"Here is a curious phenomenon. Listen:

"Away from you I have a woman's courage to tell you how I long for you, how my heart and my arms ache for you. But when I am with you I'm less of a woman and more of a girl—a girl not yet accustomed to some things—always guarded, always a little reticent, always instinctively recoiling from the contact I really like, always a little on the defensive against your lips, in spite of myself—against your arms—where, somehow, I cannot seem to stay long at a time—will not endure it—cannot, somehow.

"Yet, here, away from you, I so long for your embrace, and cannot imagine it too long, too close, too tender to satisfy my need of you.

"And this is my second letter to you within the hour—one hour after your departure.

"Oh, Duane, I do truly miss you so! I go about humming that air you found so quaint:

"'Lisetto quittee la plaine, Moi perdi bonheur a moi, Yeux a moi semblent fontaine, Depuis moi pas mire toi,'

and there's a tear in every note of it, and I'm the most lonely girl on the face of the earth to-day.

"GERALDINE QUI PLEURE."

"P.S.—Voici votre pipe, Monsieur!"



CHAPTER XIV

THE PROPHETS

August in town found an unusual number of New York men at the clubs, at the restaurants, at the summer theatres. Men who very seldom shoved their noses inside the metropolitan oven during the summer baking were now to be met everywhere and anywhere within the financial district and without. The sky-perched and magnificent down-town "clubs" were full of men who under normal circumstances would have remained at Newport, Lenox, Bar Harbor, or who at least would have spent the greater portion of the summer on their yachts or their Long Island estates.

And in every man's hand or pocket was a newspaper.

They were scarcely worth reading for mere pleasure, these New York newspapers; indeed, there was scarcely anything in them to read except a daily record of the steady decline in securities of every description; paragraphs noting the passing of dividends; columns setting forth minutely the opinions of very wealthy men concerning the business outlook; chronicles in detail of suits brought against railroads and against great industrial corporations; accounts of inquiries by State and by Federal authorities into combinations resulting in an alleged violation of various laws.

Here and there a failure of some bucket-branded broker was noted—the reports echoing like the first dropping shots along the firing line.

Even to the most casual and uninterested outsider it was evident that already the metropolis was under a tension; that the tension was increasing almost imperceptibly day by day; that there seemed to be no very clear idea as to the reason of it, only a confused apprehension, an apparently unreassuring fear of some grotesque danger ahead, which daily reading of the newspapers was not at all calculated to allay.

Of course there were precise reasons for impending trouble given and reiterated by those amateurs of finance and politics whose opinions are at the disposal of the newspaper-reading public.

Prolixity characterised these solemn utterances, packed full of cant phrases such as "undigested securities" and "the treacherous attack on the nation's integrity."

Two principal reasons were given for the local financial uneasiness; and the one made the other ridiculous—first, that the nation's Executive was mad as Nero and had deliberately begun a senseless holocaust involving the entire nation; the other that a "panic" was due, anyway. It resembled the logic of the White Queen of immortal memory, who began screaming before she pricked her finger in order to save herself any emotion after the pin had drawn blood.

Men knew in their hearts that there was no real reason for impending trouble; that this menace was an unreal thing, intangible, without substance—only a shadow cast by their own assininity.

Yet shadows can be made real property when authority so ordains. Because there was once a man with a donkey who met a stranger in the desert.

The stranger bargained for and bought the donkey; the late owner shoved the shekels into his ample pockets and sat down in the mule's shadow to escape the sun; and the new owner brought suit to recover the rent due him for the occupation of the shadow cast by his donkey.

There was also a mule which waited seven years to kick.

There are asses and mules and all sorts of shadows. The ordinance of authority can affect only the shadow; the substance is immutable.

Among other serious gentlemen of consideration and means who had been unaccustomed to haunt the metropolis in the dog days was Colonel Alexander Mallett, President of the Half Moon Trust Company, and incidentally Duane's father.

His town-house was still open, although his wife and daughter were in the country. To it, in the comparative cool of the August evenings, came figures familiar in financial circles; such men as Magnelius Grandcourt, father of Delancy; and Remsen Tappan, and James Cray.

Others came and went, men of whom Duane had read in the newspapers—very great men who dressed very simply, very powerful men who dressed elaborately; and some were young and red-faced with high living, and one was damp of hair and long-nosed, with eyes set a trifle too close together; and one fulfilled every external requisite for a "good fellow"; and another was very old, very white, with a nut-cracker jaw and faded eyes, blue as an unweaned pup's, and a cream-coloured wig curled glossily over waxen ears and a bloodless and furrowed neck.

All these were very great men; but they and Colonel Mallett journeyed at intervals into the presence of a greater man who inhabited, all alone, except for a crew of a hundred men, an enormous yacht, usually at anchor off the white masonry cliffs of the seething city.

All alone this very great man inhabited the huge white steamer; and they piped him fore and they piped him aft and they piped him over the side. Many a midnight star looked down at the glowing end of his black cigar; many a dawn shrilled with his boatswain's whistle. He was a very, very great man; none was greater in New York town.

It was said of him that he once killed a pompous statesman—by ridicule:

"I know who you are!" panted a ragged urchin, gazing up in awe as the famous statesman approached his waiting carriage.

"And who am I, my little man?"

"You are the great senator from New York."

"Yes—you are right. But"—and he solemnly pointed his gloved forefinger toward heaven—"but, remember, there is One even greater than I."

Duane had heard the absurd lampoon as a child, and one evening late in August, smoking his after-dinner cigar beside his father in the empty conservatory, he recalled the story, which had been one of his father's favorites.

But Colonel Mallett scarcely smiled, scarcely heard; and his son watched him furtively. The trim, elastic figure was less upright this summer; the close gray hair and cavalry mustache had turned white very rapidly since spring. For the first time, too, in all his life, Colonel Mallett wore spectacles; and the thin gold rims irritated his ears and the delicate bridge of his nose. Under his pleasant eyes the fine skin had darkened noticeably; thin new lines had sprung downward from the nostrils' clean-cut wings; but the most noticeable change was in his hands, which were no longer firm and fairly smooth, but were now the hands of an old man, restless if not tremulous, unsteady in handling the cigar which, unnoticed, had gone out.

They—father and son—had never been very intimate. An excellent understanding had always existed between them with nothing deeper in it than a natural affection and an instinctive respect for each other's privacy.

This respect now oppressed Duane because long habit, and the understood pact, seemed to bar him from a sympathy and a practical affection which, for the first time, it seemed to him his father might care for.

That his father was worried was plain enough; but how anxious and with how much reason, he had hesitated to ask, waiting for some voluntary admission, or at least some opening, which the older man never gave.

That night, however, he had tried an opening for himself, offering the old stock story which had always, heretofore, amused his father. And there had been no response.

In silence he thought the matter over; his sympathy was always quick; it hurt him to remain aloof when there might be a chance that he could help a little.

"It may amuse you," he said carelessly, "to know how much I've made since I came back from Paris."

The elder man looked up preoccupied. His son went on:

"What you set aside for me brings me ten thousand a year, you know. So far I haven't touched it. Isn't that pretty good for a start?"

Colonel Mallett sat up straighter with a glimmer of interest in his eyes.

Duane went on, checking off on his fingers:

"I got fifteen hundred for Mrs. Varick's portrait, the same for Mrs. James Cray's, a thousand each for portraits of Carl and Friedrich Gumble; that makes five thousand. Then I had three thousand for the music-room I did for Mrs. Ellis; and Dinklespiel Brothers, who handle my pictures, have sold every one I sent; which gives me twelve thousand so far."

"I am perfectly astonished," murmured his father.

Duane laughed. "Oh, I know very well that sheer merit had nothing much to do with it. The people who gave me orders are all your friends. They did it as they might have sent in wedding presents; I am your son; I come back from Paris; it's up to them to do something. They've done it—those who ever will, I expect—and from now on it will be different."

"They've given you a start," said his father.

"They certainly have done that. Many a brilliant young fellow, with more ability than I, eats out his heart unrecognised, sterilised for lack of what came to me because of your influence."

"It is well to look at it in that way for the present," said his father. He sat silent for a while, staring through the dusk at the lighted windows of houses in the rear. Then:

"I have meant to say, Duane, that I—we"—he found a little difficulty in choosing his words—"that the Trust Company's officers feel that, for the present, it is best for them to reconsider their offer that you should undertake the mural decoration of the new building."

"Oh," said Duane, "I'm sorry!—but it's all right, father."

"I told them you'd take it without offence. I told them that I'd tell you the reason we do not feel quite ready to incur, at this moment, any additional expenses."

"Everybody is economising," said Duane cheerfully, "so I understand. No doubt—later——"

"No doubt," said his father gravely.

The son's attitude was careless, untroubled; he dropped one long leg over the other knee, and idly examining his cigar, cast one swift level look at the older man:

"Father?"

"Yes, my son."

"I—it just occurred to me that if you happen to have any temporary use for what you very generously set aside for me, don't stand on ceremony."

There ensued a long silence. It was his bedtime when Colonel Mallett stirred in his holland-covered armchair and stood up.

"Thank you, my son," he said simply; they shook hands and separated; the father to sleep, if he could; the son to go out into the summer night, walk to his nearest club, and write his daily letter to the woman he loved:

"Dear, it is not at all bad in town—not that murderous, humid heat that you think I'm up against; and you must stop reproaching yourself for enjoying the delicious breezes in the Adirondacks. Women don't know what a jolly time men have in town. Follows the chronical of this August day:

"I had your letter; that is breeze enough for me; it was all full of blue sky and big white clouds and the scent of Adirondack pines. Isn't it jolly for you and Kathleen to be at the Varicks' camp! And what a jolly crowd you've run into.

"I note what you say about your return to the Berkshires, and that you expect to be at Berkshire Pass Inn with the motor on Monday. Give my love to Naida; I know you three and young Montross will have a bully tour through the hill country.

"I also note your red-pencil cross at the top of the page—which always gives me, as soon as I open a letter of yours, the assurance that all is still well with you and that victory still remains with you. Thank God! Stand steady, little girl, for the shadows are flying and the dawn is ours.

"After your letter, breakfast with father—a rather silent one. Then he went down-town in his car and I walked to the studio. It's one of those stable-like studios which decorate the cross-streets in the 50's, but big enough to work in.

"A rather bothersome bit of news: the Trust Company reconsiders its commission; and I have three lunettes and three big mural panels practically completed. For a while I'll admit I had the blues, but, after all, some day the Trust Company is likely to take up the thing again and give me the commission. Anyway, I've had a corking time doing the things, and lots of valuable practice in handling a big job and covering large surfaces; and the problem has been most exciting and interesting because, you see, I've had to solve it, taking into consideration the architecture and certain fixed keys and standards, such as the local colour and texture of the marble and the limitations of the light area. Don't turn up your pretty nose; it's all very interesting.

"I didn't bother about luncheon; and about five I went to the club, rather tired in my spinal column and arm-weary.

"Nobody was there whom you know except Delancy Grandcourt and Dysart. The latter certainly looks very haggard. I do not like him personally, as you know, but the man looks ill and old and the papers are becoming bolder in what they hint at concerning him and the operations he was, and is still supposed to be, connected with; and it is deplorable to see such a physical change in any human being, guilty or innocent. I do not like to see pain; I never did. For Dysart I have no use at all, but he is suffering, and it is difficult to contemplate any suffering unmoved.

"There was a letter at the club for me from Scott. He says he's plugging away at the Rose-beetle's life history as a hors-d'oeuvre before tackling the appetising problem of his total extermination. Dear old Scott! I never thought that the boy I fought in your garden would turn into a spectacled savant. Or that his sister would prove to be the only inspiration and faith and hope that life holds for me!

"I talked to Delancy. He is a good young man, as you've always insisted. I know one thing; he's high-minded and gentle. Dysart has a manner of treating him which is most offensive, but it only reflects discredit on Dysart.

"Delancy told me that Rosalie is hostess in her own cottage this month and has asked him up. I heard him speaking rather diffidently to Dysart about it, and Dysart replied that he didn't 'give a damn who went to the house,' as he wasn't going.

"So much for gossip; now a fact or two: my father is plainly worried over the business outlook; and he's quite alone in the house; and that is why I don't go back to Roya-Neh just now and join your brother. I could do plenty of work there. Scott writes that the new studio is in good shape for me. What a generous girl you are! Be certain that at the very first opportunity I will go and occupy it and paint, no doubt, several exceedingly remarkable pictures in it which will sell for enormous prices and enable us to keep a maid-of-all-work when we begin our menage!

"Father has retired—poor old governor—it tears me all to pieces to see him so silent and listless. I am here at the club writing this before I go home to bed. Now I am going. Good-night, my beloved.

"DUANE."

"P.S.—An honour, or the chance of it, has suddenly confronted me, surprising me so much that I don't really dare to believe that it can possibly happen to me—at least not for years. It is this: I met Guy Wilton the other day; you don't know him, but he is a most charming and cultivated man, an engineer. I lunched with him at the Pyramid—that bully old club into which nothing on earth can take a man who has not distinguished himself in his profession. It is composed of professional and business men, the law, the army, navy, diplomatic and consular, the arts and sciences, and usually the chief executive of the nation.

"During luncheon Wilton said: 'You ought to be in here. You are the proper timber.'

"I was astounded and told him so.

"He said: 'By the way, the president of the Academy of Design is very much impressed with some work of yours he has seen. I've heard him, and other artists, also, discussing some pictures of yours which were exhibited in a Fifth Avenue gallery.'

"Well, you know, Geraldine, the breath was getting scarcer in my lungs every minute and I hadn't a word to say. And do you know what that trump of a mining engineer did? He took me about after luncheon and I met a lot of very corking old ducks and some very eminent and delightful younger ducks, and everybody was terribly nice, and the president of the Academy, who is startlingly young and amiable, said that Guy Wilton had spoken about me, and that it was customary that when anybody was proposed for membership, a man of his own profession should do it.

"And I looked over the club list and saw Billy Van Siclen's name, and now what do you think! Billy has proposed me, Austin, the marine painter, has seconded me, and no end of men have written in my behalf—professors, army men, navy men, business friends of father's, architects, writers—and I'm terribly excited over it, although my excitement has plenty of time to cool because it's a fearfully conservative club and a man has to wait years, anyway.

"This is the very great honour, dear, for it is one even to be proposed for the Pyramid. I know you will be happy over it.

"D."

The weather became hotter toward the beginning of September; his studio was almost unendurable, nor was the house very much better.

To eat was an effort; to sleep a martyrdom. Night after night he rose from his hot pillows to stand and listen outside his father's door; but the old endure heat better than the young, and very often his father was asleep in the stifling darkness which made sleep for him impossible.

The usual New York thunder-storms rolled up over Staten Island, covered the southwest with inky gloom, veined the horizon with lightning, then burst in spectacular fury over the panting city, drenched it to its steel foundations, and passed on rumbling up the Hudson, leaving scarcely any relief behind it.

In one of these sudden thunder-storms he took refuge in a rather modest and retired restaurant just off Fifth Avenue; and it being the luncheon hour he made a convenience of necessity and looked about for a table, and discovered Rosalie Dysart and Delancy Grandcourt en tete-a-tete over their peach and grapefruit salad.

There was no reason why they should not have been there; no reason why he should have hesitated to speak to them. But he did hesitate—in fact, was retiring by the way he came, when Rosalie glanced around with that instinct which divines a familiar presence, gave him a startled look, coloured promptly to her temples, and recovered her equanimity with a smile and a sign for him to join them. So he shook hands, but remained standing.

"We ran into town in the racer this morning," she explained. "Delancy had something on down-town and I wanted to look over some cross-saddles they made for me at Thompson's. Do be amiable and help us eat our salad. What a ghastly place town is in September! It's bad enough in the country this year; all the men wear long faces and mutter dreadful prophecies. Can you tell me, Duane, what all this doleful talk is about?"

"It's about something harder to digest than this salad. The public stomach is ostrichlike, but it can't stand the water-cure. Which is all Arabic to you, Rosalie, and I don't mean to be impertinent, only the truth is I don't know why people are losing confidence in the financial stability of the country, but they apparently are."

"There's a devilish row on down-town," observed Delancy, blinking, as an unusually heavy clap of thunder rattled the dishes.

"What kind of a row?" asked Duane.

"Greensleeve & Co. have failed, with liabilities of a million and microscopical assets."

Rosalie raised her eyebrows; Greensleeve & Co. were once brokers for her husband if she remembered correctly. Duane had heard of them but was only vaguely impressed.

"Is that rather a bad thing?" he inquired.

"Well—I don't know. It made a noise louder than that thunder. Three banks fell down in Brooklyn, too."

"What banks?"

Delancy named them; it sounded serious, but neither Duane nor Rosalie were any wiser.

"The Wolverine Mercantile Loan and Trust Company closed its doors, also," observed Delancy, dropping the tips of his long, highly coloured fingers into his finger-bowl as though to wash away all personal responsibility for these financial flip-flaps.

Rosalie laughed: "This is pleasant information for a rainy day," she said. "Duane, have you heard from Geraldine?"

"Yes, to-day," he said innocently; "she is leaving Lenox this morning for Roya-Neh. I hear that there is to be some shooting there Christmas week. Scott writes that the boar and deer are increasing very fast and must be kept down. You and Delancy are on the list, I believe."

Rosalie nodded; Delancy said: "Miss Seagrave has been good enough to ask the family. Yours is booked, too, I fancy."

"Yes, if my father only feels up to it. Christmas at Roya-Neh ought to be a jolly affair."

"Christmas anywhere away from New York ought to be a relief," observed young Grandcourt drily.

They laughed without much spirit. Coffee was served, cigarettes lighted. Presently Grandcourt sent a page to find out if the car had returned from the garage where Rosalie had sent it for a minor repair.

The car was ready, it appeared; Rosalie retired to readjust her hair and veil; the two men standing glanced at one another:

"I suppose you know," said Delancy, reddening with embarrassment, "that Mr. and Mrs. Dysart have separated."

"I heard so yesterday," said Duane coolly.

The other grew redder: "I heard it from Mrs. Dysart about half an hour ago." He hesitated, then frankly awkward: "I say, Mallett, I'm a sort of an ass about these things. Is there any impropriety in my going about with Mrs. Dysart—under the circumstances?"

"Why—no!" said Duane. "Rosalie has to go about with people, I suppose. Only—perhaps it's fairer to her if you don't do it too often—I mean it's better for her that any one man should not appear to pay her noticeable attention. You know what mischief can get into print. What's taken below stairs is often swiped and stealthily perused above stairs."

"I suppose so. I don't read it myself, but it makes game of my mother and she finds a furious consolation in taking it to my father and planning a suit for damages once a week. You're right; most people are afraid of it. Do you think it's all right for me to motor back with Mrs. Dysart?"

"Are you afraid?" asked Duane, smiling.

"Only on her account," said Grandcourt, so simply that a warm feeling rose in Duane's heart for this big, ungainly, vividly coloured young fellow whose direct and honest gaze always refreshed people even when they laughed at him.

"Are you driving?" asked Duane.

"Yes. We came in at a hell of a clip. It made my hair stand, but Mrs. Dysart likes it.... I say, Mallett, what sort of an outcome do you suppose there'll be?"

"Between Rosalie and Jack Dysart?"

"Yes."

"I know no more than you, Grandcourt. Why?"

"Only that—it's too bad. I've known them so long; I'm friendly with both. Jack is a curious fellow. There's much of good in him, Mallett, although I believe you and he are not on terms. He is a—I don't mean this for criticism—but sometimes his manner is unfortunate, leading people to consider him overbearing.

"I understand why people think so; I get angry at him, sometimes, myself—being perhaps rather sensitive and very conscious that I am not anything remarkable.

"But, somehow"—he looked earnestly at Duane—"I set a very great value on old friendships. He and I were at school. I always admired in him the traits I myself have lacked.... There is something about an old friendship that seems very important to me. I couldn't very easily break one.... It is that way with me, Mallett.... Besides, when I think, perhaps, that Jack Dysart is a trifle overbearing and too free with his snubs, I go somewhere and cool off; and I think that in his heart he must like me as well as I do him because, sooner or later, we always manage to drift together again.... That is one reason why I am so particular about his wife."

Another reason happened to be that he had been in love with her himself when Dysart gracefully shouldered his way between them and married Rosalie Dene. Duane had heard something about it; and he wondered a little at the loyalty to such a friendship that this young man so naively confessed.

"I'll tell you what I think," said Duane; "I think you're the best sort of an anchor for Rosalie Dysart. Only a fool would mistake your friendship. But the town's full of 'em, Grandcourt," he added with a smile.

"I suppose so.... And I say, Mallett—may I ask you something more?... I don't like to pester you with questions——"

"Go on, my friend. I take it as a clean compliment from a clean-cut man."

Delancy coloured, checked, but presently found voice to continue:

"That's very good of you; I thought I might speak to you about this Greensleeve & Co.'s failure before Mrs. Dysart returns."

"Certainly," said Duane, surprised; "what about them? They acted for Dysart at one time, didn't they?"

"They do now."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I am. I didn't want to say so before Mrs. Dysart. But the afternoon papers have it. I don't know why they take such a malicious pleasure in harrying Dysart—unless on account of his connections with that Yo Espero crowd—what's their names?—Skelton! Oh, yes, James Skelton—and Emanuel Klawber with his thirty millions and his string of banks and trusts and mines; and that plunger, Max Moebus, and old Amos Flack—Flack the hack stalking-horse of every bull-market, who laid down on his own brokers and has done everybody's dirty work ever since. How on earth, Mallett, do you suppose Jack Dysart ever got himself mixed up with such a lot of skyrockets and disreputable fly-by-nights?"

Duane did not answer. He had nothing good to say or think of Dysart.

Rosalie reappeared at that moment in her distractingly pretty pongee motor-coat and hat.

"Do come back with us, Duane," she said. "There's a rumble and we'll get the mud off you with a hose."

"I'd like to run down sometimes if you'll let me," he said, shaking hands.

So they parted, he to return to his studio, where models booked long ahead awaited him for canvases which he was going on with, although the great Trust Company that ordered them had practically thrown them back on his hands.

That evening at home when he came downstairs dressed in white serge for dinner, he found his father unusually silent, very pale, and so tired that he barely tasted the dishes the butler offered, and sat for the most part motionless, head and shoulders sagging against the back of his chair.

And after dinner in the conservatory Duane lighted his father's cigar and then his own.

"What's wrong?" he asked, pleasantly invading the privacy of years because he felt it was the time to do it.

His father slowly turned his head and looked at him—seemed to study the well-knit, loosely built, athletic figure of this strong young man—his only son—as though searching for some support in the youthful strength he gazed upon.

He said, very deliberately, but with a voice not perfectly steady:

"Matters are not going very well, my boy."

"What matters, father?"

"Down-town."

"Yes, I've heard. But, after all, you people in the Half Moon need only crawl into your shell and lie still."

"Yes."

After a silence:

"Father, have you any outside matters that trouble you?"

"There are—some."

"You are not involved seriously?"

His father made an effort: "I think not, Duane."

"Oh, all right. If you were, I was going to suggest that I've deposited what I have, subject to your order, with your own cashier."

"That is—very kind of you, my son. I may—find use for it—for a short time. Would you take my note?"

Duane laughed. He went on presently: "I wrote Naida the other day. She has given me power of attorney. What she has is there, any time you need it."

His father hung his head in silence; only his colourless and shrunken hands worked on the arms of his chair.

"See here, father," said the young fellow; "don't let this thing bother you. Anything that could possibly happen is better than to have you look and feel as you do. Suppose the very worst happens—which it won't—but suppose it did and we all went gaily to utter smash.

"That is a detail compared with your going to smash physically. Because Naida and I never did consider such things vital; and mother is a brick when it comes to a show-down. And as for me, why, if the very worst hits us, I can take care of our bunch. It's in me to do it. I suppose you don't think so. But I can make money enough to keep us together, and, after all, that's the main thing."

His father said nothing.

"Of course," laughed Duane, "I don't for a moment suppose that anything like that is on the cards. I don't know what your fortune is, but judging from your generosity to Naida and me I fancy it's too solid to worry over. The trouble with you gay old capitalists," he added, "is that you think in such enormous sums! And you forget that little sums are required to make us all very happy; and if some of the millions which you cannot possibly ever use happen to escape you, the tragic aspect as it strikes you is out of all proportion to the real state of the case."

His father felt the effort his son was making; looked up wearily, strove to smile, to relight his cigar; which Duane did for him, saying:

"As long as you are not mixed up in that Klawber, Skelton, Moebus crowd, I'm not inclined to worry. It seems, as of course you know, that Dysart's brokers failed to-day."

"So I heard," said his father steadily. He straightened himself in his chair. "I am sorry. Mr. Greensleeve is a very old friend——"

The library telephone rang; the second man entered and asked if Colonel Mallett could speak to Mr. Dysart over the wire on a matter concerning the Yo Espero district.

Duane, astonished, sprang up asking if he might not take the message; then shrank aside as his father got to his feet. He saw the ghastly pallor on his face as his father passed him, moving toward the library; stood motionless in troubled amazement, then walked to the open window of the conservatory and, leaning there, waited.

His father did not return. Later a servant came:

"Colonel Mallett has retired, Mr. Duane, and begs that he be undisturbed, as he is very tired."



CHAPTER XV

DYSART

The possibility that his father could be involved in any of the spectacular schemes which had evidently caught Dysart, seemed so remote that Duane's incredulity permitted him to sleep that night, though the name Yo Espero haunted his dreams.

But in the morning, something he read in the paper concerning a vast enterprise, involving the control of the new radium mines in Southern California, startled him into trying to recollect what he had heard of Yo Espero and the Cascade Development and Securities Company. Tainting its title the sinister name of Moebus seemed to reoccur persistently in his confused imagination. Dysart's name, too, figured in it. And, somehow, he conceived an idea that his father once received some mining engineer's reports covering the matter; he even seemed to remember that Guy Wilton had been called into consultation.

Whatever associations he had for the name of the Cascade Development and Securities Company must have originated in Paris the year before his father returned to America. It seemed to him that Wilton had been in Spain that year examining the recent and marvellously rich radium find; and that his father and Wilton exchanged telegrams very frequently concerning a mine in Southern California known as Yo Espero.

His father breakfasted in his room that morning, but when he appeared in the library Duane was relieved to notice that his step was firmer and he held himself more erect, although his extreme pallor had not changed to a healthier colour.

"You know," said Duane, "you've simply got to get out of town for a while. It's all bally rot, your doing this sort of thing."

"I may go West for a few weeks," said his father absently.

"Are you going down-town?"

"No.... And, Duane, if you don't mind letting me have the house to myself this morning——"

He hesitated, glancing from his son to the telephone.

"Of course not," said Duane heartily. "I'm off to the studio——"

"I don't mean to throw you out," murmured his father with a painful attempt to smile, "but there's a stenographer coming from my office and several—business acquaintances."

The young fellow rose, patted his father's shoulder lightly:

"What is really of any importance," he said, "is that you keep your health and spirits. What I said last night covers my sentiments. If I can do anything in the world for you, tell me."

His father took the outstretched hand, lifted his faded eyes with a strange dumb look; and so they parted.

On Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, Duane, swinging along at a good pace, turned westward, and half-way to Sixth Avenue encountered Guy Wilton going east, a packet under one arm, stick and hat in the other hand, the summer wind blowing the thick curly hair from his temples.

"Ah," observed Wilton, "early bird and worm, I suppose? Don't try to bolt me, Duane; I'm full of tough and undigested—er—problems, myself. Besides, I'm fermenting. Did you ever silently ferment while listening politely to a man you wanted to assault?"

Duane laughed, then his eye by accident, caught a superscription on the packet of papers under Wilton's arm: Yo Espero! His glance reverted in a flash to Wilton's face.

The latter said: "I want to write a book entitled 'Gentleman I Have Kicked.' Of course I've only kicked 'em mentally; but my! what a list I have!—all sorts, all nations—from certain domestic and predatory statesmen to the cad who made his beautiful and sensitive mistress notorious in a decadent novel!—all kinds, Duane, have I kicked mentally I've just used my foot on another social favorite——"

"Dysart!" said Duane, inspired, and, turning painfully red, begged Wilton's pardon.

"You've sure got a disconcerting way with you," admitted Wilton, very much out of countenance.

"It was rotten bad taste in me——"

Wilton grinned with a wry face: "Nobody is standing much on ceremony these days. Besides, I'm on to your trail, young man"—tapping the bundle under his arm—"your eye happened to catch that superscription; no doubt your father has talked to you; and you came to—a rather embarrassing conclusion."

Duane's serious face fell:

"My father and I have not talked on that subject, Guy. Are you going up to see him now?"

Wilton hesitated: "I suppose I am.... See here, Duane, how much do you know about—anything?"

"Nothing," he said without humour; "I'm beginning to worry over my father's health.... Guy, don't tell me anything that my father's son ought not to know; but is there something I should know and don't?—anything in which I could possibly be of help to my father?"

Wilton looked carefully at a distant policeman for nearly a minute, then his meditative glance became focussed on vacancy.

"I—don't—know," he said slowly. "I'm going to see your father now. If there is anything to tell, I think he ought to tell it to you. Don't you?"

"Yes. But he won't. Guy, I don't care a damn about anything except his health and happiness. If anything threatens either, he won't tell me, but don't you think I ought to know?"

"You ask too hard a question for me to answer."

"Then can you answer me this? Is father at all involved in any of Jack Dysart's schemes?"

"I—had better not answer, Duane."

"You know best. You understand that it is nothing except anxiety for his personal condition that I thought warranted my butting into his affairs and yours."

"Yes, I understand. Let me think over things for a day or two. Now I've got to hustle. Good-bye."

He hastened on eastward; Duane went west, slowly, more slowly, halted, head bent in troubled concentration; then he wheeled in his tracks with nervous decision, walked back to the Plaza Club, sent for a cab, and presently rattled off up-town.

In a few minutes the cab swung east and came to a standstill a few doors from Fifth Avenue; and Duane sprang out and touched the button at a bronze grille.

The servant who admitted him addressed him by name with smiling deference and ushered him into a two-room reception suite beyond the tiny elevator.

There was evidently somebody in the second room; Duane had also noticed a motor waiting outside as he descended from his cab; so he took a seat and sat twirling his walking-stick between his knees, gloomily inspecting a room which, in pleasanter days, had not been unfamiliar to him.

Instead of the servant returning, there came a click from the elevator, a quick step, and the master of the house himself walked swiftly into the room wearing hat and gloves.

"What do you want?" he inquired briefly.

"I want to ask you a question or two," said Duane, shocked at the change in Dysart's face. Haggard, thin, snow-white at the temples with the light in his eyes almost extinct, the very precision and freshness of linen and clothing brutally accentuated the ravaged features.

"What questions?" demanded Dysart, still standing, and without any emotion whatever in either voice or manner.

"The first is this: are you in communication with my father concerning mining stock known as Yo Espero?"

"I am."

"Is my father involved in any business transactions in which you figure, or have figured?"

"There are some. Yes."

"Is the Cascade Development and Securities Co. one of them?"

"Yes, it is."

Duane's lips were dry with fear; he swallowed, controlled the rising anger that began to twitch at his throat, and went on in a low, quiet voice:

"Is this man—Moebus—connected with any of these transactions in which you and—and my father are interested?"

"Yes."

"Is Klawber?"

"Max Moebus, Emanuel Klawber, James Skelton, and Amos Flack are interested. Is that what you want to know?"

Duane looked at him, stunned. Dysart stepped nearer, speaking almost in a whisper:

"Well, what about it? Once I warned you to keep your damned nose out of my personal affairs——"

"I make some of them mine!" said Duane sharply; "when crooks get hold of an honest man, every citizen is a policeman!"

Dysart, face convulsed with fury, seized his arm in a vicelike grip:

"Will you keep your cursed mouth shut!" he breathed. "My father is in the next room. Do you want to kill him?"

At the same moment there came a stir from the room beyond, the tap-tap of a cane and shuffling steps across the polished parquet. Dysart's grip relaxed, his hand fell away, and he made a ghastly grimace as a little old gentleman came half-trotting, half-shambling to the doorway. He was small and dapper and pink-skinned under his wig; the pink was paint; his lips and eyes peered and simpered; from one bird-claw hand dangled a monocle.

Jack Dysart made a ghastly and supreme effort:

"I was just saying to Duane, father, that all this financial agitation is bound to blow over by December—Duane Mallett, father!"—as the old man raised his eye-glass and peeped up at the young fellow—"you know his father, Colonel Mallett."

"Yes, to be sure, yes, to be sure!" piped the old beau. "How-de-do! How-de-do-o-o! My son Jack and I motor every morning at this hour. It is becoming a custom—he! he!—every day from ten to eleven—then a biscuit and a glass of sherry—then a nap—te-he! Oh, yes, every day, Mr. Mallett, rain or fair—then luncheon at one, and the cigarette—te-he!—and a little sleep—and the drive at five! Yes, Mr. Mallett, it is the routine of a very old man who knew your grandfather—and all his set—when the town was gay below Bleecker Street! Yes, yes—te-he-he!"

Nervous spasms which passed as smiles distorted the younger Dysart's visage; the aged beau offered his hand to Duane, who took it in silence, his eyes fixed on the shrivelled, painted face:

"Your grandfather was a very fine man," he piped; "very fine! ve-ery fine! And so I perceive is his grandson—te-he!—and I flatter myself that my boy Jack is not unadmired—te-he-he!—no, no—not precisely unnoticed in New York—the town whose history is the history of his own race, Mr. Mallett—he is a good son to me—yes, yes, a good son. It is gratifying to me to know that you are his friend. He is a good friend to have, Mr. Mallett, a good friend and a good son."

Duane bent gently over the shrivelled hand.

"I won't detain you from your drive, Mr. Dysart. I hope you will have a pleasant one. It is a pleasure to know my grandfather's old friends. Good-bye."

And, erect, he hesitated a moment, then, for an old man's sake he held out his hand to Jack Dysart, bidding him good-bye in a pleasant voice pitched clear and decided, so that deaf ears might corroborate what half-blind and peering eyes so dimly beheld.

Dysart walked to the door with him, waved the servant aside, and, laying a shaking hand on the bronze knob, opened the door for his unbidden guest.

As Duane passed him he said:

"Thank you, Mallett," in a voice so low that Duane was half-way to his cab before he understood.

* * * * *

That day, and the next, and all that week he worked in his pitlike studio. Through the high sky-window a cloudless zenith brooded; the heat became terrific; except for the inevitable crush of the morning and evening migration south and north, the streets were almost empty under a blazing sun.

His father seemed to be physically better. Although he offered no confidences, it appeared to the son that there was something a little more cheerful in his voice and manner. It may have been only the anticipation of departure; for he was going West in a day or two, and it came out that Wilton was going with him.

The day he left, Duane drove him to the station. There was a private car, the "Cyane," attached to the long train. Wilton met them, spoke pleasantly to Duane; but Colonel Mallett did not invite his son to enter the car, and adieux were said where they stood.

As the young fellow turned and passed beneath the car-windows, he caught a glimpse above him of a heavy-jowled, red face into which a cigar was stuck—a perfectly enormous expanse of face with two little piglike eyes almost buried in the mottled fat.

"That's Max Moebus," observed a train hand respectfully, as Duane passed close to him; "I guess there's more billions into that there private car than old Pip's crowd can dig out of their pants pockets on pay day."

A little, dry-faced, chin-whiskered man with a loose pot-belly and thin legs came waddling along, followed by two red-capped negroes with his luggage. He climbed up the steps of the "Cyane"; the train man winked at Duane, who had turned to watch him.

"Amos Flack," he said. "He's their 'lobbygow.'" With which contemptuous information he spat upon the air-brakes and, shoving both hands into his pockets, meditatively jingled a bunch of keys.

* * * * *

The club was absolutely deserted that night; Duane dined there alone, then wandered into the great empty room facing Fifth Avenue, his steps echoing sharply across the carpetless floor. The big windows were open; there was thunder in the air—the sonorous stillness in which voices and footsteps in the street ring out ominously.

He smoked and watched the dim forms of those whom the heat drove forth into the night, men with coats over their arms and straw hats in their hands, young girls thinly clad in white, bare-headed, moving two and two with dragging steps and scarcely spirit left even for common coquetry or any response to the jesting oafs who passed.

Here and there a cruising street-dryad threaded the by-paths of the metropolitan jungle; here and there a policeman, gray helmet in hand, stood mopping his face, night-club tucked up snugly under one arm. Few cabs were moving; at intervals a creaking, groaning omnibus rolled past, its hurricane deck white with the fluttering gowns of women and young girls.

Somebody came into the room behind him; Duane turned, but could not distinguish who it was in the dusk. A little while later the man came over to where he sat, and he looked up; and it was Dysart.

There was silence for a full minute; Dysart stood by the window looking out; Duane paid him no further attention until he wheeled slowly and said:

"Do you mind if I have a word with you, Mallett?"

"Not if it is necessary."

"I don't know whether it is necessary."

"Don't bother about it if you are in the slightest doubt."

Dysart waited a moment, perhaps for some unpleasant emotion to subside; then:

"I'll sit down a moment, if you permit."

He dropped into one of the big, deep, leather chairs and touched the bell. A servant came; he looked across at Duane, hesitated to speak:

"Thank you," said Duane curtly. "I've cut it out."

"Scotch. Bring the decanter," murmured Dysart to the servant.

When it was served he drained the glass, refilled it, and turned in the rest of the mineral water. Before he spoke he emptied the glass again and rang for more mineral water. Then he looked at Duane and said in a low voice:

"I thought you were worried the other day when I saw you at my house."

"What is that to you?"

Dysart said: "You were very kind—under provocation."

"I was not kind on your account."

"I understand. But I don't forget such things."

Duane glanced at him in profound contempt. Here was the stereotyped scoundrel with the classical saving trait—the one conventionally inevitable impulse for good shining like a diamond on a muck-heap—his apparently disinterested affection for his father.

"You were very decent to me that day," Dysart said. "You had something to say to me—but were good enough not to. I came over to-night to give you a chance to curse me out. It's the square thing to do."

"What do you know about square dealing?"

"Go on."

"I have nothing to add."

"Then I have if you'll let me." He paused; the other remained silent. "I've this to say: you are worried sick; I saw that. What worries you concerns your father. You were merciful to mine. I'll do what I can for you."

He swallowed half of what remained in his iced glass, set it back on the table with fastidious precision:

"The worst that can happen to your father is to lose control of the Yo Espero property. I think he is going to lose it. They've crowded me out. If I could have endured the strain I'd have stood by your father—for what you did for mine.... But I couldn't, Mallett."

He moistened his lips again; leaned forward:

"I think I know one thing about you, anyway; and I'm not afraid you'd ever use any words of mine against me——"

"Don't say them!" retorted Duane sharply.

But Dysart went on:

"You have no respect for me. You found out one thing about me that settled me in your opinion. Outside of that, however, you never liked me."

"That is perfectly true."

"I know it. And I want to say now that it was smouldering irritation from that source—wounded vanity, perhaps—coupled with worry and increasing cares, that led to that outburst of mine. I never really believed that my wife needed any protection from the sort of man you are. You are not that kind."

"That also is true."

"And I know it. And now I've cleared up these matters; and there's another." He bit his lip, thought a moment, then with a deep, long breath:

"When you struck me that night I—deserved it. I was half crazy, I think—with what I had done—with a more material but quite as ruinous situation developing here in town—with domestic complications—never mind where all the fault lay—it was demoralising me. Do you think that I am not perfectly aware that I stand very much alone among men? Do you suppose that I am not aware of my personal unpopularity as far as men are concerned? I have never had an intimate friend—except Delancy Grandcourt. And I've treated him like a beast. There's something wrong about me; there always has been."

He slaked his thirst again; his hand shook so that he nearly dropped the glass:

"Which is preliminary," he went on, "to saying to you that no matter what I said in access of rage, I never doubted that your encounter with—Miss Quest—was an accident. I never doubted that your motive in coming to me was generous. God knows why I said what I did say. You struck me; and you were justified.... And that clears up that!"

"Dysart," said the other, "you don't have to tell me these things."

"Would you rather not have heard them?"

Duane thought a moment.

"I would rather have heard them, I believe."

"Then may I go on?"

"Is there anything more to explain between us?"

"No.... But I would like to say something—in my own behalf. Not that it matters to you—or to any man, perhaps, except my father. I would like to say it, Mallett."

"Very well."

"Then; I prefer that you should believe I am not a crook. Not that it matters to you; but I prefer that you do not believe it.... You have read enough in the papers to know what I mean. I'm telling you now what I have never uttered to any man; and I haven't the slightest fear you will repeat it or use it in any manner to my undoing. It is this:

"The men with whom I was unwise enough to become partially identified are marked for destruction by the Clearing House Committee and by the Federal Government. I know it; others know it. Which means the ruthless elimination of anything doubtful which in future might possibly compromise the financial stability of this city.

"It is a brutal programme; the policy they are pursuing is bitterly unjust. Innocent and guilty alike are going to suffer; I never in all my life consciously did a crooked thing in business; and yet I say to you now that these people are bent on my destruction; that they mean to force us to close the doors of the Algonquin; that they are planning the ruin of every corporation, every company, every bank, every enterprise with which I am connected, merely because they have decreed the financial death of Moebus and Klawber!"

He made a trembling gesture with clenched hand, and leaned farther forward:

"Mallett! There is not one man to-day in Wall Street who has not done, and who is not doing daily, the very things for which the government officials and the Clearing House authorities are attempting to get rid of me. Their attacks on my securities will ultimately ruin me; but such attacks would ruin any financier, any bank in the United States, if continued long enough.

"Doesn't anybody know that when the government conspires with the Clearing House officials any security can be kicked out of the market? Don't they know that when bank examiners class any securities as undesirable, and bank officials throw them out from the loans of such institutions, that they're not worth the match struck to burn them into nothing?

"If they mean to close my companies and bring charges against me, I'll tell you now, Mallett, any official of any bank which to-day is in operation, can be indicted!"

He sat breathing fast, hands clasped nervously between his knees. Duane, painfully impressed, waited. And after a moment Dysart spoke again:

"They mean my ruin. There is a bank examiner at work—this very moment while we're sitting here—on the Collect Pond Bank—which is mine. The Federal inquisitors went through it once; now a new one is back again. They found nothing with which to file an adverse report the first time. Why did they come back?

"And I'll tell you another thing, Mallett, which may seem a slight reason for my sullenness and quick temper; they've had secret-service men following me ever since I returned from Roya-Neh. They are into everything that I've ever been connected with; there is no institution, no security in which I am interested, that they have not investigated.

"And I tell you also, incredible as it may sound, that there is no security in which I am interested which is not now being attacked by government officials, and which, as a result of such attacks, is not depreciating daily. I tell you they've even approached the United States Court for its consent to a ruinous disposal of certain corporation notes in which I am interested! Will you tell me what you think of that, Mallett?"

Duane said: "I don't know, Dysart. I know almost nothing about such matters. And—I am sorry that you are in trouble."

The silence remained unbroken for some time; then Dysart stood up:

"I don't offer you my hand. You took it once for my father's sake. That was manly of you, Mallett.... I thought perhaps I might lighten your anxiety about your father. I hope I have.... And I must ask your pardon for pressing my private affairs upon you"—he laughed mirthlessly—"merely because I'd rather you didn't think me a crook—for my father's sake.... Good-night."

"Dysart," he said, "why in God's name have you behaved as you have to—that girl?"

Dysart stood perfectly motionless, then in a voice under fair control:

"I understand you. You don't intend that as impertinence; you're a square man, Mallett—a man who suffers under the evil in others. And your question to me meant that you thought me not entirely hopeless; that there was enough of decency in me to arouse your interest. Isn't that what you meant?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Well, then, I'll answer you. There isn't much left of me; there'll be less left of my fortune before long. I've made a failure of everything, fortune, friendship, position, happiness. My wife and I are separated; it is club gossip, I believe. She will probably sue for divorce and get it. And I ask you, because I don't know, can any amends be made to—the person you mentioned—by my offering her the sort and condition of man I now am?"

"You've got to, haven't you?" asked Duane.

"Oh! Is that it? A sort of moral formality?"

"It's conventional; yes. It's expected."

"By whom?"

"All the mess that goes to make up this compost heap we call society.... I think she also would expect it."

Dysart nodded.

"If you could make her happy it would square a great many things, Dysart."

The other looked up: "You?"

"I—don't know. Yes, in many ways; in that way at all events—if you made her happy."

Dysart stepped forward: "Would you be nice to her if I did? No other soul in the world knows except you. Other people would be nice to her. Would you? And would you have the woman you marry receive her?"

"Yes."

"That is square of you, Mallett.... I meant to do it, anyway.... Thank you.... Good-night."

"Good-night," said Duane in a low voice.

He returned to the house late that night, and found a letter from Geraldine awaiting him; the first in three days. Seated at the library table he opened the letter and saw at once that the red-pencilled cross at the top was missing.

Minutes passed; the first line blurred under his vacant gaze, for his eyes travelled no farther. Then the letter fell to the table; he dropped his head in his arms.

It was a curiously calm letter when he found courage to read it:

"I've lost a battle after many victories. It went against me after a hard fight here alone at Roya-Neh. I think you had better come up. The fight was on again the next night—that is, night before last, but I've held fast so far and expect to. Only I wish you'd come.

"It is no reproach to you if I say that, had you been here, I might have made a better fight. You couldn't be here; the shame of defeat is all my own.

"Duane, it was not a disastrous defeat in one way. I held out for four days, and thought I had won out. I was stupefied by loss of sleep, I think; this is not in excuse, only the facts which I lay bare for your consideration.

"The defeat was in a way a concession—a half-dazed compromise—merely a parody on a real victory for the enemy; because it roused in me a horror that left the enemy almost no consolation, no comfort, even no physical relief. The enemy is I myself, you understand—that other self we know about.

"She was perfectly furious, Duane; she wrestled with me, fought to make me yield more than I had—which was almost nothing—begged me, brutalised me, pleaded, tormented, cajoled. I was nearly dead when the sun rose; but I had gone through it.

"I wish you could come. She is still watching me. It's an armed truce, but I know she'll break it if the chance comes. There is no honour in her, Duane, no faith, no reason, no mercy. I know her.

"Can you not come? I won't ask it if your father needs you. Only if he does not, I think you had better come very soon.

"When may I restore the red cross to the top of my letters to you? I suppose I had better place it on the next letter, because if I do not you might think that another battle had gone against me.

"Don't reproach me. I couldn't stand it just now. Because I am a very tired girl, Duane, and what has happened is heavy in my heart—heavy on my head and shoulders like that monster Sindbad bore.

"Can you come and free me? One word—your arms around me—and I am safe.

"G.S."

As he finished, a maid came bearing a telegram on a salver.

"Tell him to wait," said Duane, tearing open the white night-message:

"Your father is ill at San Antonio and wishes you to come at once. Notify your mother but do not alarm her. Your father's condition is favorable, but the outcome is uncertain.

"WELLS, Secretary."

Duane took three telegram blanks from the note-paper rack and wrote:

"My father is ill at San Antonio. They have just wired me, and I shall take the first train. Stand by me now. Win out for my sake. I put you on your honour until I can reach you."

And to his father:

"I leave on first train for San Antonio. It's going to be all right, father."

And to his mother:

"Am leaving for San Antonio because I don't think father is well enough to I'll write you and wire you. Love to you and Naida."

He gave the maid the money, turned, and unhooking the receiver of the telephone, called up the Grand Central Station.



CHAPTER XVI

THROUGH THE WOODS

The autumn quiet at Roya-Neh was intensely agreeable to Scott Seagrave. No social demands interfered with a calm and dignified contemplation of the Rose-beetle, Melolontha subspinosa, and his scandalous "Life History"; there was no chatter of girls from hall and stairway to distract the loftier inspirations that possessed him, no intermittent soprano noises emitted by fluttering feminine fashion, no calflike barytones from masculine adolescence to drive him to the woods, where it was always rather difficult for him to focus his attention on printed pages. The balm of heavenly silence pervaded the house, and in its beneficent atmosphere he worked in his undershirt, inhaling inspiration and the aroma of whale-oil, soap, and carbolic solutions.

Neither Kathleen nor his sister being present to limit his operations, the entire house was becoming a vast mess. Living-rooms, library, halls, billiard-room, were obstructed with "scientific" paraphernalia; hundreds of glass fruit jars, filled with earth containing the whitish, globular eggs of the Rose-beetle, encumbered mantel and furniture; glass aquariums half full of earth, sod, and youthful larvae of the same sinful beetle lent pleasing variety to the monotony of Scott's interior decorative effects. Microscopes, phials, shallow trays bristling with sprouting seeds, watering-cans, note-books, buckets of tepid water, jars brimming with chemical solutions, blockaded the legitimate and natural runways of chamber-maid, parlour-maid, and housekeeper; a loud scream now and then punctured the scientific silence, recording the Hibernian discovery of some large, green caterpillar travelling casually somewhere in the house.

"Mr. Seagrave, sir," stammered Lang, the second man, perspiring horror, "your bedroom is full of humming birds and bats, sir, and I can't stand it no more!"

But it was only a wholesale hatching of huge hawk-moths that came whizzing around Lang when he turned on the electric lights; and which, escaping, swarmed throughout the house, filling it with their loud, feathery humming, and the shrieks of Milesian domestics.

And it was into these lively household conditions that Kathleen and Geraldine unexpectedly arrived from the Berkshires, worn out with their round of fashionable visits, anxious for the quiet and comfort that is supposed to be found only under one's own roof-tree. This is what they found:

In Geraldine's bath-tub a colony of water-lilies were attempting to take root for the benefit of several species of water-beetles. The formidable larvae of dragon-flies occupied Kathleen's bath; turtles peered at them from vantage points under the modern plumbing; an enormous frog regarded Kathleen solemnly from the wet, tiled floor. "Oh, dear," she said as Scott greeted her rapturously, "have I got to move all these horrid creatures?"

"For Heaven's sake don't touch a thing," protested Scott, welcoming his sister with a perfunctory kiss; "I'll find places for them in a minute."

"How could you, Scott!" exclaimed Geraldine, backing hastily away from a branch of green leaves on which several gigantic horned caterpillars were feeding. "I don't feel like ever sleeping in this room again," she added, exasperated.

"Why, Sis," he explained mildly, "those are the caterpillars of the magnificent Regal moth! They're perfectly harmless, and it's jolly to watch them tuck away walnut leaves. You'll like to have them here in your room when you understand how to weigh them on these bully little scales I've just had sent up from Tiffany's."

But his sister was too annoyed and too tired to speak. She stood limply leaning against Kathleen while her brother disposed of his uncanny menagerie, talking away very cheerfully all the while absorbed in his grewsome pets.

But it was not to his sister, it was to Kathleen that his pride in his achievements was naively displayed; his running accompaniment of chatter was for Kathleen's benefit, his appeals were to her sympathy and understanding, not to his sister's.

Geraldine watched him in silence. Tired, not physically very well, this home-coming meant something to her. She had looked forward to it, and to her brother, unconsciously wistful for the protection of home and kin. For the day had been a hard one; she was able to affix the red-cross mark to her letter to Duane that morning, but it had been a bad day for her, very bad.

And now as she stood there, white, nerveless, fatigued, an ache grew in her breast, a dull desire for somebody of her own kin to lean on; and, following it, a slow realisation of how far apart from her brother she had drifted since the old days of cordial understanding in the schoolroom—the days of loyal sympathy through calm and stress, in predatory alliance or in the frank conflicts of the squared circle.

Suddenly her whole heart filled with a blind need of her brother's sympathy—a desire to return to the old intimacy as though in it there lay comfort, protection, sanctuary for herself from all that threatened her—herself!

Kathleen was assisting Scott to envelop the frog in a bath towel for the benevolent purpose of transplanting him presently to some other bath-tub; and Kathleen's golden head and Scott's brown one were very close together, and they were laughing in that intimate undertone characteristic of thorough understanding. Her brother's expression as he looked up at Kathleen Severn, was a revelation to his sister, and it pierced her with a pang of loneliness so keen that she started forward in sheer desperation, as though to force a path through something that was pushing her away from him.

"Let me take his frogship," she said with a nervous laugh. "I'll put him into a jolly big tub where you can grow all the water-weeds you like, Scott."

Her brother, surprised and gratified, handed her the bath-towel in the depths of which reposed the batrachian.

"He's really an interesting fellow, Sis," explained Scott; "he exudes a sticky, viscous fluid from his pores which is slightly toxic. I'm going to try it on a Rose-beetle."

Geraldine shuddered, but forced a smile, and, holding the imprisoned one with dainty caution, bore him to a palatial and porcelain-lined bath-tub, into which she shook him with determination and a suppressed shriek.

That night at dinner Scott looked up at his sister with something of the old-time interest and confidence.

"I was pretty sure you'd take an interest in all these things, sooner or later. I tell you, Geraldine, it will be half the fun if you'll go into it with us."

"I want to," said his sister, smiling, "but don't hurry my progress or you'll scare me half to death."

The tragic necessity for occupation, for interesting herself in something sufficient to take her out of herself, she now understood, and the deep longing for the love of all she had of kith and kin was steadily tightening its grip on her, increasing day by day. Nothing else could take its place; she began to understand that; not her intimacy with Kathleen, not even her love for Duane. Outside of these there existed a zone of loneliness in which she was doomed to wander, a zone peopled only by the phantoms of the parents she had never known long enough to remember—a dreaded zone of solitude and desolation and peril for her. The danger line marked its boundary; beyond lay folly and destruction.

Little by little Scott began to notice that his sister evidently found his company desirable, that she followed him about, watching his so-called scientific pursuits with a curiosity too constant to be assumed. And it pleased him immensely; and at times he held forth to her and instructed her with brotherly condescension.

He noticed, too, that her spirits did not appear to be particularly lively; there were often long intervals of silence when, together by the window in the library where he was fussing over his "Life History," she never spoke, never even moved from her characteristic attitude—seated deep in a leather chair, arms resting on the padded chair-arms, ankles crossed, and her head a trifle lowered, as though absorbed in studying the Herati design on a Persian rug.

Once, looking up suddenly, he surprised her brown eyes full of tears.

"Hello!" he said, amazed; "what's the row, Sis?"

But she only laughed and dried her eyes, denying that there was any explanation except that girls were sometimes that way for no reason at all.

One day he asked Kathleen privately about this, but she merely confirmed Geraldine's diagnosis of the phenomenon:

"Tears come into girls' eyes," she said, "and there isn't anybody on earth who can tell a man why, and he wouldn't comprehend it if anybody did tell him."

"I'll tell you one thing," he said sceptically; "if Rose-beetles shed tears, I'd never rest until I found out why. You bet there's always a reason that starts anything and always somebody to find it out and tell another fellow who can understand it!"

With which brilliant burst of higher philosophy they went out into the October woods together to hunt for cocoons.

Geraldine, rather flushed and nervous, met them at Hurryon Gate, carrying a rifle and wearing the shortest skirts her brother had ever beheld. The symmetry of her legs moved him to reproof:

"I thought people looked that way only in tailor's fashion plates," he said. "What are you after—chipmunks?"

"Not at all," said his sister. "Do you know what happened to me an hour ago? I was paddling your canoe into the Hurryon Inlet, and I suppose I made no noise in disembarking, and I came right on a baby wild boar in the junipers. It was a tiny thing, not eighteen inches long, Kathleen, and so cunning and furry and yellowish, with brown stripes on its back, that I tried to catch it—just to hug it."

"That was silly," said her brother.

"I know it was, now. Because I ran after it, and it ran; and, one by one, a whole herd of the cunning little things sprang out of the hemlock scrub and went off bucking and bucketing in all directions, and I, like a simpleton, hard after one of them——"

"Little idiot," said her brother solicitously. "Are you stark mad?"

"No, I'm just plain mad. Because, before I knew it, there came a crash in the underbrush and the biggest, furriest, and wickedest wild boar I ever saw halted in front of me, ears forward, every hair on end——"

"Lord save us, you jumped the sow!" groaned her brother. "She might have torn you to pieces, you ninny!"

"She meant to, I think. The next thing I knew she came headlong, mouth open, fairly screaming at me; and I turned and jumped clean into the Gray Water. Oh, Scott, it was humiliating to have to swim to the point with all my clothes on, scramble into the canoe, and shove off because a very angry wild creature drove me out of my own woods!"

"Well, dear, you won't ever interfere with a sow and pigs again, will you?" said Kathleen so earnestly that everybody laughed.

"What's the rifle for?" inquired Scott. "You don't intend to hunt for her, do you?"

"Of course not. I'm not vindictive or cruel. But old Miller said, when I came past the lodge, dripping wet, that the boar are increasing too fast and that you ought to keep them down either by shooting or by trapping them, and sending them to other people for stocking purposes. The Pink 'uns want some; why don't you?"

"I don't want to shoot or trap them," said Scott obstinately.

"Miller says they pulled down deer last winter and tore them to shreds. Everything in the forest is afraid of them; they drive the deer from the feeding-grounds, and I don't believe a lynx or even any of the bear that climb over the fence would dare attack them."

Kathleen said: "You really ought to ask some men up here to shoot, Scott. I don't wish to be chased about by a boar."

"They never bother people," he protested. "What are you going to do with that rifle, Geraldine?"

"My nerve has gone," she confessed, laughing; "I prefer to have it with me when I take walks. It's really safer," she added seriously to Kathleen. "Miller says that a buck deer can be ugly, too."

"Oh, Lord!" said her brother, laughing; "it's only because you're the prettiest thing ever, in that hunting dress! Don't tell me; and kindly be careful where you point that rifle."

"As if I needed instructions!" retorted his sister. "I wish I could see a boar—a big one with a particularly frightful temper and tusks to match."

"I'll bet you that you can't kill a boar," he said in good-humoured disdain.

"I don't see any to kill."

"Well, I bet you can't find one. And if you do, I bet you don't kill him."

"How long," asked Geraldine dangerously, "does that bet hold good?"

"All winter, if you like. It's the prettiest single jewel you can pick out against a new saddle-horse. I need a gay one; I'm getting out of condition. And all our horses are as interesting as chevaux de bois when the mechanism is freshly oiled and the organ plays the 'Ride of the Valkyries.'"

"I've half a mind to take that wager," said Geraldine, very pink and bright-eyed. "I think I will take it if——"

"Please don't, dear," said Kathleen anxiously. "The keepers say that a wounded boar is perfectly horrid sometimes."

"Dangerous?" Her eyes glimmered brighter still.

"Certainly, a wounded boar is dangerous. I heard Miller say——"

"Bosh!" said Scott. "They run away from you every time. Besides, Geraldine isn't going to have enough sporting blood in her to take that bet and make good."

Something in the quick flush and tilt of her head reminded Scott of the old days when their differences were settled with eight-ounce gloves. The same feeling possessed his sister, thrilled her like a sudden, unexpected glimpse of a happiness which apparently had long been ended for ever.

"Oh, Scott," she exclaimed, still thrilling, "it is like old times to hear you try to bully me. It's so long since I've had enough spirit to defy you. But I do now!—oh, yes, I do! Why, I believe that if we had the gloves here, I'd make you fight me or take back what you said about my not having any sporting spirit!"

He laughed: "I was thinking of that, too. You're a good sport, Sis. Don't bother to take that wager——"

"I do take it!" she cried; "it's like old times and I love it. Now, Scott, I'll show you a boar before we go to town or I'll buy you a horse. No backing out; what's said can't be unsaid, remember:

"King, king, double king, Can't take back a given thing! Queen, queen, queen of queens, What she promises she means!"

That was a very solemn incantation in nursery days; she laughed a little in tender tribute to the past.

Scott was a trifle perturbed. He glanced uneasily at Kathleen, who told him very plainly that he had contrived to make her anxious and unhappy. Then she fell back into step with Geraldine, letting Scott wander disconsolately forward:

"Dear," she said, passing one arm around the younger girl, "I didn't quite dare to object too strongly. You looked so—so interested, so deliciously defiant—so like your real self——"

"I feel like it to-day, Kathleen; let me turn back in my own footsteps—if I can. I've been trying so very hard to—to get back to where there was no—no terror in the world."

"I know. But, darling, you won't run into any danger, will you?"

"Do you call a hard-hit beast a danger? I've wounded a more terrible one than any boar that ever bristled. I'm trying to kill something more terrifying. And I shall if I live."

"You poor, brave little martyr!" whispered Kathleen, her violet eyes filled with sudden tears; "don't you suppose I know what you are doing? Don't you suppose I watch and pray——"

"Did you know I was really trying?" asked the girl, astonished—"I mean before I told you?"

"Know it! Angels above! Of course I know it. Don't you suppose I've been watching you slowly winning back to your old dear self—tired, weary-footed, desolate, almost hopeless, yet always surely finding your way back through the dreadful twilight to the dear, sweet, generous self that I know so well—the straightforward, innocent, brave little self that grew at my knee!—Geraldine—Geraldine, my own dear child!"

"Hush—I did not know you knew. I am trying. Once I failed. That was not very long ago, either. Oh, Kathleen, I am trying so hard, so hard! And to-day has been a dreadful day for me. That is why I went off by myself; I paddled until I was ready to drop into the lake; and the fright that the boar gave me almost ended me; but it could not end desire!... So I took a rifle—anything to interest me—keep me on my feet and moving somewhere—doing something—anything—anything, Kathleen—until I can crush it out of me—until there's a chance that I can sleep——"

"I know—I know! That is why I dared not remonstrate when I saw you drifting again toward your old affectionate relations with Scott. I'm afraid of animals—except what few Scott has persuaded me to tolerate—butterflies and frogs and things. But if anything on earth is going to interest you—take your mind off yourself—and bring you and Scott any nearer together, I shall not utter one word against it—even when it puts you in physical danger and frightens me. Do you understand?"

The girl nodded, turned and kissed her. They were following a path made by game; Scott was out of sight ahead somewhere; they could hear his boots crashing through the underbrush. After a while the sound died away in the forest.

"The main thing," said Geraldine, "is to keep up my interest in the world. I want to do things. To sit idle is pure destruction to me. I write to Duane every morning, I read, I do a dozen things that require my attention—little duties that everybody has. But I can't continue to write to Duane all day. I can't read all day; duties are soon ended. And, Kathleen, it's the idle intervals I dread so—the brooding, the memories, the waiting for events scheduled in domestic routine—like dinner—the—the terrible waiting for sleep! That is the worst. I tell you, physical fatigue must help to save me—must help my love for Duane, my love for you and Scott, my self-respect—what is left of it. This rifle"—she held it out—"would turn into a nuisance if I let it. But I won't; I can't; I've got to use everything to help me."

"You ride every day, don't you?" ventured the other woman timidly.

"Before breakfast. That helps. I wish I had a vicious horse to break. I wish there was rough water where canoes ought not to go!" she exclaimed fiercely. "I need something of that sort."

"You drove Scott's Blue Racer yesterday so fast that Felix came to me about it," said Kathleen gently.

Geraldine laughed. "It couldn't go fast enough, dear; that was the only trouble." Then, serious and wistful: "If I could only have Duane.... Don't be alarmed; I can't—yet. But if I only could have him now! You see, his life is already very full; his work is absorbing him. It would absorb me. I don't know anything about it technically, but it interests me. If I could only have him now; think about him every second of the day—to keep me from myself——"

She checked herself; suddenly her eyes filled, her lip quivered:

"I want him now!" she said desperately. "He could save me; I know it! I want him now—his love, his arms to keep me safe at night! I want him to love me—love me! Oh, Kathleen! if I could only have him!"

A delicate colour tinted Kathleen's face; her ears shrank from the girl's low-voiced cry, with its glimmer of a passion scarcely understood.

Long, long, the memory of his embrace had tormented her—the feeling of happy safety she had in his arms—the contact that thrilled almost past endurance, yet filled her with a glorious and splendid strength—that set wild pulses beating, wild blood leaping in her veins—that aroused her very soul to meet his lips and heed his words and be what his behest would have her.

And the memory of it now possessed her so that she stood straight and slim and tall, trembling in the forest path, and her dark eyes looked into Kathleen's with a strange, fiery glimmer of pride:

"I need him, but I love him too well to take him. Can I do more for him than that?"

"Oh, my darling, my darling," said Kathleen brokenly, "if you believe that he can save you—if you really feel that he can——"

"I am trying to save myself—I am trying." She turned and looked off through the forest, a straight, slender shape in the moving shadows of the leaves.

"But if he could really help you—if you truly believe it, dear, I—I don't know whether you might not venture—now——"

"No, dear." She slowly closed her eyes, remained motionless for a moment, drew a deep, long breath, and looked up through the sunlit branches overhead.

"I've got to be fair to him," she said aloud to herself; "I must give myself to him as I ought to be, or not at all.... That is settled."

She turned to Kathleen and took her hand:

"Come on, fellow-pilgrim," she said with an effort to smile. "My cowardice is over for the present."

A few steps forward they sighted Scott coming back. He was unusually red in the face and rather excited, and he flourished a stick.

"Of all the infernal impudence!" he said. "What do you think has happened to me? I saw a wild boar back there—not a very big one—and he came out into the trail ahead, and I kept straight on, thinking he'd hear me and run. And I'm blessed if the brute didn't whirl around and roughen up, and clatter his tusks until I actually had to come to a halt!"

"I don't want to walk in these woods any more," said Kathleen with sudden conviction. "Please come home, all of us."

"Nonsense," he said. "I won't stand for being hustled out of my own woods. Give me that rifle, Geraldine."

"I certainly will not," she said, smiling.

"What! Why not?"

"Because it rather looks as though I'm about to win my bet with you," observed Geraldine. "Please show me your boar, Scott." And she threw a cartridge into the magazine and started forward.

"Don't let her!" pleaded Kathleen. "Scott, it's ridiculous to let that child do such silly things——"

"Then stop her if you can," said Scott gloomily, following his sister. "I don't know anything about wild boar, but I suppose straight shooting will take care of them, and Sis can do that if she keeps her nerve."

Geraldine, hastening ahead, rifle poised, scanned the woods with the palpitating curiosity of an amateur. Eyes and ears alert, she kept mechanically reassuring herself that the thing to do was to shoot straight and keep cool, and to keep on shooting whichever way the boar might take it into his porcine head to run.

Scott hastened forward to her side:

"Here's the place," he said, looking about him. "He's concluded to make off, you see. They usually go off; they only stand when wounded or when they think they can't get away. He's harmless, I suppose—only it made me very tired to have him act that way. I hate to be backed out of my own property."

Geraldine, rather relieved, yet ashamed not to do all she could, began to walk toward a clump of low hemlocks. She had heard that wild boar take that sort of cover. She did not really expect to find anything there, so when a big black streak crashed out ahead of her she stood stock still in frozen astonishment, rifle clutched to her breast.

"Shoot!" shouted her brother.

"Oh, dear, oh, dear," she said helplessly, "he's gone out of sight! And I had such a splendid shot!" She stamped with vexation. "What a goose!" she repeated. "I had a perfectly splendid shot. And all I did was to jump like a scared cat and stare!"

"Anyway, you didn't run, and that's a point gained," observed her brother. "I had to. And that's one on me."

A moment later he said: "I believe those impudent boar do need a little thinning out. When is Duane coming?"

"In November," said Geraldine, still looking vaguely about for the departed pig.

"Early?"

"I think so, if his father is all right again. I've asked Naida, too. Rosalie wants to come——"

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, don't," he protested. "All I wanted was a shooting party to do a little scientific thinning out of these boar. I'll do some myself, too."

Geraldine laughed. "Rosalie is a dead shot at a target, dear. She wrote asking us to invite her to shoot. I don't see how I can very well refuse her. Do you?"

"That means her husband, too," grumbled Scott, "and that entire bunch."

"No; if it's a shooting party, I don't have to ask him."

Her brother said ungraciously: "Well, I don't care who you ask if they'll thin out these cheeky brutes. Fancy that two-year-old pig clattering his tusks at me, planted there in the path with his mane on end!—You know it mortifies me, Kathleen—it certainly does. One of these fine days some facetious pig will send me shinning up a tree!" He grew madder at the speculative indignity. "By ginger! I'm going to have a shooting party before the snow flies," he muttered, walking forward between Kathleen and his sister. "Keep your eyes out ahead; we may jump another at any time, as the wind is all right. And if we do, let him have it, Geraldine!"

It was a beautiful woodland through which they moved.

The late autumn foliage was unusually magnificent, lacking, this year, those garish and discordant hues which Americans think it necessary to admire. Oak brown and elm yellow, deep chrome bronze and sombre crimson the hard woods glowed against backgrounds of pine and hemlock. Larches were mossy cones of feathery gold; birches slim shafts of snowy gray, ochre-crowned; silver and green the balsams' spires pierced the canopy of splendid tapestry upborne by ash and oak and towering pine under a sky of blue so deep and intense that the lakes reflecting it seemed no less vivid.

Already in the brooks they passed painted trout hung low over every bed of gravel and white sand; the male trout wore his best scarlet fins, and his sides glowed in alternate patterns, jewelled with ruby and sapphire spots. Already the ruffed grouse thundered up by coveys, though they had not yet packed, for the broods still retained their autonomy.

But somewhere beyond the royal azure of the northern sky, very, very far away, there was cold in the world, for even last week, through the violet and primrose dusk, out of the north, shadowy winged things came speeding, batlike phantoms against the dying light—flight-woodcock coming through hill-cleft and valley to the land where summer lingered still.