diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'old/69038-0.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/69038-0.txt | 8835 |
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 8835 deletions
diff --git a/old/69038-0.txt b/old/69038-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index b91d66b..0000000 --- a/old/69038-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8835 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lot & company, by Will Levington -Comfort - -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 -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Lot & company - -Author: Will Levington Comfort - -Release Date: September 24, 2022 [eBook #69038] - -Language: English - -Produced by: D A Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team - at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images - generously made available by University of California - libraries) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOT & COMPANY *** - - - - - -LOT & COMPANY - - - - -BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT - - - LOT & COMPANY - RED FLEECE - MIDSTREAM - DOWN AMONG MEN - FATHERLAND - - - GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY - NEW YORK - - - - - _Lot & Company_ - - BY - WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT - - AUTHOR OF “RED FLEECE,” “MIDSTREAM,” “DOWN AMONG - MEN,” “ROUTLEDGE RIDES ALONE,” - ETC., ETC. - - NEW YORK - GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY - - - - - Copyright, 1915, - BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY - - - - - TO - JANE - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PART ONE - - PAGE - THE JADE: I 11 - - - PART TWO - LOT & COMPANY: I 21 - - - PART THREE - THE JADE: II 67 - - - PART FOUR - THE OPEN BOAT 107 - - - PART FIVE - THE STONE HOUSE: I 197 - - - PART SIX - LOT & COMPANY: II 241 - - - PART SEVEN - THE STONE HOUSE: II 321 - - - - -PART ONE - -THE JADE: I - - - 1 - -ALL would have happened differently for Bellair had he been drowsy -as usual on this particular Sunday afternoon. The boarding-house -was preparing for its nap; indeed already half enveloped, but there -came to Bellair’s nostrils a smell of carpets that brought back his -first passage up stairs five years before. The halls were filled with -greys--dull tones that drove him forth at last. It was November, and -the day didn’t know what to do next. Gusts of seasonable wind, wisps -of sunshine, threats of rain, and everywhere Bellair’s old enemy--the -terrifying Sabbath calm, without which the naked granite soul of New -York would remain decently hid. Sundays had tortured him from the -beginning. It was not so bad when the garment was on--the weave of -millions. - -He walked east with an umbrella, thinking more than observing, crossed -to Brooklyn and followed the water-front as closely as the complication -of ferries, pier-systems and general shipping would permit. Finally he -came to a wooden arch, marked Hatmos & Company, the gate of which was -open. Entering, he heard the water slapping the piles beneath, his eyes -held in fascination to an activity ahead. In the wonder of a dream, -he realised that this was a sailing-ship putting forth. On her black -stern, he read - - _Jade of Adelaide_ - -printed in blue of worn pigment. - -A barkentine, her clipper-built hull of steel, her lines satisfying -like the return of a friend after years. Along the water-line shone -the bright edge of her copper sheathing; then a soft black line smooth -as modelled clay where she muscled out for sea-worth, and covered her -displacement in the daring beauty of contour. Still above was the -shining brass of her row of ports on a ground of weathered grey, and -the dull red of her rail. Over all, and that which quickened the ardour -of Bellair’s soul, was the mystery of her wire rigging and folded -cloths against the smoky horizon, exquisite as the frame of a butterfly -to his fancy. - -His emotion is not to be explained; nor another high moment of his life -which had to do with a flashing merchantman seen from the water-front -at San Francisco--square-rigged throughout, a cloud of sail-cloth, -her royals yet to be lifted, as she got underweigh. He knew that -considerable canvas was still spread between California, Australia and -the Islands, but what a well-kept if ancient maiden of the _Jade’s_ -species was doing here in New York harbour, A. D. Nineteen hundred and -odd, was not disclosed to Bellair until afterward, and not clearly then. - -He knew her for a barkentine, and in the intensely personal appeal -of the moment he was a bit sorry for the blend. To his eyes the -schooner-rig of mizzen and main masts was not to be compared for -beauty to the trisected fore. Still he reflected that square-rigged -throughout, she would be crowded with crew to care for her, and that -her concession to trade was at least not outright. Schooner, bark and -brig--he seemed to know them first hand, not only from pictures and -pages of print, though there had been many long evenings of half-dream -with books before him--books that always pushed back impatiently -through the years of upstart Steam into Nature’s own navigation, -where Romance has put on her brave true form in the long perspective. -Ships that really _sailed_ were one of Bellair’s passions, like -orchards and vined stone-work--all far from him apparently and out -of the question--loved the more because of it.... He watched with -rapt eyes now, estimated the _Jade’s_ length at one-seventy-five -and was debating her tonnage when a huge ox of a man appeared from -the cabin (while the _Jade_ slid farther out), waddled aft as if -bare-footed, spoke to an officer there, and then held up two brown -hairy, thick-fingered hands, palms extended to the pier--as if to push -Brooklyn from him forever.... The officer’s voice just reached shore, -but not his words. A Japanese woman appeared on the receding deck. - -“_Jade of Adelaide_,” muttered Bellair, moments afterward. - -A tug was towing her straight toward Staten. He thought of her -lying off the glistening white beach of a coral island two months -hence, surrounded by native craft, all hands helping the big man get -ashore.... At this moment a young man emerged from the harbour-front -door of the Hatmos office, locking it after him. Bellair came up from -his dream. Such realities of the city man are mainly secret. It was the -worn surface that Bellair presented to the stranger, a sophisticated -and imperturbable surface, and one employed so often that its novelty -was gone. - -“Where’s she going?” he asked. - -“Who?” - -Bellair smiled at the facetiousness. - -“The _Jade_,” he said gently. - -“Just as far from here as she can get.” - -“Round the world?” - -“I doubt if she’ll come back.” - -“You don’t see many of them any more----” - -“No,” replied the other agreeably enough, “this old dame and two or -three sisters are about all that call here. Hatmos & Co. get ’em all.” - -“Will you have a little drink?” Bellair inquired. “That is, if you know -a place around here. I’m from across.” - -The other was not unwilling. They walked up the pier together. A place -was found. - -“Does the _Jade_ belong to the Hatmos people?” Bellair asked. - -“No. We’re agents for Stackhouse. By the way, he’s aboard the -_Jade_--just left the office a half hour ago. The Hatmos son and heir -went home in a cab, like his father used to, when Stackhouse blew in -from the South Seas----” - -“The big man who stood aft as the ship cleared?” Bellair suggested. - -“Hairy neck--clothes look like pajamas?” - -“Yes.” - -“That must have been Stackhouse. He’s the biggest man in -Peloponasia----” - -Bellair wondered if he meant Polynesia. “You mean in size?” - -“Possibly that, but I meant--interests. Owns whole islands and -steam-fleets, but hates steam. Does his pleasure riding under canvas. -Comes up to New York every third year with a new Japanese wife. Used to -spend his time drinking with old Hatmos--now he’s trying to kill off -the younger generation. Lives at the _Florimel_ while in New York, and -teaches the dago barboys how to make tropical drinks. If he had stayed -longer, he would have got to me. Young Hatmos is about finished.” - -Bellair breathed deeply, strangely alive. “Where does the _Jade_ call -first after leaving here?” - -“Savannah--then one or two South American ports--then around the Horn -and the long up-beat to the Islands.” - -“Why, that might mean four months.” Bellair spoke with a touch of -wistfulness. - -They emerged to the street at length, and the New Yorker started shyly -back to the pier. The Hatmos man laughed. - -“You fall for the sailing-stuff, don’t you?” - -“Yes, it’s got me. Do they take passengers?” - -“Sure, if you’re in no hurry. Here and there, some one like you--just -for the voyage. Two or three on board from here.... One a preacher. -He’d better look out. Stackhouse hates to drink alone.” - -“Thanks. Good-bye.” - -The _Jade_, far and very little among the liners, had turned south to -the Narrows and was spreading her wings.... The world began to shut -Bellair in, as he crossed the river again. Sunday night supper at the -boarding-house was always a dismal affair; by every manner and means -it was so to-night. The chorus woman of the Hippodrome was bolting -ahead of the bell, to hurry away to rehearsal. Nightly she came up out -of the water.... He tried three sea-books that night--“Lady Letty,” -“Lord Jim” and “The Phantom,” but couldn’t get caught in their old -spell. A new and personal dimension was upon him from the afternoon. -He fell to dreaming again and again of the _Jade_--the last misty -glimpse of her at the Narrows, and the huge brown hands pushing -Brooklyn away.... There is pathos in the city man’s love and need for -fresh air. Bellair pulled his bed to the window at last, surveying the -room without regard. Long afterward he dreamed that he was out on the -heaving floor of the sea, and that a man-monster came down from the -deck in pajamas, and pressing his hands against the walls of the cabin, -made respiration next to impossible for the inmate. There was a key to -this suffocation, for the air in his room was still as a pool. A lull -had fallen upon the city before a gusty storm of wind and rain. - - - - -PART TWO - -LOT & COMPANY: I - - - 1 - -BELLAIR regarded himself as an average man; and after all perhaps this -was the most significant thing about him. He was not average to look -at--the face of a student and profoundly kind--and yet, he had moved in -binding routine for five years that they knew of at Lot & Company’s. -His acquaintances were of the average type. He did not criticise them; -you would not have known that he saw them with something of the same -sorrow that he regarded himself. - -Back of this five years was an Unknowable. Had you possessed exactly -the perception you might have caught a glimpse of some extraordinary -culture that comes from life in the older lands, and personal contacts -with deeper evils--the culture of the great drifters, the inimitable -polish of rolling stones. As a usual thing he would not have shown -you any of this. At Lot & Company’s offices, men had moved and talked -and lunched near and with him for years without uncovering a gleam of -a certain superb equipment for life which really existed in a darkened -room of his being. - -Perhaps he was still in preparation. We have not really completed the -circle of any accomplishment until we have put it in action. Certainly -Bellair had not done that, since the Unknowable ended. He had made no -great friends among men or women; though almost thirty, he had met no -stirring love affair, at least in this period. He had done the most -common duties of trade, for a common reward in cash; lived in a common -house--moved in crowds of common men and affairs. It was as if he were -a spy, trained from a child, but commanded at the very beginning of his -manhood, not only to toil and serve in an insignificant post--but to -be insignificant as well. It was by accident, for instance, that they -discovered at Lot & Company’s that Bellair was schooled in the Sanscrit. - -Before usual he was astir that Monday morning, but late at the office -for all that. A drop of consciousness somewhere between shoe-buttons, -and a similar trance between collar and tie. In these lapses a half -hour was lost, and queerly enough afterward the old purports of his -life did not hold together as before. A new breath from somewhere, a -difference in vitality, and the hum-drum, worn-sore consciousness given -to his work with Lot & Company, had become like an obscene relative, -to be rid of, even at the price of dollars and the established order -of things. It had been very clear as he drank his coffee that he must -give quit-notice at the office, yet when he reached there, this was not -so easy, and he was presently at work as usual in his cage with Mr. -Sproxley, the cashier. - -The Quaker firm of Lot & Company was essentially a printing -establishment. During the first half of the period in which Bellair -had been connected, though he was not stupider than usual, he had not -realised the crooked weave of the entire inner fabric of the house. -Lot & Company had been established for seventy-five years and through -three generations. Its conduct was ordered now like a process of -nature, a systematised tone to each surface manner and expression. All -the departments were strained and deformed to meet and adjust in the -larger current of profit which the cashier had somehow bridged without -scandal for twenty-seven years. Personally, so far as Bellair knew, -Mr. Sproxley was an honest man, though not exactly of the manner, and -underpaid. - -The cashier’s eyes were black, a black that would burn you, and -unquestionably furtive, although Bellair sat for two years at a little -distance from the cashier’s desk before he accepted the furtiveness, -so deeply laid and set and hardened were his first impressions. They -were hard eyes as well, like that anthracite which retains its gleaming -black edge, though the side to the draft is red to the core. - -Mr. Sproxley’s home was in Brooklyn, an hour’s ride from the office--a -little flat in a street of little flats, all with the same porches, -brickwork and rusty numerals. An apartment for two, and yet Mr. and -Mrs. Sproxley had not moved, though five black-eyed children had come -to them. The cashier of Lot & Company was a stationary man--that was -his first asset.... A hundred times Bellair had heard the old formula, -delivered by firm members to some caller at the office: - -“This is our cashier, Mr. Sproxley. He has been with us twenty-seven -years. We have found him the soul of honour”--the last trailing off -into a whisper--a hundred times in almost the same words, for the -Lots and the Wetherbees bred true. The visitor would be drawn off and -confidently informed that Mr. Sproxley would die rather than leave -a penny unaccounted; indeed, that his zeal on the small as well as -large affairs was frequently a disturbance to the office generally, -since everything stopped until the balance swung free. Bellair knew of -this confidential supplement to the main form, because he had taken -it into his own pores on an early day of his employment. The lift of -that first talk (in Bellair’s case it was from the elder Wetherbee, -an occasional Thee and Thou escaping with unworldly felicity) was for -Bellair sometime to attain a similar rock-bound austerity of honour.... -Always the stranger glanced a second time at Mr. Sproxley during the -firm-member’s low-voiced affirmation of his passionate integrity. - -Passing to the second floor, the visitor would meet Mr. Hardburg, head -of the manuscript and periodical department, for Lot & Company had -found a good business in publishing books of story and poetry at the -author’s expense. Here eye and judgment reigned, Mr. Hardburg’s, on all -matters of book-dress and criticism; yet within six or seven minutes, -the formula would break through for the attention of the caller, thus: - -“Lot & Company is a conservative House--that’s why it stands--a House, -sir (one felt the Capital), that has stood for seventy-five years on -a basis of honour and fair dealing, if on a conservative basis. Lot & -Company stands by its agents and employés first and last. Lot & Company -does not plunge, but over any given period of time, its progress is -apparent and its policy significantly successful.” - -Mr. Hardburg’s eyes kindled as he spoke--grey tired eyes, not at all -like Mr. Sproxley’s--but the light waned, and Mr. Hardburg quickly -relapsed into ennui and complaint, for he was a living sick man. -The impression one drew from his earlier years, was that he had -overstrained as an athlete, and been a bit loose and undone ever -since.... Now Mr. Hardburg would be called away for a moment, leaving -the stranger in the office with Miss Rinderley, his assistant. With -fluent and well directed sentences, this lady would outline the -triumphs of Mr. Hardburg from college to the mastery of criticism which -he was now granted professionally. - -“But what we love best about him,” Miss Rinderley would say, glancing -at the enlarged photograph above his desk, “is the tireless way he -helps young men. Always he is at that. I have seen him talk here for -an hour--when the most pressing matters of criticism and editorial -responsibility called--literally giving himself to some one needing -help. Very likely he would miss his train for the country. Poor Mr. -Hardburg, he needs his rest so----” - -The caller would cry in his heart, “What a superb old institution -this is!” and cover his own weaknesses and shortcomings in a further -sheath of mannerism and appreciation--the entire atmosphere strangely -prevailing to help one to stifle rather than to ventilate his real -points of view. - -So the establishment moved. The groups of girls going up and down the -back stairs--to count or tie or paste through all their interesting -days--counted the heads of their respective departments as their -greatest men; spoke of them in awed whispers, in certain cases with -maternal affection, and on occasion even with playful intimacy on the -part of a few--but always as a master-workman, the best man in the -business, who expressed the poorest part of himself in words, and had -to be lived with for years adequately to be appreciated and understood. - -Mr. Nathan Lot, the present head of the firm, was a dreamer. It was Mr. -Sproxley who had first told Bellair this, but he heard it frequently -afterward, came to recognise it as the accepted initial saying as -regarded the Head, just as his impeccable honour was Mr. Sproxley’s -and unerring critical instinct Mr. Hardburg’s titular association. -Mr. Nathan was the least quarrelsome man anywhere, the quietest and -the gentlest--a small bloodless man of fifty, aloof from business; -a man who had worn and tested himself so little that you would -imagine him destined to live as long again, except for the lugubrious -atmospheres around his desk, in the morning especially, the sense of -imperfect ventilation, though the partitions were but half-high to -the lower floor and there was a thousand feet to draw from. The same -was beginning in Jabez, the son, something pent, non-assimilation -somewhere. However Jabez wasn’t a dreamer; at least, dreaming had -not become his identifying proclivity. He was a head taller than -his father with a wide limp mouth and small expressionless brown -eyes--twenty-seven, and almost as many times a millionaire. - -Jabez was richer than his father, who was the direct heir of the House -of Lot, but his father’s dreaming had complicated the flow of another -huge fortune in the familiar domestic fashion--Jabez being the symbol -and centre of the combination; also the future head of the House of Lot -and Company--up and down town. - -Bellair wondered a long time what the pervading dream of the father -was. He had been in the office many months, had never heard the -senior-mind give vent to authoritative saying in finance, literature, -science or prints; and while this did not lower his estimate at all--he -was sincerely eager to get at the sleeping force of this giant. Mr. -Sproxley spoke long on the subject, but did not know. Mr. Hardburg said: - -“I have been associated with Mr. Nathan for eleven years now. The -appeal of his worth is not eager and insinuating, but I have this to -say--that in eleven years I have found myself slipping, slipping into -a mysterious, _a different_ regard, a profounder friendliness--if one -might put it that way--for Mr. Nathan, than any I have known in my -whole career. The fact is I love Mr. Nathan. He is one of the sweetest -spirits I ever knew.” - -Bellair was interested in dreamers; had a theory that dreaming was -important. When he heard that a certain child was inclined to -dreaming, he was apt to promise a significant future off-hand. He -reflected that even Mr. Hardburg had forgotten to tell him of the -tendency in Mr. Nathan’s case, but determined not to give up.... Once -in the lower part of the city, he passed the firm-head--a studious -little man making his way along at the edge of the walk. Bellair spoke -before he thought. Mr. Nathan started up in a dazed way, appeared to -recognise him with difficulty, as if there was something in the face -that the hat made different. He cleared his voice and inquired with -embarrassment: - -“Are you going to the store?” - -After Bellair had ceased to regret speaking, he reflected upon the word -“store.” The president of a great manufacturing plant, content to be -known as a tradesman--an excellent, a Quaker simplicity about that. - -Bellair’s particular friend in the establishment was Broadwell of the -advertising-desk, a young man of his own age who was improving himself -evenings and who aspired to be a publisher. But even closer to his -heart was Davy Acton, one of the office-boys, who had been tested out -and was not a liar. A sincere sad-faced lad of fifteen, who lived with -his mother somewhere away down town. He looked up to Bellair as to a -man among men, one who had achieved. This was hard to bear on the man’s -part, but he was fond of the youngster and often had him over Sundays, -furnishing books of his own and recommending others. Davy believed in -him. This was the sensation. - -The only voices that were ever raised in the establishment were those -of the travelling salesmen. The chief of this department, Mr. Rawter, -was loud-voiced in his joviality. That was _his_ word--“Mr. Rawter is -so jovial.” - -When the roaring joviality of Mr. Rawter boomed through the lower -floor, old Mr. Wetherbee, the vice-president, would look up from his -desk, and remark quietly to any one who happened near, “Mr. Rawter is -forced to meet the trade, you know.” It was doubtless his gentle Quaker -conception that wine-lists, back-slapping and whole-souled abandonment -of to-morrow, were essentials of the road and trade affiliation. -From the rear of the main floor, back among the piles of stock, -reverberating among great square monuments of ledgers and pamphlets -were the jovial voices of the other salesmen, Mr. Rawter’s seconds, the -Middle-west man, and the Coast-and-South man--voices slightly muffled, -as became their station, but regular in joviality, and doubtless as -boom-compelling afield as their chief’s, considering their years. - -Otherwise the elder Mr. Wetherbee--Mr. Seth--presided over a -distinguished silence for the main. His desk was open to the floor -at large. He was seventy, and one of the first to arrive in the -morning--a vice-president who opened the mail, and had in expert -scrutiny such matters as employment, salaries, orders and expenses -of the travelling men on the road. Mr. Seth was not a dreamer; at -least not on week-days--a millionaire, who gave you the impression -that he was constantly on his guard lest his heart-quality should -suddenly ruin all. The love, the very ardour of his soul was to _give_ -away--to dissipate the fortunes of his own and the firm-members, but so -successfully had he fought all his life on the basis of considering the -justice to his family and his firm, that Lot & Company now relied upon -him, undoubting. Thus often a man born with weakness develops it into -his particular strength.... - -The son, Eben Wetherbee, was harder for Bellair to designate. He seemed -a different force, and called forth secret regard. A religious young -man, who always occurred to Bellair’s mind as he had once seen him, -crossing the Square a summer evening, a book under his arm, his short -steps lifted and queerly rounded, as if treading a low-geared sprocket; -toes straight out--the whole gait mincing a little. Eben was smileless -and a great worker. He had no more to do or say with his father during -working hours than any of the others. - -Such was the firm: Mr. Nathan Lot and his son Jabez; Mr. Seth -Wetherbee and his son Eben, and Mr. Rawter who had been given a nominal -quantity of stock after thirty-five years’ service. In due course Mr. -Sproxley would qualify for this illumination.... And yet not all. -Staring down from the arch over the president’s door was a dour, white, -big-chinned face, done in oils long ago--almost yellow-white, the -black shoulder deadening away into the background; small eyes, wide -mouth, but firmly hung--grandfather to Mr. Nathan, but no dreamer; -great grand-sire to Mr. Jabez, but nothing loose-mouthed about the -face of this, the original Jabez Lot,--organising genius of the House, -and its first president, spoken of with awe and reverence; the first -millionaire of the family and builder of its Gramercy mansion.... -Suddenly, it had come to Bellair that this was the spirit of the Store, -this picture was its symbol, that the slow strangulation of the souls -of all concerned had begun in that white head, the planting of this bed -of crooked canes. - - - 2 - -One morning when Bellair was well into his third year with the -printing-firm, the silence was broken on the lower floor. He was -shaken that day into the real secret of the house. A certain Mr. -Prentidd had been in conversation with Mr. Rawter some moments. The -jovial voice of the head-salesman was without significance to those -near his partition--a part of the routine. Mr. Prentidd had invented -a combination ledger and voucher-file that was having some sale in -America, being manufactured and distributed by Lot & Company. Mr. -Rawter on a recent trip abroad had been empowered to dispose of the -English rights. The result, it now appeared, did not prove satisfactory -to the inventor. The voice of the latter was raised. One felt the -entire building subside into a quivering hush. - -“I tell you, sir, I don’t trust you. I have heard in fact that the only -way you could hurt your reputation here in New York or on the road -would be to tell the truth.” - -To Bellair there was something deeply satisfying in that remark of -the inventor’s--something long awaited and very good. He saw Mr. Seth -arise, his chin moving in a sickly fashion, a very old pathetic Mr. -Seth. He realised that Mr. Rawter had laughed--that something had -been burned from that laugh. Mr. Prentidd was hurried forth, and the -nullifying system began. Mr. Jabez emerged from his father’s office -and turning to Broadwell at the advertising-desk, said in a tone -universally penetrative: - -“What a pity that Mr. Prentidd drinks. There are few men finer to deal -with when he is himself.” - -Mr. Seth, in his chair again, sitting frog-like and gasping, remarked -to Mr. Sproxley across the distance: “I really must ask Mr. Prentidd to -come to us earlier in the day. He’s far too worthy a man to disgrace -himself in this way.” - -Bellair wondered that the point of Mr. Prentidd’s remark seemed -entirely lost. As for himself he counted it worthy of regard. The -episode was but begun. The inventor returned immediately, just as -Mr. Rawter was stepping out. The two men met in the main corridor. -It appeared that Mr. Prentidd repeated a certain question, for the -head-salesman replied, the roundness of the joviality gone from his -voice: - -“I tell you, Mr. Prentidd, the situation has changed. I could not -dispose of the English order at a better figure to save my soul. I -extracted every cent for you and for the House.” - -“I don’t believe you. Other matters of the same kind do better. If you -speak the truth, you made a very bad bargain for yourself and what is -more important, for me----” - -The least like an inventor imaginable, a most physical person, Mr. -Prentidd, with a fiery sense of his own rights and a manner as soft as -his voice was penetrating. He turned a leisurely look of scorn at Mr. -Rawter, half-stare and half-smile, then appeared to perceive the elder -Mr. Wetherbee for the first time. The old man arose. Bellair felt the -agony of expectancy far back among the stock-piles. The inventor shot -straight at the vice-president: - -“You’re an old man. I’ll trust your word. You’re an old man and a -Quaker--yes, I’ll take your word. Your man, Rawter, says he could get -only seven and one-half cents’ royalty for me on my Nubian file from -England. I say it’s only half what I should get. Is it true--remember -you’re old. Is it true?” - -Prentidd’s face had power in it, exasperation and the remains of a -laugh. It appeared that he was content to take a gambler’s chance and -close the ugly business on Mr. Seth’s word. - -The old man’s eye roved. He looked sick and shaken. He found the eyes -of his son Eben which were full of terror and pity and hope. - -“Answer me. Could Lot & Company get no more than fifteen cents -altogether on the English patents?” - -Mr. Wetherbee’s lips moved. “That’s all we could get, Mr. Prentidd. I’m -sorry,” he said. - -For an instant Mr. Prentidd stood there. It was evident that he had -expected a different answer. True to his promise to take the old man’s -word, however, he turned on his heel and walked out. - -On the high sloping desk before Bellair’s eyes, a big ledger lay open. -He had turned during the talk to the transaction of Prentidd--Lot & -Company. The English disposal had been arranged for at twenty-five -cents the file, royalty. Apparently Mr. Prentidd had agreed upon an -even split, but Lot & Company had taken seventeen and the fraction. - -Bellair was ill. The nausea crept down through his limbs, and up to -his throat. The thing had worked out before him with such surety and -clarity. The head of Mr. Sproxley moved about as if on a swivel, his -body in writing position still. Presently he stepped down from his high -stool, and came to Bellair’s side. Placing his pen behind his ear, he -lifted the ledger from under Bellair’s eyes, his lips compressed with -the effort. Then he placed it on his own desk to close it tenderly, -after which it was taken to its niche in the vault. - -The office was silent. Just now Bellair’s eyes turned as if subtly -attracted to the place where Eben Wetherbee sat. The young man’s -smileless eyes, almost insane with apprehension and sadness, were -turned with extraordinary intent upon the place where his father sat. -Bellair’s followed. The old man sat plumped in his chair; he gulped, -tried to turn. His face looked as if he heard a ghost whispering. Yet -he seemed unable to trust himself, hardly daring to meet the eyes that -awaited. His hands lifted to the papers before him, but did not feel -properly. He seemed a man of eighty. Mr. Eben came forward at last and -asked Mr. Sproxley if he might look at the Prentidd transaction. - -“It isn’t posted yet, Mr. Eben,” said the cashier. - - * * * * * - -At the side door at closing time, Bellair happened to pass a party of -young women coming down from the bindery. One was saying: - -“... and Mr. Prentidd was quite helpless after the scene--so that they -had to call a taxi-cab for him. Isn’t it dreadful he drinks so?” - - * * * * * - -There was a personal result for Bellair, which he at no time -misunderstood. - -“We have considered creating a position for you next to Mr. Sproxley,” -said the elder Mr. Wetherbee, the second morning following. - -Bellair bowed. - -“Since you have been with us less than three years, this is very good -comment on the character of your services and our hope for your future -with us----” - -“What additional salary goes with the position?” Bellair had asked. - -“If I followed my own inclination, it would be considerable. I have -been able to secure for you, however, but a slight increase----” - -This was one of Mr. Seth’s little ways. He added hopes of fine quality. -There was a further point: - -“You will at times handle considerable money and we must insist upon -your putting in trust for us the sum of two thousand dollars.” - -“I haven’t two thousand dollars, Mr. Wetherbee,” Bellair said. - -“Of course, we trust you. It is a form--a form, nevertheless, upon -which a valuable relation of this kind should be placed on a business -basis.” - -Bellair repeated. - -“But you have friends----” - -“Not with two thousand dollars’ surety for me--no friend like that.” - -“Banks insist upon this--among those employés who handle much money----” - -“I know--but that amount cannot be arranged.” - -“How much can you put in trust available to Lot & Company in event of -your departure----” - -“I have slightly less than one thousand dollars----” - -“Could you raise one thousand dollars?” - -“With some effort.” - -“Of course, it will draw interest for you----” - -“I understand these affairs.” - -The matter was referred to the next day when it was decided to accept -Bellair’s amount of one thousand dollars, which Lot & Company could -not touch without his consent, except in the event of his departure -with company funds; and which Bellair could not draw without written -statement from Lot & Company to the effect that he was leaving with a -balanced account. - -Thereafter he was one with Mr. Sproxley in the financial management, -under the eye of Seth Wetherbee. One by one he learned the points of -the system. Wherever the accounts had run over a series of years, there -were byways of loot. These pilferings were not made at once, on the -same basis that a gardener does not cut asparagus for market from young -roots. The plants were encouraged to establish themselves. After that -the open market was supplied with a certain output, the rest belonging -to Lot & Company’s table. It frequently occurred to Bellair with a -sort of enveloping darkness that he had the institution in his power; -and with a different but equal force that he had a life position in -all naturalness; that his life would be spent with slowly increasing -monetary reward for juggling the different accounts--the field of -crooked canes which was the asparagus-bed of Lot & Company. He did not -like it. He was not happy; and yet he realised that the adjustments his -nature had already made to the facts, suggested an entire adjustment -later, the final easy acceptance. - - - 3 - -Bellair had thought many times of getting out from under the die, but -it never came to him with quite the force as on that Monday morning, -after watching the _Jade_ fare forth from the Brooklyn water-front. -Something had turned within him as a result of that little pilgrimage, -something that spurred to radicalism and self-assertion. At no time had -Bellair credited himself with a fairer honesty than most men. He had -never given it a large part of thinking. Roughly he had believed that -to be honest is the common lot. The corruption in the office which he -could not assimilate had to do with extensive ramifications, its lying -to itself. The instant seizing upon Mr. Prentidd’s alleged weakness -on the part of the younger Lot and the elder Wetherbee; the action of -Mr. Sproxley with the ledger; the subtle will-breaking and spiritual -blinding of all the employés in a process that never slept and was -operative in every thought and pulse of the establishment--the extent -and talent of these, and the untellable blackness of it all, prevailed -upon Bellair with the force of a life-impression. - -Bellair’s present devil was a kind of inertia. Granting that the -Unknowable had been charged with periods of intense action of several -kinds, the recent half-decade might be regarded as its reflex -condition. There is an ebb and flow to all things, and it is easier to -adjust Bellair’s years at Lot & Company as a sort of resting period for -his faculties, than to accept a constitutional inertia in his case, for -subsequent events do not quite bear that out. He doubtless belonged -to that small class of down town men who do their work well enough, -but without passion, who have faced the modern world and its need of -bread and cake, and who have compromised, giving hours in exchange for -essential commodities, but nothing like the full energies of their -lives. It is a way beset with pitfalls, but the unavoidable result of a -system that multiplies products and profits and minimizes the chances -for fine workmanship on every hand. Moreover in Bellair’s case there is -a philosophical detachment to be considered. The aims and purports of -the printing establishment were coldly and absolutely material. These -did not challenge him to any fine or full expenditure of his powers; -and if he had touched that higher zone of philosophy which makes a -consecration of the simplest and the heaviest tasks, he had at least -found it impracticable to make it work among the systems of Lot & -Company’s business. - -The two years or more since he was made assistant cashier had brought -many further items and exhibits. He was now used on the left hand side -of the throne, developed in the darkness-department already overworked, -the eye of which was Mr. Seth and the hand, Mr. Sproxley. For as yet -Bellair believed that even Eben Wetherbee had only suspicions. This was -the bite of the whole drama. There were men in the building who would -have died for their conviction that the House was honest. You might -have told these men that Lot & Company was a morgue of conservatism; -that having existed under a certain policy for seventy-five years, -was the chief reason for its changing; that free, unhampered genius -never found utterance through that House--and any of a dozen clerks -would have laughed, spoken proudly of unerring dividends and uncanny -stability, granting the rest. But that Lot & Company was structurally -crooked was incredible except to the few who performed the trick. -Bellair knew, for instance, that his best friend in the office, -Broadwell, head of the advertising, was innocent.... - -Monday passed without his giving notice. He quailed before the -questions that would be asked. If it were not for the one thousand -dollars, he would have escaped with a mere “Good-night,” though -a panic would have started until the Company was assured of the -innocence of his departure. As for a panic, Lot & Company had that -coming, he thought. Now he knew that he would not be able to get his -surety-deposit until all was made certain in his regard by the firm.... - -Bellair wasn’t greedy, nor caught in any great desire for wealth. He -had fallen into the Down town Stream, but did not belong. Every month -had weakened him. He disliked to lose his beginnings toward competence; -all the subtle pressures of Lot & Company worked upon him not to -change. There was no other way open. He had been touched by the fear -of fear--a sort of poorhouse horror that dogs men up into the millions -and down to the grave. In a way, he had become slave to the Job. He -even had the suspicion that more men maim their souls by sticking to -their jobs than by any dissipation. This is the way to the fear of -fear--the insane undertow of modern materialism. - -He had tried to find peace outside his work in music and different -philanthropies, but the people he met, their seriousness, perhaps more -than anything else, and the vanity of their intellectualism, aroused -his sense of humour. Bellair believed in the many, but was losing -belief in himself. Often he had turned back to evenings in the room, -and realised that the days were draining him too much for his own -real expression of any kind. Always he felt that Lot & Company was -too strong for his temper, that his edge was dulled in every contact. -From his depressions, he saw ahead only two ways--a life of this, or a -moment in which he had Lot & Company in his power unequivocably. The -last was poisonous, and he knew it. He would have to fall considerably -to profit by this sort of thing, but the inevitable conclusion of the -whole matter, was that the life with Lot & Company was slowly but -surely _getting him down_. - -On Tuesday noon, Mr. Seth asked him to take to lunch a certain young -stationer from Philadelphia, named Filbrick. They were made acquainted -in the corridor. Passing out, Bellair and his companion met the smile -of Mr. Sproxley. Bellair began the formula of the cashier’s absolute -and autocratic integrity. He did not really hear himself, until he -reached this part: - -“I happen to be in the financial department. Two or three times each -year, the whole office is thrown into a mess over some little strayed -account----” - -He stopped. It was less that he was saying this, than that he had come -so far without a nudge from within. They had passed the big front -doors, and met the wind of the street before he realised how deep the -mannerism of the establishment had prevailed upon him. The process had -passed almost into fulfilment before the truth within him had stirred -from its sleep.... A very grey day. All through that luncheon he had -found himself at angles from his companion, in strategic hollows, -never in the level open. It wasn’t that he was different from usual, -but that he was watching himself more shrewdly. His inner coherence -was repeatedly broken, though the outer effects were not. He had never -perceived before with such clarity that a man cannot be square and -friendly to another man, when his mind and critical faculties are busy -appraising him, while his eyes and lips approved and assuaged. Bellair -that day realised his moral derangement--that he must be ripped open -and his displaced organs corrected once for all, if anything decent was -to come from him ever again.... He was still thinking in mid-afternoon, -in the very trance of these thoughts, when he happened to look into Mr. -Sproxley’s face. It seemed to him that there was a movement of most -pitiful activities back of the red and black of Mr. Sproxley’s eyes. - -There was much mental roving on Bellair’s part that week; moments in -which the Monday morning abandon returned, and his self-amazement of -the Tuesday luncheon, upon discovering how deeply his thoughts were -imbedded in the prevailing lie. New York and the salary clutched him -hard at intervals; so that he saw something of what was meant to give -it up; also he saw that dreams are dreams.... Thousands of other young -men would be glad to do his work, even his dirty work. - -He had just returned from lunch on Friday when he started, to perceive -the ruddy face and powerful frame of Mr. Prentidd darken the front -door--which he had not done since his voice was last raised. Bellair -was conscious of Seth Wetherbee hitching up his chair and a peculiar -gasping cough from the old man, but his own eyes did not turn from the -caller’s face--which moved slowly about, the pale little exchange-miss -behind the first barrier, attentive to catch the stranger’s eye and -answer his question. The inventor glanced slowly among desks and -doors. His eye sought Sproxley, and the furtive black eyes of the -latter shot down to his ledger as if crippled on the wing. His eyes -held Bellair and the young man felt the scorn of ages burn through -his veins--something new to his later life, yet deep in his heart, -something he had known somewhere before, as if he had betrayed a -good king, and his punishment had been to look that king in the eye -before he died. Bellair had never hated himself as at that moment, -and certainly never before felt himself identified body and soul with -modern corruption, as now with scorn like a fiery astringent in his -veins. The eyes of Mr. Prentidd finally settled upon the figure of Mr. -Seth Wetherbee, their rays striking him abeam as it were. The old man -hunched closer if anything, but did not raise his head. - -The inventor was a physical person; his morals of a physical nature; -his Nubian file of the same dimension and method of mind--a strong -man who had to do with pain and pleasure of the flesh; his ideas of -possessions were of the world. He moved softly, a soft, dangerous -smile upon his lips, to the desk of the vice-president and jerked up -a chair. The old man had to raise his head. It was as if the scene of -three years ago was now to be continued, for Bellair saw the sorrowful, -lengthened face of Mr. Eben turn from his desk in the other room and -bend toward his father, whose face was intensely pathetic now in its -forced smile of greeting. - -“You’re not looking well--in fact, you’re looking old, Mr. Wetherbee, -as if you would die pretty soon.” - -“I’m not so strong as I was, Mr. Prentidd.” - -Bellair couldn’t have done it, as the inventor did. Had the man stolen -and ruined him--he could not have pushed on after the pathos of that. - -“You’re a dirty old man--and you’ll die hard and soon--for you lied to -me when I trusted you. I suppose you have lied to everybody, all your -life----” - -Thus he baited Mr. Seth feature by feature, pointing out the disorder -of liver, kidney-puffs, the general encroachments of death, in fact. -Then he pictured the death itself--all of a low literary strength as -was Mr. Prentidd’s cold habit. The answer of Mr. Seth was an incoherent -helplessness, his lips moving but with nothing rational under the sun, -as if he had been called by some inexorable but superior being to an -altitude where he was too evil to breathe, and begged piteously to be -allowed to sink back and die. It was Mr. Eben who stopped it, coming -forward quietly, his steps rounded, his shoulders bent, his face -seeming brittle as chalk in its fixity. The thing that he said was -quite absurd: - -“You really mustn’t, Mr. Prentidd. It is too much.” - -The inventor turned to him. His look was that of a man who turns a -large morsel in his mouth. - -“Perhaps you’re right,” he said with a slow laugh. “There is this -delicacy to old liars. Come give me my check--and I will go.” - -“Your check----” Mr. Eben repeated. - -“Yes, now--the check for the difference which your father’s lie cost me -three years ago. I have seen the English books----” - -Now young Mr. Jabez Lot came forward: - -“Of course, if there has been error or any breach of contract--of -course, you see a check off hand such as you ask is out of the -question----” - -The elder Mr. Wetherbee sank back to his desk; and now the dreamer, Mr. -Nathan Lot, appeared with a frightened word of amelioration. Mr. Eben -stood by the caller to the last moment. The latter was not at his best -in this period--his threats and anger amounted to the usual result. -Lot & Company refused to deal further, referring him to its attorney. -The strangest part of it all was the gathering of three around Mr. -Seth Wetherbee’s desk--Mr. Jabez and his father with Mr. Eben. Yet the -concern of the Lots, father and son, had nothing to do with dangerous -exhaustion of the vice-president. - -“We have beaten him,” the dreamer said softly. - -“Yes, Mr. Jackson will do the rest,” said Mr. Jabez. Mr. Jackson was -the attorney. - -Bellair, even with his training, had to take it slowly. “Beaten -him”--that meant that the money had not passed to Mr. Prentidd. It was -now with the law and the years--millions against a mere inventor. The -psychic slaughtering of the old vice-president did not count--nothing -of words counted. The firm had won, because the firm had not been -knocked down and its pockets rifled--that would have meant loss. Not -having been forced to pay, they had won.... Even as Bellair thought -this out in full, the system of salving had begun from all the -firm-heads for the benefit of those who heard. It was simply arranged -and stated.... Their worst fears were realised: Mr. Prentidd was -insane.... Mr. Seth went home early. Bellair knew that Mr. Eben had not -been able to turn all responsibility to Mr. Jackson.... That afternoon -Bellair reached his decision--in fact, he found it finished within him -after the scene. - -Yet he could not walk out at once, since he must have the amount of -his surety, the item of interest and salary due. A certain project in -his mind prevented the possibility of waiting several days for this -amount to be detached from Lot & Company. Especially now after the -final scene, they would make themselves very sure of his accounts and -intentions. Late that Friday afternoon, it happened that considerable -cash came in after banking hours. Bellair’s custom was to put this in a -safety-vault until the following day. This time he held out the amount -of his deposit and two years’ interest, together with the amount of his -salary to date, locking up with the balance his order of release to the -account of the Trust company. He determined to write a letter to Nathan -Lot at once.... - - - 4 - -The City had a different look to him that night in his new sense of -detachment. There were moments at dinner in which he felt as if he were -already forgotten and out of place. Bellair had only known the one -landlady in his five years of New York; yet he knew this one no better -now than at the end of the first month. Perhaps there was nothing more -to learn. She was anæmic of body, and yet did prodigious tasks, very -quiet, very grey; and days to her were like endless rooms of the same -house, all grim and uniform. She had her little ways, her continual -suspicions, but all her faith was gone. Without church, without -friends, without any new thought or gossip, her view of the world was -neither magnified nor diminished, but greatly shortened, her eyes were -almost incredibly dim. There was nothing to love about her. She was not -excessively clean, nor excellent in cooking. She was like wax-work, -a little dusty, her mind and all. Bellair paid her for the week, and -added a present: - -“Which I forgot on your birthday,” he said. - -She held it in her hand. It did not seem hers. The apathy extended to -all that was not actually due; all expectancy dead. - -“You mean you are giving this to me?” - -“Yes.” - -“Thank you, Mr. Bellair,--perhaps you will want it some time again.” - -He wrote the letter to Mr. Nathan, but decided not to mail it until -the last thing. He was restless over the irregularity in the money -affair--had to assure himself again and again that he was taking not a -cent that did not belong to him. The boarding-house was in the upper -Forties between Broadway and Sixth avenue, and though he usually turned -eastward for pleasure, this night he went among his own people, where -even a nickle was medium of exchange. A stimulant did not exactly -relieve his tension. His sense was that of loneliness, as he chose a -table in _Brandt’s_ indoor garden. - -A mixed quartette presently broke into song behind him. Bellair’s -thoughts were far from song. He was not expectant of music that would -satisfy. Still something tugged him--again and again--until he really -listened, but without turning. It was the voice of the contralto -that was making an impression deep where his need was. There seemed -an endless purple background to it, like a night of stars and south -wind; the soft, deep volume rolled forth _for him_, and found itself -expressed without amazement or travail. He turned now. The one voice -was from the throat of a girl, just a girl, and though it was a gusty -November, she was still wearing her summer hat. - -The face was merely pretty, but the voice was drama; flame of poppies -in the presence of a fabulous orchid. Bellair’s heart may have been -particularly sensitive to impression that night. The big brilliant -den known as _Brandt’s_ did not seem to have been cast into any -enchantment; and yet it was likely that Bellair knew as much about -music natively and by acquisition as any one present. In fact, he had -reached the state of appreciation which dares to enjoy that which -appeals and to say so, having endured for several winters a zeal which -rushed him from one to another musical event, intolerant of all save -classic symphonies. It wasn’t the music that held him now--a high -flowery operatic matter not particularly interesting nor well-done--but -the contralto was just a little girl, and the round girlish breast -which held nothing miraculous for the many, was sending forth tones -that quivered through Bellair, spine and thigh, and thrilling his mind -with a profound passion to do something for the singer--an intrinsic -and clean emotion, but one which made him ashamed. For an instant, -he felt himself setting out on the great adventure of his life, the -faintest aroma of its romance touching his senses; something akin to -his dreams in the prison of Lot & Company, and which he had not sensed -at all since his departure, until this instant. Quickly it passed; yet -he had the sense that this great romance had to do with the little -singer. - -At once he wanted to take her from the other three; dreamed of working -for her, so that she might have the chance she craved. Of course, -she wanted something terribly; passionate want always went with such -a voice. He saw her future alone. Some vampire of a manager would -hear her. She would tie up--the little summer hat told him that. She -would tie up, and New York would take her bloom before the flower -matured--would take more than her little song. Here she was in -_Brandt’s_ already, and singing as if for the angels. - -Bellair was four-fifths undiscovered country, as are all men but the -very few, who dare to be themselves. Already the world was calling -to him sharply for this first step aside from the worn highways of -the crowd. He had not been normal to-night, even in his room; and his -present adventure had already summoned forth all the hateful reserves -of his training, as Prentidd’s departure had started the lies through -the floors and halls of Lot & Company. His heart was calling out to the -little singer, that here was a friend, one who understood and wanted -nothing but to give; yet all that he had learned from the world was -beating him back into the crowd. - -He saw that the music had hardly penetrated the vast vulgar throng. -New York is so accustomed to be amused, to dine to music and forget -itself in various entertainments, that the quartette barely held its -own against the routine of eating and drink and the voices of rising -stimulation. It was Bellair who started the little applause when the -first number was over. He hated to do it. The clapping of hands drew to -himself eyes that he did not care to cultivate, but it seemed the only -way just then to help her to make good. - -The four of the quartette looked at him curiously, appraising his value -as a critic, perhaps. Was he drunk or really appealed to? Was he worth -considering? Applause at any price is dearly to be had. They took him -in good faith, since he was not without desirable appearance. The young -girl and the tenor arose and sang: - - “_Oh, that we two were Maying----_” - -The old song was a kind of fulfilment for Bellair, and preciously wrung -his heart. He had never been Maying; wasn’t sure what sort of holidays -were pulled off in regular Mayings; but he liked the song, and for all -he knew the familiar sentiment was evoked bewitchingly. Many others -now caught the thrall. These things are infectious. From hatred, he -came to love _Brandt’s_--as if he had come home, and had been long away -hungering--as if this were life, indeed.... They sang the last verse -again, and sat down for hurried refreshment. The four were very near. -The young girl caught Bellair’s eye, regarded him shyly for an instant, -and turned to whisper to the bass, who seemed in charge of the four. - -“... Yes, but hurry back. We’ve got to pull out of here.” - -Bellair wasn’t dangling. Never had he been more intent to be decent and -helpful. No one knew this. Even the girl was far from expectant. ... -She sat down beside him. - -“Hello,” she said. “You don’t live in New York, do you?” - -“Yes, why?” - -“Oh, you looked so homesick--when we sang.” - -Bellair’s heart sank. - -“I think I was homesick. What may I order for you?” - -“A little Rhine wine--it’s very good here--and a sandwich----” - -The waiter was standing by. Bellair had to clear his voice before -ordering. He was distressed--up to his eyes in gloom that was general -and without name. - - - 5 - -“Do you sing in other places to-night?” - -“Oh, yes, we’re just beginning. We’re on Broadway at eleven.” - -“Where?” - -“First at _Pastern’s_, then at the _Castle_.” - -These places were just without the orbit of extravagance. She knew her -answer was not exactly a stock-raiser, and added: - -“But I expect to be on the road in the Spring----” - -“Who with?” - -She mentioned a light opera troupe that was just short of broad and -unqualified approval--like _Brandt’s_ and _Pastern’s_--an institution -as yet without that mysterious toppiness which needs no props and meets -sanction anywhere. These things are exactly ordered. - -“But you are so good--you should be with people who would help you.” - -She looked at him a little scornfully, something of weather and stress -under the summer hat. She decided to be agreeable. “They all say that,” -she said wearily. - -“I’m sorry. I said just what I thought.” - -“Study--a girl without a cent!” She lowered her voice: “Go with better -people--before one is invited? Swing to the top of the opera before one -is sufficiently urged?... Why, singing isn’t all. One must do more than -sing----” - -“I don’t believe that----” - -“You should try. Singing won’t get you across. You’ve got to act, for -one thing.” - -He was relieved that she did not discuss the angel business, which is -forgotten in so few stories of struggle and failure. - -“I tell you, all that one has to do is to sing--when one sings as you -do.” - -“I have heard that many times,” she said bitterly, “from people not in -the fight. They didn’t come to New York on their nerve--as I did. I -made up my mind not to be afraid of wolves or bears or cars--to take -what I could get, and wait until somebody beckoned me higher. Meanwhile -_Pastern’s_ and the _Castle_ and here----” - -“I wish I could do something for you.” - -Her eyes gleamed at him. - -“You need money?” he asked. - -“I need money so terribly--that it’s almost a joke--but what do _you_ -want?” - -Bellair rubbed his eyes, and smiled a little. “I don’t know what’s the -matter with me, but I want to do something for you. At least, I did -want just that.” - -“What happened?” - -“It isn’t a thing to talk or think about, I’m afraid. One starts -thinking, and ends by wanting something--and I didn’t at first. What I -said at first I meant--nothing more nor less.” - -Her lips tightened. “If you mean just that----” - -It raked him within. He did not help her by speaking. Somehow he had -expected her to see that he had meant well. It was always a mystery to -him how anything fine could be expected of men, if women were not so. - -“Of course, I have to understand,” she added. “I can do with a poor -room and poor food, but I can’t get anywhere without clothes.... I must -go now.” - -“I want you to excuse me if I’ve given you the idea of my being rich. -I’m not, but I might help you some. How late do you work?” - -“One o’clock.” - -“Where are you last?” - -“At the _Castle_.” - -“And what time do you get there?” - -“About eleven-thirty.” - -“I’ll be there. Sing ‘_Maying_’ for an encore----” - -She made believe that she trusted him. - -“We’ll sing it at the _Castle_ the last thing,” she said, leaving -hastily. - -No ease had come to him. His thoughts now were not the same as those -which had come during the singing. He tried to put them away. He didn’t -like the idea of giving her money. He knew that she didn’t expect to -see him again; also that if he did come she would accept the service of -a stranger, and give in return as little as she could. How explicit she -was, already touched with the cold stone of the world. He did want to -help her, and it had been pure at first. Talk as usual had broken the -beauty of that. Sophistication and self-consciousness had come; her -face changing more and more as the moments passed after the song. New -York had taught them each their parts. It had been her thought from the -first that he was looking for prey, but it had been very far from his. - -Bellair was not without imagination. He saw himself following this -girl in a future time, playing the part he had despised in other -men--the dumb, slaving, enduring male; she continually expectant of -his services, petulant, unreasonable without them. For the first time -the question came to him: Is there not a queer sort of conquest in the -lives of such men?... She was for herself; had it all planned out, the -waiting, and what she would give on the way up, beside her song. It -would not be much; as little as possible, in fact; but as much as was -absolutely demanded. Bellair in the present state of mind seemed to -object to all this less than what she wanted of the world--praise and -fame. - -“She’s just a little girl after all,” he muttered. “She ought to have -her chance.” - -He added (easing the conception a little for his own peace) that she -was only franker and more outspoken than other women he had known; that -they all wanted money and place, and wanted men who could furnish such -things. Suddenly it occurred that the incident automatically supplied -the final break with Lot & Company and New York. He laughed aloud.... -He might borrow enough in time to make up the amount he gave her for -morning, but that would certainly be a betrayal of the fiery urge that -had whipped him all week to cross over into a new life and burn the -last bridge. - -He took his bags down to the station, arranging with the landlady -to have his goods stored for the present. After that he rambled, a -grateful freshness in the cool wind. His steps led through darker -streets, where he startled the misery from the faces of the forbidden -who took a chance on him. Their voices _would_ whine; they couldn’t -help it, and all they wanted in the world was money.... He was at the -_Castle_ before the quartette came.... They sang and Bellair dreamed. - -He had never made pretence of other than the commonest lot; yet he -conned now an early manhood that made later years utterly common. He -followed the enticements of the sea, of the future, the singing-girl -never far away, the rest shadows and sadness.... He must do something -for her.... Rich natural tones winged forth from the breast of a maid, -from shoulders so delicate and white. He would make and keep her great; -here was something to do, to work for. It was like finding the ultimate -secret. He knew now what had been the matter all the time--nothing -to work for.... He would stand between her and all that he knew was -rotten--the crowds like this at the _Castle_, the blurred face of the -tenor which was both sharp and soft, the tired, tawdry soprano, the -stupid animal of a bass. And Bellair, in the magnanimity of his heart’s -effusion, included himself among the forces of destruction. He would -keep her from the worst of himself, by all means.... She kept her -promise, and arose with the tenor at last: - - “_Oh, that we two were Maying----_” - -... New York and all the rest reversed again in his mind. It wasn’t -rotten, but lavish to furnish everything for money--so much that men -and women were lost in the offerings, and did not know what to choose. -Yet it was man’s business to choose. Bellair listened as one across the -world; as if he had been gone a year and was thirsting and starving to -get back. He was literally longing for New York, with its ramifications -all about him--yet the thing he wanted, he could not touch. It was -like a sick stomach that infested his whole nature with desire, while -everything was at hand but the exact nameless thing desired.... She -was like a saint, as she stood there, her mouth so pure, her features -so pretty, her voice so brave and tireless--starry to Bellair, a -night-voice with depths and heights and dew-fragrance. She was coming -to him. - -“You look just the same. I wouldn’t take you for a New Yorker.... Yes, -I am through for to-night.” - -“I should think you’d love to sing,” he said. - -The remark was fatuous to her. She didn’t know that a year ago Bellair -wouldn’t have dared to say anything so commonplace, but that he had -come back to this simplicity from the complication of classics she had -never heard of. - -“Tell me, what do you want most?” he asked earnestly. “I don’t mean the -need of clothes. We’ve covered that----” - -“I want all that a voice will bring.” - -“Great salaries, noise wherever you go, a continual performance of -newspaper articles?” - -“Yes.” - -“A score of men praying for favours?” - -She sipped warily. - -“Don’t mind my question. It isn’t fair. But tell me, doesn’t it do -something to you--to get even a man like me going, for instance,--to -make him all different and full of pictures that haven’t anything to do -with the case?” - -“I don’t know what you mean.” - -He stared at her. “You ought to. You do it. I’m not talking of art -or soul, or any of that stuff. That isn’t it. I mean just what -your singing amounts to in my case. It means New York, but not the -routine New York--possibly the New York that might be. It means -_Maying_--whatever that is----” - -“You must have been drinking a lot, since I left _Brandt’s_,” she said -merrily. - -He didn’t let it hurt him, and was miserable anyway. “The fact is, I -didn’t take a drink since Sixth avenue, until a moment ago.” - -He saw that she was debating the vital matter of the evening--whether -he was a piker who must be shaken presently, or whether he would really -make good on his offer to help in the essentials of career. - -“What’s your name?” he asked. - -“Bessie Brealt.” - -“And where could I find you, if I wanted to write?” - -He noted her swift disappointment. There was positive pain in the air. -He knew well what she was thinking, though her sweet face covered well: -that he was about to promise to send the money to her, that ancient -beau business. She took a last chance, and mentioned a booking agency -that might answer for a permanent address. - -“I’ll want to write--I feel that. And here, Bessie, if you don’t mind -my saying ‘Bessie,’ I can spare a hundred for that wardrobe. I’d like -to do some really big thing for you.” - -He saw tears start to her eyes, but was not carried out of reason by -them. She had wanted the money fiercely and it had come. - -“How are you going to get home?” he asked, to relieve the embarrassment. - -She glanced up quickly. - -“I don’t mean that I want to take you home,” he said, shocked by the -ugliness of the world that had called this explanation so hastily. -“My train needs me.... Say, Bessie, men haven’t supplied you with -altogether pleasant experiences so far, have they?” - -“I’ll get a car home.” - -He gave her his card. - -“Thank you,” she said. - -“Better let me get you a cab to-night. It’s late.” - -She thanked him again.... At the curb, as the driver backed in, Bessie -put up her lips to him. - -“... Dear singing-girl--I didn’t ask that.” - -“It’s because you didn’t, I think. Really that’s it. Oh, thank you. -Good-night.” - -Bellair beckoned another cab, and sank back into the dark. All the way -to the station, and through to the Savannah-Pullman, he was wrenching -himself clear from something like a passion to turn about to New York. -At the last moment, before the train moved, he recalled the letter to -Mr. Nathan, and hailed a station porter from the step. - -“Please mail this for me,” he said, bringing up silver with the letter. - - - - -PART THREE - -THE JADE: II - - - 1 - -BELLAIR had to wait less than two days in Savannah, for the _Jade_ -had made a pretty passage. Impressions rushed home too swift for -his mind to follow, as he stepped aboard from the cotton dock; the -number of impressions, he did not know, until he began the inventory -in his cabin afterward. Last and first and most compelling, however, -was the spectacle of Stackhouse, that David Hume figure of a man, -reclining in his cane-chair of similar vast proportions just aft of the -main-shrouds. A momentous hammock of canes, that steamer-chair, with -gentle giving slopes for the calves and broad containers, polished with -wear and tightly woven like armour, for the arms; a sliding basket for -the head, suggestive of a guillotine’s grisly complement; the whole -adjusted to Stackhouse and no other. - -Humid heat in the harbour, a day of soft low clouds. The man who pushed -Brooklyn from him, had discarded even more thoroughly the clothing of -temperate climes. The vivid black of his hairy chest was uncovered, and -there was a shining bar of the same, just above the selvage of white -sock. Bellair thought he must be hairy as a collie dog.... But mainly -that which weighted and creaked the chair seemed an enormous puddle of -faded silks. - -The bulky brown head (which arose plumb as a wall from the back of the -neck) had slightly bowed as Bellair passed. There was something ox-like -in the placidity of the brown eyes, but that was only their first beam, -as it were. Much that was within and behind the eyes of Stackhouse, -Bellair thought of afterward. Through a deep, queer process, it came -to him that even the answer for his coming was in that indescribable -background; and restless, too, in the pervading brown, a movement of -sleek animals there. The Japanese woman had _skuffed_ forward with -drink for her lord. - -Over all was the cloud of canvas and rigging, which Bellair had studied -from the land, and which had forced him to a fine respect for the -ruffian sailor-men who could move directly in such an arcanum, and -command its service. Bellair had not found such labour on shore, having -lost his respect for the many who did not learn even the commonest -work.... There was a deep-sea smell about her, a solution of tar and -dried fruit, paint and steaming coppers from the galley. - -The very age of the _Jade_ was a charm to him. Only her spine and ribs -and plates were of steel--the rest a priceless woodwork that had come -into its real beauty under the endlessly wearing hands of man. There -seemed a grain and maturity to the inner parts, as if the strain and -roughing of the seas had brought out the real enduring heart of the -excellent fabric. The rose-wood side-board of his upper berth, for -instance, placed for the full light from the port to fall upon it, -was worth the price of the passage--sixteen inches wide, a full inch -and one-half thick, worn to a soft lustre as if the human hands had -hallowed it, and giving back to the touch the same answer from the -years that a vine brings to stone-work and the bouquet to wine.... The -_Jade_ had known good care and answered. Floors, even of the cabins, -were hollowed from much stoning; the hinges held and ferried their -burdens in silence, and the old locks moved with soft contented clicks, -the wards running in new oil. - -A city man who had long dreamed of a country garden; or indeed, Bellair -was a city man who had long dreamed of a full-rigged ship to fulfil in -part the romance of his soul. The _Jade_ had a dear inner life for him, -satisfied him with her lines, her breathing, settling and repose. A -fine hunger began to animate the length and breadth of the man. - -There was a half hour of straight, clear thinking, of the kind that -plumbs the outlook with the in, and mainly comes unawares. Bessie -Brealt, of course, appeared and passed, in all the hardness of her life -and the pity of it, but the days that had elapsed since the parting had -not changed his unique desire to help her; nor did he lie to himself -that he wanted her, too, as a man wants a woman. He loved her in a way, -against his will. Possibly the kiss had fixed that. In the solution of -the running thoughts, and without subtlety of mingling, was the face on -deck, the dark, extraordinary face of Stackhouse. - -They were a full day at sea, before Bellair was called to sit down -before the great cane chair. There was a warm land wind; November -already forgotten. The _Jade_ had gathered up her skirts and was -swinging along with a low music of her own. Stackhouse waddled back to -his chair from the land-rail, a remarkable mass of crumpled silks, the -canes marked in the general effusion of dampness along his back and -legs, the silks caught up behind by a system of wrinkles and imprints, -and one hitched pantaloon revealing the familiar muff of fur above the -selvage of his fallen sock. Now Stackhouse was preparing to enter. -Bellair was caught in the tension. The process, while prodigious, was -not without its delicate parts. One hand was irrevocably occupied -with a long-stemmed China pipe, a warm creamy vase, already admired by -Bellair. Breath came in puffs and pantings of fragrant tobacco, but -there were gurglings and strange stoppages of air that complained from -deeper passages. - -Creaking began at the corners; and a wallowing as if from the father of -all boars. Now the centre of the chair caught the strain in full and -whipped forth its remonstrance. One after another the legs gripped the -deck, each with a whimper of its own; and the air was filled with sharp -singing tension which infected the nerves of the watcher. Suddenly -the torso seemed to let go of itself; and from the canes of the huge -central hollow came a scream in unison. By miracle the whole found -itself once more and the breathing of Stackhouse subsided to a whine. - -“We are entering the latitude of rum,” said he. “Whoever you are, young -man, drink the drink of nature, and you will brosper.” - -The west was just a shore-line, the dusk rising like a tide. The hand -of the owner pressed the silks variously about his chest, and at last -located a loose match. Nerves were sparsely scattered in these thick, -heavy-fleshed fingers. He had to stop all talk and memory to direct his -feeling. The match at length emerged from his palm, and slithered over -the fine canes of the arm. It was damp. Stackhouse rubbed the sulphur -delicately in the hair at his temple and tried again. Fire leaped to -the tip, and poured out from the great hand which pressed it to the -pipe and mothered it from the wind. From the gurgling passages, smoke -now poured as the sweetness in Sampson’s riddle. - -Rum had come. The Japanese woman served them. The youth of her face -chilled Bellair; the littleness of her, all the tints and delicacy of -a miniature in her whitened face. Bright-hued silk, a placid smile, -the _skuffing_ of her wooden sandals and the clock-work intricacy of -the coils of her black hair--these were but decorations of the tragedy -which came home to the American where he was still tender.... But why -should he burn tissue? She seemed happy. He knew that the Japanese -women require very little to make them happy; but that little was -denied this maiden. An hour a day to giggle with her girl-friends -behind a lattice, and she might have borne twenty-three hours of hell -with calmness and cheer, not counterfeit like this. - -“You have no true drink of the soil in Ameriga,” said Stackhouse. -“You do not make beer nor wine, so you make no music. The only drink -and the only music that come from the States of Ameriga, are from the -nigger-folk who do not belong there. They make music and corn whiskey. -The rest is boison to the soul.” - -The voice was rich and mellow. He must have known Teutonic beginnings, -or enough association for the mannerisms to get into his blood. -Stackhouse was not even without that softness of sentiment, though he -was tender only for men. Except for a spellable word here and there, -his accent was inimitable. He talked of little other than death, and -with indescribable care--as if he had been much with men of another -language or with men of slow understanding.... It may have been the -drink, or the sunset over distant land; the Spanish Main ahead, or -the dryness and pentness of the city-heart and its achievement of -long-dreamed desire in a snug, sweet ship under the easy strain of -sails with wind in them; in any event Bellair was drawn with exquisite -passion--drawn southward as the _Jade_ was drawn in the soft, -irresistible strength of nature. - -He knew that this would pass, that he could not continue to sense this -_rapport_ with the sea-board, but he loved it now, breathed deep, and -saw Stackhouse as he was never to be seen again. There was enchantment -in the eyes of the great wanderer, and a certain culture of its kind in -its stories. Bellair listened and in the gleam of the broad, dark eyes, -there seemed a glimpse of burning ships, shadowy caravans on moonlit -sands and the flash of arms by night; low-lying lights of island ports, -formless rafts, spuming breakers, mourning derelicts--just glimpses, -but of all the gloom and garishness of the sea. He began a monologue -that night, and though it is not this story, it was not interrupted -except by meals and sleeping, for many days; and all the pauses in that -story were the dramatic pauses of death: - -“... I have travelled more than most travellers and have seen more than -is good for one man. In New York I saw Brundage of Frisco, who asked -me if I remembered Perry. I said I remembered very well, for Perry -was a bartner of mine, before young Brundage came out to the Islands. -He told me Perry was six weeks buried. That is the way now. When I -was young, my combanions did not die in beds. They were killed. Eight -months ago, I saw Emslie--waved at him going up the river to Shanghai. -He was outward bound, and came home to us in Adelaide in a sealed -box. Old Foster, who is richer than I, has married a little Marie in -Manila and may die when he pleases now. The South Seas still run in and -yonder among Island shores, but who buys wine for the Japanese girls in -Dunedin, since Norcross was conscripted for the service we all shall -know?... - -“And thus you come to the _Jade_, and some time you will here them dell -of Stackhouse. Who knows but you may dell the story--of a familiar face -turned down like an oft-filled glass? And some one will say, ‘He has -not laughed these many years.’ They used to say in the _Smilax_ at Hong -Kong, when the harbour was raving and the seas were trying to climb -the mountain--they used to say that Stackhouse was laughing somewhere -off the China coasts. But there are only so many laughs in a man, -and they go out with the years. Most of those who said that thing of -Stackhouse--yes, most of them, are dead as glacial drift.” - -Such was the quality of his perorations, hunched ox-like just aft of -the main-shrouds--the Japanese woman coming and going with the ship’s -bells, bringing drinks day and night. - -“It seared my coppers--that drinking in the States of Ameriga. It will -not subdue,” said he. “One has a thirst for weeks after a few days of -drinking in Ameriga. For one must be bolite.” - -He was never stimulated, seldom depressed, but saturated his great -frame twenty hours of the twenty-four, the Japanese woman seeming -to understand with few or no words the whims of taste of which he -was made. Just once in the small hours, Bellair heard her voice. The -cane-chair had not been empty long, and the silence of soft rain -was upon the deck. Bellair had opened a package of New York papers -purchased on the last day in Savannah.... It was just one scream, but -the scream of one not frightened by any human thing.... The roll of -papers dropped down behind the bunk. Anyway, Bellair could not have -read after that. Early in the morning after hours of torture of dreams, -he was awakened as usual by the sluicing of the monster. Two Lascars -who travelled with Stackhouse apparently for no other purpose, poured -pails of salt water upon him in the early hour when the decks were -washed; and often at midday as they neared the Line. It was given to -Bellair more than once, as the voyage lengthened, to witness this -hippodrome. - - - 2 - -Her face was continually turned away. Bellair wondered as days passed -if he should ever see her face to face--the silent, far-looking young -woman with a nursing baby in her arms. On deck she stood at the rail, -eyes lost oversea. Her contemplation appeared to have nothing to do -with Europe or America, but set to the wind wherever it came from, as -the strong are always turned up-stream. Sometimes she wore a little -blue jacket, curiously reminding Bellair of school-days, and though she -was not far from that in years, she seemed to have passed far into the -world. The child cried rarely. - -There was a composure about the mother, but he did not know if it were -stolidity or poise. Certainly she had known poverty, but health was -in her skin, and there was something in that white profile, that the -sun had touched with olive rather than tan, that stopped his look. -The perfection of it dismayed Bellair. He loved beauty, but did not -trust it, did not trust himself with it. The presence of a beautiful -face stimulated him as no wine could do, but it also started him to -idealising that which belonged to it, and this process had heretofore -brought disappointment. Bellair did not want this touch of magnetism -now. Beauty was plentiful. He had seen the profiles of Italian girls in -New York, that the Greeks would have worshipped, and which the early -worship of the Greeks was doubtless responsible for--beauty with little -beside but giggle and sham. He disliked the thing in a man’s breast -that answers so instantly to the line and colour of a woman’s face; -objected to it primarily, because it was one of the first and most -obvious tricks of nature for the replenishment of species in man and -below. Bellair fancied to answer the captivation, if any at all, of a -deeper wonder in woman than the contour of her countenance. - -He was aware that many a woman has a beautiful profile, whose direct -look is a disturbing reconsideration. This kept his eyes down, when she -was opposite in the dining cabin. We are strangely trained at table; -at no time so merciful. The human dining countenance must be lovely, -indeed, not to break the laws of beauty. Only outright lovers dare, and -they are bewildered by each other, and see not. So he did not know the -colour of her eyes. - -She nursed her baby often on deck, sitting bare-headed in the wind and -sun, sometimes singing to it. The singing was all her own; Bellair -wished she wouldn’t. Her melodies were foreign, and sometimes it -seemed to him as if they were just a touch off the key. Her low -dissonances, he described vaguely as Russian, but retained the -suspicion that she was tonally imperfect of hearing. - -The singing and the picture of her was just as far as possible from -Bessie Brealt, but she made Bellair think. In all likelihood this was -the general objection. His eyes smarted in the dusks, as he thought of -the other singer (as solitary in New York as this woman here), who was -determined not to be afraid of the cars or the bears or the wolves. -Every day Bessie’s first words returned to him: - -“A little Rhine wine--it’s very good here.” - -And always the devastation of that sentence was great. It was a -street-woman’s inside familiarity, _Brandt’s_ being one of her -rounds; as she might speak of the beer at _Holbeck’s_ or the chops at -_Sharpe’s_. Yet Bessie was not greedy, and had no taste for wine. It -was the glibness, the town mannerism, and the low, easy level which -her acceptance of the common saying revealed; the life which she was -willing to make her own, at least exteriorly. But after all, in the -better moments, it seemed very silly to deny a great soul to the girl -who could sing as Bessie sang. Some day she would feel her soul.... - -The preacher, third passenger on board the _Jade_, reported that the -Faraway woman was returning to her home in New Zealand. Fleury didn’t -know if her baby was boy or girl, but judged that it was very healthy, -since it cried so little. - -Fleury wasn’t promising to Bellair’s eyes. First of all it was -the cloth; and then during the first three weeks at sea, Bellair -spent innumerable hours in the periphery of the great cane-chair. -He did not resist his prejudice. “A missionary going out with the -usual effrontery,” he decided. The preacher’s face appeared placid -and boyish.... Fleury, however, continued to observe cheerful -good-mornings, to praise the fine weather, and to offer opportunities -for better acquaintance--all without being obtrusive in the least. -Hayti and Santo Domingo--names once remote and romantic to the city -man’s mind--were now vanished shores, and as yet the voyage was but -well begun.... The three passengers were served together in the cabin, -except in cases when the Stackhouse narrative happened to be running -particularly well. Bellair would then be called to dine with the owner. -Captain McArliss would appear at this mess and disappear--the courses -being brought to him one after another in a certain rapid form. The -Captain seemed so conscious, that Bellair never quite dared to observe -what happened to the food, but he was certain that McArliss did not -bolt. His suspicion was that he tasted or sipped as the case might be, -merely spoiling the offering. He was gone before Stackhouse was really -started. - -It was less what the giant ate, than the excessive formality and -importance of his table sessions that prevailed upon the American. -Dinner was the chief doing of the day. Bellair had never complained, -even in thought, of the food served to him in the usual mess, but with -Stackhouse everything was extra fine from the Chinese standpoint--all -delicacies and turns of the art, all choice cuttings and garnishments, -a most careful consideration of wines--so that from the first audible -delectation of the contents of the silver tureen, to the choice of a -cigar (invariably after a few deep inhalations from a cigarette “made -in Acca by the brisoners”), there was formality and deep responsibility -upon the ship; and a freedom afterward through the galleys that was -pleasant to regard. - -“There are many things in Belgium,” said the master. “There are wines -and gookeries there; also in Poland there are gooks. In England there -are gooks, but not in Ameriga--only think-they-are-gooks. However, -there are gooks in China. I have one, as you shall see.” - -Something like this at each mighty dining--and the promise had to do -with the next course which Stackhouse invariably knew and served as -a surprise for his guest, for he ordered his dinner with his coffee -and fish in the morning. Bellair had often seen the Chinese emerge -from the galley, as they came up from the dining saloon, little sparse -patches of hair here and there on his fat face like willow clumps -on the shore, these untouched by the razor, though his forehead was -perfectly shaven to the queue circlet. This was Gookery John taking his -breath after the moil and heat of the day. - -Stackhouse would declare that he dined just once a day, meaning this -exactly. He breakfasted on a plate of fried fish with many pourings of -mellow, golden and august German coffee, eating the hot fishes in his -hands like crackers--a very warm and shiny hand when it was done--crisp -brown fishes stripped somehow in his beard, the bones tossed overside. -He liked full day with this meal. The plates were brought hot and -covered to the great cane chair, until he called for them to cease. For -his supper he desired outer darkness (English ale and apples, black -bread from Rome that comes sewn in painted canvas like hams for the -shipping, butter from Belgium packed with the care of costly cheeses, -of which he was connoisseur; sauces of India, a cold chicken, perhaps, -or terrapin, and an hour or two of nuts). The Japanese woman appeared -at none of these services. - -It was the dinners, however, which bewildered Bellair most. He had -not the heart utterly to condemn them, since the _Jade_ and the noble -sea-air, sometimes winy and sometimes of sterile purity, kept him in -that fine state of appreciation, which if he had ever known as a boy -was utterly forgotten. He had initiation in curries and roasts, piquant -relishes of seed and fish and flower, chowders, broiled fish and -baked--until he felt the seas and continents serving their best, and -learned about each in the characteristic telling of the man who lived -for them. For instance when chicken was brought: - -“These are the birds for the Chinese to play with--yes, you would -think me joking? It is not so. The little chicken-birds are kept for -pets. They are not frightened to death. You do not know, berhaps, -that fear and anger boisons the little birds? They are kept happy and -killed quick--before they know. Many mornings they are fed from the -hand and played with, until they love John of the gookeries--and one -morning--so, like that--heads off--and no boison from the fear of death -in our flavours. Many things you do not know--yes?” - -“Yes,” Bellair said. - -Stackhouse loved his little facts like these, all matters of -preparation of fish and flesh and fowl; the intricate processes of -fattening, curing, softening, corking and all the science of the -stores.... “There was a certain goose which I found in Hakodate--not -from the Japanese, but from a Chino there----”.... “And once upon a -time in Mindanao, they baked a fish for me with heated stones in the -ground. Wrapped in leaves, it was, and covered first in clay. You -should see the scales and skin come off with the clay--and the inner -barts a little ball, when it was finished. And the dining of that -evening. Ah, the sharb eyes of the little nigger girls--you would -believe?”.... Such were the stories in the long feeding--but the -stories on deck were the stories of the death of men. - -In the usual mess the chat was perfunctory on Bellair’s part, since -he granted that the preacher and the Faraway woman (he called her -so in his thoughts from her distant-searching on deck) were so well -adjusted to each other. He granted this, and much beside concerning -the two, from pure fancy. Never once had they disregarded him, or -engaged in conversation that would leave him dangling, though many -times his own thoughts were apart. The _Jade_ had been three weeks out -of Savannah, in the southern Caribbean, a superb mid-afternoon, when -Bellair, turning at the rail, found Fleury at his side. He had just -been wondering if he had better go below and read awhile by the open -port, or start the monologue of Stackhouse for the rest of the day. The -latter was enjoyable enough, but Bellair disliked to drink anything so -early.... “One must be bolite.” - -It happened right for the first conversation with Fleury. He had never -known a preacher whose talk touched the core of things. Preachers -had always shown a softness of training on the actualities, and -left Bellair sceptical of the rest. A minister had once told him: -“What force for good we get to be in mid-life, is in spite of our -ecclesiastical training, not because of it.” Bellair had often thought -of that. - -Yet, he had given much secret thought to religious things, not counting -himself a specialist, however, seldom opening the subject. Certainly -at Lot & Company’s, no one had marked this proclivity. He had the idea -that a man must come up through men, and through the real problems of -men, if he would become a moving force for good in the world; that no -training apart among texts and tracts and tenets would get him power. -Very clearly he saw that a man must go apart to fix his ideals, but -that he should seek his wilderness after learning the world, not after -prolonged second-hand contacts with books. - -“The big job ahead is for some one who can show the human family that -it’s all of a piece, and that we’re all out after the same thing,” he -remarked. - -“A Unifier,” Fleury suggested. - -“Yes. Just so long as we have to hate one cult or sect, because we love -another, we’re lost to the whole beauty of the scheme----” - -“I quite agree with you,” said the preacher. - -“What is your church?” Bellair asked. - -“Well, the fact is, I haven’t one,” Fleury said with a smile. -“Convictions somewhat similar to that which you have expressed have -twice cost me my church. As the church puts it, I am a failure and not -to be trusted with regular work----” - -“You are going out in the mission-service?” - -Bellair was now ashamed, because he had held the other a bit cheaply. -The boyish face looked suddenly different to him, as Fleury said: - -“No--that is, I have ceased to expound theology. I have come out to -make the thought and the act one.” - -Bellair was taking on a new conception. His question was a trifle -automatic: - -“Did you talk out in meeting?” - -“Yes. There were a thousand years in the congregation. You know what I -mean--only a few of our generation in method of mind.” - -“A sort of Seventeenth century average?” Bellair suggested. - -“Don’t misunderstand me. I was wrong, too,” Fleury declared. “Wrong, -in the young man’s way of thinking himself right. You know we’re just -as baneful when we are getting into a new world of thought as when we -are not yet out of the old. It’s only after we have settled down and -got accustomed to the place, that we’re reasonable. A man should be big -enough to talk to all men, and appear everlastingly true to the least -and the greatest. Truth is big enough for that. I had only a different -trail from theirs, and wanted them all to come to mine, forgetting that -the trails are only far apart at the bottom of the mountain--that they -all converge at the top----” - -“You had to be honest with yourself,” Bellair said thoughtfully. - -“That’s just what I thought, but maybe there was a lie in that,” Fleury -answered. “It’s not so easy to be honest with one’s self and keep on -using words for a living. The best way is to act----” - -“You’ve said something, Mr. Fleury.” - -And in his new respect for the other, Bellair wanted to make his view -clearer. “It’s the old soil and seed story again,” he said. “It isn’t -enough to get truth down to superb simplicity. The minds of men must -be open beside. My objection to the Church is that it has separated -religion from work and the week-day--tried to balance one day of -sanctimoniousness against six days of mammon--taught men that heaven -is to be reached in a high spiritual effusion because One has died for -us. The fact is we’ve got to help ourselves to heaven.... Excuse me for -being so communicative,” he added, “but what you said about putting -down talk and taking up action interested me at once. I’ve a suspicion -you won’t be long in finding something to do----” - -“I’m hoping just that.” - -Fleury smiled at him. The face was large and mild, not a fighter’s -face nor a coward’s either.... The young woman appeared with the child. -She seemed to hold it to the sun, and she walked with the beauty of a -woman bringing a pitcher to the fountain. Bellair realised the heat of -the day. Her face had an intense clearness, but was partly turned away. -There was a delicacy about it that he had not known before. He recalled -that she had just bowed to them.... They were passing an island -shore--a line of sun-dazzle that stung the eyes, empty green hills and -a fierce white sky. Bellair thought of the woman and the island as one -... he, the third, coming home, mooring his boat, hastening up the -trail at evening.... Her frail back, bending a little to the right, -made him think of a dancer he had once seen. He saw the child’s bare -limbs in the sun.... His steps were quickened up that Island trail -again.... The _Jade_ seemed fainting in the cushions of hot wind. Just -then a voice said: - -“She’s quite the most remarkable woman. She isn’t a talker.” - -He had forgotten Fleury. - -“Where is she going?” - -“Auckland. She came from there.” - -“Queer, she would go home this way----” - -“Her whole fortune is in her arms,” Fleury whispered. - -The ship’s bell struck twice; the cane-chair creaked; they turned by -habit to note the appearance of the Japanese woman with drink. She did -not fail. Stackhouse came to with a prolonged snore, a sound unlike a -pair of pit-terriers at work. - -“A considerable brute,” muttered the preacher. - -“He has been much of a man in his way,” said Bellair. - -“He talks much--that is weakness.” - -Their eyes met. Bellair began to understand how deeply the other’s -experience had bitten him. - -“He’s afraid of death,” Fleury added. - -“I wonder,” Bellair mused. “He talks always of death. He’s been in at -the deaths of many men. He’ll die hard himself--if he doesn’t tame -down.” - -Fleury added: “When a man is so much an animal, all his consciousness -is in that. They see death as the end--that’s why they are afraid----” - -“I wonder if he is a coward?” Bellair questioned. - -“The stuff animals are made of cannot last,” the preacher concluded. - -Bellair pondered as he sat with Stackhouse that night. Brandy was the -choice of the evening. The Japanese woman brought it from the deeps of -the hold, where it had come in stone from Bruges. Bellair joined him a -second and a third time for the instant stinging zest of the fire.... -Fleury and the woman had long stood together aft by the clicking log. -The moon came late and bulbous. Stackhouse talked of his fortune, and -the chaos in many island affairs his death would cause.... Once he had -loved a chap named Belding, and would have left him great riches, but -Belding was dead.... - - - 3 - -They had crossed the Line. The night was windless hot--almost -suffocating below. Bellair gave it up, a little after midnight, and -went on deck, moving forward out of the smell of paint, for the heat -had bubbled the lead on the cabin planking. A few first magnitude stars -glinted in the fumy sky. The anchor chains and the big hook itself made -a radiator not to be endured--better the smell of paint than that. -Captain McArliss moved past with a cigar and suggested jerkily that a -hammock was swung aft by the binnacle. Bellair thanked him and went -there, but did not lie down. Close to the rail he could smell the deep -and it refreshed him. Left alone in this hard-won ease, his thoughts -turned back to New York. - -... It was like a ghost at the companionway--a faint grey luminosity. -She came toward him without a sound, the child in her arms. Something -of the strangeness prevented him speaking until she was near, and then -he spoke softly in fear lest she be frightened: - -“It is I, Bellair----” - -If she were startled, she did not let him know. He offered the -deckchair he had occupied, or the hammock, as she chose. - -“I would not have disturbed you,” she said. - -“I think it is cooler close to the rail,” he suggested. “The little one -is very brave. Is he awake?” - -“Yes----” - -“I don’t know why I said ‘he,’--the fact is, I didn’t know,” he laughed. - -“You were right,” she answered, sitting down. “He seems to have so much -to study and contemplate. It passes the time for him, and then he is -very well and he likes the sea.” - -“He has been to sea before?” - -“Yes, we came up from Auckland on a steamer when he was _ver-ee_ -little, but he liked it, and did so well. It was harder for him in New -York, although he didn’t complain----” - -Bellair laughed. - -“Now that I have taken your seat--won’t you get another?” she asked. -“Or the hammock?” - -“If you don’t mind I should be very glad to get another chair----” - -Bellair found himself hurrying to the waist, for there was always a -lesser seat by the great cane throne.... He could not see her face in -that utter night, but sometimes when he had forgotten for a moment, -there seemed the faintest grey haze about her face and shoulders, but -never when he looked sharply; and the curve of her back as her body -fitted to the child in her lap, hushed him queerly within, so that he -listened to his own commonplace words, as one would hear the remarks of -another. - -“Do you suppose he would come to me?” the man asked. - -“I think he would be very glad,” she said. - -Bellair took no risk, but placed his hand softly between the little -ones. Something went out of him, leaving nothing but a queer, joyous -vibration that held life together, with ample to spare to laugh with. -The larger part of his identity seemed to be infused with the night, -however. On one side of his hand, there was a warm, light seizure, -rendering powerless his own little finger, and on the other side, his -thumb was taken. He lifted his hand a little and the captor’s came with -it--no waste of energy whatsoever, but with easy confidence of having -enough and to spare. The man couldn’t breathe without laughing, but he -was very quiet about it as the moment demanded, and his delight was -nowise to be measured in recent history. - -He was bending forward close to the woman’s breast. Suddenly he -remembered her--as if finding himself in a sanctuary.... The great -pictures of the world had this _motif_, but the Third of the trinity -was always invisible. Yet he had entered in this darkness, come right -into the fragrance and the love-magnetism of it ... held there in two -ineffable pressures. - -His low laughter ceased. He was full of wonder now, but could not stay. -Out of the bewilderment of emotions he had the one sense--that he was -not the third to this mystery--that the third must be invisible, as in -the great _madonnas_ of paint. He betrayed the tiny grips with a twist, -caught the child in his two hands and lifted him from the mother, -sitting back in his own chair.... But the fragrance lingered about him -and that wonderful homing vibration. He knew something of the nature of -it now. It was peace. - - - 4 - -The little blue jacket had come forth again as they ran down into the -cold.... There was wild weather around the Horn, and Stackhouse was a -sick monster from confinement. Bellair, who could drink a little for -company through the glorious nights on deck, bolted from the cabin -performance, and Captain McArliss was called to listen, and fell, as -Stackhouse knew he would, for he had said to Bellair during one of -their last talks: - -“Lest there appear among men a perfect sailor, they handicapped my -McArliss--packed his inner barts in unslaked lime. Never will you see -a thirst fought as he fights it. First he will drink with me, and -you will hear him laugh; then he will drink alone, and there will be -silence until he begins to scream. Already his eyes are tortured and -his lips white. Bresently he will come and sit with me----” - -Bellair hated this; in fact the big master had begun to wear deeply. “I -should think you would want to keep him on his feet--for the passage -around the Horn.” - -“My McArliss is always a sailor,” said Stackhouse, rocking his head. - -Bellair could credit that. McArliss interested him--an abrupt, nervous -man, who covered the eager warmth of his friendliness in frosted -mannerisms and sentences clipped at each end. He was afraid of himself -except in his work, afraid of his opinions, though a great reader of -the queer out of the way good things. Bellair found Woolman’s Life in -his little library, with narratives of the ocean, tales of Blackbirders -and famous Indiamen, Lytton’s “Strange Story” and “Zanoni,” also -Hartmann’s “Magic, Black and White.” The latter he read, and found it -not at all what he expected, but a book that would go with him as far -as he cared at any angle, and then lose him. He was quite astonished. -It was a long book, too--the kind you vow you will begin again, from -time to time through the last half. He wanted to talk to McArliss about -it, but the Captain was embarrassed. - -“Crazy, eh?” he would say with a queer, dry laugh. - -“I’ve stopped saying that about a book--because I don’t get it all,” -Bellair remarked. “This man is right as far as I can go with him.” - -“You give him the benefit--eh? That’s pretty good.” - -“And you like it?” - -“Ha--it passes the time. Good God--we have to pass the time!” - -He spoke jerkily, always in this fashion, and the days brought no ease -to the tension. McArliss patted his pockets, swore hastily over little -things, looked snappily here and there. Bellair would have guessed, -without the word from Stackhouse. The Captain was fighting hard. There -seemed nothing to be done; the man had grown a spiked hedge around an -innocent shyness; all that was real about him he kept shamefacedly to -himself. Still Bellair believed more and more in his fine quality. -McArliss made a picture for him of one who has come up through steam -and returned to canvas bringing a finer appreciation to the beauty and -possibilities of natural seamanship; as a man returns to the land, -after many wearing years of city life, with a different and deeper -instinct of the nature of the soil. - -“She’s a slashing sailer,” he would say critically, as he crowded the -_Jade_. “She balances to a hair--eh? Good old girl--they don’t breed -her kind any more.” - -It was he who balanced her to every wind, meeting all weathers with -different cuts of cloth. Having only a distant familiarity with his -fellow-officers and not even a speaking acquaintance with the crew, -McArliss made her sing her racing song night and day down into the -lower latitudes, until one played with the suspicion that he managed -the weather, too,--with that same nervous, effective energy. It was -all tremendously satisfying to Bellair. He had reacted on the last -reaction, and was healed throughout. Worldliness was lost from his -mental pictures of Bessie; daily she became more as he wanted her to -be. Lot & Company had lost its upstanding and formidable black--was -far-off now and dimly pitiable. He had not cared what was ahead; it -had been the _Jade_ and the voyage that had called him, but now the -Islands and all that watery universe of the Southern Pacific were -in prospect, to explore and make his own. Perhaps men were younger -there; trade less old and ramified; perhaps they would bring him the -new magic of life--so that he could live with zest and be himself.... -Always at this part of the dream he would think of Bessie again. She -was the cord not yet detached. Sooner or later, he must go back to -her. At times he thought that he could not bear to remain very long; -sometimes even watching this endless passage of days with strange -concern.... But there was a short cut home--straight up the Pacific to -San Francisco--and four days across.... - -Fleury and the Faraway woman had their increasingly fine part in his -life. The preacher was always finding some new star, or bidding adieu -to some northern constellation. - -They had chosen the passage through the Straits because of the settled -weather. At least, they called it fair-going--wild and rugged though -it was, with huge masses of torn cloud, black or grey-black, hurtling -past, often as low as the masthead, and all life managed at sick -angles. The _Jade_ bowed often and met the screaming blasts with her -poles strangely bare, except, perhaps, for a few feet of extra-heavy -canvas straining at the mizzen weather-rig.... Stackhouse nudged him -one night and a laugh gurgled up from his chest as he pointed forward -where McArliss stood in the waist lighting a cigarette. - -“He will not sleep to-night. He will come to me--and you will never -hear such talk as from this silent man. He will look for gompany -to-night. One must be bolite.” - -It was true. McArliss apparently fell into the cigarettes first, -or perhaps he had fallen deeper. Bellair did not join them in the -cabin, but heard their voices. The next day McArliss hunted him up, -an inconceivable action. This was not like timid Spring, but sudden -redolent summer after the austerities. The man was on fire, but -perfectly in hand. All that he had thought and kept to himself for -months appeared to come forth now--books and men, the great oceans of -spirit and matter, and the mysteries of life and release. It seemed as -if his body and brain had suddenly become transparent. The Captain was -happy and kind, without oath or scandal, full of colour and romance; -returning with excellent measure all the good thoughts that Bellair had -given to him, and showing forth for one rare forenoon the memorable -fabric of a man. - -There was no repetition to his stages. In the afternoon he passed -Bellair brusquely, and drank the night away with Stackhouse. The -next day both face and figure had a new burden; the real man was now -imprisoned more effectively than even his sobriety could accomplish.... -Then the descent day by day--the narrow, woman’s waist and the broad, -lean shoulders becoming a hunched unit, face averted, hands thick. -Bellair always felt that Stackhouse was in a way responsible--for the -old Master had known what would come and lured it on. He had foretold -each stage--even to the last of McArliss drinking alone. - -On two nights Fleury was with him while he met his devils. He had -outraged Bellair at every offer and entrance. Even Stackhouse was -surprised that the preacher was permitted to attend. His poor vitality -at length began to crawl back into his body with terrible pain and -shattered sanity--that old familiar battle, the last of many storms. -And now the _Jade_ was sailing up into the summer of the southern -ocean. Midwinter in New York and here a strange, spacious sort of -June, not without loneliness and wonderment to Bellair for the steady -brightness and exceeding length of day. - -The new moon had come down, extraordinary in its earth-shine which -Fleury explained. The _Jade_ was marking time, just making steerage -headway, the breeze too light for good breathing.... To-night (as -had happened a dozen times before on the other side of South America -before the cold weather) Stackhouse had begun his story with, “It was -a night like this----” As of old it was the tale of man and death, of -the Stackhouse escape from death, sinuously impressing the Stackhouse -courage and cleverness. Not that the story was without art; indeed, -as usual, it was such a one as a man seldom leaves until the end; but -Bellair had long since reached the moment of sufficiency. He had come -to the end of his favourite author; had begun to see the mechanism and -inventional methods of the workmanship. Vim was lost for the enactment -of Stackhouse’s fiercer strength. The man was a concentrated fume of -spirit, every tissue falsely braced, his very life identified with the -life and heat of decay.... - -Alone, Bellair glanced about before going below. A breeze had slightly -quickened the ship in the last hour. There may have been a dozen -nights of equal mystery but this he appreciated more soundly and -was grateful for freedom. His mind answered the beauty of it all -... something of this, he might be able to tell Bessie in a letter. -The stars were far and tender; the air heavenly cool and soft, the -night high, and the ship’s full white above, had something to do with -angels--a dreamy spirit-haunt about it all. He would always see the -_Jade_ so, as he would see the Captain in that wonderful forenoon of -his emancipation--poor McArliss who had not been on deck for days. - -Twenty minutes later, with paper before him in his berth, Bellair was -deep in the interpretation of his heart, when the _Jade_ struck the -cupola of a coral castle, and hung there shivering for five seconds. It -was like a suspension of the law of time. - -Bellair thought of Bessie, of every one on the ship, beginning with -Fleury and the New Zealand woman, and ending with Captain McArliss and -the owner’s Japanese wife. These latter two were strangely rolled into -one, as their images came. He thought of the ship’s position somewhere -in the great emptiness between the Strait of Magellan and Polynesia. He -re-read the last line of the letter before him. It had to do with the -real help he hoped to be in Bessie’s cause _within the year_. He heard -the running and the hard-held voices on deck, and one great bellowing -cry from Stackhouse. He knew now that all the tales were the low -furies of fear; that the movement he had seen first in the eyes of the -great animal were the movements of fear.... - -And then the _Jade_ slid off the reef with a rip more tragic than the -strike. - - - 5 - -Hissing and sucking began below, and the drawing of the centre of the -earth. Bellair felt this in his limbs, and the limp paralysis of the -sails. It was like the blind struggle in the soul of a bird, this -strain in the entity of the old _Jade_ to retain her balance between -earth and sky.... Bellair was on his knees dragging forth his unused -case. The roll of New York papers came with it, and he stuffed them -in overcoat pockets with a six-shooter, a bottle of whiskey and a -few smaller things. These arrangements were made altogether without -thought. Unfumblingly, he obeyed a rush of absurdities that seemed -obvious and reasonable as in a dream. - -The touch of water on his knee as he arose was like a burn. It poured -in under the door, its stream the size of a pencil, a swift and quiet -little emissary. It occurred--a queer, rational touch--that the _Jade_ -could not be thus filled so soon, that something must have overturned. -He opened the door to the deck. Night and ocean were all one; the rest -was the stars, and this bit of chaos recoiling from its death--a -little ship, struck from the deep and perceiving her death like a rat -that has been struck by a rattler. He smelled the sea, as one in a -night-walk smells the earth when passing a ravine. - -He moved aft toward the voices, without yet having thought of his own -death. He passed a leaking water-cask, and this reminded him of his -thirst. He took a deep drink--all he could--and his thoughts came -up to the moment. At the same time, that which had been a mass of -inarticulate sounds cleared into a more or less coherent intensity of -action. - -He heard that the _Jade_ was sinking, but knew that already; heard -that she would be under in five minutes, which was news of the first -order of sensation.... Now he heard Stackhouse again; the rich unctuous -voice gone, a sharp, dry _peaking_ instead.... They were aft at the -binnacle--Stackhouse, Fleury, the Faraway Woman, McArliss. The Japanese -woman was hurrying forward with a pitcher of wine. Stackhouse drank -from the pitcher, standing, and with greed that flooded his chest. He -spoke and the Japanese woman vanished. - -Bellair saw the face of McArliss in the white ray from the binnacle. -He had scarcely seen the Captain for a week. Last seen, it was a face -swollen and flaming red. It was yellow now, like the skin of a chicken, -and feathered with patches of white beard. The loose eye-lids were -touched with blue. He fumbled with a cigarette, and called hysterically -to an officer amidships. He was not broken from the tragedy, but from -the debauch. - -Stackhouse was standing by the small boat when two sailors came to -launch it. He rocked from one foot to another and peaked to them -incessantly. Fleury and the woman stepped nearer the boat. They moved -together as one person.... Bellair saw Stackhouse raise his hands as he -had done that first Sunday, pushing Brooklyn from him. His body pressed -against the gunwale of the small boat; he caught it in his hands, as it -raised clear, his ridiculous ankles alternately lifting. - -His Chinese cook rushed forward with cans of crackers, and dumped them -in the boat. The Japanese woman appeared dragging a huge hamper of -wines and liquors. Stackhouse took the hamper between his legs and sent -her back to his cabin. The boat was lowered just below the level of the -_Jade’s_ gunwale. Stackhouse sprawled forward, the hairy masses of his -legs writhing after. Presently he reversed, and began to reach for the -hamper. Fleury kicked it out of reach, and lifted the woman and child -in. - -“Get water,” he said to Bellair. “I’ll save a place for you.” - -Bellair tossed his overcoat into the boat and darted to the galley, -where he found cans. Filling them seemed a process interminable, until -he pulled over the half-filled cask.... Stackhouse was screaming for -his hamper. The Japanese woman sped by with more bottles. She tried -to put them in the boat, but Fleury took them from her, and attempted -to force her into a place, but she had heard a final command from her -lord and broke away.... Bellair was filling his cans a second time.... -Stackhouse, who had risen insanely, was rocked back either by word or -blow from Fleury. The small boat was on the sea, and the _Jade’s_ rail -leaned low to it. The sea was roaring into the mother-boat; she would -flurry in an instant. - -“Yes, water, Bellair,” said Fleury. “But don’t go back.” - -“One more trip,” said Bellair. - -He filled the last can--his mind holding the image of Stackhouse -on his knees praying to Fleury for his hamper. Beseechings back in -the dark accentuated the picture. Fleury was calling for him.... He -passed the Japanese woman, sobbing and _skuffing_ pitifully back to -the cabin; as a child sent repeatedly for something hard to find. He -heard the launching of the other and larger boat forward; saw at the -binnacle McArliss still fumbling for a match. Then Fleury grasped him -and his can.... No, it was the woman’s hand that saved the can from -overturning. Bellair would have waited for the Japanese woman, but the -_Jade_ dipped half-over and slid him into the boat. - -The mother-ship shuddered. The Japanese woman passed the binnacle, -holding something high in her hand. She was on her knees.... There was -a flare and the face of McArliss--who had struck his match at last.... -The _Jade_ seemed to go from them--a sheet of grey obscured the rail. -The two who remained were netted there together, the red point of the -cigarette flickered out.... The two boats were on the sea; the night, a -serenity of starlight.... The sound of slobbering turned their eyes to -Stackhouse, who was drinking from one of the large cans.... Fleury went -to him, pressed the face from it, and placed the cans forward at the -feet of the woman. His hand was sticky afterward, as if with blood, and -he held it overside. - - - - -PART FOUR - -THE OPEN BOAT - - - 1 - -BELLAIR was athirst. The fact that he had taken a deep drink less than -a half-hour before, did not prevail altogether against it. In the very -presence of Stackhouse there was a psychological intensity of thirst. -The master sat hunched and obscene in the stern of the boat, patting -the wet folds of his shirt--a pure desire-body, afraid of death, afraid -of thirst, afraid of the fear of thirst and death. Picturesqueness and -personality were gone from him; romance and the strange culture of the -man, for the eyes of Bellair; the old wonder, too, which the seas and -the islands of the seas had given him. Bellair could not forget the -ankles, the moving of those bare masses up and down, as Stackhouse -had clung at the same time to the small boat and the gunwale of the -_Jade_. What a poison to past tales--this present passion and method of -self-salvation. He was less than a beast, in retaining the effigy of a -man. - -Bellair turned to Fleury. Like swift pleasant rays in the dark, the -last scenes of the main-deck recurred. Again he marvelled at the -falsity of his first judgments, by which he had formerly set so much, -and so complacently. It had seemed a fat face to him at first, a face -out of true with the world, the face of an easy man who placates things -as they are, because he was not trained to see the evil of them and -give them fight. All that was remembered with difficulty, even for this -moment of contrast. It would not come again. Fleury had stood up in -the crisis, a man to tie to. He would never be the same again in look -or action or intonation; as Stackhouse could never be the same. Fleury -had risen and put on a princely dimension; the other had lost even that -uncertain admirableness of gross animalism. - -The preacher was leaning forward toward the knees of the woman, talking -to the babe. Bellair imagined its eyes wide-open and sober; certainly -it was still. The mother’s face was partly turned away. Fleury said: - -“He is having his adventures. He will be a great man. He will have the -world at his finger-tips, when he is as old as we are--and then his -real work will begin. For when we know enough of the world, we turn to -God.” - -The note of the preacher in this did not embarrass Bellair, as it -would have done before the _Jade’s_ sinking. - -“He will be a great power,” Fleury went on, for the heart of the -mother. “These things which for him pass unconsciously, will form him -nevertheless. They will do their work within; and when he is grown he -will know what to do and say.” - -“How do you know?” the mother asked. - -“Chiefly because I believe in you,” he answered. - -“I want him to live,” she said. - -“We want that, too,” said Fleury. - -Bellair felt himself nodding in the dark. - -“If he is to be a great man, he will have to live through his first--at -least, through this adventure.” - -The meaning came very pure to Bellair. It had to do with crackers and -water for the nourishment of the child. So strong and sure was her own -fortitude that she did not need to say she was thinking only of food -and drink for him. It meant to Bellair, “If I cannot nurse him, he will -die.” - -He regarded the length and beam of the small boat. It was not more -than eighteen feet long--and only the Polar seas could be emptier than -this vast southern ocean. The nights would be more easily endured, but -the days, one long burning. Still it would not be torrid heat; they -were too far south for that. The thought of storm, he kept in the -background of his mind. They all did. Roughly estimated, there was -food and water enough for them to live without great agony for a week, -possibly for a day or two over, but Stackhouse was not a part of this -consideration. He could not live a week without an abnormal consumption -of water.... - -Fleury was talking about the stars. They would see Venus before dawn, -he said; the great one in their meridian now was Jupiter. “If we had a -marine-glass, we would be able to see his moons.... That,” he pointed -to the brightest of the fixed stars, a splendid yellow gleam in the -east, “that is Canopus, never seen north of the Gulf States at Home. -It’s so mighty that our little earth would turn molten in ten seconds -if it came as near as our sun.” - -Bellair leaned toward him listening. The preacher pointed out the -Southern Cross, and Alpha Centauri, almost the nearest of the sun’s -neighbours. - -Their thoughts groped naturally to such things. In the full realisation -of their helplessness, they looked up. The background was a deep -fleckless purple. Bellair hadn’t known the great stars of the northern -skies, much less these splendid strangers. The brimming closeness -of the dark sea harrowed the landsman’s heart of him; and there was -something as great or greater than the actual terror of ultimate -submerging. It was the fear of the fear; the same that causes men -to leap from high places through the very horror of the thought of -leaping. The water lapped the clinkered sides of the small boat. He -touched it. His flesh took from the coolness something that numbed the -pervading alarm; a message which the wet hand sensed, but the brain -could not interpret. The presence of the others forward sustained him; -Stackhouse in the stern was the downpull; thus Bellair was in the -balance. - -It was yet far from dawn; certainly no lighter, but Bellair could see -better. The woman was looking away. He knew that he would see her so, -until the last day of her life--that profile of serene control, that -calm, far-seeing gaze.... What gave her this quiet power?... Already -the thoughts of the three were intimate matters to all. It seemed very -natural now to ask Fleury what gave the woman such strength. - -“It’s the sense that all is well, in spite of this physical -estrangement from the world,” the preacher said. “Bellair, it’s the -sense that nothing matters but the soul. It’s not belief; it’s knowing. -She has lost the sense of self. _She is through talking._ It is -finished with her. We talk, because it is not finished in us--but it is -being accomplished. We talk because we want that peace; when it comes -we will not talk, but live it. It is exactly opposite to _desire_; you -can see that----” - -Yes, Bellair could see that. He had but to turn back in his seat to -confront Stackhouse wringing his heavy twitching hands and begging for -water, begging like a leper, now that a face turned to him--the most -frightful picture of the work of desire and the fear of desire, that -the world or the underworld could furnish. Less than two hours before -he had drunk a quart and wasted a pint in his greed; and behind Bellair -was the silent woman and Fleury, thinking of others, full of the good -of the world.... In the worldliness that came to him from Stackhouse, -the intimacy of the matter they had just talked about seemed startling. - -“One can’t help but notice what _you get from somewhere_--and what the -woman has,” Bellair added. - - * * * * * - -They were in the grey mystery of dawn--alone, for they had drifted, and -the sailors in the other boat had begun to row at once. Stackhouse was -lifted a little, brought nearer, possibly by the tension, which they -all came to know so well--the tension of that grey hour, before the day -reveals the sea. - -“It was my ship,” he whimpered. “It was my hamber--McArliss was mine -and the service----” - -“You’d have had them all yet, but you amused yourself watching poor -McArliss fall into the drink. You would have had it all--just the same -this morning--for he would never have hit the reef on duty----” - -It was Bellair who spoke, and the thing had suddenly appeared very -clear to him. Stackhouse did not falter from the present, his huge head -darting east and west to stare through the whitening film. - -“It was my hamber. There is room here at my feet. It was little, yet -meant so much. I should not have troubled you----” - -The lack of it seemed suddenly to hurt him even more poignantly. - -“You will all go to hell with your talk of beace,” he declared, looking -between them but at no pair of eyes. “I will go first, what with the -drink dying out, but you will not be long. There is hell for me, but -for all alike. You may live days--but the longer, the more hell. And -you will all come at last--to the long deep drink of the brine----” - -“Oh, come now, Stackhouse,” said Bellair. “It may not turn out so -badly. You’ve had luck before. You’ve talked much to me of luck--and -deaths of others. If it’s your turn--face it as your innumerable -friends faced it.” - -The man was undone before them. The flesh of his jaws stood out, as if -pulled by invisible fingers. His heavy lips rubbed together, so that -they turned from the sight of them. - -“There was room in the boat for that basket of rum,” he called out -insanely. “It was all to me. There is no talk of God for me--rum was -all I had!... I would have been so quiet. It would have been here at my -feet, but for that fool who talks of God, and can never know the thirst -of men.” - -Fleury turned to him, his face deeply troubled. It occurred to Bellair -that there was something to what Stackhouse said. Fleury, in kicking -back the hamper, had kept the devil of Stackhouse from entering the -boat, and Stackhouse served no other.... More and more it was twisting -his brain, as young alligators twist at a carcass. - -“I would have had it here between my knees. And I would have had the -little bottle from the cabin--the last that boots you to sleep----” - -“And so that is what you sent her back for--sent her to her death----” - -“You lie. She was held here--trying to get the hamber to me. There -would have been time. She would have gone and come. She would have been -here now----” - -Bellair and Fleury glanced at each other. - -“I am rotted with drink--and will drink the brine first, but you -will follow me. You will bring it up with your hands and drink--and -drink----” - -He was looking at Fleury now. The intensity of thirst in the spectacle -of him--the presence of that vast galvanism of thirst--was like a -burning sun in their throats. The baby cried, and the mother drew him -shudderingly to her breast. Fleury swallowed hard, his face haggard -and drawn in the daybreak. He went over and took his seat before the -monster. Bellair was tempted to ask him to be easy, but there was no -need. Fleury turned and drew a cup of water and handed it to the other. -Bellair’s jaws ached cruelly from the drain of empty glands. - -“We should pity you, Stackhouse,” he said, “but we are not facing -death now. You fill the boat with thirst--you fill the sea--with your -thinking drink and talking drink--until you bring a cry of thirst -to the little child. It’s as if we had gone sixty hours--instead of -six----” - -He talked on for the sake of the woman. Stackhouse drank and grew -silent. Bellair felt better and braver--even though the full light -revealed nothing but empty sea and heavenly sky. - - - 2 - -Bellair surveyed his world as the dawn came up.... Thirst and -fasting; possibly, the end.... The peculiar part of his open boat -contemplations, no two were alike. Physical denial hurried him from one -plane to another from which he regarded his world--his two worlds, for -Stackhouse behind was one, and his friends forward, another; the one -drawing his love, courage and finest ideals; the other, repression -of self, lest he wear himself out in hatred. They were not talkers in -front. He had not seen quite the entire fulfilment of Fleury’s meaning -about talking until late moments. The Faraway Woman invariably said -little; the child was the silentest of all; Fleury had met this demon -and put it away. Stackhouse had talked and talked, and to the pictures -he made with words, he belonged not at all, but to unspeakable things. -Bellair remembered his own talk to Filbrick. It made him writhe. He had -become crossed and complicated and ineffective that day. He had not -talked in the straight line of heart and brain. He saw that a man who -talks that which he is not, is less than nothing, as Stackhouse was -less than nothing. - -“How far are we from anywhere, Bellair?” Fleury asked. - -“We weren’t supposed to strike land before Chatham or Bounty -Island--two days’ sail this side of New Zealand, as I understand it. -We lost land six--a week ago to-day--_Madre de Dios_, McArliss called -it--off the west Coast of South America. With good wind McArliss -planned to sight the Islands off New Zealand in three weeks. We had -a week’s good sailing until yesterday--so we are a fortnight, as the -_Jade_ reckoned, from--_your home_.” - -Bellair turned to the woman. She did not speak. - -“Do you suppose we struck coral?” Fleury asked. - -The subject seemed very hopeless. “I saw the charts in McArliss’ cabin. -No reefs were charted according to our passage. We may have been -off our course. But I do not understand. The mate took our bearings -yesterday noon. I do not know what he reported to the Captain----” - -“It may have been a sunken wreck that we struck,” said Fleury. - -Bellair had thought of that. He turned to Stackhouse, who might have -had something to say, but the other stared at them balefully--at their -faces, not meeting their eyes. Either he had not followed their words, -or chose to take no part. - -“If we are in the course of any ships at all, it would be of one -passing our route, from the Horn to the Islands,” Fleury added. “I -doubt if it would do us any good to row. We must not tax our strength. -If we are off our course, we cannot tell whether it is to the north or -south, so nothing is positively to be gained. It’s a question of hands -up. The other boat set out for somewhere at once. If they find ship -they will tell the story----” - -It appeared a useless recounting of obvious things. Bellair had thought -this out bit by bit several times without finding the least substance -to tie to. Fleury’s addition merely accentuated the bleakness of their -position. - -“Still,” the preacher added, “if there is nothing for us to do in the -way of struggle--the rest is simplified. We may be thoroughly tested, -but I feel a strange confidence of our ultimate delivery. I thought of -it before we had parted from the _Jade_. It came to me again in the -night. I believe it now. We do not belong to the deep--not all of us.” - -Bellair wondered at the strength which came from this. He placed his -trust upon this man, as one having familiarity with a source which he -personally did not draw from. The preacher’s words were designed to -cheer the woman, but he could not let them pass as merely for that. -Fleury had a conviction, or he would not have spoken so. - -The air grew cooler during the long closing of that first day. -Bellair thought of his overcoat which lay in a roll under the narrow -planking forward where the woman sat. The bundle of New York papers -dropped out, as he drew the garment forth. He opened one of the papers -laughingly.... The headlines were like voices from another world. The -abyss between the real and the unreal yawned before his eyes now in -the open boat. New York seemed to be fighting in prints for things so -little and unavailing. So little ago, he, Bellair, had moved among -them, as among things that counted. Now what was real was the woman’s -courage and the substance of Fleury’s faith, and the hope that came -from the immensity. The deep contrasts of life held Bellair. - -As the message of the press came up to his eyes, he sunk into queer -apathy, believed himself dreaming when he read his own name. He was not -startled; even that was not his, but an invention like the clicking -of a watch, which marks off an illusion of the illusion time.... An -afternoon paper, dated the second day after his departure from New -York; a brief statement of his departure with certain funds of Lot -& Company; one item of a thousand dollars, several others suspected -missing.... There was a follow story in the next day’s issue: Bellair -as yet unfound, was believed to have gone to the Cobalt; Bessie Brealt, -a professional singer, had passed an hour or two with the missing man -on the eve of his flight. He had spent money recklessly.... This was -all. - -He dumped the papers overside, and was sorry afterward; still, there -was not physical energy in him to explain, nor comprehension in the -other two for such details. Lot & Company had sacrificed him to ward -off disclosures he might make. Possibly Attorney Jackson had suggested -the step. It was very clear. Even if the station-porter had not mailed -his letter, they would have found his order of release in the safe. It -was a part of the other world--proper business from Lot & Company’s -point of view. He was marked a thief in his small circle. He seemed -to see the face of the boarding-house woman as she heard the news. -She would search her house.... And Bessie Brealt.... The tempter, -notoriety, was responsible for her small, mean part. It wasn’t an -accident. She must have looked at his card and told, for the reporters -would not have come to her.... It began to hurt him, mainly because of -the thoughts and dreams of helping her, which had come to him since, -especially here in the open boat. She had fallen into one of the little -tricks of New York--to break into print at any cost. There wasn’t much -reality in the rest, nor much chance of his needing New York again. - - * * * * * - -... Three and a child in a small boat. The pale moon-crescent, her -bow to the sinking sun, appeared higher in the west. What a cosmic -intervention--since last night when he had seen her first arc and the -earth-shine from the deck of the _Jade_! And what a supper he had gone -down to afterward! There was wrench in that--an age since then.... No -one had spoken for a long time. Bellair wondered if the man and woman -thought of food as he did. - -Three and a child in the empty sea, and the great suns of night were -coming forth in the deepening dusk. They were strangers, but more -real than the sea. This was not like the earth at all; and yet the -_Jade_ had been of the earth. Her fabric had contained the bond that -held from port to port. Stars and sea--one more real than the other, -and different, too, for there was horror in looking down, but hope in -looking up. Something in his breast answered the universality--but -quailed before the deep. - -... Just now Bellair, lifting his overcoat to draw it closer around -him, sensed its unaccustomed weight on the left. His hand sped thither, -touched the full bottle of Bourbon whiskey purchased in Savannah. His -hand remained with it a moment. A shudder passed through the small boat -from Stackhouse, who had come to from another hideous sleep. - - - 3 - -Bellair stared into the sea. No one had spoken for many minutes. It was -close to noon. Though all that had to do with memory since the sinking -of the _Jade_ was treacherous, according to his recounting, it was but -the second day; that is, the mother-ship had gone down in the heart of -night before last.... Bellair had given away to temptation, when he let -his eyes sink into the depths. He had fought it for hours, and knew -that nothing good would come of it, but there was so much to fight, he -had not the further strength for this. - -The sea was calm on the surface, but there appeared a movement below, -so vast and unhurried, that it was like some planetary function. -There seemed a draw of the depths southward, an under-movement toward -the Pole. At times a cloud of purple would rise from far beneath and -shut off his peering, like the movement of blueing in a laundry-tub -before it is well-diffused. It came to him that this was but a denser -cloud-land--an ocean of condensed clouds, moved not by winds alone, -but the stirring of the earth’s mysterious inner attractions, which -in their turn were determined by the sun and moon and stars. It was -all orderly, but he, Bellair, was out of order. And such a little -thing--a quart of cool water, and any one of the thousands of meals he -had thoughtlessly, gratelessly bought and paid for--thousands consumed -with a book at hand, or a paper to keep his mind off the perfunctory -routine of feeding himself. Hundreds of meals he had taken, because -it was the hour, and a cigar was more pleasurable afterward; meals in -his room--paper packages of food, pails of ice, chilled bottles with -a mist forming on them; saloon lunches, plates of colored sausages, -creamy-rose slices of ham, tailored radishes and herring pickled in -onions.... There was not a fish in the sea, not a movement but the -blueing, and that slide of the under-ocean river to the Pole. - -Yet there _was_ something in there--an end to this disorder. It would -take all he had left--the good air. It was like a knife or a gun or a -poison-pill.... The movement below was so strong that it would grip -him, shut him from the air, and leave him slithering along toward the -Pole, sometimes sinking sideways, and then rising, forever seeking his -balance ... not forever. He pictured himself in a school of herring, -thousands of bright lidless eyes, thousands of bubbles, like eyes, from -their mouths opening and shutting--he slithering sideways--his hands -moving in the tugs and pressures. They would cease to dart from his -movements, understanding them as the ground-birds know the wind in the -grass. Lips and eye-lids and nostrils--they would have food. Food was -the great event of the day to all things--except men. Men ate by the -clock, ate to smoke, ate to soften the hearts of women ... yet after -all food was food.... Or one big fish.... Or two fighting for him.... -Or one finding him lying still, a slow fanning of fins against the -purple pressures, watching to be sure--then the strike.... Once he had -examined a minnow after the strike of a bass.... Where would _he_ be -in that strike--or in that herring school-room--not that slithering -sideways thing--but _he_? Would he be watching humorously, or back -in the cage with Mr. Sproxley, or in Bessie’s bedroom? Was it all a -myth about that other _he_? It seemed a myth with his stomach sinking, -tightening like a dripping rag between a pair of mighty elbows. In the -centre of the rag was a compressed cork, and in the cork, a screw was -twisting. - -Cork--that made him think of the whiskey. He turned from the water -to the coat under the seat, his eyes blinking. His bare foot moved -painfully to the coat and along the breast to the pocket, to the hard -hump of the bottle. - -His eyes suddenly filled with the figure of Stackhouse, whose attitudes -were an endless series of death tableaus, as his stories had also -pictured. His face had broken out into more beard, his eyes glazed, -body shapeless, like clothing stuffed with hair. His hands held the -primal significance of birth and death. They lay upon his limbs, the -thumbs drawn into the palms, the first and little fingers of each -pointing straight down. Bellair thought of how death contracts the -thumb, and how infants come with their thumbs in-drawn. - -Also his mind was played upon by two distinct series of -emotions--Stackhouse representing one set; Fleury and the Faraway Woman -signifying the other. He swung from power to power. Then his concern -and fascination for Stackhouse changed from loathing and the visible -tragedy, to a queer passage of conjecture regarding the worldwide -processes which had nourished that huge body to its fall. In fact, -Bellair’s favourite restaurants returned to mind like a pageant; -the little inns on the Sound that he used to go summer Saturday -afternoons; the one place in Staten where there were corn-cakes and -a view of the shipping; the myriad eating and drinking places of New -York; and from them all, one shop of chop and chicken-broils where the -miracles were done on wood-embers, so that even the smoke that filled -the place was seasoned nutriment. - -“They certainly knew how to buy,” he muttered aloud. - -It was a kind of moan, and he added quickly: “I beg your pardon.” - -Fleury and the woman regarded him with silent kindness. - -“I was just thinking of a man I knew--a buyer of canned goods,” he -explained hastily. “The bargains in canned-goods he had a way of -pulling off! There wasn’t a man in New York who could bring in lines of -stuff at the figure he copped--a little runt of a man named Blath, who -knew his business----” - -Fleury leaned back as if reaching for support, his quiet smile not a -little tender. His two browned hands came forward to Bellair’s knees, -and he said with a devoted smile: - -“I’ll not forget that in a hurry.... Blath, you say his name was?” - -Bellair knew well that he had not kept his mental pictures from -Fleury’s mind. His entire consciousness had been in steam and woodsmoke -having to do with broiling meat. The three were worn thin, worn to -fine receptivity, and caught one-another’s thought without effort of -many words.... Though he did not turn, a shock of pity came to him now -for the master. He had meant to save the opening of the whiskey for the -next dawn, vaguely thinking that if they should find the sea empty once -more, there would be that false strength to fall back upon. Stackhouse -could not live more than a day or two longer. He was torn by devils, -his only surcease being the snap of consciousness from time to time. -The whiskey had been upon Bellair’s mind like a curse. He wanted its -force for himself, but never really meant to use it, had not even given -the temptation leeway. His lot was cast with the forward forces; they -would not have touched the contents of his bottle. This did not change -the desire, however. - - - 4 - -The third day. Bellair was light-headed from the scarcity of crackers. -Yesterday had been a mingled thirst and hunger day, but this was -characterised by hunger incessant. To-morrow he anticipated with dread -another thirst horror, and after that, no hunger at all, but mighty -agony that knew but the one word, _Water_. The keen airs of night and -morning, and the sterilised burning of the noons, constantly fanned -and stimulated the natural demands of the body.... He had forgotten -the newspapers. Bessie’s face came before him--something of her deep -heart-touching tones which changed him. - -“There must be a great woman there--a great fine woman--like this one.” - -He did not turn. It may have been the first concession from his -every-day faculties of this woman’s actual beauty. He had already -granted this deeper within, where the understandings of men are wiser, -but harder to get at. Certain hours had shown him the clear quality -of saints and martyrs; and he had seen in pure life-equation that the -child was worth his life or Fleury’s. He would have given his, as most -white men would, but it was different to see the value and rightness of -it.... - -There was now an unspeakable need in the stern. He drew the bottle from -the overcoat-pocket at his feet, without turning. Fleury and the woman -watched him. He cut the small wires with his knife, tore off the wafer, -half-expectant of some sound from behind.... The day was ending. The -young moon newly visible in the dusk began its curve into the west from -a higher point in the sky.... - -There was a screw in Bellair’s knife. It sank noiselessly into the -cork, but the first creak of the stopper against the glass brought the -jolt. They all felt it--as if the great body had fallen from a dream. - -Stackhouse was staring at the thing in Bellair’s hands, his tongue -visible, his face filling with light. He rubbed his eyes, the -beginnings of articulation deep in his throat. He was trying to make -himself believe it was not a vision. That harrowed them. A pirate would -have pitied him--reptile desire imaged not in the face alone, but in -the hands and all. Bellair poured a big drink in a tin-cup. Fleury -passed him a gill of water. Stackhouse drained the cup with a cry. - -Something earth-bound slowly left his face. In contrast it grew mild -and reckonable; but within an hour he was wild with pain, and dangerous -for night was falling. In the light of the moon there was treachery. -Bellair and Fleury sat together in the centre. The other’s bulk was -great and the boat small. In becoming custodian of a bottle of whiskey, -Bellair now required help. He wished it in the sea, but there was a -pang of cruelty about that. The new force that animated Stackhouse -had to be reckoned with. It was both cunning and destructive. There -was no murder in their hearts.... Stackhouse drew his feet under him, -helping them with his hands; his eyeballs turned upward from the agony -of cramps in his limbs; then he sank forward on his knees. The craft of -desire had turned from fighting to speech. The moon was grey upon his -breast and gleamed from his eyes. - -“You will listen to a man who is dying. Yes, Bellair, you will -listen--who listened to me so much.... Give me drink, so I can talk----” - -“It may save you--but not if you take it all at once.” - -The creature winced, but his passion moved to its appointed ends. He -drew forth the large brown wallet they had often seen; rubbed it in his -hands, until his fingers could feel; then opened the leather band. From -one receptacle he lifted a thick package of bank-notes. - -“I liked you, Bellair--almost as I liked one Belding. I could have done -much for you. I hate _that_ man, for he has made my death hard----” - -His face turned toward Fleury, but did not meet the preacher’s eyes. - -“The _Jade_ brought a sweet cargo to Ameriga, and Stackhouse does -not bank in New York.... Bellair, I want to drink--so the talk will -come----” - -So absurd was the sound of cargo and banking that Bellair thought his -mind had wandered again, yet he said: - -“You are better. You cannot drink each hour. If this is to help you, -you must be sane.” - -“I have something to say of imbortance--you will help me, Bellair. It -is for you.” - -The faces of Fleury and the mother gave him no help. They were kind, -but the thing seemed beneath them, as if they were waiting for him to -come back from it. - -“You have stood by that man, and not by me,” Stackhouse said hoarsely. -“So that I meant to toss this in the sea at the last--this and all the -papers----” - -He lifted the bank-notes and showed him the collection of -separately-banded documents. - -“I am a rich man, and I have no heir. I had thought of you, but you -turned away from me and did not continue to listen. You went to him -of the breachings--but you have now what is needful for me and I will -bay. I have no heir. I said that before. I dell you now. A dying man -does not lie. There are papers to make you rich, for I have other -fortunes. Look, I will toss it into the sea--if you do not give me that -bottle----” - -Bellair laughed at him. - -“These are thousand dollar notes--there are fifty of them----” - -Bellair turned aside for an instant. Money and papers of more -money--these were very far from fanning excitement in his breast. A -loaf and a jug of fresh water were real; the moon’s higher appearance -each night, and the majestic plan of the night-suns, these were real. -Fleury, the woman and the babe, lost in the brimming darkness of -earth’s ocean--they were real. Like the stars they had to do with the -mighty Conceiver of it all. They were a part of the Conception--and so -they were real--but the dollars of men.... - -“And do you know what I will do--after I have tossed this into the sea?” - -The question brought him back quickly. - -“No, Stackhouse,” he answered. - -“I will come for you and dake that bottle. I am big. I have strength. I -will dake it--or you will kill me--and that will be the end----” - -Bellair thought of that. There was a pistol in his coat. He did not -want to use it. He believed Stackhouse would do as he said. - -“For God’s sake, Bellair----” - -“If I give it to you--oh, not for that rubbish!” he pointed to the -wallet. “If I give it to you--you will die more quickly----” - -“That is what I want.” - -“But it is not our way----” - -Stackhouse tore loose from his shirtpocket the heavy gold watch and its -heavier chain, dropped the whole into one of the folds of the wallet to -weight it down. “It will sink,” he said. - -“To hell with it----” - -“For God’s sake, Bellair!” Stackhouse moaned, his arm rising with the -wallet and falling again. - -At that instant Bellair thought of Bessie Brealt and her career.... He -turned to Fleury and the Mother. They were regarding him with kindest -concern--as if he were a loved one who could not fail to do well in any -event. Then he thought of the work that Fleury might do--the preacher -who had finished with talk, and was so eager to act.... And just then, -the little child turned to him from the mother’s breast--a puzzled -look, but calm, and a flicker of the damp upper lip, as if it would -like to smile, but was not sure. - -Bellair held out the whiskey. The wallet was thrust in his hands for -reception of the bottle--a frenzied transaction. - -They begged him to spare it for his own peace. They gave him water, but -poor Stackhouse could not live with the stuff in his hands. In fifteen -minutes the bottle was drained, and then the monster wept. - - - 5 - -The night roved on like a night in still mountains. The young moon had -sunk behind the sea. Jupiter in meridian glory seemed trying to bring -his white fire to the dying red of Antares.... A dark night of stars -now, since the upstart moon had left the deeper purple. Most of all, -Bellair was fascinated by the great yellow gleam of Canopus. It was -a dry, pure dark--no drip in that night--but a thirsty horror in the -saline lapping of the ocean against the planks. - -Stackhouse was headless in the shadow, his piglike breathing a part -of all. Fleury, the mother and the child slept; the preacher’s head -close to the knees of the woman. Bellair marked that, and that Fleury -loved her. At times the preacher’s whole life seemed an effort to make -her eat and drink; and as for Fleury himself it often appeared that he -required no better nutriment than that of conferring food and water -upon the others. As custodian, he claimed authority for his action.... -Bellair thought long of Bessie. He was watching the east at last for -Venus to arise ahead of the sun.... - -... But Bessie became blurred. He did not understand. Either his -brain had another picture, or the original of the singing girl was -fading.... A New York voice, no passion, but ambition, an excellent -voice--and such a beautiful, girlish breast.... Bellair tried to -shake this coldness from him. This was not being true. He had a faint -suspicion that a man’s woman is more apt to depart from him while he -is at her side than when he is away. It is because another has come, -if passion for the old dies, when one is away. Alone and apart, man is -more ardent, in fact, unless a new picture composes.... He thought of -Davy Acton, the office boy at Lot & Company’s, that wistful, sincere -face--and then Bellair gave way to the night. - -This was a new sensation. It came from the hunger and thirst. He could -_let go_. The purple immensity would then take him. A half-hour, even -an hour, would pass. It was not sleep, very different from that. He was -not altogether lost. A little drum-beat would come back to him from the -mighty revery-space, and his heart would answer the beat. He seemed to -be on the borderland of the Ultimate Secret; and invariably afterward -he was amazed at what he had been--so sordid and sunken and depraved -was the recent life he had known. - -“But I was what the days and years seemed to want of me,” he muttered. - -That was the gall of it. Days and years are betrayers; all the -activities of the world are betrayers. He glimpsed the great patience -of the scheme. Only man makes haste. Myriad pressures, subtle and -still-voiced, tighten upon a man, bringing just the suggestion that all -is not well with him. Then there are the more obvious pressures--fever, -desire, the death of a man’s loves--to make him stop and look and -listen. But so seldom does he relate these to the restlessness of his -soul. Rather he attributes them to the general misery of life. He has -been taught to do so--the false teaching.... For general misery is not -the plan of life. If _children_ could only be taught that it is all -superbly balanced, the plan perfect; that not a momentary stress of -suffering comes undeserved; that the burden of all suffering is to make -a man change!... A sentence came so clearly to him that even his lips -formed it. - -“The plan of life is for joy!” - -He saw the need of every hundredth man at least, arising to repeat -this sentence around the world--arising from his pain and husks like -the Younger Son, and returning to the joy of the Father’s House.... -Something was singing in him from his thought of _children_. - -“We’re too old,” he thought, meaning the millions of men caught in -the world as he had been, “but the children could learn. They could -change----” - -He had turned to the bow. Fleury was a nearer shadow, sitting, head -bowed forward. The Mother’s head lay back against Bellair’s coat, the -child across her knees.... That faint grey light was about her. He had -not noted this at first; it seemed to have come from the moment of -contemplation--something like starlight, something like the earth-shine -that Fleury explained. Her lips were parted, and her eyes seemed held -shut, not as if she slept but as if she were thinking of something dear -to her--her face wasted a little. - -He saw it more clearly than the faintness of the light would -suggest--and to Bellair’s breast came a sudden sense of her expectancy. -It seemed she were awake, but lying back with eyes shut awaiting a -lover, her face wasted a little from the burning of expectation. For -a moment it was very beautiful to him. Then all was spoiled--for the -personal entered. Almost before he had any volition in the matter, his -mind had flashed across the interval of space between them--as if he -were the one to bring that token to the parted lips. - -He shook his head with impatience, and the miseries of the hour rushed -home to his mind. - -... Fleury was awake and they were whispering, the woman still asleep. - -“The plan of the world is for joy,” Bellair said wearily. “We are all -taught that it is a vale of tears--that’s the trouble--taught that we -must grab what we can.” - -“If we won’t learn from joy--we’ve got to take the pain,” said the -preacher. “We’ve got to get out of the conception of time and space as -the world sees it to catch a glimpse of the joy of the plan. We are -in the midst of a superb puzzle. To those who see only the matter and -not the meaning, life is an evil country, a country of dragons and -monsters. But there’s a soul to it all, and man has a soul. If a man -begins to use his soul to see and think with, the puzzle begins to -unfold. A man’s soul isn’t of matter. It’s a pilgrim come far, far to -go--very eager to get this particular journey through matter ended----” - -“But why make the journey?” - -“To learn evil.” - -“The Younger Son wasted himself afield----” - -“Was he not placed afterward above the elder in the Father’s heart?” -Fleury asked. “Could he not appreciate the Father’s House better than -him who had not left it? Man is greater than angels--that’s hinted at -everywhere in the Scriptures. Angels are unalloyed good. The man who -has mastered matter becomes a creative force. All the great stories -of the world tell the same story--the wanderings of Ulysses, the -tasks of Hercules. The soul’s mastery of each task and escape from -each peril and illusion is an added lesson--finally the puzzle breaks -open. The adventurer sees the long journey of the soul, not this -little earth-crossing. He sees that his misery now is but a dip of the -valley--that the long way is a steadily rising road--that the plan _is_ -for joy.” - -It came home to him closer than ever before that night. His soul had -tried to express itself and ordain his higher ways these many years, -but he had lost his way in the world. He perceived that all men lose -their way; that he had suddenly been shaken apart so he could see. -It was luck in his case--the misery at Lot & Company’s, the singing -of Bessie Brealt, the unparalleled contrasts here in the open boat. -But why should he be shown, and not the millions of other imprisoned -men? Was this a part of the great patience of the scheme again? Would -something happen to each man in due season, some force in good time to -help him to rise and be free? - -“The man who ties himself to the pilgrim--and not the sick little -chattering world creature--suddenly finds that he has but one job,” -Fleury said presently. “He’s got to tell about it----” - -The world suddenly smote Bellair. - -“Why, men would say a man was crazy if he told the things we have -thought this night,” he said, leaning forward. “Maybe we are a bit -unsound. Perhaps these are illusions we are harbouring--vagaries -from drying up and wasting away, similar to the vagaries of -alcohol--doubtless----” - - * * * * * - -It was like waking from a dream--the horrible sounds now from the -stern. Bellair heard Fleury’s voice. Turning, he saw Venus before -anything else. It was the thought that he had fallen into the revery -with, and had to be finished on the way out. - -Under that superb vision of morning, Stackhouse was kneeling, his -breast against the rail,--bringing up to his mouth great palm-fuls of -brine. - - - 6 - -The things that happened in the open boat on this fourth day are not -altogether to be explained. A metaphysician from the East explained -a similar visitation--but like many explanations of the East, the -foundations of his discussion were off the ground. He did not begin -with stuff that weighs-up avoirdupois. The West can weigh the moon -and estimate the bulk of Antares’ occulted companion, but in cases -where _things_ cease to be weighable, our side of the world sits back -with the remark, “It is well enough to hypothecate the immaterial, -but what’s the good of it when you can’t see it?” Also when the East -gently suggests an opinion, the West rises to declare, “Why, you people -haven’t got gas or running water in your houses.” - -Now occasionally there comes a time when the Western eye sees something -that it can’t touch or smell exactly, and it is easier to disbelieve -its own senses than to change its point of view for an Eastern one. -Accordingly it says, “I was crazy with the heat,” or as Bellair was -prone to explain away the visitation of this day, “The thirst and the -hunger had got to me.” - -There follows, without further peroration, an unheated narrative of -what _appeared_ to take place on that fourth day: - -As was expected from drinking the brine, Stackhouse went mad. The -look of the great creature, his very identity, changed, went out from -him, and something else came in. This happens when a dog goes mad. We -have had to reckon with it in our own families. If that which we knew -passes, without something foreign taking its place, the result would -be a mere inert mass waiting for death. The alienists have given us -the word _obsession_ to explain that which comes instead, making an -obscenity and violence of that which we knew. In the olden days these -Enterers were known as demons. A man named Legion was beset with them, -and Another with a strong will came and, according to the story, freed -Legion. That which had defiled him entered a herd of swine, the bars of -which were somehow down at the time.... - -They had ceased to hate Stackhouse. The old Master was gone into who -knows what long feeding dream? This was merely his body that they -watched for an hour or two in the forenoon. In fact, Bellair had -studied the departure with some detachment. He was sitting as usual in -the centre of the boat, glad that the Stackhouse agony was done. There -was a moment in which it appeared that death was stealing in rapidly, -and another in which a new kind of life entered the body--as vandals -enter to despoil a house after the tenant has moved away. - -The hunched body had suddenly reached for him like a great ape. Bellair -had felt the crippling force of the touch, and an almost equal force -from the thought that flashed in his mind--to use the pistol.... The -boat had rocked beneath them. The blackness of much blood was in -Bellair’s brain. The struggle was brief. Through it all, Bellair heard -the cries of the child. Just as he was ready to fail, the monster sat -back, his teeth snapping in his beard--the huge hands feeling for him, -as one blinded. - -“Change places with me, Bellair.” - -This was from Fleury--midforenoon that fourth day. Bellair obeyed -because he was afraid of the pistol at hand. - -“I don’t want to kill him,” he panted. - -“It will not come to that,” Fleury answered. - -It was then that the transfer of seats was made. Bellair relied -vaguely upon the preacher’s greater strength which was not of limb and -shoulder. The monster dropped to his knees to renew the fight. - -“Be still,” Fleury commanded. “Be still and rest----” - -Stackhouse himself would not have faltered before that voice of -Fleury’s, but there was a force in it that prevailed for a moment upon -the obsession. The air was full of strain.... They heard the heart in -the poor body. The blue-tipped hands were upraised from the bottom of -the boat--the face was toward them. Bellair and the Faraway Woman could -see only the back of Fleury’s head. The strain was like a vice in the -open boat. - -Bellair contemplated the mystery: that this force, lower and more -destructive than Stackhouse, could be managed and subdued in part by -the energy of another’s will-power, when Stackhouse himself would have -required brute strength.... He thought he understood what was going -on, though he would likely have scouted the same had some one told him. -In any event, Fleury was quieting the complicated thing before him.... -They heard the heart-beats rise and sink, the hands often lifting from -the bottom. The entire passage of the battle was magnified before their -eyes. Hours passed. Fleury scarcely turned. - -So far there is nothing to call in the Eastern metaphysicians, but -the day was not done, nor the dying galvanism of the monster. The -afternoon was still bright, when the great hairy head cocked itself -up differently--the eyes stretching open and suddenly filled with -yellow-green light, the colour of squash-pulp close to the rind, but a -transparent light, that gathered the rays of the day in its expiring -lucency, and held their own eyes--a lidless horror lifted from its -belly. The woman must have seen the change at the same instant, for her -cry blended with the voice of Bellair. As one, they understood that -this was a different force for Fleury to meet--a wiser, more ancient -and terrific force, from the bowels of the world of evil possibly, -without relation to Stackhouse, but with a very thrilling relation to -them. - -The whole face had a different look. It was rising higher. The hands -were braced upon the grating, pushing the body up. They were accustomed -to the loosed havoc of bestiality which Stackhouse had left upon his -features--but this that looked out from his eyes was knit and intent. - -Fleury’s hand groped back. - -“It will not answer me,” he was saying. “This is different. It will not -obey me. Take my hand, Bellair.... Yes, and take hers with the other. -We must drive it out.” - -Weariness more than death was in the speech. He had struggled for -hours. It was the voice of a man who had fought to his soul’s end. -Bellair held his hand and the woman’s, but felt himself the betrayer. -This had come _for him_! He was the prophet lying still while the -sailors deliberated. They must cast him into the sea, before this thing -could be willed into quiescence. Concentration on his part was broken -by this conviction. - -The body of Stackhouse was lifted to its knees--the different face -looking out of the eyes. They sat before it like terrified children; -the eyes found them one after another, steadily, with unearthly frigid -humour, like some creative force of evil, integrated of the ages, -charged with intrepid will, a ruling visitant that would tarry but an -instant for the climax. - -It was not human, save in the shape and feature for their recognition; -its difference from the human was its frank knowing destructiveness. -Humanity is mainly unconscious of the processes of evil; _this had -chosen_. This was of the pull of the earth, and knew its power. It -seemed known to Bellair as if from some ancient meeting. He could never -have remembered, however, without this return. It was devoid of sex, -which seemed to bring to him some old deep problem that took its place -with his ineffable fear of the presence. - -So Bellair sat between them, holding their hands, but powerless to -help.... It was higher, looking out of the eyes of the body, in strange -solution with the fallen humanity of the face they knew. And Bellair -knew _he_ was responsible. - -“You must depart. You do not belong here,” a voice said. Bellair could -not tell if it were Fleury’s or the woman’s or his own. It may have -been merely a thought. - -The thing had uprisen now. It lurched in the sway of the boat. Fleury -and he were standing to meet the body that hurled itself forward.... -Water dashed over them. They were beneath the monster. Bellair felt -more than the crush of the weight of flesh, a force kindred to -electricity, but not electric, a smothering defiling dynamics, that -despoiled him by the low, cold depth of its vibration, rather than by -the fierce fury of it. Then he thought of the woman’s child. It came to -him like a pure gleam. The child must live. The thought was very real, -out of the self, but not _for_ self.... It seemed that he heard the -heart of Stackhouse break, and the demon hiss away. - -Bellair looked up from the bottom of the boat. The woman’s face was -very close, his face between her hands. - -“... Yes, come back to us!” she was saying. “Oh, we could not live -without you----” - -It did not seem real to him for a moment. He turned from her merciful -eyes. Fleury was sitting there in the centre, holding the child with -hands that trembled. The boat rode lightly, though water lay in the -bottom. He turned farther. Yes, the seat in the stern was empty. - -“He is dead?” Bellair whispered. - -“Yes,” she answered. - -“And we did not kill him,” Fleury added. - -“But how did he get overside?” - -“You helped,” they told him. - -He did not remember. “And the child?” - -“The little Gleam is all right. All is well with us, Bellair.” - -Something of the encounter returned now. “I do not belong here with -you,” he said. “The thing--at the last--came for me----” - -Then he realised how absurd this would sound--as if some ogre had come. -Yet they understood. - -“I thought it had come for me,” the woman answered quietly. “I said -that, and _he_----”she turned with a smile to the preacher,“--and he -said the same--that it had come for him. We will forget that. Something -freed us----” - -Bellair turned to the child. - -“It was the little Gleam who freed us,” Fleury said. - -“How did you get that name?” Bellair asked. - -“You said it.” - -“How long have I been lying here?” - -“Ten minutes.” - -He rested a moment longer.... The woman was sane, the child unhurt. -Stackhouse was dead, and they had not murdered him. It was the fourth -sunset.... Bellair sat up and turned his eyes to the sea. - -The great body was near. It would not sink. They tried to row, but -were too weak to pull far. The calm sea would not cover it from their -eyes.... Even the birds did not come to it, and there was no tugging -from the deep. - -The terrible battle of the day had left them whimpering--drained men, -in the pervading calm of the sea, under the dry cloudless heat and -light of the sky. Fleury and Bellair looked at each other and their -eyes said: “We did not murder him.” They looked again and found the -woman saner than they. They turned over her shoulder to the blotch -upon the sea. It floated high, drifted with them. They could not speak -connectedly, but longed for the night.... At last, they heard her voice: - -“It is very great to me to know that there are such men in the world. -As a little girl in New Zealand I used to picture such heroes--such -brothers and heroes. I came to doubt it afterward, and that was evil in -me. I see now that the dream was true----” - -They listened like two little boys. - -“See, the cool is coming!” she added. “The child is glad, too. -To-night, we will talk!” - -“You will tell us a story?” Fleury said. - -“Yes, when it is darker. It is all so safe and quiet now. We are all -one.” - -That meant something to Bellair. Later when it was dark, and they had -supped, he said: - -“It’s good--the way you count me in, but you shouldn’t. I don’t belong, -much as I’d like to. I misjudged you at first. I misjudged Fleury--and -him----” he pointed over her shoulder to the sea. - -“It will be gone in the morning,” she whispered, patting his hand. “We -are three--and the child.” - -“Three, and God bless you,” said Fleury. “Three and the little -Gleam----” - -“The Gleam,” the woman repeated, holding the child closer. “I love -that.” - -“We are three and we follow the Gleam.” - - - 7 - -Fleury took the child. The Faraway Woman sat straight in her seat, so -that Bellair wondered at her strength. Her strength came to him. The -deeps of his listening were opened to her low voice. The story came -to them with all the colour and contour of her thought-pictures--a -richness from the unspoken words which cannot be given again: - -“It’s about a little girl whom I will call Olga,” she said. “That is -really her name, and the story is the little girl’s truly. I shall only -tell part of it to-night, for it is long and I would only tell you the -happy part--to-night. - -“Olga’s father and mother and the other children lived in a low house -by the open road that led to Hamilton. He raised sheep for a living on -the rolling pasture-lands near the Waikata river, a hundred miles south -of Auckland.... Yes, Olga was born in New Zealand--the youngest of a -houseful of sisters. They belong more to the latter part of the story -which I shall not tell to-night--just the happy part to-night.... The -first thing that Olga remembered as belonging to the Great Subject was -spoken by her father one evening when they were all together at their -supper of bread and milk: - -“‘... One never knows. It is best not to turn away any stranger, not -even if he is shabby and ill-looking. I heard of a house where a -stranger was turned away. They were not bad people, but supper was -over, the things put aside, and the woman was very tired. The stranger -was taken in at the next house, and in the morning he seemed different -to them--not shabby or ill-looking at all, but rested and laughing, -with bright lights about his hair. Always afterward, that house was -blest, but the other house went on in its misery and labour. One never -knows. It is best not to turn any stranger away.’ - -“Now Olga understood that from beginning to end. Many times before she -had tried to follow the talk at the table, but the words would come -too fast, and she would fall away to her own manner of seeing things. -This talk simplified many matters for her, and seemed greatly to be -approved. So in the evenings she began to watch for _her_ guest up the -long level road that led to Hamilton. All that summer Olga thought of -it and watched, though she was very little and only five. Sometimes -when it was not yet dark she would venture forth a few steps and -stare up the long road, until the house of their distant but nearest -neighbour was all blurred in the night. Just behind her cottage in the -other direction, the road dipped into a ravine, and the trees grew up -from it, shutting off the distance. No place could be more wonderful -than the ravine at midday, for the shades were quickened with birds, -bees, flowers and much beside that only Olga saw, but its enchantment -was too keen for the evening, and the night came there very quickly. - -“Her Guest would never come from the ravineway, but from the long, open -road--Olga was sure of this. Yet when stopping to think, she became -afraid he would not be allowed to pass the neighbour’s house. Their -little Paul was her frequent playmate, and Paul’s father and mother -were most good and hospitable people, the last on the Hamilton road -to let a stranger go by, without food and shelter. And Paul would -be looking, for he was almost always interested in her things.... -But perhaps they would be in at supper and not see the stranger; or -perhaps he would not want to stop there, but would know that _she_ was -watching. She made very certain that he would not get by her house -unobserved. - -“Spring had come again. The pale blue hepaticas were peeping into -bloom. There was one day that ended in Olga’s most wonderful night. The -sun had gone down, but not the light. The sky was crowded with rich -gold like the breast of the purple martin--flickerings of beautiful -light in the air, as if little balls of happiness were bursting of -themselves. The shadows were soft on the long road; the tiles of the -neighbour’s low house were like beaten gold, and the perfume of the -hyacinths flooded everywhere into the silence. All that heaven could -ever be was in that broad splendour and sweetness--the ravine a soft -purple stillness behind, and a faint mist of red falling in the distant -gold. - -“He was coming. She knew him for The Guest from afar. The neighbours’ -house was already dimmed, but the stranger was clear, so that she knew -he had passed their door. She ran forth to meet him, and no one called -to her from behind. It seemed all made for her--the evening so sweet -and vast and perfect. One of her little loose shoes came off as she -hurried, but she did not stop. The single one made her running clumsy, -so she kicked that free too. He must not think she was a little lame -girl.... He was farther than she thought; she had never come so far -alone in the evening. And yet how clearly she could see him.... - -“He must be very tired, for sometimes he was on one side of the road, -and sometimes on the other. He was quite old, and his step unsteady, -yet he carried his cane and did not use it.... His head was uncovered. -Now she knew why his steps were so unsteady. He was looking upward as -he walked--upward and around quite joyously, the glow of the sky upon -his white beard and hair--so that he did not see her coming, and her -bare feet were silent on the road. - -“She felt very little as she touched his cane. - -“‘Won’t you come to our house to rest? Oh, please----’ - -“‘Yes, yes,’ he answered, but did not look down. - -“‘Our house is near--won’t you come?’ she asked again, and turning, she -was surprised how far it was, but not afraid, and no one called to her. - -“‘Oh, yes,’ he answered. - -“‘But I am down here----’ - -“‘Bless me--are you?’ - -“He did not seem to see her very well, but tried to follow her voice, -his eyes looking past her, and to the side, his great hands groping -for her gently. Olga spoke again and touched his hands. Then he really -saw her, and she sighed with relief, because his eyes filled with the -gentlest love she had ever seen--seemed to rest upon her and enclose -her at the same time. The gladdest smile of welcome had come to his -face. Both her hands were in his groping ones, but now she turned and -led him. There was silence as they walked, and Olga asked: - -“‘But what were you looking for--you were looking up, you know?’ - -“‘Was I, dear?’ - -“‘Yes, and what were you looking for?’ - -“‘I was looking for my mother,’ he said. - -“Olga thought how old she must be, and she wanted to cry.... _Her_ -mother made the stranger very welcome, and her father stood back -against the wall smiling in a way that she always remembered, and -without lighting his pipe until after the stranger had finished his -meal. There was golden butter and the dark bread that is the life of -the peasants, a pitcher of fresh milk and a bite of that cheese which -is brought forth only on Sundays or holidays. They pressed him to eat -more, saying that he must be in need of food after his journey, but it -was very little that he really took. He smiled and looked with peace -from face to face, but Olga had pulled her stool back into the shadows, -for she did not wish to intrude. He had not seen so much of the others. - -“A chair was brought to the hearth, for it was now dark and there was a -little fire burning against the damp coolness of evening. They waited -in vain for him to speak. It was as if he had come home. To Olga he was -intensely memorable sitting there in the firelight. The others would -draw near, and he leaned forward and looked into their faces smilingly, -but it was not the same.... Now he was looking and looking around the -room. He found her, and held out his hands. She heard her mother say, -‘This is Olga’s guest.’ - -“She had not believed his old arms could be so strong. With one hand he -held her, while the other patted her shoulder softly, slowly,--as if -he had everything he desired. All about her was the firelight and the -strange joyous whiteness of him--his throat and collar and beard all -lustrous white. In his arms there was something she had never known, -even from her mother--a deep and limitless joy, as if the world were -all good, and nothing could possibly happen that would not be the right -good thing. - -“Then she became afraid her breast would burst, for the happiness was -more and more. It had to do with the future, such a far distance of -seeing, all rising and increasingly good--until Olga had to slip down -from his knees, because the happiness in and through her was more than -she could bear. - -“‘I will come back,’ she said hoarsely. - -“Outdoors she waited until the stars had steadied and were like the -stars she knew, for they had been huge and blazing at first; then she -returned and he stretched out his hands to her, and she heard her -mother say, ‘Surely, this is Olga’s guest.’ - -“She did not remember how she got into her little bed. She heard the -birds in the vines, and it was golden day when she awoke. Suddenly she -knew that she had slept too long, that she would find him gone.... She -thought of her little brown shoes on the road, but some one must have -brought them in, for there they were by the bed.... He was no longer in -the house, but she did not weep. There had been so much of wonder and -beauty. She looked into her mother’s face, but did not ask. The mother -smiled, as if waiting for her to speak. The other children must have -been told, for they did not speak. - -“A thousand times Olga wished that she had awakened in time; often it -came to her that she had not done all she could for her guest, but -there was never real misery about it, and she was never quite the same -after that perfect night. She thought it out bit by bit every day, but -it was long, long afterward before she spoke, and this was to an elder -sister, who--it was most strange and pitiful to Olga--seemed to have -forgotten it all----” - -The Faraway Woman reached for the child, and held it close and -strangely. Fleury offered her water, but she took just a sup and bade -them finish the cup. “That was the happy part,” she added in a whisper, -her back moving slowly to and fro, as she held the child high. “It -might all have been happier, but Olga was not quite like the others. -They did not tell her what they knew, and Olga never could tell them -what she felt. Another time--some happy time--I will tell you, who are -so good--you will understand the rest of the story----” - -“Would you tell us if Olga’s guest came again?” the preacher asked. - -“Yes, he came again,” she said softly. - -Bellair sat still for several moments. Then he leaned forward and -touched the child’s dress. - - - 8 - -They made an appearance of drinking (with a cracker in hand) at -midnight, but it was for the sake of the woman--a sup of tepid water. -The long night sailed by. Slowly the moon sank--that dry moon, -brick-red and bulbous, as it entered the western sea. All was still in -the little boat. Bellair was ready to meet his suffering. He could not -sleep--because the woman was near. That was the night that her quality -fixed itself for all time exemplary in his heart. - -The little story had revealed to him a new sanctuary. He loved it and -the little Gleam; as for that, he loved Fleury, too. It was a strange -resolving of all separateness that had come to him from these friends. -More than ever thrilling it had come, with Stackhouse out of the boat -and since the story had been made his. - -She had been frightened by his loss of consciousness at the end of the -battle. He had awakened looking into her eyes. He scarcely dared to -recall what she had said in her anxiety, but it was an extraordinary -matter of value. What a mother she was; and what a little girl lived -in that story, and now!... That little girl was still in her heart. -The recent days in the open boat had not spoiled her; nor the recent -years of loneliness and tragedy. Out of it all had come certain perfect -works--the babe in her arms, her own fortitude and fearlessness of -death; the little girl still in her eyes and heart. Bellair saw that a -man loves the child in a woman, quite as much as a woman loves the boy -in a man.... She had said that Fleury and he were brothers and heroes. -He knew better in his own case. Still she had said it, adding that the -discovery of such men to her was a part of the very bloom of life.... - -Bellair was not thinking the personal relation now. Fleury and she -were mated in his own thoughts. From the beginning, this was so; and -yet he did not ask more. He had come to believe from their glorious -humanity (so strange to him and unpromising in the beginning)--that the -world was crowded with latent values which, once touched and quickened -into life, would make it a paradise. - -That was the substance of the whole matter. He must never forget it. -The human values which he had met in these were secret in thousands, -perhaps in millions, of hearts, and needed only breaking open by stress -and revelation--to bring the millennium to old Mother Earth, and open -her skies for the plan of joy. Bellair impressed this upon his mind -again, so he would not forget--then fell asleep. - -She was first awake in the distance-clearing light. She arose -carefully, so as not to awaken the men and the child, and stared long -in every quarter. There was no ship, no land, no cloud; and yet a trace -of happiness on her thin face, as she sat down. Fleury was rousing. She -had expected that; for through their strange sympathy several times -before he had awakened with her, or soon after. She bent forward and -whispered a good-morning, and added: - -“It is gone----” - -“Surely?” - -“Yes.” - -“Thank God.” - -The preacher breathed deeply, contemplated their faces one after -another. From Bellair lying in the stern, his eyes turned significantly -to the woman’s, and his own lit with zeal.... Bellair was on the -borderland then, coming up through the fathoms of dream. Already he -felt the heat; the sun had imparted its ache to his eyes. The three -were half-blinded by the long brilliance of the cloudless days on the -sea.... Bellair was trying to speak, but could not because of the parch -in his throat. Moreover, no thoughts could hold him--not even Bessie. -She came to mind, pink and ineffectual, lost in her childish things. -She had failed this way before.... - -There was a cup to his lips. He smelled the water, and wanted it as he -wanted decency and truth--as he wanted to be brave and fit to be one of -the three. It almost crazed him, the way he wanted it--but it would be -taking it from her. All the violence of one-pointed will was against -the cup. He pushed it away. - -“Don’t, Bellair,” said Fleury. “You’ll spill it. Drink----” - -“I won’t. Take it away.” - -“You must drink. It is yours.” - -“Yes, he must drink,” said the woman. - -Bellair sat up. Fleury was holding the cup to his lips. - -“It is gone from behind,” said the preacher. “Drink your water. I -have. I will speak to you after you drink.” - -He stared at them, and at the open sea behind her. Then it came to him, -as if from Fleury’s mind, to obey.... Fleury then served the woman. -They ate a cracker together; at least it seemed so. Then Fleury spoke: - -“We have the child to serve--that is our first thought; therefore we -must think of the child’s mother first. As for her other part, as our -companion, she will be one with us, of course. We have been here five -full days, and we have not been allowed, by the presence of him who -is gone--and may God rest and keep that--we have not been allowed to -do the best we could in this great privilege of being together and -drawing close to reality. Many have gone without food and drink for ten -days--to come close to God. There is food here and water--to keep us in -life. This is what I would say: We must change our point of view.” - -He paused, and their eyes turned from one to another. The child’s face -seemed washed in the magic of morning. The preacher added: - -“We must cease to regard ourselves as suffering, as creatures in want, -as starving or dying of thirst. Rather, as three souls knit, each to -the other, who have entered upon a pilgrimage together--a period of -simple austerity to cleanse and purify our bodies the better to meet -and sense reality, and to approach with a finer sensitiveness, than -we have ever known--the mystery and ministry of God.... So we are not -suffering, Bellair. We are not suffering--” - -He turned to the woman. - -“We are chosen ones. This is our wilderness. When we are ready--God -will speak to us. We are very far from the poor needs of the body--for -this is the time and period of our consecration. God bless you -both--and the Gleam.” - - - 9 - -It was the seventh evening, the cool coming in. Bellair could not feel -his body below his lungs, unless he stopped to think. The child was -on his knee, his hands holding it. The little face was browned, but -very clear and bright. Bellair’s hands against the child’s dress were -clawlike to his own eyes, like the hands of a black man very aged. He -could move his fingers when he thought of it, but he did not know if -they moved unless he watched. The effort of steadying the child he did -not feel in his arms, but in his shoulders. It was like the ache in his -eyes. No tears would come, but all the smart of tears’ beginnings; and -the least little thing would bring it about. He had to stop between -words and wait for his throat to subside--in the simplest saying. - -He saw everything clearly. The open boat was like a seat lifted a -trifle above the runways of the world. He could see them, as one in the -swarming paths beneath could never hope to see. It was all good, but -the pain and the pressure of them all!... Bessie Brealt in pain and -pressure; Davy Acton in the hard heavy air; Broadwell who was trying -to be a man at Lot & Company’s; the old boarding-house woman who had -forgotten everything but her rooms--her rooms moving with shadows whom -she never saw clearly and never hoped to understand--shadows that -flitted, her accounts never in order, her rooms never in order.... -There had been people in there whom he never saw--one girlish voice -that awakened in the afternoon and sang softly, a most subdued and -impossible singing. She worked nights at a telephone switch-board--the -night-desires of the great city passing through her--and she sang -to the light of noon when it came to the cage.... Sunday afternoons -when it was fine, a bearded man emerged from a back-room, emerged -with a cane and cigarette case. Always on the front steps he lit the -cigarette.... - -Bellair now couldn’t smoke.... Once there had been moaning in a lower -back room, moaning night and morning from a woman. He was not sure if -it were the millinery woman, or the one who worked in Kratz’s. The -moaning stopped and as he passed through the hall, he heard a doctor -say to the landlady: - -“King Alcohol.” - -Just that.... He saw the millinery woman afterward, so it wasn’t -she.... The air in the old halls was of a character all its own. It -was stronger than the emanations from any of the rooms. The separate -currents lost their identity like streams in the ocean, like souls -in Brahma.... How strangely apart he had kept all that five years! A -face not seen before in the halls, and he did not know if it were a -newcomer or old. So few came to the board to dine--the chorus-woman -from the Hippodrome, who came up nightly from the water.... He saw -the view from his window--over the roofs and areas. It was a wall of -windows--dwellers in the canyon sides; boxes of food hanging out, -clothing out to freshen itself in the dingy and sluggish airs--the -coloured stockings and the faces that looked out. Everything was -monotonous but the faces--faces grim and sharp--faces of kittens and -bulls and rabbits and foxes, faces of ferrets, sleek faces, torn faces, -red and brutal, white and wasted faces; faces of food and drink, faces -of hunger and fear; the drugged look; few tears but much dry yearning, -and not a face of joy. - -There was no joyousness and peace in the lower runways, but pain and -heavy pressures.... Bellair saw himself moving among those halls again, -not a stranger, but with a hand, a smile, a dollar. No one would moan -for days without his knowing. He would find day-work for the little -telephone miss, and send orders for hats to the milliner. He would -awaken that shadow of all the shadows, the landlady, with kindness and -healing. He would call across the windowed cavern.... They would say, -“Come over and help us,” and he would rush down stairs, and around -into other streets, and faces there would be ready to show him. He -saw it all clearly, such as it was, but no facts. They would not call -to him. They would not be healed. They would take a dollar, but say -he was cracked. He could move about passing forth a dollar here and -there--that was all. They would welcome him at Lot & Company’s if he -passed it out quietly enough. The dollar would go into the Sproxley -system and emerge unbroken to the firm itself, there to be had and held -and marked down in the house of Lot--Jabez, Nathan, Eben, Seth, each -a part, the jovial Mr. Rawter a small but visible part--one hundred -Sproxley-measured cents.... Davy Acton wouldn’t get one, nor Broadwell, -nor the girls upstairs. The firm would not encourage him passing beyond -the cage of Mr. Sproxley.... There were many who wanted food and drink -and hats--hats----” - -He was with Bessie Brealt now ... that night and the kiss. It was -another life.... He went back to those who needed food--New York so -full of food. Then he felt the heavy wallet against his breast--one -paper in there would fill the open boat with food.... - -“My God,” he said. - - * * * * * - -He didn’t try to explain.... Sometimes he fell into a little dream as -he sat. Once he was drinking at the narrow throat of a green bottle,--a -magic bottle whose base was in the sea, and the trickle that passed -through was freshened drop by drop. But it was a trick like all else -in the world and the drops passed with agonising slowness. He came to, -sucking hard upon his brass key, his mouth ulcered from it.... There -were times in the long days that he hungered for the stars almost -as for drink; times in the night when the stars bored him like some -man-pageantry that he had seen too much of; times when the thought -of God was less than the thought of water; and times when the faith -and the glory of the spirit of the world made thirst a thing to laugh -at, and death whimsical and insignificant.... Sometimes in the night, -he fancied the woman was Bessie Brealt. It would come like a little -suspicion first hardly stirring his faculties; finally it would be -real--that the singing girl was there, all but her song. He would sit -up rubbing his eyes in rebellion. Once he had spoken to be sure. - -“Yes, it is I,” she said huskily, and the voice was not Bessie -Brealt’s. - - - 10 - -They did not speak of ships. Through the wakeful night hours they -watched for the lights of ships, but they did not speak of vigils. -Their eyes were straining for uncharted shores during the days, -but they did not speak of land; nor of rain, though they watched -passionately the change and movement of wind and cloud. - -It is true that they suffered less in the days that followed the -passing of Stackhouse. The underworld was gone from the seat in the -stern; sunlight and sea air had cleansed it from the boat. They were -weaker, but pangs of thirst were weaker, too. Small pieces of metal -in their mouths kept the saliva trickling. The real difference was an -exaltation which even Bellair shared at times, and which had come to -them the fifth morning with Fleury’s talk, and with refining intensity -since. - -The child was well; his imperative founts still flowing. She was pure -mother; it was the child that was nourished first, not her own body. -She was first in the passion for his preservation. Indeed, she would -have told them at once had any change threatened him. But she was the -soul of the fasting too; the austerity of it found deep sanction within -her; and there were moments in which she bewildered Bellair, for she -became bright with the vitality which is above the need of bread. - -Fleury talked of God, as Stackhouse had talked of death. Indeed, there -was a contrasting intoxication in the days and nights of the preacher, -but one without hideous reaction. - -“There comes a moment,” he said, “when I am alone--when you two are -asleep--that I feel the weakness. I drink and eat--perhaps more than my -share. But when we are all together--sitting here as now, talking and -sustaining one another--oh, it seems I was never so happy.” - -Bellair suspected that this talk of lapses into abandonment while -others slept was an effort to make their minds easy on the subject of -his share. Both the Mother and Bellair doubted this; it preyed upon -them. In the main they were one solution, each separate quality of -their individualism cast into a common pool for the sustaining of a -trinity. - -“It changes the whole order,” Fleury declared. “Why, whole crowds have -died of hunger--in half the number of days that holy men and women have -fasted as a mere incident of their practice toward self-mastery. This -is our consecration.” - -Bellair found it true. He had ceased to marvel at himself. Deep -reconstruction was advanced within him; and a strange loyalty -and endurance prospered from the new foundations. If this were -self-hypnosis--very well; if madness--very well, too; at least, it -was good to possess, seven, eight, nine days in an open boat, on a -one-fifth ration of water and food. To Bellair, who felt himself -inferior to the others, it appeared that they already lived what he was -thrillingly thinking out. He remembered his first thoughts of them--in -the cold worldly manner of a fellow-traveller. It was almost as far as -a man’s emotion can swing, from what he thought of them now. Before -God, he believed he was right now, and wrong then. Certainly he would -test it out, if he lived to move among men again. - -He thought often about the child’s voice--at the moment that the heart -of Stackhouse broke--as the point of his turning and salvation. This -furnished a clue to many things, though he did not miss the fact that -the world would smile at his credulity in accepting such a dispensation -as real. The world would say that he had been driven to far distances -of illusion by thirst and hunger; in fact, that anything which he had -seen, other than the original entity in the eyes of Stackhouse, was a -part of the illusion. Bellair considered this, and also that in every -instance of late in which he had held the world’s point of view he -had been proven wrong. He granted the world its rights to think as it -chose, but accepted the dispensation. - -There had been good and evil within him. The balance had turned in -favour of the good, with that cry. It had turned from the self. The -purpose of the Enterer had been to keep him _in_ the self. It had come -from the unfathomed depths of evil--that purpose and the devil which -he saw. Bellair had heard repeatedly that some such _dweller_ appeared -to each man who makes an abrupt turn from the life of flesh to the -life of the spirit. Each of the three had seen something foreign in -the eyes of Stackhouse. It is true they had not talked of it; possibly -to each it was different in its deadliness; perhaps theirs was not the -demon _he_ saw, since Fleury and the woman were much farther on the way -than he, but they had been good enough to share responsibility for the -visitation. Indeed, the Faraway Woman could not have been acting, since -a cry came from her the instant _it_ appeared. - -This he loved to study: that his thought of the child had balanced the -whole issue against the intruder; that something within him had brought -that saving grace of selflessness out of chaos. It was a squeak, he -invariably added, but it had shown him enough, opening the way. There -must be such a beginning in every man; in fact, there must come an -instant of choice; an instant in which a man consciously chooses his -path, weighing all that is past against the hope and intellectual -conception of a better life. - -Bellair brooded upon this a great deal, especially on the ninth day, -and that was the day, Fleury talked--the holiest of their days in the -open boat. Bellair found many things clearer afterwards. As soon as he -understood fully, he meant to close it all, so far as his own relation -was concerned. In its very nature it must be given to others, must be -turned to helpfulness. It was a sort of star-dust which did not adhere -to self, but sought places of innocence to shine from, and used every -pure instrument for its dissemination. The key to the whole matter was -the loss of the sense of self. Having accepted this, Bellair knew that -he must go up into Nineveh, so to speak. He trembled. - -“We learn by austerities apart,” Fleury said, “and then we return -to men with the story. We are called up the mountain to witness the -transfiguration, and then are sent with the picture down among men. Oh, -no, we are not permitted to remain, nor build a temple up there. First -we receive; then we must give. We must lose the sense of self in order -to receive; and having received, we do not want the sense of self. -This is the right and left hand of prayer--pure selfless receptivity, -then tireless giving to others. It is the key to the whole scheme of -life--mountain and valley, ebb and flow, night and day, winter and -summer, the movement of the lungs and the heart and the soul. We cannot -receive while our senses are hot with desire; therefore we must become -delicate and sensitive. Having received, we must make the gift alive -through action. Dreaming is splendid; the dreamer receives. The dreamer -starts all things; but the dreamer becomes a hopeless ineffectual if -he does not make his dreams come true in matter. That is it. We are -here to make matter follow the dream. That’s why the spirit puts on -flesh--that’s why we are workmen. Action is the right hand of thought.” - -The preacher was ahead of him in these thoughts. So often he said just -what Bellair needed, the exact, clearing, helpful thing. For instance, -Bellair had followed his own fascinating conviction that the world -is full of secret values; that the world is ready to pull together, -only it requires a certain stimulus from without--some certain message -that would reach and unify all. Fleury tightened the matter by his -expression of it: - -“The socialists are doing great good. The church is still doing good; -the societies that have turned to the East have heard the great -message; even in commerce there is a new life; everywhere in the world, -the sense of having found _some new spirit_ which works to destroy -the sense of self. If one great figure should come now--come saying, -‘You are all good. You are all after the same thing. One way is as -good as another--only come.’... What we need is for some one to touch -the chord for us--to give us the key, as to an orchestra of different -instruments. We are all making different notes; and yet are ready for -the harmony--some of us intensely eager for the harmony. The great need -is for a Unifier.... It seems that we, here in the small boat, can see -America so much clearer, than when we were there----” - -Bellair had felt this a thousand times. - -“The greatest story in the world is the story of the coming of a -Messiah--the one who may chord for us. I think He will come. He will -come out of the East, his face like the morning sun turned to the West. -Don’t you see--we are all like atoms of steel in a chaos? You know what -happens when a voltage of electricity is turned upon a bar of steel? -Order comes to the chaos; the atoms sing, all turned the same way. That -Voice must come--that tremendous voltage of spiritual electricity--that -will set us all in harmony--all with our tails down stream.” - -And Fleury finished it all by pointing out what had happened to them -in the small boat. They had lost separateness; they were each for the -others. - -“That’s what must happen in America, in the world,--the pull of -each for the whole--the harmony. You have seen an audience in the -midst of great message or great music--they weep together. They cry -out together. They are all one. That’s the story. That is what must -happen. It will happen when the Unifier comes. It is the base of -all gospel--that we are all one in spirit. Don’t you see it--every -message from the beginning of time has told it? All one--all one--our -separateness is our suffering, our evil. To return to the House of Our -Father--that is the end of estrangement.” - -... And Fleury was the one who had ceased to talk. But he had acted, -too.... They saw that he was held by some power of his giving to them. -He was like light. He had given the whole material force of his body to -hold off that destruction which had come with the dying of Stackhouse. -He had not eaten, even as they had eaten. They feared for him, because -he was the centre and mainspring of their pilgrimage. Especially this -haunt became more grippable in the heart of the ninth night.... There -was a small tin of water left, less than three pints, very far from -clean; and somewhat less than a pound of crackers. Bellair awoke to -find Fleury gone from his place between him and the woman. He was in -the stern, in the old seat of Stackhouse, praying. ... Fleury met the -tenth day with an exaltation that awed Bellair and the woman; and there -came from it a fear to Bellair’s heart that had nothing to do with -self, nor with the Mother, nor the Gleam. - -They were all weak, and two men utterly weak. Through their will and -denial, and the extraordinary force and health of her own nature, the -child had not yet been dangerously denied. It had become a sort of -natural religion with the three--a readiness to die for the Gleam. - -“This is our last day,” said Fleury, before the western horizon was -marked clear.... The Faraway Woman told them another story of what the -wise old shepherd dog told the puppies--that it was better to begin on -crackers and water--and end on cookies and cream.... - - - 11 - -Bellair believed about this being the last day. The authority was quite -enough, but there was still something akin to eternity in the possible -space of another daylight and distance. The announcement did not bring -him an unmixed gladness, for the mysterious fear of the night haunted -him--the thing that had come to him under the full and amazing moon -while Fleury prayed.... Day revealed no sign. They sat speechless and -bowed under the smiting noon--the little boat in the wide, green deep -under a fleckless, windless sky, proud of its pure part in infinite -space. - -That was the day the child moaned, as significantly for the ears of -men, as for the mother. He was a waif to look at--the little heart at -times like one of them in stoicism--then nestling to the mother-breast -and the turning away in astonishment and pain. The Mother’s eyes were -harrowing. - -“This is our last day,” Fleury repeated. - -“I believe you,” she said. - -“Then drink and eat----” - -“I did--it is--it is--oh, I did!” - -“Land or rain or a ship, I do not know--but this is the last day----” - -Bellair regarded him, between his own wordless vapourings of -consciousness. The preacher was like a guest, not of earth -altogether--like one who would come in the evening.... Yes, that was -it. He was like the old man who came to Olga, only young and beautiful. -It did not occur to Bellair now that he was regarding his friend with -a quality of vision that a well-fed man never knows.... That which he -had fancied placid and boyish was knit and masterful. The cheeks and -temples were hollowed, but the eyes were bright. There is a brightness -of hunger, of fever, of certain drugs, but these were as different as -separate colours--and had not to do with this man’s eyes. Nothing that -Bellair knew but starlight could be likened--and not all starlight. -There was one star that rose late and climbed high above and a little -toward the north--solitary, remote, not yellow nor red nor green nor -white, as we know it--yet of that whiteness which is the source of all. -Bellair had forgotten the name, but Fleury’s eyes made him think of it. - -... The woman’s head was lying back. Something that Bellair had noted -a hundred times, without bringing it actually into his mind’s front, -now appeared with all the energy of a realisation. Her throat was -almost too beautiful. The diverging lines under the ear, one stretching -down to the shoulder, the other curving forward around the chin, were -shadowed a little deeper from her body’s wasting, but the beauty was -deeper than flesh, the structure itself classic. It was the same as -when he had noted her finger-nails. Beauty had brought him a kind of -excitement, and something of hostility--as if he had been hurt terribly -by it long ago. But this was different; these details had come one -by one, as he was ready. Her integrity had entered his heart before -each outer symbol. He had not seen her at all at first; recalled the -queer sense of hesitation in raising his eyes across the table in the -cabin of the _Jade_. He had studied her face in the open boat, but -something seemed to blur his eyes when she turned to him to speak. Two -are required for a real understanding. As yet they had not really met, -not yet turned to each other in that searching silence which fathoms. -But the details were dawning upon him. Perhaps that was the way of the -Faraway Woman--to dawn upon one. - - * * * * * - -The day was ending--their shadows long upon the water. Fleury raised -his hand as he said: - -“It is surer to me than anything in the world----” - -“What, Fleury?” Bellair asked, though there was but one theme of the -day. - -“That this is our last day in the open boat.” - -Bellair did not answer. His own voice had a hideous sound to him and -betrayed his misery. - -“It was the _too-great light_--that I saw,” the preacher added huskily. -“It began last night as I prayed. I saw that this was the last day for -us--but more----” - -“I saw something about you as you prayed,” the woman said. - -Fleury surprised them now, taking a sup of water. They saw that he had -something to say about God and the soul of man--that was the romance he -worshipped. They listened with awe. In Bellair’s heart, at least, there -was a conviction that tightened continually--that they were not long to -hear the words of the preacher. - -“... For two years I have been in the dark and could not pray. Before -that I prayed with the thought of self, which is not prayer. I could -not stay as a church leader without praying. I said I would pray when -I could pray purely for them. I told them, too, that I could not look -back in service and adoration to the Saviour of another people who -lived two thousand years ago. They called me a devil and a blasphemer. -For two years, I have tried to serve instead of to pray, but no one -would listen, no one would have me. They said I was insane, and at -times I believed it. At last, it came to me that I must go away--to -the farthest part of the world----” - -He turned yearningly to the woman. - -“And then you came with your strength and faith.” - -Now to Bellair: - -“And you came with the world in your thoughts, and I made the third. -We went down into the wilderness together--with that other of the -underworld. _It was a cosmos._ It has shown me all I can bear. Last -night, it came to me that I _could_ pray for you. It came simply, -because I loved you enough----” - -His face moved from one to the other, his hand fumbling the dress of -the child beside him. - -“It was very clear. As soon as I loved you enough, I could pray for -you, without thought of self. It was the loss of the self that made it -all so wonderful. And as I prayed, the light came, and the Saviour I -had lost, was in the light. And the light was Ahead; and this message -from Him, came to my soul: - -“_I am here for those who look ahead; and for those who turn back -two thousand years, I am there. Those who love one another find me -swiftly._” - -Bellair scarcely heard him. Fleury’s eyes were light itself. The man’s -inner flame had broken through. Something incandescent was within him; -something within touched by the “glittering plane.” But it did not -mean future years together. Bellair had wanted that.... Fleury smiled -now, his eyes lost in the East. He lifted his hand. - -“It always comes from the East,” he said strangely. - -Bellair had searched that horizon a few moments ago. He knew exactly -how the East had looked--a thin luminous grey line on the green, -brightening to Prussian blue, then to vivid azure. He dared not look -now, but watched the woman. - -Straining and terror were in her eyes--then sudden light, a miracle of -light and hope, then her cry. - -Bellair seemed to see it in her mind--the smudge upon the -horizon--before he turned. It was there--a blur on the thin grey line. - -To lift the oars was like raising logs of oak, but he shipped the pair -at last, listening for the words of the others and watching their -faces. It seemed simpler than straining his eyes to the East. Fleury -tried to raise the overcoat from the bottom of the boat, but it fell -from his hands, and he sank back smiling: - -“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “They’re coming. They’ll see us soon.” - -To Bellair it was like seeing a ghost, that smile of Fleury’s. It meant -something that in the future would be quite as important to him as the -ship’s bearing down to lift them up. He pulled toward the east--felt -the old fainting come, pulled against that,--to the east, until a -low, thundering vibration was all about him, like the tramp of death. -Perhaps it was that--the thought flickered up into form out of the deep -blur.... He was drinking water again. This time he did not fight. - -“You may as well have yours, Bellair, man,” Fleury was saying, “and you -need not row. They’re coming. It’s a ship coming fast. There is light -for them to see us well--if they do not already----” - -“But you haven’t drunk!” - -“Bless you, I’ll drink now.” - -The woman handed him the water. The cup was in his hand. He covered -merely the bottom of the cup, and made much of it as if it were a full -quart. - -“The fact is--I’m not thirsty,” he said pitifully, when he saw their -faces. - -“You’re all in,” Bellair said in an awed tone. - - * * * * * - -Through the prolonged ending of that day Bellair watched the steamer -near, but his thoughts were not held to the beauty of her form, nor -the pricking out at last of her lights. He stood against the bare pole -in the dusk, and waved and called--his voice little and whimsical. It -seemed to falter and cling within their little radius, then run back -to his ears--a fledgeling effort. But the deep baying of the steamer -answered at last. Even that could not hold Bellair’s thoughts.... She -was coming straight toward them now. If it were death and illusion, so -be it; at least that is what he saw. - -“It would be all right--except for him,” Bellair said to the woman. - -“I tell you all is well,” said Fleury. “Only I ask----” - -“Yes,” they said, when he paused. - -“Don’t let them separate us--when we are on board the ship to-night. -I want to be with you both to-night--we three who have seen so much -together--and the little man.” - -... They heard her bells and the slackening of the engines. She was -coming in softly like an angel, bringing the different life, a return -to earth it was. The woman was weeping. Bellair could not have spoken -without tears.... - -Just now through the evening purple, he saw _that_ star in the east, -off the point of the steamer’s prow. - -“Fleury,” he said, “tell me--what is that one--that pure one--I have -forgotten?” - -The preacher’s eyes followed his finger. - -“That is Spika--Spika of the Virgin,” he said. - - - 12 - -The engine had stopped. She neared in the deep dusk, a harp of lights, -and with the steady sound of a waterfall.... She was just moving. -There was a hail from the heights. - -“Hai!” answered Bellair. It was a poor, broken sound. - -Now they felt the strange, different heat of the -steamer--earth-heat--and a thousand odours registered on their clean -senses--milk and meat, coal-smoke, and the steam of hot ashes, -perfumes, metal and paint.... A hoarse voice called down: - -“Are any of you sick--infectious?” - -“No--just hunger and thirst--clean as a new berth.” - -It was Bellair again. - -“Stay off well. We’re putting down a ladder. Watch the green light.” - -They saw it come down to them--to the very water. Then they were -uplifted. This was the world coming back--but a changed world. A great -kindness had come over all men. Bellair saw the tears in the eyes of -the people gathered on the deck. He almost expected to see Bessie -Brealt there.... Perhaps the change had come from her singing.... There -was a choke in the voices of the people gathered around them. - -“Please,” he managed to say, “don’t keep us apart to-night--we three. -Please let us be together.” - -And down the deck-passage he heard the voices of women, and among -them, the Faraway Woman’s voice, in answer: - -“Yes, I will go with you thankfully--but not for long. My companions -and I must be together very soon. We three--to-night--it is promised -between us.” - -There was no voice from Fleury. - -The kindness of every one, that was like a poignant distress to -Bellair. He dared not speak; in fact, there was danger of him breaking -down even without words. The eyes about him were searching, in their -eagerness to help. An Englishman came forward at intervals and gripped -his hand; a German spoke to others of the remarkable condition of -the boat and its three, after ten days; another German moved in and -out helping, without any words, though his eyes lifted Bellair over -several pinches of emotion. The American ship-doctor was the best -of all; young, gruff, humorous, quick-handed, doing and saying the -right thing.... They brought him stimulants and sups of water by the -teaspoon. The merest aroma of thin broth in the bottom of a tea-cup -was lifted to his lips. He was helped to a hot bath; a splendid quiet -friendliness about it all. Now it occurred to Bellair that they were -tremendously eager to hear his story. He wanted to satisfy them.... - -“It was the fifth day--that Stackhouse died,” he was saying, though he -was mistaken. “Perhaps you’ve heard of him ... owns a lot of ships and -islands down here.... That was the climax for us. He died hard and he -was a big man--but we did not murder him.... His body did not sink....” - -There was a boom of running water in the bathroom; the steam rising. -Bellair’s voice was ineffectual. The face of the ship-surgeon bent to -him in the steam, saying: - -“Cut it--there’s plenty of time.... Leave it all to us.... I say, lean -back. You’ve got a bath coming. Guess you’ve never been on a sick-list -before. We can wait for the story.” - -Bellair did try to lean back. One by one, the sheathes of will power -that he had integrated in the past ten days relaxed. It was strange to -feel them go. They had come hard, and they were correspondingly slow -to ease in their grip. He had to be told again and again--to be helped -to rest. It was good to think that a man does not lose such hard-won -strength more easily than it comes--that one, in fact, has to use the -same force to relax with. It was all delightful, this friendliness, the -ease of his body, and the giving--the giving into human arms of great -kindliness, and the sense of the others being cared for similarly. They -had fixed a berth for him, when he said: - -“You know we are to be together to-night. It was a compact between -us----” - -The surgeon was out and in. It occurred to Bellair that he was -attending the other two.... He repeated his wish to the surgeon about -joining the others as soon as possible. - -“They’re all alike,” the latter said. “They’re all thinking about -getting together again.... Good God, man, you’ve had ten days of steady -company. You ought to sleep----” - -“It is a compact between us.... Is he--is he?” - -It came to Bellair that this man might be able to tell him the truth, -but the surgeon was now at the door speaking to one of the Germans. He -vanished without turning.... - - * * * * * - -They were together later in one of the empty cabins of the German -liner, _Fomalhaut_, bound for Auckland; and only the American doctor -came and went. The child was asleep in the berth beside Fleury. The two -others sat near. - -The extraordinary moonlight of the night before, when Bellair had -awakened to find the preacher at prayer, had left the spirit of its -radiance upon Fleury’s face. It was there now--and such a different -face from which his eyes, falsified by New York, had seen at first. -This was the real Fleury--this lean, dark, white-toothed gamester, -features touched by some immortal glow from that orient moon; whose -smile and the quality of every word and gesture, had for him a gleam -of inspiration and the nobility of tenderness. The man had risen in -Fleury--that was the secret. And this that had risen in Fleury could -not die. - -But the flesh was dying. Bellair had known it in the dusk while the -steamer neared. He knew that the woman understood--from her face which -leaned toward the berth continually, from the suffering in her eyes -and the dilation of sensitive nostrils.... For ten days, as much as he -could, Fleury had betrayed himself. Custodian of the food and water, -he had served them well. And that day of the Stackhouse passing--if it -were not all a hideous dream, as Bellair fancied at times--he had not -given a balance of strength that had not returned, to fight off the -will of the Intruder. - -The flesh was dying, but this that had risen in Fleury could not die. -Their other companion had gone down, clothed in hair and filth and the -desire of a beast, taking the remnant of the man with it. - -Thus it had come to Bellair--the vivid contrast of cavern and high -noon. It was all in the two deaths, the enactment of the second, as yet -unfinished.... New York and all life moved with countless tricks and -lures to make a man lose his way, lose his chance to rise and die with -grace like this. New York was like one vast Lot & Company. - -Fleury’s head was upon the knees of the woman. Bellair had not seen -her take him. For this last hour, the three were as one. There was a -cry from Bellair that the woman heard all her days: - -“Oh, Fleury, do you have to go?” - -So far as time measures, the silence was long before Fleury answered, -and then only to say: - -“Take my hand, Bellair.” - -He came up from a deep dream to obey. It had been as if he were out -under the stars again,--Fleury talking from the shadows near the -woman--the rest, vastness and starlight. - -“It’s the _too-great_ light, Bellair. It came when I could stand it. -As soon as I could love you enough I could pray. It is the loss of the -sense of self that made it wonderful. The Light and His voice came from -ahead. - -“‘_I am here for those who look ahead, and for those who turn back -two thousand years, I am there. Those who love one another find me -swiftly._’... This is dying of happiness.” - -In the silence, the low lights of the cabin came back for their eyes. -They heard him say at the last: - -“... I love you both and respect and thank you both. We found our -happiness in the open boat.... And Bellair, when you go back to New -York, do not stay too long. It is right for you to go, but do not stay -too long.... And dear Bellair--always follow the Gleam.” - -The Doctor came. It was his step in the passage that roused them. He -bent to the face, then searched the eyes of the woman. She could not -find his.... Bellair was puzzled. The head was in her lap, yet the -preacher seemed behind them, and still with something to say. They were -not sure at first that it was the Doctor who asked: - -“Why did you not call me?” - -He repeated the question. - -“He told us--you would come afterward,” Bellair said in a dazed way. - -“Yes, he wanted it so,” said the woman. - -The Doctor stared at them. “Are you two going to pull off anything -further to-night, or are you going to get the rest you need, and attend -to the nourishment you need?” - -“We’re under orders now, Doctor,” said Bellair.... - -“If I should want him in the night--if I should be frightened, you -would let him come?” - -It was the Faraway Woman who asked this of the Doctor, her hand -touching Bellair’s sleeve. - -“Why, of course,” the Doctor answered quickly. - -“We’ve been together in strange things,” Bellair explained. “And now -you see, our friend is gone.” - - * * * * * - -The door was open between their cabins, but Bellair was not called. -Once he heard the child cry, but it was quickly hushed.... He -thought it must be near morning at last, and went on deck. He was not -suffering, except from lassitude, deep languor and numbing strangeness -that Fleury was not near him--that the woman was not sitting in her -place forward.... It was just after midnight, the moon still high, -the weather the same. ... He was not seen. Three men were seated -smoking in the lee of one of the engine-room funnels, the light from -the dining-saloon on their knees. The Doctor joined them, and said -presently: - -“... It’s a bit deep for me. They’ve been in an open boat ten days. Old -Stackhouse, well-known down here, died of thirst the fourth or fifth -day, but these two and the infant have lived through it. The preacher -looked all right, but seems to have suffered a fatal case of happiness -since we lifted him aboard. The two knew it was coming apparently, and -arranged for me to be absent.... It appears that they made a sort of -pilgrimage to Mecca out of thirst and starvation, and got away with -it----” - -Bellair withdrew softly. - -In the long next forenoon when he could not rise, he wished he had gone -into that open door, when he was on his feet last night. Sometimes -half-dreamily he wished he were back in the open boat, because she -was always there. Something had taken establishment in his character -from that ten days. She had never failed--in light or dark, in the -twilights of dawn and evening, in moon and star and sunlight--always -there; disclosing leisurely some new aspect of beauty for him. He -understood now that one does not begin to see clearly any object until -one is attracted to it--that all the cursory _looking at things_ around -the world will not bring them home to the full comprehension. - -... He could call to her, but it was like telephoning. He had never -liked that, and beside he was not the master of his voice. It would -not go straight, but lingered in corners, broke pitifully--so that he -knew it frightened her--and the meanings in his mind which he could not -speak, pressed the tears out of his eyes.... Then there was pain. His -body astonished him. He had merely been weak and undone last night, but -to-day.... And he knew that she was suffering, not from any sound from -her cabin, but because she did not come. Then _they_ had to feed the -child. This filled him with a rebellion so sharp that it recalled him -to full faculties for a second. He had to smile at his absurdity. - -The second day it was the same, but the third Bellair arose; and when -she heard his step, her call came. It was still early morning. He found -the child before he looked into her face. - -“I am ashamed to be so weak,” she said. “But to-day--a little later--he -said I could rise. We are to be on deck for a half-hour after dinner, -he told me.” - -“The little Gleam----” said Bellair.... - -She was whiter, more emaciated than when they sighted the -_Fomalhaut_. There had been a crisis that they had not expected in -the relinquishment of their will-powers.... Yet he saw how perfectly -her face was fashioned.... Her hand came up to him, warm from the -child, the sleeve falling back to her shoulder--held toward him, palm -upward. As he took it, all strangeness and embarrassment left him, and -he was something that he had not been for five years, something from -the Unknowable. But that was not all. He looked into her eyes and met -something untellably familiar there. - -A most memorable moment to Bellair. - - * * * * * - -They were on deck together in the afternoon, the American doctor -helping them. They heard sacred music--as he walked between them aft. -They reached the rail of the promenade overlooking the main-deck.... A -service was being intoned in German. Passengers and crew were below, -and in the midst--leaded and sewn in canvas, in the cover of a flag---- - -The sound that came from the woman was not to be interpreted. She -turned and left them. Bellair would have followed but he felt a -courtesy due the Doctor, who had arranged for them not to miss the -ceremony. Perhaps he had held the ceremony until they could leave the -cabin. Yet Bellair had already turned away. - -“Good God----” said the American. “You people have got me stopped. I -thought this was a trinity outfit--that we picked up.” - -Bellair took his hand. “It was--but our friend left us.” - -The Doctor glanced at him curiously, and pointed down to the body -already upon the rail. “I suppose _that_ has nothing to do with him?” -he remarked. - -“Not now--not to watch,” said Bellair. - -“I’ll understand you sometime,” the other added. “Go to her. You’ll -probably find her waiting for you forward.” - - * * * * * - -Bellair lay in his berth that night, the open door between, and he -thought of that first real look that had passed between them. “I’m not -just right yet from the open boat,” he reflected. “I’m all let down -from starvation, a bit wild with dreams and visions, but I saw old joys -there and old tragedies, and mountains and deserts and--most of all, -partings. I wonder what I’ve got to do with them all? It seemed to me -that I belonged to some of those partings--as if I had hungered with -her before and belonged to her now--and yet----” - -Fleury came into his thoughts. “They were certainly great together. It -seemed to me that I did not belong when they were together; and yet, -this morning as I looked down at her--well, something of expectancy was -there----” - -Bellair found himself lying almost rigid in the intensity of his hope. -Then his thoughts whirled back to New York--all unfinished. There was -something in his heart for Bessie--and something in the wallet for -Bessie. That was in the original conception, and he must not fail in -that; and then he must clean that name, Bellair, from the black mark -Lot & Company had traced across it. For a moment he fell to wondering -just how he would go about that. Lot & Company was tight and hard to -move.... A moment later he was somewhere in an evil and crowded part of -New York, in the dark, Davy Acton holding him fast by the hand. - -“... something of expectancy.”... Was it in her eyes, or in her lips? -Her whole face came to him now, a picture as clear as life. He had -dwelt upon her eyes before--and that billowy softness of her breast, as -she lay--he had not thought of that. It was like something one says to -another of such moment, that only the meaning goes home--the words not -remembered until afterward. And her mouth--it was like a girl’s, like a -mother’s too, so tender and _expectant_. ... That word thrilled him. It -was the key to it all. - -He was farther and farther from sleep--listening at last with such -intensity that it seemed she must call. - - - - -PART FIVE - -THE STONE HOUSE: I - - - 1 - -THE woman awed him quite as much as in the open boat. The turning -of her profile to the sea had for Bellair a significance not to be -interpreted exactly, but it had to do with firmness and aspiration -and the future. Fleury was in their minds more than in speech. She -could speak of him steadily, and this during the sensitiveness of -convalescence which is so close to tears. Perhaps they found their -deepest joy in the child’s fresh blooming. The ship’s people were an -excellent company. - -Bellair’s mind adjusted slowly, and by a rather intense process, to -the fact of the Stackhouse wallet. It was all that the great wanderer -had said. The woman accepted the lifted condition, but it seemed hard -for her faculties to establish a relation with temporal plenty. Fleury -had given them each a greater thing. They were one in that--keen and -comprehensive; indeed their minds attacked with vigour and ardour this -one thought: somehow to help in drawing off the brimming sorrows of the -world. - -It came all at once to Bellair that this was no new conception. He had -heard and read of _helping_ all his life. A touch, queerly electric, -had come over him as a boy, when a certain old man passed, and some -one whispered in the most commonplace way, “His whole thought is for -others.”... He had read it in many books; especially of late, the note -had been sounded. It was getting into the press--some days on every -page. All the cultic and social ports, into which he had sailed (like a -dingy whaler, he thought) had spoken of brotherhood, first and last. - -Did a thing like this have to be talked by the few for several thousand -years before it broke its way into the conception of the many, and -finally began to draw the materials of action together? It had not been -new in certain parts of the world two thousand years ago when Jesus -brought the perfect story of it, and administered it through life and -death. Had there been too much speech and too little action since; or -did all this speech help; the result being slow but cumulative, toward -the end of the clearly-chiselled thought on the part of the majority -that would compel the atoms of matter into action, making good all -thoughts and dreams?... He knew men who sat every Sunday listening -courteously to more or less inspired voices that called upon them to -_Love One Another_; yet these men, during the next six days, moved as -usual about their work of rivalry and burning personal desire. Why was -this? - -The answer was in his own breast. He had made a mental conception of -the good of turning the force of one’s life out to others, but he had -not lived it; had never thought seriously of living it, until now that -the results had been shown him, as mortal eyes were never given before -to see. That was it; men required more than words. Would something -happen to bring to all men at last the transfiguring facts as they had -been brought to him in the open boat--squarely, leisurely, one by one? -He was not different from many men. Given the spectacle of the fruits -of desire and the fruits of compassion side by side, as he had been -forced to regard them--any one would understand. - -The woman was one of those who had got it all long ago. She had ceased -to speak of it much, but had put it into action. The child was a part -of her action, and his own love for her--that new emotion, deeper than -life to him. She had mainly ceased to speak.... Action and not speech -had been the way of Fleury, his main life-theme, his first and last -words. Formerly Fleury had spoken, and then emerged into the world of -action. It had been tremendous action--for them. These things never -die. - -“That’s the beauty of them,” he said aloud. “These things never die.” - -“You were thinking of _him_?” the Faraway Woman said. - - * * * * * - -The _Fomalhaut_ left them at Auckland--insular, high and breezy -between its harbours and warm to the heart, from the southern summer. -They took the train to Hamilton, near where she had lived.... - -“It seems so long since I was a part of the life here,” she told him, -as they climbed a hill by the long road--the same upon which Olga’s -Guest had come, “and yet it really isn’t. You can see--how little the -Gleam is. He was born here.... There was so much to learn. It has been -like a quick review of all life. When I think of it--and feel the child -alive, unhurt--oh, do you know what it makes me want to do?” - -Bellair was thinking of Fleury. He sensed her emotion, as he shook his -head. - -“It makes me want to work for you.” - -Bellair placed her saying to the account of her fine zeal for the -good of the nearest. He was very far from seeing anything heroic in -his part of the ten days.... They had paused on the little hill back -of the settlement where she had lived. With all her coming home, she -met no acquaintance while he was with her. It was as if she had come -to look, not to enter.... But there were two days in which she went -forward alone, and Bellair got a foretaste of what it would mean to be -separated. It called to him all the strength that he had earned.... The -Faraway Woman came back to Hamilton where he waited--as one who had -hastened. The child was asleep, and they walked out into the streets -together.... - -They were alone again as in that first night on board the _Fomalhaut_ -when Fleury left them. - -“Do you want to stay to make your house near the Hamilton road?” he -asked. - -She regarded him quietly, her eyes fixed upon his face with an -incommunicable yearning. - -“No.” - -“Do you mean to stay in New Zealand?” - -Again she held him with her eyes, before answering: - -“It may be well for me here, as anywhere. I could not stay in America.” - -The sun was setting. It was she who broke the silence: - -“_You_ must go away?” - -“Yes. You knew that from _him_?” - -“From what he said--yes.” - -“He told me not to stay too long.” - -“Perhaps he saw it all. Perhaps he saw something that would keep you.” - -“He saw a very great deal.” - -They had been gone two hours. Her steps quickened, when she thought -of the child.... “Yes, I may as well stay in Auckland,” she said. -“Do you know, I should like to stay by the sea--to be near it, for -remembering----” - -That seemed to come very close to Bellair’s conviction--that her whole -life was turned to the saint who had passed. - -“A little house by the sea,” he said, his mind picturing it eagerly to -relieve the greater matter. - -“Just what I was thinking--a little place out of Auckland on the -bluffs--overlooking Waitemata--where one could see the ships coming -in----” - -“Will you let me help you find it, and arrange your affairs?” - -“Nothing could be happier for me--if you would.” - -“We’ll go back to Auckland to-night, and start out looking from there.” - -Mainly they followed the shore during their days of search; but -sometimes they found woods and little towns. There was no coming to -the end of her; she put on fresh perfections every day, and there were -moments in which he was meshed in his own stupidity for not seeing -the splendour of her at the first moment. He became possessed of a -healthful wonder about women--how men like himself wait for years for -some companion-soul, finally believing her to be in the sky, only to -find that _the nearest_ was waiting all the time. The world is so full -of illusions, and a man’s mind is darkest when it seems most clear. - -The days were like entering one walled garden after another, always -her spirit vanishing at the far gate. Beside him was a strong frail -comrade, loving the water and air and sky and wood, as only a natural -woman can love them--her eyes shining softly, her lips parted and red -as the sleeping child’s. He was struck with the miracle of her mouth’s -freshness. It was like the mouth of a city-bred woman, a woman who had -forced her way for years through the difficult passages of a man’s -world, who had met the fighting of the open, and the heavier-line -fighting of solitude.... Here Bellair’s diffidence intervened. -Moreover, it was a mouth that could say unerring things. - -“She is a fine weave,” he would say, after the partings at night. - -She held through every test. The enthralling advance guard never -failed--that winged immortal something ahead. Often in some little inn -or in the hotel at Auckland during the nights, he found himself in -rebellion because he could not go to her. Always in the open boat he -had awakened to find her there, and on the night that Fleury passed, -she had asked to have him within call--but those times were gone. The -world had intervened that little bit.... There was one summer day -and a bit of forest to enter, a moment surpassing all. Her arms and -fingers, her eyes and breast were all fused with emotions. She gave him -back his boyhood that afternoon in a solemn wordless ceremony, but all -his diffidence of boyhood came with it. - -The woods were full of fairies to her; there were meanings for her eyes -in the drift of the wind over the brown pools. She caught the woodland -whispers, was a part of sweet, low vibrations of the air.... Her eyes -had come up to his, fearless and tender; yet for the life of him, he -could not have been sure that they wanted anything he could give. -For the first time he marvelled now at the genius of self-protection -which women have put on, instinct by instinct, throughout all this age -of man, this age of muscle and brain, in which the driving spirit of -it all has no voice.... There was one branch above her that was like -hawthorn, and full of buds. The little Inverness cape that she wore was -tossed back, and her arms were held up to the branches.... Strangely -that instant he thought of her story--the coming of The Guest--the -thought she had held all the years, the strange restless beauty of its -ideal--the mothering beauty of it that seemed to him now endless in -power. Such a mystery came to him from her arms--as if she were holding -them up to receive perfection, some great spiritual gift.... It was -startlingly native to her, this expectancy--the pure receptivity of it, -and the thought of beauty in her mind. A woman could command heaven -with that gesture, he thought, and call to earth an archangel--if her -ideal were pure enough. - -A sudden gust of love came over him for her child. He thought he had -loved it before, but it was startling now, filling him, turning his -steps back toward the place where it lay.... - - - 2 - -And all the time that they were searching widely from Auckland for -their house, a little Englishwoman, growing old, sat waiting for -them within an hour’s ride from the city. They found her at last -and her stone cottage, rarely attractive in its neglect; and from -the door-yard, an Odessian vista of sky and harbour and lifted -shore-line.... They had even passed it before, their eyes turned -farther afield. Bellair couldn’t ignore the analogy of the nearest -woman, nor the stories of all the great spiritual quests--how the -fleeces on a man’s doorstep turn golden, if he can only see. - -“I knew some one would come,” the little woman said. She had a mole on -her nose and eyes that twinkled brightly. “In fact, I prayed.” - -Bellair smiled and thought of Fleury’s saying--that those who turn back -two thousand years would find Him.... She had kept a boarding-house, -and now the work was too much. Besides, the children of a younger -sister back in the home in Essex were calling to her. - -“They need me in England,” she repeated. “And here, I have been unable -to keep up the little house. I am too old now. My young men were so -dear about it, but I was not making them comfortable. One’s heart -turns home at the close----” She thought they did not understand; and -explained all the meanings carefully--how in age, the temporal needs -are not so keen, and the mind wanders back to the elder places.... -Bellair stood apart, knowing that the two women could manage better -alone.... The cottage faced the east a little to northward, and had -been built of the broken rocks of the bluff and shore, its walls twenty -inches thick and plastered on the stone within. The interior surprised -them with its size, two bedrooms facing the sea and two behind, beside -the living room (for dining, too, according to the early design) and -the kitchen. They took it as it was, furniture and all, and loved the -purchase. - -For several days she remained with them, helped and explained and -amplified--suggesting much paint. Each day for an hour or so, there -were tears. She had found her going not so easy, and the process was -slow to accustom herself to the long voyage; the sense of detachment -could not be hurried. She wanted them to see her whole plan of the -place. Her dream had been to have evergreens cut in patterns and -flower-beds in stars and crescents. Meanwhile with her years had grown -up about her the wildest and most natural garniture of the stone -cottage; vines and shrubs, the pines putting on a sumptuousness of low -foliage altogether unapproved. - -Gradually it was all forgotten but the long voyage, and Bellair could -help in making the details of that as simple and desirable as possible. -In fact, he went with her to the ship.... - -“She was dear to us, and we shall miss her always,” the Faraway Woman -said that night.... She would never come back. It was a parting, but -the very lightness of it moved them. They wondered if they had done all -they could. - -“I’m so glad the means were not at hand for her to paint the -stone-work,” Bellair said firmly. - -“I’m afraid she would think we lack interest,” the woman added, as she -glanced at the smoky beams of the ceiling. The years had softened them -perfectly. - -“She wanted them washed the very first thing,” said Bellair, “and -varnished. If she had stayed much longer we would have been forced to -paint something.” - -In the days that followed, a softness and summery bloom came -continually to the Faraway Woman’s eyes. His heart quickened when -she turned to him. They moved in and out from the cottage to grounds, -again and again. - -“It’s unreal to me,” she would say. “I wonder if it will ever seem -ours? I know it won’t, while you are away. I could live here fifty -years until I seemed a part of the cottage and grass and trees, and I -would feel a pilgrim resting----” - -“It is part of you now, and always has been,” he said. “You are at home -on high ground and you must have the sea-distance. They belong to you. -I think that is what made you so hard for me to understand.” - -“Was I hard for you?” - -“I was so fresh from the little distances and the short-sight of -things--from looking down----” - -“I wonder if any one ever was so willing to be seen on his worst side?” -she asked. “I really believe you know very little about yourself.... He -saw--the real side.” - -“He saw good everywhere,” said Bellair. - -“... I wonder why I was strange to you at first?” she repeated, after a -moment. “You were not strange to me.” - -“Not when I spent so much time at the great cane chair?” - -“No. You seemed to be studying. I could see that you didn’t belong -there. You appeared to be interested in it all--as if he were a part of -the ship----” - -“And you didn’t seem to belong at all to my eyes,” he told her. “You -belonged out in the distances of ocean. You came closer and closer -during the days in the open boat--but here you belong. It seems to me -that you have come home--and how I wish I could stay, too.” - -“I wish you could stay--but I know that there is unfinished work in New -York.” - -“I wonder how _he_ knew?” Bellair questioned. - -“He saw very clearly. He was not flesh at all--that last day----” - -“After the night--when he prayed.... You saw him that night?” - -“Yes.” - -Her innate sense of beauty startled him afresh every day. All that he -idealised was an open book to her. Bellair had planned his house in the -New York room. The greatest houses are planned so, by those who suffer -and are confined. It had not come to him in the form of this stone -cottage by the sea. This was not his dream that had come true here, -although in many ways it was fairer than his dream. Very plainly, this -little rock-bound eyrie was of her fashioning--the very atoms of it, -drawing together to conform with the picture in her mind. He loved the -place better so. Perhaps her thought of a home had been the stronger. - -“It is almost perfect now,” she would say. “The neglect has made -it right. A few roses, some bee-hives, vines and perennials--the -rest is just clearing and cleansing. I could go over all the leaves -and branches with a soapy sponge. The rest is to prune and thin and -cleanse--so the sunlight is not shut from anywhere altogether--so it -all can breathe----” - -He caught the picture in her mind--foliage cut away for the play of sun -and wind everywhere--the chaste and enduring beauty of leaf and stone -and moving water. And now appeared a bit of her nature quite as real: - -“And then those extra two rooms, I could rent them and give board----” - -“Oh, but you don’t have to.” - -“I have always had much to do. I must have work now.” - -She had no realisation of property; material poverty was a part of her -temperament. She was superbly well, and could only remain so by the -expenditure of ample energy. Bellair saw the Martha soul, the mother of -men, a breadgiver. He thought of the passion of men for the vine-women, -and of the clinging sons they bear.... He lingered over a ship, and -another. They toiled together like two peasants in the open, the baby -sitting in the sun, the house ashine within. She would have only the -simple things. She loved fine textures, but only of the lasting fabrics -in woods and wares. She was content to carry water and trim lamps. -She loved the stones and the low open fires. Often she turned away -seaward, as he had seen her from the _Jade’s_ rail, and from the bow -seat of the open boat. Once in the garden, he made the child laugh, to -bring back her eyes, and she said: - -“I love it so here, but I don’t want to love it, so that it would hurt -terribly, if it were taken away.” - -This was but one side. There were other moments, in which Bessie and -New York and all that he and the Faraway Woman had been, seemed fused -into a ball of mist whirling away, and they stood together, man and -woman, touching sanity at last in a world of power and glory. It was -not then a time for words.... Once their hands went out together, and -holding for a moment, Bellair had the strange sense of the self sinking -from him. He could not feel his hand or any part of his being--as if it -were a part of her, two creatures blent into one, and an indescribable -rush of something different than physical vitality. - -And once sitting with her under the lamp in the evening, he drew again -that sense of peace that had come in the queer darkness on the deck of -the _Jade_. It had to do with the mountains--as if they had finished -with the valleys, and were ascending together in the strong light of -the mountains. - -And then there was passion--that plain, straight earth drive. Bellair -was strange about this with the Faraway Woman. This passion was like -the return of an old hunting companion, so natural in the wilds, but -strange and out of place in his newly-ordered life. It had come from -the Unknowable, and he had supposed it lost in that wilderness. It -dismayed him that _she_ should call it forth, but she called from him -everything day by day, and no day the same. He had lost much of the -old, but not that passion. And the nature of it which she called had -a bewildering beauty.... But there was much to keep the old native of -the wilds from really entering. The world would have called Bellair’s -idealism _naïve_; and there was something of Fleury in the very -solution of their lives--not a finger-print of passion in all that -relation. There was the Unfinished Story of Ogla’s Guest. Finally there -was the Gleam. - -Life was very full and rare to Bellair, but there seemed always a new -ship in the harbour flying Blue Peter for California.... In the main, -they forgot themselves, as unwatched man and woman, slept under the -same roof and had their food together; at least, Bellair forgot it for -hours at a time. It seemed the very nature of life; the purity of it -all so obvious.... One afternoon he came up from the city in a cool -south wind; a grey afternoon, the sunset watery and lemon-hued. He was -thinking of the ship that would float Blue Peter to-morrow. The homely -scent of damp bark burning quickened his senses, as he crossed the -yard, and he heard her singing to the child. Somehow the woodsmoke had -brought back to him a Spring day in the northern woods--grey light and -dark pools, all foliage baby-new, a song-sparrow pair trilling back and -forth from edge to open.... - -He saw her in one of the rare flashes of life. She was sitting by the -fireplace, the nearest window across the room. Her figure was softened -in the deep grey light to the pure sensousness of motherhood--except -her face, hands and boots, and that which she held. These were mellowed -in the faintest orange glow from the firelight. Her back was curved -forward, her face bent to the baby’s head, held high in the hollow of -her arms. The dress was caught tightly about her ankles--a covering -pliant almost as a night-robe, but that was a mystery of the shadows. -She was like the figure of some woman he had seen somewhere--some woman -of the river-banks, but this a Madonna of the firelight. He passed on, -and waited before speaking. - - - 3 - -They went a last time to the city.... There was a place for a chair, -and they had seen an old urn in a by-street which belonged near the -Spring. They felt that these products of men had to be just so, and -that they had earned a great boon in being given a part at stone -cottage. The things that were brought there must endure; must reason -together in long leisure concord, putting on the same inner hue at the -last and mellowing together as old friends, or old mates. This time, -Bellair’s eyes did not meet the city quite as before; it was not as -a stranger exactly, who rambles through a port while his ship lies -in the offing. His real berth was an hour’s ride back from the city -and made of stone. Perhaps later he would find work to do here.... A -child passed them in the store, and brought the change after their -purchase--a boy of twelve or fourteen, his face old with care. It made -Bellair think of Davy Acton at Lot & Company’s. They bought a bit of -glass, a bit of silver, some linen and a rug, and rode home with their -arms full. - -Another letter had come from one of the Island headquarters of -Stackhouse, in answer to Bellair’s inquiry concerning affairs. The -papers in the wallet had given him clues to the various insular -interests; and the replies, without exception, represented the -attitudes of agents ready and open to authority from without. -Stackhouse had left no centre of force that appeared to have vitality -enough to rise in its own responsibility. Bellair saw that sooner or -later he must make a visit to these different interests, and that -the place of the wallet for the time being, at least, amounted -to headquarters. He wrote as explicitly as possible in reply to -the letters, promised to call in due course, established a freedom -where his judgment permitted, but felt the whole vast business very -loosely in hand. New York was first, and it became very clear to him, -especially on this night, that New York must be entered upon without -further delay. There was a thrill of dismay in the thought of the weeks -that had passed, and the dreaming. Dreams were good. He had needed -these days; great adjustments and healings had taken place. It had -been the pleasant lull between the old and new, the only rest his life -had known, in fact. All its beauty was massed into the period--but the -dreams must be turned into action now. - -A man may stay just so long in joy. There are moments in every life -when the hour strikes for parting. The lover does well to leave his -lady then quickly. There is an understanding in the world that the -woman invariably whispers, _Stay_, but very often an organisation of -force that makes austerity possible, does not come from the man alone. -If the moment of parting passes, the two still lingering together, a -shadow enters between them, blurring their faces for each other’s eyes, -dimming the dream. - -It does not come from without. The train missed, the passage paid for -and not connected, the column that marches away, one set broken, -the sentry post to which a strange figure is called--these are but -matters to laugh at afterward. The shadow comes between them from their -own failure. It is slow to lift. In the final elevation of romance, -there shows one sunken length.... There is the moment of meeting and -the moment of parting; that which lies between, whether an hour or -generation, forms but the equal third, for the great love intervals of -human kind are not measured by time, but by the opening of the doors -of the heart. By the very laws of our being, the doors draw together -against rapture prolonged. The man who crosses the world to live -one day with his sweetheart, sees her at last in the doorway or the -trysting-place as he cannot see her again; and in the tear of parting, -something different of her, something that has been occulted, clears -magically for his eyes. It must not blind him to remain, for it is her -gift to abide with him over the divide. It passes, not to come again -if he remains; rapture falls into indulgence; the fibre of integrity -weakens and lets them down into mere mortals. Man is not ready for -the real revelation of romance in whom a master does not arise at the -stroke. - - * * * * * - -That night there was a _mew_ at the door. They had finished tea and -were sitting by the fire. The woman opened the door and a young -tabby-puss walked leisurely in, moved in a circle about the room, tail -held high. Chair and table and lounge, she brushed against, standing -upon her toes, eyes blinking at the fire. The woman brought a saucer of -milk. The visitor drank, as if that were all very well, but that she -could have done well enough until breakfast. Apparently it was not her -way to land upon friends in a starving condition. Before the fire, she -now sat, adding a point to her toilet from time to time, inspecting it -carefully and long. Finally she turned to the woman, hopped upon her -knee and settled to doze. She had accepted them, and they called her -_Elsie_. - -“Little-Else-to-do,” said the woman. - -They stood beside the child’s bed later that night. - -It rained, and the home closed in upon them with its cheer and humble -beauty. He saw her hand now in everything--even the rungs of the chairs -shone in the firelight. The hearth was swept. Her face--it was a place -of power, and such a fusion of tenderness was there, the eyes pure -and merciful. All that he had known before her coming was unfinished, -explanatory. She had shown him what a human adult woman should be in -this year of our Lord. His soul yearned to her; his whole life nestling -to this place of hers--as her stone cot nestled to the cliff.... She -was always very quiet about her love for the child when he was near. -That was because he loved the Gleam so well.... Yet he had seen the -Firelight Madonna. - -“You have made it all I can do--to go away,” he said. - -“I have thought of that--I might have made it easier. I have thought of -that,” she repeated. “And yet--we were so tired. We seemed to need to -be ourselves. It has been beautiful--to be ourselves----” - -It seemed to him that she came nearer, but that was impossible for the -child was between.... Just then his mind finished the other picture--of -her arms held up to the hawthorn buds--a babe of his own in those -arms! He would have fought to prevent its coming, but it visualised -of itself. Had it been that which enchanted the woodland?... He was -silent. She had become even more to him for this instant. He would not -call it other than beautiful, now that it had come. She was more than -ever the heart of mystery--the Quest. She knew all these things--love -and maternity she knew; even the passionate fluting of Pan had -quickened her eyes; and where she abode, there was the genius of Home. - -So slowly had it come--perhaps this was not all. For weeks he had -stood by--day after day, the heart of her becoming more spacious and -eloquent; one miracle of the woman after another--finally, to-night -the mystery of all life about her, for his eyes. Yet to her it was no -mystery; she was _of it_, rhythmically so. She knew the dream--and the -life that comes at last to quicken it. She could love; she could live; -she could wait. She loved God--but loved Nature, too. She was spirit, -but flesh, too. She was powerful in two worlds.... - -So Bellair stood with bowed head, and though Bessie was forgotten, -Fleury was not. It was still with him that Fleury and the Faraway Woman -were fashioned for each other.... “She may be so wonderful to me, -because she trusts me to understand----” such was the essence of his -fear. It kept his heart dumb.... That night she brought a pitcher of -water and placed it upon the hearth, looked up and found him watching. - -“For the fairies,” she said. - - * * * * * - -That changed him a little, brought her nearer to words of his; though -the effort to speak was like lifting a bridge. She was leaving for her -room when he managed: - -“Day after to-morrow--the steamer. May we not talk to-night?” - -He saw her stop. Then she was coming toward him so gladly. - -“Yes--you want the rest of the story?” - -“Yes.... I have been sorry that _he_ couldn’t hear it----” - -She stood before him, tall and white. - -“I think you are like me,” she said in a moment. “I think you have -something behind you that you do not tell--something that made you -what you are--yet greater than you seem to yourself.... I would have -told you while _he_ was with us, but you know how the days passed and -we could not hold our thoughts together. Then there were times when -we could not even use our voices.... Do you know that the world is -wonderful--that the thousands about us do not even dream how wonderful -it is--how tremendous even miseries are? Sometimes I think that the -tragedies we meet are our greatest hours.” - -“You have met them,” he said, a part of her spirit almost. “I have -seen them in your eyes. It gave me the sense of shelter with you and -limitless understanding---” - -“I am thankful for that,” she whispered. “When we have understanding, -we have everything. Those who in their childhood are made to suffer -horribly are often the ones who reach understanding. Sometimes they -suffer too much and become dulled and dumb. Sometimes in the very ache -of their story, which can be so rarely told, they risk the telling to -some one not ready. It aches so, as its stays and stays untold. Oh, the -whole world craves understanding, and yet if we tell our story to one -who is not ready--we hurt them and ourselves, and add unto our misery. -There are moments set apart in life in which one finds understanding, -but the world presses in the next day, and the story does not look so -well. The spirit of it fades and the actions do not seem pure when the -spirit is out--so one loses a loved friend. Oh, I am talking vaguely. -It is not my way to talk vaguely--but to-night--it is like a division -of roads, and a story is to be told---” - -“Do you think the story will diminish in my mind to-morrow?” he asked. - -“No--not you. I have seen you through the sunlight and the dark looking -into my eyes for it. If I thought it would diminish in your mind--yes, -I would tell it just the same. It must be told--but life would not be -the same. Even this, our little stone cot, would not be the same. I -should have to become harder and harder to hold--to follow the Gleam---- - -“... I shall be Olga in the rest of the story,” she was saying. “For -I am Olga.... The truth is, I have no other name. There is one that -I used, and another that I formerly used--but they are not mine. You -shall see.... My father prospered with the sheep-raising, and slowly on -the long road that you have seen, houses came one by one, until at last -there was a village about us. My father was like the village father, -and my mother the source of its wisdom in doctoring and maternal -affairs--she had learned by bringing forth. But I was not of them--they -all saw that. The coming of plenty, the coming of the people, the -coming of men to woo my sisters, and the maidens my brothers brought -for us to see, before they took them quite away--none of these things -were so real to me as the coming of my Guest when I was such a little -girl. And none remembered that--not even my mother. Until I ceased to -speak of it, they tried to make me think it was a dream. But I knew -that rapture. It had changed me. I was always to search for it again. I -was always looking for another such night--for that afterglow again. I -was the last child and the silent one. - -“But all that had to do with children was intimate and wonderful to -me.... I remember once when we were all girls at home together, and -they were talking--each of what she should have for her treasure from -the household--one walnut, one silver, one an inlaid desk--and they -turned to me laughingly, for I was not consulted as a rule, I said I -wanted the little hickory cradle in an upper closet. It was one of -those household days which girls remember.... All was happier then. -The little cradle seemed like a casket in which jewels had come to my -mother--seven times. We had all smiled at her first from that hickory -cradle.... I went up stairs to look at it--a dim place full of life and -messages to me. I was weak; my arms ached; and it was so dear that I -dare not say that it was mine.... My father said the cradle must belong -to the eldest girl. - -“... I began to sense the terrible actuality of life through the -mating of Lois, ten years older, with a countryman who came for her. -For sisters, Lois and I had always been far apart, and this stranger -who wished to marry her, had nothing to do with life as I dreamed -it--a child of twelve. To many, Lois was the loveliest of us--large, -calm, dark and quiet, very well, slow of speech, but quick to smile. -Had you visited our house then, you would have remembered my father’s -patriarchal air, the smile of Lois, and the maternity that brooded -over us all. The rest you would get afterward--a variety of young -people with different faults and attractions--I the grey one, last to -be noted. Lois was given credit for more than she was. I do not love -brain or power, but I seem to love courage. Lois had something to take -the place of these--not courage--and no, not power nor brain. She had -sensuousness and appetite. - -“One night I seemed to see what the whole house was straining for--a -kind of process of marriage continually afoot. Just now it was Lois. -I remember my father being called into the front room where Lois and -Collinge had been for an evening--his face beaming when he came forth, -and my mother’s quiet sanction. There were conferences after that, -dressmaking, the arrangement of money affairs. And I was suddenly ill -with it. To me, there could be no trade or public business. To me, it -had to do with a child and that was consecrated ground. Oh, you must -see it had to be different. I wanted it like a stroke of lightning. -I did not understand but I wanted it like that--like a flight of -swans--and not talk and property transactions. To me it had to do with -rain and frost and the tides and the pulses of plants--the silent -things. I did not understand--but knew that children came to those who -took each other. - -“I remember one supper; the countryman talked--talked of the marriage -day--the breakfast, the ceremony--the end and the dusk, and turned to -Lois with sleepy half-folded eyes. She was smiling and flushed--and I -looked from face to face at the table, at my sisters--and I rushed away -because I could find nothing pure.... Some one said my mother never -looked prettier.... I remember the flood of honeysuckle perfume that -came to me in the torture of hatred, as I passed through the distant -hall.... And then later from the top of the stairs, Lois and my mother -were talking, and Lois said: - -“‘You know, Mother, we will not have children for the first three -years, at least----’” - -“I was somehow below by her in the lower hall. She seemed a rosy pig -upstanding, marked red and flaming.... And that night long afterward, -my mother found me and said, ‘You are getting beyond me, Olga.’ ... -But I could only think of men and women copying the squirrels, -filling their bins, dressing their door-yards, reaching for outer -things--and it was back of my very being--back of the mother and the -patriarch--back of the shepherding and the folding--back of _me_. -I hated life with destroying hatred--Lois wanting the seasons, but -unwilling to bring forth fruit, accepting the countryman’s idea of -life.... Can you see that it had the look of death to me?” - -Bellair could only bow his head. To him the woman was revealing the -grim days through which she had won her poise and power.... She was -telling another incident with the same inclination--for the thought -of being a mother had been the one master of her days. He seemed to -see the child, the girl, the younger woman about her--a grey-eyed, -red-lipped girl, with a waist that was smaller and smaller as she -gained in inches from fifteen to eighteen--madness for mothering, -passionate in that, but not passionate for sensation--her face -sometimes so white, that they would ask her mother, “Is Olga quite -well?”... Yet teeming with that intensive health that goes with small -bones and perfect assimilation--that finds all to sustain life in fruit -and leaves ... books, light sleeping, impassioned with the lives of -great women and the saints--one of those who come to the world for -devotion and austerity and instant sacrifice; yet for none of these -apart; rather a fruitful vine, her prevailing and perennial passion -for motherhood. - -“And yet I almost ceased to breathe,” she was saying, “when I came to -understand man’s part in these things. I felt _myself_ differently -after that--even children--but from this early crisis which so many men -and women have met with untellable suffering, emerged a calm that could -not have come without it. The travail brought me deep into the truth. -For all great things the price must be paid--how wonderfully we learned -that in the open boat. There are sordid processes in the production of -all fine things--even in the bringing forth of a Messiah.” - -She paused, as if she saw something enter the eyes that had listened -so fervently. Bellair cleared his voice. “I remember something _he_ -said,” he told her. “That matter is the slate--spirit the message that -is written. The slate is broken, the message erased, but _eyes_ have -seen it, and the transaction is complete. For the spirit has integrated -itself in expression----” - -“I think he said it, for you to tell me now,” the Faraway Woman -whispered. - -“Only _he_ could have halted your story,” Bellair added. - -“... I told you when my Guest came in the afterglow, of the house -of our nearest but distant neighbour; now I am telling you of years -afterward, when there were many houses between on the long road, and -my playmate Paul had gone away to Sidney. Lois had long been married. I -was seventeen--and so strangely and subtly hungering--for expression, -for something that I did not know, which meant reality to me, but which -was foreign and of no import to all about me. Often at evening I stared -up the long road.... I remember late one night in the nearest house, -the soft wind brought me the cry of a child. It was so newly come and -it was not well. I went to it just as I was, though the people had just -moved in and were strange to us. It was thirst--as we know. I went to -it, as we would have gone to a waterfall. The door of their house was -locked, but I knocked. The father came down at last. The lower rooms -were filled with unpacked boxes. I told him why I had come. He talked -to me strangely. He went upstairs and sent the mother down to me. It -did not seem as if I could live through that night--and not have my -way. She put her arms about me, led me upstairs to a room that was -not occupied--save a chair by the window. I stood there waiting until -she returned with the child.... I saw lights back in our house when -they missed me--voices, but I could not go. In the early light I heard -the woman saying to my mother: ‘... We really needed her so. Baby was -restless, but he is much better and quiet with her. They are very happy -together.... Yes, she is safe and well.’” - -The Faraway Woman left him now to go to the child. - - - 4 - -Returning, she put the kettle on, and made tea in the earthen pot. To -Bellair her coming into the room again was a replenishment--as if she -had been gone for hours; and this started a pang deep in his heart, -which presently suffused everything when he realised that his ship had -come for him. It was past midnight.... In reality it was to-morrow that -his ship would sail. - -“You listen wonderfully,” she said. - -“It seems all about the little Gleam,” he answered. “It makes -everything significant about the open boat.... I forget to swallow----” - -They laughed together. - -“Do you know, I can hardly realise when we are here--that this is New -Zealand?” she said presently, “that only a little way back is the long -road and the river and the ravine--the neighbour’s house and ours and -the other houses between.... I will tell you the rest very quickly--and -oh, let me tell you first, I am not afraid. In spite of all I know, I -am not----” - -She was bending forward across the table. - -“... I was a woman when Paul came back from the distant city--and came -first of all to me. He was changed--something excellent about his -face and carriage, and something I did not understand at all, his -face deeper lined, his voice lower, his words ready. I did not think -about him when he was away. In the first evenings we passed together, -I had only an old-time laugh for him. I kissed him with something -like affection. We were permitted to be alone together, and I saw the -old look upon my father’s face--that I had hated so. That look--even -before the playmate thing had departed from me. Then I began to _see_ -Paul--something I could not like nor understand, a readiness of words, -and he was not wise enough to make them ring deeply. I seemed to be -studying in him the novelty of a man--through the eyes of a girl. - -“One night we were together in my father’s house. It was our Spring and -raining softly on the steps. The grass seemed full of odours, and the -vines trembling with life. He kissed me there. It seemed that I hardly -knew. I was looking over his shoulder into the dark, and I saw a little -white face. It was like a rain-washed flower ... and to me it was quite -everything. - -“... Everything that I had known and loved--compensation for all that I -had missed and hungered for. Only the little face--but I knew the arms -were held out to me. - -“Paul knew nothing of this. He was not to blame. It was not he, who -carried me away. He was merely being the man he fancied--playing the -thing as the world had taught him--showing himself fervent and a man. -I could have laughed at his kisses.... I have nothing against him. -It was his way.... But once he kissed me--and it came to me that he -was the way--that he must join his call to mine.... I could do all -but that--I need not love him. Can you understand--it seemed as if -everything was done but that--that the little face had already chosen -me.... I sent him away, and I remember long afterward I was standing on -the porch alone. It rained.” - -Bellair realised now that she was watching him with something like -anguish. A different picture of her came to him from that moment--filed -for the long days apart--the rapt look of her mouth, and the pearl -in her hair that brought out the lustre of whiteness from her -skin--full-bosomed, but slender--slender hands that trembled and moved -toward him as she spoke.... It was something for him--as if he had -always been partly asleep before--as if she had brought some final -arousing component to his being. - -“... My mother did not ask but once. When I told her--the horror came -to me that she would die. I had not thought of it before. I had thought -that it was mine--had seen very little of Paul. In fact, he had come -several times, when I would not see him.... She called my father--and -it was all to be enacted again. For a moment, I thought he would strike -me. The most dreadful thing to them all was that I was not ashamed. -They felt that I was unnatural.... - -“There was one high day in that little upper room. It was all like a -prayer, when they would suffer me to be alone and not wring me with -their misery--but this one high day, I must tell you. I stood by -the window in the watery light of the sun from the far north. That -moment the Strange Courage came. I felt that I could lead a nation, -not to war, but to enduring peace; as if I had a message for all my -people, and a courage not of woman’s, to tell it, to tell it again and -again--until all the people answered. It was then that I understood -that a man’s soul had come to my baby, and that it was not to be a -girl, as I had sometimes thought. - -“And then the rest of the waiting--days of misery that I can hardly -remember the changes of--yet something singing within me--I holding -it high toward heaven as I could--singing with the song within. After -weeks, it suddenly came to me what they wanted to do to hide their -shame--to take the little child half-finished from me--to murder it--to -hide their shame. - -“Then I told them that it had not occurred to me to marry Paul--that -I did not love him--that I had loved the little child. I told them -that I did not believe in the world--that I did not believe I had done -wrong--that I did not believe our old preacher who stayed so long at -the table could make me more ready for the child. I told my father that -I did not believe in marrying a man and saying that I would have no -children for three years. I told him that I was mad for the child--that -I was young and strong and ready to die for it ... that my baby wanted -me, and no other. I would have gone away, but they would not let me do -that. They kept me in an upper room. Paul had gone away ... and after -months my father went to find him. It was sad to me--sadness that -I cannot forget in that--my father taking his cane and his bag and -setting out to find the father--heart-broken and full of the awfulness -of being away from his home. He had not been away for years.... And -my mother coming timidly to my room.... And then I went down like -Pharaoh’s daughter to the very edge of the water--for, for the Gleam!” - -Her eyes were shining and she laughed a little, looking upward -as if she saw a vision of it, and had forgotten the room and the -listening--her eyes as close to tears as laughter. - -“... And when I came back--it was all so different. I could pity -them--my heart breaking for my father and mother, who had not the -wonder, and only the fears. They were passing out--after doing their -best as they saw it, for many, many years together--and I had brought -them the tragedy, the crumbling of their house--a shame upon the -patriarch of the long road, a blackness upon her maternities.... It was -my father’s thought to bring Paul to me. As if I would have taken him, -but he came--my father having given him much money.... Oh, do not be -hard upon him. There is wildness in him and looseness, but the world -had showed him the way and he was young. I said to him (it was within -ten days after the coming and my father and mother were gone from the -room), ‘I would not think of marrying you, Paul, but do not tell them. -As soon as I am ready, I shall go away with you, and they will not be -so unhappy--and as soon as we are well away, you shall be free. And you -may keep the money, Paul.’ - -“... And now it is like bringing you a reward for listening so well. I -tell you now of a moment of beauty and wonder--such as I had known but -once before, and was more real to me than all the rest. It made that -which was sorrowful and sordid of the rest seem of little account.... -It was early evening in the upper room and still light. An old -servant who loved me was in the room, and the Gleam was sleeping--the -fourteenth day after his coming. The woman helped me to a chair and -drew it to the window, and all was hushed. Even before I looked out, an -unspeakable happiness began to gush into my heart. - -“The ravine was crowding with darkness, but the long road was full -of light. The houses between seemed to dwindle but the distance was -full of radiance--that perfect afterglow again. Not for twenty years -had there been such a sunset, and now the sky was massed with gold of -the purple martin’s breast, and the roof of Paul’s house was like two -open leaves of beaten gold--everywhere the air filled with strange -brightenings. The fragrance from the fields arose to meet the heaven -falling from the sky. - -“I tried to make believe, but the road was empty. The Guest would never -come again, and yet on such a night as this, he had come to me--like -a saint that has finished his work, like a Master coming down a last -time. All the room and the house was hushed behind me.... But the long -road was empty. - -“The old servant at last could bear it no longer. Perhaps she thought -I did not breathe. Softly she crossed the room to the cradle, lifted -the Gleam and placed him in my lap--as if to call me back. Breath came -quickly at the touch of him, and she must have heard a low, joyous -sound as I felt the child. With one hand I held him, patting his -shoulder softly, slowly, with the other, until the ecstasy of long ago -flowed into my being. - -“There was a moment that I should have asked her to take the Gleam -from me--had I been able to speak. It was such a moment that I had run -out under the stars. But as I patted the tiny shoulder, the burden of -the ecstasy passed, and a durable blessedness came--the calm of great -understanding. - -“The road--of course it was empty--for he had come.... I thought I had -told the old servant, but a second time I seemed to see her anxious -face bending so near in the dusk. - -“‘Why, don’t you see?’ I whispered. ‘He was looking for his mother when -I found him.’” - - * * * * * - -That was the end of the story--the rest just details that an outsider -might ask: How she went away with Paul for the sake of her father; how -he remained with her during the long voyage to America, but as nothing -to her, more and more a stranger of different ways from hers--how he -gave her but a little of the money her father had put in trust for her -keeping--and rushed away to dig his grave in the city.... Then just a -glimpse of her need and her labour and longing for the Island life--a -dream, the _Jade_.... - - - 5 - -The final morning, Bellair took the babe in his arms and let himself -down the rocky way to the shore. The trail was empty behind him, and -the cottage shut off by the group of little pines, pure to pass through -as the room of a child. And here were rain-washed boulders warming -in the morning sun, and before his eyes the blue and deep-eyed sea. -It rolled up to his feet, forever changing with its stories and its -secrets, very cool about them all to-day, full of mastery and leisure. - -Bellair sat upon a stone and looked at the child: “I wish you could -tell me, little man ... but you are not telling. You know it all, like -the sea--but you do not tell.... And I’ll see you so many times, when -I’m away,--see you like this and wish many times I could hold you. For -we were always friends, good friends. You didn’t ask much.... And you -were fine in the pinch, my son.... That little cry I heard, that little -cry.... He loved you, and promised great things for you. I’ve come to -believe it, little man, for I know your mother. That’s good gambling, -from where I stand.... He knew it first. He knew it all first. And you -didn’t tell him.... Oh, be all to her, little Gleam--be all to her, and -tell her I love her--when she looks away to the sea. Tell her, I’ll be -coming, perhaps.... I didn’t know I’d ever be called to kiss a little -boy--but it’s all the same to you ... and take care of her for me.” - -They were standing together a last time before his journey. The -carriage had been waiting many minutes. The child was propped upon the -lawn, and Elsie was picking her steps and shaking her paws that met -the dew under the grass. His eye was held over her shoulder to the -weathered door of the stone cottage. It was ajar and coppery brown, -like the walls above the young vines. And over her other shoulder, too, -was the brilliant etheric divide of the sea. He had to go back and -stand a moment in the large room. The wind and the light came in; the -vine tendrils came trailing in. He saw her books, her pictures, her -chair, her door.... - -He stood beside her again, and tried to tell her how moving these weeks -had been. - -“Yes, we have seen both sides, and this was the perfect side. We saw -the other, well----” - -“And you are not caught in either--that’s what thrills me most,” said -he. “I am always caught--in hunger and thirst and fear and pain--in -beauty and possessions. But you have stood the same through it -all--ready to come or go, ready for sun or storm----” - -“After years of changes and uncertainty, one comes to rely only upon -the true things.” - -“I shall want to come back--before the first turn of the road,” he -said. “I think I am hungry for the little house now----” - -She put her arms about him. His heart was torn, but there was something -immortal in the moment. - -“This shall always be your home,” she said. “You may come back -to-night--to-morrow--in twenty years--this is your house. I shall -be here. I shall teach _him_ to know and welcome you.... We are -different. We are not strangers. We have gone down into the deep ways -together. We shall always know each other, as no one else can, or as we -can know no others. So we must be much to each other--and this is our -home. You will never forget.... Oh, yes, you must come back--just as -you must go away----” - -Sentence by sentence, softly, easily spoken; not with a great beauty -of saying, but with a bestowal of the heart that compelled his finest -receptivity. And she had held him as a mother might, or as a sister, or -as a woman who loved him. There was something in her tenure, of all the -loves of earth. He looked deeply into her eyes, but hers was the love -that did not betray itself then in the senses. He could not know, for -he would not trust his own heart.... But this he knew, and was much to -ponder afterward: This which she gave, could not have been given, nor -have been received, before the days of the open boat. So strange was -the ministry of that fasting. - -They kissed, and hers so gladly given, failed of the secret; yet -revealed to him a love that sustained, and sent him forth a man--such -as Bellair had not been. - - - - -PART SIX - -LOT & COMPANY: II - - - 1 - -BELLAIR reached New York on a mid-May morning from the west, and walked -up Seventh avenue to his old room. It was a time of day that he had -seldom known the street and step. There was a different expression -of daylight upon them. Of course, he had met these matters on many -Sundays, but Sunday light and atmosphere was invariably different -to his eyes--something foreign and false about it. He saw the old -hall-mark, however, in the vestibule--the partial sweeping.... It -had always been her way; all things a form. The vestibule and stone -steps had to be swept--that was the law; to be swept with strength and -thoroughness was secondary. He rang, and asked the servant for the -woman of the house. - -Waiting, he found himself in a singular depression of mind. The City -had cramped and bewildered him. A small oval of grey-white cloud -appeared in the dark hall. It came nearer, and Bellair saw the face of -dusty wax--smaller, a little lower from his eyes. It came very near, -and was upturned. The vision was dim, and the memory; all the passages -slow and cluttered. - -“It is Mr. Bellair,” she said, without offering her hand. - -“Yes. I’ve come back.” - -“I haven’t a room--for you.” - -“Oh, I’m sorry.” - -“And about your things in storage--I would be glad for the space now. -Could you take care of this to-day?’ - -“Yes,” he answered. - -“I have the bill ready.”... She called the servant who came with the -broom. “On my table among the papers you will find Mr. Bellair’s bill -for storage. Please get it.” - -Bellair heard the servant on the stairs, one, two, three flights; then -a long silence. He had never been quite sure where the landlady slept, -believing that she hovered from basement to sky-light according to the -ebb and flow of the tenant tides. The double-doors from the hall to the -lower front room were slightly ajar. This, the most expensive in the -house, appeared to be vacant. The servant was gone a long time. The -landlady did not leave him alone in the hall. They did not speak. The -darkness crept upon Bellair as if he were in a tank that was slowly -but surely being filled, and presently would cover him. The paper was -brought, the charge for six months’ storage, meagre. Bellair paid it, -and offered more. He thought of her hard life, but the extra money was -passed back to him. - -“I have that present in keeping,” she said. - -“What present?” - -“That you gave me the night you went away----” - -“But I gave it to you. Would you not take a little gift from one who -had been in your house five years?” - -“Money easily got, goes the same,” she answered. - -Then Bellair realised how stupid he had been. She had seen the -newspapers. She had been afraid to trust him alone in that bare hall. -The smell of carpets stifled him. - -“I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said. “But hold the present a little -longer. Perhaps you will not always feel that it came so easily. I’ll -send for my goods at once.... Good-bye.” - -“Good-bye, Mr. Bellair.” - -He was ill. The side-door of a famous hotel yawned to him directly -across the street from his step. He was not sure they would take him. -Registering, he stopped to think where he was from, adding Auckland, N. -Z.... Yes, his bags would be brought from the station. They gave him a -room, and Bellair stood in the centre of it. - -For a few moments he actually weakened--limbs and mind. It wasn’t New -York alone, nor the sordid incident across the street, reminding him -so ruthlessly of Lot & Company and all that had been and was still to -do; rather it was a giving way to a loneliness that had been rising -for almost a month, wearing him to a shadow of himself, and giving -him battle night and morning. Like many another solitary young man, -he had brooded much upon what a certain woman might be. He had found -that in those women he met, certain spaces must be filled in by his -own compassion--and these spaces did not endure. Always in a test -they separated from the reality. But the Faraway Woman day by day had -fulfilled; even where his idealism failed, she completed the picture of -the woman above him and of irresistible attraction. - -She had come nearer and nearer. She was magic in this way. He had -regarded her at first distantly and askance at the rail of the _Jade_. -A gasp now came from him. That was so impossible and long ago.... She -had not called him any more than a peasant woman. And yet one after -another her rarities had unfolded; it would always be so. She was -the very fountain of romance to him; the essence of whose attraction -is variableness of days. Of all the days together, there had been -no two alike--no two hours alike. He had watched her face under the -light--never twice the same. The child, the maiden, the mother, the -love-woman, the saint--lips passional, devotional ... then those -wonder-moments when the old tragedies came back to her eyes. - -They stirred him as if he had known her long ago; and yet nothing of -this had come to him at first. How crude and coarse he had been not -to see. Lot & Company and New York had covered her from his eyes. He -had to fast and pray and concentrate upon her being, as a devotee upon -the ball of crystal to begin upon her mysteries. Every man has his -Lot & Company, his New York--the forces that bind him to the world. -A man bound to the world can see but the body of a thing--the paint -of a picture, just the outline and pigment of a picture or a bit of -nature--just the body of a woman. - -Something came to him that instant--of the perfect law of all -things. Those caught in the body of events see but that, hear but -that, anticipate but that--the very secret of all the misery and -shortsightedness in the world. A man must rise, lift the centre of -consciousness above the body of things, even to see physical matters -in their true relation. It was all so thrillingly true to him in this -glimpse--that a man can never see properly the sequence of his actions -unless he can rise above them--that those in the ruck never know what -they are about.... - -He tried to remember her face, as he stood in the hotel room. Failing, -his mind returned to their days together. He was apart now and could -view them, one by one, in their wonder and beauty. He was torn with -them. At different times on the long voyage he had dwelt separately -upon the episodes. Some had worn him to exhaustion. People on the ship -had believed him a man with a great grief. At first, he looked about -from face to face searching for some one whom he might tell, but there -was no reception for his story. He had to stop and think that he was -different and apart.... She had always been apart. - -He had carried it alone, moving hushed and alone with his story; lying -open-eyed in his berth through the hours of night, and often through -the afternoons, an open book face downward upon his chest, his pipe -cold ... living again the different moments in the rooms of the stone -cottage, in the garden, on the shore; their journeys together, their -breakfasts and luncheons and evenings together. - -The boy was gone from him, from face and body. He did not know what -had come instead, but he knew that he carried a creative image in his -heart; something of the fragrance of her lingering about him. It had -come to him at night alone on deck--the sweetness of her--on the wind. -All that he wanted, all that he dreamed best of life and labour and -love ... and yet after all, what had he to do with her in relation -to these intimate things? Friend, companion, confidante--she was -everything that a woman could be, except---- Had not the substance of -that kind of giving died for her in the passing of the preacher?... -Something of her story frightened him. She had learned the ultimate -realness of loving. The man who entered her heart now would have to -come with an immortal seal upon him. There was but one who could take -up the fatherhood of the Gleam.... Bellair did not feel the man; did -not know what she had given him; did not know what had come to him--to -his face and carriage and voice. He had not yet lifted himself above -so that he could see. Those whom he met, however, were struck with -a different Bellair, and those who could not understand thought him -touched a little queerly--as a man after sunstroke or any great light. - -... It was now noon. He thought of his old friend, Broadwell, of the -advertising-desk at Lot & Company. Perhaps Broadwell would dine with -him. He called. The voice came back to him.... Yes, he would come at -once. Bellair asked him to the hotel. In the interval he called the -Trust company in whose keeping the thousand dollar surety had been, -inquiring if Lot & Company had collected the amount. The answer was -returned presently to the effect that Lot & Company had presented his -release and collected the amount with interest four days after his -departure. - -Bellair hearkened to a faint singing somewhere within and found it had -to do with Bessie. He called Brandt’s and ascertained that the same -quartette was to sing there at nine in the evening. This was also one -of the things he had come to do. - -Broadwell was a trifle late, but all urbanity. There was something of -the salesman’s manner and enunciation about him. Bellair fell away -after the greeting, caught in a sort of mental flurry in which the -picture of another luncheon engagement recurred to his mind--the day he -had passed the desk and cage of Mr. Sproxley with the stranger named -Filbrick, and his own telling of the cashier’s passionate honour.... -When he came back to see clearly the face of Broadwell, he found that -he personally was being scrutinised with odd intensity. Could it be -that Broadwell had something more than a personal friendly interest? -His questions did not seem adroit, and yet he wanted to know so -much--of the ship, of Auckland, but especially of this long drive back -to New York. - -“Are you stopping here?” he asked. - -“Yes. My old room was just opposite, but I was told that the house was -full.” - -“So you came here?” - -“Yes.” - -“And are you going to stay in New York?” - -“I don’t know, Ben. There are a few things to see to.” - -“Are you looking for a job?” - -“Well, no. Not exactly, at least.” - -Try as he might, Bellair could not feel free, as of old time. He felt -the other wanted something, and this checked his every offering. -He knew that Broadwell, at least six months before, could not have -believed ill of Lot & Company, and there was no apparent change. The -disclosure of the press must have righted itself in the office so far -as he, Bellair, was concerned; surely Broadwell did not share the dread -of him the landlady had shown; and yet, it was hard to broach these -things. The advertising-man apparently had no intention of doing so. - -“We’ve all missed you on the lower floor,” he said. - -“Are there any changes?” - -“Very few.” - -“Who took my place?” - -“Man from outside. Mr. Rawter brought in the man--middle-aged. Mr. -Sproxley knew him, too.” - -“Poor devil,” said Bellair, but not audibly. They had not dared to -open the ledger revelations to any one in the office, but had found a -man outside who was doubtless familiar with such books, doubtless one -who had been deformed in the long, slow twistings of trade. Perhaps -this one had children. Children were good for Lot & Company’s most -trusted servants. It was well to have a number of children, like Mr. -Sproxley--for their wants are many, and a man’s soul cannot breathe in -the midst of many wants and small salary. - -“Are you coming over to the office?” - -“Yes, I find I have to. Some folks are taking the end Lot and Company -gave the newspapers about my leaving. They were very much in a hurry -about giving out that newspaper story--with the money in the vaults.” - -Broadwell regarded him seriously. “I suppose they took the point of -view that there could be but one motive for your leaving, without -giving notice. Most firms would----” - -“I wonder if most firms would?” Bellair asked. “Men have lapses other -than falling into thievery. At least a firm should look up the facts -in the case first. It’s a rather serious thing to charge a man with -departure with funds. For instance, the public will glance through the -details of such a charge, and miss entirely a denial afterward. Are you -under bond?” - -“No, I don’t handle company funds----” - -“Suppose you were--and one night you came to the end of your -rope--found you couldn’t go back--found it was a life or death -matter of your soul, whether you went back or not. Still you had -some salary coming and say a thousand dollars’ surety. You took this -amount exactly--salary and bond and interest to the dollar, and left -a note saying so, in place of the amount; also a note releasing to -your firm the amount of the bond and interest, and stating clearly the -item of salary--I say, would you expect to find yourself charged with -embezzlement in next day’s paper?” - -Broadwell’s shoulders straightened. - -“Not in next day’s paper,” he said, with a smile. - -Bellair did not miss the cut of this. - -“You think that my case was not like that exactly?” he asked. - -“I can’t see why a firm would give such a story to the press--unless -they uncovered a loss,” Broadwell said slowly. - -“Lot & Company couldn’t have uncovered a loss without looking in the -very place where my note was, which proved there was no loss. Lot & -Company couldn’t have collected my bond without proceedings--unless -they found my release of it. And the bond was collected.” - -“Then I can’t see any reason for incriminating--any one,” said -Broadwell. - -“Well, there was a reason--though the facts of my case are exactly as -stated. Lot & Company had a reason. I haven’t decided whether it will -be necessary to make that known.... But I didn’t bring you here to -discuss this affair. I wanted to see _you_----” - -Just then Mr. Broadwell was paged. A messenger was said to be waiting -for him in the lobby. - -“Send him in,” Broadwell said thoughtlessly. - -Davy Acton came, and Broadwell saw his error. Bellair perceived that -his luncheon-companion had made known his engagement at the office -before leaving.... - -“Sit down, Davy. I’m glad to see you----” - -The boy had grown. Bellair noted that simple thing, as he noted the -fact also that Davy was tortured with embarrassment, and had not meant -to come in. He wriggled his hand forward to take Bellair’s, which was -held toward his, and then looked down shamefacedly, as if _he_ had been -charged with theft. Bellair knew well that the boy’s trouble was how to -meet him--formerly a friend, but now an outcast from the firm. A kind -of darkness stole over him. He saw now that Broadwell believed him a -thief, even as the landlady had believed; but in the case of neither -of these did the dread finality come to him, as from the face of this -stricken boy. - -This was the thought that shot through Bellair’s mind, “No one liked -Davy so well as I did; no one tried to help him as I did; and now he -thinks my liking and my helping, a part of the looseness of character -which made me a thief.” - -The thought was strange, yet natural, too. It came into the darkness -which had covered the abode of Bellair’s consciousness. - - * * * * * - -“A bit of copy--that I missed getting off,” Broadwell was saying. “I -was excited when you called.... All right, Davy. I’ve told ’em where -to find it on the back of the note.... And now Bellair--you were -saying----” - - - 2 - -Bellair watched for the turn on the part of Broadwell that would reveal -the character of his message, for he did not believe the matter of the -copy for the printer. The chill was thick between them, yet Bellair -managed to say: - -“I’m not here for reprisal or trouble-making. It’s rather a novelty to -be innocent, yet charged with a thing; certainly one sees a look from -the world that could come no other way. I want to see you again--soon. -I’ve got a story to tell you. It was a big thing to me. We used to have -things in common. I’d like to tell you the story and see how it strikes -you----” - -“Good. I’m to spare----” - -“Suppose you come here to lunch to-morrow----” - -“No, you come with me.” - -“I’d prefer it the other way,” Bellair declared. “It’s my story you are -to listen to.” - -As they parted, there was just a trace of the old Broadwell, that left -Bellair with a feeling of kindness. - -“I’m interested to hear that story,” the advertising-man said. “It did -something to you apparently. Pulled you down a lot--but that’s not all. -I can’t make it out exactly--but you’ve got something, Bellair.” - -That was a long afternoon.... He had been gone less than six months; -and yet was as much a stranger, as a young man coming in from the West -for the first time. The hours dragged. The City did not awe him, but -so much of it struck him in places tender. He could give and give; -there seemed no other way, no other thing to do. He sat on a bench in -Union Square, and talked with an old man who needed money so badly -that Bellair reflected for some time the best way to bestow it without -shock. The old fellow looked so near gone, that one feared his heart -would break under any undue pressure of excitement. - -Bellair concluded he had better buy a stimulant first of all, so he -led the way across the Square to Kiltie’s. They lined up against the -bar, and warmed themselves, the idea in Bellair’s mind being to give -something beside money. Now the old man (not in the least understanding -more than it was the whim of the stranger to do something for him), -was so intent on what was to be done that he could not listen. Bellair -had to come to the point. They went to a table for a bite of lunch, and -the spectacle of a beggar’s mind opened--a story lacking imagination -and told with the pitiful endeavour to fit into what was imagined to be -the particular weakness of this listener. - -For months, Bellair had not touched the little orbit of the trodden -lives. The story was not true, for no single group of ten words hinged -upon what had been said, or folded into the next statement. The old -man was not simple, but his guile was simple, and the simplicity of -that was obscene. Begging might be a fine art, but men chose or fell -into their work without thought of making an art of it. The old man did -not know his own tremendous drama. Had he dared plainly to be true, he -would have captivated the world with his own poor faculties. Behind the -affectations were glimpses of great realities--if only the fallen mind -could accept his days and tell them as they came--just the imperishable -fruits of his days. As it was, the whiskey swept them farther away, -and the creature attempted to act; his pitiful conception of effects -were called into being. The throb of it all was the way the world was -brought back to Bellair. His whole past city life thronged into mind. -This was but a shocking example of myriads of lives--trying to be what -their undeveloped senses prompted for the moment, rather than to be -themselves. This was the salesman’s voice and manner, he had seen in -Broadwell.... He stopped his revery by handing over the present. - -The old man’s eyes were wild now with hope and anguish to get away; -a mingling of fear, too, lest the great sum of money in one piece be -counterfeit; lest the stranger ask it back, or some one knock him down -and take it away. - -“I sat in a small boat,” Bellair was saying, “for ten days, with very -little food and water. I saw one man die like a beast of thirst--or -fear of thirst; and I saw another man master it--so that he died -smiling--as only a man can die----” - -Bellair did not finish. He had tried to catch the old man’s attention -with this--to hold it an instant, thinking that some word would get -home, something of the immortal facts in his heart, something greater -than cash ... but the old man believed him insane, a liar, a fool or -all three. - -“Yes, yes,” he said, looking to the side, and to the door. - -So he could listen, neither before nor afterward. Bellair eased his -agony by letting him go--the money gripped in his hands, his limbs -hastening, eyes darting to the right and left, as he sped through the -swinging door.... For several moments, Bellair sat in the sorrow of -it--lost in the grimmest of all tragedies--that here we are, a human -family, all designed for lofty and majestic ends, yet having lost -the power to articulate to each other. Suddenly Bellair remembered -that the old face had looked into his for a swift second, when he was -released--shaken, ashen, a murmur of something like “God thank you,” -on the trembling lips. There was a bit of a ray in that.... Then -he settled back into the tragedy again. It was this--that the old -man had thought him insane for trying to help him; that he had seen -something foreign and altogether amiss in the landlady’s eyes, in Ben -Broadwell’s, and what was more touching to him, in Davy Acton’s. - -Bellair straightened his shoulders. The misery of the thing oppressed -him until he brought it to the laugh. Formerly he would have tried to -escape. It was not his business if the old man would not be helped; he -had tried. If a man can succeed in radiating good feelings and a spirit -of helpfulness, he has done his part; the consequences are out of his -hand. He saw that he had wanted to help; that what he had taken from -the open boat and from the woman had brought this impulse to the fore -in all his thinking. After that he must be an artist in the work; must -become consummate; but having done his best--he must not spend energy -in moods and personal depressions.... As for Lot & Company, he must -meet them on their own footings--forgetting everything but their points -of view. It was his business now to make a black spot clean, and it -was an ugly material matter to be coped with as such, calling forth -will-power and acumen of a world kind. He would see if he was to fail. - -Bellair’s laugh was hard at first, from the tensity of the temptation -to give up and let New York have its way in his case. Having whipped -that (and it was a fair afternoon’s work) the smile softened a little, -and he entered upon the task of the evening. - -... Brandt’s was just as he had left it. The crowd increased; the -quartette came. Bessie was lovely as ever; slightly different, since -he had thought of her so much in the old hat. She did not see him, -but her smile was like a flower of warmth and culture. A touch of the -old excitement mounted in his breast, as they sang.... This was New -York--among men--food and drink and warmth. This, too, was life; these -were men who toil every day, who cannot take months to dream in, who -cannot cross the sea and observe heroes and saints, but men who crowd -and toil and fight, even expire, for their pleasures--such were the -surgings of Bellair’s brain in the midst of the music. Bessie was the -arch of it all--the arch of the old home, New York,--not this Bessie, -but the Bessie that might be, the significant woman it was his work to -make and mould. He was living his own thoughts, as much as listening. -They vanished when the music stopped.... He sent a waiter to her with -this written on a blank card: - -“Will you sing _Maying_ for an old friend?” - -... The song choked the wanderer, and this was the new mystery of -_Maying_--that it left him at the stone gate of a door-yard beyond -windy Auckland.... - - * * * * * - -He sent forward a gift of flowers, and was in a daze when she came to -him and sat down. - -“I have only a few minutes. We sing once more and then go. How dark and -thin you look!” - -He wanted to see her after her work was done, but dared not ask until -other things were said.... There were words that left no impress, until -he heard himself saying: - -“I read the New York papers at sea----” - -“... The reporters came to me. I had told some one of seeing you. It -was just after I had read the news. It was new to me to have reporters -come--and somehow they got what they wanted----” - -“Oh, that didn’t matter. Only it was all unnecessary. My accounts there -were never other than straight.” - -She said she was glad. He saw she was more glad to drop the subject, -and didn’t exactly believe him. - -“And you’ve had luck away?” - -“Yes, in several ways--beside money.” - -It seemed necessary to add the last. He was struck with the shame and -pity of it; yet it had to do with seeing her again. - -“Are you going to be in New York long?” - -“I don’t know. I’d like to talk with you to-night, after you are -through. I might know better then--how long I am to stay.... Is it -possible?” - -“Yes--yes, I think so.” - -“When?” - -“After the _Castle_” - -“Thank you.” - -“I’m going to be given a chance--in two weeks--a real chance,” she -declared. “I’ll tell you later.” - -He tried to make himself believe that it was just as it had been; that -Bessie was the same, the meaning of New York and the fortune that had -come to him. How could she sing so, if it were not true? - -“The formal try-out is two weeks from to-day,” she added. “The rest -is done. It’s the chance for life--one of the leads with the _King -Follies_ for next season. They’ve already heard me. I need to do no -more, than has been done?” - -“Just singing?” - -“There are many lines and some dancing--oh, it’s a chance to storm the -piece--if I can.” - -She enlarged and detailed the promise; Bellair forgot many things he -had to say. - -“Is that all you want, Bessie?” - -“What?” - -“This chance.” - -Her brows knit with irritation. It was her high tide, and he did not -seem able to rise with it. Still she dared not be angry with him. - -“Don’t you see--it’s everything?” - -“A good salary, I suppose?” - -“Oh, yes----” - -“And you are all fixed for it?” - -“All but clothes--the old struggle. You helped me wonderfully before.” - -“Perhaps I could help you again?” - -“Oh, could you?” She was joyousness aflame--her whole nature winging -about him. - -Deep within, he was empty and bleak and cold. He wanted to give her -money, but somehow could not make it easy for her. It cheapened him in -his own eyes.... He was silent--his thoughts having crossed the world. -There is no one to explain the sentence that ran through his mind, “... -_who buys wine for the Japanese girls in Dunedin, since Norcross was -conscripted in the service we all shall know?_” - -“... But what am I to do for you,” he heard the girl inquire, “since -you are--not going away to-night?” - -He quaked at the old recall. Perhaps he had forgotten a little how to -be sharp and city-wise; at least, he did not make himself clear at -once. - -“You have your mornings, don’t you, Bessie?” - -“Not if I’m to have new clothes. That’s morning work----” - -“There’s so much to say. I’ve thought about you in a lot of strange -places----” - -She leaned forward and said with a pitiful quiet, “Once, you only -wanted me to be good.” - -Then it dawned on him. “Good God, Bessie,” he cried, “I don’t want you -to be bad!” - -She regarded him, playing with the stem of her glass, as of old time. A -curious being he was to her, and quite inexplicable. - -“You love me?” she asked. - -The bass now beckoned, and she fled. - - - 3 - -Bellair saw that one may have a gift from heaven, a superb -singing-voice, for instance, but that one must also furnish the thought -behind it. It was not that Bessie Brealt lacked ambition; in fact, -she had plenty of that, but it was the sort that cannot wait for real -results. She did not see the great singer; she had not a thought to -give with her song. She had not the emotions upon which a great organ -of inspiration might be built with the years. Already she was touched -with the world; the world stirred her desires; matters of first -importance in her mind were the things she wanted. - -She was not different from the thousands, from the millions, in this. -He had not altogether lost the conviction that she might be made -different. Already she was singing too much; her voice would never -reach its full measure under these conditions. She would suffer the -fate of the countless high-bred colts that are ruined by being raced -too young, being denied the right to sound maturity. She should have -been out of the life-struggle for years yet; in the country, in the -perfect convent of natural life. She had not answered the true call, -but meanwhile a call had come; its poison had entered. Bellair saw that -the process before him, if any, was to break before building.... If -consummate art were used, might not Bessie be helped to conceive the -great career? Of course that thought must come first. However, he was -far from believing that any art of his could be consummate.... Speaking -that night of her new opportunity, he said: - -“They will rehearse you a great deal--then performances twice a -day--and you’re not more than twenty----” - -“Just twenty----” - -“You should be forty--before giving your voice so much work----” - -She laughed. “Forty, I will doubtless be finished. Forty, and before, -the fat comes----” - -“People can forget fat--when a great voice is singing----” - -“The great voices have sung from children,” she answered. - -He believed this untrue; at least, he believed that with conservation, -a more sumptuous power was attainable. “They have sung naturally -perhaps, but not professionally. If they were called into the stress -of life very young, any greatness afterward was in spite of the early -struggle, not because of it. The voice is an organ that wears out. It -is not the same as the character which improves through every test. If -you were to spend ten years in study--ten years, not alone in vocal -culture, but in life preparation and the culture of happiness----” - -“I suppose you would have me give up this chance with the _Follies_?” -she asked with the control that suggests imminent fracture. - -“Yes. There is nothing that passes so quickly--as the voice of a -season. It is the plaything of a people without memory. If you had -ever listened to the best of the light opera singers, in contrast to a -really developed talent----” - -But this was not the way. Bellair finished the sentence vaguely, not -with the sharpness of the idea that had come to him. She was nervous -and irritable and tired. She was enduring him, much as one endures a -brother from the country, for whom allowances must be made; also there -was a deeper reason. - -“Perhaps what I think of you,” he said, stirring to thrill her some way -if possible, “is really a fiery thing, Bessie. I think of you singing -great hordes of creatures into unity of idea that would lift them from -beasts into men. The world is so full of sorrow and dulness of seeing; -the world is in a cloud--I want you to sing the clouds away. If you -could wait--just wait, as one holding a sure and perfect gift--until -the real call comes to you, and then sing, knowing your part, not -in pleasure and amusement, but in life, in the stirring centres of -struggle and strife. If you would go forth singing that great song -of yours--from your soul! It would be like a voice from the East--to -bring the tatters of humanity together. I felt all this vaguely when I -first heard you--six months ago. I have thought of it nights and days -on the ocean--in times when we had to live on our thoughts, hold fast -to them or go mad, for we had two days’ water for ten, and two days’ -food for ten. Then I remembered how I came into Brandt’s, torn that -night, not knowing what to do--dull-eyed and covered with wrongs. You -sang me free. For the minute you sang me out of all that. I could not -have freed myself perhaps--without that song. I know that there are -thousands of men like me to be freed----” - -Bellair felt on sure ground now. This was his particular manner and -message--the finest and strangest thing about him--the fact that -had always appeared, making him different even from Fleury and the -woman,--the thought that he was average--and not more impressionable -than the multitudes. If they could be reached, they would make the big -turn that he had been shoved into. - -“... Thousands just as I was that night, preyed upon by trade, -dull-witted with the ways of trade, the smug, the bleak, the poisonous -tricks of trade, born and bred--their real life softened and watered -and wasted away ... thousands who could turn into men at the right -song, the right word. I always thought of you, Bessie--as one of the -great helpers. If you can wait, the way will come. I will help you to -wait. I came back to New York to help you----” - -She picked up his glass and smelled it, her eyes twinkling. “Splendid,” -she said, “but are you quite sure you haven’t a stick in this -ginger-ale?” - -Bellair leaned back. He hadn’t touched _it_ yet. Perhaps something -would come, better than words. It was not straight-going--this work -that he had dreamed; always a shock in bringing down dreams from Sinai; -always something deadly in meeting the empirical. He smiled. “Just -ginger-ale, Bessie, but you are a stimulant. You are more beautiful -than before. Not quite so girlish, but there is something new that is -very intense to me----” - -She leaned toward him now, very eager. - -“I wondered what you would see. The difference was plain at once in -you.... Tell me what you see----” - -“Just between the fold of the eye and the point of the chin----” he -answered.... (Queerly now he imagined himself talking on the shore to -the little Gleam; it gave him just the touch that helped.) “--a little -straightening of the oval, and the little puff at the mouth-corners -drawn out. Why, Bessie, it’s just the vanishing child. And you are -taller. I’m almost afraid to speak--to try to put it into words, how -pretty you are----” - -She was elate and puzzled, too. “Where did you get anything like that?” -she asked. “It’s what made me remember before. Always when you get -through preaching--you pay for it----” - -It was out before she thought--yet for once the exact unerring thing -that was in her mind. - -He treasured it; saw that his appeal was certain this way; that he must -be of the world, and right glib to master her. The way of reality was -slow; he must never fail to pay for preaching.... They laughed, and -the weariness went from her eyes. The bloom of her health was at its -height. Now as Bellair watched her, thinking of the world-ways, she -suddenly swept home to him--the old forbidden adventure of her, the -meaning of money and nights, her homelessness, the city, the song, the -price she would pay if he demanded it. - -The thing was upon him before he realised. It had all been the new -Bellair until now. His body had lain as if in a vault of wax, its -essential forces in suspension. Suddenly without warning, the wax -had melted away. He did not instantly give battle to the gust of -desire--met it eye-to-eye. Bellair felt his own will, and knew he -would use it presently. He was rather amazed at the power of the thing -as it struck him, and the nature of it, so utterly detached from the -redolence and effulgence he had known in the Stone House. This was -not the old Hunting Companion who had come with garlands; a minkish -aborigine, this, who had come empty-handed, whose hands were out to be -filled. - -The meaning of all that Stackhouse had left in wallets and sea-girt -archipelagoes was in this sullen-eyed entity--in the _O_ formed of -thirsting lips. Bellair tried to check it before it came--the thought -that this was peculiarly a New York manifestation, one destined to be -Bessie Brealt’s familiar in future years.... He did not have to use his -will. He lost himself in thinking of her plight. - -“... Please bring the coffee,” she was saying to the waiter, her hand -lifted, as if she would touch his sleeve, the familiarity of one who -had sung here many nights. “Yes, he will have coffee. He is merely away -somewhere.... Yes, we will have it smoked with cognac--but here--do it -here. I like to see it burn....” - -“Very well, Miss Brealt----” - -The lights had all come back to Bellair. He was miserable--the -adventure palled. There had been no lift, nor tumultuous carrying away. -The quick change chilled him. Her words one by one had chilled him.... -At least, he had demanded a madness to-night. Bessie did not have the -wine of madness in her veins. This much had been accomplished. He could -not break training coldly.... And now he felt as if the day had drained -him to the heart, as if the day had come to an end, and he must rest. - -He turned to her. “I found a little check-book for you to-day, but -you must go to the bank and give them your signature. It is made of -leather, small enough for your purse almost. The bank-book is with it. -You will find a little account started.... And now I will call a cab -for you----” - -“But your coffee----” she said. - -“Yes, we will have that----” - -He had to get away for a moment. His heart was desolate with hunger.... -The smell of the kitchen made him think of the galley of a ship.... - - * * * * * - -“Oh, what can I do for you?” Bessie asked, when he returned. - -“It’s what you can do for yourself that interests me----” - -“But I must go with the _Follies_--if I win. It’s the career--the -beginning!” - -“If you must.” - -“And when shall I see you?” - -“Here to-morrow night--if you will.” - -“Yes,” she said eagerly. - - - 4 - -On the way to Lot & Company’s the next morning Bellair smiled at the -sense of personal injustice which had returned to him. He held fast to -a sort of philosophical calm, but permitted his energy to be excited by -a peculiar blending of contempt and desire to wring the truth from Lot -& Company at any price. - -Suddenly he stopped. Lot & Company was merely something to master. Lot -& Company was but an organised bit of the world which he had met; all -men had their own organisations to face, to comprehend the vileness -and illusion of, and then to get underfoot, neck and other vitals.... -Bessie had helped him. There was something in that.... He felt the -fighting readiness within him, and an added warning not to raise his -voice. He must deal with Lot & Company on the straight low plane of -what-was-wanted. That was the single level of the firm’s understanding. - -Davy Acton smiled at him shyly--the first face after the pale -telephone-miss at the door. Davy was more at home in these halls and -floors than in the hotel dining-room. Bellair heard the jovial voice -of Mr. Rawter behind his partition. From the distance, Broadwell -glanced up and waved at him. Mr. Sproxley’s black eyes were fixed in -his direction from behind the grating of his cage. Mr. Sproxley came -forward, greeted him and returned. Bellair had asked to see the elder -Mr. Wetherbee, but it appeared that Mr. Seth was not in. - -“I’ll speak with Mr. Nathan Lot,” said Bellair. - -“Mr. Lot is occupied.” - -“Mr. Jabez then.” - -Mr. Jabez came forth presently.... He had been married in the interval, -according to Broadwell; the fact had touched the wide, limp mouth. A -very rich girl had joined pastures with Jabez; so that this coming -forward was one of the richest young men in New York, representing -the fortune of his mother which the dreaming Nathan had put into -works; representing the fortune he had recently wedded with or without -dreaming, and also the Lot & Company millions. Mr. Jabez also stood -for the modern note of the firm; he was designed to bring the old and -prosperous conservatism an additional new and up-to-the-hour force of -suction.... Mr. Jabez smiled. - -“Hello, Bellair,” he said with a careless regard,--doubtless part of -the modern method, the laxity of new America which knows no caste. The -thought had formed about him something to this effect: “What’s the use -of me carrying it--you will not be able to forget you are talking to -forty millions?” - -“Come in,” he added and Bellair followed. - -Mr. Nathan was beyond the partition. The atmosphere of the dreamer had -looped over into the son’s sanctum.... Bellair began at the point of -his handing the letter, addressed to Mr. Nathan, to the station-porter -at the last moment from the platform of the Savannah Pullman. - -“But mails don’t miscarry,” said Mr. Jabez, impatiently. - -“That’s a fact. Perhaps mine wasn’t mailed. Of course,” he added -quietly, “you didn’t require that letter. You had my note of release in -the safe. They say at the Trust company that you collected the thousand -dollars and interest within four days after I left.” - -“Suppose every employé who has a deposit of faith--should tie us up -that way?” - -“It would be well to find out what he has done--before calling in the -police.” - -“What do you want, Bellair?” - -Mr. Jabez could hold his temper, when its display was an inconvenience. - -“I want a paper signed by you for Lot & Company, stating that you were -in error when you charged me with absconding with company funds; that -my accounts were afterward found to be entirely correct.” - -Jabez Lot surveyed him. There was some change which he did not -understand. The paper asked for, was a mere matter of dictation, a -thing that might be forced from the firm. He believed, however, that -Bellair wanted something else. - -“I think the wisest plan for us will be to turn your case over to our -attorney,” he said. - -“Why?” Bellair asked. The full episode of the Nubian File and Mr. -Prentidd passed through his mind. - -“You see these affairs are adjusted better out of the office----” - -“Why?” - -“As a matter of fact, Bellair,” Mr. Jabez said patiently, “Lot & -Company is eager to make amends for its mistake----” - -There was a slow, quiet cough, the most natural and thoughtless sort of -cough from the inner office. Bellair wondered if the modern method of -Mr. Jabez was wearing a bit upon the dreamer, or if he were really lost -in some inscrutable departure of mind. - -“That would seem natural,” said he. “It would seem the direct, clear -way. I am not boisterous; I threaten nothing.” - -Bellair knew that this reminder of the Prentidd episode did not -help his cause, but he wished nothing to be lost from the force he -possessed. At the same time, he knew that it was the policy of Lot & -Company to give nothing unforced. He was interested. - -“We hadn’t thought of it, of course,” the future head now said, “but I -have no doubt that Lot & Company has something as good for you as your -old place, if you----” - -“But I do not want a position,” said Bellair. - -“What is it you want--again?” - -“I want a paper, saying that I stole nothing, that Lot & Company was in -error in charging me with taking funds----” - -“A sort of explanation of our course?” - -“Not exactly--a statement of your course, and that you incriminated me -unjustly----” Bellair spoke with slow clearness. - -“I really believe you had better see Mr. Jackson.” - -“Why?” - -“Because this is most unusual----” - -Another cough was heard. - -“Unusual--to straighten out a wrong that has hurt a man?” - -“The way you ask it. Lot & Company is willing to take you back----” - -“But I do not want to come back. You say that Lot & Company is eager to -make amends----” - -Davy Acton came in, saying that Mr. Jabez was called to the advertising -department for a moment.... To Bellair this was like an interruption -of an interesting story, but he did not wait long. The scene was merely -shifted. He was in Mr. Nathan’s room. Mr. Rawter joined them and Mr. -Jabez returned directly. The latter reopened the conversation by -relating justly and patiently what Bellair asked. - -“I don’t see why he shouldn’t have such a paper,” said Mr. Nathan, -brushing his fingers through his hair, as if to force his thoughts -down. He was not a whit older. The same identical dandruff was upon his -shoulders. - -Mr. Rawter laughed jovially: “Don’t you see? That’s just it. -Individually, that is exactly the situation--but a big house--all its -ramifications affected--and who’s to be responsible for Lot & Company -as a whole?” - -“It was Lot & Company that incriminated me,” said Bellair. - -“I told Mr. Bellair----” Mr. Jabez began. - -“Mr. Bellair had better come back to the House--that in itself is our -acknowledgement,” interrupted his father. Evidently the son was not yet -finished in training. - -Bellair turned to Mr. Jabez, who explained the point of Bellair’s -unwillingness to return. There was silence at this, as if it were -entirely incomprehensible. - -“Have you taken a position elsewhere in New York?” Mr. Nathan asked. - -“No.” - -“Are you going to?” - -“On that--I cannot be sure.” - -Mr. Rawter now arose and came forward, placing his arm across Bellair’s -shoulder. The latter winced, but not physically. For an instant it had -fired and fogged him. “Bellair, my boy, on the face of it--this that -you ask would seem very simple,” he began. “I would ask it in your -case, but think of us. By misunderstanding, we let out the fact that -you had gone with funds not your own.... You were away. We looked for -you everywhere before this happened----” - -“You let it out,” said Bellair. “It is very simple. Call it in -again----” - -“It isn’t so simple.” - -“I might come back to work for you,” Bellair added, “and those who -knew would say, ‘He hadn’t anything. Instead of locking him up, Lot & -Company took him back to work out what he had taken----’” - -“I might give you a personal letter, saying I was very sorry, that in -the bewilderment of the moment, we jumped at the conclusion that you -were identified with the missing funds----” - -“But the funds were not missing. You could not look into the vault-box -without finding my letter.” - -“Our funds were not all in that box, Bellair.” - -“They would know by next morning, if I had broken into your bank----” - -Mr. Nathan appeared to be gone from them, his eyes softened with -visions. - -“Write him the letter, Mr. Rawter----” suggested Mr. Jabez. - -It struck Bellair like a hated odour--this tool for unclean work, -Rawter’s part in the establishment. He did not hasten now, though he -knew they were waiting for his answer. The head of the sales resumed: - -“Yes, I will do this gladly--in fact, it would relieve my mind to do -this in the most cordial terms, but I would be interested first in -learning just what disposition of it was intended----” - -“It would be mine,” said Bellair. “Of course, I should use it as I -thought fit.” - -“I was thinking--in adjusting the tone of the letter, the wording, you -know----” - -“Adjust the tone--the wording--to the facts--that would seem best. But -I would not accept such a letter from you personally. It would have to -be written for Lot & Company----” - -Mr. Nathan now showed signs of coming back. - -“Let us have a day to think it over, Bellair,” he said. - -“In that case--my part is finished. I have asked to be lifted out of -a shameful position. You acknowledge that I have this lift coming.” -It was at this point that an inspiration arrived. “All that there is -left, naturally and equitably, is for you to do your part. A man’s name -is of more importance than a firm’s name, and in any event, no man nor -firm was ever hurt by squaring a crooked action.” - -Mr. Nathan appeared to welcome the slight heat of this remark. It -brought the moment nearer in which hands might be washed and the -attorney summoned. But Bellair was not heated, Mr. Rawter fumed a -little. - -“What do you mean by a man’s name being more important than a firm’s -name?” he demanded. - -“A firm shares its responsibility. A man shoulders it alone.” - -“And what do you mean by your part being finished?” - -“I have worked in this office five years,” Bellair answered. “I never -saw nor heard of a man in my position, or in a similar position of -asking something, who profited by allowing delay. I will put the matter -out of mind if the letter is not furnished to-day. Of course, I expect -to get it. In fact, I have the pressure to force the issue--although it -seems trivial for me to mention it.” - -Bellair had thought of Mr. Prentidd again. There was doubtless a case -of some kind pending on the matter of the Nubian File. Mr. Prentidd was -no man to stop. It would not have been settled within six months. Lot -& Company knew of his knowledge of this affair. Bellair plunged: - -“In fact, there is a case against Lot & Company, to which I might add -a singular weight of testimony. As for my own, it would go to the same -counsel----” - -Mr. Nathan ruffled his hair and the silent fall of grey white dust -followed. Bellair felt pent. After so long a time at sea, it was hard -for him to breathe in this place. He wearied now of the game, although -Mr. Nathan was palpably down, present in the material plane. - -“Bellair,” said he, turning about in his chair, “the added pressure -of a discredited employé doesn’t count for much as testimony in any -case----” - -“I realised at once the reason why you discredited me--to cripple for -the time being any knowledge I might care to use against you. However, -you have all granted that I am not discredited. The only item mentioned -in the charge was the item covered by the Trust company. You would have -to work with Mr. Sproxley to show a deficit in the books having to do -with my departure----” - -“Bellair,” said Mr. Nathan, “a poor man can never win a suit against a -strongly backed firm----” - -“That is unfortunately true,” said Bellair, “but I am not poor. I came -into an inheritance during the past six months. The fact is, I think -I could spend as much money to buy justice as Lot & Company would be -willing to spend to prevent it.” - -“Bellair,” said Mr. Nathan, “you will find it impossible to move the -press in your behalf against the firm of Lot & Company, with our -advertising contracts among the valuable ones in the city lists----” - -Knowledge now counted. “You do not advertise in the _Record_,” he -declared. “I have often heard from the advertising department that -there is a rupture between this office and that paper, dating over a -quarter of a century----” - -Mr. Nathan touched a button for his stenographer. She lit upon the -little chair beside him like a winged seed. - - * * * * * - -“To all Parties interested: Mr. Bellair left our employ suddenly and -without furnishing customary warning,” the president dictated. “Finding -a certain explanation in the vault, instead of a sum slightly over one -thousand dollars belonging to this firm, we hastily assumed that his -sudden departure was energised by the usual conditions. In fact, such -a suspicion was stated to the press by this firm. We have since found -Mr. Bellair’s accounts to be correct in every detail, and we furnish -this letter to express in part our concern for Mr. Bellair’s character -which our hasty conclusion impinged upon. Mr. Bellair left a letter -of explanation in the vault, but his action in leaving abruptly and -without explanation forced us on the spur of the moment to discredit -it. However, the statement of his letter proved true, and the money -taken by Mr. Bellair was the exact amount of his surety bond, with -stipulated interest, and his salary to the hour of departure.” - - * * * * * - -“You have heard it?” Mr. Nathan inquired. - -“Yes, it will do,” said Bellair. - -The president nodded to his stenographer, who whisked out. “It will -be ready in a moment,” he said. “I will sign it for Lot & Company.... -Bellair, are you sure you don’t want your old desk back?” - -“Quite sure,” said Bellair. - -Mr. Jabez and Mr. Rawter had departed. Bellair glanced at his watch. -It was a moment past the hour of Mr. Broadwell’s leaving for luncheon. -The advertising-man, of course, was aware of his presence in the lower -office. Bellair stepped out, however, to make sure of his appointment. -Broadwell, hat in hand, was engaged in talk with Mr. Jabez. Bellair -returned to the office of the president to wait for the stenographer. -Not more than two minutes later, Davy Acton came in with this message: - - “Mighty sorry to call luncheon off. Am hurrying to catch a train for - Philadelphia for the rest of the day. Will see you later.--Broadwell.” - -... Bellair folded this thoughtfully. The stenographer brought the -letter with copy. The front draft was approved for signature, and -Bellair’s morning work accomplished. - -In the hall he met Davy Acton, and followed a quick impulse. - -“Davy, lad, how soon will you be ready to go out to lunch?” - -“In about three minutes----” - -“I’ll wait for you. I’m going your way.” - -Davy’s customary exit was the side-door. Bellair waited there -accordingly. The girls were coming down the iron stairway from the -bindery. He stepped back in the shadow to let them pass. There were -figures and faces that clutched at his throat.... And then a story -began, half way up the first flight, and came nearer and nearer, the -voice carrying easily to one who listened with emotion: - -“Did you know that Mr. Bellair was back?... Bellair, the absconding -clerk--Mr. Sproxley’s assistant. Lot & Company has refused to -prosecute. He will not be arrested.... And think of his nerve--asking -his old position back----” - -... They saw merely the back of a man, if they saw him at all. The talk -was not interrupted on the way to the street and beyond.... Bellair -came up with a start to find the boy at his side. - - - 5 - -For a square or two, Davy Acton walking beside him, Bellair did not -speak. He had needed that last bit. The morning would have blurred his -hard-earned knowledge of Lot & Company and the world, without that -moment under the iron stairs. It was hard to take, but a man mustn’t -forget such realities as this. He loses his grip on the world when he -forgets. Happy to lose, of course, but the point of his effectiveness -is gone when these rock-bottom actualities are forgotten.... He looked -down, Davy was hopping every third step to keep up. Bellair had -quickened his pace to put the stench of the swamp farther behind him, -but it was still in his nostrils.... He laughed. - -“I was thinking, Davy, and the thoughts were like spurs. We’re in no -hurry, really.” - -He would not take the boy to a stately and formal dining-room for him -to be embarrassed. Bellair felt that he had something very precious -along; a far graver solution than luncheon with Broadwell. They sat -down at a little table in the corner of one of the less crowded -restaurants. As they waited, Bellair said, drawing out the paper he had -received from the dreaming Mr. Nathan: - -“I want you to see this first. In fact, I was particularly concerned -about getting it, just to show you. Davy, it hit me like a rock--the -way you looked at me in the hotel yesterday. I couldn’t have that. -We’ve been too good friends----” - -Davy read the letter carefully, deep responsibility upon his -understanding. - -“Did you have trouble getting it?” he asked finally. - -“It took the forenoon, Davy. I found that they had not taken the -trouble to tell my old friends on the different floors that I was not a -thief. What was worse for me, they let you think so----” - -“I wouldn’t believe it at first,” said Davy. - -“I’m glad of that.” - -“I said to Mr. Broadwell, that they’d find out differently and be -sorry. They didn’t let us know when they found out----” - -“That’s why it was important for me to come back----” - -“But why did you go away like that?” - -The boy’s mind dwelt in the fine sense of being treated as an equal. -Bellair felt called upon to be very explicit and fair: - -“I came to the time when I couldn’t live with myself any longer--and -stay in the cage with Mr. Sproxley. I saw a ship in the harbour the -Sunday before--a sailing-ship,” he began, and then made a picture of -it; also of his own hopelessness and what the years would mean, not -touching specific dishonesties, but suggesting the atmosphere which -had suddenly become poisonous to him. He did not forget that Davy had -no other place, that he must keep a certain sense of loyalty, or be -destroyed in such conditions. - -“It would have taken two weeks to get clear in the ordinary way,” he -added. “My decision came the day of the squabble with Mr. Prentidd in -the office. I had to leave right then--was off for Savannah that very -night----” - -“And you found the ship there?” Davy asked eagerly. - -“I beat her there a day and a half. Then we sailed for South America. I -want to tell you the whole story. This is not the place. Could you come -up in my room after supper to-night?” - -“I think my mother will let me come----” - -“Tell me about your mother, Davy. Is she well? I remember I meant to -meet her some time.” - -“Yes--just the same. You know she works a little, too----” - -“Where?” Bellair asked absently. - -Davy swallowed, and before he spoke, the man saw with a queer thrill -that the boy hadn’t yet learned to lie. - -“Well, she goes out three days a week--to do the laundry work--for -people who have had her a long time.” - -“Oh, I see.” - -“I’m hoping to get where she won’t have to.” - -“Of course.” - -The dinner was brought. Bellair tried to make up for the place--in -quantity. Neither spoke for the present. The man was hungry, too. - -“I’m glad you told me that,” he said after a time, “glad you told me -just that way.” - -Davy applied himself further. Manifestly here was a point that he need -not follow. - -“Davy, you’ll come through. You’re starting in the right hard way--the -old-fashioned way. It won’t be so slow as you think----” He was -reminded now of what Fleury had said about the little Gleam that first -night in the open boat. - -“Slow but sure at Lot & Company’s--if a fellow does his part and works -hard----” - -Davy was being brought up in the usual way. - -Bellair said: “I’m coming over to see you at your house some evening -soon--if I may.” - -“Sure.... It isn’t much of a house.” - -“I’m not so certain about that. Anyway, I want to come. We’ll talk -about it again this evening. You ask your mother when she’ll let me----” - -“You might come to-night---instead of me coming to the hotel----” - -“No, I want to talk with you alone.” - -Davy looked relieved.... He was on his way presently, and the town -appeared better to Bellair that afternoon. At five he was in the -hotel-lobby when a hand plucked his sleeve and he looked down into the -whitest, most terrified face, he had ever seen. - -“I’m fired!” was the intelligence that came up from it, and there was -reproach, too. - -“Come on upstairs, but first take it from me that you’ll be glad of it, -in ten minutes----” - -Bellair had to furnish a swift, heroic antidote for that agony. - -“You haven’t been home, of course?” the man asked in the elevator. - -“No.” - -“Could we send a messenger to your mother--so she wouldn’t worry, and -you wouldn’t have to go home until after we talk?” - -“Yes.” - -“All right, I’ll see to that at once.” - -Davy wrote with trembling hands. The messenger was asked to bring an -answer from Mrs. Acton. - -“Now tell me,” said Bellair. - -“Old Mr. Seth was down when I got back. You know he only comes down for -an hour or two now in the middle of the day. He called me to him, and -asked where I had been to lunch. I said with you. That was all, until -four o’clock, when Mr. Eben came to me and asked if you had shown me -anything--a letter from Lot & Company, for instance. I said yes. He -went away, and at half-past four, he called me again, handed me my -weekly envelope, saying that they would not need me any longer. I came -right here. It seemed, I couldn’t go home----” - -“Davy, lad, I’m glad I’m not broke, but if I were and couldn’t do a -thing to make up--it would be a lucky day for you.” - -Bellair ordered supper served in the room. They were free and alone. -Faith returned to the boy, enough for the hour. Davy was consulted -carefully upon the details of the order, a subtle suggestion from -Bellair from time to time. Something of the long dinners on the _Jade_ -had come to his mind in this rôle. He had learned much about food that -voyage, the profundity and emptiness of the subject. Bellair told his -story, making it very clear to Davy--this at first: - -“The office was doing to me just what it would do to you, Davy. It -was breaking me down. The floors of Lot & Company are filled with -heart-broken men. They do not know it well; some of them could -never know, but there are secrets in the breasts of men there, that -you wouldn’t dream of. It is so all over New York. Trade makes it -so--offices, the entire city, crowded with heart-broken men.... They -say first, ‘Why, every one is out for himself and the dollar--why -not I?’ You and I were taught so in our little schooling. Then Lot -& Company taught us. They are old masters--generations of teachers. -Cramped and bleak, but loyal to the one verb--_get_. In all the Lot -family, Davy, there is not a true life principle such as you brought -to the office in the beginning. But if Lot & Company were unique--they -would be an interesting study. The city is crowded with such -firms--heart-breakers of men, the slow, daily, terrible grind; every -movement, every expression, a lie--until to those inside, the lie is -reality--and the truth a forbidden and terrible stranger. Every man has -his Lot & Company. - -“Davy, I breathed a bit of open that Sunday--so that I could see, but -the next morning it closed about me again. It was Mr. Prentidd who -helped me out. They stole from him and lied to him. Face to face, eye -to eye, old Seth Wetherbee, the Quaker, lied to him, taking hundreds -of dollars in the lie--millionaires taking hundreds of dollars from -a poor inventor. I had the book of the London transaction before me, -which showed the truth as they talked, and Mr. Sproxley came and took -the book from me, and shut it in the safe.... And then when I left, -they knew I had their secrets. You wondered why they called me a -thief, when I was not. It was plain, Davy, to spoil anything I might -say about their methods. Instantly they discredited me, because I was -one of six or seven in the office who knew that they were thieves and -liars. And why did they fire you to-day for lunching with me? Because -they were afraid of what I might have told you. And why did they -send Broadwell to Philadelphia when they knew he was to have lunch -with me? For fear of what I might tell Broadwell. Even now they will -not tell the different floors that I am exonerated.... But they are -afraid, Davy--that’s their hell. That is their life--fear and the lie. -Imagine men standing straight up to heaven--spines lifted from the -ground, but going back to the ground--who knows but their souls already -belly-down?--because they break the hearts of men, and live with fear -and the lie.” - -He told of Fleury and Stackhouse and the Faraway Woman--of McArliss, -of striking the reef, and day by day in the open boat.... Davy’s eyes -bulged. The boy saw Stackhouse at one end and quiet manhood in the -other. He sat with Bellair, whom he could understand, in the point -of balance between these forces. Bellair told of the stars and the -child, and the distance from which they viewed the little things of -the world and the grand simplicity of God. He pictured the man Fleury -had become--the straight-seeing, the fearless, the ignited man, who -mastered the lie in his heart and the animal in his abdomen--the man -he, Bellair, wanted to be, and wanted Davy to be.... The _Formahaut_ -came, with Spika agleam to the northward, and Fleury died--the picture -in his mind of a man, rising rather than falling.... Bellair told him -of the first moment he heard the real voice of Fleury, as he stood -on the tilted deck of the _Jade_ in the dark, while he went back for -water.... “I’ll hold a place for you!” - -“A real man always says that, Davy. A real man will hold a place for -you. And I thought, as I saw Stackhouse die and remembered his life, -that he was the saddest and most terrible animal in human form. He -was a glutton and a coward, but mainly he broke his own heart and not -others. He was a slave to his stomach, but there was life, not creeping -death, in his mind. I saw the pictures that moved there, low, vivid -pictures, animal dreams, but he was not a destroyer of children or a -breaker of the hearts of men. Low Nature was loose in him, but it was -not a predatory instinct alone. Having enough, he could give. He could -give fifty thousand dollars and a wallet full of valuable papers for -a bottle of whiskey--but the Lots and the Wetherbees would have died -clutching their money. I learned Stackhouse, Davy--only to understand -that there is a depth below his. I think I should have taken you out -somehow--if they hadn’t let you go----” - -Davy asked questions, and the story came better and better. The thing -that held him especially was the last days in the open boat. - -“And did you really suffer less when you decided to make it a fast?” - -“Yes, that was true in my case. Many have set out to fast ten days, and -done with as little as we did. Of course it was harrowing, because we -didn’t know when it would end; then the little baby was there, and the -mother.” - -“And you think _he_ was really as happy as he said?” - -“Davy, lad, Fleury was a prince. He would have given you his shirt. He -had himself going so strong _for us_--that the fire of happiness ran -through him. I’ll give you some books about that. It’s really a fact. -You can’t suffer pain, when you’ve got something really fine up your -sleeve for another. Perhaps you’ve felt it at Christmas----” - -“You’re all out of yourself-like----” - -“That’s it,” said the man. - -More words would have stuck in his throat. Davy got it--got something -of it. Bellair had come to ask so little, that this seemed a great -deal.... He followed Davy down and into the street. It was still two -hours before he was due at the _Castle_. - -“How long does it take to get to your house, Davy?” - -“About twenty-five minutes. It’s ’way down town.” - -“Suppose I should go home and meet your mother. I have the time----” - -“Yes, come with me. She will be watching.” - -They passed a delicatessen-store, ripe cherries in the window, and a -counter full of provisions that would have been far more thrilling had -they not dined so well. - -“Do you suppose we might take home an armful of these things?” Bellair -asked. - -Davy dissuaded weakly.... That clerk must have thought him mad, for -Bellair merely pointed to bottles and jars and baskets--until they were -both loaded. There was a kind of passion about it for the man. He hated -to stop; in fact did not, until it occurred to him that this was not -the last night of the world, and that Davy doubtless required many more -substantial matters, which would furnish a rapturous forenoon among the -stores--to-morrow forenoon.... - -They sat in an almost empty downtown subway train, their bundles about -them, the stops called by the guard. They both hunched a little, when -the stop nearest Lot & Company’s was called, but did not speak. Farther -and farther downtown--the last passengers leaving. It was the hour the -crowds move upward. Strange deep moments for Bellair--moments in which -this was more than Davy sitting beside him. This was Boy--Davy Acton -but the symbol of a great need. - - - 6 - -A hurried walk to the east with their bundles to a quarter that Bellair -had not known before, past the great stretches of massive buildings -which the day had abandoned, to a low and older sort that carried on a -night-life of their own, where children cried, halls were narrow, and -the warmth became heaviness.... A plump little woman who had not lost -hope (she did not see the stranger at first because the boy filled her -eyes); a dark, second-floor hall, a little room with a lamp and a red -table-cloth; a door at either end, and opposite the door they entered, -one window.... How bewildered she was with the bundles, desiring to -prepare something for them right away. Indeed, it would have helped her -to be active in their behalf.... Bellair was smiling. - -Davy told part and Bellair part. Presently all was forgotten in the -presence of the calamity that had befallen. It was slow to change her -mind about Lot & Company. Davy had impressed upon her for two years -the lessons administered there. Not to be changed in a moment, this -estimate--that before all poverty, before all need, and above all hope, -a place at Lot & Company’s was a permanent place, “if a fellow did his -part”--that Lot & Company was an honest house. Davy told of the paper -Mr. Bellair had forced from them, and Bellair touched upon the life -he had led in those halls, just a little and with haste. To help him -to speak authoritatively, he added that he would help Davy to another -position.... Then he looked around, and glanced at his watch. There was -a small anteroom which they occupied.... Bellair had asked about the -other door. “An empty room,” Mrs. Acton told him. - -Of course it was for rent. On the spur of the moment, he declared -he would take it, asked her to rent it for him, insisting on paying -in advance. He would come in the morning--have his things brought -later.... No, Davy was not to look for a position to-morrow. Davy must -devote himself to him to-morrow. He left them happily. The mother -called after him in hopeless excitement that he had left enough to rent -the room all summer. - -He did not show the Lot & Company paper to Bessie; in fact, he never -showed it but once, and that was to Davy Acton immediately after it -was obtained. He had thought of taking it across the street to show -the landlady, but perhaps that would merely have added to her living -confusion. It had been most important for Davy, but to reopen the -subject with Bessie, his manner might have touched an “I-told-you-so” -indelicacy.... She was happy when he found her that night. Clothes -in quantity were already begun--the next ten forenoons at the -dressmakers’. She thanked him charmingly, studied him with a quizzical -expression that invariably haunted him afterward. - -Bellair could never tell just what would do it, but occasionally -through an hour’s chat, he would say something, just enough above her -comprehension to challenge her. Once opened, her faculties were not -slow, but the life she had chosen, held her mind so consistently to its -common level that the habit was formed. Mainly when he spoke above her, -she ceased to listen, ignored him; but when something he said just hit -home, she praised him with animation, as one would a sudden gleam of -unexpected intelligence on the part of a child. It became one of his -most remarkable realisations that a man who has anything worth while to -say must come down to say it, just as certainly as he must go up to get -it. - -The sense of adventure with her did not return this night, though she -had seemed to accept him differently from before; as if he belonged, -part of her impediment mainly, but at moments of surpassing value, like -a machine that one packs a day for a half-hour’s work it may do. His -money had purchased something. - -Bellair sat in the dark of his room, feet on the window-sill, hat -still on, at two o’clock, his last night in the hotel where he never -had belonged. He was very tired and longed for sleep; and yet there -was a different longing for sleep than that which belonged to physical -weariness. It had to do with his hunger for the Faraway Woman. This -startled him. What was that refreshing mystery afterward? Did he go -to her in sleep--did she come? Why was it that the burden of parting -invariably increased through the long days? It had been so on the ship. -In the morning he could live; then the hours settled down, until it -seemed he must leap back to her; the ship’s ever increasing distance at -times literally twisting his faculties until he was dazed with pain. - -He had not thought of this before. Why was it always when the pressure -increased and the ardour mounted--that he longed for sleep?... Nothing -came to his work-a-day brain from the nights. His dreams were of lesser -matters--and yet, something within pulled him to unconsciousness like -the rush of a tide. It gave him a sense of the vastness, a glimpse of -the inner beauty of life. - -Far below in the side-street a heavy, slow-trotting horse clattered -by. The motors were more and more hushed, even the hell of Broadway -subdued. A different set of sounds came home to him, but he did not -interpret for the present; their activity playing upon deeps of their -own--a bridge swung open between them and his exterior thoughts.... - -Slowly all exterior matters slipped away--the mother and Davy and -Bessie. The bridge between the surface and the deeps swung to, and he -heard the sounds that had been thrilling his real being all the time as -he sat by the window--the liner whistles that crossed Manhattan from -the harbour, the deep-sea bayings which seemed to be calling him home. - - - 7 - -Bellair must have rested well in a few hours, for he arose early, -feeling very fit in and out. For years the man he had seen in the -glass when he was alone, had aroused little or no curiosity; a sort -of customary forbearance rather. The fact is, he had not looked close -for years. This morning as he shaved, something new regarded him from -the face, still deeply dark from the open boat. He called it a glint, -but would have designated it as something that had to do with power in -another. It was fixed--something earned and delivered. - -Perhaps it was something she had seen. - -This animated him. It had come from Fleury and the fasting, but most of -all from contemplating her face and her nature. Was it the arousing of -his own latent will? Was it because he was lifted above Lot & Company? -What part of it had come from the anguish of separation? Truly a man -must build something if he manages to live against the quickened beat -of a hungry heart. - -The face was very thin, too. He had felt that so often as he used the -morning knife, but he saw it now. Thin and dark, and the boy gone -altogether.... Bellair smiled. Lot & Company had tried to take the -boy. Had they not failed, the man would never have come, but something -craven in the place of the boy, something tied to its own death, its -soul shielded from the light--a shield of coin-metals. - -He shuddered, less at the narrowness of his own escape, than at New -York whose business came up to him now through the open windows.... The -shaving had dragged. He was not accustomed to study his own face. The -very novelty of it had held him this time--and especially the thought -of what she might have seen there. Suddenly he wanted something big to -take back to her--a manhood of mind and an integrity of soul--something -to match that superb freedom she had wrung from the world. A thousand -times the different parts of her story had returned to his mind, always -filling him with awe and wonder. She had come like one with a task, and -set about it from a child, against all odds, putting all laws of men -beneath--as if the task had been arranged before she came. He knew that -the essence of this freedom was in the hearts of women everywhere, but -she had made it manifest, dared all suffering for it. And yet with all -the struggle behind her, the gentleness which he had come to know in -her nature was one of the great revelations. It gave him a vision of -the potential beauty of humanity; it made him understand that one must -be powerful before one can be gentle; that one must master one’s self -before one dare be free. All that he had was far too little to bring -home to her. This morning he felt that nothing short of the impossible -was worth going after. - -A little later as he was leaving the room, the telephone rang. The -operator said that a gentleman wanted to see him. On the lower floor, -Bellair glanced into the eyes of a young man who wanted something; -“glanced _into_” is somewhat inaccurate; rather his eyes glanced -from the other’s, and took away a peculiar, indescribable interest. -It was the look of a colt he had seen, a glitter of wildness and -irresponsibility in a face that was handsome but not at its best. - -Bellair had seen something of the expression in the faces of young men -who had been fathered too much; those who had not met the masterful -influence of denial, and had been allowed to lean too long. The face -had everything to charm and to express beauty and reality with, but the -inner lines of it were not formed; the judgments lacking, the personal -needs too imperious. He had made the most of well-worn clothing, but -appeared to feel keenly the poorness of it. - -“I came in here yesterday,” he said hastily. “It all happened because -the ledger was turned back. I glanced at it, as one will, and standing -out from the page was ‘Auckland, N. Z.’ It was as if written in -different colour to me. I followed the line back to the name--and tried -to see you yesterday afternoon and last night. You didn’t come in----” - -“You come from Auckland?” Bellair asked. - -“Yes----” - -“How long?” - -“It’s more than a year.... Small thing to meet a stranger on, but it -was all I had. Auckland is so far and so different--that when I saw -it--it seemed there must be a chance----” - -“Of course. I know how it is,” said Bellair. “Do you want to get back?” - -“That isn’t it, exactly, though I haven’t anything here----” - -“Have you had breakfast?” - -“N-no.” - -“Come in with me and we’ll talk. I have a half-hour to spare.” - -Bellair heard his voice and wondered at the coldness of it. He -remembered afterward the covered billiard-tables at the far end of -the hall and the dimness of the hall’s length, as he led the way. His -own custom was a pot of coffee and a bit of toast, but the other’s -possible need of food had a singular authority over him, so he made out -that this was one of the main feeding features of his day.... But the -other was intent upon certain things beside food. He had been unlucky. -Everything that he had tried in the year of New York had failed him -somehow--little ventures, positions lost--and always some one was to -blame, not this one who spoke and had suffered so. Bellair hearkened -for one note that would confine itself to the unfinished mouth and -the unstable character; one note that would suggest the possibility -of a clue that the series of failures lay in his own shortcomings of -strength and quality, but the boy had not this suggestion in his heart. - -“Are you married?” Bellair asked. - -“No.” - -There was an instant’s lull, and then was turned off another story of -misfortune: - -“... I didn’t want to marry her. I got her in trouble down in New -Zealand. Her father wanted me to marry her--was willing to pay for -it--but a fellow can’t take a chance like that. We came up together -with the kid to New York, but everything broke bad for me----” - -The voice went on, but Bellair lost his face. There was a -greenish-yellow light between their faces, at least, for Bellair’s -eyes, and the floor seemed shaken with heavy machinery. Bellair -knew the burn of hate, and the thirst to kill--and then he was all -uncentred, like a man badly wounded. He arose. - -“... The fact is, I don’t think she was quite _right_. None of them -are----” - -“I won’t be able to hear any more of that just now,” Bellair said -slowly. “I’m leaving this hotel to-day for other quarters. But -to-morrow morning at ten, I shall be here and listen to what you want. -Perhaps I can set you straight a bit--for the present, anyway. And -this--is so you won’t miss any meals in the meantime----” - -Bellair handed him money. - -“Please excuse me,” he added. “And finish your breakfast----” - -He called the waiter and signed the card. Then he turned as if to look -around the room. He located the door by which they had entered, drew -his hands strangely across his eyes. Effusive gratefulness was seeking -his ears from the young man in the chair. Bellair lifted his hand as if -to cut off the voice, and then started for the door, his step hastening. - - - 8 - -It was truly a tenement quarter in which Davy and his mother lived. The -fact awed Bellair somewhat. Had he been a cripple in a wheeled-chair, -confined to one side of one block, he could have found a life’s -work.... Little faces that choked him everywhere. One might toss coins -at their feet, but the futility of that was like a cry to God. - -Davy’s mother was making his room ready. By some chance it faced the -east; between ten and noon, there was sunlight. Forty years ago it had -been the kitchen of a second-floor apartment, doubtless respectable. -Only the scars of the kitchen fixtures remained, like organs gone back -to a rudiment in swift involution. Water now was to be had in but one -place on each floor--in the hall, and the natives came there with their -pitchers and cans as tropical villagers, morning and evening to the -well. - -Mrs. Acton had spared a bit of carpet, which looked as if it had been -scrubbed; and just below the window the tip of a heaven-tree waved. It -was thin as his single bed, but even that growth seemed miraculously -attained, as if the seed must have held all the nourishment. Bellair -stared down through shadows and litter, and could discern no more than -a crack in the stone pavement, from which this leafy creature had come -to him. Quite as miraculously it was, with the myriad children in the -streets and halls. Certainly this was a place to keep tender. Davy had -gone forth on an errand. - -“What was he interested in especially when he was little?” Bellair -asked. - -“Boats--boats,” said the mother. - -It struck the man queerly that he had not noted this. Davy had devoured -his little list of sea stories, and had listened as no one else to the -open boat narrative, but the man fancied it just the love of adventure. -Bellair’s mother might have said the same thing. - -“Did he draw them, you mean?” he asked. - -“Yes, and played with them. His father was a seaman, Mr. Bellair.” - -Bellair’s father had not been a seaman, but there was little to that. -They were one in the initial proclivity. Perhaps if the truth were -shaken down, there was something in this fact that had to do with their -relation. - -“Could I have breakfast and supper here with you?” he asked suddenly. - -The woman looked startled. “You see, I am away three days a week.” - -It was Bellair’s idea to make this impossible, so he insisted: - -“My wants are simple. I might not be here always to supper--but, of -course, I should want to pay for it. It would be pleasant--we three -together--and no matter to me if supper were a bit late. You see, Mrs. -Acton, now that I’ve begun, I insist on having a home. I lived in one -room for five years, and that sort of thing is ended. A hotel is no -better.” - -Davy returned and Bellair took him forth at once, impatient to continue -the adventure of the purchases, begun the night before. Hours passed. -Once Davy looked up to him in a mixture of awe and joy: - -“Why are you buying so many things for us, Mr. Bellair?” - -“Sit down,” the man answered. - -They were in a retail clothier’s. The salesman drew back. - -“Davy,” said Bellair, “it’s the most natural thing. First I have the -money and you have the needs. Second, we are friends----” - -Bellair had felt many things hammering for utterance, but when he had -come thus far, he found that the whole ground was covered.... The boy -hurried home, but Bellair was not ready. With all his affection for -the lad, he wanted to be alone. He had held himself to Davy’s needs -for hours; but through it all, the sentences--so brief and thoughtless -across the breakfast table--recurred smitingly. They hurt everything in -him and in an incredible fashion. He marvelled that he had been able -to reply quietly. His face burned now, and he thought of the Faraway -Woman--how gentle she had been, blaming nothing, holding no sense of -being wronged. It was that which helped him now, though his heart was -hot and aching.... One must have compassion for the world--one whose -home is the house of such a woman. - -“It must not hurt the Gleam,” he said half-aloud. This was the burden -of all his effort. “The Gleam is hers. I must not let the thought of -this touch the Gleam--not even in my mind.” - -The young man was stranded in New York. They met as arranged the -next morning. Many difficulties were related, and the perversities -of outside influences and the actions of others. The great regret -was that at a certain time when he _had_ the money more than a year -ago, the young man had delayed for a day to purchase a certain little -tobacconist’s shop on Seventh avenue. A friend of his had advised him -against it, and plucked the fruit himself. This gave Bellair an idea. - -In the next ten days, everything seemed waiting for the manager of -the _Follies_ to decide the case of Bessie Brealt. Davy was permitted -to look for a new job, but Bellair made light of his unsuccess.... -He did not look up Broadwell again, understanding clearly that the -advertising-man would endanger his position in calling on him. Bellair -was not ready to be responsible for such a loss to Broadwell. Employés -of Lot & Company did not change easily.... He was frequently, but never -long with Bessie during these days. There were moments of disturbing -sweetness, and moments that he struggled quickly to forget, as Nature -sets about hastily to cover unseemly matters upon the ground. - -Now that the great event of her life had come, Bessie required much -sleep, and cared for her beauty as never before. She already lived, for -the most part, in the actual substance of victory, as only the young -dare to do; yet she lost none of her zeal in preparation.... Bellair -held to the original idea, though the means was not yet articulate. He -was sensitive enough to realise that a man may be impertinent, even -when trying to help another. - -The tremendous discovery in this interval was that the open boat events -which had proved so salutary and constructive in his own case, did not -appear to have a comparable effect upon others when he related them. He -began to believe that he had not authority, and that he must somehow -try to gain authority by making good with men. He had his story to -tell. He had seen the spirit and the flesh--beast and saint--watched -them die. All life and hope and meaning were caught and held, as he saw -it, between the manner of the deaths of two men. This experience had -changed him--if not for the better--then he was insane. - -It was hard for him to grasp, that the thing which had changed him -could not change others--even Bessie. Yet those who listened, except -Davy and his mother, appeared to think that he was making much of an -adventure for personal reasons. He tried to write his story, but felt -the bones of his skull as never before. He began, “I am a simple man,” -but deep guile might be construed to that.... “I want nothing,” he -wrote, “but to make you see the half that I saw in the open boat,” and -he heard the world replying in his consciousness, “The open boat is on -this man Bellair’s nerves. It’s his mania. The sun or the thirst _did_ -touch him a bit.”... - -He became afraid to talk much even with Bessie, and New York boomed -by, leaving him out--out.... He tried to lift the signs of misery on -the way to the home of Davy’s mother, and in the surrounding halls, -but the extent and terror of it dismayed him; and remarkably enough, -always this same answer came: that he must get himself and the South -Sea business in hand before a true beginning could be made here.... - -It wasn’t on Seventh avenue that he found a cigar store to suit his -purpose in this interval, but the promise was certainly as good as -the old one. He put the New Zealand young man in charge, on a basis -designed to challenge any one’s quality; and having done this in a -businesslike fashion, Bellair made haste to escape. The sense was cool -and abiding in his mind that in this case, as in Lot & Company’s, the -circle was complete. Still he retained the suspicion that the young man -did not believe him sane. - -He followed the singer when she permitted, to dressmakers, rehearsals, -quartette performances and meals; found other men following singers -similarly, in all their byways of routine; he disliked them, disliked -himself. - -He had not told her of his fortune, because he knew in his heart it -would change everything. He helped in many small ways, and allowed her -to believe what she chose. She had never identified him with large -things, did not think the present arrangement could last, and made as -much as possible of the convenience. They were together on the night -before her try-out, though as usual it was but a matter of moments. -Bellair used most of them in silence. The tension of hurry always -stopped his throat. He longed for one full day with her, a ramble -without the clock; yet what would he do with it--he, who dared not go -to the water-front alone--to whom the night whistling of steamers in -the harbour was like the call of the child of his heart? - -“You are at your best,” he said. “Your voice was never sweeter than -to-night. You must go now and sleep. To-morrow, of course, you will -win, and when may I come?” - -Her face clouded. Perhaps because he said the opposite, the thought of -possible defeat came now with a clearness which had not before appealed -to her unpracticed imagination. - -“You may come to my room at twelve--no, at one. I shall go there at -once after the trial--and you shall be first.” - -It pleased him, and since she did not seem inclined to leave just -then, Bellair found himself talking of the future. Perhaps he did not -entirely cover his zeal to change a little her full-hearted giving of -self to the foam. Bessie bore it. He had not spoken of the open boat, -but something he said was related to it in her mind. - -“To-morrow will settle everything,” she declared.... “And I don’t like -that other woman on the ship. She isn’t human. You think it amazing -because she didn’t cry and scream. That isn’t everything.... She’d be -lost and unheard of here in New York.” - -“Yes, that is probably true.” - -“It’s all right for people who don’t write or paint or sing--to talk -about real life and what’s right work in the world, but artists see it -differently. Anyway, it’s the only job we’ve got.” - -Bellair never forgot that, or rather what she had meant to say. - -“Singing is what drew me to you, Bessie. What I object to is what the -world tries to do with its singers, and that so many singers fall for -it.” - -“The world lets you more or less alone--until you make good. Plenty of -time after that to answer back.” - -She yawned. It was as near reality as they had gotten, and Bellair, who -asked so little, had a glimpse again of the loveliness he had first -taken to sea--even to the kiss at the last. She also granted him this: - -“You’ve been good to me. I couldn’t have done without you----” - -He lay awake long. The house in which he lived was very silent, and it -pressed so close to the sea. - - - 9 - -She was only partly dressed when he came early the next afternoon, but -was not long in letting him in. Before any words, he knew that she had -won. A man often has to readjust hastily after the night before. It was -so with Bellair now. Her eyes were bright with emotions, but a certain -hardness was shining there. It was an effort for her to think of him -and be kind. He would have seen it all in another’s story. - -His glance kept turning to her bare arm, upon which a hideous -vaccination-scar was revealed. _They_ had not thought of her singing -in those days.... She had never spoken of her house or her people. It -was enough that those days were finished. Bellair could understand -that. Her victory was all through her now, satisfying, completing her. -She did not love money for its own sake or she would have treated him -differently. All her surplus energy, even her passion, was turned to -this open passage of her career. Having that, previous props could be -kicked away; at least, Bellair felt this. - -“Yes, it’s all done. A month of solid rehearsal--then the road. I take -the second part, but I hope to come back in the first----” - -“You were at your best at the trial?” - -“After the first moment or two.... And no more Brandt’s or _Castle_--no -more with the other three--God, how sick I am of them--and of this -room!” - -“Will you lunch with me?” - -“Yes--I have until three.” - -It was shortly after one. She talked with animation about her work, -her eyes held to a glistening future. She finished her dressing -leisurely, with loving touches, abandoning herself completely to -the mirror as an old actress might, having conceded the essential -importance of attractions. She studied her face and figure as if she -were the maid to them. Bessie dressed for the world, not for herself, -certainly not for Bellair. Without, in the world--streets, restaurants, -theatres--there existed an abstraction which must be satisfied. She had -not yet entered upon that perilous adventure of dressing for the eyes -of one man. She did not think of Bellair as she lifted her arms to her -hair. On no other morning could she have been so far from the sense of -him in her room. Empires have fallen because a woman has lifted her -naked arms to her hair with a man in the room. - -An older woman would have rewarded him for being there; an older woman -never would have put on her hat for the street without remembering her -humanity. There was something in Bessie that reserved the kiss for the -last. Possibly after the last song of the day, a kiss remained. She put -on the flowers he brought; even that did not remind her, nor the dress -he had bought for her--asking him if he approved, not that she cared, -but because she was turning before the glass with the thing upon her -body and mind. She would have asked a child the same. - -They went to Beathe’s for luncheon, which was also Bessie’s breakfast. -There, it may have been that she was ready to forget herself, knowing -it would keep for a little. In any event, she seemed to see Bellair -as he ordered for her, as if recalling that he had made many things -move easily of late, and that it was pleasant to have these matters, -even luncheons, conducted by another. Thinking of him, the voyage was -instantly associated: - -“I said last night that I didn’t like that woman,” she began. “I didn’t -mean just that, of course. But a woman can see another woman better -than a man. There are women who keep their mouths shut and get great -reputations for being wise and all that. They never associate with -women. You’ll always find them with men, playing sister and helping and -saying little. Men get to think they’re the whole thing----” - -“I suppose there are,” said Bellair. - -He wished she had not picked up this particular point again; and yet a -certain novelty about this impressed him now, and recurred many times -afterward--that it was she who had broached the subject. - -“Do you think a man knows men better than a woman does?” he asked. - -Bessie had not thought of it; she was not sure. - -Nor was Bellair. “The fact is, it doesn’t greatly matter what women -think of women, and what men think of men--compared to what men and -women think of each other,” he observed. - -“You say you didn’t know that other man at first--that preacher,” she -remarked. - -“That’s true. There had to be danger--I had to hear his voice in -danger.” - -Bellair was lifted to his life-theme. He had never really told it in -one piece. He did not mean to now, but Fleury came clearly to mind. The -food was served and it was quiet behind the palms. If he could only say -something for her heart. She seemed ready. Points of human interest -were crowding to mind--perhaps he could hold her with them. - -“... His every thought was for others,” he was saying. “I disliked him -at first, but he was so kind and good-natured throughout that he could -not fail to impress me a bit, but I didn’t really see him before the -night of the wreck, when he arose to take things in hand. It was not -noise, nor voice, but a different force. He seemed to rise--so that the -huge Stackhouse was just a squealing pig before him. He had no fear. -You looked into his face and wanted to be near him, and to do what -he said. I caught his secret. A fool would. It was because he wasn’t -thinking of himself. It seems, Bessie, as sure as you live--that the -more a man gives out in that pure way Fleury did for us all--the more -power floods into him. It came to him in volumes. We all knew it--even -Stackhouse---- - -“And this is what I’m getting at. _You’ve_ got the chance to use it. -I can’t yet. I seem to be all clotted with what I want, but you can! -You did. You pulled me out of the crowd, not knowing me at all--made -me come to you--changed me. You can _give_ with your singing--to -hundreds--so that they will answer in their thoughts, and do things -strange to themselves at first. They’ll want to die for you--but -that isn’t the thing for you. You must want to sing for them--want -to give them your soul all the time. Greater things will come to you -than this--this which makes you happy. All that the world could give -you--you will come to see--doesn’t matter--but what you can give the -world----” - -He saw her falling away from his story. It crippled him. He did not -think he could fail so utterly. - -“But you _were_ a thief,” she said. - -“I--was what?” - -“You preach all the time, but you were a thief----” - -He had heard aright. His hand reached for the wallet, that contained -the letter from Lot & Company, but fell from it again. - -“If you like,” he answered, “but I saw a beast die in the open -boat--and saw a saint die----” - -“You preach--preach--preach!” she cried, and her own points of view -returned with greater intensity. “You’ve been kind--but, oh, you bore -me so! You have been kind--but oh, don’t think you fail to make -one pay the price! You were sunstruck, or crazed--and you come back -preaching. I’m sick of you--just in my highest day, after the months of -struggle--I hate you----” - -Bellair heard a ship’s bell. It was dark about him--a cool, serene -dark. The air fanned him softly and sweet; the place rocked--just for -an instant, as if he were at sea. - -“I hate you when you preach,” she finished. Her voice was softer. He -knew she was smiling, but did not look at her face. She had delivered -him. He was calm, and ineffably free, the circle finished. - -“_Oh, that we two were Maying_----” he muttered, his thoughts far down -the seas--remote and insular, serene and homing thoughts. - -“It takes two to sing that,” she said. - -“Yes.” - -“But, I’m so sick of that----” - -“You must have sung it many times,” he said. - -He did not want to linger. A certain hush had come to her from him. It -was not yet three.... He seemed surprised to find it broad day in the -street. She touched his sleeve, drawing him to the curb, away from the -crowds which astonished him. Clearly something was wrong with his head. - -“Bessie--before your salary begins--have you everything? Isn’t there -something----?” - -She smiled and hesitated. He rubbed his eyes. - -“I’m so glad I thought of it,” he said, drawing forth the brown wallet. - -His gift bewildered her, but she did not ask him this time what he -wanted. Instead she asked: - -“But where are you going?” - -“Why, Bessie, I’m going home.” - - - - -PART SEVEN - -THE STONE HOUSE: II - - - 1 - -THE hard thing was to get Honolulu behind. The first seven days at -sea was like a voyage to another planet. Bellair could lose himself -in the universe, between the banging of the Chinese gongs that called -passengers willingly, for the most part, to meals on the British ship -_Suwarrow_.... They had crawled out of the harbour in the dusk, a -southwest wind waiting at the gate, like an eager lover for a maiden to -steal forth. She was in his arms shamelessly, before the dusk closed, -the voices from the land hardly yet having died away. Bellair watched -their meeting in the offing. The blusterer came head on; the _Suwarrow_ -veered coquettishly and started to run, knowing him the swifter and -the stronger, as all woman-things love to know. Presently he had her, -and they made a night of it--the moon breaking out aghast from time -to time, above black and flying garments of cloud. Bellair enjoyed the -game, the funnels smoking the upper decks straight forward. They were -making a passage that night, in the southward lift of that lover. - -He had found a little leaf of cigars in a German shop in Honolulu; -the same reminding him of Stackhouse. They were _Brills_, with a -Trichinopoli flavour, a wrapping from the States, the main filler -doubtless from the Island plantations. The German had talked of them -long, playing with the clotty little fellows in his hands, for they -were moist enough, not easily to be broken. “You sink your teeth in -one of these after a good dinner,” he said, “and if you do not enjoy -tobacco, it is because you have been smoking other plants. These are -made by a workman----” - -Bellair smoked to the workman; also he smoked to Stackhouse. Something -kindly had come over him for the Animal. Lot & Company had helped him -to it.... Yes, he thought, the animal part is right enough. It is only -when the human adult consciousness turns predatory that the earth is -laid waste and the stars are fogged.... These were but back-flips -of Bellair’s mind. In the main he was held so furiously ahead, that -body and brain ached with the strain. As nearly as he could describe -from the sensation, there was a carbon-stick upstanding between his -diaphragm and his throat. Every time he thought of Auckland, it turned -hot. - -... He knew better where to begin now. The beginning was not in New -York. The wallet was heavy upon him; he must not waste it; nor allow -it to waste itself through bad management. Auckland was a desirable -centre for the Stackhouse operations. He could travel forth from one -agency to another. The fundamental ideas of trade, together with large -knowledge of how trade should not be conducted, was his heritage from -Lot & Company. He would begin slowly and sincerely to work out his big -problems--holding the fruits loosely in his hands; ready to give them -up to another, if that other should appear; contenting himself only -with the simplest things; preparing always to be poorer, instead of -richer.... He would earn the right to be poor. The thought warmed him, -something of the natural strength of youth about it. - -Standing out of the wind with an expensive cigar, a superb -course-dinner finished less than an hour back, Bellair smiled at the -ease of poverty, welcoming all the details of clean, austere denial. -Yet he was not so far from it as would appear. He had always taken -these matters of luxury and satiety with tentative grasp; even the -dinners of Stackhouse were but studies of life. His ideal was closely -adjusted to the Faraway Woman’s in these things. One of the dearest of -her sayings had to do with renting the two front rooms of the stone -cottage. Yet now he hoped furiously that she had not yet done so. - -His thoughts turned again out among the Islands. He would meet the -agents of Stackhouse. They would be bewildered at first; they would -think he had come to peer and bite. He would lift and help and pass -on--making the circles again and again, gaining confidence, not saying -much. No, the thing he had in mind had little to do with words.... What -a masonry among men--here and there one giving his best secretly. - -_No words about it._ Bellair halted and filled his lungs from the good -breeze. This thought had repeated itself like a certain bright pattern -through all the weave of his conception. It had a familiar look, and -a prod that startled him now. The whole meaning of it rushed home, so -that he laughed. - -He had reached in his own way, the exact point that Fleury had set out -with. He was determined to act. He had ceased to talk.... Just then -looking up from his laughing reverie, he saw a star. It was ahead, not -high, very brilliant and golden. It had only escaped a moment between -the flying black figures of the night, but more brilliant for that. It -was vast and familiar--the meaning tried the throat and struck at his -heart with strange suffering.... Yes, the _Suwarrow_ was lifting the -southern stars. There could be no doubt. He had looked at that mighty -sun too often from the open boat to mistake. Fleury had said if it were -as near to earth as our sun, this little planet would be dried to a -cinder in ten seconds. It was the great golden ball, _Canopus_.... A -hand was placed softly in his. Bellair was startled. He had been far -away, yet the gladness was instant, as he turned down to the face of -Davy Acton. - -“She’s better,” the boy said. “I’ve been trying to get her to come up -on deck. She told me to ask you, if you thought it best.” - -“Sure, Davy--I’ll go with you to get her.” - - - 2 - -He had seen very little of Mrs. Acton during the voyage. Sailing was -not her feat, but the lady was winsome after her fast. Bellair had -found her very brave, and there had not been such an opportunity to -tell her so, as this night. He wanted enough light to see her face, and -enough air to keep her above any qualm. They found a cane-table, on the -lee-side, toward America, the light of a cabin passage upon it. Bellair -ordered an innocuous drink for Davy and himself, and whispered along a -pint of champagne, having heard it spoken well of as an antidote for -those emerging from the sickness of the sea. - -“... It’s a little charged, cidery sort of a drink--just made for -people convalescent from the first days out of ’Frisco,” he said. - -She drank with serene confidence, and leaned back to regard the glass -and the two. - -“It’s not unlike a wine I drank long ago,” she observed, and her eyes -warmed with the memory. - -“A wine?” he said. - -“Just so, but it’s no crutch for the poor, I should say, by the way it -comes----” - -She pointed to the service-tub, which, unfortunately, was of silver. - -“They like to keep it cold,” Bellair suggested. - -“It would need ice to keep that cold,” she replied. - -There was a lyrical lilt to her words that he had not known before; in -fact he hadn’t quite known Mrs. Acton before. She was lifted from the -stratum of the submerged. She had her hands, her health, and the days -now and ahead were novel in aspect. A little seasickness was nothing -to one who had met the City, and for years prevented it from taking -her boy. The heart for adventure was not dead within her.... In fact, -Bellair, surveying the little plump white creature in new black, with -a sparkle in her eye, her hand upon the thin stem of a glass, entered -upon a pleasant passage. - -“You see, Mrs. Acton--I’ve been struck ever since we sailed by the -courage you showed in crossing the world like this, at the word from a -stranger----” - -“Stranger,” she repeated. - -“I wanted you to take me up on that, but the fact is, you came at my -word.” - -“’Twas not much I had to leave----” - -“I liked it better than the hotel.” - -“Do you know, Mr. Bellair, I never gave up the hope of travel--a bit of -travel before I passed? But I thought it would be alone from Davy----” -Her eyes glistened. - -Bellair was wondering if there were others in that tenement-house who -had kept a hope. - -“You know,” he said, “when I decided to ask you to come--because I was -far from finished with our lad--I anticipated that it would be somewhat -of a struggle. I saw how hard it was for you at first--the night we -told you about his loss of a place----” - -“We were on the edge so long--the least bump ready to push us over,” -she murmured. - -“I made a little arrangement with the express company to furnish you -with a return ticket--you and Davy, or cheques to secure them, and -enough beside to get you back to New York at any time----” - -Her eyes widened. She turned to her boy to see if he were in this great -business. Wonders had not ceased for him, since the first evening at -the hotel. Davy was intent upon her now, even more than upon his friend. - -“So I had it all fixed in your name. There’s an agency in Auckland--one -in every city--so you can’t go broke. And no one can cash these things -but you--after you call and register your signature. You’ll find enough -and to spare for your passage (though I hope you won’t use it for many -a year), and expenses for you and the boy----” - -There were tears in her eyes. Bellair poured her wineglass full in the -excitement. - -“You didn’t need to do anything like that----” - -“That’s a point I am particularly proud of,” he answered. - -“I’ll put this away for you,” she said, taking the proffered envelope. - -The face of dusty wax-work sped past his inner eyes. - -“It’s all one,” she added. “It’s easy for me to say this, having -nothing but what you give me. Did you hear of the house where every one -put what they had in a basket hanging from the ceiling?” - -“No,” he said. - -“’Twas mainly empty. The poor are great-hearted, and those who have -nothing.... This, I’ll put in no basket, but the bank, and you’ll have -it when you get through giving away the rest. I’ll trust in the Lord, -sure, to take me home----” - -“I haven’t been very successful in giving away much,” he said. “That’s -our problem down here among the Islands. Davy is to grow up and help -me. You are to help us. There is another to help us.” - -Mrs. Acton finished her glass. “Is it as much as that, then?” - -Davy was regarding her with fine pride in his eyes. - -Bellair sent him to the cabin for a book that would be hard to find, -and turned to the boy’s mother: - -“I’ve got something to say to you about Davy. I brought back a story -and a fortune from my other trip down here. The story was more -important by a whole lot. It changed everything for me. I thought I’d -only have to tell it, to change others. That didn’t work. But Davy -listened, and he wasn’t the same afterward. - -“I didn’t understand him at first. I used to think when he didn’t -speak, he was bored. I used to think I had to entertain him, buy him -with gifts. But I was wrong. He was thinking things out for himself all -the time. He was puzzled at first why any one cared to be good to him -and be a friend to him--God, what a price the world must pay for making -boys as strange to kindness as that.... But this is what I want to say. -He believed in me long ago in Lot & Company’s. I succeeded in making -him believe in me again. And because he believed in me, he believed in -my story, and when he heard that--he wasn’t the same afterward. - -“I tell you, boys are full of wonderful things, but the world has shut -the door on them. All we’ve got to do is to be patient and kind and -keep the door open, and we’ll have human heroes about us presently, -instead of wolves and foxes and parrots and apes.... I learned that -from Davy Acton. After he accepted me, he got my story--and that showed -me that my work is with boys, and that first I’ve got to make them -believe in me. I’ve got to be the kind of a man to win that. We’ll all -pull together--you and Davy and that other and I. - -“I’m going to help Davy, and I’m going to help boys. They’re not set. -They change. They are open to dreams and ready for action. They can -forget themselves long enough to listen. The world has treated them -badly; the world has been a stupid fool in bringing up its children. -Why, it’s half luck if we manage to amount to anything! I think I know -now how to do better. I’m going to try. Why, I’d spend five years and -all I have to give one boy his big, deep chance of being as human as -God intended. I’ll help boys to find their work, show them how to be -clean and fit and strong. I’ll show them that _getting_ is but an -incident, and when carried too far becomes the crime and the hell of -the world.... He’s coming back--and he’s found the book, too. I must -use it----” - -He had told his story in a kind of gust, and the little woman had -listened like a sensitive-plate, her eyes brimming, her son moving -higher and higher in a future that was safe and green and pure.... It -had come out at last for Bellair. He was happy, for he knew that this -which had been born to-night, with the help of the mother’s listening, -was the right good thing--the thing that had come home from hard -experience to the heart of a simple man. - -“Davy,” he said, “I’ve got a suspicion that your mother could eat -something. Call a steward, lad.” - -She started and fumbled for her handkerchief. - -“Do you know--that is--I might try a bite, Mr. Bellair----” - -The man was smiling. Davy returned and sat down wonderingly between -them. His mother kept her mouth covered, but her eyes were wells of joy. - -“I don’t know whether it’s that cider that needs keeping so cold,” she -began steadily, “or this which Mr. Bellair has been saying, but the -truth is, Davy, I haven’t been so happy since a girl----” - -“A little lunch will fix that,” Bellair suggested absently. - -“If it will,” she returned, “tell the man that it’s nothing I wish for, -this night.” - - - 3 - -Auckland passengers were not to be landed until the morning, but the -_Suwarrow_ sent one boat ashore that night. By some law unknown to the -outsider, a few top bags of mail were discriminately favoured, and they -were in the boat. The second officer, with a handful of telegrams to -be filed; a travelling salesman called home from the States on account -of family illness, also Bellair were in the boat. He had told Davy -and his mother that he was going to prepare a place for them; that he -would be back on the deck of the _Suwarrow_ before nine in the morning. -Because the little landing party was out of routine, an hour or more -was required for Bellair to obtain release to the streets. It was now -midnight. - -Three months away, and there had been no word from the woman who had -remained. In fact, no arrangement for writing had been agreed upon, -except in case New York should hold him. He had never seen the writing -of the Faraway Woman.... He believed with profound conviction that -within an hour’s ride by trolley from the place in the street where -he moved so hastily now, there was a bluff, a stone cottage, a woman -waiting for him, and a child near her; that all was well with the two -and the place. Yet he lived and moved now in a wearing, driving terror. -All his large and little moments of the past three months passed before -him like dancers on a flash-lit stage, some beautiful, some false and -ugly, but each calling his eyes, something of his own upon them. - -The world had shown him well that man is not ready for joy when he -fears, yet Bellair was afraid. Man deserves that which he complains of. -Still, he was afraid. He was exultant, too. Cities might change and -nations and laws, but not that woman’s heart. He did not believe she -could love him, but he knew of her fondness hoped for that again. She -was in a safe place--as any place in the world is safe. She was well, -with a health he had never known in another, and the child was flesh -of her. Yet he feared, his heart too full to speak. He did not deserve -her, but he hoped for the miracle, hoped that the driving laws of the -human heart might be merciful, hoped for her fondness again. - -He would stand before her at his worst--all weakness and commonness -of the man, Bellair, open before her. Perhaps she would see his love -because of that, but he would not be able to tell her. Never could he -ask for her. If it were made known, it would not be through words. It -could only come from him in a kind of delirium. _He_ must be carried -away, a passion must take him out of self. Very far he seemed from -passion; rather this was like a child in his heart, with gifts, deep -and changeless, but inarticulate, as a child is. It had been long in -coming, quietly fulfilling itself, and this was the rising. - -... The last car was gone, but he found a carriage--an open carriage, a -slow horse, a cool and starry night. The city was growing silent, the -edges darkened. There were high trees, a homing touch about them after -the sea, and a glimpse of the harbour to the left. Bellair had not even -a bag with him. He would take off his hat for a way, and then put it -on again. Sometimes he would let his ungloved hand hang overside, as -one would do in a small boat. There was a leathery smell from the seat -of the carriage, with a bit of stable flavour, that would get into a -man’s clothes if he stayed long enough. It was dusty, too, something -like a tight room full of old leather-bound books. - -The horse plumped along, a little lurch forward at every fourth beat. -Hunched and wrapped, the driver sat, and extraordinarily still--a man -used to sitting, who gave himself utterly to it, a most spineless and -sunken manner. Every little while he coughed, and every little while -he spat.... Once they passed a motor-car--two men and a girl laughing -between them; then the interurban trolley going back--the car he had -missed. His heart thumped. It was the same car that he had known, the -same tracks, no upheaval of the earth here so far. - -Meanwhile, Bellair was rounding the Horn in the _Jade_; they struck -rock or derelict, were lost for ages in an open boat; they came to -Auckland and found a little stone house on the bluff, paused there.... - -He was away at sea again, from Auckland to ’Frisco, across the States, -to _Brandt’s_, to _Pastern’s_, to Lot & Company’s and the tenements, -to the _Castle_ and the Landlady’s House; then trains and the long -southern sweep of the _Suwarrow_, down the great sea again to this -... plumping along on the high, rocky shore. The brine came up to him, -almost as from the open boat. His eyes smarted, his throat was dry, and -the driver coughed. - -Bellair had paper money in his hand. He meant to look at it under the -carriage-light, when he stepped forth near the Gate. He leaned forward -and touched the great coat. - -“_Whoa_,” said the man, loud enough to rouse the seven sleepers, and -the horse came up with a teeter. - -“Don’t stop,” said Bellair. “It’s a little ahead yet. I’ll tell you -when to stop.... Yes, let him walk----” - -Now, Bellair surveyed what he had said. He was like that, just about as -coherent as that. The _whoa_ had shaken him empty for the most part.... -He would not know what to say to her. He would sit or stand like a fool -and grin.... But she was great-hearted. She would help him.... Awe and -silence crept into him again. - -“Now, pull up----” - -“_Whoa_,” was the answer, shaking the trees. - -“There, that will do,” Bellair said tensely. He stepped out and passed -over the money, forgetting to look at it. He was afraid the man would -roar again. - -It was nearer than he thought, but a step to the Gate; its latch lifted -softly and he crossed the gravel, held by the voice of the rig turning -behind. It turned slowly as a ship in a small berth, and the voice -carried like the cackle of geese.... There was no light. He was on the -step. Something sweet was growing at the door.... Something brushed -him at his feet. He leaned down in the darkness, and touched the -tabby-puss, knocked softly. - -“Yes----” came from within. - -“It is I, Bellair----” - -The door was opened to absolute blackness. She was not in his arms. -Rather he was in her arms. She seemed to tower above him. Around was -the softness and fragrance of her arms and her breast.... Not the -cottage--her arms made the home of man. She held him from her, left him -standing bewildered in the centre of the room. He heard her match, and -her voice like a sigh, trailing to him almost like a spirit-thing: - -“Oh,--I--am--so--happy!” - -The lamp was lit, but she left it in the alcove, came to him again, a -shawl about her. Lights were playing upon his shut eye-lids, fulfilment -in his arms that a man can only know when he has crossed the world to a -woman, not a maiden; a plenitude that a maiden cannot give. - -And now she brought the light, and looked into his face--her own -gleaming behind it, full of rapture, the face of a love-woman, some -inspired training of the centuries upon it, all the mystery and -delicacy for a man’s eyes that he can endure and live.... - -“What is it?” - -He could only look at her. - -“What is it?” more softly. - -As if the thing had been left over in his mind, and required clearing -away, he answered: - -“Are--are the rooms rented?” - -She laughed, came closer than the light. - -“We are alone--only the child. I could not let any one come--the rooms -seemed yours.... I thought you would come. It was time enough to change -when I heard from you----” - -“The little Gleam----” - -“Yes, he is here.... Oh, did you know what it meant to us--when you -went away?” - -“I knew what it meant to me----” - -“After the open boat and the days together here--you knew all?” - -“Yes.” - -“I thought it would be easier.... And you are changed! You are like a -man who has found his Quest.” - -She was about him like magic. They were moving toward the little room. -She stopped and put the lamp back in the alcove. - -“We will not take it in there. It would wake him.” - -... It was dark upon the threshold. She took his hand. He heard her -heart beating, or was it his own?... They heard the little breathing. -She guided his hand to the warm little hand. - -“Yes, he is well,” she whispered. “Everything is perfect with your -coming.... There.... You hurried home to me, didn’t you?... Yes, I -hoped. I felt the ship. I could not sleep. I wondered if I could be -wrong.... Oh, to think of the dawn coming in--finding us here together -... and the little Gleam....” - - * * * * * - -Gray light was coming in. Her face was shadowed, but the gray was -faint about her hair. His heart had taken something perfect from her; -something of the nature of that peace which had come to him at the -_Jade’s_ rail crossing the Line, but greater than that, the fulfilment -of that. Because it was perfect, it could not last in its fulness. -That was the coolness of the Hills, but his love was glowing now like -noon sunlight in a valley, the redolence of high sunlight in the river -lowlands. Mother Earth had taken them again. - -It was the tide of life; it was as she had told him it must be with -her, akin to the loveliest processes of nature, like the gilding of a -tea-rose, like the flight of swans. He watched her as the dawn rose, as -a woman is only to be seen in her own room; watched her without words, -until from the concentration, that which had been bound floated free -within him.... A sentence she had spoken (it may have been an hour, or -a moment ago) returned to his consciousness. “Oh, how I wanted you to -come home to-night!” - -His mind was full of pictures and power. It may have been the -strangeness of the light, but his eyes could not hold her face, nor -his mind remember the face that had welcomed him in the lamplight. -Different faces moved before his eyes, a deep likeness in the plan of -them, as pearls would be sorted and matched for one string, a wonderful -sisterhood of faces, tenderness, fortitude, ardour, joy, renunciation. -It was like a stroke. He had loved them all--facets of one jewel. And -was the jewel her soul? - -He arose, without turning from her, and moved to the far corner of the -room, where there was neither chair nor table. As he moved, he watched -her with tireless thirsting eyes. - -She arose and came to him, moving low.... This figure that came, -thrilled him again with the old magic of the river-banks. He could not -pass the wonder of her crossing the room to follow him.... And now he -saw her lips in the light--a girl’s shyness about her lips. She was a -girl that instant--as if a veil had dropped behind her. It had never -been so before--a woman always, wise and finished with years, compared -to whom that other was a child. And yet she was little older than -that other--in years. He loved the shyness of her lips. It was like -one familiar bloom in the midst of exotic wonders. It seemed he would -fall--before she touched him. - -She was low in his arms, as if her knees were bent, as if she would -make herself less for her lord.... And something in that, even as he -held her, opened the long low roads of the past--glimpses from that -surging mystery behind us all--as if they had sinned and expiated and -aspired together. - -“... That you would come to me----” he whispered. - -“I have wanted to come to you so long.” - -“I thought--I could not tell you--I thought I would stand helpless -without words before you. Why, everything I thought was wrong. I can -tell you--but there is no need----” - -“There is little need of words between us.” - -... That which she wore upon her feet was heel-less, and all the cries -and calls and warnings and distances of the world were gone from -between them, as they stood together.... And once her arms left him and -were upheld, as if to receive a perfect gift. A woman could command -heaven with that gesture. - - * * * * * - -They had reached the end of the forest, and found the dawn. The sounds -of the world came back to them like an enchanter’s drone. - -“Come,” she said, taking his hand, “it is day. We must return to the -village. And oh, to our little Gleam! He is awakening. He will speak -your name.” - - -THE END - - - - -BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT - - -_A Brief Expression of the Critical Reception of_ - -DOWN AMONG MEN - - -_Outlook_: Possessed of a marvelous descriptive genius, equipped with -a remarkably flexible use of English and impelled by the passion of a -mystic--the author of _Down Among Men_ has written a striking novel. - -_The Dial_: Seems to us the most exalted and appealing story Mr. -Comfort has thus far written. - -_The Argonaut_: A novel of extraordinary power. It is good as -_Routledge Rides Alone_. It could hardly be better. - -_London Post_: Alive with incident, bounding with physical energy, -dramatic in coloring, and modern in every phrase. He has a message -delivered with vigor, inspired with tense passion. - -_Atlantic Monthly_: There is so much real fire in it--the fire of youth -that has seen and suffered--so much vitality and passion that one grows -chary of petty comments. The writer offers us the cup of life, and -there is blood in the cup. - -_Chicago Record-Herald_: An almost perfect tale of courage and -adventure. - -_Chicago Tribune_: Contains some of the most remarkable scenes that -have appeared in recent American fiction. - -_New York Times_: Few richer novels than this of Mr. Comfort’s have -been published in many a long day. - -_New York Globe_: We can say in all sincerity that we know of no -recent bit of descriptive writing that can match this for sustained, -breathless, dramatic interest. - -_Springfield Republican_: _Down Among Men_ is perhaps the most -ambitious American novel that has come out during the past year. - - _12mo., Net $1.25._ - - - - -MIDSTREAM - -... A hint from the first-year’s recognition of a book that was made to -remain in American literature: - -_Boston Transcript_: If it be extravagance, let it be so, to say -that Comfort’s account of his childhood has seldom been rivaled in -literature. It amounts to revelation. Really the only parallels that -will suggest themselves in our letters are the great ones that occur -in _Huckleberry Finn_.... This man Comfort’s gamut is long and he has -raced its full length. One wonders whether the interest, the skill, the -general worth of it, the things it has to report of all life, as well -as the one life, do not entitle _Midstream_ to the very long life that -is enjoyed only by the very best of books. - -_San Francisco Argonaut_: Read the book. It is autobiography in its -perfection. It shows more of the realities of the human being, more of -god and devil in conflict, than any book of its kind. - -_Springfield Republican_: It is difficult to think of any other young -American who has so courageously reversed the process of writing for -the “market” and so flatly insisted upon being taken, if at all, on -his own terms of life and art. And now comes his frank and amazing -revelation, _Midstream_, in which he captures and carries the reader on -to a story of regeneration. He has come far; the question is, how much -farther will he go? - -Mary Fanton Roberts in _The Craftsman_: Beside the stature of this -book, the ordinary novel and biography are curiously dwarfed. You -read it with a poignant interest and close it with wonder, reverence -and gratitude. There is something strangely touching about words so -candid, and a draught of philosophy that has been pressed from such -wild and bitter-sweet fruit. The message it contains is one to sink -deep, penetrating and enriching whatever receptive soul it touches. -This man’s words are incandescent. Many of us feel that he is breathing -into a language, grown trite from hackneyed usage, the inspiration of a -quickened life. - -Ida Gilbert Myers in _Washington Star_: Courage backs this revelation. -The gift of self-searching animates it. Honesty sustains it. And Mr. -Comfort’s rare power to seize and deliver his vision inspires it. It -is a tremendous thing--the greatest thing that this writer has yet done. - -George Soule in _The Little Review_: Here is a man’s life laid -absolutely bare. A direct, big thing, so simple that almost no one -has done it before--this Mr. Comfort has dared. People who are made -uncomfortable by intimate grasp of anything, to whom reserve is more -important than truth--these will not read _Midstream_ through, but -others will emerge from the book with a sense of the absolute nobility -of Mr. Comfort’s frankness. - -Edwin Markham in _Hearst’s Magazine_: Will Levington Comfort, a -novelist of distinction, has given us a book alive with human interest, -with passionate sincerity, and with all the power of his despotism over -words. He has been a wandering foot--familiar with many strands; he -has known shame and sorrow and striving; he has won to serene heights. -He tells it all without vaunt, relating his experience to the large -meanings of life for all men, to the mystic currents behind life, out -of which we come, to whose great deep we return. - - _12mo., Net, $1.25_ - - - - -RED FLEECE - -_Springfield Republican_: The first genuine war novel. - -_Outlook_: The first novel of any real consequence dealing with the -great war. - -_San Francisco Argonaut_: An extraordinary book. The reader of -Comfort’s book is carried away on a storm of emotion. - -_New York Tribune_: Decidedly the first notable novel of the great war -is Will Levington Comfort’s _Red Fleece_. Comfort sees in the moujik’s -dreamy soul the seed of a spiritual regeneration of the world. - -_The Dial_: As a stylist, Mr. Comfort has never done better work. “His -clothing smelled of death; and one morning before the smoke fell, he -watched the sun shining upon the smoke-clad hills. That moment the -thought held him that the pine-trees were immortal, and men just the -dung of the earth.” It is not given to many men to write such English -as that. - -_Boston Transcript_: This is a story written in wireless. It leaves a -lightning impression. - -_New York Times_: This novel has one most unusual fault. It is not long -enough. - -_Churchman_, New York: By far the most interesting and thoughtful book -of fiction springing from the great war. - - _12mo., Net, $1.25_ - - - - -TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: - -On page 123, side-ways has been changed to sideways. - -On page 130, banknotes has been changed to bank-notes. - -On page 310, waterfront has been changed to water-front. - -On page 336, eyelids has been changed to eye-lids. - -The name "Fomalhaut" was spelled multiple ways in this book; all have -been regularized to "Fomalhaut" (a star in the Southern Hemisphere.) - -All other spelling, hyphenation and dialect has been retained as -typeset. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOT & COMPANY *** - -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 an eBook, except by following -the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use -of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for -copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very -easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation -of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project -Gutenberg eBooks 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 other than 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 will 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 website -(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 the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager 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 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 website -and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without -widespread 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 website which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This website 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. |