able to -get off in three weeks." He left hurriedly, without giving Anthony an -opportunity for further speech. It was an alluring offer, a hundred -dollars secured for the future, for Eliza. He speculated about the -prospective trip, Hartmann's wish to secure a "discreet" man, the -foreman's insinuations. However, the motive didn't concern him, the wage -was his sole consideration, and that, he decided, he could not afford -to lose. He whistled to a newsboy, and, studying the baseball scores, -waited comfortably for his employer. - -Later he drove Hartmann, now accompanied by Kuhn, out of town, through -a district of suburban villas, smooth, white roads and green lawns, into -the farmland and pasturage beyond. They finally stopped at an inn of -weathered grey stone set behind a row of ancient elms. A woman was -sitting on the portico, and she rose and came forward sinuously as -the men descended from the motor car. Anthony saw that she had a full, -voluptuous figure, lustreless, yellow hair, and sleepy eyes. Hartmann -patted her upon the shoulder, and the three moved to the portico, where -they sat conversing over a table of whiskies and soda. Occasional shrill -bursts of laughter, gross terms, reached Anthony. The woman lounged -nonchalantly in her chair; she wore a transparent white waist, through -winch was visible a confused tracery of purple ribband, frank rubicund -flesh. When the men rose, Hartmann kissed her. "Thursday," he reminded -her; "shortly after three." - -"And I'll depend on you," Kuhn added,--"a good figger and a loving -disposition. We don't want any dead ones on this trip." - -"Laura's all right," she assured him; "she's just ready for something of -this sort; she goes off about twice a year." - -When they had started, Hartmann leaned forward. "Going Thursday... that -little trip I spoke to you about.--No talking, understand. Look over the -tires, get what you think-necessary for five or six hundred miles." He -tended Anthony a crisp, currency note. "Here's the five. Your salary -starts to-morrow." - -That night Anthony wrote a letter of explanation to his father, a note -to California in reference to his trunk, and a short communication to -Eliza.--He was not certain that she would receive it. Her parents, -he was convinced, were opposed to him--they were ignorant of the -singleness, the depth, the determination, of his love. - - - - -XXV - -IT. was nearly four, when, on Thursday, Anthony stopped the car before -the inn by the elms. The woman with the yellow hair, accompanied by -a figure in a shapeless russet silk coat, were waiting for them. The -latter carried a small, patent-leather dressing case, and a large bag -reposed on the portico, which Anthony strapped to the luggage rack. -Kuhn, animated by a flow of superabundant animal spirits, bantered each -member of the party: he gave Anthony a cigar that had been slightly -broken, tipped off Hartmann's cap, and assisted the woman with profound -gallantry into the car. Hartmann discussed routes over an unfolded map -with Anthony; then, the course laid out, they moved forward. - -Their way led over an old postroad, now between walls, trees, dank and -grey with age and dust, now rising steadily into a region of bluish -hills. Scraps of conversation fell upon Anthony's hearing: the woman -in the russet coat, he learned, was named Laura Dallam. Kuhn talked -incessantly, and, occasionally, she replied to his sallies in a cool, -detached voice. She differed in manner from the others, she was a little -disdainful, Anthony discovered. Once she said sharply, "Do let me enjoy -the country." - -They slipped smoothly through the afternoon to the end of day. The -sun had vanished beyond the hills when they stopped at an inn on the -outskirts of an undiscovered town. It was directly on the road, and, -built in a flimsy imitation of an Elizabethan hostelry, had benches at -either side of the entrance. - -There Anthony sat later, while, from a balcony above him, fell the -tones of his employer and his companions. He could hear them clearly, -distinguish Hartmann's heavy jocularity, the yellow-haired woman's -syrupy voice, Laura Dallam's crisp utterances. Kuhn's labored wit had -drooped with the afternoon, an accent of complaint had grown upon him. -Occasionally there was a thin, clear tinkle of glasses and ice. As -the night deepened, the conversation above grew blurred, peals of -inconsequential laughter more frequent; a glass fell on the balcony, and -broke with a small, sudden explosion. Some one--it was the Dallam woman, -exclaimed, "don't!" She leaned over the railing above Anthony's head, -and said despairingly, "I can't get drunk!" Kuhn pressed to her side, -and she moved away impatiently. He became enraged, and they commenced a -low, bitter wrangling. Finally Hartmann insinuated himself between them; -the two women disappeared; and Kuhn complained aloud of the manner in -which he had been treated. - -"She's all right," Hartmann assured him; "you went at it too heavy; take -your time; she's not a flapper from the chorus." They tramped heavily -across the balcony, whispering tensely, into the hotel. - -The morning following they failed to start until past eleven: Hartmann's -countenance was pasty from the night's debauch, greenish shadows -hung beneath his colorless eyes, his mouth was a leaden line; the -yellow-haired woman was haggard, she looked older by ten years since the -day previous. Kuhn was savagely, morosely, silent. But Mrs. Dallam was -as fresh, as sparkling, as the morning itself. She nodded brightly at -Anthony as she took a seat forward, by his side. A heavy veil was draped -back from her face, and he saw that it was finely-cut; an intensely -black bang fell squarely across her low, white forehead, beneath which -eyes of a sombre, velvety blue were oddly compelling; and against the -blanched oval of her face her mouth was like a print of blood. It was a -potent, vaguely disturbing countenance; and, beneath the voluminous -silk coat, he saw narrow black slippers with carelessly tied bows that, -stinging his imagination, reminded him of wasps. - -As he drove the car he was frequently aware of her exotic gaze resting -speculatively upon him. On a high, sunny reach of road there was a -shrill rush of escaping air, and he found a rear tire flat. Hartmann and -his mate explored the road, Kuhn gloomed aloof, while Mrs. Dallam seated -herself on a nearby bank, as Anthony replaced the inner tube. It was -hot, and he removed his coat, and soon his shirt was clinging to -the rippling, young muscles of his vigorous torso. Once, when he -straightened up to wipe the perspiration from his brow, Mrs. Dallam -caught his glance, and held it with a slow smile. - -Their progress for the day ended at a small hotel maintained upon the -roof of a ridge of hills. As the dusk deepened the valley beyond swam -with warm, scattered lights, while above, in illimitable space, gleamed -stars near, only a few millions of miles away, and stars far, millions -upon millions of miles distant. - -The ground floor of the hotel was divided by a passage, on one side the -bar, and the other a dining and lounging room, lit with kerosene lamps -swung below tin reflectors. When Anthony was ready for supper the others -had disappeared above. He was served by the proprietor, a short, rotund -man with a glistening red face and hands like swollen pincushions. He -breathed stentoriously amid his exertions, muttering objurgations -in connection with the name of an absent servitor, hopelessly drunk, -Anthony gathered, in the stable. - -A bell sounded sharply from above, and he disappeared abruptly, shouting -up the stair. Then, shortly after, he reappeared in the dining room with -a tray bearing a pitcher of water, glasses, and a bottle labelled with -the name of a popular brand of whiskey. "Can you run this up to your -folks?" he demanded, in a storm of explosive breaths; "I got enough to -stall three men down here." Anthony balanced the tray, and moved toward -the stair. - -He stopped in the hallway to redispose his burden, when he heard the -changing gears of a second automobile without. He moved carefully -upward, conscious of lowered voices at his back, then the sound of -footsteps following him. He turned as he had been directed in the hall -above, and knocked upon a closed door. Kuhn's sullen voice bade him -enter. He had opened the door, when, almost upsetting the tray, a small -group at his back pushed him aside, and entered Hartmann's room. - - - - -XXVI - -THE flaring gas jet within shone on Hartmann, in his shirt sleeves, -reclining collarless on a bed, while the yellow-haired woman, in a -short, vividly green petticoat, but otherwise normally garbed, sat by -him twisting her fingers in his hair. Mrs. Dallam, her waist open at the -neck, was cold-creaming her throat, while Kuhn was decorating her bared -arms with pats of pink powder from a silver-mounted puff. He turned at -the small commotion in the doorway.... His jaw dropped, and his glabrous -eyes bulged in incredulous dismay. The powder puff fell to the floor; he -wet his dry lips with his tongue. "Minna!" he stammered; "Minna!" - -The woman in the door had grey hair streaked and soiled with sallow -white, and a deeply scored, harsh countenance. Her gnarled hands were -tightly clenched, and her tall, spare figure shook from suppressed -excitement and emotion. At her back were two men, one unobtrusive, -remarkable in his lack of salient feature; the other stolidly, heavily, -Semitic. - -Hartmann hastily scrambled into an upright position; the woman at his -side gave vent to a startled, slight scream, desperately arranging -her scant draperies; Mrs. Dallam, with a stony face, continued to rub -cold-cream into her throat. - -"Now, Mrs. Kuhn," Hartmann stuttered, "everything can he satisfactorily -explained." The woman he addressed paid not the slightest attention -to him, but, advancing into the room, gazed with mingled hatred and -curiosity at Mrs. Dallam. The two women stood motionless, tense, -oblivious to the others, in their silent, merciless battle. The latter -smiled slightly, with coldly-contemptuous lips, at the grotesque figure, -the ill-fitting dress upon the wasted body, the hat pinned askew on the -thin, time-stained hair, before her. And the other, painfully rigid, -worn, brittle, gazed with bitter appraisal at the softly-rounded, -graceful figure, the mature youth, that mocked her. - -"Minna," Kuhn reiterated, "come outside, won't you, I want to see you -outside. Tell her to go out, Abbie," he entreated the stolid figure -at the door; "it ain't fit for her to be here. I will see you all down -stairs." He laid a shaking hand upon his wife's shoulder. "Come away," -he implored. - -But still, unconscious apparently of his presence, she gazed at Mrs. -Dallam. - -"You gutter piece!" she said finally; "you thief!" - -Mrs. Dallam laughed easily. "Steal that!" she exclaimed, indicating -Kuhn, "that... beetle! If it's any consolation to you--he hasn't put -his hand on me. It makes me ill to be near him. I should be grateful if -you'd take him home." - -"That's so, Mrs. Kuhn," Hartmann interpolated eagerly, "nothing's went -on you couldn't witness, nothing." - -Tears stole slowly over the inequalities of Mrs. Kuhn's countenance. -She trembled so violently that the man called Abbie stepped forward -and supported her. Now tears streamed copiously over Kuhn's narrow -countenance. "Oh, Minna!" he cried, "_can_ I go home with you? can I go -_now?_ These people don't mean anything to me, not like you do.--I get -crazy at times, and gotta have excitement; I hate it," he declared; -"but I can't somehow stand out against it. But you must give me another -try.... Why, I'd be nothing in the world without you; I'd go down to -hell alive without you, Minna." - -Mrs. Kuhn became unmanageable; she uttered a series of short, gasping -cries, and wilted into the arm about her. "Take her out, Abbie," Kuhn -entreated, "take her out of this." Anthony, with the tray still balanced -in his grasp, stood aside. The man without characteristics was making -rapid notes in an unostentatious wallet. Then Mrs. Kuhn, supported and -followed by her husband and the third, disappeared into the hall. - -"Shut the door," Hartmann commanded sharply; "and give me a drink." -Anthony set the tray on a table. "God!" the yellow-haired woman -ejaculated, "me too." Mrs. Dallam returned to the mirror, and surveyed -the effects of the cold cream. With an expression of distaste she -brushed the marks of the powder from her arm. "The beetle!" she -repeated. - -"Minna Kuhn won't bring action," Hartmann declared, with growing -confidence; "she'll take him back; nothing will come out." The other -woman drank deeply, a purplish flush mantelled her full countenance. -A strand of metallic hair slipped over her eyes. "Let her talk," she -asseverated; "we're bohemians." She clasped Hartmann to her ample bosom. - -Mrs. Dallam moved to the half opened door to the room beyond. "Bring in -the pitcher of water, Anthony," she directed. He followed her with the -water, and she bolted the door behind them. The door to the hall was -closed too. She stopped and smiled at him with narrowed, enigmatic eyes. -The subtle force of her being swept tingling over him. She laid her -hand, warm, palpitatingly alive, upon his. - -"The swine," she said; "how did we get into this, you and I?" - - - - -XXVII - -THE patent-leather dressing case lay open on a bureau, spilling a small -cascade of ivory toilet implements, a severely-plain black dinner gown -lay limp, dully shimmering, over the back of a chair, and, on the bed, a -soft, white heap of undergarments gave out a seductive odor of lavender. -"Cigarettes in the leather box," she indicated; "take some outside." A -screened door opened upon a boxlike balcony, cut into the angle of the -roof; and Anthony, conscious of the warm weight of a guiding arm, found -himself upon it. He seated himself on the railing, and lit a cigarette. -He must go in a minute, he thought. - -The lights had vanished from the valley, at his back the risen moon -dimmed the stars, turned the leaves silver grey. A wan ray fell upon -a clump of bushes below--lilacs, but the blooms had wilted, gone. The -screen door opened, and Mrs. Dallam was at his side; she sank into a -chair, the rosy blur of a cigarette in her fingers; she wore a loose -wrap of deep green silk, open at her throat upon the white web beneath; -in the obscurity her eyes were as black, as lustreless, as ebony, her -mouth was a purple stain. - -She smoked silently, gazing into the night. He would go now, he decided, -and moved from his place on the rail. But with clinging fingers she -caught his wrist, reproachfully lifting a velvety gaze. "I will not be -left alone," she declared; "I simply must have some one with me... you, -or I will get despondent. You are--no, I won't say young, that would -make you cross; you are like that fabulous fountain the Spaniards hunted -in Florida, I want to drink deep, deep." - -Anthony's resolution wavered; it was early; it pleased him that so fine -a creature should desire his presence; an unhappy note in her voice -moved him to pity. She was lonely, and he was alone--here; why should -they not support each other? He leaned, close to her, upon the sloping -roof. She talked little; she laughed once, a low, silvery peal whose -echo ran up and down his spine. - -They heard a servant closing the shutters, the doors, below them, -and the sound linked Anthony to Mrs. Dallam in a feeling of pervading -intimacy. She rose, and stood pressed against his side, and his heart -beat instantly unsteady. The night grew strangely oppressive, there was -a roll of distant, muffled thunder; he turned to her with a commonplace -about the heat, when her arms went about his neck, and she kissed him -full, slowly, upon the lips. Unconsciously he held her supple body to -him. She leaned back against his arms, her eyes shut and lips parted. A -terrible and brute tyranny of desire welled up within him, sweeping away -every vestige of control, of memory. The sky whirled in his vision, the -substantial world vanished in a smother of flaming mists. - -Then he released her so suddenly that she fell against the rail, -recovering her poise with difficulty. Anthony stumbled back, drawing -his hand across his brow. "What... what damned perfume's on you?" he -demanded hoarsely. - -"None at all," she assured him, "I never... Why, Anthony, are you ill?" - -Wave after wave of sweetness enveloped him, choking, nauseating, -stinging his eyes, extinguishing the fire within him, turning the lust -to ashes. He too supported himself upon the rail, and his gaze fell -below, to the bushes. Was it the moonlight, or were they, where they had -been bare a few minutes before, now covered with great misty masses of -lilacs? - -The perfume of the flowers came up to him breath on breath: he could see -them clearly now.... White lilacs! An overwhelming panic swept over him, -a sudden dread of his surrounding, of the silken figure of the woman -before him. He must get away. He pushed her roughly aside, swung back -the screen door, and clattered through the room and down the stair. He -fumbled for a moment with a bolted door, and then was outside, free. -Without hesitancy he fled into the night, the secretive shadows. He -ran until he literally fell, with bursting lungs and shaking, powerless -knees, upon a bank. - - - - -XXVIII - -THE hotel was lost; the silence, the peace of nature, unbroken. A -drowsy flutter of wings stilled in a hedge. The moon sailed behind a -cloud that drooped low upon the earth, and great, slow drops of rain -fell to a continuous and far reverberation. They struck coolly upon -Anthony's face, pattered among the grass, dropped with minute explosions -of dust upon the road. The shower passed, the cloud dissolved, and the -crystal flood of light fell once more into the cup of the valley. - -It spread like a balm over Anthony: Hartmann, Mrs. Dallam, the weeping -face of Mrs. Kuhn, were like painted figures in a distasteful act upon -which he had turned his back, from which he had gone forth into the -supreme spectacle of the spheres, the presence of Eliza Dreen. Every -atom thrilled with the thought of her. "Oh, my very dear," he whispered -to the sleeping birds, the dead, white disk of the moon: "I will come -back to you... good." - -After the rain the night was like a damp, sweet veil upon his face; -the few stars above him were blurred as though seen through tears; the -horizon burned in a circle of flickering, ruddy light. He took up his -way once more over the soft folds of the road; now, accustomed to the -dark, he could distinguish the smooth pebbles by the way, separate, grey -blades of grass. He walked buoyantly, tirelessly, weaving on the loom -of the dim miles mingled visions of future and past, dominated by the -serene presence of Eliza. - -He felt in a pocket the wallet containing his ticket to California and -the generous sum added by his father. There must be no more delay in -arriving at his western destination! His excursion with Hartmann had -been a grave error; he saw it clearly now, one of those faults--so -fatally easy for him to commit--which, if his life was to spell success, -if he was to come finally into his heritage of joy, he must scrupulously -avoid. In the future he would drive directly, safely, toward his goal; -he would become part of that orderly pattern of life plotted in streets -and staid occupations: at the end of day he would return to his small, -carefully-tended garden to weed and water, and sit with Eliza on his -portico--a respectable, an authentic, member of society. On Sunday -morning they would go to the Episcopal Church, they would join the -sober, festivally-garbed procession moving toward the faint thunder of -the organ. And, at dinner, he would carve the roast. Thus, quietly, -they would grow old, grey, together. They would have a number of -children--all girls, he decided. - -Imperceptibly the morning was born about him, faint shadows grew under -the hedges, the sweet, querulous note of a robin sounded from the -sparkling sod. A wind stirred, as immaculate, as dewly fresh, as though -it were the first breath blown upon a new world of virginal and lyric -beauty. The molten gold of the sun welled out of the east and spilled -over the wooded hills and meadows; the violet mists drawn over the -swales and streams dissolved; Anthony met a boy driving cows to pasture. - - - - -XXIX - -HE rapidly overtook a bent and doggedly tramping figure; no common -wanderer, he recognized, as he drew nearer. The others decent suit was -eminently presentable, his felt hat brushed, his shoes comparatively -new. He turned upon Anthony a countenance as expressionless, as -darkly-stained, as a chipped and rusted effigy of iron; deep lines fell -back across the dingy cheeks; his lipless mouth was, apparently, another -such line; and his eyes, deeply sunk in the skull, were the eyes of a -dead man. Yet they were not blind; they saw. - -He halted, and surveyed Anthony with a lowered, searching curiosity, -clenching with a strained and surprising force the knob of a black -stick. Anthony met his scrutiny with the salutation of youth and the -road; but the other made no reply; his countenance was as blank as -though no word had been spoken. Then a sudden flicker of hot light -burned in the dull depths of his gaze, his worn face quivered with -a swift malignancy, an energy of suspicion, of hatred, that touched -Anthony's heart with a cold finger of fear. - -"What's your name?" he demanded, his entire being strained in an agony -of attention. - -Anthony informed him with scrupulous exactitude. - -He seemed, for a moment, to doubt Anthony's identity; then the fire -died, his eyes grew blank; his grasp relaxed on the stick, and, bent, -dogged, he continued on his way. - -The repellent contraction of Anthony's heart expanded in a light and -careless curiosity, youthful contempt mingled with the gayety of his -morning mood, and he hastened his steps until he had again overtaken his -inquisitor. - -"That's a good cane you've got," he observed of the stout shaft and -rounded head. - -Its owner grasped it by the lower end, and swung the head against his -hand. "Lead," he pronounced somberly. "It would crumble your skull like -an egg." - -Again fear stirred vaguely in Anthony: the entire absence of emotion -in the sanguinary, the dull, matter-of-fact voice were inhuman, tainted -with madness; the total detachment of those deliberate words had been -appalling. - -"I thought," he continued, "that you might have been Alfred Lukes, -but you're too young." As he pronounced that name his grasp tightened -whitely about the lead knob. The conviction seized Anthony that it was -fortunate he was not the individual in question. - -"You want Alfred?" he asked in an attempted jocularity. - -"He murdered my boy," the other answered simply. "Him and another. They -asked James into a boat to go fishing. Boys will always go fishing; he -was only eleven." He stopped in the middle of the road, and produced a -small package folded in oiled silk. It proved to be a derringer, of an -old-fashioned model, with two, short black barrels, one atop the other. -"Loaded," he said, "to put against his face." Then he rewrapped the -weapon and returned it to its place of concealment. "I've been looking -for Alfred Lukes for nineteen years," he recommenced his dogged -progress, "in trains and saloons and stores. Nineteen years ago James -was found in the river." He was silent for a moment, then, "One eye was -torn out," he added in his weary voice. He turned his blank and terrible -gaze upon Anthony, upon the sparkling morning. The derringer dragged -slightly upon his coat, the stick--that stick which could crush a skull -like an egg--made its trailing signature in the dust. A mingled loathing -and pity took possession of Anthony; he recoiled from the corroding and -secret horror of that nineteen year Odyssey of a torturing and impotent -spirit of revenge, from the infinite black tide that had swept over the -stooping figure at his side, the pitiless memory that had destroyed its -sanity. - -"It was on Sunday; James had on his nice blue suit and a new, red silk -necktie... they found it knotted about his throat... as tight as a big -man could make it." - -A sudden impulse overcame Anthony to run, to leave far behind him this -sinister, animated speck on the sunny road, under the dusty branches -burdened with ripening fruit, thrilling with the bubbling notes of -birds. But, as his gaze fell again upon his companion, he saw only -an old man, gaunt with suffering, hurrying toward the noon. A deep, -cleansing compassion vanquished the dread, and, spontaneously, he spoke -of his own lighter affairs, of California, his destination. - -"I have never been west of Chicago," the other interposed. "I hadn't the -money; the walking is dreadfully hard; the sun on those plains hurt my -head. Do you suppose James Lukes is in California?" he asked, pausing -momentarily in his rapid shamble. - -In his careless, youthful egotism, Anthony ignored the query. He -wondered aloud where he could board a through train to the West. - -"Have you got your ticket?" - -Anthony tapped complacently upon the pocket that held the wallet. They -were walking now through a wood that flowed to the rim of the road, and -a turn hid either vista. A stream ran through the rank greenery of the -bottom, crossed by a bridge of loosely bolted planks. Anthony paused, -intent upon the brown, sliding water beneath him, the minute minnows -balancing against the stream. In that closed place of broken light the -cool stillness was profound. The stream fled past its weeds without a -gurgle, the leaves hung motionless, as though they had been stamped from -metal... he might have been, with his companion, within a charmed circle -of everlasting tranquillity. Then: - -"I wonder if Alfred Lukes is in California?" the latter resumed; "I've -never got there, the fare... too expensive, the sun hurt my head." -Anthony lit a Dulcina, and expelled a cloud of blue smoke that rose -compactly in the motionless air. "California," he repeated, sunk in -thought; "I wonder--" - -"California's a big place," Anthony hazarded. - -"If he was there I'd find him." Then, in his mechanical and -dispassionate voice, he cursed Alfred Lukes with the utmost foulness. -One heated word, the slightest elevation of his even tones, would have -made the performance human, intelligent, but the deadly monotony, the -impersonal accents, were as harrowing as though a mummy had ground out -of its shrunken and embalmed interior a recital of prehistoric hatred -and wrong; it resembled a phonograph record of incalculable depravity. -He stood beyond the bridge, resting upon his stick, with his unmoved -face turned toward Anthony. His hat cast a deep shade over his eyes; -but, below, in a wanton patch of sunlight, his lipless mouth trembled -greyly. - -"California," he repeated still again, then, "I must get there." He -shifted his hand lower upon the stick, and moved nearer to Anthony by a -step; the patch of sunlight shifted up to his hat and fled. - -"You could try the freight cars," Anthony suggested. The stooping, -neatly-brushed figure, the stony countenance, had become, in an -intangible manner, menacing, obscurely dangerous. The fingers were drawn -like a claw about the club. Then the arm relaxed, he seemed to shrink -into hopeless resignation. Beyond the leafy arcade Anthony could now -see the countryside spread out in sunny fields, fleecy, white clouds -shifting in the sea of blue.... Suddenly a great flame shot up before -his eyes, a stunning shock fell upon his head, and the flame went out -in a whirling darkness that swept like a black sea over a continent of -intolerable pain. He heard, as if from an immense distance, a thin voice -pronounce the single word, "California." - - - - -XXX - -A GRIPPING wave of nausea recalled Anthony to consciousness; a deathly -sickness spreading from the pit of his stomach through his entire being; -his prostrate head, seeming stripped of its skull, was tortured by the -dragging fronds of the ferns among which he lay. He sat up dizzily. -Through the leafy opening the fleeting forms of the clouds shifted -over the sunny hills. The stream slipped silently through the grass. He -staggered down the slight incline, and, falling forward upon the ground, -let the water flow over his throbbing head. The cool shock revived him, -and he washed away a dark, clotted film from his forehead and cheek. - -His wallet, with his ticket to California and store of money were gone. -He started in instant, unsteady pursuit of the man who had struck him -down and robbed him. But, at the edge of the wood he paused--how long -had he lain among the ferns? the sun was now high over his head, the -morning lapsed, the other might have had three, four hours' start. -He might now be entrained, bound for California, searching for Alfred -Lukes. A sudden weakness forced him to sit at the roadside; he lost -consciousness again for a moment. Then, summoning his youth, his -vitality, he rose, and walked unsteadily in search of assistance. - -He had proceeded an intolerable mile, wiping away a thin trickle of -blood that persisted in crawling into his eye, when he saw a low roof -amid a tangle of greenery. He stopped with a sobbing breath of relief. -He was delirious, he thought, for peering at him through the leaves he -saw the countenance and beautiful, bare body of a child, as dark and -tense as bronze. A cloud of black hair overhung a face vivid as a -flower; her crimson lips trembled; then, with a startled cry, the figure -vanished. - -He made his way with difficulty over a short path, overgrown with vines -and twisted branches, and came abruptly upon a low, white house and -wide, opened door. An aged and shapeless woman sat on a chair without a -back, cutting green beans into a bright tin basin. When she saw him -she dropped the pan with a clatter, and an unfamiliar exclamation of -surprise. - -"I've been hurt," Anthony explained; "knocked silly and robbed." - -"Gina!" she called excitedly; "Dio mio! _Gina!_" A young woman, large -and loosely molded, with a lusty baby clasped to her bared breast, -appeared in the doorway. When she saw Anthony she dropped the baby into -the elder's arms. "Poverino!" she cried; "come in the house, little -mister." She caught him by the arm, almost lifting him over the doorstep -into a cool, dark interior. He had a brief glimpse of drying vegetables -strung from the ceiling, of a waxen image of the virgin in faded pink -silk finery against the wall; then, with closed eyes, he relaxed -into the charge of soothing and skilled fingers. His head rested on a -maternal arm while a soft bandage was fixed about his forehead. - -"Ecco!" she ejaculated, her ministration successful. She led him to a -rude couch upon the floor, and gently insisted upon his lying down. He -attempted to thank her, but she laid her large, capable hand over his -mouth, and he sank into an exhausted, semi-conscious rest. Once she bent -over him, dampening the bandage, once he saw, against the light of the -door, the shape, slim and beautiful as an angel, of the child. Outside -a low, liquid murmur of voices continued without a break, strange and -quieting. - -He slept, and woke up refreshed, strengthened. The dusk had thickened in -the room, the strings of vegetables were lost in the shadows, a dim -oil lamp cast a feeble glow on rude walls. He lay motionless for a few, -delightful seconds, folded in absolute peace, beneficent quietude. The -amazing idea struck him that, perhaps, he had died, and that this was -the eternal tranquillity of the hymn books, and he started vigorously -to his feet in an absurd panic. The homely figure of a man entering -dispelled the illusion--he was a commonplace Italian, one of the -multitude who labored in the ditches of the country, stood aside in -droves from the tracks as trains whirled past. - -"What hit your head?" he asked, his mobile face displaying sympathetic -interest, concern. - -"A leaded stick," Anthony explained. "I was knocked out, robbed." - -"Birbanti!" he laid a heavy hand upon Anthony's shoulder. "You feel -better now, gia?" The latter, confused by such open attention, shook -the hand from its friendly grip. "He was crazy," he awkwardly explained; -"and looking for a man who had killed his son; he wanted to get to -California and I told him I had a ticket west." - -The laborer led Anthony to a room where a rude table was spread with -homely fare--a great, rough loaf of bread, a deep bowl of steaming, -green soup, flakey white cheese, and a bottle of purple wine. An open -door faced the western sky, and the room was filled with the warm -afterglow; it hung like a shining veil over the man, the still, maternal -countenance of the woman, like an aureole about the baby now sleeping -against her breast, and graced the russet countenance of an aged -peasant. The child that Anthony had seen first, now in a scant white -slip, seemed dipped in the gold of dreams. - -As he consumed the savory soup, the creamy cheese and wine, the scene -impressed him as strangely significant, familiar. He dismissed an idle -effort of memory in order to consider the unfortunate aspect assumed by -his immediate affairs. Concerning one thing he was determined--he would -ask his father to assist him no further toward his western destination. -He must himself pay for the initial error, together with all its -consequences, of having followed Hartmann: California was his object, -he would not write to Ellerton until his westward progress was once more -assured. - -Two courses were open to him--he could "beat" his way, getting meals -when and how he was able, riding, when possible, on freight cars, doing -casual jobs on the way. That he dismissed in favor of a second, which -in the end, he judged, would prove more speedy. He would make his way -to the nearest city, find employment in a public or private garage as -chauffeur or mechanic, and, in a month at most, have the money necessary -for the continuation of his journey. - -The household conversed vigorously in their native idiom, giving his -thoughts full freedom. The glow in the west faded, sank from the room, -but, suddenly, he recognized the familiar quality of his surroundings. -It resembled a picture of the Holy Family on the wall of his mother's -room; the bare interior was the same, the rugged features of Joseph the -carpenter, the brooding beauty of Mary. He almost laughed aloud at the -absurd comparison of the exalted scene of Christ's infancy with this -commonplace but kindly group, the laborer with soiled and callous hands -and winestained mouth, the material young woman with the string of cheap -blue beads. - -The meal at an end the chairs were pushed back and the old woman noisily -assembled the dishes. Anthony's head throbbed and burned. In passing, -the mother's fingers rested upon his brow. "Not too hot," she nodded -contentedly. - -A consultation followed. Anthony might remain there for the night; or, -if he insisted, he might drive into the city with "Nono," who left in -a few hours with a wagonload of greens for the morning market. He chose -the latter, with a clumsy expression of gratitude, impatient to resume -active efforts in his rehabilitation in his own mind. - -"Niente!" they disclaimed in chorus. - - - - -XXXI - -HE fell into an instant slumber on the hospitable heap in the corner, -and was awakened while it was still dark. In the flicker of the oil lamp -the old man's face swam vaguely against the night. Without the wagon was -loaded, a drooping horse insecurely harnessed into patched shafts. The -world was a still space of blue gloom, of indefinite forms suspended -in the hush of color, sound; it seemed to be spun out of shadows like -cobwebs, out of vapors, scents. A pale, hectic glow on the horizon -marked the city. They ambled noiselessly, slowly, forward, under the -vague foliage of trees. There was a glint of light in a passing -window, the clatter of milk pails; a rooster crowed, thin and clear and -triumphant; on a grassy slope by the road they saw a smoldering fire, -recumbent forms. - -They entered the soiled and ragged outskirts of the city--isolated -ranks of hideous, boxlike dwellings amid raw stretches of clay, rank -undergrowth. The horse's hoofs rang on a bricked pave, and the city -surged about them. Overhead the elevated tracks made a confused, black -tracing rippling with the red and white and green fire of signals. A -gigantic truck, drawn by plunging horses whose armored hoofs were ringed -in pale flame, passed with a shattering uproar of its metallic load. A -train thundered above with a dolorous wail, showering a lurid trail -of sparks into the sky, out of which a thick soot sifted down upon -the streets. On either hand the blank walls of warehouses shut in the -pavements deserted save for a woman's occasional, chalky countenance in -the frosty area of the arc lights, or a drunkard lurching laboriously -over the gutters. The feverish alarm of firebells sounded from a distant -quarter. A heavy odor of stagnant oil, the fetid smoke of flaring -chimneys, settled over Anthony, and gratefully he recalled the pastoral -peace of the house he had left--the house hidden in its tangled verdure -amid the scented space of the countryside. - -They stopped finally before a shed open upon the street, where -bluish-orange flames, magnified by tin reflectors, illuminated busy -groups. Silvery fish with exposed carmine entrails were ranged -in rows; the crisp, green spoil of the countryside was spread in the -stalls--the silken stalks of early onions, the creamy pink of carrots, -wine-red beets; rosy potatoes were heaped by cool, crusty cantaloupe, -the vert pods of peas, silvery spinach and waxy, purple eggplant. Over -all hung the delicate aroma of crushed mint, the faint, sweet tang of -scarlet strawberries, the spicy fragrance of simple flowers--of cinnamon -pinks and heliotrope and clover. - -Anthony assisted the other to transfer his load to part of a stall -presided over by a woman with bare, powerful elbows, shouting in a -boisterous voice in perfect equality with her masculine neighbors. - -High above the dawn flushed the sky; the flares dimmed from a source of -light to mere colored fans, and were extinguished. Early buyers arrived -at the market with baskets and pushcarts. - -Anthony remained at the old man's side; it was too early to start -in search of work; and, at his companion's invitation, he shared the -latter's breakfast of cheese and bread, with a stoup of the bitter wine. -As the market became crowded, in the stress of competition, bargaining, -the vendor forgot Anthony's presence; and with a deep breath of -determination, he started in search of employment; he again faced the -West. - -He had no difficulty in discovering the section of the city given over -to the automobile industry, a broad, asphalt way with glittering show -windows, serried ranks of cars, by either curb. There was, however, -no work to be obtained here; a single offer would scarcely pay for his -maintenance; in its potentialities California was the merest blur upon -the future. Then for a second and more lucrative position he lacked the -necessary papers. Midday found him without a prospect of employment. He -had almost two dollars in change that had remained intact; and, lunching -sparingly, he continued his inquiries. - -It was late when he found himself before a sign that proclaimed the -ability within to secure positions for competent chauffeurs. And, -influenced largely by the chairs which he saw ranged against the wall, -he entered and registered. The fee for registration was a dollar, and -that left him with scant supplies as he took a place between three other -men awaiting skeptically the positions which they had been assured they -might confidently expect. With a casual nod to Anthony, a small man -with watery blue eyes, clad in a worn and greasy livery, continued -a dissertation on methods of making money additional to that of mere -salary, of agreements with tiremen, repairs necessary and otherwise, the -proper manner in which to bring a car's life quickly and gracefully to -a close, in order, he added slyly to the indifferent clerk, to encourage -the trade. - -The afternoon wasted slowly but surely to a close; no one entered and -the three rose with weary oaths and left in search of a convenient -saloon. They waved to Anthony to follow them, but he silently declined. - -A profound depression settled over him, a sense of impotence, of -failure. His wounded head fretted him with frequent hot pains. He was -enveloped by a sense of desolating loneliness which he endeavored to -dispel with the thought of Eliza; but she remained as far, as faintly -sweet, as the moon of a spring night. It seemed incredible that she -had once been in his arms; surely he had dreamed her voice--such voices -couldn't exist in reality--telling him that she loved him. Her letter -had gone with his wallet, his ticket to California. He had not written -her... she would be unable to penetrate the reason for his silence, -his shame for blundering into such a blind way, his lack of anything -reassuring to tell her. He could not write until his feet were once more -firmly planted upon the only path that led to success, to happiness, to -her. - - - - -XXXII - -THE clock on the wall above the clerk's head indicated half past five, -and Anthony, relinquishing hope for the day, rose. Now he regretted the -apparently fruitless expenditure of a dollar. "Leave an address?" the -clerk inquired mechanically. "Office open at nine." - -"I'll be back," Anthony told him. He turned, and collided with a man -entering suddenly from the street. He was past middle age, with a long, -pallid countenance, drooping snuff-colored mustache, a preoccupied gaze -behind bluish glasses, and was clad in correct brown linen, but wore an -incongruously battered and worn soft hat. - -"I want a man to drive my car," he announced abruptly. "I don't -particularly care for a highly expert individual, but his habits--" he -broke off, and muttered, "superficial adjustment to environment--popular -conception of acquired characteristics." Then, "must be moderate," he -ended unexpectedly. - -Anthony lingered, while the clerk assured the other that several highly -desirable individuals were available. "In fact," he told him, "one left -the office only a few minutes ago; I will have him call upon you in the -morning." - -"What's this?" he replied, indicating Anthony; "is he a chauffeur?" -The clerk nodded. "But," he added, "the man I refer to is older, more -experienced... sure to satisfy you." - -"What references have you?" the prospective employer demanded. - -"None," Anthony answered directly. The clerk dismissed his chances with -a gesture. - -"What experience?" the other persisted. "Driving on and off for four or -five years, and I am a fair mechanic." - -"Fair only?" - -"That's all, sir." - -The older man drew nearer to Anthony, scrutinizing him with a kindly -severity. "What's the matter with your head?" he demanded. - -"I was knocked down and robbed on a country road." - -"Lose much?" - -"Everything." - -"Drinking?" - -"No, sir." - -"Familiar with prehistoric geological strata?" Anthony admitted that he -was not. - -"I had hoped," the other murmured, "to get a driver who could assist me -with my indices." He renewed his close inspection, then, "Elemental," he -pronounced suddenly; "I'll take you." - -"Five dollars, please," interpolated the clerk. Outside his new employer -took Anthony by the shoulder, glancing over his suit. "You can get your -things, and then go out to my house." - -"I can go sooner than that," Anthony corrected him. "I have no things." - -"Nothing but those clothes! Why... they will hardly do, will they? You -must get something, take it out of your salary. But, hang it, a man must -have a change of clothes! You must allow me--you are only a boy. I'll -come along; no--impossible." He took a long wallet from his pocket and -placed it in Anthony's hands. "I don't know what such things cost," -he said. "I think there's enough; get what you need. I must be off... -Mousterian deposits. Customs House." Before Anthony could reply he -had started away in a long, quick stride, but he stopped short. "My -address," he cried, "clean forgot." He gave Anthony a street and number. - -"Rufus Hardinge," he called, hurrying away. - -Anthony stood gazing in incredulous surprise at the polished, brown -wallet in his hand. He turned to hurry after the other, to protest, but -already he was out of sight. Anthony slipped the wallet in his pocket, -and, his head in a whirl, walked slowly over the street until he found -himself opposite a large retail clothing establishment. After a brief -hesitation he entered, pausing to glance hastily at his resources. In -the leather pocket which contained the paper money he saw a comfortable -number of crisp yellow bills; the rest of the space was taken up by -bulky and wholly unintelligible notes. - -He purchased a serviceable suit, stout shoes, a cap, and, after a short -consideration, two flannel shirts. If this were not satisfactory, he -concluded, he could pay with a portion of his salary. The slip of the -total amount, which he carefully folded, registered thirty-one dollars -and seventy cents. - -At a small tobacco shop, where he drew upon his own rapidly diminishing -capital, he discovered from the proprietor that it would be necessary -to take a suburban car to the address furnished him. He rolled rapidly -between rows of small, identical, orderly brick dwellings; on each -shallow portico a door exhibited an obviously meretricious graining; -dingy or garish curtains draped the single lower windows; the tin eaves -were continuous, unvaried, monotonous. Occasionally a greengrocer's -display broke the monotony of the vitreous way, a rare saloon or -drugstore held the corners. Farther on the street suffered a decline, -the line of dwellings was broken by patches of bedraggled gardens, set -with the broken fragments of stone ornaments; small frame structures, -streaked by the weather and blistered remnants of paint, alternated with -stables, stores heaped with the sorry miscellanies of meager, disrupted -households. Imperceptibly green spaces opened, foliage fluttered in the -orange light of the declining sun; through an opening in the habited -wall he caught sight of a glimmering stream, cows wandering against a -hill. - -He left the car finally at a lane where the houses, set back solidly in -smooth, opulent lawns, were somberly comfortable, reserved. The place -he sought, a four-square ugly dwelling faced with a tower, the woodwork -painted mustard yellow, was surrounded by gigantic tulip poplars. At the -front a cement basin caught the spray from a cornucopia held aloft -by sportive cherubs balanced precariously on the tails of reversed -dolphins, circled by a tan-bark path to the entrance and a broad side -porch. He was about to ring the bell when a high, young voice summoned -him to the latter. There he discovered a girl with a mass of coppery -hair, loosely tied and streaming over her shoulder, in a coffee-colored -wicker chair. She was dressed in white, without ornaments, and wore pale -yellow silk stockings. A yellow paper book, with a title in French, -was spread upon her lap; and, gravely sitting at her side, was a large -terrier with a shaggy yellow coat. - -"I suppose," she said without preliminary, "that you are the person -who took father's money. It was really unexpected of you to appear with -_any_ of it. Give me the wallet," she demanded, without allowing him -opportunity for a reply. - -He gave it to her without comment, a humorous light rising in his clear -gaze. "I warn you," she continued, "I know every penny that was in it. I -always give him a fixed amount when he goes out." She emptied the money -into her lap, and counted it industriously: at the end she wrinkled her -brow. - -"Here is a note of what I spent," he informed her, tendering her the -slip from the store. She scanned it closely. "That's not unreasonable," -she admitted finally, palpably disappointed that no villainous -discrepancy had been revealed; "and it adds up all right." Then, with an -assumption of business despatch, "It must come out of your salary, of -course; father is frightfully impractical." - -"Of course," he assented solemnly. - -"Your references--" - -"I haven't any." - -She made an impatient gesture of dismay; the terrier rose and surveyed -him with a low growl. "He promised me that he would do the thing -properly, that I positively need not go. What experience have you had?" - -He told her briefly. - -"Dreadfully unsatisfactory," she commented, "and you are oceans too -young. But... we will try you for one week; I can't promise any more. -Would you be willing to help a little in the house--opening boxes, -unwrapping bones--?" - -"Certainly," he assured her cheerfully, "any little thing I can do...." - -"The car's at the bottom of the garden, it has to be brought around by -the side street. There's a room overhead, and a bell from the house. You -must come up very quickly if, in the night, it rings three times, for -that," she informed him, "will mean burglars. My father and I are quite -alone here with two women. I can't think of anything else now." The -terrier moved closer to Anthony, sniffing at his shoes, then raised his -golden eyes and subjected him to a lengthy, thoughtful scrutiny. "That -is Thomas Huxley," she informed him; "he is a perfectly wonderful -investigator, and detests all sentimentality. You will come up to the -kitchen for meals," she called, as Anthony turned to descend the lawn; -"the bell will ring for your dinner." - - - - -XXXIII - -HE found the automobile in the semi-gloom of a closed carriage house. -On the right, separated by a partition, were three loose stalls, -apparently long unoccupied; their ornamental fringe of straw had -moldered, and dank, grey heaps of feed lay in the troughs. A ladder -fixed vertically against a wall disappeared into cobwebby shadows above; -and mounting, Anthony found the room to which he had been directed. It, -too, was partitioned from the great, bare space of the hay-loft; the -musty smell of old hay and heated wood hung dusty, heavy, about the -corners, where sounded the faint squeaks of scattering mice. The space -which he was to occupy had been rigorously swept and aired; print -curtains hung at the small dormer window that overlooked the lawn, -while, above the washstand, was the bell which, he had been warned, -would appraise him of the possible presence of burglars above. A bright -metal clock ticked noisily on a deal bureau, and, on a table beside a -pitcher and glass, two books had been arranged with precise disarray; -they proved, upon investigation, to be a volume of the Edib. Rev. LXIX, -and a bound collection of the proceedings of the Linean Society. - -He saw by the noisy clock that it was nearly seven, and, hastily -washing, responded immediately to the summons of the bell. A small, -covered porch framed the kitchen door, where he entered to find a long -room dimly lit, and a dinner set at the end of a table. A bulky woman -with a flushed countenance and massive ankles in white cotton stockings -set before him half a broiled chicken, an artichoke with a bowl of -yellow sauce, and a silver jug of milk. - -"God knows it's a queer meal to put to a hearty young lad," she -observed; "but it's all was ordered. There's not a pitata in the house," -she added in palpable disgust. A younger woman in a frilled apron -appeared from within, carrying a tray of used dishes. She had a trim -figure, and a broad face glowing with rude vitality, which, with an -assumption of disdain, she turned upon Anthony. "I'd never trust myself -with him in the machine," she observed to the older woman, "and him not -more than a child." - -"Be holding your impudent clatter," the other commanded, "you're not -required to go out with him at all." - -"Mr. Hardinge says, will you see him in the library when you have -done," the former shot at Anthony over a shapely shoulder. "You can walk -through the dining room to where he is beyond." - -The library was a somber chamber: its long windows were draped with -stiff folds of green velvet, its walls occupied by high bookcases with -leaded glass doors and ornamental Gothic points under the ceiling. -A massive desk was piled with papers, pamphlets, printed reports, -comparative tables of figures, an hundred and one huddled details; the -table beneath a glittering crystal chandelier was hardly better; even -the floor was stacked with books about the chair where Anthony found his -employer. The latter looked up absently from a printed sheet as Anthony -entered. - -"Positively," he pronounced, "there are not enough dominants to secure -Mendel's position." His expression was profoundly disturbed. - -"Yes, sir," Anthony replied non-committally. "The consequences of that," -the other continued, "are beyond prediction." Silence descended -upon him; his fixed gaze seemed to be contemplating some unexpected -catastrophe, some grave peril, opened before him in the still chamber. -"I am at a temporary loss!" he ejaculated suddenly; "we are all at a -loss... unless my experiments in pure descent warrant--" Suddenly he -became aware of Anthony's presence. "Oh!" he said pleasantly; "glad you -got fixed up. Say nothing more to Annot--it's all nonsense, taking it -out of your salary. That's what I wanted to see you for," he added; -"what salary do you require? what did you get at your last place?" - -Anthony made a swift calculation of the distance to California, the -probable cost of carriage. "I should like seventy-five," he pronounced -finally. His conscience suddenly and uncomfortably awoke in the presence -of the other's unquestioning generosity. "Perhaps I'd better tell -you that I don't intend to stay here long.... I am anxious to get to -California." - -But Rufus Hardinge had already forgotten him. "Seventy-five," he had -murmured, with a satisfied nod, and once more concentrated his attention -upon the sheet in his hand. As Anthony returned through the dining room -he found Annot Hardinge arranging a spray of scarlet verbena in a glass -vase. - -"Has father spoken to you about the salary you are to get?" she asked. -He paused, cap in hand. "I told him that you were positively not to get -above eighty." - -"I told him seventy-five. He seemed contented." - -"He would have been contented if you had said seven hundred and fifty." -Then, to discountenance any criticism of her father's intelligence, she -added: "He is a very famous biologist, you know. The people about here -don't understand those things, but in London, in Paris, in Berlin, he -is easily one of the greatest men alive. He is carrying the Mendelian -theory to its absolute, logical conclusion." - -"He said something about that to me," Anthony commented; "it seemed to -upset him." - -A cloud appeared upon her countenance; then, coldly, "That will do," she -told him. - -Once more in the informal garage he lit the gas jet on either wall, and, -in the bubbling, watery light, found the automobile caked with mud and -grease, the tires flat, the wires charred and the cylinders coated with -carbon. A pair of old canvas trousers were hanging from a nail, and, -donning them and connecting a length of hose to a convenient faucet, he -began the task of putting the machine in order. It was past eleven -when he finished for the night, and mounting with cramped and stiffened -muscles to his room, he fell into immediate slumber. - - - - -XXXIV - -ON the following morning he wrote a brief, reassuring note to his -father; then, over another page, hesitated with poised pen. "Dear -Eliza," he finally began, then once more fell into indecision. "I wish -I were back on the Wingo-hocking with you," he' embarked. "That was -splendid, having you in the canoe, with no one else; the whole world -seemed empty except for you and me. It's no joke of an emptiness without -you. - -I have been delayed in reaching California, but I'll soon be out there -now, working like thunder for our wedding. - -"Mostly I can't realize it, it's too good to be true--you seem like -a thing I dreamed about, in a dream all full of moonlight and white -flowers. It's funny but I smell lilacs, you know like you picked, -everywhere. Last night, cleaning a car just soaked in dirt and greasy -smells, that perfume came out of nothing, and hung about so real that it -hurt me. And all the time I kept thinking that you were standing beside -me and smiling. I knew better, but I had to look more than once. - -"Love's different from what I thought it would be; I thought it would be -all happy, but it's not that, it's blamed serious. I am always flinching -from blows that might fall on you, do you see? Before I went away I -saw a man kiss a woman, and they both seemed scared; I understand that -now--they loved each other." - -He broke off and gazed out the narrow window over the feathery tops of -maples, the symmetrical, bronze tops of a clump of pines. The odor of -lilacs came to him illusively; he was certain that Eliza was standing at -his shoulder; he could hear a silken whisper, feel an intangible thrill -of warmth. He turned sharply, and faced the empty room, the bright, -stentorious clock, the table with the pitcher and glass and serious -volumes. "Hell!" he exclaimed in angry remonstrance at his credulity. -Still shaken by the reality of the impression he wondered if he were -growing crazy? The bell above the washstand rang sharply, and, putting -the incomplete letter in a drawer, he proceeded over the tanbark path -that led to the house. - -Annot Hardinge beckoned to him from the porch, and, turning, he passed a -conservatory built against the side of the dwelling, where he saw small, -identical plants ranged in mathematical rows. - -"What is your name?" she demanded abruptly, as he stopped before her. -"Anthony," he told her. - -She was dressed in apricot muslin, with a long necklace of alternate -carved gold and amber beads, dependent amber earrings, and a flapping -white hat with broad, yellow ribbands that streamed downward with her -hair. In one hand she held a pair of crumpled white gloves and a soft -gold mesh bag. - -"You may bring around the car... Anthony," she directed. "I want to go -into town." - -In the heart of the shopping district they moved slowly in an unbroken -procession of motor landaulets, open cars and private hansoms, a -glittering, colorful procession winding through the glittering, colorful -cavern of the shop windows. The sidewalks were thronged with women, -brilliant in lace and dyed feathers and jewels, the thin, sustained -babble of trivial voices mingled with the heavy, coiling odors of costly -perfumes. - -When a small heap of bundles had been accumulated a rebellious -expression clouded An-not Hardinge's countenance. "Stop at that -confectioner's," she directed, indicating a window filled with candies -scattered in a creamy tide, bister, pale mauve, and citrine, over -fluted, delicately green satin, against a golden mass of molasses bars. -She soon emerged, with a package tied in silver cord, and paused upon -the curb. "I want to go out... out, into the heart of the country," she -proclaimed; "this crowd, these tinsel women, make me ill. Drive until I -tell you to stop... away from everything." - -When they had left the tangle of paved streets, the innumerable stone -faades, she directed their course into a ravine whose steep sides were -covered with pines, at the bottom of which a stream foamed whitely over -rocky ledges. Beyond, they rose to an upland, where open, undulating -hills burned in the blue flame of noon; at their back a trail of dust -resettled upon the road, before them a glistening flock of peafowl -scattered with harsh, threatening cries. By a gnarled apple tree, whose -ripening June apples overhung the road, she called, "stop!" - -The motor halted in the spicy, dappled shadow of the tree; at one side a -cornfield spread its silken, green tapestry; on the other a pasture was -empty, close-cropped, rising to a coronal of towering chestnuts. The -road, in either direction, was deserted. - -Anthony heard a sigh of contentment at his back: relaxed from the -tension of driving he removed his cap, and, with crossed legs, -contemplated the sylvan quiet. He watched a flock of blackbirds wheeling -above the apple tree, and decided that they had been within easy shot. - -"Look over your head!" she cried suddenly; "what gorgeous apples." - -He rose, and, measuring the distance in a swift glance, jumped, and -caught hold of a limb, by means of which he drew himself up into the -tree. He mounted rapidly, filling his cap with crimson apples; when his -pockets were full he paused. Down through the screen of leaves he -could see her upturned countenance, framed in the broad, white hat; -her expression was severely impersonal; yet, viewed from that informal -angle, she did not appear displeased. And, when he had descended, she -picked critically among the store he offered. She rolled back the gloves -upon her wrists, and bit largely, with youthful gusto. On the road, -after a moment's hesitation, Anthony embarked upon the consumption of -the remainder. He strolled a short distance from the car, and found a -seat upon a low stone-wall. - - - - -XXXV - -SOON, he saw, she too left the car, and passed him, apparently ignorant -of his presence. But, upon her return, she stopped, and indicated -with her foot some feathery plants growing in a ditch by the road. -"Horsetails," she declared; "they are Paleozoic... millions of years -old." - -"They look fresh and green still," he observed. She glanced at him -coldly, but his expression was entirely serious. "I mean the species -of course. Father has fossils of the Devonian period... they were trees -then." She chose a place upon the wall, ten feet or more from him, and -sat with insolent self-possession, whistling an inconsequential tune. -There was absolutely no pose about her, he decided; she possessed a -masculine carelessness in regard to him. She leaned back, propped upon -her arms, and the frank, flowing line of her full young body was like -the June day in its uncorseted freedom and beauty. - -"If you will get that package from the confectioner's--" she suggested -finally. She unfolded the paper, and exposed a row of small cakes, which -she divided rigorously in two; rewrapping one division she held it out -toward him. - -"No, no," he protested seriously. "I'm not hungry." - -"It's past two," she informed him, "and we can't possibly be back in -time for luncheon. I'd rather not hold this out any longer." He relieved -her without further words. "Two brioche and two babas," she enumerated. -He resumed his place, and then consumed the cakes without further -speech. - -"The study of biology," she informed him later, with a gravity -appropriate to the subject, "makes a great many small distinctions seem -absurd. When you get accustomed to thinking in races, and in millions -of years, the things your friends fuss about seem absurd. And so, if you -like, why, smoke." - -It was his constant plight that, between the formal restrictions of his -position, and the vigorous novelty of her speech, Anthony was constantly -at a loss. "Perhaps," he replied inanely; "I know nothing about those -things." - -She flashed over him a candid, amber gaze that singularly resembled her -father's. "You are not at all acquisitive," she informed him; "and it's -perfectly evident that you are the poorest sort of chauffeur. You drive -very nicely," she continued with severe justice. "One could trust you -in a crisis; but it is little things that make a chauffeur, and in the -little things," she paused to indicate a globe of cigarette smoke that -instantly dissolved, "you are like--that." - -He moodily acknowledged to himself the truth of her observation, but -such acumen he considered entirely unnecessary in one so young; he did -not think it becoming. He contrasted her, greatly to her detriment, with -the elusive charm of Eliza Dreen; the girl before him was too vivid, too -secure; he felt instinctively that she was entirely free from the bonds, -the conventions, that held the majority of girls within recognized, -convenient limits. Her liberty of mind upset a balance to which both -heredity and experience had accustomed him. The entire absence of a -tacitly recognized masculine superiority subconsciously made him uneasy, -and he took refuge in imponderable silence. - -"Besides," she continued airily, "you are too physically normal to -think, all normal people are stupid.... You are like one of those wood -creatures in the classic pastorals." - -A faint grin overspread Anthony's countenance; among so many -unintelligible words he had regained his poise--this was the usual, the -familiar feminine chatter, endless, inconsequential, by means of which -all girls presented the hopeless tangle of their thoughts and emotions; -its tone had deceived him only at the beginning. - -In the stillness which followed other blackbirds, equally within shot, -winged over the apple tree; the shadow of the boughs crept farther -and farther down the road. She rose vigorously. "I must get back," she -announced. She remained silent during the return, but Anthony, with the -sense of direction cultivated during countless days in the fields and -swales, found the way without hesitation. - -When she left the car he slowly backed and circled to the carriage -house. As he splashed body and wheels with water, polished the metal, -dried and dusted the cushions, the crisp, cool voice of Annot Hardinge -rang in his ears. He divined something of her isolated existence, her -devotion to the absorbed, kindly man who was her father, and speculated -upon her matured youth. She recalled his sister Ellie, for whose -inflexible integrity he cherished a deep-seated admiration; but both -left him cold before the poignant tenderness of Eliza... Eliza, the -unforgettable, who loved him. - - - - -XXXVI - -AFTER an unsubstantial dinner of grilled sweetbreads and mushrooms, and -a frozen pudding, he continued his interrupted letter: "But there isn't -any use in my trying to write my love in words; it won't go into words, -even inside of me I can't explain it--it seems as if instead of its -being a part of me that I am a part of it, of something too big for me -to see the end of." Then he became practicable, and wrote optimistically -of the things that were soon to be. - -There was a letter box at the upper corner of the street, and, passing -the porch, he saw the biologist sunk in an attitude of profound -dejection. His daughter sat with bare arms and neck at his side; her -hair was bound in a gleaming mass about her ears, and one hand was laid -upon the man's shoulder, while she patted Thomas Huxley with the other. -The dog rose, growling belligerently at the unfamiliar figure, but sank -again beneath a sharp command. When he returned Rufus Hardinge greeted -him, and turned to his daughter with a murmured suggestion, but she -shook her head in decisive negation. A light shone palely in the long -windows at their back. The sun, at its skyey, evening toilette, seemed, -in the rosy glow of westering candles, to scatter a cloud of powdered -gold over the worn and huddled shoulders of the world. - -Suddenly, seemingly in reconsideration of her decision, she called, "Oh, -Anthony!" and he retraced his steps to the porch. "My father suggests -that you sit here," she told him distantly. "He says that you are very -young, and that solitude is not good for you." - -"Annot," the older man protested humorously, "you have mangled my intent -beyond any recognition." With an unstudied, friendly gesture he tended -Anthony his cigar case. A deep preoccupation enveloped him; he sat with -loose hands and unseeing eyes. In the deepening twilight his countenance -was grey. Anthony had taken a position upon the edge of the porch, his -feet in the fragrant grass, out of which fireflies rose glimmering, -mounting higher and higher, until, finally, they disappeared into the -night above, in the pale birth of the stars. - -A deep silence enfolded them until in an unexpected, low voice, Rufus -Hardinge repeated mechanically aloud lines called, evidently, out of a -memory of long ago: - - ''Within thy beams, Oh, Sun! or who could find, - - While fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed, - - That too," he paused, groping in his memory for - - the words: - - "That too such countless orbs thou madst us - - blind." - -The girl rose, and drew his head into her warm, young arms. "Don't, -father," she cried, in a sudden, throbbing apprehension; "please... -please. You have the clearest, most beautiful eyes in the world. Think -of all they have seen and understood--" He patted her absently. Anthony -moved silently away. - - - - -XXXVII - -NOT long after, at breakfast, the young and disdainful maid conveyed to -Anthony a request to proceed, when he had finished, to the conservatory. -There he discovered Annot Har-dinge, with her sleeves rolled up above -her vigorous elbows, dusting with a fine, brown powder the rows of -monotonous, potted plants. She directed him to follow her with a -slender-nosed watering pot. He wondered silently at the featureless -display of what he found to be ordinary bean plants, some of the dwarf -variety, others drawn up against the wall. They bore in exact, minute -inscriptions, strange names and titles, cryptic numbers; some, he saw, -were labelled "Dominants," others, "Recessives." - -"The 'cupids' are doing wretchedly, poor dears!" she exclaimed before a -row of dwarf sweet peas. "This is my father's laboratory," she told him -briefly. - -"I thought he had something to do with Darwin and the missing link." - -She gazed at him pityingly from the heights of a vast superiority. -"Darwin did some valuable preliminary work," she instructed him; -"although Wallace really guessed it all first. Now Mendel, Bateson, are -the important names. They were busy with the beginnings; and, among the -beginnings, plants are the most suggestive." She indicated a small row -of budding sweet peas. "Perhaps, in those flowers, the whole secret of -the universe will be found; perhaps the mystery of our souls will be -explained; isn't it thrilling! The secret of inheritance may sleep in -those buds--if they are white it will prove... oh, a thousand things, -and among them that father is the most wonderful scientist alive; it -will explain heredity and control it, make a new kind of world possible, -a world without the most terrible diseases. What church, what saint, -what god, has really done that?" she demanded. "Stupid priggish figures -bending out of their gold-plated heavens!" - -Her enthusiasm communicated a thrill to him as he regarded the still, -withdrawn mystery of the plants. For the first time he thought of them -as alive, as he was alive; he imagined them returning his gaze, his -interest, exchanging--critically, in their imperceptible, chaste -tongue--their unimpassioned opinions of him. It was a disturbing -possibility that the secret of his future, of life and death, might lurk -in the flowers to unfold on those slender stems. He was oppressed by -a feeling of a world crowded with invisible, living forms, of fields -filled with billions of grassy inhabitants, of seas, mountains, made up -of interlocking and contending lives; every breath, he felt, absorbed -races of varied individuals. He thought, too, of people as plants, as -roses--Oh, Eliza!--as nettles, rank weeds, crimson lilies. And, vaguely, -this hurt him; something valuable, something sustaining, vanished from -his unformulated, instinctive conception of life; the world of men, -their aims, their courage, ideals, lost their peculiar beauty, their -importance; the past, rising from the mold through those green tubes -and vanishing into a future of dissolving gases, shrunk, stripped of its -glamor, to an affair of little moment. - -Outside, as he descended the lawn, the sun had the artificial glitter of -an incandescent light; the trees waved their arms at him threateningly. -Then, with a shrug of his normal young shoulders, he relinquished the -entire conception; he forgot it. He recklessly permeated a universe of -airy atoms with the smoke of a Dulcina. "That's a woolly delusion," he -pronounced. - -That evening he burnished the car, and mounted the ladder to his room -late. But the evening following, detained to perform a trivial task, -found him seated upon the porch, enveloped in the fragrant clouds of -Habana leaf. - - - - -XXXVIII - -ANNOT, as now he mentally termed her, dressed in the inevitable yellow, -was swinging a satin slipper on the point of her foot; her father was, -if possible, more greyly withdrawn than before. - -"To-night," the biologist finally addressed his daughter, "your mother -has been dead eighteen years.... She hated science; she said it had -destroyed my heart. Impossible--a purely functionary pump. The illusions -of emotions are cerebro-spinal reflexes, only that. She said that I -cared more for science than--than herself." He raised his head sharply, -"I was forced to tell her the truth, in common honor: science first.... -Tears are an automatic escapement to protect the vision. But women -have no logic, little understanding; hopelessly romantic, a false -quantity--romance, dangerous. I was away when she died ... Borneo, -Aurignacian strata had been discovered, a distinct parallel with the -Maurer jaw. Death is only a change of chemical activity," he shot at -Anthony in a voice not entirely steady, "the human entity a passing -agglomeration, kinetic.... Love is a mechanical principle, categorically -imperative," his voice sank, became diffuse. "Absolute science, -selfless. - -"People found her beautiful, I didn't know," he added wistfully; "beauty -is a vague term. The Chapelle skull is beautiful, as I understand it, as -I understand it. In a letter to me," after a long pause, "she employed -the term 'frozen to death'; she said that I had frozen her to death. -Only a figure, romantic, inexact." - -"Stuff!" Annot exclaimed lightly, but her anxious countenance -contradicted the spirit of her tones. "You mustn't stir about in old -troubles. Everything great demands sacrifice; mother didn't quite -understand; and I expect she got lonely, poor dear." - -Anthony rose, and made his way somberly toward the stable, but running -feet, his name called in low, urgent tones, arrested his progress. -An-not approached with the trouble deepening in her gaze. "Does he seem -entirely himself to you?" she asked, but, before he could answer,--"of -course, you don't know him well enough. You see, he is working too much -again, an average of sixteen hours for the ten days past. I haven't said -anything because the most difficult part of his work is at an end. -If his last conclusions are right he will have only to scribble the -reports, put a book together.... I can always tell when he is overworked -by the cobwebs--he tries to brush them off his face," she explained. -"They don't exist, of course. - -"But I really wanted to say this," she lifted her candid gaze to his -face. "Could you be a little more about the house? we might need you; -we'll use the car very little for a while." The apprehension was clearly -visible now. "Would you mind helping him with his clothes; he gets them -mixed? It isn't regular, I know," she told him; "but we have a great -deal of money; anything you required--" - -"Perhaps I'd be better at that," he suggested. "You know, you said I was -a rotten chauffeur." - -For a moment, appealing, she had seemed nearer to him, but now she -retreated spiritually, slipped behind her cold indifference. "There will -be nothing more to-night; if he grows worse you will have to move into -the house." She left him abruptly, gathering her filmy skirt from the -grass, an elusive shape with gleams on her hair, her arms and neck white -for an instant and then veiled in the scarf of night. - -In his room he could still hear, mingled with the faint, muffled -squeaking of the mice in the empty hayloft, Hardinge's voice, jerky, -laborious, "a categorical imperative... categorical imperative." He -wondered what that meant applied to love? An errant air brought him the -unmistakable odor of white lilacs, an ineffable impression of Eliza. - - - - -XXXIX - -THE day following found him installed in the house, in a small chamber -formed where the tower fronted upon the third story. At luncheon a -place was laid for him at the table with Annot and her father, where the -attentions of the disdainful and shapely maid positively quivered with -suppressed scorn. Anthony had found in his room fifty dollars in an -envelope, upon which Annot had scribbled that he might need a few -things; and, at liberty in the afternoon, he boarded an electric car -for the city, where he invested in fresh and shining pumps, and other -necessities. - -The house was dark when he inserted his newly acquired latchkey in the -front door and made his way softly aloft. But a thread of light was -shining under the door of Rufus Har-dinge's study. Later--he had just -turned out the light--a short knock fell upon his door. - -"Me," Annot answered his instant query. "I am going to ask you to dress -and come to my father. It may be unnecessary; he may go quietly to bed; -but go he must." - -He found her in a dressing gown that fell in heavy, straight folds of -saffron satin, her feet thrust in quaint Turkish slippers with curled -points; while over her shoulders slipped and slid the coppery rope -of her hair. She led the way to the study, which she entered without -knocking. Anthony saw the biologist bent over pages spread in the -concentrated light of a green shaded globe. In a glass case against -the wall some moldy bones were mounted and labelled; fragmentary and -sinister-appearing casts gleamed whitely from a stand; and, everywhere, -was the orderly confusion of books and papers that had distinguished the -library. - -"Come, Rufus," Annot laid her hand upon his shoulder; "it's bedtime for -all scientists. You promised me you would be in by eleven." - -He gazed at her with the hasty regard directed at an ill-timed, casual -stranger. "Yes, yes," he ejaculated impatiently, "get to bed. I'll -follow... some crania tracings, prognathic angles--" - -"To-morrow will do for those," she insisted gently, "you are making -yourself ill again--" - -"Nonsense," he interrupted, "never felt better in my life, never--" his -voice dwindled abruptly to silence, as though a door had been closed -on him; his lips twisted impotently; beads of sweat stood out upon his -white, strained forehead. His whole body was rigid in an endeavor to -regain his utterance. He rose, and would have fallen, if Annot's arm -had not slipped about his shoulders. Anthony hurried forward, and, -supporting him on either side, they assisted him into the sleeping -chamber beyond. There, at full length on a couch, a sudden, marble-like -immobility fell upon his features, his mouth slightly open, his hands -clenched. Annot busied herself swiftly, while Anthony descended into -the dark, still house in search of ice. When he returned, Hardinge was -pronouncing disconnected words, terms. "Eoliths," he said, "snow line... -one hundred and thirty millimeters." He was silent for a moment, then, -struggling into a sitting posture, "Annot!" he cried sharply, "I've -frightened you again. Only a touch of... aphasia; unfortunately not new, -my dear, but not serious." - -Later, when Anthony had assisted him in the removal of his clothes, and -lowered the light, he found Annot in the study assembling the papers -scattered on the table. "I am glad that you are here," she said simply. -"Soon he can have a complete rest." She sank into a chair; he had had no -idea that she could appear so lovely: her widely-opened eyes held flecks -of gold; beneath the statuesque fall of the dressing gown her bare -ankles were milky-white. - - - - -XL - -HE felt strangely at ease in a setting so easily strange. There was -a palpable flavor of unreality in the moment, of detachment from the -commonplace round of existence; it was without connection, without -responsibility to yesterday or to to-morrow; he was isolated with the -informal vision of Annot in an hour which seemed neither day nor night. -He felt--inarticulately--divorced from his customary daily personality; -and, with no particular need for speech, lit a cigarette, and blew -clouds of smoke at the ceiling. It was his companion who interrupted -this mood. - -"The life that people think so tremendously important," she observed, -"the things one does, are hardly more real than a suit of clothes, with -religion for a nice, prim white collar, gloves for morals, and a hidden -red silk handkerchief for a rare revolt. And all the time, politely -ignored, decently covered, our bodies are underneath. Now and then some -one slips out of his covering, and stands bare before his shocked -and protesting friends, but they soon hurry something about him, a -conventional shawl, a moral sheet. Do you happen to remember a wonderful -caricature of Louis XIV--simply a wig, a silk suit, buckled shoes and a -staff?" - -The mordant humor of that drawing penetrated Anthony's understanding: -he saw rooms, streets, a world full of gesticulating suits, dresses, -nodding hats, bonnets; he saw the unsubstantial concourse haughtily -erect, condescending, cunningly deceptive, veiling in a thousand -subterfuges their essential emptiness. The thought evaporated -in laughter at the obvious humor of such a spectacle; its social -significance missed him totally, happily. - -"What an unthinking person you are," she told him; "you just--live. It's -rather remarkable--one of Bacchus' company caught in the modern streets. -It is all so different now," she added plaintively; "men get drunk in -saloons or at dinner, and the purple stain of the grape centers in -their noses. I tried myself," she confessed, "in Geneva. I was with a -specialist who had father. The caf balcony overhung the lake; it was at -night, and the villages looked like clusters of fireflies about a black -mirror; and you simply never saw so many stars. We were looking for -a lyric sensation, but it was the most awful fizzle; he insisted on -describing an operation with all the grey and gory details complete, and -I fell fast asleep." - -The outcome of her experiment tallied exactly with that of his own -more involuntary efforts in that field. It established in his mind -a singularly direct sympathy with her; the uneasy element which her -attitude had called up in him disappeared entirely, its place taken by a -comfortable sense of freedom, a total lack of _rot_. - -She rose, vanishing into her father's room, then, coming to the door, -nodded shortly, and left for the night. - -He found on the bureau in his tower room what remained of the fifty -dollars--it had been reduced to less than eight. Suddenly he remembered -his purpose there, his supreme need of money, the imperative westward -call.... He bitterly cursed his lax character as he recalled the cigars -he had purchased, the silk shirt too, and an unnecessary tie. A deep -gloom settled upon his spirit. He heard in retrospect his father's -clear, high voice--"shiftless, no sense of responsibility." He sat -miserably on the edge of the bed in the dark, while the petty, unbroken -procession of past failures wheeled through his brain. Then the shining -vision of Eliza, compassionate, tender, folded him in peace; one by one -he would subdue those rebellious elements in himself, of fate, that held -them apart. - - - - -XLI - -AT a solitary breakfast the incident of the preceding night seemed -fantastic, unreal; he retained the broken, vivid memory of the scene, -the thrill of vague words, that lingers disturbingly into the waking -world from a dream. And, when he saw Annot later, there was no trace of -a consequent informality in her manner; she was distant, hedged about by -an evident concern for her father. "I have sent for Professor Jamison." -She addressed Anthony with blank eyes. "Please be within call in case--" - -He saw the neurologist as the latter circled the plaster cupids to the -entrance of the house--a heavy man with a broad, smooth face, thinlipped -like a priest, with staring yellow gloves. Anthony remained in the lower -hall, but no demand for his assistance sounded from above. When the -specialist descended, he flashed a glance, as bitingly swift and cold as -glacial water, over Anthony, then nodded in the direction of the garden. - -"Miss Annot tells me that you are sleeping in the house," he said -when they were outside; "on the chance that she might need you for -her father... she will. He is at the point of mental dissolution." An -involuntary repulsion possessed Anthony at the detached manner in which -the other pronounced these hopeless words. "Nothing may be done; that -is--it is not desirable that anything should. I am telling you this so -that you can act intelligently. Rufus Hardinge knows it; there was a -consultation at Geneva, which he approved. - -"He is," he continued with a warmer, more personal note, "a very -distinguished biologist; his investigations, his conclusions, have been -invaluable." He glanced at an incongruous, minute, jewelled watch on his -wrist, and continued more quickly. "Ten years ago he should have stopped -all work, vegetated--he was burning up rapidly; merely a reduced amount -of labor would have accomplished little for his health or subject. And -we couldn't spare his labor, no mere prolongation of life would have -justified that loss of knowledge, progress. It was his position; he -insisted upon it and we concurred... he chose... insanity. - -"Miss Annot is not aware of this; he must have every moment possible; -every note is priceless. The end will come--now, at any time." He had -reached the small, canary yellow Dreux landaulet waiting for him, and -stepped into it with a sharp nod. "You may expect violence," he added, -as the car gathered momentum. - -But that evening in the dim quietude of the piazza the biologist seemed -to have recovered completely his mental poise. He spoke in a buoyant -vein of the great men he had known, celebrated names in the world of -the arts, in politics and science. He recalled Braisted, the astronomer, -searching relaxation in the Boulevard school of French fictionists. "I -told him," he chuckled at the mild, scholastic humor, "that he had been -peeping too long at Venus." - -Annot was steeped in an inscrutable silence. - -For the first time, Anthony was actually aware of her features: she had -a broad, low brow swept by the coppery hair loosely tied at the back; -her eyes resembled her father's, they were amber-colored, and singularly -candid in their interest in all that passed before them; while her nose -tilted up slightly above a mouth frankly large. It was the face of a -boy, he decided, but felt instantly that he had fallen far short of -the fact--the allurement, the perfection, of her youthful maturity hung -overwhelmingly about her the challenge of sex. - -Rather, she was all girl, he recognized, but of a new variety. A vision -of _the nice_ girls he had known dominated his vision, flooded his mind, -all smiling with veiled eyes, clothed in a thousand reserves, fluttering -graces, innocent wiles, with their gaze firmly set toward the shining, -desirable goal of matrimony. Eliza was not like that, it was true; but -she, from the withdrawn, impersonal height of her cool perfection, was -a law to herself. There was a new freedom in Annot's acceptance of life, -he realized vaguely, as different as possible from mere license; no one, -he was certain, would presume with Annot Hardinge: her very frankness -offered infinitely less incentive to unlawful thoughts than the -conscious modesty of the others. - -When the biologist left the piazza Annot turned with a glad gesture to -her companion. "He hasn't seemed so well--not for years; his little, -gay fun again... it's too good to be true. I should like to -celebrate--something entirely irresponsible. I have worried, oh, -dreadfully." The night was still, moonless; the stars burned like opals -in the intense purple deeps of the sky. The air, freighted with the rich -fruitage of full summer, hung close and heavy. "It's hot as a blotter," -Annot declared. "I think, yes--I'm sure, I should like to go out in the -car." She rose. "Will you bring it around, please?" - -He drove slowly over the deserted lane by the lawn, and found her, -enveloped in the lustrous folds of a black satin wrap, at the front -gate. Over her hair she had tied a veil drawn about her brow in a webby -filament of flowers "I think I'll sit in front," she decided; "perhaps -I'll drive." He waited, at the steering wheel, for directions. - -"Go west, young man," she told him, and would say nothing more. A -distant bell thinly struck eleven jarring notes as they moved into the -flickering gloom of empty streets with the orange blur of lamps floating -unsteadily on dim boughs above, and the more brilliant, crackling -radiance of the arc lights at the crossings. - -The headlights of the automobile cut like white knives through the -obscurity of hedged ways; at sudden turnings they plunged into gardens, -flinging sharply on the shadowy night vivid glimpses of incredible -greenery, unearthly flowers, wafers of white wall. They drove for a -long, silent period, with increasing momentum as the way became more -open and direct; now they seemed scarcely to touch the uncertain surface -below, but to be wheeling through sheer space, flashing their stabbing -incandescence into the empty envelopment beyond the worlds. - -They passed with a muffled din through the single street of a sleeping -village, leaving behind a confusion of echoes and the startled barking -of a dog. Anthony could see Annot's profile, pale and clear, against -the flying and formless countryside; the lace about her hair fluttered -ceaselessly; and her wrap bellowed and clung about her shoulders, about -her gloveless hands folded upon her slim knees. She was splendidly, -regally scornful upon the wings of their reckless flight; the throttle -was wide open; they swung from side to side, hung on a single wheel, -lunged bodily into the air. In the mad ecstasy of speed she rose; but -Anthony, clutching her arms, pulled her sharply into the seat. Then, -decisively, he shut off the power, the world ceased to race behind them, -the smooth clamor of the engine sank to a low vibratone. - -"You did that wonderfully," she told him with glowing cheeks, shining -eyes; "it was marvellous. A moment like that is worth a life-time -on foot... laughing at death, at everything that is safe, admirable, -moral... a moment of the freedom of soulless things, savage and -unaccountable to God or society." - -The illuminated face of the clock before him indicated a few minutes -past one, and, tentatively, he repeated the time. "How stupid of you," -she protested; "silly, little footrule of the hours, the conventional -measure of the commonplace. For punishment--on and on. Like Columbus' -men you are afraid of falling over the edge of--propriety." She turned -to him with solemn eyes. "I assure you there is no edge, no bump or -brimstone, no place where good stops and tumbles into bad; it's all -continuous--" - -He lost the thread of her mocking discourse, and glanced swiftly at her, -his brow wrinkled, the shadow of a smile upon his lips. "Heavens! but -you are good-looking," she acknowledged, her countenance studiously -critical, impersonal. After that silence once more fell upon them; -the machine sang through the dark, lifting over ridges, dropping down -declines. - -Anthony had long since lost all sense of their position. The cyanite -depths of the sky turned grey, cold; there was a feeling in the air of -settling dew; a dank mist filled the hollows; the color seemed suddenly -to have faded from the world. He felt unaccountably weary, inexpressibly -depressed; he could almost taste the vapidity of further existence. -Annoys hard, bright words echoed in his brain; the flame of his -unthinking idealism sank in the thin atmosphere of their logic. - - - - -XLII - -SHE had settled low in the seat, her mouth and chin hidden in the folds -of the satin wrap; her face seemed as chill as marble, her youth cruel, -disdainful. But her undeniable courage commanded his admiration, the -unwavering gaze of her eyes into the dark. He wondered if, back of her -crisp defenses, she were happy. He knew from observation that she led an -almost isolated existence... she had gathered about her no circle of her -own age, she indulged in none of the rapturous confidences, friendships, -so sustaining to other girls. The peculiar necessities of her father -had accomplished this. Yet he was aware that she cherished a general -contempt for youth at large, for a majority of the grown, for that -matter. Contempt colored her attitude to a large extent: that and -happiness did not seem an orderly pair. - -He felt, rather than saw, the influence of the dawn behind him; it was -as though the grey air grew more transparent. Annot twisted about. "Oh! -turn, turn!" she cried; "the day! we are driving away from it." A sudden -intoxicating freshness streamed like a sparkling birdsong over the -world, and Anthony's dejection vanished with the gloom now at their -backs. Delicate lavender shadows grew visible upon the grass, the color -shifted tremulously, like the shot hues of changeable silks, until the -sun poured its ore into the verdant crucible of the countryside. - -"I am most frightfully hungry," Annot admitted with that entire -frankness which he found so refreshing. "I wonder--" On either hand -fields, far farmhouses, reached unbroken to the horizon; before them the -road rose between banks of soft, brown loam, apparently into the sky. -But, beyond the rise, they came upon a roadside store, its silvery -boards plastered with the garish advertisements of tobaccos, and a -rickety porch, now undergoing a vigorous sweeping at the hands of an -old man with insecure legs, upon whose faded personage was stamped -unmistakably the initials "G. A. R." - -Anthony brought the car to a halt, and returned his brisk and curious -salutation. "Shall I bring out some crackers?" he asked from the road. -But she elected to follow him into the store. The interior presented the -usual confusion of gleaming tin and blue overalls, monumental cheeses -and cards of buttons, a miscellany of ludicrously varied merchandise. -Annot found a seat upon a splintered church pew, now utilized as a -secular resting place, while Anthony foraged through the shelves. He -returned with the crackers, and a gold lump of dates, upon which they -breakfasted hugely. "D'y like some milk?" the aged attendant inquired, -and forthwith dipped it out of a deep, cool and ringing can. - -Afterward they sat upon the step and smoked matutinal cigarettes. The -day gathered in a shimmering haze above the vivid com, the emerald of -the shorn fields; the birds had already subsided from the heat among -the leaves. Anthony saw that the lamps of the car were still alight, a -feeble yellow flicker, and turned them out. He tested the engine; and, -finding it still running, turned with an unspoken query to Annot. She -rose slowly. - -The wrap slipped from her bare shoulders and her dinner gown with its -high sulphur girdle, the scrap of black lace about her hair, presented -a strange, brilliantly artificial picture against the blistered, gaunt -boards of the store, with, at its back, the open sunny space of pasture, -wood and sky. - -"It's barely twenty miles back," she told him, once more settled at his -side. The old man regarded them from under one gnarled palm, the -other tightly clasped about the broom handle; his jaw was dropped; -incredulity, senile surprise, claimed him for their own. - -With Annot, Anthony reflected, he was everlastingly getting into new -situations; she seemed to lift him out of the ordinary course of events -into a perverse world of her own, a front-backward land where the -unexpected, without rule or obligation, continually happened; and, what -was strangest of all, without any of the dark consequences which he -had been taught must inevitably follow such departures. He recalled the -incredulous smiles, the knowing insinuations, that would have greeted -the exact recounting of the past night at Doctor Allhop's drugstore. -He would himself, in the past, have regarded such a tale as a flimsy -fabrication. And suddenly he perceived dimly, in a mind unused to such -abstractions, the veil of ugliness, of degradation, that hung so -blackly about the thoughts of men. He gazed with a new sympathy -and comprehension at the scornful line of Annot's vivid young lips; -something of her superiority, her contempt, was communicated to him. - -She became aware of his searching gaze, and smiled in an intimate, -friendly fashion at him. "You are the most comfortable person alive," -she told him. There was nothing critical in her tones now. "I said that -you were not a good chauffeur, and--" the surroundings grew familiar, -they had nearly reached their destination, and an impalpable reserve -fell upon her, but she continued to smile at him, "and... you are not." -That was the last word she addressed to him that day. - -As, later, he sluiced the automobile with water, he recalled the strange -intimacy of the night, her warm and sympathetic voice; once she had -steadied herself with a clinging hand upon his shoulder. These new -attributes of the person who, shortly, passed him silently and with cold -eyes, stirred his imagination; they were potent, rare, unsettling. - - - - -XLIII - -Notwithstanding, in the days which followed there was a perceptible -change in Annot's attitude toward him: she became, as it were, conscious -of his actuality. One afternoon she read aloud to him a richly-toned, -gloomy tale of Africa. They were sitting by a long window, open, but -screened from the summer heat by stiff, darkly-drooping green folds, -where they could hear the drip of the fountain in its basin, a cool -punctuation on the sultry page of the afternoon. Annot proceeded rapidly -in an even, low voice; she was dressed in filmy lavender, with little -buttons of golden velvet, an intricately carved gold buckle at her -waist. - -Anthony listened as closely as possible, the faint smile which seldom -left him hovering over his lips. The bald action of the narrative--a -running fight with ambushed savages from a little tin pot of a steamer, -a mysterious affair in the darkness with a grim skeleton of a fellow, -stakes which bore a gory fruitage of human heads, held him; but the -rest... words, words. His attention wavered, fell upon minute, material -objects; Annot's voice grew remote, returned, was lost among his -juggling thoughts. - -"Isn't it splendid!" she exclaimed, at last closing the volume; "the -most beautiful story of our time--" She stopped abruptly, and cast a -penetrating glance at him. "I don't believe you even listened," she -declared. "In your heart you prefer, 'Tortured by the Tartars.'" - -His smile broadened, including his eyes. - -"You are impossible! No," she veered suddenly, "you're not; if you cared -for this you wouldn't be... you. That's the most important thing in -the world. Besides, I wouldn't like you; everybody reads now, it's -frightfully common; while you are truly indifferent. Have you noticed, -my child, that books always increase where life runs thin? and you are -alive, not a papier-mch man painted in the latest shades." - -Anthony dwelt on this unexpected angle upon his mental delinquencies. -The approval of Annot Hardinge, so critical, so outspoken, was not -without an answering glow in his being; no one but she might discover -his ignorance to be laudable. - -She rose, and the book slipped neglected to the floor. "The mirror of my -dressing table is collapsing," she informed him; "I wonder if you -would look at it." He followed her above to her room; it was a large, -four-square chamber, its windows brushed by the glossy leaves of an -aged black-heart cherry tree. Her bed was small, with a counterpane of -grotesque lace animals, a table held a scattered collection of costly -trifles, and a closet door stood open upon a shimmering array from -deepest orange to white and pale primrose. An enigmatic lacy garment, -and a surprisingly long pair of black silk stockings, occupied a chair; -while the table was covered with columns of print on long sheets of -paper. "Galleys," she told him. "I read all father's proof." - -He moved the dressing table from the wall, and discovered the bolt -which had held the mirror in place upon the floor. As he screwed it into -position, Annot said: - -"Don't look around for a minute." There was a swift whisper of skirts, -a pause, then, "all right." He straightened up, and found that she had -changed to a white skirt and waist. Fumbling in the closet she produced -a pair of low, brown shoes, and kicking off her slippers, donned the -others, balancing each in turn on the bed. - -"Let's go--anywhere," she proposed; "but principally where books are not -and birds are." At a drugstore they purchased largely of licorice root, -which they consumed sitting upon a fence without the town. - - - - -XLIV - -I SAID that instinctively, back in my room," Annot remarked with a -puzzled frown. "It was beastly, really, to feel the necessity... -as though we had something corrupt to hide. And I feel that you are -especially nice--that way. You see, I am not trying to dispose of myself -like the clever maidens at the balls and bazaars, my legs and shoulders -are quite uncalculated. There is no price on... on my person; I'm not -fishing for any nice little Christian ceremony. No man will have to pay -the price of hats at Easter and furs in the fall, of eternal boredom, -for me. All this stuff in the novels about the sacredness of love and -constancy is just--stuff! Love isn't like that really; it's a natural -force, and Nature is always practical: potato bugs and jimson-weed and -men, it is the same law for all of them--more potato bugs, more men, -that's all." - -Anthony grasped only the larger implications of this speech, its -opposition to that love which he had felt as a misty sort of glory, as -intangible as the farthest star, as fragrant as a rose in the fingers. -There was an undeniable weight of solid sense in what Annot had said. -She knew a great deal more than himself, more--yes--than Eliza, more -than anybody he had before known; and, in the face of her overwhelmingly -calm and superior knowledge, his vision of love as eternal, changeless, -his ecstatic dreams of Eliza with the dim, magic white lilacs in her -arms, grew uncertain, pale. Love, viewed with Annot's clear eyes, was a -commonplace occurrence, and marriage the merest, material convenience: -there was nothing sacred about it, or in anything--death, birth, or -herself. - -And was not the biologist, with his rows of labelled plants and bones, -his courageous questioning of the universe, of God Himself, bigger than -the majority of men with their thin covering of cant, the hypocrisy in -which they cloaked their doubts, their crooked politics and business? -Rufus Hardinge's conception of things, Annot's reasoning and patent -honesty, seemed more probable, more convincing, than the accepted -romantic, often insincere, view of living, than the organ-roll and -stained glass attitude. - -In his new rationalism he eyed the world with gloomy prescience; he had -within him the somber sense of slain illusions; all this, he felt, -was proper to increasing years and experience; yet, between them, they -emptied the notable bag of licorice. - -Annot rested a firm palm upon his shoulder and sprang to the ground, -and they walked directly and silently back. "It's a mistake to discuss -things," Annot discovered to him from the door of her room, "they should -be lived; thus Zarathustrina." - - - - -XLV - -LATER they were driven from the porch by a heavy and sudden shower, -a dark flood torn in white streamers and pennants by wind gusts, and -entered through a long window a formal chamber seldom occupied. A -thick, white carpet bore a scattered design in pink and china blue; oil -paintings of the Dutch school, as smooth as ice, hung in massive gold -frames; a Louis XVI clock, intricately carved and gilded, rested upon -a stand enamelled in black and vermilion, inlaid with pagodas and -fantastic mandarins in ebony and mother-of-pearl and camphor wood. -At intervals petulant and sweet chimes rang from the clock: trailing, -silvery bubbles of sound that burst in plaintive ripples. - -Rufus Hardinge sat with bowed head, his lips moving noiselessly. Annot -occupied a chair with sweeping, yellow lines, that somehow suggested to -Anthony a swan. "Father has had a tiresome letter from Doctor Grundlowe -at Bonn," she informed the younger man. - -"He disagrees with me absolutely," Hardinge declared. "But Caprera at -Padova disagrees with him; and Markley, at Glasgow, contravenes us all." - -"It's about a tooth," Annot explained. - -"The line to the anterior-posterior diameter is simian," the biologist -asserted. "The cusps prove nothing, but that forward slope--" he half -rose from his chair, his eyes glittering wrathfully at Anthony, but fell -back trembling... "simian," he muttered. - -"A possible difference of millions of years in human history," Annot -added further. - -"But can't they agree at all!" Anthony exclaimed; "don't they know -anything? That's an awful long time." - -"A hundred million years," the elder interrupted with a contemptuous -gesture, "nothing, a moment. I place the final glacial two hundred -and seventy million after Jenner, and we have--, agreed to dismiss it; -trifling, adventitious. There are more fundamental discrepancies," he -admitted. "Unless something definite is discovered, a firm base -established, a single ray of light let into a damnable dark," he stopped -torn with febrile excitement, then, scarcely audible, continued, "our -lives, our work... will be of less account than the blood of Oadacer, -spilt on barbaric battle-fields." - -The rain ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Anthony followed Annot to -the porch. In the black spaces between the swiftly shifting clouds -stars shone brilliantly; there was a faint drip from the trees. "He gets -dreadfully depressed," she interpreted her parent to him. "They wrangle -all the time, exactly like a lot of schoolgirls. You have no idea of -the bitterness, the jealousy, the contemptuous personalities in the -Quarterlies. Really, they are as fanatical, as narrow, as the churches -they ignore; they are quite like Presbyterian biologists and Catholic." -She sighed lightly. "They leave little for a youngish person to dream -on. You are so superior--to ignore these centessimo affairs. Will you -lean from the edge of your cloud and smile on a daughter of the earth in -last year's dinner gown?" - -It was, he told himself, nonsense; yet he was moved to make no -easy reply, something in her voice, illusive and wistful, made that -impossible. "It's very good-looking," he said impotently. - -"I'm glad you like it," she told him simply. "M'sieur Paret fitted it -himself while an anteroom full of women hated me. Oh, Anthony!" she -exclaimed, "I'd love to wander with you down that brilliant street and -through the Place Vendme to the Seine. Better still--there's a -little shop on the Via Cavour in Florence where they sell nothing but -chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, the most heavenly cakes with black -hearts and the most heavenly smell. And you'd like Spain, so fierce -and hot against its dusty hills; and Cortina, green beneath its red -mountains. We could get a porter and rucksacks, and walk--" she broke -off, her hands pressed to her cheeks, a dawning dismay in her eyes. Then -she was gone with a flutter of the skirt so carefully draped by M'sieur -Paret. - - - - -XLVI - -THE pictures of far places had stirred him but slightly: but to travel -with Annot, to see anything with Annot, would offer continual amusement -and surprise; her vigorous candor, her freedom from sham and petty -considerations, enveloped the most commonplace perspectives in an -atmosphere of high novelty. The trace of the vagabond, the detachment -of the born dweller in tents, woven so picturesquely through his being, -responded to her careless indifference to the tyranny of an established -and timid scheme of existence. - -The following day her old, bright hardness had returned: she railed at -him in French, in German, in Italian; she called him the solemn shover, -Sir Anthony Absolute. And, holding Thomas Huxley's head directed toward -him, recommended that resigned quadruped to emulate Anthony's austere -and inflexible virtues. - - - - -XLVII - -BUT there was no trace of gayety in the excited and subdued tones in -which, later, she called him into the hothouse. He found her bending -tense with emotion over the row of plants upon whose flowering such -incalculable things depended. "Look!" she cried, taking his hand and -drawing him down over the green shoots, where his cheek brushed her -hair, where he felt the warm stir of her breathing. "Look! they are in -full bud, to-morrow they will burst open." She straightened up, his hand -still held in hers, and a shadow fell upon her vivid countenance. "If -his reasoning is wrong, this experiment... like all the others, it will -kill him. They _must_ be white, it would be too cruel, too senseless -not. I am afraid," she said simply; "nature is so terrible, a -Juggernaut, crushing everything to dust beneath its wheeling centuries. -I am glad that you are here, Anthony." She drew closer to him; her -breast swelled in a sharp, tempestuous breath. - -"I have been lonelier than I--I realized. I am dreadfully worried about -father. They have lied to me; things are worse, I can see that. You -have to dress him like a child; I know how considerate you are; you are -bright, new gold with the clearest ring in the world. - -"We must get a real chauffeur; you have never been that... in my -thoughts. You know," she laughed happily, "I said in the beginning that -you were a miserable affair in details of that kind." - -A feeling of guilt rose swiftly within him, which, unwilling to -acknowledge, he strove to beat down from his thoughts. But, above his -endeavor, grew the clear conviction that he should immediately tell -Annot his purpose in driving Rufus Hardinge's car. He must not victimize -her generosity, nor take profit from the friendship she offered him so -unreservedly. He was dimly conscious that the revelation of his design -would end the pleasant intimacy growing up between them; the mere -mention of Eliza must destroy their happy relations; girls, even Annot, -were like that. - -He wondered, suddenly cold, if this spelled disloyalty to Eliza! but he -angrily refuted that whispered insinuation. His love for Eliza was -as un-assailably above all other considerations as she herself shone -starlike over a petty, stumbling humanity. White and withdrawn and fine -she inhabited the skies of his aspirations. He endeavored now to capture -her in his imagination, his memory; and she smiled at him palely, as -from a very great distance. He realized that in the past few days he had -not had that subtle sense of her nearness, he had not been conscious of -that drifting odor of lilacs; and suddenly he felt impoverished, alone. - -Annot smiled, warm and near. - -"You are awfully kind," he temporized; "but hadn't we better let the -thing stand as it is? You see--I want money." - -"But you may have that now; whatever you want." - -"No. You are so good, it's hard to explain--I want money that I earn; -real money; I couldn't think of taking any other from you." - -"Anthony, my good bourgeois! I had thought you quite without that -sort of tin pride. Besides, I am not giving it to you; after all it's -father's to use as he likes." - -"But I must give him something for it--" - -"Do you suppose you are giving us nothing?" she interrupted him warmly; -"you have brought us your clear, beautiful spirits, absolutely without -price. Why, you can make father laugh; have you any idea how rarely he -did that? When you imitate Margaret absolutely I can see her fat, white -stockings. And your marvellous unworldliness--" she shook her head -mournfully. "I fear that this is mere calculation; surely you must know -the value of your innocent charms." Anthony stood with a lowered head, -floundering mentally among his warring inclinations; when, almost with -relief, he saw that she had noiselessly vanished. - - - - -XLVIII - -HE slept uneasily, and woke abruptly to a room flooded with sunlight, -and an unaccountable sense of something gone wrong. He dressed -hurriedly, and had opened his door, when he heard his name called from -below. It was Annot, he knew, but her voice was strange, terrified--a -helpless cry new to her accustomed poise. "Anthony! Anthony!" she called -from the conservatory. - -Rufus Hardinge, who, it was evident from his clothes had not been in -bed, was standing rigidly before the row of plants upon whose flowering -they had so intently waited. And, in a rapid glance, Anthony saw -that they had blossomed in delicate, parti-colored petals--some pale -lavender, others deep purple, still others reddish white. Annoys yellow -wrap was thrown carelessly about her nightgown, her feet were bare, and -her hair hung in a tangle about her blanched face. - -When Anthony entered she clung to his arm, and he saw that she was -trembling violently. For a tense moment they were silent: the sun -streamed over the mathematical plant ranks and lit the white or blue -tickets tied to their stems; a bubbling chorus of birds filled the world -of leaves without. "It's all wrong," she sobbed. - -"So!" the biologist finally said with a wry smile; "you see that I have -not solved the riddle of the universe; inheritance in pure line is not -explicated.... A life of labor as void as any prostitute's; not a single -fact, not a supposition warranted, not a foot advanced." - -With a sudden and violent movement for which they were entirely -unprepared he swept the row of plants crashing upon the floor; where, -in a scattered heap of brown loam, broken pottery, smeared bloom, their -tenuous, pallid roots quivered in air. "Games with plants and animals -and bones for elderly children; riddles without answer... blind ways." -His expression grew furtive, cunning. "I have been trifled with," he -declared, "I have been deliberately misled; but I desire to say that -I see through--through Him: I comprehend His little joke. It's in bad -taste... to leave a soul in the dark, blundering about in the cellar -with the table spread above. But in the end I was not completely -bamboozled. He was not quick enough... the hem of His garment. - -"Your mother saw Him clear. She was considered beautiful, but beauty's a -vague term. Perhaps if I saw her now it would be clearer to me. But I'll -tell you His little joke," he lowered his voice confidentially--"it's -all true--that apocalyptical heaven; there's a big book, trumpets, -angels all complete singing Gregorian chants. What a sell!" He laughed, -a gritty, mirthless performance. - -"Come up to your room, father," Annot urged; "his arm, Anthony." Anthony -placed his hand gently upon the biologist's shoulder, but the latter -wrenched himself free. Suddenly with a choked cry and arms swinging like -flails he launched himself upon the orderly plants. Before he could be -stopped row upon row splintered on the floor; he fought, struggled -with them as though they were animate opponents, cursed them in a high, -raving voice. Anthony quickly lifted him, pinning his arms to his sides. -Annot had turned away, her shoulders shaking with sobs. - -Rufus Hardinge's struggling unexpectedly ceased, his countenance -regained completely its habitual quietude. "I shall begin once more, -at the beginning," he whispered infinitely wistful. "The little ray of -light... germ of understanding. The scientific problem of the future," -his speech became labored, thick, "scientific... future. Other avenue of -progress: - -"Gentlemen, the Royal Society, a paper on, on--Tears, gentlemen... -not only automatic," his voice sank to a mere incomprehensible -babble. Anthony carried him to his bed, while Annot telephoned for the -neurologist. - -After the specialist had gone Annot came in to where Anthony waited -in the study. Her feet were thrust in the Turkish slippers, her hair -twisted into a hasty knot, but otherwise she had not changed. She came -swiftly, with pale lips and eyes brilliantly shining from dark hollows, -to his side. "His wonderful brain is dead," she told him. "Professor -Jamison thinks there will be only a few empty years to the end. But -actually it's all over." In a manner utterly incomprehensible to him she -was crying softly in his arms. - -He must lead her to a chair, he told himself, release her at once. Yet -she remained with her warm, young body pressed against him, the circle -of her arms about his neck, her tears wet upon his cheek. He stepped -back, but she would have fallen if he had not continued to support -her. His brain whirled under the assault, the surrender, of her dynamic -youth. Their mouths met; were bruised in kissing. - - - - -XLIX - -HE stood with bowed shoulders, twisting lips; and, after a momentary -pause, she fled from the room. Cold waves of self-hatred flowed over -him--he had taken a despicable advantage of her grief. The pleasant -fabric of the past, unthinking days, the new materialism with its -comfortable freedom from restraint, crumbled from an old, old skeleton -whose moldering lines spelled the death of all--his heart knew--that was -high, desirable, immaculate. He wondered if, like Rufus Hardinge, his -understanding had come too late. But, in the re-surge of his adoration -for Eliza, infinitely more beautiful and serene from the pit out of -which he sped his vision, he was possessed by the conviction that -nothing created nor void should extinguish the bright flame of his -passion, hold them separate. - -In the midst of his turmoil he recalled Eliza with relief, with delight, -with tumultuous longing. He soared on the wings of his ecstasy; but -descended abruptly to the practical necessities which confronted him. He -must leave the Hardinges immediately; with a swift touch of the humorous -spirit native to him, he realized that again he would be without money. -Then more seriously he considered his coming interview with Annot. - -The house was charged with the vague unrest, the strange aspect of -familiar things, wrought by serious illness. Luncheon was disorganized, -Annot was late. She was pale, but, under an obvious concern, she -radiated a suppressed content. She laid a letter before Anthony. -"Registered," she told him. "I signed." It was, he saw, from his father, -and he slipped it into his pocket, intent upon the explanation which -lay before him. It would be more difficult even than he had anticipated: -Annot spoke of the near prospect of a Mediterranean trip, if Rufus -Hardinge rallied sufficiently. "He is as contented and gentle as a nice -old lady," she reported; then, with a subtle expansion of manner, "it -will be such fun--I shall take you by the hand, 'This, my good infant, -is one of Virgil's final resting places....'" - -"That would be splendid," he acknowledged, "but I'm afraid that I -sha'n't be able to go. The fact is that--that I had better leave you. I -can't take your money for... for...." - -She glanced at him swiftly, under the shadow of a frown, then shook her -head at him. "That tiresome money again! It's a strange thing for you -to insist on; material considerations are ordinarily as far as possible -from your thoughts. I forbid you absolutely to mention it again; every -time you do I shall punish you--I shall present you with a humiliating -gold piece in person." - -"I should be all kinds of a trimmer to take advantage of your goodness. -No, I must go--" The gay warmth evaporated from her countenance as -abruptly as though it had been congealed in a sudden icy breath; she -sat motionless, upright, enveloping him in the bright resentment of her -gaze. - -"And I must ask you to forgive me for... for this morning," he stumbled -hastily on. - -The resentment burned into a clear flame of angry contempt. "'For this -morning!' because I kissed you?" - -He made a vehement gesture of denial. "Oh, no!" But she would not allow -him to finish. "But I did," she announced in a hard, determined voice. -"It isn't necessary for you to be polite; I don't care a damn for -that sickening sort of thing. I did, and you are properly and modestly -retreating. I believe that you think I am--'designing,' isn't that -the word? that you might have to marry me. A kiss, I am to realize, is -something sacred. Bah! you make me ill, like almost everything else in -life. - -"If you think for a minute that it was anything more than the expression -of a passing impulse you are beyond words. And, if it had been more, -you--you violet, I wouldn't marry you; I wouldn't marry any man, ever! -ever! ever! I might have gone to Italy with you, but probably come home -with some one else--will that get into your pretty prejudices?" - -"If you had gone to Italy with me," he declared sullenly, "you would -never have come home with anybody else." - -"That sort of thing has been dismissed to the smaller rural towns and -the cheap melodramas; it's no longer considered elevated to talk like -that, but only pitiful. You will start next on 'God's noblest creation,' -and purity, and the females of your family. Don't you know, haven't you -been told, that the primitive religious rubbish about marriage has been -laughed out of existence? Did you dream that I wanted to _keep_ you? -or that I would allow you to keep me after the thing had got stale? -It makes me cold all over to be so frightfully misunderstood. Oh, its -unthinkable! Fi, to kiss you! wasn't it loose of me?" - -Her contemptuous periods stung him in a thousand minute places. "I told -you," he retorted hotly, "that I wanted to make money; I don't want it -given to me; it's for my wedding." - -"Of course, how stupid of me not to have guessed--the lips sacred to -her," her own trembled ever so slightly, but her scornful attitude, her -direct, bright gaze, were maintained, "A knight errant adventuring for -a village queen with her handkerchief in his sleeve and tempted by the -inevitable Kundry." - -He settled himself to weathering this feminine storm; he owed her all -the relief to be found in words. "I wanted the money to go West," he -particularized further. "There's a position waiting for me--" - -"It's all very chaste," she told him, "but terribly commonplace. I think -that I don't care to hear the details." She addressed herself to what -remained of the luncheon. "Have some more sauce," she advised coolly, -then rang. "The pudding, Jane," she directed. - -"You have been wonderfully kind--" he began. But she halted him -abruptly. "We'll drop all that," she pronounced, and deliberately lit a -cigarette. - -A genuine admiration for her possessed Anthony; he recognized that she -was extraordinarily good to look at; he had had no idea that so vigorous -a spirit could have burned behind a becoming dress by Paret. He realized -with a faint regret, eminently masculine, that other men, men of moment, -would find her irresistibly attractive. Already it seemed incredible -that she had ever been familiar, intimate, tender, with him. - -"You will be wanting to leave," she said, rising; "--whenever you -like. I have written for a--a chauffeur. I think you should have, it's -twenty-five dollars, isn't it?" - -"Not twenty-five cents," he returned. - -"I shouldn't like to force your delicate sensibilities." She left the -room. He caught a last glimpse of her firm, young profile; her shining, -coppery hair; her supple, upright carriage. - - - - -L - -IN his room he assembled the battered clothing in which Rufus Hardinge -had discovered him, preparatory to changing from his present more -elaborate garb, but a sudden realization of the triviality of that -course, born of the memory of Annot's broad disposition, halted him -midway. Making a hasty bundle of his personal belongings he descended -from the tower room. Through an open door he could see the still, white -face of the biologist looming from a pillow, and the trim form of a -nurse. - -Thomas Huxley lay somnolently on the porch, beside Annot's -coffee-colored wicker chair and a yellow paper book which bore a title -in French. He paused on the street, gazing back, and recalled his first -view of the four-square, ugly house in its coat of mustard-colored -paint, the grey, dripping cupids of the fountain, the unknown girl with -yellow silk stockings. Already he seemed to have crossed the gulf which -divided it all from the present: its significance faded, its solidity -dissolved, dropped behind, like a scene viewed from a car window. He -turned, obsessed by the old, familiar impatience to hurry forward, the -feeling that all time, all energy, all plans and thoughts, were vain -that did not lead directly to---- - -A sudden and unaccountable sensation of cold swept over him, a profound -emotion stirring in response to an obscure, a hidden cause. Then, with -a rush, returned the feeling of Eliza's nearness: he _heard_ her, the -little, indefinable noises of her moving; he felt the unmistakable -thrill which she alone brought. There was a vivid sense of her hand -hovering above his shoulder; her fingers _must_ descend, rest warmly.... -God! how did she get here. He whirled about... nothing against the -low stone-wall that bounded a sleepy garden, nothing in the paved -perspective of the sunny street! He stood shaken, half terrified, -miserable. He had never felt her nearness so poignantly; her distant -potency had never before so mocked his hungering nerves. - -Then, with the cold chilling him like a breath from an icy vault, he -heard her, beyond all question, beyond all doubt: - -"Anthony!" she called. "Anthony!" From somewhere ahead of him her tones -sounded thin and clear; they seemed to reach him dropping from a window, -lingering, neither grave nor gay, but tenderly secure, upon his hearing. -He broke into a clattering run over the bricks of the unremarkable -street, but soon slowed awkwardly into a walk, jeering at his fancy, -his laboring heart, his mad credulity. And then, drifting across his -bewildered senses, came the illusive, the penetrating, the remembered -odor of lilacs, like a whisper, a promise, a magic caress. - - - - -LI - -IT was with a puzzled frown that Anthony halted in the heart of the -city and considered his present resources, his future, possible plans. -He had three dollars and some small silver left from the Hardinges, and -he regarded with skepticism the profession of chauffeur; he would rather -adventure the heavier work of the garages. As the afternoon was far -advanced he decided to defer his search until the following morning; and -he was absorbed within the gaudy maw of a moving picture theater. - -Later, he entered an elaborate maze of mirrors, where, apparently, a -sheaf of Susannas unconsciously exhibited their diminishing, anatomical -charms to a procession of elders advancing two by two through a -perspective of sycamores.--At the bar, his glass of beer supported -by two fried oysters, a sandwich and a saucer of salted almonds, he -reflected upon the slough of sterility that had fastened upon his feet: -something must be accomplished, decisive, immediate. - -He was proceeding toward the entrance when the familiar aspect of a back -brought him to a halt. The back moved, turned, and resolved into the -features of Thomas Addington Meredith. The mutual, surprised recognition -was followed by a greeting of friendly slaps, queries, the necessity for -instant, additional beers, and they found a place at a small, polished -table. - -He was surprised to discover Tom Meredith the same foxy-faced boy he -had left in Doctor Allhop's drugstore... it seemed to Anthony that -an incalculable time had passed since the breaking of the bottles of -perfume; he felt himself to be infinitely changed, older, and the other -his junior by decades of experience and a vast accumulation of worldly -knowledge, contact with men, women, and events. Tom's raiment did not -seem so princely as it had aforetime; the ruby reputed to be the gift of -a married woman, was obviously meretricious, the gold timepiece merely -commonplace. But Anthony was unaffectedly glad to see him, to discuss -homely, familiar topics, repeat affectionately the names of favorite -localities, persons. - -"I'm in a bonding house here," Tom explained upon Anthony's query. -"Nothing in Ellerton for _me_. What are you doing?" - -"Nothing, until to-morrow, when I think I'll get something in one of the -garages." He thrust his hands negligently into his pockets, and came -in contact with his father's forgotten letter. He opened it, gazing -curiously at the words: "My dear Son," when Tom, with an exclamation, -bent and recovered a piece of yellow paper that had fallen from the -envelope. "Is this all you think of these?" he demanded, placing a fifty -dollar bill upon the table. - -Anthony read the letter with growing incredulous wonder and joy. He -looked up with burning cheeks at his companion. "Remember old Mrs. -Bosbyshell?" he questioned in an eager voice. "I used to carry wood, -do odd jobs, for her: well, she's dead, and left me--what do you -think!--father says about forty-seven thousand dollars. It's there, -waiting for me, in Ellerton." - -Suddenly he forgot Thomas Meredith, the glittering saloon, the -diminishing perspective of Susannas--he saw Eliza smiling at him out of -the dusk, with her arms full of white lilacs. With an unsteady -pounding of his heart, a tightening of the throat, he realized that, -miraculously, the happiness which he had imagined so far removed in the -uncertain future had been brought to him now, to the immediate present. -He could take a train at once and go to her. The waiting was over. The -immeasurable joy that flooded him deepened to a great chord of happiness -that vibrated highly through him. He folded the letter gravely, -thoughtfully. It was but a few hours to Ellerton by train, he knew, but -he doubted the possibility of a night connection to that sequestered -town. He would go in the morning. - -"Thomas," he declared, "I am about to purchase you the best dinner that -champagne can shoot into your debased middle. Oh, no, not here, but in a -real place where you can catch your own fish and shoot a pheasant out of -a painted tree." - -Thus pleasantly apostrophized that individual led Anthony to the Della -Robbia room of an elaborate hostelry, where they studied the _carte de -jour_ amid pink tiling and porphyry. There was a rosy flush of shaded -lights over snowy linen in the long, high chamber, the subdued passage -of waiters like silhouettes, low laughter, and a throbbing strain -of violins falling from a balcony above their heads. They pondered -nonchalantly the strange names, elaborate sauces; but were finally -launched upon suave cocktails and clams. Anthony settled back into -a glow of well-being, of the tranquillity that precedes an expected, -secure joy. He saluted the champagne bucket by the table; when, -suddenly, the necessity to speak of Eliza overcame him, he wished to -hear her name pronounced by other lips... perhaps he would tell Tom all; -he was the best of fellows.... - -"Are the Dreens home?" he asked negligently. "Have you seen Eliza Dreen -about--you know with that soft, shiny hair?" - -Thomas Meredith directed at him a glance of careless surprise. "Why," he -answered, "I thought you knew; it seemed to me she died before you left. -Anyhow, it was about the same time, it must have been the next week. -Pneumonia. This soup's great, Anthony." - - - - -LII - -HE joy that had sung through Anthony shrunk into an intolerable pain -like an icicle thrust into his heart; he swallowed convulsively a -spoonful of soup, tasteless, scalding hot, and put the spoon down with -a clatter. He half rose from the chair, with his arms extended, as if by -that means he could ward off the terrible misfortune that had befallen -him. Thomas Meredith, unaware of Anthony's drawn face, his staring -gaze, continued to eat with gusto the unspeakable liquid, and the waiter -uncorked the champagne with a soft explosion. The wine flowed bubbling -into their glasses, and Tom held his aloft. "To your good luck," he -proclaimed, but set it down untouched at Anthony's pallor. - -"What's the matter--sick? It's the beer and cocktail, it always does -it." - -"It's not that," Anthony said very distinctly. - -His voice sounded to him like that of a third person. He was laboring to -adjust the tumult within him to the fact of Eliza's death; he repeated -half aloud the term "dead" and its whispered syllable seemed to fill the -entire world, the sky, to echo ceaselessly in space. From the -stringed instruments above came the refrain of a popular song; and, -subconsciously, mechanically, he repeated the words aloud; when he heard -his own voice he stopped as though a palm had been clapped upon his -mouth. - -"What is it?" Tom persisted; "don't discompose this historical banquet." -The waiter replaced the soup with fish, over which he spread a thick, -yellow sauce. "Go on," Anthony articulated, "go on--" he emptied his -champagne glass at a gulp, and then a second. "Certainly a fresh quart," -his companion directed the waiter. - -Eliza was dead! pneumonia. That, he told himself, was why she had -not answered his letter, why, on the steps at Hydrangea House, Mrs. -Dreen--hell! how could he think of such things? Eliza... dead, cold who -warm had kissed him; Eliza, for whom all had been dreamed, planned, -undertaken, dead; Eliza gone from him, gone out of the sun into the -damned and horrible dirt. Tom, explaining him satisfactorily, devoted -himself to the succession of dishes that flowed through the waiter's -skillful hands, dishes that Anthony dimly recognized having -ordered--surely years before. "You're drunk," Thomas declared. - -He drank inordinately: gradually a haze enveloped him, separating him -from the world, from his companion, a shadowy shape performing strange -antics at a distance. Sounds, voices, penetrated to his isolation, rent -thinly the veil that held at its center the sharp pain dulled, expanded, -into a leaden, sickening ache. He placed the yellow bank note on a -silver platter that swayed before him, and in return received a crisp -pile, which, with numb fingers, he crowded into a pocket. He would have -fallen as he rose from his chair if Tom had not caught him, leading him -stumbling but safely to the street. - -"Don't start an ugly drunk," Thomas Meredith begged. Without a word, -Anthony turned and, with stiff legs, strode into the night. Eliza was -dead; he had had something to give her, a surprise, but it was too -late. A great piece of good fortune had overtaken him, he wanted to tell -Eliza, but... he collided with a pedestrian, and continued at a tangent -like a mechanical toy turned from its course. His companion swung him -from under the wheels of a truck. "Wait," he panted, "I'm no Marathon -runner, it's hotter'n Egypt." - -The perspiration dripped from Anthony's countenance, wet the clenched -palms of his hands. He walked on and on, through streets brilliantly -lighted and streets dark; streets crowded with men in evening clothes, -loafing with cigarettes by illuminated playbills, streets empty, silent -save for the echo of his hurried, shambling footsteps. Eliza was lost, -out there somewhere in the night; he must find her, bring her back: but -he couldn't find her, nor bring her back--she was dead. He stopped to -reconsider dully that idea. A row of surprisingly white marble steps, of -closed doors, blank windows, confronted him. "This is where I retire," -Thomas Meredith declared. Anthony wondered what the fellow was buzzing -about? why should he wait for him, Anthony Ball, at "McCanns"? - -He considered with a troubled brow a world empty of Eliza; it wasn't -possible, no such foolish world could exist for a moment. Who had -dared to rob him? In a methodical voice he cursed all the holy, all -the august, all the reverent names he could call to mind. Then again -he hurried on, leaving standing a ridiculous figure who shouted an -incomprehensible sentence. - -He passed through an unsubstantial city of shadows, of sudden, -clangoring sounds, of the blur of lights swaying in strings above his -head, of unsteady luminous bubbles floating before him through ravines -of gloom; bells rang loud and threatening, throats of brass bellowed. -His head began to throb with a sudden pain, and the pain printed clearly -on the bright suffering of his mind a stooping, dusty figure; leaden -eyes, a grey face, peered into his own; slack lips mumbled the story -of a boy dead long ago--Eliza, Eliza was dead--and of a red necktie, a -Sunday suit; a fearful figure, a fearful story, from the low mutter of -which he precipitantly fled. Other faces crowded his brain--Ellie with -her cool, understanding look, his mother, his father frowning at him in -assumed severity; he saw Mrs. Dreen, palely sweet in a starlit gloom. -Then panic swept over him as he realized that he was unable, in a sudden -freak of memory, to summon into that intimate gallery the countenance of -Eliza. It was as though in disappearing from the corporeal world she had -also vanished from the realm of his thoughts, of his longing. He paused, -driving his nails into his palms, knotting his brow, in an agony of -effort to visualize her. In vain. "I can't remember her," he told an -indistinct human form before him. "I can't remember her." - -A voice answered him, thin and surprisingly bitter. "When you are sober -you will stop trying." - -And then he saw her once more, so vivid, so near, that he gave a sobbing -exclamation of relief. "Don't," he whispered, "not... lose again--" He -forgot for the moment that she was dead, and put out a hand to touch -her. Thin air. Then he recalled. He commenced his direct, aimless -course, but a staggering weariness overcame him, the toylike progress -grew slower, there were interruptions, convulsive starts. - - - - -LIII - -AT the same time the haze lightened about him: he saw clearly his -surroundings, the black, glittering windows of stores, the gleaming -rails which bound the stone street. His hat was gone and he had long -before lost the bundle that contained his linen. But the loss was of -small moment now--he had money, a pocketful of it, and forty-seven -thousand dollars waiting in Ellerton: his father was a scrupulous, -truthful and exact man. - -Eliza and he would have been immediately married, gone to a little green -village, under a red mountain; Eliza would have worn the most beautiful -dresses made by a parrot; but that, he recognized shrewdly, was an -idiotic fancy--birds didn't make dresses. And now she was dead. - -He entered a place of multitudinous mirrors reflecting a woman's -flickering limbs, sly and bearded masculine faces, that somehow were -vaguely familiar. - -"Champagne!" he cried, against the bar. - -"Your champagne'll come across in a schooner." - -But, impatiently, he shoved a handful of money into the zinc gutter. -"Champagne!" he reiterated thickly. The barkeeper deduced four dollars -and returned the balance. "Sink it," he advised, "or you'll get it -lifted on you." - -With the wine, the mist deepened once more about him; the ache--was it -in his head or his heart?--grew duller. He had poured out a third glass -when a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and whirling suspiciously, he -saw a uniform cap, a man's gaunt face and burning eyes. - -"Brother," the latter said, "brother, shall we leave this reeking sink, -and go out together into God's night?" - -Blinking, Anthony recognized the livery, the accents, of the Salvation -Army. A sullen anger burned within him--this man was a sort of official -connection of God's, who had killed Eliza. He smoothed out his face -cunningly, moved obediently toward the other, and struck him viciously -across the face. Pandemonium rose instantly about him, an incredible -number of men appeared shouting, gesticulating, and formed in a ring of -blurred, grinning faces. The jaw of the Salvation Army man was bright -with blood, dark drops fell on his threadbare coat. His hand closed -again on Anthony's shoulder. - -"Strive, brother," he cried. "The Mansion door is open." - -Anthony regarded him with insolent disdain. "Ought to be exposed," he -articulated, "whole thing... humbug. Isn't any such--such... Eliza's -dead, ain't she?" - -A ripple of merriment ran about the circle of loose, stained lips; the -curious, ribald eyes glittered with cold mirth; the circle flattened -with the pressure of those without, impatient for a better view. Anthony -surveyed them with impotent fury, loathing, and they met his passionate -anger with faces as stony, as inhuman, as cruel, carved masks. He -heard _her_ name, the name of the gracious and beautiful vision of his -adoration, repeated in hoarse, in maculate, in gibing tones. - -"She's dead," he repeated sharply, as though that fact should impose -silence on them; "you filthy curs!" But their approbation of the -spectacle became only the more marked. - -The Salvation Army man fastened his hectic gaze upon Anthony; he was, -it was evident, unaware of the blood drying upon his face, of the throng -about them. "There is no death," he proclaimed. "There is no death!" - -"But she _is_ dead," Anthony insisted; "pneumonia... with green eyes -and foggy hands." They began an insane argument: Eliza was gone, Anthony -reiterated, the other could not deny that she was lost to life, to the -sun. He recalled statements of Rufus Hardinge's, crisp iconoclasms of -Annot's, and fitted them into the patchwork of his labored speech. -Texts were flung aloft like flags by the other; ringing sentences in the -incomparable English of King James echoed about the walls, the bottles -of the saloon and beat upon the throng, the blank hearts, the beery -brains, of the spectators. "Blessed are the pure in heart," he orated, -"for they... for they..." - - - - -LIV - -THAT word--purity, rang like a gong in Anthony's thoughts: Eliza had -emphasized it, questioning him. The term became inexplicably merged -with Eliza into one shining whole--Eliza, purity; purity, Eliza. A swift -impression of massed, white flowers swept before him, leaving a delicate -and trailing fragrance. He had a vision of purity as something concrete, -something which, like a priceless and fragile vase, he guarded in -his hands. It had been a charge from her, a trust that he must keep -unspotted, inviolable, that she would require--but she was gone, she was -dead. - -"... through the valley of the shadow," the other cried. - -She had left him; he stood alone, guarding a meaningless thing, useless -as the money in his pocket. - -A man with bare, corded arms and an apron, broke roughly through the -circle; and with a hand on Anthony's back, a hand on the back of -his opponent, urged them toward the door. "You'll have to take this -outside," he pronounced, "you're blocking the bar." - -An arm linked within Anthony's, and swung him aside. "Unavoidably -detained by merest 'quaintance," Thomas Meredith explained with -ponderous exactitude. Unobserved, they found a place at the table they -had occupied earlier in the evening. The latter ordered a fresh bottle, -but was persuaded by Anthony to surrender the check which accompanied -it. - -A sudden hatred for the money that had come too late possessed him: if -he had had the whole forty-seven thousand dollars there he would have -torn it up, trampled upon it, flung it to the noisome corners of the -saloon. It seemed to have become his for the express purpose of mocking -at his sorrow, his loss. His hatred spread to include that purity, that -virtue, which he had conceived of as something material, an actual -possession.... That, at any rate, he might trample under foot, destroy, -when and as it pleased him. Eliza was gone and all that was left was -valueless. It had been, all unconsciously, dedicated to her; and now he -desired to cast it into the mold that held her. - -He fingered with a new care the sum in his pocket, an admirably -comprehensive plan had occurred to him--he would bury them both, the -money and purity, beneath the same indignity. Tom Meredith, he was -certain, could direct his purpose to its fulfillment. Nor was he -mistaken. The conversation almost immediately swung to the subject of -girls, girls gracious, prodigal of their charms. They would sally forth -presently and "see the town." Tom loudly asseverated his knowledge of -all the inmates of all the complacent quarters under the gas light. -Before a cab was summoned Anthony stumbled mysteriously to the bar, -returning with a square, paper-wrapped parcel. - -"Port wine," he ejaculated, "must have it... for a good time." - - - - -LV - -A SEEMINGLY interminable ride followed, they rattled over rough stones, -rolled with a clacking tire over asphalt. A smell unnamable, fulsome, -corrupt, hung in Anthony's nostrils; the driver objurgated his horse in -a desperate whisper; Tom's head fell from side to side on his breast. -The mists surged about Anthony, veiling, obscuring all but the sullen -purpose compressing his heart, throbbing in his brain. - -There was a halt, a rocking pavement and unctuous tones. Then a hall, a -room, and the tinny racket of a piano, feminine voices that, at the same -time, were hoarsely sexless, empty, like harsh echoes flung from a rocky -void. A form in red silk took possession of Anthony's hand, sat by his -side; a hot breath, a whisper, flattened against his ear. At times he -could distinguish Tom's accents; he seemed to be arguing masterfully, -but a shrill, voluble stream kept pace with him, silenced him in the -end. - -Anthony strove against great, inimical forces to maintain his sanity of -action, ensure his purpose: he sat with a grim, haggard face as rigid -as wood, as tense as metal. The cloudy darkness swept over him, -impenetrable, appalling; through it he seemed to drop for miles, for -years, for centuries; it lightened, and he found himself clutching the -sides of his chair, shuddering over the space which, he had felt, gaped -beneath him. - -In moments of respite he saw, gliding through the heated glare, -gaily-clad forms; they danced; yet for all the dancing, for all the -colors, they were more sinister than merry, they were incomparably more -grievous than gay. A tray of beer glasses was held before him, but he -waved it aside. "Champagne," he muttered. The husky voices commended -him; a bare arm crept around his neck, soft, stifling; the red silk form -was like a blot of blood on the gloom; it spread over his arm like a -tide of blood welling from his torn heart. - -He thought at intervals, when the piano was silent, that he could -distinguish the sound of low, continuous sobbing; and the futility of -grief afforded a contemptuous amusement. "It's fierce," a shrill voice -pronounced. "They ought to have took her somewhere else; this is a -decent place." A second hotly silenced this declaration. In the -jumble of talk which followed he heard the title "captain" pronounced -authoritatively, conclusively imposing an abrupt lull. Men entered. With -an effort which taxed his every resource of concentration he saw that -there were two; he distinguished two tones--one deliberate, coldly -arrogant, the other explosive, iterating noisy assertions. Peering -through the film before his eyes, Anthony saw that the first, -insignificant in stature, exactly and fashionably dressed, had a -countenance flat and dark, like a Chinaman's; the other was a fleshy -young man in an electric blue suit, his neck swelling in a crimson fold -above his collar, who gesticulated with a fat, white hand. - -Anthony felt the attention of the room centered upon himself, he heard -disconnected periods; "... to the eyes. Good fellow... threw friend -out--one of them lawyer jags, too dam' smart." A voice flowed, thick -and gummy like molasses, from the redness at his side, "He's my fellow; -ain't you, Raymond?" - -A wave of deathly sickness swept up from the shuddering void and -enveloped him. He summoned his dissipated faculties, formed his cold -lips in readiness to pronounce fateful words, when he was diverted -by the sharp impact of a shutting door, he heard with preternatural -clearness a bolt slip in its channel. The young man in the blue suit had -disappeared. Again the sobbing, low and distinct, rose and fell upon his -hearing. - -There was a general stir in the room; the form beside him rose; and he -was lunging to his feet when, in the act of moving, he became immovable; -he stood bent, with his hands extended, listening; he turned his head -slowly, he turned his dull, straining gaze from side to side. Then he -straightened up as though he had been opened by a spring. - -"Who--who called?" he demanded. "Who called me--Anthony?" - -In the short, startled silence which followed the room grew suddenly -clear before him, the mist dissolved before a garish flood of gaslight -that fell upon a grotesque circle of women in shapeless, bright apparel; -he saw haggard, youthful countenances on which streaks of paint burned -like flames; he saw eyes shining and dead like glass marbles; mouths -drawn and twisted as though by torture. He saw the fragile, fashionably -dressed youth with the flat face. No one of them could have called him -in the clear tone that had swept like a silver stream through the miasma -of his consciousness. - -Again he heard it. "Anthony!" Its echo ran from his brain in thrills of -wonder, of response, to the tips of his fingers. "Anthony!" Oh, God! -he knew now, beyond all question, all doubt, that it was the voice -of Eliza. But Eliza was dead. It was an inexplicable, a cunning and -merciless jest, at the expense of his love, his longing.... "Anthony!" -it came from above, from within. - -A double, sliding door filled the middle of the wall, and, starting -forward, he fumbled with its small, brass handles. A sudden, subdued -commotion of curses, commands, arose behind him; hands dragged at -his shoulders; an arm as thin and hard as steel wire closed about his -throat. He broke its strangling hold, brushed the others aside. The door -was bolted. Yes, it came from beyond; and from within came the sobbing -that had hovered continuously at the back of his perception. - -He shook the door viciously; then, disregarding the hands tearing at him -from the rear, burst it open with his shoulder. He staggered in, looking -wildly about.... It had, after all, been only a freak of his disordered -mind, an hallucination of his pain. The room was empty but for the young -man in electric blue, now with his coat over the back of a chair, and -a girl with a torn waist, where her thin, white shoulder showed dark, -regular prints, and a tangle of hair across her immature face. - -The man in shirt sleeves rose from the couch, on which he had been -sitting, with a stream of sudden, surprised oaths. The girl who stood -gazing with distended eyes at Anthony turned and flashed through the -broken door. "Stop her!" was urgently cried; "the hall door--" Anthony -heard a chair fall in the room beyond, shrill cries that sank, muffled -in a further space. - -The two men faced him in the silent room: the larger, with an empurpled -visage, bloodshot eyes, shook with enraged concern; the other was as -motionless as a piece of furniture, in his wooden countenance his -gaze glittered like a snake's, glittered as icily as the diamond that -sparkled in his crimson tie folded exactly beneath an immaculate collar. -Only, at intervals, his fingers twitched like jointed and animated -straws. - -An excited voice cried from the distance: "She's gone! Alice's face -is tore open... out the door like a devil, and up the street in her -petticoat." - -The man with the flushed face wilted. "This is as bad as hell," he -whimpered. "It will come out, sure. You--" he particularized Anthony -with a corroding epithet. "The captain is in it deep... this will do for -him, we'll all go up--" - -"Why?" the other demanded. He indicated Anthony with his left hand, -while the other stole into his pocket. "He brought her here... you heard -the girl and broke into the room; there was a fight--a fight." He drew -nearer to Anthony by a step. - - - - -LVI - -ANTHONY gazed above their heads. There, again, clear and sweet, his -name shaped like a bell-note. The familiar scent of a springtide of -lilacs swept about him; the placid murmur of water slipping between -sodded banks, tumbling over a fall; the querulous hunting cry of owls -hovered in his hearing, singing in the undertone of that pronouncement -of his name out of the magic region of his joy. - -"No good," a voice buzzed, indistinct, immaterial. "Who'll shut this--? -who'll get the girl?" - -"The girl can't reach us alone...." - -An intolerable scarlet hurt stabbed at Anthony out of a pungent, whitish -cloud. There was a fretful report. A flat, dark face without expression, -without the blink of an eyelid, a twitch of the mouth, loomed before him -and then shot up into darkness. The hurt multiplied a thousand fold, it -poured through him like molten metal, lay in a flashing pool upon his -heart, filled his brain. He opened his lips for a protest, put out his -hands appealingly. But he uttered no sound, his arms sank, grew stiff... -the light faded from his eyes.... imponderable silence. Frigid night.... - -Far off he heard _her_ calling him, imperative, confident, glad. Her -crystal tones descended into the abyss whose black and eternal walls -towered above him. He must rise and bear to her that gift like a -precious and fragile vase which he held unbroken in his hands. An -ineffable fragrance deepened about him from the massed blooms rosy in -the glow where she waited, drawing him up to her out of the chaotic wash -beyond the worlds where the vapors of corrupted matter sank and sank in -slow coils, falling endlessly, forever. - - -THE END - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lay Anthony, by Joseph Hergesheimer - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAY ANTHONY *** - -***** This file should be named 51921-8.txt or 51921-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/9/2/51921/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by Google Books - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive -specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this -eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook -for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, -performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given -away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks -not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the -trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. - -START: FULL LICENSE - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full -Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at -www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or -destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your -possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a -Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound -by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the -person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph -1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this -agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the -Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection -of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual -works in the collection are in the public domain in the United -States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the -United States and you are located in the United States, we do not -claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, -displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as -all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope -that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting -free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm -works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the -Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily -comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the -same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when -you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are -in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, -check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this -agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, -distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any -other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no -representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any -country outside the United States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other -immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear -prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work -on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, -performed, viewed, copied or distributed: - - This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and - most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no - restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it - under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this - eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the - United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you - are located before using this ebook. - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is -derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not -contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the -copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in -the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are -redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply -either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or -obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any -additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms -will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works -posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the -beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including -any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access -to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format -other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official -version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site -(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense -to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means -of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain -Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the -full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -provided that - -* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed - to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has - agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid - within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are - legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty - payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in - Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg - Literary Archive Foundation." - -* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all - copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue - all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm - works. - -* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of - any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of - receipt of the work. - -* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than -are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing -from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The -Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project -Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may -contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate -or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other -intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or -other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or -cannot be read by your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium -with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you -with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in -lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person -or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second -opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If -the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing -without further opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO -OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT -LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of -damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement -violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the -agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or -limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or -unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the -remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in -accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the -production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, -including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of -the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this -or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or -additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any -Defect you cause. - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of -computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It -exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations -from people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future -generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see -Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at -www.gutenberg.org Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by -U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the -mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its -volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous -locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt -Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to -date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and -official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact - -For additional contact information: - - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND -DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular -state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To -donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project -Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be -freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and -distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of -volunteer support. - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in -the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. - diff --git a/old/51921-8.zip b/old/51921-8.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index b95d46b..0000000 --- a/old/51921-8.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/51921-h.zip b/old/51921-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 7f5b3e9..0000000 --- a/old/51921-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/51921-h/51921-h.htm b/old/51921-h/51921-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index 371dc6f..0000000 --- a/old/51921-h/51921-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7307 +0,0 @@ -<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> - -<!DOCTYPE html - PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > - -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> - <title> - The Lay Anthony, by Joseph Hergesheimer - </title> - <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> - - body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} - P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } - H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } - hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} - .foot { margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; text-align: justify; font-size: 80%; font-style: italic;} - blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} - .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} - .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} - .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} - .xx-small {font-size: 60%;} - .x-small {font-size: 75%;} - .small {font-size: 85%;} - .large {font-size: 115%;} - .x-large {font-size: 130%;} - .indent5 { margin-left: 5%;} - .indent10 { margin-left: 10%;} - .indent15 { margin-left: 15%;} - .indent20 { margin-left: 20%;} - .indent30 { margin-left: 30%;} - .indent40 { margin-left: 40%;} - div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } - div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } - .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} - .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} - .pagenum {position: absolute; right: 1%; font-size: 0.6em; - font-variant: normal; font-style: normal; - text-align: right; background-color: #FFFACD; - border: 1px solid; padding: 0.3em;text-indent: 0em;} - .side { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 15%; padding-left: 0.8em; - border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left; - text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; - font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;} - .head { float: left; font-size: 90%; width: 98%; padding-left: 0.8em; - border-left: dashed thin; text-align: center; - text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; - font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;} - p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0} - span.dropcap { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 0.8 } - pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} - -</style> - </head> - <body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lay Anthony, by Joseph Hergesheimer - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: The Lay Anthony - A Romance - -Author: Joseph Hergesheimer - -Release Date: May 1, 2016 [EBook #51921] -Last Updated: March 12, 2018 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAY ANTHONY *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by Google Books - - - - - - -</pre> - - <div style="height: 8em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h1> - THE LAY ANTHONY - </h1> - <h3> - A Romance - </h3> - <h2> - By Joseph Hergesheimer - </h2> - <h4> - New York & London - </h4> - <h4> - Mitchell Kennerley 1914 - </h4> - <blockquote> - <p> - “<i>... if in passing from this deceitful world into true life love is - not forgotten,... I know that among the most joyous souls of the third - heaven my Fiametta sees my pain. Pray her, if the sweet draught of Lethe - has not robbed me of her,... to obtain my ascent to her.</i>” - </p> - </blockquote> - <p> - —Giovanni Boccaccio - </p> - <p> - <br /> <br /> - </p> - <h3> - TO - </h3> - <h3> - DOROTHY - </h3> - <h3> - THIS - </h3> - <h3> - FIGMENT OF A PERPETUAL FLOWERING - </h3> - <h3> - THE LAY ANTHONY - </h3> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - <b>CONTENTS</b> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> III </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> IV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> V </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> VI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> IX </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> X </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> XI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XVI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XVII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> XVIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> XIX </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> XX </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> XXI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> XXII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> XXIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> XXIV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> XXV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> XXVI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> XXVII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> XXVIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> XXIX </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> XXX </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> XXXI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> XXXII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> XXXIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0034"> XXXIV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0035"> XXXV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0036"> XXXVI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0037"> XXXVII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0038"> XXXVIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0039"> XXXIX </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0040"> XL </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0041"> XLI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0042"> XLII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0043"> XLIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0044"> XLIV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0045"> XLV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0046"> XLVI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0047"> XLVII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0048"> XLVIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0049"> XLIX </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0050"> L </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0051"> LI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0052"> LII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0053"> LIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0054"> LIV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0055"> LV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0056"> LVI </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - I—A ROMANCE - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>OT for the honor - of winning the Vanderbilt Cup, nor for the glory of pitching a major - league baseball team into the world's championship, would Tony Ball have - admitted to the familiar and derisive group in the drugstore that he was—in - the exact, physical aspect of the word—pure. Secretly, and in an - entirely natural and healthy manner, he was ashamed of his innocence. He - carefully concealed it in an elaborate assumption of wide worldly - knowledge and experience, in an attitude of cynical comprehension, and - indifference toward <i>girls</i>. - </p> - <p> - But he might have spared himself the effort, the fictions, of his pose—had - he proclaimed his ignorance aloud from the brilliantly lighted entrance to - the drugstore no one who knew him in the midweek, night throng on - Ellerton's main street would have credited Anthony with anything beyond a - thin and surprising joke. He was, at twenty, the absolute, adventurous - opposite of any conscious or cloistered virtue: the careless carriage of - his big, loose frame; his frank, smiling grey eyes and ample mouth; his - very, drawling voice—all marked him for a loiterer in the pleasant - and sunny places of life, indifferent to the rigors of a mental or moral - discipline. - </p> - <p> - The accumulated facts of his existence fully bore this out: the number of - schools from which, playing superlative baseball, he had been still - obliged to leave, carrying with him the cordial good will of master and - fellow, for an unconquerable, irresponsible laxity; the number and variety - of occupations that had claimed him in the past three years, every one of - which at their inception certain, he felt confident, to carry him beyond - all dreams and necessity of avarice; and every one, in his rapidly - diminishing interest, attention, or because of persistent, adverse - conditions over which, he asseverated, he had no control, turning into a - fallow field, a disastrous venture; and, conclusively, the group of - familiars, the easy companions of idle hours, to which he had gravitated. - </p> - <p> - He met his mates by appointment at Doctor Allhop's drugstore, or by an - elaborate system of whistled formulas from the street, at which he would - rise with a muttered excuse from the dinner table and disappear.—He - was rarely if ever sought outright at his father's house; it was quite - another sort of boy who met and discoursed easily with sisters, who - unperturbed greeted mothers face to face. - </p> - <p> - It would have been useless, had he known it, to protest his virtue inside - the drugstore or out; a curious chain of coincidents had preserved it. - Again and again he had been at the point of surrendering his involuntary - Eden, and always the accident, the interruption, had befallen, always he - had retired in a state of more or less orderly celibacy. On the occasion - of one of those nocturnal, metropolitan escapades by which matured boys, - in a warm, red veil of whiskey, assert their manhood and independence, he - had been thrust in a drunken stupor into the baggage car of the “owl” - train to Ellerton. Instances might be multiplied: life, in its haphazard - manner, its uncharted tides and eddies sweeping arbitrarily up and down - the world, had carelessly preserved in him that concrete ideal which - myriads of heroic and agonized beings had striven terribly and in vain to - ward. - </p> - <p> - And so it happened, when Doctor Allhop turned with an elaborate - impropriety from the pills he was compounding in a porcelain pestle, that - Anthony's laugh was loudest, his gusto most marked, in the group gathered - at the back of the drugstore. A wooden screen divided them, hid the - shelves of bottles, the water sink, and the other properties and - ingredients of the druggist's profession, from the glittering and public - exhibition of the finished article, the marble slab and silver mouths of - the sodawater fountain, the uninitiated throng. - </p> - <p> - He was sitting on a case of prepared food, his legs thrust out before him, - and a thread of smoke coiling bluely from the cigarette held in his broad, - scarred hand. There was a little gay song on his lips, and a roving, gay - glint in his direct gaze. At frequent intervals he surveyed with - approbation maroon socks and a pair of new and shining pumps; the rest of - his apparel was negligent. - </p> - <p> - The sole chair was occupied by the plump bulk of Thomas Addington - Meredith, to whom a sharp nose in a moonlike countenance lent an - expression of constant inquiry and foxy caution. He was elaborately - apparelled in a suit which boasted a waistcoat draped with the gold chain - of an authentic timepiece; while, closing a silver cigarette case scrolled - large with his initials, a fat finger bore a ruby that, rumor circulated, - had been the gift of a married woman. - </p> - <p> - Lounging against a shelf Alfred Craik gazed absently at his blackened and - broken fingernails, his greasy palms. He was Anthony's partner in the - current industry of a machine shop and garage, maintained in a dilapidated - stable on the outskirts of Ellerton. It was a concern mainly upheld by a - daily levy on the Ball family for necessary tools and accessories. He was, - as always, silent, detached. - </p> - <p> - But William Williams amply atoned for any taciturnity on the part of the - others; he had returned a short while before from two checkered years in - the West; and, a broad felt hat cinched with a carved leather hand pushed - back from his brow, and waving the formidable stump of a cigar, he - expiated excitedly on the pleasures of that far, liberal land. - </p> - <p> - “Why,” he proclaimed, “I owe a saloon keeper in San Francisco sixty-five - dollars for one round of drinks—the joint was full and it was up to - me... nothing but champagne went, understand! He knows he'll get it. Why, - I collared ten dollars a day overseeing sheep. I cleaned up three thousand - in one little deal; it was in Butte City; it lasted nine days. But - 'Frisco's the place—all the girls there are good sports, all the men - spenders.” - </p> - <p> - “What did you come back East for?” Alfred Craik demanded; “why didn't you - stay right with it?” - </p> - <p> - “I got up against it,” William grinned; “the old man wouldn't give me - another stake.” The thought of the glories he had been forced to - relinquish started him afresh. “I cleaned up enough in a week at - billiards,” he boasted, “to keep me in Ellerton a year.” - </p> - <p> - “Didn't Bert Dingley take four bits from you last night at Hinkle's?” - Anthony lazily asked. - </p> - <p> - “That farmer!” the other scoffed; “I had a rank cue; they are all rank at - Hinkle's. I'll match him in a decent parlor for any amount.” - </p> - <p> - “How much will you put up?” Meredith demanded; “I will back Bert.” - </p> - <p> - “How much have you got?” William queried. - </p> - <p> - “How much have you?” - </p> - <p> - “If this was San Francisco I could get a hundred.” - </p> - <p> - “What have you got in real coin, Bill?” Tony joined in. - </p> - <p> - “Three nickles,” William Williams admitted moodily. - </p> - <p> - “I've got thirty-five cents,” Thomas added. “I wish I could get a piece of - change.” - </p> - <p> - “How's the car?” Anthony turned to hiss partner in the lull that followed. - The “car,” their sole professional charge, had been placed in their hands - by an optimistic and benevolent connection of the Balls. - </p> - <p> - “I had the differential apart again to-day,” Alfred responded, “but I - can't find that grinding anywhere. It will have to be all torn down,” he - announced with sombre enthusiasm. - </p> - <p> - “You have had that dam' thing apart three times in the last four weeks, - and every time you put it together it's worse,” Anthony protested; “the - cylinder casing leaks, and God knows what you did to the gears.” - </p> - <p> - “I wish I had a piece of change,” Thomas Meredith repeated, in a manner - patently mysterious. - </p> - <p> - “A temporary sacrifice of your tin shop—” Doctor Allhop suggested, - tinning from the skilful moulding of the pills on a glass slab. - </p> - <p> - “Not a chance! the family figurehead announced that he had taken my watch - 'out' for the last time.” - </p> - <p> - “He wants to plaster it on some Highschool skirt,” Alfred announced - unexpectedly. - </p> - <p> - “This robbing the nursery makes me ill,” William protested. “Out in Denver - there are real queens with gold hair—” - </p> - <p> - His period was lost in a yapping chorus from the west-wearied circle. - “Take it to bed with you,” he was entreated. - </p> - <p> - “Nothing in the Highschool can reach these,” Meredith assured them, “this - is the real thing—an all night seance. They have just moved in by - the slaughter house; a regular pipe—their father is dead, and the - old woman's deaf. Two sisters... one has got red hair, and the other can - kick higher'n you can hold your hand. The night I went I had to leave - early, but they told me to come hack... any night after nine, and bring a - friend.” - </p> - <p> - “I'll walk around with you,” William Williams remarked negligently. - </p> - <p> - “Not on three nickles. They told me to fetch around a couple of bottles of - port wine, and have a genuine party.” - </p> - <p> - Anthony Ball listened with rapidly growing attention, while he fingered - three one dollar bills wadded into the bottom of his pocket. He felt his - blood stir more rapidly, beating in his ears: vague pictures thronged his - brain of girls with flaming hair, dexterous, flashing limbs, white frills, - garters. With an elaborate air of unconcern he asked: - </p> - <p> - “Are they goodlookers?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Boy! they have got that hidden fascination.” - </p> - <p> - Anthony made a swift reckoning of the price of port; it would wipe out the - sum he was getting together for badly needed baseball shoes.—Red - hair!—He could count on no further assistance from his father that - month; the machine shop at present was an expense. - </p> - <p> - “Got any coin?” Meredith demanded. - </p> - <p> - “A few.” - </p> - <p> - The other consulted with importance the ostentatious watch. “Just the - minute,” he announced. “Come along; we can get the port at the Eagle; - we'll have a Paris of a time.” - </p> - <p> - Doctor Allhop offered an epigrammatic parallel between two celebrated - planets. - </p> - <p> - “I need new ball shoes,” Anthony temporized; “I ripped mine the last - game.” - </p> - <p> - Meredith rose impatiently. “Charge them to the family,” he ejaculated. - “But if you don't want to get in on this, there are plenty of others. Two - or three dollars are easy to raise in a good cause. Why, the last night I - spent in the city cost me seventeen bucks.” - </p> - <p> - “I guess I'll come.” Anthony instinctively barred his sudden eagerness - from his voice. He rose, and was surprised to find that his knees were - trembling. His face was hot too.—he wondered if it was red? if it - would betray his inexperience? “If they hand me any Sundayschool stuff,” - he proclaimed bigly, “I'll step right on it; I'm considerably wise to - these dames.” - </p> - <p> - “This is the real, ruffled goods.” Meredith settled a straw hat with a - blue band on his sleek head, and Anthony dragged a faded cap from his - pocket, which he drew far over his eyes. William Williams regarded them - enviously. Craik's thoughts had wandered far, his lips moved silently. And - Doctor Allhop had disappeared into the front of the drugstore. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - II. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ET'S get along,” - Anthony said in a a thick, strange voice. He stumbled forward; his eyes - were hot, blurred; he tried in vain to wink clear his vision. Suddenly his - elbow struck sharply against a shelf, and there was an answering crash, - the splintering of glass smashing upon the floor. Doctor Allhop hurried in - to the scene of the disaster. “You young bull among the bottles!” he - exclaimed in exasperated tones; “a whole gross of perfume, all the white - lilac, lost.” - </p> - <p> - Anthony Ball stood motionless, embarrassed and annoyed by the accident; - and great, heavy coils of the scent rose about him; they filled his - nostrils with wave on wave of pungent odor, and stung his eyes so that he - shut them. The scent seemed to press about him, to obstruct his breathing, - weigh upon his heart; he put out a hand as if to ward it off. It seemed to - him that great masses of the flower surrounded him, shutting him with a - white, sweet wall from the world. He swayed dizzily; then vanquished the - illusion with an expression of regret for the damage he had wrought. - </p> - <p> - The Doctor was on his knees, brushing together the debris; William - Williams guffawed; and Craik smiled idly. Meredith swore, tapping a - cigarette on his silver case. “You're a parlor ornament, you are,” he told - Anthony. - </p> - <p> - A feeling of impotence enveloped the latter, a sullen resentment against - an occurrence the inevitable result of which must descend like a shower of - cold water upon his freshly-stirred desires. “I am sorry as hell, Doctor,” - he repeated; “what did that box cost you?” - </p> - <p> - “Six seventy,” Allhop shot impatiently over his shoulder. - </p> - <p> - Anthony produced his three dollars, and, smoothing them, laid the sum on a - table. “I will stop in with the rest to-morrow morning,” he said. The - Doctor rose and turned, partly mollified; but, to avoid the argument - which, he felt, might follow, Anthony strode quickly out into the - drugstore. There at the white marble sodawater fountain a bevy of youth - was consuming colorific cones of ice cream, drinking syrupy concoctions - from tall, glistening glasses. They called him by name, but he passed them - without a sign of recognition, still the victim of his jangling - sensibilities. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - III - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>AY STREET was - thronged; the shops displayed broad, lighted windows filled with their - various merchandise; in front of a produce store a row of chickens hung - bare, bright blue and yellow, head down; from within came the grinding of - a coffee machine, the acrid voices of women bargaining. The glass doors to - the fire-engine house stood open, the machines glimmering behind a wide - demilune of chairs holding a motley assemblage of men. Further along, from - above, came the shuffle of dancing feet, the thin, wiry wail of violins. - At the corners groups of youths congregated, obstructing the passerby, - smirking and indulging in sudden, stridulous hursts of laughter. - </p> - <p> - The sky was infinitely remote, intensely, tenderly blue, the stars white - as milk; from the immediately surrounding countryside came the scented - breaths of early summer—the trailing sweetness of locust blooms, of - hidden hedges of honeysuckle, of June roses, and all the pungent aroma of - growing grasses, leaves, of fragile and momentary flowers. - </p> - <p> - Anthony made his way brusquely through the throng, nodding shortly to the - countless salutations that marked his progress. The youths all knew him, - and the majority of the men; women stopped in their sharp haggling to - smile at him; garlands of girls gay in muslins “Mistered” him with pretty - propriety, or followed him more boldly over their shoulders with inviting - eyes. - </p> - <p> - He impatiently disregarded his facile popularity: the tumult within him - settled into a dull, unreasoning anger against the universe at large. He - still owed Doctor Allhop four dollars and seventy cents; he had told the - Doctor that he would pay to-morrow; and he would have to go to his father. - The latter was a rigorously just man, Anthony gladly recognized, the money - would be instantly forthcoming; but he was not anxious to recall the - deficiencies of his present position to his father just then. He had - passed twenty, and—beyond his ability to cause a baseball to travel - in certain unexpected tangents, and a limited comprehension of the conduct - of automobiles—he was totally without assets, and without any light - on the horizon. - </p> - <p> - He had been willing to work, he reminded himself resentfully, but bad luck - had overtaken him at every turn. The venture before the machine shop—a - scheme of squabs, the profits of which, calculated from an advertisement, - soared with the birthrate of those prolific birds, had been ruined by - rats. The few occasions when he had neglected to feed the pigeons, despite - the frank and censorious opinion of the family, had had little or nothing - to do with that misfortune. And, before that, his kennel of rabbit dogs - had met with an untimely fate when a favorite bitch had gone mad, and a - careful commonwealth had decreed the death of the others. If his mother - could but be won from the negative she had placed upon baseball as a - professional occupation, he might easily rise through the minor leagues to - a prideful position in the ranks of the national pastime—“Lonnie - This” was paid fourteen hundred yearly for his prowess with the leather - sphere, “Hans That's” removal from one to another club had involved - thousands of dollars. - </p> - <p> - He heard his name pronounced in a peremptory manner, and stopped to see - the relative whose automobile had been placed in his care cross the - street. - </p> - <p> - “What in the name of the Lord have you young dunces done to my car?” the - older man demanded. - </p> - <p> - “We have been trying to locate that grinding,” Anthony told him in as - conciliatory manner as he could assume. - </p> - <p> - “Well,” the other proceeded angrily, “you have ruined it this time; the - gears slid around like a plate of ice cream.” - </p> - <p> - “It was nothing but a pile of junk when we took it,” Tony exploded; “why - don't you loosen up and get a real car?” - </p> - <p> - “I took it to Feedler's. You can send me a bill to-morrow.” - </p> - <p> - “There will be no bill. I'm sorry you were not satisfied, Sam.” - </p> - <p> - “You are the most shiftless young dog in the county,” the other told him - in kindlier tones; “why don't you take hold of something, Anthony?” - </p> - <p> - Anthony swung on his heel and abruptly departed. He had taken hold, he - thought hotly, times without number, but everything broke in his grasp. - </p> - <p> - The stores on Bay Street grew more infrequent, the rank of monotonous - brick dwellings closed up, family groups occupied the steps that led to - the open doors. The crowd grew less, dwindling to a few aimless couples, - solitary pedestrians. He soon stopped, before his home. Opposite the gaunt - skeleton of a building operation rose blackly against the pale stars. The - aged lindens above him, lushly leaved, cast an intenser gloom, filled with - the warm, musty odor of the sluiced pavement, about the white marble - steps. The hall, open before him, was a cavern of coolness; beyond, from - the garden shut from the street by an intricate, rusting iron fence, he - heard the deliberate tones of his sister Ellie. Evidently there was a - visitor, and he entered the hall noiselessly, intent upon passing without - notice to his room above. But Ellie had been watching for him, and called - before he had reached the foot of the stairs. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - IV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E made his way - diffidently through a long window to the lawn; where he saw his sister, a - glimmering, whitish shape in the heavily overgrown garden, conversing with - a figure without form or detail, by a trellis sagging beneath a verdurous - weight. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Tony!” she called; “here's Mrs. Dreen.” - </p> - <p> - He leaned forward awkwardly, and grasped a slim, jewelled hand. “I didn't - know you were back from France,” he told the indistinct woman before him. - </p> - <p> - “But you read that Mr. Dreen had resigned the consulship at Lyons,” a - delicate, rounded voice rejoined, “and you should have guessed that we - would come home to Ellerton. My dear Ellie,” she turned to the girl, “you - have no idea how delighted James is at being here once more. He has given - the farmer notice, and insists that he is going to cultivate his own - acres. He was up this morning at six; fancy, after France and his late <i>déjeuner.</i> - And Eliza adores it; she spends the day with a gardener, planning - flowerbeds.” - </p> - <p> - Anthony slipped into an easy posture on the thick, damp sod. Although he - had not seen Mrs. James Dreen since his childhood, when she had - accompanied her husband abroad to a consular post, he still retained a - pleasant memory of her magnetic and precise charm, the memory of her - harmonious personality, the beauty of her apparel and rings. - </p> - <p> - “How is Eliza?” he asked politely, and with no inward interest; “she must - be a regular beauty by now.” - </p> - <p> - “No,” Mrs. Dreen returned crisply, “she is not particularly goodlooking, - but she has always told me the truth. Eliza is a dear.” Anthony lit a - cigarette, and flipped the match in a minute gold arc, extinguished in the - night. - </p> - <p> - “I am decidedly uneasy about Eliza though,” she continued to Ellie; “to - tell the truth, I am not sure how she will take over here. She is a - serious child; I would say temperamental, but that's such an impossible - word. She is absolutely and transparently honest and outspoken—it's - <i>ghastly</i> at times. The most unworldly person alive; with her thought - and action are one, and often as not her thoughts are appalling. All that, - you know, doesn't spell wisdom for a girl.” - </p> - <p> - “Yet James and I couldn't bear to... make her harder. A great deal of - care... If she is my daughter, Ellie, she is exquisite—so sensitive, - sympathetic...” - </p> - <p> - Anthony, absorbed in the misfortune that had overtaken the machine shop, - the impending, inevitable interview with his father, so justly rigorous, - hardly gathered the sense of Mrs. Dreen's discourse. Occasional phrases, - familiar and unfamiliar terms, pierced his abstraction.—“Colombin's.” - “James' siatica.” “Camille Marchais.” Then her words, centering about a - statement that had captured his attention, became coherent, significant. - </p> - <p> - “Only a small affair,” Mrs. Dreen explained; “to introduce Eliza to - Ellerton. Nothing on a large scale until winter.... Dancing, or rather - what goes down for dancing to-day. I am asking our old intimates, and have - written a few informal cards.” - </p> - <p> - An automobile drew up smoothly before the Balls; its rear light winked - like an angry red eye through the iron fence. Mrs. Dreen rose. In the - gloom her face was girlish; there was a blur of lace at her throat, a - glimmer of emeralds. “Mind you come,” she commanded Ellie. “And you too, - without fail,” to Anthony. “Now that Hydrangea House is open again we must - have our friends about us. Heavens! Howard Ball's children and mine grown - up!” She moved gracefully across to a garden gate. Anthony assisted her - into the motorcar; the door closed with a snap. - </p> - <p> - Ellie had sunk back into her chair, and was idly twisting her fingers in - the grass at her side. At her back the ivied wall of the house beyond - stirred faintly with sparrows. A misshapen moon swung apparently up from - and through the building frame opposite, and faint shadows unfolded on the - grass. Anthony flung himself moodily by his sister. - </p> - <p> - “Sam's taken his car from us,” he informed her; “that will about shut up - the shop.” - </p> - <p> - “Then perhaps you will bring back the screwdrivers.” - </p> - <p> - “To-morrow.” - </p> - <p> - “What are you going to do, Tony?” - </p> - <p> - “Tell me.” - </p> - <p> - “A big strong fellow... there mast be something.” - </p> - <p> - “Mother won't let me play ball in the leagues.” - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps she will; we'll talk to her; it's better than nothing.” - </p> - <p> - “I broke a box of rotten perfume at the drugstore, and owe the Doctor four - seventy.” - </p> - <p> - “It's too bad—father is never free from little worries; you are - always getting into difficulties. You are different from other boys, - Anthony—there don't seem to be any place in life for you; or you - don't make a place, I can't tell which. You have no constructive sense, - and no feeling of responsibility. What do you want to do with yourself?” - </p> - <p> - “I don't know, Ellie, honestly,” he confessed. “I try like the devil, make - a thousand resolutions, and then—I go off fishing. Or if I don't - things go to the rats just the same.” - </p> - <p> - “Well,” she rose, “I'm going up. Don't bother father about that money, - I'll let you have it. It's perfectly useless to tell you to return it.” - </p> - <p> - “I swear you will get it next week,” he proclaimed gratefully. “The - baseball association owes me for two games.” - </p> - <p> - “Haven't you promised it?” - </p> - <p> - “That's so!” he exclaimed ruefully. She laughed and disappeared into the - house. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - V - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> BLACK depression - settled over him; life appeared a huge conspiracy against his success, his - happiness. The future, propounded by Ellie, was suddenly stripped of all - glamor, denuded of all optimistic dreams; he passed through one of those - dismaying periods when the world, himself, his pretentions, were revealed - in the clear and pitiless light of reality. His friends, his - circumstances, his hopes, held out no promise, no thought of pleasure. - Behind him his life lay revealed as a series of failures, before him it - was plotted without security. The plan, the order, that others saw, or - said that they saw, presented to him only a cloudy confusion. The rewards - for which others struggled, aspired, which they found indispensable, had - been ever meaningless to him—to money he never gave a thought; a - society organized into calls, dancing, incomprehensible and petty values, - never rose above his horizon. - </p> - <p> - He was happiest in the freedom of the open, the woods; in the easy company - of casual friends, black or white, kindly comment. He would spend a day - with his dogs and gun, sitting on a stump in a snowy field, listening to - the eager yelping in the distant, blue wood, shooting a rare rabbit. Or - tramping tirelessly the leafy paths of autumn. Or, better still, swinging - through the miry October swales, coonhunting after midnight with lantern - and climbers. - </p> - <p> - But now those pleasures, in anticipated retrospect, appeared bald, - unprofitable. Prolonged indefinitely, he divined, they would pall; they - did not offer adequate material, aim, for the years. For a moment he saw, - grinning hatefully at him, the spectre of what he might become; he passed - such men, collarless and unshaven, on the street comers, flinging them a - scornful salutation. He had paid for their drinks, hearkening negligently - to their stereotyped stories, secretly gibing at their obvious - goodfellowship, their eager, tremulous smiles. They had been, in their - day, great rabbit hunters... detestable. - </p> - <p> - The mood vanished, the present closed mercifully about him, leaving him - merely defiant. The townclock announced the hour in slow, jarring notes. A - light shone above from Ellie's room, and he heard his father's deliberate - footsteps in the hall, returning from the Ellerton Club, where, as was his - invariable nightly habit, he had played cooncan. The moon, freed from the - towering beams, was without color. - </p> - <p> - Anthony rose, and flung away a cold, stale cigarette; the world was just - like that—stale and cold. He proceeded toward the house, when he - heard footfalls on the pavement; in the obscurity he barely made out a man - and woman, walking so closely as to be hardly distinguishably separate. - They stopped by the fence, only a few feet from where he stood concealed - in the shadows, and the man took the woman's hands in his own, bending - over her. Then, suddenly, clasping her in his arms, he covered her - upturned face with passionate kisses. With a little, frightened gasp she - clung to his shoulders. The kisses ceased. Their strained, desperate - embrace remained unbroken.—It seemed that each was the only reality - for the other in a world of unsubstantial gloom, veiled in the shifting, - silvery mist of a cold and removed planet. The woman breathed with a deep, - sobbing inspiration; and, when she spoke, Anthony realized that he was - eavesdropping, and walked swiftly and cautiously into the house. - </p> - <p> - But the memory of that embrace; accompanied him up the stairs, into his - room. It haunted him as he lay, cool and nearly bare, on his bed. It - filled him with a profound and unreasoning melancholy, new to his - customary, unconscious animal exuberance. All at once he thought of the - redhaired girl who liked port wine; and, as he fell asleep, she stood - before him, leering slyly at the side of that other broken shape which - threatened him out of the future. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE shed that held - the machine shop and garage fronted upon an informal lane skirting the - verdurous border of the town. Beyond the fence opposite a broad pasturage - dipped and rose to the blackened ruins of a considerable brick mansion, - now tenanted by a provident colony of Italians; further hill topped green - hill, the orchards drawn like silvery scarves about their shoulders, - undulating to the sky. Back of the shed ranged the red roofs and tree-tops - of the town. - </p> - <p> - When Anthony arrived at the seat of his industry the grass was flashing - with dew and the air a thrill with the buoyant piping of robins. He found - the door open, and Alfred Craik awaiting him. - </p> - <p> - “She's gone,” Alfred informed him. - </p> - <p> - “Sam told me last night; it was your infernal tinkering... you can't let a - machine alone,” Anthony dropped beside the other on the door sill. - </p> - <p> - “Could we get another car, do you think?” Alfred demanded; “I had almost - finished a humming experiment on Sam's.” - </p> - <p> - “This garage is closed,” Anthony pronounced; “it's out of existence. The - family are yelping for the screwdrivers. What do we owe?” - </p> - <p> - “Three ninety to Feedler for 'gas,' and a month's rent.” - </p> - <p> - “We're bankrupt,” the other immediately declared. He rose, and proceeded - to collect the tools that littered the floor; then he removed the sign, - “Ball and Craik. Machine Shop and Garage.”, from the door, and the shed - relapsed into its nondescript, somnolent decay. - </p> - <p> - “There's a game with Honeydale to-day,” Anthony resumed his seat; “I'm to - pitch that, and another Saturday; and, hear me, boy, I need the money.” - </p> - <p> - Alfred gazed over the orchards, beyond the hills, into the sky, and made - no answer. It was evident that he was lost in a vision of gloriously - disrupted machinery. His silence spread to Anthony, who settled back with - a cigarette into the drowsy stillness. The minutes passed, hovering like - bees, and merged into an hour. They could hear a horse champing in the - pasture; the wail of an Italian infant came to them thinly across the - green; behind them sounded mellow the tin horn of the shad vendor. - </p> - <p> - Anthony roused himself reluctantly, recalling the debt he had to discharge - at the drugstore. Elbe's crisp five dollar bill lay in his pocket. - “Later,” he nodded, and made his way over the shady brick pavements, - through the cool perspective of maple-lined streets, where summer dresses - fluttered in spots of subdued, bright color, to Doctor Allhop's. The - Doctor was absent, and Anthony tendered the money, with a short - explanation, to the clerk. The latter smartly rang the amount on the cash - register, and placed thirty cents on the counter. - </p> - <p> - “Two packs of Dulcinas,” Anthony required, and dropped the cigarettes into - his pocket. He made his way in a leisurely fashion toward home and the - midday meal. At the table his mother's keen grey eyes regarded him with - affectionate concern. “How do you feel, Tony?” she asked. “You were - coughing last night... take such wretched care of yourself—” His - father glanced up from the half-masted sheet of the Ellerton <i>Bugle</i>. - He was a spare man, of few words, with a square-cut beard about the lower - part of an austere countenance. “What's the matter with him?” he demanded - crisply. - </p> - <p> - “Nothing,” Anthony hastily protested; “you ought to know mother.” - </p> - <p> - After lunch he extended himself smoking on the horsehair sofa in the front - room. It was a spacious chamber, with a polished floor, and well-worn, - comfortable chairs; in a corner a lacquered table bore old blue Canton - china; by the door a jar of roses dropped their pink petals; over the - fireplace a tall mirror held all in silvery replica. - </p> - <p> - “Thirty cents, please,” Ellie demanded; “I must get some stamps.” - </p> - <p> - A wave of conscious guilt, angry self condemnation, swept over him. “I'm - sorry, Ellie,” he admitted; “I haven't got it.” - </p> - <p> - She stood regarding him for a moment with cold disapproval. She was a - slender woman, past thirty, with dark, regular features and tranquil eyes; - carelessly dressed, her hair slipped over her shoulder in a cool plait. - </p> - <p> - “I am sorry,” he repeated, “I didn't think.” - </p> - <p> - “But it wasn't yours.” - </p> - <p> - “You'll get every pretty penny of it.” He rose and in orderly discretion - sought his room, where he changed into his worn, grey playing flannels. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> HIGH board fence - enclosed the grounds of the Ellerton Baseball Association; over one side - rose the rude scaffolding of a grandstand, protected from sun and rain by - a covering of tarred planks; a circular opening by a narrow entrance - framed the ticket seller; while around the base of the fence, located - convenient to a small boy's eye, ran a girdle of unnatural knotholes, - highly improved cracks, through which an occasional fleeting form might be - observed, a segment of torn sod, and the fence opposite. - </p> - <p> - A shallow flood of spectators, drawn from the various quarters of the - town, converged in a dense stream at the entrance to the Grounds; troops - of girls with brightly-hued ribbands about their vivacious arms, - boisterous or superior squads of young males, alternated with their more - sober elders—shabby and dejected men, out at elbows and work, in - search of the respite of the sun and the play; baseball enthusiasts, - rotund individuals with ruddy countenances, saturnine experts with - scorecards. - </p> - <p> - Anthony observed the throng indifferently as he drew near the scene of his - repeated, past triumphs, the metal plates in his shoes grinding into the - pavement. A small procession followed him, led by a colored youth, to - whose dilapidated garments clung the unmistakable straws and aroma of the - stable, bearing aloft Anthony's glove, and “softing” it vigorously from a - natural source; a boy as round and succulent as a boiled pudding, with - Anthony's cap beneath his arm, leaving behind him a trail of peanut - shells, brought up the rear of this democratic escort. - </p> - <p> - There was little question in Anthony's mind of his ability to triumph that - afternoon over his opponents from a near-by town; their “battery,” he told - himself, was an open book to him—a slow, dropping ball here, a - speedy one across the fingers of that red-haired fielder who habitually - flinched... and yet he wished that it had not been so hot. He thought of - the game without particular pleasure; he was conscious of a lack of - energy; his thoughts, occupied with Elli's patent contempt, stung him - waspishly. - </p> - <p> - A throng of players and hangerson filled the contracted dressing quarters - beneath the grandstand, and he was instantly surrounded by vociferous - familiars. The captain of the Ellerton team drew him aside, and tersely - outlined a policy of play, awaiting his opinion. Anthony nodded gravely: - suddenly he found the other's earnestness a little absurd—the fate - of a nation appeared to color his accents, to hang upon the result of his - decision. “Sure,” he said absently, “keep the field in; they won't hit - me.” - </p> - <p> - The other regarded him with a slight frown. “Hate yourself to-day, don't - you?” he remarked. “Lay that crowd cold on the plate, though,” he added; - “there's a man here from the major league to look you over. Hinkle told my - old man.” - </p> - <p> - A quickening of interest took possession of Anthony; they had heard of him - then in the cities, they had discovered him worthy of the journey to - Ellerton, of investigation. A vision of his name acclaimed from coast to - coast, his picture in the playing garb of a famous organization filling - the Sunday sheets, occupied his mind as he turned toward the field. The - captain called mysteriously, “Don't get patted up with any purple stuff - handed you before the game.” - </p> - <p> - The opposing team, widely scattered, were warming; a pitcher, assuming the - attitudes of an agonising cramp, was indulging in a preliminary practice; - the ball sped with a dull, regular thud into the catcher's mit. A ball was - tossed to Anthony, a team mate backed against the fence, and, raising his - hands on high, he apparently overcame all the natural laws of flight. He - was conscious of Hinkle, prosperous proprietor of the Ellerton Pool - Parlor, at his back with a stranger, an ungainly man, close lipped, keen - of vision. There were intimations of approval. “A fine wing,” the stranger - said. “He's got 'em all,” Hinkle declared. “Hundreds of lads can pitch a - good game,” the other told him, “now and again, they are amatoors. One in - a thousand, in ten thousand, can play ball all the time; they're - professionals; they're worth money... I want to see him act...” they moved - away. - </p> - <p> - The players were called in from the field, the captains bent over a tossed - coin; and, first to bat, the Ellerton team ranged itself on benches. Then, - as the catcher was drawing on his mask, Hinkle and another familiar town - figure, who dedicated his days to speeding weedy horses in red flannel - anklets from a precarious wire vehicle, stepped forward from the - grandstand. “Mr. Anthony Ball!” Hinkle called. A sudden, tense silence - enveloped the spectators, the players stopped curiously. Anthony turned - with mingled reluctance and surprise. Something shone in Hinkle's hand: he - saw that it was a watch. “As a testimonial from your Ellerton friends,” - the other commenced loudly. Anthony's confused mind lost part of the short - oration which followed “... recognition of your sportsmanship and skill... - happy disposition. The good fame of the Ellerton Baseball team... predict - great future on the national diamond.” - </p> - <p> - A storm of applause from the grandstand rippled away in opposite - directions along the line sitting by the fence; boys with their mouths - full of fingers whistled incredibly. Hinkle held out the watch, but - Anthony's eyes were fixed upon the ground. He shook the substantial mark - of Ellerton's approval, so that the ornate fob glittered in the sun, but - Anthony's arms remained motionless at his sides. “Take it, you - leatherkop,” a voice whispered fiercely in his ear. 'And with a start, he - awkwardly grasped the gift. “Thank you,” he muttered, his voice inaudible - five yards away. He wished with passionate resentment that the fiend who - was yelling “speech!” would drop dead. He glanced up, and the sight of all - those excited, kindly faces deepened his confusion until it rose in a lump - in his throat, blurred his vision, in an idiotic, childish manner. “Ah, <i>call</i> - the game, can't you,” he urged over his shoulder. - </p> - <p> - The first half inning was soon over, without incident; and, as Anthony - walked to the pitcher's “box,” the necessity to surpass all previous - efforts was impressed upon him by the watch, by the presence of that - spectator from a major league who had come to see him “act.” He wished - again, in a passing irritation, that it had not been so hot. Behind the - batter he could see the countenance of “Kag” Lippit staring through the - wires of his mask. “Kag” executed a cabalistic signal with his left arm, - and Anthony pitched. The umpire hoarsely informed the world at large that - it had been a strike. A blast of derisive catcalls arose from the Ellerton - partisans; another strike, shriller catcalls, and the batter retired after - a third ineffectual lunge amid a tempest of banter. - </p> - <p> - The second batter hit a feeble fly negligently attached by the third - baseman, who “put it over to first” in the exuberance of his contempt. The - third Anthony disposed of with equal brevity. - </p> - <p> - He next faced the pitcher, and, succumbing to the pressure of - extraordinary events, he swung the bat with a tremendous effort, and the - flattened ball described a wide arc into the ready palms of the right - fielder. “You're <i>Out!</i>” the umpire vociferated. The uncritical - portion of the spectators voiced their pleasure in the homeric length of - the hit, but the captain was contemptuously cold as Anthony returned to - the bench. “The highschool hero,” he remarked; “little Willie the Wallop. - If you don't bat to the game,” he added in a different tone, “if you were - Eddie Plank I'd bench you.” - </p> - <p> - That inning the Ellerton team scored a run: a youth hurtling headlong - through the dust pressed his cheek affectionately upon the dingy square of - marble dignified by the title of home, while a second hammered him - violently in the groin with the ball; one chorus shrieked, “out by a - block!” another, “safe! safe!” he was “safe as safe!” the girls declared. - The umpire's voice rose authoritatively above the tumult. “Play ball! he's - safe!” - </p> - <p> - Anthony pitched that inning faultlessly; never had ball obeyed him so - absolutely; it dropped, swung to the right, to the left, revolved or sped - dead. The batters faded away like ice cream at a church supper. As he came - in from the “box” the close-lipped stranger strode forward and grasped his - shoulder. “I want to see you after the game,” he declared; “don't sign up - with no one else. I'm from—” he whispered his persuasive source in - Anthony's ear. The captain commended him pithily. “He's got 'em all,” - Hinkle proclaimed to the assembled throng. - </p> - <p> - When Anthony batted next it was with calculated nicety; he drove the ball - between shortstop and second base, and, by dint of hard running, achieved - a rapturously acclaimed “two bagger.” The captain then merely tapped the - ball—breathlessly it was described as a “sacrifice”—and - Anthony moved to the third base, and a succeeding hit sent him “home.” - Another run was added to the Ellerton score, it now stood three to nothing - in their favor, before Anthony returned to the dusty depression from which - he pitched. - </p> - <p> - He was suddenly and unaccountably tired; the cursed heat was worse than - ever, he thought, wiping a wet palm on his grimy leg; above him the sky - was an unbroken, blazing expanse of blue; short, sharp shadows shifted - under the feet of the tense players; in the shade of the grandstand the - dresses, mostly white, showed here and there a vivid note of yellow and - violet, the crisp note of crimson. The throbbing song of a thrush floated - from a far hedge... it stirred him with a new unrest, dissatisfaction... - “Kag” looked like a damned fool grimacing at him through the wire mask—exactly - like a monkey in a cage. The umpire in his inflated protector, crouching - in a position of rigorous attention, resembled a turtle. He pitched, and a - spurt of dust rose a yard before the plate. “Ball one!” That wouldn't do, - he told himself, recalling the substantially expressed confidence, esteem, - of Ellerton. The captain's sibilant “steady” was like the flick of a whip. - With an effort which taxed his every resource he marshalled his relaxed - muscles into an aching endeavor, centred his unstable thoughts upon the - exigencies of the play, and retired the batter before him. But he struck - the next upon the arm, sending him, nursing the bruise, to first base. He - saw the captain grimly wave the outfielders farther back; and, determined, - resentful, he struck out in machinelike order the remaining batters. But - he was unconscionably weary; his arm felt as though he had been pitching - for a week, a month; and he dropped limp and surly upon the sod at a - distance from the players' bench. - </p> - <p> - He batted once more, but a third “out” on the bases saved him from the - fluke which, he had been certain, must inevitably follow. As he stood with - the ball in his hand, facing the batter, he was conscious of an air of - uncertainty spreading like a contagion through the Ellerton team; he - recognized that it radiated from himself—his lack of confidence - magnified to a promised panic. The centre fielder fumbled a fly directly - in his hands; there was a shout from Ellerton's opponents, silence in the - ranks of Ellerton. - </p> - <p> - Anthony pitched with a tremendous effort, his arm felt brittle; it felt as - though it was made of glass, and would break off. He could put no speed - into the ball, his fingers seemed swollen, he was unable to grip it - properly, control its direction. The red-haired player whom he had - despised faced him, he who habitually flinched, and Anthony essayed to - drive the ball across his fingers. The bat swung with a vicious crack upon - the leather sphere, a fielder ran vainly back, back.... - </p> - <p> - The runner passed first base, and, wildly urged by a small but adequately - vocal group of wellwishers, scorned second base, repudiated third, from - which another player tallied a run, and loafed magnificently “home.” - </p> - <p> - From the fence some one called to Anthony, “what time is it?” and achieved - a huge success among the opposition. His captain besought him desperately - to “come back. Where's your pep' went? you're pitching like a dead man!” - Confusion fell upon the team in the field, and, in its train, a series of - blunders which cost five runs. After the inning Anthony stood with a - lowered, moody countenance. “You're out of this game,” the captain shot at - him; “go home and play with mother and the girls.” - </p> - <p> - He left the field under a dropping fire of witticisms, feebly stemmed by - half-hearted applause; Hinkle frowned heavily at him; the man from the - major league had gone. Anthony proceeded directly through the gate and - over the street toward home. The taste of profound Humiliation, of - failure, was bitter in his mouth, that failure which seemed to lie at the - heart of everything he attempted, which seemed to follow him like his - shadow, like the malicious influence of a powerful spite, an enmity - personal and unrelenting. The sun centred its heat upon his bared head - with an especial fervor; the watch, thrust hastily in a pocket, swung - against his leg mockingly; the abrupt departure of that keeneyed spectator - added its hurt to his self pride. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VIII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E maintained a - surly silence throughout dinner; but later, on discovering a dress shirt - laid in readiness on his bed, and recalling the purport of Mrs. James - Dreen's call, he announced on the crest of an overwhelming exasperation - that he would go to no condemmed dance. “Ellie can't go alone,” his mother - told him from the landing below; “and do hurry, Tony, she's almost - dressed.” The flaring gas jet seemed to coat his room with a heavy yellow - dust; the night came in at the window as thickly purple as though it had - been paint squeezed from a tube. He slowly assembled his formal clothes. - An extended search failed to reveal the whereabouts of his studs, and he - pressed into service the bone buttons inserted by the laundry. The shirt - was intolerably hot and uncomfortable, his trousers tight, a white - waistcoat badly shrunken; but a collar with a frayed and iron-like edge - the crowning misery. When, finally, he was garbed, he felt as though he - had been compressed into an iron boiler; a stream of perspiration coursed - down the exact middle of his back; his tie hung in a limp knot. Fiery - epithets escaped at frequent intervals. - </p> - <p> - On the contrary, Ellie was delightfully cool, orderly; she waved a lacy - fan in her long, delicate fingers. The public vehicle engaged to convey - them to the Dreens, a mile or more beyond the town, drew up at the door - with a clatter of hoofs. It was an aged hack, with complaining joints, and - a loose iron tire. A musty smell rose from the threadbare cushions, the - rotting leather. The horse's hoofs were now muffled in the dusty country - road; shadowy hedges were passed, dim, white farmhouses with orange, - lighted windows, the horizon outspread in a shimmering blue circle under - the swimming stars. - </p> - <p> - Anthony smoked a cigarette in acute misery; already his neck felt scraped - raw; a button flew jubilantly from his waistcoat; and his improvised studs - failed in their appointed task. “I'm having the hell of a good time, I - am,” he told Ellie satirically. - </p> - <p> - They turned between stone pillars supporting a lighted grill, advanced - over a winding driveway to Hydrangea House, where they waited for a motor - to move from the brilliantly-illuminated portal. A servant directed - Anthony to the second floor, where he found a bedchamber temporarily in - service as coat room, occupied by a number of <i>men</i>. Most of them he - knew, and nodded shortly in return to their careless salutations. They - belonged to a variety that he at once envied and disdained: here they were - thoroughly at ease, their ties irreproachable, their shirts without a - crease. Drawing on snowy gloves they discussed women and society with - fluency, gusto, emanating an atmosphere of cocktails. - </p> - <p> - Anthony produced his gloves in a crumpled wad from the tail of his coat - and fought his way into them. He felt rather than saw the restrained - amusement of his fellows. They spoke to him gravely, punctiliously - proffered cigarettes; yet, in a vague but unmistakable manner, he was made - to feel that he was outside their interests, ignorant of their shibboleth. - In the matter of collars alone he was as a Patagonian to them. He recalled - with regret the easy familiarity, the comfort, of Doctor Allhop's - drugstore. - </p> - <p> - Then, throwing aside cigarettes, patting waistcoats into position, they - streamed down to the music. The others found partners immediately, and - swung into a onestep, but Anthony stood irresolutely in the doorway. The - girls disconcerted him with their formal smiles, their bright, ready - chatter. But Ellie rescued him, drawing him into the dance. After which he - sought the porch that, looped with rosevines, crossed the face of the - long, low house. There, with his back against a pillar, he found a cool - spot upon the tiles, and sought such comfort as he could command. - </p> - <p> - Long windows opening from the ballroom were now segments of whirling - color, now filled with gay streams, ebbing and returning. Fragmentary - conversation, glowing cigarettes, surrounded him. Behind the pillar at his - back a girl said, softly, “please don't.” - </p> - <p> - Then he saw Ellie, obviously searching for him, and he rose. At her side - was a slim figure with a cloud of light hair. “There he is!” Ellie - exclaimed; “Eliza... my brother, Anthony.” - </p> - <p> - He saw that her eyes opened widely, and that her hair was a peculiar, - bright shade. Ginger-colored, he thought. “I made Ellie find you,” she - told him; “you know, you must ask me to dance; I won't be ignored at my - own party.” - </p> - <p> - He muttered awkwardly some conventional period, annoyed at having been - found, intensely uncomfortable. In a minute more he found himself dancing, - conscious of his limp tie, his crumpled and gaping shirt. He swung his - partner heavily across the room, colliding with a couple that he - shouldered angrily aside. The animation swiftly died from Eliza Dreen's - countenance; she grew indifferent, then cold. And, when the music ceased, - she escaped with a palpable sigh of relief. He was savagely mopping his - heated face on the porch when, at his elbow, a clear voice captured his - attention. “A dreadful person,” it said, “... like dancing with a - locomotive... A regular Apache.” - </p> - <p> - He turned and saw that it was Eliza Dreen, gathering from her swift - concern both that he had been the subject of her discourse, and that she - was aware that he had overheard it. Back at his post at the pillar he - promised himself grimly that never again would he be found in such - specified company. He stripped his gloves from his wet palms, and flung - them far across the lawn, then recklessly eased his collar. There was a - sudden whisper of skirts behind him, when Eliza seated herself on the - porch's edge, at his side. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - IX - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> AM a loathsome - person at times,” she informed him; “and to-night I was rather worse than - usual.” - </p> - <p> - “I do dance like a—locomotive,” involuntarily. - </p> - <p> - “It doesn't matter how you dance,” she proceeded, “and you mustn't repeat - it, it isn't generous.” Suddenly she laughed uncontrollably. “You looked - so uncomfortable... your collar,” it was lost in a bubbling, silvery peal. - “Forgive me,” she gasped. - </p> - <p> - “I don't mind,” he assured her. All at once he didn't; the sting had - vanished from his pride; he smiled. He saw that she wore a honey-colored - dress, with a strand of pearls about her slim throat, and that her feet, - in satin, were even smaller than Ellie's. Her hair resembled more a crown - of light than the customary adornment. “I didn't want to come,” he - confided: “I hate, well—going out, dancing.” - </p> - <p> - “It doesn't suit you,” she admitted frankly; “you are so splendidly - bronzed and strong; you need,” she paused, “lots of room.” - </p> - <p> - For this Anthony had no adequate reply. “I have this with some one,” she - declared as the music recommenced, “but I hope they don't find me; I hate - it for the moment... I'll show you a place; it's very wicked of me.” She - rose and, waving him to follow, slipped over the grass. Beyond the house - she stopped in the shadowy vista of a pergola; vines shut out the stars, - walled them in a virid, still gloom. She sank on a low stone bench, and he - found the grass at her feet. A mantle of fine romance descended upon his - shoulders, of subtile adventure, prodigious daring. Immaculate men, - pearl-studded, were searching for her, and she had hidden herself from - them with him. A new and pleasant sense of importance warmed him, - flattered his self-esteem. He felt strangely at ease, and sat in silent - contentment. The faint sound of violins, a burst of distant laughter, - floated to him. - </p> - <p> - “It seems as if the world were rushing on, out there, without us,” Eliza - finally broke the silence, “as if they were keeping a furious pace, while - we sat in some everlasting, quiet wood, like Fontainebleau. Don't you - adore nature?” - </p> - <p> - “I knock about a lot outside,” he admitted cautiously, “often I stay out - all night, by the Wingohocking Creek. There's a sort of cave where you can - hear the falls, and the owls hunting about. I cook things in clay—fish, - chickens,” he paused abruptly at the latter item, recalling the - questionable source of his supply. “In winter I shoot rabbits with Bert - Woods, he's a barber, and Doctor Allhop, you know—the druggist.” - </p> - <p> - “I am sure that your friends are very nice,” she promptly assured him. - </p> - <p> - “Bert's crazy about girls,” he remarked, half contemptuously. - </p> - <p> - “And you... don't care for them?” - </p> - <p> - “I don't know anything about them,” he admitted with an abrupt, - unconscious honesty. - </p> - <p> - “But there must have been—there must be—one,” she persisted. - </p> - <p> - She leaned forward, and he met her gaze with unwavering candor. “Not that - many,” he returned. - </p> - <p> - “It would be wonderful to care for just one person, <i>always</i>,” she - continued intently: “I had a dream when I was quite young.... I dreamed - that a marvellous happiness would follow a constancy like that. Father - rather laughs at me, and quotes Shakespeare—the 'one foot on land - and one on shore' thing. Perhaps, but it's too bad.” - </p> - <p> - Anthony gravely considered this new idea in relation to his own, hitherto - lamented, lack of experience. It dawned upon him that the idea of manly - success he had cherished would appear distasteful to Eliza Dreen. She had - indirectly extolled the very thing of which he had been secretly ashamed. - He thought in conjunction with her of the familiar group at the drugstore, - and in this light the latter retreat suffered a disconcerting change: - Thomas Meredith appeared sly and trivial, and unhealthy; Williams an empty - braggard; Craik ineffectual, untidy. He surveyed himself without - enthusiasm. - </p> - <p> - “You are different from any one I ever knew,” he told her. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, there are millions of me,” she returned; “but you are different. I - didn't like you for a sou at first; but there is something about you like—like - a very clear spring of water. That's idiotic, but it's what I mean. There - is an early morning feeling about you. I am very sensitive to people,” she - informed him, “some make me uncomfortable directly they come into the - room. There was a curé at Etretat I perfectly detested, and he turned out - to be an awful person.” - </p> - <p> - Her name was called unmistakably across the lawn, and she rose. “They're - all furious,” she announced, without moving further. Her face was pale, - immaterial, in the gloom; her wide eyes dark, disturbing. A minute gold - watch on her wrist ticked faintly, and—it seemed to Anthony—in - furious haste. Something within him, struggling inarticulately for - expression, hurt; an oppressive emotion beat upon his heart. He uttered a - period about seeing her again. - </p> - <p> - “Some day you may show me the place where the fall sounds and the owls - hunt. No, don't come with me.” She turned and fled. - </p> - <p> - An unreasoning conviction seized Anthony that a momentous occasion had - overtaken him; he was unable to distinguish its features, discover it - grave or gay; but, wrapped in the impenetrable veil of the future, it - enveloped and permeated him, swept in the circle of his blood's - circulation, vibrated in the cords of his sensitive ganglia. He returned - slowly to the house: the brilliantly-lit, dancing figures seemed the mere - figments of a febrile dream; but the music apparently throbbed within his - brain. - </p> - <p> - Ellie's cool voice recreated his actual sphere. He found their hack, the - driver slumbering doubled on the seat. The latter rose stiffly, and - stirred his drowsing animal into a stumbling walk. Beyond the illuminated - entrance to Hydrangea House the countryside lay profoundly dim to where - the horizon flared with the pale reflection of distant lightning. - </p> - <p> - “Eliza's a sweet,” Ellie pronounced. Anthony brooded without reply upon - his opinion. The iron-like collar had capitulated, and rested limply upon - his limp shirt; at the sacrifice of a second button his waistcoat offered - complete comfort. “I am going to get a new dress suit,” he announced - decisively. Ellie smiled with sisterly malice. “Eliza is a sweet,” she - reiterated. - </p> - <p> - “You go to thunder!” he retorted. But, “she's wonderful,” he admitted, and—out - of his conclusive experience, “there is not another girl like her in all - the world.” - </p> - <p> - “I'll agitate for the new suit,” Ellie promised. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - X - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE following - morning he reorganized his neckties, left a pair of white flannels to be - pressed at the tailor's; then, his shoulders swathed in a crisp, sprigged - muslin, sat circumspectly under the brisk shears of Bert Woods. Bert - hovered above him, and commented on yesterday's fiasco. “It comes to the - best of 'em,” Bert assured him: “'member how Ollie Stitcher fell down in - the world's series at Chicago.” He recited, for Anthony's comfort, the - names of eminent pitchers who had “fell down” when every necessity - demanded that they should have remained splendidly erect. - </p> - <p> - His defeat still rankled in Anthony's mind, but the bitterness had - vanished, the sting salved by that other memory of the impulsive charm of - Eliza Dreen. He recalled all that she had said to him; her words, - thoughtfully considered, were just those employed by humdrum individuals - in their commonplace discourses; but, spoken by her, they were a thrill - with an especial, a significant, importance and beauty. It was inevitable - that she should have dreamed things immaculate, rare; things like... white - flowers. - </p> - <p> - “Shampoo?” Bert inquired absent-mindedly. - </p> - <p> - “<i>And</i> singed, and curled, and sprinkled with violets,” Anthony - promptly returned. With a flourish, Bert swept aside the muslin folds. - </p> - <p> - Then, in the pursuit of a neglected duty, he crossed the town to a quiet - corner, occupied by a small dwelling built of smooth, green stone, crowned - with a fantastic and dingy froth of wood. A shallow, untended garden was - choked with weeds and bushes, sprawling upward against closely-shuttered - windows. He had not been to see Mrs. Bosbyshell for two weeks, he - realized, with a stir of mild self-reproach. He was aware that his visits - to that solitary and eccentric old woman formed her sole contact with a - world she regarded with an increasing, unbalanced suspicion. - </p> - <p> - A minute or more after his knock—the bell handle was missing—a - shutter shifted a fraction, upon which he was admitted to a narrow, dark - hall, and the door bolted sharply behind him. A short, stout woman, in a - formless wrap of grotesquely gorgeous design, faced him with a quivering, - apprehensive countenance and prodigiously bright eyes. Her scant, - yellowish-white hair was gathered aloft in a knot that slipped oddly from - side to side; and, as she walked, shabby Juliet slippers loudly slapped - the bare floor. - </p> - <p> - “Do you want some wood brought in?” Anthony inquired; “and how does the - washer I put on the hot water spigot work?” - </p> - <p> - “A little wood, if you please; and the spigot's good as new.” She sat on a - chair, lifting a harassed gaze to his serious solicitation. “I've had a - dreadful time since you were here last—an evilish-appearing man - knocked and knocked, at one door and again at another.” - </p> - <p> - Her voice sank to a shrill whisper, “he was after the money.” She nodded - so vigorously that the knot fell in a straggling whisp across her eyes. - “Cousin Alonzo sent him.” - </p> - <p> - “Your cousin Alonzo has been dead ten years,” he interposed patiently, - going once more over that familiar ground. “Probably it was a man wanting - to sell gas stoves.” - </p> - <p> - “You don't know Alonzo,” she persisted, unconvinced; “I should have to see - his corp'. He knows I've a comfortable sum put by, and's hard after it for - his wenching and such practices: small good, or bad, he'll get of it when - my time comes.” - </p> - <p> - He passed through the hall to the kitchen, and, unchaining the back door, - brought a basket of cut wood from a shed, and piled it beside the stove. - Mrs. Bosbyshell inspected with a critical eye the fastening of the door. - There was a swollen window sash to release above, a mattress to turn, when - he was waved ceremoniously into a formal, darkened chamber. The musty - spice of rose pot-pourri lingered in the flat air; old mahogany—rush - bottomed chairs, flute-legged table, a highboy and Dutch clock—glimmered - about the walls. A marble topped stand bore orderly volumes in maroon and - primrose morocco, the top one entitled, “The Gentlewoman's Garland. A Gift - Book.” - </p> - <p> - From a triangular cupboard, she produced a decanter with a carved design - of bees and cobalt clover, and a plate of crumbling currant cake. “A sup - of dandelion cordial,” she announced, “a bite of sweet. Growing boys must - be fed.” - </p> - <p> - She sat, and with patent satisfaction watched Anthony consume the ropy - syrup and cake. - </p> - <p> - “I met a girl last night,” he told her intimately; “she had hair like—like - a roman candle.” - </p> - <p> - “Did you burn your heart up in it?” - </p> - <p> - “She told me that I was like the early morning,” he confided with a rush. - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Bosbyshell nodded her approval. - </p> - <p> - “An understandable remark; exactly what I should have said fifty years - ago; I didn't know the girls of to-day had it in 'em. You've got a good - heart, Anthony,” she enunciated. Anthony shuffled his feet. “A good heart - is a rare thing to find in the young. But I misdoubt, in a world of - mammon, you'll pay for it dear; I'm afraid you will never be successful, - so called. It's selling men that that success is got, and buying women, - and it's never in you to do those. <i>You</i> wouldn't wish an old woman - gone for the sum she'd laid aside.” Her fancies had been wilder than - usual, he concluded, as the holt of the door at his hack slid home. Alonzo - and her money, one he considered as actual, as imminent, as the other, - occupied to the exclusion of all else her dimming brain. He had hoped to - converse with her more fully on the inexhaustible subject of Eliza Dreen, - but her vagaries had interrupted him continuously. He decided that she was - an antiquated bore, but made a mental note to return before the store of - wood was consumed. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>N the evening he - stopped from force of habit at Doctor Allhop's drugstore: the familiar - group was assembled behind the screen at the rear, the conversation flowed - in the old channels. Anthony lounged and listened, but his attention - continually wandered—he heard other, more musical, tones; his vision - was filled with a candid face and widely-opened eyes in the green gloom of - a pergola. He passed out by the bevy at the sodawater fountain to the - street. - </p> - <p> - In the artificial day of the electric lights the early summer foliage was - as virulently green as the toy trees of a miniature ark; the sky was a - breathless vault filled with blue mists that veiled the stars; under the - locust trees the blooms were spilled odorously, whitely, on the pavement. - He walked aimlessly to the outskirts of the town. Across the dim valley, - against the hills merged into the night and sky, he could see glimmering - the low lights of Hydrangea House. It would be pleasant, he thought, to be - closer to that abode of delight; and, crossing the road, he vaulted a - fence, and descended through a tangle of aromatic grass to the brook that - threaded the meadow below. A star swam imaged on the black, wrinkled - surface of the water: it suggested vague, happy images—Eliza was the - star, and he was the brook, holding her mirrored in his dreams. - </p> - <p> - He passed cows, blowing softly into the sod; a flock of sheep broke before - him like an argent cloud on the heaven of the fields; and, finally, - reached the boundary of James Dreen's acres. He forced his way through the - budding hedge from which the place had its name, and, in a cup of the lawn - like a pool of brimming, fragrant shadows, sat watching the lights of the - house. - </p> - <p> - Indistinct shapes passed the windows, each—since it might be she—carrying - to him a thrill; indistinguishable voices reached him, the vague tones—they - might be hers—chiming like bells on his straining senses. The world, - life, was so beautiful that it brought an obstruction into his throat; he - drew the back of his hand across his eyes, and, to his surprise, found - that it was wet. - </p> - <p> - Presently, the lights sank on the lower floor and reappeared above. The - blinding whiteness of the thought of Eliza sleeping seared his brain like - a flare of powder. When the house retreated unrelieved into the gloom he - rose and slowly retraced his steps. He lit a cigarette; the match burned - with a steady flame in the stillness; but, in an unnamed impulse, he flung - both aside, and filled his lungs with the elysian June air. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE next afternoon, - returning from the unloading of a grain car at his father's warehouse, he - discovered a smartly saddled horse fast to the marble hitchingpost before - his door. It hardly required the glance at the silver “D” on the headstall - to inform him who was within. He found Ellie and Eliza Dreen in the corner - by the Canton tea service, consuming Pekoe and gingerbread dicky birds. - Eliza nodded and smiled over her shoulder, and resumed an animated - projection of an excursion in canoes on the Wingohocking. She wore a - severe coat over white breeches and immaculate boots with diminutive gold - spurs. Beneath a flat straw hat her hair was confined by a broad ribband - low upon her neck, while a pink stock was held in position by a - gaily-checked waistcoat. - </p> - <p> - Anthony dropped with affected ease on the sofa, and covertly studied the - delicate line of her cheek. He now recalled indignantly that Mrs. Dreen - had said Eliza was not good-looking; while her reference to Eliza's - veracity had been entirely superfluous. She turned toward him, finally, - with an engaging query. He saw across her nose a faint trail of the most - delightful freckles in the world; her eyes were blue, that amazing blue of - bachelor's buttons; while her mouth—he would have sworn this the - first time such simile had been applied to that feature—was like a - roseleaf. He made a totally inadequate reply, when Ellie rose, and, plate - in hand, vanished in quest of a fresh supply of gingerbread. A sort of - desperate, blundering courage took possession of him: - </p> - <p> - “I have been thinking a lot about you,” he told her; “last night I sat on - your grass and wondered which was your window.” - </p> - <p> - “What a silly I—we were on the porch all evening.” - </p> - <p> - “It wasn't that I wanted to talk to you so much,” he tried to explain his - instinctive impulses, desires, “as just to be near you.” - </p> - <p> - “I think,” she said slowly, “yes, I know—that is the prettiest thing - that has ever been said to me. I thought about you... a little; really - more about myself. I haven't recognized myself at all very lately; I - suppose it's being home again.” She gazed at him candidly, critically. - “You have very unusual eyes,” she remarked unexpectedly; “they are so - transparent. Haven't you <i>anything</i> to hide?” - </p> - <p> - “Some chicken feathers,” he affirmed. He grew serious immediately. “Your - eyes are like—like—” the name of the flower so lately - suggested by her lucid vision had flown his mind. Suspenders, bachelor's - suspenders, exclusively occurred to him. “An awfully blue flower,” he - temporized. - </p> - <p> - She crossed the room, and bent over the tea roses, freshly placed in the - jar by the door. “I must go,” she said, her back to him; “I have been here - a terrific length of time... I thought perhaps you'd come in.... Wasn't it - shocking of me?” - </p> - <p> - The knowledge that she had considered the possibility of seeing him filled - Anthony with incredulous joy. Then, sitting silently, gazing fixedly at - the floor, he became acutely miserable at the sudden conviction of his - worthlessness; shame prevented him from looking at her—surely she - must see that he, Anthony Ball, the unsuccessful, without prospect, the - truant from life, was an improper object for her interest. She was so - absolutely desirable, so fine. - </p> - <p> - He recalled what she had said on the night of the dance... about - constancy: if the single devotion of his life would mean anything to her, - he thought grandiloquently, it was hers. He was considering the - possibility of telling her this when Ellie unnecessarily returned with a - replenished plate. He was grateful when neither included him in the - remarks which followed. And he speedily left the room, proceeding to the - pavement, where he stood with his palm resting on the flank of her horse. - </p> - <p> - In the slanting rays of the sun the street was a way of gold; when Eliza - appeared she was ringed in the molten glory. She placed her heel in his - hand, and sprang lightly into the saddle; the horse shied, there was a - clatter of hoofs, and she cantered away. Ellie stood on the steps, - graceful, unconcerned; he watched until the upright, mounted figure was - out of sight, then silently passed his sister into the house. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XIII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E was in his room - when the familiar formula of a whistled signal sounded from the darkening - street. It was Alfred Craik, he recognized the halt ending of the bar; he - whistled like an old hinge, Anthony thought impatiently. He made his way - to the lawn, and called shortly, over the crumbling iron fence. Alfred - Craik was agog with weighty information. - </p> - <p> - “The circus is coming in at three-thirty tomorrow morning,” he announced. - “The station agent told me... old Giller's lot on Newberry Street. 'Member - last year we had breakfast with the elephant trainer!” - </p> - <p> - Circuses, Anthony told him in large unconcern, were for infantile minds; - they might put their circus on top the Courthouse without calling forth - the slightest notice from him; horses were no better than old cows; and as - for clowns, the ringmaster, they made him specifically ill. - </p> - <p> - The greater part of this diatribe Alfred chose to ignore; he impatiently - besought Anthony to “come off”; and warned him strenuously against a tardy - waking. Once more in his room Anthony smiled at the other's pretty - enthusiasm. Yet at half past three he woke sharply, starting up on his - elbow as though he had been called. He heard in the distance the faint, - shrill whistle of the locomotive drawing the circus into Ellerton. He sank - back, but, with the face of Eliza radiant against the gloom, slumber - deserted him. It occurred to him that he might, after all, rise and - witness from his rarer elevation the preparations that had once aroused in - him such immature joy. - </p> - <p> - The circus ground was an apparently inexplicable tangle of canvas and - lumber, threaded by men like unsubstantial, hurrying shadows. At the fence - corner loomed the vague bulks of elephants, heaving ceaselessly, stamping - with the dull clank of chains; a line of cages beyond was still - indistinguishable. The confusion seemed hopeless—the hasty, - desperate labor at the edges of the billowing, grey canvas, the virulent - curses as feet slipped in the torn sod, the shrill, passionate commands, - resembled an inferno of ineffectual toil for shades condemned to - never-ending labor. The tent rose slowly, hardly detached from the thin - morning gloom, and the hammering of stakes uprose with a sharp, furious - energy. A wagonload of hay creaked into the lot; a horse whinnied; and, - from a cage, sounded a longdrawn, despondent howl. The fusillade of - hammering, the ringing of boards, increased. A harried and indomitable - voice maintained an insistent grip upon the clamor. It grew lighter; - pinched features emerged, haggard individuals in haphazard garbs stood - with the sweat glistening on their blue brows. - </p> - <p> - The elephants, tearing apart a bale of hay, appeared ancient beyond all - computation, infinitely patient, infinitely weary. Out of the sudden - crimson that stained the east a ray of sunlight flashed like a pointed, - accusing finger and rested on the garish, gilded bars and tarnished fringe - of the cages; it hit the worn and dingy fur of an aged, gaunt lioness, the - dim and bleared topaz of her eyes blinking against the flood of day; it - fell upon a pair of lean wolves trotting in a quick, constricted circle; - upon a ragged hyena with a dry and uplifted snout; upon a lithe leopard - with a glittering, green gaze of unquenchable hate. - </p> - <p> - “Take a hold,” a husky voice had urged Anthony; “help the circus men put - up the big tent, and get a free pass.” In the contagion of work he had - pulled upon the hard canvas, the stiff ropes that cut like scored iron, - and held stakes to be driven into the slushy sod. Thin shoulders strained - against his own, gasping and maculate breaths assailed him. The flesh was - tom from a man's palm; another, hit a glancing blow on the head with a - mall, wandered about dazed, falling over ropes, blundering in paths of - hasty brutality. - </p> - <p> - Anthony rested with aching muscles in the orient flood of the sun. The - tent was erected, flags fluttered gaily aloft, the posters of the sideshow - flung their startling colors abroad. A musical call floated upward from an - invisible bugle: an air of gala, of triumphant and irresponsible pleasure, - permeated the scene. “She's all right, isn't she?” Alfred Craik demanded - at his side. He nodded silently, and turned toward home, his pulses - leaping with joy at the dewy freshness of the morning, the knowledge of - Eliza—a sparkling, singing optimism drawn from the unstained - fountain of his youth. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XIV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ATER, engaged in - repairing a shelf—at a super-union scale—for his mother, he - heard the steam shriek of a calliope announcing the parade. From a window - he could see the thronged sidewalks, the crudely fantastic figures of the - clowns, enveloped in a dusty haze of light. His thoughts withdrew from - that vapid spectacle to the rapt contemplation of Eliza Dreen. He pictured - Eliza and himself in the dramatic situations which diversified the moving - pictures of his nightly attendance: he rescued her from the wiles of - Mexicans, counts, weirdly-wicked Hindoos; now he dragged her from the - chimney into which she had been bricked by a Brotherhood of Blood; now, - driving a monoplane above the hurtling express that bore her toward a - fiendish revenge, he descended to halt the train at a river's brink while - the bridge sank dynamited into the swirling stream—“Mercy, Tony!” - his mother's practical voice rent the resplendent vision; “don't crush - your greatuncle's epaulets.” - </p> - <p> - After the midday meal a minute review of the places where Eliza might be - found discovered the Ellerton Country Club to hold the greatest - possibility. Anthony was a virtual stranger to that focus of the newer - Ellerton; except for the older enthusiasts who played golf every afternoon - that it was humanly possible to remain outside it was the stronghold of - the species Anthony had encountered in the dressing room at the Dreens' - dance. The space at the back of the drugstore where he had lounged held - unbroken the elder tradition of Ellerton. There he had cultivated a mild - contempt for the studied urbanity, the formally organized converse and - games, of the Club. But as a setting for Eliza it gained a compelling - attraction. And, in his freshly-ironed flannels, he ordered his steps - toward that goal. The Club House overhung the rolling green of the golf - links; from a place of vantage he saw that Eliza was not on the veranda; - at one end a group of young men were drinking—teal Beyond his father - and three companions, followed by caddies, rose above a hill. His father - grasped a club and bent over the turf; the club described a short arc, the - ball flashed whitely through the air, and the group trotted eagerly - forward, mingling explanation, chagrin and prediction with heated and - simple sums in arithmetic. - </p> - <p> - Then he saw Eliza... she was on the tennis court, playing with a vigorous - girl with a bare and stalwart forearm. He divined that the latter was - winning, and conceived a sweeping distaste for her flushed, perspiring - countenance and thickset ankles. “How beautiful you look!” Eliza called, - as he propped himself against the wire netting that, overrun with - honeysuckle, enclosed the courts. He watched her fleeting form, heard her - breathless exclamations, with warm stirs of delight. When her opponent - played the ball beyond her reach his dislike for that efficiency became an - obsession. The flying shadows lengthened on the rolled, yellow surface of - the court; the group on the porch emptied their teacups and moved away; - and the final set of games won by the “beefsteak.” - </p> - <p> - Eliza slipped into a formless chocolate-colored coat: racket in hand she - smiled at him. “I'm rather done,” she admitted. She hesitated, then: “I - wonder—are you doing anything?—if you would drive me home?” He - assured her upon that point with a celerity that wrought a momentary - confusion upon them. “The Meadowbrook and roan at the sheds,” she - directed. In the basketlike cart they swung easily over the road toward - Hydrangea House. Checked relentlessly into a walk the roan stepped in a - dainty fume. - </p> - <p> - Eliza's countenance was as tenderly hued as the pearly haze that overlay - the far hills; faint, mauve shadows deepened the blueness of her eyes; her - mouth, slightly parted, held the fragile pink of coral; a tinge of - weariness upon her bore an infinite appeal—her relaxed, drooping - body filled him with a gusty longing to put his arms about her shoulders - and hold her secure against all fatigue, against the assaults of time - itself. - </p> - <p> - He had never before driven such an impatient and hasty animal; at the - slightest slackening of the reins the horse broke into a sharp trot; and, - beyond doubt, he could walk faster than any other brute alive. Already - they were at the entrance to the driveway; the house appeared to hurry - forward to intercept them. Eliza pressed a button, and a man crossed the - grass to the roan's head. They descended, and she lingered on the steps - with a murmur of gratitude. “Mrs. Dreen telephoned Ranke to meet the - eight-forty,” a servant in the doorway replied to Eliza's query; “she's - having dinner in town with Mr. Dreen.” - </p> - <p> - Eliza turned with a gesture of appeal. “Save me from a solitary pudding,” - she petitioned Anthony; “you can go back with Ranke.... On the porch, such - fun—father detests candles.” The voicing of his acceptance he felt - to be an absurd formality. “Then if you can amuse yourself,” she - announced, “I'll vanish for a little... cigars in the library and victrola - in the hall.” - </p> - <p> - He crossed the sod to the porch on the other face of the house, and sat - watching the day fade from the valley below. A violet blur of smoke - overhung the chimney of the Ellerton Waterworks, printed thinly on the - sky. A sense of detachment from that familiar scene enveloped him—the - base ball field, the defunct garage, places and details, customary, - normal, retreated into the distance, it seemed into the past, gathering - upon the horizon of his thoughts as the roofs of Ellerton huddled beyond - the hills, vanishing into shadows that inexorably deepened, blotted out - the old aspects, stilled the accustomed voices, sounds. - </p> - <p> - A servant appeared, and placed a table upon the tiles, spreading a - blanched cloth, gleaming crystal and silver. A low bowl of shadowy wood - violets was ranged in the centre, and hooded candles lighted, spilling - over the table, the flowers, a pale, auriferous pool of light in the - purpling dusk. When Eliza followed, in filmy white, she seemed half - materialized from the haunting vision of poignant beauty at the back of - his brain. She was like moonlight, still and yet disturbing, veiled in - illusion, in strange, ethereal influences that set athrill within him - emotions immaterial, potent, snowy longing, for which he had no name. - </p> - <p> - The last plate removed, Anthony stirred his coffee in a state of dreamy - happiness. The candlelight spread a wan gold veil over Eliza's delicate - countenance, it slid over the pearls about her slim throat, and fell upon - her fragile wrists. “It's been wonderful,” he pronounced solemnly. - </p> - <p> - “I've been terribly rude,” she told him, “I have hardly spoken. I have - been busy studying you.” - </p> - <p> - “There's not much to study,” he disclaimed; “Mrs. Bosbyshell thinks I'm - marked for failure.” In reply to her demand he gave a brief and diffident - account of that eccentric old woman. “But,” Eliza discerned among the - meagre details, “she trusts you, she lets you into her house. And you are - perfect to her, of course. - </p> - <p> - “Any one could trust you, I think. Yet you are not a particle tiresome; - most trustworthy people are so—so unexciting. But monotony is far as - possible from your vicinity. What did you do, for instance, this morning?” - He described to her the advent of the circus, the labor in the obscurity. - “I was surprised to see the old thing up,” he ended: “it seemed so - hopeless at first.” - </p> - <p> - “How wonderfully poetic!” she cried. - </p> - <p> - Until that moment poetry had occupied in his thoughts a place analogous to - tea.—In his brief passage through the last school he had been - forcibly fed with Gray's Elegy, discovering it unmitigated and sickening - rot. When now, in view of her obvious pleasure, he would have to - reconsider his judgment. - </p> - <p> - “That blind effort,” she continued, leaning forward, flushed with the - warmth of her image, “all those men struggling, building in the dark, - unable to see what they were accomplishing, or what part the others had. - And then—oh! don't you see!—the great, snowy tent in the - morning sun—a figure of the success, the reward, of all labor, all - living.” - </p> - <p> - “How about the ones that loafed—didn't pull, or were drunk?” - </p> - <p> - “For all,” she insisted, “sober and drunk and shrinking. Can you think - that any supreme judgment would be cheaply material, or in need of any of - our penny abilities? do you suppose the supreme beauty has no standard - higher than those practical minds that hold out heaven as a sort of reward - for washed faces? Anthony,” it was the first time she had called him that, - and it rang in his brain in a long peal of rapture, “if there isn't a - heaven for every one, there isn't any at all. You, singing an idle song, - must be as valuable as the greatest apostle to any supreme love, or else - it isn't supreme, it isn't love.” - </p> - <p> - “You are so wonderfully good,” he muttered, “that you think every one else - is good too.” - </p> - <p> - “But I'm hardly a bit good,” she assured him, “and I wouldn't be good if I - could—in the Christian kind of way.” She gazed about with an - affectation of secretiveness, then leaned across her coffee cup. “It would - bore me horribly,” she confided, “that 'other cheek' thing; I'm not a - grain humble; and I spend a criminal amount of money on my clothes. I have - even put a patch upon my cheek to be a gin and stumbling-block to a young - man.” - </p> - <p> - She had! - </p> - <p> - He surveyed with absurd pleasure that minute black crescent on the pale - rose of her countenance. If she had been good before she was adorable now: - her confession had drawn her out of the transplendid cloud where he had - elevated her down to his side; she was infinitely more desirable, more - warmly and delightfully human. - </p> - <p> - “I have been asking about you,” she told him later, with a slight frown; - “the accounts are, well—various. I don't mind your—your - friends of the stables, Anthony; they are, what Ellerton will never learn, - the careless choice of a born aristocrat; I don't care a Tecla pearl - whether you are 'a steady young man' or not. And one doesn't hear a - whisper of meanness about you anywhere. But I have an exaggerated - affection for things that are beautiful, I suppose it's a weakness, - really, and ugly people or surroundings, harsh voices even, terrify me. - The thought of cruelty makes me cold. And, since you will come into my - thoughts, and smile your funny little smile at me out of walls and other - impossible places, I should like to picture you, not in pool rooms, but on - the hills that you know so well. I should like to think of your mind - echoing with the rush of those streams, the hunting of those owls, you - told me about, and not sounding with coarse and silly and brutal words and - ideas.” - </p> - <p> - “It echoes with you,” he replied, “and you are more beautiful than hills - and streams.” - </p> - <p> - For a moment she held his gaze full in the blue depths of her vision; - then, with a troubled smile, evaded it. “I'm a patched jade,” she - announced. - </p> - <p> - Ranke, the servant informed them, was ready to meet the train. - </p> - <p> - “You're going... Elbe's affair on the Wingohocking?” - </p> - <p> - “Absolutely.” She stood illusive against the saffron blur of the candles, - the sweeping hem of night. - </p> - <p> - “I'll remember,” he blundered; “whatever you would wish... you have - changed everything. The dinner was—I don't remember what it was,” he - confessed; “but I remember an olive.” - </p> - <p> - He left the automobile at the edge of Ellerton, and proceeded on foot, - passing the dully-shinning bulk of the circus tent. He heard the brassy - dissonance of the band within, the monotonous thud of horses' hoofs on the - tanbark; a raucous voice rose at the entrance to the side-show dwelling - unctuously on the monstrosities to be viewed within for the price of a - dime, of a dime, a dime. He recalled the spent lioness in her painted - cage, the haggard and sick hyena, the abject trot of the wolves to - nowhere.—A sudden exhalation of hatred swept over him for the - hideous inhumanity of circuses and men. Eliza had lifted him from the - meaningless babble of trivial and hard voices into a high and immaculate - region of shining space and quietude. He didn't want to come down again, - he protested, to <i>this</i>. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>NTHONY passed the - few, intervening days to the excursion on the Wingohocking in a state of - rapt absorption: his brain sounded with every tone of Eliza's voice; she - smiled at him, in riding garb, over that delicate trail of freckles; he - saw her in the misty, amber dress of the dance; in white, illusively lit - by the candles against the shadowy veranda. Now, for the first time, day - that had succeeded haphazard to day, without relation or plan, were strung - together, bound into an intelligible whole, by the thread of romance. He - must get a firm grip upon reality, construct a solid existence out of the - unsubstantial elements of his living; but, in his new felicity, he was - unable to direct his thoughts to details inevitably sordid; he was lost in - the miracle of Eliza Dreen's mere presence; material considerations might, - must, be deferred a short while longer. - </p> - <p> - A stainless afternoon sky overspread finally the group gathered about - covered willow baskets on the green bank of the stream. Behind them the - meadow swept level, turning back the flood of the sun with a blaze of - aureate flowers, to a silver band of birch; the upstream reach, wrinkled - and dark, was lost between tangles of wild grapes; below, with a smooth, - virid rush, the water poured and broke over rocky shallows. - </p> - <p> - Anthony launched his canoe from a point of crystalline sand, and, holding - it against the hank, gazed covertly at Eliza. She was once more in white, - with a broad apple-green ribband about her waist: she stood above him, - slenderly poised against the sky; and she was so rare, he thought, so - ethereal, that she seemed capable of floating off into the blue. Then he - bent, hastily rearranging a cushion, for she was descending toward him. He - stepped skilfully after her into the craft, and they drifted silently over - the surface of the stream. A thrust of the paddle, in a swirl of white - bubbles, turned them about, and they advanced steadily against the sliding - current. - </p> - <p> - The still, watery facsimile of the banks were broken into liquid blots of - emerald and bronze by the bow of the canoe. The air rose coldly from the - surface to Anthony's face; from the meadows on either hand came the light, - dry fragrance of newly cut hay; before them trees, meeting above, formed a - sombrous reach, barred with dusty gold shafts of sunlight that sank into - the clear depths. He heard behind the distant dip of paddles, and floating - voices, worlds removed. - </p> - <p> - Eliza trailed her hand in the water. An idyllic silence folded them which - he was loath to break.... He had rolled up his sleeves, and the muscles of - his forearms swelled rhythmically under the clear, brown skin. - </p> - <p> - “You are preposterously strong,” she approved. His elation, however, - collapsed at the condition following. “But strength is simply brutality - until it's wisely directed. Mazzini and not Napoleon was my ideal in - history.” Who, he wondered unhappily, was Mazzini? “I hated school,” he - told her briefly; “I don't believe I have ever read a book through; I'd - rather paddle about—with <i>you</i>.” - </p> - <p> - “But you have read deep in the book of nature,” she reassured him; “only a - very favorite few open those pages. You are such a child,” she added - obliquely, “appallingly unsophisticated: that's what's nicest about you, - really.” That form of laudation left him cold, and he drove the canoe with - a vicious rush against the reflections. “A dear child,” she added, without - materially increasing his pleasure. - </p> - <p> - “Words are rot!” he exploded suddenly; “they can't say any of the - important things. I could talk a year to you without telling you what I - feel—here,” he laid a hand momentarily on his spare, powerful chest; - “it's all mixed up, like lead and fire; or that feeling when ice cream - goes to your head. You see,” he ended moodily, “all rot.” - </p> - <p> - “It's very picturesque... and apparently painful. Words aren't necessary - for the truly important things, Anthony.” - </p> - <p> - “Then you know—what I think of you; you know... how everything else - has moved away and left only you; you know a hundred things, all - important, all about yourself.” - </p> - <p> - She set an uncertain smile against the rush of his words. The stream - narrowed between high banks drawn against the sheer deeps of sky; the - water flowed swiftly, with a sustained whisper at the edges, and, for a - silent space, he paddled vigorously. Then a profound, glassy pool opened, - sodded bluely to the shores, with low, silvery clumps of willows casting - sooty shadows across the verd water; and, with a sharp twist, he beached - the canoe with a soft shock upon the shelving pebbles. As he held the - craft steady he felt the light, thrilling impact of Eliza's palm as she - sprang ashore. - </p> - <p> - The others followed rapidly. The canoes were drawn out of the water, and - preparations for supper commenced. Eliza and Ellie Ball, accompanied by a - youth with a pail, proceeded to a nearby farmhouse in quest of milk. - Anthony lingered at the water's edge, ignoring the appeal for firewood. - The glow of the westering sun faded from the air, and the reflection of - the fire lighted behind him danced ruddy op the grass. At intervals small - fish splashed invisibly, and a kingfisher cried downstream. Then he heard - his sister's voice, and a familiar and moving perfume hovered in his - nostrils. He turned and saw Eliza with her arms full of white lilacs. Her - loveliness left him breathless, mingled with the low sun it blinded him. - She seemed all made of misty bloom—a fragrant spirit of ineffable - flowers. The scent of the lilacs stirred profound, inarticulate emotions - within him, like the poignant impression left by a forgotten dream of - shivering delight. - </p> - <p> - He scorned the fare soon spread on the clothed sod, burning his throat - stoically with a cup of unsweetened coffee. Eliza sat beyond the charring - remains of the fire sinking from cherry-red embers to impalpable white - ash. He observed with secret satisfaction that she too ate little: an - appetite on her part, he felt, would have been a calamity. - </p> - <p> - 'The meadows and distant woods were vague against the primrose west, the - cyanite curtain of the east, when the baskets were assembled for the - return. Anthony delayed over the arrangement of his craft until Eliza and - himself were last in the floating procession. Dense shadows, drooping from - the trees, filled the banks; overhead the sky was clear green. They swept - silently forward with the current, a rare dip of the paddle. Eliza's - countenance was just palely visible. The lilacs lay in a pallid heap at - their feet. On either hand the world floated back darkly like an - immaterial void through which an ebon stream bore them beyond the stars. - </p> - <p> - At a bend he reached up and caught hold of an overhanging branch, and they - swung into a shallow backwater. A deep shelf of stone lay under the face - of the bank, closed in by a network of wildgrape stems. “This is where I - sometimes stay at night,” he told her; “no one knows but you.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XVI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>HE rose, and, - without warning, stepped out upon the rock. “Here's where you build your - fire,” she cried at the discovery of a blackened heap of ashes. He secured - the canoe and followed her. “Ideal,” she breathed. The sound of the fall - below was faintly audible; the quavering cry of an owl, the beating of - heavy wings, rose above the bank. “Don't you envy the old pastoral people - following their flocks from land to land, setting up their tents by - streams like this, waking with the dawn on the world? or gipsies... you - must read 'Lavengro.'” - </p> - <p> - “I don't envy any one on God's little globe,” he asserted; “to be here - with you is the best thing possible.” - </p> - <p> - “Something more desirable would soon occur to you.” - </p> - <p> - “Than you!” he protested; “than you!” - </p> - <p> - “But people get tired of what they have.” - </p> - <p> - “It's what they don't have that makes them old and tired,” he told her - with sudden prescience; “when I think of what I am going to lose, of what - I can never have, it makes me crazy.” - </p> - <p> - “Why do you say that?... How can you know?” - </p> - <p> - She was standing close to him in the constricted space, the tangible shock - of her nearness sweeping over him in waves of heady emotion. The water - gurgling by the rock was the only sound in a world-stillness. - </p> - <p> - “I mean you.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, I'm not fairy gold; I'm not the end of the rainbow. I am just - Eliza.” - </p> - <p> - “Just Eliza!” he scoffed. Then the possibility contained in her words - struck him dumb. The feeling irresistibly returned that because of her - heavenly ignorance, her charity, she mistook him to be worthy. The - necessity to guard her from her own divinity impelled him to repeat, - miserably, all that she had ignored. - </p> - <p> - “I'm not much account,” he said laboriously; “you see, I never stuck at - anything, and, somehow, things have never stuck to me. It was that way at - school—I was expelled from four. I'm supposed to be shiftless.” - </p> - <p> - “I don't care in the least for that!” she declared; “only one thing is - really important to me... something, oh, so different.” Suddenly she laid - her hand upon his sleeve, and, pitifully white, faced him. “I've had the - beautifullest feeling about you,” she whispered; “Anthony, tell me truly, - are you... good?” A sob rose uncontrollably in his throat, and his eyes - filled with tears that spilled over his cheeks. For a moment he struggled - to check them, then, unashamed, slipped onto his knees before her and held - her tightly in his arms. “No one in the world can say that I am not—what - you mean.” - </p> - <p> - She stooped, and sat beside him on the stone, holding his hand close to - her slight body. “My dream,” she said simply. “I didn't understand it at - first; you see, I was only a child. And then when I grew older, and—and - heard things, it seemed impossible. That sort of goodness only bored other - girls... they liked men of the world, men with a past. I thought perhaps I - was only morbid, and lost trust in—in you.” - </p> - <p> - “It was a kind of accident,” he admitted; “I never thought about it the - way you did. It seemed young to me.” - </p> - <p> - “I don't believe it was an accident in the least,” she insisted. A mist - rose greyly from the darker surface of the stream, and settled cold and - clammy about Anthony's face. It drew about them in wavering garlands, - growing steadily denser. Eliza was sitting now pressed against him, and he - felt a shiver run through her. “You are cold!” he cried instantly, and - rose, lifting her to her feet. She smiled, in his arms, and he bent down - and kissed her. She clung to him with a deep sigh, and met his lips - steadily with her own. The mist slipped like a veil over Eliza's head and - drops of moisture shone in her hair. Anthony turned and unfastened the - canoe; and, suddenly conscious of the length of their delay, he urged it - with long sweeps over the stream. Beyond the lilacs, distilling their - potent sweetness in the dark, Eliza was motionless, silent, a flicker of - white in the gloom. - </p> - <p> - They swept almost immediately into the broad reach where they had started. - The lights from the windows of a boat house, the voices of the others, - streamed gaily over the water. He felt Eliza tremble as he lifted her - ashore. - </p> - <p> - “It's happiness,” she told him; “I am ever so warm inside.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XVII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>Y his plate at the - lunch table he discovered, the following day, a small, lavender envelope - stamped and addressed to Anthony Ball, Esq. He slipped it hastily into his - pocket, and managed but a short-lived pretext of eating. Then, with the - letter yet unopened, he left Ellerton, and penetrated into the heart of - the countryside. - </p> - <p> - He stopped, finally, under a fence that crossed a hill, on a slope of wild - strawberries. The hill fell away in an unbroken sweep of undulating, - blue-green wheat; trees filled the hollow, with a roof and thread of - silver water drawn through the lush leaves; on either hand chocolate loam - bore the tender ripple of young com; and beyond, crossed by the shifting - shadows of slow-drifting clouds, hill and wood and pasture spread a mellow - mosaic of summer. - </p> - <p> - He tore open the envelope with a reluctant delight. At the top of the - sheet E D was stamped severely in mauve. “My very dear,” he read. He - stopped, suddenly unable to proceed; the countryside swam in his vision; - he gulped an ecstatic, convulsive breath, and proceeded: - </p> - <p> - “It's too wonderful—I can't realize that you exist, and that I have - found you in such a great world. Isn't it strange how real dreams are; - just now the real world seems the dream, and my dear home, my mother, - shadows compared to the thoughts that fill my brain of you, you, you. - </p> - <p> - “But I am writing mostly to tell you something that, perhaps, you didn't - fully understand yesterday—and yet I think you must have—that, - if you really want me, I am absolutely your own. I couldn't help it if I - wanted to, and, oh, I don't want to! I let a man at Etretat kiss me, and I - am glad I did, for it made me understand that I must wait for you. - </p> - <p> - “I won't write any more now because my head aches. From Eliza who loves - you utterly.” Then he saw that she had written on the following page: - “Don't worry about money and the future; I have my own, all we shall need - for years, and we can do something together.” - </p> - <p> - He laid the letter beside him on the grass. The welling song of a catbird - sounded unsupportably sweet, and a peaceful column of smoke rose bluely - from the chimney below: it carried him in imagination to a dwelling set in - a still, green garden, where birds filled the branches with melody, and - Eliza and himself walked hand in hand and kissed. Night would gather in - about their joy, their windows would shine with the golden lamp of their - seclusion, their voices mingle... sink... sacred. - </p> - <p> - He dreamed for a long while; the sunlight vanished from the slope below - him, from the darkling trees, touched only the farthest hills with a rosy - glow. As the sun sank an errant air whispered in the wheat, and scattered - the pungent aroma of the wild strawberries. A voice called thinly from the - swales, and cows gathered indistinctly about a gate. Anthony rose. The - world was one vast harmony in which he struck the highest, happiest note. - Beyond the near hills the lilac glitter of the Ellerton lights sprang - palely up on the blue dusk. As he made his way home, Anthony's brain - teemed with delightful projects, with anticipation, the thought of the - house in the hollow—abode of love, steeped in night. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XVIII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>LLIE was in the - garden, and interrupted his progress toward a belated dinner. “Father - wants to see you,” she called; “at the Club, of course.” He wondered - absently, approaching the Club, what his father wanted. The rooms occupied - the second story of the edifice that housed the administration of the - county; the main corridor was choked by a crowd that moved noisily toward - an auditorium in the rear, but the Club was silent, save for the click of - invisible billiard balls. - </p> - <p> - His father was asleep in the reading room, a newspaper spread upon his - knees, and one thin hand twisted in his beard. Through an open window - drifted the strains of a band on the Courthouse lawn. The older man woke, - clearing his throat sharply. “Well, Anthony,” he nodded. Anthony found a - chair. - </p> - <p> - His father leaned forward, regarding him with a keen, kindly gaze. “I'm - told the garage has gone up,” he commenced. - </p> - <p> - “Sam took his car away; it was Alfred's infernal tinkering; he can't leave - a machine alone.” - </p> - <p> - “Did you close affairs satisfactorily, stop solvent?” - </p> - <p> - “There's a little debt of about six dollars.” - </p> - <p> - The other sought his wallet, and, removing a rubber band, counted six - dollars into Anthony's hand. “Meet that in the morning.” He leaned hack, - tapping the wallet with deliberate fingers. “I suppose you have no plan - for the immediate future,” he observed. - </p> - <p> - “Nothing right now.” - </p> - <p> - “I have one for you, though, as 'right now' as this week.” - </p> - <p> - Anthony listened respectfully, his thoughts still dwelling upon the beauty - of the dusk without, of life. “You have tried a number of things in the - past few years without success. I have started you in a small way again - and again, only to observe the familiar course of a failure inevitable - from your shiftless habits. You are not a bad boy, but you have no ability - to concentrate, like a stream spread all over the meadow—you have no - course. You're a loiterer.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, sir,” said Anthony, from the midst of his abstraction. - </p> - <p> - “You are too old for that now, either it must stop at once, or you will - become definitely worthless. I am going to make a determined effort—I - am going to send you to California, your brother-in-law writes that he can - give you something.” - </p> - <p> - The term California sounded in Anthony's brain like the unexpected clash - of an immense hell. It banished his pleasant revery in disordered shreds, - filling him with sudden dismay. - </p> - <p> - “I telegraphed Albert yesterday,” the even tones continued, “and have his - answer in my pocket. You are to go out to him immediately.” - </p> - <p> - “But that's impossible,” Anthony interrupted; “it just can't be done.” - </p> - <p> - “Why not?” - </p> - <p> - He found himself completely at a loss to give adequate expression to his - reason for remaining in Ellerton. His joy was so new that he had scarcely - formulated it to himself, it evaded words, defied definition—it was - a thing of dreams, a vision in a shining garment, a fountain of life at - the bottom of his heart. - </p> - <p> - “Come; why not?” - </p> - <p> - “I don't want to go away from Ellerton... just now.” - </p> - <p> - “That is precisely what you must do. I can understand your desire to - remain close by your mother—she has an excuse for you, assistance, - at every turn.” - </p> - <p> - “That isn't the reason; it's... it's,” he boggled horribly, “a girl.” - </p> - <p> - “Indeed,” his father remarked dryly. - </p> - <p> - Anthony shrunk painfully from the unsympathetic voice of the elder. A new - defiance of his father welled hotly within him, corrupting the bonds of - discipline that had held him lovingly to his parent throughout the past. A - chasm opened between them; and, when Anthony spoke again, it was with a - voice of insipient insubordination. - </p> - <p> - “It isn't the silly stuff you think,” he told the other; “I'm engaged!” - </p> - <p> - “What on?” pithily came the inquiry. “Unfortunately I can't afford the - luxury of a daughter-in-law. I thought you were something more of a man - than to bring your wife into your mother's house.” - </p> - <p> - “I sha'n't; we can get along until I... find work.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you mean that your wife will support you?” - </p> - <p> - “Not altogether; she will help until—until—” he stopped - miserably before the anger confronting him in the other's gaze: it was - useless to explain, he thought; But if his father laughed at him, at his - love, he would leave the room and never see him again. “I can't see why - money is so damned holy!” he broke out; “why it matters so infernally - where it comes from; it seems to me only a dirty detail.” - </p> - <p> - “It is the measure of a man's honor,” the elder Ball told him inexorably; - “how it is made or got stamps you in the world. I am surprised to hear - that you would even consider taking it from a woman, surprised and hurt. - It shows all the more clearly the necessity for your going at once into a - hard, healthy existence. Your mother will get you ready; a couple of days - should do it.” - </p> - <p> - “... all unexpected,” Anthony muttered; “I must think about it, see some - one. I'll—I'll talk to you to-morrow. That's it,” he enunciated more - hopefully, “to-morrow—” - </p> - <p> - “Entirely unnecessary,” his father interrupted, “nothing to be gained by - delay or further talk. The thing's arranged.” - </p> - <p> - “I think I won't go,” Anthony told him slowly. The other picked up the - paper, smoothing out the creases. “Very well,” he replied; “I dare say - your mother will do something for you.—Women are the natural source - of supplies for the sort of person you seem at the point of becoming.” A - barrier of paper, covered with print in regular columns, shut one from the - other. - </p> - <p> - Anthony burned under a whelming sense of injustice. He decided that he - would leave the room, his father, forever; but, somehow, he remained - motionless in his chair, casting about in his thoughts for words with - which to combat the elder's scorn. He thought of Eliza; she smiled at him - with appealing loveliness; he felt her letter in his pocket, remembered - her boundless generosity. He couldn't leave her! The band in the square - below was playing a familiar operatic lament, and the refrain beat on his - consciousness in waves of despairing and poignant longing. A sea of misery - swept over him in which he struggled like a spent swimmer—Eliza was - the far, silver shore toward which he fought. It wasn't fair—a sob - almost mastered him—to ask him to go away now, when he had but found - her. - </p> - <p> - “It's not Siberia,” he heard his father say, “nor a life sentence; if this—this - 'girl' is serious, you will be closer working for her in California than - idle in Ellerton.” - </p> - <p> - “I don't want to go away from her,” he whispered; “the world's such a hell - of a big, empty place... things happen.” He dashed some bright tears from - his eyes, and, turning his back on the other, gazed through the window at - the tops of the maple trees—a black tracery of foliage against the - lights below. - </p> - <p> - “Two or three years should set you on your feet, give you an opportunity - to return.” Eternity could scarcely have seemed more appalling than the - term casually indicated by his father, it was unthinkable! A club member - entered, fingering the racked journals on the long table, exchanging - trivial comments with the older Ball. It seemed incredible to Anthony, in - the face of the cataclysm which threatened him, that the world should - continue to revolve callously about such topics. It was an affront to the - gravity, the dignity, of his suffering. He swiftly left the room. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XIX - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>T was Saturday - night, Bay Street was thronged, the stores brilliantly lit. He saw in the - distance the red and blue jars of illuminated water that advertised Doctor - Allhop's drugstore, and turned abruptly on his heel. In the seclusion of - his room he once more read Eliza's letter: it was a superlative document - of sweet commonsense, the soul of nobility, of wisdom, of tenderness, of - divine generosity. In its light all other suggestions, considerations, - courses, seemed tawdry and ignoble. The boasted wisdom of a world of old - men, of material experience, seemed only the mean makeshifts for base and - unworthy ends. The ecstasy sweeping from his heart to his brain, the - delicious fancies, the rare harmonies, that haunted him, the ineffable - perfume of invisible lilacs—these were the true material from which - to fashion life, these were the high things, the important. And youth was - the time to grasp them: a swift premonition seized him of the coldness, - the ineptitude, the disease, of old age. - </p> - <p> - For the first time in his life he thought of death in definite connection - with himself: he was turning out the gas, preparatory for sleep; and, at - the instantaneous darkness, he thought, with a gasp of fear, it would be - like that. He stood trembling as a full realization of disillusion - mastered him; all his hot, swinging blood, the instinctive longing for - perpetuation aroused in him by Eliza, in sick revolt. Fearsome images - filled his mind... the hole in the clay—closed; putrefaction; the - linked mass of worms. In feverish haste he lit the gas; his body was wet - with sweat; his heart pounding unsteadily. - </p> - <p> - The familiar aspect of his room somewhat reassured him; the thought - dimmed, slowly conquered by the flooding tide of his living. Then he - realized that Eliza too must die, and his terrors vanished before a loving - pity for her earthly fragility. Finally, death itself assumed a less - threatening guise; peace stole imperceptibly into his heart. A vague - belief, new born of his passion, that dying was not the end of all, rose - within him—there must be a struggle, heights to win, gulfs to cross, - a faith to keep. With steady fingers he turned out the gas.—Eliza - was his faith: he fell into a sound slumber. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XX - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E made no comment - when, in the morning, his mother made tentative piles of his clothing. He - would see Eliza that afternoon, and then announce their decision. His - mother attempted to fathom his feeling at the prospect of the journey, the - separation from Ellerton; but, the memory of his father's cutting words - still rankling in his mind, he evaded her questioning. - </p> - <p> - “If you are going to be miserable out there,” she told him, enveloping him - in the affection of her steady, grey gaze, “something else might be found. - I can always help—” - </p> - <p> - “You don't understand these things,” he interrupted her brusquely, annoyed - by his father's prescience. They were sitting in her sewing room, a pile - of his socks at her side. She wore her familiar, severe garb, the - steelbowed spectacles directed upon the needle flashing steadily in her - assured fingers. She was eternally laboring for her children, Anthony - realized with a pang of affection. His earliest memories were charged with - her unflagging care, the touch of her smooth and tireless hands, the - defense of her energetic voice. - </p> - <p> - He must tell her about his engagement, but not until he had seen Eliza - again, when something definite would be agreed upon. It was immensely - difficult for him to talk about the subject nearest his heart-words - diminished and misrepresented it: he wanted to brood over it, secretly, - for days. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ATER he dressed - with scrupulous exactitude, and proceeded directly to Hydrangea House. The - afternoon was sultry, the air full of the soothing drone of summer - insects, the dust of the road rose in heavy puffs about his feet. He - crossed the stream and fields, saturated with sunlight, and came to the - pillared portico of his destination. - </p> - <p> - “Miss Dreen,” Anthony said, stepping forward into the opening door. - </p> - <p> - “Miss Dreen cannot see you,” the servant returned without hesitation. - Anthony drew back, momentarily repelled; but, before he could question - this announcement, he heard grinding wheels on the gravel drive. Turning, - he saw a motor stop, and Mrs. Dreen descend, followed by a man with a - somber, deeply-scored countenance. Anthony moved forward eagerly as she - mounted the steps. “Mrs. Dreen,” he asked; “can you tell me-” She passed - with a confused, blank face, without stopping or acknowledging his - salutation, and the door closed softly upon her and her companion. - </p> - <p> - A momentary flame of anger within Anthony quickly sank to cold - consternation. Eliza had told her parents and they had dismissed the idea - and him. It was evident they had forbidden her to see him. He walked - indecisively down the steps, still carrying his hat, and stopped - mechanically on the driveway. He gazed blindly over a brilliant, scarlet - bed of geraniums, over the extended lawn, the rolling hills of Ellerton. - Then his courage returned, stiffened by the obstacles which apparently - confronted him: he would show them that he was not to be lightly - dismissed; no power on earth should separate him from Eliza. - </p> - <p> - The servant had only obeyed Mrs. Dreen's direction; Eliza, he was certain, - had no choice in the matter of his reception. Then, unexpectedly, he - remembered his father's words, the latter's contemptuous reference to all - appeals to women. He must go to Mr. Dreen, and straightforwardly state his - position, tell him... <i>what?</i> Why, that he, Anthony Ball, loved - Eliza, desired her, had come to take her away... <i>where?</i> In all the - world he had no place prepared for her. He drove his hand into his pocket, - and discovered a quarter of a dollar and some odd pennies—all that - he possessed. Suddenly he laughed, a short, sorry merriment that stopped - in a dry gasp. He turned and ran, stumbling over the grass, through the - hot dust, toward Ellerton. Two years, he thought, California; California - and two years. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>NTHONY sat late - into the night composing an explanatory and farewell letter to Eliza: - </p> - <p> - “Your family would laugh at me,” he wrote; “I couldn't show them a dollar. - And although my father has done a great deal for me he wouldn't do this. I - couldn't expect him to. Mother might help, she is like you, but I could - not very well live between two women, could I? The only hope is California - for a couple of years. You know how much I want to stay with you, how hard - this is to write, when our engagement, everything, is so new and - wonderful. But it would only be harder later. If I had seen you this - afternoon I would never have left you. I am going to-morrow night. This - will come to you in the morning, and I will be home if you send me a - message. I would like to see you again before I go away in order to come - back to you forever. I would like to hear you say again that you love me. - Sometimes I think it never really happened. If I don't see you again - before I leave, remember I shall never change, I shall love you always and - not forget the least thing you said. I wish now I had studied so that I - could write better. Remember that I belong to you, when you want me I will - come to you if it's around the world, I would come to you if I were dead I - think. Good-bye, dear, dear Eliza, until tomorrow anyhow, and that's a - long while to be without seeing you or hearing your voice.” - </p> - <p> - At the announcement of his agreement to go West, the attitude of his - father had changed greatly; his hand continually sought Anthony's - shoulder; he consulted gravely, as it were with an equal, with regard to - trains, precautions, new climates. His mother busied herself over his - clothes, her rare speech brusque and hurried. To Anthony she seemed - suddenly old, <i>grey</i>; her hands trembled, and necessary stitches were - uneven. - </p> - <p> - He was aware that the mail for Hydrangea House was collected before noon, - and he sat expectantly in the room overlooking the street. It was dark and - cool, there were creamy tea roses in the Canton jar now, while in the - street it was hot and bright. A sere engraving of Joseph Bonaparte in - regal robes gazed serenely from the wall. The hour for lunch arrived - without any message from Eliza. Throughout the afternoon he dropped his - pressing affairs find descended to the street... nothing. - </p> - <p> - His heart grew heavy with doubts, with fears—his letter had been - intercepted; or, if Eliza had received it, her answer had been diverted. - Perhaps she had at last realized that he was unfit for her love. The - impulse almost mastered him to go once more to Hydrangea House, but pride - prevented; his unhappiness hardened, grew bitter, suspicious. Then he - again read her letter, and its patent sincerity swept away all doubt; - Eliza was unwavering; if not now he would find her at the end of two - years, unchanged, warm, beautiful. - </p> - <p> - He was summoned to dinner, where he found the delicacies he especially - liked. The plates were liberally filled, all made a pretence at eating, - but, at the end, the food remained hardly touched. The forced conversation - fell into sudden, disturbing silences. His father sharpened the carving - knife twice, which, for shad roe, was scarcely necessary; his mother - scolded the servant without cause; even Ellie was affected, and smiled at - him with a bright tenderness. - </p> - <p> - He was to leave Ellerton at midnight, when he would be enabled to connect - with a western express, and it was arranged for him to spend a last hour - at the Club with his father. Ellie and the servant stood upon the - pavement, his mother was upstairs in the sewing room... where he entered - softly. - </p> - <p> - At the Club the billiard room was dark, the tables shrouded, but from a - room at the end of the hall came the murmur of the nightly coon-can - players. They seated themselves at a table, and his father ordered beer - and cigars. It was the first time that he had acknowledged Anthony to - possess the discretion of maturity, and he raised the stein to his lips - with the feeling that it was a sacrament of his manhood, an earnest and - pledge of his success. - </p> - <p> - The midnight train emerged from the gloom of the station, passed through - the outskirts of Ellerton, detached rows of dark dwellings, by the grounds - of the Baseball Association, its fence still plastered with the gaudy - circus posters, into the dim fields and shining streams. Anthony stood on - the last, swinging platform, gazing back at the gloom that enveloped - Ellerton, at the place where Hydrangea House was hid by the hills. An - acute misery possessed him—the unsettled maimer of his departure - from Eliza, her silence, struggled in his thoughts with the attempt to - realize the necessity of the course he had adopted to bring about a final - and lasting joy. He wondered if Eliza would understand the need for his - going; but, assured of her wise sympathy, he felt that she would; and a - measure of content settled upon him. The engine swung about a curve, - disappearing into the obscurity of a wood. “Eliza,” he cried aloud, - “Eliza, be here when I come back to you!” - </p> - <p> - He sat for the greater part of an hour on the deserted platform of the - junction, where signal lamps glistened on the steel rails that vanished - into the night, into the west, the inscrutable future. The headlight of - the massive locomotive flared unexpectedly, whitely upon him; the engine, - with a brief glimpse of a sanguinary heart of fire illuminating a sooty - human countenance, gleaming, liquid eyeballs, passed and stopped; and - Anthony hastily mounted the train. He made his way through the narrow - passage of buttoned, red curtains, and found his berth, when he sank into - a weary, dreamless sleep. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXIII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>N the morning his - was the last berth made up for the day; the car, shaded against the sun, - was rolling slightly, and he braced himself as he made his way toward - breakfast. The tables were all occupied; but, at a carelessly hospitable - nod, he found a place with two men. They were, he immediately saw, Jews. - One was robustly middle aged, with a pinkly smooth countenance, a slightly - flattened nose, and eyes as colorless as clear water in a goblet. He was - carefully dressed in shepherd's plaid, with a gay tie that held a - noticeably fine pearl. His companion was thin and dark, with a heavy nose - irritated to rawness by the constant application of a blue silk - handkerchief. The latter, Anthony discovered in the course of the - commonplaces which followed, was sycophant and henchman of the first—a - never failing source of applause for the former's witticisms. - </p> - <p> - “How far out are you bound?” queried the owner of the pearl. Then, when - Anthony had told him his destination, “no business opportunities in - California for a young man without capital behind him; only hard work and - a day laborer's wages. Nothing West but fruit, land and politics on a - large scale. My chauffeur at a hundred a month does better than eighty per - cent, of the young ones in the West.” - </p> - <p> - This information fell like a dark cloud over Anthony's sanguine hopes for - a speedy and opulent return. A sense of imminent misfortune pressed upon - him, a sudden, unreasoning dread of what might be in store for Eliza and - himself, of the countless perils of a protracted delay. At the end of two - years he might be no better off than he was at present. His - brother-in-law, he knew, would only pay him a nominal amount at first. The - two years stretched out interminably in his imagination. - </p> - <p> - The more prosperous of his companions selected a cigar from a silk case, - and, cutting it with a gold penknife, they removed to the smoking car. “I - drove a car for a while,” Anthony informed them later, mingling the - acidulous smoke of a Dulcina with the more fragrant clouds of Habana; “it - was a Challenger six.” - </p> - <p> - “Hartmann here is a director in the Challenger factory,” the sycophant - told him. “The factory's in our home city, where we are going. It's a - great car.” Hartmann examined Anthony with a new and more personal - interest. “Did you like it?” he demanded. - </p> - <p> - “It's all right, for the price,” Anthony assured him; “it's the most - sporting looking car on the American market.” - </p> - <p> - “That's the thing,” the other declared with satisfaction; “big sales and a - quick return on investment. A showy car is what the public want, the - engine's unimportant, it's paint that counts.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you have any radiator trouble?” Anthony demanded. The other regarded - him shrewdly. “I run a Berliet,” he announced; “I was discussing a popular - article.” He arranged himself more comfortably in his leather chair, and - prepared for sleep. - </p> - <p> - Anthony returned to his place in the coach, where he brooded dejectedly - upon what he had heard about California. He thought of the distance - widening at a dizzy rate between Eliza and himself, and plunged into a - vast pit of loneliness... he had made a terrible mistake in leaving her. - It seemed to him now that he had deserted her, perhaps she was suffering - on account of him—had expected him to free her from an intolerable - condition. Again he cursed in his heart the prudent counsel of old men, - the cold sapience of the world, that had betrayed him, that had prevailed - over him against his instinct, his longing. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXIV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>T lunch he was - progressing toward an empty table when Hartmann waved him imperiously to a - place at his side. “Have a drink,” he advised genially; “this is my - affair.” Beer followed the initial cocktail, and brandy wound the meal to - a comfortable conclusion. A Habana in the smoking car completed Anthony's - bodily satisfaction. - </p> - <p> - “California's no place for a young man without capital,” Hartmann - reiterated; “you work like a dog for two and a half a day; no future.” He - paused, allowing this to be digested, then: “I have a little plan to - propose, you can take it or not—or perhaps you are not competent.—My - chauffeur is laid up with a broken wrist, a matter of a month or more; how - would you like to run my car until he returns? Then, if you are - satisfactory, you can go into the Challenger factory, with something ahead - of you, a future. Or you can go on to California... say seventy-five - dollars richer.” Anthony shook his head regretfully. “Don't answer now,” - Hartmann advised; “Spring City is three hours off. Think it over; - seventy-five dollars; a chance, if you are handy, in the factory.” - </p> - <p> - Anthony was suddenly obsessed by the thought that, at Spring City, he - would be only a day removed from Eliza. He wondered what his father would - say to this new possibility? At worst he would only be delayed in his - arrival in California, and with seventy-five dollars in consequence. At - best—the Challenger factory: he expanded optimistically the - opportunities offered by the latter. If he could show his father immediate - fruits from a change of plan, the elder, he was certain, would add his - approval. In a passing, sceptical mood he speculated upon Hartmann's - motive in this offer to an entire stranger; but his doubts speedily - vanished—any irregularity must be immediately visible. - </p> - <p> - “You can make a stop over on your ticket for a couple of days and try it,” - the other interjected; “it will cost you nothing.” - </p> - <p> - Only a day removed from Eliza! he would write to his father, his - brother-in-law, and explain! he had decided that it would do no harm to - try it. “Good!” the Jew exclaimed; “see the conductor about your ticket. - If you decide to remain you can send for your trunk.” He offered his cigar - case to his companion, but, now, neglected to include Anthony. - Imperceptibly their relations had changed; Hartmann's geniality decreased; - his colorless gaze wandered indifferently. Anthony found the conductor, - and arranged a stop-over at Spring City. He collected his belongings; and, - not long after, he stood on a station platform beside his bag, watching - with sudden misgivings the rear of the train he had left disappearing - behind a bulk of factories and clustered shanties. - </p> - <p> - Hartmann handed him a card, with a written direction and address. “The - garage,” he explained; “have the car ready to-morrow at nine. I'll allow - you an expense of five dollars until a definite arrangement.” - </p> - <p> - Anthony quickly found the garage—a structure of iron and glass, with - a concrete floor where cars were drawn up in glistening rows. A line of - chairs fronted upon the pavement, occupied by mechanics in greasy - overalls, smarter chauffeurs, and garrulous, nondescript hangerson. The - foreman was within, busy with the compression tanks. He was short in - stature, with a pale, concerned countenance. “Fourth on the right from the - front,” he directed, reading Hartmann's card; “there's a bad shoe on the - back.... So the old man's ready for another little trip,” he commented. - </p> - <p> - “His chauffeur has a broken wrist,” Anthony explained. “He's offered me - the job for a month.” - </p> - <p> - “Wrist hell! Hartmann fired him, he knew too much—about sprees with - Kuhn. He's a sharp duck; I'll bet he picked you up outside Spring City.” - </p> - <p> - “I met him on the Sunset Limited,” Anthony continued; “I understood he was - a director in the Challenger Motorcar Company—” - </p> - <p> - “He's that, right enough; the rottenest car and shop in America; they're - so dam' mean they won't provide their men with drinking water; they have - to bring labor from the East, scabs and other truck.” The conviction - settled heavily upon Anthony that, after all, he had made a mistake in - listening to Hartmann, in falling in with his suggestion. If there had - been another train through Spring City that night for California he would - have taken it. But, as there was not, and he had committed himself for the - next twenty-four hours, he made his way to the Berliet car indicated. - There he took off his coat, and busied himself with replacing the damaged - shoe. When that was accomplished the dusk had thickened to evening, the - suspended gas globes in the garage had been lighted, and shone like - lemon-yellow moons multiplied in the lilac depths of a mirrored twilight. - </p> - <p> - He saw, across the street, a creamery, and, at a bare table, consumed a - quart of milk and a plate of sugared rusk. Then, on a chair in the line - before the garage, he sat half intent upon the conversation about him, - half considering the swift changes that had overtaken him in the past, few - days. His fingers closed upon Eliza's letter in his pocket, and he gazed - at the callous and ribald faces at his side, he heard the truculent - laughter, with wonderment that they existed in the same world with her - delicate beauty. She smiled at him, out of his memory, over a mass of - white bloom, and the present seemed like an ugly dream from which he must - awake in her presence. Or was the other a dream, a vision of immaterial - delight spread before his wondering mind, and this harsh mirth, these - mocking faces, Hartmann's smooth lies, the hateful reality? - </p> - <p> - The night deepened, one by one the chairs before the garage were deserted, - the sharp pounding of a hammer on metal sounded from within, the - disjointed measures of a sentimental song. A sudden weariness swept over - Anthony, a distaste for the task of seeking a room through the strange - streets; and, arranging the cushions in Hartmann's car, he slept there - until morning. He awoke to the flooding of the concrete floor with a sheet - of water flashing in the crisp sunlight. It was eight o'clock, and he made - a hurried toilet at a convenient spigot, breakfasting at the creamery. - </p> - <p> - Hartmann appeared shortly after nine: his countenance glowed from a - scented massage, his yellow boots shone with restrained splendor, and a - sprig of geranium was drawn through an ironed buttonhole. He nodded - briefly to Anthony, and narrowly watched the latter manouvre the Berliet - from its place in the row onto the street. They sped smoothly across town - to what, evidently, was the principal shopping thoroughfare; and, before a - glittering plateglass window that bore the chaste design, “Hartmann & - Company” drew up, and Hartmann prepared to descend. - </p> - <p> - “I think I'll go on West,” Anthony informed him; “this afternoon.” - </p> - <p> - Annoyance was plainly visible upon the other's countenance. “I was just - congratulating myself on a find,” he declared; “you must at least stay - with me until I get some one else.” He paused; Anthony made no comment. - “Now, listen to what I will do,” he pronounced finally; “if you will stay - with me for a month I'll give you a hundred dollars and your expenses—it - will be clear money. I... I had thought of taking a little trip in the - car, I'm feeling the store a little, and I need a discreet man. Think it - over—a hundred in your pocket, and you may be able to get off in - three weeks.” He left hurriedly, without giving Anthony an opportunity for - further speech. It was an alluring offer, a hundred dollars secured for - the future, for Eliza. He speculated about the prospective trip, - Hartmann's wish to secure a “discreet” man, the foreman's insinuations. - However, the motive didn't concern him, the wage was his sole - consideration, and that, he decided, he could not afford to lose. He - whistled to a newsboy, and, studying the baseball scores, waited - comfortably for his employer. - </p> - <p> - Later he drove Hartmann, now accompanied by Kuhn, out of town, through a - district of suburban villas, smooth, white roads and green lawns, into the - farmland and pasturage beyond. They finally stopped at an inn of weathered - grey stone set behind a row of ancient elms. A woman was sitting on the - portico, and she rose and came forward sinuously as the men descended from - the motor car. Anthony saw that she had a full, voluptuous figure, - lustreless, yellow hair, and sleepy eyes. Hartmann patted her upon the - shoulder, and the three moved to the portico, where they sat conversing - over a table of whiskies and soda. Occasional shrill bursts of laughter, - gross terms, reached Anthony. The woman lounged nonchalantly in her chair; - she wore a transparent white waist, through winch was visible a confused - tracery of purple ribband, frank rubicund flesh. When the men rose, - Hartmann kissed her. “Thursday,” he reminded her; “shortly after three.” - </p> - <p> - “And I'll depend on you,” Kuhn added,—“a good figger and a loving - disposition. We don't want any dead ones on this trip.” - </p> - <p> - “Laura's all right,” she assured him; “she's just ready for something of - this sort; she goes off about twice a year.” - </p> - <p> - When they had started, Hartmann leaned forward. “Going Thursday... that - little trip I spoke to you about.—No talking, understand. Look over - the tires, get what you think-necessary for five or six hundred miles.” He - tended Anthony a crisp, currency note. “Here's the five. Your salary - starts to-morrow.” - </p> - <p> - That night Anthony wrote a letter of explanation to his father, a note to - California in reference to his trunk, and a short communication to Eliza.—He - was not certain that she would receive it. Her parents, he was convinced, - were opposed to him—they were ignorant of the singleness, the depth, - the determination, of his love. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>T. was nearly - four, when, on Thursday, Anthony stopped the car before the inn by the - elms. The woman with the yellow hair, accompanied by a figure in a - shapeless russet silk coat, were waiting for them. The latter carried a - small, patent-leather dressing case, and a large bag reposed on the - portico, which Anthony strapped to the luggage rack. Kuhn, animated by a - flow of superabundant animal spirits, bantered each member of the party: - he gave Anthony a cigar that had been slightly broken, tipped off - Hartmann's cap, and assisted the woman with profound gallantry into the - car. Hartmann discussed routes over an unfolded map with Anthony; then, - the course laid out, they moved forward. - </p> - <p> - Their way led over an old postroad, now between walls, trees, dank and - grey with age and dust, now rising steadily into a region of bluish hills. - Scraps of conversation fell upon Anthony's hearing: the woman in the - russet coat, he learned, was named Laura Dallam. Kuhn talked incessantly, - and, occasionally, she replied to his sallies in a cool, detached voice. - She differed in manner from the others, she was a little disdainful, - Anthony discovered. Once she said sharply, “Do let me enjoy the country.” - </p> - <p> - They slipped smoothly through the afternoon to the end of day. The sun had - vanished beyond the hills when they stopped at an inn on the outskirts of - an undiscovered town. It was directly on the road, and, built in a flimsy - imitation of an Elizabethan hostelry, had benches at either side of the - entrance. - </p> - <p> - There Anthony sat later, while, from a balcony above him, fell the tones - of his employer and his companions. He could hear them clearly, - distinguish Hartmann's heavy jocularity, the yellow-haired woman's syrupy - voice, Laura Dallam's crisp utterances. Kuhn's labored wit had drooped - with the afternoon, an accent of complaint had grown upon him. - Occasionally there was a thin, clear tinkle of glasses and ice. As the - night deepened, the conversation above grew blurred, peals of - inconsequential laughter more frequent; a glass fell on the balcony, and - broke with a small, sudden explosion. Some one—it was the Dallam - woman, exclaimed, “don't!” She leaned over the railing above Anthony's - head, and said despairingly, “I can't get drunk!” Kuhn pressed to her - side, and she moved away impatiently. He became enraged, and they - commenced a low, bitter wrangling. Finally Hartmann insinuated himself - between them; the two women disappeared; and Kuhn complained aloud of the - manner in which he had been treated. - </p> - <p> - “She's all right,” Hartmann assured him; “you went at it too heavy; take - your time; she's not a flapper from the chorus.” They tramped heavily - across the balcony, whispering tensely, into the hotel. - </p> - <p> - The morning following they failed to start until past eleven: Hartmann's - countenance was pasty from the night's debauch, greenish shadows hung - beneath his colorless eyes, his mouth was a leaden line; the yellow-haired - woman was haggard, she looked older by ten years since the day previous. - Kuhn was savagely, morosely, silent. But Mrs. Dallam was as fresh, as - sparkling, as the morning itself. She nodded brightly at Anthony as she - took a seat forward, by his side. A heavy veil was draped back from her - face, and he saw that it was finely-cut; an intensely black bang fell - squarely across her low, white forehead, beneath which eyes of a sombre, - velvety blue were oddly compelling; and against the blanched oval of her - face her mouth was like a print of blood. It was a potent, vaguely - disturbing countenance; and, beneath the voluminous silk coat, he saw - narrow black slippers with carelessly tied bows that, stinging his - imagination, reminded him of wasps. - </p> - <p> - As he drove the car he was frequently aware of her exotic gaze resting - speculatively upon him. On a high, sunny reach of road there was a shrill - rush of escaping air, and he found a rear tire flat. Hartmann and his mate - explored the road, Kuhn gloomed aloof, while Mrs. Dallam seated herself on - a nearby bank, as Anthony replaced the inner tube. It was hot, and he - removed his coat, and soon his shirt was clinging to the rippling, young - muscles of his vigorous torso. Once, when he straightened up to wipe the - perspiration from his brow, Mrs. Dallam caught his glance, and held it - with a slow smile. - </p> - <p> - Their progress for the day ended at a small hotel maintained upon the roof - of a ridge of hills. As the dusk deepened the valley beyond swam with - warm, scattered lights, while above, in illimitable space, gleamed stars - near, only a few millions of miles away, and stars far, millions upon - millions of miles distant. - </p> - <p> - The ground floor of the hotel was divided by a passage, on one side the - bar, and the other a dining and lounging room, lit with kerosene lamps - swung below tin reflectors. When Anthony was ready for supper the others - had disappeared above. He was served by the proprietor, a short, rotund - man with a glistening red face and hands like swollen pincushions. He - breathed stentoriously amid his exertions, muttering objurgations in - connection with the name of an absent servitor, hopelessly drunk, Anthony - gathered, in the stable. - </p> - <p> - A bell sounded sharply from above, and he disappeared abruptly, shouting - up the stair. Then, shortly after, he reappeared in the dining room with a - tray bearing a pitcher of water, glasses, and a bottle labelled with the - name of a popular brand of whiskey. “Can you run this up to your folks?” - he demanded, in a storm of explosive breaths; “I got enough to stall three - men down here.” Anthony balanced the tray, and moved toward the stair. - </p> - <p> - He stopped in the hallway to redispose his burden, when he heard the - changing gears of a second automobile without. He moved carefully upward, - conscious of lowered voices at his back, then the sound of footsteps - following him. He turned as he had been directed in the hall above, and - knocked upon a closed door. Kuhn's sullen voice bade him enter. He had - opened the door, when, almost upsetting the tray, a small group at his - back pushed him aside, and entered Hartmann's room. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXVI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE flaring gas jet - within shone on Hartmann, in his shirt sleeves, reclining collarless on a - bed, while the yellow-haired woman, in a short, vividly green petticoat, - but otherwise normally garbed, sat by him twisting her fingers in his - hair. Mrs. Dallam, her waist open at the neck, was cold-creaming her - throat, while Kuhn was decorating her bared arms with pats of pink powder - from a silver-mounted puff. He turned at the small commotion in the - doorway.... His jaw dropped, and his glabrous eyes bulged in incredulous - dismay. The powder puff fell to the floor; he wet his dry lips with his - tongue. “Minna!” he stammered; “Minna!” - </p> - <p> - The woman in the door had grey hair streaked and soiled with sallow white, - and a deeply scored, harsh countenance. Her gnarled hands were tightly - clenched, and her tall, spare figure shook from suppressed excitement and - emotion. At her back were two men, one unobtrusive, remarkable in his lack - of salient feature; the other stolidly, heavily, Semitic. - </p> - <p> - Hartmann hastily scrambled into an upright position; the woman at his side - gave vent to a startled, slight scream, desperately arranging her scant - draperies; Mrs. Dallam, with a stony face, continued to rub cold-cream - into her throat. - </p> - <p> - “Now, Mrs. Kuhn,” Hartmann stuttered, “everything can he satisfactorily - explained.” The woman he addressed paid not the slightest attention to - him, but, advancing into the room, gazed with mingled hatred and curiosity - at Mrs. Dallam. The two women stood motionless, tense, oblivious to the - others, in their silent, merciless battle. The latter smiled slightly, - with coldly-contemptuous lips, at the grotesque figure, the ill-fitting - dress upon the wasted body, the hat pinned askew on the thin, time-stained - hair, before her. And the other, painfully rigid, worn, brittle, gazed - with bitter appraisal at the softly-rounded, graceful figure, the mature - youth, that mocked her. - </p> - <p> - “Minna,” Kuhn reiterated, “come outside, won't you, I want to see you - outside. Tell her to go out, Abbie,” he entreated the stolid figure at the - door; “it ain't fit for her to be here. I will see you all down stairs.” - He laid a shaking hand upon his wife's shoulder. “Come away,” he implored. - </p> - <p> - But still, unconscious apparently of his presence, she gazed at Mrs. - Dallam. - </p> - <p> - “You gutter piece!” she said finally; “you thief!” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Dallam laughed easily. “Steal that!” she exclaimed, indicating Kuhn, - “that... beetle! If it's any consolation to you—he hasn't put his - hand on me. It makes me ill to be near him. I should be grateful if you'd - take him home.” - </p> - <p> - “That's so, Mrs. Kuhn,” Hartmann interpolated eagerly, “nothing's went on - you couldn't witness, nothing.” - </p> - <p> - Tears stole slowly over the inequalities of Mrs. Kuhn's countenance. She - trembled so violently that the man called Abbie stepped forward and - supported her. Now tears streamed copiously over Kuhn's narrow - countenance. “Oh, Minna!” he cried, “<i>can</i> I go home with you? can I - go <i>now?</i> These people don't mean anything to me, not like you do.—I - get crazy at times, and gotta have excitement; I hate it,” he declared; - “but I can't somehow stand out against it. But you must give me another - try.... Why, I'd be nothing in the world without you; I'd go down to hell - alive without you, Minna.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Kuhn became unmanageable; she uttered a series of short, gasping - cries, and wilted into the arm about her. “Take her out, Abbie,” Kuhn - entreated, “take her out of this.” Anthony, with the tray still balanced - in his grasp, stood aside. The man without characteristics was making - rapid notes in an unostentatious wallet. Then Mrs. Kuhn, supported and - followed by her husband and the third, disappeared into the hall. - </p> - <p> - “Shut the door,” Hartmann commanded sharply; “and give me a drink.” - Anthony set the tray on a table. “God!” the yellow-haired woman - ejaculated, “me too.” Mrs. Dallam returned to the mirror, and surveyed the - effects of the cold cream. With an expression of distaste she brushed the - marks of the powder from her arm. “The beetle!” she repeated. - </p> - <p> - “Minna Kuhn won't bring action,” Hartmann declared, with growing - confidence; “she'll take him back; nothing will come out.” The other woman - drank deeply, a purplish flush mantelled her full countenance. A strand of - metallic hair slipped over her eyes. “Let her talk,” she asseverated; - “we're bohemians.” She clasped Hartmann to her ample bosom. - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Dallam moved to the half opened door to the room beyond. “Bring in - the pitcher of water, Anthony,” she directed. He followed her with the - water, and she bolted the door behind them. The door to the hall was - closed too. She stopped and smiled at him with narrowed, enigmatic eyes. - The subtle force of her being swept tingling over him. She laid her hand, - warm, palpitatingly alive, upon his. - </p> - <p> - “The swine,” she said; “how did we get into this, you and I?” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXVII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE patent-leather - dressing case lay open on a bureau, spilling a small cascade of ivory - toilet implements, a severely-plain black dinner gown lay limp, dully - shimmering, over the back of a chair, and, on the bed, a soft, white heap - of undergarments gave out a seductive odor of lavender. “Cigarettes in the - leather box,” she indicated; “take some outside.” A screened door opened - upon a boxlike balcony, cut into the angle of the roof; and Anthony, - conscious of the warm weight of a guiding arm, found himself upon it. He - seated himself on the railing, and lit a cigarette. He must go in a - minute, he thought. - </p> - <p> - The lights had vanished from the valley, at his back the risen moon dimmed - the stars, turned the leaves silver grey. A wan ray fell upon a clump of - bushes below—lilacs, but the blooms had wilted, gone. The screen - door opened, and Mrs. Dallam was at his side; she sank into a chair, the - rosy blur of a cigarette in her fingers; she wore a loose wrap of deep - green silk, open at her throat upon the white web beneath; in the - obscurity her eyes were as black, as lustreless, as ebony, her mouth was a - purple stain. - </p> - <p> - She smoked silently, gazing into the night. He would go now, he decided, - and moved from his place on the rail. But with clinging fingers she caught - his wrist, reproachfully lifting a velvety gaze. “I will not be left - alone,” she declared; “I simply must have some one with me... you, or I - will get despondent. You are—no, I won't say young, that would make - you cross; you are like that fabulous fountain the Spaniards hunted in - Florida, I want to drink deep, deep.” - </p> - <p> - Anthony's resolution wavered; it was early; it pleased him that so fine a - creature should desire his presence; an unhappy note in her voice moved - him to pity. She was lonely, and he was alone—here; why should they - not support each other? He leaned, close to her, upon the sloping roof. - She talked little; she laughed once, a low, silvery peal whose echo ran up - and down his spine. - </p> - <p> - They heard a servant closing the shutters, the doors, below them, and the - sound linked Anthony to Mrs. Dallam in a feeling of pervading intimacy. - She rose, and stood pressed against his side, and his heart beat instantly - unsteady. The night grew strangely oppressive, there was a roll of - distant, muffled thunder; he turned to her with a commonplace about the - heat, when her arms went about his neck, and she kissed him full, slowly, - upon the lips. Unconsciously he held her supple body to him. She leaned - back against his arms, her eyes shut and lips parted. A terrible and brute - tyranny of desire welled up within him, sweeping away every vestige of - control, of memory. The sky whirled in his vision, the substantial world - vanished in a smother of flaming mists. - </p> - <p> - Then he released her so suddenly that she fell against the rail, - recovering her poise with difficulty. Anthony stumbled back, drawing his - hand across his brow. “What... what damned perfume's on you?” he demanded - hoarsely. - </p> - <p> - “None at all,” she assured him, “I never... Why, Anthony, are you ill?” - </p> - <p> - Wave after wave of sweetness enveloped him, choking, nauseating, stinging - his eyes, extinguishing the fire within him, turning the lust to ashes. He - too supported himself upon the rail, and his gaze fell below, to the - bushes. Was it the moonlight, or were they, where they had been bare a few - minutes before, now covered with great misty masses of lilacs? - </p> - <p> - The perfume of the flowers came up to him breath on breath: he could see - them clearly now.... White lilacs! An overwhelming panic swept over him, a - sudden dread of his surrounding, of the silken figure of the woman before - him. He must get away. He pushed her roughly aside, swung back the screen - door, and clattered through the room and down the stair. He fumbled for a - moment with a bolted door, and then was outside, free. Without hesitancy - he fled into the night, the secretive shadows. He ran until he literally - fell, with bursting lungs and shaking, powerless knees, upon a bank. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXVIII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE hotel was lost; - the silence, the peace of nature, unbroken. A drowsy flutter of wings - stilled in a hedge. The moon sailed behind a cloud that drooped low upon - the earth, and great, slow drops of rain fell to a continuous and far - reverberation. They struck coolly upon Anthony's face, pattered among the - grass, dropped with minute explosions of dust upon the road. The shower - passed, the cloud dissolved, and the crystal flood of light fell once more - into the cup of the valley. - </p> - <p> - It spread like a balm over Anthony: Hartmann, Mrs. Dallam, the weeping - face of Mrs. Kuhn, were like painted figures in a distasteful act upon - which he had turned his back, from which he had gone forth into the - supreme spectacle of the spheres, the presence of Eliza Dreen. Every atom - thrilled with the thought of her. “Oh, my very dear,” he whispered to the - sleeping birds, the dead, white disk of the moon: “I will come back to - you... good.” - </p> - <p> - After the rain the night was like a damp, sweet veil upon his face; the - few stars above him were blurred as though seen through tears; the horizon - burned in a circle of flickering, ruddy light. He took up his way once - more over the soft folds of the road; now, accustomed to the dark, he - could distinguish the smooth pebbles by the way, separate, grey blades of - grass. He walked buoyantly, tirelessly, weaving on the loom of the dim - miles mingled visions of future and past, dominated by the serene presence - of Eliza. - </p> - <p> - He felt in a pocket the wallet containing his ticket to California and the - generous sum added by his father. There must be no more delay in arriving - at his western destination! His excursion with Hartmann had been a grave - error; he saw it clearly now, one of those faults—so fatally easy - for him to commit—which, if his life was to spell success, if he was - to come finally into his heritage of joy, he must scrupulously avoid. In - the future he would drive directly, safely, toward his goal; he would - become part of that orderly pattern of life plotted in streets and staid - occupations: at the end of day he would return to his small, - carefully-tended garden to weed and water, and sit with Eliza on his - portico—a respectable, an authentic, member of society. On Sunday - morning they would go to the Episcopal Church, they would join the sober, - festivally-garbed procession moving toward the faint thunder of the organ. - And, at dinner, he would carve the roast. Thus, quietly, they would grow - old, grey, together. They would have a number of children—all girls, - he decided. - </p> - <p> - Imperceptibly the morning was born about him, faint shadows grew under the - hedges, the sweet, querulous note of a robin sounded from the sparkling - sod. A wind stirred, as immaculate, as dewly fresh, as though it were the - first breath blown upon a new world of virginal and lyric beauty. The - molten gold of the sun welled out of the east and spilled over the wooded - hills and meadows; the violet mists drawn over the swales and streams - dissolved; Anthony met a boy driving cows to pasture. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXIX - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E rapidly overtook - a bent and doggedly tramping figure; no common wanderer, he recognized, as - he drew nearer. The others decent suit was eminently presentable, his felt - hat brushed, his shoes comparatively new. He turned upon Anthony a - countenance as expressionless, as darkly-stained, as a chipped and rusted - effigy of iron; deep lines fell back across the dingy cheeks; his lipless - mouth was, apparently, another such line; and his eyes, deeply sunk in the - skull, were the eyes of a dead man. Yet they were not blind; they saw. - </p> - <p> - He halted, and surveyed Anthony with a lowered, searching curiosity, - clenching with a strained and surprising force the knob of a black stick. - Anthony met his scrutiny with the salutation of youth and the road; but - the other made no reply; his countenance was as blank as though no word - had been spoken. Then a sudden flicker of hot light burned in the dull - depths of his gaze, his worn face quivered with a swift malignancy, an - energy of suspicion, of hatred, that touched Anthony's heart with a cold - finger of fear. - </p> - <p> - “What's your name?” he demanded, his entire being strained in an agony of - attention. - </p> - <p> - Anthony informed him with scrupulous exactitude. - </p> - <p> - He seemed, for a moment, to doubt Anthony's identity; then the fire died, - his eyes grew blank; his grasp relaxed on the stick, and, bent, dogged, he - continued on his way. - </p> - <p> - The repellent contraction of Anthony's heart expanded in a light and - careless curiosity, youthful contempt mingled with the gayety of his - morning mood, and he hastened his steps until he had again overtaken his - inquisitor. - </p> - <p> - “That's a good cane you've got,” he observed of the stout shaft and - rounded head. - </p> - <p> - Its owner grasped it by the lower end, and swung the head against his - hand. “Lead,” he pronounced somberly. “It would crumble your skull like an - egg.” - </p> - <p> - Again fear stirred vaguely in Anthony: the entire absence of emotion in - the sanguinary, the dull, matter-of-fact voice were inhuman, tainted with - madness; the total detachment of those deliberate words had been - appalling. - </p> - <p> - “I thought,” he continued, “that you might have been Alfred Lukes, but - you're too young.” As he pronounced that name his grasp tightened whitely - about the lead knob. The conviction seized Anthony that it was fortunate - he was not the individual in question. - </p> - <p> - “You want Alfred?” he asked in an attempted jocularity. - </p> - <p> - “He murdered my boy,” the other answered simply. “Him and another. They - asked James into a boat to go fishing. Boys will always go fishing; he was - only eleven.” He stopped in the middle of the road, and produced a small - package folded in oiled silk. It proved to be a derringer, of an - old-fashioned model, with two, short black barrels, one atop the other. - “Loaded,” he said, “to put against his face.” Then he rewrapped the weapon - and returned it to its place of concealment. “I've been looking for Alfred - Lukes for nineteen years,” he recommenced his dogged progress, “in trains - and saloons and stores. Nineteen years ago James was found in the river.” - He was silent for a moment, then, “One eye was torn out,” he added in his - weary voice. He turned his blank and terrible gaze upon Anthony, upon the - sparkling morning. The derringer dragged slightly upon his coat, the stick—that - stick which could crush a skull like an egg—made its trailing - signature in the dust. A mingled loathing and pity took possession of - Anthony; he recoiled from the corroding and secret horror of that nineteen - year Odyssey of a torturing and impotent spirit of revenge, from the - infinite black tide that had swept over the stooping figure at his side, - the pitiless memory that had destroyed its sanity. - </p> - <p> - “It was on Sunday; James had on his nice blue suit and a new, red silk - necktie... they found it knotted about his throat... as tight as a big man - could make it.” - </p> - <p> - A sudden impulse overcame Anthony to run, to leave far behind him this - sinister, animated speck on the sunny road, under the dusty branches - burdened with ripening fruit, thrilling with the bubbling notes of birds. - But, as his gaze fell again upon his companion, he saw only an old man, - gaunt with suffering, hurrying toward the noon. A deep, cleansing - compassion vanquished the dread, and, spontaneously, he spoke of his own - lighter affairs, of California, his destination. - </p> - <p> - “I have never been west of Chicago,” the other interposed. “I hadn't the - money; the walking is dreadfully hard; the sun on those plains hurt my - head. Do you suppose James Lukes is in California?” he asked, pausing - momentarily in his rapid shamble. - </p> - <p> - In his careless, youthful egotism, Anthony ignored the query. He wondered - aloud where he could board a through train to the West. - </p> - <p> - “Have you got your ticket?” - </p> - <p> - Anthony tapped complacently upon the pocket that held the wallet. They - were walking now through a wood that flowed to the rim of the road, and a - turn hid either vista. A stream ran through the rank greenery of the - bottom, crossed by a bridge of loosely bolted planks. Anthony paused, - intent upon the brown, sliding water beneath him, the minute minnows - balancing against the stream. In that closed place of broken light the - cool stillness was profound. The stream fled past its weeds without a - gurgle, the leaves hung motionless, as though they had been stamped from - metal... he might have been, with his companion, within a charmed circle - of everlasting tranquillity. Then: - </p> - <p> - “I wonder if Alfred Lukes is in California?” the latter resumed; “I've - never got there, the fare... too expensive, the sun hurt my head.” Anthony - lit a Dulcina, and expelled a cloud of blue smoke that rose compactly in - the motionless air. “California,” he repeated, sunk in thought; “I wonder—” - </p> - <p> - “California's a big place,” Anthony hazarded. - </p> - <p> - “If he was there I'd find him.” Then, in his mechanical and dispassionate - voice, he cursed Alfred Lukes with the utmost foulness. One heated word, - the slightest elevation of his even tones, would have made the performance - human, intelligent, but the deadly monotony, the impersonal accents, were - as harrowing as though a mummy had ground out of its shrunken and embalmed - interior a recital of prehistoric hatred and wrong; it resembled a - phonograph record of incalculable depravity. He stood beyond the bridge, - resting upon his stick, with his unmoved face turned toward Anthony. His - hat cast a deep shade over his eyes; but, below, in a wanton patch of - sunlight, his lipless mouth trembled greyly. - </p> - <p> - “California,” he repeated still again, then, “I must get there.” He - shifted his hand lower upon the stick, and moved nearer to Anthony by a - step; the patch of sunlight shifted up to his hat and fled. - </p> - <p> - “You could try the freight cars,” Anthony suggested. The stooping, - neatly-brushed figure, the stony countenance, had become, in an intangible - manner, menacing, obscurely dangerous. The fingers were drawn like a claw - about the club. Then the arm relaxed, he seemed to shrink into hopeless - resignation. Beyond the leafy arcade Anthony could now see the countryside - spread out in sunny fields, fleecy, white clouds shifting in the sea of - blue.... Suddenly a great flame shot up before his eyes, a stunning shock - fell upon his head, and the flame went out in a whirling darkness that - swept like a black sea over a continent of intolerable pain. He heard, as - if from an immense distance, a thin voice pronounce the single word, - “California.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0030" id="link2H_4_0030"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXX - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> GRIPPING wave of - nausea recalled Anthony to consciousness; a deathly sickness spreading - from the pit of his stomach through his entire being; his prostrate head, - seeming stripped of its skull, was tortured by the dragging fronds of the - ferns among which he lay. He sat up dizzily. Through the leafy opening the - fleeting forms of the clouds shifted over the sunny hills. The stream - slipped silently through the grass. He staggered down the slight incline, - and, falling forward upon the ground, let the water flow over his - throbbing head. The cool shock revived him, and he washed away a dark, - clotted film from his forehead and cheek. - </p> - <p> - His wallet, with his ticket to California and store of money were gone. He - started in instant, unsteady pursuit of the man who had struck him down - and robbed him. But, at the edge of the wood he paused—how long had - he lain among the ferns? the sun was now high over his head, the morning - lapsed, the other might have had three, four hours' start. He might now be - entrained, bound for California, searching for Alfred Lukes. A sudden - weakness forced him to sit at the roadside; he lost consciousness again - for a moment. Then, summoning his youth, his vitality, he rose, and walked - unsteadily in search of assistance. - </p> - <p> - He had proceeded an intolerable mile, wiping away a thin trickle of blood - that persisted in crawling into his eye, when he saw a low roof amid a - tangle of greenery. He stopped with a sobbing breath of relief. He was - delirious, he thought, for peering at him through the leaves he saw the - countenance and beautiful, bare body of a child, as dark and tense as - bronze. A cloud of black hair overhung a face vivid as a flower; her - crimson lips trembled; then, with a startled cry, the figure vanished. - </p> - <p> - He made his way with difficulty over a short path, overgrown with vines - and twisted branches, and came abruptly upon a low, white house and wide, - opened door. An aged and shapeless woman sat on a chair without a back, - cutting green beans into a bright tin basin. When she saw him she dropped - the pan with a clatter, and an unfamiliar exclamation of surprise. - </p> - <p> - “I've been hurt,” Anthony explained; “knocked silly and robbed.” - </p> - <p> - “Gina!” she called excitedly; “Dio mio! <i>Gina!</i>” A young woman, large - and loosely molded, with a lusty baby clasped to her bared breast, - appeared in the doorway. When she saw Anthony she dropped the baby into - the elder's arms. “Poverino!” she cried; “come in the house, little - mister.” She caught him by the arm, almost lifting him over the doorstep - into a cool, dark interior. He had a brief glimpse of drying vegetables - strung from the ceiling, of a waxen image of the virgin in faded pink silk - finery against the wall; then, with closed eyes, he relaxed into the - charge of soothing and skilled fingers. His head rested on a maternal arm - while a soft bandage was fixed about his forehead. - </p> - <p> - “Ecco!” she ejaculated, her ministration successful. She led him to a rude - couch upon the floor, and gently insisted upon his lying down. He - attempted to thank her, but she laid her large, capable hand over his - mouth, and he sank into an exhausted, semi-conscious rest. Once she bent - over him, dampening the bandage, once he saw, against the light of the - door, the shape, slim and beautiful as an angel, of the child. Outside a - low, liquid murmur of voices continued without a break, strange and - quieting. - </p> - <p> - He slept, and woke up refreshed, strengthened. The dusk had thickened in - the room, the strings of vegetables were lost in the shadows, a dim oil - lamp cast a feeble glow on rude walls. He lay motionless for a few, - delightful seconds, folded in absolute peace, beneficent quietude. The - amazing idea struck him that, perhaps, he had died, and that this was the - eternal tranquillity of the hymn books, and he started vigorously to his - feet in an absurd panic. The homely figure of a man entering dispelled the - illusion—he was a commonplace Italian, one of the multitude who - labored in the ditches of the country, stood aside in droves from the - tracks as trains whirled past. - </p> - <p> - “What hit your head?” he asked, his mobile face displaying sympathetic - interest, concern. - </p> - <p> - “A leaded stick,” Anthony explained. “I was knocked out, robbed.” - </p> - <p> - “Birbanti!” he laid a heavy hand upon Anthony's shoulder. “You feel better - now, gia?” The latter, confused by such open attention, shook the hand - from its friendly grip. “He was crazy,” he awkwardly explained; “and - looking for a man who had killed his son; he wanted to get to California - and I told him I had a ticket west.” - </p> - <p> - The laborer led Anthony to a room where a rude table was spread with - homely fare—a great, rough loaf of bread, a deep bowl of steaming, - green soup, flakey white cheese, and a bottle of purple wine. An open door - faced the western sky, and the room was filled with the warm afterglow; it - hung like a shining veil over the man, the still, maternal countenance of - the woman, like an aureole about the baby now sleeping against her breast, - and graced the russet countenance of an aged peasant. The child that - Anthony had seen first, now in a scant white slip, seemed dipped in the - gold of dreams. - </p> - <p> - As he consumed the savory soup, the creamy cheese and wine, the scene - impressed him as strangely significant, familiar. He dismissed an idle - effort of memory in order to consider the unfortunate aspect assumed by - his immediate affairs. Concerning one thing he was determined—he - would ask his father to assist him no further toward his western - destination. He must himself pay for the initial error, together with all - its consequences, of having followed Hartmann: California was his object, - he would not write to Ellerton until his westward progress was once more - assured. - </p> - <p> - Two courses were open to him—he could “beat” his way, getting meals - when and how he was able, riding, when possible, on freight cars, doing - casual jobs on the way. That he dismissed in favor of a second, which in - the end, he judged, would prove more speedy. He would make his way to the - nearest city, find employment in a public or private garage as chauffeur - or mechanic, and, in a month at most, have the money necessary for the - continuation of his journey. - </p> - <p> - The household conversed vigorously in their native idiom, giving his - thoughts full freedom. The glow in the west faded, sank from the room, - but, suddenly, he recognized the familiar quality of his surroundings. It - resembled a picture of the Holy Family on the wall of his mother's room; - the bare interior was the same, the rugged features of Joseph the - carpenter, the brooding beauty of Mary. He almost laughed aloud at the - absurd comparison of the exalted scene of Christ's infancy with this - commonplace but kindly group, the laborer with soiled and callous hands - and winestained mouth, the material young woman with the string of cheap - blue beads. - </p> - <p> - The meal at an end the chairs were pushed back and the old woman noisily - assembled the dishes. Anthony's head throbbed and burned. In passing, the - mother's fingers rested upon his brow. “Not too hot,” she nodded - contentedly. - </p> - <p> - A consultation followed. Anthony might remain there for the night; or, if - he insisted, he might drive into the city with “Nono,” who left in a few - hours with a wagonload of greens for the morning market. He chose the - latter, with a clumsy expression of gratitude, impatient to resume active - efforts in his rehabilitation in his own mind. - </p> - <p> - “Niente!” they disclaimed in chorus. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0031" id="link2H_4_0031"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXXI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E fell into an - instant slumber on the hospitable heap in the corner, and was awakened - while it was still dark. In the flicker of the oil lamp the old man's face - swam vaguely against the night. Without the wagon was loaded, a drooping - horse insecurely harnessed into patched shafts. The world was a still - space of blue gloom, of indefinite forms suspended in the hush of color, - sound; it seemed to be spun out of shadows like cobwebs, out of vapors, - scents. A pale, hectic glow on the horizon marked the city. They ambled - noiselessly, slowly, forward, under the vague foliage of trees. There was - a glint of light in a passing window, the clatter of milk pails; a rooster - crowed, thin and clear and triumphant; on a grassy slope by the road they - saw a smoldering fire, recumbent forms. - </p> - <p> - They entered the soiled and ragged outskirts of the city—isolated - ranks of hideous, boxlike dwellings amid raw stretches of clay, rank - undergrowth. The horse's hoofs rang on a bricked pave, and the city surged - about them. Overhead the elevated tracks made a confused, black tracing - rippling with the red and white and green fire of signals. A gigantic - truck, drawn by plunging horses whose armored hoofs were ringed in pale - flame, passed with a shattering uproar of its metallic load. A train - thundered above with a dolorous wail, showering a lurid trail of sparks - into the sky, out of which a thick soot sifted down upon the streets. On - either hand the blank walls of warehouses shut in the pavements deserted - save for a woman's occasional, chalky countenance in the frosty area of - the arc lights, or a drunkard lurching laboriously over the gutters. The - feverish alarm of firebells sounded from a distant quarter. A heavy odor - of stagnant oil, the fetid smoke of flaring chimneys, settled over - Anthony, and gratefully he recalled the pastoral peace of the house he had - left—the house hidden in its tangled verdure amid the scented space - of the countryside. - </p> - <p> - They stopped finally before a shed open upon the street, where - bluish-orange flames, magnified by tin reflectors, illuminated busy - groups. Silvery fish with exposed carmine entrails were ranged in rows; - the crisp, green spoil of the countryside was spread in the stalls—the - silken stalks of early onions, the creamy pink of carrots, wine-red beets; - rosy potatoes were heaped by cool, crusty cantaloupe, the vert pods of - peas, silvery spinach and waxy, purple eggplant. Over all hung the - delicate aroma of crushed mint, the faint, sweet tang of scarlet - strawberries, the spicy fragrance of simple flowers—of cinnamon - pinks and heliotrope and clover. - </p> - <p> - Anthony assisted the other to transfer his load to part of a stall - presided over by a woman with bare, powerful elbows, shouting in a - boisterous voice in perfect equality with her masculine neighbors. - </p> - <p> - High above the dawn flushed the sky; the flares dimmed from a source of - light to mere colored fans, and were extinguished. Early buyers arrived at - the market with baskets and pushcarts. - </p> - <p> - Anthony remained at the old man's side; it was too early to start in - search of work; and, at his companion's invitation, he shared the latter's - breakfast of cheese and bread, with a stoup of the bitter wine. As the - market became crowded, in the stress of competition, bargaining, the - vendor forgot Anthony's presence; and with a deep breath of determination, - he started in search of employment; he again faced the West. - </p> - <p> - He had no difficulty in discovering the section of the city given over to - the automobile industry, a broad, asphalt way with glittering show - windows, serried ranks of cars, by either curb. There was, however, no - work to be obtained here; a single offer would scarcely pay for his - maintenance; in its potentialities California was the merest blur upon the - future. Then for a second and more lucrative position he lacked the - necessary papers. Midday found him without a prospect of employment. He - had almost two dollars in change that had remained intact; and, lunching - sparingly, he continued his inquiries. - </p> - <p> - It was late when he found himself before a sign that proclaimed the - ability within to secure positions for competent chauffeurs. And, - influenced largely by the chairs which he saw ranged against the wall, he - entered and registered. The fee for registration was a dollar, and that - left him with scant supplies as he took a place between three other men - awaiting skeptically the positions which they had been assured they might - confidently expect. With a casual nod to Anthony, a small man with watery - blue eyes, clad in a worn and greasy livery, continued a dissertation on - methods of making money additional to that of mere salary, of agreements - with tiremen, repairs necessary and otherwise, the proper manner in which - to bring a car's life quickly and gracefully to a close, in order, he - added slyly to the indifferent clerk, to encourage the trade. - </p> - <p> - The afternoon wasted slowly but surely to a close; no one entered and the - three rose with weary oaths and left in search of a convenient saloon. - They waved to Anthony to follow them, but he silently declined. - </p> - <p> - A profound depression settled over him, a sense of impotence, of failure. - His wounded head fretted him with frequent hot pains. He was enveloped by - a sense of desolating loneliness which he endeavored to dispel with the - thought of Eliza; but she remained as far, as faintly sweet, as the moon - of a spring night. It seemed incredible that she had once been in his - arms; surely he had dreamed her voice—such voices couldn't exist in - reality—telling him that she loved him. Her letter had gone with his - wallet, his ticket to California. He had not written her... she would be - unable to penetrate the reason for his silence, his shame for blundering - into such a blind way, his lack of anything reassuring to tell her. He - could not write until his feet were once more firmly planted upon the only - path that led to success, to happiness, to her. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0032" id="link2H_4_0032"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXXII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE clock on the - wall above the clerk's head indicated half past five, and Anthony, - relinquishing hope for the day, rose. Now he regretted the apparently - fruitless expenditure of a dollar. “Leave an address?” the clerk inquired - mechanically. “Office open at nine.” - </p> - <p> - “I'll be back,” Anthony told him. He turned, and collided with a man - entering suddenly from the street. He was past middle age, with a long, - pallid countenance, drooping snuff-colored mustache, a preoccupied gaze - behind bluish glasses, and was clad in correct brown linen, but wore an - incongruously battered and worn soft hat. - </p> - <p> - “I want a man to drive my car,” he announced abruptly. “I don't - particularly care for a highly expert individual, but his habits—” - he broke off, and muttered, “superficial adjustment to environment—popular - conception of acquired characteristics.” Then, “must be moderate,” he - ended unexpectedly. - </p> - <p> - Anthony lingered, while the clerk assured the other that several highly - desirable individuals were available. “In fact,” he told him, “one left - the office only a few minutes ago; I will have him call upon you in the - morning.” - </p> - <p> - “What's this?” he replied, indicating Anthony; “is he a chauffeur?” The - clerk nodded. “But,” he added, “the man I refer to is older, more - experienced... sure to satisfy you.” - </p> - <p> - “What references have you?” the prospective employer demanded. - </p> - <p> - “None,” Anthony answered directly. The clerk dismissed his chances with a - gesture. - </p> - <p> - “What experience?” the other persisted. “Driving on and off for four or - five years, and I am a fair mechanic.” - </p> - <p> - “Fair only?” - </p> - <p> - “That's all, sir.” - </p> - <p> - The older man drew nearer to Anthony, scrutinizing him with a kindly - severity. “What's the matter with your head?” he demanded. - </p> - <p> - “I was knocked down and robbed on a country road.” - </p> - <p> - “Lose much?” - </p> - <p> - “Everything.” - </p> - <p> - “Drinking?” - </p> - <p> - “No, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “Familiar with prehistoric geological strata?” Anthony admitted that he - was not. - </p> - <p> - “I had hoped,” the other murmured, “to get a driver who could assist me - with my indices.” He renewed his close inspection, then, “Elemental,” he - pronounced suddenly; “I'll take you.” - </p> - <p> - “Five dollars, please,” interpolated the clerk. Outside his new employer - took Anthony by the shoulder, glancing over his suit. “You can get your - things, and then go out to my house.” - </p> - <p> - “I can go sooner than that,” Anthony corrected him. “I have no things.” - </p> - <p> - “Nothing but those clothes! Why... they will hardly do, will they? You - must get something, take it out of your salary. But, hang it, a man must - have a change of clothes! You must allow me—you are only a boy. I'll - come along; no—impossible.” He took a long wallet from his pocket - and placed it in Anthony's hands. “I don't know what such things cost,” he - said. “I think there's enough; get what you need. I must be off... - Mousterian deposits. Customs House.” Before Anthony could reply he had - started away in a long, quick stride, but he stopped short. “My address,” - he cried, “clean forgot.” He gave Anthony a street and number. - </p> - <p> - “Rufus Hardinge,” he called, hurrying away. - </p> - <p> - Anthony stood gazing in incredulous surprise at the polished, brown wallet - in his hand. He turned to hurry after the other, to protest, but already - he was out of sight. Anthony slipped the wallet in his pocket, and, his - head in a whirl, walked slowly over the street until he found himself - opposite a large retail clothing establishment. After a brief hesitation - he entered, pausing to glance hastily at his resources. In the leather - pocket which contained the paper money he saw a comfortable number of - crisp yellow bills; the rest of the space was taken up by bulky and wholly - unintelligible notes. - </p> - <p> - He purchased a serviceable suit, stout shoes, a cap, and, after a short - consideration, two flannel shirts. If this were not satisfactory, he - concluded, he could pay with a portion of his salary. The slip of the - total amount, which he carefully folded, registered thirty-one dollars and - seventy cents. - </p> - <p> - At a small tobacco shop, where he drew upon his own rapidly diminishing - capital, he discovered from the proprietor that it would be necessary to - take a suburban car to the address furnished him. He rolled rapidly - between rows of small, identical, orderly brick dwellings; on each shallow - portico a door exhibited an obviously meretricious graining; dingy or - garish curtains draped the single lower windows; the tin eaves were - continuous, unvaried, monotonous. Occasionally a greengrocer's display - broke the monotony of the vitreous way, a rare saloon or drugstore held - the corners. Farther on the street suffered a decline, the line of - dwellings was broken by patches of bedraggled gardens, set with the broken - fragments of stone ornaments; small frame structures, streaked by the - weather and blistered remnants of paint, alternated with stables, stores - heaped with the sorry miscellanies of meager, disrupted households. - Imperceptibly green spaces opened, foliage fluttered in the orange light - of the declining sun; through an opening in the habited wall he caught - sight of a glimmering stream, cows wandering against a hill. - </p> - <p> - He left the car finally at a lane where the houses, set back solidly in - smooth, opulent lawns, were somberly comfortable, reserved. The place he - sought, a four-square ugly dwelling faced with a tower, the woodwork - painted mustard yellow, was surrounded by gigantic tulip poplars. At the - front a cement basin caught the spray from a cornucopia held aloft by - sportive cherubs balanced precariously on the tails of reversed dolphins, - circled by a tan-bark path to the entrance and a broad side porch. He was - about to ring the bell when a high, young voice summoned him to the - latter. There he discovered a girl with a mass of coppery hair, loosely - tied and streaming over her shoulder, in a coffee-colored wicker chair. - She was dressed in white, without ornaments, and wore pale yellow silk - stockings. A yellow paper book, with a title in French, was spread upon - her lap; and, gravely sitting at her side, was a large terrier with a - shaggy yellow coat. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose,” she said without preliminary, “that you are the person who - took father's money. It was really unexpected of you to appear with <i>any</i> - of it. Give me the wallet,” she demanded, without allowing him opportunity - for a reply. - </p> - <p> - He gave it to her without comment, a humorous light rising in his clear - gaze. “I warn you,” she continued, “I know every penny that was in it. I - always give him a fixed amount when he goes out.” She emptied the money - into her lap, and counted it industriously: at the end she wrinkled her - brow. - </p> - <p> - “Here is a note of what I spent,” he informed her, tendering her the slip - from the store. She scanned it closely. “That's not unreasonable,” she - admitted finally, palpably disappointed that no villainous discrepancy had - been revealed; “and it adds up all right.” Then, with an assumption of - business despatch, “It must come out of your salary, of course; father is - frightfully impractical.” - </p> - <p> - “Of course,” he assented solemnly. - </p> - <p> - “Your references—” - </p> - <p> - “I haven't any.” - </p> - <p> - She made an impatient gesture of dismay; the terrier rose and surveyed him - with a low growl. “He promised me that he would do the thing properly, - that I positively need not go. What experience have you had?” - </p> - <p> - He told her briefly. - </p> - <p> - “Dreadfully unsatisfactory,” she commented, “and you are oceans too young. - But... we will try you for one week; I can't promise any more. Would you - be willing to help a little in the house—opening boxes, unwrapping - bones—?” - </p> - <p> - “Certainly,” he assured her cheerfully, “any little thing I can do....” - </p> - <p> - “The car's at the bottom of the garden, it has to be brought around by the - side street. There's a room overhead, and a bell from the house. You must - come up very quickly if, in the night, it rings three times, for that,” - she informed him, “will mean burglars. My father and I are quite alone - here with two women. I can't think of anything else now.” The terrier - moved closer to Anthony, sniffing at his shoes, then raised his golden - eyes and subjected him to a lengthy, thoughtful scrutiny. “That is Thomas - Huxley,” she informed him; “he is a perfectly wonderful investigator, and - detests all sentimentality. You will come up to the kitchen for meals,” - she called, as Anthony turned to descend the lawn; “the bell will ring for - your dinner.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0033" id="link2H_4_0033"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXXIII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E found the - automobile in the semi-gloom of a closed carriage house. On the right, - separated by a partition, were three loose stalls, apparently long - unoccupied; their ornamental fringe of straw had moldered, and dank, grey - heaps of feed lay in the troughs. A ladder fixed vertically against a wall - disappeared into cobwebby shadows above; and mounting, Anthony found the - room to which he had been directed. It, too, was partitioned from the - great, bare space of the hay-loft; the musty smell of old hay and heated - wood hung dusty, heavy, about the corners, where sounded the faint squeaks - of scattering mice. The space which he was to occupy had been rigorously - swept and aired; print curtains hung at the small dormer window that - overlooked the lawn, while, above the washstand, was the bell which, he - had been warned, would appraise him of the possible presence of burglars - above. A bright metal clock ticked noisily on a deal bureau, and, on a - table beside a pitcher and glass, two books had been arranged with precise - disarray; they proved, upon investigation, to be a volume of the Edib. - Rev. LXIX, and a bound collection of the proceedings of the Linean - Society. - </p> - <p> - He saw by the noisy clock that it was nearly seven, and, hastily washing, - responded immediately to the summons of the bell. A small, covered porch - framed the kitchen door, where he entered to find a long room dimly lit, - and a dinner set at the end of a table. A bulky woman with a flushed - countenance and massive ankles in white cotton stockings set before him - half a broiled chicken, an artichoke with a bowl of yellow sauce, and a - silver jug of milk. - </p> - <p> - “God knows it's a queer meal to put to a hearty young lad,” she observed; - “but it's all was ordered. There's not a pitata in the house,” she added - in palpable disgust. A younger woman in a frilled apron appeared from - within, carrying a tray of used dishes. She had a trim figure, and a broad - face glowing with rude vitality, which, with an assumption of disdain, she - turned upon Anthony. “I'd never trust myself with him in the machine,” she - observed to the older woman, “and him not more than a child.” - </p> - <p> - “Be holding your impudent clatter,” the other commanded, “you're not - required to go out with him at all.” - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Hardinge says, will you see him in the library when you have done,” - the former shot at Anthony over a shapely shoulder. “You can walk through - the dining room to where he is beyond.” - </p> - <p> - The library was a somber chamber: its long windows were draped with stiff - folds of green velvet, its walls occupied by high bookcases with leaded - glass doors and ornamental Gothic points under the ceiling. A massive desk - was piled with papers, pamphlets, printed reports, comparative tables of - figures, an hundred and one huddled details; the table beneath a - glittering crystal chandelier was hardly better; even the floor was - stacked with books about the chair where Anthony found his employer. The - latter looked up absently from a printed sheet as Anthony entered. - </p> - <p> - “Positively,” he pronounced, “there are not enough dominants to secure - Mendel's position.” His expression was profoundly disturbed. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, sir,” Anthony replied non-committally. “The consequences of that,” - the other continued, “are beyond prediction.” Silence descended upon him; - his fixed gaze seemed to be contemplating some unexpected catastrophe, - some grave peril, opened before him in the still chamber. “I am at a - temporary loss!” he ejaculated suddenly; “we are all at a loss... unless - my experiments in pure descent warrant—” Suddenly he became aware of - Anthony's presence. “Oh!” he said pleasantly; “glad you got fixed up. Say - nothing more to Annot—it's all nonsense, taking it out of your - salary. That's what I wanted to see you for,” he added; “what salary do - you require? what did you get at your last place?” - </p> - <p> - Anthony made a swift calculation of the distance to California, the - probable cost of carriage. “I should like seventy-five,” he pronounced - finally. His conscience suddenly and uncomfortably awoke in the presence - of the other's unquestioning generosity. “Perhaps I'd better tell you that - I don't intend to stay here long.... I am anxious to get to California.” - </p> - <p> - But Rufus Hardinge had already forgotten him. “Seventy-five,” he had - murmured, with a satisfied nod, and once more concentrated his attention - upon the sheet in his hand. As Anthony returned through the dining room he - found Annot Hardinge arranging a spray of scarlet verbena in a glass vase. - </p> - <p> - “Has father spoken to you about the salary you are to get?” she asked. He - paused, cap in hand. “I told him that you were positively not to get above - eighty.” - </p> - <p> - “I told him seventy-five. He seemed contented.” - </p> - <p> - “He would have been contented if you had said seven hundred and fifty.” - Then, to discountenance any criticism of her father's intelligence, she - added: “He is a very famous biologist, you know. The people about here - don't understand those things, but in London, in Paris, in Berlin, he is - easily one of the greatest men alive. He is carrying the Mendelian theory - to its absolute, logical conclusion.” - </p> - <p> - “He said something about that to me,” Anthony commented; “it seemed to - upset him.” - </p> - <p> - A cloud appeared upon her countenance; then, coldly, “That will do,” she - told him. - </p> - <p> - Once more in the informal garage he lit the gas jet on either wall, and, - in the bubbling, watery light, found the automobile caked with mud and - grease, the tires flat, the wires charred and the cylinders coated with - carbon. A pair of old canvas trousers were hanging from a nail, and, - donning them and connecting a length of hose to a convenient faucet, he - began the task of putting the machine in order. It was past eleven when he - finished for the night, and mounting with cramped and stiffened muscles to - his room, he fell into immediate slumber. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0034" id="link2H_4_0034"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXXIV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>N the following - morning he wrote a brief, reassuring note to his father; then, over - another page, hesitated with poised pen. “Dear Eliza,” he finally began, - then once more fell into indecision. “I wish I were back on the - Wingo-hocking with you,” he embarked. “That was splendid, having you in - the canoe, with no one else; the whole world seemed empty except for you - and me. It's no joke of an emptiness without you. - </p> - <p> - I have been delayed in reaching California, but I'll soon be out there - now, working like thunder for our wedding. - </p> - <p> - “Mostly I can't realize it, it's too good to be true—you seem like a - thing I dreamed about, in a dream all full of moonlight and white flowers. - It's funny but I smell lilacs, you know like you picked, everywhere. Last - night, cleaning a car just soaked in dirt and greasy smells, that perfume - came out of nothing, and hung about so real that it hurt me. And all the - time I kept thinking that you were standing beside me and smiling. I knew - better, but I had to look more than once. - </p> - <p> - “Love's different from what I thought it would be; I thought it would be - all happy, but it's not that, it's blamed serious. I am always flinching - from blows that might fall on you, do you see? Before I went away I saw a - man kiss a woman, and they both seemed scared; I understand that now—they - loved each other.” - </p> - <p> - He broke off and gazed out the narrow window over the feathery tops of - maples, the symmetrical, bronze tops of a clump of pines. The odor of - lilacs came to him illusively; he was certain that Eliza was standing at - his shoulder; he could hear a silken whisper, feel an intangible thrill of - warmth. He turned sharply, and faced the empty room, the bright, - stentorious clock, the table with the pitcher and glass and serious - volumes. “Hell!” he exclaimed in angry remonstrance at his credulity. - Still shaken by the reality of the impression he wondered if he were - growing crazy? The bell above the washstand rang sharply, and, putting the - incomplete letter in a drawer, he proceeded over the tanbark path that led - to the house. - </p> - <p> - Annot Hardinge beckoned to him from the porch, and, turning, he passed a - conservatory built against the side of the dwelling, where he saw small, - identical plants ranged in mathematical rows. - </p> - <p> - “What is your name?” she demanded abruptly, as he stopped before her. - “Anthony,” he told her. - </p> - <p> - She was dressed in apricot muslin, with a long necklace of alternate - carved gold and amber beads, dependent amber earrings, and a flapping - white hat with broad, yellow ribbands that streamed downward with her - hair. In one hand she held a pair of crumpled white gloves and a soft gold - mesh bag. - </p> - <p> - “You may bring around the car... Anthony,” she directed. “I want to go - into town.” - </p> - <p> - In the heart of the shopping district they moved slowly in an unbroken - procession of motor landaulets, open cars and private hansoms, a - glittering, colorful procession winding through the glittering, colorful - cavern of the shop windows. The sidewalks were thronged with women, - brilliant in lace and dyed feathers and jewels, the thin, sustained babble - of trivial voices mingled with the heavy, coiling odors of costly - perfumes. - </p> - <p> - When a small heap of bundles had been accumulated a rebellious expression - clouded An-not Hardinge's countenance. “Stop at that confectioner's,” she - directed, indicating a window filled with candies scattered in a creamy - tide, bister, pale mauve, and citrine, over fluted, delicately green - satin, against a golden mass of molasses bars. She soon emerged, with a - package tied in silver cord, and paused upon the curb. “I want to go - out... out, into the heart of the country,” she proclaimed; “this crowd, - these tinsel women, make me ill. Drive until I tell you to stop... away - from everything.” - </p> - <p> - When they had left the tangle of paved streets, the innumerable stone - façades, she directed their course into a ravine whose steep sides were - covered with pines, at the bottom of which a stream foamed whitely over - rocky ledges. Beyond, they rose to an upland, where open, undulating hills - burned in the blue flame of noon; at their back a trail of dust resettled - upon the road, before them a glistening flock of peafowl scattered with - harsh, threatening cries. By a gnarled apple tree, whose ripening June - apples overhung the road, she called, “stop!” - </p> - <p> - The motor halted in the spicy, dappled shadow of the tree; at one side a - cornfield spread its silken, green tapestry; on the other a pasture was - empty, close-cropped, rising to a coronal of towering chestnuts. The road, - in either direction, was deserted. - </p> - <p> - Anthony heard a sigh of contentment at his back: relaxed from the tension - of driving he removed his cap, and, with crossed legs, contemplated the - sylvan quiet. He watched a flock of blackbirds wheeling above the apple - tree, and decided that they had been within easy shot. - </p> - <p> - “Look over your head!” she cried suddenly; “what gorgeous apples.” - </p> - <p> - He rose, and, measuring the distance in a swift glance, jumped, and caught - hold of a limb, by means of which he drew himself up into the tree. He - mounted rapidly, filling his cap with crimson apples; when his pockets - were full he paused. Down through the screen of leaves he could see her - upturned countenance, framed in the broad, white hat; her expression was - severely impersonal; yet, viewed from that informal angle, she did not - appear displeased. And, when he had descended, she picked critically among - the store he offered. She rolled back the gloves upon her wrists, and bit - largely, with youthful gusto. On the road, after a moment's hesitation, - Anthony embarked upon the consumption of the remainder. He strolled a - short distance from the car, and found a seat upon a low stone-wall. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0035" id="link2H_4_0035"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXXV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>OON, he saw, she - too left the car, and passed him, apparently ignorant of his presence. - But, upon her return, she stopped, and indicated with her foot some - feathery plants growing in a ditch by the road. “Horsetails,” she - declared; “they are Paleozoic... millions of years old.” - </p> - <p> - “They look fresh and green still,” he observed. She glanced at him coldly, - but his expression was entirely serious. “I mean the species of course. - Father has fossils of the Devonian period... they were trees then.” She - chose a place upon the wall, ten feet or more from him, and sat with - insolent self-possession, whistling an inconsequential tune. There was - absolutely no pose about her, he decided; she possessed a masculine - carelessness in regard to him. She leaned back, propped upon her arms, and - the frank, flowing line of her full young body was like the June day in - its uncorseted freedom and beauty. - </p> - <p> - “If you will get that package from the confectioner's—” she - suggested finally. She unfolded the paper, and exposed a row of small - cakes, which she divided rigorously in two; rewrapping one division she - held it out toward him. - </p> - <p> - “No, no,” he protested seriously. “I'm not hungry.” - </p> - <p> - “It's past two,” she informed him, “and we can't possibly be back in time - for luncheon. I'd rather not hold this out any longer.” He relieved her - without further words. “Two brioche and two babas,” she enumerated. He - resumed his place, and then consumed the cakes without further speech. - </p> - <p> - “The study of biology,” she informed him later, with a gravity appropriate - to the subject, “makes a great many small distinctions seem absurd. When - you get accustomed to thinking in races, and in millions of years, the - things your friends fuss about seem absurd. And so, if you like, why, - smoke.” - </p> - <p> - It was his constant plight that, between the formal restrictions of his - position, and the vigorous novelty of her speech, Anthony was constantly - at a loss. “Perhaps,” he replied inanely; “I know nothing about those - things.” - </p> - <p> - She flashed over him a candid, amber gaze that singularly resembled her - father's. “You are not at all acquisitive,” she informed him; “and it's - perfectly evident that you are the poorest sort of chauffeur. You drive - very nicely,” she continued with severe justice. “One could trust you in a - crisis; but it is little things that make a chauffeur, and in the little - things,” she paused to indicate a globe of cigarette smoke that instantly - dissolved, “you are like—that.” - </p> - <p> - He moodily acknowledged to himself the truth of her observation, but such - acumen he considered entirely unnecessary in one so young; he did not - think it becoming. He contrasted her, greatly to her detriment, with the - elusive charm of Eliza Dreen; the girl before him was too vivid, too - secure; he felt instinctively that she was entirely free from the bonds, - the conventions, that held the majority of girls within recognized, - convenient limits. Her liberty of mind upset a balance to which both - heredity and experience had accustomed him. The entire absence of a - tacitly recognized masculine superiority subconsciously made him uneasy, - and he took refuge in imponderable silence. - </p> - <p> - “Besides,” she continued airily, “you are too physically normal to think, - all normal people are stupid.... You are like one of those wood creatures - in the classic pastorals.” - </p> - <p> - A faint grin overspread Anthony's countenance; among so many - unintelligible words he had regained his poise—this was the usual, - the familiar feminine chatter, endless, inconsequential, by means of which - all girls presented the hopeless tangle of their thoughts and emotions; - its tone had deceived him only at the beginning. - </p> - <p> - In the stillness which followed other blackbirds, equally within shot, - winged over the apple tree; the shadow of the boughs crept farther and - farther down the road. She rose vigorously. “I must get back,” she - announced. She remained silent during the return, but Anthony, with the - sense of direction cultivated during countless days in the fields and - swales, found the way without hesitation. - </p> - <p> - When she left the car he slowly backed and circled to the carriage house. - As he splashed body and wheels with water, polished the metal, dried and - dusted the cushions, the crisp, cool voice of Annot Hardinge rang in his - ears. He divined something of her isolated existence, her devotion to the - absorbed, kindly man who was her father, and speculated upon her matured - youth. She recalled his sister Ellie, for whose inflexible integrity he - cherished a deep-seated admiration; but both left him cold before the - poignant tenderness of Eliza... Eliza, the unforgettable, who loved him. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0036" id="link2H_4_0036"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXXVI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>FTER an - unsubstantial dinner of grilled sweetbreads and mushrooms, and a frozen - pudding, he continued his interrupted letter: “But there isn't any use in - my trying to write my love in words; it won't go into words, even inside - of me I can't explain it—it seems as if instead of its being a part - of me that I am a part of it, of something too big for me to see the end - of.” Then he became practicable, and wrote optimistically of the things - that were soon to be. - </p> - <p> - There was a letter box at the upper corner of the street, and, passing the - porch, he saw the biologist sunk in an attitude of profound dejection. His - daughter sat with bare arms and neck at his side; her hair was bound in a - gleaming mass about her ears, and one hand was laid upon the man's - shoulder, while she patted Thomas Huxley with the other. The dog rose, - growling belligerently at the unfamiliar figure, but sank again beneath a - sharp command. When he returned Rufus Hardinge greeted him, and turned to - his daughter with a murmured suggestion, but she shook her head in - decisive negation. A light shone palely in the long windows at their back. - The sun, at its skyey, evening toilette, seemed, in the rosy glow of - westering candles, to scatter a cloud of powdered gold over the worn and - huddled shoulders of the world. - </p> - <p> - Suddenly, seemingly in reconsideration of her decision, she called, “Oh, - Anthony!” and he retraced his steps to the porch. “My father suggests that - you sit here,” she told him distantly. “He says that you are very young, - and that solitude is not good for you.” - </p> - <p> - “Annot,” the older man protested humorously, “you have mangled my intent - beyond any recognition.” With an unstudied, friendly gesture he tended - Anthony his cigar case. A deep preoccupation enveloped him; he sat with - loose hands and unseeing eyes. In the deepening twilight his countenance - was grey. Anthony had taken a position upon the edge of the porch, his - feet in the fragrant grass, out of which fireflies rose glimmering, - mounting higher and higher, until, finally, they disappeared into the - night above, in the pale birth of the stars. - </p> - <p> - A deep silence enfolded them until in an unexpected, low voice, Rufus - Hardinge repeated mechanically aloud lines called, evidently, out of a - memory of long ago: - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - ''Within thy beams, Oh, Sun! or who could find, - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - While fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed, - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - That too,” he paused, groping in his memory for - </p> - <p class="indent30"> - the words: - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - “That too such countless orbs thou madst us - </p> - <p class="indent30"> - blind.” - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p> - The girl rose, and drew his head into her warm, young arms. “Don't, - father,” she cried, in a sudden, throbbing apprehension; “please... - please. You have the clearest, most beautiful eyes in the world. Think of - all they have seen and understood—” He patted her absently. Anthony - moved silently away. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0037" id="link2H_4_0037"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXXVII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>OT long after, at - breakfast, the young and disdainful maid conveyed to Anthony a request to - proceed, when he had finished, to the conservatory. There he discovered - Annot Har-dinge, with her sleeves rolled up above her vigorous elbows, - dusting with a fine, brown powder the rows of monotonous, potted plants. - She directed him to follow her with a slender-nosed watering pot. He - wondered silently at the featureless display of what he found to be - ordinary bean plants, some of the dwarf variety, others drawn up against - the wall. They bore in exact, minute inscriptions, strange names and - titles, cryptic numbers; some, he saw, were labelled “Dominants,” others, - “Recessives.” - </p> - <p> - “The 'cupids' are doing wretchedly, poor dears!” she exclaimed before a - row of dwarf sweet peas. “This is my father's laboratory,” she told him - briefly. - </p> - <p> - “I thought he had something to do with Darwin and the missing link.” - </p> - <p> - She gazed at him pityingly from the heights of a vast superiority. “Darwin - did some valuable preliminary work,” she instructed him; “although Wallace - really guessed it all first. Now Mendel, Bateson, are the important names. - They were busy with the beginnings; and, among the beginnings, plants are - the most suggestive.” She indicated a small row of budding sweet peas. - “Perhaps, in those flowers, the whole secret of the universe will be - found; perhaps the mystery of our souls will be explained; isn't it - thrilling! The secret of inheritance may sleep in those buds—if they - are white it will prove... oh, a thousand things, and among them that - father is the most wonderful scientist alive; it will explain heredity and - control it, make a new kind of world possible, a world without the most - terrible diseases. What church, what saint, what god, has really done - that?” she demanded. “Stupid priggish figures bending out of their - gold-plated heavens!” - </p> - <p> - Her enthusiasm communicated a thrill to him as he regarded the still, - withdrawn mystery of the plants. For the first time he thought of them as - alive, as he was alive; he imagined them returning his gaze, his interest, - exchanging—critically, in their imperceptible, chaste tongue—their - unimpassioned opinions of him. It was a disturbing possibility that the - secret of his future, of life and death, might lurk in the flowers to - unfold on those slender stems. He was oppressed by a feeling of a world - crowded with invisible, living forms, of fields filled with billions of - grassy inhabitants, of seas, mountains, made up of interlocking and - contending lives; every breath, he felt, absorbed races of varied - individuals. He thought, too, of people as plants, as roses—Oh, - Eliza!—as nettles, rank weeds, crimson lilies. And, vaguely, this - hurt him; something valuable, something sustaining, vanished from his - unformulated, instinctive conception of life; the world of men, their - aims, their courage, ideals, lost their peculiar beauty, their importance; - the past, rising from the mold through those green tubes and vanishing - into a future of dissolving gases, shrunk, stripped of its glamor, to an - affair of little moment. - </p> - <p> - Outside, as he descended the lawn, the sun had the artificial glitter of - an incandescent light; the trees waved their arms at him threateningly. - Then, with a shrug of his normal young shoulders, he relinquished the - entire conception; he forgot it. He recklessly permeated a universe of - airy atoms with the smoke of a Dulcina. “That's a woolly delusion,” he - pronounced. - </p> - <p> - That evening he burnished the car, and mounted the ladder to his room - late. But the evening following, detained to perform a trivial task, found - him seated upon the porch, enveloped in the fragrant clouds of Habana - leaf. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0038" id="link2H_4_0038"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXXVIII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>NNOT, as now he - mentally termed her, dressed in the inevitable yellow, was swinging a - satin slipper on the point of her foot; her father was, if possible, more - greyly withdrawn than before. - </p> - <p> - “To-night,” the biologist finally addressed his daughter, “your mother has - been dead eighteen years.... She hated science; she said it had destroyed - my heart. Impossible—a purely functionary pump. The illusions of - emotions are cerebro-spinal reflexes, only that. She said that I cared - more for science than—than herself.” He raised his head sharply, “I - was forced to tell her the truth, in common honor: science first.... Tears - are an automatic escapement to protect the vision. But women have no - logic, little understanding; hopelessly romantic, a false quantity—romance, - dangerous. I was away when she died ... Borneo, Aurignacian strata had - been discovered, a distinct parallel with the Maurer jaw. Death is only a - change of chemical activity,” he shot at Anthony in a voice not entirely - steady, “the human entity a passing agglomeration, kinetic.... Love is a - mechanical principle, categorically imperative,” his voice sank, became - diffuse. “Absolute science, selfless. - </p> - <p> - “People found her beautiful, I didn't know,” he added wistfully; “beauty - is a vague term. The Chapelle skull is beautiful, as I understand it, as I - understand it. In a letter to me,” after a long pause, “she employed the - term 'frozen to death'; she said that I had frozen her to death. Only a - figure, romantic, inexact.” - </p> - <p> - “Stuff!” Annot exclaimed lightly, but her anxious countenance contradicted - the spirit of her tones. “You mustn't stir about in old troubles. - Everything great demands sacrifice; mother didn't quite understand; and I - expect she got lonely, poor dear.” - </p> - <p> - Anthony rose, and made his way somberly toward the stable, but running - feet, his name called in low, urgent tones, arrested his progress. An-not - approached with the trouble deepening in her gaze. “Does he seem entirely - himself to you?” she asked, but, before he could answer,—“of course, - you don't know him well enough. You see, he is working too much again, an - average of sixteen hours for the ten days past. I haven't said anything - because the most difficult part of his work is at an end. If his last - conclusions are right he will have only to scribble the reports, put a - book together.... I can always tell when he is overworked by the cobwebs—he - tries to brush them off his face,” she explained. “They don't exist, of - course. - </p> - <p> - “But I really wanted to say this,” she lifted her candid gaze to his face. - “Could you be a little more about the house? we might need you; we'll use - the car very little for a while.” The apprehension was clearly visible - now. “Would you mind helping him with his clothes; he gets them mixed? It - isn't regular, I know,” she told him; “but we have a great deal of money; - anything you required—” - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps I'd be better at that,” he suggested. “You know, you said I was a - rotten chauffeur.” - </p> - <p> - For a moment, appealing, she had seemed nearer to him, but now she - retreated spiritually, slipped behind her cold indifference. “There will - be nothing more to-night; if he grows worse you will have to move into the - house.” She left him abruptly, gathering her filmy skirt from the grass, - an elusive shape with gleams on her hair, her arms and neck white for an - instant and then veiled in the scarf of night. - </p> - <p> - In his room he could still hear, mingled with the faint, muffled squeaking - of the mice in the empty hayloft, Hardinge's voice, jerky, laborious, “a - categorical imperative... categorical imperative.” He wondered what that - meant applied to love? An errant air brought him the unmistakable odor of - white lilacs, an ineffable impression of Eliza. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0039" id="link2H_4_0039"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXXIX - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE day following - found him installed in the house, in a small chamber formed where the - tower fronted upon the third story. At luncheon a place was laid for him - at the table with Annot and her father, where the attentions of the - disdainful and shapely maid positively quivered with suppressed scorn. - Anthony had found in his room fifty dollars in an envelope, upon which - Annot had scribbled that he might need a few things; and, at liberty in - the afternoon, he boarded an electric car for the city, where he invested - in fresh and shining pumps, and other necessities. - </p> - <p> - The house was dark when he inserted his newly acquired latchkey in the - front door and made his way softly aloft. But a thread of light was - shining under the door of Rufus Har-dinge's study. Later—he had just - turned out the light—a short knock fell upon his door. - </p> - <p> - “Me,” Annot answered his instant query. “I am going to ask you to dress - and come to my father. It may be unnecessary; he may go quietly to bed; - but go he must.” - </p> - <p> - He found her in a dressing gown that fell in heavy, straight folds of - saffron satin, her feet thrust in quaint Turkish slippers with curled - points; while over her shoulders slipped and slid the coppery rope of her - hair. She led the way to the study, which she entered without knocking. - Anthony saw the biologist bent over pages spread in the concentrated light - of a green shaded globe. In a glass case against the wall some moldy bones - were mounted and labelled; fragmentary and sinister-appearing casts - gleamed whitely from a stand; and, everywhere, was the orderly confusion - of books and papers that had distinguished the library. - </p> - <p> - “Come, Rufus,” Annot laid her hand upon his shoulder; “it's bedtime for - all scientists. You promised me you would be in by eleven.” - </p> - <p> - He gazed at her with the hasty regard directed at an ill-timed, casual - stranger. “Yes, yes,” he ejaculated impatiently, “get to bed. I'll - follow... some crania tracings, prognathic angles—” - </p> - <p> - “To-morrow will do for those,” she insisted gently, “you are making - yourself ill again—” - </p> - <p> - “Nonsense,” he interrupted, “never felt better in my life, never—” - his voice dwindled abruptly to silence, as though a door had been closed - on him; his lips twisted impotently; beads of sweat stood out upon his - white, strained forehead. His whole body was rigid in an endeavor to - regain his utterance. He rose, and would have fallen, if Annot's arm had - not slipped about his shoulders. Anthony hurried forward, and, supporting - him on either side, they assisted him into the sleeping chamber beyond. - There, at full length on a couch, a sudden, marble-like immobility fell - upon his features, his mouth slightly open, his hands clenched. Annot - busied herself swiftly, while Anthony descended into the dark, still house - in search of ice. When he returned, Hardinge was pronouncing disconnected - words, terms. “Eoliths,” he said, “snow line... one hundred and thirty - millimeters.” He was silent for a moment, then, struggling into a sitting - posture, “Annot!” he cried sharply, “I've frightened you again. Only a - touch of... aphasia; unfortunately not new, my dear, but not serious.” - </p> - <p> - Later, when Anthony had assisted him in the removal of his clothes, and - lowered the light, he found Annot in the study assembling the papers - scattered on the table. “I am glad that you are here,” she said simply. - “Soon he can have a complete rest.” She sank into a chair; he had had no - idea that she could appear so lovely: her widely-opened eyes held flecks - of gold; beneath the statuesque fall of the dressing gown her bare ankles - were milky-white. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0040" id="link2H_4_0040"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XL - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E felt strangely - at ease in a setting so easily strange. There was a palpable flavor of - unreality in the moment, of detachment from the commonplace round of - existence; it was without connection, without responsibility to yesterday - or to to-morrow; he was isolated with the informal vision of Annot in an - hour which seemed neither day nor night. He felt—inarticulately—divorced - from his customary daily personality; and, with no particular need for - speech, lit a cigarette, and blew clouds of smoke at the ceiling. It was - his companion who interrupted this mood. - </p> - <p> - “The life that people think so tremendously important,” she observed, “the - things one does, are hardly more real than a suit of clothes, with - religion for a nice, prim white collar, gloves for morals, and a hidden - red silk handkerchief for a rare revolt. And all the time, politely - ignored, decently covered, our bodies are underneath. Now and then some - one slips out of his covering, and stands bare before his shocked and - protesting friends, but they soon hurry something about him, a - conventional shawl, a moral sheet. Do you happen to remember a wonderful - caricature of Louis XIV—simply a wig, a silk suit, buckled shoes and - a staff?” - </p> - <p> - The mordant humor of that drawing penetrated Anthony's understanding: he - saw rooms, streets, a world full of gesticulating suits, dresses, nodding - hats, bonnets; he saw the unsubstantial concourse haughtily erect, - condescending, cunningly deceptive, veiling in a thousand subterfuges - their essential emptiness. The thought evaporated in laughter at the - obvious humor of such a spectacle; its social significance missed him - totally, happily. - </p> - <p> - “What an unthinking person you are,” she told him; “you just—live. - It's rather remarkable—one of Bacchus' company caught in the modern - streets. It is all so different now,” she added plaintively; “men get - drunk in saloons or at dinner, and the purple stain of the grape centers - in their noses. I tried myself,” she confessed, “in Geneva. I was with a - specialist who had father. The café balcony overhung the lake; it was at - night, and the villages looked like clusters of fireflies about a black - mirror; and you simply never saw so many stars. We were looking for a - lyric sensation, but it was the most awful fizzle; he insisted on - describing an operation with all the grey and gory details complete, and I - fell fast asleep.” - </p> - <p> - The outcome of her experiment tallied exactly with that of his own more - involuntary efforts in that field. It established in his mind a singularly - direct sympathy with her; the uneasy element which her attitude had called - up in him disappeared entirely, its place taken by a comfortable sense of - freedom, a total lack of <i>rot</i>. - </p> - <p> - She rose, vanishing into her father's room, then, coming to the door, - nodded shortly, and left for the night. - </p> - <p> - He found on the bureau in his tower room what remained of the fifty - dollars—it had been reduced to less than eight. Suddenly he - remembered his purpose there, his supreme need of money, the imperative - westward call.... He bitterly cursed his lax character as he recalled the - cigars he had purchased, the silk shirt too, and an unnecessary tie. A - deep gloom settled upon his spirit. He heard in retrospect his father's - clear, high voice—“shiftless, no sense of responsibility.” He sat - miserably on the edge of the bed in the dark, while the petty, unbroken - procession of past failures wheeled through his brain. Then the shining - vision of Eliza, compassionate, tender, folded him in peace; one by one he - would subdue those rebellious elements in himself, of fate, that held them - apart. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0041" id="link2H_4_0041"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XLI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>T a solitary - breakfast the incident of the preceding night seemed fantastic, unreal; he - retained the broken, vivid memory of the scene, the thrill of vague words, - that lingers disturbingly into the waking world from a dream. And, when he - saw Annot later, there was no trace of a consequent informality in her - manner; she was distant, hedged about by an evident concern for her - father. “I have sent for Professor Jamison.” She addressed Anthony with - blank eyes. “Please be within call in case—” - </p> - <p> - He saw the neurologist as the latter circled the plaster cupids to the - entrance of the house—a heavy man with a broad, smooth face, - thinlipped like a priest, with staring yellow gloves. Anthony remained in - the lower hall, but no demand for his assistance sounded from above. When - the specialist descended, he flashed a glance, as bitingly swift and cold - as glacial water, over Anthony, then nodded in the direction of the - garden. - </p> - <p> - “Miss Annot tells me that you are sleeping in the house,” he said when - they were outside; “on the chance that she might need you for her - father... she will. He is at the point of mental dissolution.” An - involuntary repulsion possessed Anthony at the detached manner in which - the other pronounced these hopeless words. “Nothing may be done; that is—it - is not desirable that anything should. I am telling you this so that you - can act intelligently. Rufus Hardinge knows it; there was a consultation - at Geneva, which he approved. - </p> - <p> - “He is,” he continued with a warmer, more personal note, “a very - distinguished biologist; his investigations, his conclusions, have been - invaluable.” He glanced at an incongruous, minute, jewelled watch on his - wrist, and continued more quickly. “Ten years ago he should have stopped - all work, vegetated—he was burning up rapidly; merely a reduced - amount of labor would have accomplished little for his health or subject. - And we couldn't spare his labor, no mere prolongation of life would have - justified that loss of knowledge, progress. It was his position; he - insisted upon it and we concurred... he chose... insanity. - </p> - <p> - “Miss Annot is not aware of this; he must have every moment possible; - every note is priceless. The end will come—now, at any time.” He had - reached the small, canary yellow Dreux landaulet waiting for him, and - stepped into it with a sharp nod. “You may expect violence,” he added, as - the car gathered momentum. - </p> - <p> - But that evening in the dim quietude of the piazza the biologist seemed to - have recovered completely his mental poise. He spoke in a buoyant vein of - the great men he had known, celebrated names in the world of the arts, in - politics and science. He recalled Braisted, the astronomer, searching - relaxation in the Boulevard school of French fictionists. “I told him,” he - chuckled at the mild, scholastic humor, “that he had been peeping too long - at Venus.” - </p> - <p> - Annot was steeped in an inscrutable silence. - </p> - <p> - For the first time, Anthony was actually aware of her features: she had a - broad, low brow swept by the coppery hair loosely tied at the back; her - eyes resembled her father's, they were amber-colored, and singularly - candid in their interest in all that passed before them; while her nose - tilted up slightly above a mouth frankly large. It was the face of a boy, - he decided, but felt instantly that he had fallen far short of the fact—the - allurement, the perfection, of her youthful maturity hung overwhelmingly - about her the challenge of sex. - </p> - <p> - Rather, she was all girl, he recognized, but of a new variety. A vision of - <i>the nice</i> girls he had known dominated his vision, flooded his mind, - all smiling with veiled eyes, clothed in a thousand reserves, fluttering - graces, innocent wiles, with their gaze firmly set toward the shining, - desirable goal of matrimony. Eliza was not like that, it was true; but - she, from the withdrawn, impersonal height of her cool perfection, was a - law to herself. There was a new freedom in Annot's acceptance of life, he - realized vaguely, as different as possible from mere license; no one, he - was certain, would presume with Annot Hardinge: her very frankness offered - infinitely less incentive to unlawful thoughts than the conscious modesty - of the others. - </p> - <p> - When the biologist left the piazza Annot turned with a glad gesture to her - companion. “He hasn't seemed so well—not for years; his little, gay - fun again... it's too good to be true. I should like to celebrate—something - entirely irresponsible. I have worried, oh, dreadfully.” The night was - still, moonless; the stars burned like opals in the intense purple deeps - of the sky. The air, freighted with the rich fruitage of full summer, hung - close and heavy. “It's hot as a blotter,” Annot declared. “I think, yes—I'm - sure, I should like to go out in the car.” She rose. “Will you bring it - around, please?” - </p> - <p> - He drove slowly over the deserted lane by the lawn, and found her, - enveloped in the lustrous folds of a black satin wrap, at the front gate. - Over her hair she had tied a veil drawn about her brow in a webby filament - of flowers “I think I'll sit in front,” she decided; “perhaps I'll drive.” - He waited, at the steering wheel, for directions. - </p> - <p> - “Go west, young man,” she told him, and would say nothing more. A distant - bell thinly struck eleven jarring notes as they moved into the flickering - gloom of empty streets with the orange blur of lamps floating unsteadily - on dim boughs above, and the more brilliant, crackling radiance of the arc - lights at the crossings. - </p> - <p> - The headlights of the automobile cut like white knives through the - obscurity of hedged ways; at sudden turnings they plunged into gardens, - flinging sharply on the shadowy night vivid glimpses of incredible - greenery, unearthly flowers, wafers of white wall. They drove for a long, - silent period, with increasing momentum as the way became more open and - direct; now they seemed scarcely to touch the uncertain surface below, but - to be wheeling through sheer space, flashing their stabbing incandescence - into the empty envelopment beyond the worlds. - </p> - <p> - They passed with a muffled din through the single street of a sleeping - village, leaving behind a confusion of echoes and the startled barking of - a dog. Anthony could see Annot's profile, pale and clear, against the - flying and formless countryside; the lace about her hair fluttered - ceaselessly; and her wrap bellowed and clung about her shoulders, about - her gloveless hands folded upon her slim knees. She was splendidly, - regally scornful upon the wings of their reckless flight; the throttle was - wide open; they swung from side to side, hung on a single wheel, lunged - bodily into the air. In the mad ecstasy of speed she rose; but Anthony, - clutching her arms, pulled her sharply into the seat. Then, decisively, he - shut off the power, the world ceased to race behind them, the smooth - clamor of the engine sank to a low vibratone. - </p> - <p> - “You did that wonderfully,” she told him with glowing cheeks, shining - eyes; “it was marvellous. A moment like that is worth a life-time on - foot... laughing at death, at everything that is safe, admirable, moral... - a moment of the freedom of soulless things, savage and unaccountable to - God or society.” - </p> - <p> - The illuminated face of the clock before him indicated a few minutes past - one, and, tentatively, he repeated the time. “How stupid of you,” she - protested; “silly, little footrule of the hours, the conventional measure - of the commonplace. For punishment—on and on. Like Columbus' men you - are afraid of falling over the edge of—propriety.” She turned to him - with solemn eyes. “I assure you there is no edge, no bump or brimstone, no - place where good stops and tumbles into bad; it's all continuous—” - </p> - <p> - He lost the thread of her mocking discourse, and glanced swiftly at her, - his brow wrinkled, the shadow of a smile upon his lips. “Heavens! but you - are good-looking,” she acknowledged, her countenance studiously critical, - impersonal. After that silence once more fell upon them; the machine sang - through the dark, lifting over ridges, dropping down declines. - </p> - <p> - Anthony had long since lost all sense of their position. The cyanite - depths of the sky turned grey, cold; there was a feeling in the air of - settling dew; a dank mist filled the hollows; the color seemed suddenly to - have faded from the world. He felt unaccountably weary, inexpressibly - depressed; he could almost taste the vapidity of further existence. Annoys - hard, bright words echoed in his brain; the flame of his unthinking - idealism sank in the thin atmosphere of their logic. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0042" id="link2H_4_0042"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XLII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>HE had settled low - in the seat, her mouth and chin hidden in the folds of the satin wrap; her - face seemed as chill as marble, her youth cruel, disdainful. But her - undeniable courage commanded his admiration, the unwavering gaze of her - eyes into the dark. He wondered if, back of her crisp defenses, she were - happy. He knew from observation that she led an almost isolated - existence... she had gathered about her no circle of her own age, she - indulged in none of the rapturous confidences, friendships, so sustaining - to other girls. The peculiar necessities of her father had accomplished - this. Yet he was aware that she cherished a general contempt for youth at - large, for a majority of the grown, for that matter. Contempt colored her - attitude to a large extent: that and happiness did not seem an orderly - pair. - </p> - <p> - He felt, rather than saw, the influence of the dawn behind him; it was as - though the grey air grew more transparent. Annot twisted about. “Oh! turn, - turn!” she cried; “the day! we are driving away from it.” A sudden - intoxicating freshness streamed like a sparkling birdsong over the world, - and Anthony's dejection vanished with the gloom now at their backs. - Delicate lavender shadows grew visible upon the grass, the color shifted - tremulously, like the shot hues of changeable silks, until the sun poured - its ore into the verdant crucible of the countryside. - </p> - <p> - “I am most frightfully hungry,” Annot admitted with that entire frankness - which he found so refreshing. “I wonder—” On either hand fields, far - farmhouses, reached unbroken to the horizon; before them the road rose - between banks of soft, brown loam, apparently into the sky. But, beyond - the rise, they came upon a roadside store, its silvery boards plastered - with the garish advertisements of tobaccos, and a rickety porch, now - undergoing a vigorous sweeping at the hands of an old man with insecure - legs, upon whose faded personage was stamped unmistakably the initials “G. - A. R.” - </p> - <p> - Anthony brought the car to a halt, and returned his brisk and curious - salutation. “Shall I bring out some crackers?” he asked from the road. But - she elected to follow him into the store. The interior presented the usual - confusion of gleaming tin and blue overalls, monumental cheeses and cards - of buttons, a miscellany of ludicrously varied merchandise. Annot found a - seat upon a splintered church pew, now utilized as a secular resting - place, while Anthony foraged through the shelves. He returned with the - crackers, and a gold lump of dates, upon which they breakfasted hugely. - “D'y like some milk?” the aged attendant inquired, and forthwith dipped it - out of a deep, cool and ringing can. - </p> - <p> - Afterward they sat upon the step and smoked matutinal cigarettes. The day - gathered in a shimmering haze above the vivid com, the emerald of the - shorn fields; the birds had already subsided from the heat among the - leaves. Anthony saw that the lamps of the car were still alight, a feeble - yellow flicker, and turned them out. He tested the engine; and, finding it - still running, turned with an unspoken query to Annot. She rose slowly. - </p> - <p> - The wrap slipped from her bare shoulders and her dinner gown with its high - sulphur girdle, the scrap of black lace about her hair, presented a - strange, brilliantly artificial picture against the blistered, gaunt - boards of the store, with, at its back, the open sunny space of pasture, - wood and sky. - </p> - <p> - “It's barely twenty miles back,” she told him, once more settled at his - side. The old man regarded them from under one gnarled palm, the other - tightly clasped about the broom handle; his jaw was dropped; incredulity, - senile surprise, claimed him for their own. - </p> - <p> - With Annot, Anthony reflected, he was everlastingly getting into new - situations; she seemed to lift him out of the ordinary course of events - into a perverse world of her own, a front-backward land where the - unexpected, without rule or obligation, continually happened; and, what - was strangest of all, without any of the dark consequences which he had - been taught must inevitably follow such departures. He recalled the - incredulous smiles, the knowing insinuations, that would have greeted the - exact recounting of the past night at Doctor Allhop's drugstore. He would - himself, in the past, have regarded such a tale as a flimsy fabrication. - And suddenly he perceived dimly, in a mind unused to such abstractions, - the veil of ugliness, of degradation, that hung so blackly about the - thoughts of men. He gazed with a new sympathy and comprehension at the - scornful line of Annot's vivid young lips; something of her superiority, - her contempt, was communicated to him. - </p> - <p> - She became aware of his searching gaze, and smiled in an intimate, - friendly fashion at him. “You are the most comfortable person alive,” she - told him. There was nothing critical in her tones now. “I said that you - were not a good chauffeur, and—” the surroundings grew familiar, - they had nearly reached their destination, and an impalpable reserve fell - upon her, but she continued to smile at him, “and... you are not.” That - was the last word she addressed to him that day. - </p> - <p> - As, later, he sluiced the automobile with water, he recalled the strange - intimacy of the night, her warm and sympathetic voice; once she had - steadied herself with a clinging hand upon his shoulder. These new - attributes of the person who, shortly, passed him silently and with cold - eyes, stirred his imagination; they were potent, rare, unsettling. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0043" id="link2H_4_0043"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XLIII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>otwithstanding, in - the days which followed there was a perceptible change in Annot's attitude - toward him: she became, as it were, conscious of his actuality. One - afternoon she read aloud to him a richly-toned, gloomy tale of Africa. - They were sitting by a long window, open, but screened from the summer - heat by stiff, darkly-drooping green folds, where they could hear the drip - of the fountain in its basin, a cool punctuation on the sultry page of the - afternoon. Annot proceeded rapidly in an even, low voice; she was dressed - in filmy lavender, with little buttons of golden velvet, an intricately - carved gold buckle at her waist. - </p> - <p> - Anthony listened as closely as possible, the faint smile which seldom left - him hovering over his lips. The bald action of the narrative—a - running fight with ambushed savages from a little tin pot of a steamer, a - mysterious affair in the darkness with a grim skeleton of a fellow, stakes - which bore a gory fruitage of human heads, held him; but the rest... - words, words. His attention wavered, fell upon minute, material objects; - Annot's voice grew remote, returned, was lost among his juggling thoughts. - </p> - <p> - “Isn't it splendid!” she exclaimed, at last closing the volume; “the most - beautiful story of our time—” She stopped abruptly, and cast a - penetrating glance at him. “I don't believe you even listened,” she - declared. “In your heart you prefer, 'Tortured by the Tartars.'” - </p> - <p> - His smile broadened, including his eyes. - </p> - <p> - “You are impossible! No,” she veered suddenly, “you're not; if you cared - for this you wouldn't be... you. That's the most important thing in the - world. Besides, I wouldn't like you; everybody reads now, it's frightfully - common; while you are truly indifferent. Have you noticed, my child, that - books always increase where life runs thin? and you are alive, not a - papier-mâché man painted in the latest shades.” - </p> - <p> - Anthony dwelt on this unexpected angle upon his mental delinquencies. The - approval of Annot Hardinge, so critical, so outspoken, was not without an - answering glow in his being; no one but she might discover his ignorance - to be laudable. - </p> - <p> - She rose, and the book slipped neglected to the floor. “The mirror of my - dressing table is collapsing,” she informed him; “I wonder if you would - look at it.” He followed her above to her room; it was a large, - four-square chamber, its windows brushed by the glossy leaves of an aged - black-heart cherry tree. Her bed was small, with a counterpane of - grotesque lace animals, a table held a scattered collection of costly - trifles, and a closet door stood open upon a shimmering array from deepest - orange to white and pale primrose. An enigmatic lacy garment, and a - surprisingly long pair of black silk stockings, occupied a chair; while - the table was covered with columns of print on long sheets of paper. - “Galleys,” she told him. “I read all father's proof.” - </p> - <p> - He moved the dressing table from the wall, and discovered the bolt which - had held the mirror in place upon the floor. As he screwed it into - position, Annot said: - </p> - <p> - “Don't look around for a minute.” There was a swift whisper of skirts, a - pause, then, “all right.” He straightened up, and found that she had - changed to a white skirt and waist. Fumbling in the closet she produced a - pair of low, brown shoes, and kicking off her slippers, donned the others, - balancing each in turn on the bed. - </p> - <p> - “Let's go—anywhere,” she proposed; “but principally where books are - not and birds are.” At a drugstore they purchased largely of licorice - root, which they consumed sitting upon a fence without the town. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0044" id="link2H_4_0044"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XLIV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> SAID that - instinctively, back in my room,” Annot remarked with a puzzled frown. “It - was beastly, really, to feel the necessity... as though we had something - corrupt to hide. And I feel that you are especially nice—that way. - You see, I am not trying to dispose of myself like the clever maidens at - the balls and bazaars, my legs and shoulders are quite uncalculated. There - is no price on... on my person; I'm not fishing for any nice little - Christian ceremony. No man will have to pay the price of hats at Easter - and furs in the fall, of eternal boredom, for me. All this stuff in the - novels about the sacredness of love and constancy is just—stuff! - Love isn't like that really; it's a natural force, and Nature is always - practical: potato bugs and jimson-weed and men, it is the same law for all - of them—more potato bugs, more men, that's all.” - </p> - <p> - Anthony grasped only the larger implications of this speech, its - opposition to that love which he had felt as a misty sort of glory, as - intangible as the farthest star, as fragrant as a rose in the fingers. - There was an undeniable weight of solid sense in what Annot had said. She - knew a great deal more than himself, more—yes—than Eliza, more - than anybody he had before known; and, in the face of her overwhelmingly - calm and superior knowledge, his vision of love as eternal, changeless, - his ecstatic dreams of Eliza with the dim, magic white lilacs in her arms, - grew uncertain, pale. Love, viewed with Annot's clear eyes, was a - commonplace occurrence, and marriage the merest, material convenience: - there was nothing sacred about it, or in anything—death, birth, or - herself. - </p> - <p> - And was not the biologist, with his rows of labelled plants and bones, his - courageous questioning of the universe, of God Himself, bigger than the - majority of men with their thin covering of cant, the hypocrisy in which - they cloaked their doubts, their crooked politics and business? Rufus - Hardinge's conception of things, Annot's reasoning and patent honesty, - seemed more probable, more convincing, than the accepted romantic, often - insincere, view of living, than the organ-roll and stained glass attitude. - </p> - <p> - In his new rationalism he eyed the world with gloomy prescience; he had - within him the somber sense of slain illusions; all this, he felt, was - proper to increasing years and experience; yet, between them, they emptied - the notable bag of licorice. - </p> - <p> - Annot rested a firm palm upon his shoulder and sprang to the ground, and - they walked directly and silently back. “It's a mistake to discuss - things,” Annot discovered to him from the door of her room, “they should - be lived; thus Zarathustrina.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0045" id="link2H_4_0045"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XLV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ATER they were - driven from the porch by a heavy and sudden shower, a dark flood torn in - white streamers and pennants by wind gusts, and entered through a long - window a formal chamber seldom occupied. A thick, white carpet bore a - scattered design in pink and china blue; oil paintings of the Dutch - school, as smooth as ice, hung in massive gold frames; a Louis XVI clock, - intricately carved and gilded, rested upon a stand enamelled in black and - vermilion, inlaid with pagodas and fantastic mandarins in ebony and - mother-of-pearl and camphor wood. At intervals petulant and sweet chimes - rang from the clock: trailing, silvery bubbles of sound that burst in - plaintive ripples. - </p> - <p> - Rufus Hardinge sat with bowed head, his lips moving noiselessly. Annot - occupied a chair with sweeping, yellow lines, that somehow suggested to - Anthony a swan. “Father has had a tiresome letter from Doctor Grundlowe at - Bonn,” she informed the younger man. - </p> - <p> - “He disagrees with me absolutely,” Hardinge declared. “But Caprera at - Padova disagrees with him; and Markley, at Glasgow, contravenes us all.” - </p> - <p> - “It's about a tooth,” Annot explained. - </p> - <p> - “The line to the anterior-posterior diameter is simian,” the biologist - asserted. “The cusps prove nothing, but that forward slope—” he half - rose from his chair, his eyes glittering wrathfully at Anthony, but fell - back trembling... “simian,” he muttered. - </p> - <p> - “A possible difference of millions of years in human history,” Annot added - further. - </p> - <p> - “But can't they agree at all!” Anthony exclaimed; “don't they know - anything? That's an awful long time.” - </p> - <p> - “A hundred million years,” the elder interrupted with a contemptuous - gesture, “nothing, a moment. I place the final glacial two hundred and - seventy million after Jenner, and we have—, agreed to dismiss it; - trifling, adventitious. There are more fundamental discrepancies,” he - admitted. “Unless something definite is discovered, a firm base - established, a single ray of light let into a damnable dark,” he stopped - torn with febrile excitement, then, scarcely audible, continued, “our - lives, our work... will be of less account than the blood of Oadacer, - spilt on barbaric battle-fields.” - </p> - <p> - The rain ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Anthony followed Annot to the - porch. In the black spaces between the swiftly shifting clouds stars shone - brilliantly; there was a faint drip from the trees. “He gets dreadfully - depressed,” she interpreted her parent to him. “They wrangle all the time, - exactly like a lot of schoolgirls. You have no idea of the bitterness, the - jealousy, the contemptuous personalities in the Quarterlies. Really, they - are as fanatical, as narrow, as the churches they ignore; they are quite - like Presbyterian biologists and Catholic.” She sighed lightly. “They - leave little for a youngish person to dream on. You are so superior—to - ignore these centessimo affairs. Will you lean from the edge of your cloud - and smile on a daughter of the earth in last year's dinner gown?” - </p> - <p> - It was, he told himself, nonsense; yet he was moved to make no easy reply, - something in her voice, illusive and wistful, made that impossible. “It's - very good-looking,” he said impotently. - </p> - <p> - “I'm glad you like it,” she told him simply. “M'sieur Paret fitted it - himself while an anteroom full of women hated me. Oh, Anthony!” she - exclaimed, “I'd love to wander with you down that brilliant street and - through the Place Vendôme to the Seine. Better still—there's a - little shop on the Via Cavour in Florence where they sell nothing but - chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, the most heavenly cakes with black hearts - and the most heavenly smell. And you'd like Spain, so fierce and hot - against its dusty hills; and Cortina, green beneath its red mountains. We - could get a porter and rucksacks, and walk—” she broke off, her - hands pressed to her cheeks, a dawning dismay in her eyes. Then she was - gone with a flutter of the skirt so carefully draped by M'sieur Paret. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0046" id="link2H_4_0046"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XLVI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE pictures of far - places had stirred him but slightly: but to travel with Annot, to see - anything with Annot, would offer continual amusement and surprise; her - vigorous candor, her freedom from sham and petty considerations, enveloped - the most commonplace perspectives in an atmosphere of high novelty. The - trace of the vagabond, the detachment of the born dweller in tents, woven - so picturesquely through his being, responded to her careless indifference - to the tyranny of an established and timid scheme of existence. - </p> - <p> - The following day her old, bright hardness had returned: she railed at him - in French, in German, in Italian; she called him the solemn shover, Sir - Anthony Absolute. And, holding Thomas Huxley's head directed toward him, - recommended that resigned quadruped to emulate Anthony's austere and - inflexible virtues. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0047" id="link2H_4_0047"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XLVII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>UT there was no - trace of gayety in the excited and subdued tones in which, later, she - called him into the hothouse. He found her bending tense with emotion over - the row of plants upon whose flowering such incalculable things depended. - “Look!” she cried, taking his hand and drawing him down over the green - shoots, where his cheek brushed her hair, where he felt the warm stir of - her breathing. “Look! they are in full bud, to-morrow they will burst - open.” She straightened up, his hand still held in hers, and a shadow fell - upon her vivid countenance. “If his reasoning is wrong, this experiment... - like all the others, it will kill him. They <i>must</i> be white, it would - be too cruel, too senseless not. I am afraid,” she said simply; “nature is - so terrible, a Juggernaut, crushing everything to dust beneath its - wheeling centuries. I am glad that you are here, Anthony.” She drew closer - to him; her breast swelled in a sharp, tempestuous breath. - </p> - <p> - “I have been lonelier than I—I realized. I am dreadfully worried - about father. They have lied to me; things are worse, I can see that. You - have to dress him like a child; I know how considerate you are; you are - bright, new gold with the clearest ring in the world. - </p> - <p> - “We must get a real chauffeur; you have never been that... in my thoughts. - You know,” she laughed happily, “I said in the beginning that you were a - miserable affair in details of that kind.” - </p> - <p> - A feeling of guilt rose swiftly within him, which, unwilling to - acknowledge, he strove to beat down from his thoughts. But, above his - endeavor, grew the clear conviction that he should immediately tell Annot - his purpose in driving Rufus Hardinge's car. He must not victimize her - generosity, nor take profit from the friendship she offered him so - unreservedly. He was dimly conscious that the revelation of his design - would end the pleasant intimacy growing up between them; the mere mention - of Eliza must destroy their happy relations; girls, even Annot, were like - that. - </p> - <p> - He wondered, suddenly cold, if this spelled disloyalty to Eliza! but he - angrily refuted that whispered insinuation. His love for Eliza was as - un-assailably above all other considerations as she herself shone starlike - over a petty, stumbling humanity. White and withdrawn and fine she - inhabited the skies of his aspirations. He endeavored now to capture her - in his imagination, his memory; and she smiled at him palely, as from a - very great distance. He realized that in the past few days he had not had - that subtle sense of her nearness, he had not been conscious of that - drifting odor of lilacs; and suddenly he felt impoverished, alone. - </p> - <p> - Annot smiled, warm and near. - </p> - <p> - “You are awfully kind,” he temporized; “but hadn't we better let the thing - stand as it is? You see—I want money.” - </p> - <p> - “But you may have that now; whatever you want.” - </p> - <p> - “No. You are so good, it's hard to explain—I want money that I earn; - real money; I couldn't think of taking any other from you.” - </p> - <p> - “Anthony, my good bourgeois! I had thought you quite without that sort of - tin pride. Besides, I am not giving it to you; after all it's father's to - use as he likes.” - </p> - <p> - “But I must give him something for it—” - </p> - <p> - “Do you suppose you are giving us nothing?” she interrupted him warmly; - “you have brought us your clear, beautiful spirits, absolutely without - price. Why, you can make father laugh; have you any idea how rarely he did - that? When you imitate Margaret absolutely I can see her fat, white - stockings. And your marvellous unworldliness—” she shook her head - mournfully. “I fear that this is mere calculation; surely you must know - the value of your innocent charms.” Anthony stood with a lowered head, - floundering mentally among his warring inclinations; when, almost with - relief, he saw that she had noiselessly vanished. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0048" id="link2H_4_0048"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XLVIII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E slept uneasily, - and woke abruptly to a room flooded with sunlight, and an unaccountable - sense of something gone wrong. He dressed hurriedly, and had opened his - door, when he heard his name called from below. It was Annot, he knew, but - her voice was strange, terrified—a helpless cry new to her - accustomed poise. “Anthony! Anthony!” she called from the conservatory. - </p> - <p> - Rufus Hardinge, who, it was evident from his clothes had not been in bed, - was standing rigidly before the row of plants upon whose flowering they - had so intently waited. And, in a rapid glance, Anthony saw that they had - blossomed in delicate, parti-colored petals—some pale lavender, - others deep purple, still others reddish white. Annoys yellow wrap was - thrown carelessly about her nightgown, her feet were bare, and her hair - hung in a tangle about her blanched face. - </p> - <p> - When Anthony entered she clung to his arm, and he saw that she was - trembling violently. For a tense moment they were silent: the sun streamed - over the mathematical plant ranks and lit the white or blue tickets tied - to their stems; a bubbling chorus of birds filled the world of leaves - without. “It's all wrong,” she sobbed. - </p> - <p> - “So!” the biologist finally said with a wry smile; “you see that I have - not solved the riddle of the universe; inheritance in pure line is not - explicated.... A life of labor as void as any prostitute's; not a single - fact, not a supposition warranted, not a foot advanced.” - </p> - <p> - With a sudden and violent movement for which they were entirely unprepared - he swept the row of plants crashing upon the floor; where, in a scattered - heap of brown loam, broken pottery, smeared bloom, their tenuous, pallid - roots quivered in air. “Games with plants and animals and bones for - elderly children; riddles without answer... blind ways.” His expression - grew furtive, cunning. “I have been trifled with,” he declared, “I have - been deliberately misled; but I desire to say that I see through—through - Him: I comprehend His little joke. It's in bad taste... to leave a soul in - the dark, blundering about in the cellar with the table spread above. But - in the end I was not completely bamboozled. He was not quick enough... the - hem of His garment. - </p> - <p> - “Your mother saw Him clear. She was considered beautiful, but beauty's a - vague term. Perhaps if I saw her now it would be clearer to me. But I'll - tell you His little joke,” he lowered his voice confidentially—“it's - all true—that apocalyptical heaven; there's a big book, trumpets, - angels all complete singing Gregorian chants. What a sell!” He laughed, a - gritty, mirthless performance. - </p> - <p> - “Come up to your room, father,” Annot urged; “his arm, Anthony.” Anthony - placed his hand gently upon the biologist's shoulder, but the latter - wrenched himself free. Suddenly with a choked cry and arms swinging like - flails he launched himself upon the orderly plants. Before he could be - stopped row upon row splintered on the floor; he fought, struggled with - them as though they were animate opponents, cursed them in a high, raving - voice. Anthony quickly lifted him, pinning his arms to his sides. Annot - had turned away, her shoulders shaking with sobs. - </p> - <p> - Rufus Hardinge's struggling unexpectedly ceased, his countenance regained - completely its habitual quietude. “I shall begin once more, at the - beginning,” he whispered infinitely wistful. “The little ray of light... - germ of understanding. The scientific problem of the future,” his speech - became labored, thick, “scientific... future. Other avenue of progress: - </p> - <p> - “Gentlemen, the Royal Society, a paper on, on—Tears, gentlemen... - not only automatic,” his voice sank to a mere incomprehensible babble. - Anthony carried him to his bed, while Annot telephoned for the - neurologist. - </p> - <p> - After the specialist had gone Annot came in to where Anthony waited in the - study. Her feet were thrust in the Turkish slippers, her hair twisted into - a hasty knot, but otherwise she had not changed. She came swiftly, with - pale lips and eyes brilliantly shining from dark hollows, to his side. - “His wonderful brain is dead,” she told him. “Professor Jamison thinks - there will be only a few empty years to the end. But actually it's all - over.” In a manner utterly incomprehensible to him she was crying softly - in his arms. - </p> - <p> - He must lead her to a chair, he told himself, release her at once. Yet she - remained with her warm, young body pressed against him, the circle of her - arms about his neck, her tears wet upon his cheek. He stepped back, but - she would have fallen if he had not continued to support her. His brain - whirled under the assault, the surrender, of her dynamic youth. Their - mouths met; were bruised in kissing. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0049" id="link2H_4_0049"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XLIX - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E stood with bowed - shoulders, twisting lips; and, after a momentary pause, she fled from the - room. Cold waves of self-hatred flowed over him—he had taken a - despicable advantage of her grief. The pleasant fabric of the past, - unthinking days, the new materialism with its comfortable freedom from - restraint, crumbled from an old, old skeleton whose moldering lines - spelled the death of all—his heart knew—that was high, - desirable, immaculate. He wondered if, like Rufus Hardinge, his - understanding had come too late. But, in the re-surge of his adoration for - Eliza, infinitely more beautiful and serene from the pit out of which he - sped his vision, he was possessed by the conviction that nothing created - nor void should extinguish the bright flame of his passion, hold them - separate. - </p> - <p> - In the midst of his turmoil he recalled Eliza with relief, with delight, - with tumultuous longing. He soared on the wings of his ecstasy; but - descended abruptly to the practical necessities which confronted him. He - must leave the Hardinges immediately; with a swift touch of the humorous - spirit native to him, he realized that again he would be without money. - Then more seriously he considered his coming interview with Annot. - </p> - <p> - The house was charged with the vague unrest, the strange aspect of - familiar things, wrought by serious illness. Luncheon was disorganized, - Annot was late. She was pale, but, under an obvious concern, she radiated - a suppressed content. She laid a letter before Anthony. “Registered,” she - told him. “I signed.” It was, he saw, from his father, and he slipped it - into his pocket, intent upon the explanation which lay before him. It - would be more difficult even than he had anticipated: Annot spoke of the - near prospect of a Mediterranean trip, if Rufus Hardinge rallied - sufficiently. “He is as contented and gentle as a nice old lady,” she - reported; then, with a subtle expansion of manner, “it will be such fun—I - shall take you by the hand, 'This, my good infant, is one of Virgil's - final resting places....'” - </p> - <p> - “That would be splendid,” he acknowledged, “but I'm afraid that I sha'n't - be able to go. The fact is that—that I had better leave you. I can't - take your money for... for....” - </p> - <p> - She glanced at him swiftly, under the shadow of a frown, then shook her - head at him. “That tiresome money again! It's a strange thing for you to - insist on; material considerations are ordinarily as far as possible from - your thoughts. I forbid you absolutely to mention it again; every time you - do I shall punish you—I shall present you with a humiliating gold - piece in person.” - </p> - <p> - “I should be all kinds of a trimmer to take advantage of your goodness. - No, I must go—” The gay warmth evaporated from her countenance as - abruptly as though it had been congealed in a sudden icy breath; she sat - motionless, upright, enveloping him in the bright resentment of her gaze. - </p> - <p> - “And I must ask you to forgive me for... for this morning,” he stumbled - hastily on. - </p> - <p> - The resentment burned into a clear flame of angry contempt. “'For this - morning!' because I kissed you?” - </p> - <p> - He made a vehement gesture of denial. “Oh, no!” But she would not allow - him to finish. “But I did,” she announced in a hard, determined voice. “It - isn't necessary for you to be polite; I don't care a damn for that - sickening sort of thing. I did, and you are properly and modestly - retreating. I believe that you think I am—'designing,' isn't that - the word? that you might have to marry me. A kiss, I am to realize, is - something sacred. Bah! you make me ill, like almost everything else in - life. - </p> - <p> - “If you think for a minute that it was anything more than the expression - of a passing impulse you are beyond words. And, if it had been more, you—you - violet, I wouldn't marry you; I wouldn't marry any man, ever! ever! ever! - I might have gone to Italy with you, but probably come home with some one - else—will that get into your pretty prejudices?” - </p> - <p> - “If you had gone to Italy with me,” he declared sullenly, “you would never - have come home with anybody else.” - </p> - <p> - “That sort of thing has been dismissed to the smaller rural towns and the - cheap melodramas; it's no longer considered elevated to talk like that, - but only pitiful. You will start next on 'God's noblest creation,' and - purity, and the females of your family. Don't you know, haven't you been - told, that the primitive religious rubbish about marriage has been laughed - out of existence? Did you dream that I wanted to <i>keep</i> you? or that - I would allow you to keep me after the thing had got stale? It makes me - cold all over to be so frightfully misunderstood. Oh, its unthinkable! Fi, - to kiss you! wasn't it loose of me?” - </p> - <p> - Her contemptuous periods stung him in a thousand minute places. “I told - you,” he retorted hotly, “that I wanted to make money; I don't want it - given to me; it's for my wedding.” - </p> - <p> - “Of course, how stupid of me not to have guessed—the lips sacred to - her,” her own trembled ever so slightly, but her scornful attitude, her - direct, bright gaze, were maintained, “A knight errant adventuring for a - village queen with her handkerchief in his sleeve and tempted by the - inevitable Kundry.” - </p> - <p> - He settled himself to weathering this feminine storm; he owed her all the - relief to be found in words. “I wanted the money to go West,” he - particularized further. “There's a position waiting for me—” - </p> - <p> - “It's all very chaste,” she told him, “but terribly commonplace. I think - that I don't care to hear the details.” She addressed herself to what - remained of the luncheon. “Have some more sauce,” she advised coolly, then - rang. “The pudding, Jane,” she directed. - </p> - <p> - “You have been wonderfully kind—” he began. But she halted him - abruptly. “We'll drop all that,” she pronounced, and deliberately lit a - cigarette. - </p> - <p> - A genuine admiration for her possessed Anthony; he recognized that she was - extraordinarily good to look at; he had had no idea that so vigorous a - spirit could have burned behind a becoming dress by Paret. He realized - with a faint regret, eminently masculine, that other men, men of moment, - would find her irresistibly attractive. Already it seemed incredible that - she had ever been familiar, intimate, tender, with him. - </p> - <p> - “You will be wanting to leave,” she said, rising; “—whenever you - like. I have written for a—a chauffeur. I think you should have, - it's twenty-five dollars, isn't it?” - </p> - <p> - “Not twenty-five cents,” he returned. - </p> - <p> - “I shouldn't like to force your delicate sensibilities.” She left the - room. He caught a last glimpse of her firm, young profile; her shining, - coppery hair; her supple, upright carriage. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0050" id="link2H_4_0050"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - L - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>N his room he - assembled the battered clothing in which Rufus Hardinge had discovered - him, preparatory to changing from his present more elaborate garb, but a - sudden realization of the triviality of that course, born of the memory of - Annot's broad disposition, halted him midway. Making a hasty bundle of his - personal belongings he descended from the tower room. Through an open door - he could see the still, white face of the biologist looming from a pillow, - and the trim form of a nurse. - </p> - <p> - Thomas Huxley lay somnolently on the porch, beside Annot's coffee-colored - wicker chair and a yellow paper book which bore a title in French. He - paused on the street, gazing back, and recalled his first view of the - four-square, ugly house in its coat of mustard-colored paint, the grey, - dripping cupids of the fountain, the unknown girl with yellow silk - stockings. Already he seemed to have crossed the gulf which divided it all - from the present: its significance faded, its solidity dissolved, dropped - behind, like a scene viewed from a car window. He turned, obsessed by the - old, familiar impatience to hurry forward, the feeling that all time, all - energy, all plans and thoughts, were vain that did not lead directly to—— - </p> - <p> - A sudden and unaccountable sensation of cold swept over him, a profound - emotion stirring in response to an obscure, a hidden cause. Then, with a - rush, returned the feeling of Eliza's nearness: he <i>heard</i> her, the - little, indefinable noises of her moving; he felt the unmistakable thrill - which she alone brought. There was a vivid sense of her hand hovering - above his shoulder; her fingers <i>must</i> descend, rest warmly.... God! - how did she get here. He whirled about... nothing against the low - stone-wall that bounded a sleepy garden, nothing in the paved perspective - of the sunny street! He stood shaken, half terrified, miserable. He had - never felt her nearness so poignantly; her distant potency had never - before so mocked his hungering nerves. - </p> - <p> - Then, with the cold chilling him like a breath from an icy vault, he heard - her, beyond all question, beyond all doubt: - </p> - <p> - “Anthony!” she called. “Anthony!” From somewhere ahead of him her tones - sounded thin and clear; they seemed to reach him dropping from a window, - lingering, neither grave nor gay, but tenderly secure, upon his hearing. - He broke into a clattering run over the bricks of the unremarkable street, - but soon slowed awkwardly into a walk, jeering at his fancy, his laboring - heart, his mad credulity. And then, drifting across his bewildered senses, - came the illusive, the penetrating, the remembered odor of lilacs, like a - whisper, a promise, a magic caress. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0051" id="link2H_4_0051"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - LI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>T was with a - puzzled frown that Anthony halted in the heart of the city and considered - his present resources, his future, possible plans. He had three dollars - and some small silver left from the Hardinges, and he regarded with - skepticism the profession of chauffeur; he would rather adventure the - heavier work of the garages. As the afternoon was far advanced he decided - to defer his search until the following morning; and he was absorbed - within the gaudy maw of a moving picture theater. - </p> - <p> - Later, he entered an elaborate maze of mirrors, where, apparently, a sheaf - of Susannas unconsciously exhibited their diminishing, anatomical charms - to a procession of elders advancing two by two through a perspective of - sycamores.—At the bar, his glass of beer supported by two fried - oysters, a sandwich and a saucer of salted almonds, he reflected upon the - slough of sterility that had fastened upon his feet: something must be - accomplished, decisive, immediate. - </p> - <p> - He was proceeding toward the entrance when the familiar aspect of a back - brought him to a halt. The back moved, turned, and resolved into the - features of Thomas Addington Meredith. The mutual, surprised recognition - was followed by a greeting of friendly slaps, queries, the necessity for - instant, additional beers, and they found a place at a small, polished - table. - </p> - <p> - He was surprised to discover Tom Meredith the same foxy-faced boy he had - left in Doctor Allhop's drugstore... it seemed to Anthony that an - incalculable time had passed since the breaking of the bottles of perfume; - he felt himself to be infinitely changed, older, and the other his junior - by decades of experience and a vast accumulation of worldly knowledge, - contact with men, women, and events. Tom's raiment did not seem so - princely as it had aforetime; the ruby reputed to be the gift of a married - woman, was obviously meretricious, the gold timepiece merely commonplace. - But Anthony was unaffectedly glad to see him, to discuss homely, familiar - topics, repeat affectionately the names of favorite localities, persons. - </p> - <p> - “I'm in a bonding house here,” Tom explained upon Anthony's query. - “Nothing in Ellerton for <i>me</i>. What are you doing?” - </p> - <p> - “Nothing, until to-morrow, when I think I'll get something in one of the - garages.” He thrust his hands negligently into his pockets, and came in - contact with his father's forgotten letter. He opened it, gazing curiously - at the words: “My dear Son,” when Tom, with an exclamation, bent and - recovered a piece of yellow paper that had fallen from the envelope. “Is - this all you think of these?” he demanded, placing a fifty dollar bill - upon the table. - </p> - <p> - Anthony read the letter with growing incredulous wonder and joy. He looked - up with burning cheeks at his companion. “Remember old Mrs. Bosbyshell?” - he questioned in an eager voice. “I used to carry wood, do odd jobs, for - her: well, she's dead, and left me—what do you think!—father - says about forty-seven thousand dollars. It's there, waiting for me, in - Ellerton.” - </p> - <p> - Suddenly he forgot Thomas Meredith, the glittering saloon, the diminishing - perspective of Susannas—he saw Eliza smiling at him out of the dusk, - with her arms full of white lilacs. With an unsteady pounding of his - heart, a tightening of the throat, he realized that, miraculously, the - happiness which he had imagined so far removed in the uncertain future had - been brought to him now, to the immediate present. He could take a train - at once and go to her. The waiting was over. The immeasurable joy that - flooded him deepened to a great chord of happiness that vibrated highly - through him. He folded the letter gravely, thoughtfully. It was but a few - hours to Ellerton by train, he knew, but he doubted the possibility of a - night connection to that sequestered town. He would go in the morning. - </p> - <p> - “Thomas,” he declared, “I am about to purchase you the best dinner that - champagne can shoot into your debased middle. Oh, no, not here, but in a - real place where you can catch your own fish and shoot a pheasant out of a - painted tree.” - </p> - <p> - Thus pleasantly apostrophized that individual led Anthony to the Della - Robbia room of an elaborate hostelry, where they studied the <i>carte de - jour</i> amid pink tiling and porphyry. There was a rosy flush of shaded - lights over snowy linen in the long, high chamber, the subdued passage of - waiters like silhouettes, low laughter, and a throbbing strain of violins - falling from a balcony above their heads. They pondered nonchalantly the - strange names, elaborate sauces; but were finally launched upon suave - cocktails and clams. Anthony settled back into a glow of well-being, of - the tranquillity that precedes an expected, secure joy. He saluted the - champagne bucket by the table; when, suddenly, the necessity to speak of - Eliza overcame him, he wished to hear her name pronounced by other lips... - perhaps he would tell Tom all; he was the best of fellows.... - </p> - <p> - “Are the Dreens home?” he asked negligently. “Have you seen Eliza Dreen - about—you know with that soft, shiny hair?” - </p> - <p> - Thomas Meredith directed at him a glance of careless surprise. “Why,” he - answered, “I thought you knew; it seemed to me she died before you left. - Anyhow, it was about the same time, it must have been the next week. - Pneumonia. This soup's great, Anthony.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0052" id="link2H_4_0052"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - LII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E joy that had - sung through Anthony shrunk into an intolerable pain like an icicle thrust - into his heart; he swallowed convulsively a spoonful of soup, tasteless, - scalding hot, and put the spoon down with a clatter. He half rose from the - chair, with his arms extended, as if by that means he could ward off the - terrible misfortune that had befallen him. Thomas Meredith, unaware of - Anthony's drawn face, his staring gaze, continued to eat with gusto the - unspeakable liquid, and the waiter uncorked the champagne with a soft - explosion. The wine flowed bubbling into their glasses, and Tom held his - aloft. “To your good luck,” he proclaimed, but set it down untouched at - Anthony's pallor. - </p> - <p> - “What's the matter—sick? It's the beer and cocktail, it always does - it.” - </p> - <p> - “It's not that,” Anthony said very distinctly. - </p> - <p> - His voice sounded to him like that of a third person. He was laboring to - adjust the tumult within him to the fact of Eliza's death; he repeated - half aloud the term “dead” and its whispered syllable seemed to fill the - entire world, the sky, to echo ceaselessly in space. From the stringed - instruments above came the refrain of a popular song; and, subconsciously, - mechanically, he repeated the words aloud; when he heard his own voice he - stopped as though a palm had been clapped upon his mouth. - </p> - <p> - “What is it?” Tom persisted; “don't discompose this historical banquet.” - The waiter replaced the soup with fish, over which he spread a thick, - yellow sauce. “Go on,” Anthony articulated, “go on—” he emptied his - champagne glass at a gulp, and then a second. “Certainly a fresh quart,” - his companion directed the waiter. - </p> - <p> - Eliza was dead! pneumonia. That, he told himself, was why she had not - answered his letter, why, on the steps at Hydrangea House, Mrs. Dreen—hell! - how could he think of such things? Eliza... dead, cold who warm had kissed - him; Eliza, for whom all had been dreamed, planned, undertaken, dead; - Eliza gone from him, gone out of the sun into the damned and horrible - dirt. Tom, explaining him satisfactorily, devoted himself to the - succession of dishes that flowed through the waiter's skillful hands, - dishes that Anthony dimly recognized having ordered—surely years - before. “You're drunk,” Thomas declared. - </p> - <p> - He drank inordinately: gradually a haze enveloped him, separating him from - the world, from his companion, a shadowy shape performing strange antics - at a distance. Sounds, voices, penetrated to his isolation, rent thinly - the veil that held at its center the sharp pain dulled, expanded, into a - leaden, sickening ache. He placed the yellow bank note on a silver platter - that swayed before him, and in return received a crisp pile, which, with - numb fingers, he crowded into a pocket. He would have fallen as he rose - from his chair if Tom had not caught him, leading him stumbling but safely - to the street. - </p> - <p> - “Don't start an ugly drunk,” Thomas Meredith begged. Without a word, - Anthony turned and, with stiff legs, strode into the night. Eliza was - dead; he had had something to give her, a surprise, but it was too late. A - great piece of good fortune had overtaken him, he wanted to tell Eliza, - but... he collided with a pedestrian, and continued at a tangent like a - mechanical toy turned from its course. His companion swung him from under - the wheels of a truck. “Wait,” he panted, “I'm no Marathon runner, it's - hotter'n Egypt.” - </p> - <p> - The perspiration dripped from Anthony's countenance, wet the clenched - palms of his hands. He walked on and on, through streets brilliantly - lighted and streets dark; streets crowded with men in evening clothes, - loafing with cigarettes by illuminated playbills, streets empty, silent - save for the echo of his hurried, shambling footsteps. Eliza was lost, out - there somewhere in the night; he must find her, bring her back: but he - couldn't find her, nor bring her back—she was dead. He stopped to - reconsider dully that idea. A row of surprisingly white marble steps, of - closed doors, blank windows, confronted him. “This is where I retire,” - Thomas Meredith declared. Anthony wondered what the fellow was buzzing - about? why should he wait for him, Anthony Ball, at “McCanns”? - </p> - <p> - He considered with a troubled brow a world empty of Eliza; it wasn't - possible, no such foolish world could exist for a moment. Who had dared to - rob him? In a methodical voice he cursed all the holy, all the august, all - the reverent names he could call to mind. Then again he hurried on, - leaving standing a ridiculous figure who shouted an incomprehensible - sentence. - </p> - <p> - He passed through an unsubstantial city of shadows, of sudden, clangoring - sounds, of the blur of lights swaying in strings above his head, of - unsteady luminous bubbles floating before him through ravines of gloom; - bells rang loud and threatening, throats of brass bellowed. His head began - to throb with a sudden pain, and the pain printed clearly on the bright - suffering of his mind a stooping, dusty figure; leaden eyes, a grey face, - peered into his own; slack lips mumbled the story of a boy dead long ago—Eliza, - Eliza was dead—and of a red necktie, a Sunday suit; a fearful - figure, a fearful story, from the low mutter of which he precipitantly - fled. Other faces crowded his brain—Ellie with her cool, - understanding look, his mother, his father frowning at him in assumed - severity; he saw Mrs. Dreen, palely sweet in a starlit gloom. Then panic - swept over him as he realized that he was unable, in a sudden freak of - memory, to summon into that intimate gallery the countenance of Eliza. It - was as though in disappearing from the corporeal world she had also - vanished from the realm of his thoughts, of his longing. He paused, - driving his nails into his palms, knotting his brow, in an agony of effort - to visualize her. In vain. “I can't remember her,” he told an indistinct - human form before him. “I can't remember her.” - </p> - <p> - A voice answered him, thin and surprisingly bitter. “When you are sober - you will stop trying.” - </p> - <p> - And then he saw her once more, so vivid, so near, that he gave a sobbing - exclamation of relief. “Don't,” he whispered, “not... lose again—” - He forgot for the moment that she was dead, and put out a hand to touch - her. Thin air. Then he recalled. He commenced his direct, aimless course, - but a staggering weariness overcame him, the toylike progress grew slower, - there were interruptions, convulsive starts. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0053" id="link2H_4_0053"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - LIII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>T the same time - the haze lightened about him: he saw clearly his surroundings, the black, - glittering windows of stores, the gleaming rails which bound the stone - street. His hat was gone and he had long before lost the bundle that - contained his linen. But the loss was of small moment now—he had - money, a pocketful of it, and forty-seven thousand dollars waiting in - Ellerton: his father was a scrupulous, truthful and exact man. - </p> - <p> - Eliza and he would have been immediately married, gone to a little green - village, under a red mountain; Eliza would have worn the most beautiful - dresses made by a parrot; but that, he recognized shrewdly, was an idiotic - fancy—birds didn't make dresses. And now she was dead. - </p> - <p> - He entered a place of multitudinous mirrors reflecting a woman's - flickering limbs, sly and bearded masculine faces, that somehow were - vaguely familiar. - </p> - <p> - “Champagne!” he cried, against the bar. - </p> - <p> - “Your champagne'll come across in a schooner.” - </p> - <p> - But, impatiently, he shoved a handful of money into the zinc gutter. - “Champagne!” he reiterated thickly. The barkeeper deduced four dollars and - returned the balance. “Sink it,” he advised, “or you'll get it lifted on - you.” - </p> - <p> - With the wine, the mist deepened once more about him; the ache—was - it in his head or his heart?—grew duller. He had poured out a third - glass when a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and whirling suspiciously, - he saw a uniform cap, a man's gaunt face and burning eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Brother,” the latter said, “brother, shall we leave this reeking sink, - and go out together into God's night?” - </p> - <p> - Blinking, Anthony recognized the livery, the accents, of the Salvation - Army. A sullen anger burned within him—this man was a sort of - official connection of God's, who had killed Eliza. He smoothed out his - face cunningly, moved obediently toward the other, and struck him - viciously across the face. Pandemonium rose instantly about him, an - incredible number of men appeared shouting, gesticulating, and formed in a - ring of blurred, grinning faces. The jaw of the Salvation Army man was - bright with blood, dark drops fell on his threadbare coat. His hand closed - again on Anthony's shoulder. - </p> - <p> - “Strive, brother,” he cried. “The Mansion door is open.” - </p> - <p> - Anthony regarded him with insolent disdain. “Ought to be exposed,” he - articulated, “whole thing... humbug. Isn't any such—such... Eliza's - dead, ain't she?” - </p> - <p> - A ripple of merriment ran about the circle of loose, stained lips; the - curious, ribald eyes glittered with cold mirth; the circle flattened with - the pressure of those without, impatient for a better view. Anthony - surveyed them with impotent fury, loathing, and they met his passionate - anger with faces as stony, as inhuman, as cruel, carved masks. He heard <i>her</i> - name, the name of the gracious and beautiful vision of his adoration, - repeated in hoarse, in maculate, in gibing tones. - </p> - <p> - “She's dead,” he repeated sharply, as though that fact should impose - silence on them; “you filthy curs!” But their approbation of the spectacle - became only the more marked. - </p> - <p> - The Salvation Army man fastened his hectic gaze upon Anthony; he was, it - was evident, unaware of the blood drying upon his face, of the throng - about them. “There is no death,” he proclaimed. “There is no death!” - </p> - <p> - “But she <i>is</i> dead,” Anthony insisted; “pneumonia... with green eyes - and foggy hands.” They began an insane argument: Eliza was gone, Anthony - reiterated, the other could not deny that she was lost to life, to the - sun. He recalled statements of Rufus Hardinge's, crisp iconoclasms of - Annot's, and fitted them into the patchwork of his labored speech. Texts - were flung aloft like flags by the other; ringing sentences in the - incomparable English of King James echoed about the walls, the bottles of - the saloon and beat upon the throng, the blank hearts, the beery brains, - of the spectators. “Blessed are the pure in heart,” he orated, “for - they... for they...” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0054" id="link2H_4_0054"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - LIV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HAT word—purity, - rang like a gong in Anthony's thoughts: Eliza had emphasized it, - questioning him. The term became inexplicably merged with Eliza into one - shining whole—Eliza, purity; purity, Eliza. A swift impression of - massed, white flowers swept before him, leaving a delicate and trailing - fragrance. He had a vision of purity as something concrete, something - which, like a priceless and fragile vase, he guarded in his hands. It had - been a charge from her, a trust that he must keep unspotted, inviolable, - that she would require—but she was gone, she was dead. - </p> - <p> - “... through the valley of the shadow,” the other cried. - </p> - <p> - She had left him; he stood alone, guarding a meaningless thing, useless as - the money in his pocket. - </p> - <p> - A man with bare, corded arms and an apron, broke roughly through the - circle; and with a hand on Anthony's back, a hand on the back of his - opponent, urged them toward the door. “You'll have to take this outside,” - he pronounced, “you're blocking the bar.” - </p> - <p> - An arm linked within Anthony's, and swung him aside. “Unavoidably detained - by merest 'quaintance,” Thomas Meredith explained with ponderous - exactitude. Unobserved, they found a place at the table they had occupied - earlier in the evening. The latter ordered a fresh bottle, but was - persuaded by Anthony to surrender the check which accompanied it. - </p> - <p> - A sudden hatred for the money that had come too late possessed him: if he - had had the whole forty-seven thousand dollars there he would have torn it - up, trampled upon it, flung it to the noisome corners of the saloon. It - seemed to have become his for the express purpose of mocking at his - sorrow, his loss. His hatred spread to include that purity, that virtue, - which he had conceived of as something material, an actual possession.... - That, at any rate, he might trample under foot, destroy, when and as it - pleased him. Eliza was gone and all that was left was valueless. It had - been, all unconsciously, dedicated to her; and now he desired to cast it - into the mold that held her. - </p> - <p> - He fingered with a new care the sum in his pocket, an admirably - comprehensive plan had occurred to him—he would bury them both, the - money and purity, beneath the same indignity. Tom Meredith, he was - certain, could direct his purpose to its fulfillment. Nor was he mistaken. - The conversation almost immediately swung to the subject of girls, girls - gracious, prodigal of their charms. They would sally forth presently and - “see the town.” Tom loudly asseverated his knowledge of all the inmates of - all the complacent quarters under the gas light. Before a cab was summoned - Anthony stumbled mysteriously to the bar, returning with a square, - paper-wrapped parcel. - </p> - <p> - “Port wine,” he ejaculated, “must have it... for a good time.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0055" id="link2H_4_0055"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - LV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> SEEMINGLY - interminable ride followed, they rattled over rough stones, rolled with a - clacking tire over asphalt. A smell unnamable, fulsome, corrupt, hung in - Anthony's nostrils; the driver objurgated his horse in a desperate - whisper; Tom's head fell from side to side on his breast. The mists surged - about Anthony, veiling, obscuring all but the sullen purpose compressing - his heart, throbbing in his brain. - </p> - <p> - There was a halt, a rocking pavement and unctuous tones. Then a hall, a - room, and the tinny racket of a piano, feminine voices that, at the same - time, were hoarsely sexless, empty, like harsh echoes flung from a rocky - void. A form in red silk took possession of Anthony's hand, sat by his - side; a hot breath, a whisper, flattened against his ear. At times he - could distinguish Tom's accents; he seemed to be arguing masterfully, but - a shrill, voluble stream kept pace with him, silenced him in the end. - </p> - <p> - Anthony strove against great, inimical forces to maintain his sanity of - action, ensure his purpose: he sat with a grim, haggard face as rigid as - wood, as tense as metal. The cloudy darkness swept over him, impenetrable, - appalling; through it he seemed to drop for miles, for years, for - centuries; it lightened, and he found himself clutching the sides of his - chair, shuddering over the space which, he had felt, gaped beneath him. - </p> - <p> - In moments of respite he saw, gliding through the heated glare, gaily-clad - forms; they danced; yet for all the dancing, for all the colors, they were - more sinister than merry, they were incomparably more grievous than gay. A - tray of beer glasses was held before him, but he waved it aside. - “Champagne,” he muttered. The husky voices commended him; a bare arm crept - around his neck, soft, stifling; the red silk form was like a blot of - blood on the gloom; it spread over his arm like a tide of blood welling - from his torn heart. - </p> - <p> - He thought at intervals, when the piano was silent, that he could - distinguish the sound of low, continuous sobbing; and the futility of - grief afforded a contemptuous amusement. “It's fierce,” a shrill voice - pronounced. “They ought to have took her somewhere else; this is a decent - place.” A second hotly silenced this declaration. In the jumble of talk - which followed he heard the title “captain” pronounced authoritatively, - conclusively imposing an abrupt lull. Men entered. With an effort which - taxed his every resource of concentration he saw that there were two; he - distinguished two tones—one deliberate, coldly arrogant, the other - explosive, iterating noisy assertions. Peering through the film before his - eyes, Anthony saw that the first, insignificant in stature, exactly and - fashionably dressed, had a countenance flat and dark, like a Chinaman's; - the other was a fleshy young man in an electric blue suit, his neck - swelling in a crimson fold above his collar, who gesticulated with a fat, - white hand. - </p> - <p> - Anthony felt the attention of the room centered upon himself, he heard - disconnected periods; “... to the eyes. Good fellow... threw friend out—one - of them lawyer jags, too dam' smart.” A voice flowed, thick and gummy like - molasses, from the redness at his side, “He's my fellow; ain't you, - Raymond?” - </p> - <p> - A wave of deathly sickness swept up from the shuddering void and enveloped - him. He summoned his dissipated faculties, formed his cold lips in - readiness to pronounce fateful words, when he was diverted by the sharp - impact of a shutting door, he heard with preternatural clearness a bolt - slip in its channel. The young man in the blue suit had disappeared. Again - the sobbing, low and distinct, rose and fell upon his hearing. - </p> - <p> - There was a general stir in the room; the form beside him rose; and he was - lunging to his feet when, in the act of moving, he became immovable; he - stood bent, with his hands extended, listening; he turned his head slowly, - he turned his dull, straining gaze from side to side. Then he straightened - up as though he had been opened by a spring. - </p> - <p> - “Who—who called?” he demanded. “Who called me—Anthony?” - </p> - <p> - In the short, startled silence which followed the room grew suddenly clear - before him, the mist dissolved before a garish flood of gaslight that fell - upon a grotesque circle of women in shapeless, bright apparel; he saw - haggard, youthful countenances on which streaks of paint burned like - flames; he saw eyes shining and dead like glass marbles; mouths drawn and - twisted as though by torture. He saw the fragile, fashionably dressed - youth with the flat face. No one of them could have called him in the - clear tone that had swept like a silver stream through the miasma of his - consciousness. - </p> - <p> - Again he heard it. “Anthony!” Its echo ran from his brain in thrills of - wonder, of response, to the tips of his fingers. “Anthony!” Oh, God! he - knew now, beyond all question, all doubt, that it was the voice of Eliza. - But Eliza was dead. It was an inexplicable, a cunning and merciless jest, - at the expense of his love, his longing.... “Anthony!” it came from above, - from within. - </p> - <p> - A double, sliding door filled the middle of the wall, and, starting - forward, he fumbled with its small, brass handles. A sudden, subdued - commotion of curses, commands, arose behind him; hands dragged at his - shoulders; an arm as thin and hard as steel wire closed about his throat. - He broke its strangling hold, brushed the others aside. The door was - bolted. Yes, it came from beyond; and from within came the sobbing that - had hovered continuously at the back of his perception. - </p> - <p> - He shook the door viciously; then, disregarding the hands tearing at him - from the rear, burst it open with his shoulder. He staggered in, looking - wildly about.... It had, after all, been only a freak of his disordered - mind, an hallucination of his pain. The room was empty but for the young - man in electric blue, now with his coat over the back of a chair, and a - girl with a torn waist, where her thin, white shoulder showed dark, - regular prints, and a tangle of hair across her immature face. - </p> - <p> - The man in shirt sleeves rose from the couch, on which he had been - sitting, with a stream of sudden, surprised oaths. The girl who stood - gazing with distended eyes at Anthony turned and flashed through the - broken door. “Stop her!” was urgently cried; “the hall door—” - Anthony heard a chair fall in the room beyond, shrill cries that sank, - muffled in a further space. - </p> - <p> - The two men faced him in the silent room: the larger, with an empurpled - visage, bloodshot eyes, shook with enraged concern; the other was as - motionless as a piece of furniture, in his wooden countenance his gaze - glittered like a snake's, glittered as icily as the diamond that sparkled - in his crimson tie folded exactly beneath an immaculate collar. Only, at - intervals, his fingers twitched like jointed and animated straws. - </p> - <p> - An excited voice cried from the distance: “She's gone! Alice's face is - tore open... out the door like a devil, and up the street in her - petticoat.” - </p> - <p> - The man with the flushed face wilted. “This is as bad as hell,” he - whimpered. “It will come out, sure. You—” he particularized Anthony - with a corroding epithet. “The captain is in it deep... this will do for - him, we'll all go up—” - </p> - <p> - “Why?” the other demanded. He indicated Anthony with his left hand, while - the other stole into his pocket. “He brought her here... you heard the - girl and broke into the room; there was a fight—a fight.” He drew - nearer to Anthony by a step. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0056" id="link2H_4_0056"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - LVI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>NTHONY gazed above - their heads. There, again, clear and sweet, his name shaped like a - bell-note. The familiar scent of a springtide of lilacs swept about him; - the placid murmur of water slipping between sodded banks, tumbling over a - fall; the querulous hunting cry of owls hovered in his hearing, singing in - the undertone of that pronouncement of his name out of the magic region of - his joy. - </p> - <p> - “No good,” a voice buzzed, indistinct, immaterial. “Who'll shut this—? - who'll get the girl?” - </p> - <p> - “The girl can't reach us alone....” - </p> - <p> - An intolerable scarlet hurt stabbed at Anthony out of a pungent, whitish - cloud. There was a fretful report. A flat, dark face without expression, - without the blink of an eyelid, a twitch of the mouth, loomed before him - and then shot up into darkness. The hurt multiplied a thousand fold, it - poured through him like molten metal, lay in a flashing pool upon his - heart, filled his brain. He opened his lips for a protest, put out his - hands appealingly. But he uttered no sound, his arms sank, grew stiff... - the light faded from his eyes.... imponderable silence. Frigid night.... - </p> - <p> - Far off he heard <i>her</i> calling him, imperative, confident, glad. Her - crystal tones descended into the abyss whose black and eternal walls - towered above him. He must rise and bear to her that gift like a precious - and fragile vase which he held unbroken in his hands. An ineffable - fragrance deepened about him from the massed blooms rosy in the glow where - she waited, drawing him up to her out of the chaotic wash beyond the - worlds where the vapors of corrupted matter sank and sank in slow coils, - falling endlessly, forever. - </p> - <h3> - THE END - </h3> - <div style="height: 6em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lay Anthony, by Joseph Hergesheimer - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAY ANTHONY *** - -***** This file should be named 51921-h.htm or 51921-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/9/2/51921/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by Google Books - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive -specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this -eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook -for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, -performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given -away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks -not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the -trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. - -START: FULL LICENSE - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project -Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full -Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at -www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or -destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your -possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a -Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound -by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the -person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph -1.E.8. - -1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this -agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the -Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection -of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual -works in the collection are in the public domain in the United -States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the -United States and you are located in the United States, we do not -claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, -displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as -all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope -that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting -free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm -works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the -Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily -comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the -same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when -you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are -in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, -check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this -agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, -distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any -other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no -representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any -country outside the United States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other -immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear -prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work -on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the -phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, -performed, viewed, copied or distributed: - - This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and - most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no - restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it - under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this - eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the - United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you - are located before using this ebook. - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is -derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not -contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the -copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in -the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are -redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project -Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply -either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or -obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any -additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms -will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works -posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the -beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including -any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access -to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format -other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official -version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site -(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense -to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means -of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain -Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the -full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -provided that - -* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed - to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has - agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid - within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are - legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty - payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in - Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg - Literary Archive Foundation.” - -* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all - copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue - all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm - works. - -* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of - any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of - receipt of the work. - -* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than -are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing -from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The -Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project -Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may -contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate -or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other -intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or -other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or -cannot be read by your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right -of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium -with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you -with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in -lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person -or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second -opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If -the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing -without further opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO -OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT -LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of -damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement -violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the -agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or -limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or -unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the -remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in -accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the -production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, -including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of -the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this -or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or -additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any -Defect you cause. - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of -computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It -exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations -from people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future -generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see -Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at -www.gutenberg.org Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by -U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the -mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its -volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous -locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt -Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to -date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and -official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact - -For additional contact information: - - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND -DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular -state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To -donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project -Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be -freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and -distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of -volunteer support. - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in -the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. - - - -</pre> - - </body> -</html> diff --git a/old/51921.txt b/old/51921.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 43d6a69..0000000 --- a/old/51921.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5839 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lay Anthony, by Joseph Hergesheimer - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: The Lay Anthony - A Romance - -Author: Joseph Hergesheimer - -Release Date: May 1, 2016 [EBook #51921] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAY ANTHONY *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by Google Books - - - - - - - - -THE LAY ANTHONY - -A Romance - -By Joseph Hergesheimer - -New York & London - -Mitchell Kennerley 1914 - - -"_... if in passing from this deceitful world into true life love is -not forgotten,... I know that among the most joyous souls of the third -heaven my Fiametta sees my pain. Pray her, if the sweet draught of Lethe -has not robbed me of her,... to obtain my ascent to her._" - ---Giovanni Boccaccio - - -TO - -DOROTHY - -THIS - -FIGMENT OF A PERPETUAL FLOWERING - -THE LAY ANTHONY - - - - -I--A ROMANCE - -NOT for the honor of winning the Vanderbilt Cup, nor for the glory of -pitching a major league baseball team into the world's championship, -would Tony Ball have admitted to the familiar and derisive group in the -drugstore that he was--in the exact, physical aspect of the word--pure. -Secretly, and in an entirely natural and healthy manner, he was ashamed -of his innocence. He carefully concealed it in an elaborate assumption -of wide worldly knowledge and experience, in an attitude of cynical -comprehension, and indifference toward _girls_. - -But he might have spared himself the effort, the fictions, of his -pose--had he proclaimed his ignorance aloud from the brilliantly lighted -entrance to the drugstore no one who knew him in the midweek, night -throng on Ellerton's main street would have credited Anthony with -anything beyond a thin and surprising joke. He was, at twenty, the -absolute, adventurous opposite of any conscious or cloistered virtue: -the careless carriage of his big, loose frame; his frank, smiling grey -eyes and ample mouth; his very, drawling voice--all marked him for a -loiterer in the pleasant and sunny places of life, indifferent to the -rigors of a mental or moral discipline. - -The accumulated facts of his existence fully bore this out: the number -of schools from which, playing superlative baseball, he had been still -obliged to leave, carrying with him the cordial good will of master -and fellow, for an unconquerable, irresponsible laxity; the number and -variety of occupations that had claimed him in the past three years, -every one of which at their inception certain, he felt confident, to -carry him beyond all dreams and necessity of avarice; and every one, in -his rapidly diminishing interest, attention, or because of persistent, -adverse conditions over which, he asseverated, he had no control, -turning into a fallow field, a disastrous venture; and, conclusively, -the group of familiars, the easy companions of idle hours, to which he -had gravitated. - -He met his mates by appointment at Doctor Allhop's drugstore, or by an -elaborate system of whistled formulas from the street, at which he would -rise with a muttered excuse from the dinner table and disappear.--He -was rarely if ever sought outright at his father's house; it was quite -another sort of boy who met and discoursed easily with sisters, who -unperturbed greeted mothers face to face. - -It would have been useless, had he known it, to protest his virtue -inside the drugstore or out; a curious chain of coincidents had -preserved it. Again and again he had been at the point of surrendering -his involuntary Eden, and always the accident, the interruption, had -befallen, always he had retired in a state of more or less orderly -celibacy. On the occasion of one of those nocturnal, metropolitan -escapades by which matured boys, in a warm, red veil of whiskey, assert -their manhood and independence, he had been thrust in a drunken stupor -into the baggage car of the "owl" train to Ellerton. Instances might -be multiplied: life, in its haphazard manner, its uncharted tides -and eddies sweeping arbitrarily up and down the world, had carelessly -preserved in him that concrete ideal which myriads of heroic and -agonized beings had striven terribly and in vain to ward. - -And so it happened, when Doctor Allhop turned with an elaborate -impropriety from the pills he was compounding in a porcelain pestle, -that Anthony's laugh was loudest, his gusto most marked, in the group -gathered at the back of the drugstore. A wooden screen divided them, -hid the shelves of bottles, the water sink, and the other properties and -ingredients of the druggist's profession, from the glittering and public -exhibition of the finished article, the marble slab and silver mouths of -the sodawater fountain, the uninitiated throng. - -He was sitting on a case of prepared food, his legs thrust out before -him, and a thread of smoke coiling bluely from the cigarette held in -his broad, scarred hand. There was a little gay song on his lips, and a -roving, gay glint in his direct gaze. At frequent intervals he surveyed -with approbation maroon socks and a pair of new and shining pumps; the -rest of his apparel was negligent. - -The sole chair was occupied by the plump bulk of Thomas Addington -Meredith, to whom a sharp nose in a moonlike countenance lent an -expression of constant inquiry and foxy caution. He was elaborately -apparelled in a suit which boasted a waistcoat draped with the gold -chain of an authentic timepiece; while, closing a silver cigarette case -scrolled large with his initials, a fat finger bore a ruby that, rumor -circulated, had been the gift of a married woman. - -Lounging against a shelf Alfred Craik gazed absently at his blackened -and broken fingernails, his greasy palms. He was Anthony's partner -in the current industry of a machine shop and garage, maintained in a -dilapidated stable on the outskirts of Ellerton. It was a concern -mainly upheld by a daily levy on the Ball family for necessary tools and -accessories. He was, as always, silent, detached. - -But William Williams amply atoned for any taciturnity on the part of the -others; he had returned a short while before from two checkered years -in the West; and, a broad felt hat cinched with a carved leather hand -pushed back from his brow, and waving the formidable stump of a cigar, -he expiated excitedly on the pleasures of that far, liberal land. - -"Why," he proclaimed, "I owe a saloon keeper in San Francisco sixty-five -dollars for one round of drinks--the joint was full and it was up to -me... nothing but champagne went, understand! He knows he'll get it. -Why, I collared ten dollars a day overseeing sheep. I cleaned up three -thousand in one little deal; it was in Butte City; it lasted nine days. -But 'Frisco's the place--all the girls there are good sports, all the -men spenders." - -"What did you come back East for?" Alfred Craik demanded; "why didn't -you stay right with it?" - -"I got up against it," William grinned; "the old man wouldn't give -me another stake." The thought of the glories he had been forced -to relinquish started him afresh. "I cleaned up enough in a week at -billiards," he boasted, "to keep me in Ellerton a year." - -"Didn't Bert Dingley take four bits from you last night at Hinkle's?" -Anthony lazily asked. - -"That farmer!" the other scoffed; "I had a rank cue; they are all rank -at Hinkle's. I'll match him in a decent parlor for any amount." - -"How much will you put up?" Meredith demanded; "I will back Bert." - -"How much have you got?" William queried. - -"How much have you?" - -"If this was San Francisco I could get a hundred." - -"What have you got in real coin, Bill?" Tony joined in. - -"Three nickles," William Williams admitted moodily. - -"I've got thirty-five cents," Thomas added. "I wish I could get a piece -of change." - -"How's the car?" Anthony turned to hiss partner in the lull that -followed. The "car," their sole professional charge, had been placed in -their hands by an optimistic and benevolent connection of the Balls. - -"I had the differential apart again to-day," Alfred responded, "but I -can't find that grinding anywhere. It will have to be all torn down," he -announced with sombre enthusiasm. - -"You have had that dam' thing apart three times in the last four weeks, -and every time you put it together it's worse," Anthony protested; "the -cylinder casing leaks, and God knows what you did to the gears." - -"I wish I had a piece of change," Thomas Meredith repeated, in a manner -patently mysterious. - -"A temporary sacrifice of your tin shop--" Doctor Allhop suggested, -tinning from the skilful moulding of the pills on a glass slab. - -"Not a chance! the family figurehead announced that he had taken my -watch 'out' for the last time." - -"He wants to plaster it on some Highschool skirt," Alfred announced -unexpectedly. - -"This robbing the nursery makes me ill," William protested. "Out in -Denver there are real queens with gold hair--" - -His period was lost in a yapping chorus from the west-wearied circle. -"Take it to bed with you," he was entreated. - -"Nothing in the Highschool can reach these," Meredith assured them, -"this is the real thing--an all night seance. They have just moved in by -the slaughter house; a regular pipe--their father is dead, and the old -woman's deaf. Two sisters... one has got red hair, and the other can -kick higher'n you can hold your hand. The night I went I had to leave -early, but they told me to come hack... any night after nine, and bring -a friend." - -"I'll walk around with you," William Williams remarked negligently. - -"Not on three nickles. They told me to fetch around a couple of bottles -of port wine, and have a genuine party." - -Anthony Ball listened with rapidly growing attention, while he fingered -three one dollar bills wadded into the bottom of his pocket. He felt his -blood stir more rapidly, beating in his ears: vague pictures thronged -his brain of girls with flaming hair, dexterous, flashing limbs, white -frills, garters. With an elaborate air of unconcern he asked: - -"Are they goodlookers?" - -"Oh, Boy! they have got that hidden fascination." - -Anthony made a swift reckoning of the price of port; it would wipe out -the sum he was getting together for badly needed baseball shoes.--Red -hair!--He could count on no further assistance from his father that -month; the machine shop at present was an expense. - -"Got any coin?" Meredith demanded. - -"A few." - -The other consulted with importance the ostentatious watch. "Just the -minute," he announced. "Come along; we can get the port at the Eagle; -we'll have a Paris of a time." - -Doctor Allhop offered an epigrammatic parallel between two celebrated -planets. - -"I need new ball shoes," Anthony temporized; "I ripped mine the last -game." - -Meredith rose impatiently. "Charge them to the family," he ejaculated. -"But if you don't want to get in on this, there are plenty of others. -Two or three dollars are easy to raise in a good cause. Why, the last -night I spent in the city cost me seventeen bucks." - -"I guess I'll come." Anthony instinctively barred his sudden eagerness -from his voice. He rose, and was surprised to find that his knees were -trembling. His face was hot too.--he wondered if it was red? if it would -betray his inexperience? "If they hand me any Sundayschool stuff," he -proclaimed bigly, "I'll step right on it; I'm considerably wise to these -dames." - -"This is the real, ruffled goods." Meredith settled a straw hat with a -blue band on his sleek head, and Anthony dragged a faded cap from his -pocket, which he drew far over his eyes. William Williams regarded them -enviously. Craik's thoughts had wandered far, his lips moved silently. -And Doctor Allhop had disappeared into the front of the drugstore. - - - - -II. - -LET'S get along," Anthony said in a a thick, strange voice. He stumbled -forward; his eyes were hot, blurred; he tried in vain to wink clear his -vision. Suddenly his elbow struck sharply against a shelf, and there was -an answering crash, the splintering of glass smashing upon the floor. -Doctor Allhop hurried in to the scene of the disaster. "You young bull -among the bottles!" he exclaimed in exasperated tones; "a whole gross of -perfume, all the white lilac, lost." - -Anthony Ball stood motionless, embarrassed and annoyed by the accident; -and great, heavy coils of the scent rose about him; they filled his -nostrils with wave on wave of pungent odor, and stung his eyes so that -he shut them. The scent seemed to press about him, to obstruct his -breathing, weigh upon his heart; he put out a hand as if to ward it -off. It seemed to him that great masses of the flower surrounded him, -shutting him with a white, sweet wall from the world. He swayed dizzily; -then vanquished the illusion with an expression of regret for the damage -he had wrought. - -The Doctor was on his knees, brushing together the debris; William -Williams guffawed; and Craik smiled idly. Meredith swore, tapping a -cigarette on his silver case. "You're a parlor ornament, you are," he -told Anthony. - -A feeling of impotence enveloped the latter, a sullen resentment against -an occurrence the inevitable result of which must descend like a shower -of cold water upon his freshly-stirred desires. "I am sorry as hell, -Doctor," he repeated; "what did that box cost you?" - -"Six seventy," Allhop shot impatiently over his shoulder. - -Anthony produced his three dollars, and, smoothing them, laid the sum on -a table. "I will stop in with the rest to-morrow morning," he said. The -Doctor rose and turned, partly mollified; but, to avoid the argument -which, he felt, might follow, Anthony strode quickly out into the -drugstore. There at the white marble sodawater fountain a bevy of youth -was consuming colorific cones of ice cream, drinking syrupy concoctions -from tall, glistening glasses. They called him by name, but he passed -them without a sign of recognition, still the victim of his jangling -sensibilities. - - - - -III - -BAY STREET was thronged; the shops displayed broad, lighted windows -filled with their various merchandise; in front of a produce store a row -of chickens hung bare, bright blue and yellow, head down; from within -came the grinding of a coffee machine, the acrid voices of women -bargaining. The glass doors to the fire-engine house stood open, the -machines glimmering behind a wide demilune of chairs holding a motley -assemblage of men. Further along, from above, came the shuffle of -dancing feet, the thin, wiry wail of violins. At the corners groups of -youths congregated, obstructing the passerby, smirking and indulging in -sudden, stridulous hursts of laughter. - -The sky was infinitely remote, intensely, tenderly blue, the stars white -as milk; from the immediately surrounding countryside came the scented -breaths of early summer--the trailing sweetness of locust blooms, of -hidden hedges of honeysuckle, of June roses, and all the pungent aroma -of growing grasses, leaves, of fragile and momentary flowers. - -Anthony made his way brusquely through the throng, nodding shortly to -the countless salutations that marked his progress. The youths all knew -him, and the majority of the men; women stopped in their sharp haggling -to smile at him; garlands of girls gay in muslins "Mistered" him with -pretty propriety, or followed him more boldly over their shoulders with -inviting eyes. - -He impatiently disregarded his facile popularity: the tumult within him -settled into a dull, unreasoning anger against the universe at large. He -still owed Doctor Allhop four dollars and seventy cents; he had told -the Doctor that he would pay to-morrow; and he would have to go to his -father. The latter was a rigorously just man, Anthony gladly recognized, -the money would be instantly forthcoming; but he was not anxious to -recall the deficiencies of his present position to his father just then. -He had passed twenty, and--beyond his ability to cause a baseball to -travel in certain unexpected tangents, and a limited comprehension of -the conduct of automobiles--he was totally without assets, and without -any light on the horizon. - -He had been willing to work, he reminded himself resentfully, but bad -luck had overtaken him at every turn. The venture before the machine -shop--a scheme of squabs, the profits of which, calculated from an -advertisement, soared with the birthrate of those prolific birds, had -been ruined by rats. The few occasions when he had neglected to feed the -pigeons, despite the frank and censorious opinion of the family, had -had little or nothing to do with that misfortune. And, before that, -his kennel of rabbit dogs had met with an untimely fate when a favorite -bitch had gone mad, and a careful commonwealth had decreed the death -of the others. If his mother could but be won from the negative she had -placed upon baseball as a professional occupation, he might easily rise -through the minor leagues to a prideful position in the ranks of the -national pastime--"Lonnie This" was paid fourteen hundred yearly for -his prowess with the leather sphere, "Hans That's" removal from one to -another club had involved thousands of dollars. - -He heard his name pronounced in a peremptory manner, and stopped to -see the relative whose automobile had been placed in his care cross the -street. - -"What in the name of the Lord have you young dunces done to my car?" the -older man demanded. - -"We have been trying to locate that grinding," Anthony told him in as -conciliatory manner as he could assume. - -"Well," the other proceeded angrily, "you have ruined it this time; the -gears slid around like a plate of ice cream." - -"It was nothing but a pile of junk when we took it," Tony exploded; "why -don't you loosen up and get a real car?" - -"I took it to Feedler's. You can send me a bill to-morrow." - -"There will be no bill. I'm sorry you were not satisfied, Sam." - -"You are the most shiftless young dog in the county," the other told him -in kindlier tones; "why don't you take hold of something, Anthony?" - -Anthony swung on his heel and abruptly departed. He had taken hold, he -thought hotly, times without number, but everything broke in his grasp. - -The stores on Bay Street grew more infrequent, the rank of monotonous -brick dwellings closed up, family groups occupied the steps that led to -the open doors. The crowd grew less, dwindling to a few aimless couples, -solitary pedestrians. He soon stopped, before his home. Opposite the -gaunt skeleton of a building operation rose blackly against the pale -stars. The aged lindens above him, lushly leaved, cast an intenser -gloom, filled with the warm, musty odor of the sluiced pavement, about -the white marble steps. The hall, open before him, was a cavern of -coolness; beyond, from the garden shut from the street by an intricate, -rusting iron fence, he heard the deliberate tones of his sister Ellie. -Evidently there was a visitor, and he entered the hall noiselessly, -intent upon passing without notice to his room above. But Ellie had -been watching for him, and called before he had reached the foot of the -stairs. - - - - -IV - -HE made his way diffidently through a long window to the lawn; where -he saw his sister, a glimmering, whitish shape in the heavily overgrown -garden, conversing with a figure without form or detail, by a trellis -sagging beneath a verdurous weight. - -"Oh, Tony!" she called; "here's Mrs. Dreen." - -He leaned forward awkwardly, and grasped a slim, jewelled hand. "I -didn't know you were back from France," he told the indistinct woman -before him. - -"But you read that Mr. Dreen had resigned the consulship at Lyons," a -delicate, rounded voice rejoined, "and you should have guessed that we -would come home to Ellerton. My dear Ellie," she turned to the girl, -"you have no idea how delighted James is at being here once more. He has -given the farmer notice, and insists that he is going to cultivate his -own acres. He was up this morning at six; fancy, after France and -his late _dejeuner._ And Eliza adores it; she spends the day with a -gardener, planning flowerbeds." - -Anthony slipped into an easy posture on the thick, damp sod. Although -he had not seen Mrs. James Dreen since his childhood, when she had -accompanied her husband abroad to a consular post, he still retained -a pleasant memory of her magnetic and precise charm, the memory of her -harmonious personality, the beauty of her apparel and rings. - -"How is Eliza?" he asked politely, and with no inward interest; "she -must be a regular beauty by now." - -"No," Mrs. Dreen returned crisply, "she is not particularly goodlooking, -but she has always told me the truth. Eliza is a dear." Anthony lit a -cigarette, and flipped the match in a minute gold arc, extinguished in -the night. - -"I am decidedly uneasy about Eliza though," she continued to Ellie; "to -tell the truth, I am not sure how she will take over here. She is a -serious child; I would say temperamental, but that's such an impossible -word. She is absolutely and transparently honest and outspoken--it's -_ghastly_ at times. The most unworldly person alive; with her thought -and action are one, and often as not her thoughts are appalling. All -that, you know, doesn't spell wisdom for a girl." - -"Yet James and I couldn't bear to... make her harder. A great deal of -care... If she is my daughter, Ellie, she is exquisite--so sensitive, -sympathetic..." - -Anthony, absorbed in the misfortune that had overtaken the machine shop, -the impending, inevitable interview with his father, so justly rigorous, -hardly gathered the sense of Mrs. Dreen's discourse. Occasional phrases, -familiar and unfamiliar terms, pierced his abstraction.--"Colombin's." -"James' siatica." "Camille Marchais." Then her words, centering about a -statement that had captured his attention, became coherent, significant. - -"Only a small affair," Mrs. Dreen explained; "to introduce Eliza to -Ellerton. Nothing on a large scale until winter.... Dancing, or rather -what goes down for dancing to-day. I am asking our old intimates, and -have written a few informal cards." - -An automobile drew up smoothly before the Balls; its rear light winked -like an angry red eye through the iron fence. Mrs. Dreen rose. In the -gloom her face was girlish; there was a blur of lace at her throat, a -glimmer of emeralds. "Mind you come," she commanded Ellie. "And you too, -without fail," to Anthony. "Now that Hydrangea House is open again we -must have our friends about us. Heavens! Howard Ball's children and -mine grown up!" She moved gracefully across to a garden gate. Anthony -assisted her into the motorcar; the door closed with a snap. - -Ellie had sunk back into her chair, and was idly twisting her fingers -in the grass at her side. At her back the ivied wall of the house beyond -stirred faintly with sparrows. A misshapen moon swung apparently up from -and through the building frame opposite, and faint shadows unfolded on -the grass. Anthony flung himself moodily by his sister. - -"Sam's taken his car from us," he informed her; "that will about shut up -the shop." - -"Then perhaps you will bring back the screwdrivers." - -"To-morrow." - -"What are you going to do, Tony?" - -"Tell me." - -"A big strong fellow... there mast be something." - -"Mother won't let me play ball in the leagues." - -"Perhaps she will; we'll talk to her; it's better than nothing." - -"I broke a box of rotten perfume at the drugstore, and owe the Doctor -four seventy." - -"It's too bad--father is never free from little worries; you are -always getting into difficulties. You are different from other boys, -Anthony--there don't seem to be any place in life for you; or you don't -make a place, I can't tell which. You have no constructive sense, and no -feeling of responsibility. What do you want to do with yourself?" - -"I don't know, Ellie, honestly," he confessed. "I try like the devil, -make a thousand resolutions, and then--I go off fishing. Or if I don't -things go to the rats just the same." - -"Well," she rose, "I'm going up. Don't bother father about that money, -I'll let you have it. It's perfectly useless to tell you to return it." - -"I swear you will get it next week," he proclaimed gratefully. "The -baseball association owes me for two games." - -"Haven't you promised it?" - -"That's so!" he exclaimed ruefully. She laughed and disappeared into the -house. - - - - -V - -A BLACK depression settled over him; life appeared a huge conspiracy -against his success, his happiness. The future, propounded by Ellie, was -suddenly stripped of all glamor, denuded of all optimistic dreams; he -passed through one of those dismaying periods when the world, himself, -his pretentions, were revealed in the clear and pitiless light of -reality. His friends, his circumstances, his hopes, held out no promise, -no thought of pleasure. Behind him his life lay revealed as a series -of failures, before him it was plotted without security. The plan, the -order, that others saw, or said that they saw, presented to him only a -cloudy confusion. The rewards for which others struggled, aspired, which -they found indispensable, had been ever meaningless to him--to money -he never gave a thought; a society organized into calls, dancing, -incomprehensible and petty values, never rose above his horizon. - -He was happiest in the freedom of the open, the woods; in the easy -company of casual friends, black or white, kindly comment. He would -spend a day with his dogs and gun, sitting on a stump in a snowy field, -listening to the eager yelping in the distant, blue wood, shooting -a rare rabbit. Or tramping tirelessly the leafy paths of autumn. Or, -better still, swinging through the miry October swales, coonhunting -after midnight with lantern and climbers. - -But now those pleasures, in anticipated retrospect, appeared bald, -unprofitable. Prolonged indefinitely, he divined, they would pall; they -did not offer adequate material, aim, for the years. For a moment he -saw, grinning hatefully at him, the spectre of what he might become; he -passed such men, collarless and unshaven, on the street comers, flinging -them a scornful salutation. He had paid for their drinks, hearkening -negligently to their stereotyped stories, secretly gibing at their -obvious goodfellowship, their eager, tremulous smiles. They had been, in -their day, great rabbit hunters... detestable. - -The mood vanished, the present closed mercifully about him, leaving him -merely defiant. The townclock announced the hour in slow, jarring -notes. A light shone above from Ellie's room, and he heard his father's -deliberate footsteps in the hall, returning from the Ellerton Club, -where, as was his invariable nightly habit, he had played cooncan. The -moon, freed from the towering beams, was without color. - -Anthony rose, and flung away a cold, stale cigarette; the world was just -like that--stale and cold. He proceeded toward the house, when he heard -footfalls on the pavement; in the obscurity he barely made out a man and -woman, walking so closely as to be hardly distinguishably separate. They -stopped by the fence, only a few feet from where he stood concealed in -the shadows, and the man took the woman's hands in his own, bending over -her. Then, suddenly, clasping her in his arms, he covered her upturned -face with passionate kisses. With a little, frightened gasp she clung -to his shoulders. The kisses ceased. Their strained, desperate embrace -remained unbroken.--It seemed that each was the only reality for the -other in a world of unsubstantial gloom, veiled in the shifting, silvery -mist of a cold and removed planet. The woman breathed with a deep, -sobbing inspiration; and, when she spoke, Anthony realized that he was -eavesdropping, and walked swiftly and cautiously into the house. - -But the memory of that embrace; accompanied him up the stairs, into his -room. It haunted him as he lay, cool and nearly bare, on his bed. -It filled him with a profound and unreasoning melancholy, new to his -customary, unconscious animal exuberance. All at once he thought of the -redhaired girl who liked port wine; and, as he fell asleep, she stood -before him, leering slyly at the side of that other broken shape which -threatened him out of the future. - - - - -VI - -THE shed that held the machine shop and garage fronted upon an informal -lane skirting the verdurous border of the town. Beyond the fence -opposite a broad pasturage dipped and rose to the blackened ruins of -a considerable brick mansion, now tenanted by a provident colony of -Italians; further hill topped green hill, the orchards drawn like -silvery scarves about their shoulders, undulating to the sky. Back of -the shed ranged the red roofs and tree-tops of the town. - -When Anthony arrived at the seat of his industry the grass was flashing -with dew and the air a thrill with the buoyant piping of robins. He -found the door open, and Alfred Craik awaiting him. - -"She's gone," Alfred informed him. - -"Sam told me last night; it was your infernal tinkering... you can't let -a machine alone," Anthony dropped beside the other on the door sill. - -"Could we get another car, do you think?" Alfred demanded; "I had almost -finished a humming experiment on Sam's." - -"This garage is closed," Anthony pronounced; "it's out of existence. The -family are yelping for the screwdrivers. What do we owe?" - -"Three ninety to Feedler for 'gas,' and a month's rent." - -"We're bankrupt," the other immediately declared. He rose, and proceeded -to collect the tools that littered the floor; then he removed the sign, -"Ball and Craik. Machine Shop and Garage.", from the door, and the shed -relapsed into its nondescript, somnolent decay. - -"There's a game with Honeydale to-day," Anthony resumed his seat; "I'm -to pitch that, and another Saturday; and, hear me, boy, I need the -money." - -Alfred gazed over the orchards, beyond the hills, into the sky, and made -no answer. It was evident that he was lost in a vision of gloriously -disrupted machinery. His silence spread to Anthony, who settled back -with a cigarette into the drowsy stillness. The minutes passed, hovering -like bees, and merged into an hour. They could hear a horse champing in -the pasture; the wail of an Italian infant came to them thinly across -the green; behind them sounded mellow the tin horn of the shad vendor. - -Anthony roused himself reluctantly, recalling the debt he had to -discharge at the drugstore. Elbe's crisp five dollar bill lay in his -pocket. "Later," he nodded, and made his way over the shady brick -pavements, through the cool perspective of maple-lined streets, where -summer dresses fluttered in spots of subdued, bright color, to Doctor -Allhop's. The Doctor was absent, and Anthony tendered the money, with a -short explanation, to the clerk. The latter smartly rang the amount on -the cash register, and placed thirty cents on the counter. - -"Two packs of Dulcinas," Anthony required, and dropped the cigarettes -into his pocket. He made his way in a leisurely fashion toward home and -the midday meal. At the table his mother's keen grey eyes regarded him -with affectionate concern. "How do you feel, Tony?" she asked. "You were -coughing last night... take such wretched care of yourself--" His father -glanced up from the half-masted sheet of the Ellerton _Bugle_. He was a -spare man, of few words, with a square-cut beard about the lower part -of an austere countenance. "What's the matter with him?" he demanded -crisply. - -"Nothing," Anthony hastily protested; "you ought to know mother." - -After lunch he extended himself smoking on the horsehair sofa in the -front room. It was a spacious chamber, with a polished floor, and -well-worn, comfortable chairs; in a corner a lacquered table bore old -blue Canton china; by the door a jar of roses dropped their pink petals; -over the fireplace a tall mirror held all in silvery replica. - -"Thirty cents, please," Ellie demanded; "I must get some stamps." - -A wave of conscious guilt, angry self condemnation, swept over him. "I'm -sorry, Ellie," he admitted; "I haven't got it." - -She stood regarding him for a moment with cold disapproval. She was a -slender woman, past thirty, with dark, regular features and tranquil -eyes; carelessly dressed, her hair slipped over her shoulder in a cool -plait. - -"I am sorry," he repeated, "I didn't think." - -"But it wasn't yours." - -"You'll get every pretty penny of it." He rose and in orderly discretion -sought his room, where he changed into his worn, grey playing flannels. - - - - -VII - -A HIGH board fence enclosed the grounds of the Ellerton Baseball -Association; over one side rose the rude scaffolding of a grandstand, -protected from sun and rain by a covering of tarred planks; a circular -opening by a narrow entrance framed the ticket seller; while around the -base of the fence, located convenient to a small boy's eye, ran a -girdle of unnatural knotholes, highly improved cracks, through which an -occasional fleeting form might be observed, a segment of torn sod, and -the fence opposite. - -A shallow flood of spectators, drawn from the various quarters of the -town, converged in a dense stream at the entrance to the Grounds; -troops of girls with brightly-hued ribbands about their vivacious arms, -boisterous or superior squads of young males, alternated with their more -sober elders--shabby and dejected men, out at elbows and work, in search -of the respite of the sun and the play; baseball enthusiasts, rotund -individuals with ruddy countenances, saturnine experts with scorecards. - -Anthony observed the throng indifferently as he drew near the scene of -his repeated, past triumphs, the metal plates in his shoes grinding into -the pavement. A small procession followed him, led by a colored youth, -to whose dilapidated garments clung the unmistakable straws and aroma of -the stable, bearing aloft Anthony's glove, and "softing" it vigorously -from a natural source; a boy as round and succulent as a boiled pudding, -with Anthony's cap beneath his arm, leaving behind him a trail of peanut -shells, brought up the rear of this democratic escort. - -There was little question in Anthony's mind of his ability to triumph -that afternoon over his opponents from a near-by town; their "battery," -he told himself, was an open book to him--a slow, dropping ball here, a -speedy one across the fingers of that red-haired fielder who habitually -flinched... and yet he wished that it had not been so hot. He thought -of the game without particular pleasure; he was conscious of a lack of -energy; his thoughts, occupied with Elli's patent contempt, stung him -waspishly. - -A throng of players and hangerson filled the contracted dressing -quarters beneath the grandstand, and he was instantly surrounded by -vociferous familiars. The captain of the Ellerton team drew him aside, -and tersely outlined a policy of play, awaiting his opinion. Anthony -nodded gravely: suddenly he found the other's earnestness a little -absurd--the fate of a nation appeared to color his accents, to hang upon -the result of his decision. "Sure," he said absently, "keep the field -in; they won't hit me." - -The other regarded him with a slight frown. "Hate yourself to-day, don't -you?" he remarked. "Lay that crowd cold on the plate, though," he added; -"there's a man here from the major league to look you over. Hinkle told -my old man." - -A quickening of interest took possession of Anthony; they had heard of -him then in the cities, they had discovered him worthy of the journey to -Ellerton, of investigation. A vision of his name acclaimed from coast to -coast, his picture in the playing garb of a famous organization filling -the Sunday sheets, occupied his mind as he turned toward the field. The -captain called mysteriously, "Don't get patted up with any purple stuff -handed you before the game." - -The opposing team, widely scattered, were warming; a pitcher, assuming -the attitudes of an agonising cramp, was indulging in a preliminary -practice; the ball sped with a dull, regular thud into the catcher's -mit. A ball was tossed to Anthony, a team mate backed against the fence, -and, raising his hands on high, he apparently overcame all the natural -laws of flight. He was conscious of Hinkle, prosperous proprietor of the -Ellerton Pool Parlor, at his back with a stranger, an ungainly man, -close lipped, keen of vision. There were intimations of approval. "A -fine wing," the stranger said. "He's got 'em all," Hinkle declared. -"Hundreds of lads can pitch a good game," the other told him, "now and -again, they are amatoors. One in a thousand, in ten thousand, can play -ball all the time; they're professionals; they're worth money... I want -to see him act..." they moved away. - -The players were called in from the field, the captains bent over a -tossed coin; and, first to bat, the Ellerton team ranged itself on -benches. Then, as the catcher was drawing on his mask, Hinkle and -another familiar town figure, who dedicated his days to speeding weedy -horses in red flannel anklets from a precarious wire vehicle, stepped -forward from the grandstand. "Mr. Anthony Ball!" Hinkle called. A -sudden, tense silence enveloped the spectators, the players stopped -curiously. Anthony turned with mingled reluctance and surprise. -Something shone in Hinkle's hand: he saw that it was a watch. "As a -testimonial from your Ellerton friends," the other commenced loudly. -Anthony's confused mind lost part of the short oration which followed -"... recognition of your sportsmanship and skill... happy disposition. -The good fame of the Ellerton Baseball team... predict great future on -the national diamond." - -A storm of applause from the grandstand rippled away in opposite -directions along the line sitting by the fence; boys with their mouths -full of fingers whistled incredibly. Hinkle held out the watch, but -Anthony's eyes were fixed upon the ground. He shook the substantial mark -of Ellerton's approval, so that the ornate fob glittered in the sun, -but Anthony's arms remained motionless at his sides. "Take it, you -leatherkop," a voice whispered fiercely in his ear. 'And with a start, -he awkwardly grasped the gift. "Thank you," he muttered, his voice -inaudible five yards away. He wished with passionate resentment that the -fiend who was yelling "speech!" would drop dead. He glanced up, and the -sight of all those excited, kindly faces deepened his confusion until -it rose in a lump in his throat, blurred his vision, in an idiotic, -childish manner. "Ah, _call_ the game, can't you," he urged over his -shoulder. - -The first half inning was soon over, without incident; and, as Anthony -walked to the pitcher's "box," the necessity to surpass all previous -efforts was impressed upon him by the watch, by the presence of that -spectator from a major league who had come to see him "act." He wished -again, in a passing irritation, that it had not been so hot. Behind the -batter he could see the countenance of "Kag" Lippit staring through the -wires of his mask. "Kag" executed a cabalistic signal with his left arm, -and Anthony pitched. The umpire hoarsely informed the world at large -that it had been a strike. A blast of derisive catcalls arose from the -Ellerton partisans; another strike, shriller catcalls, and the batter -retired after a third ineffectual lunge amid a tempest of banter. - -The second batter hit a feeble fly negligently attached by the third -baseman, who "put it over to first" in the exuberance of his contempt. -The third Anthony disposed of with equal brevity. - -He next faced the pitcher, and, succumbing to the pressure of -extraordinary events, he swung the bat with a tremendous effort, and the -flattened ball described a wide arc into the ready palms of the right -fielder. "You're _Out!_" the umpire vociferated. The uncritical portion -of the spectators voiced their pleasure in the homeric length of the -hit, but the captain was contemptuously cold as Anthony returned to the -bench. "The highschool hero," he remarked; "little Willie the Wallop. If -you don't bat to the game," he added in a different tone, "if you were -Eddie Plank I'd bench you." - -That inning the Ellerton team scored a run: a youth hurtling headlong -through the dust pressed his cheek affectionately upon the dingy square -of marble dignified by the title of home, while a second hammered him -violently in the groin with the ball; one chorus shrieked, "out by -a block!" another, "safe! safe!" he was "safe as safe!" the girls -declared. The umpire's voice rose authoritatively above the tumult. -"Play ball! he's safe!" - -Anthony pitched that inning faultlessly; never had ball obeyed him so -absolutely; it dropped, swung to the right, to the left, revolved or -sped dead. The batters faded away like ice cream at a church supper. As -he came in from the "box" the close-lipped stranger strode forward and -grasped his shoulder. "I want to see you after the game," he declared; -"don't sign up with no one else. I'm from--" he whispered his persuasive -source in Anthony's ear. The captain commended him pithily. "He's got -'em all," Hinkle proclaimed to the assembled throng. - -When Anthony batted next it was with calculated nicety; he drove the -ball between shortstop and second base, and, by dint of hard running, -achieved a rapturously acclaimed "two bagger." The captain then merely -tapped the ball--breathlessly it was described as a "sacrifice"--and -Anthony moved to the third base, and a succeeding hit sent him "home." -Another run was added to the Ellerton score, it now stood three to -nothing in their favor, before Anthony returned to the dusty depression -from which he pitched. - -He was suddenly and unaccountably tired; the cursed heat was worse than -ever, he thought, wiping a wet palm on his grimy leg; above him the sky -was an unbroken, blazing expanse of blue; short, sharp shadows shifted -under the feet of the tense players; in the shade of the grandstand the -dresses, mostly white, showed here and there a vivid note of yellow -and violet, the crisp note of crimson. The throbbing song of a -thrush floated from a far hedge... it stirred him with a new unrest, -dissatisfaction... "Kag" looked like a damned fool grimacing at him -through the wire mask--exactly like a monkey in a cage. The umpire in -his inflated protector, crouching in a position of rigorous attention, -resembled a turtle. He pitched, and a spurt of dust rose a yard before -the plate. "Ball one!" That wouldn't do, he told himself, recalling the -substantially expressed confidence, esteem, of Ellerton. The captain's -sibilant "steady" was like the flick of a whip. With an effort which -taxed his every resource he marshalled his relaxed muscles into an -aching endeavor, centred his unstable thoughts upon the exigencies of -the play, and retired the batter before him. But he struck the next -upon the arm, sending him, nursing the bruise, to first base. He saw -the captain grimly wave the outfielders farther back; and, determined, -resentful, he struck out in machinelike order the remaining batters. But -he was unconscionably weary; his arm felt as though he had been pitching -for a week, a month; and he dropped limp and surly upon the sod at a -distance from the players' bench. - -He batted once more, but a third "out" on the bases saved him from the -fluke which, he had been certain, must inevitably follow. As he stood -with the ball in his hand, facing the batter, he was conscious of an air -of uncertainty spreading like a contagion through the Ellerton team; -he recognized that it radiated from himself--his lack of confidence -magnified to a promised panic. The centre fielder fumbled a fly directly -in his hands; there was a shout from Ellerton's opponents, silence in -the ranks of Ellerton. - -Anthony pitched with a tremendous effort, his arm felt brittle; it felt -as though it was made of glass, and would break off. He could put no -speed into the ball, his fingers seemed swollen, he was unable to grip -it properly, control its direction. The red-haired player whom he had -despised faced him, he who habitually flinched, and Anthony essayed to -drive the ball across his fingers. The bat swung with a vicious crack -upon the leather sphere, a fielder ran vainly back, back.... - -The runner passed first base, and, wildly urged by a small but -adequately vocal group of wellwishers, scorned second base, repudiated -third, from which another player tallied a run, and loafed magnificently -"home." - -From the fence some one called to Anthony, "what time is it?" and -achieved a huge success among the opposition. His captain besought him -desperately to "come back. Where's your pep' went? you're pitching like -a dead man!" Confusion fell upon the team in the field, and, in its -train, a series of blunders which cost five runs. After the inning -Anthony stood with a lowered, moody countenance. "You're out of this -game," the captain shot at him; "go home and play with mother and the -girls." - -He left the field under a dropping fire of witticisms, feebly stemmed by -half-hearted applause; Hinkle frowned heavily at him; the man from the -major league had gone. Anthony proceeded directly through the gate -and over the street toward home. The taste of profound Humiliation, of -failure, was bitter in his mouth, that failure which seemed to lie at -the heart of everything he attempted, which seemed to follow him like -his shadow, like the malicious influence of a powerful spite, an enmity -personal and unrelenting. The sun centred its heat upon his bared head -with an especial fervor; the watch, thrust hastily in a pocket, swung -against his leg mockingly; the abrupt departure of that keeneyed -spectator added its hurt to his self pride. - - - - -VIII - -HE maintained a surly silence throughout dinner; but later, on -discovering a dress shirt laid in readiness on his bed, and recalling -the purport of Mrs. James Dreen's call, he announced on the crest of an -overwhelming exasperation that he would go to no condemmed dance. "Ellie -can't go alone," his mother told him from the landing below; "and do -hurry, Tony, she's almost dressed." The flaring gas jet seemed to coat -his room with a heavy yellow dust; the night came in at the window as -thickly purple as though it had been paint squeezed from a tube. He -slowly assembled his formal clothes. An extended search failed to reveal -the whereabouts of his studs, and he pressed into service the bone -buttons inserted by the laundry. The shirt was intolerably hot and -uncomfortable, his trousers tight, a white waistcoat badly shrunken; -but a collar with a frayed and iron-like edge the crowning misery. When, -finally, he was garbed, he felt as though he had been compressed into an -iron boiler; a stream of perspiration coursed down the exact middle -of his back; his tie hung in a limp knot. Fiery epithets escaped at -frequent intervals. - -On the contrary, Ellie was delightfully cool, orderly; she waved a lacy -fan in her long, delicate fingers. The public vehicle engaged to convey -them to the Dreens, a mile or more beyond the town, drew up at the door -with a clatter of hoofs. It was an aged hack, with complaining joints, -and a loose iron tire. A musty smell rose from the threadbare cushions, -the rotting leather. The horse's hoofs were now muffled in the dusty -country road; shadowy hedges were passed, dim, white farmhouses with -orange, lighted windows, the horizon outspread in a shimmering blue -circle under the swimming stars. - -Anthony smoked a cigarette in acute misery; already his neck felt -scraped raw; a button flew jubilantly from his waistcoat; and his -improvised studs failed in their appointed task. "I'm having the hell of -a good time, I am," he told Ellie satirically. - -They turned between stone pillars supporting a lighted grill, advanced -over a winding driveway to Hydrangea House, where they waited for -a motor to move from the brilliantly-illuminated portal. A servant -directed Anthony to the second floor, where he found a bedchamber -temporarily in service as coat room, occupied by a number of _men_. -Most of them he knew, and nodded shortly in return to their careless -salutations. They belonged to a variety that he at once envied and -disdained: here they were thoroughly at ease, their ties irreproachable, -their shirts without a crease. Drawing on snowy gloves they discussed -women and society with fluency, gusto, emanating an atmosphere of -cocktails. - -Anthony produced his gloves in a crumpled wad from the tail of his coat -and fought his way into them. He felt rather than saw the restrained -amusement of his fellows. They spoke to him gravely, punctiliously -proffered cigarettes; yet, in a vague but unmistakable manner, he was -made to feel that he was outside their interests, ignorant of their -shibboleth. In the matter of collars alone he was as a Patagonian to -them. He recalled with regret the easy familiarity, the comfort, of -Doctor Allhop's drugstore. - -Then, throwing aside cigarettes, patting waistcoats into position, they -streamed down to the music. The others found partners immediately, and -swung into a onestep, but Anthony stood irresolutely in the doorway. -The girls disconcerted him with their formal smiles, their bright, ready -chatter. But Ellie rescued him, drawing him into the dance. After which -he sought the porch that, looped with rosevines, crossed the face of the -long, low house. There, with his back against a pillar, he found a cool -spot upon the tiles, and sought such comfort as he could command. - -Long windows opening from the ballroom were now segments of whirling -color, now filled with gay streams, ebbing and returning. Fragmentary -conversation, glowing cigarettes, surrounded him. Behind the pillar at -his back a girl said, softly, "please don't." - -Then he saw Ellie, obviously searching for him, and he rose. At her -side was a slim figure with a cloud of light hair. "There he is!" Ellie -exclaimed; "Eliza... my brother, Anthony." - -He saw that her eyes opened widely, and that her hair was a peculiar, -bright shade. Ginger-colored, he thought. "I made Ellie find you," she -told him; "you know, you must ask me to dance; I won't be ignored at my -own party." - -He muttered awkwardly some conventional period, annoyed at having -been found, intensely uncomfortable. In a minute more he found himself -dancing, conscious of his limp tie, his crumpled and gaping shirt. He -swung his partner heavily across the room, colliding with a couple -that he shouldered angrily aside. The animation swiftly died from Eliza -Dreen's countenance; she grew indifferent, then cold. And, when the -music ceased, she escaped with a palpable sigh of relief. He was -savagely mopping his heated face on the porch when, at his elbow, a -clear voice captured his attention. "A dreadful person," it said, "... -like dancing with a locomotive... A regular Apache." - -He turned and saw that it was Eliza Dreen, gathering from her swift -concern both that he had been the subject of her discourse, and that she -was aware that he had overheard it. Back at his post at the pillar -he promised himself grimly that never again would he be found in such -specified company. He stripped his gloves from his wet palms, and flung -them far across the lawn, then recklessly eased his collar. There was -a sudden whisper of skirts behind him, when Eliza seated herself on the -porch's edge, at his side. - - - - -IX - -I AM a loathsome person at times," she informed him; "and to-night I -was rather worse than usual." - -"I do dance like a--locomotive," involuntarily. - -"It doesn't matter how you dance," she proceeded, "and you mustn't -repeat it, it isn't generous." Suddenly she laughed uncontrollably. -"You looked so uncomfortable... your collar," it was lost in a bubbling, -silvery peal. "Forgive me," she gasped. - -"I don't mind," he assured her. All at once he didn't; the sting had -vanished from his pride; he smiled. He saw that she wore a honey-colored -dress, with a strand of pearls about her slim throat, and that her feet, -in satin, were even smaller than Ellie's. Her hair resembled more a -crown of light than the customary adornment. "I didn't want to come," he -confided: "I hate, well--going out, dancing." - -"It doesn't suit you," she admitted frankly; "you are so splendidly -bronzed and strong; you need," she paused, "lots of room." - -For this Anthony had no adequate reply. "I have this with some one," -she declared as the music recommenced, "but I hope they don't find me; -I hate it for the moment... I'll show you a place; it's very wicked of -me." She rose and, waving him to follow, slipped over the grass. Beyond -the house she stopped in the shadowy vista of a pergola; vines shut out -the stars, walled them in a virid, still gloom. She sank on a low stone -bench, and he found the grass at her feet. A mantle of fine romance -descended upon his shoulders, of subtile adventure, prodigious daring. -Immaculate men, pearl-studded, were searching for her, and she -had hidden herself from them with him. A new and pleasant sense of -importance warmed him, flattered his self-esteem. He felt strangely at -ease, and sat in silent contentment. The faint sound of violins, a burst -of distant laughter, floated to him. - -"It seems as if the world were rushing on, out there, without us," Eliza -finally broke the silence, "as if they were keeping a furious pace, -while we sat in some everlasting, quiet wood, like Fontainebleau. Don't -you adore nature?" - -"I knock about a lot outside," he admitted cautiously, "often I stay out -all night, by the Wingohocking Creek. There's a sort of cave where -you can hear the falls, and the owls hunting about. I cook things in -clay--fish, chickens," he paused abruptly at the latter item, recalling -the questionable source of his supply. "In winter I shoot rabbits with -Bert Woods, he's a barber, and Doctor Allhop, you know--the druggist." - -"I am sure that your friends are very nice," she promptly assured him. - -"Bert's crazy about girls," he remarked, half contemptuously. - -"And you... don't care for them?" - -"I don't know anything about them," he admitted with an abrupt, -unconscious honesty. - -"But there must have been--there must be--one," she persisted. - -She leaned forward, and he met her gaze with unwavering candor. "Not -that many," he returned. - -"It would be wonderful to care for just one person, _always_," she -continued intently: "I had a dream when I was quite young.... I dreamed -that a marvellous happiness would follow a constancy like that. Father -rather laughs at me, and quotes Shakespeare--the 'one foot on land and -one on shore' thing. Perhaps, but it's too bad." - -Anthony gravely considered this new idea in relation to his own, -hitherto lamented, lack of experience. It dawned upon him that the idea -of manly success he had cherished would appear distasteful to Eliza -Dreen. She had indirectly extolled the very thing of which he had been -secretly ashamed. He thought in conjunction with her of the familiar -group at the drugstore, and in this light the latter retreat suffered -a disconcerting change: Thomas Meredith appeared sly and trivial, and -unhealthy; Williams an empty braggard; Craik ineffectual, untidy. He -surveyed himself without enthusiasm. - -"You are different from any one I ever knew," he told her. - -"Oh, there are millions of me," she returned; "but you are different. -I didn't like you for a sou at first; but there is something about you -like--like a very clear spring of water. That's idiotic, but it's what -I mean. There is an early morning feeling about you. I am very sensitive -to people," she informed him, "some make me uncomfortable directly they -come into the room. There was a cure at Etretat I perfectly detested, -and he turned out to be an awful person." - -Her name was called unmistakably across the lawn, and she rose. "They're -all furious," she announced, without moving further. Her face was pale, -immaterial, in the gloom; her wide eyes dark, disturbing. A minute gold -watch on her wrist ticked faintly, and--it seemed to Anthony--in furious -haste. Something within him, struggling inarticulately for expression, -hurt; an oppressive emotion beat upon his heart. He uttered a period -about seeing her again. - -"Some day you may show me the place where the fall sounds and the owls -hunt. No, don't come with me." She turned and fled. - -An unreasoning conviction seized Anthony that a momentous occasion had -overtaken him; he was unable to distinguish its features, discover it -grave or gay; but, wrapped in the impenetrable veil of the future, -it enveloped and permeated him, swept in the circle of his blood's -circulation, vibrated in the cords of his sensitive ganglia. He returned -slowly to the house: the brilliantly-lit, dancing figures seemed the -mere figments of a febrile dream; but the music apparently throbbed -within his brain. - -Ellie's cool voice recreated his actual sphere. He found their hack, -the driver slumbering doubled on the seat. The latter rose stiffly, -and stirred his drowsing animal into a stumbling walk. Beyond the -illuminated entrance to Hydrangea House the countryside lay profoundly -dim to where the horizon flared with the pale reflection of distant -lightning. - -"Eliza's a sweet," Ellie pronounced. Anthony brooded without reply upon -his opinion. The iron-like collar had capitulated, and rested limply -upon his limp shirt; at the sacrifice of a second button his waistcoat -offered complete comfort. "I am going to get a new dress suit," he -announced decisively. Ellie smiled with sisterly malice. "Eliza is a -sweet," she reiterated. - -"You go to thunder!" he retorted. But, "she's wonderful," he admitted, -and--out of his conclusive experience, "there is not another girl like -her in all the world." - -"I'll agitate for the new suit," Ellie promised. - - - - -X - -THE following morning he reorganized his neckties, left a pair of white -flannels to be pressed at the tailor's; then, his shoulders swathed in a -crisp, sprigged muslin, sat circumspectly under the brisk shears of Bert -Woods. Bert hovered above him, and commented on yesterday's fiasco. "It -comes to the best of 'em," Bert assured him: "'member how Ollie Stitcher -fell down in the world's series at Chicago." He recited, for Anthony's -comfort, the names of eminent pitchers who had "fell down" when every -necessity demanded that they should have remained splendidly erect. - -His defeat still rankled in Anthony's mind, but the bitterness had -vanished, the sting salved by that other memory of the impulsive charm -of Eliza Dreen. He recalled all that she had said to him; her words, -thoughtfully considered, were just those employed by humdrum individuals -in their commonplace discourses; but, spoken by her, they were a -thrill with an especial, a significant, importance and beauty. It was -inevitable that she should have dreamed things immaculate, rare; things -like... white flowers. - -"Shampoo?" Bert inquired absent-mindedly. - -"_And_ singed, and curled, and sprinkled with violets," Anthony promptly -returned. With a flourish, Bert swept aside the muslin folds. - -Then, in the pursuit of a neglected duty, he crossed the town to a -quiet corner, occupied by a small dwelling built of smooth, green stone, -crowned with a fantastic and dingy froth of wood. A shallow, untended -garden was choked with weeds and bushes, sprawling upward against -closely-shuttered windows. He had not been to see Mrs. Bosbyshell for -two weeks, he realized, with a stir of mild self-reproach. He was aware -that his visits to that solitary and eccentric old woman formed her -sole contact with a world she regarded with an increasing, unbalanced -suspicion. - -A minute or more after his knock--the bell handle was missing--a shutter -shifted a fraction, upon which he was admitted to a narrow, dark hall, -and the door bolted sharply behind him. A short, stout woman, in -a formless wrap of grotesquely gorgeous design, faced him with a -quivering, apprehensive countenance and prodigiously bright eyes. Her -scant, yellowish-white hair was gathered aloft in a knot that slipped -oddly from side to side; and, as she walked, shabby Juliet slippers -loudly slapped the bare floor. - -"Do you want some wood brought in?" Anthony inquired; "and how does the -washer I put on the hot water spigot work?" - -"A little wood, if you please; and the spigot's good as new." She sat on -a chair, lifting a harassed gaze to his serious solicitation. "I've -had a dreadful time since you were here last--an evilish-appearing man -knocked and knocked, at one door and again at another." - -Her voice sank to a shrill whisper, "he was after the money." She nodded -so vigorously that the knot fell in a straggling whisp across her eyes. -"Cousin Alonzo sent him." - -"Your cousin Alonzo has been dead ten years," he interposed patiently, -going once more over that familiar ground. "Probably it was a man -wanting to sell gas stoves." - -"You don't know Alonzo," she persisted, unconvinced; "I should have to -see his corp'. He knows I've a comfortable sum put by, and's hard after -it for his wenching and such practices: small good, or bad, he'll get of -it when my time comes." - -He passed through the hall to the kitchen, and, unchaining the back -door, brought a basket of cut wood from a shed, and piled it beside the -stove. Mrs. Bosbyshell inspected with a critical eye the fastening of -the door. There was a swollen window sash to release above, a mattress -to turn, when he was waved ceremoniously into a formal, darkened -chamber. The musty spice of rose pot-pourri lingered in the flat air; -old mahogany--rush bottomed chairs, flute-legged table, a highboy and -Dutch clock--glimmered about the walls. A marble topped stand bore -orderly volumes in maroon and primrose morocco, the top one entitled, -"The Gentlewoman's Garland. A Gift Book." - -From a triangular cupboard, she produced a decanter with a carved design -of bees and cobalt clover, and a plate of crumbling currant cake. "A -sup of dandelion cordial," she announced, "a bite of sweet. Growing boys -must be fed." - -She sat, and with patent satisfaction watched Anthony consume the ropy -syrup and cake. - -"I met a girl last night," he told her intimately; "she had hair -like--like a roman candle." - -"Did you burn your heart up in it?" - -"She told me that I was like the early morning," he confided with a -rush. - -Mrs. Bosbyshell nodded her approval. - -"An understandable remark; exactly what I should have said fifty years -ago; I didn't know the girls of to-day had it in 'em. You've got a good -heart, Anthony," she enunciated. Anthony shuffled his feet. "A good -heart is a rare thing to find in the young. But I misdoubt, in a -world of mammon, you'll pay for it dear; I'm afraid you will never be -successful, so called. It's selling men that that success is got, and -buying women, and it's never in you to do those. _You_ wouldn't wish -an old woman gone for the sum she'd laid aside." Her fancies had been -wilder than usual, he concluded, as the holt of the door at his hack -slid home. Alonzo and her money, one he considered as actual, as -imminent, as the other, occupied to the exclusion of all else her -dimming brain. He had hoped to converse with her more fully on the -inexhaustible subject of Eliza Dreen, but her vagaries had interrupted -him continuously. He decided that she was an antiquated bore, but made a -mental note to return before the store of wood was consumed. - - - - -XI - -IN the evening he stopped from force of habit at Doctor Allhop's -drugstore: the familiar group was assembled behind the screen at the -rear, the conversation flowed in the old channels. Anthony lounged and -listened, but his attention continually wandered--he heard other, -more musical, tones; his vision was filled with a candid face and -widely-opened eyes in the green gloom of a pergola. He passed out by the -bevy at the sodawater fountain to the street. - -In the artificial day of the electric lights the early summer foliage -was as virulently green as the toy trees of a miniature ark; the sky was -a breathless vault filled with blue mists that veiled the stars; under -the locust trees the blooms were spilled odorously, whitely, on the -pavement. He walked aimlessly to the outskirts of the town. Across the -dim valley, against the hills merged into the night and sky, he could -see glimmering the low lights of Hydrangea House. It would be pleasant, -he thought, to be closer to that abode of delight; and, crossing the -road, he vaulted a fence, and descended through a tangle of aromatic -grass to the brook that threaded the meadow below. A star swam imaged -on the black, wrinkled surface of the water: it suggested vague, happy -images--Eliza was the star, and he was the brook, holding her mirrored -in his dreams. - -He passed cows, blowing softly into the sod; a flock of sheep broke -before him like an argent cloud on the heaven of the fields; and, -finally, reached the boundary of James Dreen's acres. He forced his way -through the budding hedge from which the place had its name, and, in a -cup of the lawn like a pool of brimming, fragrant shadows, sat watching -the lights of the house. - -Indistinct shapes passed the windows, each--since it might be -she--carrying to him a thrill; indistinguishable voices reached him, -the vague tones--they might be hers--chiming like bells on his straining -senses. The world, life, was so beautiful that it brought an obstruction -into his throat; he drew the back of his hand across his eyes, and, to -his surprise, found that it was wet. - -Presently, the lights sank on the lower floor and reappeared above. The -blinding whiteness of the thought of Eliza sleeping seared his brain -like a flare of powder. When the house retreated unrelieved into the -gloom he rose and slowly retraced his steps. He lit a cigarette; the -match burned with a steady flame in the stillness; but, in an unnamed -impulse, he flung both aside, and filled his lungs with the elysian June -air. - - - - -XII - -THE next afternoon, returning from the unloading of a grain car at his -father's warehouse, he discovered a smartly saddled horse fast to the -marble hitchingpost before his door. It hardly required the glance at -the silver "D" on the headstall to inform him who was within. He found -Ellie and Eliza Dreen in the corner by the Canton tea service, consuming -Pekoe and gingerbread dicky birds. Eliza nodded and smiled over her -shoulder, and resumed an animated projection of an excursion in canoes -on the Wingohocking. She wore a severe coat over white breeches and -immaculate boots with diminutive gold spurs. Beneath a flat straw hat -her hair was confined by a broad ribband low upon her neck, while a pink -stock was held in position by a gaily-checked waistcoat. - -Anthony dropped with affected ease on the sofa, and covertly studied the -delicate line of her cheek. He now recalled indignantly that Mrs. Dreen -had said Eliza was not good-looking; while her reference to Eliza's -veracity had been entirely superfluous. She turned toward him, finally, -with an engaging query. He saw across her nose a faint trail of the most -delightful freckles in the world; her eyes were blue, that amazing blue -of bachelor's buttons; while her mouth--he would have sworn this the -first time such simile had been applied to that feature--was like a -roseleaf. He made a totally inadequate reply, when Ellie rose, and, -plate in hand, vanished in quest of a fresh supply of gingerbread. A -sort of desperate, blundering courage took possession of him: - -"I have been thinking a lot about you," he told her; "last night I sat -on your grass and wondered which was your window." - -"What a silly I--we were on the porch all evening." - -"It wasn't that I wanted to talk to you so much," he tried to explain -his instinctive impulses, desires, "as just to be near you." - -"I think," she said slowly, "yes, I know--that is the prettiest thing -that has ever been said to me. I thought about you... a little; really -more about myself. I haven't recognized myself at all very lately; I -suppose it's being home again." She gazed at him candidly, critically. -"You have very unusual eyes," she remarked unexpectedly; "they are so -transparent. Haven't you _anything_ to hide?" - -"Some chicken feathers," he affirmed. He grew serious immediately. "Your -eyes are like--like--" the name of the flower so lately suggested by -her lucid vision had flown his mind. Suspenders, bachelor's suspenders, -exclusively occurred to him. "An awfully blue flower," he temporized. - -She crossed the room, and bent over the tea roses, freshly placed in the -jar by the door. "I must go," she said, her back to him; "I have been -here a terrific length of time... I thought perhaps you'd come in.... -Wasn't it shocking of me?" - -The knowledge that she had considered the possibility of seeing him -filled Anthony with incredulous joy. Then, sitting silently, gazing -fixedly at the floor, he became acutely miserable at the sudden -conviction of his worthlessness; shame prevented him from looking -at her--surely she must see that he, Anthony Ball, the unsuccessful, -without prospect, the truant from life, was an improper object for her -interest. She was so absolutely desirable, so fine. - -He recalled what she had said on the night of the dance... about -constancy: if the single devotion of his life would mean anything to -her, he thought grandiloquently, it was hers. He was considering the -possibility of telling her this when Ellie unnecessarily returned with -a replenished plate. He was grateful when neither included him in the -remarks which followed. And he speedily left the room, proceeding to -the pavement, where he stood with his palm resting on the flank of her -horse. - -In the slanting rays of the sun the street was a way of gold; when Eliza -appeared she was ringed in the molten glory. She placed her heel in his -hand, and sprang lightly into the saddle; the horse shied, there was -a clatter of hoofs, and she cantered away. Ellie stood on the steps, -graceful, unconcerned; he watched until the upright, mounted figure was -out of sight, then silently passed his sister into the house. - - - - -XIII - -HE was in his room when the familiar formula of a whistled signal -sounded from the darkening street. It was Alfred Craik, he recognized -the halt ending of the bar; he whistled like an old hinge, Anthony -thought impatiently. He made his way to the lawn, and called shortly, -over the crumbling iron fence. Alfred Craik was agog with weighty -information. - -"The circus is coming in at three-thirty tomorrow morning," he -announced. "The station agent told me... old Giller's lot on Newberry -Street. 'Member last year we had breakfast with the elephant trainer!" - -Circuses, Anthony told him in large unconcern, were for infantile minds; -they might put their circus on top the Courthouse without calling forth -the slightest notice from him; horses were no better than old cows; and -as for clowns, the ringmaster, they made him specifically ill. - -The greater part of this diatribe Alfred chose to ignore; he impatiently -besought Anthony to "come off"; and warned him strenuously against a -tardy waking. Once more in his room Anthony smiled at the other's pretty -enthusiasm. Yet at half past three he woke sharply, starting up on his -elbow as though he had been called. He heard in the distance the faint, -shrill whistle of the locomotive drawing the circus into Ellerton. -He sank back, but, with the face of Eliza radiant against the gloom, -slumber deserted him. It occurred to him that he might, after all, rise -and witness from his rarer elevation the preparations that had once -aroused in him such immature joy. - -The circus ground was an apparently inexplicable tangle of canvas and -lumber, threaded by men like unsubstantial, hurrying shadows. At the -fence corner loomed the vague bulks of elephants, heaving ceaselessly, -stamping with the dull clank of chains; a line of cages beyond was still -indistinguishable. The confusion seemed hopeless--the hasty, desperate -labor at the edges of the billowing, grey canvas, the virulent curses as -feet slipped in the torn sod, the shrill, passionate commands, resembled -an inferno of ineffectual toil for shades condemned to never-ending -labor. The tent rose slowly, hardly detached from the thin morning -gloom, and the hammering of stakes uprose with a sharp, furious energy. -A wagonload of hay creaked into the lot; a horse whinnied; and, from a -cage, sounded a longdrawn, despondent howl. The fusillade of hammering, -the ringing of boards, increased. A harried and indomitable voice -maintained an insistent grip upon the clamor. It grew lighter; pinched -features emerged, haggard individuals in haphazard garbs stood with the -sweat glistening on their blue brows. - -The elephants, tearing apart a bale of hay, appeared ancient beyond all -computation, infinitely patient, infinitely weary. Out of the sudden -crimson that stained the east a ray of sunlight flashed like a pointed, -accusing finger and rested on the garish, gilded bars and tarnished -fringe of the cages; it hit the worn and dingy fur of an aged, gaunt -lioness, the dim and bleared topaz of her eyes blinking against the -flood of day; it fell upon a pair of lean wolves trotting in a quick, -constricted circle; upon a ragged hyena with a dry and uplifted snout; -upon a lithe leopard with a glittering, green gaze of unquenchable hate. - -"Take a hold," a husky voice had urged Anthony; "help the circus men put -up the big tent, and get a free pass." In the contagion of work he had -pulled upon the hard canvas, the stiff ropes that cut like scored -iron, and held stakes to be driven into the slushy sod. Thin shoulders -strained against his own, gasping and maculate breaths assailed him. -The flesh was tom from a man's palm; another, hit a glancing blow on the -head with a mall, wandered about dazed, falling over ropes, blundering -in paths of hasty brutality. - -Anthony rested with aching muscles in the orient flood of the sun. -The tent was erected, flags fluttered gaily aloft, the posters of the -sideshow flung their startling colors abroad. A musical call floated -upward from an invisible bugle: an air of gala, of triumphant and -irresponsible pleasure, permeated the scene. "She's all right, isn't -she?" Alfred Craik demanded at his side. He nodded silently, and turned -toward home, his pulses leaping with joy at the dewy freshness of the -morning, the knowledge of Eliza--a sparkling, singing optimism drawn -from the unstained fountain of his youth. - - - - -XIV - -LATER, engaged in repairing a shelf--at a super-union scale--for his -mother, he heard the steam shriek of a calliope announcing the parade. -From a window he could see the thronged sidewalks, the crudely fantastic -figures of the clowns, enveloped in a dusty haze of light. His thoughts -withdrew from that vapid spectacle to the rapt contemplation of Eliza -Dreen. He pictured Eliza and himself in the dramatic situations which -diversified the moving pictures of his nightly attendance: he rescued -her from the wiles of Mexicans, counts, weirdly-wicked Hindoos; now -he dragged her from the chimney into which she had been bricked by -a Brotherhood of Blood; now, driving a monoplane above the hurtling -express that bore her toward a fiendish revenge, he descended to halt -the train at a river's brink while the bridge sank dynamited into the -swirling stream--"Mercy, Tony!" his mother's practical voice rent the -resplendent vision; "don't crush your greatuncle's epaulets." - -After the midday meal a minute review of the places where Eliza might -be found discovered the Ellerton Country Club to hold the greatest -possibility. Anthony was a virtual stranger to that focus of the -newer Ellerton; except for the older enthusiasts who played golf every -afternoon that it was humanly possible to remain outside it was the -stronghold of the species Anthony had encountered in the dressing room -at the Dreens' dance. The space at the back of the drugstore where he -had lounged held unbroken the elder tradition of Ellerton. There he -had cultivated a mild contempt for the studied urbanity, the formally -organized converse and games, of the Club. But as a setting for Eliza it -gained a compelling attraction. And, in his freshly-ironed flannels, he -ordered his steps toward that goal. The Club House overhung the rolling -green of the golf links; from a place of vantage he saw that Eliza was -not on the veranda; at one end a group of young men were drinking--teal -Beyond his father and three companions, followed by caddies, rose above -a hill. His father grasped a club and bent over the turf; the club -described a short arc, the ball flashed whitely through the air, and -the group trotted eagerly forward, mingling explanation, chagrin and -prediction with heated and simple sums in arithmetic. - -Then he saw Eliza... she was on the tennis court, playing with a -vigorous girl with a bare and stalwart forearm. He divined that the -latter was winning, and conceived a sweeping distaste for her flushed, -perspiring countenance and thickset ankles. "How beautiful you look!" -Eliza called, as he propped himself against the wire netting that, -overrun with honeysuckle, enclosed the courts. He watched her fleeting -form, heard her breathless exclamations, with warm stirs of delight. -When her opponent played the ball beyond her reach his dislike for that -efficiency became an obsession. The flying shadows lengthened on the -rolled, yellow surface of the court; the group on the porch emptied -their teacups and moved away; and the final set of games won by the -"beefsteak." - -Eliza slipped into a formless chocolate-colored coat: racket in hand she -smiled at him. "I'm rather done," she admitted. She hesitated, then: "I -wonder--are you doing anything?--if you would drive me home?" He assured -her upon that point with a celerity that wrought a momentary confusion -upon them. "The Meadowbrook and roan at the sheds," she directed. In the -basketlike cart they swung easily over the road toward Hydrangea House. -Checked relentlessly into a walk the roan stepped in a dainty fume. - -Eliza's countenance was as tenderly hued as the pearly haze that overlay -the far hills; faint, mauve shadows deepened the blueness of her eyes; -her mouth, slightly parted, held the fragile pink of coral; a tinge of -weariness upon her bore an infinite appeal--her relaxed, drooping body -filled him with a gusty longing to put his arms about her shoulders -and hold her secure against all fatigue, against the assaults of time -itself. - -He had never before driven such an impatient and hasty animal; at the -slightest slackening of the reins the horse broke into a sharp trot; -and, beyond doubt, he could walk faster than any other brute alive. -Already they were at the entrance to the driveway; the house appeared -to hurry forward to intercept them. Eliza pressed a button, and a man -crossed the grass to the roan's head. They descended, and she lingered -on the steps with a murmur of gratitude. "Mrs. Dreen telephoned Ranke -to meet the eight-forty," a servant in the doorway replied to Eliza's -query; "she's having dinner in town with Mr. Dreen." - -Eliza turned with a gesture of appeal. "Save me from a solitary -pudding," she petitioned Anthony; "you can go back with Ranke.... On the -porch, such fun--father detests candles." The voicing of his acceptance -he felt to be an absurd formality. "Then if you can amuse yourself," -she announced, "I'll vanish for a little... cigars in the library and -victrola in the hall." - -He crossed the sod to the porch on the other face of the house, and -sat watching the day fade from the valley below. A violet blur of smoke -overhung the chimney of the Ellerton Waterworks, printed thinly on the -sky. A sense of detachment from that familiar scene enveloped him--the -base ball field, the defunct garage, places and details, customary, -normal, retreated into the distance, it seemed into the past, gathering -upon the horizon of his thoughts as the roofs of Ellerton huddled beyond -the hills, vanishing into shadows that inexorably deepened, blotted out -the old aspects, stilled the accustomed voices, sounds. - -A servant appeared, and placed a table upon the tiles, spreading a -blanched cloth, gleaming crystal and silver. A low bowl of shadowy wood -violets was ranged in the centre, and hooded candles lighted, spilling -over the table, the flowers, a pale, auriferous pool of light in the -purpling dusk. When Eliza followed, in filmy white, she seemed half -materialized from the haunting vision of poignant beauty at the back of -his brain. She was like moonlight, still and yet disturbing, veiled in -illusion, in strange, ethereal influences that set athrill within him -emotions immaterial, potent, snowy longing, for which he had no name. - -The last plate removed, Anthony stirred his coffee in a state of dreamy -happiness. The candlelight spread a wan gold veil over Eliza's delicate -countenance, it slid over the pearls about her slim throat, and fell -upon her fragile wrists. "It's been wonderful," he pronounced solemnly. - -"I've been terribly rude," she told him, "I have hardly spoken. I have -been busy studying you." - -"There's not much to study," he disclaimed; "Mrs. Bosbyshell thinks -I'm marked for failure." In reply to her demand he gave a brief and -diffident account of that eccentric old woman. "But," Eliza discerned -among the meagre details, "she trusts you, she lets you into her house. -And you are perfect to her, of course. - -"Any one could trust you, I think. Yet you are not a particle tiresome; -most trustworthy people are so--so unexciting. But monotony is far -as possible from your vicinity. What did you do, for instance, this -morning?" He described to her the advent of the circus, the labor in -the obscurity. "I was surprised to see the old thing up," he ended: "it -seemed so hopeless at first." - -"How wonderfully poetic!" she cried. - -Until that moment poetry had occupied in his thoughts a place analogous -to tea.--In his brief passage through the last school he had been -forcibly fed with Gray's Elegy, discovering it unmitigated and sickening -rot. When now, in view of her obvious pleasure, he would have to -reconsider his judgment. - -"That blind effort," she continued, leaning forward, flushed with the -warmth of her image, "all those men struggling, building in the dark, -unable to see what they were accomplishing, or what part the others -had. And then--oh! don't you see!--the great, snowy tent in the morning -sun--a figure of the success, the reward, of all labor, all living." - -"How about the ones that loafed--didn't pull, or were drunk?" - -"For all," she insisted, "sober and drunk and shrinking. Can you think -that any supreme judgment would be cheaply material, or in need of -any of our penny abilities? do you suppose the supreme beauty has no -standard higher than those practical minds that hold out heaven as a -sort of reward for washed faces? Anthony," it was the first time she had -called him that, and it rang in his brain in a long peal of rapture, "if -there isn't a heaven for every one, there isn't any at all. You, singing -an idle song, must be as valuable as the greatest apostle to any supreme -love, or else it isn't supreme, it isn't love." - -"You are so wonderfully good," he muttered, "that you think every one -else is good too." - -"But I'm hardly a bit good," she assured him, "and I wouldn't be good -if I could--in the Christian kind of way." She gazed about with an -affectation of secretiveness, then leaned across her coffee cup. "It -would bore me horribly," she confided, "that 'other cheek' thing; -I'm not a grain humble; and I spend a criminal amount of money on -my clothes. I have even put a patch upon my cheek to be a gin and -stumbling-block to a young man." - -She had! - -He surveyed with absurd pleasure that minute black crescent on the pale -rose of her countenance. If she had been good before she was adorable -now: her confession had drawn her out of the transplendid cloud where -he had elevated her down to his side; she was infinitely more desirable, -more warmly and delightfully human. - -"I have been asking about you," she told him later, with a slight frown; -"the accounts are, well--various. I don't mind your--your friends of the -stables, Anthony; they are, what Ellerton will never learn, the careless -choice of a born aristocrat; I don't care a Tecla pearl whether you are -'a steady young man' or not. And one doesn't hear a whisper of meanness -about you anywhere. But I have an exaggerated affection for things that -are beautiful, I suppose it's a weakness, really, and ugly people or -surroundings, harsh voices even, terrify me. The thought of cruelty -makes me cold. And, since you will come into my thoughts, and smile your -funny little smile at me out of walls and other impossible places, I -should like to picture you, not in pool rooms, but on the hills that you -know so well. I should like to think of your mind echoing with the rush -of those streams, the hunting of those owls, you told me about, and not -sounding with coarse and silly and brutal words and ideas." - -"It echoes with you," he replied, "and you are more beautiful than hills -and streams." - -For a moment she held his gaze full in the blue depths of her vision; -then, with a troubled smile, evaded it. "I'm a patched jade," she -announced. - -Ranke, the servant informed them, was ready to meet the train. - -"You're going... Elbe's affair on the Wingohocking?" - -"Absolutely." She stood illusive against the saffron blur of the -candles, the sweeping hem of night. - -"I'll remember," he blundered; "whatever you would wish... you have -changed everything. The dinner was--I don't remember what it was," he -confessed; "but I remember an olive." - -He left the automobile at the edge of Ellerton, and proceeded on foot, -passing the dully-shinning bulk of the circus tent. He heard the brassy -dissonance of the band within, the monotonous thud of horses' hoofs -on the tanbark; a raucous voice rose at the entrance to the side-show -dwelling unctuously on the monstrosities to be viewed within for the -price of a dime, of a dime, a dime. He recalled the spent lioness in her -painted cage, the haggard and sick hyena, the abject trot of the wolves -to nowhere.--A sudden exhalation of hatred swept over him for the -hideous inhumanity of circuses and men. Eliza had lifted him from the -meaningless babble of trivial and hard voices into a high and immaculate -region of shining space and quietude. He didn't want to come down again, -he protested, to _this_. - - - - -XV - -ANTHONY passed the few, intervening days to the excursion on the -Wingohocking in a state of rapt absorption: his brain sounded with -every tone of Eliza's voice; she smiled at him, in riding garb, over -that delicate trail of freckles; he saw her in the misty, amber dress of -the dance; in white, illusively lit by the candles against the shadowy -veranda. Now, for the first time, day that had succeeded haphazard -to day, without relation or plan, were strung together, bound into an -intelligible whole, by the thread of romance. He must get a firm grip -upon reality, construct a solid existence out of the unsubstantial -elements of his living; but, in his new felicity, he was unable to -direct his thoughts to details inevitably sordid; he was lost in the -miracle of Eliza Dreen's mere presence; material considerations might, -must, be deferred a short while longer. - -A stainless afternoon sky overspread finally the group gathered about -covered willow baskets on the green bank of the stream. Behind them the -meadow swept level, turning back the flood of the sun with a blaze of -aureate flowers, to a silver band of birch; the upstream reach, wrinkled -and dark, was lost between tangles of wild grapes; below, with a smooth, -virid rush, the water poured and broke over rocky shallows. - -Anthony launched his canoe from a point of crystalline sand, and, -holding it against the hank, gazed covertly at Eliza. She was once more -in white, with a broad apple-green ribband about her waist: she stood -above him, slenderly poised against the sky; and she was so rare, he -thought, so ethereal, that she seemed capable of floating off into -the blue. Then he bent, hastily rearranging a cushion, for she was -descending toward him. He stepped skilfully after her into the craft, -and they drifted silently over the surface of the stream. A thrust of -the paddle, in a swirl of white bubbles, turned them about, and they -advanced steadily against the sliding current. - -The still, watery facsimile of the banks were broken into liquid blots -of emerald and bronze by the bow of the canoe. The air rose coldly from -the surface to Anthony's face; from the meadows on either hand came the -light, dry fragrance of newly cut hay; before them trees, meeting above, -formed a sombrous reach, barred with dusty gold shafts of sunlight that -sank into the clear depths. He heard behind the distant dip of paddles, -and floating voices, worlds removed. - -Eliza trailed her hand in the water. An idyllic silence folded them -which he was loath to break.... He had rolled up his sleeves, and the -muscles of his forearms swelled rhythmically under the clear, brown -skin. - -"You are preposterously strong," she approved. His elation, however, -collapsed at the condition following. "But strength is simply brutality -until it's wisely directed. Mazzini and not Napoleon was my ideal in -history." Who, he wondered unhappily, was Mazzini? "I hated school," he -told her briefly; "I don't believe I have ever read a book through; I'd -rather paddle about--with _you_." - -"But you have read deep in the book of nature," she reassured him; "only -a very favorite few open those pages. You are such a child," she added -obliquely, "appallingly unsophisticated: that's what's nicest about you, -really." That form of laudation left him cold, and he drove the canoe -with a vicious rush against the reflections. "A dear child," she added, -without materially increasing his pleasure. - -"Words are rot!" he exploded suddenly; "they can't say any of the -important things. I could talk a year to you without telling you what -I feel--here," he laid a hand momentarily on his spare, powerful chest; -"it's all mixed up, like lead and fire; or that feeling when ice cream -goes to your head. You see," he ended moodily, "all rot." - -"It's very picturesque... and apparently painful. Words aren't necessary -for the truly important things, Anthony." - -"Then you know--what I think of you; you know... how everything else has -moved away and left only you; you know a hundred things, all important, -all about yourself." - -She set an uncertain smile against the rush of his words. The stream -narrowed between high banks drawn against the sheer deeps of sky; the -water flowed swiftly, with a sustained whisper at the edges, and, for -a silent space, he paddled vigorously. Then a profound, glassy pool -opened, sodded bluely to the shores, with low, silvery clumps of willows -casting sooty shadows across the verd water; and, with a sharp twist, -he beached the canoe with a soft shock upon the shelving pebbles. As -he held the craft steady he felt the light, thrilling impact of Eliza's -palm as she sprang ashore. - -The others followed rapidly. The canoes were drawn out of the water, and -preparations for supper commenced. Eliza and Ellie Ball, accompanied by -a youth with a pail, proceeded to a nearby farmhouse in quest of milk. -Anthony lingered at the water's edge, ignoring the appeal for firewood. -The glow of the westering sun faded from the air, and the reflection -of the fire lighted behind him danced ruddy op the grass. At intervals -small fish splashed invisibly, and a kingfisher cried downstream. Then -he heard his sister's voice, and a familiar and moving perfume hovered -in his nostrils. He turned and saw Eliza with her arms full of white -lilacs. Her loveliness left him breathless, mingled with the low sun it -blinded him. She seemed all made of misty bloom--a fragrant spirit -of ineffable flowers. The scent of the lilacs stirred profound, -inarticulate emotions within him, like the poignant impression left by a -forgotten dream of shivering delight. - -He scorned the fare soon spread on the clothed sod, burning his throat -stoically with a cup of unsweetened coffee. Eliza sat beyond the -charring remains of the fire sinking from cherry-red embers to -impalpable white ash. He observed with secret satisfaction that she -too ate little: an appetite on her part, he felt, would have been a -calamity. - -'The meadows and distant woods were vague against the primrose west, -the cyanite curtain of the east, when the baskets were assembled for the -return. Anthony delayed over the arrangement of his craft until Eliza -and himself were last in the floating procession. Dense shadows, -drooping from the trees, filled the banks; overhead the sky was clear -green. They swept silently forward with the current, a rare dip of the -paddle. Eliza's countenance was just palely visible. The lilacs lay in a -pallid heap at their feet. On either hand the world floated back darkly -like an immaterial void through which an ebon stream bore them beyond -the stars. - -At a bend he reached up and caught hold of an overhanging branch, and -they swung into a shallow backwater. A deep shelf of stone lay under the -face of the bank, closed in by a network of wildgrape stems. "This is -where I sometimes stay at night," he told her; "no one knows but you." - - - - -XVI - -SHE rose, and, without warning, stepped out upon the rock. "Here's -where you build your fire," she cried at the discovery of a blackened -heap of ashes. He secured the canoe and followed her. "Ideal," she -breathed. The sound of the fall below was faintly audible; the quavering -cry of an owl, the beating of heavy wings, rose above the bank. "Don't -you envy the old pastoral people following their flocks from land to -land, setting up their tents by streams like this, waking with the dawn -on the world? or gipsies... you must read 'Lavengro.'" - -"I don't envy any one on God's little globe," he asserted; "to be here -with you is the best thing possible." - -"Something more desirable would soon occur to you." - -"Than you!" he protested; "than you!" - -"But people get tired of what they have." - -"It's what they don't have that makes them old and tired," he told her -with sudden prescience; "when I think of what I am going to lose, of -what I can never have, it makes me crazy." - -"Why do you say that?... How can you know?" - -She was standing close to him in the constricted space, the tangible -shock of her nearness sweeping over him in waves of heady emotion. The -water gurgling by the rock was the only sound in a world-stillness. - -"I mean you." - -"Well, I'm not fairy gold; I'm not the end of the rainbow. I am just -Eliza." - -"Just Eliza!" he scoffed. Then the possibility contained in her words -struck him dumb. The feeling irresistibly returned that because of -her heavenly ignorance, her charity, she mistook him to be worthy. The -necessity to guard her from her own divinity impelled him to repeat, -miserably, all that she had ignored. - -"I'm not much account," he said laboriously; "you see, I never stuck at -anything, and, somehow, things have never stuck to me. It was that way -at school--I was expelled from four. I'm supposed to be shiftless." - -"I don't care in the least for that!" she declared; "only one thing is -really important to me... something, oh, so different." Suddenly she -laid her hand upon his sleeve, and, pitifully white, faced him. "I've -had the beautifullest feeling about you," she whispered; "Anthony, tell -me truly, are you... good?" A sob rose uncontrollably in his throat, and -his eyes filled with tears that spilled over his cheeks. For a moment he -struggled to check them, then, unashamed, slipped onto his knees before -her and held her tightly in his arms. "No one in the world can say that -I am not--what you mean." - -She stooped, and sat beside him on the stone, holding his hand close to -her slight body. "My dream," she said simply. "I didn't understand it at -first; you see, I was only a child. And then when I grew older, and--and -heard things, it seemed impossible. That sort of goodness only bored -other girls... they liked men of the world, men with a past. I thought -perhaps I was only morbid, and lost trust in--in you." - -"It was a kind of accident," he admitted; "I never thought about it the -way you did. It seemed young to me." - -"I don't believe it was an accident in the least," she insisted. A mist -rose greyly from the darker surface of the stream, and settled cold and -clammy about Anthony's face. It drew about them in wavering garlands, -growing steadily denser. Eliza was sitting now pressed against him, and -he felt a shiver run through her. "You are cold!" he cried instantly, -and rose, lifting her to her feet. She smiled, in his arms, and he bent -down and kissed her. She clung to him with a deep sigh, and met his lips -steadily with her own. The mist slipped like a veil over Eliza's head -and drops of moisture shone in her hair. Anthony turned and unfastened -the canoe; and, suddenly conscious of the length of their delay, he -urged it with long sweeps over the stream. Beyond the lilacs, distilling -their potent sweetness in the dark, Eliza was motionless, silent, a -flicker of white in the gloom. - -They swept almost immediately into the broad reach where they had -started. The lights from the windows of a boat house, the voices of -the others, streamed gaily over the water. He felt Eliza tremble as he -lifted her ashore. - -"It's happiness," she told him; "I am ever so warm inside." - - - - -XVII - -BY his plate at the lunch table he discovered, the following day, a -small, lavender envelope stamped and addressed to Anthony Ball, Esq. -He slipped it hastily into his pocket, and managed but a short-lived -pretext of eating. Then, with the letter yet unopened, he left Ellerton, -and penetrated into the heart of the countryside. - -He stopped, finally, under a fence that crossed a hill, on a slope -of wild strawberries. The hill fell away in an unbroken sweep of -undulating, blue-green wheat; trees filled the hollow, with a roof and -thread of silver water drawn through the lush leaves; on either hand -chocolate loam bore the tender ripple of young com; and beyond, crossed -by the shifting shadows of slow-drifting clouds, hill and wood and -pasture spread a mellow mosaic of summer. - -He tore open the envelope with a reluctant delight. At the top of the -sheet E D was stamped severely in mauve. "My very dear," he read. He -stopped, suddenly unable to proceed; the countryside swam in his vision; -he gulped an ecstatic, convulsive breath, and proceeded: - -"It's too wonderful--I can't realize that you exist, and that I have -found you in such a great world. Isn't it strange how real dreams are; -just now the real world seems the dream, and my dear home, my mother, -shadows compared to the thoughts that fill my brain of you, you, you. - -"But I am writing mostly to tell you something that, perhaps, you didn't -fully understand yesterday--and yet I think you must have--that, if you -really want me, I am absolutely your own. I couldn't help it if I wanted -to, and, oh, I don't want to! I let a man at Etretat kiss me, and I am -glad I did, for it made me understand that I must wait for you. - -"I won't write any more now because my head aches. From Eliza who loves -you utterly." Then he saw that she had written on the following page: -"Don't worry about money and the future; I have my own, all we shall -need for years, and we can do something together." - -He laid the letter beside him on the grass. The welling song of a -catbird sounded unsupportably sweet, and a peaceful column of smoke -rose bluely from the chimney below: it carried him in imagination to a -dwelling set in a still, green garden, where birds filled the branches -with melody, and Eliza and himself walked hand in hand and kissed. Night -would gather in about their joy, their windows would shine with the -golden lamp of their seclusion, their voices mingle... sink... sacred. - -He dreamed for a long while; the sunlight vanished from the slope below -him, from the darkling trees, touched only the farthest hills with a -rosy glow. As the sun sank an errant air whispered in the wheat, and -scattered the pungent aroma of the wild strawberries. A voice called -thinly from the swales, and cows gathered indistinctly about a gate. -Anthony rose. The world was one vast harmony in which he struck the -highest, happiest note. Beyond the near hills the lilac glitter of the -Ellerton lights sprang palely up on the blue dusk. As he made his way -home, Anthony's brain teemed with delightful projects, with -anticipation, the thought of the house in the hollow--abode of love, -steeped in night. - - - - -XVIII - -ELLIE was in the garden, and interrupted his progress toward a belated -dinner. "Father wants to see you," she called; "at the Club, of course." -He wondered absently, approaching the Club, what his father wanted. -The rooms occupied the second story of the edifice that housed the -administration of the county; the main corridor was choked by a crowd -that moved noisily toward an auditorium in the rear, but the Club was -silent, save for the click of invisible billiard balls. - -His father was asleep in the reading room, a newspaper spread upon his -knees, and one thin hand twisted in his beard. Through an open window -drifted the strains of a band on the Courthouse lawn. The older man -woke, clearing his throat sharply. "Well, Anthony," he nodded. Anthony -found a chair. - -His father leaned forward, regarding him with a keen, kindly gaze. "I'm -told the garage has gone up," he commenced. - -"Sam took his car away; it was Alfred's infernal tinkering; he can't -leave a machine alone." - -"Did you close affairs satisfactorily, stop solvent?" - -"There's a little debt of about six dollars." - -The other sought his wallet, and, removing a rubber band, counted six -dollars into Anthony's hand. "Meet that in the morning." He leaned hack, -tapping the wallet with deliberate fingers. "I suppose you have no plan -for the immediate future," he observed. - -"Nothing right now." - -"I have one for you, though, as 'right now' as this week." - -Anthony listened respectfully, his thoughts still dwelling upon the -beauty of the dusk without, of life. "You have tried a number of things -in the past few years without success. I have started you in a small -way again and again, only to observe the familiar course of a failure -inevitable from your shiftless habits. You are not a bad boy, but -you have no ability to concentrate, like a stream spread all over the -meadow--you have no course. You're a loiterer." - -"Yes, sir," said Anthony, from the midst of his abstraction. - -"You are too old for that now, either it must stop at once, or you will -become definitely worthless. I am going to make a determined effort--I -am going to send you to California, your brother-in-law writes that he -can give you something." - -The term California sounded in Anthony's brain like the unexpected -clash of an immense hell. It banished his pleasant revery in disordered -shreds, filling him with sudden dismay. - -"I telegraphed Albert yesterday," the even tones continued, "and have -his answer in my pocket. You are to go out to him immediately." - -"But that's impossible," Anthony interrupted; "it just can't be done." - -"Why not?" - -He found himself completely at a loss to give adequate expression to -his reason for remaining in Ellerton. His joy was so new that he -had scarcely formulated it to himself, it evaded words, defied -definition--it was a thing of dreams, a vision in a shining garment, a -fountain of life at the bottom of his heart. - -"Come; why not?" - -"I don't want to go away from Ellerton... just now." - -"That is precisely what you must do. I can understand your desire to -remain close by your mother--she has an excuse for you, assistance, at -every turn." - -"That isn't the reason; it's... it's," he boggled horribly, "a girl." - -"Indeed," his father remarked dryly. - -Anthony shrunk painfully from the unsympathetic voice of the elder. A -new defiance of his father welled hotly within him, corrupting the bonds -of discipline that had held him lovingly to his parent throughout the -past. A chasm opened between them; and, when Anthony spoke again, it was -with a voice of insipient insubordination. - -"It isn't the silly stuff you think," he told the other; "I'm engaged!" - -"What on?" pithily came the inquiry. "Unfortunately I can't afford the -luxury of a daughter-in-law. I thought you were something more of a man -than to bring your wife into your mother's house." - -"I sha'n't; we can get along until I... find work." - -"Do you mean that your wife will support you?" - -"Not altogether; she will help until--until--" he stopped miserably -before the anger confronting him in the other's gaze: it was useless to -explain, he thought; But if his father laughed at him, at his love, he -would leave the room and never see him again. "I can't see why money is -so damned holy!" he broke out; "why it matters so infernally where it -comes from; it seems to me only a dirty detail." - -"It is the measure of a man's honor," the elder Ball told him -inexorably; "how it is made or got stamps you in the world. I am -surprised to hear that you would even consider taking it from a woman, -surprised and hurt. It shows all the more clearly the necessity for your -going at once into a hard, healthy existence. Your mother will get you -ready; a couple of days should do it." - -"... all unexpected," Anthony muttered; "I must think about it, see some -one. I'll--I'll talk to you to-morrow. That's it," he enunciated more -hopefully, "to-morrow--" - -"Entirely unnecessary," his father interrupted, "nothing to be gained by -delay or further talk. The thing's arranged." - -"I think I won't go," Anthony told him slowly. The other picked up the -paper, smoothing out the creases. "Very well," he replied; "I dare say -your mother will do something for you.--Women are the natural source of -supplies for the sort of person you seem at the point of becoming." A -barrier of paper, covered with print in regular columns, shut one from -the other. - -Anthony burned under a whelming sense of injustice. He decided that he -would leave the room, his father, forever; but, somehow, he remained -motionless in his chair, casting about in his thoughts for words with -which to combat the elder's scorn. He thought of Eliza; she smiled -at him with appealing loveliness; he felt her letter in his pocket, -remembered her boundless generosity. He couldn't leave her! The band in -the square below was playing a familiar operatic lament, and the refrain -beat on his consciousness in waves of despairing and poignant longing. -A sea of misery swept over him in which he struggled like a spent -swimmer--Eliza was the far, silver shore toward which he fought. It -wasn't fair--a sob almost mastered him--to ask him to go away now, when -he had but found her. - -"It's not Siberia," he heard his father say, "nor a life sentence; if -this--this 'girl' is serious, you will be closer working for her in -California than idle in Ellerton." - -"I don't want to go away from her," he whispered; "the world's such -a hell of a big, empty place... things happen." He dashed some bright -tears from his eyes, and, turning his back on the other, gazed through -the window at the tops of the maple trees--a black tracery of foliage -against the lights below. - -"Two or three years should set you on your feet, give you an opportunity -to return." Eternity could scarcely have seemed more appalling than the -term casually indicated by his father, it was unthinkable! A club member -entered, fingering the racked journals on the long table, exchanging -trivial comments with the older Ball. It seemed incredible to Anthony, -in the face of the cataclysm which threatened him, that the world should -continue to revolve callously about such topics. It was an affront to -the gravity, the dignity, of his suffering. He swiftly left the room. - - - - -XIX - -IT was Saturday night, Bay Street was thronged, the stores brilliantly -lit. He saw in the distance the red and blue jars of illuminated water -that advertised Doctor Allhop's drugstore, and turned abruptly on his -heel. In the seclusion of his room he once more read Eliza's letter: it -was a superlative document of sweet commonsense, the soul of nobility, -of wisdom, of tenderness, of divine generosity. In its light all other -suggestions, considerations, courses, seemed tawdry and ignoble. The -boasted wisdom of a world of old men, of material experience, seemed -only the mean makeshifts for base and unworthy ends. The ecstasy -sweeping from his heart to his brain, the delicious fancies, the -rare harmonies, that haunted him, the ineffable perfume of invisible -lilacs--these were the true material from which to fashion life, these -were the high things, the important. And youth was the time to grasp -them: a swift premonition seized him of the coldness, the ineptitude, -the disease, of old age. - -For the first time in his life he thought of death in definite -connection with himself: he was turning out the gas, preparatory for -sleep; and, at the instantaneous darkness, he thought, with a gasp of -fear, it would be like that. He stood trembling as a full realization of -disillusion mastered him; all his hot, swinging blood, the instinctive -longing for perpetuation aroused in him by Eliza, in sick revolt. -Fearsome images filled his mind... the hole in the clay--closed; -putrefaction; the linked mass of worms. In feverish haste he lit the -gas; his body was wet with sweat; his heart pounding unsteadily. - -The familiar aspect of his room somewhat reassured him; the thought -dimmed, slowly conquered by the flooding tide of his living. Then he -realized that Eliza too must die, and his terrors vanished before a -loving pity for her earthly fragility. Finally, death itself assumed -a less threatening guise; peace stole imperceptibly into his heart. A -vague belief, new born of his passion, that dying was not the end of -all, rose within him--there must be a struggle, heights to win, gulfs -to cross, a faith to keep. With steady fingers he turned out the -gas.--Eliza was his faith: he fell into a sound slumber. - - - - -XX - -HE made no comment when, in the morning, his mother made tentative -piles of his clothing. He would see Eliza that afternoon, and then -announce their decision. His mother attempted to fathom his feeling -at the prospect of the journey, the separation from Ellerton; but, the -memory of his father's cutting words still rankling in his mind, he -evaded her questioning. - -"If you are going to be miserable out there," she told him, enveloping -him in the affection of her steady, grey gaze, "something else might be -found. I can always help--" - -"You don't understand these things," he interrupted her brusquely, -annoyed by his father's prescience. They were sitting in her sewing -room, a pile of his socks at her side. She wore her familiar, severe -garb, the steelbowed spectacles directed upon the needle flashing -steadily in her assured fingers. She was eternally laboring for her -children, Anthony realized with a pang of affection. His earliest -memories were charged with her unflagging care, the touch of her smooth -and tireless hands, the defense of her energetic voice. - -He must tell her about his engagement, but not until he had seen Eliza -again, when something definite would be agreed upon. It was immensely -difficult for him to talk about the subject nearest his heart-words -diminished and misrepresented it: he wanted to brood over it, secretly, -for days. - - - - -XXI - -LATER he dressed with scrupulous exactitude, and proceeded directly to -Hydrangea House. The afternoon was sultry, the air full of the soothing -drone of summer insects, the dust of the road rose in heavy puffs about -his feet. He crossed the stream and fields, saturated with sunlight, and -came to the pillared portico of his destination. - -"Miss Dreen," Anthony said, stepping forward into the opening door. - -"Miss Dreen cannot see you," the servant returned without hesitation. -Anthony drew back, momentarily repelled; but, before he could question -this announcement, he heard grinding wheels on the gravel drive. -Turning, he saw a motor stop, and Mrs. Dreen descend, followed by a man -with a somber, deeply-scored countenance. Anthony moved forward eagerly -as she mounted the steps. "Mrs. Dreen," he asked; "can you tell me-" She -passed with a confused, blank face, without stopping or acknowledging -his salutation, and the door closed softly upon her and her companion. - -A momentary flame of anger within Anthony quickly sank to cold -consternation. Eliza had told her parents and they had dismissed the -idea and him. It was evident they had forbidden her to see him. He -walked indecisively down the steps, still carrying his hat, and stopped -mechanically on the driveway. He gazed blindly over a brilliant, scarlet -bed of geraniums, over the extended lawn, the rolling hills of Ellerton. -Then his courage returned, stiffened by the obstacles which apparently -confronted him: he would show them that he was not to be lightly -dismissed; no power on earth should separate him from Eliza. - -The servant had only obeyed Mrs. Dreen's direction; Eliza, he -was certain, had no choice in the matter of his reception. Then, -unexpectedly, he remembered his father's words, the latter's -contemptuous reference to all appeals to women. He must go to Mr. Dreen, -and straightforwardly state his position, tell him... _what?_ Why, that -he, Anthony Ball, loved Eliza, desired her, had come to take her away... -_where?_ In all the world he had no place prepared for her. He drove his -hand into his pocket, and discovered a quarter of a dollar and some -odd pennies--all that he possessed. Suddenly he laughed, a short, sorry -merriment that stopped in a dry gasp. He turned and ran, stumbling over -the grass, through the hot dust, toward Ellerton. Two years, he thought, -California; California and two years. - - - - -XXII - -ANTHONY sat late into the night composing an explanatory and farewell -letter to Eliza: - -"Your family would laugh at me," he wrote; "I couldn't show them a -dollar. And although my father has done a great deal for me he wouldn't -do this. I couldn't expect him to. Mother might help, she is like you, -but I could not very well live between two women, could I? The only hope -is California for a couple of years. You know how much I want to stay -with you, how hard this is to write, when our engagement, everything, is -so new and wonderful. But it would only be harder later. If I had seen -you this afternoon I would never have left you. I am going to-morrow -night. This will come to you in the morning, and I will be home if you -send me a message. I would like to see you again before I go away in -order to come back to you forever. I would like to hear you say again -that you love me. Sometimes I think it never really happened. If I don't -see you again before I leave, remember I shall never change, I shall -love you always and not forget the least thing you said. I wish now I -had studied so that I could write better. Remember that I belong to you, -when you want me I will come to you if it's around the world, I would -come to you if I were dead I think. Good-bye, dear, dear Eliza, until -tomorrow anyhow, and that's a long while to be without seeing you or -hearing your voice." - -At the announcement of his agreement to go West, the attitude of his -father had changed greatly; his hand continually sought Anthony's -shoulder; he consulted gravely, as it were with an equal, with regard -to trains, precautions, new climates. His mother busied herself over -his clothes, her rare speech brusque and hurried. To Anthony she seemed -suddenly old, _grey_; her hands trembled, and necessary stitches were -uneven. - -He was aware that the mail for Hydrangea House was collected before -noon, and he sat expectantly in the room overlooking the street. It was -dark and cool, there were creamy tea roses in the Canton jar now, -while in the street it was hot and bright. A sere engraving of Joseph -Bonaparte in regal robes gazed serenely from the wall. The hour for -lunch arrived without any message from Eliza. Throughout the afternoon -he dropped his pressing affairs find descended to the street... nothing. - -His heart grew heavy with doubts, with fears--his letter had been -intercepted; or, if Eliza had received it, her answer had been diverted. -Perhaps she had at last realized that he was unfit for her love. The -impulse almost mastered him to go once more to Hydrangea House, but -pride prevented; his unhappiness hardened, grew bitter, suspicious. Then -he again read her letter, and its patent sincerity swept away all doubt; -Eliza was unwavering; if not now he would find her at the end of two -years, unchanged, warm, beautiful. - -He was summoned to dinner, where he found the delicacies he especially -liked. The plates were liberally filled, all made a pretence at -eating, but, at the end, the food remained hardly touched. The forced -conversation fell into sudden, disturbing silences. His father sharpened -the carving knife twice, which, for shad roe, was scarcely necessary; -his mother scolded the servant without cause; even Ellie was affected, -and smiled at him with a bright tenderness. - -He was to leave Ellerton at midnight, when he would be enabled to -connect with a western express, and it was arranged for him to spend a -last hour at the Club with his father. Ellie and the servant stood upon -the pavement, his mother was upstairs in the sewing room... where he -entered softly. - -At the Club the billiard room was dark, the tables shrouded, but from -a room at the end of the hall came the murmur of the nightly coon-can -players. They seated themselves at a table, and his father ordered beer -and cigars. It was the first time that he had acknowledged Anthony to -possess the discretion of maturity, and he raised the stein to his lips -with the feeling that it was a sacrament of his manhood, an earnest and -pledge of his success. - -The midnight train emerged from the gloom of the station, passed through -the outskirts of Ellerton, detached rows of dark dwellings, by the -grounds of the Baseball Association, its fence still plastered with the -gaudy circus posters, into the dim fields and shining streams. Anthony -stood on the last, swinging platform, gazing back at the gloom that -enveloped Ellerton, at the place where Hydrangea House was hid by -the hills. An acute misery possessed him--the unsettled maimer of his -departure from Eliza, her silence, struggled in his thoughts with the -attempt to realize the necessity of the course he had adopted to bring -about a final and lasting joy. He wondered if Eliza would understand the -need for his going; but, assured of her wise sympathy, he felt that she -would; and a measure of content settled upon him. The engine swung about -a curve, disappearing into the obscurity of a wood. "Eliza," he cried -aloud, "Eliza, be here when I come back to you!" - -He sat for the greater part of an hour on the deserted platform of the -junction, where signal lamps glistened on the steel rails that vanished -into the night, into the west, the inscrutable future. The headlight -of the massive locomotive flared unexpectedly, whitely upon him; the -engine, with a brief glimpse of a sanguinary heart of fire illuminating -a sooty human countenance, gleaming, liquid eyeballs, passed and -stopped; and Anthony hastily mounted the train. He made his way through -the narrow passage of buttoned, red curtains, and found his berth, when -he sank into a weary, dreamless sleep. - - - - -XXIII - -IN the morning his was the last berth made up for the day; the car, -shaded against the sun, was rolling slightly, and he braced himself as -he made his way toward breakfast. The tables were all occupied; but, at -a carelessly hospitable nod, he found a place with two men. They were, -he immediately saw, Jews. One was robustly middle aged, with a pinkly -smooth countenance, a slightly flattened nose, and eyes as colorless as -clear water in a goblet. He was carefully dressed in shepherd's plaid, -with a gay tie that held a noticeably fine pearl. His companion was -thin and dark, with a heavy nose irritated to rawness by the constant -application of a blue silk handkerchief. The latter, Anthony discovered -in the course of the commonplaces which followed, was sycophant and -henchman of the first--a never failing source of applause for the -former's witticisms. - -"How far out are you bound?" queried the owner of the pearl. Then, when -Anthony had told him his destination, "no business opportunities in -California for a young man without capital behind him; only hard work -and a day laborer's wages. Nothing West but fruit, land and politics on -a large scale. My chauffeur at a hundred a month does better than eighty -per cent, of the young ones in the West." - -This information fell like a dark cloud over Anthony's sanguine hopes -for a speedy and opulent return. A sense of imminent misfortune pressed -upon him, a sudden, unreasoning dread of what might be in store for -Eliza and himself, of the countless perils of a protracted delay. At the -end of two years he might be no better off than he was at present. His -brother-in-law, he knew, would only pay him a nominal amount at first. -The two years stretched out interminably in his imagination. - -The more prosperous of his companions selected a cigar from a silk case, -and, cutting it with a gold penknife, they removed to the smoking car. -"I drove a car for a while," Anthony informed them later, mingling the -acidulous smoke of a Dulcina with the more fragrant clouds of Habana; -"it was a Challenger six." - -"Hartmann here is a director in the Challenger factory," the sycophant -told him. "The factory's in our home city, where we are going. It's -a great car." Hartmann examined Anthony with a new and more personal -interest. "Did you like it?" he demanded. - -"It's all right, for the price," Anthony assured him; "it's the most -sporting looking car on the American market." - -"That's the thing," the other declared with satisfaction; "big sales and -a quick return on investment. A showy car is what the public want, the -engine's unimportant, it's paint that counts." - -"Do you have any radiator trouble?" Anthony demanded. The other regarded -him shrewdly. "I run a Berliet," he announced; "I was discussing a -popular article." He arranged himself more comfortably in his leather -chair, and prepared for sleep. - -Anthony returned to his place in the coach, where he brooded dejectedly -upon what he had heard about California. He thought of the distance -widening at a dizzy rate between Eliza and himself, and plunged into a -vast pit of loneliness... he had made a terrible mistake in leaving her. -It seemed to him now that he had deserted her, perhaps she was suffering -on account of him--had expected him to free her from an intolerable -condition. Again he cursed in his heart the prudent counsel of old -men, the cold sapience of the world, that had betrayed him, that had -prevailed over him against his instinct, his longing. - - - - -XXIV - -AT lunch he was progressing toward an empty table when Hartmann waved -him imperiously to a place at his side. "Have a drink," he advised -genially; "this is my affair." Beer followed the initial cocktail, -and brandy wound the meal to a comfortable conclusion. A Habana in the -smoking car completed Anthony's bodily satisfaction. - -"California's no place for a young man without capital," Hartmann -reiterated; "you work like a dog for two and a half a day; no future." -He paused, allowing this to be digested, then: "I have a little plan to -propose, you can take it or not--or perhaps you are not competent.--My -chauffeur is laid up with a broken wrist, a matter of a month or more; -how would you like to run my car until he returns? Then, if you are -satisfactory, you can go into the Challenger factory, with something -ahead of you, a future. Or you can go on to California... say -seventy-five dollars richer." Anthony shook his head regretfully. "Don't -answer now," Hartmann advised; "Spring City is three hours off. Think it -over; seventy-five dollars; a chance, if you are handy, in the factory." - -Anthony was suddenly obsessed by the thought that, at Spring City, he -would be only a day removed from Eliza. He wondered what his father -would say to this new possibility? At worst he would only be delayed in -his arrival in California, and with seventy-five dollars in consequence. -At best--the Challenger factory: he expanded optimistically the -opportunities offered by the latter. If he could show his father -immediate fruits from a change of plan, the elder, he was certain, -would add his approval. In a passing, sceptical mood he speculated upon -Hartmann's motive in this offer to an entire stranger; but his doubts -speedily vanished--any irregularity must be immediately visible. - -"You can make a stop over on your ticket for a couple of days and try -it," the other interjected; "it will cost you nothing." - -Only a day removed from Eliza! he would write to his father, his -brother-in-law, and explain! he had decided that it would do no harm to -try it. "Good!" the Jew exclaimed; "see the conductor about your ticket. -If you decide to remain you can send for your trunk." He offered his -cigar case to his companion, but, now, neglected to include Anthony. -Imperceptibly their relations had changed; Hartmann's geniality -decreased; his colorless gaze wandered indifferently. Anthony found the -conductor, and arranged a stop-over at Spring City. He collected his -belongings; and, not long after, he stood on a station platform beside -his bag, watching with sudden misgivings the rear of the train he had -left disappearing behind a bulk of factories and clustered shanties. - -Hartmann handed him a card, with a written direction and address. "The -garage," he explained; "have the car ready to-morrow at nine. I'll allow -you an expense of five dollars until a definite arrangement." - -Anthony quickly found the garage--a structure of iron and glass, with -a concrete floor where cars were drawn up in glistening rows. A line -of chairs fronted upon the pavement, occupied by mechanics in greasy -overalls, smarter chauffeurs, and garrulous, nondescript hangerson. The -foreman was within, busy with the compression tanks. He was short in -stature, with a pale, concerned countenance. "Fourth on the right from -the front," he directed, reading Hartmann's card; "there's a bad shoe -on the back.... So the old man's ready for another little trip," he -commented. - -"His chauffeur has a broken wrist," Anthony explained. "He's offered me -the job for a month." - -"Wrist hell! Hartmann fired him, he knew too much--about sprees with -Kuhn. He's a sharp duck; I'll bet he picked you up outside Spring City." - -"I met him on the Sunset Limited," Anthony continued; "I understood he -was a director in the Challenger Motorcar Company--" - -"He's that, right enough; the rottenest car and shop in America; they're -so dam' mean they won't provide their men with drinking water; they have -to bring labor from the East, scabs and other truck." The conviction -settled heavily upon Anthony that, after all, he had made a mistake in -listening to Hartmann, in falling in with his suggestion. If there had -been another train through Spring City that night for California he -would have taken it. But, as there was not, and he had committed himself -for the next twenty-four hours, he made his way to the Berliet car -indicated. There he took off his coat, and busied himself with replacing -the damaged shoe. When that was accomplished the dusk had thickened to -evening, the suspended gas globes in the garage had been lighted, -and shone like lemon-yellow moons multiplied in the lilac depths of a -mirrored twilight. - -He saw, across the street, a creamery, and, at a bare table, consumed a -quart of milk and a plate of sugared rusk. Then, on a chair in the line -before the garage, he sat half intent upon the conversation about him, -half considering the swift changes that had overtaken him in the past, -few days. His fingers closed upon Eliza's letter in his pocket, and -he gazed at the callous and ribald faces at his side, he heard the -truculent laughter, with wonderment that they existed in the same world -with her delicate beauty. She smiled at him, out of his memory, over -a mass of white bloom, and the present seemed like an ugly dream from -which he must awake in her presence. Or was the other a dream, a vision -of immaterial delight spread before his wondering mind, and this harsh -mirth, these mocking faces, Hartmann's smooth lies, the hateful reality? - -The night deepened, one by one the chairs before the garage were -deserted, the sharp pounding of a hammer on metal sounded from within, -the disjointed measures of a sentimental song. A sudden weariness swept -over Anthony, a distaste for the task of seeking a room through the -strange streets; and, arranging the cushions in Hartmann's car, he slept -there until morning. He awoke to the flooding of the concrete floor with -a sheet of water flashing in the crisp sunlight. It was eight o'clock, -and he made a hurried toilet at a convenient spigot, breakfasting at the -creamery. - -Hartmann appeared shortly after nine: his countenance glowed from a -scented massage, his yellow boots shone with restrained splendor, and -a sprig of geranium was drawn through an ironed buttonhole. He nodded -briefly to Anthony, and narrowly watched the latter manouvre the Berliet -from its place in the row onto the street. They sped smoothly across -town to what, evidently, was the principal shopping thoroughfare; and, -before a glittering plateglass window that bore the chaste design, -"Hartmann & Company" drew up, and Hartmann prepared to descend. - -"I think I'll go on West," Anthony informed him; "this afternoon." - -Annoyance was plainly visible upon the other's countenance. "I was just -congratulating myself on a find," he declared; "you must at least stay -with me until I get some one else." He paused; Anthony made no comment. -"Now, listen to what I will do," he pronounced finally; "if you will -stay with me for a month I'll give you a hundred dollars and your -expenses--it will be clear money. I... I had thought of taking a little -trip in the car, I'm feeling the store a little, and I need a discreet -man. Think it over--a hundred in your pocket, and you may be able to -get off in three weeks." He left hurriedly, without giving Anthony an -opportunity for further speech. It was an alluring offer, a hundred -dollars secured for the future, for Eliza. He speculated about the -prospective trip, Hartmann's wish to secure a "discreet" man, the -foreman's insinuations. However, the motive didn't concern him, the wage -was his sole consideration, and that, he decided, he could not afford -to lose. He whistled to a newsboy, and, studying the baseball scores, -waited comfortably for his employer. - -Later he drove Hartmann, now accompanied by Kuhn, out of town, through -a district of suburban villas, smooth, white roads and green lawns, into -the farmland and pasturage beyond. They finally stopped at an inn of -weathered grey stone set behind a row of ancient elms. A woman was -sitting on the portico, and she rose and came forward sinuously as -the men descended from the motor car. Anthony saw that she had a full, -voluptuous figure, lustreless, yellow hair, and sleepy eyes. Hartmann -patted her upon the shoulder, and the three moved to the portico, where -they sat conversing over a table of whiskies and soda. Occasional shrill -bursts of laughter, gross terms, reached Anthony. The woman lounged -nonchalantly in her chair; she wore a transparent white waist, through -winch was visible a confused tracery of purple ribband, frank rubicund -flesh. When the men rose, Hartmann kissed her. "Thursday," he reminded -her; "shortly after three." - -"And I'll depend on you," Kuhn added,--"a good figger and a loving -disposition. We don't want any dead ones on this trip." - -"Laura's all right," she assured him; "she's just ready for something of -this sort; she goes off about twice a year." - -When they had started, Hartmann leaned forward. "Going Thursday... that -little trip I spoke to you about.--No talking, understand. Look over the -tires, get what you think-necessary for five or six hundred miles." He -tended Anthony a crisp, currency note. "Here's the five. Your salary -starts to-morrow." - -That night Anthony wrote a letter of explanation to his father, a note -to California in reference to his trunk, and a short communication to -Eliza.--He was not certain that she would receive it. Her parents, -he was convinced, were opposed to him--they were ignorant of the -singleness, the depth, the determination, of his love. - - - - -XXV - -IT. was nearly four, when, on Thursday, Anthony stopped the car before -the inn by the elms. The woman with the yellow hair, accompanied by -a figure in a shapeless russet silk coat, were waiting for them. The -latter carried a small, patent-leather dressing case, and a large bag -reposed on the portico, which Anthony strapped to the luggage rack. -Kuhn, animated by a flow of superabundant animal spirits, bantered each -member of the party: he gave Anthony a cigar that had been slightly -broken, tipped off Hartmann's cap, and assisted the woman with profound -gallantry into the car. Hartmann discussed routes over an unfolded map -with Anthony; then, the course laid out, they moved forward. - -Their way led over an old postroad, now between walls, trees, dank and -grey with age and dust, now rising steadily into a region of bluish -hills. Scraps of conversation fell upon Anthony's hearing: the woman -in the russet coat, he learned, was named Laura Dallam. Kuhn talked -incessantly, and, occasionally, she replied to his sallies in a cool, -detached voice. She differed in manner from the others, she was a little -disdainful, Anthony discovered. Once she said sharply, "Do let me enjoy -the country." - -They slipped smoothly through the afternoon to the end of day. The -sun had vanished beyond the hills when they stopped at an inn on the -outskirts of an undiscovered town. It was directly on the road, and, -built in a flimsy imitation of an Elizabethan hostelry, had benches at -either side of the entrance. - -There Anthony sat later, while, from a balcony above him, fell the -tones of his employer and his companions. He could hear them clearly, -distinguish Hartmann's heavy jocularity, the yellow-haired woman's -syrupy voice, Laura Dallam's crisp utterances. Kuhn's labored wit had -drooped with the afternoon, an accent of complaint had grown upon him. -Occasionally there was a thin, clear tinkle of glasses and ice. As -the night deepened, the conversation above grew blurred, peals of -inconsequential laughter more frequent; a glass fell on the balcony, and -broke with a small, sudden explosion. Some one--it was the Dallam woman, -exclaimed, "don't!" She leaned over the railing above Anthony's head, -and said despairingly, "I can't get drunk!" Kuhn pressed to her side, -and she moved away impatiently. He became enraged, and they commenced a -low, bitter wrangling. Finally Hartmann insinuated himself between them; -the two women disappeared; and Kuhn complained aloud of the manner in -which he had been treated. - -"She's all right," Hartmann assured him; "you went at it too heavy; take -your time; she's not a flapper from the chorus." They tramped heavily -across the balcony, whispering tensely, into the hotel. - -The morning following they failed to start until past eleven: Hartmann's -countenance was pasty from the night's debauch, greenish shadows -hung beneath his colorless eyes, his mouth was a leaden line; the -yellow-haired woman was haggard, she looked older by ten years since the -day previous. Kuhn was savagely, morosely, silent. But Mrs. Dallam was -as fresh, as sparkling, as the morning itself. She nodded brightly at -Anthony as she took a seat forward, by his side. A heavy veil was draped -back from her face, and he saw that it was finely-cut; an intensely -black bang fell squarely across her low, white forehead, beneath which -eyes of a sombre, velvety blue were oddly compelling; and against the -blanched oval of her face her mouth was like a print of blood. It was a -potent, vaguely disturbing countenance; and, beneath the voluminous -silk coat, he saw narrow black slippers with carelessly tied bows that, -stinging his imagination, reminded him of wasps. - -As he drove the car he was frequently aware of her exotic gaze resting -speculatively upon him. On a high, sunny reach of road there was a -shrill rush of escaping air, and he found a rear tire flat. Hartmann and -his mate explored the road, Kuhn gloomed aloof, while Mrs. Dallam seated -herself on a nearby bank, as Anthony replaced the inner tube. It was -hot, and he removed his coat, and soon his shirt was clinging to -the rippling, young muscles of his vigorous torso. Once, when he -straightened up to wipe the perspiration from his brow, Mrs. Dallam -caught his glance, and held it with a slow smile. - -Their progress for the day ended at a small hotel maintained upon the -roof of a ridge of hills. As the dusk deepened the valley beyond swam -with warm, scattered lights, while above, in illimitable space, gleamed -stars near, only a few millions of miles away, and stars far, millions -upon millions of miles distant. - -The ground floor of the hotel was divided by a passage, on one side the -bar, and the other a dining and lounging room, lit with kerosene lamps -swung below tin reflectors. When Anthony was ready for supper the others -had disappeared above. He was served by the proprietor, a short, rotund -man with a glistening red face and hands like swollen pincushions. He -breathed stentoriously amid his exertions, muttering objurgations -in connection with the name of an absent servitor, hopelessly drunk, -Anthony gathered, in the stable. - -A bell sounded sharply from above, and he disappeared abruptly, shouting -up the stair. Then, shortly after, he reappeared in the dining room with -a tray bearing a pitcher of water, glasses, and a bottle labelled with -the name of a popular brand of whiskey. "Can you run this up to your -folks?" he demanded, in a storm of explosive breaths; "I got enough to -stall three men down here." Anthony balanced the tray, and moved toward -the stair. - -He stopped in the hallway to redispose his burden, when he heard the -changing gears of a second automobile without. He moved carefully -upward, conscious of lowered voices at his back, then the sound of -footsteps following him. He turned as he had been directed in the hall -above, and knocked upon a closed door. Kuhn's sullen voice bade him -enter. He had opened the door, when, almost upsetting the tray, a small -group at his back pushed him aside, and entered Hartmann's room. - - - - -XXVI - -THE flaring gas jet within shone on Hartmann, in his shirt sleeves, -reclining collarless on a bed, while the yellow-haired woman, in a -short, vividly green petticoat, but otherwise normally garbed, sat by -him twisting her fingers in his hair. Mrs. Dallam, her waist open at the -neck, was cold-creaming her throat, while Kuhn was decorating her bared -arms with pats of pink powder from a silver-mounted puff. He turned at -the small commotion in the doorway.... His jaw dropped, and his glabrous -eyes bulged in incredulous dismay. The powder puff fell to the floor; he -wet his dry lips with his tongue. "Minna!" he stammered; "Minna!" - -The woman in the door had grey hair streaked and soiled with sallow -white, and a deeply scored, harsh countenance. Her gnarled hands were -tightly clenched, and her tall, spare figure shook from suppressed -excitement and emotion. At her back were two men, one unobtrusive, -remarkable in his lack of salient feature; the other stolidly, heavily, -Semitic. - -Hartmann hastily scrambled into an upright position; the woman at his -side gave vent to a startled, slight scream, desperately arranging -her scant draperies; Mrs. Dallam, with a stony face, continued to rub -cold-cream into her throat. - -"Now, Mrs. Kuhn," Hartmann stuttered, "everything can he satisfactorily -explained." The woman he addressed paid not the slightest attention -to him, but, advancing into the room, gazed with mingled hatred and -curiosity at Mrs. Dallam. The two women stood motionless, tense, -oblivious to the others, in their silent, merciless battle. The latter -smiled slightly, with coldly-contemptuous lips, at the grotesque figure, -the ill-fitting dress upon the wasted body, the hat pinned askew on the -thin, time-stained hair, before her. And the other, painfully rigid, -worn, brittle, gazed with bitter appraisal at the softly-rounded, -graceful figure, the mature youth, that mocked her. - -"Minna," Kuhn reiterated, "come outside, won't you, I want to see you -outside. Tell her to go out, Abbie," he entreated the stolid figure -at the door; "it ain't fit for her to be here. I will see you all down -stairs." He laid a shaking hand upon his wife's shoulder. "Come away," -he implored. - -But still, unconscious apparently of his presence, she gazed at Mrs. -Dallam. - -"You gutter piece!" she said finally; "you thief!" - -Mrs. Dallam laughed easily. "Steal that!" she exclaimed, indicating -Kuhn, "that... beetle! If it's any consolation to you--he hasn't put -his hand on me. It makes me ill to be near him. I should be grateful if -you'd take him home." - -"That's so, Mrs. Kuhn," Hartmann interpolated eagerly, "nothing's went -on you couldn't witness, nothing." - -Tears stole slowly over the inequalities of Mrs. Kuhn's countenance. -She trembled so violently that the man called Abbie stepped forward -and supported her. Now tears streamed copiously over Kuhn's narrow -countenance. "Oh, Minna!" he cried, "_can_ I go home with you? can I go -_now?_ These people don't mean anything to me, not like you do.--I get -crazy at times, and gotta have excitement; I hate it," he declared; -"but I can't somehow stand out against it. But you must give me another -try.... Why, I'd be nothing in the world without you; I'd go down to -hell alive without you, Minna." - -Mrs. Kuhn became unmanageable; she uttered a series of short, gasping -cries, and wilted into the arm about her. "Take her out, Abbie," Kuhn -entreated, "take her out of this." Anthony, with the tray still balanced -in his grasp, stood aside. The man without characteristics was making -rapid notes in an unostentatious wallet. Then Mrs. Kuhn, supported and -followed by her husband and the third, disappeared into the hall. - -"Shut the door," Hartmann commanded sharply; "and give me a drink." -Anthony set the tray on a table. "God!" the yellow-haired woman -ejaculated, "me too." Mrs. Dallam returned to the mirror, and surveyed -the effects of the cold cream. With an expression of distaste she -brushed the marks of the powder from her arm. "The beetle!" she -repeated. - -"Minna Kuhn won't bring action," Hartmann declared, with growing -confidence; "she'll take him back; nothing will come out." The other -woman drank deeply, a purplish flush mantelled her full countenance. -A strand of metallic hair slipped over her eyes. "Let her talk," she -asseverated; "we're bohemians." She clasped Hartmann to her ample bosom. - -Mrs. Dallam moved to the half opened door to the room beyond. "Bring in -the pitcher of water, Anthony," she directed. He followed her with the -water, and she bolted the door behind them. The door to the hall was -closed too. She stopped and smiled at him with narrowed, enigmatic eyes. -The subtle force of her being swept tingling over him. She laid her -hand, warm, palpitatingly alive, upon his. - -"The swine," she said; "how did we get into this, you and I?" - - - - -XXVII - -THE patent-leather dressing case lay open on a bureau, spilling a small -cascade of ivory toilet implements, a severely-plain black dinner gown -lay limp, dully shimmering, over the back of a chair, and, on the bed, a -soft, white heap of undergarments gave out a seductive odor of lavender. -"Cigarettes in the leather box," she indicated; "take some outside." A -screened door opened upon a boxlike balcony, cut into the angle of the -roof; and Anthony, conscious of the warm weight of a guiding arm, found -himself upon it. He seated himself on the railing, and lit a cigarette. -He must go in a minute, he thought. - -The lights had vanished from the valley, at his back the risen moon -dimmed the stars, turned the leaves silver grey. A wan ray fell upon -a clump of bushes below--lilacs, but the blooms had wilted, gone. The -screen door opened, and Mrs. Dallam was at his side; she sank into a -chair, the rosy blur of a cigarette in her fingers; she wore a loose -wrap of deep green silk, open at her throat upon the white web beneath; -in the obscurity her eyes were as black, as lustreless, as ebony, her -mouth was a purple stain. - -She smoked silently, gazing into the night. He would go now, he decided, -and moved from his place on the rail. But with clinging fingers she -caught his wrist, reproachfully lifting a velvety gaze. "I will not be -left alone," she declared; "I simply must have some one with me... you, -or I will get despondent. You are--no, I won't say young, that would -make you cross; you are like that fabulous fountain the Spaniards hunted -in Florida, I want to drink deep, deep." - -Anthony's resolution wavered; it was early; it pleased him that so fine -a creature should desire his presence; an unhappy note in her voice -moved him to pity. She was lonely, and he was alone--here; why should -they not support each other? He leaned, close to her, upon the sloping -roof. She talked little; she laughed once, a low, silvery peal whose -echo ran up and down his spine. - -They heard a servant closing the shutters, the doors, below them, -and the sound linked Anthony to Mrs. Dallam in a feeling of pervading -intimacy. She rose, and stood pressed against his side, and his heart -beat instantly unsteady. The night grew strangely oppressive, there was -a roll of distant, muffled thunder; he turned to her with a commonplace -about the heat, when her arms went about his neck, and she kissed him -full, slowly, upon the lips. Unconsciously he held her supple body to -him. She leaned back against his arms, her eyes shut and lips parted. A -terrible and brute tyranny of desire welled up within him, sweeping away -every vestige of control, of memory. The sky whirled in his vision, the -substantial world vanished in a smother of flaming mists. - -Then he released her so suddenly that she fell against the rail, -recovering her poise with difficulty. Anthony stumbled back, drawing -his hand across his brow. "What... what damned perfume's on you?" he -demanded hoarsely. - -"None at all," she assured him, "I never... Why, Anthony, are you ill?" - -Wave after wave of sweetness enveloped him, choking, nauseating, -stinging his eyes, extinguishing the fire within him, turning the lust -to ashes. He too supported himself upon the rail, and his gaze fell -below, to the bushes. Was it the moonlight, or were they, where they had -been bare a few minutes before, now covered with great misty masses of -lilacs? - -The perfume of the flowers came up to him breath on breath: he could see -them clearly now.... White lilacs! An overwhelming panic swept over him, -a sudden dread of his surrounding, of the silken figure of the woman -before him. He must get away. He pushed her roughly aside, swung back -the screen door, and clattered through the room and down the stair. He -fumbled for a moment with a bolted door, and then was outside, free. -Without hesitancy he fled into the night, the secretive shadows. He -ran until he literally fell, with bursting lungs and shaking, powerless -knees, upon a bank. - - - - -XXVIII - -THE hotel was lost; the silence, the peace of nature, unbroken. A -drowsy flutter of wings stilled in a hedge. The moon sailed behind a -cloud that drooped low upon the earth, and great, slow drops of rain -fell to a continuous and far reverberation. They struck coolly upon -Anthony's face, pattered among the grass, dropped with minute explosions -of dust upon the road. The shower passed, the cloud dissolved, and the -crystal flood of light fell once more into the cup of the valley. - -It spread like a balm over Anthony: Hartmann, Mrs. Dallam, the weeping -face of Mrs. Kuhn, were like painted figures in a distasteful act upon -which he had turned his back, from which he had gone forth into the -supreme spectacle of the spheres, the presence of Eliza Dreen. Every -atom thrilled with the thought of her. "Oh, my very dear," he whispered -to the sleeping birds, the dead, white disk of the moon: "I will come -back to you... good." - -After the rain the night was like a damp, sweet veil upon his face; -the few stars above him were blurred as though seen through tears; the -horizon burned in a circle of flickering, ruddy light. He took up his -way once more over the soft folds of the road; now, accustomed to the -dark, he could distinguish the smooth pebbles by the way, separate, grey -blades of grass. He walked buoyantly, tirelessly, weaving on the loom -of the dim miles mingled visions of future and past, dominated by the -serene presence of Eliza. - -He felt in a pocket the wallet containing his ticket to California and -the generous sum added by his father. There must be no more delay in -arriving at his western destination! His excursion with Hartmann had -been a grave error; he saw it clearly now, one of those faults--so -fatally easy for him to commit--which, if his life was to spell success, -if he was to come finally into his heritage of joy, he must scrupulously -avoid. In the future he would drive directly, safely, toward his goal; -he would become part of that orderly pattern of life plotted in streets -and staid occupations: at the end of day he would return to his small, -carefully-tended garden to weed and water, and sit with Eliza on his -portico--a respectable, an authentic, member of society. On Sunday -morning they would go to the Episcopal Church, they would join the -sober, festivally-garbed procession moving toward the faint thunder of -the organ. And, at dinner, he would carve the roast. Thus, quietly, -they would grow old, grey, together. They would have a number of -children--all girls, he decided. - -Imperceptibly the morning was born about him, faint shadows grew under -the hedges, the sweet, querulous note of a robin sounded from the -sparkling sod. A wind stirred, as immaculate, as dewly fresh, as though -it were the first breath blown upon a new world of virginal and lyric -beauty. The molten gold of the sun welled out of the east and spilled -over the wooded hills and meadows; the violet mists drawn over the -swales and streams dissolved; Anthony met a boy driving cows to pasture. - - - - -XXIX - -HE rapidly overtook a bent and doggedly tramping figure; no common -wanderer, he recognized, as he drew nearer. The others decent suit was -eminently presentable, his felt hat brushed, his shoes comparatively -new. He turned upon Anthony a countenance as expressionless, as -darkly-stained, as a chipped and rusted effigy of iron; deep lines fell -back across the dingy cheeks; his lipless mouth was, apparently, another -such line; and his eyes, deeply sunk in the skull, were the eyes of a -dead man. Yet they were not blind; they saw. - -He halted, and surveyed Anthony with a lowered, searching curiosity, -clenching with a strained and surprising force the knob of a black -stick. Anthony met his scrutiny with the salutation of youth and the -road; but the other made no reply; his countenance was as blank as -though no word had been spoken. Then a sudden flicker of hot light -burned in the dull depths of his gaze, his worn face quivered with -a swift malignancy, an energy of suspicion, of hatred, that touched -Anthony's heart with a cold finger of fear. - -"What's your name?" he demanded, his entire being strained in an agony -of attention. - -Anthony informed him with scrupulous exactitude. - -He seemed, for a moment, to doubt Anthony's identity; then the fire -died, his eyes grew blank; his grasp relaxed on the stick, and, bent, -dogged, he continued on his way. - -The repellent contraction of Anthony's heart expanded in a light and -careless curiosity, youthful contempt mingled with the gayety of his -morning mood, and he hastened his steps until he had again overtaken his -inquisitor. - -"That's a good cane you've got," he observed of the stout shaft and -rounded head. - -Its owner grasped it by the lower end, and swung the head against his -hand. "Lead," he pronounced somberly. "It would crumble your skull like -an egg." - -Again fear stirred vaguely in Anthony: the entire absence of emotion -in the sanguinary, the dull, matter-of-fact voice were inhuman, tainted -with madness; the total detachment of those deliberate words had been -appalling. - -"I thought," he continued, "that you might have been Alfred Lukes, -but you're too young." As he pronounced that name his grasp tightened -whitely about the lead knob. The conviction seized Anthony that it was -fortunate he was not the individual in question. - -"You want Alfred?" he asked in an attempted jocularity. - -"He murdered my boy," the other answered simply. "Him and another. They -asked James into a boat to go fishing. Boys will always go fishing; he -was only eleven." He stopped in the middle of the road, and produced a -small package folded in oiled silk. It proved to be a derringer, of an -old-fashioned model, with two, short black barrels, one atop the other. -"Loaded," he said, "to put against his face." Then he rewrapped the -weapon and returned it to its place of concealment. "I've been looking -for Alfred Lukes for nineteen years," he recommenced his dogged -progress, "in trains and saloons and stores. Nineteen years ago James -was found in the river." He was silent for a moment, then, "One eye was -torn out," he added in his weary voice. He turned his blank and terrible -gaze upon Anthony, upon the sparkling morning. The derringer dragged -slightly upon his coat, the stick--that stick which could crush a skull -like an egg--made its trailing signature in the dust. A mingled loathing -and pity took possession of Anthony; he recoiled from the corroding and -secret horror of that nineteen year Odyssey of a torturing and impotent -spirit of revenge, from the infinite black tide that had swept over the -stooping figure at his side, the pitiless memory that had destroyed its -sanity. - -"It was on Sunday; James had on his nice blue suit and a new, red silk -necktie... they found it knotted about his throat... as tight as a big -man could make it." - -A sudden impulse overcame Anthony to run, to leave far behind him this -sinister, animated speck on the sunny road, under the dusty branches -burdened with ripening fruit, thrilling with the bubbling notes of -birds. But, as his gaze fell again upon his companion, he saw only -an old man, gaunt with suffering, hurrying toward the noon. A deep, -cleansing compassion vanquished the dread, and, spontaneously, he spoke -of his own lighter affairs, of California, his destination. - -"I have never been west of Chicago," the other interposed. "I hadn't the -money; the walking is dreadfully hard; the sun on those plains hurt my -head. Do you suppose James Lukes is in California?" he asked, pausing -momentarily in his rapid shamble. - -In his careless, youthful egotism, Anthony ignored the query. He -wondered aloud where he could board a through train to the West. - -"Have you got your ticket?" - -Anthony tapped complacently upon the pocket that held the wallet. They -were walking now through a wood that flowed to the rim of the road, and -a turn hid either vista. A stream ran through the rank greenery of the -bottom, crossed by a bridge of loosely bolted planks. Anthony paused, -intent upon the brown, sliding water beneath him, the minute minnows -balancing against the stream. In that closed place of broken light the -cool stillness was profound. The stream fled past its weeds without a -gurgle, the leaves hung motionless, as though they had been stamped from -metal... he might have been, with his companion, within a charmed circle -of everlasting tranquillity. Then: - -"I wonder if Alfred Lukes is in California?" the latter resumed; "I've -never got there, the fare... too expensive, the sun hurt my head." -Anthony lit a Dulcina, and expelled a cloud of blue smoke that rose -compactly in the motionless air. "California," he repeated, sunk in -thought; "I wonder--" - -"California's a big place," Anthony hazarded. - -"If he was there I'd find him." Then, in his mechanical and -dispassionate voice, he cursed Alfred Lukes with the utmost foulness. -One heated word, the slightest elevation of his even tones, would have -made the performance human, intelligent, but the deadly monotony, the -impersonal accents, were as harrowing as though a mummy had ground out -of its shrunken and embalmed interior a recital of prehistoric hatred -and wrong; it resembled a phonograph record of incalculable depravity. -He stood beyond the bridge, resting upon his stick, with his unmoved -face turned toward Anthony. His hat cast a deep shade over his eyes; -but, below, in a wanton patch of sunlight, his lipless mouth trembled -greyly. - -"California," he repeated still again, then, "I must get there." He -shifted his hand lower upon the stick, and moved nearer to Anthony by a -step; the patch of sunlight shifted up to his hat and fled. - -"You could try the freight cars," Anthony suggested. The stooping, -neatly-brushed figure, the stony countenance, had become, in an -intangible manner, menacing, obscurely dangerous. The fingers were drawn -like a claw about the club. Then the arm relaxed, he seemed to shrink -into hopeless resignation. Beyond the leafy arcade Anthony could now -see the countryside spread out in sunny fields, fleecy, white clouds -shifting in the sea of blue.... Suddenly a great flame shot up before -his eyes, a stunning shock fell upon his head, and the flame went out -in a whirling darkness that swept like a black sea over a continent of -intolerable pain. He heard, as if from an immense distance, a thin voice -pronounce the single word, "California." - - - - -XXX - -A GRIPPING wave of nausea recalled Anthony to consciousness; a deathly -sickness spreading from the pit of his stomach through his entire being; -his prostrate head, seeming stripped of its skull, was tortured by the -dragging fronds of the ferns among which he lay. He sat up dizzily. -Through the leafy opening the fleeting forms of the clouds shifted -over the sunny hills. The stream slipped silently through the grass. He -staggered down the slight incline, and, falling forward upon the ground, -let the water flow over his throbbing head. The cool shock revived him, -and he washed away a dark, clotted film from his forehead and cheek. - -His wallet, with his ticket to California and store of money were gone. -He started in instant, unsteady pursuit of the man who had struck him -down and robbed him. But, at the edge of the wood he paused--how long -had he lain among the ferns? the sun was now high over his head, the -morning lapsed, the other might have had three, four hours' start. -He might now be entrained, bound for California, searching for Alfred -Lukes. A sudden weakness forced him to sit at the roadside; he lost -consciousness again for a moment. Then, summoning his youth, his -vitality, he rose, and walked unsteadily in search of assistance. - -He had proceeded an intolerable mile, wiping away a thin trickle of -blood that persisted in crawling into his eye, when he saw a low roof -amid a tangle of greenery. He stopped with a sobbing breath of relief. -He was delirious, he thought, for peering at him through the leaves he -saw the countenance and beautiful, bare body of a child, as dark and -tense as bronze. A cloud of black hair overhung a face vivid as a -flower; her crimson lips trembled; then, with a startled cry, the figure -vanished. - -He made his way with difficulty over a short path, overgrown with vines -and twisted branches, and came abruptly upon a low, white house and -wide, opened door. An aged and shapeless woman sat on a chair without a -back, cutting green beans into a bright tin basin. When she saw him -she dropped the pan with a clatter, and an unfamiliar exclamation of -surprise. - -"I've been hurt," Anthony explained; "knocked silly and robbed." - -"Gina!" she called excitedly; "Dio mio! _Gina!_" A young woman, large -and loosely molded, with a lusty baby clasped to her bared breast, -appeared in the doorway. When she saw Anthony she dropped the baby into -the elder's arms. "Poverino!" she cried; "come in the house, little -mister." She caught him by the arm, almost lifting him over the doorstep -into a cool, dark interior. He had a brief glimpse of drying vegetables -strung from the ceiling, of a waxen image of the virgin in faded pink -silk finery against the wall; then, with closed eyes, he relaxed -into the charge of soothing and skilled fingers. His head rested on a -maternal arm while a soft bandage was fixed about his forehead. - -"Ecco!" she ejaculated, her ministration successful. She led him to a -rude couch upon the floor, and gently insisted upon his lying down. He -attempted to thank her, but she laid her large, capable hand over his -mouth, and he sank into an exhausted, semi-conscious rest. Once she bent -over him, dampening the bandage, once he saw, against the light of the -door, the shape, slim and beautiful as an angel, of the child. Outside -a low, liquid murmur of voices continued without a break, strange and -quieting. - -He slept, and woke up refreshed, strengthened. The dusk had thickened in -the room, the strings of vegetables were lost in the shadows, a dim -oil lamp cast a feeble glow on rude walls. He lay motionless for a few, -delightful seconds, folded in absolute peace, beneficent quietude. The -amazing idea struck him that, perhaps, he had died, and that this was -the eternal tranquillity of the hymn books, and he started vigorously -to his feet in an absurd panic. The homely figure of a man entering -dispelled the illusion--he was a commonplace Italian, one of the -multitude who labored in the ditches of the country, stood aside in -droves from the tracks as trains whirled past. - -"What hit your head?" he asked, his mobile face displaying sympathetic -interest, concern. - -"A leaded stick," Anthony explained. "I was knocked out, robbed." - -"Birbanti!" he laid a heavy hand upon Anthony's shoulder. "You feel -better now, gia?" The latter, confused by such open attention, shook -the hand from its friendly grip. "He was crazy," he awkwardly explained; -"and looking for a man who had killed his son; he wanted to get to -California and I told him I had a ticket west." - -The laborer led Anthony to a room where a rude table was spread with -homely fare--a great, rough loaf of bread, a deep bowl of steaming, -green soup, flakey white cheese, and a bottle of purple wine. An open -door faced the western sky, and the room was filled with the warm -afterglow; it hung like a shining veil over the man, the still, maternal -countenance of the woman, like an aureole about the baby now sleeping -against her breast, and graced the russet countenance of an aged -peasant. The child that Anthony had seen first, now in a scant white -slip, seemed dipped in the gold of dreams. - -As he consumed the savory soup, the creamy cheese and wine, the scene -impressed him as strangely significant, familiar. He dismissed an idle -effort of memory in order to consider the unfortunate aspect assumed by -his immediate affairs. Concerning one thing he was determined--he would -ask his father to assist him no further toward his western destination. -He must himself pay for the initial error, together with all its -consequences, of having followed Hartmann: California was his object, -he would not write to Ellerton until his westward progress was once more -assured. - -Two courses were open to him--he could "beat" his way, getting meals -when and how he was able, riding, when possible, on freight cars, doing -casual jobs on the way. That he dismissed in favor of a second, which -in the end, he judged, would prove more speedy. He would make his way -to the nearest city, find employment in a public or private garage as -chauffeur or mechanic, and, in a month at most, have the money necessary -for the continuation of his journey. - -The household conversed vigorously in their native idiom, giving his -thoughts full freedom. The glow in the west faded, sank from the room, -but, suddenly, he recognized the familiar quality of his surroundings. -It resembled a picture of the Holy Family on the wall of his mother's -room; the bare interior was the same, the rugged features of Joseph the -carpenter, the brooding beauty of Mary. He almost laughed aloud at the -absurd comparison of the exalted scene of Christ's infancy with this -commonplace but kindly group, the laborer with soiled and callous hands -and winestained mouth, the material young woman with the string of cheap -blue beads. - -The meal at an end the chairs were pushed back and the old woman noisily -assembled the dishes. Anthony's head throbbed and burned. In passing, -the mother's fingers rested upon his brow. "Not too hot," she nodded -contentedly. - -A consultation followed. Anthony might remain there for the night; or, -if he insisted, he might drive into the city with "Nono," who left in -a few hours with a wagonload of greens for the morning market. He chose -the latter, with a clumsy expression of gratitude, impatient to resume -active efforts in his rehabilitation in his own mind. - -"Niente!" they disclaimed in chorus. - - - - -XXXI - -HE fell into an instant slumber on the hospitable heap in the corner, -and was awakened while it was still dark. In the flicker of the oil lamp -the old man's face swam vaguely against the night. Without the wagon was -loaded, a drooping horse insecurely harnessed into patched shafts. The -world was a still space of blue gloom, of indefinite forms suspended -in the hush of color, sound; it seemed to be spun out of shadows like -cobwebs, out of vapors, scents. A pale, hectic glow on the horizon -marked the city. They ambled noiselessly, slowly, forward, under the -vague foliage of trees. There was a glint of light in a passing -window, the clatter of milk pails; a rooster crowed, thin and clear and -triumphant; on a grassy slope by the road they saw a smoldering fire, -recumbent forms. - -They entered the soiled and ragged outskirts of the city--isolated -ranks of hideous, boxlike dwellings amid raw stretches of clay, rank -undergrowth. The horse's hoofs rang on a bricked pave, and the city -surged about them. Overhead the elevated tracks made a confused, black -tracing rippling with the red and white and green fire of signals. A -gigantic truck, drawn by plunging horses whose armored hoofs were ringed -in pale flame, passed with a shattering uproar of its metallic load. A -train thundered above with a dolorous wail, showering a lurid trail -of sparks into the sky, out of which a thick soot sifted down upon -the streets. On either hand the blank walls of warehouses shut in the -pavements deserted save for a woman's occasional, chalky countenance in -the frosty area of the arc lights, or a drunkard lurching laboriously -over the gutters. The feverish alarm of firebells sounded from a distant -quarter. A heavy odor of stagnant oil, the fetid smoke of flaring -chimneys, settled over Anthony, and gratefully he recalled the pastoral -peace of the house he had left--the house hidden in its tangled verdure -amid the scented space of the countryside. - -They stopped finally before a shed open upon the street, where -bluish-orange flames, magnified by tin reflectors, illuminated busy -groups. Silvery fish with exposed carmine entrails were ranged -in rows; the crisp, green spoil of the countryside was spread in the -stalls--the silken stalks of early onions, the creamy pink of carrots, -wine-red beets; rosy potatoes were heaped by cool, crusty cantaloupe, -the vert pods of peas, silvery spinach and waxy, purple eggplant. Over -all hung the delicate aroma of crushed mint, the faint, sweet tang of -scarlet strawberries, the spicy fragrance of simple flowers--of cinnamon -pinks and heliotrope and clover. - -Anthony assisted the other to transfer his load to part of a stall -presided over by a woman with bare, powerful elbows, shouting in a -boisterous voice in perfect equality with her masculine neighbors. - -High above the dawn flushed the sky; the flares dimmed from a source of -light to mere colored fans, and were extinguished. Early buyers arrived -at the market with baskets and pushcarts. - -Anthony remained at the old man's side; it was too early to start -in search of work; and, at his companion's invitation, he shared the -latter's breakfast of cheese and bread, with a stoup of the bitter wine. -As the market became crowded, in the stress of competition, bargaining, -the vendor forgot Anthony's presence; and with a deep breath of -determination, he started in search of employment; he again faced the -West. - -He had no difficulty in discovering the section of the city given over -to the automobile industry, a broad, asphalt way with glittering show -windows, serried ranks of cars, by either curb. There was, however, -no work to be obtained here; a single offer would scarcely pay for his -maintenance; in its potentialities California was the merest blur upon -the future. Then for a second and more lucrative position he lacked the -necessary papers. Midday found him without a prospect of employment. He -had almost two dollars in change that had remained intact; and, lunching -sparingly, he continued his inquiries. - -It was late when he found himself before a sign that proclaimed the -ability within to secure positions for competent chauffeurs. And, -influenced largely by the chairs which he saw ranged against the wall, -he entered and registered. The fee for registration was a dollar, and -that left him with scant supplies as he took a place between three other -men awaiting skeptically the positions which they had been assured they -might confidently expect. With a casual nod to Anthony, a small man -with watery blue eyes, clad in a worn and greasy livery, continued -a dissertation on methods of making money additional to that of mere -salary, of agreements with tiremen, repairs necessary and otherwise, the -proper manner in which to bring a car's life quickly and gracefully to -a close, in order, he added slyly to the indifferent clerk, to encourage -the trade. - -The afternoon wasted slowly but surely to a close; no one entered and -the three rose with weary oaths and left in search of a convenient -saloon. They waved to Anthony to follow them, but he silently declined. - -A profound depression settled over him, a sense of impotence, of -failure. His wounded head fretted him with frequent hot pains. He was -enveloped by a sense of desolating loneliness which he endeavored to -dispel with the thought of Eliza; but she remained as far, as faintly -sweet, as the moon of a spring night. It seemed incredible that she -had once been in his arms; surely he had dreamed her voice--such voices -couldn't exist in reality--telling him that she loved him. Her letter -had gone with his wallet, his ticket to California. He had not written -her... she would be unable to penetrate the reason for his silence, -his shame for blundering into such a blind way, his lack of anything -reassuring to tell her. He could not write until his feet were once more -firmly planted upon the only path that led to success, to happiness, to -her. - - - - -XXXII - -THE clock on the wall above the clerk's head indicated half past five, -and Anthony, relinquishing hope for the day, rose. Now he regretted the -apparently fruitless expenditure of a dollar. "Leave an address?" the -clerk inquired mechanically. "Office open at nine." - -"I'll be back," Anthony told him. He turned, and collided with a man -entering suddenly from the street. He was past middle age, with a long, -pallid countenance, drooping snuff-colored mustache, a preoccupied gaze -behind bluish glasses, and was clad in correct brown linen, but wore an -incongruously battered and worn soft hat. - -"I want a man to drive my car," he announced abruptly. "I don't -particularly care for a highly expert individual, but his habits--" he -broke off, and muttered, "superficial adjustment to environment--popular -conception of acquired characteristics." Then, "must be moderate," he -ended unexpectedly. - -Anthony lingered, while the clerk assured the other that several highly -desirable individuals were available. "In fact," he told him, "one left -the office only a few minutes ago; I will have him call upon you in the -morning." - -"What's this?" he replied, indicating Anthony; "is he a chauffeur?" -The clerk nodded. "But," he added, "the man I refer to is older, more -experienced... sure to satisfy you." - -"What references have you?" the prospective employer demanded. - -"None," Anthony answered directly. The clerk dismissed his chances with -a gesture. - -"What experience?" the other persisted. "Driving on and off for four or -five years, and I am a fair mechanic." - -"Fair only?" - -"That's all, sir." - -The older man drew nearer to Anthony, scrutinizing him with a kindly -severity. "What's the matter with your head?" he demanded. - -"I was knocked down and robbed on a country road." - -"Lose much?" - -"Everything." - -"Drinking?" - -"No, sir." - -"Familiar with prehistoric geological strata?" Anthony admitted that he -was not. - -"I had hoped," the other murmured, "to get a driver who could assist me -with my indices." He renewed his close inspection, then, "Elemental," he -pronounced suddenly; "I'll take you." - -"Five dollars, please," interpolated the clerk. Outside his new employer -took Anthony by the shoulder, glancing over his suit. "You can get your -things, and then go out to my house." - -"I can go sooner than that," Anthony corrected him. "I have no things." - -"Nothing but those clothes! Why... they will hardly do, will they? You -must get something, take it out of your salary. But, hang it, a man must -have a change of clothes! You must allow me--you are only a boy. I'll -come along; no--impossible." He took a long wallet from his pocket and -placed it in Anthony's hands. "I don't know what such things cost," -he said. "I think there's enough; get what you need. I must be off... -Mousterian deposits. Customs House." Before Anthony could reply he -had started away in a long, quick stride, but he stopped short. "My -address," he cried, "clean forgot." He gave Anthony a street and number. - -"Rufus Hardinge," he called, hurrying away. - -Anthony stood gazing in incredulous surprise at the polished, brown -wallet in his hand. He turned to hurry after the other, to protest, but -already he was out of sight. Anthony slipped the wallet in his pocket, -and, his head in a whirl, walked slowly over the street until he found -himself opposite a large retail clothing establishment. After a brief -hesitation he entered, pausing to glance hastily at his resources. In -the leather pocket which contained the paper money he saw a comfortable -number of crisp yellow bills; the rest of the space was taken up by -bulky and wholly unintelligible notes. - -He purchased a serviceable suit, stout shoes, a cap, and, after a short -consideration, two flannel shirts. If this were not satisfactory, he -concluded, he could pay with a portion of his salary. The slip of the -total amount, which he carefully folded, registered thirty-one dollars -and seventy cents. - -At a small tobacco shop, where he drew upon his own rapidly diminishing -capital, he discovered from the proprietor that it would be necessary -to take a suburban car to the address furnished him. He rolled rapidly -between rows of small, identical, orderly brick dwellings; on each -shallow portico a door exhibited an obviously meretricious graining; -dingy or garish curtains draped the single lower windows; the tin eaves -were continuous, unvaried, monotonous. Occasionally a greengrocer's -display broke the monotony of the vitreous way, a rare saloon or -drugstore held the corners. Farther on the street suffered a decline, -the line of dwellings was broken by patches of bedraggled gardens, set -with the broken fragments of stone ornaments; small frame structures, -streaked by the weather and blistered remnants of paint, alternated with -stables, stores heaped with the sorry miscellanies of meager, disrupted -households. Imperceptibly green spaces opened, foliage fluttered in the -orange light of the declining sun; through an opening in the habited -wall he caught sight of a glimmering stream, cows wandering against a -hill. - -He left the car finally at a lane where the houses, set back solidly in -smooth, opulent lawns, were somberly comfortable, reserved. The place -he sought, a four-square ugly dwelling faced with a tower, the woodwork -painted mustard yellow, was surrounded by gigantic tulip poplars. At the -front a cement basin caught the spray from a cornucopia held aloft -by sportive cherubs balanced precariously on the tails of reversed -dolphins, circled by a tan-bark path to the entrance and a broad side -porch. He was about to ring the bell when a high, young voice summoned -him to the latter. There he discovered a girl with a mass of coppery -hair, loosely tied and streaming over her shoulder, in a coffee-colored -wicker chair. She was dressed in white, without ornaments, and wore pale -yellow silk stockings. A yellow paper book, with a title in French, -was spread upon her lap; and, gravely sitting at her side, was a large -terrier with a shaggy yellow coat. - -"I suppose," she said without preliminary, "that you are the person -who took father's money. It was really unexpected of you to appear with -_any_ of it. Give me the wallet," she demanded, without allowing him -opportunity for a reply. - -He gave it to her without comment, a humorous light rising in his clear -gaze. "I warn you," she continued, "I know every penny that was in it. I -always give him a fixed amount when he goes out." She emptied the money -into her lap, and counted it industriously: at the end she wrinkled her -brow. - -"Here is a note of what I spent," he informed her, tendering her the -slip from the store. She scanned it closely. "That's not unreasonable," -she admitted finally, palpably disappointed that no villainous -discrepancy had been revealed; "and it adds up all right." Then, with an -assumption of business despatch, "It must come out of your salary, of -course; father is frightfully impractical." - -"Of course," he assented solemnly. - -"Your references--" - -"I haven't any." - -She made an impatient gesture of dismay; the terrier rose and surveyed -him with a low growl. "He promised me that he would do the thing -properly, that I positively need not go. What experience have you had?" - -He told her briefly. - -"Dreadfully unsatisfactory," she commented, "and you are oceans too -young. But... we will try you for one week; I can't promise any more. -Would you be willing to help a little in the house--opening boxes, -unwrapping bones--?" - -"Certainly," he assured her cheerfully, "any little thing I can do...." - -"The car's at the bottom of the garden, it has to be brought around by -the side street. There's a room overhead, and a bell from the house. You -must come up very quickly if, in the night, it rings three times, for -that," she informed him, "will mean burglars. My father and I are quite -alone here with two women. I can't think of anything else now." The -terrier moved closer to Anthony, sniffing at his shoes, then raised his -golden eyes and subjected him to a lengthy, thoughtful scrutiny. "That -is Thomas Huxley," she informed him; "he is a perfectly wonderful -investigator, and detests all sentimentality. You will come up to the -kitchen for meals," she called, as Anthony turned to descend the lawn; -"the bell will ring for your dinner." - - - - -XXXIII - -HE found the automobile in the semi-gloom of a closed carriage house. -On the right, separated by a partition, were three loose stalls, -apparently long unoccupied; their ornamental fringe of straw had -moldered, and dank, grey heaps of feed lay in the troughs. A ladder -fixed vertically against a wall disappeared into cobwebby shadows above; -and mounting, Anthony found the room to which he had been directed. It, -too, was partitioned from the great, bare space of the hay-loft; the -musty smell of old hay and heated wood hung dusty, heavy, about the -corners, where sounded the faint squeaks of scattering mice. The space -which he was to occupy had been rigorously swept and aired; print -curtains hung at the small dormer window that overlooked the lawn, -while, above the washstand, was the bell which, he had been warned, -would appraise him of the possible presence of burglars above. A bright -metal clock ticked noisily on a deal bureau, and, on a table beside a -pitcher and glass, two books had been arranged with precise disarray; -they proved, upon investigation, to be a volume of the Edib. Rev. LXIX, -and a bound collection of the proceedings of the Linean Society. - -He saw by the noisy clock that it was nearly seven, and, hastily -washing, responded immediately to the summons of the bell. A small, -covered porch framed the kitchen door, where he entered to find a long -room dimly lit, and a dinner set at the end of a table. A bulky woman -with a flushed countenance and massive ankles in white cotton stockings -set before him half a broiled chicken, an artichoke with a bowl of -yellow sauce, and a silver jug of milk. - -"God knows it's a queer meal to put to a hearty young lad," she -observed; "but it's all was ordered. There's not a pitata in the house," -she added in palpable disgust. A younger woman in a frilled apron -appeared from within, carrying a tray of used dishes. She had a trim -figure, and a broad face glowing with rude vitality, which, with an -assumption of disdain, she turned upon Anthony. "I'd never trust myself -with him in the machine," she observed to the older woman, "and him not -more than a child." - -"Be holding your impudent clatter," the other commanded, "you're not -required to go out with him at all." - -"Mr. Hardinge says, will you see him in the library when you have -done," the former shot at Anthony over a shapely shoulder. "You can walk -through the dining room to where he is beyond." - -The library was a somber chamber: its long windows were draped with -stiff folds of green velvet, its walls occupied by high bookcases with -leaded glass doors and ornamental Gothic points under the ceiling. -A massive desk was piled with papers, pamphlets, printed reports, -comparative tables of figures, an hundred and one huddled details; the -table beneath a glittering crystal chandelier was hardly better; even -the floor was stacked with books about the chair where Anthony found his -employer. The latter looked up absently from a printed sheet as Anthony -entered. - -"Positively," he pronounced, "there are not enough dominants to secure -Mendel's position." His expression was profoundly disturbed. - -"Yes, sir," Anthony replied non-committally. "The consequences of that," -the other continued, "are beyond prediction." Silence descended -upon him; his fixed gaze seemed to be contemplating some unexpected -catastrophe, some grave peril, opened before him in the still chamber. -"I am at a temporary loss!" he ejaculated suddenly; "we are all at a -loss... unless my experiments in pure descent warrant--" Suddenly he -became aware of Anthony's presence. "Oh!" he said pleasantly; "glad you -got fixed up. Say nothing more to Annot--it's all nonsense, taking it -out of your salary. That's what I wanted to see you for," he added; -"what salary do you require? what did you get at your last place?" - -Anthony made a swift calculation of the distance to California, the -probable cost of carriage. "I should like seventy-five," he pronounced -finally. His conscience suddenly and uncomfortably awoke in the presence -of the other's unquestioning generosity. "Perhaps I'd better tell -you that I don't intend to stay here long.... I am anxious to get to -California." - -But Rufus Hardinge had already forgotten him. "Seventy-five," he had -murmured, with a satisfied nod, and once more concentrated his attention -upon the sheet in his hand. As Anthony returned through the dining room -he found Annot Hardinge arranging a spray of scarlet verbena in a glass -vase. - -"Has father spoken to you about the salary you are to get?" she asked. -He paused, cap in hand. "I told him that you were positively not to get -above eighty." - -"I told him seventy-five. He seemed contented." - -"He would have been contented if you had said seven hundred and fifty." -Then, to discountenance any criticism of her father's intelligence, she -added: "He is a very famous biologist, you know. The people about here -don't understand those things, but in London, in Paris, in Berlin, he -is easily one of the greatest men alive. He is carrying the Mendelian -theory to its absolute, logical conclusion." - -"He said something about that to me," Anthony commented; "it seemed to -upset him." - -A cloud appeared upon her countenance; then, coldly, "That will do," she -told him. - -Once more in the informal garage he lit the gas jet on either wall, and, -in the bubbling, watery light, found the automobile caked with mud and -grease, the tires flat, the wires charred and the cylinders coated with -carbon. A pair of old canvas trousers were hanging from a nail, and, -donning them and connecting a length of hose to a convenient faucet, he -began the task of putting the machine in order. It was past eleven -when he finished for the night, and mounting with cramped and stiffened -muscles to his room, he fell into immediate slumber. - - - - -XXXIV - -ON the following morning he wrote a brief, reassuring note to his -father; then, over another page, hesitated with poised pen. "Dear -Eliza," he finally began, then once more fell into indecision. "I wish -I were back on the Wingo-hocking with you," he' embarked. "That was -splendid, having you in the canoe, with no one else; the whole world -seemed empty except for you and me. It's no joke of an emptiness without -you. - -I have been delayed in reaching California, but I'll soon be out there -now, working like thunder for our wedding. - -"Mostly I can't realize it, it's too good to be true--you seem like -a thing I dreamed about, in a dream all full of moonlight and white -flowers. It's funny but I smell lilacs, you know like you picked, -everywhere. Last night, cleaning a car just soaked in dirt and greasy -smells, that perfume came out of nothing, and hung about so real that it -hurt me. And all the time I kept thinking that you were standing beside -me and smiling. I knew better, but I had to look more than once. - -"Love's different from what I thought it would be; I thought it would be -all happy, but it's not that, it's blamed serious. I am always flinching -from blows that might fall on you, do you see? Before I went away I -saw a man kiss a woman, and they both seemed scared; I understand that -now--they loved each other." - -He broke off and gazed out the narrow window over the feathery tops of -maples, the symmetrical, bronze tops of a clump of pines. The odor of -lilacs came to him illusively; he was certain that Eliza was standing at -his shoulder; he could hear a silken whisper, feel an intangible thrill -of warmth. He turned sharply, and faced the empty room, the bright, -stentorious clock, the table with the pitcher and glass and serious -volumes. "Hell!" he exclaimed in angry remonstrance at his credulity. -Still shaken by the reality of the impression he wondered if he were -growing crazy? The bell above the washstand rang sharply, and, putting -the incomplete letter in a drawer, he proceeded over the tanbark path -that led to the house. - -Annot Hardinge beckoned to him from the porch, and, turning, he passed a -conservatory built against the side of the dwelling, where he saw small, -identical plants ranged in mathematical rows. - -"What is your name?" she demanded abruptly, as he stopped before her. -"Anthony," he told her. - -She was dressed in apricot muslin, with a long necklace of alternate -carved gold and amber beads, dependent amber earrings, and a flapping -white hat with broad, yellow ribbands that streamed downward with her -hair. In one hand she held a pair of crumpled white gloves and a soft -gold mesh bag. - -"You may bring around the car... Anthony," she directed. "I want to go -into town." - -In the heart of the shopping district they moved slowly in an unbroken -procession of motor landaulets, open cars and private hansoms, a -glittering, colorful procession winding through the glittering, colorful -cavern of the shop windows. The sidewalks were thronged with women, -brilliant in lace and dyed feathers and jewels, the thin, sustained -babble of trivial voices mingled with the heavy, coiling odors of costly -perfumes. - -When a small heap of bundles had been accumulated a rebellious -expression clouded An-not Hardinge's countenance. "Stop at that -confectioner's," she directed, indicating a window filled with candies -scattered in a creamy tide, bister, pale mauve, and citrine, over -fluted, delicately green satin, against a golden mass of molasses bars. -She soon emerged, with a package tied in silver cord, and paused upon -the curb. "I want to go out... out, into the heart of the country," she -proclaimed; "this crowd, these tinsel women, make me ill. Drive until I -tell you to stop... away from everything." - -When they had left the tangle of paved streets, the innumerable stone -facades, she directed their course into a ravine whose steep sides were -covered with pines, at the bottom of which a stream foamed whitely over -rocky ledges. Beyond, they rose to an upland, where open, undulating -hills burned in the blue flame of noon; at their back a trail of dust -resettled upon the road, before them a glistening flock of peafowl -scattered with harsh, threatening cries. By a gnarled apple tree, whose -ripening June apples overhung the road, she called, "stop!" - -The motor halted in the spicy, dappled shadow of the tree; at one side a -cornfield spread its silken, green tapestry; on the other a pasture was -empty, close-cropped, rising to a coronal of towering chestnuts. The -road, in either direction, was deserted. - -Anthony heard a sigh of contentment at his back: relaxed from the -tension of driving he removed his cap, and, with crossed legs, -contemplated the sylvan quiet. He watched a flock of blackbirds wheeling -above the apple tree, and decided that they had been within easy shot. - -"Look over your head!" she cried suddenly; "what gorgeous apples." - -He rose, and, measuring the distance in a swift glance, jumped, and -caught hold of a limb, by means of which he drew himself up into the -tree. He mounted rapidly, filling his cap with crimson apples; when his -pockets were full he paused. Down through the screen of leaves he -could see her upturned countenance, framed in the broad, white hat; -her expression was severely impersonal; yet, viewed from that informal -angle, she did not appear displeased. And, when he had descended, she -picked critically among the store he offered. She rolled back the gloves -upon her wrists, and bit largely, with youthful gusto. On the road, -after a moment's hesitation, Anthony embarked upon the consumption of -the remainder. He strolled a short distance from the car, and found a -seat upon a low stone-wall. - - - - -XXXV - -SOON, he saw, she too left the car, and passed him, apparently ignorant -of his presence. But, upon her return, she stopped, and indicated -with her foot some feathery plants growing in a ditch by the road. -"Horsetails," she declared; "they are Paleozoic... millions of years -old." - -"They look fresh and green still," he observed. She glanced at him -coldly, but his expression was entirely serious. "I mean the species -of course. Father has fossils of the Devonian period... they were trees -then." She chose a place upon the wall, ten feet or more from him, and -sat with insolent self-possession, whistling an inconsequential tune. -There was absolutely no pose about her, he decided; she possessed a -masculine carelessness in regard to him. She leaned back, propped upon -her arms, and the frank, flowing line of her full young body was like -the June day in its uncorseted freedom and beauty. - -"If you will get that package from the confectioner's--" she suggested -finally. She unfolded the paper, and exposed a row of small cakes, which -she divided rigorously in two; rewrapping one division she held it out -toward him. - -"No, no," he protested seriously. "I'm not hungry." - -"It's past two," she informed him, "and we can't possibly be back in -time for luncheon. I'd rather not hold this out any longer." He relieved -her without further words. "Two brioche and two babas," she enumerated. -He resumed his place, and then consumed the cakes without further -speech. - -"The study of biology," she informed him later, with a gravity -appropriate to the subject, "makes a great many small distinctions seem -absurd. When you get accustomed to thinking in races, and in millions -of years, the things your friends fuss about seem absurd. And so, if you -like, why, smoke." - -It was his constant plight that, between the formal restrictions of his -position, and the vigorous novelty of her speech, Anthony was constantly -at a loss. "Perhaps," he replied inanely; "I know nothing about those -things." - -She flashed over him a candid, amber gaze that singularly resembled her -father's. "You are not at all acquisitive," she informed him; "and it's -perfectly evident that you are the poorest sort of chauffeur. You drive -very nicely," she continued with severe justice. "One could trust you -in a crisis; but it is little things that make a chauffeur, and in the -little things," she paused to indicate a globe of cigarette smoke that -instantly dissolved, "you are like--that." - -He moodily acknowledged to himself the truth of her observation, but -such acumen he considered entirely unnecessary in one so young; he did -not think it becoming. He contrasted her, greatly to her detriment, with -the elusive charm of Eliza Dreen; the girl before him was too vivid, too -secure; he felt instinctively that she was entirely free from the bonds, -the conventions, that held the majority of girls within recognized, -convenient limits. Her liberty of mind upset a balance to which both -heredity and experience had accustomed him. The entire absence of a -tacitly recognized masculine superiority subconsciously made him uneasy, -and he took refuge in imponderable silence. - -"Besides," she continued airily, "you are too physically normal to -think, all normal people are stupid.... You are like one of those wood -creatures in the classic pastorals." - -A faint grin overspread Anthony's countenance; among so many -unintelligible words he had regained his poise--this was the usual, the -familiar feminine chatter, endless, inconsequential, by means of which -all girls presented the hopeless tangle of their thoughts and emotions; -its tone had deceived him only at the beginning. - -In the stillness which followed other blackbirds, equally within shot, -winged over the apple tree; the shadow of the boughs crept farther -and farther down the road. She rose vigorously. "I must get back," she -announced. She remained silent during the return, but Anthony, with the -sense of direction cultivated during countless days in the fields and -swales, found the way without hesitation. - -When she left the car he slowly backed and circled to the carriage -house. As he splashed body and wheels with water, polished the metal, -dried and dusted the cushions, the crisp, cool voice of Annot Hardinge -rang in his ears. He divined something of her isolated existence, her -devotion to the absorbed, kindly man who was her father, and speculated -upon her matured youth. She recalled his sister Ellie, for whose -inflexible integrity he cherished a deep-seated admiration; but both -left him cold before the poignant tenderness of Eliza... Eliza, the -unforgettable, who loved him. - - - - -XXXVI - -AFTER an unsubstantial dinner of grilled sweetbreads and mushrooms, and -a frozen pudding, he continued his interrupted letter: "But there isn't -any use in my trying to write my love in words; it won't go into words, -even inside of me I can't explain it--it seems as if instead of its -being a part of me that I am a part of it, of something too big for me -to see the end of." Then he became practicable, and wrote optimistically -of the things that were soon to be. - -There was a letter box at the upper corner of the street, and, passing -the porch, he saw the biologist sunk in an attitude of profound -dejection. His daughter sat with bare arms and neck at his side; her -hair was bound in a gleaming mass about her ears, and one hand was laid -upon the man's shoulder, while she patted Thomas Huxley with the other. -The dog rose, growling belligerently at the unfamiliar figure, but sank -again beneath a sharp command. When he returned Rufus Hardinge greeted -him, and turned to his daughter with a murmured suggestion, but she -shook her head in decisive negation. A light shone palely in the long -windows at their back. The sun, at its skyey, evening toilette, seemed, -in the rosy glow of westering candles, to scatter a cloud of powdered -gold over the worn and huddled shoulders of the world. - -Suddenly, seemingly in reconsideration of her decision, she called, "Oh, -Anthony!" and he retraced his steps to the porch. "My father suggests -that you sit here," she told him distantly. "He says that you are very -young, and that solitude is not good for you." - -"Annot," the older man protested humorously, "you have mangled my intent -beyond any recognition." With an unstudied, friendly gesture he tended -Anthony his cigar case. A deep preoccupation enveloped him; he sat with -loose hands and unseeing eyes. In the deepening twilight his countenance -was grey. Anthony had taken a position upon the edge of the porch, his -feet in the fragrant grass, out of which fireflies rose glimmering, -mounting higher and higher, until, finally, they disappeared into the -night above, in the pale birth of the stars. - -A deep silence enfolded them until in an unexpected, low voice, Rufus -Hardinge repeated mechanically aloud lines called, evidently, out of a -memory of long ago: - - ''Within thy beams, Oh, Sun! or who could find, - - While fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed, - - That too," he paused, groping in his memory for - - the words: - - "That too such countless orbs thou madst us - - blind." - -The girl rose, and drew his head into her warm, young arms. "Don't, -father," she cried, in a sudden, throbbing apprehension; "please... -please. You have the clearest, most beautiful eyes in the world. Think -of all they have seen and understood--" He patted her absently. Anthony -moved silently away. - - - - -XXXVII - -NOT long after, at breakfast, the young and disdainful maid conveyed to -Anthony a request to proceed, when he had finished, to the conservatory. -There he discovered Annot Har-dinge, with her sleeves rolled up above -her vigorous elbows, dusting with a fine, brown powder the rows of -monotonous, potted plants. She directed him to follow her with a -slender-nosed watering pot. He wondered silently at the featureless -display of what he found to be ordinary bean plants, some of the dwarf -variety, others drawn up against the wall. They bore in exact, minute -inscriptions, strange names and titles, cryptic numbers; some, he saw, -were labelled "Dominants," others, "Recessives." - -"The 'cupids' are doing wretchedly, poor dears!" she exclaimed before a -row of dwarf sweet peas. "This is my father's laboratory," she told him -briefly. - -"I thought he had something to do with Darwin and the missing link." - -She gazed at him pityingly from the heights of a vast superiority. -"Darwin did some valuable preliminary work," she instructed him; -"although Wallace really guessed it all first. Now Mendel, Bateson, are -the important names. They were busy with the beginnings; and, among the -beginnings, plants are the most suggestive." She indicated a small row -of budding sweet peas. "Perhaps, in those flowers, the whole secret of -the universe will be found; perhaps the mystery of our souls will be -explained; isn't it thrilling! The secret of inheritance may sleep in -those buds--if they are white it will prove... oh, a thousand things, -and among them that father is the most wonderful scientist alive; it -will explain heredity and control it, make a new kind of world possible, -a world without the most terrible diseases. What church, what saint, -what god, has really done that?" she demanded. "Stupid priggish figures -bending out of their gold-plated heavens!" - -Her enthusiasm communicated a thrill to him as he regarded the still, -withdrawn mystery of the plants. For the first time he thought of them -as alive, as he was alive; he imagined them returning his gaze, his -interest, exchanging--critically, in their imperceptible, chaste -tongue--their unimpassioned opinions of him. It was a disturbing -possibility that the secret of his future, of life and death, might lurk -in the flowers to unfold on those slender stems. He was oppressed by -a feeling of a world crowded with invisible, living forms, of fields -filled with billions of grassy inhabitants, of seas, mountains, made up -of interlocking and contending lives; every breath, he felt, absorbed -races of varied individuals. He thought, too, of people as plants, as -roses--Oh, Eliza!--as nettles, rank weeds, crimson lilies. And, vaguely, -this hurt him; something valuable, something sustaining, vanished from -his unformulated, instinctive conception of life; the world of men, -their aims, their courage, ideals, lost their peculiar beauty, their -importance; the past, rising from the mold through those green tubes -and vanishing into a future of dissolving gases, shrunk, stripped of its -glamor, to an affair of little moment. - -Outside, as he descended the lawn, the sun had the artificial glitter of -an incandescent light; the trees waved their arms at him threateningly. -Then, with a shrug of his normal young shoulders, he relinquished the -entire conception; he forgot it. He recklessly permeated a universe of -airy atoms with the smoke of a Dulcina. "That's a woolly delusion," he -pronounced. - -That evening he burnished the car, and mounted the ladder to his room -late. But the evening following, detained to perform a trivial task, -found him seated upon the porch, enveloped in the fragrant clouds of -Habana leaf. - - - - -XXXVIII - -ANNOT, as now he mentally termed her, dressed in the inevitable yellow, -was swinging a satin slipper on the point of her foot; her father was, -if possible, more greyly withdrawn than before. - -"To-night," the biologist finally addressed his daughter, "your mother -has been dead eighteen years.... She hated science; she said it had -destroyed my heart. Impossible--a purely functionary pump. The illusions -of emotions are cerebro-spinal reflexes, only that. She said that I -cared more for science than--than herself." He raised his head sharply, -"I was forced to tell her the truth, in common honor: science first.... -Tears are an automatic escapement to protect the vision. But women -have no logic, little understanding; hopelessly romantic, a false -quantity--romance, dangerous. I was away when she died ... Borneo, -Aurignacian strata had been discovered, a distinct parallel with the -Maurer jaw. Death is only a change of chemical activity," he shot at -Anthony in a voice not entirely steady, "the human entity a passing -agglomeration, kinetic.... Love is a mechanical principle, categorically -imperative," his voice sank, became diffuse. "Absolute science, -selfless. - -"People found her beautiful, I didn't know," he added wistfully; "beauty -is a vague term. The Chapelle skull is beautiful, as I understand it, as -I understand it. In a letter to me," after a long pause, "she employed -the term 'frozen to death'; she said that I had frozen her to death. -Only a figure, romantic, inexact." - -"Stuff!" Annot exclaimed lightly, but her anxious countenance -contradicted the spirit of her tones. "You mustn't stir about in old -troubles. Everything great demands sacrifice; mother didn't quite -understand; and I expect she got lonely, poor dear." - -Anthony rose, and made his way somberly toward the stable, but running -feet, his name called in low, urgent tones, arrested his progress. -An-not approached with the trouble deepening in her gaze. "Does he seem -entirely himself to you?" she asked, but, before he could answer,--"of -course, you don't know him well enough. You see, he is working too much -again, an average of sixteen hours for the ten days past. I haven't said -anything because the most difficult part of his work is at an end. -If his last conclusions are right he will have only to scribble the -reports, put a book together.... I can always tell when he is overworked -by the cobwebs--he tries to brush them off his face," she explained. -"They don't exist, of course. - -"But I really wanted to say this," she lifted her candid gaze to his -face. "Could you be a little more about the house? we might need you; -we'll use the car very little for a while." The apprehension was clearly -visible now. "Would you mind helping him with his clothes; he gets them -mixed? It isn't regular, I know," she told him; "but we have a great -deal of money; anything you required--" - -"Perhaps I'd be better at that," he suggested. "You know, you said I was -a rotten chauffeur." - -For a moment, appealing, she had seemed nearer to him, but now she -retreated spiritually, slipped behind her cold indifference. "There will -be nothing more to-night; if he grows worse you will have to move into -the house." She left him abruptly, gathering her filmy skirt from the -grass, an elusive shape with gleams on her hair, her arms and neck white -for an instant and then veiled in the scarf of night. - -In his room he could still hear, mingled with the faint, muffled -squeaking of the mice in the empty hayloft, Hardinge's voice, jerky, -laborious, "a categorical imperative... categorical imperative." He -wondered what that meant applied to love? An errant air brought him the -unmistakable odor of white lilacs, an ineffable impression of Eliza. - - - - -XXXIX - -THE day following found him installed in the house, in a small chamber -formed where the tower fronted upon the third story. At luncheon a -place was laid for him at the table with Annot and her father, where the -attentions of the disdainful and shapely maid positively quivered with -suppressed scorn. Anthony had found in his room fifty dollars in an -envelope, upon which Annot had scribbled that he might need a few -things; and, at liberty in the afternoon, he boarded an electric car -for the city, where he invested in fresh and shining pumps, and other -necessities. - -The house was dark when he inserted his newly acquired latchkey in the -front door and made his way softly aloft. But a thread of light was -shining under the door of Rufus Har-dinge's study. Later--he had just -turned out the light--a short knock fell upon his door. - -"Me," Annot answered his instant query. "I am going to ask you to dress -and come to my father. It may be unnecessary; he may go quietly to bed; -but go he must." - -He found her in a dressing gown that fell in heavy, straight folds of -saffron satin, her feet thrust in quaint Turkish slippers with curled -points; while over her shoulders slipped and slid the coppery rope -of her hair. She led the way to the study, which she entered without -knocking. Anthony saw the biologist bent over pages spread in the -concentrated light of a green shaded globe. In a glass case against -the wall some moldy bones were mounted and labelled; fragmentary and -sinister-appearing casts gleamed whitely from a stand; and, everywhere, -was the orderly confusion of books and papers that had distinguished the -library. - -"Come, Rufus," Annot laid her hand upon his shoulder; "it's bedtime for -all scientists. You promised me you would be in by eleven." - -He gazed at her with the hasty regard directed at an ill-timed, casual -stranger. "Yes, yes," he ejaculated impatiently, "get to bed. I'll -follow... some crania tracings, prognathic angles--" - -"To-morrow will do for those," she insisted gently, "you are making -yourself ill again--" - -"Nonsense," he interrupted, "never felt better in my life, never--" his -voice dwindled abruptly to silence, as though a door had been closed -on him; his lips twisted impotently; beads of sweat stood out upon his -white, strained forehead. His whole body was rigid in an endeavor to -regain his utterance. He rose, and would have fallen, if Annot's arm -had not slipped about his shoulders. Anthony hurried forward, and, -supporting him on either side, they assisted him into the sleeping -chamber beyond. There, at full length on a couch, a sudden, marble-like -immobility fell upon his features, his mouth slightly open, his hands -clenched. Annot busied herself swiftly, while Anthony descended into -the dark, still house in search of ice. When he returned, Hardinge was -pronouncing disconnected words, terms. "Eoliths," he said, "snow line... -one hundred and thirty millimeters." He was silent for a moment, then, -struggling into a sitting posture, "Annot!" he cried sharply, "I've -frightened you again. Only a touch of... aphasia; unfortunately not new, -my dear, but not serious." - -Later, when Anthony had assisted him in the removal of his clothes, and -lowered the light, he found Annot in the study assembling the papers -scattered on the table. "I am glad that you are here," she said simply. -"Soon he can have a complete rest." She sank into a chair; he had had no -idea that she could appear so lovely: her widely-opened eyes held flecks -of gold; beneath the statuesque fall of the dressing gown her bare -ankles were milky-white. - - - - -XL - -HE felt strangely at ease in a setting so easily strange. There was -a palpable flavor of unreality in the moment, of detachment from the -commonplace round of existence; it was without connection, without -responsibility to yesterday or to to-morrow; he was isolated with the -informal vision of Annot in an hour which seemed neither day nor night. -He felt--inarticulately--divorced from his customary daily personality; -and, with no particular need for speech, lit a cigarette, and blew -clouds of smoke at the ceiling. It was his companion who interrupted -this mood. - -"The life that people think so tremendously important," she observed, -"the things one does, are hardly more real than a suit of clothes, with -religion for a nice, prim white collar, gloves for morals, and a hidden -red silk handkerchief for a rare revolt. And all the time, politely -ignored, decently covered, our bodies are underneath. Now and then some -one slips out of his covering, and stands bare before his shocked -and protesting friends, but they soon hurry something about him, a -conventional shawl, a moral sheet. Do you happen to remember a wonderful -caricature of Louis XIV--simply a wig, a silk suit, buckled shoes and a -staff?" - -The mordant humor of that drawing penetrated Anthony's understanding: -he saw rooms, streets, a world full of gesticulating suits, dresses, -nodding hats, bonnets; he saw the unsubstantial concourse haughtily -erect, condescending, cunningly deceptive, veiling in a thousand -subterfuges their essential emptiness. The thought evaporated -in laughter at the obvious humor of such a spectacle; its social -significance missed him totally, happily. - -"What an unthinking person you are," she told him; "you just--live. It's -rather remarkable--one of Bacchus' company caught in the modern streets. -It is all so different now," she added plaintively; "men get drunk in -saloons or at dinner, and the purple stain of the grape centers in -their noses. I tried myself," she confessed, "in Geneva. I was with a -specialist who had father. The cafe balcony overhung the lake; it was at -night, and the villages looked like clusters of fireflies about a black -mirror; and you simply never saw so many stars. We were looking for -a lyric sensation, but it was the most awful fizzle; he insisted on -describing an operation with all the grey and gory details complete, and -I fell fast asleep." - -The outcome of her experiment tallied exactly with that of his own -more involuntary efforts in that field. It established in his mind -a singularly direct sympathy with her; the uneasy element which her -attitude had called up in him disappeared entirely, its place taken by a -comfortable sense of freedom, a total lack of _rot_. - -She rose, vanishing into her father's room, then, coming to the door, -nodded shortly, and left for the night. - -He found on the bureau in his tower room what remained of the fifty -dollars--it had been reduced to less than eight. Suddenly he remembered -his purpose there, his supreme need of money, the imperative westward -call.... He bitterly cursed his lax character as he recalled the cigars -he had purchased, the silk shirt too, and an unnecessary tie. A deep -gloom settled upon his spirit. He heard in retrospect his father's -clear, high voice--"shiftless, no sense of responsibility." He sat -miserably on the edge of the bed in the dark, while the petty, unbroken -procession of past failures wheeled through his brain. Then the shining -vision of Eliza, compassionate, tender, folded him in peace; one by one -he would subdue those rebellious elements in himself, of fate, that held -them apart. - - - - -XLI - -AT a solitary breakfast the incident of the preceding night seemed -fantastic, unreal; he retained the broken, vivid memory of the scene, -the thrill of vague words, that lingers disturbingly into the waking -world from a dream. And, when he saw Annot later, there was no trace of -a consequent informality in her manner; she was distant, hedged about by -an evident concern for her father. "I have sent for Professor Jamison." -She addressed Anthony with blank eyes. "Please be within call in case--" - -He saw the neurologist as the latter circled the plaster cupids to the -entrance of the house--a heavy man with a broad, smooth face, thinlipped -like a priest, with staring yellow gloves. Anthony remained in the lower -hall, but no demand for his assistance sounded from above. When the -specialist descended, he flashed a glance, as bitingly swift and cold as -glacial water, over Anthony, then nodded in the direction of the garden. - -"Miss Annot tells me that you are sleeping in the house," he said -when they were outside; "on the chance that she might need you for -her father... she will. He is at the point of mental dissolution." An -involuntary repulsion possessed Anthony at the detached manner in which -the other pronounced these hopeless words. "Nothing may be done; that -is--it is not desirable that anything should. I am telling you this so -that you can act intelligently. Rufus Hardinge knows it; there was a -consultation at Geneva, which he approved. - -"He is," he continued with a warmer, more personal note, "a very -distinguished biologist; his investigations, his conclusions, have been -invaluable." He glanced at an incongruous, minute, jewelled watch on his -wrist, and continued more quickly. "Ten years ago he should have stopped -all work, vegetated--he was burning up rapidly; merely a reduced amount -of labor would have accomplished little for his health or subject. And -we couldn't spare his labor, no mere prolongation of life would have -justified that loss of knowledge, progress. It was his position; he -insisted upon it and we concurred... he chose... insanity. - -"Miss Annot is not aware of this; he must have every moment possible; -every note is priceless. The end will come--now, at any time." He had -reached the small, canary yellow Dreux landaulet waiting for him, and -stepped into it with a sharp nod. "You may expect violence," he added, -as the car gathered momentum. - -But that evening in the dim quietude of the piazza the biologist seemed -to have recovered completely his mental poise. He spoke in a buoyant -vein of the great men he had known, celebrated names in the world of -the arts, in politics and science. He recalled Braisted, the astronomer, -searching relaxation in the Boulevard school of French fictionists. "I -told him," he chuckled at the mild, scholastic humor, "that he had been -peeping too long at Venus." - -Annot was steeped in an inscrutable silence. - -For the first time, Anthony was actually aware of her features: she had -a broad, low brow swept by the coppery hair loosely tied at the back; -her eyes resembled her father's, they were amber-colored, and singularly -candid in their interest in all that passed before them; while her nose -tilted up slightly above a mouth frankly large. It was the face of a -boy, he decided, but felt instantly that he had fallen far short of -the fact--the allurement, the perfection, of her youthful maturity hung -overwhelmingly about her the challenge of sex. - -Rather, she was all girl, he recognized, but of a new variety. A vision -of _the nice_ girls he had known dominated his vision, flooded his mind, -all smiling with veiled eyes, clothed in a thousand reserves, fluttering -graces, innocent wiles, with their gaze firmly set toward the shining, -desirable goal of matrimony. Eliza was not like that, it was true; but -she, from the withdrawn, impersonal height of her cool perfection, was -a law to herself. There was a new freedom in Annot's acceptance of life, -he realized vaguely, as different as possible from mere license; no one, -he was certain, would presume with Annot Hardinge: her very frankness -offered infinitely less incentive to unlawful thoughts than the -conscious modesty of the others. - -When the biologist left the piazza Annot turned with a glad gesture to -her companion. "He hasn't seemed so well--not for years; his little, -gay fun again... it's too good to be true. I should like to -celebrate--something entirely irresponsible. I have worried, oh, -dreadfully." The night was still, moonless; the stars burned like opals -in the intense purple deeps of the sky. The air, freighted with the rich -fruitage of full summer, hung close and heavy. "It's hot as a blotter," -Annot declared. "I think, yes--I'm sure, I should like to go out in the -car." She rose. "Will you bring it around, please?" - -He drove slowly over the deserted lane by the lawn, and found her, -enveloped in the lustrous folds of a black satin wrap, at the front -gate. Over her hair she had tied a veil drawn about her brow in a webby -filament of flowers "I think I'll sit in front," she decided; "perhaps -I'll drive." He waited, at the steering wheel, for directions. - -"Go west, young man," she told him, and would say nothing more. A -distant bell thinly struck eleven jarring notes as they moved into the -flickering gloom of empty streets with the orange blur of lamps floating -unsteadily on dim boughs above, and the more brilliant, crackling -radiance of the arc lights at the crossings. - -The headlights of the automobile cut like white knives through the -obscurity of hedged ways; at sudden turnings they plunged into gardens, -flinging sharply on the shadowy night vivid glimpses of incredible -greenery, unearthly flowers, wafers of white wall. They drove for a -long, silent period, with increasing momentum as the way became more -open and direct; now they seemed scarcely to touch the uncertain surface -below, but to be wheeling through sheer space, flashing their stabbing -incandescence into the empty envelopment beyond the worlds. - -They passed with a muffled din through the single street of a sleeping -village, leaving behind a confusion of echoes and the startled barking -of a dog. Anthony could see Annot's profile, pale and clear, against -the flying and formless countryside; the lace about her hair fluttered -ceaselessly; and her wrap bellowed and clung about her shoulders, about -her gloveless hands folded upon her slim knees. She was splendidly, -regally scornful upon the wings of their reckless flight; the throttle -was wide open; they swung from side to side, hung on a single wheel, -lunged bodily into the air. In the mad ecstasy of speed she rose; but -Anthony, clutching her arms, pulled her sharply into the seat. Then, -decisively, he shut off the power, the world ceased to race behind them, -the smooth clamor of the engine sank to a low vibratone. - -"You did that wonderfully," she told him with glowing cheeks, shining -eyes; "it was marvellous. A moment like that is worth a life-time -on foot... laughing at death, at everything that is safe, admirable, -moral... a moment of the freedom of soulless things, savage and -unaccountable to God or society." - -The illuminated face of the clock before him indicated a few minutes -past one, and, tentatively, he repeated the time. "How stupid of you," -she protested; "silly, little footrule of the hours, the conventional -measure of the commonplace. For punishment--on and on. Like Columbus' -men you are afraid of falling over the edge of--propriety." She turned -to him with solemn eyes. "I assure you there is no edge, no bump or -brimstone, no place where good stops and tumbles into bad; it's all -continuous--" - -He lost the thread of her mocking discourse, and glanced swiftly at her, -his brow wrinkled, the shadow of a smile upon his lips. "Heavens! but -you are good-looking," she acknowledged, her countenance studiously -critical, impersonal. After that silence once more fell upon them; -the machine sang through the dark, lifting over ridges, dropping down -declines. - -Anthony had long since lost all sense of their position. The cyanite -depths of the sky turned grey, cold; there was a feeling in the air of -settling dew; a dank mist filled the hollows; the color seemed suddenly -to have faded from the world. He felt unaccountably weary, inexpressibly -depressed; he could almost taste the vapidity of further existence. -Annoys hard, bright words echoed in his brain; the flame of his -unthinking idealism sank in the thin atmosphere of their logic. - - - - -XLII - -SHE had settled low in the seat, her mouth and chin hidden in the folds -of the satin wrap; her face seemed as chill as marble, her youth cruel, -disdainful. But her undeniable courage commanded his admiration, the -unwavering gaze of her eyes into the dark. He wondered if, back of her -crisp defenses, she were happy. He knew from observation that she led an -almost isolated existence... she had gathered about her no circle of her -own age, she indulged in none of the rapturous confidences, friendships, -so sustaining to other girls. The peculiar necessities of her father -had accomplished this. Yet he was aware that she cherished a general -contempt for youth at large, for a majority of the grown, for that -matter. Contempt colored her attitude to a large extent: that and -happiness did not seem an orderly pair. - -He felt, rather than saw, the influence of the dawn behind him; it was -as though the grey air grew more transparent. Annot twisted about. "Oh! -turn, turn!" she cried; "the day! we are driving away from it." A sudden -intoxicating freshness streamed like a sparkling birdsong over the -world, and Anthony's dejection vanished with the gloom now at their -backs. Delicate lavender shadows grew visible upon the grass, the color -shifted tremulously, like the shot hues of changeable silks, until the -sun poured its ore into the verdant crucible of the countryside. - -"I am most frightfully hungry," Annot admitted with that entire -frankness which he found so refreshing. "I wonder--" On either hand -fields, far farmhouses, reached unbroken to the horizon; before them the -road rose between banks of soft, brown loam, apparently into the sky. -But, beyond the rise, they came upon a roadside store, its silvery -boards plastered with the garish advertisements of tobaccos, and a -rickety porch, now undergoing a vigorous sweeping at the hands of an -old man with insecure legs, upon whose faded personage was stamped -unmistakably the initials "G. A. R." - -Anthony brought the car to a halt, and returned his brisk and curious -salutation. "Shall I bring out some crackers?" he asked from the road. -But she elected to follow him into the store. The interior presented the -usual confusion of gleaming tin and blue overalls, monumental cheeses -and cards of buttons, a miscellany of ludicrously varied merchandise. -Annot found a seat upon a splintered church pew, now utilized as a -secular resting place, while Anthony foraged through the shelves. He -returned with the crackers, and a gold lump of dates, upon which they -breakfasted hugely. "D'y like some milk?" the aged attendant inquired, -and forthwith dipped it out of a deep, cool and ringing can. - -Afterward they sat upon the step and smoked matutinal cigarettes. The -day gathered in a shimmering haze above the vivid com, the emerald of -the shorn fields; the birds had already subsided from the heat among -the leaves. Anthony saw that the lamps of the car were still alight, a -feeble yellow flicker, and turned them out. He tested the engine; and, -finding it still running, turned with an unspoken query to Annot. She -rose slowly. - -The wrap slipped from her bare shoulders and her dinner gown with its -high sulphur girdle, the scrap of black lace about her hair, presented -a strange, brilliantly artificial picture against the blistered, gaunt -boards of the store, with, at its back, the open sunny space of pasture, -wood and sky. - -"It's barely twenty miles back," she told him, once more settled at his -side. The old man regarded them from under one gnarled palm, the -other tightly clasped about the broom handle; his jaw was dropped; -incredulity, senile surprise, claimed him for their own. - -With Annot, Anthony reflected, he was everlastingly getting into new -situations; she seemed to lift him out of the ordinary course of events -into a perverse world of her own, a front-backward land where the -unexpected, without rule or obligation, continually happened; and, what -was strangest of all, without any of the dark consequences which he -had been taught must inevitably follow such departures. He recalled the -incredulous smiles, the knowing insinuations, that would have greeted -the exact recounting of the past night at Doctor Allhop's drugstore. -He would himself, in the past, have regarded such a tale as a flimsy -fabrication. And suddenly he perceived dimly, in a mind unused to such -abstractions, the veil of ugliness, of degradation, that hung so -blackly about the thoughts of men. He gazed with a new sympathy -and comprehension at the scornful line of Annot's vivid young lips; -something of her superiority, her contempt, was communicated to him. - -She became aware of his searching gaze, and smiled in an intimate, -friendly fashion at him. "You are the most comfortable person alive," -she told him. There was nothing critical in her tones now. "I said that -you were not a good chauffeur, and--" the surroundings grew familiar, -they had nearly reached their destination, and an impalpable reserve -fell upon her, but she continued to smile at him, "and... you are not." -That was the last word she addressed to him that day. - -As, later, he sluiced the automobile with water, he recalled the strange -intimacy of the night, her warm and sympathetic voice; once she had -steadied herself with a clinging hand upon his shoulder. These new -attributes of the person who, shortly, passed him silently and with cold -eyes, stirred his imagination; they were potent, rare, unsettling. - - - - -XLIII - -Notwithstanding, in the days which followed there was a perceptible -change in Annot's attitude toward him: she became, as it were, conscious -of his actuality. One afternoon she read aloud to him a richly-toned, -gloomy tale of Africa. They were sitting by a long window, open, but -screened from the summer heat by stiff, darkly-drooping green folds, -where they could hear the drip of the fountain in its basin, a cool -punctuation on the sultry page of the afternoon. Annot proceeded rapidly -in an even, low voice; she was dressed in filmy lavender, with little -buttons of golden velvet, an intricately carved gold buckle at her -waist. - -Anthony listened as closely as possible, the faint smile which seldom -left him hovering over his lips. The bald action of the narrative--a -running fight with ambushed savages from a little tin pot of a steamer, -a mysterious affair in the darkness with a grim skeleton of a fellow, -stakes which bore a gory fruitage of human heads, held him; but the -rest... words, words. His attention wavered, fell upon minute, material -objects; Annot's voice grew remote, returned, was lost among his -juggling thoughts. - -"Isn't it splendid!" she exclaimed, at last closing the volume; "the -most beautiful story of our time--" She stopped abruptly, and cast a -penetrating glance at him. "I don't believe you even listened," she -declared. "In your heart you prefer, 'Tortured by the Tartars.'" - -His smile broadened, including his eyes. - -"You are impossible! No," she veered suddenly, "you're not; if you cared -for this you wouldn't be... you. That's the most important thing in -the world. Besides, I wouldn't like you; everybody reads now, it's -frightfully common; while you are truly indifferent. Have you noticed, -my child, that books always increase where life runs thin? and you are -alive, not a papier-mache man painted in the latest shades." - -Anthony dwelt on this unexpected angle upon his mental delinquencies. -The approval of Annot Hardinge, so critical, so outspoken, was not -without an answering glow in his being; no one but she might discover -his ignorance to be laudable. - -She rose, and the book slipped neglected to the floor. "The mirror of my -dressing table is collapsing," she informed him; "I wonder if you -would look at it." He followed her above to her room; it was a large, -four-square chamber, its windows brushed by the glossy leaves of an -aged black-heart cherry tree. Her bed was small, with a counterpane of -grotesque lace animals, a table held a scattered collection of costly -trifles, and a closet door stood open upon a shimmering array from -deepest orange to white and pale primrose. An enigmatic lacy garment, -and a surprisingly long pair of black silk stockings, occupied a chair; -while the table was covered with columns of print on long sheets of -paper. "Galleys," she told him. "I read all father's proof." - -He moved the dressing table from the wall, and discovered the bolt -which had held the mirror in place upon the floor. As he screwed it into -position, Annot said: - -"Don't look around for a minute." There was a swift whisper of skirts, -a pause, then, "all right." He straightened up, and found that she had -changed to a white skirt and waist. Fumbling in the closet she produced -a pair of low, brown shoes, and kicking off her slippers, donned the -others, balancing each in turn on the bed. - -"Let's go--anywhere," she proposed; "but principally where books are not -and birds are." At a drugstore they purchased largely of licorice root, -which they consumed sitting upon a fence without the town. - - - - -XLIV - -I SAID that instinctively, back in my room," Annot remarked with a -puzzled frown. "It was beastly, really, to feel the necessity... -as though we had something corrupt to hide. And I feel that you are -especially nice--that way. You see, I am not trying to dispose of myself -like the clever maidens at the balls and bazaars, my legs and shoulders -are quite uncalculated. There is no price on... on my person; I'm not -fishing for any nice little Christian ceremony. No man will have to pay -the price of hats at Easter and furs in the fall, of eternal boredom, -for me. All this stuff in the novels about the sacredness of love and -constancy is just--stuff! Love isn't like that really; it's a natural -force, and Nature is always practical: potato bugs and jimson-weed and -men, it is the same law for all of them--more potato bugs, more men, -that's all." - -Anthony grasped only the larger implications of this speech, its -opposition to that love which he had felt as a misty sort of glory, as -intangible as the farthest star, as fragrant as a rose in the fingers. -There was an undeniable weight of solid sense in what Annot had said. -She knew a great deal more than himself, more--yes--than Eliza, more -than anybody he had before known; and, in the face of her overwhelmingly -calm and superior knowledge, his vision of love as eternal, changeless, -his ecstatic dreams of Eliza with the dim, magic white lilacs in her -arms, grew uncertain, pale. Love, viewed with Annot's clear eyes, was a -commonplace occurrence, and marriage the merest, material convenience: -there was nothing sacred about it, or in anything--death, birth, or -herself. - -And was not the biologist, with his rows of labelled plants and bones, -his courageous questioning of the universe, of God Himself, bigger than -the majority of men with their thin covering of cant, the hypocrisy in -which they cloaked their doubts, their crooked politics and business? -Rufus Hardinge's conception of things, Annot's reasoning and patent -honesty, seemed more probable, more convincing, than the accepted -romantic, often insincere, view of living, than the organ-roll and -stained glass attitude. - -In his new rationalism he eyed the world with gloomy prescience; he had -within him the somber sense of slain illusions; all this, he felt, -was proper to increasing years and experience; yet, between them, they -emptied the notable bag of licorice. - -Annot rested a firm palm upon his shoulder and sprang to the ground, -and they walked directly and silently back. "It's a mistake to discuss -things," Annot discovered to him from the door of her room, "they should -be lived; thus Zarathustrina." - - - - -XLV - -LATER they were driven from the porch by a heavy and sudden shower, -a dark flood torn in white streamers and pennants by wind gusts, and -entered through a long window a formal chamber seldom occupied. A -thick, white carpet bore a scattered design in pink and china blue; oil -paintings of the Dutch school, as smooth as ice, hung in massive gold -frames; a Louis XVI clock, intricately carved and gilded, rested upon -a stand enamelled in black and vermilion, inlaid with pagodas and -fantastic mandarins in ebony and mother-of-pearl and camphor wood. -At intervals petulant and sweet chimes rang from the clock: trailing, -silvery bubbles of sound that burst in plaintive ripples. - -Rufus Hardinge sat with bowed head, his lips moving noiselessly. Annot -occupied a chair with sweeping, yellow lines, that somehow suggested to -Anthony a swan. "Father has had a tiresome letter from Doctor Grundlowe -at Bonn," she informed the younger man. - -"He disagrees with me absolutely," Hardinge declared. "But Caprera at -Padova disagrees with him; and Markley, at Glasgow, contravenes us all." - -"It's about a tooth," Annot explained. - -"The line to the anterior-posterior diameter is simian," the biologist -asserted. "The cusps prove nothing, but that forward slope--" he half -rose from his chair, his eyes glittering wrathfully at Anthony, but fell -back trembling... "simian," he muttered. - -"A possible difference of millions of years in human history," Annot -added further. - -"But can't they agree at all!" Anthony exclaimed; "don't they know -anything? That's an awful long time." - -"A hundred million years," the elder interrupted with a contemptuous -gesture, "nothing, a moment. I place the final glacial two hundred -and seventy million after Jenner, and we have--, agreed to dismiss it; -trifling, adventitious. There are more fundamental discrepancies," he -admitted. "Unless something definite is discovered, a firm base -established, a single ray of light let into a damnable dark," he stopped -torn with febrile excitement, then, scarcely audible, continued, "our -lives, our work... will be of less account than the blood of Oadacer, -spilt on barbaric battle-fields." - -The rain ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Anthony followed Annot to -the porch. In the black spaces between the swiftly shifting clouds -stars shone brilliantly; there was a faint drip from the trees. "He gets -dreadfully depressed," she interpreted her parent to him. "They wrangle -all the time, exactly like a lot of schoolgirls. You have no idea of -the bitterness, the jealousy, the contemptuous personalities in the -Quarterlies. Really, they are as fanatical, as narrow, as the churches -they ignore; they are quite like Presbyterian biologists and Catholic." -She sighed lightly. "They leave little for a youngish person to dream -on. You are so superior--to ignore these centessimo affairs. Will you -lean from the edge of your cloud and smile on a daughter of the earth in -last year's dinner gown?" - -It was, he told himself, nonsense; yet he was moved to make no -easy reply, something in her voice, illusive and wistful, made that -impossible. "It's very good-looking," he said impotently. - -"I'm glad you like it," she told him simply. "M'sieur Paret fitted it -himself while an anteroom full of women hated me. Oh, Anthony!" she -exclaimed, "I'd love to wander with you down that brilliant street and -through the Place Vendome to the Seine. Better still--there's a -little shop on the Via Cavour in Florence where they sell nothing but -chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, the most heavenly cakes with black -hearts and the most heavenly smell. And you'd like Spain, so fierce -and hot against its dusty hills; and Cortina, green beneath its red -mountains. We could get a porter and rucksacks, and walk--" she broke -off, her hands pressed to her cheeks, a dawning dismay in her eyes. Then -she was gone with a flutter of the skirt so carefully draped by M'sieur -Paret. - - - - -XLVI - -THE pictures of far places had stirred him but slightly: but to travel -with Annot, to see anything with Annot, would offer continual amusement -and surprise; her vigorous candor, her freedom from sham and petty -considerations, enveloped the most commonplace perspectives in an -atmosphere of high novelty. The trace of the vagabond, the detachment -of the born dweller in tents, woven so picturesquely through his being, -responded to her careless indifference to the tyranny of an established -and timid scheme of existence. - -The following day her old, bright hardness had returned: she railed at -him in French, in German, in Italian; she called him the solemn shover, -Sir Anthony Absolute. And, holding Thomas Huxley's head directed toward -him, recommended that resigned quadruped to emulate Anthony's austere -and inflexible virtues. - - - - -XLVII - -BUT there was no trace of gayety in the excited and subdued tones in -which, later, she called him into the hothouse. He found her bending -tense with emotion over the row of plants upon whose flowering such -incalculable things depended. "Look!" she cried, taking his hand and -drawing him down over the green shoots, where his cheek brushed her -hair, where he felt the warm stir of her breathing. "Look! they are in -full bud, to-morrow they will burst open." She straightened up, his hand -still held in hers, and a shadow fell upon her vivid countenance. "If -his reasoning is wrong, this experiment... like all the others, it will -kill him. They _must_ be white, it would be too cruel, too senseless -not. I am afraid," she said simply; "nature is so terrible, a -Juggernaut, crushing everything to dust beneath its wheeling centuries. -I am glad that you are here, Anthony." She drew closer to him; her -breast swelled in a sharp, tempestuous breath. - -"I have been lonelier than I--I realized. I am dreadfully worried about -father. They have lied to me; things are worse, I can see that. You -have to dress him like a child; I know how considerate you are; you are -bright, new gold with the clearest ring in the world. - -"We must get a real chauffeur; you have never been that... in my -thoughts. You know," she laughed happily, "I said in the beginning that -you were a miserable affair in details of that kind." - -A feeling of guilt rose swiftly within him, which, unwilling to -acknowledge, he strove to beat down from his thoughts. But, above his -endeavor, grew the clear conviction that he should immediately tell -Annot his purpose in driving Rufus Hardinge's car. He must not victimize -her generosity, nor take profit from the friendship she offered him so -unreservedly. He was dimly conscious that the revelation of his design -would end the pleasant intimacy growing up between them; the mere -mention of Eliza must destroy their happy relations; girls, even Annot, -were like that. - -He wondered, suddenly cold, if this spelled disloyalty to Eliza! but he -angrily refuted that whispered insinuation. His love for Eliza was -as un-assailably above all other considerations as she herself shone -starlike over a petty, stumbling humanity. White and withdrawn and fine -she inhabited the skies of his aspirations. He endeavored now to capture -her in his imagination, his memory; and she smiled at him palely, as -from a very great distance. He realized that in the past few days he had -not had that subtle sense of her nearness, he had not been conscious of -that drifting odor of lilacs; and suddenly he felt impoverished, alone. - -Annot smiled, warm and near. - -"You are awfully kind," he temporized; "but hadn't we better let the -thing stand as it is? You see--I want money." - -"But you may have that now; whatever you want." - -"No. You are so good, it's hard to explain--I want money that I earn; -real money; I couldn't think of taking any other from you." - -"Anthony, my good bourgeois! I had thought you quite without that -sort of tin pride. Besides, I am not giving it to you; after all it's -father's to use as he likes." - -"But I must give him something for it--" - -"Do you suppose you are giving us nothing?" she interrupted him warmly; -"you have brought us your clear, beautiful spirits, absolutely without -price. Why, you can make father laugh; have you any idea how rarely he -did that? When you imitate Margaret absolutely I can see her fat, white -stockings. And your marvellous unworldliness--" she shook her head -mournfully. "I fear that this is mere calculation; surely you must know -the value of your innocent charms." Anthony stood with a lowered head, -floundering mentally among his warring inclinations; when, almost with -relief, he saw that she had noiselessly vanished. - - - - -XLVIII - -HE slept uneasily, and woke abruptly to a room flooded with sunlight, -and an unaccountable sense of something gone wrong. He dressed -hurriedly, and had opened his door, when he heard his name called from -below. It was Annot, he knew, but her voice was strange, terrified--a -helpless cry new to her accustomed poise. "Anthony! Anthony!" she called -from the conservatory. - -Rufus Hardinge, who, it was evident from his clothes had not been in -bed, was standing rigidly before the row of plants upon whose flowering -they had so intently waited. And, in a rapid glance, Anthony saw -that they had blossomed in delicate, parti-colored petals--some pale -lavender, others deep purple, still others reddish white. Annoys yellow -wrap was thrown carelessly about her nightgown, her feet were bare, and -her hair hung in a tangle about her blanched face. - -When Anthony entered she clung to his arm, and he saw that she was -trembling violently. For a tense moment they were silent: the sun -streamed over the mathematical plant ranks and lit the white or blue -tickets tied to their stems; a bubbling chorus of birds filled the world -of leaves without. "It's all wrong," she sobbed. - -"So!" the biologist finally said with a wry smile; "you see that I have -not solved the riddle of the universe; inheritance in pure line is not -explicated.... A life of labor as void as any prostitute's; not a single -fact, not a supposition warranted, not a foot advanced." - -With a sudden and violent movement for which they were entirely -unprepared he swept the row of plants crashing upon the floor; where, -in a scattered heap of brown loam, broken pottery, smeared bloom, their -tenuous, pallid roots quivered in air. "Games with plants and animals -and bones for elderly children; riddles without answer... blind ways." -His expression grew furtive, cunning. "I have been trifled with," he -declared, "I have been deliberately misled; but I desire to say that -I see through--through Him: I comprehend His little joke. It's in bad -taste... to leave a soul in the dark, blundering about in the cellar -with the table spread above. But in the end I was not completely -bamboozled. He was not quick enough... the hem of His garment. - -"Your mother saw Him clear. She was considered beautiful, but beauty's a -vague term. Perhaps if I saw her now it would be clearer to me. But I'll -tell you His little joke," he lowered his voice confidentially--"it's -all true--that apocalyptical heaven; there's a big book, trumpets, -angels all complete singing Gregorian chants. What a sell!" He laughed, -a gritty, mirthless performance. - -"Come up to your room, father," Annot urged; "his arm, Anthony." Anthony -placed his hand gently upon the biologist's shoulder, but the latter -wrenched himself free. Suddenly with a choked cry and arms swinging like -flails he launched himself upon the orderly plants. Before he could be -stopped row upon row splintered on the floor; he fought, struggled -with them as though they were animate opponents, cursed them in a high, -raving voice. Anthony quickly lifted him, pinning his arms to his sides. -Annot had turned away, her shoulders shaking with sobs. - -Rufus Hardinge's struggling unexpectedly ceased, his countenance -regained completely its habitual quietude. "I shall begin once more, -at the beginning," he whispered infinitely wistful. "The little ray of -light... germ of understanding. The scientific problem of the future," -his speech became labored, thick, "scientific... future. Other avenue of -progress: - -"Gentlemen, the Royal Society, a paper on, on--Tears, gentlemen... -not only automatic," his voice sank to a mere incomprehensible -babble. Anthony carried him to his bed, while Annot telephoned for the -neurologist. - -After the specialist had gone Annot came in to where Anthony waited -in the study. Her feet were thrust in the Turkish slippers, her hair -twisted into a hasty knot, but otherwise she had not changed. She came -swiftly, with pale lips and eyes brilliantly shining from dark hollows, -to his side. "His wonderful brain is dead," she told him. "Professor -Jamison thinks there will be only a few empty years to the end. But -actually it's all over." In a manner utterly incomprehensible to him she -was crying softly in his arms. - -He must lead her to a chair, he told himself, release her at once. Yet -she remained with her warm, young body pressed against him, the circle -of her arms about his neck, her tears wet upon his cheek. He stepped -back, but she would have fallen if he had not continued to support -her. His brain whirled under the assault, the surrender, of her dynamic -youth. Their mouths met; were bruised in kissing. - - - - -XLIX - -HE stood with bowed shoulders, twisting lips; and, after a momentary -pause, she fled from the room. Cold waves of self-hatred flowed over -him--he had taken a despicable advantage of her grief. The pleasant -fabric of the past, unthinking days, the new materialism with its -comfortable freedom from restraint, crumbled from an old, old skeleton -whose moldering lines spelled the death of all--his heart knew--that was -high, desirable, immaculate. He wondered if, like Rufus Hardinge, his -understanding had come too late. But, in the re-surge of his adoration -for Eliza, infinitely more beautiful and serene from the pit out of -which he sped his vision, he was possessed by the conviction that -nothing created nor void should extinguish the bright flame of his -passion, hold them separate. - -In the midst of his turmoil he recalled Eliza with relief, with delight, -with tumultuous longing. He soared on the wings of his ecstasy; but -descended abruptly to the practical necessities which confronted him. He -must leave the Hardinges immediately; with a swift touch of the humorous -spirit native to him, he realized that again he would be without money. -Then more seriously he considered his coming interview with Annot. - -The house was charged with the vague unrest, the strange aspect of -familiar things, wrought by serious illness. Luncheon was disorganized, -Annot was late. She was pale, but, under an obvious concern, she -radiated a suppressed content. She laid a letter before Anthony. -"Registered," she told him. "I signed." It was, he saw, from his father, -and he slipped it into his pocket, intent upon the explanation which -lay before him. It would be more difficult even than he had anticipated: -Annot spoke of the near prospect of a Mediterranean trip, if Rufus -Hardinge rallied sufficiently. "He is as contented and gentle as a nice -old lady," she reported; then, with a subtle expansion of manner, "it -will be such fun--I shall take you by the hand, 'This, my good infant, -is one of Virgil's final resting places....'" - -"That would be splendid," he acknowledged, "but I'm afraid that I -sha'n't be able to go. The fact is that--that I had better leave you. I -can't take your money for... for...." - -She glanced at him swiftly, under the shadow of a frown, then shook her -head at him. "That tiresome money again! It's a strange thing for you -to insist on; material considerations are ordinarily as far as possible -from your thoughts. I forbid you absolutely to mention it again; every -time you do I shall punish you--I shall present you with a humiliating -gold piece in person." - -"I should be all kinds of a trimmer to take advantage of your goodness. -No, I must go--" The gay warmth evaporated from her countenance as -abruptly as though it had been congealed in a sudden icy breath; she -sat motionless, upright, enveloping him in the bright resentment of her -gaze. - -"And I must ask you to forgive me for... for this morning," he stumbled -hastily on. - -The resentment burned into a clear flame of angry contempt. "'For this -morning!' because I kissed you?" - -He made a vehement gesture of denial. "Oh, no!" But she would not allow -him to finish. "But I did," she announced in a hard, determined voice. -"It isn't necessary for you to be polite; I don't care a damn for -that sickening sort of thing. I did, and you are properly and modestly -retreating. I believe that you think I am--'designing,' isn't that -the word? that you might have to marry me. A kiss, I am to realize, is -something sacred. Bah! you make me ill, like almost everything else in -life. - -"If you think for a minute that it was anything more than the expression -of a passing impulse you are beyond words. And, if it had been more, -you--you violet, I wouldn't marry you; I wouldn't marry any man, ever! -ever! ever! I might have gone to Italy with you, but probably come home -with some one else--will that get into your pretty prejudices?" - -"If you had gone to Italy with me," he declared sullenly, "you would -never have come home with anybody else." - -"That sort of thing has been dismissed to the smaller rural towns and -the cheap melodramas; it's no longer considered elevated to talk like -that, but only pitiful. You will start next on 'God's noblest creation,' -and purity, and the females of your family. Don't you know, haven't you -been told, that the primitive religious rubbish about marriage has been -laughed out of existence? Did you dream that I wanted to _keep_ you? -or that I would allow you to keep me after the thing had got stale? -It makes me cold all over to be so frightfully misunderstood. Oh, its -unthinkable! Fi, to kiss you! wasn't it loose of me?" - -Her contemptuous periods stung him in a thousand minute places. "I told -you," he retorted hotly, "that I wanted to make money; I don't want it -given to me; it's for my wedding." - -"Of course, how stupid of me not to have guessed--the lips sacred to -her," her own trembled ever so slightly, but her scornful attitude, her -direct, bright gaze, were maintained, "A knight errant adventuring for -a village queen with her handkerchief in his sleeve and tempted by the -inevitable Kundry." - -He settled himself to weathering this feminine storm; he owed her all -the relief to be found in words. "I wanted the money to go West," he -particularized further. "There's a position waiting for me--" - -"It's all very chaste," she told him, "but terribly commonplace. I think -that I don't care to hear the details." She addressed herself to what -remained of the luncheon. "Have some more sauce," she advised coolly, -then rang. "The pudding, Jane," she directed. - -"You have been wonderfully kind--" he began. But she halted him -abruptly. "We'll drop all that," she pronounced, and deliberately lit a -cigarette. - -A genuine admiration for her possessed Anthony; he recognized that she -was extraordinarily good to look at; he had had no idea that so vigorous -a spirit could have burned behind a becoming dress by Paret. He realized -with a faint regret, eminently masculine, that other men, men of moment, -would find her irresistibly attractive. Already it seemed incredible -that she had ever been familiar, intimate, tender, with him. - -"You will be wanting to leave," she said, rising; "--whenever you -like. I have written for a--a chauffeur. I think you should have, it's -twenty-five dollars, isn't it?" - -"Not twenty-five cents," he returned. - -"I shouldn't like to force your delicate sensibilities." She left the -room. He caught a last glimpse of her firm, young profile; her shining, -coppery hair; her supple, upright carriage. - - - - -L - -IN his room he assembled the battered clothing in which Rufus Hardinge -had discovered him, preparatory to changing from his present more -elaborate garb, but a sudden realization of the triviality of that -course, born of the memory of Annot's broad disposition, halted him -midway. Making a hasty bundle of his personal belongings he descended -from the tower room. Through an open door he could see the still, white -face of the biologist looming from a pillow, and the trim form of a -nurse. - -Thomas Huxley lay somnolently on the porch, beside Annot's -coffee-colored wicker chair and a yellow paper book which bore a title -in French. He paused on the street, gazing back, and recalled his first -view of the four-square, ugly house in its coat of mustard-colored -paint, the grey, dripping cupids of the fountain, the unknown girl with -yellow silk stockings. Already he seemed to have crossed the gulf which -divided it all from the present: its significance faded, its solidity -dissolved, dropped behind, like a scene viewed from a car window. He -turned, obsessed by the old, familiar impatience to hurry forward, the -feeling that all time, all energy, all plans and thoughts, were vain -that did not lead directly to---- - -A sudden and unaccountable sensation of cold swept over him, a profound -emotion stirring in response to an obscure, a hidden cause. Then, with -a rush, returned the feeling of Eliza's nearness: he _heard_ her, the -little, indefinable noises of her moving; he felt the unmistakable -thrill which she alone brought. There was a vivid sense of her hand -hovering above his shoulder; her fingers _must_ descend, rest warmly.... -God! how did she get here. He whirled about... nothing against the -low stone-wall that bounded a sleepy garden, nothing in the paved -perspective of the sunny street! He stood shaken, half terrified, -miserable. He had never felt her nearness so poignantly; her distant -potency had never before so mocked his hungering nerves. - -Then, with the cold chilling him like a breath from an icy vault, he -heard her, beyond all question, beyond all doubt: - -"Anthony!" she called. "Anthony!" From somewhere ahead of him her tones -sounded thin and clear; they seemed to reach him dropping from a window, -lingering, neither grave nor gay, but tenderly secure, upon his hearing. -He broke into a clattering run over the bricks of the unremarkable -street, but soon slowed awkwardly into a walk, jeering at his fancy, -his laboring heart, his mad credulity. And then, drifting across his -bewildered senses, came the illusive, the penetrating, the remembered -odor of lilacs, like a whisper, a promise, a magic caress. - - - - -LI - -IT was with a puzzled frown that Anthony halted in the heart of the -city and considered his present resources, his future, possible plans. -He had three dollars and some small silver left from the Hardinges, and -he regarded with skepticism the profession of chauffeur; he would rather -adventure the heavier work of the garages. As the afternoon was far -advanced he decided to defer his search until the following morning; and -he was absorbed within the gaudy maw of a moving picture theater. - -Later, he entered an elaborate maze of mirrors, where, apparently, a -sheaf of Susannas unconsciously exhibited their diminishing, anatomical -charms to a procession of elders advancing two by two through a -perspective of sycamores.--At the bar, his glass of beer supported -by two fried oysters, a sandwich and a saucer of salted almonds, he -reflected upon the slough of sterility that had fastened upon his feet: -something must be accomplished, decisive, immediate. - -He was proceeding toward the entrance when the familiar aspect of a back -brought him to a halt. The back moved, turned, and resolved into the -features of Thomas Addington Meredith. The mutual, surprised recognition -was followed by a greeting of friendly slaps, queries, the necessity for -instant, additional beers, and they found a place at a small, polished -table. - -He was surprised to discover Tom Meredith the same foxy-faced boy he -had left in Doctor Allhop's drugstore... it seemed to Anthony that -an incalculable time had passed since the breaking of the bottles of -perfume; he felt himself to be infinitely changed, older, and the other -his junior by decades of experience and a vast accumulation of worldly -knowledge, contact with men, women, and events. Tom's raiment did not -seem so princely as it had aforetime; the ruby reputed to be the gift of -a married woman, was obviously meretricious, the gold timepiece merely -commonplace. But Anthony was unaffectedly glad to see him, to discuss -homely, familiar topics, repeat affectionately the names of favorite -localities, persons. - -"I'm in a bonding house here," Tom explained upon Anthony's query. -"Nothing in Ellerton for _me_. What are you doing?" - -"Nothing, until to-morrow, when I think I'll get something in one of the -garages." He thrust his hands negligently into his pockets, and came -in contact with his father's forgotten letter. He opened it, gazing -curiously at the words: "My dear Son," when Tom, with an exclamation, -bent and recovered a piece of yellow paper that had fallen from the -envelope. "Is this all you think of these?" he demanded, placing a fifty -dollar bill upon the table. - -Anthony read the letter with growing incredulous wonder and joy. He -looked up with burning cheeks at his companion. "Remember old Mrs. -Bosbyshell?" he questioned in an eager voice. "I used to carry wood, -do odd jobs, for her: well, she's dead, and left me--what do you -think!--father says about forty-seven thousand dollars. It's there, -waiting for me, in Ellerton." - -Suddenly he forgot Thomas Meredith, the glittering saloon, the -diminishing perspective of Susannas--he saw Eliza smiling at him out of -the dusk, with her arms full of white lilacs. With an unsteady -pounding of his heart, a tightening of the throat, he realized that, -miraculously, the happiness which he had imagined so far removed in the -uncertain future had been brought to him now, to the immediate present. -He could take a train at once and go to her. The waiting was over. The -immeasurable joy that flooded him deepened to a great chord of happiness -that vibrated highly through him. He folded the letter gravely, -thoughtfully. It was but a few hours to Ellerton by train, he knew, but -he doubted the possibility of a night connection to that sequestered -town. He would go in the morning. - -"Thomas," he declared, "I am about to purchase you the best dinner that -champagne can shoot into your debased middle. Oh, no, not here, but in a -real place where you can catch your own fish and shoot a pheasant out of -a painted tree." - -Thus pleasantly apostrophized that individual led Anthony to the Della -Robbia room of an elaborate hostelry, where they studied the _carte de -jour_ amid pink tiling and porphyry. There was a rosy flush of shaded -lights over snowy linen in the long, high chamber, the subdued passage -of waiters like silhouettes, low laughter, and a throbbing strain -of violins falling from a balcony above their heads. They pondered -nonchalantly the strange names, elaborate sauces; but were finally -launched upon suave cocktails and clams. Anthony settled back into -a glow of well-being, of the tranquillity that precedes an expected, -secure joy. He saluted the champagne bucket by the table; when, -suddenly, the necessity to speak of Eliza overcame him, he wished to -hear her name pronounced by other lips... perhaps he would tell Tom all; -he was the best of fellows.... - -"Are the Dreens home?" he asked negligently. "Have you seen Eliza Dreen -about--you know with that soft, shiny hair?" - -Thomas Meredith directed at him a glance of careless surprise. "Why," he -answered, "I thought you knew; it seemed to me she died before you left. -Anyhow, it was about the same time, it must have been the next week. -Pneumonia. This soup's great, Anthony." - - - - -LII - -HE joy that had sung through Anthony shrunk into an intolerable pain -like an icicle thrust into his heart; he swallowed convulsively a -spoonful of soup, tasteless, scalding hot, and put the spoon down with -a clatter. He half rose from the chair, with his arms extended, as if by -that means he could ward off the terrible misfortune that had befallen -him. Thomas Meredith, unaware of Anthony's drawn face, his staring -gaze, continued to eat with gusto the unspeakable liquid, and the waiter -uncorked the champagne with a soft explosion. The wine flowed bubbling -into their glasses, and Tom held his aloft. "To your good luck," he -proclaimed, but set it down untouched at Anthony's pallor. - -"What's the matter--sick? It's the beer and cocktail, it always does -it." - -"It's not that," Anthony said very distinctly. - -His voice sounded to him like that of a third person. He was laboring to -adjust the tumult within him to the fact of Eliza's death; he repeated -half aloud the term "dead" and its whispered syllable seemed to fill the -entire world, the sky, to echo ceaselessly in space. From the -stringed instruments above came the refrain of a popular song; and, -subconsciously, mechanically, he repeated the words aloud; when he heard -his own voice he stopped as though a palm had been clapped upon his -mouth. - -"What is it?" Tom persisted; "don't discompose this historical banquet." -The waiter replaced the soup with fish, over which he spread a thick, -yellow sauce. "Go on," Anthony articulated, "go on--" he emptied his -champagne glass at a gulp, and then a second. "Certainly a fresh quart," -his companion directed the waiter. - -Eliza was dead! pneumonia. That, he told himself, was why she had -not answered his letter, why, on the steps at Hydrangea House, Mrs. -Dreen--hell! how could he think of such things? Eliza... dead, cold who -warm had kissed him; Eliza, for whom all had been dreamed, planned, -undertaken, dead; Eliza gone from him, gone out of the sun into the -damned and horrible dirt. Tom, explaining him satisfactorily, devoted -himself to the succession of dishes that flowed through the waiter's -skillful hands, dishes that Anthony dimly recognized having -ordered--surely years before. "You're drunk," Thomas declared. - -He drank inordinately: gradually a haze enveloped him, separating him -from the world, from his companion, a shadowy shape performing strange -antics at a distance. Sounds, voices, penetrated to his isolation, rent -thinly the veil that held at its center the sharp pain dulled, expanded, -into a leaden, sickening ache. He placed the yellow bank note on a -silver platter that swayed before him, and in return received a crisp -pile, which, with numb fingers, he crowded into a pocket. He would have -fallen as he rose from his chair if Tom had not caught him, leading him -stumbling but safely to the street. - -"Don't start an ugly drunk," Thomas Meredith begged. Without a word, -Anthony turned and, with stiff legs, strode into the night. Eliza was -dead; he had had something to give her, a surprise, but it was too -late. A great piece of good fortune had overtaken him, he wanted to tell -Eliza, but... he collided with a pedestrian, and continued at a tangent -like a mechanical toy turned from its course. His companion swung him -from under the wheels of a truck. "Wait," he panted, "I'm no Marathon -runner, it's hotter'n Egypt." - -The perspiration dripped from Anthony's countenance, wet the clenched -palms of his hands. He walked on and on, through streets brilliantly -lighted and streets dark; streets crowded with men in evening clothes, -loafing with cigarettes by illuminated playbills, streets empty, silent -save for the echo of his hurried, shambling footsteps. Eliza was lost, -out there somewhere in the night; he must find her, bring her back: but -he couldn't find her, nor bring her back--she was dead. He stopped to -reconsider dully that idea. A row of surprisingly white marble steps, of -closed doors, blank windows, confronted him. "This is where I retire," -Thomas Meredith declared. Anthony wondered what the fellow was buzzing -about? why should he wait for him, Anthony Ball, at "McCanns"? - -He considered with a troubled brow a world empty of Eliza; it wasn't -possible, no such foolish world could exist for a moment. Who had -dared to rob him? In a methodical voice he cursed all the holy, all -the august, all the reverent names he could call to mind. Then again -he hurried on, leaving standing a ridiculous figure who shouted an -incomprehensible sentence. - -He passed through an unsubstantial city of shadows, of sudden, -clangoring sounds, of the blur of lights swaying in strings above his -head, of unsteady luminous bubbles floating before him through ravines -of gloom; bells rang loud and threatening, throats of brass bellowed. -His head began to throb with a sudden pain, and the pain printed clearly -on the bright suffering of his mind a stooping, dusty figure; leaden -eyes, a grey face, peered into his own; slack lips mumbled the story -of a boy dead long ago--Eliza, Eliza was dead--and of a red necktie, a -Sunday suit; a fearful figure, a fearful story, from the low mutter of -which he precipitantly fled. Other faces crowded his brain--Ellie with -her cool, understanding look, his mother, his father frowning at him in -assumed severity; he saw Mrs. Dreen, palely sweet in a starlit gloom. -Then panic swept over him as he realized that he was unable, in a sudden -freak of memory, to summon into that intimate gallery the countenance of -Eliza. It was as though in disappearing from the corporeal world she had -also vanished from the realm of his thoughts, of his longing. He paused, -driving his nails into his palms, knotting his brow, in an agony of -effort to visualize her. In vain. "I can't remember her," he told an -indistinct human form before him. "I can't remember her." - -A voice answered him, thin and surprisingly bitter. "When you are sober -you will stop trying." - -And then he saw her once more, so vivid, so near, that he gave a sobbing -exclamation of relief. "Don't," he whispered, "not... lose again--" He -forgot for the moment that she was dead, and put out a hand to touch -her. Thin air. Then he recalled. He commenced his direct, aimless -course, but a staggering weariness overcame him, the toylike progress -grew slower, there were interruptions, convulsive starts. - - - - -LIII - -AT the same time the haze lightened about him: he saw clearly his -surroundings, the black, glittering windows of stores, the gleaming -rails which bound the stone street. His hat was gone and he had long -before lost the bundle that contained his linen. But the loss was of -small moment now--he had money, a pocketful of it, and forty-seven -thousand dollars waiting in Ellerton: his father was a scrupulous, -truthful and exact man. - -Eliza and he would have been immediately married, gone to a little green -village, under a red mountain; Eliza would have worn the most beautiful -dresses made by a parrot; but that, he recognized shrewdly, was an -idiotic fancy--birds didn't make dresses. And now she was dead. - -He entered a place of multitudinous mirrors reflecting a woman's -flickering limbs, sly and bearded masculine faces, that somehow were -vaguely familiar. - -"Champagne!" he cried, against the bar. - -"Your champagne'll come across in a schooner." - -But, impatiently, he shoved a handful of money into the zinc gutter. -"Champagne!" he reiterated thickly. The barkeeper deduced four dollars -and returned the balance. "Sink it," he advised, "or you'll get it -lifted on you." - -With the wine, the mist deepened once more about him; the ache--was it -in his head or his heart?--grew duller. He had poured out a third glass -when a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and whirling suspiciously, he -saw a uniform cap, a man's gaunt face and burning eyes. - -"Brother," the latter said, "brother, shall we leave this reeking sink, -and go out together into God's night?" - -Blinking, Anthony recognized the livery, the accents, of the Salvation -Army. A sullen anger burned within him--this man was a sort of official -connection of God's, who had killed Eliza. He smoothed out his face -cunningly, moved obediently toward the other, and struck him viciously -across the face. Pandemonium rose instantly about him, an incredible -number of men appeared shouting, gesticulating, and formed in a ring of -blurred, grinning faces. The jaw of the Salvation Army man was bright -with blood, dark drops fell on his threadbare coat. His hand closed -again on Anthony's shoulder. - -"Strive, brother," he cried. "The Mansion door is open." - -Anthony regarded him with insolent disdain. "Ought to be exposed," he -articulated, "whole thing... humbug. Isn't any such--such... Eliza's -dead, ain't she?" - -A ripple of merriment ran about the circle of loose, stained lips; the -curious, ribald eyes glittered with cold mirth; the circle flattened -with the pressure of those without, impatient for a better view. Anthony -surveyed them with impotent fury, loathing, and they met his passionate -anger with faces as stony, as inhuman, as cruel, carved masks. He -heard _her_ name, the name of the gracious and beautiful vision of his -adoration, repeated in hoarse, in maculate, in gibing tones. - -"She's dead," he repeated sharply, as though that fact should impose -silence on them; "you filthy curs!" But their approbation of the -spectacle became only the more marked. - -The Salvation Army man fastened his hectic gaze upon Anthony; he was, -it was evident, unaware of the blood drying upon his face, of the throng -about them. "There is no death," he proclaimed. "There is no death!" - -"But she _is_ dead," Anthony insisted; "pneumonia... with green eyes -and foggy hands." They began an insane argument: Eliza was gone, Anthony -reiterated, the other could not deny that she was lost to life, to the -sun. He recalled statements of Rufus Hardinge's, crisp iconoclasms of -Annot's, and fitted them into the patchwork of his labored speech. -Texts were flung aloft like flags by the other; ringing sentences in the -incomparable English of King James echoed about the walls, the bottles -of the saloon and beat upon the throng, the blank hearts, the beery -brains, of the spectators. "Blessed are the pure in heart," he orated, -"for they... for they..." - - - - -LIV - -THAT word--purity, rang like a gong in Anthony's thoughts: Eliza had -emphasized it, questioning him. The term became inexplicably merged -with Eliza into one shining whole--Eliza, purity; purity, Eliza. A swift -impression of massed, white flowers swept before him, leaving a delicate -and trailing fragrance. He had a vision of purity as something concrete, -something which, like a priceless and fragile vase, he guarded in -his hands. It had been a charge from her, a trust that he must keep -unspotted, inviolable, that she would require--but she was gone, she was -dead. - -"... through the valley of the shadow," the other cried. - -She had left him; he stood alone, guarding a meaningless thing, useless -as the money in his pocket. - -A man with bare, corded arms and an apron, broke roughly through the -circle; and with a hand on Anthony's back, a hand on the back of -his opponent, urged them toward the door. "You'll have to take this -outside," he pronounced, "you're blocking the bar." - -An arm linked within Anthony's, and swung him aside. "Unavoidably -detained by merest 'quaintance," Thomas Meredith explained with -ponderous exactitude. Unobserved, they found a place at the table they -had occupied earlier in the evening. The latter ordered a fresh bottle, -but was persuaded by Anthony to surrender the check which accompanied -it. - -A sudden hatred for the money that had come too late possessed him: if -he had had the whole forty-seven thousand dollars there he would have -torn it up, trampled upon it, flung it to the noisome corners of the -saloon. It seemed to have become his for the express purpose of mocking -at his sorrow, his loss. His hatred spread to include that purity, that -virtue, which he had conceived of as something material, an actual -possession.... That, at any rate, he might trample under foot, destroy, -when and as it pleased him. Eliza was gone and all that was left was -valueless. It had been, all unconsciously, dedicated to her; and now he -desired to cast it into the mold that held her. - -He fingered with a new care the sum in his pocket, an admirably -comprehensive plan had occurred to him--he would bury them both, the -money and purity, beneath the same indignity. Tom Meredith, he was -certain, could direct his purpose to its fulfillment. Nor was he -mistaken. The conversation almost immediately swung to the subject of -girls, girls gracious, prodigal of their charms. They would sally forth -presently and "see the town." Tom loudly asseverated his knowledge of -all the inmates of all the complacent quarters under the gas light. -Before a cab was summoned Anthony stumbled mysteriously to the bar, -returning with a square, paper-wrapped parcel. - -"Port wine," he ejaculated, "must have it... for a good time." - - - - -LV - -A SEEMINGLY interminable ride followed, they rattled over rough stones, -rolled with a clacking tire over asphalt. A smell unnamable, fulsome, -corrupt, hung in Anthony's nostrils; the driver objurgated his horse in -a desperate whisper; Tom's head fell from side to side on his breast. -The mists surged about Anthony, veiling, obscuring all but the sullen -purpose compressing his heart, throbbing in his brain. - -There was a halt, a rocking pavement and unctuous tones. Then a hall, a -room, and the tinny racket of a piano, feminine voices that, at the same -time, were hoarsely sexless, empty, like harsh echoes flung from a rocky -void. A form in red silk took possession of Anthony's hand, sat by his -side; a hot breath, a whisper, flattened against his ear. At times he -could distinguish Tom's accents; he seemed to be arguing masterfully, -but a shrill, voluble stream kept pace with him, silenced him in the -end. - -Anthony strove against great, inimical forces to maintain his sanity of -action, ensure his purpose: he sat with a grim, haggard face as rigid -as wood, as tense as metal. The cloudy darkness swept over him, -impenetrable, appalling; through it he seemed to drop for miles, for -years, for centuries; it lightened, and he found himself clutching the -sides of his chair, shuddering over the space which, he had felt, gaped -beneath him. - -In moments of respite he saw, gliding through the heated glare, -gaily-clad forms; they danced; yet for all the dancing, for all the -colors, they were more sinister than merry, they were incomparably more -grievous than gay. A tray of beer glasses was held before him, but he -waved it aside. "Champagne," he muttered. The husky voices commended -him; a bare arm crept around his neck, soft, stifling; the red silk form -was like a blot of blood on the gloom; it spread over his arm like a -tide of blood welling from his torn heart. - -He thought at intervals, when the piano was silent, that he could -distinguish the sound of low, continuous sobbing; and the futility of -grief afforded a contemptuous amusement. "It's fierce," a shrill voice -pronounced. "They ought to have took her somewhere else; this is a -decent place." A second hotly silenced this declaration. In the -jumble of talk which followed he heard the title "captain" pronounced -authoritatively, conclusively imposing an abrupt lull. Men entered. With -an effort which taxed his every resource of concentration he saw that -there were two; he distinguished two tones--one deliberate, coldly -arrogant, the other explosive, iterating noisy assertions. Peering -through the film before his eyes, Anthony saw that the first, -insignificant in stature, exactly and fashionably dressed, had a -countenance flat and dark, like a Chinaman's; the other was a fleshy -young man in an electric blue suit, his neck swelling in a crimson fold -above his collar, who gesticulated with a fat, white hand. - -Anthony felt the attention of the room centered upon himself, he heard -disconnected periods; "... to the eyes. Good fellow... threw friend -out--one of them lawyer jags, too dam' smart." A voice flowed, thick -and gummy like molasses, from the redness at his side, "He's my fellow; -ain't you, Raymond?" - -A wave of deathly sickness swept up from the shuddering void and -enveloped him. He summoned his dissipated faculties, formed his cold -lips in readiness to pronounce fateful words, when he was diverted -by the sharp impact of a shutting door, he heard with preternatural -clearness a bolt slip in its channel. The young man in the blue suit had -disappeared. Again the sobbing, low and distinct, rose and fell upon his -hearing. - -There was a general stir in the room; the form beside him rose; and he -was lunging to his feet when, in the act of moving, he became immovable; -he stood bent, with his hands extended, listening; he turned his head -slowly, he turned his dull, straining gaze from side to side. Then he -straightened up as though he had been opened by a spring. - -"Who--who called?" he demanded. "Who called me--Anthony?" - -In the short, startled silence which followed the room grew suddenly -clear before him, the mist dissolved before a garish flood of gaslight -that fell upon a grotesque circle of women in shapeless, bright apparel; -he saw haggard, youthful countenances on which streaks of paint burned -like flames; he saw eyes shining and dead like glass marbles; mouths -drawn and twisted as though by torture. He saw the fragile, fashionably -dressed youth with the flat face. No one of them could have called him -in the clear tone that had swept like a silver stream through the miasma -of his consciousness. - -Again he heard it. "Anthony!" Its echo ran from his brain in thrills of -wonder, of response, to the tips of his fingers. "Anthony!" Oh, God! -he knew now, beyond all question, all doubt, that it was the voice -of Eliza. But Eliza was dead. It was an inexplicable, a cunning and -merciless jest, at the expense of his love, his longing.... "Anthony!" -it came from above, from within. - -A double, sliding door filled the middle of the wall, and, starting -forward, he fumbled with its small, brass handles. A sudden, subdued -commotion of curses, commands, arose behind him; hands dragged at -his shoulders; an arm as thin and hard as steel wire closed about his -throat. He broke its strangling hold, brushed the others aside. The door -was bolted. Yes, it came from beyond; and from within came the sobbing -that had hovered continuously at the back of his perception. - -He shook the door viciously; then, disregarding the hands tearing at him -from the rear, burst it open with his shoulder. He staggered in, looking -wildly about.... It had, after all, been only a freak of his disordered -mind, an hallucination of his pain. The room was empty but for the young -man in electric blue, now with his coat over the back of a chair, and -a girl with a torn waist, where her thin, white shoulder showed dark, -regular prints, and a tangle of hair across her immature face. - -The man in shirt sleeves rose from the couch, on which he had been -sitting, with a stream of sudden, surprised oaths. The girl who stood -gazing with distended eyes at Anthony turned and flashed through the -broken door. "Stop her!" was urgently cried; "the hall door--" Anthony -heard a chair fall in the room beyond, shrill cries that sank, muffled -in a further space. - -The two men faced him in the silent room: the larger, with an empurpled -visage, bloodshot eyes, shook with enraged concern; the other was as -motionless as a piece of furniture, in his wooden countenance his -gaze glittered like a snake's, glittered as icily as the diamond that -sparkled in his crimson tie folded exactly beneath an immaculate collar. -Only, at intervals, his fingers twitched like jointed and animated -straws. - -An excited voice cried from the distance: "She's gone! Alice's face -is tore open... out the door like a devil, and up the street in her -petticoat." - -The man with the flushed face wilted. "This is as bad as hell," he -whimpered. "It will come out, sure. You--" he particularized Anthony -with a corroding epithet. "The captain is in it deep... this will do for -him, we'll all go up--" - -"Why?" the other demanded. He indicated Anthony with his left hand, -while the other stole into his pocket. "He brought her here... you heard -the girl and broke into the room; there was a fight--a fight." He drew -nearer to Anthony by a step. - - - - -LVI - -ANTHONY gazed above their heads. There, again, clear and sweet, his -name shaped like a bell-note. The familiar scent of a springtide of -lilacs swept about him; the placid murmur of water slipping between -sodded banks, tumbling over a fall; the querulous hunting cry of owls -hovered in his hearing, singing in the undertone of that pronouncement -of his name out of the magic region of his joy. - -"No good," a voice buzzed, indistinct, immaterial. "Who'll shut this--? -who'll get the girl?" - -"The girl can't reach us alone...." - -An intolerable scarlet hurt stabbed at Anthony out of a pungent, whitish -cloud. There was a fretful report. A flat, dark face without expression, -without the blink of an eyelid, a twitch of the mouth, loomed before him -and then shot up into darkness. The hurt multiplied a thousand fold, it -poured through him like molten metal, lay in a flashing pool upon his -heart, filled his brain. He opened his lips for a protest, put out his -hands appealingly. But he uttered no sound, his arms sank, grew stiff... -the light faded from his eyes.... imponderable silence. Frigid night.... - -Far off he heard _her_ calling him, imperative, confident, glad. Her -crystal tones descended into the abyss whose black and eternal walls -towered above him. He must rise and bear to her that gift like a -precious and fragile vase which he held unbroken in his hands. An -ineffable fragrance deepened about him from the massed blooms rosy in -the glow where she waited, drawing him up to her out of the chaotic wash -beyond the worlds where the vapors of corrupted matter sank and sank in -slow coils, falling endlessly, forever. - - -THE END - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lay Anthony, by Joseph Hergesheimer - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAY ANTHONY *** - -***** This file should be named 51921.txt or 51921.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/9/2/51921/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by Google Books - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive -specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this -eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook -for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, -performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given -away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks -not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the -trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. - -START: FULL LICENSE - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full -Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at -www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or -destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your -possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a -Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound -by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the -person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph -1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this -agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the -Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection -of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual -works in the collection are in the public domain in the United -States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the -United States and you are located in the United States, we do not -claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, -displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as -all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope -that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting -free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm -works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the -Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily -comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the -same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when -you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are -in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, -check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this -agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, -distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any -other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no -representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any -country outside the United States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other -immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear -prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work -on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, -performed, viewed, copied or distributed: - - This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and - most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no - restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it - under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this - eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the - United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you - are located before using this ebook. - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is -derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not -contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the -copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in -the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are -redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply -either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or -obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any -additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms -will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works -posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the -beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including -any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access -to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format -other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official -version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site -(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense -to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means -of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain -Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the -full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -provided that - -* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed - to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has - agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid - within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are - legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty - payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in - Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg - Literary Archive Foundation." - -* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all - copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue - all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm - works. - -* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of - any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of - receipt of the work. - -* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than -are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing -from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The -Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project -Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may -contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate -or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other -intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or -other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or -cannot be read by your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium -with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you -with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in -lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person -or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second -opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If -the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing -without further opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO -OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT -LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of -damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement -violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the -agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or -limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or -unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the -remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in -accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the -production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, -including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of -the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this -or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or -additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any -Defect you cause. - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of -computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It -exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations -from people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future -generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see -Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at -www.gutenberg.org Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by -U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the -mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its -volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous -locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt -Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to -date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and -official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact - -For additional contact information: - - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND -DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular -state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To -donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project -Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be -freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and -distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of -volunteer support. - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in -the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. - diff --git a/old/51921.zip b/old/51921.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index e930fc7..0000000 --- a/old/51921.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/old/51921-h.htm.2021-01-24 b/old/old/51921-h.htm.2021-01-24 deleted file mode 100644 index 7ca2cd9..0000000 --- a/old/old/51921-h.htm.2021-01-24 +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7306 +0,0 @@ -<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
-
-<!DOCTYPE html
- PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
- "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
-
-<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
- <head>
- <title>
- The Lay Anthony, by Joseph Hergesheimer
- </title>
- <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
-
- body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
- P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
- H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
- hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
- .foot { margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; text-align: justify; font-size: 80%; font-style: italic;}
- blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
- .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
- .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
- .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;}
- .xx-small {font-size: 60%;}
- .x-small {font-size: 75%;}
- .small {font-size: 85%;}
- .large {font-size: 115%;}
- .x-large {font-size: 130%;}
- .indent5 { margin-left: 5%;}
- .indent10 { margin-left: 10%;}
- .indent15 { margin-left: 15%;}
- .indent20 { margin-left: 20%;}
- .indent30 { margin-left: 30%;}
- .indent40 { margin-left: 40%;}
- div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
- div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
- .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
- .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
- .pagenum {position: absolute; right: 1%; font-size: 0.6em;
- font-variant: normal; font-style: normal;
- text-align: right; background-color: #FFFACD;
- border: 1px solid; padding: 0.3em;text-indent: 0em;}
- .side { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 15%; padding-left: 0.8em;
- border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left;
- text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
- font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}
- .head { float: left; font-size: 90%; width: 98%; padding-left: 0.8em;
- border-left: dashed thin; text-align: center;
- text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
- font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}
- p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0}
- span.dropcap { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 0.8 }
- pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
-
-</style>
- </head>
- <body>
-
-
-<pre>
-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lay Anthony, by Joseph Hergesheimer
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: The Lay Anthony
- A Romance
-
-Author: Joseph Hergesheimer
-
-Release Date: May 1, 2016 [EBook #51921]
-Last Updated: March 12, 2018
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAY ANTHONY ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Widger from page images generously
-provided by Google Books
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
- <div style="height: 8em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h1>
- THE LAY ANTHONY
- </h1>
- <h3>
- A Romance
- </h3>
- <h2>
- By Joseph Hergesheimer
- </h2>
- <h4>
- New York & London
- </h4>
- <h4>
- Mitchell Kennerley 1914
- </h4>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- “<i>... if in passing from this deceitful world into true life love is
- not forgotten,... I know that among the most joyous souls of the third
- heaven my Fiametta sees my pain. Pray her, if the sweet draught of Lethe
- has not robbed me of her,... to obtain my ascent to her.</i>”
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- —Giovanni Boccaccio
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- TO
- </h3>
- <h3>
- DOROTHY
- </h3>
- <h3>
- THIS
- </h3>
- <h3>
- FIGMENT OF A PERPETUAL FLOWERING
- </h3>
- <h3>
- THE LAY ANTHONY
- </h3>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- <b>CONTENTS</b>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> III </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> IV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> V </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> VI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VIII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> IX </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> X </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> XI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XIII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XVI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XVII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> XVIII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> XIX </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> XX </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> XXI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> XXII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> XXIII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> XXIV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> XXV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> XXVI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> XXVII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> XXVIII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> XXIX </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> XXX </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> XXXI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> XXXII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> XXXIII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0034"> XXXIV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0035"> XXXV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0036"> XXXVI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0037"> XXXVII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0038"> XXXVIII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0039"> XXXIX </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0040"> XL </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0041"> XLI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0042"> XLII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0043"> XLIII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0044"> XLIV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0045"> XLV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0046"> XLVI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0047"> XLVII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0048"> XLVIII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0049"> XLIX </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0050"> L </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0051"> LI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0052"> LII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0053"> LIII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0054"> LIV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0055"> LV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0056"> LVI </a>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- I—A ROMANCE
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>OT for the honor
- of winning the Vanderbilt Cup, nor for the glory of pitching a major
- league baseball team into the world's championship, would Tony Ball have
- admitted to the familiar and derisive group in the drugstore that he was—in
- the exact, physical aspect of the word—pure. Secretly, and in an
- entirely natural and healthy manner, he was ashamed of his innocence. He
- carefully concealed it in an elaborate assumption of wide worldly
- knowledge and experience, in an attitude of cynical comprehension, and
- indifference toward <i>girls</i>.
- </p>
- <p>
- But he might have spared himself the effort, the fictions, of his pose—had
- he proclaimed his ignorance aloud from the brilliantly lighted entrance to
- the drugstore no one who knew him in the midweek, night throng on
- Ellerton's main street would have credited Anthony with anything beyond a
- thin and surprising joke. He was, at twenty, the absolute, adventurous
- opposite of any conscious or cloistered virtue: the careless carriage of
- his big, loose frame; his frank, smiling grey eyes and ample mouth; his
- very, drawling voice—all marked him for a loiterer in the pleasant
- and sunny places of life, indifferent to the rigors of a mental or moral
- discipline.
- </p>
- <p>
- The accumulated facts of his existence fully bore this out: the number of
- schools from which, playing superlative baseball, he had been still
- obliged to leave, carrying with him the cordial good will of master and
- fellow, for an unconquerable, irresponsible laxity; the number and variety
- of occupations that had claimed him in the past three years, every one of
- which at their inception certain, he felt confident, to carry him beyond
- all dreams and necessity of avarice; and every one, in his rapidly
- diminishing interest, attention, or because of persistent, adverse
- conditions over which, he asseverated, he had no control, turning into a
- fallow field, a disastrous venture; and, conclusively, the group of
- familiars, the easy companions of idle hours, to which he had gravitated.
- </p>
- <p>
- He met his mates by appointment at Doctor Allhop's drugstore, or by an
- elaborate system of whistled formulas from the street, at which he would
- rise with a muttered excuse from the dinner table and disappear.—He
- was rarely if ever sought outright at his father's house; it was quite
- another sort of boy who met and discoursed easily with sisters, who
- unperturbed greeted mothers face to face.
- </p>
- <p>
- It would have been useless, had he known it, to protest his virtue inside
- the drugstore or out; a curious chain of coincidents had preserved it.
- Again and again he had been at the point of surrendering his involuntary
- Eden, and always the accident, the interruption, had befallen, always he
- had retired in a state of more or less orderly celibacy. On the occasion
- of one of those nocturnal, metropolitan escapades by which matured boys,
- in a warm, red veil of whiskey, assert their manhood and independence, he
- had been thrust in a drunken stupor into the baggage car of the “owl”
- train to Ellerton. Instances might be multiplied: life, in its haphazard
- manner, its uncharted tides and eddies sweeping arbitrarily up and down
- the world, had carelessly preserved in him that concrete ideal which
- myriads of heroic and agonized beings had striven terribly and in vain to
- ward.
- </p>
- <p>
- And so it happened, when Doctor Allhop turned with an elaborate
- impropriety from the pills he was compounding in a porcelain pestle, that
- Anthony's laugh was loudest, his gusto most marked, in the group gathered
- at the back of the drugstore. A wooden screen divided them, hid the
- shelves of bottles, the water sink, and the other properties and
- ingredients of the druggist's profession, from the glittering and public
- exhibition of the finished article, the marble slab and silver mouths of
- the sodawater fountain, the uninitiated throng.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was sitting on a case of prepared food, his legs thrust out before him,
- and a thread of smoke coiling bluely from the cigarette held in his broad,
- scarred hand. There was a little gay song on his lips, and a roving, gay
- glint in his direct gaze. At frequent intervals he surveyed with
- approbation maroon socks and a pair of new and shining pumps; the rest of
- his apparel was negligent.
- </p>
- <p>
- The sole chair was occupied by the plump bulk of Thomas Addington
- Meredith, to whom a sharp nose in a moonlike countenance lent an
- expression of constant inquiry and foxy caution. He was elaborately
- apparelled in a suit which boasted a waistcoat draped with the gold chain
- of an authentic timepiece; while, closing a silver cigarette case scrolled
- large with his initials, a fat finger bore a ruby that, rumor circulated,
- had been the gift of a married woman.
- </p>
- <p>
- Lounging against a shelf Alfred Craik gazed absently at his blackened and
- broken fingernails, his greasy palms. He was Anthony's partner in the
- current industry of a machine shop and garage, maintained in a dilapidated
- stable on the outskirts of Ellerton. It was a concern mainly upheld by a
- daily levy on the Ball family for necessary tools and accessories. He was,
- as always, silent, detached.
- </p>
- <p>
- But William Williams amply atoned for any taciturnity on the part of the
- others; he had returned a short while before from two checkered years in
- the West; and, a broad felt hat cinched with a carved leather hand pushed
- back from his brow, and waving the formidable stump of a cigar, he
- expiated excitedly on the pleasures of that far, liberal land.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why,” he proclaimed, “I owe a saloon keeper in San Francisco sixty-five
- dollars for one round of drinks—the joint was full and it was up to
- me... nothing but champagne went, understand! He knows he'll get it. Why,
- I collared ten dollars a day overseeing sheep. I cleaned up three thousand
- in one little deal; it was in Butte City; it lasted nine days. But
- 'Frisco's the place—all the girls there are good sports, all the men
- spenders.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What did you come back East for?” Alfred Craik demanded; “why didn't you
- stay right with it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I got up against it,” William grinned; “the old man wouldn't give me
- another stake.” The thought of the glories he had been forced to
- relinquish started him afresh. “I cleaned up enough in a week at
- billiards,” he boasted, “to keep me in Ellerton a year.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Didn't Bert Dingley take four bits from you last night at Hinkle's?”
- Anthony lazily asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That farmer!” the other scoffed; “I had a rank cue; they are all rank at
- Hinkle's. I'll match him in a decent parlor for any amount.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How much will you put up?” Meredith demanded; “I will back Bert.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How much have you got?” William queried.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How much have you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If this was San Francisco I could get a hundred.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What have you got in real coin, Bill?” Tony joined in.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Three nickles,” William Williams admitted moodily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I've got thirty-five cents,” Thomas added. “I wish I could get a piece of
- change.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How's the car?” Anthony turned to hiss partner in the lull that followed.
- The “car,” their sole professional charge, had been placed in their hands
- by an optimistic and benevolent connection of the Balls.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I had the differential apart again to-day,” Alfred responded, “but I
- can't find that grinding anywhere. It will have to be all torn down,” he
- announced with sombre enthusiasm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have had that dam' thing apart three times in the last four weeks,
- and every time you put it together it's worse,” Anthony protested; “the
- cylinder casing leaks, and God knows what you did to the gears.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wish I had a piece of change,” Thomas Meredith repeated, in a manner
- patently mysterious.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A temporary sacrifice of your tin shop—” Doctor Allhop suggested,
- tinning from the skilful moulding of the pills on a glass slab.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not a chance! the family figurehead announced that he had taken my watch
- 'out' for the last time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He wants to plaster it on some Highschool skirt,” Alfred announced
- unexpectedly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This robbing the nursery makes me ill,” William protested. “Out in Denver
- there are real queens with gold hair—”
- </p>
- <p>
- His period was lost in a yapping chorus from the west-wearied circle.
- “Take it to bed with you,” he was entreated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothing in the Highschool can reach these,” Meredith assured them, “this
- is the real thing—an all night seance. They have just moved in by
- the slaughter house; a regular pipe—their father is dead, and the
- old woman's deaf. Two sisters... one has got red hair, and the other can
- kick higher'n you can hold your hand. The night I went I had to leave
- early, but they told me to come hack... any night after nine, and bring a
- friend.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll walk around with you,” William Williams remarked negligently.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not on three nickles. They told me to fetch around a couple of bottles of
- port wine, and have a genuine party.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony Ball listened with rapidly growing attention, while he fingered
- three one dollar bills wadded into the bottom of his pocket. He felt his
- blood stir more rapidly, beating in his ears: vague pictures thronged his
- brain of girls with flaming hair, dexterous, flashing limbs, white frills,
- garters. With an elaborate air of unconcern he asked:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are they goodlookers?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Boy! they have got that hidden fascination.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony made a swift reckoning of the price of port; it would wipe out the
- sum he was getting together for badly needed baseball shoes.—Red
- hair!—He could count on no further assistance from his father that
- month; the machine shop at present was an expense.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Got any coin?” Meredith demanded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A few.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The other consulted with importance the ostentatious watch. “Just the
- minute,” he announced. “Come along; we can get the port at the Eagle;
- we'll have a Paris of a time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Doctor Allhop offered an epigrammatic parallel between two celebrated
- planets.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I need new ball shoes,” Anthony temporized; “I ripped mine the last
- game.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Meredith rose impatiently. “Charge them to the family,” he ejaculated.
- “But if you don't want to get in on this, there are plenty of others. Two
- or three dollars are easy to raise in a good cause. Why, the last night I
- spent in the city cost me seventeen bucks.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I guess I'll come.” Anthony instinctively barred his sudden eagerness
- from his voice. He rose, and was surprised to find that his knees were
- trembling. His face was hot too.—he wondered if it was red? if it
- would betray his inexperience? “If they hand me any Sundayschool stuff,”
- he proclaimed bigly, “I'll step right on it; I'm considerably wise to
- these dames.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is the real, ruffled goods.” Meredith settled a straw hat with a
- blue band on his sleek head, and Anthony dragged a faded cap from his
- pocket, which he drew far over his eyes. William Williams regarded them
- enviously. Craik's thoughts had wandered far, his lips moved silently. And
- Doctor Allhop had disappeared into the front of the drugstore.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- II.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ET'S get along,”
- Anthony said in a a thick, strange voice. He stumbled forward; his eyes
- were hot, blurred; he tried in vain to wink clear his vision. Suddenly his
- elbow struck sharply against a shelf, and there was an answering crash,
- the splintering of glass smashing upon the floor. Doctor Allhop hurried in
- to the scene of the disaster. “You young bull among the bottles!” he
- exclaimed in exasperated tones; “a whole gross of perfume, all the white
- lilac, lost.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony Ball stood motionless, embarrassed and annoyed by the accident;
- and great, heavy coils of the scent rose about him; they filled his
- nostrils with wave on wave of pungent odor, and stung his eyes so that he
- shut them. The scent seemed to press about him, to obstruct his breathing,
- weigh upon his heart; he put out a hand as if to ward it off. It seemed to
- him that great masses of the flower surrounded him, shutting him with a
- white, sweet wall from the world. He swayed dizzily; then vanquished the
- illusion with an expression of regret for the damage he had wrought.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Doctor was on his knees, brushing together the debris; William
- Williams guffawed; and Craik smiled idly. Meredith swore, tapping a
- cigarette on his silver case. “You're a parlor ornament, you are,” he told
- Anthony.
- </p>
- <p>
- A feeling of impotence enveloped the latter, a sullen resentment against
- an occurrence the inevitable result of which must descend like a shower of
- cold water upon his freshly-stirred desires. “I am sorry as hell, Doctor,”
- he repeated; “what did that box cost you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Six seventy,” Allhop shot impatiently over his shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony produced his three dollars, and, smoothing them, laid the sum on a
- table. “I will stop in with the rest to-morrow morning,” he said. The
- Doctor rose and turned, partly mollified; but, to avoid the argument
- which, he felt, might follow, Anthony strode quickly out into the
- drugstore. There at the white marble sodawater fountain a bevy of youth
- was consuming colorific cones of ice cream, drinking syrupy concoctions
- from tall, glistening glasses. They called him by name, but he passed them
- without a sign of recognition, still the victim of his jangling
- sensibilities.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- III
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>AY STREET was
- thronged; the shops displayed broad, lighted windows filled with their
- various merchandise; in front of a produce store a row of chickens hung
- bare, bright blue and yellow, head down; from within came the grinding of
- a coffee machine, the acrid voices of women bargaining. The glass doors to
- the fire-engine house stood open, the machines glimmering behind a wide
- demilune of chairs holding a motley assemblage of men. Further along, from
- above, came the shuffle of dancing feet, the thin, wiry wail of violins.
- At the corners groups of youths congregated, obstructing the passerby,
- smirking and indulging in sudden, stridulous hursts of laughter.
- </p>
- <p>
- The sky was infinitely remote, intensely, tenderly blue, the stars white
- as milk; from the immediately surrounding countryside came the scented
- breaths of early summer—the trailing sweetness of locust blooms, of
- hidden hedges of honeysuckle, of June roses, and all the pungent aroma of
- growing grasses, leaves, of fragile and momentary flowers.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony made his way brusquely through the throng, nodding shortly to the
- countless salutations that marked his progress. The youths all knew him,
- and the majority of the men; women stopped in their sharp haggling to
- smile at him; garlands of girls gay in muslins “Mistered” him with pretty
- propriety, or followed him more boldly over their shoulders with inviting
- eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- He impatiently disregarded his facile popularity: the tumult within him
- settled into a dull, unreasoning anger against the universe at large. He
- still owed Doctor Allhop four dollars and seventy cents; he had told the
- Doctor that he would pay to-morrow; and he would have to go to his father.
- The latter was a rigorously just man, Anthony gladly recognized, the money
- would be instantly forthcoming; but he was not anxious to recall the
- deficiencies of his present position to his father just then. He had
- passed twenty, and—beyond his ability to cause a baseball to travel
- in certain unexpected tangents, and a limited comprehension of the conduct
- of automobiles—he was totally without assets, and without any light
- on the horizon.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had been willing to work, he reminded himself resentfully, but bad luck
- had overtaken him at every turn. The venture before the machine shop—a
- scheme of squabs, the profits of which, calculated from an advertisement,
- soared with the birthrate of those prolific birds, had been ruined by
- rats. The few occasions when he had neglected to feed the pigeons, despite
- the frank and censorious opinion of the family, had had little or nothing
- to do with that misfortune. And, before that, his kennel of rabbit dogs
- had met with an untimely fate when a favorite bitch had gone mad, and a
- careful commonwealth had decreed the death of the others. If his mother
- could but be won from the negative she had placed upon baseball as a
- professional occupation, he might easily rise through the minor leagues to
- a prideful position in the ranks of the national pastime—“Lonnie
- This” was paid fourteen hundred yearly for his prowess with the leather
- sphere, “Hans That's” removal from one to another club had involved
- thousands of dollars.
- </p>
- <p>
- He heard his name pronounced in a peremptory manner, and stopped to see
- the relative whose automobile had been placed in his care cross the
- street.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What in the name of the Lord have you young dunces done to my car?” the
- older man demanded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We have been trying to locate that grinding,” Anthony told him in as
- conciliatory manner as he could assume.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” the other proceeded angrily, “you have ruined it this time; the
- gears slid around like a plate of ice cream.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was nothing but a pile of junk when we took it,” Tony exploded; “why
- don't you loosen up and get a real car?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I took it to Feedler's. You can send me a bill to-morrow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There will be no bill. I'm sorry you were not satisfied, Sam.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are the most shiftless young dog in the county,” the other told him
- in kindlier tones; “why don't you take hold of something, Anthony?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony swung on his heel and abruptly departed. He had taken hold, he
- thought hotly, times without number, but everything broke in his grasp.
- </p>
- <p>
- The stores on Bay Street grew more infrequent, the rank of monotonous
- brick dwellings closed up, family groups occupied the steps that led to
- the open doors. The crowd grew less, dwindling to a few aimless couples,
- solitary pedestrians. He soon stopped, before his home. Opposite the gaunt
- skeleton of a building operation rose blackly against the pale stars. The
- aged lindens above him, lushly leaved, cast an intenser gloom, filled with
- the warm, musty odor of the sluiced pavement, about the white marble
- steps. The hall, open before him, was a cavern of coolness; beyond, from
- the garden shut from the street by an intricate, rusting iron fence, he
- heard the deliberate tones of his sister Ellie. Evidently there was a
- visitor, and he entered the hall noiselessly, intent upon passing without
- notice to his room above. But Ellie had been watching for him, and called
- before he had reached the foot of the stairs.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- IV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E made his way
- diffidently through a long window to the lawn; where he saw his sister, a
- glimmering, whitish shape in the heavily overgrown garden, conversing with
- a figure without form or detail, by a trellis sagging beneath a verdurous
- weight.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Tony!” she called; “here's Mrs. Dreen.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He leaned forward awkwardly, and grasped a slim, jewelled hand. “I didn't
- know you were back from France,” he told the indistinct woman before him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you read that Mr. Dreen had resigned the consulship at Lyons,” a
- delicate, rounded voice rejoined, “and you should have guessed that we
- would come home to Ellerton. My dear Ellie,” she turned to the girl, “you
- have no idea how delighted James is at being here once more. He has given
- the farmer notice, and insists that he is going to cultivate his own
- acres. He was up this morning at six; fancy, after France and his late <i>déjeuner.</i>
- And Eliza adores it; she spends the day with a gardener, planning
- flowerbeds.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony slipped into an easy posture on the thick, damp sod. Although he
- had not seen Mrs. James Dreen since his childhood, when she had
- accompanied her husband abroad to a consular post, he still retained a
- pleasant memory of her magnetic and precise charm, the memory of her
- harmonious personality, the beauty of her apparel and rings.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How is Eliza?” he asked politely, and with no inward interest; “she must
- be a regular beauty by now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” Mrs. Dreen returned crisply, “she is not particularly goodlooking,
- but she has always told me the truth. Eliza is a dear.” Anthony lit a
- cigarette, and flipped the match in a minute gold arc, extinguished in the
- night.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am decidedly uneasy about Eliza though,” she continued to Ellie; “to
- tell the truth, I am not sure how she will take over here. She is a
- serious child; I would say temperamental, but that's such an impossible
- word. She is absolutely and transparently honest and outspoken—it's
- <i>ghastly</i> at times. The most unworldly person alive; with her thought
- and action are one, and often as not her thoughts are appalling. All that,
- you know, doesn't spell wisdom for a girl.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yet James and I couldn't bear to... make her harder. A great deal of
- care... If she is my daughter, Ellie, she is exquisite—so sensitive,
- sympathetic...”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony, absorbed in the misfortune that had overtaken the machine shop,
- the impending, inevitable interview with his father, so justly rigorous,
- hardly gathered the sense of Mrs. Dreen's discourse. Occasional phrases,
- familiar and unfamiliar terms, pierced his abstraction.—“Colombin's.”
- “James' siatica.” “Camille Marchais.” Then her words, centering about a
- statement that had captured his attention, became coherent, significant.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Only a small affair,” Mrs. Dreen explained; “to introduce Eliza to
- Ellerton. Nothing on a large scale until winter.... Dancing, or rather
- what goes down for dancing to-day. I am asking our old intimates, and have
- written a few informal cards.”
- </p>
- <p>
- An automobile drew up smoothly before the Balls; its rear light winked
- like an angry red eye through the iron fence. Mrs. Dreen rose. In the
- gloom her face was girlish; there was a blur of lace at her throat, a
- glimmer of emeralds. “Mind you come,” she commanded Ellie. “And you too,
- without fail,” to Anthony. “Now that Hydrangea House is open again we must
- have our friends about us. Heavens! Howard Ball's children and mine grown
- up!” She moved gracefully across to a garden gate. Anthony assisted her
- into the motorcar; the door closed with a snap.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ellie had sunk back into her chair, and was idly twisting her fingers in
- the grass at her side. At her back the ivied wall of the house beyond
- stirred faintly with sparrows. A misshapen moon swung apparently up from
- and through the building frame opposite, and faint shadows unfolded on the
- grass. Anthony flung himself moodily by his sister.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sam's taken his car from us,” he informed her; “that will about shut up
- the shop.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then perhaps you will bring back the screwdrivers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “To-morrow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What are you going to do, Tony?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “A big strong fellow... there mast be something.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mother won't let me play ball in the leagues.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps she will; we'll talk to her; it's better than nothing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I broke a box of rotten perfume at the drugstore, and owe the Doctor four
- seventy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's too bad—father is never free from little worries; you are
- always getting into difficulties. You are different from other boys,
- Anthony—there don't seem to be any place in life for you; or you
- don't make a place, I can't tell which. You have no constructive sense,
- and no feeling of responsibility. What do you want to do with yourself?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't know, Ellie, honestly,” he confessed. “I try like the devil, make
- a thousand resolutions, and then—I go off fishing. Or if I don't
- things go to the rats just the same.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” she rose, “I'm going up. Don't bother father about that money,
- I'll let you have it. It's perfectly useless to tell you to return it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I swear you will get it next week,” he proclaimed gratefully. “The
- baseball association owes me for two games.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Haven't you promised it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's so!” he exclaimed ruefully. She laughed and disappeared into the
- house.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- V
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> BLACK depression
- settled over him; life appeared a huge conspiracy against his success, his
- happiness. The future, propounded by Ellie, was suddenly stripped of all
- glamor, denuded of all optimistic dreams; he passed through one of those
- dismaying periods when the world, himself, his pretentions, were revealed
- in the clear and pitiless light of reality. His friends, his
- circumstances, his hopes, held out no promise, no thought of pleasure.
- Behind him his life lay revealed as a series of failures, before him it
- was plotted without security. The plan, the order, that others saw, or
- said that they saw, presented to him only a cloudy confusion. The rewards
- for which others struggled, aspired, which they found indispensable, had
- been ever meaningless to him—to money he never gave a thought; a
- society organized into calls, dancing, incomprehensible and petty values,
- never rose above his horizon.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was happiest in the freedom of the open, the woods; in the easy company
- of casual friends, black or white, kindly comment. He would spend a day
- with his dogs and gun, sitting on a stump in a snowy field, listening to
- the eager yelping in the distant, blue wood, shooting a rare rabbit. Or
- tramping tirelessly the leafy paths of autumn. Or, better still, swinging
- through the miry October swales, coonhunting after midnight with lantern
- and climbers.
- </p>
- <p>
- But now those pleasures, in anticipated retrospect, appeared bald,
- unprofitable. Prolonged indefinitely, he divined, they would pall; they
- did not offer adequate material, aim, for the years. For a moment he saw,
- grinning hatefully at him, the spectre of what he might become; he passed
- such men, collarless and unshaven, on the street comers, flinging them a
- scornful salutation. He had paid for their drinks, hearkening negligently
- to their stereotyped stories, secretly gibing at their obvious
- goodfellowship, their eager, tremulous smiles. They had been, in their
- day, great rabbit hunters... detestable.
- </p>
- <p>
- The mood vanished, the present closed mercifully about him, leaving him
- merely defiant. The townclock announced the hour in slow, jarring notes. A
- light shone above from Ellie's room, and he heard his father's deliberate
- footsteps in the hall, returning from the Ellerton Club, where, as was his
- invariable nightly habit, he had played cooncan. The moon, freed from the
- towering beams, was without color.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony rose, and flung away a cold, stale cigarette; the world was just
- like that—stale and cold. He proceeded toward the house, when he
- heard footfalls on the pavement; in the obscurity he barely made out a man
- and woman, walking so closely as to be hardly distinguishably separate.
- They stopped by the fence, only a few feet from where he stood concealed
- in the shadows, and the man took the woman's hands in his own, bending
- over her. Then, suddenly, clasping her in his arms, he covered her
- upturned face with passionate kisses. With a little, frightened gasp she
- clung to his shoulders. The kisses ceased. Their strained, desperate
- embrace remained unbroken.—It seemed that each was the only reality
- for the other in a world of unsubstantial gloom, veiled in the shifting,
- silvery mist of a cold and removed planet. The woman breathed with a deep,
- sobbing inspiration; and, when she spoke, Anthony realized that he was
- eavesdropping, and walked swiftly and cautiously into the house.
- </p>
- <p>
- But the memory of that embrace; accompanied him up the stairs, into his
- room. It haunted him as he lay, cool and nearly bare, on his bed. It
- filled him with a profound and unreasoning melancholy, new to his
- customary, unconscious animal exuberance. All at once he thought of the
- redhaired girl who liked port wine; and, as he fell asleep, she stood
- before him, leering slyly at the side of that other broken shape which
- threatened him out of the future.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE shed that held
- the machine shop and garage fronted upon an informal lane skirting the
- verdurous border of the town. Beyond the fence opposite a broad pasturage
- dipped and rose to the blackened ruins of a considerable brick mansion,
- now tenanted by a provident colony of Italians; further hill topped green
- hill, the orchards drawn like silvery scarves about their shoulders,
- undulating to the sky. Back of the shed ranged the red roofs and tree-tops
- of the town.
- </p>
- <p>
- When Anthony arrived at the seat of his industry the grass was flashing
- with dew and the air a thrill with the buoyant piping of robins. He found
- the door open, and Alfred Craik awaiting him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She's gone,” Alfred informed him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sam told me last night; it was your infernal tinkering... you can't let a
- machine alone,” Anthony dropped beside the other on the door sill.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Could we get another car, do you think?” Alfred demanded; “I had almost
- finished a humming experiment on Sam's.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “This garage is closed,” Anthony pronounced; “it's out of existence. The
- family are yelping for the screwdrivers. What do we owe?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Three ninety to Feedler for 'gas,' and a month's rent.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We're bankrupt,” the other immediately declared. He rose, and proceeded
- to collect the tools that littered the floor; then he removed the sign,
- “Ball and Craik. Machine Shop and Garage.”, from the door, and the shed
- relapsed into its nondescript, somnolent decay.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There's a game with Honeydale to-day,” Anthony resumed his seat; “I'm to
- pitch that, and another Saturday; and, hear me, boy, I need the money.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Alfred gazed over the orchards, beyond the hills, into the sky, and made
- no answer. It was evident that he was lost in a vision of gloriously
- disrupted machinery. His silence spread to Anthony, who settled back with
- a cigarette into the drowsy stillness. The minutes passed, hovering like
- bees, and merged into an hour. They could hear a horse champing in the
- pasture; the wail of an Italian infant came to them thinly across the
- green; behind them sounded mellow the tin horn of the shad vendor.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony roused himself reluctantly, recalling the debt he had to discharge
- at the drugstore. Elbe's crisp five dollar bill lay in his pocket.
- “Later,” he nodded, and made his way over the shady brick pavements,
- through the cool perspective of maple-lined streets, where summer dresses
- fluttered in spots of subdued, bright color, to Doctor Allhop's. The
- Doctor was absent, and Anthony tendered the money, with a short
- explanation, to the clerk. The latter smartly rang the amount on the cash
- register, and placed thirty cents on the counter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Two packs of Dulcinas,” Anthony required, and dropped the cigarettes into
- his pocket. He made his way in a leisurely fashion toward home and the
- midday meal. At the table his mother's keen grey eyes regarded him with
- affectionate concern. “How do you feel, Tony?” she asked. “You were
- coughing last night... take such wretched care of yourself—” His
- father glanced up from the half-masted sheet of the Ellerton <i>Bugle</i>.
- He was a spare man, of few words, with a square-cut beard about the lower
- part of an austere countenance. “What's the matter with him?” he demanded
- crisply.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothing,” Anthony hastily protested; “you ought to know mother.”
- </p>
- <p>
- After lunch he extended himself smoking on the horsehair sofa in the front
- room. It was a spacious chamber, with a polished floor, and well-worn,
- comfortable chairs; in a corner a lacquered table bore old blue Canton
- china; by the door a jar of roses dropped their pink petals; over the
- fireplace a tall mirror held all in silvery replica.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thirty cents, please,” Ellie demanded; “I must get some stamps.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A wave of conscious guilt, angry self condemnation, swept over him. “I'm
- sorry, Ellie,” he admitted; “I haven't got it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She stood regarding him for a moment with cold disapproval. She was a
- slender woman, past thirty, with dark, regular features and tranquil eyes;
- carelessly dressed, her hair slipped over her shoulder in a cool plait.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am sorry,” he repeated, “I didn't think.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But it wasn't yours.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You'll get every pretty penny of it.” He rose and in orderly discretion
- sought his room, where he changed into his worn, grey playing flannels.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> HIGH board fence
- enclosed the grounds of the Ellerton Baseball Association; over one side
- rose the rude scaffolding of a grandstand, protected from sun and rain by
- a covering of tarred planks; a circular opening by a narrow entrance
- framed the ticket seller; while around the base of the fence, located
- convenient to a small boy's eye, ran a girdle of unnatural knotholes,
- highly improved cracks, through which an occasional fleeting form might be
- observed, a segment of torn sod, and the fence opposite.
- </p>
- <p>
- A shallow flood of spectators, drawn from the various quarters of the
- town, converged in a dense stream at the entrance to the Grounds; troops
- of girls with brightly-hued ribbands about their vivacious arms,
- boisterous or superior squads of young males, alternated with their more
- sober elders—shabby and dejected men, out at elbows and work, in
- search of the respite of the sun and the play; baseball enthusiasts,
- rotund individuals with ruddy countenances, saturnine experts with
- scorecards.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony observed the throng indifferently as he drew near the scene of his
- repeated, past triumphs, the metal plates in his shoes grinding into the
- pavement. A small procession followed him, led by a colored youth, to
- whose dilapidated garments clung the unmistakable straws and aroma of the
- stable, bearing aloft Anthony's glove, and “softing” it vigorously from a
- natural source; a boy as round and succulent as a boiled pudding, with
- Anthony's cap beneath his arm, leaving behind him a trail of peanut
- shells, brought up the rear of this democratic escort.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was little question in Anthony's mind of his ability to triumph that
- afternoon over his opponents from a near-by town; their “battery,” he told
- himself, was an open book to him—a slow, dropping ball here, a
- speedy one across the fingers of that red-haired fielder who habitually
- flinched... and yet he wished that it had not been so hot. He thought of
- the game without particular pleasure; he was conscious of a lack of
- energy; his thoughts, occupied with Elli's patent contempt, stung him
- waspishly.
- </p>
- <p>
- A throng of players and hangerson filled the contracted dressing quarters
- beneath the grandstand, and he was instantly surrounded by vociferous
- familiars. The captain of the Ellerton team drew him aside, and tersely
- outlined a policy of play, awaiting his opinion. Anthony nodded gravely:
- suddenly he found the other's earnestness a little absurd—the fate
- of a nation appeared to color his accents, to hang upon the result of his
- decision. “Sure,” he said absently, “keep the field in; they won't hit
- me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The other regarded him with a slight frown. “Hate yourself to-day, don't
- you?” he remarked. “Lay that crowd cold on the plate, though,” he added;
- “there's a man here from the major league to look you over. Hinkle told my
- old man.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A quickening of interest took possession of Anthony; they had heard of him
- then in the cities, they had discovered him worthy of the journey to
- Ellerton, of investigation. A vision of his name acclaimed from coast to
- coast, his picture in the playing garb of a famous organization filling
- the Sunday sheets, occupied his mind as he turned toward the field. The
- captain called mysteriously, “Don't get patted up with any purple stuff
- handed you before the game.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The opposing team, widely scattered, were warming; a pitcher, assuming the
- attitudes of an agonising cramp, was indulging in a preliminary practice;
- the ball sped with a dull, regular thud into the catcher's mit. A ball was
- tossed to Anthony, a team mate backed against the fence, and, raising his
- hands on high, he apparently overcame all the natural laws of flight. He
- was conscious of Hinkle, prosperous proprietor of the Ellerton Pool
- Parlor, at his back with a stranger, an ungainly man, close lipped, keen
- of vision. There were intimations of approval. “A fine wing,” the stranger
- said. “He's got 'em all,” Hinkle declared. “Hundreds of lads can pitch a
- good game,” the other told him, “now and again, they are amatoors. One in
- a thousand, in ten thousand, can play ball all the time; they're
- professionals; they're worth money... I want to see him act...” they moved
- away.
- </p>
- <p>
- The players were called in from the field, the captains bent over a tossed
- coin; and, first to bat, the Ellerton team ranged itself on benches. Then,
- as the catcher was drawing on his mask, Hinkle and another familiar town
- figure, who dedicated his days to speeding weedy horses in red flannel
- anklets from a precarious wire vehicle, stepped forward from the
- grandstand. “Mr. Anthony Ball!” Hinkle called. A sudden, tense silence
- enveloped the spectators, the players stopped curiously. Anthony turned
- with mingled reluctance and surprise. Something shone in Hinkle's hand: he
- saw that it was a watch. “As a testimonial from your Ellerton friends,”
- the other commenced loudly. Anthony's confused mind lost part of the short
- oration which followed “... recognition of your sportsmanship and skill...
- happy disposition. The good fame of the Ellerton Baseball team... predict
- great future on the national diamond.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A storm of applause from the grandstand rippled away in opposite
- directions along the line sitting by the fence; boys with their mouths
- full of fingers whistled incredibly. Hinkle held out the watch, but
- Anthony's eyes were fixed upon the ground. He shook the substantial mark
- of Ellerton's approval, so that the ornate fob glittered in the sun, but
- Anthony's arms remained motionless at his sides. “Take it, you
- leatherkop,” a voice whispered fiercely in his ear. 'And with a start, he
- awkwardly grasped the gift. “Thank you,” he muttered, his voice inaudible
- five yards away. He wished with passionate resentment that the fiend who
- was yelling “speech!” would drop dead. He glanced up, and the sight of all
- those excited, kindly faces deepened his confusion until it rose in a lump
- in his throat, blurred his vision, in an idiotic, childish manner. “Ah, <i>call</i>
- the game, can't you,” he urged over his shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- The first half inning was soon over, without incident; and, as Anthony
- walked to the pitcher's “box,” the necessity to surpass all previous
- efforts was impressed upon him by the watch, by the presence of that
- spectator from a major league who had come to see him “act.” He wished
- again, in a passing irritation, that it had not been so hot. Behind the
- batter he could see the countenance of “Kag” Lippit staring through the
- wires of his mask. “Kag” executed a cabalistic signal with his left arm,
- and Anthony pitched. The umpire hoarsely informed the world at large that
- it had been a strike. A blast of derisive catcalls arose from the Ellerton
- partisans; another strike, shriller catcalls, and the batter retired after
- a third ineffectual lunge amid a tempest of banter.
- </p>
- <p>
- The second batter hit a feeble fly negligently attached by the third
- baseman, who “put it over to first” in the exuberance of his contempt. The
- third Anthony disposed of with equal brevity.
- </p>
- <p>
- He next faced the pitcher, and, succumbing to the pressure of
- extraordinary events, he swung the bat with a tremendous effort, and the
- flattened ball described a wide arc into the ready palms of the right
- fielder. “You're <i>Out!</i>” the umpire vociferated. The uncritical
- portion of the spectators voiced their pleasure in the homeric length of
- the hit, but the captain was contemptuously cold as Anthony returned to
- the bench. “The highschool hero,” he remarked; “little Willie the Wallop.
- If you don't bat to the game,” he added in a different tone, “if you were
- Eddie Plank I'd bench you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That inning the Ellerton team scored a run: a youth hurtling headlong
- through the dust pressed his cheek affectionately upon the dingy square of
- marble dignified by the title of home, while a second hammered him
- violently in the groin with the ball; one chorus shrieked, “out by a
- block!” another, “safe! safe!” he was “safe as safe!” the girls declared.
- The umpire's voice rose authoritatively above the tumult. “Play ball! he's
- safe!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony pitched that inning faultlessly; never had ball obeyed him so
- absolutely; it dropped, swung to the right, to the left, revolved or sped
- dead. The batters faded away like ice cream at a church supper. As he came
- in from the “box” the close-lipped stranger strode forward and grasped his
- shoulder. “I want to see you after the game,” he declared; “don't sign up
- with no one else. I'm from—” he whispered his persuasive source in
- Anthony's ear. The captain commended him pithily. “He's got 'em all,”
- Hinkle proclaimed to the assembled throng.
- </p>
- <p>
- When Anthony batted next it was with calculated nicety; he drove the ball
- between shortstop and second base, and, by dint of hard running, achieved
- a rapturously acclaimed “two bagger.” The captain then merely tapped the
- ball—breathlessly it was described as a “sacrifice”—and
- Anthony moved to the third base, and a succeeding hit sent him “home.”
- Another run was added to the Ellerton score, it now stood three to nothing
- in their favor, before Anthony returned to the dusty depression from which
- he pitched.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was suddenly and unaccountably tired; the cursed heat was worse than
- ever, he thought, wiping a wet palm on his grimy leg; above him the sky
- was an unbroken, blazing expanse of blue; short, sharp shadows shifted
- under the feet of the tense players; in the shade of the grandstand the
- dresses, mostly white, showed here and there a vivid note of yellow and
- violet, the crisp note of crimson. The throbbing song of a thrush floated
- from a far hedge... it stirred him with a new unrest, dissatisfaction...
- “Kag” looked like a damned fool grimacing at him through the wire mask—exactly
- like a monkey in a cage. The umpire in his inflated protector, crouching
- in a position of rigorous attention, resembled a turtle. He pitched, and a
- spurt of dust rose a yard before the plate. “Ball one!” That wouldn't do,
- he told himself, recalling the substantially expressed confidence, esteem,
- of Ellerton. The captain's sibilant “steady” was like the flick of a whip.
- With an effort which taxed his every resource he marshalled his relaxed
- muscles into an aching endeavor, centred his unstable thoughts upon the
- exigencies of the play, and retired the batter before him. But he struck
- the next upon the arm, sending him, nursing the bruise, to first base. He
- saw the captain grimly wave the outfielders farther back; and, determined,
- resentful, he struck out in machinelike order the remaining batters. But
- he was unconscionably weary; his arm felt as though he had been pitching
- for a week, a month; and he dropped limp and surly upon the sod at a
- distance from the players' bench.
- </p>
- <p>
- He batted once more, but a third “out” on the bases saved him from the
- fluke which, he had been certain, must inevitably follow. As he stood with
- the ball in his hand, facing the batter, he was conscious of an air of
- uncertainty spreading like a contagion through the Ellerton team; he
- recognized that it radiated from himself—his lack of confidence
- magnified to a promised panic. The centre fielder fumbled a fly directly
- in his hands; there was a shout from Ellerton's opponents, silence in the
- ranks of Ellerton.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony pitched with a tremendous effort, his arm felt brittle; it felt as
- though it was made of glass, and would break off. He could put no speed
- into the ball, his fingers seemed swollen, he was unable to grip it
- properly, control its direction. The red-haired player whom he had
- despised faced him, he who habitually flinched, and Anthony essayed to
- drive the ball across his fingers. The bat swung with a vicious crack upon
- the leather sphere, a fielder ran vainly back, back....
- </p>
- <p>
- The runner passed first base, and, wildly urged by a small but adequately
- vocal group of wellwishers, scorned second base, repudiated third, from
- which another player tallied a run, and loafed magnificently “home.”
- </p>
- <p>
- From the fence some one called to Anthony, “what time is it?” and achieved
- a huge success among the opposition. His captain besought him desperately
- to “come back. Where's your pep' went? you're pitching like a dead man!”
- Confusion fell upon the team in the field, and, in its train, a series of
- blunders which cost five runs. After the inning Anthony stood with a
- lowered, moody countenance. “You're out of this game,” the captain shot at
- him; “go home and play with mother and the girls.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He left the field under a dropping fire of witticisms, feebly stemmed by
- half-hearted applause; Hinkle frowned heavily at him; the man from the
- major league had gone. Anthony proceeded directly through the gate and
- over the street toward home. The taste of profound Humiliation, of
- failure, was bitter in his mouth, that failure which seemed to lie at the
- heart of everything he attempted, which seemed to follow him like his
- shadow, like the malicious influence of a powerful spite, an enmity
- personal and unrelenting. The sun centred its heat upon his bared head
- with an especial fervor; the watch, thrust hastily in a pocket, swung
- against his leg mockingly; the abrupt departure of that keeneyed spectator
- added its hurt to his self pride.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VIII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E maintained a
- surly silence throughout dinner; but later, on discovering a dress shirt
- laid in readiness on his bed, and recalling the purport of Mrs. James
- Dreen's call, he announced on the crest of an overwhelming exasperation
- that he would go to no condemmed dance. “Ellie can't go alone,” his mother
- told him from the landing below; “and do hurry, Tony, she's almost
- dressed.” The flaring gas jet seemed to coat his room with a heavy yellow
- dust; the night came in at the window as thickly purple as though it had
- been paint squeezed from a tube. He slowly assembled his formal clothes.
- An extended search failed to reveal the whereabouts of his studs, and he
- pressed into service the bone buttons inserted by the laundry. The shirt
- was intolerably hot and uncomfortable, his trousers tight, a white
- waistcoat badly shrunken; but a collar with a frayed and iron-like edge
- the crowning misery. When, finally, he was garbed, he felt as though he
- had been compressed into an iron boiler; a stream of perspiration coursed
- down the exact middle of his back; his tie hung in a limp knot. Fiery
- epithets escaped at frequent intervals.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the contrary, Ellie was delightfully cool, orderly; she waved a lacy
- fan in her long, delicate fingers. The public vehicle engaged to convey
- them to the Dreens, a mile or more beyond the town, drew up at the door
- with a clatter of hoofs. It was an aged hack, with complaining joints, and
- a loose iron tire. A musty smell rose from the threadbare cushions, the
- rotting leather. The horse's hoofs were now muffled in the dusty country
- road; shadowy hedges were passed, dim, white farmhouses with orange,
- lighted windows, the horizon outspread in a shimmering blue circle under
- the swimming stars.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony smoked a cigarette in acute misery; already his neck felt scraped
- raw; a button flew jubilantly from his waistcoat; and his improvised studs
- failed in their appointed task. “I'm having the hell of a good time, I
- am,” he told Ellie satirically.
- </p>
- <p>
- They turned between stone pillars supporting a lighted grill, advanced
- over a winding driveway to Hydrangea House, where they waited for a motor
- to move from the brilliantly-illuminated portal. A servant directed
- Anthony to the second floor, where he found a bedchamber temporarily in
- service as coat room, occupied by a number of <i>men</i>. Most of them he
- knew, and nodded shortly in return to their careless salutations. They
- belonged to a variety that he at once envied and disdained: here they were
- thoroughly at ease, their ties irreproachable, their shirts without a
- crease. Drawing on snowy gloves they discussed women and society with
- fluency, gusto, emanating an atmosphere of cocktails.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony produced his gloves in a crumpled wad from the tail of his coat
- and fought his way into them. He felt rather than saw the restrained
- amusement of his fellows. They spoke to him gravely, punctiliously
- proffered cigarettes; yet, in a vague but unmistakable manner, he was made
- to feel that he was outside their interests, ignorant of their shibboleth.
- In the matter of collars alone he was as a Patagonian to them. He recalled
- with regret the easy familiarity, the comfort, of Doctor Allhop's
- drugstore.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, throwing aside cigarettes, patting waistcoats into position, they
- streamed down to the music. The others found partners immediately, and
- swung into a onestep, but Anthony stood irresolutely in the doorway. The
- girls disconcerted him with their formal smiles, their bright, ready
- chatter. But Ellie rescued him, drawing him into the dance. After which he
- sought the porch that, looped with rosevines, crossed the face of the
- long, low house. There, with his back against a pillar, he found a cool
- spot upon the tiles, and sought such comfort as he could command.
- </p>
- <p>
- Long windows opening from the ballroom were now segments of whirling
- color, now filled with gay streams, ebbing and returning. Fragmentary
- conversation, glowing cigarettes, surrounded him. Behind the pillar at his
- back a girl said, softly, “please don't.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he saw Ellie, obviously searching for him, and he rose. At her side
- was a slim figure with a cloud of light hair. “There he is!” Ellie
- exclaimed; “Eliza... my brother, Anthony.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He saw that her eyes opened widely, and that her hair was a peculiar,
- bright shade. Ginger-colored, he thought. “I made Ellie find you,” she
- told him; “you know, you must ask me to dance; I won't be ignored at my
- own party.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He muttered awkwardly some conventional period, annoyed at having been
- found, intensely uncomfortable. In a minute more he found himself dancing,
- conscious of his limp tie, his crumpled and gaping shirt. He swung his
- partner heavily across the room, colliding with a couple that he
- shouldered angrily aside. The animation swiftly died from Eliza Dreen's
- countenance; she grew indifferent, then cold. And, when the music ceased,
- she escaped with a palpable sigh of relief. He was savagely mopping his
- heated face on the porch when, at his elbow, a clear voice captured his
- attention. “A dreadful person,” it said, “... like dancing with a
- locomotive... A regular Apache.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He turned and saw that it was Eliza Dreen, gathering from her swift
- concern both that he had been the subject of her discourse, and that she
- was aware that he had overheard it. Back at his post at the pillar he
- promised himself grimly that never again would he be found in such
- specified company. He stripped his gloves from his wet palms, and flung
- them far across the lawn, then recklessly eased his collar. There was a
- sudden whisper of skirts behind him, when Eliza seated herself on the
- porch's edge, at his side.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- IX
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> AM a loathsome
- person at times,” she informed him; “and to-night I was rather worse than
- usual.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I do dance like a—locomotive,” involuntarily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It doesn't matter how you dance,” she proceeded, “and you mustn't repeat
- it, it isn't generous.” Suddenly she laughed uncontrollably. “You looked
- so uncomfortable... your collar,” it was lost in a bubbling, silvery peal.
- “Forgive me,” she gasped.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't mind,” he assured her. All at once he didn't; the sting had
- vanished from his pride; he smiled. He saw that she wore a honey-colored
- dress, with a strand of pearls about her slim throat, and that her feet,
- in satin, were even smaller than Ellie's. Her hair resembled more a crown
- of light than the customary adornment. “I didn't want to come,” he
- confided: “I hate, well—going out, dancing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It doesn't suit you,” she admitted frankly; “you are so splendidly
- bronzed and strong; you need,” she paused, “lots of room.”
- </p>
- <p>
- For this Anthony had no adequate reply. “I have this with some one,” she
- declared as the music recommenced, “but I hope they don't find me; I hate
- it for the moment... I'll show you a place; it's very wicked of me.” She
- rose and, waving him to follow, slipped over the grass. Beyond the house
- she stopped in the shadowy vista of a pergola; vines shut out the stars,
- walled them in a virid, still gloom. She sank on a low stone bench, and he
- found the grass at her feet. A mantle of fine romance descended upon his
- shoulders, of subtile adventure, prodigious daring. Immaculate men,
- pearl-studded, were searching for her, and she had hidden herself from
- them with him. A new and pleasant sense of importance warmed him,
- flattered his self-esteem. He felt strangely at ease, and sat in silent
- contentment. The faint sound of violins, a burst of distant laughter,
- floated to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It seems as if the world were rushing on, out there, without us,” Eliza
- finally broke the silence, “as if they were keeping a furious pace, while
- we sat in some everlasting, quiet wood, like Fontainebleau. Don't you
- adore nature?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I knock about a lot outside,” he admitted cautiously, “often I stay out
- all night, by the Wingohocking Creek. There's a sort of cave where you can
- hear the falls, and the owls hunting about. I cook things in clay—fish,
- chickens,” he paused abruptly at the latter item, recalling the
- questionable source of his supply. “In winter I shoot rabbits with Bert
- Woods, he's a barber, and Doctor Allhop, you know—the druggist.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am sure that your friends are very nice,” she promptly assured him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bert's crazy about girls,” he remarked, half contemptuously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And you... don't care for them?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't know anything about them,” he admitted with an abrupt,
- unconscious honesty.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But there must have been—there must be—one,” she persisted.
- </p>
- <p>
- She leaned forward, and he met her gaze with unwavering candor. “Not that
- many,” he returned.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It would be wonderful to care for just one person, <i>always</i>,” she
- continued intently: “I had a dream when I was quite young.... I dreamed
- that a marvellous happiness would follow a constancy like that. Father
- rather laughs at me, and quotes Shakespeare—the 'one foot on land
- and one on shore' thing. Perhaps, but it's too bad.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony gravely considered this new idea in relation to his own, hitherto
- lamented, lack of experience. It dawned upon him that the idea of manly
- success he had cherished would appear distasteful to Eliza Dreen. She had
- indirectly extolled the very thing of which he had been secretly ashamed.
- He thought in conjunction with her of the familiar group at the drugstore,
- and in this light the latter retreat suffered a disconcerting change:
- Thomas Meredith appeared sly and trivial, and unhealthy; Williams an empty
- braggard; Craik ineffectual, untidy. He surveyed himself without
- enthusiasm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are different from any one I ever knew,” he told her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, there are millions of me,” she returned; “but you are different. I
- didn't like you for a sou at first; but there is something about you like—like
- a very clear spring of water. That's idiotic, but it's what I mean. There
- is an early morning feeling about you. I am very sensitive to people,” she
- informed him, “some make me uncomfortable directly they come into the
- room. There was a curé at Etretat I perfectly detested, and he turned out
- to be an awful person.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her name was called unmistakably across the lawn, and she rose. “They're
- all furious,” she announced, without moving further. Her face was pale,
- immaterial, in the gloom; her wide eyes dark, disturbing. A minute gold
- watch on her wrist ticked faintly, and—it seemed to Anthony—in
- furious haste. Something within him, struggling inarticulately for
- expression, hurt; an oppressive emotion beat upon his heart. He uttered a
- period about seeing her again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Some day you may show me the place where the fall sounds and the owls
- hunt. No, don't come with me.” She turned and fled.
- </p>
- <p>
- An unreasoning conviction seized Anthony that a momentous occasion had
- overtaken him; he was unable to distinguish its features, discover it
- grave or gay; but, wrapped in the impenetrable veil of the future, it
- enveloped and permeated him, swept in the circle of his blood's
- circulation, vibrated in the cords of his sensitive ganglia. He returned
- slowly to the house: the brilliantly-lit, dancing figures seemed the mere
- figments of a febrile dream; but the music apparently throbbed within his
- brain.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ellie's cool voice recreated his actual sphere. He found their hack, the
- driver slumbering doubled on the seat. The latter rose stiffly, and
- stirred his drowsing animal into a stumbling walk. Beyond the illuminated
- entrance to Hydrangea House the countryside lay profoundly dim to where
- the horizon flared with the pale reflection of distant lightning.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Eliza's a sweet,” Ellie pronounced. Anthony brooded without reply upon
- his opinion. The iron-like collar had capitulated, and rested limply upon
- his limp shirt; at the sacrifice of a second button his waistcoat offered
- complete comfort. “I am going to get a new dress suit,” he announced
- decisively. Ellie smiled with sisterly malice. “Eliza is a sweet,” she
- reiterated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You go to thunder!” he retorted. But, “she's wonderful,” he admitted, and—out
- of his conclusive experience, “there is not another girl like her in all
- the world.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll agitate for the new suit,” Ellie promised.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- X
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE following
- morning he reorganized his neckties, left a pair of white flannels to be
- pressed at the tailor's; then, his shoulders swathed in a crisp, sprigged
- muslin, sat circumspectly under the brisk shears of Bert Woods. Bert
- hovered above him, and commented on yesterday's fiasco. “It comes to the
- best of 'em,” Bert assured him: “'member how Ollie Stitcher fell down in
- the world's series at Chicago.” He recited, for Anthony's comfort, the
- names of eminent pitchers who had “fell down” when every necessity
- demanded that they should have remained splendidly erect.
- </p>
- <p>
- His defeat still rankled in Anthony's mind, but the bitterness had
- vanished, the sting salved by that other memory of the impulsive charm of
- Eliza Dreen. He recalled all that she had said to him; her words,
- thoughtfully considered, were just those employed by humdrum individuals
- in their commonplace discourses; but, spoken by her, they were a thrill
- with an especial, a significant, importance and beauty. It was inevitable
- that she should have dreamed things immaculate, rare; things like... white
- flowers.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Shampoo?” Bert inquired absent-mindedly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>And</i> singed, and curled, and sprinkled with violets,” Anthony
- promptly returned. With a flourish, Bert swept aside the muslin folds.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, in the pursuit of a neglected duty, he crossed the town to a quiet
- corner, occupied by a small dwelling built of smooth, green stone, crowned
- with a fantastic and dingy froth of wood. A shallow, untended garden was
- choked with weeds and bushes, sprawling upward against closely-shuttered
- windows. He had not been to see Mrs. Bosbyshell for two weeks, he
- realized, with a stir of mild self-reproach. He was aware that his visits
- to that solitary and eccentric old woman formed her sole contact with a
- world she regarded with an increasing, unbalanced suspicion.
- </p>
- <p>
- A minute or more after his knock—the bell handle was missing—a
- shutter shifted a fraction, upon which he was admitted to a narrow, dark
- hall, and the door bolted sharply behind him. A short, stout woman, in a
- formless wrap of grotesquely gorgeous design, faced him with a quivering,
- apprehensive countenance and prodigiously bright eyes. Her scant,
- yellowish-white hair was gathered aloft in a knot that slipped oddly from
- side to side; and, as she walked, shabby Juliet slippers loudly slapped
- the bare floor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you want some wood brought in?” Anthony inquired; “and how does the
- washer I put on the hot water spigot work?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “A little wood, if you please; and the spigot's good as new.” She sat on a
- chair, lifting a harassed gaze to his serious solicitation. “I've had a
- dreadful time since you were here last—an evilish-appearing man
- knocked and knocked, at one door and again at another.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her voice sank to a shrill whisper, “he was after the money.” She nodded
- so vigorously that the knot fell in a straggling whisp across her eyes.
- “Cousin Alonzo sent him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your cousin Alonzo has been dead ten years,” he interposed patiently,
- going once more over that familiar ground. “Probably it was a man wanting
- to sell gas stoves.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don't know Alonzo,” she persisted, unconvinced; “I should have to see
- his corp'. He knows I've a comfortable sum put by, and's hard after it for
- his wenching and such practices: small good, or bad, he'll get of it when
- my time comes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He passed through the hall to the kitchen, and, unchaining the back door,
- brought a basket of cut wood from a shed, and piled it beside the stove.
- Mrs. Bosbyshell inspected with a critical eye the fastening of the door.
- There was a swollen window sash to release above, a mattress to turn, when
- he was waved ceremoniously into a formal, darkened chamber. The musty
- spice of rose pot-pourri lingered in the flat air; old mahogany—rush
- bottomed chairs, flute-legged table, a highboy and Dutch clock—glimmered
- about the walls. A marble topped stand bore orderly volumes in maroon and
- primrose morocco, the top one entitled, “The Gentlewoman's Garland. A Gift
- Book.”
- </p>
- <p>
- From a triangular cupboard, she produced a decanter with a carved design
- of bees and cobalt clover, and a plate of crumbling currant cake. “A sup
- of dandelion cordial,” she announced, “a bite of sweet. Growing boys must
- be fed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She sat, and with patent satisfaction watched Anthony consume the ropy
- syrup and cake.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I met a girl last night,” he told her intimately; “she had hair like—like
- a roman candle.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did you burn your heart up in it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “She told me that I was like the early morning,” he confided with a rush.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Bosbyshell nodded her approval.
- </p>
- <p>
- “An understandable remark; exactly what I should have said fifty years
- ago; I didn't know the girls of to-day had it in 'em. You've got a good
- heart, Anthony,” she enunciated. Anthony shuffled his feet. “A good heart
- is a rare thing to find in the young. But I misdoubt, in a world of
- mammon, you'll pay for it dear; I'm afraid you will never be successful,
- so called. It's selling men that that success is got, and buying women,
- and it's never in you to do those. <i>You</i> wouldn't wish an old woman
- gone for the sum she'd laid aside.” Her fancies had been wilder than
- usual, he concluded, as the holt of the door at his hack slid home. Alonzo
- and her money, one he considered as actual, as imminent, as the other,
- occupied to the exclusion of all else her dimming brain. He had hoped to
- converse with her more fully on the inexhaustible subject of Eliza Dreen,
- but her vagaries had interrupted him continuously. He decided that she was
- an antiquated bore, but made a mental note to return before the store of
- wood was consumed.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>N the evening he
- stopped from force of habit at Doctor Allhop's drugstore: the familiar
- group was assembled behind the screen at the rear, the conversation flowed
- in the old channels. Anthony lounged and listened, but his attention
- continually wandered—he heard other, more musical, tones; his vision
- was filled with a candid face and widely-opened eyes in the green gloom of
- a pergola. He passed out by the bevy at the sodawater fountain to the
- street.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the artificial day of the electric lights the early summer foliage was
- as virulently green as the toy trees of a miniature ark; the sky was a
- breathless vault filled with blue mists that veiled the stars; under the
- locust trees the blooms were spilled odorously, whitely, on the pavement.
- He walked aimlessly to the outskirts of the town. Across the dim valley,
- against the hills merged into the night and sky, he could see glimmering
- the low lights of Hydrangea House. It would be pleasant, he thought, to be
- closer to that abode of delight; and, crossing the road, he vaulted a
- fence, and descended through a tangle of aromatic grass to the brook that
- threaded the meadow below. A star swam imaged on the black, wrinkled
- surface of the water: it suggested vague, happy images—Eliza was the
- star, and he was the brook, holding her mirrored in his dreams.
- </p>
- <p>
- He passed cows, blowing softly into the sod; a flock of sheep broke before
- him like an argent cloud on the heaven of the fields; and, finally,
- reached the boundary of James Dreen's acres. He forced his way through the
- budding hedge from which the place had its name, and, in a cup of the lawn
- like a pool of brimming, fragrant shadows, sat watching the lights of the
- house.
- </p>
- <p>
- Indistinct shapes passed the windows, each—since it might be she—carrying
- to him a thrill; indistinguishable voices reached him, the vague tones—they
- might be hers—chiming like bells on his straining senses. The world,
- life, was so beautiful that it brought an obstruction into his throat; he
- drew the back of his hand across his eyes, and, to his surprise, found
- that it was wet.
- </p>
- <p>
- Presently, the lights sank on the lower floor and reappeared above. The
- blinding whiteness of the thought of Eliza sleeping seared his brain like
- a flare of powder. When the house retreated unrelieved into the gloom he
- rose and slowly retraced his steps. He lit a cigarette; the match burned
- with a steady flame in the stillness; but, in an unnamed impulse, he flung
- both aside, and filled his lungs with the elysian June air.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE next afternoon,
- returning from the unloading of a grain car at his father's warehouse, he
- discovered a smartly saddled horse fast to the marble hitchingpost before
- his door. It hardly required the glance at the silver “D” on the headstall
- to inform him who was within. He found Ellie and Eliza Dreen in the corner
- by the Canton tea service, consuming Pekoe and gingerbread dicky birds.
- Eliza nodded and smiled over her shoulder, and resumed an animated
- projection of an excursion in canoes on the Wingohocking. She wore a
- severe coat over white breeches and immaculate boots with diminutive gold
- spurs. Beneath a flat straw hat her hair was confined by a broad ribband
- low upon her neck, while a pink stock was held in position by a
- gaily-checked waistcoat.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony dropped with affected ease on the sofa, and covertly studied the
- delicate line of her cheek. He now recalled indignantly that Mrs. Dreen
- had said Eliza was not good-looking; while her reference to Eliza's
- veracity had been entirely superfluous. She turned toward him, finally,
- with an engaging query. He saw across her nose a faint trail of the most
- delightful freckles in the world; her eyes were blue, that amazing blue of
- bachelor's buttons; while her mouth—he would have sworn this the
- first time such simile had been applied to that feature—was like a
- roseleaf. He made a totally inadequate reply, when Ellie rose, and, plate
- in hand, vanished in quest of a fresh supply of gingerbread. A sort of
- desperate, blundering courage took possession of him:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have been thinking a lot about you,” he told her; “last night I sat on
- your grass and wondered which was your window.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What a silly I—we were on the porch all evening.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It wasn't that I wanted to talk to you so much,” he tried to explain his
- instinctive impulses, desires, “as just to be near you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think,” she said slowly, “yes, I know—that is the prettiest thing
- that has ever been said to me. I thought about you... a little; really
- more about myself. I haven't recognized myself at all very lately; I
- suppose it's being home again.” She gazed at him candidly, critically.
- “You have very unusual eyes,” she remarked unexpectedly; “they are so
- transparent. Haven't you <i>anything</i> to hide?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Some chicken feathers,” he affirmed. He grew serious immediately. “Your
- eyes are like—like—” the name of the flower so lately
- suggested by her lucid vision had flown his mind. Suspenders, bachelor's
- suspenders, exclusively occurred to him. “An awfully blue flower,” he
- temporized.
- </p>
- <p>
- She crossed the room, and bent over the tea roses, freshly placed in the
- jar by the door. “I must go,” she said, her back to him; “I have been here
- a terrific length of time... I thought perhaps you'd come in.... Wasn't it
- shocking of me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The knowledge that she had considered the possibility of seeing him filled
- Anthony with incredulous joy. Then, sitting silently, gazing fixedly at
- the floor, he became acutely miserable at the sudden conviction of his
- worthlessness; shame prevented him from looking at her—surely she
- must see that he, Anthony Ball, the unsuccessful, without prospect, the
- truant from life, was an improper object for her interest. She was so
- absolutely desirable, so fine.
- </p>
- <p>
- He recalled what she had said on the night of the dance... about
- constancy: if the single devotion of his life would mean anything to her,
- he thought grandiloquently, it was hers. He was considering the
- possibility of telling her this when Ellie unnecessarily returned with a
- replenished plate. He was grateful when neither included him in the
- remarks which followed. And he speedily left the room, proceeding to the
- pavement, where he stood with his palm resting on the flank of her horse.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the slanting rays of the sun the street was a way of gold; when Eliza
- appeared she was ringed in the molten glory. She placed her heel in his
- hand, and sprang lightly into the saddle; the horse shied, there was a
- clatter of hoofs, and she cantered away. Ellie stood on the steps,
- graceful, unconcerned; he watched until the upright, mounted figure was
- out of sight, then silently passed his sister into the house.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XIII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E was in his room
- when the familiar formula of a whistled signal sounded from the darkening
- street. It was Alfred Craik, he recognized the halt ending of the bar; he
- whistled like an old hinge, Anthony thought impatiently. He made his way
- to the lawn, and called shortly, over the crumbling iron fence. Alfred
- Craik was agog with weighty information.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The circus is coming in at three-thirty tomorrow morning,” he announced.
- “The station agent told me... old Giller's lot on Newberry Street. 'Member
- last year we had breakfast with the elephant trainer!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Circuses, Anthony told him in large unconcern, were for infantile minds;
- they might put their circus on top the Courthouse without calling forth
- the slightest notice from him; horses were no better than old cows; and as
- for clowns, the ringmaster, they made him specifically ill.
- </p>
- <p>
- The greater part of this diatribe Alfred chose to ignore; he impatiently
- besought Anthony to “come off”; and warned him strenuously against a tardy
- waking. Once more in his room Anthony smiled at the other's pretty
- enthusiasm. Yet at half past three he woke sharply, starting up on his
- elbow as though he had been called. He heard in the distance the faint,
- shrill whistle of the locomotive drawing the circus into Ellerton. He sank
- back, but, with the face of Eliza radiant against the gloom, slumber
- deserted him. It occurred to him that he might, after all, rise and
- witness from his rarer elevation the preparations that had once aroused in
- him such immature joy.
- </p>
- <p>
- The circus ground was an apparently inexplicable tangle of canvas and
- lumber, threaded by men like unsubstantial, hurrying shadows. At the fence
- corner loomed the vague bulks of elephants, heaving ceaselessly, stamping
- with the dull clank of chains; a line of cages beyond was still
- indistinguishable. The confusion seemed hopeless—the hasty,
- desperate labor at the edges of the billowing, grey canvas, the virulent
- curses as feet slipped in the torn sod, the shrill, passionate commands,
- resembled an inferno of ineffectual toil for shades condemned to
- never-ending labor. The tent rose slowly, hardly detached from the thin
- morning gloom, and the hammering of stakes uprose with a sharp, furious
- energy. A wagonload of hay creaked into the lot; a horse whinnied; and,
- from a cage, sounded a longdrawn, despondent howl. The fusillade of
- hammering, the ringing of boards, increased. A harried and indomitable
- voice maintained an insistent grip upon the clamor. It grew lighter;
- pinched features emerged, haggard individuals in haphazard garbs stood
- with the sweat glistening on their blue brows.
- </p>
- <p>
- The elephants, tearing apart a bale of hay, appeared ancient beyond all
- computation, infinitely patient, infinitely weary. Out of the sudden
- crimson that stained the east a ray of sunlight flashed like a pointed,
- accusing finger and rested on the garish, gilded bars and tarnished fringe
- of the cages; it hit the worn and dingy fur of an aged, gaunt lioness, the
- dim and bleared topaz of her eyes blinking against the flood of day; it
- fell upon a pair of lean wolves trotting in a quick, constricted circle;
- upon a ragged hyena with a dry and uplifted snout; upon a lithe leopard
- with a glittering, green gaze of unquenchable hate.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Take a hold,” a husky voice had urged Anthony; “help the circus men put
- up the big tent, and get a free pass.” In the contagion of work he had
- pulled upon the hard canvas, the stiff ropes that cut like scored iron,
- and held stakes to be driven into the slushy sod. Thin shoulders strained
- against his own, gasping and maculate breaths assailed him. The flesh was
- tom from a man's palm; another, hit a glancing blow on the head with a
- mall, wandered about dazed, falling over ropes, blundering in paths of
- hasty brutality.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony rested with aching muscles in the orient flood of the sun. The
- tent was erected, flags fluttered gaily aloft, the posters of the sideshow
- flung their startling colors abroad. A musical call floated upward from an
- invisible bugle: an air of gala, of triumphant and irresponsible pleasure,
- permeated the scene. “She's all right, isn't she?” Alfred Craik demanded
- at his side. He nodded silently, and turned toward home, his pulses
- leaping with joy at the dewy freshness of the morning, the knowledge of
- Eliza—a sparkling, singing optimism drawn from the unstained
- fountain of his youth.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XIV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ATER, engaged in
- repairing a shelf—at a super-union scale—for his mother, he
- heard the steam shriek of a calliope announcing the parade. From a window
- he could see the thronged sidewalks, the crudely fantastic figures of the
- clowns, enveloped in a dusty haze of light. His thoughts withdrew from
- that vapid spectacle to the rapt contemplation of Eliza Dreen. He pictured
- Eliza and himself in the dramatic situations which diversified the moving
- pictures of his nightly attendance: he rescued her from the wiles of
- Mexicans, counts, weirdly-wicked Hindoos; now he dragged her from the
- chimney into which she had been bricked by a Brotherhood of Blood; now,
- driving a monoplane above the hurtling express that bore her toward a
- fiendish revenge, he descended to halt the train at a river's brink while
- the bridge sank dynamited into the swirling stream—“Mercy, Tony!”
- his mother's practical voice rent the resplendent vision; “don't crush
- your greatuncle's epaulets.”
- </p>
- <p>
- After the midday meal a minute review of the places where Eliza might be
- found discovered the Ellerton Country Club to hold the greatest
- possibility. Anthony was a virtual stranger to that focus of the newer
- Ellerton; except for the older enthusiasts who played golf every afternoon
- that it was humanly possible to remain outside it was the stronghold of
- the species Anthony had encountered in the dressing room at the Dreens'
- dance. The space at the back of the drugstore where he had lounged held
- unbroken the elder tradition of Ellerton. There he had cultivated a mild
- contempt for the studied urbanity, the formally organized converse and
- games, of the Club. But as a setting for Eliza it gained a compelling
- attraction. And, in his freshly-ironed flannels, he ordered his steps
- toward that goal. The Club House overhung the rolling green of the golf
- links; from a place of vantage he saw that Eliza was not on the veranda;
- at one end a group of young men were drinking—teal Beyond his father
- and three companions, followed by caddies, rose above a hill. His father
- grasped a club and bent over the turf; the club described a short arc, the
- ball flashed whitely through the air, and the group trotted eagerly
- forward, mingling explanation, chagrin and prediction with heated and
- simple sums in arithmetic.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he saw Eliza... she was on the tennis court, playing with a vigorous
- girl with a bare and stalwart forearm. He divined that the latter was
- winning, and conceived a sweeping distaste for her flushed, perspiring
- countenance and thickset ankles. “How beautiful you look!” Eliza called,
- as he propped himself against the wire netting that, overrun with
- honeysuckle, enclosed the courts. He watched her fleeting form, heard her
- breathless exclamations, with warm stirs of delight. When her opponent
- played the ball beyond her reach his dislike for that efficiency became an
- obsession. The flying shadows lengthened on the rolled, yellow surface of
- the court; the group on the porch emptied their teacups and moved away;
- and the final set of games won by the “beefsteak.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Eliza slipped into a formless chocolate-colored coat: racket in hand she
- smiled at him. “I'm rather done,” she admitted. She hesitated, then: “I
- wonder—are you doing anything?—if you would drive me home?” He
- assured her upon that point with a celerity that wrought a momentary
- confusion upon them. “The Meadowbrook and roan at the sheds,” she
- directed. In the basketlike cart they swung easily over the road toward
- Hydrangea House. Checked relentlessly into a walk the roan stepped in a
- dainty fume.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eliza's countenance was as tenderly hued as the pearly haze that overlay
- the far hills; faint, mauve shadows deepened the blueness of her eyes; her
- mouth, slightly parted, held the fragile pink of coral; a tinge of
- weariness upon her bore an infinite appeal—her relaxed, drooping
- body filled him with a gusty longing to put his arms about her shoulders
- and hold her secure against all fatigue, against the assaults of time
- itself.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had never before driven such an impatient and hasty animal; at the
- slightest slackening of the reins the horse broke into a sharp trot; and,
- beyond doubt, he could walk faster than any other brute alive. Already
- they were at the entrance to the driveway; the house appeared to hurry
- forward to intercept them. Eliza pressed a button, and a man crossed the
- grass to the roan's head. They descended, and she lingered on the steps
- with a murmur of gratitude. “Mrs. Dreen telephoned Ranke to meet the
- eight-forty,” a servant in the doorway replied to Eliza's query; “she's
- having dinner in town with Mr. Dreen.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Eliza turned with a gesture of appeal. “Save me from a solitary pudding,”
- she petitioned Anthony; “you can go back with Ranke.... On the porch, such
- fun—father detests candles.” The voicing of his acceptance he felt
- to be an absurd formality. “Then if you can amuse yourself,” she
- announced, “I'll vanish for a little... cigars in the library and victrola
- in the hall.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He crossed the sod to the porch on the other face of the house, and sat
- watching the day fade from the valley below. A violet blur of smoke
- overhung the chimney of the Ellerton Waterworks, printed thinly on the
- sky. A sense of detachment from that familiar scene enveloped him—the
- base ball field, the defunct garage, places and details, customary,
- normal, retreated into the distance, it seemed into the past, gathering
- upon the horizon of his thoughts as the roofs of Ellerton huddled beyond
- the hills, vanishing into shadows that inexorably deepened, blotted out
- the old aspects, stilled the accustomed voices, sounds.
- </p>
- <p>
- A servant appeared, and placed a table upon the tiles, spreading a
- blanched cloth, gleaming crystal and silver. A low bowl of shadowy wood
- violets was ranged in the centre, and hooded candles lighted, spilling
- over the table, the flowers, a pale, auriferous pool of light in the
- purpling dusk. When Eliza followed, in filmy white, she seemed half
- materialized from the haunting vision of poignant beauty at the back of
- his brain. She was like moonlight, still and yet disturbing, veiled in
- illusion, in strange, ethereal influences that set athrill within him
- emotions immaterial, potent, snowy longing, for which he had no name.
- </p>
- <p>
- The last plate removed, Anthony stirred his coffee in a state of dreamy
- happiness. The candlelight spread a wan gold veil over Eliza's delicate
- countenance, it slid over the pearls about her slim throat, and fell upon
- her fragile wrists. “It's been wonderful,” he pronounced solemnly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I've been terribly rude,” she told him, “I have hardly spoken. I have
- been busy studying you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There's not much to study,” he disclaimed; “Mrs. Bosbyshell thinks I'm
- marked for failure.” In reply to her demand he gave a brief and diffident
- account of that eccentric old woman. “But,” Eliza discerned among the
- meagre details, “she trusts you, she lets you into her house. And you are
- perfect to her, of course.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Any one could trust you, I think. Yet you are not a particle tiresome;
- most trustworthy people are so—so unexciting. But monotony is far as
- possible from your vicinity. What did you do, for instance, this morning?”
- He described to her the advent of the circus, the labor in the obscurity.
- “I was surprised to see the old thing up,” he ended: “it seemed so
- hopeless at first.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How wonderfully poetic!” she cried.
- </p>
- <p>
- Until that moment poetry had occupied in his thoughts a place analogous to
- tea.—In his brief passage through the last school he had been
- forcibly fed with Gray's Elegy, discovering it unmitigated and sickening
- rot. When now, in view of her obvious pleasure, he would have to
- reconsider his judgment.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That blind effort,” she continued, leaning forward, flushed with the
- warmth of her image, “all those men struggling, building in the dark,
- unable to see what they were accomplishing, or what part the others had.
- And then—oh! don't you see!—the great, snowy tent in the
- morning sun—a figure of the success, the reward, of all labor, all
- living.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How about the ones that loafed—didn't pull, or were drunk?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “For all,” she insisted, “sober and drunk and shrinking. Can you think
- that any supreme judgment would be cheaply material, or in need of any of
- our penny abilities? do you suppose the supreme beauty has no standard
- higher than those practical minds that hold out heaven as a sort of reward
- for washed faces? Anthony,” it was the first time she had called him that,
- and it rang in his brain in a long peal of rapture, “if there isn't a
- heaven for every one, there isn't any at all. You, singing an idle song,
- must be as valuable as the greatest apostle to any supreme love, or else
- it isn't supreme, it isn't love.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are so wonderfully good,” he muttered, “that you think every one else
- is good too.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I'm hardly a bit good,” she assured him, “and I wouldn't be good if I
- could—in the Christian kind of way.” She gazed about with an
- affectation of secretiveness, then leaned across her coffee cup. “It would
- bore me horribly,” she confided, “that 'other cheek' thing; I'm not a
- grain humble; and I spend a criminal amount of money on my clothes. I have
- even put a patch upon my cheek to be a gin and stumbling-block to a young
- man.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had!
- </p>
- <p>
- He surveyed with absurd pleasure that minute black crescent on the pale
- rose of her countenance. If she had been good before she was adorable now:
- her confession had drawn her out of the transplendid cloud where he had
- elevated her down to his side; she was infinitely more desirable, more
- warmly and delightfully human.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have been asking about you,” she told him later, with a slight frown;
- “the accounts are, well—various. I don't mind your—your
- friends of the stables, Anthony; they are, what Ellerton will never learn,
- the careless choice of a born aristocrat; I don't care a Tecla pearl
- whether you are 'a steady young man' or not. And one doesn't hear a
- whisper of meanness about you anywhere. But I have an exaggerated
- affection for things that are beautiful, I suppose it's a weakness,
- really, and ugly people or surroundings, harsh voices even, terrify me.
- The thought of cruelty makes me cold. And, since you will come into my
- thoughts, and smile your funny little smile at me out of walls and other
- impossible places, I should like to picture you, not in pool rooms, but on
- the hills that you know so well. I should like to think of your mind
- echoing with the rush of those streams, the hunting of those owls, you
- told me about, and not sounding with coarse and silly and brutal words and
- ideas.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It echoes with you,” he replied, “and you are more beautiful than hills
- and streams.”
- </p>
- <p>
- For a moment she held his gaze full in the blue depths of her vision;
- then, with a troubled smile, evaded it. “I'm a patched jade,” she
- announced.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ranke, the servant informed them, was ready to meet the train.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You're going... Elbe's affair on the Wingohocking?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Absolutely.” She stood illusive against the saffron blur of the candles,
- the sweeping hem of night.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll remember,” he blundered; “whatever you would wish... you have
- changed everything. The dinner was—I don't remember what it was,” he
- confessed; “but I remember an olive.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He left the automobile at the edge of Ellerton, and proceeded on foot,
- passing the dully-shinning bulk of the circus tent. He heard the brassy
- dissonance of the band within, the monotonous thud of horses' hoofs on the
- tanbark; a raucous voice rose at the entrance to the side-show dwelling
- unctuously on the monstrosities to be viewed within for the price of a
- dime, of a dime, a dime. He recalled the spent lioness in her painted
- cage, the haggard and sick hyena, the abject trot of the wolves to
- nowhere.—A sudden exhalation of hatred swept over him for the
- hideous inhumanity of circuses and men. Eliza had lifted him from the
- meaningless babble of trivial and hard voices into a high and immaculate
- region of shining space and quietude. He didn't want to come down again,
- he protested, to <i>this</i>.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>NTHONY passed the
- few, intervening days to the excursion on the Wingohocking in a state of
- rapt absorption: his brain sounded with every tone of Eliza's voice; she
- smiled at him, in riding garb, over that delicate trail of freckles; he
- saw her in the misty, amber dress of the dance; in white, illusively lit
- by the candles against the shadowy veranda. Now, for the first time, day
- that had succeeded haphazard to day, without relation or plan, were strung
- together, bound into an intelligible whole, by the thread of romance. He
- must get a firm grip upon reality, construct a solid existence out of the
- unsubstantial elements of his living; but, in his new felicity, he was
- unable to direct his thoughts to details inevitably sordid; he was lost in
- the miracle of Eliza Dreen's mere presence; material considerations might,
- must, be deferred a short while longer.
- </p>
- <p>
- A stainless afternoon sky overspread finally the group gathered about
- covered willow baskets on the green bank of the stream. Behind them the
- meadow swept level, turning back the flood of the sun with a blaze of
- aureate flowers, to a silver band of birch; the upstream reach, wrinkled
- and dark, was lost between tangles of wild grapes; below, with a smooth,
- virid rush, the water poured and broke over rocky shallows.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony launched his canoe from a point of crystalline sand, and, holding
- it against the hank, gazed covertly at Eliza. She was once more in white,
- with a broad apple-green ribband about her waist: she stood above him,
- slenderly poised against the sky; and she was so rare, he thought, so
- ethereal, that she seemed capable of floating off into the blue. Then he
- bent, hastily rearranging a cushion, for she was descending toward him. He
- stepped skilfully after her into the craft, and they drifted silently over
- the surface of the stream. A thrust of the paddle, in a swirl of white
- bubbles, turned them about, and they advanced steadily against the sliding
- current.
- </p>
- <p>
- The still, watery facsimile of the banks were broken into liquid blots of
- emerald and bronze by the bow of the canoe. The air rose coldly from the
- surface to Anthony's face; from the meadows on either hand came the light,
- dry fragrance of newly cut hay; before them trees, meeting above, formed a
- sombrous reach, barred with dusty gold shafts of sunlight that sank into
- the clear depths. He heard behind the distant dip of paddles, and floating
- voices, worlds removed.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eliza trailed her hand in the water. An idyllic silence folded them which
- he was loath to break.... He had rolled up his sleeves, and the muscles of
- his forearms swelled rhythmically under the clear, brown skin.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are preposterously strong,” she approved. His elation, however,
- collapsed at the condition following. “But strength is simply brutality
- until it's wisely directed. Mazzini and not Napoleon was my ideal in
- history.” Who, he wondered unhappily, was Mazzini? “I hated school,” he
- told her briefly; “I don't believe I have ever read a book through; I'd
- rather paddle about—with <i>you</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you have read deep in the book of nature,” she reassured him; “only a
- very favorite few open those pages. You are such a child,” she added
- obliquely, “appallingly unsophisticated: that's what's nicest about you,
- really.” That form of laudation left him cold, and he drove the canoe with
- a vicious rush against the reflections. “A dear child,” she added, without
- materially increasing his pleasure.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Words are rot!” he exploded suddenly; “they can't say any of the
- important things. I could talk a year to you without telling you what I
- feel—here,” he laid a hand momentarily on his spare, powerful chest;
- “it's all mixed up, like lead and fire; or that feeling when ice cream
- goes to your head. You see,” he ended moodily, “all rot.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's very picturesque... and apparently painful. Words aren't necessary
- for the truly important things, Anthony.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then you know—what I think of you; you know... how everything else
- has moved away and left only you; you know a hundred things, all
- important, all about yourself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She set an uncertain smile against the rush of his words. The stream
- narrowed between high banks drawn against the sheer deeps of sky; the
- water flowed swiftly, with a sustained whisper at the edges, and, for a
- silent space, he paddled vigorously. Then a profound, glassy pool opened,
- sodded bluely to the shores, with low, silvery clumps of willows casting
- sooty shadows across the verd water; and, with a sharp twist, he beached
- the canoe with a soft shock upon the shelving pebbles. As he held the
- craft steady he felt the light, thrilling impact of Eliza's palm as she
- sprang ashore.
- </p>
- <p>
- The others followed rapidly. The canoes were drawn out of the water, and
- preparations for supper commenced. Eliza and Ellie Ball, accompanied by a
- youth with a pail, proceeded to a nearby farmhouse in quest of milk.
- Anthony lingered at the water's edge, ignoring the appeal for firewood.
- The glow of the westering sun faded from the air, and the reflection of
- the fire lighted behind him danced ruddy op the grass. At intervals small
- fish splashed invisibly, and a kingfisher cried downstream. Then he heard
- his sister's voice, and a familiar and moving perfume hovered in his
- nostrils. He turned and saw Eliza with her arms full of white lilacs. Her
- loveliness left him breathless, mingled with the low sun it blinded him.
- She seemed all made of misty bloom—a fragrant spirit of ineffable
- flowers. The scent of the lilacs stirred profound, inarticulate emotions
- within him, like the poignant impression left by a forgotten dream of
- shivering delight.
- </p>
- <p>
- He scorned the fare soon spread on the clothed sod, burning his throat
- stoically with a cup of unsweetened coffee. Eliza sat beyond the charring
- remains of the fire sinking from cherry-red embers to impalpable white
- ash. He observed with secret satisfaction that she too ate little: an
- appetite on her part, he felt, would have been a calamity.
- </p>
- <p>
- 'The meadows and distant woods were vague against the primrose west, the
- cyanite curtain of the east, when the baskets were assembled for the
- return. Anthony delayed over the arrangement of his craft until Eliza and
- himself were last in the floating procession. Dense shadows, drooping from
- the trees, filled the banks; overhead the sky was clear green. They swept
- silently forward with the current, a rare dip of the paddle. Eliza's
- countenance was just palely visible. The lilacs lay in a pallid heap at
- their feet. On either hand the world floated back darkly like an
- immaterial void through which an ebon stream bore them beyond the stars.
- </p>
- <p>
- At a bend he reached up and caught hold of an overhanging branch, and they
- swung into a shallow backwater. A deep shelf of stone lay under the face
- of the bank, closed in by a network of wildgrape stems. “This is where I
- sometimes stay at night,” he told her; “no one knows but you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XVI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>HE rose, and,
- without warning, stepped out upon the rock. “Here's where you build your
- fire,” she cried at the discovery of a blackened heap of ashes. He secured
- the canoe and followed her. “Ideal,” she breathed. The sound of the fall
- below was faintly audible; the quavering cry of an owl, the beating of
- heavy wings, rose above the bank. “Don't you envy the old pastoral people
- following their flocks from land to land, setting up their tents by
- streams like this, waking with the dawn on the world? or gipsies... you
- must read 'Lavengro.'”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't envy any one on God's little globe,” he asserted; “to be here
- with you is the best thing possible.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Something more desirable would soon occur to you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Than you!” he protested; “than you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But people get tired of what they have.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's what they don't have that makes them old and tired,” he told her
- with sudden prescience; “when I think of what I am going to lose, of what
- I can never have, it makes me crazy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why do you say that?... How can you know?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She was standing close to him in the constricted space, the tangible shock
- of her nearness sweeping over him in waves of heady emotion. The water
- gurgling by the rock was the only sound in a world-stillness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I mean you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I'm not fairy gold; I'm not the end of the rainbow. I am just
- Eliza.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Just Eliza!” he scoffed. Then the possibility contained in her words
- struck him dumb. The feeling irresistibly returned that because of her
- heavenly ignorance, her charity, she mistook him to be worthy. The
- necessity to guard her from her own divinity impelled him to repeat,
- miserably, all that she had ignored.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm not much account,” he said laboriously; “you see, I never stuck at
- anything, and, somehow, things have never stuck to me. It was that way at
- school—I was expelled from four. I'm supposed to be shiftless.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't care in the least for that!” she declared; “only one thing is
- really important to me... something, oh, so different.” Suddenly she laid
- her hand upon his sleeve, and, pitifully white, faced him. “I've had the
- beautifullest feeling about you,” she whispered; “Anthony, tell me truly,
- are you... good?” A sob rose uncontrollably in his throat, and his eyes
- filled with tears that spilled over his cheeks. For a moment he struggled
- to check them, then, unashamed, slipped onto his knees before her and held
- her tightly in his arms. “No one in the world can say that I am not—what
- you mean.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She stooped, and sat beside him on the stone, holding his hand close to
- her slight body. “My dream,” she said simply. “I didn't understand it at
- first; you see, I was only a child. And then when I grew older, and—and
- heard things, it seemed impossible. That sort of goodness only bored other
- girls... they liked men of the world, men with a past. I thought perhaps I
- was only morbid, and lost trust in—in you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was a kind of accident,” he admitted; “I never thought about it the
- way you did. It seemed young to me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't believe it was an accident in the least,” she insisted. A mist
- rose greyly from the darker surface of the stream, and settled cold and
- clammy about Anthony's face. It drew about them in wavering garlands,
- growing steadily denser. Eliza was sitting now pressed against him, and he
- felt a shiver run through her. “You are cold!” he cried instantly, and
- rose, lifting her to her feet. She smiled, in his arms, and he bent down
- and kissed her. She clung to him with a deep sigh, and met his lips
- steadily with her own. The mist slipped like a veil over Eliza's head and
- drops of moisture shone in her hair. Anthony turned and unfastened the
- canoe; and, suddenly conscious of the length of their delay, he urged it
- with long sweeps over the stream. Beyond the lilacs, distilling their
- potent sweetness in the dark, Eliza was motionless, silent, a flicker of
- white in the gloom.
- </p>
- <p>
- They swept almost immediately into the broad reach where they had started.
- The lights from the windows of a boat house, the voices of the others,
- streamed gaily over the water. He felt Eliza tremble as he lifted her
- ashore.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's happiness,” she told him; “I am ever so warm inside.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XVII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>Y his plate at the
- lunch table he discovered, the following day, a small, lavender envelope
- stamped and addressed to Anthony Ball, Esq. He slipped it hastily into his
- pocket, and managed but a short-lived pretext of eating. Then, with the
- letter yet unopened, he left Ellerton, and penetrated into the heart of
- the countryside.
- </p>
- <p>
- He stopped, finally, under a fence that crossed a hill, on a slope of wild
- strawberries. The hill fell away in an unbroken sweep of undulating,
- blue-green wheat; trees filled the hollow, with a roof and thread of
- silver water drawn through the lush leaves; on either hand chocolate loam
- bore the tender ripple of young com; and beyond, crossed by the shifting
- shadows of slow-drifting clouds, hill and wood and pasture spread a mellow
- mosaic of summer.
- </p>
- <p>
- He tore open the envelope with a reluctant delight. At the top of the
- sheet E D was stamped severely in mauve. “My very dear,” he read. He
- stopped, suddenly unable to proceed; the countryside swam in his vision;
- he gulped an ecstatic, convulsive breath, and proceeded:
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's too wonderful—I can't realize that you exist, and that I have
- found you in such a great world. Isn't it strange how real dreams are;
- just now the real world seems the dream, and my dear home, my mother,
- shadows compared to the thoughts that fill my brain of you, you, you.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I am writing mostly to tell you something that, perhaps, you didn't
- fully understand yesterday—and yet I think you must have—that,
- if you really want me, I am absolutely your own. I couldn't help it if I
- wanted to, and, oh, I don't want to! I let a man at Etretat kiss me, and I
- am glad I did, for it made me understand that I must wait for you.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I won't write any more now because my head aches. From Eliza who loves
- you utterly.” Then he saw that she had written on the following page:
- “Don't worry about money and the future; I have my own, all we shall need
- for years, and we can do something together.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He laid the letter beside him on the grass. The welling song of a catbird
- sounded unsupportably sweet, and a peaceful column of smoke rose bluely
- from the chimney below: it carried him in imagination to a dwelling set in
- a still, green garden, where birds filled the branches with melody, and
- Eliza and himself walked hand in hand and kissed. Night would gather in
- about their joy, their windows would shine with the golden lamp of their
- seclusion, their voices mingle... sink... sacred.
- </p>
- <p>
- He dreamed for a long while; the sunlight vanished from the slope below
- him, from the darkling trees, touched only the farthest hills with a rosy
- glow. As the sun sank an errant air whispered in the wheat, and scattered
- the pungent aroma of the wild strawberries. A voice called thinly from the
- swales, and cows gathered indistinctly about a gate. Anthony rose. The
- world was one vast harmony in which he struck the highest, happiest note.
- Beyond the near hills the lilac glitter of the Ellerton lights sprang
- palely up on the blue dusk. As he made his way home, Anthony's brain
- teemed with delightful projects, with anticipation, the thought of the
- house in the hollow—abode of love, steeped in night.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XVIII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>LLIE was in the
- garden, and interrupted his progress toward a belated dinner. “Father
- wants to see you,” she called; “at the Club, of course.” He wondered
- absently, approaching the Club, what his father wanted. The rooms occupied
- the second story of the edifice that housed the administration of the
- county; the main corridor was choked by a crowd that moved noisily toward
- an auditorium in the rear, but the Club was silent, save for the click of
- invisible billiard balls.
- </p>
- <p>
- His father was asleep in the reading room, a newspaper spread upon his
- knees, and one thin hand twisted in his beard. Through an open window
- drifted the strains of a band on the Courthouse lawn. The older man woke,
- clearing his throat sharply. “Well, Anthony,” he nodded. Anthony found a
- chair.
- </p>
- <p>
- His father leaned forward, regarding him with a keen, kindly gaze. “I'm
- told the garage has gone up,” he commenced.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sam took his car away; it was Alfred's infernal tinkering; he can't leave
- a machine alone.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did you close affairs satisfactorily, stop solvent?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There's a little debt of about six dollars.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The other sought his wallet, and, removing a rubber band, counted six
- dollars into Anthony's hand. “Meet that in the morning.” He leaned hack,
- tapping the wallet with deliberate fingers. “I suppose you have no plan
- for the immediate future,” he observed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothing right now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have one for you, though, as 'right now' as this week.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony listened respectfully, his thoughts still dwelling upon the beauty
- of the dusk without, of life. “You have tried a number of things in the
- past few years without success. I have started you in a small way again
- and again, only to observe the familiar course of a failure inevitable
- from your shiftless habits. You are not a bad boy, but you have no ability
- to concentrate, like a stream spread all over the meadow—you have no
- course. You're a loiterer.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, sir,” said Anthony, from the midst of his abstraction.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are too old for that now, either it must stop at once, or you will
- become definitely worthless. I am going to make a determined effort—I
- am going to send you to California, your brother-in-law writes that he can
- give you something.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The term California sounded in Anthony's brain like the unexpected clash
- of an immense hell. It banished his pleasant revery in disordered shreds,
- filling him with sudden dismay.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I telegraphed Albert yesterday,” the even tones continued, “and have his
- answer in my pocket. You are to go out to him immediately.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But that's impossible,” Anthony interrupted; “it just can't be done.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why not?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He found himself completely at a loss to give adequate expression to his
- reason for remaining in Ellerton. His joy was so new that he had scarcely
- formulated it to himself, it evaded words, defied definition—it was
- a thing of dreams, a vision in a shining garment, a fountain of life at
- the bottom of his heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come; why not?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't want to go away from Ellerton... just now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is precisely what you must do. I can understand your desire to
- remain close by your mother—she has an excuse for you, assistance,
- at every turn.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That isn't the reason; it's... it's,” he boggled horribly, “a girl.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Indeed,” his father remarked dryly.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony shrunk painfully from the unsympathetic voice of the elder. A new
- defiance of his father welled hotly within him, corrupting the bonds of
- discipline that had held him lovingly to his parent throughout the past. A
- chasm opened between them; and, when Anthony spoke again, it was with a
- voice of insipient insubordination.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It isn't the silly stuff you think,” he told the other; “I'm engaged!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What on?” pithily came the inquiry. “Unfortunately I can't afford the
- luxury of a daughter-in-law. I thought you were something more of a man
- than to bring your wife into your mother's house.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I sha'n't; we can get along until I... find work.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you mean that your wife will support you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not altogether; she will help until—until—” he stopped
- miserably before the anger confronting him in the other's gaze: it was
- useless to explain, he thought; But if his father laughed at him, at his
- love, he would leave the room and never see him again. “I can't see why
- money is so damned holy!” he broke out; “why it matters so infernally
- where it comes from; it seems to me only a dirty detail.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is the measure of a man's honor,” the elder Ball told him inexorably;
- “how it is made or got stamps you in the world. I am surprised to hear
- that you would even consider taking it from a woman, surprised and hurt.
- It shows all the more clearly the necessity for your going at once into a
- hard, healthy existence. Your mother will get you ready; a couple of days
- should do it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “... all unexpected,” Anthony muttered; “I must think about it, see some
- one. I'll—I'll talk to you to-morrow. That's it,” he enunciated more
- hopefully, “to-morrow—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Entirely unnecessary,” his father interrupted, “nothing to be gained by
- delay or further talk. The thing's arranged.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think I won't go,” Anthony told him slowly. The other picked up the
- paper, smoothing out the creases. “Very well,” he replied; “I dare say
- your mother will do something for you.—Women are the natural source
- of supplies for the sort of person you seem at the point of becoming.” A
- barrier of paper, covered with print in regular columns, shut one from the
- other.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony burned under a whelming sense of injustice. He decided that he
- would leave the room, his father, forever; but, somehow, he remained
- motionless in his chair, casting about in his thoughts for words with
- which to combat the elder's scorn. He thought of Eliza; she smiled at him
- with appealing loveliness; he felt her letter in his pocket, remembered
- her boundless generosity. He couldn't leave her! The band in the square
- below was playing a familiar operatic lament, and the refrain beat on his
- consciousness in waves of despairing and poignant longing. A sea of misery
- swept over him in which he struggled like a spent swimmer—Eliza was
- the far, silver shore toward which he fought. It wasn't fair—a sob
- almost mastered him—to ask him to go away now, when he had but found
- her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's not Siberia,” he heard his father say, “nor a life sentence; if this—this
- 'girl' is serious, you will be closer working for her in California than
- idle in Ellerton.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't want to go away from her,” he whispered; “the world's such a hell
- of a big, empty place... things happen.” He dashed some bright tears from
- his eyes, and, turning his back on the other, gazed through the window at
- the tops of the maple trees—a black tracery of foliage against the
- lights below.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Two or three years should set you on your feet, give you an opportunity
- to return.” Eternity could scarcely have seemed more appalling than the
- term casually indicated by his father, it was unthinkable! A club member
- entered, fingering the racked journals on the long table, exchanging
- trivial comments with the older Ball. It seemed incredible to Anthony, in
- the face of the cataclysm which threatened him, that the world should
- continue to revolve callously about such topics. It was an affront to the
- gravity, the dignity, of his suffering. He swiftly left the room.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XIX
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>T was Saturday
- night, Bay Street was thronged, the stores brilliantly lit. He saw in the
- distance the red and blue jars of illuminated water that advertised Doctor
- Allhop's drugstore, and turned abruptly on his heel. In the seclusion of
- his room he once more read Eliza's letter: it was a superlative document
- of sweet commonsense, the soul of nobility, of wisdom, of tenderness, of
- divine generosity. In its light all other suggestions, considerations,
- courses, seemed tawdry and ignoble. The boasted wisdom of a world of old
- men, of material experience, seemed only the mean makeshifts for base and
- unworthy ends. The ecstasy sweeping from his heart to his brain, the
- delicious fancies, the rare harmonies, that haunted him, the ineffable
- perfume of invisible lilacs—these were the true material from which
- to fashion life, these were the high things, the important. And youth was
- the time to grasp them: a swift premonition seized him of the coldness,
- the ineptitude, the disease, of old age.
- </p>
- <p>
- For the first time in his life he thought of death in definite connection
- with himself: he was turning out the gas, preparatory for sleep; and, at
- the instantaneous darkness, he thought, with a gasp of fear, it would be
- like that. He stood trembling as a full realization of disillusion
- mastered him; all his hot, swinging blood, the instinctive longing for
- perpetuation aroused in him by Eliza, in sick revolt. Fearsome images
- filled his mind... the hole in the clay—closed; putrefaction; the
- linked mass of worms. In feverish haste he lit the gas; his body was wet
- with sweat; his heart pounding unsteadily.
- </p>
- <p>
- The familiar aspect of his room somewhat reassured him; the thought
- dimmed, slowly conquered by the flooding tide of his living. Then he
- realized that Eliza too must die, and his terrors vanished before a loving
- pity for her earthly fragility. Finally, death itself assumed a less
- threatening guise; peace stole imperceptibly into his heart. A vague
- belief, new born of his passion, that dying was not the end of all, rose
- within him—there must be a struggle, heights to win, gulfs to cross,
- a faith to keep. With steady fingers he turned out the gas.—Eliza
- was his faith: he fell into a sound slumber.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XX
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E made no comment
- when, in the morning, his mother made tentative piles of his clothing. He
- would see Eliza that afternoon, and then announce their decision. His
- mother attempted to fathom his feeling at the prospect of the journey, the
- separation from Ellerton; but, the memory of his father's cutting words
- still rankling in his mind, he evaded her questioning.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you are going to be miserable out there,” she told him, enveloping him
- in the affection of her steady, grey gaze, “something else might be found.
- I can always help—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don't understand these things,” he interrupted her brusquely, annoyed
- by his father's prescience. They were sitting in her sewing room, a pile
- of his socks at her side. She wore her familiar, severe garb, the
- steelbowed spectacles directed upon the needle flashing steadily in her
- assured fingers. She was eternally laboring for her children, Anthony
- realized with a pang of affection. His earliest memories were charged with
- her unflagging care, the touch of her smooth and tireless hands, the
- defense of her energetic voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- He must tell her about his engagement, but not until he had seen Eliza
- again, when something definite would be agreed upon. It was immensely
- difficult for him to talk about the subject nearest his heart-words
- diminished and misrepresented it: he wanted to brood over it, secretly,
- for days.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ATER he dressed
- with scrupulous exactitude, and proceeded directly to Hydrangea House. The
- afternoon was sultry, the air full of the soothing drone of summer
- insects, the dust of the road rose in heavy puffs about his feet. He
- crossed the stream and fields, saturated with sunlight, and came to the
- pillared portico of his destination.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Miss Dreen,” Anthony said, stepping forward into the opening door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Miss Dreen cannot see you,” the servant returned without hesitation.
- Anthony drew back, momentarily repelled; but, before he could question
- this announcement, he heard grinding wheels on the gravel drive. Turning,
- he saw a motor stop, and Mrs. Dreen descend, followed by a man with a
- somber, deeply-scored countenance. Anthony moved forward eagerly as she
- mounted the steps. “Mrs. Dreen,” he asked; “can you tell me-” She passed
- with a confused, blank face, without stopping or acknowledging his
- salutation, and the door closed softly upon her and her companion.
- </p>
- <p>
- A momentary flame of anger within Anthony quickly sank to cold
- consternation. Eliza had told her parents and they had dismissed the idea
- and him. It was evident they had forbidden her to see him. He walked
- indecisively down the steps, still carrying his hat, and stopped
- mechanically on the driveway. He gazed blindly over a brilliant, scarlet
- bed of geraniums, over the extended lawn, the rolling hills of Ellerton.
- Then his courage returned, stiffened by the obstacles which apparently
- confronted him: he would show them that he was not to be lightly
- dismissed; no power on earth should separate him from Eliza.
- </p>
- <p>
- The servant had only obeyed Mrs. Dreen's direction; Eliza, he was certain,
- had no choice in the matter of his reception. Then, unexpectedly, he
- remembered his father's words, the latter's contemptuous reference to all
- appeals to women. He must go to Mr. Dreen, and straightforwardly state his
- position, tell him... <i>what?</i> Why, that he, Anthony Ball, loved
- Eliza, desired her, had come to take her away... <i>where?</i> In all the
- world he had no place prepared for her. He drove his hand into his pocket,
- and discovered a quarter of a dollar and some odd pennies—all that
- he possessed. Suddenly he laughed, a short, sorry merriment that stopped
- in a dry gasp. He turned and ran, stumbling over the grass, through the
- hot dust, toward Ellerton. Two years, he thought, California; California
- and two years.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>NTHONY sat late
- into the night composing an explanatory and farewell letter to Eliza:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your family would laugh at me,” he wrote; “I couldn't show them a dollar.
- And although my father has done a great deal for me he wouldn't do this. I
- couldn't expect him to. Mother might help, she is like you, but I could
- not very well live between two women, could I? The only hope is California
- for a couple of years. You know how much I want to stay with you, how hard
- this is to write, when our engagement, everything, is so new and
- wonderful. But it would only be harder later. If I had seen you this
- afternoon I would never have left you. I am going to-morrow night. This
- will come to you in the morning, and I will be home if you send me a
- message. I would like to see you again before I go away in order to come
- back to you forever. I would like to hear you say again that you love me.
- Sometimes I think it never really happened. If I don't see you again
- before I leave, remember I shall never change, I shall love you always and
- not forget the least thing you said. I wish now I had studied so that I
- could write better. Remember that I belong to you, when you want me I will
- come to you if it's around the world, I would come to you if I were dead I
- think. Good-bye, dear, dear Eliza, until tomorrow anyhow, and that's a
- long while to be without seeing you or hearing your voice.”
- </p>
- <p>
- At the announcement of his agreement to go West, the attitude of his
- father had changed greatly; his hand continually sought Anthony's
- shoulder; he consulted gravely, as it were with an equal, with regard to
- trains, precautions, new climates. His mother busied herself over his
- clothes, her rare speech brusque and hurried. To Anthony she seemed
- suddenly old, <i>grey</i>; her hands trembled, and necessary stitches were
- uneven.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was aware that the mail for Hydrangea House was collected before noon,
- and he sat expectantly in the room overlooking the street. It was dark and
- cool, there were creamy tea roses in the Canton jar now, while in the
- street it was hot and bright. A sere engraving of Joseph Bonaparte in
- regal robes gazed serenely from the wall. The hour for lunch arrived
- without any message from Eliza. Throughout the afternoon he dropped his
- pressing affairs find descended to the street... nothing.
- </p>
- <p>
- His heart grew heavy with doubts, with fears—his letter had been
- intercepted; or, if Eliza had received it, her answer had been diverted.
- Perhaps she had at last realized that he was unfit for her love. The
- impulse almost mastered him to go once more to Hydrangea House, but pride
- prevented; his unhappiness hardened, grew bitter, suspicious. Then he
- again read her letter, and its patent sincerity swept away all doubt;
- Eliza was unwavering; if not now he would find her at the end of two
- years, unchanged, warm, beautiful.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was summoned to dinner, where he found the delicacies he especially
- liked. The plates were liberally filled, all made a pretence at eating,
- but, at the end, the food remained hardly touched. The forced conversation
- fell into sudden, disturbing silences. His father sharpened the carving
- knife twice, which, for shad roe, was scarcely necessary; his mother
- scolded the servant without cause; even Ellie was affected, and smiled at
- him with a bright tenderness.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was to leave Ellerton at midnight, when he would be enabled to connect
- with a western express, and it was arranged for him to spend a last hour
- at the Club with his father. Ellie and the servant stood upon the
- pavement, his mother was upstairs in the sewing room... where he entered
- softly.
- </p>
- <p>
- At the Club the billiard room was dark, the tables shrouded, but from a
- room at the end of the hall came the murmur of the nightly coon-can
- players. They seated themselves at a table, and his father ordered beer
- and cigars. It was the first time that he had acknowledged Anthony to
- possess the discretion of maturity, and he raised the stein to his lips
- with the feeling that it was a sacrament of his manhood, an earnest and
- pledge of his success.
- </p>
- <p>
- The midnight train emerged from the gloom of the station, passed through
- the outskirts of Ellerton, detached rows of dark dwellings, by the grounds
- of the Baseball Association, its fence still plastered with the gaudy
- circus posters, into the dim fields and shining streams. Anthony stood on
- the last, swinging platform, gazing back at the gloom that enveloped
- Ellerton, at the place where Hydrangea House was hid by the hills. An
- acute misery possessed him—the unsettled maimer of his departure
- from Eliza, her silence, struggled in his thoughts with the attempt to
- realize the necessity of the course he had adopted to bring about a final
- and lasting joy. He wondered if Eliza would understand the need for his
- going; but, assured of her wise sympathy, he felt that she would; and a
- measure of content settled upon him. The engine swung about a curve,
- disappearing into the obscurity of a wood. “Eliza,” he cried aloud,
- “Eliza, be here when I come back to you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He sat for the greater part of an hour on the deserted platform of the
- junction, where signal lamps glistened on the steel rails that vanished
- into the night, into the west, the inscrutable future. The headlight of
- the massive locomotive flared unexpectedly, whitely upon him; the engine,
- with a brief glimpse of a sanguinary heart of fire illuminating a sooty
- human countenance, gleaming, liquid eyeballs, passed and stopped; and
- Anthony hastily mounted the train. He made his way through the narrow
- passage of buttoned, red curtains, and found his berth, when he sank into
- a weary, dreamless sleep.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXIII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>N the morning his
- was the last berth made up for the day; the car, shaded against the sun,
- was rolling slightly, and he braced himself as he made his way toward
- breakfast. The tables were all occupied; but, at a carelessly hospitable
- nod, he found a place with two men. They were, he immediately saw, Jews.
- One was robustly middle aged, with a pinkly smooth countenance, a slightly
- flattened nose, and eyes as colorless as clear water in a goblet. He was
- carefully dressed in shepherd's plaid, with a gay tie that held a
- noticeably fine pearl. His companion was thin and dark, with a heavy nose
- irritated to rawness by the constant application of a blue silk
- handkerchief. The latter, Anthony discovered in the course of the
- commonplaces which followed, was sycophant and henchman of the first—a
- never failing source of applause for the former's witticisms.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How far out are you bound?” queried the owner of the pearl. Then, when
- Anthony had told him his destination, “no business opportunities in
- California for a young man without capital behind him; only hard work and
- a day laborer's wages. Nothing West but fruit, land and politics on a
- large scale. My chauffeur at a hundred a month does better than eighty per
- cent, of the young ones in the West.”
- </p>
- <p>
- This information fell like a dark cloud over Anthony's sanguine hopes for
- a speedy and opulent return. A sense of imminent misfortune pressed upon
- him, a sudden, unreasoning dread of what might be in store for Eliza and
- himself, of the countless perils of a protracted delay. At the end of two
- years he might be no better off than he was at present. His
- brother-in-law, he knew, would only pay him a nominal amount at first. The
- two years stretched out interminably in his imagination.
- </p>
- <p>
- The more prosperous of his companions selected a cigar from a silk case,
- and, cutting it with a gold penknife, they removed to the smoking car. “I
- drove a car for a while,” Anthony informed them later, mingling the
- acidulous smoke of a Dulcina with the more fragrant clouds of Habana; “it
- was a Challenger six.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hartmann here is a director in the Challenger factory,” the sycophant
- told him. “The factory's in our home city, where we are going. It's a
- great car.” Hartmann examined Anthony with a new and more personal
- interest. “Did you like it?” he demanded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's all right, for the price,” Anthony assured him; “it's the most
- sporting looking car on the American market.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's the thing,” the other declared with satisfaction; “big sales and a
- quick return on investment. A showy car is what the public want, the
- engine's unimportant, it's paint that counts.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you have any radiator trouble?” Anthony demanded. The other regarded
- him shrewdly. “I run a Berliet,” he announced; “I was discussing a popular
- article.” He arranged himself more comfortably in his leather chair, and
- prepared for sleep.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony returned to his place in the coach, where he brooded dejectedly
- upon what he had heard about California. He thought of the distance
- widening at a dizzy rate between Eliza and himself, and plunged into a
- vast pit of loneliness... he had made a terrible mistake in leaving her.
- It seemed to him now that he had deserted her, perhaps she was suffering
- on account of him—had expected him to free her from an intolerable
- condition. Again he cursed in his heart the prudent counsel of old men,
- the cold sapience of the world, that had betrayed him, that had prevailed
- over him against his instinct, his longing.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXIV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>T lunch he was
- progressing toward an empty table when Hartmann waved him imperiously to a
- place at his side. “Have a drink,” he advised genially; “this is my
- affair.” Beer followed the initial cocktail, and brandy wound the meal to
- a comfortable conclusion. A Habana in the smoking car completed Anthony's
- bodily satisfaction.
- </p>
- <p>
- “California's no place for a young man without capital,” Hartmann
- reiterated; “you work like a dog for two and a half a day; no future.” He
- paused, allowing this to be digested, then: “I have a little plan to
- propose, you can take it or not—or perhaps you are not competent.—My
- chauffeur is laid up with a broken wrist, a matter of a month or more; how
- would you like to run my car until he returns? Then, if you are
- satisfactory, you can go into the Challenger factory, with something ahead
- of you, a future. Or you can go on to California... say seventy-five
- dollars richer.” Anthony shook his head regretfully. “Don't answer now,”
- Hartmann advised; “Spring City is three hours off. Think it over;
- seventy-five dollars; a chance, if you are handy, in the factory.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony was suddenly obsessed by the thought that, at Spring City, he
- would be only a day removed from Eliza. He wondered what his father would
- say to this new possibility? At worst he would only be delayed in his
- arrival in California, and with seventy-five dollars in consequence. At
- best—the Challenger factory: he expanded optimistically the
- opportunities offered by the latter. If he could show his father immediate
- fruits from a change of plan, the elder, he was certain, would add his
- approval. In a passing, sceptical mood he speculated upon Hartmann's
- motive in this offer to an entire stranger; but his doubts speedily
- vanished—any irregularity must be immediately visible.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can make a stop over on your ticket for a couple of days and try it,”
- the other interjected; “it will cost you nothing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Only a day removed from Eliza! he would write to his father, his
- brother-in-law, and explain! he had decided that it would do no harm to
- try it. “Good!” the Jew exclaimed; “see the conductor about your ticket.
- If you decide to remain you can send for your trunk.” He offered his cigar
- case to his companion, but, now, neglected to include Anthony.
- Imperceptibly their relations had changed; Hartmann's geniality decreased;
- his colorless gaze wandered indifferently. Anthony found the conductor,
- and arranged a stop-over at Spring City. He collected his belongings; and,
- not long after, he stood on a station platform beside his bag, watching
- with sudden misgivings the rear of the train he had left disappearing
- behind a bulk of factories and clustered shanties.
- </p>
- <p>
- Hartmann handed him a card, with a written direction and address. “The
- garage,” he explained; “have the car ready to-morrow at nine. I'll allow
- you an expense of five dollars until a definite arrangement.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony quickly found the garage—a structure of iron and glass, with
- a concrete floor where cars were drawn up in glistening rows. A line of
- chairs fronted upon the pavement, occupied by mechanics in greasy
- overalls, smarter chauffeurs, and garrulous, nondescript hangerson. The
- foreman was within, busy with the compression tanks. He was short in
- stature, with a pale, concerned countenance. “Fourth on the right from the
- front,” he directed, reading Hartmann's card; “there's a bad shoe on the
- back.... So the old man's ready for another little trip,” he commented.
- </p>
- <p>
- “His chauffeur has a broken wrist,” Anthony explained. “He's offered me
- the job for a month.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wrist hell! Hartmann fired him, he knew too much—about sprees with
- Kuhn. He's a sharp duck; I'll bet he picked you up outside Spring City.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I met him on the Sunset Limited,” Anthony continued; “I understood he was
- a director in the Challenger Motorcar Company—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He's that, right enough; the rottenest car and shop in America; they're
- so dam' mean they won't provide their men with drinking water; they have
- to bring labor from the East, scabs and other truck.” The conviction
- settled heavily upon Anthony that, after all, he had made a mistake in
- listening to Hartmann, in falling in with his suggestion. If there had
- been another train through Spring City that night for California he would
- have taken it. But, as there was not, and he had committed himself for the
- next twenty-four hours, he made his way to the Berliet car indicated.
- There he took off his coat, and busied himself with replacing the damaged
- shoe. When that was accomplished the dusk had thickened to evening, the
- suspended gas globes in the garage had been lighted, and shone like
- lemon-yellow moons multiplied in the lilac depths of a mirrored twilight.
- </p>
- <p>
- He saw, across the street, a creamery, and, at a bare table, consumed a
- quart of milk and a plate of sugared rusk. Then, on a chair in the line
- before the garage, he sat half intent upon the conversation about him,
- half considering the swift changes that had overtaken him in the past, few
- days. His fingers closed upon Eliza's letter in his pocket, and he gazed
- at the callous and ribald faces at his side, he heard the truculent
- laughter, with wonderment that they existed in the same world with her
- delicate beauty. She smiled at him, out of his memory, over a mass of
- white bloom, and the present seemed like an ugly dream from which he must
- awake in her presence. Or was the other a dream, a vision of immaterial
- delight spread before his wondering mind, and this harsh mirth, these
- mocking faces, Hartmann's smooth lies, the hateful reality?
- </p>
- <p>
- The night deepened, one by one the chairs before the garage were deserted,
- the sharp pounding of a hammer on metal sounded from within, the
- disjointed measures of a sentimental song. A sudden weariness swept over
- Anthony, a distaste for the task of seeking a room through the strange
- streets; and, arranging the cushions in Hartmann's car, he slept there
- until morning. He awoke to the flooding of the concrete floor with a sheet
- of water flashing in the crisp sunlight. It was eight o'clock, and he made
- a hurried toilet at a convenient spigot, breakfasting at the creamery.
- </p>
- <p>
- Hartmann appeared shortly after nine: his countenance glowed from a
- scented massage, his yellow boots shone with restrained splendor, and a
- sprig of geranium was drawn through an ironed buttonhole. He nodded
- briefly to Anthony, and narrowly watched the latter manouvre the Berliet
- from its place in the row onto the street. They sped smoothly across town
- to what, evidently, was the principal shopping thoroughfare; and, before a
- glittering plateglass window that bore the chaste design, “Hartmann &
- Company” drew up, and Hartmann prepared to descend.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think I'll go on West,” Anthony informed him; “this afternoon.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Annoyance was plainly visible upon the other's countenance. “I was just
- congratulating myself on a find,” he declared; “you must at least stay
- with me until I get some one else.” He paused; Anthony made no comment.
- “Now, listen to what I will do,” he pronounced finally; “if you will stay
- with me for a month I'll give you a hundred dollars and your expenses—it
- will be clear money. I... I had thought of taking a little trip in the
- car, I'm feeling the store a little, and I need a discreet man. Think it
- over—a hundred in your pocket, and you may be able to get off in
- three weeks.” He left hurriedly, without giving Anthony an opportunity for
- further speech. It was an alluring offer, a hundred dollars secured for
- the future, for Eliza. He speculated about the prospective trip,
- Hartmann's wish to secure a “discreet” man, the foreman's insinuations.
- However, the motive didn't concern him, the wage was his sole
- consideration, and that, he decided, he could not afford to lose. He
- whistled to a newsboy, and, studying the baseball scores, waited
- comfortably for his employer.
- </p>
- <p>
- Later he drove Hartmann, now accompanied by Kuhn, out of town, through a
- district of suburban villas, smooth, white roads and green lawns, into the
- farmland and pasturage beyond. They finally stopped at an inn of weathered
- grey stone set behind a row of ancient elms. A woman was sitting on the
- portico, and she rose and came forward sinuously as the men descended from
- the motor car. Anthony saw that she had a full, voluptuous figure,
- lustreless, yellow hair, and sleepy eyes. Hartmann patted her upon the
- shoulder, and the three moved to the portico, where they sat conversing
- over a table of whiskies and soda. Occasional shrill bursts of laughter,
- gross terms, reached Anthony. The woman lounged nonchalantly in her chair;
- she wore a transparent white waist, through winch was visible a confused
- tracery of purple ribband, frank rubicund flesh. When the men rose,
- Hartmann kissed her. “Thursday,” he reminded her; “shortly after three.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I'll depend on you,” Kuhn added,—“a good figger and a loving
- disposition. We don't want any dead ones on this trip.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Laura's all right,” she assured him; “she's just ready for something of
- this sort; she goes off about twice a year.”
- </p>
- <p>
- When they had started, Hartmann leaned forward. “Going Thursday... that
- little trip I spoke to you about.—No talking, understand. Look over
- the tires, get what you think-necessary for five or six hundred miles.” He
- tended Anthony a crisp, currency note. “Here's the five. Your salary
- starts to-morrow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That night Anthony wrote a letter of explanation to his father, a note to
- California in reference to his trunk, and a short communication to Eliza.—He
- was not certain that she would receive it. Her parents, he was convinced,
- were opposed to him—they were ignorant of the singleness, the depth,
- the determination, of his love.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>T. was nearly
- four, when, on Thursday, Anthony stopped the car before the inn by the
- elms. The woman with the yellow hair, accompanied by a figure in a
- shapeless russet silk coat, were waiting for them. The latter carried a
- small, patent-leather dressing case, and a large bag reposed on the
- portico, which Anthony strapped to the luggage rack. Kuhn, animated by a
- flow of superabundant animal spirits, bantered each member of the party:
- he gave Anthony a cigar that had been slightly broken, tipped off
- Hartmann's cap, and assisted the woman with profound gallantry into the
- car. Hartmann discussed routes over an unfolded map with Anthony; then,
- the course laid out, they moved forward.
- </p>
- <p>
- Their way led over an old postroad, now between walls, trees, dank and
- grey with age and dust, now rising steadily into a region of bluish hills.
- Scraps of conversation fell upon Anthony's hearing: the woman in the
- russet coat, he learned, was named Laura Dallam. Kuhn talked incessantly,
- and, occasionally, she replied to his sallies in a cool, detached voice.
- She differed in manner from the others, she was a little disdainful,
- Anthony discovered. Once she said sharply, “Do let me enjoy the country.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They slipped smoothly through the afternoon to the end of day. The sun had
- vanished beyond the hills when they stopped at an inn on the outskirts of
- an undiscovered town. It was directly on the road, and, built in a flimsy
- imitation of an Elizabethan hostelry, had benches at either side of the
- entrance.
- </p>
- <p>
- There Anthony sat later, while, from a balcony above him, fell the tones
- of his employer and his companions. He could hear them clearly,
- distinguish Hartmann's heavy jocularity, the yellow-haired woman's syrupy
- voice, Laura Dallam's crisp utterances. Kuhn's labored wit had drooped
- with the afternoon, an accent of complaint had grown upon him.
- Occasionally there was a thin, clear tinkle of glasses and ice. As the
- night deepened, the conversation above grew blurred, peals of
- inconsequential laughter more frequent; a glass fell on the balcony, and
- broke with a small, sudden explosion. Some one—it was the Dallam
- woman, exclaimed, “don't!” She leaned over the railing above Anthony's
- head, and said despairingly, “I can't get drunk!” Kuhn pressed to her
- side, and she moved away impatiently. He became enraged, and they
- commenced a low, bitter wrangling. Finally Hartmann insinuated himself
- between them; the two women disappeared; and Kuhn complained aloud of the
- manner in which he had been treated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She's all right,” Hartmann assured him; “you went at it too heavy; take
- your time; she's not a flapper from the chorus.” They tramped heavily
- across the balcony, whispering tensely, into the hotel.
- </p>
- <p>
- The morning following they failed to start until past eleven: Hartmann's
- countenance was pasty from the night's debauch, greenish shadows hung
- beneath his colorless eyes, his mouth was a leaden line; the yellow-haired
- woman was haggard, she looked older by ten years since the day previous.
- Kuhn was savagely, morosely, silent. But Mrs. Dallam was as fresh, as
- sparkling, as the morning itself. She nodded brightly at Anthony as she
- took a seat forward, by his side. A heavy veil was draped back from her
- face, and he saw that it was finely-cut; an intensely black bang fell
- squarely across her low, white forehead, beneath which eyes of a sombre,
- velvety blue were oddly compelling; and against the blanched oval of her
- face her mouth was like a print of blood. It was a potent, vaguely
- disturbing countenance; and, beneath the voluminous silk coat, he saw
- narrow black slippers with carelessly tied bows that, stinging his
- imagination, reminded him of wasps.
- </p>
- <p>
- As he drove the car he was frequently aware of her exotic gaze resting
- speculatively upon him. On a high, sunny reach of road there was a shrill
- rush of escaping air, and he found a rear tire flat. Hartmann and his mate
- explored the road, Kuhn gloomed aloof, while Mrs. Dallam seated herself on
- a nearby bank, as Anthony replaced the inner tube. It was hot, and he
- removed his coat, and soon his shirt was clinging to the rippling, young
- muscles of his vigorous torso. Once, when he straightened up to wipe the
- perspiration from his brow, Mrs. Dallam caught his glance, and held it
- with a slow smile.
- </p>
- <p>
- Their progress for the day ended at a small hotel maintained upon the roof
- of a ridge of hills. As the dusk deepened the valley beyond swam with
- warm, scattered lights, while above, in illimitable space, gleamed stars
- near, only a few millions of miles away, and stars far, millions upon
- millions of miles distant.
- </p>
- <p>
- The ground floor of the hotel was divided by a passage, on one side the
- bar, and the other a dining and lounging room, lit with kerosene lamps
- swung below tin reflectors. When Anthony was ready for supper the others
- had disappeared above. He was served by the proprietor, a short, rotund
- man with a glistening red face and hands like swollen pincushions. He
- breathed stentoriously amid his exertions, muttering objurgations in
- connection with the name of an absent servitor, hopelessly drunk, Anthony
- gathered, in the stable.
- </p>
- <p>
- A bell sounded sharply from above, and he disappeared abruptly, shouting
- up the stair. Then, shortly after, he reappeared in the dining room with a
- tray bearing a pitcher of water, glasses, and a bottle labelled with the
- name of a popular brand of whiskey. “Can you run this up to your folks?”
- he demanded, in a storm of explosive breaths; “I got enough to stall three
- men down here.” Anthony balanced the tray, and moved toward the stair.
- </p>
- <p>
- He stopped in the hallway to redispose his burden, when he heard the
- changing gears of a second automobile without. He moved carefully upward,
- conscious of lowered voices at his back, then the sound of footsteps
- following him. He turned as he had been directed in the hall above, and
- knocked upon a closed door. Kuhn's sullen voice bade him enter. He had
- opened the door, when, almost upsetting the tray, a small group at his
- back pushed him aside, and entered Hartmann's room.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXVI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE flaring gas jet
- within shone on Hartmann, in his shirt sleeves, reclining collarless on a
- bed, while the yellow-haired woman, in a short, vividly green petticoat,
- but otherwise normally garbed, sat by him twisting her fingers in his
- hair. Mrs. Dallam, her waist open at the neck, was cold-creaming her
- throat, while Kuhn was decorating her bared arms with pats of pink powder
- from a silver-mounted puff. He turned at the small commotion in the
- doorway.... His jaw dropped, and his glabrous eyes bulged in incredulous
- dismay. The powder puff fell to the floor; he wet his dry lips with his
- tongue. “Minna!” he stammered; “Minna!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The woman in the door had grey hair streaked and soiled with sallow white,
- and a deeply scored, harsh countenance. Her gnarled hands were tightly
- clenched, and her tall, spare figure shook from suppressed excitement and
- emotion. At her back were two men, one unobtrusive, remarkable in his lack
- of salient feature; the other stolidly, heavily, Semitic.
- </p>
- <p>
- Hartmann hastily scrambled into an upright position; the woman at his side
- gave vent to a startled, slight scream, desperately arranging her scant
- draperies; Mrs. Dallam, with a stony face, continued to rub cold-cream
- into her throat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now, Mrs. Kuhn,” Hartmann stuttered, “everything can he satisfactorily
- explained.” The woman he addressed paid not the slightest attention to
- him, but, advancing into the room, gazed with mingled hatred and curiosity
- at Mrs. Dallam. The two women stood motionless, tense, oblivious to the
- others, in their silent, merciless battle. The latter smiled slightly,
- with coldly-contemptuous lips, at the grotesque figure, the ill-fitting
- dress upon the wasted body, the hat pinned askew on the thin, time-stained
- hair, before her. And the other, painfully rigid, worn, brittle, gazed
- with bitter appraisal at the softly-rounded, graceful figure, the mature
- youth, that mocked her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Minna,” Kuhn reiterated, “come outside, won't you, I want to see you
- outside. Tell her to go out, Abbie,” he entreated the stolid figure at the
- door; “it ain't fit for her to be here. I will see you all down stairs.”
- He laid a shaking hand upon his wife's shoulder. “Come away,” he implored.
- </p>
- <p>
- But still, unconscious apparently of his presence, she gazed at Mrs.
- Dallam.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You gutter piece!” she said finally; “you thief!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Dallam laughed easily. “Steal that!” she exclaimed, indicating Kuhn,
- “that... beetle! If it's any consolation to you—he hasn't put his
- hand on me. It makes me ill to be near him. I should be grateful if you'd
- take him home.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's so, Mrs. Kuhn,” Hartmann interpolated eagerly, “nothing's went on
- you couldn't witness, nothing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Tears stole slowly over the inequalities of Mrs. Kuhn's countenance. She
- trembled so violently that the man called Abbie stepped forward and
- supported her. Now tears streamed copiously over Kuhn's narrow
- countenance. “Oh, Minna!” he cried, “<i>can</i> I go home with you? can I
- go <i>now?</i> These people don't mean anything to me, not like you do.—I
- get crazy at times, and gotta have excitement; I hate it,” he declared;
- “but I can't somehow stand out against it. But you must give me another
- try.... Why, I'd be nothing in the world without you; I'd go down to hell
- alive without you, Minna.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Kuhn became unmanageable; she uttered a series of short, gasping
- cries, and wilted into the arm about her. “Take her out, Abbie,” Kuhn
- entreated, “take her out of this.” Anthony, with the tray still balanced
- in his grasp, stood aside. The man without characteristics was making
- rapid notes in an unostentatious wallet. Then Mrs. Kuhn, supported and
- followed by her husband and the third, disappeared into the hall.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Shut the door,” Hartmann commanded sharply; “and give me a drink.”
- Anthony set the tray on a table. “God!” the yellow-haired woman
- ejaculated, “me too.” Mrs. Dallam returned to the mirror, and surveyed the
- effects of the cold cream. With an expression of distaste she brushed the
- marks of the powder from her arm. “The beetle!” she repeated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Minna Kuhn won't bring action,” Hartmann declared, with growing
- confidence; “she'll take him back; nothing will come out.” The other woman
- drank deeply, a purplish flush mantelled her full countenance. A strand of
- metallic hair slipped over her eyes. “Let her talk,” she asseverated;
- “we're bohemians.” She clasped Hartmann to her ample bosom.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Dallam moved to the half opened door to the room beyond. “Bring in
- the pitcher of water, Anthony,” she directed. He followed her with the
- water, and she bolted the door behind them. The door to the hall was
- closed too. She stopped and smiled at him with narrowed, enigmatic eyes.
- The subtle force of her being swept tingling over him. She laid her hand,
- warm, palpitatingly alive, upon his.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The swine,” she said; “how did we get into this, you and I?”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXVII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE patent-leather
- dressing case lay open on a bureau, spilling a small cascade of ivory
- toilet implements, a severely-plain black dinner gown lay limp, dully
- shimmering, over the back of a chair, and, on the bed, a soft, white heap
- of undergarments gave out a seductive odor of lavender. “Cigarettes in the
- leather box,” she indicated; “take some outside.” A screened door opened
- upon a boxlike balcony, cut into the angle of the roof; and Anthony,
- conscious of the warm weight of a guiding arm, found himself upon it. He
- seated himself on the railing, and lit a cigarette. He must go in a
- minute, he thought.
- </p>
- <p>
- The lights had vanished from the valley, at his back the risen moon dimmed
- the stars, turned the leaves silver grey. A wan ray fell upon a clump of
- bushes below—lilacs, but the blooms had wilted, gone. The screen
- door opened, and Mrs. Dallam was at his side; she sank into a chair, the
- rosy blur of a cigarette in her fingers; she wore a loose wrap of deep
- green silk, open at her throat upon the white web beneath; in the
- obscurity her eyes were as black, as lustreless, as ebony, her mouth was a
- purple stain.
- </p>
- <p>
- She smoked silently, gazing into the night. He would go now, he decided,
- and moved from his place on the rail. But with clinging fingers she caught
- his wrist, reproachfully lifting a velvety gaze. “I will not be left
- alone,” she declared; “I simply must have some one with me... you, or I
- will get despondent. You are—no, I won't say young, that would make
- you cross; you are like that fabulous fountain the Spaniards hunted in
- Florida, I want to drink deep, deep.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony's resolution wavered; it was early; it pleased him that so fine a
- creature should desire his presence; an unhappy note in her voice moved
- him to pity. She was lonely, and he was alone—here; why should they
- not support each other? He leaned, close to her, upon the sloping roof.
- She talked little; she laughed once, a low, silvery peal whose echo ran up
- and down his spine.
- </p>
- <p>
- They heard a servant closing the shutters, the doors, below them, and the
- sound linked Anthony to Mrs. Dallam in a feeling of pervading intimacy.
- She rose, and stood pressed against his side, and his heart beat instantly
- unsteady. The night grew strangely oppressive, there was a roll of
- distant, muffled thunder; he turned to her with a commonplace about the
- heat, when her arms went about his neck, and she kissed him full, slowly,
- upon the lips. Unconsciously he held her supple body to him. She leaned
- back against his arms, her eyes shut and lips parted. A terrible and brute
- tyranny of desire welled up within him, sweeping away every vestige of
- control, of memory. The sky whirled in his vision, the substantial world
- vanished in a smother of flaming mists.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he released her so suddenly that she fell against the rail,
- recovering her poise with difficulty. Anthony stumbled back, drawing his
- hand across his brow. “What... what damned perfume's on you?” he demanded
- hoarsely.
- </p>
- <p>
- “None at all,” she assured him, “I never... Why, Anthony, are you ill?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Wave after wave of sweetness enveloped him, choking, nauseating, stinging
- his eyes, extinguishing the fire within him, turning the lust to ashes. He
- too supported himself upon the rail, and his gaze fell below, to the
- bushes. Was it the moonlight, or were they, where they had been bare a few
- minutes before, now covered with great misty masses of lilacs?
- </p>
- <p>
- The perfume of the flowers came up to him breath on breath: he could see
- them clearly now.... White lilacs! An overwhelming panic swept over him, a
- sudden dread of his surrounding, of the silken figure of the woman before
- him. He must get away. He pushed her roughly aside, swung back the screen
- door, and clattered through the room and down the stair. He fumbled for a
- moment with a bolted door, and then was outside, free. Without hesitancy
- he fled into the night, the secretive shadows. He ran until he literally
- fell, with bursting lungs and shaking, powerless knees, upon a bank.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXVIII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE hotel was lost;
- the silence, the peace of nature, unbroken. A drowsy flutter of wings
- stilled in a hedge. The moon sailed behind a cloud that drooped low upon
- the earth, and great, slow drops of rain fell to a continuous and far
- reverberation. They struck coolly upon Anthony's face, pattered among the
- grass, dropped with minute explosions of dust upon the road. The shower
- passed, the cloud dissolved, and the crystal flood of light fell once more
- into the cup of the valley.
- </p>
- <p>
- It spread like a balm over Anthony: Hartmann, Mrs. Dallam, the weeping
- face of Mrs. Kuhn, were like painted figures in a distasteful act upon
- which he had turned his back, from which he had gone forth into the
- supreme spectacle of the spheres, the presence of Eliza Dreen. Every atom
- thrilled with the thought of her. “Oh, my very dear,” he whispered to the
- sleeping birds, the dead, white disk of the moon: “I will come back to
- you... good.”
- </p>
- <p>
- After the rain the night was like a damp, sweet veil upon his face; the
- few stars above him were blurred as though seen through tears; the horizon
- burned in a circle of flickering, ruddy light. He took up his way once
- more over the soft folds of the road; now, accustomed to the dark, he
- could distinguish the smooth pebbles by the way, separate, grey blades of
- grass. He walked buoyantly, tirelessly, weaving on the loom of the dim
- miles mingled visions of future and past, dominated by the serene presence
- of Eliza.
- </p>
- <p>
- He felt in a pocket the wallet containing his ticket to California and the
- generous sum added by his father. There must be no more delay in arriving
- at his western destination! His excursion with Hartmann had been a grave
- error; he saw it clearly now, one of those faults—so fatally easy
- for him to commit—which, if his life was to spell success, if he was
- to come finally into his heritage of joy, he must scrupulously avoid. In
- the future he would drive directly, safely, toward his goal; he would
- become part of that orderly pattern of life plotted in streets and staid
- occupations: at the end of day he would return to his small,
- carefully-tended garden to weed and water, and sit with Eliza on his
- portico—a respectable, an authentic, member of society. On Sunday
- morning they would go to the Episcopal Church, they would join the sober,
- festivally-garbed procession moving toward the faint thunder of the organ.
- And, at dinner, he would carve the roast. Thus, quietly, they would grow
- old, grey, together. They would have a number of children—all girls,
- he decided.
- </p>
- <p>
- Imperceptibly the morning was born about him, faint shadows grew under the
- hedges, the sweet, querulous note of a robin sounded from the sparkling
- sod. A wind stirred, as immaculate, as dewly fresh, as though it were the
- first breath blown upon a new world of virginal and lyric beauty. The
- molten gold of the sun welled out of the east and spilled over the wooded
- hills and meadows; the violet mists drawn over the swales and streams
- dissolved; Anthony met a boy driving cows to pasture.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXIX
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E rapidly overtook
- a bent and doggedly tramping figure; no common wanderer, he recognized, as
- he drew nearer. The others decent suit was eminently presentable, his felt
- hat brushed, his shoes comparatively new. He turned upon Anthony a
- countenance as expressionless, as darkly-stained, as a chipped and rusted
- effigy of iron; deep lines fell back across the dingy cheeks; his lipless
- mouth was, apparently, another such line; and his eyes, deeply sunk in the
- skull, were the eyes of a dead man. Yet they were not blind; they saw.
- </p>
- <p>
- He halted, and surveyed Anthony with a lowered, searching curiosity,
- clenching with a strained and surprising force the knob of a black stick.
- Anthony met his scrutiny with the salutation of youth and the road; but
- the other made no reply; his countenance was as blank as though no word
- had been spoken. Then a sudden flicker of hot light burned in the dull
- depths of his gaze, his worn face quivered with a swift malignancy, an
- energy of suspicion, of hatred, that touched Anthony's heart with a cold
- finger of fear.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What's your name?” he demanded, his entire being strained in an agony of
- attention.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony informed him with scrupulous exactitude.
- </p>
- <p>
- He seemed, for a moment, to doubt Anthony's identity; then the fire died,
- his eyes grew blank; his grasp relaxed on the stick, and, bent, dogged, he
- continued on his way.
- </p>
- <p>
- The repellent contraction of Anthony's heart expanded in a light and
- careless curiosity, youthful contempt mingled with the gayety of his
- morning mood, and he hastened his steps until he had again overtaken his
- inquisitor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's a good cane you've got,” he observed of the stout shaft and
- rounded head.
- </p>
- <p>
- Its owner grasped it by the lower end, and swung the head against his
- hand. “Lead,” he pronounced somberly. “It would crumble your skull like an
- egg.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Again fear stirred vaguely in Anthony: the entire absence of emotion in
- the sanguinary, the dull, matter-of-fact voice were inhuman, tainted with
- madness; the total detachment of those deliberate words had been
- appalling.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought,” he continued, “that you might have been Alfred Lukes, but
- you're too young.” As he pronounced that name his grasp tightened whitely
- about the lead knob. The conviction seized Anthony that it was fortunate
- he was not the individual in question.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You want Alfred?” he asked in an attempted jocularity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He murdered my boy,” the other answered simply. “Him and another. They
- asked James into a boat to go fishing. Boys will always go fishing; he was
- only eleven.” He stopped in the middle of the road, and produced a small
- package folded in oiled silk. It proved to be a derringer, of an
- old-fashioned model, with two, short black barrels, one atop the other.
- “Loaded,” he said, “to put against his face.” Then he rewrapped the weapon
- and returned it to its place of concealment. “I've been looking for Alfred
- Lukes for nineteen years,” he recommenced his dogged progress, “in trains
- and saloons and stores. Nineteen years ago James was found in the river.”
- He was silent for a moment, then, “One eye was torn out,” he added in his
- weary voice. He turned his blank and terrible gaze upon Anthony, upon the
- sparkling morning. The derringer dragged slightly upon his coat, the stick—that
- stick which could crush a skull like an egg—made its trailing
- signature in the dust. A mingled loathing and pity took possession of
- Anthony; he recoiled from the corroding and secret horror of that nineteen
- year Odyssey of a torturing and impotent spirit of revenge, from the
- infinite black tide that had swept over the stooping figure at his side,
- the pitiless memory that had destroyed its sanity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was on Sunday; James had on his nice blue suit and a new, red silk
- necktie... they found it knotted about his throat... as tight as a big man
- could make it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A sudden impulse overcame Anthony to run, to leave far behind him this
- sinister, animated speck on the sunny road, under the dusty branches
- burdened with ripening fruit, thrilling with the bubbling notes of birds.
- But, as his gaze fell again upon his companion, he saw only an old man,
- gaunt with suffering, hurrying toward the noon. A deep, cleansing
- compassion vanquished the dread, and, spontaneously, he spoke of his own
- lighter affairs, of California, his destination.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have never been west of Chicago,” the other interposed. “I hadn't the
- money; the walking is dreadfully hard; the sun on those plains hurt my
- head. Do you suppose James Lukes is in California?” he asked, pausing
- momentarily in his rapid shamble.
- </p>
- <p>
- In his careless, youthful egotism, Anthony ignored the query. He wondered
- aloud where he could board a through train to the West.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Have you got your ticket?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony tapped complacently upon the pocket that held the wallet. They
- were walking now through a wood that flowed to the rim of the road, and a
- turn hid either vista. A stream ran through the rank greenery of the
- bottom, crossed by a bridge of loosely bolted planks. Anthony paused,
- intent upon the brown, sliding water beneath him, the minute minnows
- balancing against the stream. In that closed place of broken light the
- cool stillness was profound. The stream fled past its weeds without a
- gurgle, the leaves hung motionless, as though they had been stamped from
- metal... he might have been, with his companion, within a charmed circle
- of everlasting tranquillity. Then:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wonder if Alfred Lukes is in California?” the latter resumed; “I've
- never got there, the fare... too expensive, the sun hurt my head.” Anthony
- lit a Dulcina, and expelled a cloud of blue smoke that rose compactly in
- the motionless air. “California,” he repeated, sunk in thought; “I wonder—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “California's a big place,” Anthony hazarded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If he was there I'd find him.” Then, in his mechanical and dispassionate
- voice, he cursed Alfred Lukes with the utmost foulness. One heated word,
- the slightest elevation of his even tones, would have made the performance
- human, intelligent, but the deadly monotony, the impersonal accents, were
- as harrowing as though a mummy had ground out of its shrunken and embalmed
- interior a recital of prehistoric hatred and wrong; it resembled a
- phonograph record of incalculable depravity. He stood beyond the bridge,
- resting upon his stick, with his unmoved face turned toward Anthony. His
- hat cast a deep shade over his eyes; but, below, in a wanton patch of
- sunlight, his lipless mouth trembled greyly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “California,” he repeated still again, then, “I must get there.” He
- shifted his hand lower upon the stick, and moved nearer to Anthony by a
- step; the patch of sunlight shifted up to his hat and fled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You could try the freight cars,” Anthony suggested. The stooping,
- neatly-brushed figure, the stony countenance, had become, in an intangible
- manner, menacing, obscurely dangerous. The fingers were drawn like a claw
- about the club. Then the arm relaxed, he seemed to shrink into hopeless
- resignation. Beyond the leafy arcade Anthony could now see the countryside
- spread out in sunny fields, fleecy, white clouds shifting in the sea of
- blue.... Suddenly a great flame shot up before his eyes, a stunning shock
- fell upon his head, and the flame went out in a whirling darkness that
- swept like a black sea over a continent of intolerable pain. He heard, as
- if from an immense distance, a thin voice pronounce the single word,
- “California.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0030" id="link2H_4_0030"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXX
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> GRIPPING wave of
- nausea recalled Anthony to consciousness; a deathly sickness spreading
- from the pit of his stomach through his entire being; his prostrate head,
- seeming stripped of its skull, was tortured by the dragging fronds of the
- ferns among which he lay. He sat up dizzily. Through the leafy opening the
- fleeting forms of the clouds shifted over the sunny hills. The stream
- slipped silently through the grass. He staggered down the slight incline,
- and, falling forward upon the ground, let the water flow over his
- throbbing head. The cool shock revived him, and he washed away a dark,
- clotted film from his forehead and cheek.
- </p>
- <p>
- His wallet, with his ticket to California and store of money were gone. He
- started in instant, unsteady pursuit of the man who had struck him down
- and robbed him. But, at the edge of the wood he paused—how long had
- he lain among the ferns? the sun was now high over his head, the morning
- lapsed, the other might have had three, four hours' start. He might now be
- entrained, bound for California, searching for Alfred Lukes. A sudden
- weakness forced him to sit at the roadside; he lost consciousness again
- for a moment. Then, summoning his youth, his vitality, he rose, and walked
- unsteadily in search of assistance.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had proceeded an intolerable mile, wiping away a thin trickle of blood
- that persisted in crawling into his eye, when he saw a low roof amid a
- tangle of greenery. He stopped with a sobbing breath of relief. He was
- delirious, he thought, for peering at him through the leaves he saw the
- countenance and beautiful, bare body of a child, as dark and tense as
- bronze. A cloud of black hair overhung a face vivid as a flower; her
- crimson lips trembled; then, with a startled cry, the figure vanished.
- </p>
- <p>
- He made his way with difficulty over a short path, overgrown with vines
- and twisted branches, and came abruptly upon a low, white house and wide,
- opened door. An aged and shapeless woman sat on a chair without a back,
- cutting green beans into a bright tin basin. When she saw him she dropped
- the pan with a clatter, and an unfamiliar exclamation of surprise.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I've been hurt,” Anthony explained; “knocked silly and robbed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Gina!” she called excitedly; “Dio mio! <i>Gina!</i>” A young woman, large
- and loosely molded, with a lusty baby clasped to her bared breast,
- appeared in the doorway. When she saw Anthony she dropped the baby into
- the elder's arms. “Poverino!” she cried; “come in the house, little
- mister.” She caught him by the arm, almost lifting him over the doorstep
- into a cool, dark interior. He had a brief glimpse of drying vegetables
- strung from the ceiling, of a waxen image of the virgin in faded pink silk
- finery against the wall; then, with closed eyes, he relaxed into the
- charge of soothing and skilled fingers. His head rested on a maternal arm
- while a soft bandage was fixed about his forehead.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ecco!” she ejaculated, her ministration successful. She led him to a rude
- couch upon the floor, and gently insisted upon his lying down. He
- attempted to thank her, but she laid her large, capable hand over his
- mouth, and he sank into an exhausted, semi-conscious rest. Once she bent
- over him, dampening the bandage, once he saw, against the light of the
- door, the shape, slim and beautiful as an angel, of the child. Outside a
- low, liquid murmur of voices continued without a break, strange and
- quieting.
- </p>
- <p>
- He slept, and woke up refreshed, strengthened. The dusk had thickened in
- the room, the strings of vegetables were lost in the shadows, a dim oil
- lamp cast a feeble glow on rude walls. He lay motionless for a few,
- delightful seconds, folded in absolute peace, beneficent quietude. The
- amazing idea struck him that, perhaps, he had died, and that this was the
- eternal tranquillity of the hymn books, and he started vigorously to his
- feet in an absurd panic. The homely figure of a man entering dispelled the
- illusion—he was a commonplace Italian, one of the multitude who
- labored in the ditches of the country, stood aside in droves from the
- tracks as trains whirled past.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What hit your head?” he asked, his mobile face displaying sympathetic
- interest, concern.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A leaded stick,” Anthony explained. “I was knocked out, robbed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Birbanti!” he laid a heavy hand upon Anthony's shoulder. “You feel better
- now, gia?” The latter, confused by such open attention, shook the hand
- from its friendly grip. “He was crazy,” he awkwardly explained; “and
- looking for a man who had killed his son; he wanted to get to California
- and I told him I had a ticket west.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The laborer led Anthony to a room where a rude table was spread with
- homely fare—a great, rough loaf of bread, a deep bowl of steaming,
- green soup, flakey white cheese, and a bottle of purple wine. An open door
- faced the western sky, and the room was filled with the warm afterglow; it
- hung like a shining veil over the man, the still, maternal countenance of
- the woman, like an aureole about the baby now sleeping against her breast,
- and graced the russet countenance of an aged peasant. The child that
- Anthony had seen first, now in a scant white slip, seemed dipped in the
- gold of dreams.
- </p>
- <p>
- As he consumed the savory soup, the creamy cheese and wine, the scene
- impressed him as strangely significant, familiar. He dismissed an idle
- effort of memory in order to consider the unfortunate aspect assumed by
- his immediate affairs. Concerning one thing he was determined—he
- would ask his father to assist him no further toward his western
- destination. He must himself pay for the initial error, together with all
- its consequences, of having followed Hartmann: California was his object,
- he would not write to Ellerton until his westward progress was once more
- assured.
- </p>
- <p>
- Two courses were open to him—he could “beat” his way, getting meals
- when and how he was able, riding, when possible, on freight cars, doing
- casual jobs on the way. That he dismissed in favor of a second, which in
- the end, he judged, would prove more speedy. He would make his way to the
- nearest city, find employment in a public or private garage as chauffeur
- or mechanic, and, in a month at most, have the money necessary for the
- continuation of his journey.
- </p>
- <p>
- The household conversed vigorously in their native idiom, giving his
- thoughts full freedom. The glow in the west faded, sank from the room,
- but, suddenly, he recognized the familiar quality of his surroundings. It
- resembled a picture of the Holy Family on the wall of his mother's room;
- the bare interior was the same, the rugged features of Joseph the
- carpenter, the brooding beauty of Mary. He almost laughed aloud at the
- absurd comparison of the exalted scene of Christ's infancy with this
- commonplace but kindly group, the laborer with soiled and callous hands
- and winestained mouth, the material young woman with the string of cheap
- blue beads.
- </p>
- <p>
- The meal at an end the chairs were pushed back and the old woman noisily
- assembled the dishes. Anthony's head throbbed and burned. In passing, the
- mother's fingers rested upon his brow. “Not too hot,” she nodded
- contentedly.
- </p>
- <p>
- A consultation followed. Anthony might remain there for the night; or, if
- he insisted, he might drive into the city with “Nono,” who left in a few
- hours with a wagonload of greens for the morning market. He chose the
- latter, with a clumsy expression of gratitude, impatient to resume active
- efforts in his rehabilitation in his own mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Niente!” they disclaimed in chorus.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0031" id="link2H_4_0031"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXXI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E fell into an
- instant slumber on the hospitable heap in the corner, and was awakened
- while it was still dark. In the flicker of the oil lamp the old man's face
- swam vaguely against the night. Without the wagon was loaded, a drooping
- horse insecurely harnessed into patched shafts. The world was a still
- space of blue gloom, of indefinite forms suspended in the hush of color,
- sound; it seemed to be spun out of shadows like cobwebs, out of vapors,
- scents. A pale, hectic glow on the horizon marked the city. They ambled
- noiselessly, slowly, forward, under the vague foliage of trees. There was
- a glint of light in a passing window, the clatter of milk pails; a rooster
- crowed, thin and clear and triumphant; on a grassy slope by the road they
- saw a smoldering fire, recumbent forms.
- </p>
- <p>
- They entered the soiled and ragged outskirts of the city—isolated
- ranks of hideous, boxlike dwellings amid raw stretches of clay, rank
- undergrowth. The horse's hoofs rang on a bricked pave, and the city surged
- about them. Overhead the elevated tracks made a confused, black tracing
- rippling with the red and white and green fire of signals. A gigantic
- truck, drawn by plunging horses whose armored hoofs were ringed in pale
- flame, passed with a shattering uproar of its metallic load. A train
- thundered above with a dolorous wail, showering a lurid trail of sparks
- into the sky, out of which a thick soot sifted down upon the streets. On
- either hand the blank walls of warehouses shut in the pavements deserted
- save for a woman's occasional, chalky countenance in the frosty area of
- the arc lights, or a drunkard lurching laboriously over the gutters. The
- feverish alarm of firebells sounded from a distant quarter. A heavy odor
- of stagnant oil, the fetid smoke of flaring chimneys, settled over
- Anthony, and gratefully he recalled the pastoral peace of the house he had
- left—the house hidden in its tangled verdure amid the scented space
- of the countryside.
- </p>
- <p>
- They stopped finally before a shed open upon the street, where
- bluish-orange flames, magnified by tin reflectors, illuminated busy
- groups. Silvery fish with exposed carmine entrails were ranged in rows;
- the crisp, green spoil of the countryside was spread in the stalls—the
- silken stalks of early onions, the creamy pink of carrots, wine-red beets;
- rosy potatoes were heaped by cool, crusty cantaloupe, the vert pods of
- peas, silvery spinach and waxy, purple eggplant. Over all hung the
- delicate aroma of crushed mint, the faint, sweet tang of scarlet
- strawberries, the spicy fragrance of simple flowers—of cinnamon
- pinks and heliotrope and clover.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony assisted the other to transfer his load to part of a stall
- presided over by a woman with bare, powerful elbows, shouting in a
- boisterous voice in perfect equality with her masculine neighbors.
- </p>
- <p>
- High above the dawn flushed the sky; the flares dimmed from a source of
- light to mere colored fans, and were extinguished. Early buyers arrived at
- the market with baskets and pushcarts.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony remained at the old man's side; it was too early to start in
- search of work; and, at his companion's invitation, he shared the latter's
- breakfast of cheese and bread, with a stoup of the bitter wine. As the
- market became crowded, in the stress of competition, bargaining, the
- vendor forgot Anthony's presence; and with a deep breath of determination,
- he started in search of employment; he again faced the West.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had no difficulty in discovering the section of the city given over to
- the automobile industry, a broad, asphalt way with glittering show
- windows, serried ranks of cars, by either curb. There was, however, no
- work to be obtained here; a single offer would scarcely pay for his
- maintenance; in its potentialities California was the merest blur upon the
- future. Then for a second and more lucrative position he lacked the
- necessary papers. Midday found him without a prospect of employment. He
- had almost two dollars in change that had remained intact; and, lunching
- sparingly, he continued his inquiries.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was late when he found himself before a sign that proclaimed the
- ability within to secure positions for competent chauffeurs. And,
- influenced largely by the chairs which he saw ranged against the wall, he
- entered and registered. The fee for registration was a dollar, and that
- left him with scant supplies as he took a place between three other men
- awaiting skeptically the positions which they had been assured they might
- confidently expect. With a casual nod to Anthony, a small man with watery
- blue eyes, clad in a worn and greasy livery, continued a dissertation on
- methods of making money additional to that of mere salary, of agreements
- with tiremen, repairs necessary and otherwise, the proper manner in which
- to bring a car's life quickly and gracefully to a close, in order, he
- added slyly to the indifferent clerk, to encourage the trade.
- </p>
- <p>
- The afternoon wasted slowly but surely to a close; no one entered and the
- three rose with weary oaths and left in search of a convenient saloon.
- They waved to Anthony to follow them, but he silently declined.
- </p>
- <p>
- A profound depression settled over him, a sense of impotence, of failure.
- His wounded head fretted him with frequent hot pains. He was enveloped by
- a sense of desolating loneliness which he endeavored to dispel with the
- thought of Eliza; but she remained as far, as faintly sweet, as the moon
- of a spring night. It seemed incredible that she had once been in his
- arms; surely he had dreamed her voice—such voices couldn't exist in
- reality—telling him that she loved him. Her letter had gone with his
- wallet, his ticket to California. He had not written her... she would be
- unable to penetrate the reason for his silence, his shame for blundering
- into such a blind way, his lack of anything reassuring to tell her. He
- could not write until his feet were once more firmly planted upon the only
- path that led to success, to happiness, to her.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0032" id="link2H_4_0032"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXXII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE clock on the
- wall above the clerk's head indicated half past five, and Anthony,
- relinquishing hope for the day, rose. Now he regretted the apparently
- fruitless expenditure of a dollar. “Leave an address?” the clerk inquired
- mechanically. “Office open at nine.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll be back,” Anthony told him. He turned, and collided with a man
- entering suddenly from the street. He was past middle age, with a long,
- pallid countenance, drooping snuff-colored mustache, a preoccupied gaze
- behind bluish glasses, and was clad in correct brown linen, but wore an
- incongruously battered and worn soft hat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I want a man to drive my car,” he announced abruptly. “I don't
- particularly care for a highly expert individual, but his habits—”
- he broke off, and muttered, “superficial adjustment to environment—popular
- conception of acquired characteristics.” Then, “must be moderate,” he
- ended unexpectedly.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony lingered, while the clerk assured the other that several highly
- desirable individuals were available. “In fact,” he told him, “one left
- the office only a few minutes ago; I will have him call upon you in the
- morning.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What's this?” he replied, indicating Anthony; “is he a chauffeur?” The
- clerk nodded. “But,” he added, “the man I refer to is older, more
- experienced... sure to satisfy you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What references have you?” the prospective employer demanded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “None,” Anthony answered directly. The clerk dismissed his chances with a
- gesture.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What experience?” the other persisted. “Driving on and off for four or
- five years, and I am a fair mechanic.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fair only?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's all, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The older man drew nearer to Anthony, scrutinizing him with a kindly
- severity. “What's the matter with your head?” he demanded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was knocked down and robbed on a country road.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Lose much?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Everything.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Drinking?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Familiar with prehistoric geological strata?” Anthony admitted that he
- was not.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I had hoped,” the other murmured, “to get a driver who could assist me
- with my indices.” He renewed his close inspection, then, “Elemental,” he
- pronounced suddenly; “I'll take you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Five dollars, please,” interpolated the clerk. Outside his new employer
- took Anthony by the shoulder, glancing over his suit. “You can get your
- things, and then go out to my house.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can go sooner than that,” Anthony corrected him. “I have no things.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothing but those clothes! Why... they will hardly do, will they? You
- must get something, take it out of your salary. But, hang it, a man must
- have a change of clothes! You must allow me—you are only a boy. I'll
- come along; no—impossible.” He took a long wallet from his pocket
- and placed it in Anthony's hands. “I don't know what such things cost,” he
- said. “I think there's enough; get what you need. I must be off...
- Mousterian deposits. Customs House.” Before Anthony could reply he had
- started away in a long, quick stride, but he stopped short. “My address,”
- he cried, “clean forgot.” He gave Anthony a street and number.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Rufus Hardinge,” he called, hurrying away.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony stood gazing in incredulous surprise at the polished, brown wallet
- in his hand. He turned to hurry after the other, to protest, but already
- he was out of sight. Anthony slipped the wallet in his pocket, and, his
- head in a whirl, walked slowly over the street until he found himself
- opposite a large retail clothing establishment. After a brief hesitation
- he entered, pausing to glance hastily at his resources. In the leather
- pocket which contained the paper money he saw a comfortable number of
- crisp yellow bills; the rest of the space was taken up by bulky and wholly
- unintelligible notes.
- </p>
- <p>
- He purchased a serviceable suit, stout shoes, a cap, and, after a short
- consideration, two flannel shirts. If this were not satisfactory, he
- concluded, he could pay with a portion of his salary. The slip of the
- total amount, which he carefully folded, registered thirty-one dollars and
- seventy cents.
- </p>
- <p>
- At a small tobacco shop, where he drew upon his own rapidly diminishing
- capital, he discovered from the proprietor that it would be necessary to
- take a suburban car to the address furnished him. He rolled rapidly
- between rows of small, identical, orderly brick dwellings; on each shallow
- portico a door exhibited an obviously meretricious graining; dingy or
- garish curtains draped the single lower windows; the tin eaves were
- continuous, unvaried, monotonous. Occasionally a greengrocer's display
- broke the monotony of the vitreous way, a rare saloon or drugstore held
- the corners. Farther on the street suffered a decline, the line of
- dwellings was broken by patches of bedraggled gardens, set with the broken
- fragments of stone ornaments; small frame structures, streaked by the
- weather and blistered remnants of paint, alternated with stables, stores
- heaped with the sorry miscellanies of meager, disrupted households.
- Imperceptibly green spaces opened, foliage fluttered in the orange light
- of the declining sun; through an opening in the habited wall he caught
- sight of a glimmering stream, cows wandering against a hill.
- </p>
- <p>
- He left the car finally at a lane where the houses, set back solidly in
- smooth, opulent lawns, were somberly comfortable, reserved. The place he
- sought, a four-square ugly dwelling faced with a tower, the woodwork
- painted mustard yellow, was surrounded by gigantic tulip poplars. At the
- front a cement basin caught the spray from a cornucopia held aloft by
- sportive cherubs balanced precariously on the tails of reversed dolphins,
- circled by a tan-bark path to the entrance and a broad side porch. He was
- about to ring the bell when a high, young voice summoned him to the
- latter. There he discovered a girl with a mass of coppery hair, loosely
- tied and streaming over her shoulder, in a coffee-colored wicker chair.
- She was dressed in white, without ornaments, and wore pale yellow silk
- stockings. A yellow paper book, with a title in French, was spread upon
- her lap; and, gravely sitting at her side, was a large terrier with a
- shaggy yellow coat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose,” she said without preliminary, “that you are the person who
- took father's money. It was really unexpected of you to appear with <i>any</i>
- of it. Give me the wallet,” she demanded, without allowing him opportunity
- for a reply.
- </p>
- <p>
- He gave it to her without comment, a humorous light rising in his clear
- gaze. “I warn you,” she continued, “I know every penny that was in it. I
- always give him a fixed amount when he goes out.” She emptied the money
- into her lap, and counted it industriously: at the end she wrinkled her
- brow.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Here is a note of what I spent,” he informed her, tendering her the slip
- from the store. She scanned it closely. “That's not unreasonable,” she
- admitted finally, palpably disappointed that no villainous discrepancy had
- been revealed; “and it adds up all right.” Then, with an assumption of
- business despatch, “It must come out of your salary, of course; father is
- frightfully impractical.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course,” he assented solemnly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your references—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I haven't any.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She made an impatient gesture of dismay; the terrier rose and surveyed him
- with a low growl. “He promised me that he would do the thing properly,
- that I positively need not go. What experience have you had?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He told her briefly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dreadfully unsatisfactory,” she commented, “and you are oceans too young.
- But... we will try you for one week; I can't promise any more. Would you
- be willing to help a little in the house—opening boxes, unwrapping
- bones—?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Certainly,” he assured her cheerfully, “any little thing I can do....”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The car's at the bottom of the garden, it has to be brought around by the
- side street. There's a room overhead, and a bell from the house. You must
- come up very quickly if, in the night, it rings three times, for that,”
- she informed him, “will mean burglars. My father and I are quite alone
- here with two women. I can't think of anything else now.” The terrier
- moved closer to Anthony, sniffing at his shoes, then raised his golden
- eyes and subjected him to a lengthy, thoughtful scrutiny. “That is Thomas
- Huxley,” she informed him; “he is a perfectly wonderful investigator, and
- detests all sentimentality. You will come up to the kitchen for meals,”
- she called, as Anthony turned to descend the lawn; “the bell will ring for
- your dinner.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0033" id="link2H_4_0033"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXXIII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E found the
- automobile in the semi-gloom of a closed carriage house. On the right,
- separated by a partition, were three loose stalls, apparently long
- unoccupied; their ornamental fringe of straw had moldered, and dank, grey
- heaps of feed lay in the troughs. A ladder fixed vertically against a wall
- disappeared into cobwebby shadows above; and mounting, Anthony found the
- room to which he had been directed. It, too, was partitioned from the
- great, bare space of the hay-loft; the musty smell of old hay and heated
- wood hung dusty, heavy, about the corners, where sounded the faint squeaks
- of scattering mice. The space which he was to occupy had been rigorously
- swept and aired; print curtains hung at the small dormer window that
- overlooked the lawn, while, above the washstand, was the bell which, he
- had been warned, would appraise him of the possible presence of burglars
- above. A bright metal clock ticked noisily on a deal bureau, and, on a
- table beside a pitcher and glass, two books had been arranged with precise
- disarray; they proved, upon investigation, to be a volume of the Edib.
- Rev. LXIX, and a bound collection of the proceedings of the Linean
- Society.
- </p>
- <p>
- He saw by the noisy clock that it was nearly seven, and, hastily washing,
- responded immediately to the summons of the bell. A small, covered porch
- framed the kitchen door, where he entered to find a long room dimly lit,
- and a dinner set at the end of a table. A bulky woman with a flushed
- countenance and massive ankles in white cotton stockings set before him
- half a broiled chicken, an artichoke with a bowl of yellow sauce, and a
- silver jug of milk.
- </p>
- <p>
- “God knows it's a queer meal to put to a hearty young lad,” she observed;
- “but it's all was ordered. There's not a pitata in the house,” she added
- in palpable disgust. A younger woman in a frilled apron appeared from
- within, carrying a tray of used dishes. She had a trim figure, and a broad
- face glowing with rude vitality, which, with an assumption of disdain, she
- turned upon Anthony. “I'd never trust myself with him in the machine,” she
- observed to the older woman, “and him not more than a child.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Be holding your impudent clatter,” the other commanded, “you're not
- required to go out with him at all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Hardinge says, will you see him in the library when you have done,”
- the former shot at Anthony over a shapely shoulder. “You can walk through
- the dining room to where he is beyond.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The library was a somber chamber: its long windows were draped with stiff
- folds of green velvet, its walls occupied by high bookcases with leaded
- glass doors and ornamental Gothic points under the ceiling. A massive desk
- was piled with papers, pamphlets, printed reports, comparative tables of
- figures, an hundred and one huddled details; the table beneath a
- glittering crystal chandelier was hardly better; even the floor was
- stacked with books about the chair where Anthony found his employer. The
- latter looked up absently from a printed sheet as Anthony entered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Positively,” he pronounced, “there are not enough dominants to secure
- Mendel's position.” His expression was profoundly disturbed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, sir,” Anthony replied non-committally. “The consequences of that,”
- the other continued, “are beyond prediction.” Silence descended upon him;
- his fixed gaze seemed to be contemplating some unexpected catastrophe,
- some grave peril, opened before him in the still chamber. “I am at a
- temporary loss!” he ejaculated suddenly; “we are all at a loss... unless
- my experiments in pure descent warrant—” Suddenly he became aware of
- Anthony's presence. “Oh!” he said pleasantly; “glad you got fixed up. Say
- nothing more to Annot—it's all nonsense, taking it out of your
- salary. That's what I wanted to see you for,” he added; “what salary do
- you require? what did you get at your last place?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony made a swift calculation of the distance to California, the
- probable cost of carriage. “I should like seventy-five,” he pronounced
- finally. His conscience suddenly and uncomfortably awoke in the presence
- of the other's unquestioning generosity. “Perhaps I'd better tell you that
- I don't intend to stay here long.... I am anxious to get to California.”
- </p>
- <p>
- But Rufus Hardinge had already forgotten him. “Seventy-five,” he had
- murmured, with a satisfied nod, and once more concentrated his attention
- upon the sheet in his hand. As Anthony returned through the dining room he
- found Annot Hardinge arranging a spray of scarlet verbena in a glass vase.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Has father spoken to you about the salary you are to get?” she asked. He
- paused, cap in hand. “I told him that you were positively not to get above
- eighty.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I told him seventy-five. He seemed contented.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He would have been contented if you had said seven hundred and fifty.”
- Then, to discountenance any criticism of her father's intelligence, she
- added: “He is a very famous biologist, you know. The people about here
- don't understand those things, but in London, in Paris, in Berlin, he is
- easily one of the greatest men alive. He is carrying the Mendelian theory
- to its absolute, logical conclusion.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He said something about that to me,” Anthony commented; “it seemed to
- upset him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A cloud appeared upon her countenance; then, coldly, “That will do,” she
- told him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Once more in the informal garage he lit the gas jet on either wall, and,
- in the bubbling, watery light, found the automobile caked with mud and
- grease, the tires flat, the wires charred and the cylinders coated with
- carbon. A pair of old canvas trousers were hanging from a nail, and,
- donning them and connecting a length of hose to a convenient faucet, he
- began the task of putting the machine in order. It was past eleven when he
- finished for the night, and mounting with cramped and stiffened muscles to
- his room, he fell into immediate slumber.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0034" id="link2H_4_0034"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXXIV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>N the following
- morning he wrote a brief, reassuring note to his father; then, over
- another page, hesitated with poised pen. “Dear Eliza,” he finally began,
- then once more fell into indecision. “I wish I were back on the
- Wingo-hocking with you,” he embarked. “That was splendid, having you in
- the canoe, with no one else; the whole world seemed empty except for you
- and me. It's no joke of an emptiness without you.
- </p>
- <p>
- I have been delayed in reaching California, but I'll soon be out there
- now, working like thunder for our wedding.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mostly I can't realize it, it's too good to be true—you seem like a
- thing I dreamed about, in a dream all full of moonlight and white flowers.
- It's funny but I smell lilacs, you know like you picked, everywhere. Last
- night, cleaning a car just soaked in dirt and greasy smells, that perfume
- came out of nothing, and hung about so real that it hurt me. And all the
- time I kept thinking that you were standing beside me and smiling. I knew
- better, but I had to look more than once.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Love's different from what I thought it would be; I thought it would be
- all happy, but it's not that, it's blamed serious. I am always flinching
- from blows that might fall on you, do you see? Before I went away I saw a
- man kiss a woman, and they both seemed scared; I understand that now—they
- loved each other.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He broke off and gazed out the narrow window over the feathery tops of
- maples, the symmetrical, bronze tops of a clump of pines. The odor of
- lilacs came to him illusively; he was certain that Eliza was standing at
- his shoulder; he could hear a silken whisper, feel an intangible thrill of
- warmth. He turned sharply, and faced the empty room, the bright,
- stentorious clock, the table with the pitcher and glass and serious
- volumes. “Hell!” he exclaimed in angry remonstrance at his credulity.
- Still shaken by the reality of the impression he wondered if he were
- growing crazy? The bell above the washstand rang sharply, and, putting the
- incomplete letter in a drawer, he proceeded over the tanbark path that led
- to the house.
- </p>
- <p>
- Annot Hardinge beckoned to him from the porch, and, turning, he passed a
- conservatory built against the side of the dwelling, where he saw small,
- identical plants ranged in mathematical rows.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is your name?” she demanded abruptly, as he stopped before her.
- “Anthony,” he told her.
- </p>
- <p>
- She was dressed in apricot muslin, with a long necklace of alternate
- carved gold and amber beads, dependent amber earrings, and a flapping
- white hat with broad, yellow ribbands that streamed downward with her
- hair. In one hand she held a pair of crumpled white gloves and a soft gold
- mesh bag.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You may bring around the car... Anthony,” she directed. “I want to go
- into town.”
- </p>
- <p>
- In the heart of the shopping district they moved slowly in an unbroken
- procession of motor landaulets, open cars and private hansoms, a
- glittering, colorful procession winding through the glittering, colorful
- cavern of the shop windows. The sidewalks were thronged with women,
- brilliant in lace and dyed feathers and jewels, the thin, sustained babble
- of trivial voices mingled with the heavy, coiling odors of costly
- perfumes.
- </p>
- <p>
- When a small heap of bundles had been accumulated a rebellious expression
- clouded An-not Hardinge's countenance. “Stop at that confectioner's,” she
- directed, indicating a window filled with candies scattered in a creamy
- tide, bister, pale mauve, and citrine, over fluted, delicately green
- satin, against a golden mass of molasses bars. She soon emerged, with a
- package tied in silver cord, and paused upon the curb. “I want to go
- out... out, into the heart of the country,” she proclaimed; “this crowd,
- these tinsel women, make me ill. Drive until I tell you to stop... away
- from everything.”
- </p>
- <p>
- When they had left the tangle of paved streets, the innumerable stone
- façades, she directed their course into a ravine whose steep sides were
- covered with pines, at the bottom of which a stream foamed whitely over
- rocky ledges. Beyond, they rose to an upland, where open, undulating hills
- burned in the blue flame of noon; at their back a trail of dust resettled
- upon the road, before them a glistening flock of peafowl scattered with
- harsh, threatening cries. By a gnarled apple tree, whose ripening June
- apples overhung the road, she called, “stop!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The motor halted in the spicy, dappled shadow of the tree; at one side a
- cornfield spread its silken, green tapestry; on the other a pasture was
- empty, close-cropped, rising to a coronal of towering chestnuts. The road,
- in either direction, was deserted.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony heard a sigh of contentment at his back: relaxed from the tension
- of driving he removed his cap, and, with crossed legs, contemplated the
- sylvan quiet. He watched a flock of blackbirds wheeling above the apple
- tree, and decided that they had been within easy shot.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look over your head!” she cried suddenly; “what gorgeous apples.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He rose, and, measuring the distance in a swift glance, jumped, and caught
- hold of a limb, by means of which he drew himself up into the tree. He
- mounted rapidly, filling his cap with crimson apples; when his pockets
- were full he paused. Down through the screen of leaves he could see her
- upturned countenance, framed in the broad, white hat; her expression was
- severely impersonal; yet, viewed from that informal angle, she did not
- appear displeased. And, when he had descended, she picked critically among
- the store he offered. She rolled back the gloves upon her wrists, and bit
- largely, with youthful gusto. On the road, after a moment's hesitation,
- Anthony embarked upon the consumption of the remainder. He strolled a
- short distance from the car, and found a seat upon a low stone-wall.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0035" id="link2H_4_0035"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXXV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>OON, he saw, she
- too left the car, and passed him, apparently ignorant of his presence.
- But, upon her return, she stopped, and indicated with her foot some
- feathery plants growing in a ditch by the road. “Horsetails,” she
- declared; “they are Paleozoic... millions of years old.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They look fresh and green still,” he observed. She glanced at him coldly,
- but his expression was entirely serious. “I mean the species of course.
- Father has fossils of the Devonian period... they were trees then.” She
- chose a place upon the wall, ten feet or more from him, and sat with
- insolent self-possession, whistling an inconsequential tune. There was
- absolutely no pose about her, he decided; she possessed a masculine
- carelessness in regard to him. She leaned back, propped upon her arms, and
- the frank, flowing line of her full young body was like the June day in
- its uncorseted freedom and beauty.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you will get that package from the confectioner's—” she
- suggested finally. She unfolded the paper, and exposed a row of small
- cakes, which she divided rigorously in two; rewrapping one division she
- held it out toward him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, no,” he protested seriously. “I'm not hungry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's past two,” she informed him, “and we can't possibly be back in time
- for luncheon. I'd rather not hold this out any longer.” He relieved her
- without further words. “Two brioche and two babas,” she enumerated. He
- resumed his place, and then consumed the cakes without further speech.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The study of biology,” she informed him later, with a gravity appropriate
- to the subject, “makes a great many small distinctions seem absurd. When
- you get accustomed to thinking in races, and in millions of years, the
- things your friends fuss about seem absurd. And so, if you like, why,
- smoke.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was his constant plight that, between the formal restrictions of his
- position, and the vigorous novelty of her speech, Anthony was constantly
- at a loss. “Perhaps,” he replied inanely; “I know nothing about those
- things.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She flashed over him a candid, amber gaze that singularly resembled her
- father's. “You are not at all acquisitive,” she informed him; “and it's
- perfectly evident that you are the poorest sort of chauffeur. You drive
- very nicely,” she continued with severe justice. “One could trust you in a
- crisis; but it is little things that make a chauffeur, and in the little
- things,” she paused to indicate a globe of cigarette smoke that instantly
- dissolved, “you are like—that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He moodily acknowledged to himself the truth of her observation, but such
- acumen he considered entirely unnecessary in one so young; he did not
- think it becoming. He contrasted her, greatly to her detriment, with the
- elusive charm of Eliza Dreen; the girl before him was too vivid, too
- secure; he felt instinctively that she was entirely free from the bonds,
- the conventions, that held the majority of girls within recognized,
- convenient limits. Her liberty of mind upset a balance to which both
- heredity and experience had accustomed him. The entire absence of a
- tacitly recognized masculine superiority subconsciously made him uneasy,
- and he took refuge in imponderable silence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Besides,” she continued airily, “you are too physically normal to think,
- all normal people are stupid.... You are like one of those wood creatures
- in the classic pastorals.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A faint grin overspread Anthony's countenance; among so many
- unintelligible words he had regained his poise—this was the usual,
- the familiar feminine chatter, endless, inconsequential, by means of which
- all girls presented the hopeless tangle of their thoughts and emotions;
- its tone had deceived him only at the beginning.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the stillness which followed other blackbirds, equally within shot,
- winged over the apple tree; the shadow of the boughs crept farther and
- farther down the road. She rose vigorously. “I must get back,” she
- announced. She remained silent during the return, but Anthony, with the
- sense of direction cultivated during countless days in the fields and
- swales, found the way without hesitation.
- </p>
- <p>
- When she left the car he slowly backed and circled to the carriage house.
- As he splashed body and wheels with water, polished the metal, dried and
- dusted the cushions, the crisp, cool voice of Annot Hardinge rang in his
- ears. He divined something of her isolated existence, her devotion to the
- absorbed, kindly man who was her father, and speculated upon her matured
- youth. She recalled his sister Ellie, for whose inflexible integrity he
- cherished a deep-seated admiration; but both left him cold before the
- poignant tenderness of Eliza... Eliza, the unforgettable, who loved him.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0036" id="link2H_4_0036"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXXVI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>FTER an
- unsubstantial dinner of grilled sweetbreads and mushrooms, and a frozen
- pudding, he continued his interrupted letter: “But there isn't any use in
- my trying to write my love in words; it won't go into words, even inside
- of me I can't explain it—it seems as if instead of its being a part
- of me that I am a part of it, of something too big for me to see the end
- of.” Then he became practicable, and wrote optimistically of the things
- that were soon to be.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a letter box at the upper corner of the street, and, passing the
- porch, he saw the biologist sunk in an attitude of profound dejection. His
- daughter sat with bare arms and neck at his side; her hair was bound in a
- gleaming mass about her ears, and one hand was laid upon the man's
- shoulder, while she patted Thomas Huxley with the other. The dog rose,
- growling belligerently at the unfamiliar figure, but sank again beneath a
- sharp command. When he returned Rufus Hardinge greeted him, and turned to
- his daughter with a murmured suggestion, but she shook her head in
- decisive negation. A light shone palely in the long windows at their back.
- The sun, at its skyey, evening toilette, seemed, in the rosy glow of
- westering candles, to scatter a cloud of powdered gold over the worn and
- huddled shoulders of the world.
- </p>
- <p>
- Suddenly, seemingly in reconsideration of her decision, she called, “Oh,
- Anthony!” and he retraced his steps to the porch. “My father suggests that
- you sit here,” she told him distantly. “He says that you are very young,
- and that solitude is not good for you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Annot,” the older man protested humorously, “you have mangled my intent
- beyond any recognition.” With an unstudied, friendly gesture he tended
- Anthony his cigar case. A deep preoccupation enveloped him; he sat with
- loose hands and unseeing eyes. In the deepening twilight his countenance
- was grey. Anthony had taken a position upon the edge of the porch, his
- feet in the fragrant grass, out of which fireflies rose glimmering,
- mounting higher and higher, until, finally, they disappeared into the
- night above, in the pale birth of the stars.
- </p>
- <p>
- A deep silence enfolded them until in an unexpected, low voice, Rufus
- Hardinge repeated mechanically aloud lines called, evidently, out of a
- memory of long ago:
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- ''Within thy beams, Oh, Sun! or who could find,
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- While fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- That too,” he paused, groping in his memory for
- </p>
- <p class="indent30">
- the words:
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- “That too such countless orbs thou madst us
- </p>
- <p class="indent30">
- blind.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl rose, and drew his head into her warm, young arms. “Don't,
- father,” she cried, in a sudden, throbbing apprehension; “please...
- please. You have the clearest, most beautiful eyes in the world. Think of
- all they have seen and understood—” He patted her absently. Anthony
- moved silently away.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0037" id="link2H_4_0037"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXXVII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>OT long after, at
- breakfast, the young and disdainful maid conveyed to Anthony a request to
- proceed, when he had finished, to the conservatory. There he discovered
- Annot Har-dinge, with her sleeves rolled up above her vigorous elbows,
- dusting with a fine, brown powder the rows of monotonous, potted plants.
- She directed him to follow her with a slender-nosed watering pot. He
- wondered silently at the featureless display of what he found to be
- ordinary bean plants, some of the dwarf variety, others drawn up against
- the wall. They bore in exact, minute inscriptions, strange names and
- titles, cryptic numbers; some, he saw, were labelled “Dominants,” others,
- “Recessives.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The 'cupids' are doing wretchedly, poor dears!” she exclaimed before a
- row of dwarf sweet peas. “This is my father's laboratory,” she told him
- briefly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought he had something to do with Darwin and the missing link.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She gazed at him pityingly from the heights of a vast superiority. “Darwin
- did some valuable preliminary work,” she instructed him; “although Wallace
- really guessed it all first. Now Mendel, Bateson, are the important names.
- They were busy with the beginnings; and, among the beginnings, plants are
- the most suggestive.” She indicated a small row of budding sweet peas.
- “Perhaps, in those flowers, the whole secret of the universe will be
- found; perhaps the mystery of our souls will be explained; isn't it
- thrilling! The secret of inheritance may sleep in those buds—if they
- are white it will prove... oh, a thousand things, and among them that
- father is the most wonderful scientist alive; it will explain heredity and
- control it, make a new kind of world possible, a world without the most
- terrible diseases. What church, what saint, what god, has really done
- that?” she demanded. “Stupid priggish figures bending out of their
- gold-plated heavens!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her enthusiasm communicated a thrill to him as he regarded the still,
- withdrawn mystery of the plants. For the first time he thought of them as
- alive, as he was alive; he imagined them returning his gaze, his interest,
- exchanging—critically, in their imperceptible, chaste tongue—their
- unimpassioned opinions of him. It was a disturbing possibility that the
- secret of his future, of life and death, might lurk in the flowers to
- unfold on those slender stems. He was oppressed by a feeling of a world
- crowded with invisible, living forms, of fields filled with billions of
- grassy inhabitants, of seas, mountains, made up of interlocking and
- contending lives; every breath, he felt, absorbed races of varied
- individuals. He thought, too, of people as plants, as roses—Oh,
- Eliza!—as nettles, rank weeds, crimson lilies. And, vaguely, this
- hurt him; something valuable, something sustaining, vanished from his
- unformulated, instinctive conception of life; the world of men, their
- aims, their courage, ideals, lost their peculiar beauty, their importance;
- the past, rising from the mold through those green tubes and vanishing
- into a future of dissolving gases, shrunk, stripped of its glamor, to an
- affair of little moment.
- </p>
- <p>
- Outside, as he descended the lawn, the sun had the artificial glitter of
- an incandescent light; the trees waved their arms at him threateningly.
- Then, with a shrug of his normal young shoulders, he relinquished the
- entire conception; he forgot it. He recklessly permeated a universe of
- airy atoms with the smoke of a Dulcina. “That's a woolly delusion,” he
- pronounced.
- </p>
- <p>
- That evening he burnished the car, and mounted the ladder to his room
- late. But the evening following, detained to perform a trivial task, found
- him seated upon the porch, enveloped in the fragrant clouds of Habana
- leaf.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0038" id="link2H_4_0038"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXXVIII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>NNOT, as now he
- mentally termed her, dressed in the inevitable yellow, was swinging a
- satin slipper on the point of her foot; her father was, if possible, more
- greyly withdrawn than before.
- </p>
- <p>
- “To-night,” the biologist finally addressed his daughter, “your mother has
- been dead eighteen years.... She hated science; she said it had destroyed
- my heart. Impossible—a purely functionary pump. The illusions of
- emotions are cerebro-spinal reflexes, only that. She said that I cared
- more for science than—than herself.” He raised his head sharply, “I
- was forced to tell her the truth, in common honor: science first.... Tears
- are an automatic escapement to protect the vision. But women have no
- logic, little understanding; hopelessly romantic, a false quantity—romance,
- dangerous. I was away when she died ... Borneo, Aurignacian strata had
- been discovered, a distinct parallel with the Maurer jaw. Death is only a
- change of chemical activity,” he shot at Anthony in a voice not entirely
- steady, “the human entity a passing agglomeration, kinetic.... Love is a
- mechanical principle, categorically imperative,” his voice sank, became
- diffuse. “Absolute science, selfless.
- </p>
- <p>
- “People found her beautiful, I didn't know,” he added wistfully; “beauty
- is a vague term. The Chapelle skull is beautiful, as I understand it, as I
- understand it. In a letter to me,” after a long pause, “she employed the
- term 'frozen to death'; she said that I had frozen her to death. Only a
- figure, romantic, inexact.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Stuff!” Annot exclaimed lightly, but her anxious countenance contradicted
- the spirit of her tones. “You mustn't stir about in old troubles.
- Everything great demands sacrifice; mother didn't quite understand; and I
- expect she got lonely, poor dear.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony rose, and made his way somberly toward the stable, but running
- feet, his name called in low, urgent tones, arrested his progress. An-not
- approached with the trouble deepening in her gaze. “Does he seem entirely
- himself to you?” she asked, but, before he could answer,—“of course,
- you don't know him well enough. You see, he is working too much again, an
- average of sixteen hours for the ten days past. I haven't said anything
- because the most difficult part of his work is at an end. If his last
- conclusions are right he will have only to scribble the reports, put a
- book together.... I can always tell when he is overworked by the cobwebs—he
- tries to brush them off his face,” she explained. “They don't exist, of
- course.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I really wanted to say this,” she lifted her candid gaze to his face.
- “Could you be a little more about the house? we might need you; we'll use
- the car very little for a while.” The apprehension was clearly visible
- now. “Would you mind helping him with his clothes; he gets them mixed? It
- isn't regular, I know,” she told him; “but we have a great deal of money;
- anything you required—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps I'd be better at that,” he suggested. “You know, you said I was a
- rotten chauffeur.”
- </p>
- <p>
- For a moment, appealing, she had seemed nearer to him, but now she
- retreated spiritually, slipped behind her cold indifference. “There will
- be nothing more to-night; if he grows worse you will have to move into the
- house.” She left him abruptly, gathering her filmy skirt from the grass,
- an elusive shape with gleams on her hair, her arms and neck white for an
- instant and then veiled in the scarf of night.
- </p>
- <p>
- In his room he could still hear, mingled with the faint, muffled squeaking
- of the mice in the empty hayloft, Hardinge's voice, jerky, laborious, “a
- categorical imperative... categorical imperative.” He wondered what that
- meant applied to love? An errant air brought him the unmistakable odor of
- white lilacs, an ineffable impression of Eliza.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0039" id="link2H_4_0039"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXXIX
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE day following
- found him installed in the house, in a small chamber formed where the
- tower fronted upon the third story. At luncheon a place was laid for him
- at the table with Annot and her father, where the attentions of the
- disdainful and shapely maid positively quivered with suppressed scorn.
- Anthony had found in his room fifty dollars in an envelope, upon which
- Annot had scribbled that he might need a few things; and, at liberty in
- the afternoon, he boarded an electric car for the city, where he invested
- in fresh and shining pumps, and other necessities.
- </p>
- <p>
- The house was dark when he inserted his newly acquired latchkey in the
- front door and made his way softly aloft. But a thread of light was
- shining under the door of Rufus Har-dinge's study. Later—he had just
- turned out the light—a short knock fell upon his door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Me,” Annot answered his instant query. “I am going to ask you to dress
- and come to my father. It may be unnecessary; he may go quietly to bed;
- but go he must.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He found her in a dressing gown that fell in heavy, straight folds of
- saffron satin, her feet thrust in quaint Turkish slippers with curled
- points; while over her shoulders slipped and slid the coppery rope of her
- hair. She led the way to the study, which she entered without knocking.
- Anthony saw the biologist bent over pages spread in the concentrated light
- of a green shaded globe. In a glass case against the wall some moldy bones
- were mounted and labelled; fragmentary and sinister-appearing casts
- gleamed whitely from a stand; and, everywhere, was the orderly confusion
- of books and papers that had distinguished the library.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come, Rufus,” Annot laid her hand upon his shoulder; “it's bedtime for
- all scientists. You promised me you would be in by eleven.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He gazed at her with the hasty regard directed at an ill-timed, casual
- stranger. “Yes, yes,” he ejaculated impatiently, “get to bed. I'll
- follow... some crania tracings, prognathic angles—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “To-morrow will do for those,” she insisted gently, “you are making
- yourself ill again—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nonsense,” he interrupted, “never felt better in my life, never—”
- his voice dwindled abruptly to silence, as though a door had been closed
- on him; his lips twisted impotently; beads of sweat stood out upon his
- white, strained forehead. His whole body was rigid in an endeavor to
- regain his utterance. He rose, and would have fallen, if Annot's arm had
- not slipped about his shoulders. Anthony hurried forward, and, supporting
- him on either side, they assisted him into the sleeping chamber beyond.
- There, at full length on a couch, a sudden, marble-like immobility fell
- upon his features, his mouth slightly open, his hands clenched. Annot
- busied herself swiftly, while Anthony descended into the dark, still house
- in search of ice. When he returned, Hardinge was pronouncing disconnected
- words, terms. “Eoliths,” he said, “snow line... one hundred and thirty
- millimeters.” He was silent for a moment, then, struggling into a sitting
- posture, “Annot!” he cried sharply, “I've frightened you again. Only a
- touch of... aphasia; unfortunately not new, my dear, but not serious.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Later, when Anthony had assisted him in the removal of his clothes, and
- lowered the light, he found Annot in the study assembling the papers
- scattered on the table. “I am glad that you are here,” she said simply.
- “Soon he can have a complete rest.” She sank into a chair; he had had no
- idea that she could appear so lovely: her widely-opened eyes held flecks
- of gold; beneath the statuesque fall of the dressing gown her bare ankles
- were milky-white.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0040" id="link2H_4_0040"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XL
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E felt strangely
- at ease in a setting so easily strange. There was a palpable flavor of
- unreality in the moment, of detachment from the commonplace round of
- existence; it was without connection, without responsibility to yesterday
- or to to-morrow; he was isolated with the informal vision of Annot in an
- hour which seemed neither day nor night. He felt—inarticulately—divorced
- from his customary daily personality; and, with no particular need for
- speech, lit a cigarette, and blew clouds of smoke at the ceiling. It was
- his companion who interrupted this mood.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The life that people think so tremendously important,” she observed, “the
- things one does, are hardly more real than a suit of clothes, with
- religion for a nice, prim white collar, gloves for morals, and a hidden
- red silk handkerchief for a rare revolt. And all the time, politely
- ignored, decently covered, our bodies are underneath. Now and then some
- one slips out of his covering, and stands bare before his shocked and
- protesting friends, but they soon hurry something about him, a
- conventional shawl, a moral sheet. Do you happen to remember a wonderful
- caricature of Louis XIV—simply a wig, a silk suit, buckled shoes and
- a staff?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The mordant humor of that drawing penetrated Anthony's understanding: he
- saw rooms, streets, a world full of gesticulating suits, dresses, nodding
- hats, bonnets; he saw the unsubstantial concourse haughtily erect,
- condescending, cunningly deceptive, veiling in a thousand subterfuges
- their essential emptiness. The thought evaporated in laughter at the
- obvious humor of such a spectacle; its social significance missed him
- totally, happily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What an unthinking person you are,” she told him; “you just—live.
- It's rather remarkable—one of Bacchus' company caught in the modern
- streets. It is all so different now,” she added plaintively; “men get
- drunk in saloons or at dinner, and the purple stain of the grape centers
- in their noses. I tried myself,” she confessed, “in Geneva. I was with a
- specialist who had father. The café balcony overhung the lake; it was at
- night, and the villages looked like clusters of fireflies about a black
- mirror; and you simply never saw so many stars. We were looking for a
- lyric sensation, but it was the most awful fizzle; he insisted on
- describing an operation with all the grey and gory details complete, and I
- fell fast asleep.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The outcome of her experiment tallied exactly with that of his own more
- involuntary efforts in that field. It established in his mind a singularly
- direct sympathy with her; the uneasy element which her attitude had called
- up in him disappeared entirely, its place taken by a comfortable sense of
- freedom, a total lack of <i>rot</i>.
- </p>
- <p>
- She rose, vanishing into her father's room, then, coming to the door,
- nodded shortly, and left for the night.
- </p>
- <p>
- He found on the bureau in his tower room what remained of the fifty
- dollars—it had been reduced to less than eight. Suddenly he
- remembered his purpose there, his supreme need of money, the imperative
- westward call.... He bitterly cursed his lax character as he recalled the
- cigars he had purchased, the silk shirt too, and an unnecessary tie. A
- deep gloom settled upon his spirit. He heard in retrospect his father's
- clear, high voice—“shiftless, no sense of responsibility.” He sat
- miserably on the edge of the bed in the dark, while the petty, unbroken
- procession of past failures wheeled through his brain. Then the shining
- vision of Eliza, compassionate, tender, folded him in peace; one by one he
- would subdue those rebellious elements in himself, of fate, that held them
- apart.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0041" id="link2H_4_0041"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XLI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>T a solitary
- breakfast the incident of the preceding night seemed fantastic, unreal; he
- retained the broken, vivid memory of the scene, the thrill of vague words,
- that lingers disturbingly into the waking world from a dream. And, when he
- saw Annot later, there was no trace of a consequent informality in her
- manner; she was distant, hedged about by an evident concern for her
- father. “I have sent for Professor Jamison.” She addressed Anthony with
- blank eyes. “Please be within call in case—”
- </p>
- <p>
- He saw the neurologist as the latter circled the plaster cupids to the
- entrance of the house—a heavy man with a broad, smooth face,
- thinlipped like a priest, with staring yellow gloves. Anthony remained in
- the lower hall, but no demand for his assistance sounded from above. When
- the specialist descended, he flashed a glance, as bitingly swift and cold
- as glacial water, over Anthony, then nodded in the direction of the
- garden.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Miss Annot tells me that you are sleeping in the house,” he said when
- they were outside; “on the chance that she might need you for her
- father... she will. He is at the point of mental dissolution.” An
- involuntary repulsion possessed Anthony at the detached manner in which
- the other pronounced these hopeless words. “Nothing may be done; that is—it
- is not desirable that anything should. I am telling you this so that you
- can act intelligently. Rufus Hardinge knows it; there was a consultation
- at Geneva, which he approved.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He is,” he continued with a warmer, more personal note, “a very
- distinguished biologist; his investigations, his conclusions, have been
- invaluable.” He glanced at an incongruous, minute, jewelled watch on his
- wrist, and continued more quickly. “Ten years ago he should have stopped
- all work, vegetated—he was burning up rapidly; merely a reduced
- amount of labor would have accomplished little for his health or subject.
- And we couldn't spare his labor, no mere prolongation of life would have
- justified that loss of knowledge, progress. It was his position; he
- insisted upon it and we concurred... he chose... insanity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Miss Annot is not aware of this; he must have every moment possible;
- every note is priceless. The end will come—now, at any time.” He had
- reached the small, canary yellow Dreux landaulet waiting for him, and
- stepped into it with a sharp nod. “You may expect violence,” he added, as
- the car gathered momentum.
- </p>
- <p>
- But that evening in the dim quietude of the piazza the biologist seemed to
- have recovered completely his mental poise. He spoke in a buoyant vein of
- the great men he had known, celebrated names in the world of the arts, in
- politics and science. He recalled Braisted, the astronomer, searching
- relaxation in the Boulevard school of French fictionists. “I told him,” he
- chuckled at the mild, scholastic humor, “that he had been peeping too long
- at Venus.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Annot was steeped in an inscrutable silence.
- </p>
- <p>
- For the first time, Anthony was actually aware of her features: she had a
- broad, low brow swept by the coppery hair loosely tied at the back; her
- eyes resembled her father's, they were amber-colored, and singularly
- candid in their interest in all that passed before them; while her nose
- tilted up slightly above a mouth frankly large. It was the face of a boy,
- he decided, but felt instantly that he had fallen far short of the fact—the
- allurement, the perfection, of her youthful maturity hung overwhelmingly
- about her the challenge of sex.
- </p>
- <p>
- Rather, she was all girl, he recognized, but of a new variety. A vision of
- <i>the nice</i> girls he had known dominated his vision, flooded his mind,
- all smiling with veiled eyes, clothed in a thousand reserves, fluttering
- graces, innocent wiles, with their gaze firmly set toward the shining,
- desirable goal of matrimony. Eliza was not like that, it was true; but
- she, from the withdrawn, impersonal height of her cool perfection, was a
- law to herself. There was a new freedom in Annot's acceptance of life, he
- realized vaguely, as different as possible from mere license; no one, he
- was certain, would presume with Annot Hardinge: her very frankness offered
- infinitely less incentive to unlawful thoughts than the conscious modesty
- of the others.
- </p>
- <p>
- When the biologist left the piazza Annot turned with a glad gesture to her
- companion. “He hasn't seemed so well—not for years; his little, gay
- fun again... it's too good to be true. I should like to celebrate—something
- entirely irresponsible. I have worried, oh, dreadfully.” The night was
- still, moonless; the stars burned like opals in the intense purple deeps
- of the sky. The air, freighted with the rich fruitage of full summer, hung
- close and heavy. “It's hot as a blotter,” Annot declared. “I think, yes—I'm
- sure, I should like to go out in the car.” She rose. “Will you bring it
- around, please?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He drove slowly over the deserted lane by the lawn, and found her,
- enveloped in the lustrous folds of a black satin wrap, at the front gate.
- Over her hair she had tied a veil drawn about her brow in a webby filament
- of flowers “I think I'll sit in front,” she decided; “perhaps I'll drive.”
- He waited, at the steering wheel, for directions.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go west, young man,” she told him, and would say nothing more. A distant
- bell thinly struck eleven jarring notes as they moved into the flickering
- gloom of empty streets with the orange blur of lamps floating unsteadily
- on dim boughs above, and the more brilliant, crackling radiance of the arc
- lights at the crossings.
- </p>
- <p>
- The headlights of the automobile cut like white knives through the
- obscurity of hedged ways; at sudden turnings they plunged into gardens,
- flinging sharply on the shadowy night vivid glimpses of incredible
- greenery, unearthly flowers, wafers of white wall. They drove for a long,
- silent period, with increasing momentum as the way became more open and
- direct; now they seemed scarcely to touch the uncertain surface below, but
- to be wheeling through sheer space, flashing their stabbing incandescence
- into the empty envelopment beyond the worlds.
- </p>
- <p>
- They passed with a muffled din through the single street of a sleeping
- village, leaving behind a confusion of echoes and the startled barking of
- a dog. Anthony could see Annot's profile, pale and clear, against the
- flying and formless countryside; the lace about her hair fluttered
- ceaselessly; and her wrap bellowed and clung about her shoulders, about
- her gloveless hands folded upon her slim knees. She was splendidly,
- regally scornful upon the wings of their reckless flight; the throttle was
- wide open; they swung from side to side, hung on a single wheel, lunged
- bodily into the air. In the mad ecstasy of speed she rose; but Anthony,
- clutching her arms, pulled her sharply into the seat. Then, decisively, he
- shut off the power, the world ceased to race behind them, the smooth
- clamor of the engine sank to a low vibratone.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You did that wonderfully,” she told him with glowing cheeks, shining
- eyes; “it was marvellous. A moment like that is worth a life-time on
- foot... laughing at death, at everything that is safe, admirable, moral...
- a moment of the freedom of soulless things, savage and unaccountable to
- God or society.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The illuminated face of the clock before him indicated a few minutes past
- one, and, tentatively, he repeated the time. “How stupid of you,” she
- protested; “silly, little footrule of the hours, the conventional measure
- of the commonplace. For punishment—on and on. Like Columbus' men you
- are afraid of falling over the edge of—propriety.” She turned to him
- with solemn eyes. “I assure you there is no edge, no bump or brimstone, no
- place where good stops and tumbles into bad; it's all continuous—”
- </p>
- <p>
- He lost the thread of her mocking discourse, and glanced swiftly at her,
- his brow wrinkled, the shadow of a smile upon his lips. “Heavens! but you
- are good-looking,” she acknowledged, her countenance studiously critical,
- impersonal. After that silence once more fell upon them; the machine sang
- through the dark, lifting over ridges, dropping down declines.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony had long since lost all sense of their position. The cyanite
- depths of the sky turned grey, cold; there was a feeling in the air of
- settling dew; a dank mist filled the hollows; the color seemed suddenly to
- have faded from the world. He felt unaccountably weary, inexpressibly
- depressed; he could almost taste the vapidity of further existence. Annoys
- hard, bright words echoed in his brain; the flame of his unthinking
- idealism sank in the thin atmosphere of their logic.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0042" id="link2H_4_0042"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XLII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>HE had settled low
- in the seat, her mouth and chin hidden in the folds of the satin wrap; her
- face seemed as chill as marble, her youth cruel, disdainful. But her
- undeniable courage commanded his admiration, the unwavering gaze of her
- eyes into the dark. He wondered if, back of her crisp defenses, she were
- happy. He knew from observation that she led an almost isolated
- existence... she had gathered about her no circle of her own age, she
- indulged in none of the rapturous confidences, friendships, so sustaining
- to other girls. The peculiar necessities of her father had accomplished
- this. Yet he was aware that she cherished a general contempt for youth at
- large, for a majority of the grown, for that matter. Contempt colored her
- attitude to a large extent: that and happiness did not seem an orderly
- pair.
- </p>
- <p>
- He felt, rather than saw, the influence of the dawn behind him; it was as
- though the grey air grew more transparent. Annot twisted about. “Oh! turn,
- turn!” she cried; “the day! we are driving away from it.” A sudden
- intoxicating freshness streamed like a sparkling birdsong over the world,
- and Anthony's dejection vanished with the gloom now at their backs.
- Delicate lavender shadows grew visible upon the grass, the color shifted
- tremulously, like the shot hues of changeable silks, until the sun poured
- its ore into the verdant crucible of the countryside.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am most frightfully hungry,” Annot admitted with that entire frankness
- which he found so refreshing. “I wonder—” On either hand fields, far
- farmhouses, reached unbroken to the horizon; before them the road rose
- between banks of soft, brown loam, apparently into the sky. But, beyond
- the rise, they came upon a roadside store, its silvery boards plastered
- with the garish advertisements of tobaccos, and a rickety porch, now
- undergoing a vigorous sweeping at the hands of an old man with insecure
- legs, upon whose faded personage was stamped unmistakably the initials “G.
- A. R.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony brought the car to a halt, and returned his brisk and curious
- salutation. “Shall I bring out some crackers?” he asked from the road. But
- she elected to follow him into the store. The interior presented the usual
- confusion of gleaming tin and blue overalls, monumental cheeses and cards
- of buttons, a miscellany of ludicrously varied merchandise. Annot found a
- seat upon a splintered church pew, now utilized as a secular resting
- place, while Anthony foraged through the shelves. He returned with the
- crackers, and a gold lump of dates, upon which they breakfasted hugely.
- “D'y like some milk?” the aged attendant inquired, and forthwith dipped it
- out of a deep, cool and ringing can.
- </p>
- <p>
- Afterward they sat upon the step and smoked matutinal cigarettes. The day
- gathered in a shimmering haze above the vivid com, the emerald of the
- shorn fields; the birds had already subsided from the heat among the
- leaves. Anthony saw that the lamps of the car were still alight, a feeble
- yellow flicker, and turned them out. He tested the engine; and, finding it
- still running, turned with an unspoken query to Annot. She rose slowly.
- </p>
- <p>
- The wrap slipped from her bare shoulders and her dinner gown with its high
- sulphur girdle, the scrap of black lace about her hair, presented a
- strange, brilliantly artificial picture against the blistered, gaunt
- boards of the store, with, at its back, the open sunny space of pasture,
- wood and sky.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's barely twenty miles back,” she told him, once more settled at his
- side. The old man regarded them from under one gnarled palm, the other
- tightly clasped about the broom handle; his jaw was dropped; incredulity,
- senile surprise, claimed him for their own.
- </p>
- <p>
- With Annot, Anthony reflected, he was everlastingly getting into new
- situations; she seemed to lift him out of the ordinary course of events
- into a perverse world of her own, a front-backward land where the
- unexpected, without rule or obligation, continually happened; and, what
- was strangest of all, without any of the dark consequences which he had
- been taught must inevitably follow such departures. He recalled the
- incredulous smiles, the knowing insinuations, that would have greeted the
- exact recounting of the past night at Doctor Allhop's drugstore. He would
- himself, in the past, have regarded such a tale as a flimsy fabrication.
- And suddenly he perceived dimly, in a mind unused to such abstractions,
- the veil of ugliness, of degradation, that hung so blackly about the
- thoughts of men. He gazed with a new sympathy and comprehension at the
- scornful line of Annot's vivid young lips; something of her superiority,
- her contempt, was communicated to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- She became aware of his searching gaze, and smiled in an intimate,
- friendly fashion at him. “You are the most comfortable person alive,” she
- told him. There was nothing critical in her tones now. “I said that you
- were not a good chauffeur, and—” the surroundings grew familiar,
- they had nearly reached their destination, and an impalpable reserve fell
- upon her, but she continued to smile at him, “and... you are not.” That
- was the last word she addressed to him that day.
- </p>
- <p>
- As, later, he sluiced the automobile with water, he recalled the strange
- intimacy of the night, her warm and sympathetic voice; once she had
- steadied herself with a clinging hand upon his shoulder. These new
- attributes of the person who, shortly, passed him silently and with cold
- eyes, stirred his imagination; they were potent, rare, unsettling.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0043" id="link2H_4_0043"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XLIII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>otwithstanding, in
- the days which followed there was a perceptible change in Annot's attitude
- toward him: she became, as it were, conscious of his actuality. One
- afternoon she read aloud to him a richly-toned, gloomy tale of Africa.
- They were sitting by a long window, open, but screened from the summer
- heat by stiff, darkly-drooping green folds, where they could hear the drip
- of the fountain in its basin, a cool punctuation on the sultry page of the
- afternoon. Annot proceeded rapidly in an even, low voice; she was dressed
- in filmy lavender, with little buttons of golden velvet, an intricately
- carved gold buckle at her waist.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony listened as closely as possible, the faint smile which seldom left
- him hovering over his lips. The bald action of the narrative—a
- running fight with ambushed savages from a little tin pot of a steamer, a
- mysterious affair in the darkness with a grim skeleton of a fellow, stakes
- which bore a gory fruitage of human heads, held him; but the rest...
- words, words. His attention wavered, fell upon minute, material objects;
- Annot's voice grew remote, returned, was lost among his juggling thoughts.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Isn't it splendid!” she exclaimed, at last closing the volume; “the most
- beautiful story of our time—” She stopped abruptly, and cast a
- penetrating glance at him. “I don't believe you even listened,” she
- declared. “In your heart you prefer, 'Tortured by the Tartars.'”
- </p>
- <p>
- His smile broadened, including his eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are impossible! No,” she veered suddenly, “you're not; if you cared
- for this you wouldn't be... you. That's the most important thing in the
- world. Besides, I wouldn't like you; everybody reads now, it's frightfully
- common; while you are truly indifferent. Have you noticed, my child, that
- books always increase where life runs thin? and you are alive, not a
- papier-mâché man painted in the latest shades.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony dwelt on this unexpected angle upon his mental delinquencies. The
- approval of Annot Hardinge, so critical, so outspoken, was not without an
- answering glow in his being; no one but she might discover his ignorance
- to be laudable.
- </p>
- <p>
- She rose, and the book slipped neglected to the floor. “The mirror of my
- dressing table is collapsing,” she informed him; “I wonder if you would
- look at it.” He followed her above to her room; it was a large,
- four-square chamber, its windows brushed by the glossy leaves of an aged
- black-heart cherry tree. Her bed was small, with a counterpane of
- grotesque lace animals, a table held a scattered collection of costly
- trifles, and a closet door stood open upon a shimmering array from deepest
- orange to white and pale primrose. An enigmatic lacy garment, and a
- surprisingly long pair of black silk stockings, occupied a chair; while
- the table was covered with columns of print on long sheets of paper.
- “Galleys,” she told him. “I read all father's proof.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He moved the dressing table from the wall, and discovered the bolt which
- had held the mirror in place upon the floor. As he screwed it into
- position, Annot said:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't look around for a minute.” There was a swift whisper of skirts, a
- pause, then, “all right.” He straightened up, and found that she had
- changed to a white skirt and waist. Fumbling in the closet she produced a
- pair of low, brown shoes, and kicking off her slippers, donned the others,
- balancing each in turn on the bed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let's go—anywhere,” she proposed; “but principally where books are
- not and birds are.” At a drugstore they purchased largely of licorice
- root, which they consumed sitting upon a fence without the town.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0044" id="link2H_4_0044"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XLIV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> SAID that
- instinctively, back in my room,” Annot remarked with a puzzled frown. “It
- was beastly, really, to feel the necessity... as though we had something
- corrupt to hide. And I feel that you are especially nice—that way.
- You see, I am not trying to dispose of myself like the clever maidens at
- the balls and bazaars, my legs and shoulders are quite uncalculated. There
- is no price on... on my person; I'm not fishing for any nice little
- Christian ceremony. No man will have to pay the price of hats at Easter
- and furs in the fall, of eternal boredom, for me. All this stuff in the
- novels about the sacredness of love and constancy is just—stuff!
- Love isn't like that really; it's a natural force, and Nature is always
- practical: potato bugs and jimson-weed and men, it is the same law for all
- of them—more potato bugs, more men, that's all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony grasped only the larger implications of this speech, its
- opposition to that love which he had felt as a misty sort of glory, as
- intangible as the farthest star, as fragrant as a rose in the fingers.
- There was an undeniable weight of solid sense in what Annot had said. She
- knew a great deal more than himself, more—yes—than Eliza, more
- than anybody he had before known; and, in the face of her overwhelmingly
- calm and superior knowledge, his vision of love as eternal, changeless,
- his ecstatic dreams of Eliza with the dim, magic white lilacs in her arms,
- grew uncertain, pale. Love, viewed with Annot's clear eyes, was a
- commonplace occurrence, and marriage the merest, material convenience:
- there was nothing sacred about it, or in anything—death, birth, or
- herself.
- </p>
- <p>
- And was not the biologist, with his rows of labelled plants and bones, his
- courageous questioning of the universe, of God Himself, bigger than the
- majority of men with their thin covering of cant, the hypocrisy in which
- they cloaked their doubts, their crooked politics and business? Rufus
- Hardinge's conception of things, Annot's reasoning and patent honesty,
- seemed more probable, more convincing, than the accepted romantic, often
- insincere, view of living, than the organ-roll and stained glass attitude.
- </p>
- <p>
- In his new rationalism he eyed the world with gloomy prescience; he had
- within him the somber sense of slain illusions; all this, he felt, was
- proper to increasing years and experience; yet, between them, they emptied
- the notable bag of licorice.
- </p>
- <p>
- Annot rested a firm palm upon his shoulder and sprang to the ground, and
- they walked directly and silently back. “It's a mistake to discuss
- things,” Annot discovered to him from the door of her room, “they should
- be lived; thus Zarathustrina.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0045" id="link2H_4_0045"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XLV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ATER they were
- driven from the porch by a heavy and sudden shower, a dark flood torn in
- white streamers and pennants by wind gusts, and entered through a long
- window a formal chamber seldom occupied. A thick, white carpet bore a
- scattered design in pink and china blue; oil paintings of the Dutch
- school, as smooth as ice, hung in massive gold frames; a Louis XVI clock,
- intricately carved and gilded, rested upon a stand enamelled in black and
- vermilion, inlaid with pagodas and fantastic mandarins in ebony and
- mother-of-pearl and camphor wood. At intervals petulant and sweet chimes
- rang from the clock: trailing, silvery bubbles of sound that burst in
- plaintive ripples.
- </p>
- <p>
- Rufus Hardinge sat with bowed head, his lips moving noiselessly. Annot
- occupied a chair with sweeping, yellow lines, that somehow suggested to
- Anthony a swan. “Father has had a tiresome letter from Doctor Grundlowe at
- Bonn,” she informed the younger man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He disagrees with me absolutely,” Hardinge declared. “But Caprera at
- Padova disagrees with him; and Markley, at Glasgow, contravenes us all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's about a tooth,” Annot explained.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The line to the anterior-posterior diameter is simian,” the biologist
- asserted. “The cusps prove nothing, but that forward slope—” he half
- rose from his chair, his eyes glittering wrathfully at Anthony, but fell
- back trembling... “simian,” he muttered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A possible difference of millions of years in human history,” Annot added
- further.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But can't they agree at all!” Anthony exclaimed; “don't they know
- anything? That's an awful long time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “A hundred million years,” the elder interrupted with a contemptuous
- gesture, “nothing, a moment. I place the final glacial two hundred and
- seventy million after Jenner, and we have—, agreed to dismiss it;
- trifling, adventitious. There are more fundamental discrepancies,” he
- admitted. “Unless something definite is discovered, a firm base
- established, a single ray of light let into a damnable dark,” he stopped
- torn with febrile excitement, then, scarcely audible, continued, “our
- lives, our work... will be of less account than the blood of Oadacer,
- spilt on barbaric battle-fields.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The rain ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Anthony followed Annot to the
- porch. In the black spaces between the swiftly shifting clouds stars shone
- brilliantly; there was a faint drip from the trees. “He gets dreadfully
- depressed,” she interpreted her parent to him. “They wrangle all the time,
- exactly like a lot of schoolgirls. You have no idea of the bitterness, the
- jealousy, the contemptuous personalities in the Quarterlies. Really, they
- are as fanatical, as narrow, as the churches they ignore; they are quite
- like Presbyterian biologists and Catholic.” She sighed lightly. “They
- leave little for a youngish person to dream on. You are so superior—to
- ignore these centessimo affairs. Will you lean from the edge of your cloud
- and smile on a daughter of the earth in last year's dinner gown?”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was, he told himself, nonsense; yet he was moved to make no easy reply,
- something in her voice, illusive and wistful, made that impossible. “It's
- very good-looking,” he said impotently.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm glad you like it,” she told him simply. “M'sieur Paret fitted it
- himself while an anteroom full of women hated me. Oh, Anthony!” she
- exclaimed, “I'd love to wander with you down that brilliant street and
- through the Place Vendôme to the Seine. Better still—there's a
- little shop on the Via Cavour in Florence where they sell nothing but
- chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, the most heavenly cakes with black hearts
- and the most heavenly smell. And you'd like Spain, so fierce and hot
- against its dusty hills; and Cortina, green beneath its red mountains. We
- could get a porter and rucksacks, and walk—” she broke off, her
- hands pressed to her cheeks, a dawning dismay in her eyes. Then she was
- gone with a flutter of the skirt so carefully draped by M'sieur Paret.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0046" id="link2H_4_0046"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XLVI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE pictures of far
- places had stirred him but slightly: but to travel with Annot, to see
- anything with Annot, would offer continual amusement and surprise; her
- vigorous candor, her freedom from sham and petty considerations, enveloped
- the most commonplace perspectives in an atmosphere of high novelty. The
- trace of the vagabond, the detachment of the born dweller in tents, woven
- so picturesquely through his being, responded to her careless indifference
- to the tyranny of an established and timid scheme of existence.
- </p>
- <p>
- The following day her old, bright hardness had returned: she railed at him
- in French, in German, in Italian; she called him the solemn shover, Sir
- Anthony Absolute. And, holding Thomas Huxley's head directed toward him,
- recommended that resigned quadruped to emulate Anthony's austere and
- inflexible virtues.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0047" id="link2H_4_0047"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XLVII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>UT there was no
- trace of gayety in the excited and subdued tones in which, later, she
- called him into the hothouse. He found her bending tense with emotion over
- the row of plants upon whose flowering such incalculable things depended.
- “Look!” she cried, taking his hand and drawing him down over the green
- shoots, where his cheek brushed her hair, where he felt the warm stir of
- her breathing. “Look! they are in full bud, to-morrow they will burst
- open.” She straightened up, his hand still held in hers, and a shadow fell
- upon her vivid countenance. “If his reasoning is wrong, this experiment...
- like all the others, it will kill him. They <i>must</i> be white, it would
- be too cruel, too senseless not. I am afraid,” she said simply; “nature is
- so terrible, a Juggernaut, crushing everything to dust beneath its
- wheeling centuries. I am glad that you are here, Anthony.” She drew closer
- to him; her breast swelled in a sharp, tempestuous breath.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have been lonelier than I—I realized. I am dreadfully worried
- about father. They have lied to me; things are worse, I can see that. You
- have to dress him like a child; I know how considerate you are; you are
- bright, new gold with the clearest ring in the world.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We must get a real chauffeur; you have never been that... in my thoughts.
- You know,” she laughed happily, “I said in the beginning that you were a
- miserable affair in details of that kind.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A feeling of guilt rose swiftly within him, which, unwilling to
- acknowledge, he strove to beat down from his thoughts. But, above his
- endeavor, grew the clear conviction that he should immediately tell Annot
- his purpose in driving Rufus Hardinge's car. He must not victimize her
- generosity, nor take profit from the friendship she offered him so
- unreservedly. He was dimly conscious that the revelation of his design
- would end the pleasant intimacy growing up between them; the mere mention
- of Eliza must destroy their happy relations; girls, even Annot, were like
- that.
- </p>
- <p>
- He wondered, suddenly cold, if this spelled disloyalty to Eliza! but he
- angrily refuted that whispered insinuation. His love for Eliza was as
- un-assailably above all other considerations as she herself shone starlike
- over a petty, stumbling humanity. White and withdrawn and fine she
- inhabited the skies of his aspirations. He endeavored now to capture her
- in his imagination, his memory; and she smiled at him palely, as from a
- very great distance. He realized that in the past few days he had not had
- that subtle sense of her nearness, he had not been conscious of that
- drifting odor of lilacs; and suddenly he felt impoverished, alone.
- </p>
- <p>
- Annot smiled, warm and near.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are awfully kind,” he temporized; “but hadn't we better let the thing
- stand as it is? You see—I want money.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you may have that now; whatever you want.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No. You are so good, it's hard to explain—I want money that I earn;
- real money; I couldn't think of taking any other from you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Anthony, my good bourgeois! I had thought you quite without that sort of
- tin pride. Besides, I am not giving it to you; after all it's father's to
- use as he likes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I must give him something for it—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you suppose you are giving us nothing?” she interrupted him warmly;
- “you have brought us your clear, beautiful spirits, absolutely without
- price. Why, you can make father laugh; have you any idea how rarely he did
- that? When you imitate Margaret absolutely I can see her fat, white
- stockings. And your marvellous unworldliness—” she shook her head
- mournfully. “I fear that this is mere calculation; surely you must know
- the value of your innocent charms.” Anthony stood with a lowered head,
- floundering mentally among his warring inclinations; when, almost with
- relief, he saw that she had noiselessly vanished.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0048" id="link2H_4_0048"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XLVIII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E slept uneasily,
- and woke abruptly to a room flooded with sunlight, and an unaccountable
- sense of something gone wrong. He dressed hurriedly, and had opened his
- door, when he heard his name called from below. It was Annot, he knew, but
- her voice was strange, terrified—a helpless cry new to her
- accustomed poise. “Anthony! Anthony!” she called from the conservatory.
- </p>
- <p>
- Rufus Hardinge, who, it was evident from his clothes had not been in bed,
- was standing rigidly before the row of plants upon whose flowering they
- had so intently waited. And, in a rapid glance, Anthony saw that they had
- blossomed in delicate, parti-colored petals—some pale lavender,
- others deep purple, still others reddish white. Annoys yellow wrap was
- thrown carelessly about her nightgown, her feet were bare, and her hair
- hung in a tangle about her blanched face.
- </p>
- <p>
- When Anthony entered she clung to his arm, and he saw that she was
- trembling violently. For a tense moment they were silent: the sun streamed
- over the mathematical plant ranks and lit the white or blue tickets tied
- to their stems; a bubbling chorus of birds filled the world of leaves
- without. “It's all wrong,” she sobbed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So!” the biologist finally said with a wry smile; “you see that I have
- not solved the riddle of the universe; inheritance in pure line is not
- explicated.... A life of labor as void as any prostitute's; not a single
- fact, not a supposition warranted, not a foot advanced.”
- </p>
- <p>
- With a sudden and violent movement for which they were entirely unprepared
- he swept the row of plants crashing upon the floor; where, in a scattered
- heap of brown loam, broken pottery, smeared bloom, their tenuous, pallid
- roots quivered in air. “Games with plants and animals and bones for
- elderly children; riddles without answer... blind ways.” His expression
- grew furtive, cunning. “I have been trifled with,” he declared, “I have
- been deliberately misled; but I desire to say that I see through—through
- Him: I comprehend His little joke. It's in bad taste... to leave a soul in
- the dark, blundering about in the cellar with the table spread above. But
- in the end I was not completely bamboozled. He was not quick enough... the
- hem of His garment.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your mother saw Him clear. She was considered beautiful, but beauty's a
- vague term. Perhaps if I saw her now it would be clearer to me. But I'll
- tell you His little joke,” he lowered his voice confidentially—“it's
- all true—that apocalyptical heaven; there's a big book, trumpets,
- angels all complete singing Gregorian chants. What a sell!” He laughed, a
- gritty, mirthless performance.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come up to your room, father,” Annot urged; “his arm, Anthony.” Anthony
- placed his hand gently upon the biologist's shoulder, but the latter
- wrenched himself free. Suddenly with a choked cry and arms swinging like
- flails he launched himself upon the orderly plants. Before he could be
- stopped row upon row splintered on the floor; he fought, struggled with
- them as though they were animate opponents, cursed them in a high, raving
- voice. Anthony quickly lifted him, pinning his arms to his sides. Annot
- had turned away, her shoulders shaking with sobs.
- </p>
- <p>
- Rufus Hardinge's struggling unexpectedly ceased, his countenance regained
- completely its habitual quietude. “I shall begin once more, at the
- beginning,” he whispered infinitely wistful. “The little ray of light...
- germ of understanding. The scientific problem of the future,” his speech
- became labored, thick, “scientific... future. Other avenue of progress:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Gentlemen, the Royal Society, a paper on, on—Tears, gentlemen...
- not only automatic,” his voice sank to a mere incomprehensible babble.
- Anthony carried him to his bed, while Annot telephoned for the
- neurologist.
- </p>
- <p>
- After the specialist had gone Annot came in to where Anthony waited in the
- study. Her feet were thrust in the Turkish slippers, her hair twisted into
- a hasty knot, but otherwise she had not changed. She came swiftly, with
- pale lips and eyes brilliantly shining from dark hollows, to his side.
- “His wonderful brain is dead,” she told him. “Professor Jamison thinks
- there will be only a few empty years to the end. But actually it's all
- over.” In a manner utterly incomprehensible to him she was crying softly
- in his arms.
- </p>
- <p>
- He must lead her to a chair, he told himself, release her at once. Yet she
- remained with her warm, young body pressed against him, the circle of her
- arms about his neck, her tears wet upon his cheek. He stepped back, but
- she would have fallen if he had not continued to support her. His brain
- whirled under the assault, the surrender, of her dynamic youth. Their
- mouths met; were bruised in kissing.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0049" id="link2H_4_0049"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XLIX
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E stood with bowed
- shoulders, twisting lips; and, after a momentary pause, she fled from the
- room. Cold waves of self-hatred flowed over him—he had taken a
- despicable advantage of her grief. The pleasant fabric of the past,
- unthinking days, the new materialism with its comfortable freedom from
- restraint, crumbled from an old, old skeleton whose moldering lines
- spelled the death of all—his heart knew—that was high,
- desirable, immaculate. He wondered if, like Rufus Hardinge, his
- understanding had come too late. But, in the re-surge of his adoration for
- Eliza, infinitely more beautiful and serene from the pit out of which he
- sped his vision, he was possessed by the conviction that nothing created
- nor void should extinguish the bright flame of his passion, hold them
- separate.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the midst of his turmoil he recalled Eliza with relief, with delight,
- with tumultuous longing. He soared on the wings of his ecstasy; but
- descended abruptly to the practical necessities which confronted him. He
- must leave the Hardinges immediately; with a swift touch of the humorous
- spirit native to him, he realized that again he would be without money.
- Then more seriously he considered his coming interview with Annot.
- </p>
- <p>
- The house was charged with the vague unrest, the strange aspect of
- familiar things, wrought by serious illness. Luncheon was disorganized,
- Annot was late. She was pale, but, under an obvious concern, she radiated
- a suppressed content. She laid a letter before Anthony. “Registered,” she
- told him. “I signed.” It was, he saw, from his father, and he slipped it
- into his pocket, intent upon the explanation which lay before him. It
- would be more difficult even than he had anticipated: Annot spoke of the
- near prospect of a Mediterranean trip, if Rufus Hardinge rallied
- sufficiently. “He is as contented and gentle as a nice old lady,” she
- reported; then, with a subtle expansion of manner, “it will be such fun—I
- shall take you by the hand, 'This, my good infant, is one of Virgil's
- final resting places....'”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That would be splendid,” he acknowledged, “but I'm afraid that I sha'n't
- be able to go. The fact is that—that I had better leave you. I can't
- take your money for... for....”
- </p>
- <p>
- She glanced at him swiftly, under the shadow of a frown, then shook her
- head at him. “That tiresome money again! It's a strange thing for you to
- insist on; material considerations are ordinarily as far as possible from
- your thoughts. I forbid you absolutely to mention it again; every time you
- do I shall punish you—I shall present you with a humiliating gold
- piece in person.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should be all kinds of a trimmer to take advantage of your goodness.
- No, I must go—” The gay warmth evaporated from her countenance as
- abruptly as though it had been congealed in a sudden icy breath; she sat
- motionless, upright, enveloping him in the bright resentment of her gaze.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I must ask you to forgive me for... for this morning,” he stumbled
- hastily on.
- </p>
- <p>
- The resentment burned into a clear flame of angry contempt. “'For this
- morning!' because I kissed you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He made a vehement gesture of denial. “Oh, no!” But she would not allow
- him to finish. “But I did,” she announced in a hard, determined voice. “It
- isn't necessary for you to be polite; I don't care a damn for that
- sickening sort of thing. I did, and you are properly and modestly
- retreating. I believe that you think I am—'designing,' isn't that
- the word? that you might have to marry me. A kiss, I am to realize, is
- something sacred. Bah! you make me ill, like almost everything else in
- life.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you think for a minute that it was anything more than the expression
- of a passing impulse you are beyond words. And, if it had been more, you—you
- violet, I wouldn't marry you; I wouldn't marry any man, ever! ever! ever!
- I might have gone to Italy with you, but probably come home with some one
- else—will that get into your pretty prejudices?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you had gone to Italy with me,” he declared sullenly, “you would never
- have come home with anybody else.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That sort of thing has been dismissed to the smaller rural towns and the
- cheap melodramas; it's no longer considered elevated to talk like that,
- but only pitiful. You will start next on 'God's noblest creation,' and
- purity, and the females of your family. Don't you know, haven't you been
- told, that the primitive religious rubbish about marriage has been laughed
- out of existence? Did you dream that I wanted to <i>keep</i> you? or that
- I would allow you to keep me after the thing had got stale? It makes me
- cold all over to be so frightfully misunderstood. Oh, its unthinkable! Fi,
- to kiss you! wasn't it loose of me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her contemptuous periods stung him in a thousand minute places. “I told
- you,” he retorted hotly, “that I wanted to make money; I don't want it
- given to me; it's for my wedding.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course, how stupid of me not to have guessed—the lips sacred to
- her,” her own trembled ever so slightly, but her scornful attitude, her
- direct, bright gaze, were maintained, “A knight errant adventuring for a
- village queen with her handkerchief in his sleeve and tempted by the
- inevitable Kundry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He settled himself to weathering this feminine storm; he owed her all the
- relief to be found in words. “I wanted the money to go West,” he
- particularized further. “There's a position waiting for me—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's all very chaste,” she told him, “but terribly commonplace. I think
- that I don't care to hear the details.” She addressed herself to what
- remained of the luncheon. “Have some more sauce,” she advised coolly, then
- rang. “The pudding, Jane,” she directed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have been wonderfully kind—” he began. But she halted him
- abruptly. “We'll drop all that,” she pronounced, and deliberately lit a
- cigarette.
- </p>
- <p>
- A genuine admiration for her possessed Anthony; he recognized that she was
- extraordinarily good to look at; he had had no idea that so vigorous a
- spirit could have burned behind a becoming dress by Paret. He realized
- with a faint regret, eminently masculine, that other men, men of moment,
- would find her irresistibly attractive. Already it seemed incredible that
- she had ever been familiar, intimate, tender, with him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You will be wanting to leave,” she said, rising; “—whenever you
- like. I have written for a—a chauffeur. I think you should have,
- it's twenty-five dollars, isn't it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not twenty-five cents,” he returned.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I shouldn't like to force your delicate sensibilities.” She left the
- room. He caught a last glimpse of her firm, young profile; her shining,
- coppery hair; her supple, upright carriage.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0050" id="link2H_4_0050"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- L
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>N his room he
- assembled the battered clothing in which Rufus Hardinge had discovered
- him, preparatory to changing from his present more elaborate garb, but a
- sudden realization of the triviality of that course, born of the memory of
- Annot's broad disposition, halted him midway. Making a hasty bundle of his
- personal belongings he descended from the tower room. Through an open door
- he could see the still, white face of the biologist looming from a pillow,
- and the trim form of a nurse.
- </p>
- <p>
- Thomas Huxley lay somnolently on the porch, beside Annot's coffee-colored
- wicker chair and a yellow paper book which bore a title in French. He
- paused on the street, gazing back, and recalled his first view of the
- four-square, ugly house in its coat of mustard-colored paint, the grey,
- dripping cupids of the fountain, the unknown girl with yellow silk
- stockings. Already he seemed to have crossed the gulf which divided it all
- from the present: its significance faded, its solidity dissolved, dropped
- behind, like a scene viewed from a car window. He turned, obsessed by the
- old, familiar impatience to hurry forward, the feeling that all time, all
- energy, all plans and thoughts, were vain that did not lead directly to——
- </p>
- <p>
- A sudden and unaccountable sensation of cold swept over him, a profound
- emotion stirring in response to an obscure, a hidden cause. Then, with a
- rush, returned the feeling of Eliza's nearness: he <i>heard</i> her, the
- little, indefinable noises of her moving; he felt the unmistakable thrill
- which she alone brought. There was a vivid sense of her hand hovering
- above his shoulder; her fingers <i>must</i> descend, rest warmly.... God!
- how did she get here. He whirled about... nothing against the low
- stone-wall that bounded a sleepy garden, nothing in the paved perspective
- of the sunny street! He stood shaken, half terrified, miserable. He had
- never felt her nearness so poignantly; her distant potency had never
- before so mocked his hungering nerves.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, with the cold chilling him like a breath from an icy vault, he heard
- her, beyond all question, beyond all doubt:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Anthony!” she called. “Anthony!” From somewhere ahead of him her tones
- sounded thin and clear; they seemed to reach him dropping from a window,
- lingering, neither grave nor gay, but tenderly secure, upon his hearing.
- He broke into a clattering run over the bricks of the unremarkable street,
- but soon slowed awkwardly into a walk, jeering at his fancy, his laboring
- heart, his mad credulity. And then, drifting across his bewildered senses,
- came the illusive, the penetrating, the remembered odor of lilacs, like a
- whisper, a promise, a magic caress.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0051" id="link2H_4_0051"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- LI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>T was with a
- puzzled frown that Anthony halted in the heart of the city and considered
- his present resources, his future, possible plans. He had three dollars
- and some small silver left from the Hardinges, and he regarded with
- skepticism the profession of chauffeur; he would rather adventure the
- heavier work of the garages. As the afternoon was far advanced he decided
- to defer his search until the following morning; and he was absorbed
- within the gaudy maw of a moving picture theater.
- </p>
- <p>
- Later, he entered an elaborate maze of mirrors, where, apparently, a sheaf
- of Susannas unconsciously exhibited their diminishing, anatomical charms
- to a procession of elders advancing two by two through a perspective of
- sycamores.—At the bar, his glass of beer supported by two fried
- oysters, a sandwich and a saucer of salted almonds, he reflected upon the
- slough of sterility that had fastened upon his feet: something must be
- accomplished, decisive, immediate.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was proceeding toward the entrance when the familiar aspect of a back
- brought him to a halt. The back moved, turned, and resolved into the
- features of Thomas Addington Meredith. The mutual, surprised recognition
- was followed by a greeting of friendly slaps, queries, the necessity for
- instant, additional beers, and they found a place at a small, polished
- table.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was surprised to discover Tom Meredith the same foxy-faced boy he had
- left in Doctor Allhop's drugstore... it seemed to Anthony that an
- incalculable time had passed since the breaking of the bottles of perfume;
- he felt himself to be infinitely changed, older, and the other his junior
- by decades of experience and a vast accumulation of worldly knowledge,
- contact with men, women, and events. Tom's raiment did not seem so
- princely as it had aforetime; the ruby reputed to be the gift of a married
- woman, was obviously meretricious, the gold timepiece merely commonplace.
- But Anthony was unaffectedly glad to see him, to discuss homely, familiar
- topics, repeat affectionately the names of favorite localities, persons.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm in a bonding house here,” Tom explained upon Anthony's query.
- “Nothing in Ellerton for <i>me</i>. What are you doing?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothing, until to-morrow, when I think I'll get something in one of the
- garages.” He thrust his hands negligently into his pockets, and came in
- contact with his father's forgotten letter. He opened it, gazing curiously
- at the words: “My dear Son,” when Tom, with an exclamation, bent and
- recovered a piece of yellow paper that had fallen from the envelope. “Is
- this all you think of these?” he demanded, placing a fifty dollar bill
- upon the table.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony read the letter with growing incredulous wonder and joy. He looked
- up with burning cheeks at his companion. “Remember old Mrs. Bosbyshell?”
- he questioned in an eager voice. “I used to carry wood, do odd jobs, for
- her: well, she's dead, and left me—what do you think!—father
- says about forty-seven thousand dollars. It's there, waiting for me, in
- Ellerton.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Suddenly he forgot Thomas Meredith, the glittering saloon, the diminishing
- perspective of Susannas—he saw Eliza smiling at him out of the dusk,
- with her arms full of white lilacs. With an unsteady pounding of his
- heart, a tightening of the throat, he realized that, miraculously, the
- happiness which he had imagined so far removed in the uncertain future had
- been brought to him now, to the immediate present. He could take a train
- at once and go to her. The waiting was over. The immeasurable joy that
- flooded him deepened to a great chord of happiness that vibrated highly
- through him. He folded the letter gravely, thoughtfully. It was but a few
- hours to Ellerton by train, he knew, but he doubted the possibility of a
- night connection to that sequestered town. He would go in the morning.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thomas,” he declared, “I am about to purchase you the best dinner that
- champagne can shoot into your debased middle. Oh, no, not here, but in a
- real place where you can catch your own fish and shoot a pheasant out of a
- painted tree.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus pleasantly apostrophized that individual led Anthony to the Della
- Robbia room of an elaborate hostelry, where they studied the <i>carte de
- jour</i> amid pink tiling and porphyry. There was a rosy flush of shaded
- lights over snowy linen in the long, high chamber, the subdued passage of
- waiters like silhouettes, low laughter, and a throbbing strain of violins
- falling from a balcony above their heads. They pondered nonchalantly the
- strange names, elaborate sauces; but were finally launched upon suave
- cocktails and clams. Anthony settled back into a glow of well-being, of
- the tranquillity that precedes an expected, secure joy. He saluted the
- champagne bucket by the table; when, suddenly, the necessity to speak of
- Eliza overcame him, he wished to hear her name pronounced by other lips...
- perhaps he would tell Tom all; he was the best of fellows....
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are the Dreens home?” he asked negligently. “Have you seen Eliza Dreen
- about—you know with that soft, shiny hair?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Thomas Meredith directed at him a glance of careless surprise. “Why,” he
- answered, “I thought you knew; it seemed to me she died before you left.
- Anyhow, it was about the same time, it must have been the next week.
- Pneumonia. This soup's great, Anthony.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0052" id="link2H_4_0052"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- LII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>E joy that had
- sung through Anthony shrunk into an intolerable pain like an icicle thrust
- into his heart; he swallowed convulsively a spoonful of soup, tasteless,
- scalding hot, and put the spoon down with a clatter. He half rose from the
- chair, with his arms extended, as if by that means he could ward off the
- terrible misfortune that had befallen him. Thomas Meredith, unaware of
- Anthony's drawn face, his staring gaze, continued to eat with gusto the
- unspeakable liquid, and the waiter uncorked the champagne with a soft
- explosion. The wine flowed bubbling into their glasses, and Tom held his
- aloft. “To your good luck,” he proclaimed, but set it down untouched at
- Anthony's pallor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What's the matter—sick? It's the beer and cocktail, it always does
- it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's not that,” Anthony said very distinctly.
- </p>
- <p>
- His voice sounded to him like that of a third person. He was laboring to
- adjust the tumult within him to the fact of Eliza's death; he repeated
- half aloud the term “dead” and its whispered syllable seemed to fill the
- entire world, the sky, to echo ceaselessly in space. From the stringed
- instruments above came the refrain of a popular song; and, subconsciously,
- mechanically, he repeated the words aloud; when he heard his own voice he
- stopped as though a palm had been clapped upon his mouth.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is it?” Tom persisted; “don't discompose this historical banquet.”
- The waiter replaced the soup with fish, over which he spread a thick,
- yellow sauce. “Go on,” Anthony articulated, “go on—” he emptied his
- champagne glass at a gulp, and then a second. “Certainly a fresh quart,”
- his companion directed the waiter.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eliza was dead! pneumonia. That, he told himself, was why she had not
- answered his letter, why, on the steps at Hydrangea House, Mrs. Dreen—hell!
- how could he think of such things? Eliza... dead, cold who warm had kissed
- him; Eliza, for whom all had been dreamed, planned, undertaken, dead;
- Eliza gone from him, gone out of the sun into the damned and horrible
- dirt. Tom, explaining him satisfactorily, devoted himself to the
- succession of dishes that flowed through the waiter's skillful hands,
- dishes that Anthony dimly recognized having ordered—surely years
- before. “You're drunk,” Thomas declared.
- </p>
- <p>
- He drank inordinately: gradually a haze enveloped him, separating him from
- the world, from his companion, a shadowy shape performing strange antics
- at a distance. Sounds, voices, penetrated to his isolation, rent thinly
- the veil that held at its center the sharp pain dulled, expanded, into a
- leaden, sickening ache. He placed the yellow bank note on a silver platter
- that swayed before him, and in return received a crisp pile, which, with
- numb fingers, he crowded into a pocket. He would have fallen as he rose
- from his chair if Tom had not caught him, leading him stumbling but safely
- to the street.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't start an ugly drunk,” Thomas Meredith begged. Without a word,
- Anthony turned and, with stiff legs, strode into the night. Eliza was
- dead; he had had something to give her, a surprise, but it was too late. A
- great piece of good fortune had overtaken him, he wanted to tell Eliza,
- but... he collided with a pedestrian, and continued at a tangent like a
- mechanical toy turned from its course. His companion swung him from under
- the wheels of a truck. “Wait,” he panted, “I'm no Marathon runner, it's
- hotter'n Egypt.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The perspiration dripped from Anthony's countenance, wet the clenched
- palms of his hands. He walked on and on, through streets brilliantly
- lighted and streets dark; streets crowded with men in evening clothes,
- loafing with cigarettes by illuminated playbills, streets empty, silent
- save for the echo of his hurried, shambling footsteps. Eliza was lost, out
- there somewhere in the night; he must find her, bring her back: but he
- couldn't find her, nor bring her back—she was dead. He stopped to
- reconsider dully that idea. A row of surprisingly white marble steps, of
- closed doors, blank windows, confronted him. “This is where I retire,”
- Thomas Meredith declared. Anthony wondered what the fellow was buzzing
- about? why should he wait for him, Anthony Ball, at “McCanns”?
- </p>
- <p>
- He considered with a troubled brow a world empty of Eliza; it wasn't
- possible, no such foolish world could exist for a moment. Who had dared to
- rob him? In a methodical voice he cursed all the holy, all the august, all
- the reverent names he could call to mind. Then again he hurried on,
- leaving standing a ridiculous figure who shouted an incomprehensible
- sentence.
- </p>
- <p>
- He passed through an unsubstantial city of shadows, of sudden, clangoring
- sounds, of the blur of lights swaying in strings above his head, of
- unsteady luminous bubbles floating before him through ravines of gloom;
- bells rang loud and threatening, throats of brass bellowed. His head began
- to throb with a sudden pain, and the pain printed clearly on the bright
- suffering of his mind a stooping, dusty figure; leaden eyes, a grey face,
- peered into his own; slack lips mumbled the story of a boy dead long ago—Eliza,
- Eliza was dead—and of a red necktie, a Sunday suit; a fearful
- figure, a fearful story, from the low mutter of which he precipitantly
- fled. Other faces crowded his brain—Ellie with her cool,
- understanding look, his mother, his father frowning at him in assumed
- severity; he saw Mrs. Dreen, palely sweet in a starlit gloom. Then panic
- swept over him as he realized that he was unable, in a sudden freak of
- memory, to summon into that intimate gallery the countenance of Eliza. It
- was as though in disappearing from the corporeal world she had also
- vanished from the realm of his thoughts, of his longing. He paused,
- driving his nails into his palms, knotting his brow, in an agony of effort
- to visualize her. In vain. “I can't remember her,” he told an indistinct
- human form before him. “I can't remember her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A voice answered him, thin and surprisingly bitter. “When you are sober
- you will stop trying.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And then he saw her once more, so vivid, so near, that he gave a sobbing
- exclamation of relief. “Don't,” he whispered, “not... lose again—”
- He forgot for the moment that she was dead, and put out a hand to touch
- her. Thin air. Then he recalled. He commenced his direct, aimless course,
- but a staggering weariness overcame him, the toylike progress grew slower,
- there were interruptions, convulsive starts.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0053" id="link2H_4_0053"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- LIII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>T the same time
- the haze lightened about him: he saw clearly his surroundings, the black,
- glittering windows of stores, the gleaming rails which bound the stone
- street. His hat was gone and he had long before lost the bundle that
- contained his linen. But the loss was of small moment now—he had
- money, a pocketful of it, and forty-seven thousand dollars waiting in
- Ellerton: his father was a scrupulous, truthful and exact man.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eliza and he would have been immediately married, gone to a little green
- village, under a red mountain; Eliza would have worn the most beautiful
- dresses made by a parrot; but that, he recognized shrewdly, was an idiotic
- fancy—birds didn't make dresses. And now she was dead.
- </p>
- <p>
- He entered a place of multitudinous mirrors reflecting a woman's
- flickering limbs, sly and bearded masculine faces, that somehow were
- vaguely familiar.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Champagne!” he cried, against the bar.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your champagne'll come across in a schooner.”
- </p>
- <p>
- But, impatiently, he shoved a handful of money into the zinc gutter.
- “Champagne!” he reiterated thickly. The barkeeper deduced four dollars and
- returned the balance. “Sink it,” he advised, “or you'll get it lifted on
- you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- With the wine, the mist deepened once more about him; the ache—was
- it in his head or his heart?—grew duller. He had poured out a third
- glass when a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and whirling suspiciously,
- he saw a uniform cap, a man's gaunt face and burning eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Brother,” the latter said, “brother, shall we leave this reeking sink,
- and go out together into God's night?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Blinking, Anthony recognized the livery, the accents, of the Salvation
- Army. A sullen anger burned within him—this man was a sort of
- official connection of God's, who had killed Eliza. He smoothed out his
- face cunningly, moved obediently toward the other, and struck him
- viciously across the face. Pandemonium rose instantly about him, an
- incredible number of men appeared shouting, gesticulating, and formed in a
- ring of blurred, grinning faces. The jaw of the Salvation Army man was
- bright with blood, dark drops fell on his threadbare coat. His hand closed
- again on Anthony's shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Strive, brother,” he cried. “The Mansion door is open.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony regarded him with insolent disdain. “Ought to be exposed,” he
- articulated, “whole thing... humbug. Isn't any such—such... Eliza's
- dead, ain't she?”
- </p>
- <p>
- A ripple of merriment ran about the circle of loose, stained lips; the
- curious, ribald eyes glittered with cold mirth; the circle flattened with
- the pressure of those without, impatient for a better view. Anthony
- surveyed them with impotent fury, loathing, and they met his passionate
- anger with faces as stony, as inhuman, as cruel, carved masks. He heard <i>her</i>
- name, the name of the gracious and beautiful vision of his adoration,
- repeated in hoarse, in maculate, in gibing tones.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She's dead,” he repeated sharply, as though that fact should impose
- silence on them; “you filthy curs!” But their approbation of the spectacle
- became only the more marked.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Salvation Army man fastened his hectic gaze upon Anthony; he was, it
- was evident, unaware of the blood drying upon his face, of the throng
- about them. “There is no death,” he proclaimed. “There is no death!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But she <i>is</i> dead,” Anthony insisted; “pneumonia... with green eyes
- and foggy hands.” They began an insane argument: Eliza was gone, Anthony
- reiterated, the other could not deny that she was lost to life, to the
- sun. He recalled statements of Rufus Hardinge's, crisp iconoclasms of
- Annot's, and fitted them into the patchwork of his labored speech. Texts
- were flung aloft like flags by the other; ringing sentences in the
- incomparable English of King James echoed about the walls, the bottles of
- the saloon and beat upon the throng, the blank hearts, the beery brains,
- of the spectators. “Blessed are the pure in heart,” he orated, “for
- they... for they...”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0054" id="link2H_4_0054"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- LIV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HAT word—purity,
- rang like a gong in Anthony's thoughts: Eliza had emphasized it,
- questioning him. The term became inexplicably merged with Eliza into one
- shining whole—Eliza, purity; purity, Eliza. A swift impression of
- massed, white flowers swept before him, leaving a delicate and trailing
- fragrance. He had a vision of purity as something concrete, something
- which, like a priceless and fragile vase, he guarded in his hands. It had
- been a charge from her, a trust that he must keep unspotted, inviolable,
- that she would require—but she was gone, she was dead.
- </p>
- <p>
- “... through the valley of the shadow,” the other cried.
- </p>
- <p>
- She had left him; he stood alone, guarding a meaningless thing, useless as
- the money in his pocket.
- </p>
- <p>
- A man with bare, corded arms and an apron, broke roughly through the
- circle; and with a hand on Anthony's back, a hand on the back of his
- opponent, urged them toward the door. “You'll have to take this outside,”
- he pronounced, “you're blocking the bar.”
- </p>
- <p>
- An arm linked within Anthony's, and swung him aside. “Unavoidably detained
- by merest 'quaintance,” Thomas Meredith explained with ponderous
- exactitude. Unobserved, they found a place at the table they had occupied
- earlier in the evening. The latter ordered a fresh bottle, but was
- persuaded by Anthony to surrender the check which accompanied it.
- </p>
- <p>
- A sudden hatred for the money that had come too late possessed him: if he
- had had the whole forty-seven thousand dollars there he would have torn it
- up, trampled upon it, flung it to the noisome corners of the saloon. It
- seemed to have become his for the express purpose of mocking at his
- sorrow, his loss. His hatred spread to include that purity, that virtue,
- which he had conceived of as something material, an actual possession....
- That, at any rate, he might trample under foot, destroy, when and as it
- pleased him. Eliza was gone and all that was left was valueless. It had
- been, all unconsciously, dedicated to her; and now he desired to cast it
- into the mold that held her.
- </p>
- <p>
- He fingered with a new care the sum in his pocket, an admirably
- comprehensive plan had occurred to him—he would bury them both, the
- money and purity, beneath the same indignity. Tom Meredith, he was
- certain, could direct his purpose to its fulfillment. Nor was he mistaken.
- The conversation almost immediately swung to the subject of girls, girls
- gracious, prodigal of their charms. They would sally forth presently and
- “see the town.” Tom loudly asseverated his knowledge of all the inmates of
- all the complacent quarters under the gas light. Before a cab was summoned
- Anthony stumbled mysteriously to the bar, returning with a square,
- paper-wrapped parcel.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Port wine,” he ejaculated, “must have it... for a good time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0055" id="link2H_4_0055"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- LV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> SEEMINGLY
- interminable ride followed, they rattled over rough stones, rolled with a
- clacking tire over asphalt. A smell unnamable, fulsome, corrupt, hung in
- Anthony's nostrils; the driver objurgated his horse in a desperate
- whisper; Tom's head fell from side to side on his breast. The mists surged
- about Anthony, veiling, obscuring all but the sullen purpose compressing
- his heart, throbbing in his brain.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a halt, a rocking pavement and unctuous tones. Then a hall, a
- room, and the tinny racket of a piano, feminine voices that, at the same
- time, were hoarsely sexless, empty, like harsh echoes flung from a rocky
- void. A form in red silk took possession of Anthony's hand, sat by his
- side; a hot breath, a whisper, flattened against his ear. At times he
- could distinguish Tom's accents; he seemed to be arguing masterfully, but
- a shrill, voluble stream kept pace with him, silenced him in the end.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony strove against great, inimical forces to maintain his sanity of
- action, ensure his purpose: he sat with a grim, haggard face as rigid as
- wood, as tense as metal. The cloudy darkness swept over him, impenetrable,
- appalling; through it he seemed to drop for miles, for years, for
- centuries; it lightened, and he found himself clutching the sides of his
- chair, shuddering over the space which, he had felt, gaped beneath him.
- </p>
- <p>
- In moments of respite he saw, gliding through the heated glare, gaily-clad
- forms; they danced; yet for all the dancing, for all the colors, they were
- more sinister than merry, they were incomparably more grievous than gay. A
- tray of beer glasses was held before him, but he waved it aside.
- “Champagne,” he muttered. The husky voices commended him; a bare arm crept
- around his neck, soft, stifling; the red silk form was like a blot of
- blood on the gloom; it spread over his arm like a tide of blood welling
- from his torn heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- He thought at intervals, when the piano was silent, that he could
- distinguish the sound of low, continuous sobbing; and the futility of
- grief afforded a contemptuous amusement. “It's fierce,” a shrill voice
- pronounced. “They ought to have took her somewhere else; this is a decent
- place.” A second hotly silenced this declaration. In the jumble of talk
- which followed he heard the title “captain” pronounced authoritatively,
- conclusively imposing an abrupt lull. Men entered. With an effort which
- taxed his every resource of concentration he saw that there were two; he
- distinguished two tones—one deliberate, coldly arrogant, the other
- explosive, iterating noisy assertions. Peering through the film before his
- eyes, Anthony saw that the first, insignificant in stature, exactly and
- fashionably dressed, had a countenance flat and dark, like a Chinaman's;
- the other was a fleshy young man in an electric blue suit, his neck
- swelling in a crimson fold above his collar, who gesticulated with a fat,
- white hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anthony felt the attention of the room centered upon himself, he heard
- disconnected periods; “... to the eyes. Good fellow... threw friend out—one
- of them lawyer jags, too dam' smart.” A voice flowed, thick and gummy like
- molasses, from the redness at his side, “He's my fellow; ain't you,
- Raymond?”
- </p>
- <p>
- A wave of deathly sickness swept up from the shuddering void and enveloped
- him. He summoned his dissipated faculties, formed his cold lips in
- readiness to pronounce fateful words, when he was diverted by the sharp
- impact of a shutting door, he heard with preternatural clearness a bolt
- slip in its channel. The young man in the blue suit had disappeared. Again
- the sobbing, low and distinct, rose and fell upon his hearing.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a general stir in the room; the form beside him rose; and he was
- lunging to his feet when, in the act of moving, he became immovable; he
- stood bent, with his hands extended, listening; he turned his head slowly,
- he turned his dull, straining gaze from side to side. Then he straightened
- up as though he had been opened by a spring.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who—who called?” he demanded. “Who called me—Anthony?”
- </p>
- <p>
- In the short, startled silence which followed the room grew suddenly clear
- before him, the mist dissolved before a garish flood of gaslight that fell
- upon a grotesque circle of women in shapeless, bright apparel; he saw
- haggard, youthful countenances on which streaks of paint burned like
- flames; he saw eyes shining and dead like glass marbles; mouths drawn and
- twisted as though by torture. He saw the fragile, fashionably dressed
- youth with the flat face. No one of them could have called him in the
- clear tone that had swept like a silver stream through the miasma of his
- consciousness.
- </p>
- <p>
- Again he heard it. “Anthony!” Its echo ran from his brain in thrills of
- wonder, of response, to the tips of his fingers. “Anthony!” Oh, God! he
- knew now, beyond all question, all doubt, that it was the voice of Eliza.
- But Eliza was dead. It was an inexplicable, a cunning and merciless jest,
- at the expense of his love, his longing.... “Anthony!” it came from above,
- from within.
- </p>
- <p>
- A double, sliding door filled the middle of the wall, and, starting
- forward, he fumbled with its small, brass handles. A sudden, subdued
- commotion of curses, commands, arose behind him; hands dragged at his
- shoulders; an arm as thin and hard as steel wire closed about his throat.
- He broke its strangling hold, brushed the others aside. The door was
- bolted. Yes, it came from beyond; and from within came the sobbing that
- had hovered continuously at the back of his perception.
- </p>
- <p>
- He shook the door viciously; then, disregarding the hands tearing at him
- from the rear, burst it open with his shoulder. He staggered in, looking
- wildly about.... It had, after all, been only a freak of his disordered
- mind, an hallucination of his pain. The room was empty but for the young
- man in electric blue, now with his coat over the back of a chair, and a
- girl with a torn waist, where her thin, white shoulder showed dark,
- regular prints, and a tangle of hair across her immature face.
- </p>
- <p>
- The man in shirt sleeves rose from the couch, on which he had been
- sitting, with a stream of sudden, surprised oaths. The girl who stood
- gazing with distended eyes at Anthony turned and flashed through the
- broken door. “Stop her!” was urgently cried; “the hall door—”
- Anthony heard a chair fall in the room beyond, shrill cries that sank,
- muffled in a further space.
- </p>
- <p>
- The two men faced him in the silent room: the larger, with an empurpled
- visage, bloodshot eyes, shook with enraged concern; the other was as
- motionless as a piece of furniture, in his wooden countenance his gaze
- glittered like a snake's, glittered as icily as the diamond that sparkled
- in his crimson tie folded exactly beneath an immaculate collar. Only, at
- intervals, his fingers twitched like jointed and animated straws.
- </p>
- <p>
- An excited voice cried from the distance: “She's gone! Alice's face is
- tore open... out the door like a devil, and up the street in her
- petticoat.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The man with the flushed face wilted. “This is as bad as hell,” he
- whimpered. “It will come out, sure. You—” he particularized Anthony
- with a corroding epithet. “The captain is in it deep... this will do for
- him, we'll all go up—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why?” the other demanded. He indicated Anthony with his left hand, while
- the other stole into his pocket. “He brought her here... you heard the
- girl and broke into the room; there was a fight—a fight.” He drew
- nearer to Anthony by a step.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0056" id="link2H_4_0056"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- LVI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>NTHONY gazed above
- their heads. There, again, clear and sweet, his name shaped like a
- bell-note. The familiar scent of a springtide of lilacs swept about him;
- the placid murmur of water slipping between sodded banks, tumbling over a
- fall; the querulous hunting cry of owls hovered in his hearing, singing in
- the undertone of that pronouncement of his name out of the magic region of
- his joy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No good,” a voice buzzed, indistinct, immaterial. “Who'll shut this—?
- who'll get the girl?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The girl can't reach us alone....”
- </p>
- <p>
- An intolerable scarlet hurt stabbed at Anthony out of a pungent, whitish
- cloud. There was a fretful report. A flat, dark face without expression,
- without the blink of an eyelid, a twitch of the mouth, loomed before him
- and then shot up into darkness. The hurt multiplied a thousand fold, it
- poured through him like molten metal, lay in a flashing pool upon his
- heart, filled his brain. He opened his lips for a protest, put out his
- hands appealingly. But he uttered no sound, his arms sank, grew stiff...
- the light faded from his eyes.... imponderable silence. Frigid night....
- </p>
- <p>
- Far off he heard <i>her</i> calling him, imperative, confident, glad. Her
- crystal tones descended into the abyss whose black and eternal walls
- towered above him. He must rise and bear to her that gift like a precious
- and fragile vase which he held unbroken in his hands. An ineffable
- fragrance deepened about him from the massed blooms rosy in the glow where
- she waited, drawing him up to her out of the chaotic wash beyond the
- worlds where the vapors of corrupted matter sank and sank in slow coils,
- falling endlessly, forever.
- </p>
- <h3>
- THE END
- </h3>
- <div style="height: 6em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lay Anthony, by Joseph Hergesheimer
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAY ANTHONY ***
-
-***** This file should be named 51921-h.htm or 51921-h.zip *****
-This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
- http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/9/2/51921/
-
-Produced by David Widger from page images generously
-provided by Google Books
-
-
-Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
-be renamed.
-
-Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
-law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
-so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
-States without permission and without paying copyright
-royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
-of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
-concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
-and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive
-specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this
-eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook
-for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports,
-performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given
-away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks
-not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the
-trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.
-
-START: FULL LICENSE
-
-THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
-PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
-
-To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
-(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
-Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
-Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
-www.gutenberg.org/license.
-
-Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-
-1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
-and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
-(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
-the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
-destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your
-possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
-Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
-by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
-person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
-1.E.8.
-
-1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
-used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
-agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
-things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
-paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this
-agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
-
-1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
-Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
-of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual
-works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
-States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
-United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
-claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
-displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
-all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
-that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting
-free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm
-works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
-Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily
-comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
-same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when
-you share it without charge with others.
-
-1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
-what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
-in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
-check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
-agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
-distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
-other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no
-representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
-country outside the United States.
-
-1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
-
-1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
-immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear
-prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work
-on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
-phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
-performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
-
- This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
- most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
- restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
- under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
- eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
- United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you
- are located before using this ebook.
-
-1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is
-derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
-contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
-copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
-the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
-redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
-Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
-either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
-obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm
-trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
-with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
-must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
-additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
-will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works
-posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
-beginning of this work.
-
-1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
-work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
-
-1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
-electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
-prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
-active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm License.
-
-1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
-compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
-any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
-to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format
-other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
-version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site
-(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
-to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
-of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
-Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
-full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
-
-1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
-performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
-unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
-access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-provided that
-
-* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
- the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
- you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
- to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has
- agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
- Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
- within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
- legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
- payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
- Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
- Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
- Literary Archive Foundation.”
-
-* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
- you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
- does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
- License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
- copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
- all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm
- works.
-
-* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
- any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
- electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
- receipt of the work.
-
-* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
- distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than
-are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
-from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The
-Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm
-trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
-
-1.F.
-
-1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
-effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
-works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
-Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
-contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
-or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
-intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
-other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
-cannot be read by your equipment.
-
-1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
-of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
-liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
-fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
-LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
-PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
-TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
-LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
-INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
-DAMAGE.
-
-1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
-defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
-receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
-written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
-received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
-with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
-with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
-lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
-or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
-opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
-the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
-without further opportunities to fix the problem.
-
-1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
-in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO
-OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
-LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
-
-1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
-warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
-damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
-violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
-agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
-limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
-unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
-remaining provisions.
-
-1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
-trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
-providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in
-accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
-production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
-including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
-the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
-or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or
-additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any
-Defect you cause.
-
-Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
-electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
-computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
-exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
-from people in all walks of life.
-
-Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
-assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
-goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
-remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
-and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future
-generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
-Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
-www.gutenberg.org Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation
-
-The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
-501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
-state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
-Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
-number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
-U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
-
-The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the
-mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its
-volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous
-locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt
-Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to
-date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and
-official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
-
-For additional contact information:
-
- Dr. Gregory B. Newby
- Chief Executive and Director
- gbnewby@pglaf.org
-
-Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
-spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
-increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
-freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
-array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
-($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
-status with the IRS.
-
-The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
-charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
-States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
-considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
-with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
-where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
-DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
-state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
-
-While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
-have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
-against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
-approach us with offers to donate.
-
-International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
-any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
-outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
-
-Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
-methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
-ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
-donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
-
-Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works.
-
-Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be
-freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
-distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of
-volunteer support.
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
-editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
-the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
-necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
-edition.
-
-Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search
-facility: www.gutenberg.org
-
-This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
-including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
-subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
- </body>
-</html>
|