.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 52842
   :PG.Title: Japonette
   :PG.Released: 2016-08-18
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Robert \W. Chambers
   :MARCREL.ill: Charles Dana Gibson
   :DC.Title: Japonette
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1912
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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JAPONETTE
=========

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   .. _`Cover art`:

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      :alt: Cover art

      Cover art

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   .. _`"Watching the city lights—watching, listening, always listening"`:

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      :alt: "Watching the city lights ... waiting, listening—always listening." Page 352

      "Watching the city lights ... waiting, listening—always listening." Page `352`_

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      JAPONETTE

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      *By* ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

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      WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
      CHARLES DANA GIBSON

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      \D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
      NEW YORK AND LONDON :: MCMXII

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      COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
      \D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

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      Copyright, 1911, 1912, by International Magazine Company
      under the title "The Turning Point"

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      *Published March, 1912*

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      Printed in the United States of America

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      TO
      ETHEL AND LUCILLE FOREMAN

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   CONTENTS

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   CHAPTER

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I.—`In Forma Pauperis`_
II.—`Corpus Delicti`_
III.—`Sub Judice`_
IV.—`In Loco Parentis`_
V.—`De Motu Proprio`_
VI.—`Pacta Conventa`_
VII.—`Flos Veneris`_
VIII.—`Mille Modi Veneris`_
IX.—`Non Sequitur`_
X.—`Compos Mentis`_
XI.—`Quod Erat Faciendum`_
XII.—`Nunc Aut Nunquam`_
XIII.—`Cui Malo`_
XIV.—`Desunt Cætera`_

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   LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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`"Watching the city lights—watching, listening,
always listening"`_ . . . Frontispiece

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`"A dainty, unreal shape, exquisite as a tinted
phantom stealing through a fairy tale of Old Japan"`_

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`"'We *had* to spend all our money on clothes'"`_

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`"'My uncle's port and sherry,' he said"`_

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`"'Is it because we are merely attractive that you
mentioned the relationship?'"`_

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`"'As far as I am concerned, the matter is settled'"`_

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`"'I wonder just how innocent we really are?' she said"`_

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`"Mr. Rivett took in Diana, his son Silvette"`_

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`"'Wouldn't it be odd if Jim married that girl?'"`_

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`"Presently she caught his eye and made him a pretty gesture"`_

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`"'Diana!' she exclaimed softly"`_

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`"Glancing up, she beheld Jack Rivett"`_

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`"She looked around, pen poised"`_

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`"The colonel puffed his cigar in smiling silence"`_

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`"'I want to gossip with you,' he said abruptly"`_

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`"'Oh, dear,' she said, 'there's somebody down there already'"`_

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`"Dineen slowly revolved his thumbs and squinted at a sunbeam"`_

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`"'Your loyalty to honor deceived a very gentle heart,' he said"`_

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`"That night at dinner she was very gay—a
charming, sparkling, bewildering creature"`_

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`"'So *this* is your apartment?' he said"`_

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`"'Health, happiness, prosperity to them'"`_

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.. _`IN FORMA PAUPERIS`:

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   JAPONETTE

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   CHAPTER I

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   IN FORMA PAUPERIS

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The failure of the old-time firm of
Edgerton, Tennant & Co. was unusual
only because it was an honest one—the
bewildered creditors receiving a hundred cents
on a dollar from property not legally involved.

Edgerton had been dead for several years;
the failure of the firm presently killed old
Tennant, who was not only old in years, but
also old in fashion—so obsolete, in fact, were
the fashions he clung to that he had used his
last cent in a matter which he regarded as
involving his personal honor.

The ethically laudable but materially
ruinous integrity of old Henry Tennant had made
matters rather awkward for his orphaned
nieces.  Similar traditions in the Edgerton
family—of which there now remained only a
single representative, James Edgerton
3d—devastated that young man's inheritance so
completely that he came back to the United
States, via Boston, on a cattle steamer and
arrived in New York the following day with
two dollars in loose silver and a confused
determination to see the affair through without
borrowing.

He walked from the station to the nearest
of his clubs.  It was very early, and the few
club servants on duty gazed at him with
friendly and respectful sympathy.

In the visitors' room he sat down, wrote
out his resignation, drew up similar valedictories
to seven other expensive and fashionable
clubs, and then picked up his two suit cases
again, declining with a smile the offered
assistance from Read, the doorman who had
been in service there as long as the club had
existed.

"Mr. Edgerton," murmured the old man,
"Mr. Inwood is in the Long Room, sir."

Edgerton thought a moment, then walked
to the doorway of the Long Room and looked
in.  At the same time Inwood glanced up
from his newspaper.

"Hello!" he exclaimed; "is that you, Edgerton?"

"Who the devil do you think it is?" replied
Edgerton amiably.

They shook hands.  Inwood said:

"What's the trouble—a grouch, a hangover,
or a lady?"

Edgerton laughed, placed his suit cases on
the floor, and seated himself in a corner of
the club window for the first time in six
months—and for the last time in many, many
months to come.

"It's hot in town," he observed.  "How
are you, Billy?"

"Blooming.  Accept from me a long, cold
one with a permanent fizz to it.  Yes?  No?
A Riding Club cocktail, then?  What?  Nix
for the rose-wreathed bowl?"

Edgerton shook his head.  "Nix for the
bowl, thanks."

"Well, you won't mind if I ring for first-aid
materials, will you?"

The other politely waved his gloved hand.

A servant arrived and departed with the
emergency order.  Inwood pushed an
unpleasant and polychromatic mess of Sunday
newspapers aside and reseated himself in the
leather chair.

"I'm terribly sorry about what happened
to you, Jim," he said.  "So is everybody.  We
all thought it was to be another gay year of
that dear Paris for you——"

"I thought so, too," nodded Edgerton;
"but what a fellow thinks hasn't anything to
do with anything.  I've found out that."

Inwood emptied his glass and gazed at the
frost on it, sentimentally.

"The main thing," he said, "is for your
friends to stand by you——"

"No; the main thing is for them to stand
aside—kindly, Billy—while I pass down and
out for a while."

"My dear fellow——"

"While I pass *out*," repeated Edgerton.
"I may return; but that will be up to
me—and not up to them."

"Well, what good is friendship?"

"Good to believe in—no good otherwise.
Let it alone and it's the finest thing in the
world; use it, and you will have to find
another name for it."

He smiled at Inwood.

"Friendship must remain always the
happiest and most comforting of all—theories,"
he said.  "Let it alone; it has a value
inestimable in its own place—no value otherwise."

Inwood began to laugh.

"Your notion concerning friends and
friendship isn't the popular one."

"But my friends will sleep the sounder for
knowing what are my views concerning
friendship."

"That's cynical and unfair," began the
other, reddening.

"No, it's honest; and you notice that even
my honesty puts a certain strain on our
friendship," retorted Edgerton, still laughing.

"You're only partly in earnest, aren't you?"

"Oh, I'm never really in earnest about
anything.  That's why Fate extended an unerring
and iron hand, grasped me by the slack of my
pants, shook me until all my pockets turned
inside out, and set me down hard on the
trolley tracks of Destiny.  Just now I'm crawling
for the sidewalk and the skirts of Chance."

He laughed again without the slightest
bitterness, and looked out of the window.

The view from the club window was soothing:
Fifth Avenue lay silent and deserted in
the sunshine of an early summer morning.

Inwood said: "The papers—everybody—spoke
most glowingly of the way your firm settled
with its creditors."

"Oh, hell!  Why should ordinary honesty
make such a stir in New York?  Don't let's
talk about it; I'm going home, anyway."

"Where?"

"To my place."

"It's been locked up for over a year, hasn't it?"

"Yes, but there's a janitor——"

"Come down to Oyster Bay with me,"
urged Inwood; "come on, Jim, and forget
your troubles over Sunday."

"As for my troubles," returned the other,
rising with a shrug and pulling on his gloves,
"I've had leisure on the ocean to classify and
pigeonhole the lot of them.  I know exactly
what I'm going to do, and I'm going home to
begin it."

"Begin what?" inquired Inwood with a
curiosity entirely friendly.

"I'm going to find out," said Edgerton,
"whether any of what my friends have called
my 'talents' are real enough to get me a job
worth three meals a day, or whether they'll
merely procure for me the hook."

"What are you thinking of trying?"

"I don't know exactly.  I thought of turning
some one of my parlor tricks into a future
profession—if people will let me."

"Writing stories?"

"Well, that, or painting, or illustrating—music,
perhaps.  Perhaps I could write a play,
or act in some other fellow's; or do some
damn thing or other—" he ended vaguely.
And for the first time Inwood saw that his
friend's eyes were weary, and that his face
seemed unusually worn.  It was plain enough
that James Edgerton 3d had already
journeyed many a league with Black Care, and
that he had not yet outridden that shadowy
horseman.

"Jim," said Inwood seriously, "why won't
you let me help you—"  But Edgerton
checked him in a perfectly friendly manner.

"You *are* helping me," he said; "that's why
I'm going about my business.  Success to
yours, Billy.  Good-by!  I'll be
back"—glancing around the familiar room—"sometime
or other; back here and around town,
everywhere, as usual," he added confidently;
and the haunted look faded.  He smiled and
nodded with a slight gesture of adieu, picked
up his suit cases, and, with another friendly
shake of his head for the offers of servants'
assistance, walked out into the sunshine of
Fifth Avenue, and west toward his own abode
in Fifty-sixth Street.

When he arrived there, he was hot and
dusty, and he decided to let Kenna carry up
his luggage.  So he descended to the area.

Every time he pulled the basement bell he
could hear it jingle inside the house
somewhere, but nobody responded, and after a
while he remounted the area steps to the
street and glanced up at the brown-stone
façade.  Every window was shut, every curtain
drawn.  That block on Fifty-sixth Street
on a Sunday morning in early summer is an
unusually silent and deserted region.
Edgerton looked up and down the sunny street.
After Paris the city of his birth seemed very
mean and treeless and shabby in the merciless
American sunshine.

Fumbling for his keys he wondered to what
meaner and shabbier street he might soon be
destined, now that fortune had tripped him
up; and how soon he would begin to regret
the luxury of this dusty block and the
comforts of the house which he was now about
to enter.  And he fitted his latch-key to the
front door and let himself in.

It was a very clumsy and old-fashioned
apartment house, stupidly built, five stories
high; there was only one apartment to a floor,
and no elevator.  The dark and stuffy austerity
of this out-of-date building depressed him
anew as he entered.  Its tenants, of course,
were away from town for the summer—respectable,
middle-aged people—stodgy,
wealthy, dull as the carved banisters that
guarded the dark, gas-lit well of the staircase.
Each family owned its own apartment—had
been owners for years.  Edgerton inherited
his floor from an uncle—widely known among
earlier generations as a courtly and delightful
old gentleman—an amateur of antiquities
and the possessor of many very extraordinary
things, including his own private character
and disposition.

Carrying his suit cases, which were pasted
all over with tricolored labels, the young man
climbed the first two flights of stairs, and then,
placing his luggage on the landing, halted to
recover his breath and spirits.

The outlook for his future loomed as dark
as the stair well.  He sat down on the top
step, lighted a cigarette, and gazed up at the
sham stained glass in the skylight above.  And
now for the first time he began to realize
something of the hideousness of his present
position, his helplessness, unfitted as he was
to cope with financial adversity or make an
honest living at anything.

If people had only let him alone when he
first emerged from college as mentally naked
as anything newly fledged, his more sensible
instincts probably would have led him to
remain in the ancient firm of his forefathers,
Edgerton, Tennant & Co., dealers in iron.

But fate and his friends had done the
business for him, finally persuading him to go
abroad.  He happened, unfortunately, to
possess a light, graceful, but not at all unusual,
talent for several of the arts; he could tinkle
catchy improvisations on a piano, sketch in oil
and water colors, model in clay, and write the
sort of amateur verse popular in college
periodicals.  Women often evinced an inclination
to paw him and tell him their troubles;
fool friends spoke vaguely of genius and
"achieving something distinctly worth while"—which
finally spoiled a perfectly good business
man, especially after a third-rate periodical
had printed one of his drawings, and a
fourth-rate one had published a short story
by him; and the orchestra at the Colonnade
had played one of his waltzes, and Bernstein
of the Frivolity Theater had offered to read
any libretto he might send.

So he had been ass enough to take a
vacation and offer himself two years' study
abroad; and he had been away almost a year
when the firm went to the wall, carrying with
it everything he owned on earth except this
apartment and its entailed contents, which he
could neither cast into the melting pot for his
creditors nor even sell for his own benefit.
However, the creditors were paid dollar for
dollar, and those finer and entirely obsolete
points of the Edgerton honor remained silver
bright; and the last of the Edgertons was back
once more in New York with his apartment,
his carvings, tapestries and pictures, which
the will forbade him to sell, and two dollars
change in his pockets.

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Presently he cast his cigarette from him,
picked up his suit cases, and started upward,
jaw set.  It was a good thing for him that he
had a jaw like that.  It was his only asset
now.  So far in life, however, he had never
used it.

Except the echo of his tread on the uncarpeted
staircase, not another sound stirred in
the house.  Every landing was deserted, every
apartment appeared to be empty and locked
up for the summer.  Dust lay gray on banister
and landing; the heated atmosphere reeked
with the odor of moth balls and tar paper
seeping from locked doors.

On the top floor a gas jet flickered as usual
in the corridor which led to his apartment.
By its uncertain flame he selected a key from
the bunch he carried, and let himself into his
own rooms; and the instant he set foot across
the threshold he knew that something was wrong.

Whether it had been a slight sound which
he fancied he heard in the private passage-way,
or whether he imagined some stealthy
movement in the golden dusk beyond, he
could not determine; but a swift instinct
halted and challenged him, and left him listening.

As he stood there, checked, slowly the idea
began to possess him that there was somebody
else in the apartment.  When the slight
but sudden chill had left him, and his hair
no longer tingled on the verge of rising, he
moved forward a step, then again halted.  For
a moment, still grasping both suit cases, he
stood as though at bay, listening, glancing
from alcove to corridor, from one dim spot
of light to another where a door ajar here and
there revealed corners of empty rooms.

Whether or not there was at that moment
another living being except himself in the
place he did not know, but he did know that
otherwise matters were not as he had left them
a year ago in his apartment.

For one thing, here, under his feet, was
spread his beautiful, antique Daghestan
runner, soft as deep velvet, which he had left
carefully rolled up, sewed securely in burlap,
and stuffed full of camphor balls.  For
another thing, his ear had caught a low,
rhythmical sound from the mantel in his bedroom.
It was his frivolous Sèvres clock ticking as
indiscreetly as it had ever ticked in the
boudoir of its gayly patched and powdered
mistress a hundred and fifty years ago—which
was disturbing to Edgerton, as he had been
away for a year, and had left his apartment
locked up with orders to Kenna, the janitor,
to keep out until otherwise instructed by
letter or cable.

Listening, eyes searching the dusk, he heard
somewhere the rustle of a curtain blowing at
an open window; and, stepping softly to his
dining-room door, he turned the knob
cautiously and peered in.

No window seemed to be open there; the
place was dark, the furniture still in its linen
coverings.

As he moved silently to the butler's pantry,
where through loosely closed blinds the
sunshine glimmered, making an amber-tinted
mystery of the silence, it seemed for a
moment to him as though he could still hear
somewhere the stir of the curtain; and he turned
and retraced his steps through the library.

In the twilight of the place, half revealed as
he passed, he began now to catch glimpses of
a state of things that puzzled him.

Coming presently to his dressing room, he
opened the door, and, sure enough, there was
a window open, and beside it a curtain
fluttered gayly.  But what completely
monopolized his attention was a number of
fashionable trunks—wardrobe trunks, steamer
trunks, hat trunks, shoe trunks—some open,
and the expensive-looking contents partly
visible; some closed and covered.  And on every
piece of this undoubtedly feminine luggage
were the letters D.T. or S.T.

And on top of the largest trunk sat a live cat.





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.. _`CORPUS DELICTI`:

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   CHAPTER II


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   CORPUS DELICTI

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The cat was pure white and plumy, and
Persian.  Out of its wonderful sky-blue
eyes it looked serenely at Edgerton; and
the young man gazed back, astonished.  Then,
suddenly, he caught a glimpse of the bedroom
beyond, and froze to a statue.

The object that appeared to petrify him lay
flung across his bed—a trailing garment of
cobweb lace touched here and there with
rose-tinted ribbons.

For a moment he stared at it hypnotized;
then his eyes shifted wildly to his dresser,
which seemed to be covered with somebody
else's toilet silver and crystal, and—*what* was
that row of cunning little commercial curls!—that
chair heaped with fluffy stuffs, lacy,
intimate things, faintly fragrant!

.. _`"A dainty, unreal shape, exquisite as a tinted phantom stealing through a fairy tale of Old Japan"`:

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   :alt: "A dainty, unreal shape, exquisite as a tinted phantom stealing through a fairy tale of Old Japan."

   "A dainty, unreal shape, exquisite as a tinted phantom stealing through a fairy tale of Old Japan."

With a violent shiver he turned his startled
eyes toward the parted tapestry gently
stirring in the unfelt summer wind.

From where he stood he could see into the
great studio beyond.  A small, flowered silk
slipper lay near the threshold, high of heel,
impertinent, fascinating; beyond, on the
corner of a table stood a bowl full of peonies,
ivory, pink, and salmon-tinted; and their
perfume filled the place.

Somebody had rolled up the studio shades.
Sunshine turned the great square window to
a sheet of dazzling glory, and against it,
picked out in delicate silhouette, a magic
shadow was moving—a dainty, unreal shape,
exquisite as a tinted phantom stealing through
a fairy tale of Old Japan.

Suddenly the figure turned its head and
saw him, and stood motionless against the
flare of light—a young girl, very slim in her
shimmering vestments of blossom-sprayed silk.

The next moment he walked straight into
the studio.

Neither spoke.  She examined him out of
wide and prettily shaped eyes; he inspected
her with amazed intentness.  Everything about
her seemed so unreal, so subtly fragrant—the
pink peonies like fluffy powder-puffs above
each little close-set ear, the rose-tinted
silhouette of her, the flushed cheeks, soft bare
arms, the silk-sheathed feet shod in tiny straw
sandals tied with vermilion cords.

"Who are you?" she asked; and her voice
seemed to him as charmingly unreal as the
rest of the Japanese fairy tale that held him
enthralled.

"Will you please go out again at once!"
she said, and he woke up partly.

"This—this is perfectly incredible," he said
slowly.

"It is, indeed," she said, placing a snowy
finger upon an electric button and retaining it
there.

He regarded her without comprehension,
muttering:

"I—I simply cannot realize it—that cat—those
g-garments—you——"

"There is another thing you don't realize,"
she said with heightened color, "that I am
steadily ringing the janitor's bell—and the
janitor is large and violent and Irish, and he
is probably halfway upstairs by this time——"

"Do you take me for a malefactor?" he
asked, astounded.

"I am not afraid of you in the least," she
retorted, still keeping her finger on the bell.

"Afraid of *me*?  Of course you are not."

"I am *not*!  Although your two suit cases
are probably packed with the silver from my
dressing stand."

"What!"

"Then—then—what have you put into your
suit cases?  *What* are you doing in this
apartment?  And will you please leave your suit
cases and escape immediately?"

Her voice betrayed a little unsteadiness
now, and Edgerton said:

"Please don't be frightened if I seem to
remain——"

"You *are* remaining!"

"Of course, I am."  He forced an embarrassed
smile.  "I've got to; I haven't any
other place to go.  There are all kinds of
complications here, and I think you had better
listen to me and stop ringing.  The janitor is
out anyway."

"He is *not*!" she retorted, now really
frightened; "I can hear him coming up the
stairway—probably with a p-pistol——"

Edgerton turned red.  "When I next set
eyes on that janitor," he said, "I'll probably
knock his head off....  *Don't* be frightened!
I only meant it humorously.  Really, you must
listen to me, because you and I have some
rather important matters to settle within the
next few minutes."

In his growing perplexity and earnestness
he placed his suit cases on the rug and
advanced a step toward her, and she shrank
away, her hands flat against the wall behind
her, the beautiful, frightened eyes fixed
on his—and he halted.

"I haven't the slightest notion who you
are," he said, bewildered; "but I'm pretty
sure that I'm James Edgerton, and that this
is my apartment.  But how you happen to be
inhabiting it I can't guess, unless that rascally
janitor sublet it to you supposing that I'd be
away for another year and never know it."

"*You*!—James Edgerton!" she exclaimed.

"My steamer docked yesterday."

"*You* are James Edgerton?—of Edgerton,
Tennant & Co.?"

He began to laugh.

"I *was* James Edgerton, of Edgerton, Tennant
& Co.; I am now only a silent partner in
Fate, Destiny & Co....  If you don't
mind—if you please—who are *you*?"

"Why, I'm Diana Tennant!"

"*Who?*"

"Diana Tennant!  Haven't you ever heard
of my sister and me?"

"You mean you're those two San Francisco
nieces?" he asked, astonished.

"I'm one of them.  Silvette is sitting on the
roof."

"On—the *roof*!"

"Yes; we have a roof garden—some geraniums
and things, and a hammock.  It's
just a makeshift until we secure employment....
Is it possible that you are really James
Edgerton?  And didn't you know that we had
rented your apartment by the month?"

He passed an uncertain hand over his eyes.

"Will you let me sit down a moment and
talk to you?" he said.

"Please—of course.  I *do* beg your pardon,
Mr. Edgerton....  You must understand
how startling it was to look up and see
a man standing there with two suit cases."

He began to laugh; and after a moment
she ventured to smile in an uncertain, bewildered
way, and seated herself in a big velvet
chair against the light.

They sat looking at each other, lost in
thought: he evidently absorbed in the problem
before him; she, unquiet, waiting, the reflex
of unhappy little perplexities setting her
sensitive lips aquiver at moments.

"You did rent this apartment from the
janitor?" he said at length.

"My sister and I—yes.  Didn't he have
your permission?"

"No....  But don't worry....  I'll fix it
up somehow; we'll arrange——"

"It is perfectly horrid!" she exclaimed.
"What in the world can you think of us? ... But
we were quite innocent—it was merely
chance.  Isn't it strange, Mr. Edgerton!—Silvette
and I had walked and walked and
walked, looking for some furnished
apartment within our means which we might take
by the month; and in Fifty-sixth Street
we saw the sign, 'Apartment and Studio
to let for the summer,' and we inquired, and
he let us have it for almost nothing....
And we never even knew that it belonged
to *you*!"

"To whom did you draw your checks for
the rent?"

"We were to pay the janitor."

"Have you done so?" he asked sharply.

"N-no.  We arranged—not to pay—until
we could afford it——"

"I'm glad of that!  Don't you pay that
scoundrel one penny.  As for me, of course
I couldn't think of accepting——"

"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" she said in pretty
despair; "I've got to tell you everything now!
Several humiliating things—circumstances—very
tragic, Mr. Edgerton."

"No; you need not tell me a single thing
that is likely to distress you."

"But I've *got* to!  You don't understand.
That wretched janitor has put us in a position
from which there is absolutely no escape.
Because I—we ought to go away instantly—b-but
we—can't!"

"Not at all, Miss Tennant.  I ought to
leave you in possession, and I—I'm trying to
think out how to—to do it."

"How can we ask *you* to do such a——"

"You don't ask; I've got to find some
means—ways—expedients——"

"But we *can't* turn you out of your own place!"

"No; but I've got to turn myself out.  If
you'll just let me think——"

"I will—oh, I will, Mr. Edgerton; but
please, *please* let me explain the dreadful and
humiliating conditions first, so that you won't
consider me absolutely shameless."

"I don't!"

"You will unless I tell you—unless I find
courage to tell you how it is with my sister
and me."

"I'd like to know, but you must not feel
obliged to tell me."

"I do feel obliged!  I *must*!  We're poor.
We've spent all our money, and we *can't* go
anywhere else very well!"

Edgerton glanced at the luxury in the next
room, astonished; then his gaze reverted to the
silk-clad figure before him.

"You don't understand, of course," she
said, flushing.  "How could you suppose us
to be almost penniless living here in such a
beautiful place with all those new trunks and
gowns and pretty things!  But *that* is exactly
why we are doing it!"

She leaned forward in her chair, the tint of
excitement in her cheeks.

"After the failure, Silvette and I hadn't
anything very much!—*you* know how everything
of uncle's went—"  She stopped
abruptly.  "Why—why, probably everything
of yours went, too!  Did it?"

He laughed: "Pretty nearly everything."

"Oh! oh!" she cried; "what a perfectly
atrocious complication!  Perhaps—perhaps
you haven't money enough to—to go
somewhere else for a while.  Have you?"

"Well, I'll fix it somehow."

"Mr. Edgerton!" she said excitedly, "Silvette
and I have *got* to go!"

"No," he said laughing, "you've only got
to go on with your story, Miss Tennant.  I
am a very interested and sympathetic listener."

"Yes," she said desperately, "I must go on
with that, too.  Listen, Mr. Edgerton; we
thought a long while and discussed *everything*,
and we concluded to stake everything on an
idea that came to Silvette.  So we drew out
all the money we had and we paid all our
just debts, and we parted with our chaperone—who
was a perfect d-darling—I'll tell you
about her sometime—and we took Argent,
our cat, and came straight to New York, and
we hunted and hunted for an apartment until
we found this!  And then—do you know what
we did?" she demanded excitedly.

"I couldn't guess!" said Edgerton, smiling.

"We bought clothes—beautiful clothes!
And everything luxurious that we didn't have
we bought—almost frightened to death while
we were doing it—and *then* we advertised!"

.. _`"'We *had* to spend all our money on clothes'"`:

.. figure:: images/img-029.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "We *had* to spend all our money on clothes."

   "We *had* to spend all our money on clothes."

"Advertised!"

"From *here*!  Can you *ever* forgive us?"

"Of course," he said, mystified; "but what
did you advertise?"

"Ourselves!"

"*What!*"

"Certainly; and we've had replies, but we
haven't liked the people so far.  Indeed, we
advertised in the most respectable daily,
weekly and monthly papers—"  She sprang to her
feet, trotted over to the sofa, picked up an
illustrated periodical devoted to country life,
and searching hastily through the advertising
pages, found and read aloud to him, still
standing there, the following advertisement:

"*Two ladies of gentle birth and breeding,
cultivated linguists, musicians, thoroughly
conversant with contemporary events, efficient
at auction bridge, competent to arrange
dinners and superintend decorations, desire
employment in helping to entertain house parties,
week-ends, or unwelcome but financially
important relatives and other visitations, at
country houses, camps, bungalows, or shooting
boxes*.

"*For terms write to or call at Apartment
Five——*"

She turned her flushed face toward him.

"*Your* address in full follows," she said.
"Can you ever bring yourself to forgive us?"

His astonished gaze met hers.  "That
doesn't worry me," he said.

"It is generous and—splendid of you to
say so," she faltered.  "You understand now,
don't you?  We *had* to spend all our money
on clothes; and we thought ourselves so
fortunate in this beautiful apartment because it
was certain to impress people, and nobody
could possibly suspect us of poverty with that
great picture by Goya over the mantel and
priceless tapestries and rugs and porcelains in
every direction—and our cat to make it look as
though we really belonged here."  Her voice
trembled a moment on the verge of breaking
and her eyes grew brilliant as freshly washed
stars, but she lifted her resolute little head
and caught the tremulous lower lip in her
teeth.  Then, the crisis over, she dropped the
illustrated paper, came slowly back to her
chair and sank down, extending her arms
along the velvet upholstery in silence.

Between them, on the floor, a sapphire rug
stretched its ancient Persian folds.  He looked
at it gravely, thinking that its hue matched
her eyes.  Then he considered more important
matters, plunging blindly into profound
abstraction; and found nothing in the depths
except that he had no money to go anywhere,
but that he must go nevertheless.

He looked up after a moment.

"Would you and your sister think it
inhospitable of me if I ask when you—I
mean—if I——"

"I know what you mean, Mr. Edgerton.
Silvette and I are going at once.

"You can't.  Do you think I'd permit it?
Please remember, too, that you've advertised
from here, and you've simply got to remain
here.  All I meant to ask was whether you
think it might be for a week or two yet, but,
of course, you can't tell—and forgive me
for asking—but I was merely trying to
adjust several matters in my mind to conditions——"

"Mr. Edgerton, we cannot remain.  There
is not in my mind the slightest doubt concerning
your financial condition.  If you *could*
let us stay until we secured employment,
I'd ask it of you—because you are James
Edgerton; but you can't"—she rose with
decision—"and I'm going up to the roof to tell
Silvette."

"If you stir I'll take those suit cases and
depart for good."

"You are very generous—the Edgertons
always were, I have heard, but we cannot accept——"

He interrupted, smiling: "I think the Tennants
never needed instruction concerning the
finer points of obligation." ... He stood a
moment thoughtfully, turning over and over
the two dollars in his pocket; then with a
laugh he walked across the studio and picked
up his suit cases.

"Don't do that!" she said in a grave voice.

"There is nothing else to do, Miss Tennant."

"There's another bedroom."

They stood, not regarding one another,
considering there in the sunshine.

"Will you wait until I return?" she asked,
looking up.  "I want to talk to Silvette....
I'd like to have Silvette see you.  Will you
wait?  Because I've come to one of my quick
conclusions—I'm celebrated for them,
Mr. Edgerton.  Will you wait?"

"Yes," he said, smiling.

So she trotted away in her little straw
sandals and flowery vestments and butterfly
sash; and he began to pace the studio, hands
clasped behind him, trying to think out
matters and ways and means—trying to see a way
clear which offered an exit from this
complication without forcing him to do that one
thing of which he had a steadfast
horror—borrow money from a friend.

Mingled, too, with his worried cogitations
was the thought of Henry Tennant's nieces—these
young California girls of whom he had
vaguely heard without any particular interest.
New Yorkers are never interested in relatives
they never saw; seldom in any relatives at all.
And, long ago, there had been marriage
between Tennant and Edgerton—in colonial
days, if he remembered correctly; and, to his
own slight surprise, he felt it now as an added
obligation.  It was not enough that he efface
himself until they found employment; more
than that was due them from an Edgerton.
And, as he had nothing to do it with, he
wondered how he was to do anything at all for
these distant cousins.

Standing there in the sunshine he cast an
ironical glance around him at the Beauvais
tapestries, the old masters, the carved
furniture of Charles II's time, rugs dyed with the
ancient splendor of the East, made during the
great epoch when carpets of Ispahan,
Damascus—and those matchless hues woven with
gold and silver which are called Polish—decorated
the palaces of Emperor and Sultan.

Not one thing could he sell under the will
of Peter Edgerton to save his body from
starvation or his soul from anything else; and
he jingled the two dollars in his pocket and
thought of his talents, and wondered what
market there might be for any of them in a
city where bricklayers were paid higher wages
than school teachers, and where the wealthy
employed others to furnish their new and
gorgeous houses with everything from pictures
and books to the ancient plate from
which they ate.

And, thinking of these things, his ears
caught a slight rustle of silk; and he lifted his
head as Diana Tennant and her sister Silvette
came toward him through the farther room.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`SUB JUDICE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium bold

   SUB JUDICE

.. vspace:: 2

"Isn't this a mess!" said Silvette in a
clear, unembarrassed voice, giving him
her hand.  "Imagine my excitement up on
the roof, Mr. Edgerton, when Diana appeared
and told me what a perfectly delightful man
had come to evict us!"

"I didn't say it that way," observed Diana,
her ears as pink as the powder-puff peonies
above them.  "My sister," she explained, "is
one of those girls whose apparent frankness is
usually nonsense.  I'm merely warning you,
Mr. Edgerton."

Silvette—a tall, free-limbed, healthy, and
plumper edition of her sister—laughed.  "In
the first place," she said, "suppose we have
luncheon.  There is a fruit salad which I
prepared after breakfast.  Our maid is out, but
we know how to do such things, having been
made to when schoolgirls."

"You'll stay, won't you?" asked Diana.

"Poor Mr. Edgerton—where else is he to
go?" said Silvette calmly.  "Diana, if you'll
set places for three at that very beautiful and
expensive antique table, I'll bring some
agreeable things from the refrigerator."

"Could I be of any use?" inquired Edgerton,
smiling.

"Indeed, you can be.  Talk to Diana and
explain to her how respectable we are and you
are, and how everything is certain to be
properly arranged to everybody's satisfaction.
Diana has a very wonderful idea, and she's
come to one of her celebrated snap-shot
conclusions—a conclusion, Mr. Edgerton, most
flattering to you.  Ask her."  And she went
away toward the kitchenette not at all
embarrassed by her pretty morning attire nor by the
thick braid of golden hair which hung to her
girdle.

Diana cast a swift glance at Edgerton, and,
seeing him smile, smiled, too, and set about
laying places for three with snowy linen,
crystal, silver, and the lovely old Spode
porcelain which had not its match in all the city.

"It's like a play or a novel," she said; "the
hazard of our coming here the way we did,
and of you coming back to America; but, of
course, the same cause operated in both cases,
so perhaps it isn't so remarkable after all!
And"—she repressed a laugh—"to think that
I should mistake you for a malefactor!  Did
it seem to you that I behaved in a silly manner?"

"On the contrary, you exhibited great dignity
and courage and self-restraint."

"Do you really mean it?  I was nearly
scared blue, and I was perfectly certain you'd
stuffed your suit cases full of our toilet silver.
*Wasn't* it funny, Mr. Edgerton!  And *what*
did you think when you looked into your
studio and saw a woman?"

"I was—somewhat prepared."

"Of course—after a glimpse into our bedroom!
But that must have astonished you,
didn't it?"

"Slightly.  The first thing I saw was a
white cat staring at me from the top of a
trunk."

She laughed, arranging the covers with deft
touch.

"And what next did you see?"

"Garments," he explained briefly.

"Oh!  Yes, of course."

"Also a silk-flowered slipper with a very
high heel on the threshold."

"Mine," she said.  "You see, in the days
of our affluence, I used to have a maid.  I
forget, and throw things about sometimes."

"You've a maid now, haven't you?"

"Oh, just a combination cook and waitress
until we can find employment.  She's horridly
expensive, too, but it can't be helped, because
it would create an unfavorable impression if
Silvie or I answered the door bell."

"You're quite right," he said; "people have
a curious aversion to employing those who
really need it.  Prosperity never lacks
employment.  It's odd, isn't it?"

"It's rather cruel," she said under her breath.

Silvette came in bringing a chilled fruit
salad, bread and butter, cold chicken, and tea.
"We'll have to put it all on at once.  You
don't mind, do you, Mr. Edgerton?"

He said smilingly but distinctly: "One's
own family can do no wrong.  That is my creed."

Diana looked up at him.

"I wondered whether you knew we were
relations," she said, flushing deliriously.

"You see," added Silvette, "it was not for
us to remind you."

"Of our kinship?  Why not?"

"Because you might have considered it an
added obligation toward us," said Diana,
blushing.

"I do—a delightful one; and it is very
gracious of you to acknowledge it."

"But we don't mean to presume on it,"
interrupted Silvette hastily.  "Some day we
really do mean to regulate our financial
obligations toward you."

"There are no such obligations.  Please
remember what roof covers you——"

"Mr. Edgerton!"

"And whose salt——"

"It's our salt, anyway," said Diana; "I
bought it myself!"

They seated themselves, laughing; then
suddenly Edgerton remembered, and he went
away with a hasty excuse, only to return again
with a brace of decanters.

"My uncle's port and sherry," he said.

.. _`"'My uncle's port and sherry,' he said"`:

.. figure:: images/img-041.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "'My uncle's port and sherry,' he said."

   "'My uncle's port and sherry,' he said."

Silvette jumped up and found half-a-dozen
old-time glasses; and the luncheon continued.

"Isn't it ridiculous!" observed the young
fellow, glancing around the studio; "here am
I surrounded by a fortune in idiotic antiquities,
lunching from a table that the Metropolitan
Museum inherits after my death, sipping
a sherry which came from the cellars
of a British monarch—with two dollars and
several cents in my pockets, and not the
slightest idea where to get more.  *Isn't* it
funny!"

Silvette forced a smile, then glanced significantly
at her sister.  Diana said, gravely:

"We have several hundred dollars.  Would
you be kind enough to let us offer you what
you require for immediate use until——"

"Why, you blessed child!" he said, laughing,
"that isn't what worries me now!"

"Then—what is it?" inquired Silvette.

"You and your sister."

"What do you mean, Mr. Edgerton?"

"I mean that I'm worried over your prospects!"

"Why, they are perfectly bright!"
exclaimed Diana; "In a few days somebody
will employ us to help entertain a number of
stupid and wealthy people.  We'll make a
great deal of money, I expect; don't you,
Silvie?"

"Certainly; but I'm wondering what
Mr. Edgerton is going to do with two dollars in
his pocket and us in his apartment."

"So am I," said Diana.

"It's perfectly charming of you to care."

"What an odd thing to say to us!  Is it not
very natural to care?  Besides your being
related, you have also been so considerate and
so nice to us that we'd care anyway, I think.
Don't you, Silvie?"

Silvette nodded her golden-crowned head.

"The thing to do for the present," she said,
"is for you to take that farther room.  It was
Diane's idea, and I entirely agree with
her—after seeing you."

"That was the sudden conclusion of which
I spoke to you," explained Diana.  "Such
things come to me instinctively.  I thought to
myself, 'If he mentions the kinship between
us, then we'll ask him to remain.'  And you
did.  And we do ask you; don't we, Silvie?"

"Certainly.  If two old maids wish to
entertain their masculine cousin for a week or
two, whose affair is it?  Let Mrs. Grundy
shriek; I don't care.  Do you, Diane?"

"No, I don't.  Besides," she added naïvely,
"she's out of town."

They all laughed.  The germ of a delightful
understanding was beginning to take shape;
it had already become nascent and was
developing in every frank smile, every candid
glance, every unembarrassed question and reply.

"We have no parents," said Diana gravely.
"You have none, have you?"

"No," he said.

"Then it seems natural to me, our being
here together; but"—and Diana glanced
sideways at him—"in the East, I believe, people
consider relationship of little or no importance."

He sipped his sherry, reflecting.

"As a rule," he said; "but"—and he
laughed—"if any Easterner even suspected
he had two such California cousins, he'd start
for the Pacific coast without his breakfast!"

"Did you ever hear anything half as amiable?"
asked Silvette, laughing.

"I never did," replied Diana; "especially
as we're probably his twenty-second cousins."

"That distance may lend an enchantment
to the obligations of kinship!" he said gayly.

Diana looked up, grave as a youthful Japanese
goddess.

"You don't mean that, do you?"

"No, I don't," he said, reddening.  "If I
did, the janitor ought to throw me out."

Silvette nodded seriously.

"We know you said it in joke; but the
only straw to float Diane's idea is our kinship,
Mr. Edgerton.  And we grasped at it—for
your sake."

"Please cling to it for your own sakes,"
too, he said, also very serious now; "it may
become a plank to float us all....  I realize
the point you are straining out of kindness to
me.  If I accept shelter here for a day or two,
I shall know very well what it costs you to
offer it."

"It doesn't cost us anything," interrupted
Diana hastily.  "Silvette meant only that you
should understand why our consciences and
common sense sanction your remaining if we
remain."

"*You* must remain anyway!" he said.

"So must you, cousin," said Silvette,
laughing.  "Anyway, you've probably sent your
trunks here—haven't you?"

"By jinks!  I forgot that!" he exclaimed.
"I believe that racket on the stairs means that
my trunks are arriving!"

It did mean exactly that.  And when Edgerton
went out to the landing he encountered
two expressmen staggering under the
luggage, and, behind them, the terrified
janitor who had returned, and who, on the
advent of the baggage, had hurried upstairs to
summarily evict the illegal lodgers before
Edgerton's arrival.

Now, at sight of Edgerton himself, the
Irishman turned white with horror and clung
to the banisters for support; but Edgerton
only said pleasantly: "Hello, Mike!  I hope
you've made my cousins comfortable.  I'll be
here for a day or two.  Bring up any mail
there may be for me, and see that the landing
is properly dusted after this."

He came back to the studio intensely amused.

"I thought that guilty Irishman would
faint on the stairs when he saw me," he said.
"I merely said that I hoped he'd looked out
for my cousins' comfort....  You know," he
added laughingly, "I'm anything except angry
at him."

Silvette rose from the table and strolled
over toward him.

"Are you really glad to know us?" she
asked curiously.  "We've heard that New
Yorkers are not celebrated for their enthusiasm
over poor relatives from the outer darkness."

"New Yorkers," he said, "are not different
from any other creatures segregated in a
self-imposed and comfortable captivity.  People
who have too much of anything are spoiled to
that extent—ignorant to that degree—selfish
and prejudiced according to the term of their
imprisonment.  All over the world it is the
same; the placidity of self-approval and
self-absorption is the result of local isolation.
We're not stupid; we merely have so much to
look at that we don't care what may take
place outside our front gate.  But if anybody
opens our gate and comes in, he'll have no
trouble, because he'll be as much of a New
Yorker as anybody really is."

Silvette laid her head on one side and, drawing
the heavy burnished braid of hair over her
left shoulder, rebraided the end absently.

"Is it," she inquired, "because we are
merely attractive that you mentioned the
relationship?"

.. _`"'Is it because we are merely attractive that you mentioned the relationship?'"`:

.. figure:: images/img-049.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "'Is it because we are merely attractive that you mentioned the relationship?'"

   "'Is it because we are merely attractive that you mentioned the relationship?'"

"I'm afraid it's—partly that," he admitted,
reddening and glancing askance at Diana.

"Stop tormenting him!" said Diana.  "He's
candid, anyhow.  It's very fortunate all
around, anyway," she added naïvely; though
exactly why she considered it fortunate to
meet a man with two dollars in his pocket and
the legal right to evict her, she did not
explain to herself.

Silvette, caressing her braid with deft
fingers, mused aloud: "It's very noble of him to
claim relationship with two poverty-stricken
old maids from the Pacific coast.  Don't you
think so, Diane?"  And she glanced up with
a bewitching smile that had in it a glint of
malice.

"*Stop* tormenting him!" repeated Diana.
"We're pretty and young, and he knows it
and we know it.  What's the use in speculating
about what he might have done if we were
not attractive?  He's perfectly satisfied with his
western cousins—aren't you?" glancing up.

"Perfectly," he said.

Diana nodded emphatically.

"Do you hear, Silvie?  He says he is perfectly
satisfied with us, and he is a typical New
Yorker.  Therefore, we need not be at all
disturbed about our capacity for entertaining
anybody, if somebody will only offer us
employment."

Silvette looked around at him.  "I'd like to
have you see us in our afternoon gowns; I
believe you'd really be rather proud of the
relationship."

"Good Lord!" he exclaimed, half laughing,
half annoyed; "I'm proud of it anyway.
What on earth do you think a New Yorker is?"

"We've seen *some*," said Diana meaningly.
"Several came here in answer to our
advertisement.  But we knew, of course, that your
type existed, too."

"Have you been—annoyed?"

Silvette laughed.  "One man, of very red
complexion, inquired if Diana would act as his
housekeeper.  He had several country places,
he said."

"There was a woman came; we didn't care
for her," added Diana thoughtfully.  Then,
lifting her head, she looked at Edgerton with
a gaze so pure and sweet, so exquisitely
candid, that he felt his heart stop for a moment.
Then the blood mounted to his face—to the
roots of his hair.

"Take me into your partnership," he said
impulsively; "will you?"

"What!"

"Can you?  Is it all right?"

"I don't know what you mean!" said Diana.

"Why couldn't I help entertain week-ends
with you?"

The proposition seemed to astound them all,
even the young fellow who had made it.

For a moment they all stood silent; then,
pursuing his own impulsive idea toward a
plausible conclusion, he said: "Why not,
after all?  It would make a better
combination than two young girls alone.  I've
clothes—two trunks in there, two more at
the customs—London made and duty paid!
Why not?  It's a good combination.  The
more I think of it the better I like it!"

He began to pace to and fro nervously.

"I know a lot of people—the right kind.
I'm not ashamed to ask them to employ me.
There is no reason why a Tennant or an
Edgerton should not be in their houses——"

"But," said Silvette quietly, "the *right* sort
of people, as you call them, have no need of
asking anybody to aid them in entertaining.
It is very generous of you, Mr. Edgerton, but
don't you see that services of our kind will
be accepted only by—by newcomers, newly
wealthy people—those whose circle is small
and not very select."

"Yes, that is so," he said so forlornly that
Diana watched him curiously, and a delicate
color came into her cheeks as he looked up
again, eager, radiant.

"That's true," he repeated; "but if I can't
do anything in that way for us among the
right sort, at least the other kind will have
a man to reckon with"—he glanced at
Diana grimly now—"when they inquire
about housekeepers, and when women whom
you do not care for reply to your advertisements."

"That is rather a nice thing to say,"
observed Silvette, looking at him out of her
dark eyes.  "But we know—a number of
things.  We are not a bit afraid, and—you
would not care to—endure the kind of people
likely to employ us."

"I can endure what you can.  I'd like to do
it....  Would you rather not have me?"

"Why, I—it would be delightful—charming—but
we had not even dreamed of such a thing."

He turned to Diana.  "Will *you* let me try?"

She said, confused: "I hadn't thought of
such a thing....  Could it be done?"

"Why not?" asked Silvette, immensely
interested.  "When people come, we can say,
'We and our cousin, Mr. Edgerton, are
associated as social entertainers.'"

"Oh, if you put it that way they'll think he
does Punch and Judy and we dance queer
dances!" exclaimed Diana in consternation.

Edgerton threw back his head and laughed,
utterly unable to control his merriment, and
Silvette caught the infection, and her clear,
delicious laughter filled the sunny studio.  She
showed her white teeth when she laughed.

"Oh, it is perfectly horrid of me to think
of such a thing, but I can't help thinking of
three trained acrobats," said Silvette, breathless.
"*Does* it seem funny for three of us to
be associated in entertaining guests?  *Does* it,
Mr. Edgerton?  Or am I only frivolous?"

After their laughter had ceased, and their
breath had returned, he said: "Wherever we
go—whoever employs us—the other guests
will suppose us to be guests, too.  Only the
guilty millionaire from outer darkness with a
new house on Fifth Avenue and a newer one
in the country will know."

Silvette said: "Do you realize that it is
perfectly dear of you to propose such a thing?"

Diana said nothing.

Silvette went on: "I know perfectly well
and you know, too—that your name would
be worth almost anything to the wealthy snob
who employs us."

Diana said nothing.

"To have an Edgerton as a guest would
elevate our prospective employer to the seventh
heaven of snobbery," said Silvette.  "Diane
and I would shine serenely in the reflected
relationship——"

"Don't make fun of me," he said.

"Why, I'm not.  I really mean it.  My instincts
have been so warped and materialized
and commercialized that here I am seriously
proposing to make family capital out of the
name of one branch of the family.  I really
do mean it, Mr. Edgerton."

"No," said Diana quietly.

He turned toward her.

"Do you vote against me?"

"Yes."

"Don't, please," he said, looking at her.

She met his eye calmly for a moment, then
looked at her sister.

"Do you think it a decent thing to do?"
she asked; "our making plans to live on
Mr. Edgerton?"

"Good heavens!" he said impatiently,
"my being part of a family combination isn't
going to alter your success in any way."

"Your name makes it sure."

"Your youth and beauty and good breeding
make it sure.  My name has nothing to
do with it."

"Then why do you propose it?"

He laughed.  "Because I've got to make a
living, too."

"There are less humiliating ways of making
a living—for you," said Diana steadily.

He looked first at Silvette, then at her,
deliberately, and his face altered.

"I want to look out for you," he said, "and
that's the plain truth."

"That," observed Silvette, "is the nicest
thing he's said yet, Diane."  She walked up to
him and stood serenely inspecting him.

"*I* vote for you.  Diane, let's admit him.
We're a poverty-stricken family, and we ought
to combine.  Besides, I like him to feel the
way he does about us—not that it's necessary,
of course—but it's—pleasant."

"I haven't any cash," said Edgerton, "but
I've this apartment, which nobody can take
away even if I starve; and I've some very fine
clothes....  Won't you vote for me, Diana?"
he added so naturally that neither
seemed to notice his use of her first name.

Silvette waited a moment, watching her sister;
then she said briskly: "Let's dress.  We'll
inspect your beautiful British clothing, cousin,
and you shall see our prettiest afternoon
gowns.  Then we can tell better how such a
combination would look.  Shall we?"

Edgerton said to Diana: "Don't you *want* me?"

She replied slowly: "I—don't—know,"
looked up at him, straight at him, thoughtfully.

"People may come at any time after two
o'clock," said Silvette.  "If they find you in
flowered silk and a butterfly sash and me in a
pigtail, they will certainly expect dances from
us and probably Punch and Judy from our cousin."

She laughed, and extended her hand to Edgerton.

"I like you, cousin; Diane does, too.  When
you're dressed in your best, come back to the
studio and we'll arrive at some kind of a conclusion."

Diana nodded to him as she passed with her
sister.  The questioning gravity of her
expression reminded him of a child who has not
yet made up its mind to like you.  She wore
the bluest eyes he had ever seen, and the most
enchanting mouth—the unspoiled mouth of
childhood.

When they entered their room he went out
by the hallway to his.

Standing there, fumbling with tie and
collar, his absent gaze followed the checkered
sun spots moving on the wall as the curtain
moved; and, gradually, there in the half light,
the blue eyes seemed to take winsome shape
and hue, and he said aloud to himself:

"Anyway, somebody ought to look after
her....  She can't go roaming about like this."





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.. _`IN LOCO PARENTIS`:

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   CHAPTER IV


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   IN LOCO PARENTIS

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Shaved, bathed, and his person adorned
with his most fashionable lounging suit
for a summer afternoon, Edgerton sauntered
out of his room and met the maid in the
hallway.  She had returned in time to answer the
door; evidently also she had already been
enlightened as to his identity, so he passed her
with a nod and a smile, and entered the studio
just as the door bell rang.

Neither Silvette nor Diana had yet
appeared, nor had he been instructed what to
say to those who might call in answer to the
advertisement.  He looked up doubtfully as
the maid announced a Mr. Rivett and a
Colonel Curmew, and he stepped forward as these
two gentlemen were ushered in.

"How d'you do?" he said pleasantly.
"My cousins will be in directly.  I am James
Edgerton 3d."

Colonel Curmew, a jaunty gentleman of less
than middle height and age, looked at him out
of a pair of eyes slightly inclined to pop.  He
appeared to be rather a good-looking man at
first glance, with a perceptible military cut
which, however, seemed to threaten something
akin to a strut.  He didn't exactly strut when
he stepped, but he held himself very erect—the
more so perhaps because he seemed to
lack something else—perhaps height.

He knew Edgerton perfectly well by sight
and reputation; and when he sat down he was
still looking at him out of his full, pale eyes.

Mr. Rivett also seated himself—a little man
with a walrus mustache who somehow looked
as though, under his loosely cut clothes, his
slight physique was steel framed.

He put on his glasses and looked at Edgerton
out of two little unwinking eyes which
reminded the young fellow of holes burned in
a blanket.

"I came," he said cautiously, "in answer
to a somewhat unusual advertisement."

"Yes," said Edgerton pleasantly, "we advertised."

"If I recollect," continued Mr. Rivett,
"you did not figure in the advertisement."

"No," replied Edgerton, smiling; "my
cousins possess the family talents; I'm
supernumerary—merely thrown in.  My services
are not worth very much; I ride and shoot, of
course, and all that, but I don't talk very well
and my dancing is the limit."

"I see."

Edgerton nodded serenely.

Colonel Curmew passed a carefully gloved
hand over his trimly curled military mustache.
Edgerton glanced at him and wondered just
what was the matter with his face, which
ought to have been good-looking.  Perhaps
the short, closely cropped side whiskers
extending to the lobes of the ears slightly
cheapened the mustache, and vulgarized the man
a little.

Colonel Curmew said:

"I have never had the honor of knowing
you, Mr. Edgerton, but your name and face
are very familiar to me on Fifth Avenue."

"My people have lived on Fifth Avenue
for—some time," replied the young fellow,
smiling; and caught Mr. Rivett's burnt-brown
gaze fixed steadily upon him.

"Everybody," said Colonel Curmew, sitting
very erect, but not exactly swaggering,
"everybody in town regretted to hear of your
family's financial misfortune, Mr. Edgerton."

"It's very good of them to regret it.  Naturally,
also, that unexpected catastrophe explains
my cousins' desire for employment as
well as my own."

"I see," said Mr. Rivett, never taking his
eyes off Edgerton.

There was a pause; Colonel Curmew
stroked his mustache and stared around at the
tapestries and pictures.  He evidently realized
what they might bring at auction.

"You are a lover of the antique, sir," he
observed.

"Oh, I don't exactly love it.  These things
belonged to my uncle.  The museum gets them
ultimately."

"Ah! a case of the dead hand?"

"Mort main," nodded the young man indifferently.

"I see," said Mr. Rivett; and suddenly it
occurred to Edgerton that this explanation
was, perhaps, one of the unuttered questions
with which Mr. Rivett's bony countenance
seemed crowded.  But the little man had not
yet asked a single one; and it may have been
in response to the steady, silent interrogation
of those gimlet eyes that Edgerton was moved
to further explanation.

"My cousins are Californians; I am a New
Yorker, as you know.  We have combined
forces from economical and family motives.
It is necessary that we find employment,
so—" and he smiled at Mr. Rivett—"we have
asked for it."

Mr. Rivett sat impassive behind his big,
round spectacles.  His walrus mustache
prevented anybody from seeing his mouth; his
eyes now resembled two little charred holes.
It was utterly impossible to divine what he
might be thinking about, or even whether he
was doing anything at all except waiting.
Somehow, it occurred to Edgerton that Mr. Rivett
had done a great deal of waiting in his
career.

Colonel Curmew had now risen, and was
strolling about examining the antiquities when
the folding doors slid back and Silvette and
Diana came into the studio.

.. _`"'As far as I am concerned, the matter is settled'"`:

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   :alt: "'As far as I am concerned, the matter is settled.'"

   "'As far as I am concerned, the matter is settled.'"

Edgerton rose and presented Mr. Rivett
and the colonel; the young girls spoke to them
with quiet self-possession, and presently
everybody was again seated.  Except for the
colonel, the attitude of everybody suggested a
business gathering of people pleasantly receptive
to any business proposition, but that jaunty
warrior's pale eyes popped and his smile was
of the sort termed "killing"; and he curled
his mustache continually with caressing
fingers, and presently shot his cuffs.

Mr. Rivett broke the silence somewhat abruptly:

"As far as I am concerned, the matter is
settled."

There was another silence; then Silvette
ventured: "I beg your pardon.  I don't think
we understood."

"I say, as far as *I* am concerned, the
matter is settled," repeated Mr. Rivett.  "I ask
no further information regarding these young
ladies "—turning slightly toward Edgerton—"nor
about you, sir.  I am satisfied, and Mrs. Rivett
will be."

Diana and Silvette seemed surprised; Edgerton
wore a preoccupied expression, his eyes
narrowing on the big eyeglasses of Mr. Rivett
which reflected the studio window on their
convex surface.

"About myself," continued Mr. Rivett with
more abruptness, "I have a house in New
York, which is closed, and one or two others;
one in particular where my family is living—my
wife, son, and daughter.  It's called
Adriutha Lodge; I don't know why—my wife
named it.  It's comfortable and big enough
to entertain in."

He looked at Silvette without a particle of
expression in his face.

"I would like you—both of you young
ladies—and your cousin, Mr. Edgerton, to help
us entertain.  If we knew how to entertain
successfully we wouldn't ask anybody to show
us how.  It is better to be plain about it.  We
are plain folk from a small town in the West.
We know very few people; we mean to know
more.  I've come to this city to remain; I
want to make as few mistakes as possible
socially.  What I wish you to do is to help me
out.  Will you?"

After a moment Diana asked: "Where is
Adriutha Lodge?"

"In the Berkshires.  Will you come?"

She glanced at the colonel, but he was
staring so fixedly at her that she looked
away.

"We might consider it," said Silvette, turning
toward Edgerton.

"Couldn't you consider it at once?" asked
Mr. Rivett.  Evidently this little man with
his glasses and his protuberant mustache had
his own methods of accelerating business.

"You have mentioned no terms," said Edgerton.

"Oh!  Am I to mention them?  I expected
you had your own ideas on that subject.  Very
well, then."  And the offer he made left them
silent and a little shy.  It seemed too much.

Edgerton said laughingly to Diana:

"Suppose we consult in your room—if
Mr. Rivett doesn't mind our withdrawing for a
moment."

"Go ahead," nodded Rivett energetically;
"that's exactly what I want—quick action.  I
like quick results."

So Silvette and Diana and Edgerton rose
and entered the room in single file, closing
behind them the folding doors.

"Well!" breathed Diana, sitting down on
the edge of the bed, "did you ever before see
a man of that kind?"

Silvette turned to Edgerton.  "What do
you think of him, cousin?"

"Why, I rather like that dried-up little
chip," he said.  "He's about the grade of
citizen we expected."

"*We?*" repeated Diana meaningly; "do
you expect to go with us?"

"Are you going to force me out of this
perfectly good combination, Diana?"

The girl sat silent on the bed's edge
regarding him, but not answering.

"There's one thing which ought to be settled
now," observed Silvette; "if our cousin,
Mr. Edgerton, is to remain in this firm, we've
got to call him Jim, if only for appearance'
sake.  Otherwise people would chatter."

"Jim?" repeated Diana; "very well, it
doesn't embarrass me to call him Jim—or Tom
or Bill, for that matter," she added indifferently.

"It doesn't worry me, either," said Edgerton;
"call me anything but early."

"Such a poor joke!" said Silvette; "if we
ever call you, cousin, it will be a very late
affair—and with nothing under a full house."

"Poker!—and *you*!  What an incredible
combination!" he said.

Diana interrupted coolly: "If you please,
Mr. Edgerton, what is your valuable and
masculine opinion concerning this munificent
offer for the summer?"  And she let her
glance rest slowly and sideways on her sister.

"Take it," he said; "it's a good offer."

"Is that your vote?" inquired Silvette.

"Have I a vote?" he asked of Diana; but
she merely said: "I say we try the Rivetts of
Adriutha.  That is *my* vote."

"Then—so do I say so," nodded Silvette.
"Is it settled?"

Diana looked up at Edgerton.

"Are you really expecting to come with us?"

"If you will let me."

She remained a moment in thought, then
sprang lightly to her feet.

"Who is going to be our spokesman?" she
asked; "you, sister?"

"Jim," said Silvette, tranquilly leading the
way.  "It looks better, I think."

So Edgerton politely informed Mr. Rivett
of their unanimous decision, and that little
man got briskly to his feet.

"I'm satisfied," he said.  "Come to Adriutha
as soon as you are ready.  Bring all the
luggage you want to bring; there's plenty of
room.  *Don't* bring any servants; there are
more than enough there now.  My wife and
I receive you as guests; my son and daughter
are about your ages; nobody can prophesy
what you'll think of them or they of you....
Colonel—if you are ready....  Good-by,
ma'am," to Silvette, offering a dry little hand;
and he took his leave of Diana and of Edgerton,
and pulled the colonel unceremoniously
out of a most elegant attitude, ruining a
jaunty bow which he had not intended to
finish so abruptly.

"Well," exclaimed Silvette with a sigh and
a laugh as the door closed, "it's settled!  Let's
forget it....  What do you think of our
gowns, cousin James?"

"Corking," he replied; "but my cousin
Diana was very fetching in her Japanese dress
this morning."

"That's like a man!" observed Diana.  "I
was a mess, Silvie—with two ragged peonies
over my ears and those old straw sandals of
yours——"

"You were a vision of Japanese fairyland,"
he insisted.  "I may be weak-minded, but I
simply cannot get that vision of you out of
my head."

"Try some tea," as the maid brought it;
"weak tea and feeble intellects agree."

"Oh, I'll try tea or anything else, but if you
think I'm likely to forget the first moment I
ever saw you—a slender, Japanese shadow
shape against the sun!—ethereal, vaguely
tinted, exquisite——"

"You *are* a poet, Jim," said Silvette
admiringly.  "I read one of your rhymes in
*Life* once, and didn't think so."

"Diana made me a poet.  If you'd seen her
as she came stealing across the window, which
was all glittering like a Japanese sunburst,
you'd have become a poet, too!"  He began to
laugh.  "I even created a name for you,
Diana; it came to me—was already on my
lips——"

"What name?" she asked, looking composedly at him.

"Japonette! ... *I* never before heard such
a name.  I don't believe there ever was such
a name before it suddenly twitched at my lips
for utterance!  Japonette!"

"Why didn't you utter it if you were so
enchanted with your discovery?"

"Because you seemed to be sufficiently
scared as it was."

She shrugged, and handed him his tea.
"Japonette," she repeated reflectively; "I
don't know whether or not I care for it.  It
sounds frivolous."

"Which you are not!"

She lifted her blue eyes to his.

"*You* think I am," she said.

"No, I don't."

"You *know* I am," she said, and presented
herself with a small tea cake.  Into it she bit
once; then raised her eyes, watching her sister
manipulating the alcohol lamp.

"Do you suppose," she said, "that we'll
ever have the slightest personal interest in
these Rivett people?"

"Probably not," said her sister.  "What of
it?  I wonder whether that colonel is likely to
figure as a guest."

Diana shrugged again.  "Figure!  He
seems to be all figure.  I thought him rather
odious."

"Did you?  He seemed anxious to be agreeable.
Who is he, cousin Jim?"

"I don't know....  Perhaps I may have
heard of him—a militia colonel of some kind,
I don't remember.  He's probably a decent
sort; I rather like him."

"I wonder," said Diana reflectively,
"whether you are anything of a snob?"

Edgerton reddened, then sat still looking at her.

"I was going to resent that," he said after
a moment, "but I can't; because what you
just said set me thinking."

"Are you unaccustomed to thinking?" she
asked too innocently; and he reddened again.

"Stop tormenting him," said Silvette, pouring
herself more tea.  "You're a tease, Diane."

"You both seem a little in that way," he
suggested; "you jeer at me and then look
pained, and tell each other to stop."

"We're too intelligent," said Silvette
calmly; "that's the trouble with us; and when,
by degrees, we add a little more experience to
our intelligence we'll be either exceedingly
unpopular or—successfully married."

"Why those terrible alternatives?" he
asked, laughing.

"Because the man who is able to endure
us will probably be worth the bother of
marrying—when we've finished dissecting him.
We don't know just how to dissect men yet,
but we're rapidly learning.  It's only a matter
of practice and experience."

He laughed again, and so did Silvette,
but Diana scarcely smiled, lying back in her
velvet armchair and watching Edgerton and
her sister alternately with grave, incurious
eyes.

"How old are you, anyway?" he said, looking
straight at her.

"Twenty-seven," she answered calmly.
"Don't jump, please."

"What!" he exclaimed incredulously.

"I look about nineteen, don't I?"

"Certainly you do—about eighteen!"

"Well, I am twenty-seven; Silvette is
twenty-five.  Don't bother with compliments."

"Good Lord!  Are *you* the elder?"

"Tread lightly there," cautioned Silvette,
amused, "or you'll presently involve
yourself with two indignant spinsters.  You've
behaved very cleverly.  Let well enough alone."

"If you hadn't told me," he began, astonished,
"I'd have taken Silvette for nineteen
and you for eighteen.  I—well, I simply can't
realize it."

"How old may *you* be, cousin?" inquired
Silvette with a malicious sweetness impossible
to describe.

"I'm thirty-two," he said.

"We thought you less," remarked Diana;
then she ventured to glance at him, and the
enchanting smile broke suddenly from her lips
and eyes.

"Don't you know we *do* like you, cousin
James, or we wouldn't torment you?" said
Silvette, laughing.

"A woman at twenty-seven is centuries
older than a man at thirty," added Diana,
"except, of course, in some things.  Theoretically,
Silvie and I are highly instructed;
practically, the man of thirty is more specifically
intelligent, which is no compliment to the
man of thirty."

Edgerton, still astonished, sat back in his
chair, considering.

"Do you know," he said, "I never suspected
I had two such relatives in the world,
who wear the appearance of débutantes with
an assurance that convinces until their wit and
wisdom convict them.  Where were you
educated, anyway?"

"In a southern boarding school and in a
western university.  After that, Silvette
studied law and was admitted to the bar.  I
am entitled to practice medicine," she added
demurely.  "Does *that* scare you?"

"Do you think it has spoiled us?" asked
Silvette so naïvely that he made no attempt to
control his laughter.

"Why on earth don't you do those two
things?" he managed to ask at last.  "If
you're entitled to exercise professions, why
don't you?"

"We only studied out of curiosity," explained
Diana.  "We never intended to follow
it up.  Of course, we expected to remain
always in pleasant financial circumstances."

"Anyway," added Silvette, "it's too late
now to sit in an office and wait for clients and
patients.  Besides, it's a stuffy life.  We dance
better, and we decorate a drawing-room to
more advantage than an office building."

"You *have* thoroughly scared me," he said,
looking at them admiringly.

Diana glanced up, then flushed.

"I was afraid for a moment that you meant
it," she said.

"I do.  What was it you asked me a few
moments ago—whether or not I was something
of a snob?  And I was about to resent
it—politely, of course—when it occurred to
me that there was, after all, no more finished
snob than the man who is so convinced of his
own position that he can afford to like everybody;
and I told you I liked that militia gentleman.
I really didn't; I thought him the
limit....  Diana, you seem to be a sort of
truth compeller."

"I'm a liar, occasionally—to speak with
accuracy instead of elegance," said Diana
frankly.  "I've managed to convey to you an
idea that I am indifferent to your joining the
firm of Tennant and Tennant.  As a matter
of fact, I'm flattered and happy.  It's my
conscience that protests."

"Your—what?"

"Conscience.  Never mind—you won't understand,
and I won't tell you....  After all,
you are thirty-two, even if you happen to be
an Edgerton."

"Are you jeering at me?"

"No, I am not.  I'm flattered because you
wear a distinguished name; I'm happy because
I'm entirely inclined to like you.  In fact, I'm
a kind of a happy, little snob myself.  There!
we're all tarred with the same snobbish brush,
cousin.  Shall we take off our masks for a
while and cool our faces?"

She rose with a gay little laugh and a
bewitching gesture as though sweeping from her
face an invisible vizard.

"Behold me as I am, cousin!  Just what
you have already divined me, with your eyes
too humorous and too wise for a man of
thirty—frivolous, feminine, not insensible to
flattery, wise only in theory, a novice in
practice——"

She hesitated, looking at him, the bright
color in her cheeks.

"What silenced and incensed me was that
you divined it.  I would have liked to have
played a part with you vis-à-vis——"

"You're playing it now," observed Silvette.
"Jim doesn't know what you are now; even
I have doubts."

Diana laughed deliciously.

"*Do* I puzzle you, cousin?"

"Are you trying to?"

"Of course."

"Well, you've succeeded.  You're perfectly
right, Silvette; I don't know anything about
her now.  Are there any more roles you can
assume, Japonette?"

"Many, monsieur.  One of them *is* Japonette,
if I choose."

"Play it," he said, "if you ever want to tie
me to your Obi."

"You behave," observed Silvette tranquilly,
"like two rather ordinary young persons
flirting."

"We are," nodded Diana, "but it won't
last, Silvie.  It's only my kimono and his
thirty-odd years and the unconventionality
that attracts him."  She strolled about airily
waving her fan.  "Not that I mind being
picked up——"

"Di!  You'll give him a perfectly horrid
impression of yourself!"

"Why, he knows I didn't mind it.  It's past
helping now."

"*How* can a man 'pick up,' as you so
disgustingly put it, his own cousin?"

"That *was* a triumph, wasn't it, Jim?" she
asked innocently.  "It remained for an
Edgerton to accomplish the weird and impossible;
but an Edgerton can do anything in New
York—n'est ce pas?  Bien, sure!  Sure, Mike!"

"Diana!"

"Dearest, I *feel* slangy; and cousin James
is so thoroughly a man of the world that he
doesn't care.  He wouldn't care what I did.
I could perform a pas seul or a flip-flap or a
cart wheel, and *he* wouldn't care.  It's done in
the best circles here, isn't it, cousin?"

"Frequently," he said gravely, "varied
occasionally by voloplaning down the banisters."

She looked about her wistfully.

"There are no banisters here.  Perhaps
there are at the Rivetts'.  Do you think it
would entertain his guests?  You know we are
employed for that purpose."

"You and I ought to practice some acrobatic
turns," he suggested.  "Do you think
you could learn to throw a double somersault
standing on my shoulders?"

"I can try——"

"Di! what on earth are you talking about!"
said Silvette, turning from the piano to
encounter their unrestrained laughter.

"Oh, dear," said Diana, "I didn't know I
could ever be silly again.  I thought that
losing all our money a year ago had frightened
it out of me; but it's there, cousin Jim—the
same frivolity which *you* instantly discovered
in me, and which the Rivetts will probably
and properly quench....  Silvie, this studio
floor is delightfully waxed....  Cousin, do
you dance?"

"Rottenly."

"Never mind....  Silvie, dear—one little
waltz, please?  *Please*?  Thank you.  Pull
away that rug, cousin.  Are you ready?"

She laid her arm on his, her hand in his;
Silvette, playing, turned her head to watch
them.

"He *is* a rotten dancer," she said critically.

"I can't help that," said Diana; "it was
the time and the hour.  I needed it! ... Jim,
don't step on my toe, please, and don't *think*
of stopping.  You do well enough, really, you
do....  No man who counts dances like a
Turveydrop....  We use dancing men for
dancing purposes only....  Of course you
are flattered; I meant to flatter you, so you
wouldn't be horrid enough to stop....
Please finish glaring at me; you are really
giving me a great deal of pleasure."

"I begin to wonder whether I was not
created for that, Japonette."

"To amuse me?  Unintentionally? perhaps."

"So that you notice me at all, it doesn't
matter," he said under his breath.

"Goodness! what meekness!  Only that
you're a typical man and don't mean it, I'd
hate you for it....  A meek man—from him,
good Lord, deliver us! ... No, cousin, there
is that in your eye which—and in your general
make-up——"

"What?"

"Oh, I don't know—thirty-odd masculine
years—*very* masculine!—or I'd not be dancing
with you, or I'd not be in this house at this
moment; or, rather, *you* wouldn't.  Stop
mincing along in a horrid sort of self-satisfied
prance! ... And don't hop, either!  Are
you tiring?"

"No," he said bravely.

"I'll let you go in a moment, before you
swoon and I have to drag you to a chair....
You dance well enough.  I like it, really
... and—thank you very much indeed!"

They parted, breathless.  She stood a moment
waving her fan against her bright cheeks
and touching her hair with cleft fingers.  He
extracted a handkerchief from his sleeve and
used it frankly.

"It's hot in here," he said; "show me your
roof garden."

"Silvette," she called over her shoulder,
"will you come up to the roof?"

Silvette nodded and continued playing
an air from "Armide"; and they waited for
her a moment, then went out into the hallway
and up to the roof.

"The garden of a thousand delights!" she
said with a sweep of her hand and a curtsey.
"The Japanese fairy, Japonette, welcomes the
true prophet of her frivolity."

He looked around at the flowers in
pots—geraniums, verbenas, fuchsias,
heliotrope—homely, old-fashioned blossoms.

"I bought them from a peddler; I stopped
his wagon in the street and made him carry
them up here.  They only cost two dollars;
and I was economical at the market," she
explained.

He glanced up at the awning gay with
yellow and white stripes.

"Macy's," she admitted guiltily; "I'll starve
you at dinner to-night to pay for it."

He looked at her rather queerly, she thought.

"There are things I'd starve for—and people."

"And awnings, cousin?"

"Yours."

"That's very nice and gallant and obvious,"
she said in such a tormenting tone that he
broke out almost impatiently:

"Japonette, can't you ever take me seriously?"

"I hope not, cousin."

For an instant the smile remained stamped
on their lips; then the slight strain became
perceptible, a moment only, for she turned
lightly away and seated herself on the edge of
a big hanging seat.

"More Macy," she nodded ruefully.  "We'll
all have to fast to-morrow....  You may sit
here, too, if you wish.'"

A family of starlings were nesting in
the cornices of the roof across the way,
and the two young people watched the
old birds for a while flying to the park
and returning with food for their invisible
young.

"Horrid, isn't it?" observed Diana.  "But
that's the way of things.  No sooner are you
married and happy than—zip! the scene
changes, and you turn into a wretched purveyor
of nourishment for the next generation.
Carpe diem!"

"Cede Deo!  It's probably good fun," commented
Edgerton.

"What?  Slaving for others just when you
are all ready for real happiness?"

"*That's* happiness, or nobody would do
it—not even those birds."

"It's instinct!"

"Maybe with birds.  Instincts are all right
for birds, but we humans are usually arrested
when we follow our instincts."

She laughed.  "That *is* true; it's neither
instinct nor happiness that makes us slaves to
babies:—it's duty."

"If that were all it is," he said, "the state
would be nourishing the majority of infants.
No; it's probably fun, Diana.  That's the only
possible explanation."

She shrugged her dainty shoulders and
looked at the westering sun above Staten
Island; and in the gesture she seemed, in
pantomime, to discard all feminine duties, cares,
and responsibilities forever.  Then as she
rested there, cheek on hand, her blue eyes
grew vaguer.

"I am glad you came into our lives," she
said; "I mean it this time."

"I am glad, too," he said seriously.

"You are now; I can see that....  How
soon will you be sorry?"

"Why?"

She turned toward him.

"How soon will the novelty tire you?"

"I have not considered you as a novelty."

"But I am; I'm a mechanical toy.  My
paint soon comes off, cousin."

"You're my own kin.  There's no novelty,
as you call it, in kinship, nothing evanescent."

She said: "Do you really and deliberately
desire to stand by that extremely tenuous and
attenuated tie?  An attitude of that sort
entails duties.  You may have much to overlook
in us—even much to forgive.  Are you aware
of your responsibilities?"

"I assumed them when I asked to be admitted
to your partnership."

"Why *did* you ask to join?"

"The real reason?"

She hesitated, looking at him.

"Yes, the real one."

"You."

"What exactly do you mean by that answer?"

"I don't know, myself, Japonette," he said
laughingly; "I've tried to analyze it, too.  The
instinct of relationship may have counted."

"I hope it did," said she.

"I hope so.  God knows, and men are selfish....
And *that* counted, too."

"What?"

"Selfishness."

"I don't believe there is very much in you."

"That is where your heart is still a child's
heart, Japonette."

"Oh, I'm no altruist, but there's selfishness
*and* selfishness....  What were we talking
about?  Oh! why you desired to join——"

"No, we got past that."

"Oh, yes; well, then, you say it was because
of me.  Why?"

"I told you I didn't know exactly why; but
the root of it all was you....  And when you
told me about some people who had come
here—that fellow who spoke about a housekeeper——"

"Jim Edgerton!"

"What!"

"I believe—but you *can't* be as nice as that!
You simply can't!"

"Oh, I'm not nice," he protested, reddening;
but she interrupted:

"You *are*!  I certainly believe you thought
that Silvie and I required somebody masculine
in our vicinity—to throw the housekeeping
man downstairs, for example.  Did you?"

"No.  I only——"

"*Did* you?"

"Of course not."

"Do you know," she said seriously, "you're
a perfect dear in one way, and I don't know
what you are in others.  *Now* be flattered, for
*that* makes you interesting.  And you know
it's all up with a woman who finds a man interesting."

She was laughing at him now, and he
scarcely knew how to take what she said except
to take it with a grin.

"You're a terrible torment, Diana," he said.
"My value in my own estimation, since I've
known you, has fluctuated between a dollar
and a half and thirty cents."

"You *said* you had two dollars!  I believe
you're one of these wealthy men who are
always singing poor!"

"How many other kinds of things do you
think I am?" he asked resignedly.

"I don't know.  I think I'll amuse myself
by finding out."

"Meanwhile," he said, smiling, "remember
I am always what I was when I first set eyes
on you—no!—the next second *after* I had
seen you."

"A lightning change, cousin?"

"Like lightning, Diana."

"The lightning of the gods?"

"Diana's own shaft....  'The sun shall
not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night,'
but I stand betwixt the rising sun of Japan
and—you, Diana.  *Somebody's* shot me, that's all."

"You are perfectly delightful, but do you
realize that I'm dissecting you all the while?"

"You once said——"

"Never mind that," she interrupted hastily;
and blushed until it infuriated her to
calmness.  And to heal the sting with the cause
of it she said:

"You're perfectly right, cousin; any man
who can endure our scalpel will be worth
seizing and dragging to the parson.  But—you
are perfectly safe for a while.  It takes
a lifetime to properly dissect a man of your
sort.  I'll be eighty before I make up my mind
about you."

"Eighty years is not beyond the statute of
limitations."

"You'd marry me at eighty!  Do you know
you're beginning to trouble me?  I told you I
was thoroughly feminine, and susceptible to
flattery.  I am; it's too bad I'm so intelligent
that I've really got to satisfy that intelligence
by spending years and years in dissecting you.
Otherwise, I'd run away with you now."

"In your Japanese silks and little straw
sandals?"

"Oh, yes, if you were sentimental enough
to insist."

"I would."

She shrugged.  "I knew you were a
dreamer—captivated by a vision.  Suppose you had
to see me pinning on store curls?"

"I'd help pin 'em."

"Well, there are plenty of other things to
disillusion you.  I adore onions."

"So do I," he said.

They laughed together.

She was near enough for him to be aware
of the faint scent of her breath, or it may
have been a fragrance from her gown which
stirred slightly in the evening breeze, or the
delicate fresh perfume of her hair and
skin—something indefinable, some exquisite
emanation of youth which had stolen subtly into
his senses—something of her, and as distinctly
and inviolably hers as the occult atmosphere
of a virgin planet.

"Cousin," she said, "I thought we were to
remove our masks in the family circle.  They
seem to be on as closely as ever."

He looked at her a moment.

"We never will remove them," he said.

"Never?"

"Never, Japonette."

"Why not?"

"Because, for example, in my case I want
you to believe me everything I'd like to be.
I know what I am.  All people know what
they are....  Does anybody ever really
unmask? ... Could they if they wished to?
There would be only another mask beneath....
We can't ever get rid of masks....  I
don't care how hard we try, how honestly we
try, how intimate two people become, how
deeply they may love—there's always a mask, and
it grows there; and our own eyes are the slits.
Even a mother with her first born in her arms
looks down into its eyes in vain—those blue
and transparent veils of a secret soul which
sits behind them, impenetrable, inviolable."

After a silence she said:

"Silvette was right; you are a poet, Jim....
How dusky it is growing over the river.
Silvette is probably superintending dinner
preparations.  Shall we go down?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`DE MOTU PROPRIO`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium bold

   DE MOTU PROPRIO

.. vspace:: 2

They arrived at Adriutha two days
later in a roaring downpour of June
rain.  A maid conducted Silvette and Diana
to their rooms, a valet piloted Edgerton to
another wing of the house devoted to
bachelors' quarters over the vast billiard room.

At the eastern end of the house Silvette
stood beside the window while the maid
assigned to them undressed her.  Diana, already
in her pajamas and sandals, lay flat on the
bed, one knee crossed over, swinging her slim,
bare foot and looking out at the rain.

It was a wet outlook across the meadows,
over a low range of rocky and wooded hills,
behind which the invisible sun had already
set.  In the drenched foreground, beyond
the meadow's matted edge, the Deerfield
River tossed and foamed, swollen a deeper
amber by the rain—a wide, swift stream
set with spray-dashed bowlders, and bordered
alternately by ledges dripping with verdure
and sandy stretches full of low rain-beaten
willows.  The world, through its limpid veil
of rain, looked like a silvery aquarelle framed
by a window.

Tea was presently served.  Silvette in her
silk lounging suit came over and seated
herself on the edge of the bed; the maid finished
drawing the bath, and retired until again summoned.

"Well," sighed Silvette, pouring the tea,
"here we are, Di.  How do you feel about it now?"

"Depressed," said Diana briefly.

"So do I, somehow....  I wish we were
back in New York, with just enough to live on."

Diana swung her foot gently, but made no reply.

Presently she kicked off her sandal, lay
thinking a moment, and then sat up and
accepted the cup of tea offered by her sister.
They sipped their tea in silence for a while,
nibbled toast and cakes until sufficiently
refreshed.

"After all," observed Silvette, "what we
are doing for a living is purely a matter of
personal taste.  It ought not to depress us."

"We should have told him!  That is the
only thing that worries me," remarked Diana.
"Still, it is really none of his business what
we do for a living."

"After all," repeated Silvette, "what is
there to tell him?  Keno, Nevada, has nothing
to learn from New York in frivolity, I fancy.
There are several pretty women in every set
who'd starve if they didn't play cards better
than their neighbors."

"I rather wish we'd told him about our year
there; yet, what is there to tell?  Probably it
resembled plenty of years with which he is
perfectly familiar."

"Do we have to account to Jim Edgerton
anyway?" asked Silvette impatiently.

"He wanted to come with us," mused
Diana.  "When he wants to go, he'll go fast
enough, I fancy.  It isn't what he might think,
or his possible disapproval, that worries me;
it's that he ought to have been told more about
us in the beginning....  But how were we to
tell him?"

"He didn't ask, did he?"

"No; but, somehow or other, we ought to
have put him au courant, and then he could
have had his choice about recognizing the
relationship or ignoring it.  That's what bothers
me a little."

"How could we possibly have told him all
about ourselves the first afternoon we ever set
eyes on him?"

"There were two other afternoons; one is
just ending....  I don't know; I might easily
have created a situation in which it would
have seemed natural enough to mention our
programme to him."

"Why didn't you, Di?"

"Cowardice," said the girl frankly; and she
stretched herself out flat on the bed again.

"Do you think as much of Jim Edgerton's
opinion as that?"

"I seem to....  I didn't want to take the
risk of his disapproval.  I'm beginning to
realize that we've been dishonest with him."

"That is an ugly word, little sister."

"I don't know any way to soften it.  A girl
is either honest or the contrary.  I was not
honest with Jim Edgerton."

"He might not disapprove, after all.  He
is no provincial."

"Yes—and he might disapprove.  Men of
his kind who stand for almost anything in
outsiders are finicky about their own relatives.
They really don't care what imprudence other
people commit; they may even admire it—even
do it themselves—but there's a difference
as soon as it involves one of the family.  I've
an idea he is like that."

"Isn't it stretching a thin tie of kinship too
far to speak of Jim Edgerton and ourselves
in a family sense?  Are you and I not rather
inclined to abuse that word cousin, Diana?"

"He first used it to us," she said warmly;
"it is his choice.  He's a very impulsive and
generous boy; do you know it?"

"Yes, I do....  Isn't it a thousand pities?"

"What about?"

"His losing everything—being so wretchedly
poor....  And our being poor, too."

"Yes," said Diana simply.

"And he'll never, never recoup.  He is full
of talent, and nothing else.  What a pity!  He
isn't the successful sort.  It's a pity, isn't it,
Di?"

"Yes."

"Because he is already quite mad about
you, Di—he's a perfect boy about you...
How can men of his age retain their niceness
and charm and freshness, after what they
usually pass through.  With all his undesirable
wisdom and his masculine worldly experiences,
he's practically as innocent as we are."

Diana suddenly sat up cross-legged on the
bed and gathered her ankles in her hands.

.. _`"'I wonder just how innocent we really are?' she said"`:

.. figure:: images/img-099.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "'I wonder just how innocent we really are,' she said."

   "'I wonder just how innocent we really are,' she said."

"I wonder just how innocent we really
are," she said, "with all those things which
we have been obliged to know about in our
higher education?  And—speaking of
education—there was our last year in Keno.  That
year did some curious things to us.  Do you
realize our development, our worldly
evolution since the beginning of last year—how
familiar we became with that doubtful worldly
wisdom which is supposed to be part of the
make-up of a woman of the world? ... Do
you realize that it was a year of laissez faire,
of revelation, of laxity and acquiescence in
relaxation, a year of paradox, of ceremony
sans façon, of schooling oneself to overlook
and accept, of an education in morals and
their immoral variations?  How aloof have
we kept ourselves from what we have learned
to tolerate?—and how much was due to
fastidiousness, how much to expediency, how
much to common sense, and how much to
spiritual conviction?"

"Does your conscience really trouble you?"
asked Silvette anxiously.

"No; only in regard to Jim Edgerton.  I'd
rather he knew how we regard life before he
reclaims relationship in public; that's all."

Silvette said: "We are merely wiser; merely
less provincial and more honest and tolerant of
a world that isn't any too goody-goody.  We've
learned to distinguish between mock modesty,
false shame, hypocrisy, and honest conviction.
Take Keno, for instance; before we lived
there we were inclined to look askance on
what the world accepts with indifference and
perfect good nature.  I mean, on the rather
lurid gayeties of a little world where attractive
divorcées make up the bulk of society—where
the eternal cry in the ballroom is 'Change
partners!  Ladies change!'—and where
nobody plays cards except for stakes.  After all,
Keno is merely a section of New York
temporarily transplanted.  He'd probably feel at
home there."

Diana turned, deliberately rolled across the
bed, landing lightly on her feet.

"All right," she said; "only, some day
somebody will tell Jim Edgerton that those
two cousins of his are outpacing propriety.
We're just a dash too pretty, Silvie, and we've
simply got to be careful.  There's one enemy
you and I will always have to reckon with—our
own sex."

She walked to the window, looked out, and
stood watching the rain, her childish mouth
troubled.  And, presently, speaking again
without turning around:

"Our programme, as we have arranged it,
was to be a general one—to win out, go in
for everything, play the game as hard as it
can be played, meet the gayer world face to
face squarely, and take from it honestly all
it has to offer."

"Except love."

"Except—that."

"Love, per se, we can't afford," said
Silvette gayly; "however, it may even be
included.  Who knows?  Material masculine
eligibility need not necessarily exclude that
agreeable passion, need it?  Many a worthy
heart beats beneath the waistcoat of the
plutocrat."

"The chances are against any deal in
hearts, as far as we are concerned."

"You're not thinking of Jim Edgerton, are
you, Di?"

Diana stood, hands clasped behind her back,
staring at the rain.  Suddenly she pivoted on
her sandals.

"Yes, I am thinking of him.  I'm thinking
of him all the time."

"That is very unwise," said Silvette gently.

"I am thinking of him, but it's only
thinking....  I like him.  I never liked any man
better, or as well, perhaps....  And I've
known him three days.  Give me a day or two
grace, and I'll stop thinking about him."

"You were quite mad over young Inwood
in Keno," mused Silvette.

"Yes....  I realize that I like men.  I
enjoy them; if I had my way, I'd carry on like
the deuce with every man who took my fancy,
before I come to the final decision and spoil
life for myself."

"You carry on like the deuce *now*, sister,"
said Silvette, laughing.

"I don't do it enough," retorted Diana
fiercely; "what have I got to look forward to,
after all?—a homeless life of social employment,
an old age of gossip and cards!—or, if
I win out, a loveless middle age wearing some
wealthy man's name and pearls, and all the
rest dashed out—the brightness, the youth of
things, the hope of things, children——"

"*You* don't want children!" exclaimed Silvette,
horrified; "grubby little things!  I
thought you hated them!"

"Grubby little things," repeated the girl
slowly; "so I do, in theory."

"You don't know anything about them
practically."

"Except at the Maternity Hospital....
Oh, Silvie, it *is* ghastly....  It's
horrid! horrid!—it's devilishly unfair! ... Young girls
in the springtide of youth crept in and out of
that dreadful place like the white ghosts of
murdered souls!  If maternity didn't slay
them, it killed the better part of them.  Then
the world ended for them—youth, hope, freedom
ended with the first thin cry of the tyrant
that dooms all women....  Yes, I—hate
children!"  She stood a moment, slim hands on
her hips, head lowered with the brown locks
clustering against her cheeks; then, looking up:

"But I mean to have one of my own sometime.
Life to the full, dregs and all, before
I die.  That is my programme."

Silvette laughed.  "This is a new and
recent development, isn't it?"

"I'm developing like lightning."

"Lightning develops quickly, but it doesn't
last, dear."

Diana, lost in retrospection again, smiled
vaguely.  Then, lifting her pretty eyes:

"Did you ever see starlings feeding their
young?  A pair nested opposite the studio.  I
found their evolutions rather interesting."

"No doubt," said her sister.  "Is that
what has aroused the maternal instinct?
Come, who is to bathe first.  Pull down the
shade and turn on the electricity, and ring
for the maid, dear.  She ought to lay out our
gowns at once."

Diana did as she was bidden; then, on impulse,
sat down at the little fly-away desk and
scribbled a note:

"Take it to Mr. Edgerton," she said to the
maid.

.. vspace:: 2

Edgerton, dressing leisurely, read the note
where he stood under the electric cluster:

.. vspace:: 2

"DEAR JIM: The rain, the world, and things
oppress me.  So do you sometimes....
There's a long future ahead of me.  I dread
it—who was eager for the plunge a few days
since.  I seem to be standing on the threshold
of things in general, waiting for my cue to
enter, but with little heart for the stage now.
Alas, I am already tired before the overture
has ended.

"If we dance to-night, ask me.  Probably
I'm the only girl in the house who could stand
a dance with you—and I'm not so certain
about myself....  But if we play Bridge,
continue not to sit at our table.  I ask it of
you for reasons which are none of your
business.  Indulge my whim, please.

.. vspace:: 1

"JAPONETTE."

.. vspace:: 2

He finished dressing, then scribbled a note
to her, and sent it by the valet:

.. vspace:: 2

"Japonette, dear, I'm as rotten at cards
as I am dancing.  I won't permit indiscreet
infatuation to interfere with your Bridge....
And, by the way, in this sort of a house the
chances are they'll play for stakes—probably
high stakes.  My limit is a cent a point—or
was in days of affluence—but our host will
scarcely expect us to risk our salaries, I fancy.
So even if you have no objection to playing
for stakes—which probably, however, you
have—you need not feel obliged to.  Our
duties here do not include losing money to
Mr. Rivett's assorted guests, you know.  Feel
perfectly at liberty to let the table carry you
and Silvette.

"Shall I wait and go down with you both?

.. vspace:: 1

"\J.\E."

.. vspace:: 2

She read the note; then handed it silently
to Silvette, who read it also in silence.

"You see," said Diana, "it's exactly what
I told you.  He doesn't wish us to play for
stakes."

"He says nothing here about his wishes....
Besides, it would be an impertinence for
him to make any such suggestion to either you
or me."

"His attitude is plain enough—if you think
it impertinent."

"I don't think it is.  He indicates that he
supposes we do not play for stakes, and adds
that, anyway, we need not if we don't wish
to.  That is all the note expresses.  Anyway,
it doesn't matter, does it?"

Diana shook her disheveled head, seated
herself and wrote a hasty answer, sending it
away by the valet, who was waiting outside
the door.

"Don't wait for us; we're not hooked up
yet.  We're quite accustomed to play for
stakes, you funny boy, so that need cause you
no uneasiness....  And please don't forget
to ask me, if they dance."

.. vspace:: 2

Edgerton stood thinking for a moment before
his fireplace after reading the missive;
then struck a match and lit the two notes,
holding them together until almost consumed,
and lingered still to watch the edge of yellow
flame on the hearth licking up the remaining
margins of the paper.

Then he went downstairs and into a green
and gold drawing-room, where his hostess
received him shyly, almost timidly—a small
gray-haired woman all over jewels whose
thin little hand trembled slightly in his.

It was a frail hand, fragile of bone, yet
never the hand of generations of leisure, for
the joints were hard and accented, and the
fingers rather worn than thin—as though
once not unaccustomed to household labor;
and, without knowing just why, he retained
the diamond-laden hand in his firm,
warm clasp for a moment as though to reassure
her.

"It is nice of you to ask us," he said gently.
"You have made everything very easy and
comfortable for us.  My cousins will be down
in a few moments; they asked me to come first."

The little gray woman looked up into his
pleasant, well-cut face as though confused;
he smiled down at her, still retaining her hand.

"My husband has told me who you are,"
she said.  "I didn't expect you to be just like
this....  You and your cousins are our
very welcome and honored guests....  Our
*guests*," she repeated almost tremulously,
"and none more welcome under our roof."

"It is gracious and kind of you to say so,"
he said, touched by the simplicity and the mild,
faded face upturned.

Then Mr. Rivett came forward, cautiously
treading the velvet, his two burned-brown
eyes fixed behind the big concave eyeglasses.

"It's wet weather," he said, shaking hands.
"I hope your quarters are comfortable."

"Most luxurious, thank you—with a
beautiful outlook."

Mrs. Rivett's gentle voice sounded at his
elbow presenting him to her daughter and
son, and after that to several others who, for
the moment, he made no effort to distinguish
one from another except that he recognized
Colonel Curmew in superb form and
obtrusive pearl studs decorating a fluted shirt
front.

A moment later Silvette and Diana entered,
slender and youthful, with all the softly
flushed charm of eighteen and the winning
composure of a wider experience than eighteen
years can ever lend.

Colonel Curmew presently outflanked Silvette,
forcing her skillfully into a momentary
retreat toward the recess of a window, where
he blockaded her and curled his mustache with
satisfaction and shot his cuffs, and prepared
to drive in her outer pickets.

Diana remained in quiet conversation with
Mrs. Rivett, the latter shy, wistful, and ill at
ease by turns; the former sweet and deferential,
yet all the while composedly taking the
measure of the others in the room, and of the
room itself, vaguely aware in her apparently
smiling preoccupation that she was winning a
perplexed and timid heart.

Cocktails were served—unusual ones that
had a scent like the original Ricky, that is,
the aromatic odor of wild blossoms.

The little gray woman barely tasted hers,
with that same inborn instinct, perhaps, that
impelled those old-time hostesses in the days
when viands and wines sometimes proved fatal.

Then Edgerton relieved her of her scarcely
touched glass; took Diana's, too, which was
still half full.  Mrs. Rivett rose and gave him
her arm, to his surprise; Mr. Rivett took in
Diana, his son Silvette.  The name of Edgerton
had counted heavily.

.. _`"Mr. Rivett took in Diana, his son Silvette"`:

.. figure:: images/img-113.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "Mr. Rivett took in Diana, his son Silvette."

   "Mr. Rivett took in Diana, his son Silvette."

In the dining room everything was grossly
overdone except the cookery—the sort of
thing most calculated to annoy and bore the
very man most accustomed to it in town;
profusion akin to the plethora which offends;
effort impossible to disguise which stirs even
in the most good-natured and generous an
unwilling contempt.

Edgerton let his eyes rest for a moment,
outside the silver and crystal-set circle of
light, on gold, heavy carving, gilded tapestry
and picture, and withdrew his gaze gravely.
Men servants swarmed, bothering him; the
scent of greenhouse blossoms, forced before
their time; the heavy magnificence out of
place—all slightly disgusted him, though much
of it was about what he had expected of such
people.

Little Miss Rivett, on his left, dissected her
terrapin with the healthy attention of youth
and hunger; and presently he turned to look
at her with amused but wholly amiable curiosity.

He saw a small, plump, dainty maid, with
exceedingly clear and bright brown eyes, and
a softly brilliant complexion, looking back at
him with unconcealed interest.

There was a moment's silence, then they
both smiled.

"Do you think you'll like us?" she asked
saucily; "or do you hate us already?"

"Not the slightest doubt of my liking
you, Miss Rivett; but how about your liking us?"

"Your cousins are most bewitching and
bewildering....  You seem to be nice—are you?"

"Very," he said, laughing.  "I'm glad you
gave me an opportunity of saying so, because
otherwise it might not have been perfectly
clear to you."

"I *am* rather fastidious," she said.  "How
well do you dance?"

"My grace in that praiseworthy pastime is ursine."

"Really?"

"Unbearably."

"You are very British, aren't you?"

"Do you refer to my little play upon words?"

"No, generally; that was merely a touch
of local color.  Naturally, also, you
fishshootridetohoundsandplaypolo; do you?"

"Also gawf, dear lady."

"Perfectly symmetrical and indistinguishable
from others of your kind.  I thought so.
Crocky, too?"

"Certainly, crocky," he admitted; "also no
bank account.  You may call me m'lud with
impunity."

"Perhaps you're not entirely qualified.
How do you stand on the heiress question,
Mr. Edgerton?"

"I can't qualify there."

"Then you're a sham.  Besides, you're
neither clever nor gallant.  *I* am an heiress."

"Then I qualify at once as a fortune
hunter," he said, laughing, "and I'll cable for
my solicitors."

"What *are* you saying?" asked Mrs. Rivett
in her gentle, uncertain voice.

"Mother, Mr. Edgerton and I are going to
be friends.  Perhaps he isn't sure of it, but I
am.  Tell him what happens when I am sure
of anything."

"Dear, perhaps Mr. Edgerton doesn't quite
understand your manner of saying things."

"That's just it; he *does* understand!  He
is going to turn out exceedingly nice, mother;
watch him!"

"Christine!  Please be a little less personal
and abrupt."

They turned, smiling, toward the other end
of the table where much laughter sounded.
Evidently Diana and Silvette were becoming
very popular, and, somehow, it occurred to
Edgerton that perhaps this great room had
not often resounded with mirth.

But the chatter and laughter were incessant
now; so were the servants' ministrations, and
Edgerton was glad enough to give his arm to
the faded little woman beside him and take
her to her great, gilded chair in the drawing-room,
and follow the men to another room,
where blue smoke from cigars presently floated
to the ceiling.

Jack Rivett, rather too plump and smooth,
moved into a chair beside Edgerton; and the
latter, who had prejudged him from his
appearance, was slightly surprised to find the
youth widely read, widely traveled, with a
mind and even a wit entirely his own, and
an original but sometimes callow comment for
any subject brought up.

In a desultory conversation it presently
transpired that young Rivett was a candidate
for the Patroon's Club.

"You're a member, I believe; are you not?"
he asked Edgerton.

"I have resigned."

"Oh!  I thought that was the one club
from which nobody ever resigned.  I beg your
pardon, Edgerton!" he added, turning red;
"don't think me a cad."

"No offense," smiled Edgerton; "I resigned
because I couldn't afford it.  It's a good
club; hope you make it soon."

"I hope I do....  But we're rather recent
additions—if we *are* additions—to New York.
You never can tell what New Yorkers will
do to people like us," he added laughingly.

"New York is practically composed of
recent residents," said Edgerton, smiling.

"They're the most pitiless to newcomers.
I wouldn't be very much afraid if we had only
your sort to encounter.  If you old residents
like a man, he gets his hat check ultimately,
and passes in; but it lies with the sidewalk
speculators now.  The seats of the mighty
are in their hands."

Edgerton was much amused.

"Not entirely," he said; "even we older
residents are asked about now and then."

"Into which of the three circles—Smart,
Knickerbocker, or Old Testament?"

Edgerton was laughing so frankly that
Rivett senior turned his convex glasses on him;
and, deciding that the laughter was genuine
and not included in services, went on with
his business conversation with a Mr. Snaith—a
large, soft-skinned gentleman deeply
immersed in oil and cotton.

Colonel Curmew came over briskly, expelling smoke.

"What are you youngsters playing this
evening?  Auction or Chinese Kahn?"

"However, they choose to make up the
tables," said Jack Rivett lazily.  Then, as
though on an after thought: "I doubt whether
Mr. Edgerton bothers with cards; do you?"

"I don't mind, except that I've cut out
playing for stakes," replied Edgerton,
perfectly aware of Jack Rivett's kindly
consideration in giving him a chance to escape
gracefully, and a trifle amused, too, that the young
man should suppose he cared what anybody
in the place might think of him.

Servants were now arranging the old-fashioned
colonial card tables in the noticeably
old-fashioned colonial card room.  A young
girl or two appeared at the arched doorway,
lingering on the threshold as several of the
men came out to gossip.

Then the hostess appeared with the others;
groups formed, shifted, and gradually
subsided into seats; seals of fresh packs were
broken, scores penciled, the first hands dealt
at auction.

Diana, Colonel Curmew, a very pretty
Mrs. Wemyss, and Mr. Rivett sat together; at
another table Silvette, Mr. Snaith, Christine
Rivett, and a Mr. Dineen—a gentleman
weighing some two hundred pounds and wearing an
attractive snub nose and a pair of merry
gray-blue eyes.

And the awful hush of auction descended
without a sound.

Edgerton and his hostess and a Judge
Wicklow and a Mrs. Lorrimore—a fair, fat,
blue-eyed thing with a cupid-bow mouth as sweet
as the smile that abode there—settled
themselves to Chinese Kahn, a game spelled in
various ways and played in several more.

"Stakes?" inquired Mrs. Lorrimore with
businesslike directness.

"Your pleasure," replied Judge Wicklow
in the deep, thick voice celebrated and feared
where judicial procedures are thickest and
most unimportant.

"Neither Mr. Edgerton nor I care to
gamble—I think," said Mrs. Rivett timidly.

The judge turned his bovine countenance
on Edgerton.  The only anomaly in it seemed
to be his eyebrows.  Cows have no eyebrows.

"I'm sorry," said Edgerton.

The judge seemed sorry, too, but he shuffled
the two packs in his enormous and hairy
hands, dealt, and deposited the surplus in a
pile with a single card separate and face
upward—the ace of hearts.

Mrs. Lorrimore promptly picked it up, laid
down three aces, four fours, a small sequence
interiorly made possible by a joker, and sat
back triumphantly with her depleted suit in
her gemmed fingers, which were pressed
comfortably to an ample bosom.

"Discard," rumbled the judge.

"Oh, I *beg* pardon!"  She laughed, and
laid down a nine.

Nobody ever wants a nine, somehow.  The
judge snorted, helped himself, discarded, and
turned his heavy countenance on his hostess.

"Dear me," she said in her humble little
voice, "I—I'm afraid—*afraid* I'm going out!"

"What!" thundered his honor.  "Nobody
ever goes out first hand, madam!"

But she timidly did that very thing to the
suppressed fury of his honor, who had cherished
a long sequence, according to rule, and
was further nursing the other joker and three
kings.

"It's too bad," she ventured, looking around
at Edgerton, whose entire hand was being
minutely counted by Mrs. Lorrimore.

"*I* don't mind!" said the young fellow,
laughing; and he leaned a trifle nearer and
added under his breath: "But suppose I *had*
played for stakes!"

Into her timid and faded eyes came the
ghost of a glimmer—the momentary sparkle
of fun, and went out very quickly.

But it had been there for a second; and
thereafter Edgerton found a curious pleasure
in making it come back at intervals.  She even
laughed—even ventured to provoke his
laughter—rather scared at trying until his quick
mirth set her at momentary ease again.

Luck bedeviled his honor; the fair
Mrs. Lorrimore won steadily without the least
respect for the law and no consideration at
all for the sanctity of the bench; and the
judge became peevish.  He was a very rich man.

Presently he had enough of it—letters to
write for the morning mail—and got himself
out and upstairs with the dignity of a
fly-pestered ox.

"Horrid old screw," observed Mrs. Lorrimore
in Edgerton's ear, and laughed her peculiarly
sweet and captivating laugh as a servant
returned with his honor's check in an angrily
scrawled envelope.

Mrs. Rivett had passed into a farther room,
where the high gilded pipes of an organ
glimmered in the subdued light.  Edgerton saw
her seated there—a thin, bejeweled little
figure beneath the tall gothic majesty of the
pipes.

After a while the low harmony of an old-time
hymn stole into the card room.

Those at the bridge tables remained silent
and absorbed, except Mr. Rivett, who
cautiously turned his sphinxlike countenance
toward the farther dusk where his wife was
seated.

Edgerton stood behind Diana's chair,
watching.  Presently he went over to Silvette,
lingered for a while, then came back to Diana
again.

An hour later Mr. Rivett said abruptly:
"Does anybody care to dance?"

The effect was like a pistol shot on lotus
eaters.  Slowly the players came out of their
absorption; color returned faintly to white,
tense faces.

"I suppose I may ask it?" added Mr. Rivett
dryly.  "I'm a heavy loser."

"Sure thing, dad," said Jack with a laugh.
"I'm about even, and I venture to ask it, too.
*Does* anybody here want to dance?  You
surely won't object," he added mischievously
to Silvette.

"I have no right to say anything at all,"
she laughed.

"Every right—the right of the conqueror!
Accept my bow and spear—and speak! ... How
is it with your sister?"

"I'm afraid I haven't any voice in the matter,
either," said Diana serenely.  "It is for
the losers to decide."

They decided to dance.  Mrs. Rivett came
from the dim music room and stood watching
them with her little worn hands folded, while
servants lighted and cleared the larger drawing-room,
designed for a ballroom, with its little
gilded balcony aloft and the great concert
grand in its carved and gilded foliations sprawling
like a bedizened elephant in the corner.

A servant was sent for "mademoiselle"—evidently
somebody who lived somewhere in
the house whose duties included dance music.
Meanwhile Edgerton sat down at the piano,
and began a fascinating Spanish waltz.

"Traitor," whispered a fresh, young voice
at his elbow, and he looked up into the
winning eyes of Diana.

"Hello," he said; "how went the battle?"

"The cards?"

"Yes."

"As usual, thank you."

"Oh!  And how do they usually go with
you, fair cousin?"

"Well enough," she said briefly.

She stood leaning on the piano.

"You play cleverly," she observed.

"Oh, yes—cleverly.  There's nothing else
to anything I do."

"Isn't that enough?"

"*Is* it, Diana?"

"Enough as far as music is concerned," she
said impatiently.  "Did you ever see a musical
virtuoso whom a real man didn't want to
kick?  And as for you," she added, "you are
a traitor.  You said you would ask me to
dance.  Now, if you ask me, I *won't*!"

Still playing, he continued to look up at her
smilingly.

"What do you really care about me anyway?"
he said.  "I wish you'd tell me, Diana."

"Honestly, or flippantly?"

"Honestly."

"Masks off, you mean?"

"Yes—as far off as they'll come."

"I care a lot about you."

"You say it too frankly," he laughed.

"What I say, I say....  Did you find
Christine Rivett agreeable at dinner?"

"She's interesting."

"Is *that* all!" evidently disappointed.

"Well, she's very fetching."

"That is far more serious."

"Indeed, it is.  I've qualified as an aspirant
for her hand and fortune already."

"I don't doubt it," she returned calmly.
"That's one reason her father decided to
employ us."

She said it unsmiling, and after he had
looked up at her once or twice he said: "Of
course you are joking."

"Ob, yes; it's one kind of a jest.  Meanwhile
here comes a young person in black—doubtless
mademoiselle....  I'm not going
to dance with you; don't compose your
features in that smug fashion.  You're a traitor,
and I won't."

She turned on her heel and advanced
leisurely toward Colonel Curmew, who
immediately began to twirl his mustache and
shoot his cuffs, when, without warning, she
sheered off into the receptive arms of Jack
Rivett, and was presently drifting across the
room in a Viennese waltz.

Others were dancing now; Edgerton went
over and asked his hostess—an old New York
custom now obsolete—who colored and smiled
at him, explaining that she had renounced that
art with the advent of rheumatism.  So, after
a while, he took out her daughter Christine—also
an obsolete custom—who soon, however,
had enough of him as a dancer, and took
him into the conservatory.

The others danced until supper time;
midnight found them separating on the stairs.
Edgerton and Christine Rivett had rather a
prolonged leave-taking, then shook hands
cordially in plain view of everybody.

Diana, passing with Silvette, said a careless
good night to him.  Silvette, retaining her
sister's arm, detained him for a moment in
conversation; then they went away together,
Diana dismissing him with an inattentive nod.

But, as he was prepared for his pillow, a
servant brought an envelope to his door and
tucked it under the sill.

Inside was a single line:

"Good night, Jim."

The handwriting was now familiar to him.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`PACTA CONVENTA`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center medium bold

   PACTA CONVENTA

.. vspace:: 2

Guests arrived and guests departed
from Adriutha, but the original
gathering remained.

The people who came and went were about
the kind that Edgerton had expected to
encounter—people identified with nothing in
particular except money, and not always
with that.

For, into the social mess at Adriutha an
author or two was occasionally stirred as
seasoning; sometimes an artist became temporarily
englutenized over a week-end, emerging
on Monday well fed and satiated with hope
of material results from cohabitation with
wealth—which never materialized.

Edgerton was inclined to take them all as
cheerfully as he found them—at their face
value; and they were not always pretty.

Loyalty to obligation was inherent in his
race, perhaps the strongest trait in him; and
all his inclinations toward what was easiest,
his content with the superficial, his tendency
to drift, had not yet radically altered this
trait, nor perhaps other qualities latent under
the froth.

For a few days in the beginning, humorous
curiosity, the novelty of his anomalous
position, the very rawness of the experience,
amused him; but the veneer of everything
soon wore thin, revealing the duller surface
underneath.  Then came uneasiness and
impatience; but loyalty to his bargain and to his
kindred were matters of course, and he
determined to find in these people something to
interest him and render his sojourn among
them at least endurable.

After that first stormy night in June, the
splendor of a limpid, rain-washed morning
had revealed to him the gross outward
impossibility of this place of millions—the vast, new
"villa," red-tiled and yellow-walled, hideous
in its multiplicity of roofs, angles, terraces
and bays, with outlying works of rubble,
concrete, and railroad-station floral embellishment.

Scarring the green crypt of nature, staining
the glass of the stream with painted
reflections of its architectural deformities,
Adriutha Lodge sprawled monsterlike and
naked in the summer sunshine.

Garage, hothouses, stables, barns, a farm,
a model dairy, like grewsome spawn of a
common architectural dam, affronted the
woods and meadows of this little valley set
among the remote Berkshires.

There was no reticence left in that desecrated
valley all vibrant with the scream of
discordant color, texture, and design.  Motor
cars, too, were noisy along the road; all day
the silver-mounted trappings of horses flashed
in the sun.  Staccato echoes from power
boats on the artificial lake offended.  The
House of Rivett challenged the Eternal
patience with a hundred lightning rods.

Edgerton, walking his horse beside Diana's,
suddenly drew bridle with an uncontrollable
gesture of disgust.

"Listen to me," he said; "where man's
despoiling labor pollutes nature, sadness and
resignation make heavy the hearts of her true
lovers, but where man's abominable ignorance
desecrates, reigns a more shocking desolation
which no modest heart ever forgives!"

Diana, surprised by the sudden and unexpected
outburst, drew bridle beside his standing horse.

A moment previous they had been amiably
exchanging idle gossip from their saddles,
gradually falling back behind the others—Silvette,
Christine, Jack, and Colonel Curmew—who
had cantered on forward; and now,
suddenly out of a clear sky, not apropos of
anything, Edgerton had flashed out the bolt
of his contempt for the House of Rivett—for
his ox, his ass, his servants, and all that was
Rivett's.

"Jim," she remarked, "isn't it rather bad
taste of you to say that?"

"Why?  I am paid for being here."  But
he realized that she was right, and it made
him sullen.

"His roof shelters you none the less," she
said quietly.

"Yours is rather a fine-drawn sense of
hospitality, it seems to me," he retorted.

"I can't snap at the hand that feeds me."

"Good Lord!  May a man not have his own ideas?"

"Under lock and key, yes."

"All right," he said, reddening; "only I
supposed I could be frank with you."

"Are we actually on any such footing?"
she asked quietly.

"I thought so—even a footing on which I
permit myself to accept such a rebuke from you."

She turned in her saddle.

"Permit yourself?" she repeated.  "Do
you mean *condescend*?"

"I mean what I say," he retorted sulkily,
still smarting under her rebuke.

Her cheeks were bright with anger, her lips
compressed as though silence had become an
effort.  Presently, however, she looked across
at him with perfect sweetness and composure.

"No, you don't mean what you say, Jim.
If you did, you would be at a disadvantage
with me, and you don't want to be that; nor
do I wish to be, ever."

He said obstinately: "I'm getting sick of
this Adriutha business."

"I predicted you would."

"Well, I am....  It isn't false pride; I
don't care what they think about me.  If I
chose to be a waiter in a Broadway café, their
opinion wouldn't concern me....  I'm
simply weary of the place, the majority of the
people—what they think and do, their private
life, their mere coming in and going out....
It isn't the pitiable absurdity of their offensive
environment alone, the horror of the architecture,
the gilded entrails of their abode—it's
the whole bally combination! ... I'm sick—sick!
And that's the truth, Diana."

"I think," she said, smiling, "that you are
also a little bit bored with us."

He looked up at her, perplexed, already
beginning to be very much ashamed of his
outburst, already conscious of a painful reaction
from his unrestraint.

"Diana," he said impulsively, "I'm just a
plain brute, and rather a vulgar one; but, do
you know, there isn't anybody else in the
world I'd have permitted to hear that
outburst—whether you take it as a compliment or not."

"You mean you don't care what I think of you?"

He thought for a moment.  "I can't mean
that, of course."

"You might, very easily."

"I couldn't; I do care what you think of
me.  Probably what I meant was that I—dare
say things to you; that I've a sort of
instinct that I can come to you in an emergency——"

"In other words, that I'll stand anything
from you?" she said, smiling.  "I don't know
about that, my friend."

He looked at her curiously.  "I believe
you'll stand a good deal from me—and still
like me.  I, somehow, count on it."

She met his gaze directly, unsmiling now.

"A hair divides my sentiments concerning
you," she said.  "Extremes lie on either side."

"Extremes?"

"I think so.  It would take very little to
fix definitely my opinion of you."

Sobered, but still curious, he sat his saddle
more firmly while the horses paced forward,
shoulder against shoulder, along the forest road.

"I didn't suppose you had any very violent
opinions concerning me one way or another,"
he said lightly.

"I haven't—yet."

"Or would ever develop them, either," he
added, laughing.

"I probably never shall."

He said, after another silence: "What was
it about a hair dividing your sentiments, and
that extremes lay on either side?"

"I said that, Jim."

"Extremes of what?"

"Dislike—friendship—I suppose....  I'm
a person addicted to extremes."

"Hatred is one extreme.  Did you mean
that, Japonette?"

"It is conceivable, fair sir."

"And—the other extreme?"

"Which?"

"The opposite extreme to hate....  Is
that conceivable, too?"

"Do you mean love?" she asked coolly.

"Yes, love, for example."

"Well, for example, ask yourself how
likely I am to entertain that sentimental
extreme in your regard."

"Oh," he said; "then all you threaten me
with is hatred!"

"Absolutely all, cousin James."

"Hobson's choice for mine.  No matter
how agreeable I may be, placid friendship is
my only reward; and if I'm not agreeable,
hatred.  Is that it?"

"Are you not satisfied?" she asked, lifting
her prettily shaped eyes.

He made no reply.

Yet, he had been satisfied, except at intervals
during the first flush of their unconventional
friendship, when she was still a
fascinating novelty to him, when the charming
memory of the surprise was still vivid.

But since then, recently in fact, other
matters, somehow, had intervened—the dawning
distaste for his own position, the apparent
absence of any future prospect, the gradual
conviction that he had no real capacity for
decently earning a living, no ability—perhaps no
character.

.. vspace:: 2

His silence seemed to be her answer now;
she spurred forward, accepting it.  He put his
horse to a canter, to a gallop, and they raced
away through the woods until they came in
sight of the others.  Colonel Curmew joined
her; Edgerton rode forward with Christine
Rivett.

.. vspace:: 2

That afternoon there was some tennis
played; a number of commonplace and very
rich people departed, leaving as residue the
original house party which Edgerton and his
cousins had found there on their arrival, and
who now knew one another well enough to
separate into sympathetic groups.

Thus, Judge Wicklow, Mrs. Rivett, and
Mrs. Lorrimore played Chinese Kahn under
the terrace awning; Colonel Follis Curmew,
who had been rash enough to discard his coat
and reveal an unlooked-for excess of abdomen,
played tennis with Silvette against Jack
Rivett and Mrs. Wemyss; Mr. Rivett and
Mr. Snaith indulged in laborious clock golf and
talked of oil; and Christine and Edgerton,
down by the river's edge, continued a
conversation begun the evening previous, and
which was near enough to meaning something
to stimulate their attention.

From his clock golf on the lawn above,
Mr. Rivett turned his convex glasses on them
occasionally; from one card table on the
terrace, her mother, drawing the white wool
shawl closer around her slight shoulders,
watched her daughter from moment to moment.

Later, the game ended, Mrs. Lorrimore
victorious, and his honor unusually peevish.
Mrs. Rivett rose and, advancing to the terrace
edge, gazed down at the river bank, where her
daughter and Edgerton still sat in the floating
canoe, holding it inshore by grasping willow
branches overhead.

For a few moments the little old lady
watched them, one hand gathering the fleece
shawl over the magnificent sapphire at her
breast; then she turned quietly away into the
house, wandering through it from one gorgeous
room to another, until at last she came to
the high organ.

Here her husband found her in the semi-dusk,
sitting motionless and silent under the
tall pipes, hands folded in her lap.

"Well, mother?" he said in a voice which
nobody else ever had the privilege of listening to.

She lifted her head, smiled, and laid one
hand over his as he seated himself beside her
in the demi-twilight.

"Are you happy?" he asked, patting the
worn fingers.

"Yes, Jacob—when you and the children are."

"Does that damn Sims bother you?"

No, the housekeeper did not bother her;
neither did Noonan, general superintendent.

"Are you sure you are feeling perfectly well?"

"Yes, dear."

"And you are enjoying the people?"

"Yes....  The Tennant girls are so kind to me."

"Why the devil shouldn't they be?" he
said harshly.  "They never met a better woman!"

"Jacob, dear, don't speak that way."

"Well, then—don't be so eternally surprised
if people are nice to you, mother.
They'd better be!"

She smiled.  "I am a rather plain and
unattractive old woman to young people—to
most people.  I have little to say, but Diana
Tennant and her sister are very sweet to me.
Poor, motherless girls!  I wonder—it troubles
me—sometimes—a great deal——"

"What?" he asked grimly.

"Their being so entirely alone, and so
unusually attractive....  And they're *good*
girls, Jacob."

"I assume that they are," he said dryly.

"They *are*; a woman knows at once....
They've made everybody—all our guests—enjoy
their visits so much.  Don't you think so?"

"They've earned their salaries....  People
seem to like 'em....  I'm wondering how
much Jack likes the younger one—Silvette."

"Have *you* thought so, too?"

"I'm asking you, Sarah."

There was a silence; then she said timidly:

"Do you know anything more about them?"

"They're rather learned," he said grimly.
"One, I understand, is entitled to practice
medicine—the other law....  They scarcely
look it."

"Those babies!"

"Certainly.  Snaith was at Keno on business
last winter; he heard of 'em there.  Also—I've
inquired."

"You have learned nothing to their discredit,
I am sure," she said confidently.

"No; as the fast world wags, they're respectable
enough——"

"Fast!  Jacob!"

"Oh, Sarah, I didn't mean it in any sinister
sense....  They're merely rather gay—into
everything everywhere—dancing all night,
riding, motoring all over the shop....
They're pretty girls, and good ones, too, I
guess....  But the world has gone by us,
mother.  It's developed speed.  That's what
I mean by fast."

"If it were not for the children's sake, I
would be glad to be left behind," she said,
smiling.

"So would I.  Damn this gim-crack fol-de-rol!"

"Jacob!"

"Excuse me....  We'll do what we ought
to; the children want New York, and I'm
going to give it to them if I can....  So I
guess you'd better caution Jack about that girl."

"About Miss Tennant?"

"Silvette; yes.  Tell him to keep away."

"But she is Mr. Edgerton's cousin."

"It's too far off to count; besides, it's not
a good enough gamble.  As far as that goes,
I'm not satisfied that Jim Edgerton is good
enough."

"Oh, Jacob!  You *said*——"

"If I'd stuck to all I've said, you'd still be
doing the family cooking, dear.  Jim
Edgerton does, or did, go everywhere in New
York....  I wonder how far he could take
our daughter with him? ... Wait, Sarah—I'm
not reflecting on Christine; I'm only
speculating.  How do I know about the
customs and habits of the New York fauna?  I
want to go slow.  I don't care how little
money he has, or even how much he might
have had; *I'll* do that part.  But, first, I want
to know exactly where he can take Christine.
The knot hole may be too big for her."

"They sent you a report from New York,
dear.  You have a full list of all his relatives."

"I know—I know.  If he had none, I
wouldn't be afraid.  It's a man's relatives
who act nasty, not his friends....  Does
Christine seem to like him?"

"The child is frankly devoted to him....
I don't know if it means anything more than
friendship.  Christine is a strange girl.  There
was young Inwood——"

"Everybody's beau!  Glad she shipped him....
But to return to Jack—what's your opinion?"

"I don't know.  He is with Silvette so
much; he is such a dear boy——"

"Tell him plainly we don't want her.
I like her myself, but there's better material....
Other things aside, I don't want my boy
to marry a girl who plays cards the way she does."

"Jacob!  You don't mean——"

"No, no!  She's as square as a die; but she
wins too much, stakes too much—smokes too
much, drinks too many cocktails—she and her
sister, too.  Why, they've won steadily at
cards from the beginning.  They've a genius
for it.  *I* never saw such playing.  Poor cards
don't worry them; and they never take the
shadow of advantage, never whine, never ask
questions; there's never an impatient word, a
look of protest—and the judge and the colonel
are beasts to play with!—and if there ever
seems to be the slightest doubt or indication
of a dispute over any point, those girls
instantly concede it—cheerfully, too!  They're
clean-cut sports—thoroughbred....  But, by
God!  I don't want Jack to marry a gambler!"

He stood up, his glasses glistening, his little
burned eyes fixed on space.

"No," he said; "I've done all the gambling
that will be done in this family.  I'll do a
little more—enough to put the bits on one or
two men in New York whose wives could
make it easy for my children, if they cared to.
Then I'm done, mother."

She bent her head, and her lips moved.

"What?" he said, hand to his ear.

"I was only thinking, Jacob, that I would
be happy when you have finished with—business."

"Don't worry, dear."  He put one arm
around her—a thin arm in its loose coat sleeve,
thin as a tempered steel rod.  She laid her
faded face against it, comforted by its
inflexibility.

"Some day," she said, "when the children
are happy—with their families——"

"Yes, yes," he nodded; "a smaller house
for you and me—just a little one."  He smiled;
few people ever had seen him smile.  "Just
a little house for two little old people," he
said; "only one horse to take us about, one
servant to feed us—eh, Sarah?"

She looked around her, smiling vaguely at
the magnificence.

"I like to dust," she said, coloring up
prettily, "and to make jelly....  I've wanted to
a long while."

"You shall do it; I swear you shall.  By
God!  I'll be glad when that chef is fired!"

"You know, Jacob," she said timidly, "with
knitting and dusting and—and a little kitchen
work—and you—the day passes very nicely."

"Some day you'll make some more of those
crullers!" he predicted; "mark my words!"

"And the cinnamon shells," she added,
slightly excited.

"Oh, Lord!  Why can't that fool of a chef
make 'em!" he burst out.  "Well, I'll wait....
It gives us something more to wait for,
doesn't it?"

He laughed.  Only his wife had ever heard
the dry cackle which was his manifestation
of mirth.

Contented, she lifted her face, and he kissed her.

He went to New York that evening to remain
over Wednesday as usual.

.. vspace:: 2

In the small company remaining at Adriutha
a certain intimacy had developed, enough
to make any effort at entertainment
superfluous.  There was now a decided
inclination to laziness in the evening, and a
preference for the billiard room and its easy
informality.

It was a big room with open fires and the
inevitable trophies of somebody else's
chase—the heads of big game mounted, staring at
nothing out of their glass eyes; weapons of a
vanished age on the oaken wainscoting, modern
guns in racks as well as cues, and leather
lounges and seats and wide-armed chairs
everywhere.

Hither Mrs. Rivett now brought her
embroidery or knitting; and around her, within
a radius more or less distant, the others
gathered or circled in temporary orbits, and
games were played and music made and youth
flirted and age gossiped much as they did when
she was a young girl in Mills Corners, and her
husband taught in the red schoolhouse next door.

Sometimes Diana came and sat beside her
and knitted a tie destined, she admitted, for
nobody in particular; sometimes Edgerton
drew his chair beside hers and told her of
student life in Paris—watching always for her
delightfully timid smile, the shy laugh that she
sometimes ventured, the curiously pretty flush
that came at times into her cheeks, making
them and the faded eyes almost beautiful.

Once or twice it happened that Christine
settled herself on a footstool on the other side
of her mother to listen, too; and the little old
lady experienced a furtive content with the
situation as Edgerton and her daughter
exchanged pleasantries and volleys of gay
badinage across her knitting.

But listen as demurely as she might, feign
inattention and unconsciousness as she might,
she could detect in neither her daughter nor
in Edgerton any hint of a subtler understanding,
any omen of anything for the future beyond
a frank camaraderie and the undisguised
pleasure in it.

And she sighed sometimes—not understanding,
not venturing even to admit to herself the
desire that was beginning to establish itself in
her gentle breast.

As for Edgerton and Christine, they were
now on terms of intimacy almost careless.
With Diana he was different.

The day of his bitter outbreak when riding
with Diana, Edgerton, terribly ashamed of
himself, had gone once more to her and
admitted that her rebuke was a just one; that
he was an ungrateful dog, disloyal to the hand
that fed him, and not worthy of Diana's regard.

And the girl had forgiven him very sweetly,
not with much enthusiasm, for his rapidly
advancing intimacy with Christine had begun to
perplex her, nor could she exactly understand
his apparently happy acquiescence in
conditions lately so irritating.

Not that he neglected her; in his
amiable way he was charming to her and to
Silvette; was often with them; drove, rode,
walked with them; and often, when the
opportunity happened, met them in family
conclave to discuss future prospects for business.

But his intimacy with Christine advanced
very swiftly; so rapidly that Diana became
fully aware of it only when it was already in
complete flower....  And she wondered a
little—and, looking at the girl, wondered less.
Also, knowing Edgerton less than she supposed
she did, the wonder as to his motive began
to trouble her.

Whatever Diana really thought of Edgerton,
she did not think him unusually strong in
character; was not absolutely convinced of his
sincerity—was not any too sure of his motives.
Yet, to doubt him always hurt her, and to
question his sincerity now made her ashamed
of herself.  But Christine Rivett was very,
very rich, and the only thing she did not have
was a name like Edgerton's to insure her
future for all time.  Thinking of this, the girl
was ashamed to think it, and put it resolutely
from her mind; but it returned at intervals,
even when he was most charming to her sister
and herself.

Meanwhile a silent but decisive little duel
had been fought in her vicinity, and Jack
Rivett definitely replaced Colonel Follis Curmew
at Silvette's side; and that warrior, being
unfamiliar with the fortunes of war, first sulked,
then began to appear frequently in Diana's
vicinity—sending out, as it were, pickets of
observation and foraging parties, and finally
appearing in superb force with warlike
intentions not to be misunderstood, although
Diana contrived entirely to misunderstand them.

"Do you know," she said to Silvette one
night as they were preparing for bed, "I believe
that he is actually falling in love with me."

He was; but, nevertheless, Diana entirely
misunderstood him.

.. vspace:: 2

And so the early summer days passed at
Adriutha, and Edgerton, always prone to
accommodate himself to circumstances, found it
easier and easier to keep his pact with Mr. Rivett.

Perhaps he was too easily colored by his
surroundings; for this place and these
people—toward whom, under other circumstances,
his instinct would have been antagonistic—were
becoming very agreeable to him, and he
had handy no standards of comparison from
his own world—merely memories, which are
always inadequate.

He never became entirely reconciled to the
architecture of Adriutha, but the interior
magnificence disturbed him less and less; besides,
he had very little real love for decoration, and
knew little about its harmonies.  All the art
that was in him consisted in a cleverness and
facility for expressing what was actually of
slight importance.

So he became amiably reconciled to his
surroundings, to his own position.  Probably the
lack of responsibility and the pleasant idleness
had much to do with it.

Still, he really liked Jack Rivett and
Christine.  In prosperous days the chances
would have been against his ever giving
himself the opportunity of liking them.  But
chance had taken charge of his career for the
moment; he had met them, and liked them—was
inclined to like Rivett senior, too, and
began to experience a certain tenderness
toward his frail little hostess—something he had
never noticed in himself since his mother's
death many years ago.

For the others he had no particular feelings.
He knew, without troubling himself to think
about it, that Colonel Curmew was what his
own friends would call a bounder; and the
remaining guests were of no greater importance
to him than strangers inclined to be civil.

As for Silvette and Diana, they were not
only kindred, and so to be automatically
cherished, but they also were very charming and
delightful young girls; and Diana aroused his
curiosity.

During the first days of their acquaintance,
the circumstances of his encounter with
Diana had inclined him to sentiment.  Now that
had been merged into a nice friendship—a
friendship so frank and pleasant that, in his
idea, it permitted privileges of an intimacy
which at first perplexed and disturbed Diana,
and which, presently, she began to silently
resent without exactly knowing why.

What her ideas concerning Edgerton really
were, she herself had not entirely decided.
She had been as vividly conscious of the charm
of their first encounter as had he; being a
woman, she still remembered it vividly, whereas,
with him, it had dissolved into the mistiest
of dream-tinted memories—charming, but vague.

Too, she remembered his attitude toward
her in those first three days in the studio—the
golden magic of them, the little roof garden,
the starlings, the sunset beyond the river.
Under such circumstances, the things men say
and look, men usually forget; but women
remember longer.

Then she remembered, too, the first days of
their arrival at Adriutha....  There was
nothing in particular to recall—a note or two
from her to him, from him to her....
Perhaps a something in his voice and eyes which,
somehow, had died out since....  Yet, *had*
it been anything in particular?  And, granting
that it had, what had she done to encourage it?

She had fallen into the habit of thinking
about these things in her bedroom while
preparing for the night.  She often thought, too,
about this new friendship of his for Christine
Rivett.  It perplexed her, saddened, irritated
her by turns, and it distressed her to even
question his motives.

But Silvette said one evening, after they had
undressed and the maid had left:

"Wouldn't it be odd if Jim married that girl?"

.. _`"'Wouldn't it be odd if Jim married that girl?'"`:

.. figure:: images/img-155.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "'Wouldn't it be odd if Jim married that girl?'"

   "'Wouldn't it be odd if Jim married that girl?'"

"Married—*her*?" repeated Diana, startled
out of a reverie not entirely happy.

"He's becoming very attentive to her.  She
is pretty, of course," Silvette smiled.

"Why shouldn't he marry her if he finds
that he cares for her?" asked Diana with
some heat.

"I was merely surprised that he should care
for her in that way.  She is not his sort."

"Sort! sort!  What does that matter!" said
Diana hotly.  "It never stopped a thoroughbred
from mating.  He can afford to love
where he chooses, I fancy."

"Or marry what he chooses, anyway."

"Silvie!  Do you imagine he'd do a thing
like that—not loving her!"

"I don't know," said Silvette coolly; "he's
a dear boy, and nice to us, but I don't credit
him with superhuman qualities....  And *she*
inherits millions."

"It isn't in him to do it....  And there are
plenty of his own sort who would be glad
enough——"

"Why do you become so animated, Di?
Have you noticed any particular strength of
character in Jim Edgerton?"

"Yes....  He is as true as steel, underneath
the amiable exterior of a drifter and
dilettante....  He has ideals....  I am not
one of them—I know that."

"Do you care particularly?"

"No....  I don't know whether I do or
not....  I never seem to know what to say
to him these days.  We talk together like two
men.  I'd like to know what he thinks about
me—the kind of woman I am, compared to
others in his own set....  I'd like to know
what he thinks about my gambling and cocktails
and cigarettes, which you and I have got
to stop!  What he *really* thinks of our position
in this house—in the world!  I don't believe
he thinks much of it."

"Does his position differ from ours?"
asked Silvette gently; "why are you so
excited, little sister?"

"I'm not excited....  Things—various
matters have occurred to me—recently; and
I've made up my mind that I don't like to see
him here.  This is no place for him, no
position.  He is capable of doing better things,
more important things, nobler things.  He
slips into a life like this too easily; he is too
easily reconciled, too quickly content."

Silvette seated herself on a rocking chair
and, leaning back, sat rocking and inspecting
her sister, who stood by the bed, her brown
locks clustering against her cheeks.

"There *is* something to Jim," she insisted.
"He *can* do things—respectable, dignified
things—and make his living.  It humiliates
me to see him here in such a capacity——"

"As ours?" added Silvette, smiling.

"Yes, as ours.  He is a man, and it does
not become him."

"We are respectively physician and lawyer,
but our talents and fortunes lie in this profession."

Diana flushed.  "If we were anything except
the frivolous, ease-loving, and pleasure-craving
little beasts that we are, we wouldn't
be here."

"No; we'd starve, respectably, in our
several offices.  Do you want Jim to starve?"

"I don't know," said Diana, almost fiercely;
"I'd rather see him in want, I think, than
doing this kind of thing."

"I don't believe he will do it very long—on
a salary," laughed Silvette.  "Christine
evidently adores him."

Diana was silent; her sister laughed, and
rose, putting one arm around her.

"Don't be sentimental over Jim Edgerton,"
she said; "he is a lightweight, Di."

"You are wrong; and I am not sentimental."

"Well, I believe you did get over it; but
you're a loyal and generous little thing,
Di, and you're worrying over a man who
is entirely capable of looking out for himself."

"That's what I want him to do."

"He's doing it, very gracefully.  Later,
with equal and fetching grace he'll let some
wealthy girl do it for him."

"That would be contemptible; he isn't."

"Now, does the world so consider an
advantageous marriage, little sister?  Besides,
that is exactly what we have planned for
ourselves, isn't it?"

"We?  What are we, anyway, compared to
a man who can count in the world!" flashed
out Diana, surprised at her own vehemence,
aware that her sister was even more
astonished and chagrined.

"What on earth are you saying?" she
exclaimed.  "Are you in love with that
man?"

"No."

"One might infer as much."

"You may infer it if you choose."

"Di!"

"What?"

"Why do you speak to me that way?"

"Because—I don't—know."

She turned and moved toward the bed,
encountered the soft, open arms of her sister.
They closed around her; she laid her head on
Silvette's shoulder.

"Darling!  Little Di!" whispered Silvette
in sorrowful consternation.  "Has this really
happened to you?"

"I don't know—I don't know....  I am
not happy; I don't understand....  At
moments I cannot believe it....  He is not my
ideal of a man; I am stronger in many ways—I
am wiser than he.  He is only a boy,
Silvie—careless, ease loving, with nothing but
smatterings—nothing but the social experience
of a man of his class behind him.  Nothing
real has ever happened to him in life....
And, somehow, I know—I *know* that if it only
did, he would become a man—a real man.  I
*know* it; I can't bear to see him waste his
life—fall into easy ways of thinking—make no
effort....  I want him to strive; I want him
to fight life....  He ought to.  The making
of him is in a battle with circumstances.  This
life is ruin to him—this house, these people,
any people who will employ him in such a
capacity!"

She caught her breath, almost in a sob.

"I *have* cared for him—a little—from the
very first....  I am not—fitted for him—in
many ways."

"Di!"

"I am *not*!  I care for him unselfishly.  I
don't know why I should, but I do; and he
ought not to marry me even if he—ever—wished to."

"You are talking wildly, darling!  *You*—not
good enough for *him*!  What a silly——"

"Not good enough, I tell you!" repeated
the girl fiercely.  "I care too much for what
he finds agreeable—all this ease and relaxation....
I wish I were different.  I wish I
could arouse him; I'd do it.  I'd do it
somehow—I'd do it now if I could——"

She caught her breath, stood perfectly
motionless a moment, then Silvette felt her
tremble slightly.

After a while she lifted her head from her
sister's shoulder.

"I *am* going to do what I can for him,"
she said excitedly.  "I am going to see what
can be done to arouse the man in him.  All
he needs is the initial shock—a—a stinging
one."

"What do you mean?  If there was anything
in him, the shock of the firm's failure
would have brought it out."

"It was not enough.  It was only the loss
of money!  There are worse things——"

"Di!  What are you going to do?"

Suddenly the girl's face grew radiant.

"I know now," she said breathlessly.

"What?"

But Diana only kissed her sister, laughing,
flushed, excited, and, extending her arm,
turned off the light, plunging the room and
her brilliant cheeks in darkness.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`FLOS VENERIS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII


.. class:: center medium bold

   FLOS VENERIS

.. vspace:: 2

Edgerton and Christine, ensconced
in the corners of a window seat, and
partly visible through the leaded panes, were
too deeply absorbed in each other to be aware
of the curious glances shot toward them from
the tennis court outside, where Silvette,
Colonel Curmew, Mrs. Lorrimore, and Jack Rivett
were playing, while Diana, perched aloft with
her knitting in the umpire's seat, resolutely
ignored the spectacle in the window, which
was plainer to her than to anybody else.

Perfectly oblivious to any extraneous interest
they aroused, sitting almost nose to nose
and knee to knee in the deep recess, Christine
and Edgerton remained in close consultation,
preoccupied, possibly indifferent, to view or
comment.  Christine bent forward, and drew
a carnation through his buttonhole, saying:

"Anyway, you are a perfect dear, Jim
Edgerton.  Somehow or other, I haven't any
blushes for what I've taken so many weeks to
tell you.  I never thought I could know
anybody well enough to say such a thing to, but
you *are* different; there's nobody like you,
Jim.  Do you wonder I adore you?"

"You sweet little thing, I've a mind to kiss
you for that!"

"I may let you at the psychological
moment.  *Do* you think me absolutely
shameless?—but I've asked you that before
about a dozen times....  You *don't* think so,
do you?"

"If other women displayed the common
honesty and common sense that you display,
there'd be a good deal less unhappiness in the
world."

"But how *can* other women, when there
is only one Jim Edgerton!  Oh, I liked you
so much—as soon as I saw you; and before I
had known you a week, I was ready to tell
you anything—and now I've done it!"

"It took several weeks before you came to
the point," he said, laughing.

"I know, but, oh! it was such a terrible
thing to do!—I don't even now understand
how I ever came to tell you."

"You didn't; I extracted it, seeing that you
were in pain."

She blushed.

"Yes, it was pain....  Not one of my own
family suspected it.  Father doesn't dream of
such a thing; Jack doesn't, of course.  As for
dear little mother, you know what she thinks
about you and me."

Edgerton smiled almost tenderly.

"She is very nice to me," he said.  "I almost
wish I could verify her charming theory."

"Concerning *us*?"

"Certainly....  As it is, I believe I'm
more than half in love with you, anyway,
Christine."

She blushed again, looking at him with her
pretty, frank, brown eyes; and they both
laughed happily.

"It's the first time in all my life that I've
been of any use in the world," he said.

"You *did* ask father?" she inquired, still
charmingly flushed; "didn't you?"

"I certainly did.  He said: 'Is young
Inwood such a particular friend of yours?'  I
said: 'He is!'  He said: 'All right; ask my
wife.'  So I asked your mother, and she said:
'Oh, please, Mr. Edgerton, invite anybody you
wish to.'  So I wrote Billy Inwood, and your
bully little mother inclosed my letter in the
sweetest note of her own; and now he has
telegraphed——"

"Telegraphed?"

"I've just received the message."

He fished it out of his coat pocket, and
handed it to her, and she read:

.. vspace:: 2

"On my way!

.. vspace:: 1

"BILL."

.. vspace:: 2

"Is *that* all?" she asked, half laughing, half
excited.

"He telegraphed your mother the substance
of a moderate-sized letter.  She's probably in
her room now, reading it.  She showed it to
me in amazement, but I didn't have time to
follow all his polite and grateful meanderings."

"I wish to see it!" said the girl excitedly.

"Go ahead; your mother has it.  I was
anxious to let you know how matters had
turned out, first."

"You're a dear!" she repeated, and her
voice was not any too steady.  "I am happy;
I am happier than I've been for—"  She
checked herself, and bent her head for a
moment; he pretended to reread the telegram.

"It will be all right now," he observed.

"I wish I knew," she said under her breath.

"Don't you?"

She lifted her honest eyes to his.
"How can I know, Jim?  I don't know how
men are.  It all happened over a year ago....
I was no wiser than a schoolgirl.  What
experience had I—with such episodes—such
conditions—or with anything?"

"You did act like a schoolgirl—to send him
about his business," said Edgerton with a
shrug.

"I wouldn't have if I hadn't—hadn't——"

"Cared for him?"

"Loved him," she said steadily.

"You're a corker, Christine!" he said in
genuine admiration.

"Am I?  Thank you, Jim."

"Yes, you are; and so is Billy Inwood—the
real Billy.  Young men like to chase about
with married women.  They love to delude
themselves into the pleasing belief that they
are sad dogs——"

"There was more to it than that," said the
girl; "he went to Keno to see her.  That is
what confounded me."

"While she was getting her divorce?"

"Yes."

"Then you can bet that there was nothing
in it, you little goose....  Who was she, anyway?"

"A Mrs. Atherstane.  Do you know her?"

"No," said Edgerton; "and you certainly
did act like a schoolgirl."

"I know I did, and I was twenty....  I
asked him to come, to Hot Springs; she
requested him to go to Keno.  He took his
choice; he had a perfect right to....  And
then I wrote him that letter, dismissing him."

"Ought never to have done it, sweetness,"
said Edgerton gravely.  "There are no
fetters to hold a man like absolute freedom.  He
was probably bound to her in various ways,
innocently enough, of course; but she was
probably lonely and in trouble—and—noblesse
oblige.  I tell you a young man has to pay for
sympathizing with an unhappily married woman!
And she usually sees that he does."

Christine sat back, nursing her knees, eyes
downcast.

"He was right," she said.  "She was his friend."

"Perhaps he was more right than you realize,
Christine.  When a man's man friend is
battered and used up, the man still clings to
him—anyway, until he borrows money; but
when his woman friend becomes slightly the
worse for wear, he is inclined to discard her
as naïvely as he would a worn-out coat.  That
is the rule—romance to the contrary....
Inwood proved the exception, that's all."

"Yes," said the girl in a low voice.

"He proved the exception to me, too," said
Edgerton, smiling.

"To you, Jim?"

"Certainly; wanted to lend me money when
I arrived in town on my uppers."

The girl smiled.

"Oh, he's all right," said Edgerton; "I've
known him since he was six and I twelve."

"He—is—all—right," repeated Christine
slowly; "but—am I, Jim?"

"You know you are—kleine Fischerin!"

"But I wrote him that wretched letter.  If
it hurt him as it hurt me—"  She ceased
abruptly, and turned her face toward the
window.

"You were years younger, then."

"One year," tremulously.

"*Years*, sweetness....  Do you think your
father will ever stand for him?"

"He scarcely knows him.  He did not
understand why Mr. Inwood never came to Hot
Springs, or why I never again saw him.
Probably he supposes I lost interest."

"So your father believes that you are all
over that affair, doesn't he?"

"Yes; but he probably remembers that
Mr. Inwood was to have come to Hot Springs,
and didn't.  Fathers usually remember such
things, and sometimes ask why."

"Well, Christine," he said, smiling, "you'll
have to fix it with your father; and I think
you can."

"Why do you think so?"

"Because there is much of your father in
you—steel under the velvet skin of that pretty
figure, or I miss my guess."

The girl said thoughtfully: "I am, perhaps,
more like father than Jack is....  That is
not really what concerns me....  Has
Mr. Inwood changed—in appearance?"

"Within a year?  No!  Nor otherwise, I'll wager."

"Do you—think——"

"I don't know; I don't know, little girl.
Men are protean creatures; God knows what
incarnation they'll assume next! ... But if
a woman really cares for a man, and if he
isn't in love with anybody else, it *ought* to be
a cinch—even if he had as many incarnations
as Albert Chevallier!"

"Jim!"

"Well, I know my sex," he said; "the
cleverest of them are boobs in the hands of
yours——"

"Jim!  You are becoming horrid!"

"That means I'm becoming truthful.  Hooray!
I see Bill's happy finish."  He picked up
her soft little hand and kissed it.  "Velvet
and steel," he said—"the hand that rocks the
world!  Yes?  No?  Good-by, you little
wretch!  I'm going canoeing with my cousin
Diana."

"Did you say that mother has that telegram?"
she asked naïvely, sliding from the
window-sill to the floor.

"Yes; and it's a mile long—a bally serial,
Christine—to be continued this evening, I expect."

They clasped hands at the threshold; then
she ran upstairs, and he sauntered out to the
tennis court, where Diana still sat on her high
perch knitting the silken tie, although below
her the game had ended and the players had
gone to the terrace for iced tea.

"Well, of all pretty monuments!" he
exclaimed.  "You have the other one on the
Madison Square tower beaten to a froth!"

"Beware of my arrows," she said, smiling,
as the wind blew her scarf into a silvery arc
from her shoulders.

"Arrows?  No, I'm wrong; you look like
the Angel of the Central Park Fountain."

"I feel like the dickens," she said, folding
her knitting and descending the steps.

"Headache?"

"No; I merely sat up too late, and I'm
sleepy.  It's perfectly horrid that you can't
stop when you're winning....  What did you
wish me to do, Jim—canoe with you?"

"I thought you wanted to."

"Is *that* why you asked me?"

"I wanted to, also.  Why do you always
put me in wrong, Diana?"

"Jim, *do* I put you in wrong, as you call it?"

"Sometimes."

"Well, it's horrid of me.  Forgive me.  I
do try to be such good friends with you, and
somehow I don't succeed."

"You—we *are* good friends," he said; "you
know perfectly well how I feel about you."

They had walked as far as the river's edge,
where several green-hulled canvas canoes lay
on the grass.

"Suppose we walk," she said; "shall we?
I'm too lazy to paddle.  I'm sleepy, Jim.  A
walk ought to wake me up."

"I know a ledge where you can take a cat
nap," he said.  "Accept forty winks from me,
and we'll paddle afterwards."

So they strolled along the river path,
fragrant with mint and vine and blossom; and
presently the cool green of the woods enveloped
them, and their feet pressed the moist,
springy leaves of a forest path that led over
little brooks and up a slope of young growth,
all checkered with sun spots, to a vast
overhanging ledge of rocks.

"Just look at that moss!" exclaimed Diana.
"I believe I'll sit down on it this minute.  Jim,
do sit down.  It's like velvet, and there's miles
of it; and here is the most enchanting silver
birch tree for my back to rest on, and some
wood lilies to look at....  Isn't this heavenly!"

"Out of sight," he said lazily, stretching
himself at her feet and glancing up at her.
"Go ahead with your cat nap.  I'll time you
half an hour."

After a moment he laughed, and her eyebrows
went up in a silent question.

He said: "I never noticed it before.  It's odd."

"Noticed what?"

"How funny they are in outline—your eyes,
I mean."

"Thank you, Jim."

"Oh, they're most engaging eyes, Diana."

"More thanks, thank you!"

"I mean that they tip up a trifle—just a
trifle, Japonette."

"They don't!"

"They do.  Like a pretty Japanese girl's.
Only yours are blue....  They're very
blue—unusually—like the sky—that sort of
blue."

"Young man," she said with mock seriousness,
"don't you know what comes of speculating
in ladies' eyes?"

"Bankruptcy of the heart," he nodded.

"Then choose some safer and preferred
stock, please."

He lay smiling up at her, watching the
shades of expression varying in her youthful
face—watching the delicate shape of her
mouth, which had always fascinated him with
its unspoiled purity.

"Do you know," he said, partly to himself,
"that when I first set eyes on you, Japonette,
I knew I had never seen anything half as
beautiful."

"You didn't think so long," she returned,
laughing.  "Christine is goddess of beauty
just now."

"I have always thought so," he repeated.

"Then—why don't you ever say it to me?"

His smile changed a little.

"What would be the use of my telling you
that you are beautiful?"

"Use?"

"What good would it do for me to become
sentimental over your beauty?"

"Lots of good—to me, Jim.  You can't tell
a girl too often that she is pretty—when you
really think so....  And I almost believe you
do think so."  She glanced at him sideways,
laughed a little, then her blue eyes wandered
and she leaned back, pensive, twisting a green
oak leaf between idle fingers.

"Do you know," he said after a moment,
"that, just now, you are like Japonette again.
I haven't seen you so like the real Japonette
for a long while."

"How *can* I be Japonette again?  I lack
the sandals and butterfly sash and the peonies
over my ears, Jim.  And—that was about all
you saw in Japonette, wasn't it?"

"Almost all.  Her face was only a shadowy
flower against the sunshine, and its enchantment
turned the world to fairyland."

"Alas! the spell was temporary.  The victim
of my spells fled to the roof, and told me
stories about starlings and—and children....
But, somehow, I let him get away from me,
and I don't know how to find him again."

Edgerton watched her.  She had plaited a
sash out of green oak leaves and fitted it
around her slender waist; and now, absently,
she was placing in her hair, above each little
close-set ear, a scarlet wood lily.

Presently she caught his eye, and made him
a pretty gesture.

.. _`"Presently she caught his eye and made him a pretty gesture"`:

.. figure:: images/img-177.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "Presently she caught his eye, and made him a pretty gesture."

   "Presently she caught his eye, and made him a pretty gesture."

"You see I am trying my best to return
with you to yesterday....  It is a long
path—back over the hours and minutes to yesterday,
back to a land of dreamy suns and forgotten
skies, and unremembered thoughts....
Shall I try to guide you?"

"Yes," he said, not smiling.

"We may lose our way among the phantoms,"
she warned him gayly; then became
preternaturally solemn, resting her chin in one
hand.

Her seriousness enchanted him—her youthful
grace as she bent slightly above him, one
warning finger uplifted as when a nurse speaks
of mysteries to a child in the quiet of twilight.

"Join hands with me in spirit, and I'll try
to lead you," she said....  "Now, follow
me, while we make our way through the
throng of strange faces, treading a path silently,
discreetly, avoiding this pretty girl with
her bright brown eyes."

"Christine," he thought, and started to speak.

"Hush!" she cautioned him; "for we
mustn't speak yet—not until we're in the land
of yesterday....  And we are passing over
the minutes and hours and days and weeks—and
it's like treading on formless mist; so
hold tightly to my hand, and follow me—through
a golden ballroom, around a great
gilded piano, then out into the June rain, Jim....
Have you let go my hand?"

"No."

"Then we are very near the land of
yesterday....  I thought I heard a starling
whistle.  Surely! and there is the sunset over
the river—and now we are in the house, Jim.
And it is not sunset, after all; it is
sunrise—the sunburst of Japan!  And there, against
it——"

"You!" he said in a voice not very firm.

"Hush!  Those two figures we see are only
phantoms.  Let us stand here by the door and
listen to what they might have said."

"They *did* say things!"

"Ah! but it is to what they might have
said that we must try to listen.  Be very
silent, now.  Look at that girl in her silk
and sandals and the flowers in her hair!
Look at that young fellow, rooted to the
floor, amazed at the apparition!  Can you
hear what he *might* have said to her in his
astonishment?"

"He might have said: 'Your loveliness
confounds me.  You are the most beautiful vision
I have ever dreamed.' ... What does *she*
say, Japonette?"

"She says: 'For a moment I was afraid
you'd filled your suit cases with our silver;
but you are so obviously nice that I am not
alarmed any more.  I'm merely ashamed to
be caught here in this theatrical dress.'  What
might he have said to that, Jim?"

"He might have said: 'Is it a heavenly
possibility that you are real, and not a vision?
Allah is merciful to the believer in dreams.
Your name is Youth and Beauty; I will call
you Japonette, but the high white gods have
named you Diana.' ... And what does *she*
say, Japonette?"

"She *might* have answered: 'O youth with
the engaging smile, out of my breast you have
charmed the winged heart, and it is fluttering
there above you, restless, uncertain—just
beyond your reach.' ... And what does—*might*
he have answered, Jim?"

"He might have said: 'I love you, but my
outward self does not know it yet—will not
know it, even on the roof garden—even when
the sun hangs low and the starlings pipe, and
all the west is a glory of gold and rose; and
I shall never know it until you lead me back
from to-morrow, through the magic path of
days and hours, to the true world of yesterday.'
... What answer does she make Diana?"

His voice had grown very unsteady; he lay
there looking at her, the smile stamped on his
lips.  And her faint smile had become fixed, too.

"She made no answer," said Diana.

"She might have....  Remember, all this
is what they *might* have said."

"And did not....  I don't know what she
might have said." ... Suddenly she flung
the green sash of leaves from her body, tore
the scarlet wood lilies from her hair, and flung
them away with a gay, little laugh.

"What an idle, silly pair we are," she said.
"I've had my nap.  I'm awake, now."

"Was all that a dream?"

"You know it was....  It began with a
fable—which sent me off to sleep."

"It ended in truth—and an awakening—for
one of us."

"Jim, you're not pretending to be serious,
are you?  Goodness!" she added impatiently;
"can't I pretend with you, and not be
misunderstood?"

He sat up, sprang to his feet, and began to
pace the moss.

She, resting against the silver birch, watched
him, already a little frightened, her heart
beginning to beat high and fast.

Suddenly he came back and, resting on one
knee, bent over beside her.

"Did you mean nothing of that?  *Nothing?*"

"Nothing; why should you be silly enough
to suppose——"

"I did suppose for a moment."

"Jim, you are not pretending to court me,
are you?"

"Not pretending....  No, I'm not doing
it....  How can a beggar think of such a
thing as courtship?"

"Beggars court most ardently—sometimes,"
she said, laughing tremulously.  "But it's not
hearts they usually court."

He knelt there, thinking a moment, head
bent.  Then he looked up at her.

"I have no reason to believe that you care
for me," he said—"more than for any other
man, I mean."

"You have no reason to believe so," she
repeated, now thoroughly alarmed at what she'd
done; and yet it was what she had deliberately
set out to do.  Her breath came unevenly.  She
strove to retain her composure, to recover the
ground he seemed to have gained.

"Jim," she said, "you are too easily affected
by your surroundings.  A few trees, a
summer sky, and a girl are destruction to you."

"You don't think that," he said quietly.

"I do, indeed.  Witness my fate, and the
plight of Christine."

He said, watching her: "Do you suppose
that there is any sentimentality between
Christine Rivett and me?"

"Oh, Jim! don't shuffle——"

"She is in love with another man," he said.

"Nonsense!"  But a strange thrill shot
through and through her, and, confused, she
bent forward, looking him straight in the face.

"Diana!  Diana!" he said under his breath,
"did you care?"

"I?" she said, reddening.  "Jim, I am not
a baby....  I thought—as everybody thought—but
it was of no consequence—except that
she is a sweet girl, and you are my friend."

She recovered herself with a little laugh—or
would have, had his hand not closed on
hers.  She gave it a friendly and vigorous
pressure, and attempted to drop it; but he
placed the other hand over it, inclosing her
slender fingers, which frightened her into
pretense of unconsciousness.

Now she stood on the threshold.  Now she
was on the eve of that daybreak from which
she had prayed that the shadows might flee
away; and she shrank from the coming light,
afraid, while dawn threatened her with what,
as yet, she had left undone.  And even
through the confused sense of expectancy and
consternation ran a fierce flame of happiness.

Then, unable to endure it longer, she flung
the mask from her, facing the tempest she had
sown.

"Let me go, Jim," she said in a colorless voice.

But he held her hand closely imprisoned,
and the next moment her body.  The rapid
racket of her heart seemed to stifle her; she
tried to speak—lay inert, crushed against his
shoulder, dumb, scarlet, under his kiss.

"I love you," he said; "I've always loved
you....  I'm a blackguard to say it—penniless
nobody that I am—without much chance
to be anything else, apparently.  But I say it
for better or worse....  I love you.  You
like me, but you think lightly of me....
With sufficient reason, God knows....  And
I have no right to touch you—no right in
decency or law, Diana."

She forced herself away from him, but,
somehow, held his hands clasped convulsively
in hers.

"You—shouldn't have kissed me," she managed
to say.  "You mustn't do it again—ever."

He laid his face against their clasped hands;
her own tightened.

"Nevertheless," he said, "I love you."

"You mustn't speak that way—"  She
dropped her flushed face; he lifted it, and
kissed her again.

When he released her, she leaned back
against the silver birch, head lowered, silent
and did not move her hands from the moss
as he bent and kissed them, too.

When at last she found her voice, she spoke
so low that he bent his head closer to listen.

"That is the one imprudence I have never
before committed—contact with any man.
You must not do it to me again....  I don't
know how to take it.  I *can't* love you.  You
know that."  She looked up at him.  "Don't
you know it?"

"Yes," he said stubbornly.

"You *do* know that I can't; don't you?
And that you cannot really love me?"

"I suppose it ought to be that way; but it
isn't."

And now the moment had come to make
her desire a certainty—and finish what she had
set herself to do—for this man's sake.  She
said:

"You *can't* care for me, Jim!  What am
I anyway?  A shallow, pleasure-loving nobody,
who sells her frivolous social gifts because
it is pleasanter and easier to make a
living that way than to exercise a decent
profession.  How can such a man as you really
fall in love with such a woman?"

She rose to her feet and stood leaning
against the tree; and he rose, too, releasing
her fingers.

She touched her hair, passed her hands
slowly over her eyes, let them fall idly by her
side; then, after a moment, looked up at him,
faintly smiling.

"Melodrama is no use, is it?" she said.
"You are not impressed by it; I can't act it.
Life is less serious than the stage.  Shall we
come back together along the road to yesterday,
and find our old, safe footing? ... And—shall
I forgive you what you've done this
summer day?"

"I want you to marry me," he said between
compressed lips.  "I'll make good, yet."

"What!" she exclaimed in apparent
amazement.  "*You!*"

"Will you marry me?"

How she forced the light laughter she never
understood; and she saw her gayety bring the
blood to his face like a whip lash.

"Marry!  No, I won't marry you," she
laughed.  "Mercy on the man!  Does he
suppose I wish to marry a professional
entertainer?—a generally useful gentleman—a big,
strong, healthy, well-built, intelligent fellow,
too indolent to rouse himself and make a
respectable living?—too self-indulgent to start
in a manly career and fight the world—take it
by the throat and shake a decent living out of
its sinful old pockets?"

A deeper flush of astonishment and mortification
swept his face, settling to the roots of
his hair.

She did not seem to notice it or his silence.

"Nonsense," she laughed; "a girl, with any
humor, simply *couldn't* love such a man, even
if she wanted to, Jim.  Because, how can she
respect him? ... You're a dear, generous
fellow—nice to everybody, perfectly sweet to
Silvette and to me, and I *do* like you—even
*love* you, in a certain sense—and I didn't really
mind being kissed any more than as though
Silvette had done it.  But I'm simply not
fashioned to lose my head over a man who is
hired by the month to be socially pleasant."  She
laughed again, and laid her hand carelessly
on his arm; and under her touch she felt
it was rigid and hard as iron.

"You see, don't you?" she said sweetly.
"You're not grown up yet, Jim.  It takes
more than you yet are to satisfy me."

He managed to force his voice out of his
quivering throat.

"You're right," he said.  "I didn't know
what I was talking about.  You are worth
trying for."

They turned away together; she slipped one
hand confidently through his arm, leaning on
him lightly as they walked.

"You're not hopelessly offended, are you, Jim?"

"No—good God, no."

"I'd love you if I could," she said soothingly,
"but the instincts of mating with anything
resembling servitude are wanting in me.
Besides, two slaves are enough for one
family—Silvette and I....  You are not hurt or
angry at my very horrid frankness?"

"No....  What you said is all right."  He
lifted his eyes and looked his punishment
squarely in the face; and her heart failed her,
so that she turned her head swiftly, the tears
stinging her throat.

They walked soberly on through the
meadow up to the house.  She gave him her
hand at parting; then went leisurely to her
room to dress for dinner.

And Silvette found her there alone on her
knees beside the window, partly undressed, her
head buried in her arms, the brown locks
clustering against her pale and tear-stained face.

"Diana!" she exclaimed softly.  "What is
the matter, child?"

.. _`"'Diana!' she exclaimed softly"`:

.. figure:: images/img-191.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "'Diana!' she exclaimed softly."

   "'Diana!' she exclaimed softly."

The girl got up wearily, keeping her face
out of the flood of light from the electric
brackets.

"Nothing much," she said; "I've only been
very horrid to Jim."

"I thought you were going to be kinder,"
said Silvette, astonished.

"I have been; but he doesn't know it."

Her sister stood silent, looking at her with
sorrowful eyes.

"Don't sympathize with me; I—I can't bear
it, Silvie."

"No—if you don't wish it, dear....  Shall
I fix your bath? ... And—*who* do you
suppose is downstairs?"

Diana looked up inquiringly.

"The man you flirted with so outrageously
at Keno!"

"Which?" asked Diana naïvely.

"Billy Inwood!"

Diana brightened a little.

"At least," she said with sad satisfaction,
"I can occupy my mind with him for a while.
He got away before he was thoroughly
disciplined.  *I* believe there was another girl
somewhere....  I think I'll obliterate
her—unless I approve of her.  There's the making
of a man in that boy, Silvette."

But she decided otherwise a few moments
before dinner was announced, when Inwood
made his appearance in the drawing-room and
greeted his hostess.  Then, catching sight of
her, he came hastily toward her with both
hands outstretched.

"Diana!" he exclaimed; "*isn't* this jolly!
I'm terribly glad to see you again...  And
Silvette!  Oh, this is simply too delightful!
I——"

Speech stopped, perhaps froze on his lips;
then he turned fiery red as he stepped
forward to greet Mrs. Wemyss.  A year ago she
had been a comparatively slim and pretty
divorcée; to-day even the embarrassing
opulence and prodigality of her charms had not
altered the doll-like perfection of her features.
He knew her instantly, and, in his brain, chaos
menaced him.

"How do you do," he said; "this is most
delightful and surprising.  Lilly——"

"Charming," murmured Mrs. Wemyss;
and, under her smile, she lowered her voice:
"I'm Lilly Wemyss; I've taken my maiden
name.  Don't forget, and call me Mrs. Atherstane."

He nodded, the fixed smile imprinted on his
features; and it remained there as they stood
in conversation until dinner was announced.

He took in Christine.  The girl's arm rested
lightly as a feather on his sleeve.  During
dinner she talked to him pleasantly, but without
animation; and, somehow, all seemed to go
wrong with him, for he found scarcely
anything to say to Christine—anything that was
not trite and banal.  And his haunted eyes
reverted again and again to Mrs. Wemyss.

"Oh, Lord!" he thought, "what a horrible
mess; and is Lilly going to expect me to—to——"

But his scared wits could speculate no
farther, and he sat beside Christine, worried,
unhappy, penitent, too miserable to enjoy the
moment to which he had looked forward so
impetuously all day long—a moment which,
two days ago, he dared not believe would ever
again come into his life.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MILLE MODI VENERIS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   MILLE MODI VENERIS

.. vspace:: 2

A number of matters had been
slightly disturbing Colonel
Curmew's intellect and digestion.  One thing, he
had lost money at cards—a thing he hated as
heartily as Judge Wicklow hated it.  Another
matter—Jack Rivett had fairly driven him out
of Silvette's vicinity.  True, an easily
transferred devotion to her sister already consoled
him; the one was as ornamental as the other,
but he liked young Rivett no better.

He desired to ingratiate himself with Jack
because the boy had never liked him, and he
neither understood why nor became reconciled
to it; and he was always making advances
and assuming, under the jocular familiarity of
an older man, that there existed between
himself and Jack a delightful and cordial
understanding, which Jack coolly ignored; and the
colonel disliked him the more.

Then, there was another matter which
occupied him—had occupied him, now, for
several years.  He meant to marry Christine
Rivett some day.  For the present he was
satisfied to treat her with the same jovial
familiarity with which he treated her brother; and
now it seemed to him that Christine, whom
he feared might become too much interested
in Edgerton, was veering toward this young
Inwood fellow who had just arrived.

Colonel Curmew was not actually alarmed;
he was merely bored, and now and then a trifle
uneasy, because he had to take this and other
matters into his calculations in being attentive
to Diana Tennant.

No, he was not worried.  He Lad become
cheerfully convinced that both these matters
could be properly attended to.  Let Christine
have her fling and grow up.  Her fortune kept
pace with her, anyway.

But about Diana Tennant he had not yet
entirely made up his mind—and yet he had
made it up, too, after a fashion.

There were, including Diana's youth and
beauty, several things about her which were
likely to attract the attention of such a man
as Follis Curmew.  First of all, she was poor.
Also, she was self-supporting and alone in the
world except for a similarly situated sister
who didn't count, and a very distant relative
who didn't really count, either.

She was beautiful and clever; men appreciate
such women.  Such women, he also believed,
deeply appreciated the kind of things
they could not afford....  And, furthermore,
he did not hesitate to believe that such women
were perfectly capable of appreciating middle-aged
military gentlemen of discretion, fortune,
and liberality in reason.

So he contrived to get as close to Diana as
he could on all occasions; and very often, to
her surprise, she found him at her heels or
seated unnaturally near her, pale eyes slightly
protruding, his curling mustache and little
side whiskers faintly redolent of brilliantine.

Amused, and not yet uneasy, she mentioned
his assiduity to her sister, and thought nothing
further of it; nor did Silvette, preoccupied
with an episode of her own which threatened
to become something approaching a problem.

Instinct told her that Jack Rivett preferred
her to anybody at Adriutha; and she liked
him well enough to find his attention agreeable.
But little by little it became more
marked—to her, if not to others—and she
experienced a slight uneasiness concerning this
very rich and idle only son, the ambition of
whose father had now become plain to her.

So Silvette at first very pleasantly
discouraged him, and kept out of tête-à-têtes as
much as possible, in which maneuvers she
was not very successful.  For the girl found
in this lazy, witty, good-humored, self-indulgent
young fellow a cool and confident
adversary—resistless because of his charming
manner toward her and his unvarying cheerfulness
under rebuffs which were becoming
more frequent and more severe—and, alas,
more useless.

About a week after Inwood's arrival, while
writing a letter in the rose-garden pavilion, a
shadow checkered the lattice work and fell
across her note paper; and, glancing up, she
beheld Jack Rivett, hands in his coat pockets,
the breeze ruffling his blond hair.

.. _`"Glancing up, she beheld Jack Rivett"`:

.. figure:: images/img-199.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "Glancing up, she beheld Jack Rivett."

   "Glancing up, she beheld Jack Rivett."

"I'm writing," she said, annoyed.

"I'll sit down on the sundial," he rejoined
with a bow and a smile as though accepting
a delightful invitation.

"But I'll be writing about two hours," she
observed coldly.

"Writing about two hours?" he repeated.
"But why write about hours at all, dear lady.
An hour is an arbitrary division of time,
interesting only to the unhappy."

"Very witty," she said.  "Go and scratch
it on the sundial."

And she resumed her letter, trying not to
be aware of the blond young man seated just
outside the summer house, where the sun
gilded his hair and the wind mussed it into a
most becoming mop.

Several times she bit the pearl tip of her
penholder, frowning; but he always seemed
to catch her eye at such moments, and her
deepening frown only produced on his face an
expression which was so very humble that it
became almost mischievous.

"Jack!"

He hurriedly rose, and looked all around
him among the roses as though eagerly
searching for the person who had called him.

"*Jack!*" she repeated emphatically.

He pretended to discover her for the first
time, and hurried joyously to the lattice door.

"Jack—you perfect idiot!  I want to write,
and I simply can't, with you sitting around in
that martyred manner."

"How far away shall I retire?" he inquired,
so sad and crestfallen, that between
amusement and annoyance she did not reply,
but merely sat tapping with her pen and
inspecting her letter.

As she did not speak again, very cautiously—and
holding up one hand as an unwelcome
dog holds up one beseeching paw to ward off
calamity—he ventured to seat himself on a
bench outside the summer house.

She was perfectly aware of the inimitable
pantomime, and a violent desire to
laugh seized her, but she only bit her lip
and resolutely dipped her pen into the ink
once more.

She wrote obstinately, knowing all the while
that she'd have to rewrite it.  His excessive
stillness began to get on her nerves; and, after
a quarter of an hour's preternatural silence,
she could endure it no longer.

"Jack!"

"Dear lady?" he replied patiently.

"Why don't you say something?"

"I was forbidden the exquisite consolation
of noise."

"It's horribly hot and still out here.  Why
don't the birds sing?"

"They're moulting, dear lady.  All their
little pin feathers have become unfastened,
and their bills are probably full of pins while
they make themselves tidy again."

"So that is why they don't sing in July?"
she said.

"That is why," he explained seriously.

"Well, then, why don't *you* sing?  *You*
are not untidy."

"Nothing could suit my pensive and melancholy
mood better," he said sadly.

A moment later, sitting outside her door,
he began with deep emotion to sing one of
Kirk's melting melodies:

   |  "*With head bowed low a dentist stood*
   |    *Before his office chair;*
   |  *A handsome lady customer*
   |    *Into his eyes did stare.*
   |  *He tried to fake a careless smile*
   |    *And hide his drooping jaw,*
   |  *But all in vain because his guilt*
   |    *Was plainly to be saw.*
   |  *His voice was choked with shame and fear,*
   |    *He said, 'Forgive me, miss!'*
   |  *But when he begged her pardon there*
   |    *The lady then did hiss:*

   |  *Chorus.*

   |  "'*Take back them teeth you made me!  I*
   |    *Won't wear them in my face!*
   |  *Go hang them in your parlor as*
   |    *A badge of your disgrace.*
   |  *You swore them crowns was solid gold!*
   |    *You're false—like teeth and men!*
   |  *Take back them teeth, you lobster!*
   |    *Never speak to me again!*
   |  *Take back—take ba-ack—take ba-a-a——*'"
   |

"Jack!" she exclaimed, "that is the most—most
degraded thing I ever heard you utter!"

"I'm accustoming you, by degrees, to my
repertoire.  With infinite precautions you
will, in time, be able to endure much worse
than this," he explained kindly.  "Now, what
shall we try next, dear lady?  I have a little
song called: 'Only a pint of shoe strings!'"

"Don't you dare attempt it! ... Jack,
*please* go away.  Won't you, when I ask it?"

"She mutters the unthinkable," he said,
shaking his head.  "My music has unseated
her reason.  By and by she will begin to moan
and revive."

"It's perfectly outrageous," she said,
tearing up what she had written, and moving aside
a little so that sufficient space remained
for—her sister, perhaps.  So he entered the
summer house and waited for an invitation, bland,
cheerful, irresistible.

"I had no idea I was so pitiably
weak-minded," she said.

He accepted the avowal as his invitation,
and seated himself.

"Silvette," he said genially, "what are we
going to do to-day?"

"Who?"

"Why, you and I.  Who cares what the
others do in this mad world, dear lady?"

"I don't know about the world," she said,
"but there's one girl in it who is mad; and
she's going to her room to write letters."

"When?"

"Now!"

"Don't."

"Indeed, I shall!"

"Shall, or will?" he inquired, guilelessly,
"People mix up those two auxiliaries so
persistently that there's no telling what anybody
really means in these days."

She considered a moment, then turned and
looked at him.

"Jack," she said sweetly, "don't follow me
about?"

"I?  Follow *you*!  That's more madness,
dear lady.  Who on earth ever whispered to
you that I could ever do such a——"

"Won't you be serious, please?"

Her pretty, dark eyes were serious enough,
even appealing.  He became solemn at once.

"You have forced me to say this," she
ventured.  "I didn't wish to; I thought you'd
understand, but you don't seem to.  So I am
compelled to say to you that—it is—better
taste for you to—not to——"

She hesitated, glanced up at him, colored
brightly.

"You know perfectly well what I mean!
And there you sit, letting me try to tell you as
nicely as I can——"

"About what, dear lady?"

"About you and me!" she said, incensed.
"You know perfectly well that I've been
obliged to avoid being alone with you."

"Why?"

"Because," she said, intensely annoyed, "I
am employed by your parents, and you are
an only son of Mr. Jacob Rivett....  Is that
unmistakable?"

He said nothing.

She went on: "You know I like you, Jack.
You seem to like me.  If you do, you'll
understand that this—this continually seeking
me out, separating me from the others, isn't
fair to me....  I'm trying not to talk
nonsense about it.  I know you mean nothing but
kindness; but it isn't wise, and it is not
agreeable, either.  So let us enjoy our very
delightful friendship as freely among others as we
do when alone together—"  She stopped
abruptly, blushed to her hair, furious at
herself, astonished that her tongue could have
blundered so.  The next instant she understood
that he was too decent to notice her
blunder.  Indeed, to look at him, she almost
persuaded herself that he had not even heard
her speak, so coolly remote were his eyes, so
preoccupied his air as he sat facing the far
hills, blue in the July haze.

Presently he looked up at her.

"What was it you were lecturing me
about?" he asked cheerfully.

"About our twosing, Jack."

"Did you say you *did* prefer it, or otherwise?"

"Otherwise—you monkey!" she said,
laughing, free of the restraint and of the
bright color that had made even her neck hot.

"Very well," he said briskly; "keep your
distance!  Don't start running after me the
moment I come in sight across the landscape.
Will you promise?"

"I promise," she said solemnly.

"Thank you.  I shall have a little leisure
now.  I'll have so much I won't know what
to do with it.  Can you advise me?"

"I cannot."

"Then I'll have to think for myself....
I'll have to do something, of course....
Suppose you and I take a canoe——"

"Canoes hold only two, Jack."

"By Jove!  What am I thinking of!  Thank
you for saving me from incredible suffering....
So suppose we don't take a canoe, you
and I, but we take the red runabout?"

"Jack!"

"What?"

"The red runabout holds two, only."

"I must be demented!" he said with a
shudder....  "Silvette, I'll tell you what we'll
do—we'll take a walk, you and I.  There's
room all around us for millions of other
people.  They can come if they like; if they
don't, why, it's up to them!"

"No, Jack."

"Won't it do?"

"No.  Why won't you be a little bit serious
about a matter that, after all, concerns me very
nearly."

"I *am* serious," he said.  "It concerns me, too."

"No, it doesn't."

"Indeed, it does.  Two people are not to
go twosing any more; *I'm* one of those people.
Therefore, it concerns me, doesn't it?"

She looked at him, confused, half smiling,
half reluctant.

"Don't you know," she said, "that your
attention to me is worrying your father and
mother?"

He thought a moment, then slowly turned
toward her a sober and youthful face, from
which all humor had departed; and she looked
back at him out of grave young eyes that met
his very sweetly, but inexorably.

"Do you mean it, Silvette?"

"About your parents?"

"Yes."

"Yes, I do, Jack."

He said, partly to himself: "I had not
noticed it."

"I have.  It's a woman's business to notice
such things.  Otherwise, she'll find herself in
trouble....  Inclination is a silly guide, Jack."

"For me?"

"For—us both....  I will be frank with
you all the way through.  I do like you.  I
enjoy our tête-à-têtes.  They are perfectly
honest and harmless, and without significance—the
significance, alas, that others will surely
attach to them....  It isn't that there's
anything wrong with you and me, Jack....  It's
the World that is wrong....  But—it's the
World; and you and I must conform to its
prejudices as long as we inhabit it—at least *I*
must."

"I suppose you must," he said.  Then, leaning
a little nearer, he took her hand, held it
lightly across his palm, looked at it a
moment, then at her.

"Will you let me tell father and mother
that I am in love with you, and wish to marry
you?" he said.

"Jack!" she exclaimed in consternation.

"Will you let me?"

"No, I won't! ... Jack!  Don't be foolish.
I had no idea you had arrived as far as
that.  I had no reason to think so—to
suppose for one moment—because it has always
been the jolliest and most unsentimental—and—you
never even touched me before."

Her color brightened, and her breath came
irregularly.  She tried to laugh, and failed.

"You know perfectly well that they have
other ambitions for you."

"I know....  How is it with you, Silvette?"

"With me?  What do you mean?"

"Could you care for me?"

"I—I haven't even thought about such a—I
haven't really, Jack.  You know that,
don't you?  You must try to look back on our
very brief friendship—try to recollect how
brief it has been—try to remember—remember
how happy and amusing and confident
that friendship has been—with no suspicion
of sentiment to embarrass or vex——"

"I know....  Isn't there any hope for me?"

"Hope?  No....  Don't put it that way,
Jack....  I *don't* love you....  I oughtn't
to, and, thank Heaven, I don't.  And you don't
really love me—you dear, sweet fellow!  It's
just part of your niceness—your generous
attitude toward a girl——"

"I'm in love with you....  But that
mustn't worry you.  It had to be.  You need
feel no self-reproach.  You didn't do
anything—you were just yourself—and I"—he
laughed a little—"started in to love you as
soon as I saw you....  I'm glad you know it,
anyway.  We won't say anything more about it——"

"Jack, we *will*!  Do you understand that
you have distressed me dreadfully?  Do you
realize what a girl's responsibilities are when a
nice man loves her?  Do you think she can
merely shrug her shoulders and go about her
daily frivolities without another thought?"

She rose to her feet, looking at him earnestly.

"Oh, Jack!  Jack!" she said, nervously
clasping and unclasping her hands; "why did
you do this?  Why *did* you?"

He forced a laugh.  "I won't do it again—ever,"
he said.  "Promise you never to
fall-in-love-again-hope-I-may-die'n-cross m'heart."

But there were no smiles left in her now.

"If you don't behave," he threatened, "I'll
lock us both inside and sing songs to
you!" ... But the smile died out on his face.  "I
was a gink to tell you.  Don't feel unhappy
about it," again the engaging humor glimmered
in his eyes.  "Cheer up, Silvette; you may fall
in love with me yet!"

She looked up, the smile dawning, distressed,
yet sweet.

"Don't let me, Jack....  Because I'm all
right, so far....  And you know what your
father wishes for you.  I want to deal
honorably by him."

"All right," he said quietly.

They walked slowly back to the house together,
and the girl went directly to her room,
where she found her sister mending stockings.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`NON SEQUITUR`:

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   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center medium bold

   NON SEQUITUR

.. vspace:: 2

Silvette dropped into an armchair,
crossed her knees, and sat swinging her
foot and gazing through the open window in
silence until Diana's head, lifted from time to
time in smiling interrogation, could be no
longer ignored.

"Jack Rivett has asked me to marry him,"
she said in an expressionless voice.

Diana laughed in frank surprise:

"That infant!"

"Yes."

"What an absurdity!"

Her sister said nothing.

"How did it come—out of a clear sky?"

"Yes....  I knew he liked me.  I had no
idea he wanted to marry me."

"You're not going to, are you?"

"No."

"I should think not.  It would be sheer
cradle snatching."

"He's a year older than I am."

"In years, yes; but, intellectually, he ought
to be playing marbles.  Moreover, that sort
of a boy *never* grows up."

"I don't think he will....  God bestows
that gift sometimes."

"What gift?"

"The gift of eternal youth....  I haven't
it....  But I believe it can be shared."  She
gazed thoughtfully at the distant hills.
"Years and years slip from me when that
boy and I talk nonsense together."

"Better talk sense with him, and wake up,
sweetness, or you'll relapse into your second
childhood."

"I have just been talking sense to him....
I'm awake," she said dreamily.

"Do you mean to admit that the interview
has seriously affected you?"

"Oh, I don't know yet."

"Better investigate," said Diana.  "You
know what his parents expect of their children.
And if we are to remain here, I think,
dear, that you had better see a little less of
Jack Rivett than you have been seeing.  Don't you?"

"I am sure of it."

"Otherwise," continued Diana calmly, "it
would be playing the game fairer for you and
me to seek another business engagement.
These people have been very honorable toward
us.  We can scarcely permit them to outdo us."

Silvette looked up calmly, her cheek
resting on her hand.

"How dishonorable would it be?" she asked.

"What?"

"To—let him fall in love with me?"

"Ask yourself.  You know their social ambitions."

"I know; but, after all, you and I started
out to make of life a successful business
proposition.  I thought a desirable marriage was
to be part of the programme."

"Do you consider Jack Rivett desirable?
He could take you nowhere.  With all his
wealth, where could you take him?  And
anyway, it's not playing the game, Silvie.  It's
kidnaping."  She laughed.  "Take a man of
your size—and of the world, little sister; and
if he isn't of the world, and is poor, defy him
to take *you*!—give him battle—put up a good
fight with foot, horse, and artillery.  The best
one of you will always win, and the other get
what's coming."

Silvette went to the desk, supplied herself
with pen and paper, and prepared to resume
her interrupted correspondence.  Presently
she looked around, pen poised.

.. _`"She looked around, pen poised"`:

.. figure:: images/img-219.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "Presently she looked around, pen poised."

   "Presently she looked around, pen poised."

"Did the best man win between you and
Jim Edgerton?" she asked.

Diana bent lower over her sewing.

"I'm afraid so, Silvie."

"Then *you* won."

"I think so....  I have fought it over
every day since—alone."

"You poor little thing," said Silvette softly.

Diana looked up with a slight smile.  "Perhaps
you misunderstood me, dear.  I told you
I was winning....  Which means, I think,
that Jim Edgerton isn't going to remain very
long at Adriutha."

"Where is he going?"

"I don't know that he is going at all; he
doesn't know it, either....  But, somehow,
I dare believe that he *is* going."

"Where?"

"Into a man's world to engage in a man's
business."

"It isn't in him, Diana....  You are
taking a great responsibility on your shoulders.
Do you realize that you are?"

"Yes."

"And that a man with no more force of
character and real ability than he has may
starve?  That the world will probably break
his heart, anyway."

"Let it, then....  Only a real man's heart
breaks.  I'll know he's one if it does; and so
will he.  And that's worth all the rest."

"That's a stern creed, little sister, considering
the pleasure-loving lips that utter it."

"Out of the mouth of fools, wisdom.  It
doesn't matter what I am.  The thing that is
important is what he shall become."

"If he become what you desire, he may
have little further interest in you."

"He will have none, if he becomes what
he could become," said the girl steadily.  "Did
you suppose my—ambition for him was
selfish?"

"Little breaker of images, are you going to
shatter your own under his very eyes?"

"He will be the iconoclast some day....
Probably I'll be married before that—as soon,
anyway, as it's best for him....  I've plenty
of time." ... She smiled without a trace of
mirth in her eyes.  "Mr. Snaith has already
indicated his noiseless entry into the lists.  He
and Colonel Curmew are at lance points.
Materially speaking, a girl ought to consider both
of them."

"But, child, we have many another business
engagement before us yet, I trust....
You wouldn't think of taking the first—the
first——"

"Million offered?" asked Diana, laughing.
"No, of course not, silly.  I'm merely
observing the manners and customs of the
creature man."

Silvette laughed, too.  "How are you
getting on with Billy Inwood?" she asked
demurely—"speaking of more agreeable matters."

"Perfectly; after the initial shock at
encountering me here, he behaved most
reasonably.  *I* have an idea that he came here on
Christine's account, and he seemed to be
rather nervous as to his obligations to me,
but I set that right at the first opportunity.
I said: 'Billy, if I don't tell you, somebody
else will, that Silvette and I are here
practicing our profession, which is—to be amiable
to the guests and help entertain them.  So
I'm going to be just as amiable to you as I
know how, but it need not frighten you
because I have no designs on you.'"

They both laughed.  Diana, mending her
stocking, continued:

"I think he was very much relieved, though
he pretended not to be.  I wonder if he *did*
come here to see Christine?  The girl is cool
enough with him, and he is inclined to follow
her about in an aimless sort of way, as though
he had something on his mind."

"He seems to be equally attentive to
Christine and Mrs. Wemyss," observed Silvette.
"It appears that he and that ample
beauty are old friends."

"Who is Mrs. Wemyss, anyway?"

Silvette smiled.  "I asked Mrs. Rivett,
saying that there was something familiar about
Mrs. Wemyss, and that I had an idea I had
seen her somewhere; but Mrs. Rivett didn't
know who she was.  She had met her last
winter at the Plaza, which is the kind of thing
one might have expected—even of Mrs. Rivett,
who is as dear a little woman as ever
wore sapphires at breakfast....  What a
horrid, cynical thing I'm turning
into! ... And now I'm going to turn into an imitation
of a young girl dressing for luncheon.
Heigho!  I wish other people were what they
ought to be and I were what I'd like to be.
The world would wag very well, then."

.. vspace:: 2

Luncheon was the usual animated, gossipy,
and amusing function that Silvette and Diana
and Jack Rivett always made it, and at which
Colonel Curmew assiduously assisted according
to his notions of jollity.

Edgerton for the last week or so had remained
rather silent among the others, amiable
and nice always and perfectly receptive when
spoken to, but not volunteering very much, and
not, according to Colonel Curmew's idea, earning
his salary.  However, as the colonel didn't
like him, that fact may have colored his
judgment when he spoke to Mr. Rivett about it
after luncheon in the privacy of that silent
man's study.

"He's turned into what I knew he was—a
damned snob!" said the colonel, sitting with
widened legs, a rich cigar tucked in under his
military mustache, and furtively loosening the
rear buckle of his white waistcoat.

"He doesn't pay for his keep," he went on.
"What use to you is a man who sits around
looking unapproachable?"

"I have no difficulty in approaching him,"
observed Mr. Rivett.

"You pay him.  To look at him, one would
think he paid you."

"He pays me his services."

"Ah, but he doesn't!  He's off with that
little Diana girl half the time."

"That's their affair."

"By gad!  Is it?  They're both here on a
salary if it comes to that, Jake....  Say, did
it ever strike you as funny—this cousin
business he puts up?"

Mr. Rivett's burned-brown eyes fixed
themselves on the jaunty colonel.

"How?"

"Oh, nothing....  They're rather distant
relatives, that's all....  Not but what she
seems to be straight—as far as I know."

"What does anybody else know about her?"

"Oh, nothing—nothing," said the colonel,
waving his cigar and heavy seal ring.  "But
it's curious....  You can't really say a word
against an Edgerton, rich or poor; but, as far
as I can see the girl is only a little adventuress
looking for trouble....  She'll probably get
it some day," he added with a tenor laugh
peculiarly ungrateful to the auditory
mechanism of Mr. Rivett.

The colonel puffed his cigar in smiling
silence for a while; then, expelling another
laugh and a large volume of blue smoke,
slapped his knee, straightened his tie and
waistcoat and shot his cuffs.

.. _`"The colonel puffed his cigar in smiling silence"`:

.. figure:: images/img-227.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "The colonel puffed his cigar in smiling silence."

   "The colonel puffed his cigar in smiling silence."

"She'll be all right to take about town, eh,
Jake?" he said.

Mr. Rivett said nothing.

"Now, there's old Parke Ellingford,"
continued the colonel; "he's never had as good
looking a girl, and, b'gad!  I've seen 'em
all—known most of 'em," he added with a leer.
"And take any of the men you and I
know—Wallowby, Dankland, and that
hatchet-faced Van Wyne!  They've never had any
better-looking girl than that little Diana."

Mr. Rivett said nothing.

"B'gad!" said the colonel, with a laugh
that approached the falsetto, "if she doesn't
cut a dash in town' this winter, I miss my
guess."

"Oh—are you to be in town?" inquired
Mr. Rivett.

"I?  No; Palm Beach," said the colonel
hastily, watching the other out of his pale and
protruding eyes.  "And then—*I* don't go in
for such capers," he explained with a pained
expression.  "What a man jokes about, he
never bothers with."

"*I've* joked many a man out of half a
million," observed Rivett grimly.

"That's different....  I'm a settled
citizen."  He looked cautiously at Rivett,
hesitated, then said carelessly: "I mean to marry,
some day."

"Do you?"

"I do, certainly....  And I flatter myself
that the woman I marry will receive her
equivalent, sir."

"Her moral equivalent?"

"Certainly.  Perhaps not her—ah—financial
equivalent."  He looked up at Rivett to
see how he took it.  Rivett neither took it nor
rejected it, apparently, and the colonel probed
further.

"I expect to wait a year or two——"

"Aren't you getting on, Follis?"

"No, sir, I am *not* getting on!" said the
colonel shortly.  "I am forty-five.  No man
is fit to marry before he's forty-seven, in my
opinion.  At that age he's able to treat his
wife intelligently.  Intelligence is what a
young girl most deeply appreciates in a man."

"A—*young* girl?"

"I prefer a youthful wife.  Youth is
susceptible of being moulded.  I propose to make
a perfect specimen of womanhood out of whatever
charming and adolescent material fortune
bestows upon me."  The colonel slightly lifted
his eyes until they protruded toward the
ceiling.  "I shall consider my wife as a sacred
trust, a soul for which I am responsible."

"Very good idea," said Rivett without the
slightest trace of expression on his face.
"Why not marry the little Diana—and mould
her into the ideal?"

"*Marry* her!" blurted out Curmew.
"What!  Marry a hired—a paid—employee!"

His countenance became crimson and
congested, and his eyes popped and popped.

Rivett rose.  "My wife worked in her uncle's
kitchen when I married her," he said
indifferently, and walked out.

On the stairway he joined Diana, also
descending.

"Well," he said, looking at her through his
round glasses, "you *look* happy enough."

"I am, thank you," said the girl, smiling.

"Don't thank me for it," he said dryly.

"You're to be thanked, too," she laughed—"or
ought to be.  But you don't like it, I
know, so I tell your wife how very pleasant
you are making Adriutha for my sister and
myself."

"Do you find it pleasant?"

"Yes, I do."

"Like the people?"

They had halted on the stairs.

She looked up at him.

"Some of them I like," she said frankly.

"Which?"

"That is bad manners! ... But I like you
and your wife and Christine and Jack."

"All of us?"

"Unreservedly—except in your case."

"What's the matter with me?" he asked grimly.

"Why, I don't know you very well," she
said, "so how can——"

"Come and talk it over," he said.

They resumed the descent of the stairway
together, and, side by side, walked out to a
seat on the terrace overlooking the river.

"Sit down, ma'am," he said, dusting the
marble bench with his drab-colored soft hat.
She seated herself with decorum, inwardly
amused.  He dusted a place for himself, and
sat down beside her.

"Now," he said, "what's the matter with
me, Miss Tennant?"

She laughed deliciously.  "Nothing that I
have ever discovered."

"You're not much of an explorer, are you?"

"A rather good one, Mr. Rivett.  But—you
know there are still certain peaks in the
world that defy approach," she added
audaciously.

"I'm a peak, am I?"

He came so near to smiling that the girl
watched him with increasing interest.

"You know," she said, "that you *are* not
exactly talkative, Mr. Rivett.  How is a girl
to form any definite idea of a—a—sphinx?"

"That's two names you've called me already"—he
looked at his watch—"in the last
four minutes—a peak and a sphinx."

She was laughing so unrestrainedly now
that the corners of his eyes began to wrinkle
a trifle.

He said: "What do you think of a self-made
man who was once schoolmaster, day
laborer, donkey-engine tender, foreman—all
kinds of things, and whose wife was
washing out a wood shed when he first met her?"

"Is that you?"

"It is.  What do you think of such a man's
chances in New York?"

"Financial?"

"Social."

"I don't know New York."

"You're highly connected there?"

"It is a very distant connection....
Mr. Edgerton chooses to acknowledge it."

"He's a snob, isn't he?"

"Not in the slightest," she said pleasantly;
but the blood mounted to her cheeks and
betrayed her.

"You like him?"

"Naturally."

"Unnaturally, too?"

"Kinship has little to do with my liking him."

"He's rather easy-going, isn't he?"

She flushed up again, and turned her clear
eyes on his little brown ones.

"Don't you like him?" she asked.

"Isn't he easy-going?"

"He has not yet found himself.  He is an
intelligent, warm-hearted, high-minded man,
capable of taking an honorable position in the
world....  And I do not doubt that he will
one day take and keep it."

"He was in iron, was he not—Edgerton,
Tennant & Co.?"

"Yes."

Mr. Rivett thought for a while.  "By the
way," he said, "I neglected to answer your
question.  I'll answer it now.  I like Mr. Edgerton."

"Thank you," said Diana, not perfectly
aware of what she said.

Mr. Rivett sat buried in meditation for fully
five minutes; at the end of that period he
turned his glasses on her.

"I want to gossip with you," he said
abruptly.

.. _`"'I want to gossip with you,' he said abruptly"`:

.. figure:: images/img-235.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "'I want to gossip with you,' he said abruptly."

   "'I want to gossip with you,' he said abruptly."

She began to laugh again.

"How did you discover that I am such a
dreadful gossip?  Begin at once, please.  I
adore picking to pieces my absent acquaintances."

"Yes—tearing 'em to tatters, the way you
demolished Mr. Edgerton just now," he said
grimly.  "Well, I'll begin the scandal bee.
Where did you know Mr. Inwood?"

"In Keno, Nevada," she said coolly, wondering
what was impending.

"Know him long?"

"One winter."

"In Keno?"

"In Keno."

"Like him?"

"Immensely."

"Oh!  So you're going to tear him to
tatters, too?"

"Just as I demolished Mr. Edgerton.
They're the two nicest men I ever knew.  It's
odd, isn't it, that I didn't know they were
such intimate friends before Mr. Inwood came here?"

"Are they?"

"I understand so."

"And you didn't know it?"

"How should I?  I never saw Mr. Inwood
except that winter in Keno; and I don't know
my cousin intimately."

"How well *do* you know your cousin?"

The girl sat thinking for a moment, then
looked up frankly.

"Perhaps you can judge," she said, and
told him the history of her friendship with
Edgerton from their meeting in his studio to
their arrival at Adriutha.  And Mr. Rivett
listened without a shade of expression on his
face, but his little dark eyes seemed to bore
her through and through.

"That," she said, "is the situation."  She
hesitated, then meeting his gaze candidly, but
with a slight increase of color in her cheeks:

"I told you this because I wanted to be
fair to Mr. Edgerton—in case—in the event
of you—your family—people here not
considering us of much importance.  Mr. Edgerton
is not responsible for us....  I think he
came from some boyish impulse—some
chivalrous notion that my sister and I, being
alone, might receive perhaps more consideration
if a man of our family accompanied us."

"I see."

"I wanted you to see.  I'm glad I've had
an opportunity to make the matter plain that
Mr. Edgerton is in no way responsible for
any shortcomings on our part."

"Nobody complains of you."

"Oh, no; everybody is nice to us.  But—we—do
things—which—women of his family—perhaps
would not do."

"Smoke?"

"Yes.  Cocktails, too.  Also we gamble,
dreadfully."

"Wouldn't his people?"

"I don't know," said the girl.  "I don't
know New York.  One reads about these
rather harmless vices being universal there.
But Silvette and I are really provincial.
Provincials usually go too far in either
direction.  It was only that I did not wish people
to judge Mr. Edgerton from us."

Mr. Rivett scraped the gravel with his cane
for a moment, then:

"So you like Inwood?"

"Very much."

"Wasn't he mixed up in some mess or other?"

"I never heard so," she said, surprised.

"Oh!  What was he doing in Keno?"

She laughed.  "Visiting, as we were, I
suppose.  You know we weren't being divorced."

"Glad to hear it."

"You didn't *think* so!" she exclaimed.

His eyes twinkled.

"No," he said, "I didn't.  But you can't
throw a stone into a crowd and give odds on
its not hitting a divorced person."

"Does divorce shock you?"

"Not in the least; I'm past shocks, young
lady.  Who is Mrs. Wemyss?"

"Your own guest?"

He winced.  "I'm asking you.  We made
her acquaintance at the Plaza last winter....
It seems that she and young Inwood knew
each other in Keno."

"*That* is where I've seen her!" said Diana
with innocent conviction.  "I knew I'd seen
her somewhere....  But she was very much
slighter—oh, very much—and extremely pretty."

"Divorcée?"

"Isn't she a widow?"

"I guess so....  No matter." ... He
stood up briskly; she rose, too, understanding
that the interview was ended—feeling slightly
uncomfortable because she had permitted
herself to be so thoroughly pumped.  Yet there
seemed to be nothing significant in the
operation or results.

"I'm going for a ride with my wife"—he
meant drive—"just a buggy and an old plug.
She and I enjoy it, Miss Tennant."

To her surprise he took her hand between
his own dry little palms and pressed it.

"You're a good girl," he said; "you and
your sister—and Edgerton—he's all right—you're
good children—and all off the same
tree, little lady—all off the same old block in
the beginning—that's plain as preaching....
Do you really like my Christine?"

"Yes, I do."

"And Jack?"

"Exceedingly."

"That's right; they like you, too.  They
ought to.  They're good children, and so are
you.  Good-by."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`COMPOS MENTIS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium bold

   COMPOS MENTIS

.. vspace:: 2

As Diana put her pony to a full gallop
and rode him off, Edgerton's mount
fell, and the young fellow lay sprawling on
the sod.

He was on his feet immediately; so was
his polo pony.  When Diana pulled up, whirled
her mount and came scurrying back, Edgerton
had picked up his mallet and stood resting
against his saddle.

"All right, Jim?" she asked briefly.

"All right, thanks."

The color had left his face under the tan,
and his expression was queer.

"You look rather white," she insisted.
"Did Parsnip kick you?"

"It's nothing," he said, smiling.  "Put Jack
in; I've got some business to talk over with
Mr. Rivett."

"You're *sure* you're all right?"

"What a fuss you are!" he said, leading
Parsnip across the field toward a groom.

The girl looked after him, saw the groom
slip a white wool polo coat over the young
man's shoulders and take the pony, saw
Edgerton drop his hands into the pockets and
stroll across the field toward the terrace; then,
lifting her mallet, she hailed Jack Rivett in a
clear, ringing call, and cantered away up field.

As Mr. Rivett senior stood waiting for his
wife at the foot of the terrace steps, wrapped
in his old-fashioned linen duster and pulling
on a pair of worn driving gloves, Edgerton,
in white from head to foot, came across the
lawn, the youthful antithesis of the older
man—tall, powerfully built, his smooth skin and
short, thick hair burned by the summer sun—a
graceful, leisurely figure agreeable to see on
anybody's lawn.

"Good morning!" he said pleasantly, stopping
on the gravel drive.

"Good morning, Mr. Edgerton.  Are the
young people amusing themselves?"

"I think so—thoroughly."

"You came a cropper?"

"I sometimes do."

"You are amusing yourself?"

"I always do."

"So do I," nodded Rivett, buttoning his
gloves.  "Never was bored in my life—poor
compliment to oneself, Mr. Edgerton, to find
life a bore."

Edgerton smiled and stood with his left
hand in his coat pocket, looking out at the
flat field beyond, where half a dozen young
people on lively ponies swung their mallets
and cantered leisurely about in pretense of
practice.

Presently Diana, Christine, and Inwood
swung their ponies, and came driving pell-mell
down the field after the ball.

"Your cousins seem to be up to anything,"
commented Rivett.

"They were bred to everything worth while."

"Oh!  Is polo worth while, as you call it?"

"Do you wish to start such a complex
discussion?" asked Edgerton, laughing.

"No; my wife will be here in a moment....
You're looking very pale, young man,"
he added abruptly.  "Did that pony hurt you?"

"A little....  Mr. Rivett, do you need my
services any longer?"

"I don't *need* anybody's services," said the
little man dryly.  "I never *needed* anybody in
all my life—except my wife.  There's no such
thing as a necessary man.  No man ever lived
who couldn't be replaced....  What's the
matter?"

Edgerton said slowly: "I thought I'd go
back to town and hunt up a job."

"Why?"

"Because there's no reason for my being
here.  There never was any reason.  You
knew it when I asked you to take me, but I
didn't—because I didn't know you and your
family."

"That's a compliment, isn't it?"

"It's just the truth.  I'm glad my cousins
are with you....  I'd like to go back now."

"Tired of us?"

"You don't have to ask that."

"More compliments," said Rivett.  "What
is wrong, then?"

"I am."

"Hadn't noticed it."

Edgerton smiled faintly.  "More
compliments? ... Mr. Rivett, I want to go to town
and hunt up a job, and get in the game.  That's
all."

"Can't you wait a month and see us
through the October shooting?"

Edgerton stepped nearer.

"I would, merely because you ask me, but
I can't.  I just want to get away quietly, and
not bother anybody....  I've broken my arm."

Mr. Rivett swung sharply and his eye-glasses
glittered.

"Which?" he demanded.

"The left....  I'll just run down to town
and have it fixed up.  Don't say anything
about it until I've left."

"Won't you stay here and let us look after you?"

"I knew you'd say that.  You've been very
nice to me.  Ask me again as a guest.  I'll be
glad to come as a friend if you care for me
that way."

Mr. Rivett's unchanging eyes watched him.

"We'll ask you.  My wife likes you.  So
do I....  I don't want to interfere with a
man who knows his own mind....  But do
you think you can stand the journey?"

Edgerton's white lips were compressed.

"Yes," he said.

"Very well; we'll stop at Fern Center.
Billings can reduce the fracture."

"Are you going with me?"

"I certainly am," said the elder man.


With a valet's aid he got into his clothes.
His swollen wrist lay in a sling.

"I won't bother the others now," he said
to Mrs. Rivett who was on the edge of tears
because he would not remain and let her take
care of him.  "Please say good-by for me
when they come in, and say that I'm all right
and hope to see them all again....
Good-by! ... It's been a real happiness to know
you—and yours.  Will you let me continue the
friendship?"

"Please do," she said tremulously.  "Jacob,
you will tell Holmes to drive carefully, won't
you?"

"Yes, mother.  Billings is going to put him
in good shape."

So they drove away in a big red touring
car, Edgerton sick with pain, but perfectly
cheerful; Rivett taciturn, twirling his gloved
thumbs, seeming to muse gloomily in his
walrus mustache.

Dr. Billings reduced the fracture—a simple
one—Edgerton refusing anæsthetics.  He
fainted during the short operation, and came
to with his head on Rivett's shoulder.

Half an hour later he was on his way to
New York, lying back in a chair in the
drawing-room car, feverish lids closed.  Rivett sat
in the chair opposite.

"I was going, anyway," he said briefly in
reply to the young fellow's protest.

And together they made the journey, not
only to the city, but to Edgerton's apartment,
where Rivett quietly turned himself into a
valet, helped the young man to bed, called up
his physician, Dr.  Ellis, lingered to learn what
condition the patient was in, and silently
vanished.  And for two or three days Edgerton
forgot about him, for Ellis kept him pretty
quiet, and the nurse who had been summoned
knew her business.

He managed, however, to write his bread-and-jam
letter to Mrs. Rivett, and another to
Diana:

.. vspace:: 2

"MY DEAR COUSIN:

.. vspace:: 1

"They've probably told you that I've been
ass enough to snap a bone in my left arm.
It's nothing, as you hunting people
understand.  I was a bit stupid with it, so I ran
down to town to have it fixed up—and,
incidentally, hunt up a job; and I wasn't up
to explaining and saying by-by to everybody,
so I just slunk off—ill mannered pup
that I am; but people are indulgent to dogs.

"This is just a line to take leave of you
and Silvette, and to ask you to remember that,
in any and all interims, this apartment is a
family joint, so don't go elsewhere and pay
perfectly good rent.  Your room and Silvette's
is always ready for you—useless unless you
use it.

"When I nail a job, I'll report to the family.
If you make new plans, may I hear from
you?

"Wishing you both a jolly and successful
autumn,

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   "Your cousin,
       "JAMES EDGERTON 3d."

.. vspace:: 2

Her reply came by return mail:

.. vspace:: 2

"Jim, dear, I feel very badly about your
injury.  It was my fault; I cannoned into you.
You behaved as only a man of your sort
always does.  I won't say any more about it.

"By this time I hope you are freer from
pain.  The first two days are the limit; I know
from experience and two mended ribs.  But—I
hate to think of you in bed this glorious
autumn day—and the little fool who sent you
there idling in the sunshine of these lovely hills.

"Jim, dear, it is generous and entirely like
you to ask us to make your place our
headquarters between engagements.

"If we do it, it will be only because we all
would be happier en famille.  Even we, hardened
materialists that we are, could not bring
ourselves to use you.  You know that, don't
you?  So I have assumed that your offer is
not only a kindness, but a genuine expression
of regard for us; and we return to the full
whatever you feel for us.

"Jim, there are many things that I am
denying myself to say to you; and I find
self-denial hard.  It's a worthy and laudable
virtue which Silvette and I are trying to acquire
in our old age, and it isn't easy.

"There's no news.  Mrs. Wemyss seems to
have fascinated your friend, Mr. Inwood.
He's a curious sort of man—rather
melancholy of temperament, I fancy.

"We play a languid sort of polo now and
then, dawdle in canoes, and sit up too late at
cards.

"A lot of men are coming for the shooting.
Mr. Rivett's manager turned out several
thousand pheasants and Hungarian partridges, it
seems.  The latter, they say, have vanished;
the former seem disposed to wander into the
front yard.

"Mrs. Lorrimore has departed with much
of Judge Wicklow's salary.  Her stouter and
prettier friend, Mrs. Wemyss, despoiled
almost everybody except Silvette and me.  This
letter is degenerating into gossip.  It had to,
or I might have been even more indiscreet.

"Jim, you are a good type of citizen when
you're at your best.  Let me lecture you, won't
you?  Anyway, you're helpless and in bed and
miles away, and you can't prevent me.

"So—be yourself.  Go into a man's business.
Disregard your accomplishments, your
cleverness at paraphrasing art.  It doesn't
count in real life, all this facility with paint
and pen and paper—your gay imitation of
painter, writer, composer.  They're little gifts,
Jim—meant for an hour of light leisure
among the leisured—pleasant, but unimportant
accomplishments.  When you court some
nice girl, some day, you'll understand their
full value—which is to amuse her, and later,
I prophesy, the jolly little family of a
home-returning business man.

"The years are before you still, Jim.  Open
the battle when you're well enough.  You will
win out, for you are really not the man I
have known.  I wish I might have been a
woman to bring out what you really are.
Some woman will.  Meanwhile give a friendly
hand and a generous lift to a fellow who
deserves your respect and consideration—your
other self.

"Good-by and good luck.

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   "Your cousin,
       "DIANA TENNANT."

.. vspace:: 2

In a few days Edgerton began to experience
the intolerable sensations of a bone which
is mending itself.

He had become very restless and impatient;
and, finally, the doctor let him wear his arm
in a sling and go out to hunt for a job.

He had no trouble in securing one—a small
clerkship with Close & Co., ornamental iron
work.  He might have done even better.  All
iron men knew who James Edgerton 3d must
be.  Many friends of the old firm of Edgerton,
Tennant & Co. might have offered him easier
work and higher salary, but he not only went
to none of them—he even avoided them.  He
had decided to discover what he really was
worth.

It rather surprised him to find out that the
big, blue-eyed, snub-nosed Irishman,
Mr. Dineen, whom he had met at Adriutha, was a
director in Close & Co.  Later, he discovered
that Mr. Dineen was also interested in his own
old firm, Edgerton, Tennant & Co., now
reconstructed, but still bearing the ancient name.
And after a while he learned that Mr. Dineen
seemed to be interested in almost every house
in New York that dealt in structural or
ornamental iron.

Edgerton's duties began with ledger work.
And the evening that he drew his first pay, he
wrote Diana:

.. vspace:: 2

"DEAR Di:

.. vspace:: 1

"I'm getting fifteen dollars a week with
Close & Co., ornamental iron.  I have my first
week's wages in my pocket.  As I pay no rent,
I can live on it.

"It's not uninteresting work.  Somebody
said something about my going into the
designing department as a draughtsman.  That's
pretty quick advancement—if it comes.  I'll
let you know if it does.

"My arm is about well.  It's still mummified,
of course, but that maddening sensation
is gone.  Town isn't so bad.  Of course, it's
rather hot and dusty, and, as usual, it looks
dingy and mean in its characteristic October
shabbiness—meaner for the glorious blue
overhead and the pitiless sun exposing its few
withered trees and its many architectural
shams in the remorseless light of high heaven.

"But I am peculiarly happy.  I have no
servant; I dine at a French restaurant for
seventy-five cents, and I prepare my own
breakfast in the studio.  Crackers and milk
compose my luncheon at the price of ten pennies.
And I never felt better.  All this in case you
are interested in such details.

"To answer your letter—I did not intend
to write until I had nailed down a job and
received my first pay envelope.  Now I feel
that I may.

"First, regarding your comments upon my
artistic ability, you are perfectly right.  I
ought to have known it; I did know it, deep
inside of me.  I'm not the stuff that artists
are made of.  Eviter les contrefaçons!  I was
an imitation.  I was not even a good amateur;
I'm not even equipped to really appreciate the
best work in others.  All I had was a monkey-like
cleverness and the blank facility of a
receptive parrot; and I was idiot enough to
contemplate an idle life of dabbling and
fiddling with professions that better men
dignify.

"I tell you, Di, I bid fair to turn into one
of those horrors—a cultivated talker!—the
lowest type of incompetent.  Drawing-rooms,
studios, cafés are full of them, all telling one
another what is what and how to do it.  I was
heading straight that way.  My peers and
companions would have been smatterers,
instructors in arts which the instructors couldn't
master—or they wouldn't have become
instructors!—men of one picture, or none at
all; of one book, one story, or of none at all,
or of dozens, all still in their minds, or in
unpublished manuscripts; men of one waltz,
or several grand operas—I mean ideas for
grand operas—all failures, all men who had
mistaken their professions, self-deceived men,
incompetent, hopeless, pitiable.

"You said in your letter that one day I
might meet a woman who could appreciate, at
their real value, my very slim talents.  Haven't
I met her, Di?  Those clear eyes of yours
pierced the flimsy fabric long since; the
trenchant sweetness of your tongue cut more
than one knot for me.

"If you demur, my answer is that I am
here.  Who sent me?  A flanneled satrap,
already insidiously beguiled by idleness,
already reconciled to the status quo—how long
before, and by what process of evolution,
would my real self have awakened?  Or
would the degeneracy have ended only with life?

"I don't know; all I know is that you sent
me about my business in the world.  I walked
to it in my sleep; awake, I follow it.  Thus
far, so far, Diana of the far white gods!

"Yours is the stronger character, so far.
Let us await events.  It may be, as you say,
that the years will twist my path toward the
possible woman you predict for me.  I dined
with Dr.  Ellis last evening.  His daughter will
certainly grow up to be such a woman as you
and I delight in.  I told her that I hoped my
path would twist toward her.  She said she
hoped so, too, very shyly.  She is only
fifteen—alas!

"In the meanwhile my path runs straight
to Close & Co., and I shall continue to travel
it every day with my shovel and dinner
pail—thanks to you, my loyal little cousin, who
were plucky enough and merciful enough to
tell me the merciless truth.

"Give my love to Silvette.  My remembrances
to all.  Accept for yourself my friendship.
Do you remember those photographs I
made of you as Japonette the day after we
first met?  I've developed them.  Here is one.

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   "Yours sincerely,
       "JAMES EDGERTON 3d."

.. vspace:: 2

Which letter resulted in an immediate
interchange of notes:

.. vspace:: 2

"DEAR JIM:

.. vspace:: 1

"Fifteen and eighteen are not far apart.  A
man can help Chance to twist his path through
life.  The resulting route is called the Path of
Destiny.  I think you have already started to
travel it.  I hope you are better.

.. vspace:: 1

"DIANA."

.. vspace:: 2

He replied:

.. vspace:: 2

"DEAR DI:

.. vspace:: 1

"You meant that path which leads to Close
& Co., didn't you?

.. vspace:: 1

"J. E. 3d."

.. vspace:: 2

She answered:

.. vspace:: 2

"DEAR JIM:

.. vspace:: 1

"No, I meant the other path you mentioned.
Follow it for the next three years.
Mr. Inwood says that little Miss Ellis is the
most beautiful and winsome and intelligent
and cultivated child he ever knew.  Life is all
before you, Jim.

.. vspace:: 1

"DIANA."

.. vspace:: 2

He wrote:

.. vspace:: 2

"I'm in the designing department as
draughtsman!  Mr. Rivett's friend,
Mr. Dineen, dropped in to have a chat with me.
He's a very decent fellow....  You don't
think that Mr. Rivett has inspired him to show
me any unmerited favors, do you?  It would
make havoc of my present complacency.  Try
to find out.

.. vspace:: 1

"JIM."

.. vspace:: 2

She answered:

.. vspace:: 2

"Mr. Rivett isn't to be pumped.  I tried it.
I'll never try it again.  Anyway, Jim, no favor
can inject brains into a man; it can only
stimulate what intellect he has.  Don't worry about
favors.  Neither Mr. Rivett nor Mr. Dineen
are the men to injure their own affairs by the
incompetent service of others.  You can be
perfectly certain that you are worth what is
offered you if they have anything to do with it.

"Why don't you fall in love with Christine?
She's one of the sweetest girls I ever knew.  I
supposed she and you were on delightful terms
once.  Also, once, I thought she was inclined
toward Mr. Inwood.  But he seems to be
monopolized by Mrs. Wemyss; and the poor
child comes into my room in a forlorn sort of
way—so white and limp these days that I'm
wondering what this change in her means.
*Does* it mean your absence?  You'd tell me,
wouldn't you?  But I know you're not the sort
of man to win a young girl's heart, and then
coolly walk out of her life.  It looks to me as
though she had something on her mind.  Dr. Billings
has been here several times, and her
mother is worried sick.

"That's all the gossip, except that the
shooting is in full blast here.  A number of men
came up for it—the usual sort of men who
shoot, except one.  He's a Mr. Wallace, and
very nice and a poor shot.  He and I go out
together sometimes, and he is forever making
fun of himself and his perfectly rotten
marksmanship, and he and I don't care two raps
whether we get anything or not.

"Mr. Inwood is the saddest young man I
ever had the pleasure (?) of trying to
animate.  Are all your friends as melancholy and
temperamental?  He haunts the terrace like
a lost soul until Mrs. Wemyss annexes him.
Christine does not seem to care for him;
she doesn't seem to care for anybody these days.

"Colonel Curmew is a funny man.  He has,
apparently, devoted himself to me, and I have
the greatest difficulty in getting away from
him long enough to take a stroll with Mr. Wallace.
Such a funny, strutty, sentimentally
elaborate little man!—with a rather horrid
habit of staring.  But he's a crack shot, and
popular here with the men.

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   "Good night,
       "DIANA."

.. vspace:: 2

She wrote next day, also:

.. vspace:: 2

"Jim!  My little Christine is in love—that's
what's the matter!  I *know* it; I'm absolutely
sure of it.  And with—oh, ye humorous gods
and dryads!—with your melancholy friend,
Mr. Inwood.

"And I want to tell you, Jim, that I don't
*like* Mrs. Wemyss.  She's fat and selfish and—why
does she drag that boy about with her
all the time?  I don't believe he likes it.  I
don't believe he's so enamored of her.  Maybe
his low spirits come from too much of that
fair and ample lady.  I'm going to find out.  I
won't have my little Christine ignored by any
melancholy idiot who ever lived.

"Write me what you know about Mr. Inwood.

"How is Chance, and the twisted path, and
little Miss Ellis?

"Scott Wallace and I managed to shoot a
grouse.  We both fired, and neither of us
were inclined to claim the poor, dead, little
thing.  A keeper put it in his pocket.
Mr. Wallace and I are going to take up target
shooting hereafter.

.. vspace:: 1

"DIANA."

.. vspace:: 2

He wrote: "Inwood is all right.  Who *is*
Mrs. Wemyss?

.. vspace:: 1

"JIM."

.. vspace:: 2

A week later he heard from her: "I've
found out from people in Keno.  She was a
Mrs. Atherstane—divorced hubby, and
resumed her maiden name of Wemyss with the
prefix Mrs.  Did you ever hear of her?  Scott
Wallace and I detest her.

.. vspace:: 1

"DIANA."

.. vspace:: 2

He did not reply, partly because the
constant recurrence of Wallace's name in her
letters had begun to annoy him—partly because
what he had to say must be said to Inwood;
and at that miserable young man he launched
the following:

.. vspace:: 2

"DEAR BILLY:

.. vspace:: 1

"You're a fine specimen.  What are you,
anyway—a lap dog or a Chow pup?  Get rid
of that woman!  I don't care whether or not
you made an ass of yourself over her by
sympathizing with her.  Old Atherstane had no
more mistresses than the majority of church
pillars and public benefactors in town; and,
anyway, it was not up to you to dry her weeps.

"Don't make any mistake—the ci-devant
Mrs. Atherstane can look out for herself.
She needs no consideration from you; she
doesn't deserve any, either.  What kind of a
woman is she, anyhow—taking advantage of a
chivalrous and conscientious boy who never
did more than hold her hand and pat it, at
most, when she told him she was lonely and
unhappy, and needed a good man's moral support?

"Rot!  You're not responsible for her.
You're not in honor bound to sit around and
await her pleasure, now that she's free to
marry.  She wouldn't have you, anyway.

"You probably made an ass of yourself—probably
talked too much.  You're not in
honor bound, I tell you.  And don't make any
mistake—she's not going to marry.  She's
having too good a time.  I know that kind of
woman, Billy.  They never put their heads
into the noose a second time; but they
harpoon all the men they can, and they trail
around with a lot of silly ginks like you.

"If you don't believe me, I'll tell you how
to put yourself out of your misery.  Ask her
to marry you; ask her flatly.  You'll wake up,
then.  I know what I'm saying.  You do what
I tell you, and then get back to first principles,
and clear up all this nightmare between a
sweet and plucky little girl and your own dam-fool
self.  Clear it up, I tell you.  I know you,
Billy.  You have nothing to confess in regard
to Mrs. Wemyss.  Of course, you wouldn't
confess, anyway; but, thank God! there's
nothing to say except that you were a silly ass,
and have learned better.

"Now, I've told you how to get clear of
this petty and miserable affair.  If you don't
do it, for Christine's sake as well as for your
own, you're no man.

.. vspace:: 1

"JIM EDGERTON."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`QUOD ERAT FACIENDUM`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium bold

   QUOD ERAT FACIENDUM

.. vspace:: 2

With the daily advent of men arriving
for the flight-shooting, now imminent,
Lillian Wemyss seemed to grow prettier
and slimmer every day until the perfectly
visible metamorphosis had produced radiant
and brand-new creature.

For the men who were now accumulating
in billiard room and card room, who haunted
stable and garage and kennel, were the sort
of men who inspired the very breath of life
in a woman of her sort—big, handsome,
ruddy-faced, thick-necked men with large,
indiscriminating tastes and an eternal readiness
for anything from a half-broken horse to an
unbroken woman, but heartily preferring them
both bridlewise and registered.

They tramped all over the place, on the
terrace, over the lawn, in to dinner; and the
house echoed with large bantering voices, loud
unfeigned laughter—and they rode hard and
drank hard and played for heavy stakes, and
were up and tramping all over the place by
sunrise, sniffing for the frost which would
bring the first night flight of woodcock from
the north into the far-famed coverts of the
Adriutha hills.

And the best-looking, most humorous, and
most reckless among them was Scott Wallace,
a young giant of infinite jest, who began
by pleasing himself with Diana and, out of the
sheer perversity of humorous animal spirits,
pretended to her that he scarcely knew one
end of a shotgun from the other, which gave
him a pretext for dawdling over the country
with her, and making love to her until such
time as the flight might send him seriously
afield.

So, as he cared nothing for the scattered
pheasants and wilder and scarcer grouse, he
amused himself and Diana by playing Winkle,
now and then consoling himself with a difficult
shot, which satisfied him and left the girl
none the wiser.

But on Wallace Mrs. Wemyss had her blue
eyes fixed with all the veiled alertness and
objectless intensity of the sort of woman she
was—a woman who would never be dunce
enough to marry again.

In the meanwhile, already exceedingly
popular with the shooting fraternity, she kept a
mechanical hold on Inwood for no more reason
than the matter-of-fact impulse which had
prompted her to snap a leash on his collar the
moment she set eyes on him after many
months' separation.

To take him away from Christine had not
been her object; she had no idea that he was
interested in anybody except herself.  She
was perfectly confident that, given half a
chance, men preferred her to any other
woman; and there was really no particular malice
in her desire to give Scott Wallace an opportunity
to follow at her heels instead of Diana's.

For Mrs. Wemyss really needed nothing of
men except admiration and uninterrupted
attention.  No deeper passion had ever moved
her.  She was ignorant of love, although
apparently fashioned for it; immune to its
lawlessness, although lid and ear and lip seemed
to chorus the contrary.  In the slightly veiled
eyes there was really no promise, no significance
in the full, sweet mouth—nothing to her
except the superficial provocation which all
men mistook, and the laughing and ready
friendship offered so prettily that no man ever
refused.

Inwood, searching the house and terrace
over for Christine, discovering her at last in
the moonlit rose garden, and, not daring to
join her after all, so faint hearted he had
become, walked moodily into the billiard room
where a noisy lot of people were enjoying
themselves.

Wallace, standing between Diana and
Lillian Wemyss, his broad back against a
billiard table, was evidently having a splendid
time; and Inwood halted, irresolute, one hand
in his pocket crushing Edgerton's letter into
a wad.

Lillian Wemyss caught sight of him, smiled
instinctively, but her blue eyes reverted to
Wallace.  There was something in her attitude,
as she stood in the full splendor of her
somewhat ample beauty, that subtly repelled
Inwood; and he swung on his heel, somber
young head bent, moving toward the door by
which he had entered.

"Mr. Inwood!" called Diana across the
hubbub, "will you play bottle pool with us?"

He turned, smiling to her.

"Thanks, I'm not up to it," and resumed
his way out.

"Billy!" said Mrs. Wemyss, "I wish you to play!"

"No, thanks," he returned coolly, and continued
toward the door.

It was his first exhibition of insubordination,
and Lillian Wemyss, surprised, did not
propose to stand it, particularly in the
presence of these two people.  Scott Wallace
seemed to be almost ready for his leash; it
was a bad example for him, this insubordination
of young Inwood.

She looked anxiously at Diana.

"I'm afraid Billy Inwood is not well," she
said.  "I've thought so for several days.
Those swamps where you men shoot must be
full of malaria."

"Not a bit," said Wallace, laughing.

"How do you know?" asked Diana.  "You
never go into them, you lazy thing!"

Mrs. Wemyss hesitated, listening to the
banter that passed between Diana and Scott
Wallace, which slightly excluded her for the
moment.

Then she made up her mind that her authority
over Inwood must be asserted at once,
and that she had time enough to eliminate
Diana later.

She turned and saw Inwood passing the
windows outside on the terrace.  The next
moment she was on the terrace, too, and he
turned slowly to confront her.

"Billy," she said gently, "are you feeling
perfectly well?"

"Perfectly, thanks."

"Then why didn't you remain at my request?"

"I didn't care to."

"But *I* asked you," she said, surprised.

"Yes, I know you did."

"Well?" she asked, astonished.

He had been looking away from her out
over the misty moonlit river.  Now he turned.

"Lillian," he said, "do you honestly care
for me?"

"Billy, what a question!"

"Yes, it's one kind of question....  *Do* you?"

"You know I do.  How can you ask such a——"

"Do you *love* me?

"What!"

"*Do* you?"

"Billy, what on earth is——"

"Wait, please.  Let me ask you again,
Lillian.  Are you honestly in love with me?"

"I don't know what you mean by suddenly
and abruptly questioning—demanding——"

"Please answer."

"You have no right to doubt it.  You know
perfectly well what we have been to each
other—even before——"

"What *have* we been?"

"I supposed we had been in love," she said
with sad dignity.  "I wrote you while I was
abroad, and—I don't write many letters."

"Then you *are* in love with me....  We
are in love.  Is that true as you understand it?"

"You silly boy—of course!"

He stood stock still for a moment, tasting
all the misery he had stored up for himself.
Finally, he found his voice.

"If that is so," he said, "we ought to be
engaged."

"Oh, Billy!  Are you jealous?"

She laughed, radiant, delighted to feel the
leash tighten in her soft little hand once more.

"No," he said, "I am not jealous; but, if we
are to marry, it is time people understood it."

"Do you mean these people?"

"I mean everybody."

"You don't mean to announce our engagement
this winter?" she asked uneasily.

"I mean to announce it now."

"Here!"

"Here—to-night."

"I—I don't wish to," she faltered.  "You
are unreasonable."

"Is there any reason why people shouldn't
know it?"

"My dear boy, one doesn't announce such
important matters on the impulse of the moment."

"If I'm going to marry you, I want people
to know it now!" he said.

"I've explained that I did not wish it."

"Why?"

"Why?  There are a million perfectly good
reasons."

"Give me one, Lillian."

She stood considering, her crook'd finger
under her chin, blue eyes taking his measure
from time to time.  Evidently happiness
too long deferred had made him unmanageable.
She never thought of doubting her
power.  Probably he needed discipline.  It was
most annoying to be annoyed at such a time,
with all these men here, and Scott Wallace
already left too long alone with Diana at the
billiard table.  Discipline was certainly what
Inwood needed.

"Billy," she said, "come in and play bottle pool."

"Am I to tell them that we are to be married?"

"No," she said petulantly.

"When may I tell them?"

"Not at all.  Do you think a year of liberty
is sufficient for a woman who has suffered
what I have?  I don't wish to marry you or
anybody—yet.  I haven't made up my mind
to do it at all," she added with a tiny flash of
rare anger, for her not very sensitive nerves
were beginning to feel the pressure.

"Lillian, I want to know now.  It is only
square to me to——"

"Billy, if you continue to insist, you will
end by seriously offending me.  You have
annoyed me enough already."

"By asking you to set a definite date for
our impending marriage?"

"It is *not* impending!" she retorted,
exasperated, as Diana and Wallace came out
together and walked toward the farther end of
the terrace.

"Do you refuse to marry me?"

"Yes, I do; I am sorry.  I really cannot
help how you feel about it.  This year of
liberty has been a year of happiness.  I don't
wish to marry.  I don't know when I may
wish to.  I am perfectly contented; and that's
the truth, Billy."

"So—you refuse me?"

"For the present—yes."

"No; you must answer me for all time, to-night."

She nodded.  "Very well, then; I refuse
definitely—and for all time....  And, Billy
Inwood, you have brought this calamity upon
yourself."

But Lillian's anger was always short-lived;
she was already sorry for him.  Besides, she
was convinced that he would continue to
dangle.  It had been her experience with men
that they were never reconciled to the
unobtainable.

So with one of her swift, smiling changes
of feeling she held out her hand to Inwood.
He took it.

"Are you very angry?" she asked.

"No."

"Do we part—friends?"

"We do, indeed," he said so sincerely that
the smile faded on her face, and into her
limited mind flickered a momentary doubt.  But,
no, it was not possible; for Lillian had never
really been able to doubt herself.  Certain,
once more, that this young man would appear
at heel when whistled for, she returned his
friendly pressure with an encouraging one,
laughed, and turned lightly toward the house.
He accompanied her to the door and bowed
her in.

Then the strength seemed to ooze out of his
back and legs; he dropped on to a marble
bench, and sat there in the moonlight, his face
buried in his hands.

How long he had been there he did not
know, when a light touch and a soft voice
close to his ear aroused him, and, looking up,
he saw Diana inspecting him.

"As dejected as all that, Mr. Inwood?" she
asked, as he rose to his feet.

"Not dejected, Miss Tennant."

"Why, then, these attitude?  Wherefore
those woe, young sir?"

"I don't know," he said listlessly.

But she did—or thought she did; so she
took his arm in friendly fashion and strolled
about with him in the moonlight until she
pretended that the beauty of the night tempted
her toward the garden.

He was alarmed for an instant, and hung
back, scanning the rose garden with anxious
eyes; but he could see nothing of Christine,
and presently succumbed to Diana's whim.

To and fro among the late roses they paced,
the girl light-heartedly rallying him on his
soberness and lack of animation, until he
laughed a little and squared his shoulders, and
drew in a full deep breath of the soft air.

"I thought every man flirted if offered an
opportunity," said Diana, "but I've flung
myself at your head in vain, young man.
Evidently there's some caterpillar at work on that
damask cheek, or I'd be more generously
appreciated."

He laughed again, and tried to tell her how
deeply he was appreciating her, but she shook
her head and finally dropped his arm.

"I'm going to the house," she said.
"There's an arbor across the garden.  If
you'll wait for me there, perhaps I'll return.
Will you?"

"Certainly," he said.

So she turned and sped away among the
roses, and he stood and watched her until she
crossed the terrace and vanished into the
house.

For a few minutes he remained where he
was standing; then, with a sigh, he swung on
his heel and started toward the arbor, fumbling
for his cigarette case as he walked.

At the entrance he paused to strike a
light—and remained motionless until the match
burned close to his fingers.  Then it fell on
the gravel; he dropped the cigarette beside it.

As he entered the arbor, a white figure,
lying full length on a swinging seat, lifted its
head from its arms, then sat up hastily.

"Is that you, Miss Rivett?"

"Yes." ... She rose to her feet, holding
to one of the swinging chains.  Moonlight fell
across her white, confused face.

"May I remain?" he asked unsteadily.
"Would you rather have me go?"

"No....  I am going....  My gown is
damp....  I will go immediately."

"Were you asleep?"

She hesitated; but there was in her only
honesty.

"No," she said.

"Then you must have heard my step on the gravel?"

She shook her head.

"Then what were you doing out here
all alone with your head buried in your arms?"

"Thinking," she said....  "Would you
care to walk to the house with me, Mr. Inwood?"

"Would you mind remaining here a little while?"

"My gown is damp with dew."

"Then perhaps we had better go?"

"I think so."

Neither stirred.

"It is so warm and beautiful to-night," he
said, "that I can't imagine anybody taking
cold out here."

"It is a bad outlook for the flight shooters."

"Yes, indeed.  There is no frost in this wind."

"It may shift overnight," she said.  "If
to-morrow is a magnificent and cloudless day,
with just a hint of silver in the horizon blue,
then it means a frost and a flight to-morrow night."

"And that," he said, "would mean an end
to—the roses."

"Yes."

"An end to anybody sitting out here again
this year."

"Probably."

"So it seems a pity," he went on, "not to
enjoy it while we may, Miss Rivett."

"I have enjoyed it—for an hour."

"You are not very generous."

"Why?  You may remain another hour if
you wish?" she said, smiling.

"Alone?"

"I was alone during my hour."

"I have been alone for an entire year," he
said under his breath.

"What?"

She had heard him, but her abrupt question
seemed to have been beaten out sharply from
her startled heart.

He made no reply; she stood, one hand
clasping the chain, not looking at him,
conscious of the clamor of her heart.

"Miss Rivett," he said, "am I too much of
a fool—too hopeless a thing for you to listen to?"

"What do you mean?" she said faintly.

"I mean that—this night, now, for the first
time since I knew you—I can use, decently,
honorably, whatever liberty of speech you permit me."

Presently her white hand relaxed, the chain
slipped through her fingers; she sank down
on the swinging seat.

After a moment he stepped toward her.  She
raised her head in the moonlight, and he saw
the tears in her eyes.

"Christine," he said under his breath.

"Are we free to speak to each other?" she
faltered.

"Thank God, yes!"

"Thank God," she whispered.

But for a long, long while they did not use
the inestimable privilege of free, articulate
speech.  There seemed to be no need of it
further than apparently irrelevant fragments
such as, "My darling!" and, "Oh, Billy, if
you only knew!"

Far away beyond them Diana came out on
the terrace with young Wallace, and gazed
very earnestly down at the rose garden.

"Shall we walk there?" he said persuasively.

.. _`"'Oh, dear,' she said, 'there's somebody down there already'"`:

.. figure:: images/img-281.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "'Oh, dear,' she said, 'there's somebody down there already.'"

   "'Oh, dear,' she said, 'there's somebody down there already.'"

Suddenly Diana's face sparkled.  "Oh,
dear," she said, "there's somebody down there
already—two of them!  And—and it looks to
me as though they were spooning.  What a
world this is, Mr. Wallace!  I think I'd better
go in and play bottle pool."

That night she wrote to Edgerton:

.. vspace:: 2

"DEAR JIM:

.. vspace:: 1

"You have not answered my letter—but
men were made to pardon.

"Somehow—and I don't quite know how—that
wretched and melancholy Inwood man,
fortified by a gentle push from me, contrived
to get up sufficient momentum to carry my
little Christine by assault.  The darling has
just been in here to whisper her happiness to
me.  We wept together, which is our feminine
fashion of uttering three cheers.

"There is, of course, papa to inform.  I
don't envy Christine.  Papa has a will of his
own, but so has his infant daughter.

"Even yet I can't understand why this
Inwood boy has lost all this time dingling and
dangling around Mrs. Wemyss.  Evidently he
wasn't doing it because he was having a good
time.  I was inclined to suppose him either
blighted or a mooner.

"But you should see the change in your
intimate friend *now*!  Why, Jim, he fairly
pranced up to me as I was saying good night,
and he wrung my hand and said, 'Thanks,
awf'lly, Miss Tennant!'  And all I had done
was to give him a rendezvous with me in an
arbor, and then go off to walk with Scott Wallace.

"Scott's a nice boy.  You'd like him; he's a
terrible tease.  It seems that he's really a dead
wing shot, and has just been jollying me all
this time.  I really enjoy him, which is more
than I can say for the remainder of the
sporting fraternity now investing this place.
They're a hard young lot, without, perhaps,
being really very hard; but they are a loud,
careless, irresponsible bunch of wealthy young
men who, as far as I can learn, spend their
entire time in shooting at something or other,
including clay birds.

"They seem to be Wall Street men when
occupied at all, and all betray a very healthy
respect for Mr. Rivett.  People say he is a
factor to be reckoned with in New York; but
I don't care.  He's nice to me, and his wife
is adorable.  As for Christine, I dearly love
her, Jim.  No girl is more fitted for happiness,
and I'm glad she's got her Inwood boy at last.

"And now, Jim, dear, there are two matters
which very sorely perplex me; and, somehow,
I turn to you to help me solve them....  No,
only one of them, because I shall not bother
about the other matter yet.

"But about the matter which is really nearer
my heart, Jim—we must leave this place; and
the reason is this: Jack Rivett is making
himself miserable over Silvette.

"Silvette doesn't love him; at least, I don't
think she does.  She couldn't do it honorably,
anyway.  She told me so, and I quite see it,
because she and I are employed here under
the Rivetts' roof, practically in a position of
trust, and dedicated to their service.

"It is not a loyal thing to permit the son
of the house to lose his head, and Silvette tries
so hard not to let him.  But he's doing it, and
she can't keep him from being nice to her; and
she and I know perfectly well what his father's
plans for him are, and that they include a
fashionable marriage.

"Of course, that argues well for Christine.
The Inwoods are fashionable people, are they
not?  But poor Silvie!  Alas! her connection
with your race isn't near enough to impress
Jack's father; besides, Silvette doesn't love
him, and the boy is in a bad way all around.

"Now, what ought we to do?  If we offer
to sever social and business relations with
Mr. Rivett, he will ask why we do it.

"Shall we tell him?  Is that square to poor
Jack?  Or shall we lie?  Or shall we simply
remain and let Jack suffer and make Silvie
miserable?

"Oh, wise young sir, inform a suppliant at
your knee!

"There is nothing more to tell you about,
except that your progress makes me very
happy.  You are doing only what you would
ultimately have done without any impudent
advice from me.  You have found yourself,
Jim; you are climbing the rungs very quickly.

"Jim, I am not yet very old—but I might
easily be younger....  I was thinking the
other day—and to-night—that sometime I
shall be too old and unattractive to practice
this not very dignified profession; and I'm
disinclined to do anything more strenuous.  I
don't want to struggle and grub and starve
along respectably as a feminine physician.  It's
too late for that, anyway.

"So I don't know what to do, ultimately,
unless I accomplish what I started out to
do—marry a wealthy man.  I mean the first
agreeable one I encounter.

"Well, I won't bother with that problem
to-night; my head aches a little.

"Good night, Jim.

.. vspace:: 1

"JAPONETTE."

.. vspace:: 2

Diana finished her letter, sealed and stamped
it, and kissed the superscription.  She always
did when she wrote his name.

Then she laid her aching temples on her
arms and, leaning limply on the desk, thought
about him.

Hers was a strange, sweet pride in him—a
fierce jealousy lest he should not take
the place in the world to which he was
entitled, and prove himself every inch a man.

Nor did she pretend to hide from herself
what his return among his own friends must
ultimately mean.  If the love he had offered
her had not been totally extinguished by her
light mockery and smiling insolence, then this
return to his own set would do it ultimately.
The standards that measured women there
would be fatal to her; nor could he choose
but apply them, sooner or later.

She knew this when she sent him back
among his own sort.  She realized perfectly
that if any love for her survived her irony
and flippancy—her airy but trenchant scorn—it
could not survive very long when he came
to his cool-headed and reasoning self, and
looked around him at the women, and at the
families and relatives of the women among
whom he had always lived.

Already he had spoken of little Aliss Ellis—a
mere child, of course—yet—yet it was a
straw prophesying a change in the wind to her.

She knew; she had accomplished what she
had desired.  She had done this thing to
herself, to her whole life, for his sake.  What
more could she wish for?

Sick at heart, she lifted her throbbing head
and kissed his name once more where she had
written it on the envelope.  Then she placed
it on the desk, and lay down on the bed to
wait for Silvette before ringing for the maid
who attended them; and after a little while
she fell asleep.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`NUNC AUT NUNQUAM`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII


.. class:: center medium bold

   NUNC AUT NUNQUAM

.. vspace:: 2

Warm weather continued; no flight
occurred.  The men thrashed about
with the dogs after grouse and a few native
woodcock bred in the willows along the river,
or rode, motored, and played cards.  One or
two had to give up, and return to the city.

Colonel Curmew was at his best on these
gay occasions—gallant, jocose, busy, everybody's
friend, including Jack Rivett's, who
quietly began to hate him.

In the midst of the general tension and
expectancy concerning the long-awaited flight,
Christine one morning entered her father's
study and found the author of her being
conferring with Mr. Dineen.

"This won't do, Christine," he said.  "I'm busy."

"No, it won't do," she admitted, looking so
significantly at Mr. Dineen that the jolly, big
Irishman laughed.

"*You* want *me* to go out!" he said, shaking
an enormous forefinger at her.

"Please—for a few minutes."

"Sure," said Mr. Dineen with an amused
glance at Rivett, who sat inspecting his offspring
with a face entirely devoid of expression.

When the big Mr. Dineen had closed the
door behind him, Christine, a trifle pale, walked
resolutely to her father and laid her hand on
his shoulder.

"Dad?"

"What?"

"I've practically asked Billy Inwood to
marry me."

Her father's eyes bored through and through
her.

"Who did the asking, Chrissy?"

"Both of us."

"What?" he barked.

"It wasn't asking, exactly.  I have loved
him for a year, and he has loved me.  There
has been a misunderstanding."

"About what?"

His daughter's eyes never flinched.

"About a point of honor, father," she said
quietly.

He grunted.

She went on, still resting her hand on his
shoulder.

"We were very unhappy; but the point of
honor involved straightened itself out....
I happened to be in the rose arbor that
evening.  He came in by accident....  After we
had talked a little, he told me that he was free
to speak if I would listen to him....  Then,
somehow, we merely looked at each other,
and—and presently—presently we kissed each
other....  I don't remember much else
... except that I said I would marry him—before
he asked me——"

"Did you also set the date?" inquired her
father sarcastically.

"No....  Mother and I are considering....
Are you happy over it, dad?"

"Not violently."

"Why?"

"I don't know anything about him," he snapped.

"Yes, you know that I'm in love with him."

"Certainly; of course.  Very worthy young
man, no doubt."

"Also," continued his daughter calmly,
"you know that Jim Edgerton is his closest
friend."

"That," said Rivett, "counts some."

"And mother likes him," concluded the girl.

Her father sat staring at her in silence.
Suddenly she put her arms around his neck,
and the little man hid his spectacles on her
breast for a second.

"Thank you, dad, darling," she whispered.

"Chrissy—Chrissy—so soon!  I wanted
you awhile yet." ... He jerked his head
free, produced a handkerchief, and began
busily to polish his eyeglasses.

"All right," he said brusquely, "I'll talk it
over with your mother.... She knows....
She knows more than I do.  They wouldn't
believe that in Wall Street, but it's true."

"Dad?"

"Yes, child."

"Couldn't we live with you and mother?"

"Sure.  D'you think I'd let any young
jackanapes take you entirely away?  You tell
him I'll scalp him if he talks that kind of thing
to you." ... He laughed harshly.  "But I'm
a fool, Chrissy; you and I are talking foolish....
You won't come back to stay.  You
won't want to."

"I will!"

"No, dear; you don't know yet....  Your
mother and I made our own home.  It was a
rough one, Chrissy, but it was ours.  You'll
do the same ultimately.  It's part of the
game....  Tell your young man to come here."

The girl slipped away; in a few moments
Inwood knocked and entered.  Mr. Rivett
gave him a level and murderous look.

"How about that complication you got
yourself into?" he asked harshly.

Inwood turned scarlet.

"I'm out of it."

"With honor?"

"Honorably."

"What was it?"

"You don't mean to ask me that?"

"Yes, I do! ... But I didn't expect an
answer....  Can you support my little girl
decently?"

"Decently."

"Not in the style to which I have
accustomed her?"

"No, sir."

"All right," he snapped.

After a silence the young fellow said:

"Do you disapprove of me?"

"How the devil can I?  I don't know you.
If you make my little girl a good husband, I'll
love you like a son; if you don't, I'll—kill you.
You *look* all right; but there's no use talking....
You show me what stuff you're made of,
and I'll do my part."

"All right," said Inwood, smiling.

Something in his smile interested Rivett.

"Was your mother a Lawrence?" he demanded
suddenly.

"She was born Elizabeth Lawrence."

"Betty Lawrence," he repeated, staring at
the younger man.

"Did you know her?" asked Inwood.

"I taught her in school....  Betty
Lawrence....  Only two people ever smiled like
that—you and your mother....  You have
good blood in you, Inwood....  I know your
father—in Wall Street.  We are on good
terms....  Don't ever be a fool again, will you?"

"No, sir."

They shook hands seriously.  As Inwood
left, Dineen came in.

Rivett looked at Dineen without speaking
for a full minute, then he said slowly:

"My daughter is going to be married."

"God bless my soul!" ejaculated the big
Irishman—"not *that* child!"

"Yes; I guess she means business, John."

"When?—in the name of the saints!"

"When she's ready, I presume....  She's
a good girl....  They're good children.
They've stayed as long as they could.  Their
time is nearly up....  But the smallest hut is
a big barn when the children have taken wing....
I wish I could have seen more of my
father and mother....  But I had to go out
into a lean world and hunt a living."

"The best of us have passed that way,"
observed Dineen; and, after a moment: "Who's
the lucky divil, Jacob?"

"Young Inwood."

"Stuart Inwood's boy?"

"That's the one."

Dineen lit a cigar and, drawing it into
vaporous action, ruminated with enormous thumbs
joined.

"It's good stock," he said, finally; "none
better betwixt the Bowling Green and Patroon
Van Courtlandt's old shebang.  There's
money, too; and an opera box and a bit of
a shack at Newport.  What kind of a lad
is it?"

"He can look me in the face," said Rivett.
"Otherwise he looks like everybody else of
his sort, and probably resembles them, too.
Ah!"—he broke out angrily—"these sleek-headed,
tailor-made, smooth-faced young pups
from New York, with their pleasant
manners when they want anything, and their ways
and means and by-ways and ten-cent brains—God!
Dineen, do they really ever turn into
men?  Answer me that!  You've lived long
enough to see a new-born snob grow to be
thirty.  Do they ever turn into anything
except the harmless fools they're born?"

Dineen slowly revolved his thumbs and
squinted at a sunbeam, while the smoke from
the cigar in his cheek rose to the ceiling in a
straight, thin column.

.. _`"Dineen slowly revolved his thumbs and squinted at a sunbeam"`:

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   :alt: "Dineen slowly revolved his thumbs and squinted at a sunbeam."

   "Dineen slowly revolved his thumbs and squinted at a sunbeam."

"Some of them become men," he said
deliberately.  "The most o' them is born spots
and rots; or, if they're not, college addles 'em.
But, God be praised! if it wasn't for them
the good people of Reno, Palm Beach, and
Paris, France, would starve entirely....
Jacob, they say there's a use even for the San
José scale; and cursing would become a lost
art barring the mosquito."

"What do you know about young Inwood?"
asked Rivett.

"Nothing; he's a broker."

"Then we've nothing to learn, I guess," said
Rivett dryly, "unless he gets into the papers....
Well, my wife likes him....  She's always
right, John.  I'll go and talk to her
presently....  What were you saying
about young Edgerton before my daughter came?"

"I said that he's the same as all the Edgertons.
By jimmy!  I started him on ink wells
to see would he stand for it, and he was there
every morning at seven; and he cleaned those
ink wells and desks till nobody knew them—with
his busted arm and all.  Then I set him
at the ledgers, and I let him stew for a week.
A week was enough to see a good man wasting
his fist and eyes at fifteen per.

"'G'wan into the designing room,' I said
to him, using Doolan as meejum for my
remarks; and I let him stew there with his
compass and his tracing paper, doping out the
work of worse than he.

"Then I gave Williamson the kitty-wink.
'Give us a pair of gates for a gentleman's
estate,' said Williamson, very damn polite,
knowing who was backin' the lad for a place....
They're using the sketch now."

"I told you so," said Rivett calmly.

"Ah, go on!  I told you so!  Let it go at
that, Jacob.  So I talked to Everly, and Everly
sent him into the laboratory.  When he isn't
there he's nosing around the shops, or asking
questions of Cost and McCorkle over in
Jersey, or he's investigating the Holmes
Construction plant."

"He's got his eye on the game."

"Sure; it's in him.  There's iron in every
Edgerton.  They're all full of ore.  He's taken
longer to open his eyes than the usual litter,
that's all....  Got playing the art game, you
say—like a kitten with a paper ball....
There's art in him, too, I guess.  Those gates
were all right....  But—you mean to give
him his chance?"

Rivett nodded.  "I am Edgerton, Tennant
& Co.  I'd like to have Edgerton go back there
some day....  They were square people....
I might have used them a little easier....
My wife likes Edgerton....  She wishes it."

"She wants him to have his chance," mused
Dineen.

"What she wants, *I* want," said Rivett....
"And I might have been easier on Edgerton,
Tennant & Co....  I would have been—if
we hadn't needed the plant."

Dineen nodded gravely.

"Sure!  A poor corporal of industry like
you, Jake, needs what he can pick up out o'
the ash can."

For a full minute neither spoke.  A slight
flush faded from Rivett's cheek bones.

"You damned Irishman," he said, wincing,
"when are you going back?"

"To-night, I think....  There's an ash can
I haven't raked over—the Carrol-Baker Company."

"You'd better fix that," said Rivett dryly;
"there may be a lump of slag or two we can
use for filling in ballast."

Dineen winked, rose, deposited the ashes
from his cigar on the window ledge, and
sauntered forth—to meet Jack walking swiftly
and firmly toward his father's study.

"Hello, young man!" exclaimed Dineen,
"is the house afire, or has the brown jug
below run dry?"

"No fear," said the young man, smiling,
but continuing on his way.  Dineen looked
after him with shrewd, blue eyes.

"I'm a monkey," he said to himself, "if
that young man isn't on some such errand as
took his sister to the same place an hour ago.
If he is, God help him! for Jacob's still sore
all over with the news from the front stoop."


Jack knocked, and his father, who had settled
himself for five minutes' hard thinking,
rapped out: "Who's there?"

"It's Jack.  May I come in?"

"Come on," said his father grimly, "I
am—" but catching sight of his son's face he
stopped short.

"Father?"

"What?" snapped Rivett senior, instinctively
squaring his shoulders.

"May I talk to you as two men ought to
talk together, or must I assume the attitude
of a child to its father?"

"Talk as you feel.  I had a notion that you
were still my son—maybe I'm mistaken.  In
that case you may try to bully me if you care
to.  Go on."

"I didn't mean that, dad."

"I know you didn't; but you've come in
here with your mind already made up that I
won't do what you want me to do.  That's no
good, Jack.  Go into everything cocksure that
you'll win out.  It's the only way you stand
any chance at all.  Proceed."

The boy sat down and gazed absently out
of the window; after a few moments he
turned his head and looked at his father.

"Dad," he said, "I'm in love."

Rivett senior regarded him in angry amazement,
for a second only; then the grim mask
of a face resumed its weasel-eyed and
expressionless immobility.

"Babies have to go through teething, too,"
he observed.

Jack said pleasantly: "Wouldn't you rather
I came to you and told you about it?"

"Yes; a boy is all right who tells his
parents.  Who is the girl?"

"Silvette."

An unaccustomed color dyed Mr. Rivett's
pallid temples.

"Oh!  Have you informed her?"

"Yes."

Rivett's teeth met under the walrus mustache,
parted, met, and ground together; but
his son saw only the jaw muscles move slightly
in the lean face.

"Silvette is a—an interesting young girl,"
said Rivett with an effort; "but she is one of
my employees, and not the sort of woman I
wish my son to marry."

"So she says," observed Jack quietly.

"*Who* says *what*?"

"Silvette said exactly what you have just
said—that she is your employee, and her sense
of honor will not permit her to listen to me."

"Oh! ... She said that, did she? ... Oh! ... Did
she tell you to tell me her answer?"

"No; she told me that if I uttered one word
on the subject to you, she would leave your
service in twenty-four hours."

His father's eyes fairly bored into him like
augers.

"And yet you've done it?"

"I've taken the chance—yes."

"Why?"

"Because I love her."

"You'll have that kind of pip several times
before you pick the right one, Jack."

"No; I'm like you."

"What's that?"

"I say that I am like you, dad....  I don't
believe there was ever anybody but mother.
Was there?"

"How about that little Beaumont girl you
met at Hot Springs?" asked his father.

"I taught her to shoot a pistol.  I liked her,
but that was all.  Silvette is different."

Somehow, the memory of a girl he had once
taught came into Mr. Rivett's mind—Betty
Lawrence—who smiled as nobody else ever
had smiled except her own son—years
afterwards—years and years afterwards.

He raised his sunken head and looked hard
at his son.

"I don't want you to marry her, Jack," he said.

"Why?"

"I had other plans for you.  There are girls
in New York who——"

"There are girls everywhere, but only one
Silvette Tennant; and I am like you, father."

"You don't show it now," retorted Rivett
sharply.  "Do you think I'd spoil my chances—no,
my certainty in New York, as you are
trying to do?"

"You only got as far as Mills Corners, dad;
and you had not even seen New York."

"I don't want you to marry her," repeated
his father doggedly.

"Why?—once more."

"Because—I don't know anything about
her.  She gambles, too!"

"Would you care whether the girl you
meant to pick out for me plays cards for
stakes?"

"I certainly—"  He stopped abruptly, then:
"She smokes and drinks like a man!"

"Get some woman to ask you to dine with
her at the Convent Club some evening," said
Jack, smiling.

"Who is Silvette Tennant, anyway?"
demanded his father.

"You ought to know something about the
Tennants, dad.  You reorganized their firm."

"I never heard of her or her sister before
I hired them," said his father, reddening.

"Dad, be square with me.  Do you like her?"

"What?"

"Do you like Silvette?"

"I like her sister."

"And Silvette?"

"Yes, damn it, I do!"

Jack laughed.

"So do I," he said; "but she has refused me."

"She knew enough to do it; she is a girl of
sense.  Certainly, I like her.  She knows well
enough that she has no right to encourage you."

"She knows something else, too."

"What's that?"

"She knows that she doesn't care for me
anyway," said the boy with a quiet simplicity
that, somehow, left a confused and restless
resentment in Mr. Rivett's breast.

"Doesn't care for you?" repeated his
father slowly.  "She'd care for you fast
enough if she dared."

"Dared!" Jack laughed.  "If she had
cared for me, she'd have told me—and sent
me about my business all the same; don't
worry about that.  But she doesn't care about
me....  I think, sweet and generous as she
is, she does not consider our family as
particularly desirable for an alliance."

"What!  My employee!"

"Why, dad, our employing her puts us at
her mercy.  Didn't you realize that?"

The elder man sat silent, glaring at his son
through his great convex spectacles.

"So *that* is why this girl wouldn't listen to
you?" he said.

"Her reason was that she, being in your
employment, occupied a position of trust, and
that it would be dishonest in her to take
advantage of it by encouraging your only son."

"Did she say that?"

"Almost word for word."

"When?"

"Long ago."

"Oh!  So this has been going on a long while?"

"I've bothered her a long while; I've
contrived to make her miserable.  She does her
best to keep away from me.  I don't know
what to do," said the boy miserably.

"Well, you've done it now, anyway; you've
come to me, and told me against her orders.
Now, she'll go—if I tell her."

"I shall tell her; I couldn't do this without
being honest enough to tell her that I've done it."

"But—you say she'll go away."

"She certainly will, unless you ask her to
remain."

"I?"

"Yes; you, dad."

"Do you think I'm going to deliberately
bite my own head off?"

Jack smiled forlornly.  "If you don't ask
her to stay, you'll be biting my head off; but
I won't need a head if she goes, so bite away,
dad, if you're going to."

Rivett stared at him in stony silence.

"Do you know what your sister has done?"

"Yes; Inwood is a corker.  I'm terribly glad."

"Oh, *are* you!"

"Aren't you?"

"Confound it! how do I know whether I'm
glad or not to see the house emptying itself of
all your mother and I care for—"  He stopped
with a dry catch in his throat, then resumed
more cautiously:

"I thought Chrissy's tale of woe was sufficient
for one morning, but here you come galloping
in with one that beats hers to a batter!
How do you suppose I like it?  I expected to
have my children with me for a while....
Yesterday you were in the cradle....  To-day
you're up and off and out into the world
with a girl I never saw before last June!
Jack!  Jack! what the devil's the matter with
everything!"

"Isn't everything about as it was when you
were my age, father?"

"No, it isn't.  If anybody had predicted
these times, he'd have been locked up for a
lunatic!  What with luxury, and fashions,
and folderol, and high finance, and cards, and
cocktails, and cigarettes——"

"I don't mean the details, dad; but isn't it
all about the same—the birth, growth, courtship,
parting?  Isn't it?"

The older man was silent.

Jack rose and stood by the window watching
the big clouds drifting across the sky.

"Jack," said his father, "why did you come
here to tell me this?"

"Mother said I had better."

"Your *mother*!" he exclaimed, horrified.

"Yes; I told her first, of course—even
before I spoke to Silvette."

"She never said—one—word to me,"
murmured Rivett vacantly.

"She promised not to before I would tell her."

"Do you mean to say that your mother *approves*?"

"She said she would if you did....  And
all I ask of you is to invite Silvette to
overlook what I've said and done, and request her
to remain."

"If she doesn't care for you," said Mr. Rivett,
"what do you want her to remain for?"

Jack's eye met his father's.

"So that I can have a chance to win her,"
he said doggedly, "with my parents' full
approval."

Rivett rose, furious.

"You stay here until I've talked to your
mother!" he barked, and went out slamming
the door.

Jack sat down prepared to wait, but it was
not five minutes before his father came in.

"I've seen your mother.  Clear out of here!
That young lady of yours is coming."

"Here?"

"Yes, here.  If you don't go out, I'll drop
you out of the window—old as I am."

"Dad!  You're a brick!"

"Well, you'll get that brick in the neck if
you don't hustle!"

Jack laughed and held out his hand; his
father took it, tried to speak—only succeeded
in swearing.  The boy went out.  When the
girl entered, Mr. Rivett was standing by the
window, wiping his glasses for the second time
that morning.

He turned, nodded, placed a chair for Silvette,
but remained standing.

"I don't suppose you've any notion why
I've asked you to come in here.  Have you?"

"Not the slightest," she said, smiling.

"I suppose you think it's on business?"

"Naturally."

"Why naturally."

"Because," said Silvette, laughing, "our
relations are on a business basis."

"Do you consider them entirely so?"

"I—am obliged to, am I not?"

"Don't you like us?" he asked bluntly.

"What an odd question!  Of course, I do.
I'm in love with your wife."

"*Not* with me?"

She laughed gayly.  "You've evidently
discovered that Diana and I like you immensely."

"Do you?  Really?"

"Of course; you've been very charming to
us.  As for Christine, we care a great deal for
her—very sincerely and deeply, Mr. Rivett."

"What about Jack?" asked Mr. Rivett casually.

A slight tinge of color rose and spread in
the girl's pretty cheeks.

"Everybody likes Jack," she said briefly.

"Do *you*?"

"Certainly."

"That's what I wanted to find out.  That's
why I asked you to come here."

The girl looked at him, startled, incredulous
of her own hearing.

"I don't understand," she said.

"Then I'll be plainer.  Jack has told me
that he wishes to marry you."

The crimson stained her from throat to
temple, but she rose with perfect self-possession.

"I think," she said quietly, "that this severs
our business relations."

"Not unless you wish it."

"I do wish it."

"Why?"

"Because I warned Jack that one word of
this matter to you would mean my leaving
Adriutha."

"Why?"

"Because I am employed here by you, and
Jack is your son," she said coldly.

"Do you mean to leave us?"

"I must."

"You need not."

"You are very kind, but my service is of
no further value."

"I ask you to remain," he said slowly.
"You have already rendered me service I
could never pay for.  I ask you to remain with
us—as our guest, if you must; as Jack's
betrothed, if you will."

She flushed again, brightly, astonished.

"But—but I don't—I am not in love—with
Jack!" she stammered.  "He knows it.  I
have told him so....  I like him immensely....
he is a dear boy—generous, clever,
charming, considerate....  I never liked any
man better....  But I *don't* love him, Mr. Rivett."

"That's up to him, isn't it?" asked Rivett
dryly.  "I can't make you love my boy;
neither can his mother.  Mothers can do most
things.  Probably Jack is young enough to
think she can make you love him; but I can't
help that, Miss Tennant.  All I can do is to
ask you to remain....  And to say—that if
you ever come to care for Jack, my only boy,
his mother will welcome you as our daughter—and
so will I."

Then Silvette did a curious thing.  She sat
down at Mr. Rivett's desk and bent her head
over the blotter, and sat so, with her small
handkerchief against her eyes.

There was not a sound from her nor from
Mr. Rivett.

For a long while she sat there, finally
burying her face in her handkerchief and both
hands.

Mr. Rivett bent over her presently.

"Silvette?"

She merely nodded in sign that she had
heard him.

He said quietly: "You *are* in love with
Jack."

She sat motionless.

"Your loyalty to honor deceived a very
gentle heart," he said; "you loved him all the
time."

.. _`"'Your loyalty to honor deceived a very gentle heart,' he said"`:

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   :alt: "'Your loyalty to honor deceived a very gentle heart,' he said."

   "'Your loyalty to honor deceived a very gentle heart,' he said."

She made no sign, no movement.

"We could ask no better woman for our
daughter," he said.  "I was very blind.  Jack
knew, but his mother knew best of all.  My
wife is very wise, Silvette—far wiser than I....
And I have—I am in debt—to the name
you bear.  I thought by giving you my boy I
was canceling it....  You put me under
obligations I am unable to meet—unless you
can accept my—affection—as collateral.  Can
you, child?"

Her hand moved slightly—moved farther
across the polished surface of the desk.  His
hand fell over it.

"Thank you," he said.

They remained silent for a few moments;
then he gently relinquished her hand and went
out, leaving the door just ajar.

When Silvette lifted her head from the
desk, she knew that Jack had entered.

Tall and quiet, he stood looking at her; tall
and pale, she rose, looked at him steadily,
came toward him as he moved toward her,
and laid both hands fearlessly in his.

"I didn't know," she said.  "I wouldn't let
myself even think of you....  Do you want
me, Jack?"

Then down he went on one knee, and kissed
hers, and her hands, and her gown; and,
confused, she drew away, then waited as he rose
waited, looking at him as his arm encircled her.

Very gravely they exchanged their first kiss.

That seemed to break the divine spell, for
they found their tongues very quickly now,
and, sitting perched on his father's desk, side
by side, feet hanging, and hand in hand, they
succumbed to the rapture of garrulity, asking
Love's same old questions with all the ardor
of neophytes, and answering as Love has
answered for many a century, and will answer
for many more—tritely, passionately, and
with that incurable redundance of which
lovers alone are masters.





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.. _`CUI MALO`:

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   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   CUI MALO

.. vspace:: 2

For the present, it was decided between
Mr. Rivett and his wife that the engagements
of both their children should be kept secret.

Except those immediately concerned, only
the parents, Diana, and Mr. Dineen knew; and
Edgerton, as the nearest male relative of
Silvette, was to be informed.

It had been left to Diana to inform him.
Silvette wrote a hasty and cordial note for
her sister to inclose; then Diana took her
writing materials up to the mossy ledge in the
woods from where Edgerton and she had once
taken the Path to Yesterday on that
sun-drenched morning so long—so long ago.

She had never been there since.  Once,
strolling with Scott Wallace, he had espied
the ledge, climbed thither, and called to her to
join him in a new-found wonderland.

But it was not new-found to her, and the
wonder of it had departed; and she continued
on along the river bank below, heedless of his
enthusiasm and persuasion.

Now something drew her there.  What the
sentiment was she did not analyze.  Perhaps
it was because the girl knew no spot as
intimate, no fitter place in which to write him of
her sister's happiness.

The place had changed with the season;
yellowing leaves clothed the trees; the beds of
moss had turned to vast reaches of golden
velvet; naked branches crossed and recrossed
above in delicate network against the sky.

Here was the silver birch against which she
had leaned when his arms were round her
and her lips touched his; there he had lain
at her feet, stretched across that bed of gilded
moss—only a boy then, smiling, idle, unawakened.

She seated herself exactly as she had sat
that day, and looked at the empty place where
once, so long ago, life had begun and ended
for her—the place of self-sacrifice, the altar
where her heart had died to appease the Fates
and mollify the mischief of the far white gods.

Among the yellow leaves a blue jay screamed
through the stillness; and presently she saw
him for a moment, a flash of azure and
silver, high-winging from his invaded sanctuary.

Behind him he left a silence, deeper for the
constant whisper of falling leaves, stranger
for the far sighing of the unseen stream below.

She bent over and searched for the imprint
of her fingers in the moss where he had kissed
them unrebuked.  Many a sun and moon and
rain had smoothed out that delicate sign
manual long since.  Only upon her heart the
imprint of his lips remained.

Then—for the path was easy to her; alas! too
easy—she sent her spirit back along the
Road to Yesterday; and soon she heard the
starlings piping and saw the sky all rose and
gold above the river; and she saw him, and
heard his voice, talking of starlings and of
children.

If a single bright tear fell, the moss buried
it; and when at last she could see her letter
paper through glimmering lashes, she inked
her pen and set her small, sun-tanned hand
resolutely to the task before her:

"Jim, dear, Silvette is going to marry Jack
Rivett.  She is supremely happy.  I inclose
her note to you.

"Only the families concerned know about
it yet.  It is to be announced in December.
The date of the wedding has not yet been
fixed.

"I write you this pleasant news because
you are our nearest relative.

"In my last letter I told you that Silvette
did not love him.  I was wrong; she did love
him all the while, but she was too decent to
know it.  So how on earth was I to suspect it?
I didn't, and she didn't, and if it hadn't been
for Jack kicking over the traces and cantering
away out of bounds, there probably would
have been a tragedy in the family; for Silvette
and I had your kind and sensible letter, saying
that the only honorable thing to do was to
take the first opportunity to withdraw from
Adriutha, and we had decided you were right.

"But man proposes, Jim, and the far gods
laugh at him—not unkindly, sometimes.  My
little sister is radiantly happy.  Jack is a dear;
so is his sister and parents.

"It amuses me to realize that I have come
to be a purveyor of marital news to you.
First, it was Christine and Mr. Inwood; now
it's Silvette and Jack.  The nearest I can come
to rounding out the classical triad of the
blessed is to inform you, monsieur, that the
symptoms of Colonel Curmew are becoming
acute.  He tried to take my hand in the
billiard room—*not* my bridge hand, either.

"He retains my hand too long when he
helps me into a canoe.  The other day I was
horribly tempted to tip him into the river; he
said such silly things and popped his eyes and
went into rhapsodies over my ankles—which
was slightly infringing les convenances, wasn't it?

"But he's merely a foolish, pompous,
well-meaning man, slightly silly about all women,
but with a very kind heart, I fancy.  He is
always doing things for me, always strutting
around me and shooting his cuffs and curling
his mustaches.  Half the time I don't understand
his talk—his jokes and apparently witty
innuendoes, which perhaps are very funny,
for he laughs at them himself, and I have to
smile and pretend I am not stupid.

"No flight has occurred, although there was
a white frost Saturday night.

"The shooting brotherhood are anxious and
gloomy.  Some even declare that a flight did
occur Saturday night; that the birds remained
with us over Sunday, when nobody could
shoot, and left Sunday night, which was bitter
cold and froze water in the garden.

"I don't know about such things—and don't
care very much.  It seems to me that these
big, red-faced men make a ridiculous to-do
about the migrations of a few small birds.

"Scott Wallace is the laziest man—which
reminds me in time, Jim, to speak about your
apparent attitude toward Scott.  I merely
wrote you that you would like him if you knew him.

"To my surprise, you wrote that you, personally,
had no use for the kind of man I described.

"Was that a snub for me or for Scott?
I'm sorry I spoke of him.  To me he is a nice,
wholesome, amusing fellow, so friendly to
everybody that, somehow, your letter—what
you said in it about a man you never met—hurt
me.  You *would* like him if you knew
him.  So, with this feminine prerogative, I
close my lips about Scott Wallace for the
present and the future.

"I am glad your arm is practically well;
but what makes me entirely contented is what
you say of your constant and bewildering
promotions.  Best of all is what I read between
the lines—that you really love the business—the
business of generations of Edgertons; and
you, the last of them—but not the last, God
willing!—are plunging into the game up to
your neck, interested, optimistic, enthusiastic,
fitting yourself for that dignified place which
is yours, Jim, by every right.

"Now that it's over, and the mist blown
clear of your path forever, I want to confess
to you how dreadfully I felt to see you here
in such a capacity.  More than that, your light
talk about the arts, your light and graceful
accomplishments in them, your tendency to
drift back toward a career for which you are
no more fitted than I—all these things troubled
me deeply, so that, sometimes, I even dreamed
of them, and finally came to regard your
facility with actual fear, so jealous was I for
your real career, so anxious was I that you
should become your real self.

"I suppose you will scarcely believe it, Jim,
when I tell you that this feeling began from
the very moment when you offered to go with
Silvette and me to Adriutha.  Somehow,
blindly, I understood even then that it was not
the thing for you to do; and, remember, I
knew you scarcely at all.

"Yet my instinct resented your going, and
if I did not actually protest, perhaps you may
recollect that my attitude was not cordial;
that you had to ask me many times for my
vote; that, after all, I never cast it, but simply
refrained from voting at all.

"I suppose this was cowardly in me; yet,
Jim, what else could I have done?  I scarcely
knew you; I dared not appear ungrateful after
your kindness to Silvette and to me.

"Forgive this self-defense.  I merely
wanted you to know; I only wish you to
understand that, at heart anyway, I have been,
from the beginning, loyal to the best interests
of a friend and a kinsman who was most kind
to two girls alone in the world."

.. vspace:: 2

"This is a still, golden, autumn world—autumn
no longer, alas! for we are already
well along in November.  But autumn lingers
in this land of hills and waters, and the frost
was not severe enough to blacken the late
roses.  If the weather is unseasonable, it is
also charming, and I love it.  Russet and gold
always did fascinate me—like the hangings
and tapestries in your studio, with the dusty
sunlight falling over all.

"Eh bien, monsieur, I must conclude my
monologue.  You are a brave man if you have
read as far as the name you gave me
once—centuries ago.

.. vspace:: 1

"JAPONETTE."

.. vspace:: 2

She closed and sealed her letter, wrote his
name on the envelope, rested awhile, blue eyes
seeing nothing; then, touching the envelope
with her lips, she laid it between the leaves of
her portfolio.

Since that day in this very place, Edgerton
had spoken no more of love to her.  She knew
that he never would again, that what had
begun here on the Path to Yesterday had ended
where the path ended.  Never again would he
retrace those steps with her; never again
travel them alone.  For it was a lost road to
him, a blind trail already overgrown with
briars.  The days made it fainter, the months
were hiding it, the years would obliterate it
for him.  But for her, alas—she had many a
pilgrimage yet to make along that briar-grown
path; and many a scar, yet unmade, must heal
before that path closed before her pilgrim feet,
and shut out forever from her eyes the hidden
shrine it led to, where the sky was rosy above
the river and the starlings called through the
golden light of Paradise.

And now, as she stood up, the subtle scent
of autumn hung heavy in the air—a faint odor
of ripening, hinting of decay and death.
Summer had gone indeed—on earth and in her
heart.

Never again would life be the same to her
after this day, in this place, alone with
memory; never again would she be the same.  How
old her heart had become—how old—how old!
O amari dies!  O flebiles noctes!

.. vspace:: 2

She rode that afternoon with Colonel
Curmew, accepting him instead of another
because she thought his chatter might leave her
freer to follow her own thoughts.

But after a while it seemed to her as
though she could no longer endure them,
and that the colonel's inanities were preferable.

They were riding down a mountain road,
the horses picking a cautious way among the
scattered stones.

He was paying court to her, as usual, and
she had been riding on, smiling absently,
preoccupied with her own thoughts and mentally
oblivious to him, when there came a clatter of
stones from behind, and Scott Wallace galloped
recklessly up at the risk of his horse's
neck as well as his own.

"Halloo!" he said cheerfully; "hope I'm
not smashing a twosome, colonel."

The colonel glanced sourly at him.  Diana
laughed with pleasure: "Not at all, Scott!
Colonel Curmew and I are old acquaintances,
and the resources of sentiment were long ago
exhausted between us.  Where are you going?"

"Nowhere; I just felt like a gallop.  All
the chaps are kickin' over the flight, which
either isn't goin' to materialize or passed over
Sunday and made boobs of the bunch of us.
Where are *you* goin'?"

"Nowhere in particular; come with us.  My
nerves needed soothing, so I took the colonel
along."

"As a tonic or quieter?" asked Wallace so
seriously that Diana threw back her pretty
head and the woodlands were melodious.

The colonel laughed loudly, too, and began
to hate young Wallace with a hatred that
passes all understanding.

Wallace turned to her.  "What's wrong
with *your* nerves?  I supposed you hadn't any."

"I didn't know it either, Scott.  Probably
I've played with cards and cigarettes too hard.
For all the sunshine, to-day has been a gray
one for me....  Shall we gallop?"

She launched her horse into a trot, a canter,
then into a dead run.  Behind her tore the two
men through the afternoon sunlight, on, on,
until their winded mounts topped the homeward
crest of the hill and they looked down
on the meadows of Adriutha.

They wended their way down the mountain
in silence—Diana, grave and apparently
tired; Wallace smiling slightly, and glancing
at her from moment to moment; Colonel
Curmew pop-eyed, expressionless, curling his
mustache with gloved fingers.

He was furious with Diana, with Wallace,
with himself.  Yet even he could not see how
he might have resented the young man's
intrusion otherwise than by the lack of cordiality
which he had certainly manifested.  Besides
Diana had invited him to remain with
them.  Of what low tricks women are capable!
Because she knew well enough that he had
desired and sought a tête-à-tête.

Curling his mustache tighter, he rode on, a
good figure in the saddle always—ruminating,
considering, angry because of the interruption.

For Colonel Follis Curmew had for days,
now, been carefully preparing the way for
something he meant to say to Diana.  He was
a cautious man with women; he reconnoitered
by degrees, inch by inch, carefully watching
effect.  Hint, innuendo, double meanings,
sly feelers, veiled intent, was the strategy he
usually employed at first, skirmishing as close
to the dead line as he dared; furtive, alert,
ready always for a brilliant and resistless
climax at the psychological moment.

A few minutes ago he had believed that the
psychological moment was approaching.  He
had said one or two things so cleverly that
not the least resentment had altered her smile;
but how was he to know that, if she had
heard him at all, she had not in the least
understood him?  It takes more than one to play
a game of that kind.  The trouble was that
her smiling inattention had deceived him—had
always deceived him.  He was entirely persuaded
that she had drifted into the game long ago.

Surely, surely the psychological moment
had been close at hand when that big fool of
a boy had come clattering downhill and
smashed their approaching understanding into
smithereens for the moment.  The colonel
silently damned him as he rode.  It took time
and patience to gather up and piece together
the fragments and smithereens; it took skill
and watchfulness to choose another such
propitious day and hour—to select the scenery
and the moment for what he meant to say to
this young girl.

As he dismounted her at the foot of the terrace
he pressed her arm significantly, and said
under his breath:

"Can we get away for a moment together
this evening?"

Wallace was close by, and the colonel spoke
so low and pinched so discreetly that she
neither understood nor noticed his amenities, so
she merely nodded smilingly, thanked him for
his escort, and ran up the steps beside Wallace.

"I'll be in the billiard room later, if that
interests you," she called back over her
shoulder to Wallace as she ascended the stairs.

"It certainly does!" he replied promptly,
and went away to change.

Diana continued on to her own room,
disturbing Jack and Silvette on the stairs, and
gaily jeering at them as she banged the door.
A curious reaction had set in from the sadness
of the morning—a feverish desire to escape
from herself, from the misery that lay
always heavy in her breast, the relentless
hours that weighted her heart so that its dull
beating had become a burden.

The bath refreshed her; so did the tea.  She
put on her little Japanese gown and her straw
sandals, and curled up by the window, sipping
her tea and watching the declining sun.

Dusk came swiftly, and with it Silvette who
bent over and kissed her, and tasted the tea,
and wandered about the rooms gossiping, too
full of the joy of living to endure silence in
herself or in anybody else.

Pangs of swift remorse and self-reproach
stabbed her at intervals when she thought of
her own happiness and remembered Diana's
late unhappy affair.

How far Diana had cured herself, she did
not know, but she knew that her sister was
still more or less unhappy about Edgerton.

"Did you send him my note?" she inquired.

"Yes: I wrote him, and inclosed it."

"He's a dear boy....  How well he must
be doing!  He ought to go down on his knees
and thank you every day of his life for what
he is turning out to be."

"He would have turned out all right anyway,
sooner or later."

"Well, he's a horrid pig if he isn't grateful
to you....  I don't suppose he has the
slightest idea what his regeneration cost you."

"Don't talk that way, Silvie."

"What way?  I'm merely saying——"

"Don't say it, dear....  If it cost me
anything, he is never going to know it."

Silvette looked at her wistfully.  "If I
could only see you as happy as I am, Di....
Sometimes I can scarcely bear to be as happy
as I am, and remember that you are not sharing it."

"True," said Diana, smiling; "Jack can't
marry us both, so we can't share your
happiness, dear."

Silvette came and sat on the arm of the
chair, drawing one arm about Diana's neck.

"Do you still care for him very much?"
she asked sorrowfully.

"Very much."

"Do you think it will last?"

"Yes."

"What are you going to do?"

"Nothing."

"Isn't there something to do?"

"Nothing."

"Perhaps, all this time he really cares for you."

"There is not the slightest possibility.  I
had my chance; he cared for me—at that
moment—when he told me so....  Those men
out there"—she made a vague gesture toward
the unseen hills—"are no more deadly cool
when they shoot than was I when I deliberately
killed in him whatever love he may have
had for me....  I slew it, I tell you.  There
is no resurrection for dead things."

Silvette sighed heavily, and laid her smooth
cheek against her sister's hair.

"Still," she murmured half to herself,
"there are miracles."

"There *were*."

"There may be others yet."

"No; I wounded his pride."

"You aroused it."

"By wounding it, and at the expense of
what fell dead beside it.  Love died that day,
little sister, and for that death there is no
reincarnation."

Again the feverish desire for escape came
over her, seeming to burn through every vein,
and she sprang to her feet and rang for the maid.

"I'm likely to do almost anything to-night,"
she said.  "Shall I make it a double event
when you're ready?"

"A double—what?"

"Double event—double wedding?  I can
easily do so.  Is it a good way to drown your
griefs, Silvie?  Because the prospect of being
alone after you and Jack marry actually
terrifies me."

"You little goose, you'll live with us!"

"I see myself doing it!—the superfluous
spinster to be reckoned with, counted in
at dinners, mollified by kindness, secretly
feared for her acidulated tongue, to be employed
later in either bribing or disciplining
the children."

"Di!"

"What?"

"If—in the—the——"

"Course of human events——"

"Jack and I have children," continued Silvette,
flushing, "we'll also have nurses to look
out for the grubby little things."

"Grubby!  You don't know what you're
saying.  You'll be the most adoring—and
adorable mother——"

"Well, please don't talk about it....  I
don't care for children now....  I don't know
how I'll feel later."

Diana stood in the middle of the room—the
smile fading from her face, her small
hands clenching.

"I've learned to like children," she said.
"I've learned to love them, somehow—even
babies....  I want one of my own," she
added fiercely.  "I wish for one very much;
and if I can't have one—and it's impossible,
of course—I—I'll marry some man and have one!"

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Silvette, horrified,
"what are you talking about?  I'll let
you have one of mine!"

"I don't want yours!  How do you know
you'll have any?  How do you know you'll
have more than one?"

Her eyebrows were bent inward, her lips
compressed; she turned her head and stared
out at the stars—from where, they say, all
babies come, and where they all return at
last.

"You know," she said calmly, "that I
wouldn't really do such a thing—even to have
what I care for so much....  And yet—if a
woman is tired, hopeless, alone, isn't marrying
some man a help to her?  Can't she stand
the passing years better?  Doesn't it give her
some respite from the eternal pain—here"—she
laid a slim hand on her breast—"doesn't
it give her something to live for, especially if
children should come?  I don't know, Silvie;
I ask you because I'm tired and confused with
the pain of it."

"My darling!"

She dropped her head on Silvette's shoulder
for a moment; then, as the maid knocked,
lifted it calmly and bade her come in.

.. vspace:: 2

That night at dinner she was very gay—a
charming, sparkling, bewildering creature.
Through and through Colonel Curmew shot
intermittent pangs of jealousy and doubt,
mercifully assuaged by hope; through and through
Scott Wallace her blue eyes seemed to penetrate,
exposing to her laughing gaze his youthful
and very susceptible heart.

.. _`"That night at dinner she was very gay—a charming, sparkling, bewildering creature"`:

.. figure:: images/img-339.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "That night at dinner she was very gay—a charming, sparkling, bewildering creature."

   "That night at dinner she was very gay—a charming, sparkling, bewildering creature."

"Certainly I'm bowled over," he admitted
cheerfully to himself.  "She is the cunnin'est
thing that ever missed a pheasant; but she's
found me, all right, with both barrels, and the
sky's full of feathers, and I'm on the sod,
kickin'."

Me managed to tell her so that evening, in
language sportsmanlike and picturesque,
before they cut for partners at auction.  She
was standing on the stairs, two steps
up; he below her, with his handsome face
lifted.

"All you've got to do is to send your dogs
forward, and retrieve me, Diana.  I'm grassed
in the open in plain sight."

"Suppose I *should* take you up, Scott?"

"Is it a go?"

She smiled down at him.

"Take care, young man.  I'm approaching
spinsterhood at a terrifying speed.  How do
you know that I may not clutch wildly at you?"

"For Heaven's sake, clutch!" he urged her.

"How?  Shall I roll up my eyes and whisper,
'Oh, Scott!'—or shall I take a flying
leap at you from here, and rope you before
you can get away?  Instruct me, please,
because I really don't know as much about such
customs as perhaps you think I do."

"Take the flyer, Diana; I'll catch you.  Are
you ready?  Come on; be a sport!"

"I can't be a sport, Scott.  I try; I make a
brave effort to be cigaretteful and naughty,
but—I'm ashamed to say it isn't in me.  Now
you'll run, I suppose."

"After you—yes....  Diana, I do love
you.  I haven't said it right, that's all.  Will
you marry me and make somethin' out of me
besides a loafin' lout in puttees?"

"Oh, Scott, you're so beautiful in puttees!
I wouldn't make anything else out of you if
I could; you must be perfectly gorgeous in pink."

"Come down to the next hunt ball and see.
They're a fine bunch at Meadowbrook.  You'll
like 'em; maybe you'll learn to like me."

"I do now, you scatter-brain!  I adore you,
Scott; but, you know, love is a different game."

"That'll come all right," he protested.
"When you're the missus, and you see me
come a cropper over five bars, you'll suddenly
wake up to find you love hubby.  And I won't
be hurt, but you'll think I am, and you'll pull
up and scramble down and look me over, and
cover my pale and beautiful face with kisses
and—I'll play foxy and let you," he ended
with pleased satisfaction.

The smile on her face had suddenly become
fixed: for what he was saying had conjured
up a vision of the polo field, and a young
fellow in white picking himself up from the
trampled sod.

Wallace, looking around to see that the hall
was empty, sprang up the two steps and took
her hand in his.

"Diana, I do love you dearly," he said.
"Will you take me on for a trial gallop?"

"Do you mean an engagement?" she said,
looking him over.

"Yes, I do; will you?"

"What kind of an engagement?"

"The regular—with a sparkler on the side.
Will you, Di?"

"No, you very slangy young man, I won't."

"Well, then—then—what kind of an
engagement do you suggest?" he asked cheerfully.
"Just the circingle and halter kind?"

"What kind is that, Scott?"

"Oh, an understanding that you're not bitted
and bridled yet."

"You mean that the engagement lasts
during my pleasure?"

"Yes, that's it."

"And ends in marriage—or a very, very
kind note?" she asked, laughing.

"Sure thing!  Am I on?"

She considered him, smilingly.

"If you like," she said.

"Oh, I *do* like!  It's awf'lly good of you,
Diana....  Would you be gracious enough to
wear a sparkler?"

"Not yet, Scott."

"Oh, that's all right—whenever you say."  He
looked up at her, blushing.  "Do you mind
if I kiss you?"

She looked at him for a second, then
impulsively bent forward and kissed him
squarely.

"You nice boy," she said gently; "you nice,
nice boy.  I wish the world were fuller of
your sort....  I don't love you, Scott....
I don't suppose I shall....  But if you knew
what I feel for you, I believe you wouldn't
exchange it for any love I could ever give you....
Shall we go into the billiard room?  I'm
playing at Colonel Curmew's table, and he's
probably perfectly furious at being kept waiting."

She gave his hand a friendly pressure as
he released it, laughed, blushed, and turned
away toward the billiard room, where the
clamor was already audible.

They parted at the door, where she met her
sister in conversation with Mr. Rivett.

"Diana," she said, "Mr. Rivett and I are
going to town on the early train.  You know
he goes every week, and I've simply got to do
some shopping.  Will you come with us?"

Diana's heart gave a bound.  To her, New
York had become merely the abiding place of
Edgerton, and every mention of it started her
pulses.

"Oh, do come, Di," urged her sister.  "If
you'll come, we'll have Jim to dinner at the
Plaza.  All the theaters are open, too, and we
can have a jolly time."

"How on earth is Jack going to bear it?"
asked Diana, laughing.

"Bear it?  Did you suppose Jack wasn't
coming?" asked Silvette so naïvely that the
corners of Mr. Rivett's eyes cracked into
wrinkles.

"All right, I'll come," said Diana, with
never a thought for Scott Wallace; but,
thinking of Edgerton, she had meant to go from
the first.

As Silvette, on her future father-in-law's
arm, walked on toward the drawing-room,
Colonel Curmew appeared from the billiard room.

"Oh," said Diana, "I am so sorry to have
kept you waiting.  I was talking to my sister
about going to town to-morrow."

"I want to see you before you go," said
Curmew in a low voice.  "It can't be done
now—they're waiting for us, and Mrs. Wemyss
is developing a temper.  When can
I see you?"

"Why, I don't know," she said, smiling.
"What have you to say to me that cannot be
said now?"

The colonel's eyes popped, and he leered at
her, not doubting her coquetry.

"On the terrace after cards," he said, curling
his mustache.  "Is that understood?"

"Indeed, it is not, Colonel Curmew!" she
said, amused.  "I shall retire early, because
I have an early train to catch."

The colonel's face darkened.  There were
limits to coquetry.

"When did you decide to go?"

"A few minutes ago."

"You knew I had something to say to you?"

"I knew nothing of the sort.  And what has
it to do with my going to town, anyway?"

The colonel had only a few moments to decide.

"How long will you be in town?"

"I don't know."

"Where will you be?"

He wearied her, and to be rid of him she
thoughtlessly gave him the address at the Plaza.

"I'll be in town for a day or two," he said,
leering at her once more.

If she heard, she paid no heed, for she was
already entering the billiard room with a gay
gesture and a smile for Wallace, who waved
his hand in reply, and looked volumes at her
across the hubbub.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`DESUNT CÆTERA`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   DESUNT CÆTERA

.. vspace:: 2

Silvette and Diana, in one of Mr. Rivett's
town limousines, had shopped
to their hearts' satisfaction, inspected
fashions for the coming winter in hats and furs
and gowns and various intimate affairs of
flimsier fabric, had whirled away down town
to lunch with Mr. Rivett and Mr. Dineen at
the Iron and Steel Club, then whirled up town
again to resume the delicious exploration of
those glittering Fifth Avenue shops which line
that thoroughfare from Madison Square to
the gilded battle horse and its rider in two
almost unbroken ranks.

In that magic land, where trousseaux are
assembled and garnered by pretty brides to be,
Silvette lingered, fascinated; but her rapid,
intelligent survey was only preliminary as yet.
She and Diana were merely en vidette; official
inspection and an advance in force would follow later.

But, oh, the jewels and the furs and the
lovely laces and the heavenly hats!

Every shop was now in full swing toward
the culminating, scintillating transformation of
Christmas; the avenue was crowded with
flashing automobiles and carriages, the
florists' windows were beautiful, the sidewalks
crowded.

Men sold violets everywhere at street corners
or offered enormous, orange-tinted
chrysanthemums nodding on long stems; giant
policemen on foot kept busy ward at every
crossing; superb mounted police calmly stemmed
the twin torrents and, with lifted hand, quieted
the maelstrom.  Far to the south, in snowy
magnificence against the sky, the huge marble
tower brooded under its golden lantern above
the city's roar; northward the naked trees of
the park turned ruddy and golden in the eye
of the level sun.

And all of it the two young girls beheld,
and part of it they were—sometimes afoot in
the throng, sometimes in their limousine,
looking out with enchanted eyes upon all this
magic—magic only, alas! to the unspoiled eyes
of youth.

From time to time Silvette had stopped at
any convenient place to telephone Edgerton,
calling him up at his various points of possible
contact.  She had telegraphed him the morning
that they left Adriutha, which was the
day before, but, as time passed, it became
evident that he had not yet received the telegram.

Some days ago he had gone to Pittsburg at
Mr. Dineen's suggestion.  On his way back
he was to stop at Philadelphia and Jersey City.

Rivett said at luncheon that he'd probably
return to his rooms before dining, and find
their telegram in time to join them at the
Plaza for dinner.

But he didn't come, nor did any word arrive
from him; and Silvette and Jack went off
to the New Theater to see "The Thunderbolt"
matchlessly staged and acted in a matchless
theater; and Rivett offered to take Diana
anywhere.

But the girl was sick at heart under her
smiling, feverish gayety, and the brilliant
darkness of the streets seemed to mock her
as she looked out into them.

Also, there was a chance that Edgerton
might arrive late and telephone to
somebody—perhaps even to her.

It was merely a chance, but her chances
were few these days, and she durst not pass
one by, no matter how unlikely it looked.

.. _`352`:

So she thanked Mr. Rivett, and preferred
her room in the pretty suite to which he had
invited Silvette and herself; and there she sat
in her silken dinner gown, sunk into the velvety
depths of a chair, watching the city lights
from the window, waiting, listening—always
listening with a hope that died and lived with
her unquiet breathing; fading, flowering,
waxing, waning, dead and alive between two
heartbeats—the hope forever new—the only living
thing which cannot die while the sad world
endures.

Below her, far below, the lights of motors
ran swiftly like passing meteors; the lights of
carriages and hansoms streamed to and fro,
yellower and slower; the lighted windows of
street cars glided across her line of vision in
endless, level repetition.

To the west the gemmed façade of the New
Theater sparkled above the trees; northward
the lighted streets spread away like linked
jewels under the winter stars.

Into the high silence where she lay and
looked out into the night, only a faint rumor
of the city mounted from below; a tongue of
flame rustled on the hearth; the clock ticked.

Suddenly, silence was shattered in her ears;
she sprang to her feet, one hand against her
heart, her stunned senses deafened by the
clamor of the telephone.

The next instant she was at the receiver—the
receiver pressed convulsively to her ear.

"Yes," she said faintly.

.. class:: white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

"Yes; this is Miss Tennant."

.. class:: white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

"Yes—Diana Tennant.  Who is it?"

.. class:: white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

"Yes; I will hold the wire."

She rested against the shelf, relaxing from
the tension; then, rigid, electrified:

"Yes!  Is that you, Jim?"

"Of course!" he replied.  "Are you at the Plaza?"

"Yes—all alone.  Oh, Jim!  I am so glad
to hear your voice!"

"It's bully of you to say it.  I'm delighted
to hear yours.  I have just come in and found
Silvette's telegram on my desk.  Shall I come
around?"

"*Will* you?"

She could hear him laughing, then:

"Watch me," he said, "if the dust doesn't
obscure the spectacle, I'll be with you in five
minutes.  Is that right, Diana?"

"It is perfectly right."

As though dazed she hung up the receiver
in its nickel wishbone, and began walking
aimlessly up and down the room trying to
collect her wits and calm her senses.  Outwardly
composed, inwardly facing chaos, she threw
open the window and turned her face to the
coolness of the winter stars.

Then behind her the telephone sounded
again.  It was only the announcement of his
arrival, and she closed the door of her room
and went into the pretty parlor, where a
maid was already turning on the electric
lights.

His ring sounded; the maid admitted him
to the outer hall, took his hat and coat, and
ushered him in.  Diana rose to receive him
with smiling composure as the maid retired to
the bedroom.

"This is very prompt of you, Jim—-and
promptness is the most subtle of flatteries....
How thin and white you look! ... Are
you perfectly well?"

"Perfectly.  I need not ask that question
of you, Rose of the Berkshires!"

"Do I really look well?"

"Flawless and dewy fresh—a trifle slim,
perhaps.  Don't they keep you in pheasants?"

"They do, kind sir.  It's fashion, not
slenderness, you behold.  Never mind how it's
accomplished.  But, Jim, you don't look well.
Are they working you to death?"

"Not so you'd notice my decease," he said
laughingly.  "I'm in the game, up to the neck,
and swimming strongly.  It's a fine game,
Diana.  No doubt generations of Edgertons on
high look down on me and sing in unison the
Anvil Chorus.  It's a great game—this iron
one.  The iron is in me; I'm lanced through
and through—it's flowing in my blood; it's in
my bones.  Iron! iron!  There is nothing to
compare with it in all the world, Diana."

"Let me see your arm, Jim."

"Shall I take off my coat and——"

"No; I'll just feel it—very gently."

"It's mended.  Squeeze all you please."

"Was it here?"

"Higher."

"Here?"

"Lower."

"*Here?*"

"Higher."

"Jim, I believe you're just letting me fondle
your old arm and waste oceans of sympathy
on it!"

They laughed; he showed her where the
fracture had occurred.  She, gravely curious,
explored his sleeve with timid fingers.

"Doesn't hurt at all, Jim?"

"Damp weather," he said briefly.  "How
long do you remain in town, Diana?"

"Only over to-morrow."

"Good Lord!  Is that all?"

"We've been here two days."

"And I was in Pittsburg, dammit!"

"You certainly were, my friend; but, could
I help that?  I did my best.  We wired you,
and we have telephoned you steadily every
minute since we've been here....  Jim, do
you know, in the excitement we've quite
forgotten to sit down."

They laughed again; he placed a chair for
her, but she chose the lounge, and made a
place for him beside her.  Within the half
hour a physical transformation had changed
her to a flushed and radiant young girl, shy
and audacious by turns, brilliant of eye and
lip, and charmingly alert to his every word
and smile.  From her shoulders the robe of
care seemed to have fallen, shriveling, as it
fell, in the soft fire of her youth and spring-tide,
leaving visible only her fresh, unstained,
and winsome beauty.

She told him all that had occurred at
Adriutha—all except what had happened between
herself and young Wallace; and for the time
she really forgot that such a man existed.

Then she asked eager questions; and he laid
open the first pages of his new life before her
proud, happy, sympathetic eyes, tracing it
paragraph by paragraph for her since he had
entered into man's estate, and had put away
childish things.

The clock ticked; the tongue of flame
flickered low among its ashes.  They talked on,
heeding nothing except each other.

"I thought you and Silvette were to use the
apartment when you come to town.  Your
room is ready; but here you are in white
marble and palatial grandeur overlooking the
park.  Explain those phenomena, pretty maid!"

"We're guests of Mr. Rivett, Jim.  Otherwise,
no palatial grandeur for us.  We *wanted*
to go to the studio apartment; I was perfectly
crazy to go.  But we saw it would hurt Mr. Rivett's
feelings, and that he had set his kind
old heart on entertaining us....  Oh, Jim, I
don't want to seem ungrateful, but if older
people only knew that the less they entertain
the young, the better they are beloved!"

"That's a rather sad truth, but it's the
truth," he said.  "Rivett handed me one black
eye, too, bless his heart.  I had so counted on
your being in the apartment....  Well, you'll
come sometime—"  He hesitated, looked at
her, troubled.

"When is Silvette to be married?"

"They think in the spring; they haven't
settled it yet."

"Then you and she will be in the apartment
this winter?"

"If you want us," she said almost shyly.

"*Want* you!  It will be paradise!  I'll make
my salary go as far as it will."

"Indeed, you *won't*!  Silvette and I chip
in pro rata, or we refuse your marble halls!"

"I'm afraid I'll have to agree, Japonette.
My poverty, not my will, consents!"

After a moment she said: "It is a long
while since you have called me that."

"What?"

"Japonette.  I like it.  There's a sort of an
irresponsible frou-frou to the name which
suits me.  That's all I am, Jim," she added
with a laugh—"just a swish of scented skirts."

He glanced up at her, half smiling.

"I know what you are," he said.

"Do you?  *I* don't.  Reveal me to myself,
O Cagliostro!"

"Not now."

"Why?"

"Not now," he repeated.

"When?" she insisted.

"Some particularly sunny day in June, perhaps."

"June!  Listen to this man!  The very
nearest June is seven months off!"

"And I don't believe it will be next June,
either," he said with a grin.

"Jim!"

"Yes?"

"You're a plain masculine brute!  You say
you know what I am.  If you do, tell me *now*!
I maintain that I'm only a silken rustle and a
hint of scent.  Am I a louder episode than
that, Jim?"

"The vault of heaven rings with you!" he
assured her, laughing.

"Harmoniously?"

"Entrancingly."

"Well, that's better," she nodded dubiously.
"Evidently I'm not the kind of a noise that
gets arrested.  Jim, when the others come in,
shall we have supper?"

"Tons of it, dear lady.  They'll have to
push me out of this hotel before I consent to go."

"Do you mean it?"

"Militantly—truculently!"

"*Are* you glad to see me?"

He glanced at her with an odd expression,
then turned aside to set his cigarette afire.

"Yes, I'm glad," he said.

She took one of his cigarettes, lighted it,
savored it daintily, then leaned back watching
mm.  Their eyes encountered, and they smiled.

"Where are the others, Diana?"

"Jack and Silvette are at the New Theater.
Mr. Rivett and Mr. Dineen are sitting
somewhere, cheek by jowl, looking wealthy."

"How does one look wealthy?"

"*You* always do, Jim."

"Thank fortune for that.  It ought to land
me somewhere on the grandstand."

"Haven't you noticed," she said, "that
some people always *look* wealthy?  I don't
know exactly what it is about them; it has
nothing to do with breeding, or clothes, or
careful grooming."

"Neither has wealth," he smiled.

"That's trite; you're becoming too prosperous
to remain clever.  But, oh, Jim! *isn't* it
fine!" she exclaimed impulsively.

"What is fine?"

"Why, your success, of course!  Your
splendid interest in the business—your fitting
yourself for a position of honor among your
peers!  It is fine! fine!  And it is the happiest
thing that has ever happened in my life!"

He looked at her.

"You dear girl," he said quietly.

"I?  It was none of my doing.  You're mistaken
if you think so.  Once you said something
of that sort in a letter to me; but it isn't
true, Jim.  You have found yourself; the
credit is yours alone."

"I give credit to the far white gods....
In that Olympian Pantheon one is known as Diana."

"She of the Ephesians—yes.  She was
great, wasn't she?  Did you ever hear of the
fly who said, 'I lie on my back in space,
balancing the world on my six legs'?  The fly
was quite right; there's no top or bottom point
to this sphere—or to your logic, Jim."

He smiled quietly.

"Did *you* ever hear of that Chinese goddess
of the lotus, Kwan-Yin, who, from her blossom
throne in the Happy Isles, rescues lost
souls?"

"With how many incarnations are you
going to endow me, Jim?"

"Do you think I am endowing you with
anything you do not already possess?"

"What do I possess?" she laughed; "blue
eyes and a fair skin and a heart as mercenary
as a Persian pussy's.  Warmed in the sunshine
of life, I radiate purrs; but I'm a
slit-eyed opportunist in storm and stress."

After a moment he said:

"What are your plans when Silvette marries?"

"I suppose I'll marry somebody," she said,
thinking of Wallace for the first time.  "Old
age alone doesn't attract me; in fact, I've been
hedging already," she added.

"Hedging?"

"Practically; I've told a man I'd marry
him if it suited me to do so some day; but,
meanwhile, he must consider himself padlocked.
Isn't that a nice, thrifty, feminine
contract?"

"Are you serious?"

"Entirely."

"Who is he?"

She glanced at him uncertainly.

"I think you've heard me speak of him, Jim."

"Wallace?"

"That is the youth."

"Are you in love with him?"

"Oh, more than that, Jim.  I *like* him."

"Enough to marry him?"

"Not at present....  But you never can
tell.  I await the event.  I haven't anything
else to do."

He nodded, smiling.

"I rather imagined him to be the sort of
man you'd come to care for....  I've heard
one or two men speak of him recently."

"You mean that you made inquiries?"

A tint of red touched the city pallor of his skin.

"Yes, I took that, liberty."

"It was a friendly one.  The reports were
excellent, of course."

"Excellent.  He must be a good deal of a man."

Her eyes were fixed on him, expressionless,
considering.  The slightest smile edged her lips.

"He is young—and nice....  I don't know
how much of a man he may become....  I
know nothing about him, and haven't studied
him very minutely yet."

"You will—before you marry him."

"I may not....  A girl often misuses a
microscope.  I think I have, frequently.  Do
you remember King Gama's song?—

   |  "'*And interested motives*
   |  *I'm delighted to detect!*'
   |

"No, Jim; my snooping days are about
over.  Dissection wearies; the clinic is a bore.
I'm beginning to be content with the surface of
things; I'm tending toward impressionism and
the elimination of detail—toward the blessed
serenity of stupidity.  There is rest, there."

"Rest," he repeated, smiling.  "Of what
are you already tired?"

"I am tired of intelligence.  It's too exacting.
It forms a liaison with conscience, and
affronts inclination.  I'm tired of rule and
precept with which an occult and inborn tyranny
shackles me.  I'm tired of more than
that—but isn't that sufficient to fatigue a
girl?"

"Heavy chains," he said, looking at the
figures on the carpet, tracing them with an
incurious eye.

"So I think I'll file away a few links."

"You can't."

He rose, walked to the window, drew the
curtain, and looked out at the November stars.
Limpid, inexorable, the countless eyes of the
night met his.  Whatever message they held
for him he seemed to understand it, for,
presently he came quietly back to her.

"Yes," he said, "it's a good game, after
all.  The main thing is to get into it and stay
there—*in medeas res*—squarely."  He looked
up, smiling.  "Your superb interference put
me there.  Why do you deny it?"

"Does it please you that I should not deny it?"

"Yes, Diana."

"Then I affirm and deny nothing—which
makes me sufficient of a nonentity to suit you,
I hope."

"I am suited."

A moment later the bell rang, and Silvette
and Jack, followed by Mr. Rivett, came laughing
through the hall and into the little parlor.

"Jim!  At last!" cried Silvette, giving him
both hands.

"How are you, cousin!  How are you, Mr. Rivett!
Hello, Jack!" he said as they surrounded
him with lively greetings.

"How goes it?" inquired Mr. Rivett dryly.

"First rate."

"Did you see McMillan in Pittsburgh?"

"By jove, I did!  He was tremendously
interesting—and exceedingly cordial to me."

Mr. Rivett nodded.  He might have said
that he kept McMillan in his vest pocket, but
he only stared at Edgerton through his big,
round glasses.

They all had supper together, later; Jack
and Silvette bubbled enthusiasm over the play
and the splendid cast; Dineen came in and
talked business to Rivett in casual undertones;
Diana and Edgerton were quieter, even inclined
to silence.

Meanwhile Jack was consulting Silvette
about theater plans for the following evening,
and Edgerton said that he would return from
business in time to join them.

"You'll be in Jersey, won't you?" asked Rivett.

"Yes."

"Well, try to get back in time to dress and
join us at dinner."

"I don't believe I can do that."

Rivett looked at him.  "Try," he said briefly.

But Edgerton said aside to Diana:

"I can't get back to the studio before eight....
By the way, you have a key, you know,
if you wish to go there at any time."

"Thank you, Jim.  I may look in to-morrow
sometime.  I want to see—"  She flushed,
and hesitated; then calmly: "We left two
trunks there, you know."

He nodded.  "Go and rummage.  The janitor
has orders.  He has taken splendid care
of that big white cat of yours.  You'll find
everything in order, and quite comfortable."

So he made his adieux and went his way;
and Mr. Dineen followed, and Jack and his
father retired to their suite, and Silvette and
Diana went to theirs.

"Little sister," whispered Silvette, leaning
over Diana's pillow, where she lay, eyes closed;
"are you any happier than you were this
morning?"

"Yes."

"Very much?"

"Very much."

And that was all.  Silvette looked down at
the white face and closed eyes, sighed, and
extinguished the night light.

The eyes of happiness close only in sleep,
or in the arms of the best beloved.

.. vspace:: 2

Silvette's excited heart began to sing with
the first ray of the morning sun.  Also she
arose, dressed, and breakfasted with her
equally reckless affianced, which showed that
theirs was a hopeless case, and a recent one.

Dineen came and took Rivett away.  Diana
tasted a grape fruit in bed, and lay thinking
until noon brought luncheon and her maid
pro tem.

Jack and Silvette, unable to persuade her,
drifted off somewhere into the sparkling
confusion of the metropolis, promising to return
and take her for a drive through the Park.

About five o'clock she summoned her maid.

"Please say that I have gone to the studio
apartment to get some things from my trunks,"
she said; and wrote out the address in case
either Mr. Rivett or Mr. Dineen wished to
communicate with her.

Then, in furs, walking skirt and veil, and
her tired little heart already outstripping her
feet, she went out into the sunset world upon
the pilgrimage so long desired, so long and
wistfully deferred.

Her pulse beat fast as she entered *his* street.
The sight of the house filled her with
sudden trepidation, but she knew that he was
not there.  She had nearly three hours alone
before her, unless the others, returning to
find her note, might telephone and interrupt her.

Her key turned smoothly in the lock; she
crossed the threshold, holding her breath.

A dull, mellow light filled the studio.  In
the stillness a faint fragrance of tobacco hung
in the air.  Step by step she advanced, looking
at each familiar object as she came to it and
passed it—pausing to lay a gloved hand on
the sofa where, ages ago, two very young
people sat, touching with lingering fingers
the empty silver bowl which once, on a
summer day, had been almost hidden under a
fragrant load of peonies.

Something behind her—and it was not a
sound—made her turn.  The white cat sat
looking at her with no recognition in its solemn
eyes; and when she moved forward, hand
outstretched in wistful appeal, it calmly retreated
into the demi light of the bedroom beyond.

The well of desolation was filling fast now;
she sank into a wide chair by the tea table
and, lifting her veil, touched her eyes with her
handkerchief.  Then, disciplined, controlled,
she lay back looking into the bedroom where
she and her sister had slept and awakened
through those three magic days which even
Fate allowed before foreclosing on her destiny
forever.

Pink bars of sunlight slanted on the wall,
warming the painted armor of a forgotten
dead man—forgotten no more than some
among the living.  A great lady, painted in
her jewels, seemed to flush and smile as a rosy
bar crept across her cheek.  Doubtless she,
too, had loved before she died.

The girl extended her arm listlessly along
the upholstered arm of her chair, and looked
at her white-gloved hand.

In the hollow of that hand she had once
held Love, and had smilingly released it.  Out
of that little palm Love had flown far beyond
her ken; and there was no returning for that
winged thing.

Then, very quietly, she bowed her head, eyes
sheltered by her hand, and remained so,
motionless, for a long while.

The outer bell had sounded twice before
she realized that it was the bell of the
apartment.  Dazed, she rose, stood a moment
collecting herself, then walked to the door and
opened it.

Colonel Curmew stepped jauntily in.

So astonished was she that she scarcely
understood what he was about before they both
were on the studio threshold—she instinctively
retreating, he advancing, wreathed in a smile
so remarkable that it fascinated her.

"What an odd thing of you to do," she
said, still confused by the suddenness of his
invasion, groping instinctively for the reason.

"You left word at the Plaza; *I* understood,"
he said, his eyes fairly popping at her,
then palely roving around the place.

.. _`"'So *this* is your apartment?' he said"`:

.. figure:: images/img-371.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "'So *this* is your apartment?' he said."

   "'So *this* is your apartment?' he said."

"So *this* is your apartment?" he said.
"What a discreet and charming little nest!"

"I think you don't understand," she said;
"this is Mr. Edgerton's apartment."

He looked at her oddly, then burst into
laughter.

"You clever girl!" he chuckled.

"What!" she said, bewildered.

But he only smirked at her.

"Look here, little girl," he said, "suppose
you begin to make your eyes behave, and come
down to actualities.  You know what I want;
*I* know what you want.  We've been wasting
time all summer.  I'm no fool; neither are
you, as you show by selecting this nice, little
nook for a good, sensible talk."

She only stared at him, thinking he had gone
mad, and he laughed and twirled his mustache.

"Nix for the baby stare," he said reprovingly.
"I tell you I know what a girl like you
wants—privacy, discretion, *and* the usual
... And I've got it, little girl—wads of it!"

The grotesqueness of the dream seemed to
make her stupid; she tried to find some sense
and reason in what this man was saying to
her, strove to comprehend him, his visit, his
words.

"Are you asking me to—marry you," she
said, confused.

"*Marry* you!" he repeated, his expressive
features suddenly blank, then jocular again.

"Then—what——"

And, suddenly staring into the sinister
smirk, she comprehended, and turned ashy white.

Even he could not mistake the genuineness
of that white horror.

"You—you d-don't understand," he stammered,
his effrontery shaken....  "I—perhaps
I didn't understand you, either....  But
I thought—I supposed——"

His top hat fell clattering on the floor; he
stooped and picked it up, lifting a redder and
more impudent countenance to confront her.

"After all," he said with a sneer, "I had
a right to think you knew what you were
about—a girl, alone, who lives on her wits."

He hesitated, malignant now, writhing
internally under her pallid contempt.

"By God!" he said, "you're nothing better
than any other hired woman!  I helped hire
you myself."  And added, between his teeth:
"You little clawing cat!  I know damned
well you're an adventuress, but your game is
beyond me——"

He swung insolently on his heel, and found
himself looking straight into the eyes of Jacob
Rivett.

"Go out!" said Mr. Rivett in a low voice.

The colonel stared at him, confounded.

"Go out!" repeated Rivett softly.

The colonel, flushed and utterly discountenanced,
started toward the door.  Mr. Rivett
followed him out into the hall, closing the
door behind him.

Diana stood stock still, as though turned to
stone.  There had been a crash outside; then,
in rather rapid but irregular succession, a
series of thuds.  It was Colonel Curmew's
impact with wall and floor; Mr. Dineen had been
patiently knocking him down until that
battered and half-senseless warrior took the
count.  Then one careful and heavy kick sent
him down the first of the flights of stairs, and
a moment later Diana heard the door bell.

She opened; Mr. Rivett walked in slowly,
as though abstracted; Mr. Dineen came
behind, straightening his scarf-pin.

"You left the door ajar, so we walked in,"
observed Rivett, ignoring his previous
entrance.  He strolled about, glancing up at
the pictures and tapestries.  Then his manner
changed.

"Well, my dear," he said briskly, "Mr. Dineen
and I stopped at the hotel, and your
maid told us you had come here to get things
out of your trunks.  So, if you've finished
rummaging, the car is below, and Jack and
Silvette are waiting tea for us at the St. Regis."

"Thank you," she said in a low voice.

"Had you rather not come?"

"I had rather not—if you don't mind."

He walked over to her, took both her hands,
and looked into her eyes.

"I am at your service, my dear," he said.

"I know it....  My heart will always be
in yours."

His face grew grimmer.

"I guess we understand each other, child....
Next to my own—Silvette—and you....
Shall the car wait for you?"

"I will walk back."

"Dinner at seven," he said, releasing her hands.

She nodded, forcing a smile.

"At seven," she repeated, offering her hand
to Mr. Dineen, who squeezed it shamelessly
while unfeigned admiration transfigured his
broad face.

So they left her there in the studio, standing
in the dusk, head held high, and in her
eyes that dauntless courage that remains
though lips quiver and the hot tears sting the
straining throat.

Cautiously, lest self-control slip the leash,
she reseated herself and lay back in the chair,
closing her eyes.  Whatever battle raged
within her was fought out there in darkness
and in silence.  She lay motionless, never
stirring save for the slow clenching and
relaxing of her fingers; and at last even that
ceased.

Then the steel nerves and iron will that had
mastered the storm and soothed it, turned
traitor, tricking her, furtively relaxing in the
wake of exhaustion.

In the dark the white cat stole in, hesitated,
looked at her; then, satisfied, stretched out on
a Persian rug in front of her.

Long ago all sound had ceased in her ears;
her heart beat quietly, her breath came and
went as evenly and softly as the respiration of
a sleeping child.

Through the tall windows the starlight
touched her; at her feet the white cat dozed,
dreaming of nothing.

Confused, the brilliancy of electric light in
her eyes, Diana found herself sitting bolt
upright, clutching the arms of her chair, and
staring at a dark figure which leaned over her—a
man, laughing, still amazed, still a little
incredulous.

"Jim!" she faltered.

"Certainly.  What do you mean by going
to sleep in my favorite chair?"

"Oh, dear!  Oh, Jim!" she wailed, dropping
back helplessly into the depths of the
chair, "I must be perfectly crazy to do such
a thing!  What time is it?  I came in here
to—to get something"—she pressed her hands
to her temples—"to find—to look—  Oh, I
don't know what I'm talking about!"

Her hands dropped; she gazed hopelessly
up at him.

"Did you *ever* hear of such a perfect
fool?" she said.  "What time *is* it?—if you
think I can bear the information."

"It's only eight."

"Eight!  Jim, dear, *will* you go to that
telephone and inform Mr. Rivett that I have not
been run over, murdered, or arrested?"

He went over and telephoned, adding:
"Don't wait for either of us.  Leave the
tickets on Diana's dresser.  We'll be along pretty
soon."

"What did you mean, Jim?" she asked,
struggling with her veil.

"It's so late," he said, "that you'd better
wait for me to get into my jeans, and then I'll
take you over and you can get into yours, and
then we'll dine together, and go in for the
last act if we have time."

"I've spoiled your evening," she said.

"Do you think so?"

"Oh, I know it.  *Did* Mr. Rivett think me
an utter lunatic?"

"He didn't say so over the wire."

"What *did* he say, Jim?"

"Nothing that meant anything."

"*Tell* me!"

"All he said was for me to take care of you.
You perceive the irony, don't you?"

"Irony?" she repeated, looking at him.

"Why?  Aren't you capable of doing it?"

"Do you need anybody to look after you?"
he asked, smiling.

Slowly she lifted her eyes to his; his smile
died out.  Never had he looked into such a
desolate face.

"What is it?" he said, astonished; "what
on earth is the matter, Diana?  Has anything
happened?"

"Nothing—unusual—I suppose."

"You are not ill, are you?"

The tears were slowly blinding her, and she
turned her head, standing so, fighting for
self-mastery.

"Diana——"

She motioned him to silence.  He stood it
as long as he could, then stepped over beside
her and touched her arm.

"Tell me, dear?" he said under his breath.

She strove to speak—could not, yet;
motioned him aside, but he would have none of
such commands.

"You took my troubles on your slender
shoulders," he said; "may I not help you to
carry one or two of yours?" ... And, as
she made no answer: "Dear, if you have not
loved me, you have done for me, perhaps, even
more than love might have done."

She had dried her eyes; now she turned to
him quietly.

"It was love....  But don't mistake it,
Jim....  It was a love that asked for nothing
that it had not—desired nothing that you
had not already given....  I thought it best
to tell you—because—it is a world of men;
and women—sometimes—are held—lightly in
it——"

Her lip quivered, but she, somehow,
managed to meet his eyes and smile.

"All that happened long ago, Jim."

"Did love—die?"

"Yours," she said, smiling.  "I slew it very
neatly for you."

"I mean yours, Diana?"

"Mine?  Why, I gave you something better
than that," she began gaily.  Then her face
altered; she fell silent, watching him—at first
incredulous, then a little dazed.

"Didn't you know that I loved you?" he said.

"You mean—last summer....  Yes."

"*Now*!  Didn't you *know* it?"

"I—no."

Far in the chaos of her brain she heard his
words echoing, reëchoing in confused reiteration.

He was saying, slowly: "There has never
been a moment since that day that my life has
not been yours—that you have not possessed
my heart, my mind, filled them, owned them,
overwhelmingly inspired me with love and
adoration for you alone.  What I am, and
will be, I am, and shall be by grace of you.

"But gratitude is not the love of man for
woman; it is not even part of it; it is a
separate passion—a shrine by itself.  I worship
you there in my own fashion.

"But you, Diana—Japonette—"  He flung
one arm around her body.  She placed a firm
hand on his wrist as though to break the clasp,
looked at him, and began to tremble.

"Can you love me, Japonette?"

"*Can* you?"

"Yes."

Her hand tightened over his wrist as he
drew her close, crushing her to him.  She
looked up blindly into his eyes as he kissed
her; then her lids unclosed and her silent lips
moved, forming his name.

.. vspace:: 2

They neither dressed for the theater nor
went to it.  They dined together at an
outrageous hour in an unfashionable haunt of his.

Silvette, Jack, Mr. Rivett, and Mr. Dineen
found them at supper in the little parlor when
they arrived from the play.

"Di!" cried Silvette, "what on earth has
possessed you and Jim?"

Her voice failed her at sight of her sister's
face.

"*That!*" she exclaimed; "has *that* happened?
Darling!  My little Di—my little, little
girl!" she murmured, dropping on her
knees beside her.

Mr. Dineen looked foolishly at Mr. Rivett.

"Say it later, John," whispered Mr. Rivett
dryly.  "We'll go downstairs for a
while."

"You won't!" said Diana, turning laughingly
on them.  "You will wish us happiness,
and drink to it, too."  She rose, flushed and
radiant.  Silvette sprang to her feet and
kissed her; Jack seized her with determination,
and made no ceremony about it.

Then Diana walked straight up to Mr. Rivett,
and held out both hands; and the little
man kissed her grimly.

Mr. Dineen's blue eye sparkled; she looked
at the big, jolly Irishman, audaciously delighted.

"What man has done, man may do," she said.

"Faith, I'll see if a woman can do it, too!"
he said, saluting her with all the reckless grace
of his race.

Then Edgerton's hand was shaken and his
shoulder patted, and Jack summoned legions
of waiters from the regions below.

Rivett's burned-brown eyes bored through
and through Edgerton as he took his hand.

"I thought you'd do it," he said.

"Did you?  I wasn't very hopeful myself,"
said the young fellow, laughing.

"*I* was....  They're good children—good
children—like my own....  If you will
excuse me, I will go and telegraph my wife....
It will be a happiness to her—a great happiness."

Jack thrust a glass into his hand.  "What's
this?" demanded his father.

"We are to drink health to them, dad."

Mr. Rivett inspected his glass, hesitated,
while all waited; then, lifting it:

.. _`"'Health, happiness, prosperity to them'"`:

.. figure:: images/img-385.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "'Health, happiness, prosperity to them.'"

   "'Health, happiness, prosperity to them.'"

"They're good children," he said.  "Health,
happiness, prosperity to them—and—to the
house of Edgerton, Tennant and
Company! ... Break your glasses!"

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center

   THE END

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: noindent large bold

   Works of Robert W. Chambers

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

Japonette
The Common Law
The Adventures of a Modest Man
Ailsa Paige
The Danger Mark
Special Messenger
The Firing Line
The Younger Set
The Fighting Chance
Some Ladies in Haste
The Tree of Heaven
The Tracer of Lost Persons
A Young Man in a Hurry
Lorraine
Maids of Paradise
Ashes of Empire
The Red Republic
Outsiders
The Green Mouse
Iole
The Reckoning
The Maid-at-Arms
Cardigan
The Haunts of Men
The Mystery of Choice
The Cambric Mask
The Maker of Moons
The King in Yellow
In Search of the Unknown
The Conspirators
A King and a Few Dukes
In the Quarter

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent large bold

   For Children

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

Garden-Land
Mountain-Land
Forest-Land
Orchard-Land
River-Land
Outdoor-Land
Hide and Seek in Forest-Land

.. vspace:: 6

.. pgfooter::
