Then Penelope laughed as though in the sheer joy of casting years away and living over her childhood.

"Indeed I do," she returned. "But we were speaking of Joe Hicks. You surprised me. He was an old man when we knew him."

"He was seventy then. He is still seventy," I returned. "Stage-driving, you know, is conducive——"

"I used to think I'd like to be a stage-driver when I grew up," she interrupted. "You would see so much of the world with so little trouble, just holding the reins as the horses ambled along. How our ideas change, David!"

It was on the old and unchanged ideas that I wanted to dwell. The new would bring me back all too quickly to ancestral portraits, to imposing fireplaces and costly bear-skin rugs. I assented readily to her self-evident proposition and brushed it aside for the most interesting matter of Joseph Hicks.

"You used to love to drive," I said. "I can see you now wheedling Joe into letting you have the reins. Don't you remember his telling you that no self-respecting woman was ever seen driving more than one horse?"

"How shocked he would be could he see how I handle four," she said.

Should we never get out of the shadow of costly things, out of the clutch of changed ideas? For a moment I had a picture of Penelope on the box of a coach, ribbons and whip in hand, with four smart cobs stepping to the music of jingling harness, with bandy-legged grooms on the boot, and beside her some perfectly tailored creature in a glistening top-hat. It was a gallant picture, and one in which there was no part for me. Metaphorically I hurled at it a missile of the common clay of which, after all, we were both made. Surely fishing was a subject on which her ideas could not change.

"Do you remember the great expeditions we used to have along the creek?" I said.

"Remember them? Why, David, I never could forget such days as those." She leaned forward, with her hands clasped in her lap, as though to bring herself into closer touch with the kindred spirit on the divan. "I often laugh over the time I caught the big turtle on my hook. You remember—we were on the bridge at the end of the meadow, and I thought I had captured a whale, and when I saw it I was so astonished that I went head-first into the water."

"And I dived after you," I cried excitedly, "into two feet of water and three feet of mud."

"And we both ran home soaking wet and covered with green slime," she went on rapidly. "Will you ever forget her look when mother——"

"Mother?" There was in my exclamation a note of surprise in which was almost lost the delight I felt in her use of that word.

She caught the surprise alone, and spoke now as though offended at what she thought my protest. "Yes, mother. Why, David, don't you remember I always called her mother? And she was the only mother I ever knew—even if only for a brief summer."

"I was glad, Penelope," I said. "Yet you surprised me just a little, because I feared that so much had come into your life you might have forgotten——"

"Forgotten?" she returned with a gesture of impatience. "You do not grant me much heart if you think I could ever forget those who took me in when I was homeless, the mother who tucked me into bed every night, who taught me the first prayer I ever uttered." She paused for a moment, and sat with her eyes fixed on her clasped hands. I, too, was silent. Suddenly she looked up. "You are right, David; I had forgotten. I was ungrateful, too; but seeing you again and talking with you has brought those days very near to me. When I have thought of your father and mother it was as though they lived in another world, as though, if I would, I could never see them, they were so far away." She leaned back in her chair and broke into a little laugh. "How foolish of me! Why, David, we shall go to see them—you and I and Uncle Rufus. We shall go very soon, David." Her slender figure was clear-cut in the firelight and a hand was held out to me in invitation.

Had the world been mine to give, how gladly would I have lost it for the right to answer her as she asked; to go with her and to walk by the creek to that deep sea of our childhood where she had caught the turtle; to ride with her again over the mountain road where we had careered so madly on the white mule; to sit with her on the humble back steps and watch the sun sink into the mountains, and listen to the sheep in the meadow, the night-hawk in the sky, the rustle of the wind in the trees—to the valley's lullaby. From this I was held by the vital fact still unrevealed. I folded my arms and looked at the floor, to shut from my eyes the idle vision of the days to which Penelope would lead me, to shut from them Penelope herself sitting very straight, with head high, so that I had fancied the blue bow tossing there.

"We'll go in May," she said with a sweep of a small hand, as though our great adventure were settled. "We will go when the orchards are in blossom, David. The valley is loveliest then."

To go in May! To go when the hills were clad in the pink and white! To sit with her on the grassy barn-bridge in the evening as we had sat in the old days watching the mountains sink into the night, listening to the last faint echoes of the valley as she turned to restful sleep. Had the universe been mine to give, I would have bartered it for the power to answer her as she asked. Such joys as these I dared not even dream of now, but still I had not the strength to cut myself forever from the last faint hope of them. I looked up into her face aglow with prospect of a return to those simple, kindly days; into her eyes, kindled with that same light that glowed in them in the old time when she would slip her hands so trustingly in mine as we trudged together over the fields. I could say nothing.

"Why, David!" she cried, and again a hand was held out to me in appeal. "Don't you want to go with us?"

I laughed. And what a struggle I had to force into that laugh a note of happy gayety! I sat on the edge of the divan, very erect, pulling at my fingers, for I was no longer David Malcolm, a dreaming boy; I was a man with a vital fact to meet. Meeting it, I must become to her as any other man she knew—a formal creature, a lay figure for the barber's and tailor's art, with a gift of talking inanities.

"It's not because I don't want to go," I said. I was glad that I was in the shadow, for though my voice was steady I felt the blood leave my face. "But you see—there is something I have been wanting to tell you. I'm to be married."

"Oh!" she exclaimed.

If I had hoped to hear more of a cry of pain than that one exclamation of surprise, I must have been disappointed. But I cherished no such hope now. I was utterly miserable. I was awkward and ill at ease. The Penelope Blight I had known lived in another world, and this Penelope Blight who was regarding me so quietly, meeting my covert glance with a friendly smile, could, after all, never be more than a casual acquaintance.

"How splendid!" she said. Mrs. Bannister, I think, would have spoken in that same way, as though the news were quite the most delightful that she had ever heard. "Who to? Quick—I must hear all about it."

"To a Miss Todd," I answered, and, though I struggled against it, I cleared my throat dryly. "A Miss Gladys Todd."

The name sounded harshly in my ears. I was conscious that I had used it in the manner of the select circles of Harlansburg, and I was angry that, though knowing better, I had let myself lapse into the ways of a manikin. When I had spoken of Joe Hicks it was from my heart; I had forgotten my hands, and Penelope and I had laughed together. When I spoke of Gladys Todd my voice was tainted with apology. Inwardly I was calling myself a cad, for it mattered little whether or not I loved her. I had won her trust, and my first duty was to speak her name with pride. But I had had that brief glimpse of Penelope Blight, the companion of my boyhood; I had walked with her, grown lovelier than my dreams, through visionary woods and fields. She was before me, a dainty woman of the world; behind her the firelight fanned the leaves carved for her long ago by the old Italian artist; from above Reynolds's majestic lady looked down at her kindly, at me with a haughty stare, as if she read presumption in my mind. Never could I imagine her photographed on a camel's back by the side of ex-Judge Bundy. For this alone, it seemed to me as though I were unfolding to her the love story of a Darby and Joan, adorned with a chaos of easels and camels, bird's-eye-maple mantels and gayly painted plaques; as though I had come to tell the great lady of it, because she had always taken a kindly interest in my affairs.

Against this absurd humiliation I was fighting when again I coughed dryly and said: "She is the daughter of Doctor Todd, the president of McGraw."

"Oh, I see," returned Penelope brightly. "She must be very learned, David. But of course I knew that you would marry a clever woman." To this gentle flattery I raised my hand and shook my head in protest. "And I see, too, how it all came about—at college. How romantic! Just like you, David. And yet I can hardly think of you as a married man. It was only yesterday that I pulled you out of the creek; to-morrow you are to marry a charming woman—an accomplished woman, I know. She must sing and play the piano and do all kinds of things like that. How proud you should be!"

"I am," said I in a sepulchral tone, much as I might have answered to my name at roll-call.

"When she comes to town you must let me know—I shall call on her." There was no note but one of kindliness in Penelope's easily modulated voice, nothing but friendliness in the smile which parted her lips. As she leaned forward again, grasping the carved arms of her chair, she was speaking with queenly condescension, and it nettled me to find myself reduced to the level of the herd.

So there was in my voice a faint ring of pride when I said: "Gladys is abroad now." At least in this august presence a fiancee abroad sounded more impressive than a fiancee in Harlansburg, and I wanted it known that mine was a woman of the world and not simply the accomplished daughter of a small country town.

I think that the point struck home, for a hopeful "Oh!" escaped from Penelope's lips, as though she were giving vent to bottled-up doubts as to whether or not she could ever more than call on Gladys Todd. I think that she divined what I wanted her to understand—that though Gladys Todd had painted tulips on black plaques, she had acquired the dignity that comes with travel and the grace of a widened view.

"You must both come and dine with me when she gets home," Penelope said, with a manner of increased interest. "I suppose she is studying, David, music or painting."

"Travelling," I answered, encouraged to nonchalance by the impression I was making, for to travel merely sounded much more prosperous than to be working at the rudiments of an art. "She has been over since last May—just travelling around."

"And gathering together a trousseau—how delightful! You must be counting the days till she comes home, David?"

I nodded. I tried my best to look as though at that very moment I was busy with the fond calculation.

"And who is with her—some friend?" Penelope asked.

"Her father and mother," I answered. That sounded still more prosperous: the family of three—the learned doctor, his wife and accomplished daughter—wandering where they willed about the world. I should have stopped there, but I am one of those unfortunate persons who in telling anything must tell it all. My better judgment made me hesitate. My habit carried me on. "And Judge Bundy," I added.

"Judge who?" she exclaimed.

I fancied that I detected a strange note in her voice.

"Bundy—Judge Bundy," I replied, my own voice rising to a pitch of irritation.

Would she go on and make me spell the name that sounded so strangely when spoken in her presence? I was angry. It was at myself for my uncalled-for frankness. For one brief moment I had almost raised myself again to the level of the dainty creature in the old carved chair, to the approval even of the majestic lady above the great fireplace; speaking so nonchalantly of my friends who could wander where they willed over the face of the globe, I had almost made myself one with those for whom Italian sculptors drove the chisel and Reynolds plied his brush. But that name, so unwisely given, called to my mind the figure on the camel, and I was sure that by some strange freak of conjury Penelope must see it too; and worse, that other, the girl in the pugree, and behind them, discreetly placed, Doctor Todd, uncomfortably balancing on his giant beast, and Mrs. Todd taken inopportunely as she was mopping her brow. Well might Penelope look at me with quizzical eyes. I had tumbled again among the common herd. In my desperation I might have gone on to the whole truth recklessly; told her what an absurd man Judge Bundy really was, and how the Todds were being dragged over Europe on a glorified Cook's tour, captives at the wheels of his chariot; told her how I appreciated her sweet condescension in offering to call on the woman I loved. The woman I loved? For that moment I think I did love Gladys Todd, for I was standing to her defence against the crushing weight of millions of money and the bluest of blood. Yes, I am sure that I should have gone on and told her all, but Fate, wiser than I, intervened, and the butler announced Mr. Talcott.

As usual, Mr. Talcott did not wish tea—he had just come from the club, but he could not see why we were sitting in utter darkness. With Penelope's assent, he turned a button, showing thereby an exasperating familiarity with the room, and, seating himself comfortably before her, expressed his wonder that he had not seen her last night; he had hunted for her everywhere to join his party at supper. And now the lights were on and I a mere spectator at the play; I was having a glimpse of the stage on which I could never move. The lights burned high; they swept the dust and cobwebs from the diamond panes; they drove the flames to hiding in the ashes; their touch turned the leaves of the fireplace to dead stone. But Penelope they could not change. In the soft black webs, woven for her by a hundred toiling human spiders, she held still the heritage of the proud woman in frills and furbelows and the fine old man in wig and smallclothes. She was more radiant, as though her blood ran quicker in the joy of the part she played. Enter the butler. Enter Mr. Grant, a tall young man in business clothes, a good-natured fellow who laughed joyously at nothing. He had just dropped in on his way home after a beastly day downtown—a horrible day—a new attack on the trusts and a smash in the market. He fixed himself close to the curate's delight and beginning at the bottom worked upward, fortifying himself, as he explained, for a late dinner. Talcott thought that he had heard Grant say that he was going to the opera. Grant had never said any such thing. Didn't Mr. Malcolm agree with him that more than one act of opera was a bore? Mr. Malcolm quite agreed. Mr. Talcott wondered if Miss Blight had heard that Jerry White was engaged. Miss Blight was at once dying to know to whom. Mr. Talcott admonished her to think. Mr. Grant wanted to know if Mr. Malcolm had heard. But Mr. Malcolm had a strange unappreciation of important news. He moved in another world than this and he wanted to flee from it. He was homesick for familiar scenes and faces, for Miss Minion's and the long table in the basement to which the wizened old women would soon be crawling down for their evening nourishment, for Miss Tucker and his neighbor, Mr. Bunce, who by day made tooth-powder and by night talked Pater. He rose and held out his hand to the princess of the blood. Graciously she rose from her throne.

Graciously she said: "Good-by, David. It was good of you to drop in."

And graciously she added, as he backed awkwardly away: "Remember, you must let me know when Miss Todd comes. I shall call."



CHAPTER XVIII

I dined with the Blights. It had been a month since the afternoon when I talked with Penelope, and this evening in December I went to the house with hope high that in seeing her again I might have an opportunity of regaining a little of our lost friendship. The invitation had come from her, over the telephone, to dine with them most informally, and though she cleared herself of any charge of interest in the matter by adding that Mr. Blight wished to see me, I flattered myself with the hope that she might be speaking more personally than she cared to admit. How soon was that illusion wrecked! I entered the great library. Mrs. Bannister was standing by the fireplace, her eyes fixed on the opposite wall, her mind occupied with a struggle to suppress a yawn of boredom. Rufus Blight was reading a newspaper, but when I was announced he came forward and greeted me cordially. With his arm in mine he led me to Mrs. Bannister, and she allowed me to raise her hand and drop it. She said something, made some conventional remark on the great pleasure it gave her to see me; the yawn almost forced itself into view, but she set her lips firmly and drove it back. As I made my response to these friendly expressions of welcome my eyes swept the room and rested at last on the door through which I had come. There they held expectantly.

Mrs. Bannister read my thoughts. "Penelope is so distressed that she cannot see you to-night," she said, drawing her scarf across her bared and massive shoulders, so that I wondered if my entrance had suddenly chilled the air. "She had expected to be here, but this afternoon the Ruyters called up and insisted that she dine with them and go to the opera. It's 'Tristan.' She is mad about 'Tristan.'"

So faded the last vain hope! Had Penelope spent hours in devising a way of making it plain to me that the link between the past and the present was broken, she could not have been more adroit. Had David Malcolm, the boy, been coming to dine that night I know that she would have been standing there at Mrs. Bannister's side, her own eyes fixed expectantly on the door. But between the company of such excellent folk as these Ruyters, with the glorious music of "Tristan," and this awkward man whose people were not her people, who found content in the lodges of the Todds and Bundys, there could be but one choice. I was humiliated. The good-natured grace with which I expressed my disappointment to Mrs. Bannister belied my angry mind, and as we moved toward the dining-room, she chattering incessantly, she must have believed that I was entirely satisfied with just her company. Fortunately I had only to smile my responses, while my thoughts were busy with the cavalier way in which I had been treated. I was incensed at Penelope, but had it been any balm to my wounds to make her feel the weight of my anger, I knew well enough that she was far beyond the reach of my reproaches. But hopelessly I repeated over and over to myself that I never could forgive her. Then, by a sudden weak reversal, I did forgive her and let my anger evaporate into a silent protest against the unkind fate which had decreed that her people should no longer be my people.

It was when I saw her that I forgave her. As we three sat at dinner, Mrs. Bannister chattering on, Rufus Blight meditative but offering a mono-syllable now and then as evidence that he listened, I smiling responsively, Penelope came in. How could I not forgive her when I saw her thus, gowned in the daintiest art of the Rue de la Paix, cloaked in soft white fur, capped with a scarf of filmy lace, and one small hand held out to mine.

The fault, I said, was my own, mine and the Fates which had ordered that the orbits in which we moved should meet but rarely. The fault, too, lay with my forebears, who, had they considered me, would have settled on the shores of the Hudson instead of pushing westward so recklessly. Then I might now be going to the Ruyters', to sit at dinner at her side, to sit behind her in the shadow of an opera-box and whisper in her ear the ten thousand things which I had to say. I forgave Penelope. I called down maledictions on the robust Malcolms and McLaurins who had carried me out of her world and abandoned me to the garrulous Mrs. Bannister and the taciturn Rufus Blight.

Penelope was exceedingly sorry to be going out, but she knew that David would understand and would come some other night. David understood thoroughly; there was no reason for her to apologize, and, of course, he would come again. Penelope was immensely relieved to find him so complacent; she even wished he were to be of the company to which she was going. She had just come in to have a glimpse of him, and now she must be hurrying. And so she went away to take her bright place in that social firmament of which the abandoned Mr. Malcolm thought with so much envy and longing while he dallied again with sweetbreads and peas.

"It was very late when I got home," said Mrs. Bannister, taking up the thread of her narrative, "and who should I find here, as usual, but Herbert Talcott!"

The emphasis which she put on the words "as usual" aroused Mr. Blight from his placid interest in his glass of claret. "And who," said he, "is Talcott, anyway? What does he do?"

"Herbert Talcott is a remarkable man," replied Mrs. Bannister. "He does nothing."

It should have mattered little to me that Herbert Talcott refused tea from Penelope's hands every day of the week because he had just come from the club. Had Mrs. Bannister announced that he was calling daily on Gladys Todd, then I should very properly have been startled. Yet I sat up straight now as though she had named an archenemy of my happiness and my ears were keen to hear every word.

"He does absolutely nothing," she continued. "He has absolutely nothing, in spite of the reports that he is quite well off. I know positively that his father left him only ten thousand a year, and yet he knows everybody and goes everywhere. He is undeniably clever and was a great favorite at Harvard."

"Doesn't he work at all?" said Mr. Blight with a rising inflection of astonishment.

"Why, no," replied Mrs. Bannister. She saw the disapproval in my host's face and was quick to bring herself into sympathy. "That is what I can't understand. Now, there is Bob Grant, who is very rich in his own right, and yet goes religiously down to the Stock Exchange every day because he feels an obligation to be of some use in the world. But of the two men, Herbert Talcott is the more sought after."

"Sought after?" said my host inquiringly.

"Yes, sought after," repeated Mrs. Bannister. "He is asked everywhere. I suppose his name has something to do with it, but in these days, when name counts for so little and money for so much, it is remarkable."

"It is remarkable," said Rufus Blight, with a return to the spirit of the day when I had known him as a bustling, pompous man. "It is remarkable that he can be happy doing nothing. Look how restless I am with nothing to do but to play golf and read magazines. I can't understand him. And yet he seems a decent young man."

"But, you must remember, he is going out all the time," said Mrs. Bannister. "A man simply couldn't go out as he does and do anything. He is always in demand. Why, I know a dozen families into which he would be heartily welcomed. Last year it was reported that he was engaged to marry Jane Carmody, the mine man's daughter; but she was rather plain—to be truthful, very plain—and I will say for Herbert Talcott that he is not the kind who would marry solely for money."

Mrs. Bannister went on chattering her praise of Herbert Talcott, with a subtle purpose, I suspected, of impressing on me the utter absurdity of my entering the lists with him and of bringing Rufus Blight to a keener appreciation of the man whom he might be called on any day to welcome into his own family. With me her efforts were quite unneeded. With Rufus Blight the impression which she seemed to create was alone one of astonishment that any man could be happy doing nothing. Again and again he interrupted her to express his doubt on that point, and when dinner was over and Mrs. Bannister had retired, and we were smoking in the room which he called his den, he unmasked to me a mind weary of working over nothing. He should never have sold out to the trust, he said; in the mills he had been happy; every hour had its task and every day its victories in orders for rails and armor-plate. Now in a single day every month he could cut coupons and attend to dividends, and the others he must pass with golf and magazines.

His den? How quickly does this bourgeois phrase call up before us a hodgepodge room, an atmosphere of stale tobacco smoke, a table covered with pipes, books and magazines, littered with tobacco, walls burdened with hideous prints, a mantel adorned with objects dear to their owner from their associations, to the visitor hideous. The alien mind which had conceived the great library had evidently been held at bay when Rufus Blight was fitting himself into this den, his real home.

Over the fireplace was a great steel plate of the regretted mills, a world covered with immaculate smokeless buildings and cut with streets in which women were taking the air in barouches as though in a park; before the fireplace two patent rockers, and behind them a table littered with magazines and novels; in the corners golf sticks of innumerable designs, and wherever the eye turned it met coldly colored prints showing trotting horses in action. I had one of the rocking-chairs and Rufus Blight the other, and he was looking up at the mills when he spoke so regretfully of them. He referred again to Talcott.

"I can't understand it—a man happy doing nothing. I suppose I am a sort of machine—I must have work fed into me. Here I am at fifty-five and not a wheel moving. It was the power of the mills that kept me running. Now I have lost that." For a moment he was silent. Then he leaned toward me and said in a wistful voice: "David, you remember my brother. He could be happy just sitting thinking. Now if my energy could have been combined with his mentality, what——"

I finished the sentence. From the past came the picture of the Professor at the bare table in the cabin, pointing a long finger at me. "What a man we would have made."

Rufus Blight's eyes opened wide. "How did you read my thoughts so well!" he exclaimed.

"The conclusion was simple," said I. "Years ago I heard your brother say the same thing."

"Oh! Well it does express the case exactly. Henderson was always a wonderful man for thinking, David. In his young days he was perfectly happy with a book. There were not many books in our valley, but he read them all and it was very interesting to hear the ideas he formed from them. He was a wonderful talker." Rufus Blight nodded his head reminiscently. "A wonderful talker. But when it came to practical things he was quite helpless. It wasn't that he was lazy. If there had been at hand anything big to do, anything that appealed to him, he would have done it. What he needed was an opportunity. He really never had half a chance. He did try working in the store with me—and he tried hard, but a mind like his could not be happy measuring out sugar and counting eggs. Such work seemed to lead to nothing—I know it did to me. But I had a different kind of a mind. I had to feed it, like a machine, with figures and facts. But to him it was of no importance that butter had gone up a cent a pound. He would say that the ants weren't worried about it, nor the birds, nor the people of other planets. Do you know, David, I really used to envy Hendry his way of seeing things."

For a few moments Rufus Blight was silent, and my eyes were on the picture of the great mills to which the counting of sugar and eggs had led. From the mills they wandered to what they had given the man who built them, from the golf sticks to the prints of trotting horses and to the litter on the table. This den measured the true extent of his conquest. I looked at him. With a movement of weariness he stretched his feet toward the fire and leaned back and gazed at the ceiling, with a whimsical smile playing around the corners of his mouth.

"I had to work, David," he went on. "Hendry could earn a living teaching school, but I hadn't the brains, so I toiled away in the store from early morning until late at night. Teaching school was easier. He used to say that if the sluggard did actually go to the ant he would probably find him a most uninteresting creature to talk to. I guess Hendry was right. I do know that he had little of the virtue of the ant, but he was one of the most interesting men I ever heard talk. When I was behind the counter it was my main pleasure to listen to him, perched on a chair in front of it." Rufus Blight laughed. "Really, David, in those days I was proud of having such a distinguished brother. I had always looked up to him. He was older than I, four years, and he was my protector against the assaults of other lads—my ready compendium of universal knowledge. I never dreamed but that if I prospered he would prosper; and if he, then I. Why, David, I can feel him now clapping me on the back and calling me his grub-worm. 'Some day,' he would say, 'I'll come and ask a bed in your garret.' And I would laugh at him and talk of the time when we—I always said 'we'—when we should have a pair of fine trotters, and should go skimming over the country together instead of crawling along behind our blind mare." Rufus Blight paused. The whimsical smile was gone and he was looking at me through narrowed eyes. "Then the break came." And quickly, as he said it, he turned from me and began to smoke very hard.

"The break?" said I in a questioning tone; for I believed that at last I was to know the mystery which lay behind the Professor's conduct if only I could lead him on.

"Yes," said he in an even voice, "the break. The break came and I had to leave the valley. I wouldn't stay after that, David. There was nothing left for me there, but I had my work; I could go on weighing butter and counting eggs." Rufus Blight's voice was low and he spoke rapidly. He seemed to have it in his mind that I knew the story of those early days, had heard it, perhaps, from the lips of his brother or from common report, for men are prone to think their fellows well informed of the conspicuous facts of their lives. I dared not interrupt again for an explanation, lest my question should betray me to him as nothing more than a curious stranger. I know the story now in all its detail, but it came to me only from Rufus Blight, and from him in a few scattered threads, dropped for me to weave while in his den that night; feeling that he had found one whom he could trust, he unburdened his heart. Doubtless he had no such thought when he led me into the room, but there might have been in my eyes, when he spoke of the valley, some light of sympathy. And when he turned from that great hall, from his heavy table and his liveried servants, to speak of counting eggs and weighing butter, I had not even smiled at the incongruity. Then the dam broke, and memories backed up in years of silence broke forth in a quick and troubled flood.

"It was my fault, David, as much as his. I was a grub—a dull, toiling grub. But those long hours that I was toiling came to be good hours for me when it was for her sake. Why, it seemed that every pound of sugar I sold, that every little profit I made, was for her. I planned the finest house in the country as I stood all day at the counter, and it was for her. She was to have it all, and I only asked to be allowed to grub away—for her. She didn't understand me, David. She used to taunt me with being sordid, and said that I stayed at the store early and late because I loved a dollar most. I didn't understand women. I guess at least I should have closed up the store for an evening or two a week, and yet"—Rufus Blight hesitated—"and yet it wouldn't have made any difference. Hendry was a tall fellow. I was short and rather fat. Hendry could talk in a wonderful way. I was always silent except when it came to a trade. It had to be as it was, David, but it was hard—very hard. I don't think I said any more than most men would have said to him—perhaps less, because I never was a talker. And, after all, I couldn't blame them. Why, I remember, as I was leaving the valley, I said to him that if they ever needed a home they must come to me. He was offended. He drew himself up and said proudly that when I needed help I must come to them. Poor Hendry! It wasn't long before he did need help; but could you imagine him taking it from any one? He lost the school—he had become not quite orthodox in his ideas and was inclined to rail at church doctrine. He never was intended for manual labor; he worked hard when he could get work, but everything seemed against him. Then Penelope came, and he was left alone with her, and it made him bitter. I tried to get him to come to me; but could you imagine a man as proud as he, David—a man of his mind—coming to me after what had happened! Why, he called my offer charity. Then he left the valley, too, and I wrote to him from Pittsburgh, where I had bought a little mill. I wanted them to come to me—him and Penelope—for I was lonely. I had nothing but the mill; why, only in the mill was I happy. But could you imagine a man as proud as he, David, taking help from me? He answered rather curtly; said that some day I should see what he was worth; that he was not the idler he seemed. He said that again to me face to face, that once when I have seen him in all the years since the break."

Rufus Blight left his chair and stood by the fireplace, a hand on the mantel, his eyes watching the flames.

"Could I have done more, David? That night when I saw him I had come in from the mills late, and the servants would not let him wait for me even in the hall. He told me how he had shot the constable. He feared he had killed him, but he did not know, not daring to turn back to find out. He had walked the whole way, travelling day and night. I wanted him to stay, but he said that in Mary he had taken from me everything I had ever had; he could take no more. He had come not to beg, but to give me Penelope; and when he came again it would not be as a brother who could be turned from my door by the servants; when he came again it would be as a father of whom Penelope could feel no shame. I could not move him. I did my best, David, but he laughed and slapped me on the back and called me his old grub; said that some day I should really see what was in him. Then he went away—God only knows where."

"To the West," said I. "To the East, to Tibet."

"Yes," said Rufus Blight. He was standing before me, his hands clasped behind him, his eyes intent on the ceiling.

"And you came to us for Penelope," I said. The last trace of my antipathy to this man, once to me so fat and pompous, was gone.

He looked at me with a faint smile of embarrassment. "And what an ungrateful brute I was!" he exclaimed. "David, did you remember the promises I made that day?"

"I used to remember them," I answered, "and to wonder."

"You had the right," he said. "But remember what I was—just a lonely grub. Till Penelope came to me I had nothing but the mills. Having her, I wanted her entirely." He held out his hand. "She was only that high, David, and I was getting gray. I never looked at her but there came into my mind another just that high who had a desk in school in front of mine, and sometimes I seemed to be looking again over the top of my spelling-book at the same bright hair and the same bobbing bit of ribbon. Can't you see what she meant to me, David? She hated me at first—she spoke always of her father and of you—and I was jealous."

"I understand," said I.

He had not spoken of the letters. There was no need of it. I knew that they were in his mind and that he was perfectly conscious of the pettiness of his action. But for me his simple confession had absolved him.

"I wanted her entirely," he went on, throwing himself into a chair at my side. "I wanted something to live for beside the mills. In Penelope I found it. What the mills gave me was for her. Every hour I worked was happier because it was for her good. Sometimes I have to fight against a dread that Hendry will come back and take her from me, and yet when I think of him, tumbling around the world alone, I want him too—want him in that very chair you are sitting in. It would be so good just to hear him talk, and it wouldn't make any difference to us now if he did just talk." Rufus Blight brought a fist down on the arm of his chair. "David, I must find him!"

"He went to Tibet," said I.

"To the South Seas, to the Arctic, to Tibet—everywhere, David. His trail has led me all over the world. I can never catch up to him. The Philadelphia man you told me of—Harassan—dead three years. My secretary, Mallencroft, has found that in San Francisco a man named Henderson worked on The Press there, but only two men remembered him. They said he was erratic, always in trouble by writing things contrary to the paper's policy, and gave up in disgust, to ship as supercargo on a vessel trading in the South Seas. He wrote a book after that, but the publishers failed, and Mallencroft couldn't even find a copy of it. That must have been about the time you saw him—when he lectured on 'Life.' Poor old Hendry! It's his pride, his confounded pride—that's the trouble."

I had risen. Rufus Blight came to me and laid a hand on each of my shoulders. What a change since that day long ago! He had to reach up to me, and I looked down into his face.

"You'll think me a strange fellow, David. I didn't mean to tell you so much, but it just would come out when I saw that you understood. We must find him—you and I. We may find him any day; at this very minute he may be going by the Old Grub's door. Watch for him."

I promised. I must come often, he said; it was good to have such a friend as I was, one who could understand, to whom he could talk of old days in the valley. He had never really been at home since he left the valley. He had lived in strange places, among strange people. We must all go back—back to the valley, he and Penelope and I—we should go in May—Penelope had talked of it—in May, when the orchards were in blossom.

Rufus Blight laughed at the joyous prospect. And I? I closed my eyes to it. I turned away, through the great hall, but he, with unwelcome kindness, followed me to the stairs. What a great expedition it would be—to the valley—just he and I and Penelope! I laughed ironically—at myself. I plunged down the deep-carpeted steps. The grilled door closed behind me. I paused a moment to turn up my collar against the cold, to button my gloves and collect my scattered thoughts. How the wind bit!

Across the Avenue a dark figure leaned against the wall of the park. As I stepped over the pavement the man seemed to think that I was moving toward him, for he roused himself quickly and walked rapidly up the street. I laughed at his fright and turned on my way downtown, for I was thinking of myself and of what I had lost, and I had no care for shivering tramps. I reached the corner. Rufus Blight's words came back to me. Had that man been watching the Old Grub's door? I turned sharply, but I saw nothing, no sign of a living thing save the lights of a retreating cab.



CHAPTER XIX

I have spoken casually, in this rambling story of mine, of young Marshall, a fellow-lodger at Miss Minion's. He was the Brummel of the boarding-house. The fact that he occupied the smallest rear hall-bedroom, with the minimum of daylight, in no way affected his standing, for everybody knew that he went out in society. Indeed, for him more spacious quarters were hardly needed, as he was seldom at home except to dress and to sleep. By day he hurried about Wall Street, buying and selling bonds. On the winter evenings he stepped forth from his cell a splendid figure, realizing, as nearly as possible, those spotless and creaseless young men whom the illustrators draw with so much unction. Then we might have imagined that he would step on, into his brougham, to be whirled away to some smart dinner. Alas! his equipage was not even a cab. His pair of prancing blacks were only his galoches, and his protection against the weather a long ulster, a chest-protector of thickly padded satin, and an opera-hat. The great trouble which Marshall had on these nightly expeditions was getting home. I do not mean to insinuate that it was to find Miss Minion's door. It was to pass Miss Minion's door. There were several absent-minded old gentlemen living in the house who had a way of forgetting that they were not its sole occupants. Coming in from their weekly or monthly trip to the theatre, the hour would to them seem horribly late and they would catch the chain. Occasionally I was myself their victim, and had to stand shivering outside, ringing the bell with one hand and with the other playing a tattoo on the panels. More generally it was Marshall, for, though I was frequently held very late at my work downtown, he was abroad at his pleasures even later. The lateness with which he pursued these pleasures was no evidence against their innocence. Tom Marshall was one of the most innocent men that I have ever known. He was not a New Yorker. He came, as he told me, of the Marshalls of Pogatuck, in Maine. The way that he said it made me understand that there was no bluer blood in the land than that running in the veins of the Pogatuck Marshalls, and it explained why the Knickerbockers were so willing to meet him as an equal. He had come from Pogatuck by way of Harvard, and one advantage which his education had given him was an acquaintance that he could turn to use, inasmuch as his great ambition was to "go out." To him a card to the Ruyters would have been an olive-wreath of victory. It was a trophy that he hoped to win, and to that end he worked patiently, selling bonds all day, and at night as patiently setting forth in his galoches, his ulster, and his opera-hat to storm the outer works of society. He belonged to innumerable dancing-classes. Indeed, it seemed to me that he kept himself poor meeting their dues, for I remember more than one occasion when he appealed to me in distress because he had to send fifteen dollars to the treasurer of the Tuesdays or the Fridays and the pater had forgotten to remit his allowance. Tom Marshall's father was the most forgetful of men.

I liked him. You could not help liking him. He was so thoroughly good-natured and affable. His conversation was by no means instructive, but there was an airiness about his views and ambitions which was restful to one who was taking life as seriously as was I in those days. I got to know him by having constantly to let him in. Of all the lodgers in the house, I was the most likely to be up late, and if one of the forgetful old gentlemen fastened the door-chain, to me would fall the duty of answering the signals of distress from the stoop.

Tom Marshall has played but a small part in my life. Like that of Boller of '89, his place in the cast is a minor one. He is one of those who fall in near the end of the line when the company joins hands to sidle across the stage, bowing and smiling, after the second act. Yet without him I wonder sometimes how my own play would have ended. It seems to me now as though he must have been born in Pogatuck, as though his whole life had been ordered, his love of going out developed, so that at the proper moment he might enter the stage where I was playing the hero to an empty house. He entered it at one o'clock in the morning. The door was chained. At the moment I was sitting in my room, on my one comfortable chair, my book on the floor at my side, my pipe in my mouth, and I was smoking very hard. What countless pipes I had smoked in this same way since the night, a month before, when I had dined with Rufus Blight! What countless nights I had sat in this same way, in this same month, with my book on the floor and my mind revolving ceaselessly in a circle! This night I had come to that part of the circle where I thought of Penelope, the lovely, the formal, the distant Penelope, when down in the depths of the house I heard the muffled clatter of the bell and faint rat-tats upon the front door. I went to the window and put out my head, to see on the stoop the muffled black figure of Tom Marshall.

"It was old Ransome again, I'll bet you," he said, when I had unchained the door and we stood in the dimly lighted hall. "This is the third time this month that he has locked me out, confound him!"

I raised my finger to my lips, cautioning Marshall not to arouse the whole house. But he would not be silenced—it was early yet, anyway—he had been to a Friday cotillon and it was a beastly bore—even the supper was poor—he wanted something to eat. His foot was on the stairs when he discovered that he was hungry. He discovered at the same time that he was indebted to me for having let him in, not alone this time but many others, and he insisted on showing his appreciation by taking me out to a late supper. I demurred. Marshall talked louder. I insinuated that he had been drinking, to which he replied that the Fridays never served anything but weak punch. I should have protested further, but Mrs. Markham's door opened at the head of the stairs and I heard her breathing indignantly. For the sake of quiet I consented, and so it happened that at one o'clock in the morning I found myself in the street, with my arm tucked under Marshall's and our faces set toward O'Corrigan's chop-house.

O'Corrigan's has been torn down these many years, but you can see a score of replicas of it on upper Sixth Avenue and Broadway. Its plate-glass windows were adorned with set pieces of lobsters and oysters, celery and apples, and you entered through a revolving door into an atmosphere laden heavily with kitchen fumes, into a room which multiplied itself in many mirrors. When you went there for the first time the man who took you, if he knew his New York, would tell you of O'Corrigan's rise from waiting at a downtown lunch-counter to the ownership of these glittering halls.

Of course, Tom Marshall knew O'Corrigan. He hailed him cordially, and it seemed to me that he had no little pride in the privilege. He even nodded to the bartender as we passed him, leading me to the archway whence we could survey the adjoining room to see what was going on there. But nothing was going on there. These late-night restaurants are at their best in colored pictures. There they seem to own an atmosphere of light and joy. There lovely women sip champagne, that gayest of wines, from dainty glasses, and gallant men seem to say to us that if you would have health and wealth and happiness you would never go home until morning, but would live with them in this bright world of wine and women and song. Really, they are melancholy places, especially in their gayest hours. If vice really were attractive, how vicious most of us would be! I do not say that O'Corrigan's was a vicious place. At certain hours its patronage was of the dullest respectability from the suburbs. Dull respectability is not supposed to be abroad in the early hours of the morning, but it does seek at times to hover on the edge of disrespectability with something of the roguish curiosity of childhood. And now the respectables and the unrespectables, a motley gathering in that garish room, amid the ugly debris of their feasting, made an unattractive picture from which I turned with a sense of relief to the quieter place behind us.

As we moved to a table in a secluded corner, I saw Talcott and Bob Grant sitting with their heads close together over a litter of plates and glasses. Grant spoke to me. As he rose and offered his hand, I noticed in his eyes that watery brightness which comes in certain stages of conviviality. The effusiveness of his greeting might have flattered me had I not realized that his heart was unduly expanded by alcohol. To see such a great, good-natured animal as young Grant thus exhilarated was not surprising to me, but with Talcott it was different. I had known him only as a quiet, self-possessed man who, from policy if nothing else, I believed must be as circumspect in his life as in his clothes. Now he spoke to me. His greeting was perfunctory. In his eyes was that watery dulness which comes with the later stages of conviviality. His hair was tousled, his collar crushed, his tie awry; for whiskey muddles the clothes as well as the brain. He nodded to me; he wondered what I was doing out so late; he snapped his fingers and called loudly for Andrew. The summons to the waiter was for me a hint to be gone.

Tom Marshall was greatly impressed by the fact that I knew Talcott and Grant. When I rejoined him he seemed to treat me with greater respect than hitherto, for he had been rather patronizing. It was surprising to him, always so busy storming the outer works, to know that I, the drudge of the fourth floor front, who never "went out," was so intimate with these gallant cadets who lived in the citadel. He had come to give me beer. Now in a faltering voice he suggested champagne, rubbing his hands and smiling as he named it, as though it were his habit to indulge nightly in so expensive a beverage. Remembering that he had owed me five dollars for many months, I deemed it unwise to make an unnecessary inroad into his pocket-book. With my refusal he grew insistent, and at last consented, only with reluctance, to a modest repast of welsh-rabbit and beer.

"And the beer at once," he commanded the waiter.

Then, unfolding his napkin on his knees and lighting a cigarette, he looked over my shoulder to the distant table where the two heads were close together over the litter of plates and glasses. "So you know Talcott and Grant," he went on. "I'm sorry you didn't introduce me, Malcolm. I've seen them around, of course, but, strangely, have never met them. They are a great pair—stacks of money—Grant especially. Talcott was in Harvard with me—was rather a snob and went with the rich crowd—very smart now. He was one of Willie Ruyter's ushers."

I smiled with compassion at this broken discourse. It brought to my mind Mrs. Bannister. Tom Marshall and Mrs. Bannister looked at life from the same view-point and I from one entirely different. To my mind there was nothing very remarkable in having my existence acknowledged by two very muddled young men, who in their present state acknowledged also their brotherhood with the roue whom I had seen in the next room or the cabman sitting outside on his box in a half-stupor. I might envy the good fortune which allowed them to move in the same world as Penelope Blight, but to disavow intimacy with them, even to one so strangely ambitious as Tom Marshall, called for no loss of pride. With some show of temper I avowed that I hardly knew them. I had only met them once or twice at the house of friends. But the sincerity with which I disowned them served only to heighten the new-born respect with which Marshall treated me. He did not know that I "went out." Laughing, I retorted that I never did go out. He said that I must; that he would take me out; he would present me to the right people. He launched into the delights of going out and the necessity of going out if a man was to be anybody at all; then suddenly stopped at the thought that the beer ordered at once was very slow in coming.

"That waiter is always confoundedly slow," he said. "I should have insisted on having Andrew. I apologize, Malcolm—I should have thought of Andrew. You would have enjoyed Andrew."

"Andrew?" I repeated, questioning.

"Yes, Andrew," replied Marshall. "Here's the beer. Now, George, hurry those rabbits—I'm famished. Andrew," he went on, lighting a fresh cigarette, "is a remarkable character. He is full of philosophy. He quoted Herbert Spencer to me the other night. He has a sly way—and a somewhat disconcerting one—when you order a drink, of trying to induce you to take mineral water, and if he can, and O'Corrigan is not within hearing, he serves a temperance lecture with every Scotch and soda." Marshall tapped his forehead. "A little queer," he said sagely, "but shrewd. By Jove, there he is now arguing with Bob Grant—a temperance lecture, I'll bet—trying to persuade him to take plain soda."

I looked over my shoulder to see this philosophic waiter who served temperance lectures with whiskey. His back was to me. I saw only a tall, loose-jointed figure clad in a waiter's jacket, a long, black arm outstretched, a napkin draped over it, a long, thin hand clutching a bill-of-fare, and a head of dark hair shot with white. The bill-of-fare struck the table in emphasis, the napkin waved like a flag of battle, both arms were stretched out wide in appeal. Grant laughed again—uproariously.

"I'll bet he is trying to uplift those fellows," said Marshall. "He has a good chance to get in a word, as O'Corrigan is in the next room."

I turned to my companion. At that moment I was more interested in the non-arrival of the welsh-rabbit than in the scene behind me, for waiters are by nature inclined to be voluble when the opportunity is given them, and to me there was nothing particularly amusing in the picture of young Grant, with that graciousness which comes with too much drink, condescending to argue with this crack-brained fellow who moved with his head in the clouds while his weary feet shuffled in and out of O'Corrigan's kitchen. At the moment there was nothing familiar to me in the tall, thin figure, nothing more than I should have seen in any other lank, shambling waiter waving a napkin and a bill-of-fare. I was growing tired. I was regretting that I had even allowed Tom Marshall to inveigle me out so late, to breathe heavy air and to eat heavy food at this hour, when I should be refreshing my body with sleep.

But Tom Marshall's spirits grew higher as the night grew older. He was immensely comfortable with his beer and cigarettes, immensely amused at the argument which was going on behind my back.

"You really must meet Andrew. You will enjoy him, Malcolm," he said. "I'll call him over when he is through with those men. He is a character worth knowing."

"You speak of him as if you had known him for a long time," I returned, and I think my lips must have curled a little; but if I was unappreciative of the hospitality which I was enjoying, my excuse was my great weariness.

"Oh dear, no," he demurred; "I've been coming here for years—late at night, you understand, for a bite occasionally. I never saw him until last fall—got talking to him—I always like to talk to waiters, to get their ideas. I found him a curious chap, better educated than most of them and surprisingly well informed—surprisingly. He seemed to have knocked around a good deal."

"Had been a waiter in Hoboken, I suppose," said I, "and in Philadelphia——"

"In Hoboken!" My sarcasm nettled Marshall. "He told me that he had never been a waiter at all until he came here; he was simply looking for an opportunity to find something really congenial. He was fresh from Canton. In Hoboken!" Tom Marshall leaned toward me aggressively. "Why, man, he has been everywhere—through the South Seas, in——"

There was something familiar in the tall, thin figure, something that even the waiter's jacket and the waving napkin could not hide.

"What's up now?" Marshall cried.

I had half risen from my chair and turned. Talcott and Grant were leaning over their table, elbows resting there, heads close together. And behind Talcott's chair the black figure was bent until the hands could touch the floor. He was brushing up scattered crumbs. As I looked, he raised his head, and it seemed to me that he had forgotten his menial task, had forgotten his menial place, for he was very still. He was no longer dusting. The napkin fell from his outstretched hand. He was listening to the muttered, maudlin conversation as though from the chaos of it he gathered some sober words of truth.

I looked at my companion. "In the South Seas, you said, Marshall. Has he spoken of San Francisco? Do you know his name?"

Marshall sprang from his chair. I was up too, and it was to see the Professor with a hand on Talcott's collar, shaking him, holding him at arm's length as he shook him, as though this man were some contemptible thing that he would touch as little as he could and yet must hold to and shake until it was cleansed of its vileness.



CHAPTER XX

For myself I should have chosen the hut where I first met the Professor above the home to which he led me in the early morning. If the old was tumble-down, dark and ill-furnished, its air was the pure air of the mountains and the way to it through things green and lovely. To the new we went through squalid streets, westward, toward the river; we turned into a dilapidated tenement; we climbed three flights of rickety stairs into a room which compared to mine as mine to the house of Rufus Blight. The lighted gas revealed hardly more than a narrow cell, with dirty, torn paper on the walls, a narrow bed, a cheap table, and a single chair. Giving me the chair, my host seated himself upon the bed, so close to me, of necessity, that our knees touched. To my eyes he was little older than that day fifteen years before when we had met. He was old then to my youthful view. Thinner he could not have been, and now only the scattered white hairs and the deepened lines of his face marked his increased years. He had laid aside his overcoat, and sat before me clad in his waiter's clothes, but the waiter's mien was gone. With his legs crossed, his hands clasped over one knee, his head drawn down between his shoulders, he seemed the languid, weary man of the store-porch, whose eyes quickened only at the trumpet-call to debate. Clearly his attitude toward me was one of antagonism. This I saw in his quiet gaze and in the restless twitching of fingers, impatient for the cut and thrust of argument.

On our way from O'Corrigan's to his squalid room, the Professor had spoken little. For the most part, as he plodded along at my side, he had contented himself in expressing opinions not complimentary to Herbert Talcott, in voicing his regret that he had not thrashed him instead of merely shaking him. That he had not thrashed Talcott was hardly evidence of the mildness of his attack. It was rather because I had interposed; and then O'Corrigan, in the character of the outraged proprietor of a highly respectable restaurant, had intruded himself into the quarrel, even going so far as to threaten to call the police. But I was first in the melee, and on me fell the blame of saving Talcott from merited chastisement. For this the Professor upbraided me. He spoke as though Talcott had been the aggressor. Had not Talcott struck him a blow under the eye? Yes, but it was feebly given. But the sting of it was to the Professor's pride, and he would regret to his dying day that I had withheld him from giving the young scoundrel his just deserts.

Poor Talcott! I confessed to myself that it would have given me pleasure to have had some part in his chastisement, and as we plodded westward through the empty streets I pictured him driving home in a hansom, trying to gather his scattered wits and to discover some reason why a quiet, respectful waiter should have assailed him without cause. Poor muddled Talcott! He did not know that his betrayer had been distilled in far-off Scotland, and had lain away in vats a score of years awaiting that very moment to make him speak his honest thought just as the quiet, respectful waiter was bending behind him to pick up crumbs. Perhaps he could not even remember what he was saying when he was stopped by the long fingers which were thrust down the back of his neck. Did he remember, what he was saying could be none of the waiter's affair, anyway. It could matter nothing to that humble creature if he did speak of Rufus Blight as a vulgar little brute and of Penelope as "a bit raw, but worth marrying for her money alone." "A woman's millions never grow passe," was an aphorism which fitted the lips of the half-drunken cynic. To be sure, the things which he had said were not such as a man would give expression to were he cold sober, even if he thought them, and much less would he apply them to particular persons, yet when you are sitting late at night with such a good fellow as Bob Grant over your fifth Scotch and soda, you are likely to be a little unguarded. For who would think of a waiter objecting? Poor, muddled, drunken Talcott! He did not know that he really had given the first blow, had changed the obsequious waiter into a fury by striking him in the heart of his pride. And to such a fury had the Professor been wrought, and so firmly did anger hold his mind, that my own sudden interference was received by him as quite in the ordinary, though he protested against my good offices. He remonstrated indignantly when I acquiesced in O'Corrigan's assertion that my humble friend must be demented, a plea which opened a way out of the predicament. Fortunately, the Professor's own wisdom in refusing an explanation of an apparently unprovoked assault gave color to this theory, and as Talcott's one clear thought was to escape without any unpleasant notoriety, O'Corrigan satisfied his ire by ordering his mad employee out of the place.

So the Professor came into my charge. Had we met after a separation of only a day, his treatment of me could not have been more casual. He consented to my accompanying him home, but this seemed less from a desire to see me again than to protest against my having publicly humiliated him by treating him as demented. He had always thought that David Malcolm would understand him under every circumstance; that whatever his condition and whatever mine, when we met again it would be with mutual esteem. Yet David Malcolm had judged him by his clothes, had given him a waiter's heart and mind with a waiter's garb! He was bent on proving to me that, however low he might have fallen in the world's eye, he was as sane as he ever had been, and that in accepting O'Corrigan's opinion so readily I had done him a wrong.

Now when we were sitting in his room, so close that our knees touched, he seemed by his silence to tell me that he had spoken, and that my part was to excuse and to explain what he deemed a reflection on himself. I saw him in his shabby waiter's garb. This was the uniform in which he marched, moved night after night with shuffling feet and eyes alert lest he break the dishes—marched to the divine drumbeat, marched under God's sealed orders. His own high-flowing phrases came back to me, and I could have laughed, seeing him, but I remembered that those phrases had been the sabre cuts which drove me into action, that but for them I might be dozing like the very dogs, dozing with the unhappy restlessness of enforced inaction. Perhaps I was moving to barren conquests, but barren conquests are better than defeat. He had moved to defeat, and I pitied him. He asked of me excuse and explanation. I, having none to give, was silent. But I think he must have seen in my eyes something of the same light which he found in them that morning in the smoky cabin. Then he had reached down, taken me in his arms and called me his only friend. Now with a sudden movement he held out his hand to mine. Anger was gone. He had forgotten Talcott. He had forgotten the stranger who seized his arm and thwarted his fury. He saw only the boy who yesterday had stood at his side when every man's hand was against him.

"Davy—Davy," he cried, "you have come again to help me."

"Yes—to take you home," said I, "to your brother and Penelope."

He made a gesture of dissent and his eyes narrowed. "No," he returned with sharpness. "That cannot be. Don't you suppose that I should have gone to them of my own accord had it been possible?"

"But it is possible," I said. "They want you. I have it from their own lips."

"I know—I know," he replied. "Rufus would give me a home. Rufus would give me money—all I need a hundred times over. But is that what I really need? I want to do something myself, David—to be somebody myself. I have it in me. All I ask is an opportunity." He brought his fist down on his knee. "And by heaven, I will find it! I will show them I'm not the worthless fellow I seem."

"But they don't think you worthless, Professor," said I, addressing him as I might have, had we been in the cabin again. "They have been searching for you everywhere——"

"But never expecting to find me as I am now," he interrupted, spreading wide his arms and inviting me to behold him as he was, a shabby waiter. "Rufus, who has made what the world calls a success, would be proud of me; and Penelope, who has learned to think with the rest of the world, would be proud of me—proud to present me to her friends—to splendid fellows like Talcott and his muddle-headed companion." He leaned forward and tapped me on the knee with his long forefinger, and his face broke into a bitter smile as he spoke more quietly. "David, I have seen Penelope. I came to New York just to be near her, and many a night I have stood for hours across the street from her house only to get a glimpse of her. And sometimes as I see her stepping in or out of her carriage I say to myself that she cannot be my daughter; and if I spoke to her how high she would toss her head! Why, she would lose less caste by walking with Talcott drunk than with me as I am now."

"But she need not see you as you are now," I protested, half smiling at the incongruous picture which he had drawn of Penelope walking down the avenue by the side of this shabby waiter. "They need not even know——"

I paused to grasp at some inoffensive phrase in which to describe his forlorn condition.

"That I have fallen so low," he exclaimed. He had been quick to see my predicament, and laughed. "I know what you are thinking of, David. You saw me an obsequious, tip-grasping fellow, with a spirit as heavy as his feet. You think me broken and down and out." The hands spread wide again. "I—down and out? Why, Davy, I've been like this a score of times, and I am still game. You must not think that because of a little temporary embarrassment I am in prime condition to go crawling to Rufus and tell him that I have failed and need his help. I told Rufus that I would come back and claim Penelope when she could be proud to own me as her father." He brought his fist down on his knee again. "She couldn't be very proud now, but I'll show them!"

It was hard to combat so overwhelming a pride as this, a pride which seemed to thrive in the ashes of hope. I tried to break it by speaking of his brother and daughter, giving him an account of my renewed acquaintance with them and of their talk of him. The effect was to set him smoking a very black pipe. Rising and leaning over the foot-rail of the bed, much as in the old days he leaned lazily over the store counter, he held his eyes fixed on mine, and smoked while I argued. He was a patient listener. My own story was interwoven with his, and that he might understand my relations with his brother and Penelope, I told him briefly all that had occurred with me since that day when we parted in the clearing. When I came to the college lecture, and my efforts to see him then, and to find him, he made a motion as though to interrupt. I paused. He commanded me to go on, and the smile which came to his face at my mention of his discourse on "Life" held there until I had finished. But my story, intended to give force to my arguments for him to surrender his pride, only served to put him in a reminiscent mood.

"That was a lecture, wasn't it, David?" he said, laughing. "Why, do you know that when I talked that night I almost imagined that I was a success in life. It was the introduction that did it—distinguished traveller—famous journalist. And you, I suppose, accepted it all as truth. Still, you may be thankful you didn't have to hear Harassan—a gigantic windbag, if there ever was one. I fell in with him one day in a smoking-car and got to talking about my travels. He was preparing a lecture on China, and as he had never been there, I was useful, so he took me into his house until he had pumped me dry. I substituted for him that night at your college for half the fee—was to read his lecture, but when I got started on it I couldn't stand it. An astonishing man, Harassan! When he died he left a modest fortune made in spouting buncombe; and yet—" The Professor held out a hand in appeal. "How many men are called great because they succeed in talking buncombe and selling rubbish! That is what discourages me so; and doesn't it make you a little bitter when you meet men surrounded by every material evidence of success and go fishing in their brains and can't hook up a single original idea of any kind? Why, I've met hundreds of them, Davy. Now that night Harassan would have hurled at you a lot of pompous commonplaces, and you would have hailed him as a great and wise man. I broke from the beaten path. I told you plain truth. Was I ever asked to lecture again? People won't pay to hear plain truth, Davy. I suspect that I should have done better had I not been trying all my life to drive plain truth into unwilling ears."

"I suspect so, too," said I mildly.

He laughed at my ready acquiescence. "I started wrong at home," he went on. "Had I listened to Rufus and plodded along in his humdrum way, I suppose I'd be rich now. But I couldn't. After I left the valley I went to Kansas and really settled down, got a school to teach, and for a time I was quite in the way of becoming a successful educator—principal of a high-school, perhaps. I might even have become president of a college, but to die the head of a fresh-water college did not seem a very glorious end; nor did teaching a lot of foolish young men to live what are held successful lives seem very inspiring living. So I went on west to San Francisco and tried newspaper work. It seemed just the vocation for me. Here I could use my sword against the dragons of untruth and corruption. The beast stalks forth brazenly enough, and without considering the moral side at all, it is sport to attack him. To get myself into a position to attack him, I had to serve an apprenticeship. You know what that means—the daily digging for ephemeral facts. But I stuck to it. I saw the day when I should be the most feared man on the coast, wielding a pen as efficacious as a surgeon's knife. Unfortunately, my knife first struck a politician named Mulligan, who owned some stock in the paper. You know the result. I could direct my caustic pen against O'Connor or Einstein, but from Mulligan came my living. I took to the sea to breathe purer air, sailing as supercargo on a trading vessel. For two years I knocked about the South Sea Islands and along the coast of Asia, and it seemed that I was gathering a vast amount of information which would be of service to the race if preserved in a book. How I worked over that book! When I got back to San Francisco I saw my fame and fortune about to be made by it. At last the power to do something worth while was in my reach."

The Professor paused. He spread wide his arms in a gesture to express futility. "I had as well stood on the highest peak of the Rockies and read my manuscript to space. The distinguished traveller and author!" With a hand upon his heart, he bowed gravely. "The author of one thousand volumes of uncut leaves. Useless! Well, I suppose Harassan found the one I gave him of some service, for he got most of his famous Chinese lecture out of it. There was some pretty good stuff in that book, too, but Harassan was the only man I ever heard of who agreed with me; and he—well, he was a successful idiot."

"And of course you never shared the benefits he reaped," said I.

"Benefits from Harassan?" The Professor laughed. "Why, David, you might have thought that I had ruined Harassan from the way he talked when he received a letter from Todd, that president of yours. Todd said that I would subvert the morals of the country. So the Reverend Valerian and I parted with words—he to go to China in his mind, I to work my way there in the body." The Professor rested himself on the bed, and between puffs at his pipe continued: "I had an idea of going to Tibet. That seemed to be really doing something—to go to Lhasa and unveil its mysteries to the world. I started from Peking, afoot mostly, and so you see I didn't make very rapid progress, and while walking I had plenty of time to think. When I was about half-way to the border, the absurdity of the thing came to me—spending years to get into Tibet, only to find there a filthy land ruled by a mad religion. I got almost to Shen-si, and turned back. Somehow China suited me. I fell into the Chinese way of thinking, and might have gone on satisfied with a daily dole of rice and fish had it not been for Penelope. I never could forget Penelope. Always, it seemed to me, she must be waiting for me to come back with my promises fulfilled, to return a man she could be proud to own her father. It looked pretty black for me then, David. China isn't a place to accomplish much, and I might as well have gone on to Lhasa as to do what I did—work three years in the consulate at Che-Foo as interpreter and useful man, eyes, arms, and brains for a politician from Missouri. But my one purpose was to get home, to see Penelope, to see her a woman grown, and perhaps—I would say to myself sometimes—to speak to her."

"And you have found her a woman grown," said I. "Now you have only to speak to her."

He shook his head. "I've been here three months now, David, and I have seen her perhaps a score of times; and when I see her, sometimes entering that great house, sometimes driving in her carriage, always the very picture of the ideal princess, she seems a creature of another world than mine, and I laugh at myself for trying to believe that there ever was a time when she sat on my knees and talked of days to come when we should have a house like that and drive in such a carriage! Would she understand me now? Would temporary necessity condone my descending to this uniform? I tried to do better when I came here, but I couldn't. I tried even your profession, but they wanted young men. I came to this only to be near her. But I am away again, David. I must be up and doing." He had risen, and was speaking rapidly as he paced the narrow limits of the room. "Money is what I need and I will have it. Money has always seemed to me a paltry thing to work for, but now it is for Penelope's sake. There has been a plan in my mind for some time, David, only I have delayed starting on it—for Penelope's sake, you understand. I'm going to Argentina. There was a man on my ship coming out from Yokohama who was bound for Argentina, and he told me——"

The Professor launched into a glowing account of the promise of the southern country. To his mind, he had only to reach it to acquire the wealth which he wanted. The man who had failed in every undertaking, who had turned back from every goal to which he had set his eyes, would win there in a few years that for which men in other parts of the world strove a lifetime. I pointed out that the opportunity lay right at his hand, and his answer was to spread wide his arms that I might see the waiter's jacket. He had the better of the argument, but the reason lay in his own character. Then I had recourse to pleading, and my plea was made not for his sake, but for Penelope's, for only when I spoke of her would he listen. I tried to show him Penelope's danger, as it had been revealed to us that very night in Talcott's drunken talk. His reply was a laugh. He had so idealized Penelope that it was inconceivable that she should fall a victim to the attentions of such a vapid creature. He had not seen, as I had, Talcott sober and correct in deportment. He had not fallen, as I had, under the spell of Talcott's easy manner when he had just dropped in from the club to talk of last night's dance and to-morrow's opera. He did not know, as I did, that the whole company from whom Penelope might choose a mate were to the outward eye just such commonplace men whose power of fascination lay in commonplace deeds and words. The Professor, whose whole life had been spent pursuing shadows, was naturally of a romantic turn of mind, and it was even difficult for him to conceive of Penelope marrying at all. That she could be inveigled into so grave a step with a man whose sole claim to merit was well-cut clothes and a command of social patois was quite beyond his comprehension. In vain I argued that most women married just such men, and perhaps it was because the sex had attained wisdom with experience, had discovered that a brilliant mind on parade might be amusing, but that, like its duller fellows, it retired to barracks and found contentment in the same humdrum existence as they. The birth of eternal, enduring love was but a matter of propinquity. Sitting on the front doorstep of an afternoon talking and strolling down to the drugstore every evening for soda-water, Darby and Joan discovered that existence apart was worse than death. And so might Joan's richer sister in the old carved chair, under the eyes of Reynolds's majestic lady, grow accustomed to the coming and going of Darby's richer brother, confirm herself in the habit of taking narcotic conversation, talk of last night's dinner and to-morrow's dance, until he seemed to become essential to her existence. All this I explained to the Professor. He retorted that I had grown cynical. Perhaps I had grown cynical, but my cynicism was born of experience—bitter experience, I called it then. Perhaps, imbittered by my own thwarted hopes, I exaggerated the danger in which Penelope stood. Perhaps, in my own vanity and jealousy, I magnified Talcott's sins, knowing well enough that, after all, he was no worse than most of his brothers. Yet there was a danger, and its avoidance was simple could I only induce the man before me to abandon his foolish pride. At least, said I, his brother should know of the night's occurrence.

"Know that, after all my boasts, I had come to waiting in a restaurant and quarrelling with drunken boys?" he cried, shaking his head and waving an arm to deny my demand. "Of course, if there were any possibility of Penelope marrying that fool it would be different. But, David, I know Rufus. He is not brilliant, but he is shrewd, and I'll trust him to find out if anybody is after his money. And Penelope? Haven't I seen Penelope many a night stepping into her carriage—don't you think I can trust her to look higher than that?"

I could not change him, though we argued until dawn came. Then we walked together, in the gray of the early morning, from the poor quarter where he lived to Miss Minion's, a house that had grown in my eyes, by contrast, palatial. The street was still deserted, and standing by my door I made a last appeal. But he shook his head.

"Davy, can't you understand?" he said, as he took my hand in parting. "I admit that I have been a failure up to date, but Rufus and Penelope are the last people in the world that I want to know it, and I'll trust you to be discreet. Some day it may be best to tell them, but at present, no. Silence, David; I have your promise. I'm to have one more chance in Argentina, and if I fail you have your way; but I won't fail."

He turned from me and stood very straight. His overcoat collar was buttoned to the neck, hiding the uniform of his adversity. For a moment, as I watched him, he seemed to be in the gulch again; we looked over the towering walls of brick and stone, and to me they were the ridge-side, dark and sombre in the gray light; we looked beyond the crest of it, beyond the chimneys, the tall pines which pierced the sky-line, and our eyes rested on a flake of cloud. I think it must have been there. I felt the pressure of his hand.

"I'll not be gone long, Davy," he said. "I'm coming back very soon, and till then you will take care of Penelope; won't you, boy?"



CHAPTER XXI

Spring came and with it the Todds. All that winter they had been so far from me, often so far from my thoughts even, that the remembrance of them would bring a shock like a sudden consciousness of sin or the recollection of a duty left undone. My fiancee's communication with me had dwindled to a weekly post-card. At first these had carried to me some little hint of affection, but latterly Gladys had contented herself with commonplace scrawls announcing that this was where they were staying for a few days or that the window in the hotel marked with a cross was hers. And my replies, so conscientiously written every Saturday night, had become rather brief and formal statements of facts. I had long since ceased to take Miss Minion's stairs two steps at a time in my eagerness to secure the portly epistle from abroad; the post-card which had filled its place I regarded with languid interest. You can imagine, then, that it was with surprise that I found, one evening in May, a fat letter directed to me in the tall, angular hand. The reading of it was like a blow which restored me to my senses. I had awakened to find myself not only engaged but on the verge of marriage. The Todds were coming home!

If my fiancee had neglected me for many months, she now overwhelmed me with sixty closely written pages of devotion. It was as though on coming face to face with steamer tickets she, too, had awakened from a dream and found herself engaged. It might well be true that the few weeks in London before embarking on the homeward stage had been her first opportunity to sit down with pen and paper to have what she called "a talk" with me. A year before that talk would have been highly gratifying and flattering, but now I read with a critical eye, and while I could find no fault with the sentiments expressed, the form of the expression irritated me. It was natural that the sentiment pent up in those months of hurried sight-seeing should break forth in this moment of leisure, but to me, grown practical, the form would have been more effective if direct and simple. In those days Penelope was so distant from me, so cold and implacable, that I might have turned to Gladys Todd with a thought that here at last was peace, an end of absurd and inordinate ambition, and perhaps content. Had she written to me simply that she was coming home, I might have soothed myself with the idea that I, too, was going home, back to the simple ways to which I was born, back, after all, to my own people. But Gladys Todd, grown more cultured than ever in the grand tour and revealing her mind in poetical phrases, was as much a being of another world than mine as was Penelope set in her frame of costly simplicity. I should go to the pier to meet her, I said. I knew that it could not be gladly, but I was bound by a sense of honor, by the remembrance of four years through which she had waited for me so patiently, always cheerful and firm in her faith in my power to win a home for us both. Because I was so bound, I vowed that she should never know the change in me, and then if I set myself to the task I might fan into flame the dead embers of my boyish infatuation.

So I stood on the pier that May morning when the Todds came home. So grim was my determination that I might have stood there with a smiling, expectant face had I not in that very hour seen Penelope. I had held to that cherished custom of mine to begin my day with a walk up-town, for always there was a bare chance that I might have a glimpse of her. There was poor consolation in her passing bow; but I could not let her go altogether out of my existence, and even her distant greeting served to keep me in the number of her acquaintances. This day I wanted to take a formal farewell, as if in doffing my hat I renounced all my claims, abandoned all my idle dreams, and set myself to the right path. Of course, I met her, and for a time I had cause to regret that I had not taken the direct way to the pier, for Penelope that morning, as she drove by me rapidly down the avenue, was the embodiment of loveliness, a loveliness beyond the reach of him whom fortune held to the sidewalk. Her horses seemed to step with pride at being a part of such a perfect turnout, and the men on the box to have turned to statues by the congealing of their self-importance. Seeing her, erect, a slender, quiet figure in filmy black, with a white-gloved hand on her parasol, you forgave the horses for lifting their feet so mincingly and the men for staring before them with such hauteur. She whirled by me in all that costly simplicity. I doffed my hat. She saw me and, strangely enough, smiled at me more kindly than in many days. I watched until even the men's tall hats were lost in the maze at Twenty-third Street, and as I watched I said my silent farewell to Penelope Blight.

On the pier, in the cheering, expectant throng that watched the steamer turning into her dock, I leaned on my cane and fixed my eyes with resolution on the ship which was bringing me a life of happiness. But I was silent as I pondered over the radiant smile with which I had been greeted as the carriage swept by. A week ago Penelope had given her head just a tilt of recognition; this morning she had seemed genuinely glad to see me, as though it were a pleasure to know that I lived in the same world. This afternoon, I said forgetfully, I would call upon her again—I had not called for so long. Then I heard my name. I came back to the pier and the cheering crowd, and, looking up, saw Gladys Todd.

Beside me there was a young man who brandished his cane to the peril of his neighbors' heads while he shouted again and again to his inamorata. My duty was to evince just such joy, but when I tried to call her name my lips refused to form it, and I only raised my hat and smiled. Gladys, standing by the ship's rail, waved her hand at me. Then she seemed to forget me entirely, and turned to a youngish-looking, stout man at her side.

The stout man began to interest me, because Gladys had written to me that she would be on deck this day straining her eyes to the shore where her knight would be waiting. Now it seemed as though a brief glance at her knight was sufficient, and that she found more charm in this portly fellow traveller.

Ex-Judge Bundy had small side-whiskers, and always wore a large derby and a frock coat, sometimes black, sometimes pale gray. This youngish-looking stout man was clean shaven, and he had the ruddy skin of the out-of-doors. His hat was brown felt, with its crown wound around with a white pugree—a rather affected hat, but it harmonized with his rough gray tweeds. His appearance was English; he might be, I thought, the governor of some island colony. But when he raised himself from the rail on which he had been leaning, slipped one hand into the breast of his coat, and turned to address Doctor Todd, speaking as though he were Jupiter and the doctor Mercury disguised in dingy clerical clothes, I recognized the patron of my alma mater.

They came down the gangway one by one, the ex-judge leading; then Gladys Todd, rather mannish in a straight-cut English suit and a sailor hat, slung from her shoulder a camera, and nestling in one arm a Yorkshire terrier; then Doctor Todd, unchanged, in the same clothes in which he had sailed, for he was one of those men who could go twice around the world and collect nothing but statistics and postcards; then Mrs. Todd with her two greatest acquisitions in bold evidence, a lorgnette and a caged paroquet.

For a moment I felt that I had come solely to welcome ex-Judge Bundy home. He was first to get my hand, and he held it while he told me how kind it was of me to take so much trouble; it was good to be home; he was always glad to get back to America—speaking as though these expeditions were annual events. He might have gone on and presented me to his friends the Todds had I not disengaged myself and turned to my fiancee with a hand outstretched.