He was so ingenuous, so frankly in earnest, so open in his gratitude and admiration, that Martin, square-jawed, taciturn, and repressed, turned away to hide the sudden flash of liking that warmed his eyes.

"I'll take it as a favor if you'll ask my advice," he replied. "In fact, I'll probably give you a darned sight more advice than you'll either like or follow. Well, what are you going to do now?"

"Send a wire to my mother," said Jimmy, "You see, Maw's worried, and—it'll make her so happy that I can't put that off for another minute. Do you mind if I tell her that I got the job through your kindness?"

"If you wish," said Martin, with a smile. "You can step to the desk over there and find a form, and I'll have it sent from here."

Jimmy rushed to the desk and returned in a few minutes, with a jubilant face. Martin took the message outside to have it sent and was compelled to read it to settle a question of the count of words and read this eulogium:

"Martin finest man on earth. Never knew any so good and kind. Got Sayers job for me on better terms than I could dare ask for. Glorious chance. Martin will help me make good. Marvelous fund common sense. Can't fail when he so kind and friendly. Writing long letter. Love. God bless you. Jimmy."

"Lack of gratitude certainly isn't one of his failings," thought Martin; but somehow his face appeared neither harsh nor cynical, from which it might be surmised that he was not at all displeased. He sauntered back, rejoined his guest, and then said. "When do you propose to begin work?"

"I've already begun," said Jimmy, looking up at him. "Been thinking about it since you left. But—I can't see just how I'm to do it until I can meet Mr. Sayers and tell him all about Judge Granger. I think I should go back to Princetown first of all and get full knowledge from the superintendent of our technical advantages over all other cars. And if I go back there Granger will have me pinched! Isn't it rotten luck? What a chump I was! That man hates me because we look alike. It's not my fault at all. I didn't make his lookings. If I had, I'd have tried to make a better job of it. It seems to me that either he or I will have to change his face. He ought to wear whiskers. A Judge without whiskers isn't any good, anyhow, I reckon. So here I am with the biggest chance of my life, and it's all mucked up because I can't get that chap to forget that I helped him out with a single speech I made for him up at Yimville. Why, if he had sense enough to appreciate it, I gave him more free advertising than he ever had before in all his life! That apology of mine should have made more votes for him than he'd ever have grabbed through his own eloquence. I wouldn't harm him for anything and yet he hates me. I tried to make it up when I met him. I went the limit. But he was so sore he wouldn't even think of sleeping in the same section with me, although I had the upper berth and never snore nor talk in my sleep! He's a big man and I'm a slob; but all of that doesn't seem to count with him. He can't forgive me because we look alike. If I were in his place I'd feel sorry for the other chap. I'd hold conference with him about our mutual predicament. I'd send him clippings from interesting folks who make things for noses and tell how to grow eyebrows and how to flatten ears and make wide grins into sweet, diminutive smiles. I'd put him next to people who change gray eyes into brown ones, and purple eyes into greens. What on earth am I to do to get a passport into his state from J. Woodworth-Granger so I can keep my job?"

He spoke almost tearfully, as if contemplating an unsurmountable obstacle, but Martin appeared unimpressed by his woe. Indeed, he chuckled as if amused.

"It might take time," he said, "to persuade the judge; but—suppose you leave it to me. I have an idea that I can do it within a week or ten days, or at least gain an armistice. And you needn't worry about Sayers. I'll tell him how the matter stands. You can put in your time for a week or two scouting around car agencies here in New York, and in the meantime, can consider yourself employed. Meet me here to-morrow at three o'clock."

Jimmy experienced several paradoxes in his surroundings when he stepped briskly out of the skyscraper wherein he had been entertained. It was nearly five o'clock in a dark afternoon, but the universe seemed filled with sunshine; heavy flakes were falling softly, but they appeared rose petals; men and women wore overcoats but the air was benignantly soft and warm; each sputtering arc light had a rainbow or a beautiful halo; street cars clanged, taxis honk-honked, the wheels of trucks screeched and ground across paving blocks and metal rails; but the whole blended into a strange triumphal march as if performed by some immense band of music. Mr. James Gollop had to fight an impulse to sing, dance, shout and altogether conduct himself with the improprieties that are chronicled against one King David, who played on timbrels and recklessly jazzed himself out of his job. Unlike King David, he came to his senses in time to commune with himself and to admonish himself.

"Steady, Jimmy! Steady! Whoa there! Back up! Ca'm yourself! Ca'm yourself. You've got the job, but there's a lot of work to be done before you become part owner of the finest car on earth, the peerless wonder of the transportation world, the winged victory of the roads. Don't let your head swell, James. Better keep it solid bone than have it turn into a toy balloon; because the latter can be pricked with a bare bodkin."

But nevertheless his happiness was so great, his hopes so high, his dreams so insurgent, that he longed, most fervently, to share his glad news with someone. As he said to himself, "If I can't tell someone pretty soon, I'll just naturally blow up! That's all there is to that!"

And evidently the "someone" he wished to make his confidant was pretty well known in the back of his head, for he suddenly hurried out to the nearest corner and boarded a car that would take him into old New York.

As the car came under the big electric sign reading "Gonfaroni's" it shone up there in the heavens like a lighthouse to a homecoming mariner, and he blithely stepped off and hastened down the side street to the entrance of MacDougall Alley. It was dark, chill and deserted. Lights shone through the cracks of one window at the far end, but the studio which was his Mecca was rayless.

Jimmy stood for a long time in front of it, staring up at its darkened windows, and derided himself for his pangs of disappointment.

"This can't go on any longer," he told himself, savagely. "To-morrow I've just got to know Mary Allen's real name. I'm a big enough man now—prospectively at least—to dare to walk into that Martha Putnam hotel, glare at the ogress who guards the pearly gates, and tell her to send my card up to Miss So-and-so and to step lively. Here I am, just bubbling over with glad news like a tin tea kettle on a red hot stove spouting steam, and I can't go uptown to that hotel and send up my card because I've never had the courage to ask her real name. I've been a coward all along, but now it's got to stop."

Nevertheless he did return to the uptown precincts and for a long time stood guard in front of the distinguished woman's caravanserai, hoping against all common sense that Mary Allen might appear. He remembered reading an article in a Sunday newspaper on telepathy, and stood across the street frowning at the Martha Putnam and concentrating his mind on the object of his adoration, and beseeching her to come to the elevator, and thence down into the cold street in response to his great desire. But somehow the telepathy stuff didn't work at all according to propaganda. He shut his eyes and tried more earnestly until aroused by a voice. "Hey! You can't sleep in that doorway. Move on! Wiggle your stumps!"

A fat policeman stood regarding him. Jimmy was discouraged, for he knew that any policeman, anywhere, is an unfeeling wretch, who, if he met the great god Cupid on the street, would promptly arrest that light of the world for indecent exposure and perhaps carry him to the nearest station by the tips of his golden wings as if he were but a vagrant chicken destined for the sergeant's pot.

"Come! Fade away!" the enemy ordered, belligerently.

And Mr. James Gollop, crestfallen, faded.



CHAPTER XIV

At exactly three-thirty o'clock on the following day in the Engineers' Club the taciturn Mr. Martin, after some further questioning, took from his pocket a contract and duplicate that assured Mr. James Gollop employment.

"I've been in a peculiar situation in this affair," said Martin. "I've had to fight against some personal likings and inclinations, and stand as a mediator; for I must look after the best interests of the Sayers Automobile Company as well as the interests of Jim Gollop. However, here you are. Sign these."

Jimmy signed the contracts with as glad a hand as if he had been affixing his signature to some document of inheritance that would bring him a million. He put his own copy in his pocket with as much care as if it were precious beyond computation.

"Now," he said, "when do I meet Mr. Sayers?"

"Sayers," said Martin, as he put the original contract into his pocket, "is going somewhere West to-day. You'll see him soon enough. His instructions are that you are to go immediately to San Augustine, Florida, to see what is being done by rival concerns down there at the beach races. I suppose he expects you to pick up points and information. Keep track of your expense account. Learn all you can. Then report at Princetown."

"But—about Granger! Am I to——"

"You'll be away at least two weeks," said Martin. "Many things can happen in that time. If I were you, I'd forget that the Judge is on earth. I'll—I'll tell Sayers about this matter," said his benefactor, with the first sign of hesitancy that Jim had ever seen him display. "And in the meantime, I'll do all I can to get that Judge to show some sense. You can be certain of that. Well, may good luck go with you!"

At exactly seven-thirty that evening Mr. James Gollop reluctantly departed from the street in front of the Martha Putnam hotel, where he had taken up sentry go after convincing himself that MacDougall Alley was dark.

"Got to catch my train to San Augustine," he warned himself. "Can't put it off a minute longer because the meeting is on there day after to-morrow, and it won't wait until I can tell Mary Allen all about it! But if I don't straighten this matter out so that hereafter I can at least write her, or send her a wire, I'm no organizer at all and my chance with the Sayers Company isn't worth a tinker's curse."

As if he were forever scraping under the wire just before the barrier fell, Jimmy got the last vacant berth in the sleeper and, recovering from his Martha Putnam disappointment, whistled blithely as a porter carried his suitcase to the Pullman steps. He stood outside to enjoy the last of his cigar and was mildly interested in the final rush of passengers when a porter came rapidly wheeling an invalid's chair in which sat a man bodily broken and hideously scarred. The porter halted the chair and the man asked, anxiously, if it were possible to secure a berth.

"Sorry, sir," said the Pullman conductor, "but we're full up. You should have engaged one earlier for this train. It's always crowded now."

"I didn't know until half an hour ago that I could come," said the man in the wheel chair with such evident disappointment that Jimmy's sympathy was enlisted. "Isn't there some place you can put me? It's—it's like a day out of my life if I miss this train to San Augustine!"

That was more than Jimmy could endure.

"Give this man my berth," said Jimmy to the conductor. "No. 12 in this car. I can stick it through the night in the smoker. I've done it heaps of times!"

And with that he brushed the porter aside, bent forward, lifted the wreck from the chair and with his sturdy strength carried him up the steps and to the relinquished section.

"There," he said cheerfully, as the porter came bearing the cushions with which to make the invalid comfortable. "Now you'll be right as a top."

The train took on motion and Jimmy was starting to carry his suitcase forward when the Pullman conductor, proving that kindliness commands kindliness, came hurrying forward and said, "Here! Let the porter find a seat for you. It's pretty crowded out there now. Or, if the gentleman has no objections, you might sit here with him until it's time to make the berths down. The day coaches and smokers usually get thinned out a little by ten o'clock at night."

And thus it was that Jimmy made a new friend.

"You see," explained the man he had befriended, "this race meeting down there means a lot to a chap smashed up as I am. It's about the only thrill I ever get since—since—I had to live in a chair. My name is Carver. Dan Carver. What's yours?"

"Jim Gollop," said Jimmy, puzzling his excellent memory to recall why it was that the name Dan Carver suggested something, and then, after an interval, blurting, "Carver? Are you the man who used to be a famous race driver two or three years ago? The man who wrecked himself in the Vanderbilt Cup races rather than take a chance on throwing his machine into the crowd at a turn?"

"The same—what's left of him," Carver admitted.

"Then," said Jimmy, "I wish I could have given you a whole Pullman instead of just one berth! By gosh! You deserve it. The firm you drove for ought to have seen to that."

"Firms forget, when a man is no longer of use," said Carver with a shake of his head.

"Some of 'em do. Mine isn't that sort. But, you see, my firm is head and shoulders above the others—in some ways. The Sayers Automobile Company isn't one of these big, swollen concerns. Old Tom Sayers looks after his people."

He was in true form again, proud of his firm, boasting its merits, advertising it and ready to defend it quite as valiantly as if he had been with it from its beginnings.

"I've heard of it," admitted Carver, politely. "Suppose it's because I'm so out of the game that I don't know more about it than I do. My fault! How long you been with 'em?"

"Since about five o'clock this afternoon," said Jimmy.

The crippled record breaker took out his watch, consulted it, and slipped it back in his pocket.

"Long time, isn't it?" he commented. "That's nearly three hours. I've broken a few records in my time, but you beat anything I've come across. It took thirteen years for me to learn that one concern I worked for was no good. It took you three hours to learn the one you work for is the best there is."

"But I believe it!" declared Jimmy, with his unquenchable enthusiasm. "Why? Because I believe in Tom Sayers. I believe in his honesty, and his reputation, and—well—because he gave me a chance."

"Know him very well?" his seat mate asked.

"Never met him," Jimmy admitted.

"Know anything about his cars?" Carver somewhat cynically asked.

"I know that some of those who have them brag about them," said Jimmy. "And I know that the men who work for him, from the superintendent down to the yard boy, believe in them and say so, and would tear to pieces a man who says they aren't the best. That's good enough for me. Know anything about cars? Um-m-m-mh! I reckon I don't know a thing on earth about 'em. If my life depended upon starting a car that somebody had handed me on a platter, I suppose I'd be a deader. But a man doesn't have to know it all to succeed. Noah couldn't have started the Aquitania; but he did navigate the ark pretty successfully, and nobody denies that he was the first admiral that ever sailed the seas. Admiral Nelson and Commodore Paul Jones got there, somehow, but if they had seen a motor launch tearing down on them at twenty miles an hour, I can imagine both of them diving off the poop!"

Before they parted that night, the expert and the novice had become friends. Before the race meeting was over, Mr. James Gollop knew more about the merits of cars, the advantages of one over the other, and the prevailing failings and universal obstacles than he had ever dreamed before. Incidentally, he had established a friendship that lasted and was to be of mutual benefit thereafter. He jubilated when considering fortune. All things were coming his way. He would have accepted it as a part of the regular procedure had he found a twenty dollar gold piece on the pavement. His luck was in.

And so, like a happy victor, Mr. James Gollop of the Sayers Automobile Company returned to New York one evening and, knowing that it was too late to base any hope on either MacDougall Alley or the Martha Putnam hotel, repaired, in lieu thereof, to the palm-garden precincts of the place in which he had last dined with Mary Allen. He made plans for the morrow, thought of what he might say to her, determined that the mystery should end, and was anything but discontented. He ate leisurely, enjoyed his food, and perused an evening paper. He liked the black coffee, and felt civilized when he resorted to the finger bowl. He got to his feet leisurely, well content, and then stopped, bent to one side, moved a pace and through a screen of palm fronds stared as if transfixed. What he saw was Mary Allen seated at a nice little table, inspecting a bunch of violets in her hand, whilst across from her, stiff, pompous, self-conscious, but entirely self-satisfied, sat the man who might have been Mr. James Gollop but who was, indubitably one J. Woodworth-Granger, Judge of the Fourth District Court. Others might not identify him, but Mr. James Gollop did and for a moment his mind was in a turmoil of surprise and anger. Granger! That wind bag had somehow, probably by mere accident, met the only girl on earth, taken base advantage of his likeness to one Jim Gollop, and was profiting thereby! How dare he! To impersonate another man under ordinary circumstances was in itself sufficiently culpable, but in private affairs, extraordinary and personal, it became outrageous.

A great wave of indignation surged Jimmy Gollop as if he had been thrust into a turbulent sea and was being helplessly bobbed up and down thereon. He was undecided whether to create a scene by rushing forward, seizing the impertinent Judge by the short hair at the back of his neck, which country barbers had encouraged to a bristle, or to stalk deliberately forward like the long lost hero in the cinema and—after the screen had announced his words, "This girl is mine!"—scornfully indicate to the impostor the door through which the latter, crestfallen, must inevitably depart. For about a half-minute that seemed a half-century, he didn't know what to do. And then, upsetting all ethics and standards of the melodrama and the movies, he did just what anyone else would have done in like circumstances; stalked majestically toward the hat pirate in the outer hall, fumbled for his hat slip, presented it with humble fingers, got his head covering and his overcoat, and shuffled out into the street dejectedly to ponder over the exigencies of this calamity, this tragedy, that threatened to end the world. How dared the Judge to look like him! What a dirty trick to take advantage of their unfortunate resemblance and impose himself into such a situation! It was incredible, and base. He didn't know what to do about it, because she was involved. He felt himself in a peculiarly helpless position. He could but pray that the Judge's intentions were honorable.



CHAPTER XV

After a rather disturbed night in which he slept by fits and starts, mostly starts, and occupied the intervening wakeful hours in considering the Judge's unparalleled effrontery, Jim dawdled over a breakfast for which he had no appetite, reflecting meanwhile what he could do. Ordinarily his nerves were equal to any strain; but now he found himself fidgety, which but added to his general perturbation. For her sake, as much as his own, he was indignant over the deception practiced upon Mary Allen, and resolved to punish the impostor if ever opportunity offered. He decided that his first move must be to warn her. That, too, presented its difficulty, as his one certain chance of finding her was at her studio, and he doubted if she would be there before the late forenoon. He scanned the list of hotel arrivals and learned that the Judge was a guest at the Van Astor.

"That," he soliloquized, "is worth knowing; because after I have had a talk with Mary, I'll call upon that human airship or write him a note telling him what one James Gollop thinks about him!"

He was still perplexed and absent-minded when he somewhat listlessly walked out into the morning sunlight and started rather aimlessly down town; nor was he aware that he was passing the Van Astor until disturbed by a sharp "Harrup! Ahem!" snorted out as if by a hippopotamus that had just emerged from deep water, and looking around saw the object of his indignation advancing toward him. If Jim's usual frown looked black, the scowl that was on the Judge's face was cyclonic.

"You unspeakable scoundrel!" the Judge exclaimed, as he confronted Jimmy.

"That, sir, is precisely the term I should have applied to you!" retorted Jimmy. And then, before the Judge, who was not so quick on the up-take, had time to recover, Jim poked his face belligerently forward and added, "The sole condition that prevents me from giving you just what you deserve—a punch in the jaw!—is that we are here on the street; but I'll promise you this, you infernal windbag, that if ever I get you alone, I'll change your facial boundaries until you'll never more be mistaken for me."

"You—you—how dare you!" exclaimed the Judge, drawing back as if aghast, and considerably alarmed by the threat of physical peril.

"See here," said Jim, advancing a step as the Judge retreated, "we'll mention no names, but I'll say this: that if ever again you take advantage of our resemblance to force your attentions on the young lady with whom I saw you last night, I'll expose you. You should be ashamed of yourself. There is a limit to everything, and your actions are beyond the lines of decency—you—you—hypocritical blackguard!"

"Not another word! Not another word!" roared the Judge, as if he were admonishing a highly obstreperous witness in his court "It's all I can do to keep from turning you over to the police, and——"

"And it's all I can do to keep from putting my fist into your face until someone calls for an ambulance! By God! I think I'll do it anyhow!" exclaimed Jim with such evident intention that the Judge got from reach not an instant too soon, and, deciding that he might as well continue his progress after such a flying start, did not pause until he had reached the security of the hotel rotunda. Jim's first impulse had been to assist his departure with his boot, but after his leg had got half-way into the air he recovered his senses, and then angrily turned and walked down the avenue. Once around the corner of an intersecting street he stopped, got out of the line of traffic, and despite the coldness of the day, removed his hat and wiped moisture from his forehead.

"Good Lord!" he muttered, "what a narrow escape! I came as near to making an absolute fool of myself then as ever I have in my life. If I hadn't controlled myself at the right moment I would have probably booted the Judge; but would have kicked away my new job at the same time. Will I never, never, never learn sense?"

The fact that the Judge had opened a meeting with an insult that scarcely any red-blooded man could have failed to resent, did not, in Jimmy's sober self-arraignment condone his own conduct.

"What I should have done," he thought, "was to keep my temper cool, and let him know beyond any chance of misunderstanding just where we stand, right now and in the future. I'm not going to run away from that big bluffer any more. It's come to a show-down between him and me! I'm done, not only with apologies, but, with side-stepping. If ever he sticks his nose into my affairs again I'll make him wish he'd taken it to a shipyard and had it armor plated. But how on earth did he happen to bump into Mary? And where? That's what gets me!"

He thought he could picture it all—the chance meeting, her cordial greeting, the Judge's joy at being hailed by such an extraordinary beautiful and attractive creature when all the girls he had hitherto met had been of the small town or tea-party variety, and his tacit pretension that he was her accepted friend and pal, James Gollop.

"I reckon he'd smirk, and bow, and try to be clever and witty, and all the time he'd be either patting himself on the back for his luck, or envying or hating me," thought Jimmy. "When I let the people out in Yimville think I was him, it was a joke; but this is a serious matter and—it's positively indecent! That's what it is! It's an outrage!"

Imbued with a frantic wish to have Mary Allen share his indignation, he started toward MacDougall Alley. And then his consideration for her feelings and wish to shield her from distress caused him to ponder whether it were not the best to avoid mention of the Judge unless she broached the subject of the supposed James Gollop's actions on the preceding night. That brought him to another tormenting question, which was how long this affair had been going on. How long had the Judge been in town? How many times had he met and entertained her? And—horrible condition!—suppose of the two men she had learned to like Judge Woodworth-Granger better than James Gollop? That would be a tragedy. Never a doubt entered his mind but that the Judge would speedily fall in love with such a paragon, and throw himself at her feet. It was impossible that he should be such an imbecile as to do otherwise! Any man in the world would do the same. It was to be expected, in the natural course of things. Being something of an opportunist, he decided to stop pondering over everything until he was in the presence of Mary, and then to guide himself by his reception. He hoped that the Judge had, as nearly as his capabilities permitted, lived up to the high standard of the Gollop form, or, as Jimmy himself might have expressed it, that the Judge "hadn't queered his pitch."

"It'd be just like him to make her hate me after one interview. Considering how I hated myself after one meeting with him I couldn't blame her," he admitted, dolefully.

With an unwonted trepidation he climbed the studio stairs and rapped on the door.

"Come in." Her voice, sounding to Jimmy like a long unheard and beautiful song, responded and he turned the handle and entered.

She was sitting in front of an easel and the forenoon light from outside lent finer lights and shadows to her face as with her head half-turned over her shoulder she regarded him.

"Oh, hello! It's you, is it?" she greeted, and then got to her feet quickly, and stepped toward him as if to inspect him at shorter range, or else as if wondering what mood he might be in at the moment. There was a palpable uncertainty, curiosity, and perhaps reserve in her attitude, as if she wondered whether he would begin talking pompous platitudes or, on the contrary, breezing into some whimsy. He didn't quite know what to say or do. He felt like a human interrogation point; aware of the necessity of finding out something and adapting himself to that knowledge.

He had kept away from her when discharged from the old employment and sought her when his outlook was brightened by the new. He had tried to find her when his dreams were flashing fast. He had anticipated this interview. His imagination and love had so gilded her and her surroundings with glamour that now, as he stood there, awkward, irresolute, with hat in hand, everything seemed unreal. Everything seemed reduced to hard realities. The fire that warmed the studio was a real fire. The light that entered through the windows was real light. The studio was but a real working room, and she but a real flesh-and-blood girl standing there in a paint-soiled apron with a palette in one hand and a brush in the other.

And then her voice brought him back to earth.

"For goodness sake! Can't you speak?" she asked, and extricated a thumb from the palette, and turned to lay it and the paint brush on a littered table near her easel. Inasmuch as her eyes were for the moment diverted from him he succeeded in recovering some of his customary wits.

"Speak? Speak! I've got so much to speak that I'm smothered with talk," he replied. "Aren't you going to shake hands before I begin?"

"I suppose it's polite," she said, extending a hand which, with all the delightful inconsequence of a man infatuated with love, he had frequently craved to hold forever. "Suppose you sit down to tell it!" she suggested, withdrawing her hand from his. "I'm—I'm rather curious to hear you talk."

"Why?" he asked. "Don't I talk enough—usually?"

"Yes, but——" She stopped, appeared to hesitate, and then almost irrelevantly said "You've never said what you thought of my work. Do you think I should continue it, or drop it?"

Jimmy was so astonished by the unexpected that he forgot his embarrassment.

"Drop it? Of course not. How absurd! It was never in me to do anything very well," he added almost wistfully, "for I have no gifts. But if I could sing even a little, I would cultivate my voice. And if I but knew how to paint at all, I would work to paint better, always hoping that some time I might do at least one picture. But—isn't it unusual for you to be either discouraged, or questioning?"

"Perhaps," she said, looking away from him. "But—suppose I had to give it up?"

"Why?" he cried solicitously. And then, remembering that all his recent worries had been of a financial nature, he was fearful that some wolf of poverty had thrust its head into the studio door. "If—if—it's money that keeps you from going ahead as you have been, I—look here! Your work mustn't stop. We're too good friends to be falsely modest. If—if you're broke, I'd like to let you have some money. I haven't got much, but—Mary—I'm going to make some. I'll—I'll buy a picture. I'd like one. I've always wanted one of yours."

She smiled a trifle sadly and shook her head in negation. He thought she doubted the affluence of a mere chocolate salesman and it brought his mind back to his own good news.

"See here, Mary Allen," he expostulated, "a lot of things have happened since I saw you last. I'm no longer Jimmy Gollop, candy drummer. I'm Mr. James Gollop, Sales Manager for one of the best institutions on earth, and I'm going to make good. I know I shall. I feel it here," and he tapped his breast with his knuckles. She did not observe his gesture, for she had turned still further from him, and was looking out of the window as if half distracted by her own thought.

"Why," he blurted, "you'd be as unhappy without paint as I'd be without work. Rather than have you give it up, I'd—I'd send you down to Maryland to my mother. Why not do that? You'd love her, because everyone does. And she'd love you because—well—just because she couldn't help it. Mary—if you'd only go down there you could have a home—no fussy hotel, and—and—I'd be so happy to——"

She suddenly turned toward him with a tiny gesture, then laughed. He was rather hurt, and felt that possibly she was ridiculing his honest and generous offer. As if she read his thought she came quickly toward him and held out her hand and caught his and said, using the old jocular name, "No, Bill Jones, Pirate, it isn't money! But don't think for an instant that I don't appreciate the offer that comes from your big, fine heart! I do! And—I wish I could accept it. I think I know what your home is like—and what your mother is like."

She dropped his hand and now turned toward the easel, smudged a blotch of paint with a slender finger tip in awkward pretense at being interested in her study, and without looking at him said, "It's not money. It's because the man to whom I am engaged to be married disapproves of my little hobby and has asserted so in most emphatic terms."

It seemed to Jim that the whole room was reeling, and that there was a great burst of sound, followed by a stillness so profound that the distressed beating of his heart had become loudly audible. His knees trembled. His hands clutched and quivered. He felt mentally and physically stricken, tried to speak, could utter no sound, and then, to conceal his hurt, turned almost mechanically to the chair she had proffered, groped blindly for its arm, and slowly subsided into it. He was pitifully thankful that she had not observed his distress; that she was still standing there in front of the easel. This betrothal was an intervention that had never entered into any of his thoughts or dreams of her. He had always pictured her as free, quite free, following her whims and ambitions within the limitations of a meager purse. He sat there, stunned, for a moment, and then remembered, dully, that he did not even know her name. The absurdities of his position, and the futilities of all his long aspirations and love dreams seemed magnified through the shock of sudden and bitter knowledge. In a moment of bitter disappointment, he wondered how he had ever dared to advance from the accident of a chance meeting to friendship, and from friendship to love.

"I—I congratulate you," he said, lamely, for want of something better to say.

"On what?" she asked. "Because the man to whom I am engaged doesn't understand what this daubing of mine means to me?"

"No, not on that; but on being betrothed," he replied, and then added, bluntly, "You see,—I—I didn't know it. You never told me. No, you never told me anything about it in all these months in which—in which you've been just Mary Allen, and I, Bill Jones!"

He was not aware of the sorry tragedy in his voice that contrasted so sharply with the banality of his words. He felt that he was but a pitiful jester who was like a clown, compelled to play a merry part when there was anguish in his mind. But—he must play.

"I don't know why I was such a fool!" he declared. "Why I thought it could go on in this way—with you as Mary Allen, and I as Bill Jones. You see—I may as well tell the truth—now that it's come to this—You see, I didn't know your name, or who you were! I thought on the day that we met in Fifth Avenue you were someone in the trade, and I was ashamed to admit that I'd forgotten where you came from. You knew who I was, but I couldn't remember you. And so, after that first meeting, I was a coward. I'm a coward now, Mary! Now that it doesn't matter!"

He sat staring at the rug and striving to his utmost to think of something to say in his own defense.

"Well," she said, "since you have been so frank, I suppose that I may as well add my confession. I never knew, until within the last five minutes, who you were. Therefore I had nothing the best of you."

"What? What's that?" he asked as if incredulous, or in fear that he had not heard her words aright.

He lifted his eyes and saw that she was now facing him.

"It's the truth," she bravely admitted. "I never knew that your name was James Gollop, and that you were a commercial man, until within the last five minutes! If there were need I could swear it."

"Then," he demanded, blankly, "who in the deuce did you think I was, anyhow?"

"I thought," she said with a slight shrug, "that you were Judge James Woodworth-Granger, of whom I suppose you have never heard. He is the Judge of the Fourth District Court, seated in a small city called Princetown."

He was so astounded that for the moment he was speechless. It seemed to him that all his chickens had come home to roost.

"Granger? Judge Granger—that inflated, stiff-necked, egotistical bag of conceit! And—and—you thought I was Granger!"

There was reproach in his voice as well as words.

"Yes," she admitted, "I thought you were Judge Granger. But—please wait a moment—I thought that you were different when away from your judicial position, admired your reticence concerning your profession, and—and I thought that I knew the real man better than anyone else. And I liked the change."

She uttered the last almost defiantly.

"I can at least thank you for that preference," his said, lowering his eyes. "I've come to dislike myself since I met him. He's bothered me a lot. Maybe I've bothered him. I played a joke on him one time and—he hasn't ever forgiven me, although I've tried to patch it up. I think he's about the most stupid, unforgiving, inhuman bounder that—"

"Please!" she objected, and Jimmy saw that she had turned toward the window, and so paused whilst she walked toward it, and stared out before again facing him. He wished that the light from without were less glaring, for it rendered her face and expression indistinct.

"It's not quite fair for me to listen to anything disparaging Judge Granger," she said. "That wouldn't be playing the game. Judge Granger is the man to whom I am betrothed."

He was incredibly shocked. Mary Allen betrothed to Granger! It was like the last blow—his ultimate humiliation. Had it been anyone but Granger it might have been less unendurable.

"I apologize," he said, mechanically. "I didn't understand the situation. Judge Granger is—is a very prominent man."

"Quite so," she assented. "A man who is distinguished, and I think will be more so."

"I expect he'll be a governor, and then a senator, and—maybe a president," said Jimmy, helplessly, and feeling his own insignificance. "But—but does Judge Granger know that you knew me? I ask this because I'm afraid that if he does, he might object to our—our acquaintanceship. He doesn't exactly approve of me."

Somewhat to Jimmy's surprise she laughed as if amused.

"No," she said, "I don't think he does know that we are friends. Indeed, I'm rather certain of it. But—just the same, if you are such enemies—it's not fair for me to show friendship under existing circumstances, is it? See here, Mr. Gollop—that's a terrible name!—You could scarcely respect me if I who am engaged to marry Judge Granger were to stand here and let you criticise him. There is a limit to most things, isn't there?"

"There is," agreed Jimmy, soberly. "You are quite right in your attitude. I'm helpless." He paused, got to his feet, buttoned his coat, looked absently for his hat, found it on the window ledge, and seemed undecided. It was the old, boyish impulsiveness that made him turn to her in what he believed to be a parting and say, "But—Mary! Mary Allen! It doesn't matter what I am, or anything about the accidents and the misunderstandings—nothing matters now—to me—only this, that—that you believe that I was honest to you and to myself when you were but Mary Allen, and I but Bill Jones!"

"No," she said, "nothing else matters. That is something quite yours and mine—our own. Conditions are about as we all make them for ourselves. Sometimes they run away from us. But we can't alter things that have been. This has been a mixup. Neither of us could help it."

He could find nothing to say, for he seemed involved in a cataclysm that had crushed him, and so moved toward the door. She walked by his side and stepped back when he opened it. He held out his hand as if to bid her good-by, for the last time, but she appeared to disregard it and stood quietly by his side.

"It—it seems a travesty—a blunder," she said, at last. "I—I don't know quite what to do about it all! I feel as if this were a farewell. I—I don't like to think of it as such. You have been so kind, and so encouraging, and you are so frank and—Can't we have one day more? Can't you come back to-morrow afternoon,—here—and be just Bill Jones, the Pirate, for another day? I think we'd be happier—afterward—if you could, and if we could forget certain things. Say you will come."

And as he walked dejectedly up the narrow confines of the blind little alley after leaving her he loathed himself for his weakness in promising that he would.



CHAPTER XVI

It's a long way from MacDougall Alley to Fort George at any time. It is rendered longer when the wind is chill; but Jimmy, no longer the jester, could never remember how he reached there on that wintry afternoon, and its hills, bleak with snow, were no more drab and cold than the dead fires of his dreams. The skies above were leaden, with no ray of sunlight. Away behind him the smoke of the city seemed leveled like a shroud. Its distant monotone of sound became a dirge. Unmindful of the chill, he found a bench, brushed the snow from a corner and sat there for a long time, seeing nothing, unobservant of his surroundings, and thinking of all that somehow seemed left irrevocably behind. It was as if it had been ages ago! It had been ages ago since happiness had fled. There was not a laugh left in all the sad world that had abruptly grown old, and savorless. A vagrant, aged, dirty, ragged, accosted him, begging alms, and without looking up, Jimmy thrust a hand into his pocket and took therefrom a dollar note. The beggar mumbled thanks, stamped his feet, turned away, and then came back and said, "Hope you're not down on your luck. I wish you luck, sir!"

"Luck? Oh, no. It's all right. I'm not down on my luck. Only—'They're hanging Danny Deever in the morning!'"

The vagrant shuffled away, shaking his head. He did not in the least appreciate the sorry quip. All that he knew was that sometimes well-dressed men who came and thus sat in the parks, were sometimes found in the same place by a policeman—and usually such men had holes, self-inflicted, in their heads. But long before he had passed from sight Jimmy had reverted to the thought that to-morrow was the end. To see her just once more, and after that—nothing to look forward to, nothing to hope for, nothing to dream about. Strangely enough it is the men whose laugh is readiest, whose mental sufferings and depressions are greatest. Often the laugh is but a forced cloak for grief. Well, to-morrow he would laugh! Be Bill Jones for the last time! Make a decent finish of the dream! Leave with this girl he had so loved a kindly recollection of a strange adventure as he made his exit from her life! There should be neither sighs, sentiment, nor repining.

Despite the fact that he had slept so little on the previous night, he moved restlessly about his room all that evening, standing before his window now and then to look out over the lights that flared and glittered from electric signs, hearing absently the hoarse whistles of ships out in the harbors, and the clamor of street cars that surged up and down the arteries of the city and went heedlessly on with its existence. Jimmy wondered, as the street life of the night waned and the lights went out, if there were others out there in the darkness as unhappy as was he. His new employment that had so elated him with its promise of golden opportunity sometimes came to his mind, but now he felt that success was empty without Mary Allen to share it with him. It was not until dawn that he fell asleep, exhausted, and even then trouble pursued him in his dreams.

When he awoke, at noon, he tried for a few minutes to imagine that it was still a very happy, prosperous and promising world; but it was all in vain. He sat on the edge of his bed, and again thought that if he had lost to any other than the Judge, it might not have been so distressing. He got up and looked at his own face in the glass, and hated it for that peculiar resemblance. It was certain now, after her confession, that all the time she had believed him to be the Judge and yet, because when with Mary Allen the Judge's very existence had been forgotten, Jim could not accuse himself of having fostered her illusion. Honesty would compel her to admit that. And, on the other hand, thinking it over, he could not remember that he had ever talked of the road, his business, or commercial adventure, because it was a rule of his never to "talk shop" out of hours. He thought she had already experienced too much of that and she had told him once that she detested chocolates. The only feature for which he could at all censure himself was for lack of frankness.

"If I hadn't been such a rotten coward, and had told her plainly after the first afternoon I ever had with her who I was, that I'd forgotten her name and all, it would never have come to this!" he soliloquized, and then, an instant later, reversed himself, considered that if he had been frank he might never have got to love her at all, and—to have loved her for so long and to have been with her so many times, was worth more than all else. Could he but have that measure of delight again, and then die, Death wouldn't be so grim and hopeless as this present pass. He flattered himself that she could never imagine all his folly of love. He was grateful to Fate that he had never uttered such avowal and suffered its inevitable rejection; for now she could always remember him as a friend. Rejections, he decided, must inevitably leave unpleasant or harrowing memories. He throttled all his sad eagerness for the farewell visit and resolutely delayed it until late in the afternoon. He schooled himself to the determination that there should be no sentimental speech or action lest she suspect his wounds and perhaps be thereby saddened. He had come to her with a laugh, he would leave her with a laugh. That was the brave way.

When he entered the studio for the last time, it seemed in twilight, for the shadows of a midwinter afternoon were already long. He saw that she had set out a dainty little tea table and his heart gave a throb when he discerned in its center, in a cut glass bowl, the violets that he had brought her on the preceding day. They seemed to scent the room with a definite and yet elusive fragrance, quite like her personality that was so soon to be but a memory.

"Well, Bill Jones, Pirate, you are late," she said, as she took his hat from his hand, while he removed his overcoat and hung it on the tiny little cloak stand in the corner, thinking as he did so, that there it brushed, honored, against her hanging garments.

"The obsequies of a pirate are best held in late afternoon," he replied. "It's a time-honored form. I'm very formal, as you know."

"I suppose Mary Allen has to die, too, doesn't she? That's the way pirate romances should end," she retorted. "I don't see why we never hear what becomes of the pirate's lady friends. Surely any decent, self-respecting pirate who is an honor to his profession, should have a woman somewhere to either mourn his loss or—as I suggested—go to the gallows and hang with him."

She turned to shift the tiny brass tea kettle that was beginning to steam in the little grate, and, fascinated by her grace, he forgot to speak. He thought he should always remember the firelight on her profile—there in the shadows of the room.

"Remember the time we had tea together in that funny little inn out on Long Island?" she asked, and then, before he could answer, laughed, gently, and added, as if pleased by the reminiscence—"and the car broke down on the way home, and we had to walk three miles to get another? And then we were so hot and thirsty that we stopped in the inn and had beer—plain, frothy beer—while the chauffeur was trying to start his old contraption into life. Um-mh! That seems a dreadfully long time ago."

"It does! It does!" he assented glumly, and fell to staring into the fire as if therein he could bring it all back to vision. "We agreed, then, that some day when summer came again, we'd do it all over. And now—there will be no more summers!"

Unconsciously he had betrayed himself in a despair of voice and twitch of movement.

"Are—are you sorry?" she asked, softly. "Are you sorry that Bill Jones and Mary Allen are finished?"

All his previous resolutions were forgotten, swept away as it by the hand of grief. All his pre-imagined repression vanished. He was but the heart-broken jester now, impulsive, outspoken.

"Oh, if I could live these few times over again, I think I could die happy! Mary! Mary! I never knew until yesterday how precious they were. Never knew that when Bill Jones died, the heart of me died with him! I'm—I'm——" He checked himself, shut his hands tightly over the arms of his chair, and exclaimed, "I'm sorry I said that. I didn't mean to tell you anything; because I've no right to say anything of the sort to you—now that Bill Jones is dead! I can't seem to remember that he was executed in that moment when you told me of your betrothal."

She abruptly dropped the steaming kettle back into the fender and he feared that she thus indicated resentment of his outburst. She got to her feet and walked across to the window where the rapidly waning light seemed hastily pulling drop curtains over their brief romance and he, fearful that he had offended her, sat dejectedly in his chair.

"One imagines many things! One is curious about them, sometimes," she said, softly. "And so—and so I wonder what you would have said, if Bill Jones had not passed out."

She stood as if considering something of grave importance and then, as if resolved, turned and came back until she stood near the chair in which he sat with bent head and shoulders, so unlike the buoyant, erect man she had known.

"It is but a week ago when being—being somewhat tired of neglect, I wrote a letter. Oh, I could kick myself for that! I suppose it must have been rather—let's say—familiar. It was addressed to Judge Granger. By return mail came a proposal of marriage and—well—I accepted it. Then he came on and—oh, it was a dreadful mixup! After just one evening together I knew that he wasn't, and never could have been, Bill Jones, the Pirate. And I didn't know what to do, or who, or what Bill Jones really was, and—and I was furious, disappointed and humiliated, and then you returned and—and——"

She paused and he looked up to find that her eyes were not on him, and that she was twisting her wisp of a handkerchief between her fingers quite as if considering whether such fury, disappointment and humiliation could ever be forgiven. He felt that he was on trial and that his future hung upon her judgment.

"But—but—it wasn't altogether my fault—Mary," he pleaded in a voice in which contrition, distress and desire were eloquently blended. "I didn't mean to be dishonest. Coward I may have been but—but—oh, Mary! What can I say or do to be forgiven? To be at least kindly remembered?"

He bent forward again, resting his elbows on his knees and clutching his temples in his palms as if utterly given over to despair. It seemed to him that there was a prolonged wait in which she was coming to her decision, an interval filled with portent and so lifeless and still that tiny sounds from without became magnified.

Her voice, hesitant, and low, but, to his relief, gentle, broke the interminable spell.

"Suppose—suppose I were to tell you that—that I'm not going to marry Judge Granger, because after you came here yesterday I knew how impossible it was and wrote and told him so. And——"

"Mary! Mary, don't make it supposititious," he appealed, leaping to his feet. "That would be cruelty! Tell me that it's true, and that I am free to tell you that I love you—love you! You know that I do, and that there's no use in my trying to hide it."

She retreated from him a trifle, as if to escape his impetuosity, then, when he paused as if fearing to frighten her with his ardor, smiled at him and said, "Yes, Bill Jones. It's true!"

He caught her in his arms. For a moment he held her close while she made her last resistance, and then slowly lifted her hands upward until they came to rest about his shoulders.

"That's why I made you promise to come back," she said. "I—I couldn't let you go! I couldn't! I don't care what anyone thinks of it, I am what I am, and—I love you!"

They were suddenly aware of heavy steps climbing the studio stairs and she pushed him away hurriedly, bashfully.

"My Father!" she whispered. "I—I forgot that he was coming to get me. But—you'll love Dad," and then, as if suddenly remembering something, she laughed softly and added hastily, "I don't believe you even know my name. Don't forget it, now that Mary Allen is dead. My name is Sayers—Margaret Sayers, and my father's name is Sayers, Thomas Sayers, and he's in the motor business and—for heaven's sake!—pretend we've known each other for years and years!"

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Jimmy, panic-stricken, as she hastened toward the door. "Tom Sayers! My job's gone bust! I'm done!"

The door opened and her hand swept up to a light switch in the lintel, there was a click, and the room was brilliant.

"Dad," she said, trying to suppress some trepidation of voice, "I want you to know Mr. Gollop. And I'd like to have you like him, because you see, I'm going to marry him, if you do."

Jimmy had been tempted to run; but now stood bending his head forward, blinking, and holding his breath in astonishment

"Martin—Martin—Mr. Martin—and you are not Martin, but are Mr. Sayers, and——"

But the man he had known as Martin smiled, for the moment ignored him, permitted his daughter to cling to him, and as he caressed her hair with tender fingers, said soothingly, "There! There! Don't be afraid of me, my girl. I've known this boy Jim for some time. I knew that he knew you, and I satisfied myself what sort he was, too, before things went too far. I never did like Granger. When you first told me that you had met Granger here in New York, I knew it couldn't be so, because I had seen him going through Media City on the previous day to keep some political appointment. And then I met Jim, and—I fooled him a little bit because I wanted to know just what sort of a man it was who had dared to look at you, and to take you to a horse show. Let go now! Let go, while Jim and I shake hands. But—inasmuch as your mother has always belonged to the Granger party, I suppose—I suppose she'll just raise hell! That's a part of the affair that I reckon you two had best leave to me. There's time enough, because, mark you both, there'll be no wedding bells in this firm until Jim satisfies me that he can make good."

And then he turned discreetly to hang up his overcoat and hat as if unaware that Mary Allen, struggling artist, and Bill Jones, Pirate, jubilant and unabashed, were again in each others' arms.

THE END

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