Ingraham Lovell Margarita's Soul The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty 
 
 
 PART 1 (IN WHICH YOU SEE A SECRET SPRING) CHAPTER I (FATE WALKS BROADWAY) Pg 1 
     O I have seen a fair mermaid, 
       That sang beside a lonely sea, 
     And now her long black hair she'll braid, 
       And be my own good wife to me. 
   
     O woe's the day you saw the maid, 
       And woe's the song she sang the sea, 
     In hell her long black hair she'll braid, 
       For ne'er a soul at all has she! 
   
 _Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden._ 
   
 Roger Bradley was walking up Broadway. This fact calls sharply for 
 comment, for he had not done it in years; the thoroughfare was 
 intolerable to him. But one of its impingements upon a less blatant 
 avenue had caught him napping and he found himself entangled in a mesh 
 of theatre dribblings, pool-room loungers, wine-touts and homeward 
 bent women of the middle, shopping class. Being there, he scorned to 
 avail himself of the regularly recurring cross streets, but strode 
 along, his straight, trim bulk, his keen, judicial profile--a profile 
 that spoke strong of the best traditions of American blood--marking 
 him for what he was among a crowd not to be matched, in its way, upon 
 the Western Continent. 
   
 At the second slanting of the great, tawdry lane he bent with it and 
 encountered suddenly a little knot of flustered women just descended 
 from the elevated way that doubled the din and blare of the shrieking 
 city. They were bundle-filled, voluble, dressed by any standards save 
 those of their native city, far beyond their probable means and 
 undoubted station. As they stopped unexpectedly and hesitated, damming 
 the flood of hurrying citizens, Roger halted of necessity and stepped 
 backward, but in avoiding them he bumped heavily against the person 
 behind him. A startled gasp, something soft against his shoulder, the 
 sharp edge of a projecting hat, told him that this person was a 
 woman, and stepping sidewise into the shelter of a neighbouring 
 news-stall, he raised his hat with a courtesy alien to the place and 
 hour. 
   
 "I beg your pardon, madam," he said, "I trust I have not hurt you?" 
   
 "No," said the woman, who wore a heavy grey veil, and as that is 
 literally all she said and as her method of saying it was as 
 convincing as it was simple, one would suppose the incident closed and 
 look to see Roger complete his journey to his club without further 
 adventure. 
   
 Do I wish he had? God knows. It was undoubtedly the turning-point in 
 his life and he was forty. Had he gone on to the club where I was 
 waiting for him; had we dined, played out our rubber, dropped in at 
 the occasional chamber concert that was our usual and almost our only 
 dissipation in those days, I should not now be ransacking old letters 
 and diaries from which to make this book, nor would Margarita's 
 picture--her loveliest, as _Juliet_--lean toward me from the wall. She 
 is smiling; not as one smiles in photographs, but as a flesh-and-blood 
 woman droops over the man she loves and smiles her heart into his 
 lips, reaching over his shoulder. Everything slips behind but you two, 
 herself and you, when you look at it. Sarony, who took it, told me he 
 had never posed such a subject, and I believe him. 
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER I (FATE WALKS BROADWAY) Pg 2 
   
 Well, well, it's done now. It was twenty years ago that Roger bumped 
 into his fate in that eddy of Broadway and I was as powerless as you 
 are now to disentangle him and keep him for myself, which, selfishly 
 enough, of course, I wanted terribly to do. You see, he was all I had, 
 Roger, and I was hoping we would play the game out together. But--not 
 to have known Margarita? Never to have watched that bending droop of 
 her neck, that extraordinary colouring of her skin--a real Henner 
 skin! I remember Maurice Grau's telling me that he had always thought 
 Henner colour blind till he saw Margarita's neck in her name-part in 
 _Faust_. 
   
 The things that girl used to tell me, before she had any soul, of 
 course, and in the days when I was the third man to whom she had ever 
 spoken more than ten words in her life, were almost enough to pay for 
 all the pain she taught me. Such talks! I can close my eyes and 
 actually smell the sea-weed and the damp sand and hear the inrush of 
 the big combers. She used to sit in the lee of the rocks, all huddled 
 in that heavy, supple army-blue officer's cloak of hers with its 
 tarnished silver clasps, and talk as Miranda must have talked to 
 Ferdinand's old bachelor friend, who probably appreciated the 
 chance--too well, the poor old dog! 
   
 I had reached, I think, when I left off my plain unvarnished tale and 
 took to maundering, that precise point in it which exhibits Roger in 
 the act of replacing his hat upon his even then slightly greyish head 
 and striding on. It seems to me that he would not have checked in his 
 stride if the woman had replied after the usual tautological fashion 
 of her sex (we blame them for it, not thinking how wholly in nature it 
 is that they should be so, like the repeated notes of birds, the 
 persistence of the raindrops, the continual flicker of the sun through 
 the always fluttering leaves,) with some such phrase as, "No, indeed, 
 not in the least, I assure you!" or "Not at all, really--don't mention 
 it!" or even, "No, indeed," with a shy bow or a composed one, as the 
 case might be. But this woman uttered merely the syllable, "No," with 
 no modification nor variation, no inclination of the head, no movement 
 forward or back. Her utterance was grave, moreover, and precise; her 
 tone noticeably full and deep. Roger, pausing a moment in the shelter 
 of the news-stall, spoke again at the spur of some unexplainable 
 impulse. 
   
 "I was afraid I had stepped directly on your foot--it felt so," he 
 said. 
   
 Again she answered simply, "No," and that was his second chance. Now 
 in the face of these facts it is folly to contend that the woman 
 "accosted" him, as his cousin, who was one of the Boston Thayers, put 
 it to me. She did nothing of the kind; she replied twice, to his 
 distinct questions, in the coldest of monosyllables and he could not 
 even have told if she looked at him, her veil was so thick. Let that 
 be definitely understood, once and for all. The chances were even in 
 favour of her being violently pitted from the small-pox, since even 
 twenty years ago, when the city was less cosmopolitan (and from my 
 point of view more interesting) the women of New York of the class 
 that travels unaccompanied and on foot at dusk were not accustomed to 
 go heavily veiled if they had any fair excuse for the contrary course. 
   
 Nevertheless to that veiled woman did Roger address 
 himself--unnecessarily, mark you--for the third time. 
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER I (FATE WALKS BROADWAY) Pg 3 
   
 Why did he? He 
 had his chance; two chances in fact. But this is folly, for of course 
 he had no chance at all. Fate stood by that news-stall, with the 
 blear-eyed, frousy woman that tended it looking vacantly on; Fate, 
 veiled, too, and not even monosyllabic in his behalf. I should have 
 known this, I think, even if I had not lived those curious, long eight 
 months in Algeria and slept those dreamless nights under the Algerian 
 stars that got into my blood and call me back now and then; 
 imperiously and never in vain, though I feel older than the stars, and 
 Alif and the rest are dead or exhibiting themselves at the great 
 American memorial fairs that began to flourish about the time this 
 tale begins. No, there was no help: it was written. 
   
 "I am glad I did not hurt you," he said, really moving forward now and 
 again raising his hat, "these crowds are dangerous for women at this 
 hour." 
   
 He took two steps and stopped suddenly, for a hand slipped under his 
 arm. (You should have seen his cousin's face, the Boston one, when in 
 that relentless way known only to women and eminent artists in 
 cross-examination she got this fact out of me.) 
   
 "Will you tell me the quickest way to Broadway?" said the woman to 
 whom he had just spoken. 
   
 "To Broadway?" he echoed stupidly, standing stock still, conscious of 
 the grasp upon his arm, a curious sense of the importance of this 
 apparently cheap experience surging over him, even while he resented 
 its banality. "This is Broadway. What do you want of it?" 
   
 "I want to show myself on it," said the woman, a young woman, from the 
 voice. 
   
 Roger stepped back against the news-stall, dragging her with him, 
 since her hand did not leave his arm. 
   
 "To show yourself on it?" he repeated sternly, "and why do you want to 
 do that?" 
   
 "To get myself some friends. I have none," said she serenely. 
   
 Now you must not think Roger a fool, for he was not. You see, you 
 never heard the voice that spoke to him. If you had, and had possessed 
 any experience or knowledge of the world, you would have realised that 
 the owner of that voice possessed neither or else was a very great and 
 convincing actress. Mere print cannot excuse him, perhaps, but I give 
 you my word he was as a matter of fact excusable, since he was a 
 bachelor. Most men are very susceptible to the human voice, especially 
 to the female human voice, and it has always been a matter of the 
 deepest wonder to me that the men who do not hear a lovely one once in 
 the year are most under the dominion of their females. I mean, of 
 course, the Americans. It is one of the greatest proofs of the power 
 of these _belles Americaines_ that they wield it in spite of the 
 rustiness of this, their chief national weapon. 
   
 The bell notes, the grave, full richness of this veiled woman's voice 
 touched Roger deeply and with a brusque motion he drew out from his 
 pocket a banknote and pressed it into the hand under his arm. 
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER I (FATE WALKS BROADWAY) Pg 4 
   
   
 "Take this and go home," he said severely. "If you will promise me to 
 call at an address I will give you, I will guarantee you a decent 
 means of livelihood. Will you promise me?" 
   
 She reached down without a word into a bag that hung _en chatelaine_ 
 at her waist and drew out something in her turn. 
   
 "I have a great many of those," she said placidly, "and more at home. 
 See them!" 
   
 And under his face she thrust a double handful of stamped paper--all 
 green. 
   
 "Each one of these is called twenty dollars," she informed him, "and 
 some of them are called fifty dollars. They are in the bottom of the 
 bag. I do not think that I need any more." 
   
 Roger stared at her. 
   
 "Put that away directly," he said, "and lift your veil so that I can 
 see who you are. There is something wrong here." 
   
 They stood in the lee of the flaring stall, a pair so obvious in their 
 relation to each other, one would say, as to require no comment beyond 
 the cynical indifference of the red-eyed woman who tended it. No doubt 
 she had long ceased to count the well-dressed, athletic men who drew 
 indifferently clothed young women into the shelter of her stand. And 
 yet no one of his Puritan ancestors could have been further in spirit 
 from her dreary inferences than this Roger. Nor do I believe him to be 
 so exceptional in this as to cause remark. We are not all birds of 
 prey, dear ladies, believe me. Indeed, since you have undertaken the 
 responsibilities of the literary dissecting-room so thoroughly and 
 increasingly; since you have, as one might say, at last freed your 
 minds to us in the amazing frankness of your multitudinous and 
 unsparing pages, I am greatly tempted to wonder if you are not 
 essentially less decent than we. One would never have ventured to 
 suspect it, had you not opened the door.... 
   
 The woman threw back her veil so that it framed her face like a cloud 
 and Roger looked straight into her eyes. And so the curtain rolled up, 
 the orchestra ceased its irrelevant pipings and the play was begun. 
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER II (FATE GOES A-FISHING) Pg 5 
 Roger told me afterward that he literally could not say if it were 
 five seconds or five minutes that he looked into the girl's eyes. He 
 has since leaned to the opinion that it was nearer five minutes, 
 because even the news-woman stared at him and the passing street boys 
 had already begun to collect. Some subconscious realisation of this 
 finally enabled him to drag his eyes away, very much as one drags 
 himself awake when he must, and to realise the picture he presented--a 
 dazed man confronting an extraordinarily lovely girl with her fist 
 full of banknotes on a Broadway kerbstone. An interested cabby caught 
 his eye, wagged his whip masterfully, wheeled up to them and with an 
 apparently complete grasp of the situation whirled them off through a 
 side street with never so much as a "Where to, sir?" 
   
 And so he found himself alone with an unknown beauty in a hansom cab, 
 for all the world like a mysterious hero of melodrama, and Roger hated 
 melodrama and was never mysterious in all his life, to say nothing of 
 disliking mystery in anyone connected with him. He says he was 
 extremely angry at this juncture and I believe him. 
   
 "What is your name?" he asked shortly. "Have you no parents or friends 
 to protect you from the consequences of this crazy performance? Where 
 do you live?" 
   
 "My name is Margarita," she replied directly and pleasantly, "I never 
 had but one parent and he died a few days ago. I live by the sea." 
   
 An ugly thrill shot down his spine. No healthy person likes to be 
 alone with a mad woman, and under a brilliant fleeting light he 
 studied her curiously only to receive the certain conviction that 
 whatever his companion might be, she was not mad. Her slate-blue eyes 
 were calm and bright, her lips rather noticeably firm for all their 
 curves--and the mad woman's mouth bewrayeth her inevitably under 
 scrutiny. Nor was she drugged into some passing vacancy of mind: her 
 whole atmosphere breathed a perfectly conscious control of her 
 movements, however misguided the event might prove them. Before this 
 conviction he hesitated slightly. 
   
 "You have another name, however," he said gently, "and what do you 
 mean by the sea? What sea?" 
   
 For it occurred to him that although her English was perfect, she 
 might be an utter stranger to the country, unthinkably abandoned, with 
 sufficient means to salve her betrayer's conscience. 
   
 "Is there more than one sea, then?" she inquired of him with interest. 
 "I thought there was only mine. It is a very large one with high 
 waves--and cold," she added as an after-thought. 
   
 Roger gasped. "You did not tell me your other name," he said. 
   
 "Joséphine," she replied readily, pronouncing the name in the French 
 manner. 
   
 "But you have another still?" 
   
 "Yes. Dolores," she said, with an evidently accustomed Spanish accent. 
   
 "And the last name?" he persisted in despair, noting with some busy 
 corner of his mind that they were drifting down Fifth Avenue. 
   
 "That is all there are," she assured him, "surely three different 
 names are sufficient for one person? I do not use the last two--only 
 Margarita." 
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER II (FATE GOES A-FISHING) Pg 6 
   
   
 Roger squared his shoulders, took the banknotes from her unresisting 
 hand and gravely folded them into her bag before he spoke again. 
   
 "Listen to me, Miss Margarita," he said slowly and with exaggerated 
 articulation, as one speaks to a child, "what was your father's name? 
 What did the people in the town you live in call him?" 
   
 "I told you we lived by the sea--did you forget?" she answered, a 
 shade reprovingly. "There is no town at all. And there are no people. 
 We live alone." 
   
 "But your servants must have called him something?" he persisted. 
   
 "Hester called my father 'sir' and the boy cannot talk, of course," 
 she said. 
   
 "Why not?" 
   
 "Because he is dumb. His name is Caliban," she added hastily, "and he 
 has no other, only that one." 
   
 "What is Hester's name?" Roger demanded doggedly. 
   
 "Hester Prynne," said Margarita Joséphine Dolores, "and I have had 
 nothing to eat since the man with the shining buttons gave me meat 
 between bread a great many hours ago. I wish I might see another such 
 man. He might be willing to give me more. Will you look out and tell 
 me if you see one?" 
   
 "For heaven's sake," Roger cried, "you are hungry! You should have 
 said so before--why didn't you?" 
   
 He called out a name to the cabman who took them quickly to a place 
 now called "the old one," because the new one is filled with people 
 who endeavour consistently to look newer than they are, I suppose. The 
 wine is newer certainly, and the manners. At this place, then, in a 
 quaint old corner, they found themselves, and Roger bespoke a meal 
 calculated to please a young woman far more exigent than this lonely 
 dweller by the sea was likely to be. The clearest of soups, the driest 
 of sherry in a tiny glass, something called by the respectful and 
 understanding waiter "_sôle frite_," which was at any rate, quite as 
 good as if it had been that, a hot and savoury _poulet rôti_--and 
 Roger, who had been too busy to take luncheon, looked about him, 
 contentedly well fed, rested his eyes with the clean, coarse linen, 
 the red wine in its straw basket that had come with the _poulet_, the 
 quiet, worn fittings of the little old-world place, and realised with 
 a shock of surprise that his companion had not spoken a word since the 
 meal began. 
   
 This was obviously not because she was famished, though she had the 
 healthy hunger of the creature not yet done with growing, but because, 
 simply, she felt no necessity for speech. She was evidently thinking, 
 for her eyes had the fixed absorption of a child's who dreams over his 
 bread and milk, but conversation she had none. He studied her, amused 
 partly, partly lost in her beauty, for indeed she was beautiful.  
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER II (FATE GOES A-FISHING) Pg 7 
   
 . She 
 had a pure olive skin, running white into the neck--oh, the back of 
 Margarita's neck! That tender nape with its soft, nearly blonde locks 
 that curled short about it below the heavy waves of what she called 
 her "real hair." That was chestnut, dark brown at night. Nature had 
 given her long dark lashes with perfect verisimilitude, but had at the 
 last moment capriciously decided against man's peace and hidden behind 
 them, set deep behind them under flexible Italian brows, those curious 
 slate-blue eyes that fixed her face in your mind inalterably. You 
 could not forget her. I know, because I have been trying for twenty 
 years. 
   
 "You are not, I take it, accustomed to dining out, Miss Margarita?" 
 said Roger, amused, contented, ignorant of the cause of his sudden 
 sense of absolute _bien être_, or attributing it, man like, to his 
 good dinner. 
   
 "Oh, yes," she answered, "I dine out very often. I like it better." 
   
 He bit his lip with quick displeasure; she was merely eccentric, then, 
 not naïve. For like every other man Roger detested eccentric women. It 
 has always been a marvel to me that women of distinct brain capacity 
 so almost universally fail to realise that we like you better 
 fashionable, even, than eccentric. You do not understand why, dear 
 ladies: you think it must be that we prefer fashion to brains, but 
 indeed it is not so. It is because to be fashionable is for you to be 
 normal, at least, that we tolerate your sheeplike marches and 
 counter-marches across the plain of society. 
   
 "Where do you dine when you dine out?" he inquired coldly, to trap her 
 at last into some explanation. 
   
 "On the rocks," she answered serenely, "or under the trees. Sometimes 
 on the sand close to the water. I like it better than in the house." 
   
 Roger experienced a ridiculous sense of relief. 
   
 "Do you dine alone?" he asked and she answered quietly, 
   
 "Of course. My father always ate by himself, and Hester, too. Caliban 
 will never let anyone see him eat: I have often tried, but he hides 
 himself." 
   
 The waiter brought them at this point an ivory-white salad of _endive_ 
 set with ruby points of beet, drenched in pure olive-oil, and of this 
 soothing luxury Margarita consumed two large plates in dreamy silence. 
   
 "I like this food," she remarked at last, "I like it better than 
 Hester's." 
   
 Roger grew literally warm with satisfaction. He was still smiling when 
 she spooned out a great mouthful of the delicate ice before her and 
 under his amazed eyes set her teeth in it. 
   
 The horror of that humiliating scene woke him, years afterward, 
 through more than one clammy midnight. In one second the peaceful 
 dining-room was a chattering, howling reign of terror. 
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER II (FATE GOES A-FISHING) Pg 8 
   
 For Margarita, 
 with a choking cry of rage and anguish, threw the ice with terrible 
 precision into the bland face of the waiter who had brought it; threw 
 her glass of water with an equal accuracy into the wide-open eyes of 
 the head waiter, who appeared instantly; threw Roger's wine-glass full 
 into his own horrified face as he rose to catch her death-dealing 
 hand, and lifting with the magnificent single-armed sweep of a Greek 
 war-goddess her chair from behind her, stood facing them, glaring 
 silently, a slate-eyed Pallas gloriously at bay! 
   
 The red wine poured down Roger's face like blood; the force of the 
 blow nearly stunned him, but by a supreme effort he bit furiously at 
 his tongue and the pain steadied him. As he swept the table over with 
 a crash and wrenched the chair from her hand (and he took his strength 
 for it) he became aware that the angry excitement behind his back, the 
 threatening babel, had subsided to long-drawn sighs of pity, and 
 realised with a sort of disgusted relief that the blow he had himself 
 suffered from this panting, writhing mænad had somehow changed the 
 situation and that he was an object of horrified sympathy. Mercifully, 
 the room was scantily filled, for it was early, and his curt 
 explanation was accepted in respectful silence. 
   
 "Mademoiselle is--is not responsible for her act, I beg you to 
 believe," he said grimly, white with humiliation and pain. "I beg you 
 will accept ..." 
   
 The two waiters pocketed a week's earnings in voluble deprecation, the 
 proprietor shrugged his excitement away into an admirable regret, the 
 diners wrenched their eyes from Margarita's face and affected to see 
 nothing as Roger buttoned her cheapish vague-coloured jacket around 
 her and ordered her sternly to straighten her hat. Her fingers 
 literally trembled with rage, her soft, round breasts, strangely 
 distinct in outline to his fingers as he strained the tight jacket 
 over them, rose and fell stormily; in a troubled flash of memory he 
 seemed to be handling some throbbing, shot bird. His own clumsiness 
 and strange, heady elation he attributed to the shock of the wine in 
 his face. 
   
 In an incredibly short time the table was upright, the débris removed, 
 the room, except for the indefinable, electric sense of recent tragedy 
 that hovers over such scenes, much as it had been. Roger had carried, 
 fortunately for him, a light overcoat on his arm, and this would hide 
 his white, stained triangle of vest with a little management. 
 Grasping Margarita by the arm he led her out of the room, and for the 
 first time questioned her. 
   
 "Are you mad?" he muttered. "What do you mean by such a performance?" 
   
 "That man," she answered, her voice vibrating like a swept 
 violoncello, "is a devil. Did you not see what he gave me? It was not 
 food at all, but freezing snow. Snow should not be in a glass, but on 
 the ground. It is plain that he wishes to kill me." 
   
 Her resonant voice filled every corner of the room; it was impossible 
 for anyone in it to miss the situation, and with a sudden inspiration 
 Roger spoke with a special distinctness to the proprietor, noticing 
 that the dozen persons at the tables were obviously French, and using 
 that language. 
   
 "Mademoiselle is but recently come out of the convent," said he.  
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER II (FATE GOES A-FISHING) Pg 9 
   
 "She 
 has lived always in the provinces and has never had the honour of 
 tasting such admirable forms of dessert as Monsieur offers his 
 patrons." 
   
 The proprietor bowed; an extraordinary mixture of expressions played 
 over his countenance. 
   
 "That sees itself, Monsieur," he replied. "The affair is already 
 forgotten. I have summoned a closed carriage for Monsieur." 
   
 And thus it was that Roger found himself for the second time in a 
 carriage with Margarita Joséphine Dolores, but with a great difference 
 in his attitude toward that young person. It is a fact possibly 
 curious but certainly undeniable, that when one receives a wine-glass 
 full in the face at the hands of an acquaintance, however recent, this 
 acquaintance is placed immediately upon terms of a certain intimacy 
 with one; the ice, at least, is broken. An unconscious conviction of 
 this coloured Roger's tone and shone in his eyes. 
   
 "You must never do such a thing as that, Margarita," he said, "that 
 was a terrible thing to do." 
   
 "It was a terrible thing that he did to me," replied Margarita 
 composedly. 
   
 "Nonsense," said Roger, "perfect nonsense! The man meant you no harm. 
 He brought you only what I had ordered for you." 
   
 "You! You told him to try to kill me?" cried this unbelievable 
 Margarita, and turning in her seat with the swiftness of a panther she 
 slapped him, a stinging, biting blow, flat across his cheek. A tornado 
 of answering rage whirled him out of himself and seizing her wrists, 
 he bent them behind her back. 
   
 If I seem to be unwarrantably acquainted with Roger's emotions at this 
 crisis, it is only because I understand them from experience, not 
 because he analysed them at length for me. I too have been in 
 conflict, real physical conflict, with Margarita. I too have felt that 
 old unpitying frenzy, that unreasonable delight in vanquishing her 
 furious strength. Something in Roger--I know how suddenly, how 
 amazingly--strained and snapped; the old bonds of civilisation (which 
 with the Anglo-Saxon has always been feminisation) burst and dropped 
 away, and the lust of physical ascendency caught him and swept the 
 pretty legends of moral control and chivalrous forbearing into the 
 dust bins and kitchen middens of nature's great domestic economy. What 
 was it in Margarita that drew that old, primitive passion, that 
 ancient world-stuff out of its decorous grave, all planted with 
 orchids and maiden-hair, that woke it with a rough shout in us and 
 offered us at the same time its natural gratification--a fierce fight 
 and a certain victory? God knows and knows better, perhaps, than the 
 Devil that Roger's ancestors would have been quick to credit with the 
 exclusive knowledge. 
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER II (FATE GOES A-FISHING) Pg 10 
   
 Civilisation and her mysterious daughter whom we call nowadays Culture 
 have tried to teach us that golf and lawn tennis and, for the 
 lustiest, fencing, or the control of a spirited horse, must best 
 translate in your house-broken citizen of forty the heat that surged 
 up in Roger then; but to most of us it becomes once or twice apparent 
 in our sidewalk career, our delicate journey from mahogany sideboards 
 to mahogany beds, that this teaching is idiotic to the last degree, 
 however strictly the police have enforced it; and we know that only 
 the man that forged with clenched teeth after Atalanta, tenderly 
 hungry for all her uncaptured whiteness, brutally driving the pace 
 till her heart burst in her side if need be, tasted the supremest 
 ecstasy of the fighting that lifts us that one tantalising step above 
 the savage--the fight for joy. I am convinced that it is after some 
 one of those red glimpses that a certain proportion of us every year 
 of the world's life throws his chest weights out of window, settles 
 his tailor's bill, and is off for Africa or Greenland with a hatchet 
 and a cartridge belt. We become thus inscrutable to our maiden aunts 
 and it may be to ourselves, a little, when we discover that it was not 
 quite exactly the struggle for food and shelter, the fight against the 
 cliffs and elements and animals that we went out into the wilderness 
 to seek. But we are in any event less unreasonable than those belated 
 and blindfolded ones among us who translate the implacable desire too 
 literally and lose its meaning utterly in the garbled text of the 
 midnight city streets. 
   
 Roger literally fell upon this vixenish, beautiful creature with the 
 perfectly definite intention of shaking her until her teeth chattered 
 in her head, but he did not achieve this result, for the reason that 
 Margarita fought like a demon; fought, her hands being pinioned, with 
 her supple back, her strong shoulders and her rigid knees. It was like 
 struggling with a malicious little girl of six and a stubborn boy of 
 sixteen rolled into one. She did not cry nor chatter but set her teeth 
 and directed all her superb energy to the actual business in hand. His 
 idea of grasping both her wrists with one hand was out of the 
 question; for two or three delicious, angry moments he essayed this, 
 enraged, amused, breathing hard, while she strained and bent with all 
 her magnificent youth against him, and the years and the rust of the 
 years fell off from him in the heartsome contest, with victory certain 
 but not easy, her submission sure--but not yet! Some subterranean 
 spring welled up in him, some trickle from the everlasting caves that 
 will only be completely levelled over when humanity, decadent, 
 crumbles into them and returns to the primal clay, and he knew that 
 for these few gleaming seconds, snatched from the rest of the greyish 
 hours and weeks, he had been made and destined. 
   
 You will, of course, perceive that all this is what I felt when my 
 little turn came; Roger never talked this sort of thing in his life. 
 But unless I am vastly mistaken, he lived it, in those galloping 
 quick-breathed minutes, before he pinioned Margarita, her hands behind 
 her back, with one arm, and held her fast about the knees with the 
 other. Crushed against him, dead weight, she lay, her unconquered eyes 
 sea black now, flat against his, her heart labouring heavily, under 
 his relentless, banding arm. 
   
 "Will you be good, you absurd little wildcat? Will you?" he demanded, 
 his voice shaking with laughter and triumph. (And you need not be too 
 ready, O exponent of tolerant hearthstone chivalry, to smile at the 
 triumph! V--l, whom Margarita detested, practically refused to sing 
 _Siegfried_ to her _Brünhilde_, because, he said, she made him 
 ridiculous with her virginal strugglings and got him out of breath 
 besides! And he could lift and carry Lilli Lehmann.) 
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER II (FATE GOES A-FISHING) Pg 11 
   
 "Will you?" Roger repeated, not loosening his hold of her, for he felt 
 her muscles tense as wire under the soft flesh. 
   
 "No, I will not," said Margarita. "I hate you. I will die before I 
 will obey you." 
   
 And at this foolish and melodramatic remark, Roger Bradley, descendant 
 of all the Puritans (Whistler used to say that he was by Plymouth Rock 
 out of Mayflower--alas, dear Jimmie!), a respected bachelor, of 
 exemplary habits and no entanglements, deliberately, and with a 
 happy, heartfelt oath, kissed Margarita, at length and somewhat 
 brutally, I fear, in a hired four-wheeler at the junction of 
 Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue. And of his sensations at this 
 point I cannot speak, because I never had them. I never kissed 
 Margarita but once and then very quickly, because I was convinced that 
 upon my subsequent speed depended my ever seeing her alive again. And 
 she did not struggle at all, because, as a matter of fact, it was 
 perfectly immaterial to her whether I kissed her or not. But that was 
 not the case with Roger's kiss. 
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER III (AS THE TWIGS WERE BENT) Pg 12 
   
 The day that Roger and I first met is as clear in my mind as if, in 
 the current phrase, it were but yesterday. I was a slender little lad 
 of ten and he a great, strapping fifteen-year-old. I was trundling my 
 hoop about the part of the schoolyard usually given over to the little 
 fellows, as blue as indigo, homesick for my mammy-O, and secretly 
 ashamed of the French school-boy cape I had worn at Vevay, which all 
 my mates derided, but she in her woman's thrift had thought too good 
 to throw aside. No doubt she was right, but oh, what you make us 
 suffer, you gentle widow mothers! You would give us the hearts out of 
 your fervent bodies for footballs, you will nurse at our sick beds 
 without rest and deny yourself the comforts of existence, if need be, 
 to start us fairly in the world with a gentle training and schools of 
 the best, but you cannot comprehend that we would far rather go 
 without a meal in private than be the mock of our schoolmates in 
 public. I would have lived on bread and water for a week could I have 
 buried that French cloak at the end of it. 
   
 The very sport in which I was engaged was not in use among the other 
 boys of my age, but inconsistently enough, though I was eager to 
 conform as far as the cloak was concerned, wild horses could not have 
 dragged me from my wooden hoop, and I trundled it sulkily up and down 
 the flagged paths. 
   
 To me, an odd figure enough to young American eyes, advanced and spoke 
 Monsieur Duval, in whose regard I was the most homelike and natural 
 figure in the landscape, I have no doubt. It was with a real kindness 
 that he called out some cheery nothing, some "_Ah! Ah! ça va 
 bien--vous vous amusez, n'est-ce pas?_" or such like, and with an 
 equal and unconscious amiability that I replied in like manner. The 
 language was perfectly familiar to me, especially in its present 
 routine connection, and I took off my cap instinctively, as I should 
 have done at Vevay, and probably said something about my being 
 _joliment bien amusé_, which was purely perfunctory of course, because 
 I wasn't. He passed by and I trundled my hoop along, but only during 
 the space of time required for his complete exit from the scene, for 
 at the precise ending of that time I was violently set upon by three 
 or four boys, dragged, protesting and frightened, to a private 
 retreat, and there informed that my nauseating familiarity with the 
 French language and consequent "showing off" therein must cease 
 incontinently, and that the event of my refusing this ultimatum would 
 be a perilous and not easily forgotten one for a little sneak like me. 
   
 Now our school at Vevay had been entirely under the influence, in its 
 secret and really important life, of a circle of English boys, cruelly 
 banished from their natural educational facilities, who made up for 
 this banishment by a careful and systematic insistence on as much as 
 possible of their native school atmosphere, and we little ones were 
 bred up in this very strictly. The word "sneak" was too much for me, 
 and I flew at the offender, which was, I suppose, what he wanted. 
   
 It would have gone hard indeed with me had not a tall, 
 broad-shouldered boy, glorious in a jersey enriched with the initials 
 of the school, swung suddenly upon us and twitched me out of the 
 bandit crew by my coat collar. 
   
 "What's all this? What are you up to?" he asked briskly. 
   
 He had a baseball bat with him--I regarded baseball at that time as a 
 sort of cricket gone mad--and a round visored cap on his thick fair 
 hair. His chin was deeply cleft, his eyes grey-blue, his skin very 
 fair. To me he was an upper-form demi-god and I, seeing nothing odd in 
 his actions, for he was what I called the cock of the school, voiced 
 my trembling plea. 
   
 "If you please, sir," I began, whereat he blushed and my captors burst 
 into derisive shouts and capered around us, and thoroughly embarrassed 
 and frightened, I began to snivel into my elbow. 
   
 "We don't talk that way over here," he admonished me shortly, "go 
 ahead without any sirs, can't you?" 
   
 Well, it all came out finally and he settled it very easily, though 
 not, I am sure, in the way he had at first intended to. I saw his 
 fingers tighten around the bat, I saw him warily measuring his chances 
 against four twelve-year-olds, and realised suddenly that this was not 
 Albion the long desired of some of us at Vevay, but free America, and 
 that this was not really the head boy nor had he any rights in 
 particular beyond any knight's who chooses to ride a-rescuing. 
 Nevertheless I was and am sure he could have punished them all and 
 that without the bat. Suddenly, however, a reflective look came across 
 his face, he stroked the cleft in his chin thoughtfully--a trick he 
 never lost--and said in a quiet, convincing tone: 
   
 "You always were an awful fool, Judson," this to the bully. 
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER III (AS THE TWIGS WERE BENT) Pg 13 
   
 "If you 
 had the sense of a cat you wouldn't haze this little fellow for what 
 he can't help, but instead you'd use him. Why, if _I_ had him in _my_ 
 French class, I'd make him do most of the reciting and keep old Duval 
 busy--he'd never see through it. Think it over. Come on, shaver!" 
   
 This he said to me and I trotted off his slave--his fag, I hoped, but 
 vainly, as it proved. 
   
 I tell this at length because it illustrates Roger's character so 
 perfectly. Not that he couldn't fight, but he preferred not if a 
 little practical arbitration could be made to do the work of battle. 
 And yet he was rather tactless in a social sense: this was his 
 professional attitude, you understand. 
   
 "You're the little French boy," he said, as I followed him. "What's 
 your name, anyhow? I'm Roger Bradley." As if I didn't know! 
   
 "If you pl--I mean, mine is Winfred Jerrolds," I said shyly. 
   
 "You're not really French, are you?" 
   
 It was the first time I had ever been proud of my American blood. I 
 told him about my American mother and my English father, his tragic 
 death and her return to her own country after twelve years of absence; 
 of the acquisition of my wonderful French, which was only the work of 
 two years, of my violin lessons, strictly concealed from the other 
 boys, of my old Swiss nurse, now our cook, of my French poodle, and a 
 score of other secrets never breathed before. 
   
 He was deeply interested, inquired the brave details of my father's 
 death, shook hands heartily, and expressed his intention of inviting 
 me to his home some time during the vacation. We parted the best of 
 friends and shall be, I trust, till we part for good and all. 
   
 I did not visit him, however, that vacation. Some slight injury, 
 received during a game of his favourite baseball, affected his eyes, 
 and for six months he could not use them at all, so he did not return 
 to school until the next autumn. When we met again it was on a 
 different basis, for I had made good use of my time and had mounted 
 rapidly in my classes. Whether it was because I kept the habit of 
 vacation study (the entire lazy freedom of American school children 
 during the long vacation was very shocking to my mother) or whether my 
 habit of application and concentration, the fact that I had really 
 been taught to study, not merely turned loose with a book in my hands, 
 gave me an advantage over my mates, I do not know, but when Roger came 
 back he found me only three classes below him and graduated from the 
 little boys' playground forever. 
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER III (AS THE TWIGS WERE BENT) Pg 14 
   
 That summer he took me home with him and I gazed with deep respect 
 upon the portraits of his ancestors, fading against the dark wainscots 
 of the respectable Boston mansion; played my violin obediently for his 
 mother, who presented me with a volume of Emerson's essays; hung upon 
 the lips of his soldier-uncle, one-armed since Gettysburg, who in his 
 turn listened gravely to my tales of my father; and sedulously avoided 
 his cousin Sarah, who, even then, a fresh-faced girl of eighteen, had 
 begun to feel those responsibilities toward the human race which have 
 since so consistently distinguished her, and pursued me with hideous 
 bits of paper bearing a mocking resemblance to blank cheques, which 
 she called "pledges," by means of which she urged me to begin in the 
 days of my youth the practice of total abstinence, with the result 
 that she has become hopelessly involved in my mind with that revolting 
 practice. They were Unitarians, a doctrine then fashionable in those 
 regions, oddly enough, and greatly to the puzzlement of my dear 
 mother, who could not understand how dissent could ever be so, and who 
 was firmly convinced that "your Bradleys" as she called them, were 
 addicted to ranting prayers on all occasions. In vain I described to 
 her old Madam Bradley with a scrap of frosty lace on her white hair, a 
 terrifying ear trumpet and the manners of a countess; in vain I 
 assured her that Uncle Winthrop would no more be guilty of a ranting 
 prayer than my father would have been: she shook her head gently and 
 urged me to recall my confirmation vows! 
   
 My dear mother! To write of her even so slightly is to see her in her 
 neat black dress with its web-like bands of lawn at neck and wrists, 
 directing old Jeanne, _bonne-à-tout-faire_ now in our small 
 establishment, watering our window geraniums from a quaint, long-nosed 
 copper pot, drilling Mr. Boffin, the poodle, in his manners, and, when 
 the early dinner was out of the way, sitting in all simplicity with 
 Jeanne at work upon my shirts--the only example of really democratic 
 institutions that I ever saw in this irascible democracy. I should 
 like to have seen Madam Bradley sewing with the cook and innocently 
 gossiping over the old days! 
   
 Well, well, even to have invented so inhumanly possible an ideal as 
 democracy is a great feat and a wonderful exhibition of the powers of 
 our minds on this planet, I suppose. And I am not sure that it is a 
 greater proof of sincerity to practice it while denying it in theory, 
 as they do in the old countries, than to reverse the process in the 
 new ones. Americans are such incurable idealists! And if Plato is 
 right and the idea is the really important part of the matter, then 
 the idea of seventy--or is it eighty, now?--millions of equal lords of 
 creation is really more to the point than the fact that they don't 
 exist. But why, oh why, must equality produce such bad manners? They 
 must have been very bad to make such an impression upon a little lad 
 of ten. And who can explain its extraordinary effect upon the voice? 
 Why does it kill all modulation, all tone-color, all delicate shades 
 of thought and passion equally, and resolve that great gift, which I 
 sometimes think the greatest difference between me and my dog, into a 
 toneless, mumble-chopped grunting? 
   
 That was the glory of Margarita's voice: if she but informed you that 
 she would like more bread, your ear relished that series of 
 unimportant syllables precisely as the tongue relishes a satisfying 
 dish; with her, pleading, commanding, refusing, admiring, were four 
 perfectly different tonal processes; a blind man, an Eskimo or a South 
 Sea Islander would have understood that voice perfectly. And even now, 
 merely a shadow of what it once was, it is a lesson to all about her. 
   
 When Roger was seventeen and I but twelve he lost two years out of his 
 school-life, and this brought us closer together ultimately, as will 
 be seen. 
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER III (AS THE TWIGS WERE BENT) Pg 15 
   
 In some more than usually violent game of his favourite 
 baseball at this time he managed to fall so heavily on his chest as 
 slightly to bruise the lung, and a teasing cough that resulted from 
 this terrified his mother, over whom, like so many of her 
 pure-blooded countrywomen, the White Scourge hung threateningly, never 
 very far away. Good luck sent them just then an invitation from a 
 distant cousin, skipper of a large schooner that plied in Southern 
 waters, and she thankfully sent Roger off for a long cruise with him. 
 It was a fine experience, and oh, how bitterly I longed to share it, 
 as the skipper cousin urged me to do! But I was the only son of my 
 mother and she a widow, and so I swallowed my grief and contented 
 myself with writing. It had long been a great grief to me that I must 
 follow him so far behind at college--he had of course decided me on 
 his own university--and one of my contentments at this period was the 
 hope of winning ahead a year and leaving only two between us. This 
 would enable me to enter Yale when he was but half way in his course, 
 which as a matter of fact, I accomplished, to my mother's great pride. 
 She liked Roger, but always found him a little heavy and slow, and 
 secretly cherished my greater facility and more rapid mental 
 development with a fond and wholly female short-sightedness. 
   
 Our correspondence was very characteristic at this time: I have 
 specimens of both sides of it. My letters are long and detailed, 
 almost school-diaries. Roger's are few, short and immensely 
 impressive. He had a straightforward, utterly unimaginative style that 
 strikes the heart like Defoe's. He gave the strongest sense of great 
 events always happening, of high seas, bright, strange coasts, racy, 
 vital talk--and all in few, short words. 
   
 "We have been rolling hard for three days now," he says in one letter, 
 "and the ship's dog died of colic, which is about the worst sign there 
 is, they say. It may be we shall be wrecked. I wish you were here, 
 Jerry, you would enjoy it. They have stopped trying to coddle me now 
 and I live rough, like the rest. The food is not so very good, but we 
 all eat hard. I hardly ever cough at all now. The captain says I am as 
 handy as the next man." 
   
 The oldest of four, he had been looked up to and respected from the 
 nursery. A powerful influence at school, a prince regent at home, 
 wealthy in his own right, he stood in some danger of being spoiled, I 
 suppose. But the bluff skipper cousin, representative of that strange 
 New England _Wanderlust_, so little exploited in the anemic fiction 
 that so ridiculously caricatures New England life, stamped Roger at 
 this most impressionable age with the clean, downright simplicity, the 
 manly humility so signally characteristic of men who must always be 
 ready to perish in the elements; the ability to hold his tongue and 
 wait. Few families really rooted in that Old England that made the New 
 but can count in some generation their skipper cousin; in these the 
 whitecaps, the tall masts, the spices and hot nights, the scarlet 
 tropics and the dusky, startled natives tip with flame the quiet 
 chronicles of the sisters left at home; and gorgeous peacock fans, 
 rosy, enamelled shells, strings of sandalwood beads, riotous, bloomy 
 embroideries and supple folds of exotic muslin weave their scents and 
 suggestions through the sober-coloured stuff of everyday. Indeed, New 
 England as I have known her, both as a child in her chief and 
 representative city, and as a man in her farthest, least-spoiled 
 hamlets has always seemed to me far more complicated and mysterious, 
 far more vital and suggestive than her too-exclusively-spinsterly 
 chroniclers can comprehend. 
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER III (AS THE TWIGS WERE BENT) Pg 16 
   
 I look to see the country turn back to New England, not only with 
 historic pride, but with a rich appreciation of its artistic 
 mother-land--not mistaking her for its bleak and apprehensive maiden 
 aunt! 
   
 I am far from her now, that old breeding ground of great, incisive 
 sons, that nest of passions so strong that only a grip of 
 granite--like her sea line--could master them (do you fancy, O 
 languorous, faded South, do you bellow, O strident, bustling West, 
 that because she neither sighed them nor trumpeted them, she had no 
 passions? _Allez, allez!_) but I can close my eyes at any moment and 
 smell the challenge of her Atlantic winds here on the Mediterranean 
 or feel the heady languor of her miraculous "Indian Summer" there in a 
 London drizzle. It is strange that I, who have said many unhandsome 
 things of her country as a whole, should thus rush into apologia for 
 my mother's birthplace. And yet to think of never having known 
 Margarita! 
   
 But of course I should have met her. She would have come to me walking 
 lightly out of the dim Algerian evening or bumped into me some morning 
 in Piccadilly or peered curiously through my leaded pane at Oxford, 
 whither I should undoubtedly have returned, one day, to muse away my 
 middle age. I idled for a happy year there, twenty-odd years ago, 
 while Roger was grinding away at the fantastic matter he called the 
 Law, and liked it well. But fate had not decreed me for a conventional 
 Englishman, which I should doubtless have been, for as a boy I was 
 malleable to a degree, but had reserved me instead for the ends of the 
 earth--and Margarita. 
   
   
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER IV (FATE REELS IN) Pg 17 
   
 There is nothing more certain than that the bare facts of life are 
 misleading in the extreme. This is doubtless nature's reason for 
 concealing the human skeleton; it is undeniably necessary, but not 
 many of us take it into daily consideration, and nobody but a few 
 negligible anthropologists would dream of bringing it forward as proof 
 of anything in particular. And yet people who are fond of describing 
 themselves as practical persistently fold their hands over their 
 abdomens, shrug their shoulders and reiterate monotonously: "But, my 
 dear fellow, there are the facts! It is only necessary to consider the 
 facts of the case!" or, "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid the bare facts are 
 against you!" I suppose that is why they are so often called bare, 
 because so little of the important, informing or attractive is draped 
 around them. 
   
 Consider for instance, the bare facts of Roger's adventure. Here is a 
 man who, meeting a perfectly unknown and singularly beautiful young 
 woman in a questionable locality at dusk, enters into conversation 
 with her, takes her to a French restaurant for dinner, then finds 
 himself embroiled in a disgraceful altercation in which wine-glasses 
 are thrown and chairs waved, and finally escapes with her in a closed 
 carriage, which soon becomes the scene of a violent struggle 
 culminating in a ferocious kiss! The case is really too clear; it is 
 almost too conventional for an art student of any initiative and 
 originality. Anyone possessed of the slightest acquaintance with 
 fiction or the daily papers could tell you instantly that here were a 
 dissipated clubman and a too-unfortunately-stereotyped creature who 
 not only required no description but were best, in the interests of 
 morality, undescribed. And yet Roger was emphatically not dissipated, 
 nor even a clubman, in the sense in which the word appears to be used 
 in America, and Margarita was not in the least unfortunate and so far 
 from stereotyped that she pressed the unusual hard toward the utterly 
 unique. 
   
 "Well, well," I hear the practical man, "but this is a case in 
 one--five--ten thousand, surely! We all know--" 
   
 My good man, there is absolutely nothing we all know except that we 
 shall certainly die, one day, and from this one bare fact more utterly 
 contradictory inferences have been drawn than I can afford ink to 
 enumerate. Nothing could be more certain than this bare fact, and can 
 you show me anything more productive of human uncertainty? I trow not. 
 What do you know of the private life of the man in the next house? 
 Have you a friend who cannot tell you from one to three melodramatic 
 tales, lying quite within his experience, at which you will gasp, 
 "Why, it's as exciting as a novel!" The best novels never get into 
 print and the most blood-curdling, goose-pimpling dramas are played by 
 the boxholders. The longer I live the more firmly am I convinced that 
 the really quiet life is relatively rare. 
   
 To Roger, indeed, after his climax in the four-wheeler, it seemed 
 impossible that life could ever again be quiet. If I have not 
 impressed you with the idea that he was a decent sort of man, I have 
 wasted a whole chapter and demonstrated the folly of attempting 
 authorship at my age, and you will be but poorly prepared to learn 
 that when the cabby knocked at the glass, after heaven knows how many 
 minutes of interested observation, Roger discovered his identity 
 again--and loathed it. His conduct appeared to him indescribably 
 beneath contempt, his situation deplorable. Margarita, sobbing quietly 
 in her corner, seemed unlikely to raise either his spirits or his 
 estimate of himself. 
   
 Opening the door of the carriage he repeated his directions to the 
 too-confidential driver and spoke stiffly to his companion. 
   
 "I will not attempt to excuse myself to you," he said, "for it would 
 be pointless. If you can believe me, I will try my best to help you to 
 your friends. Can you not tell me the name of one?" 
   
 "What is your name?" she asked, her voice only a little shaken from 
 her sobs, which had ceased as soon as he began to speak. 
   
 "My name is Roger Bradley," he answered promptly. 
   
 "Then that is the name of my first friend," said Margarita Joséphine 
 Dolores, "but I hope to find others." 
   
 Roger's revulsion of feeling was so great, his state of mind so 
 perturbed and confounded that he crushed them into a short, husky 
 laugh. 
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER IV (FATE REELS IN) Pg 18 
   
 Had he been the hero of a novel he would undoubtedly have 
 launched into a bitter speech, but he did not. 
                   
 "Others like me?" he said briefly, and all the bitterness of the 
 novel-hero was there if Margarita had been able to read it. But she 
 only smiled, a little uncertainly, it is true, and replied: 
   
 "Yes, I should like them like you--only not so strong," she added 
 softly, with a shy glance at her wrists. 
   
 It has been quite unnecessary for me to consult letters or diaries to 
 give me a very clear insight into Roger's feelings at this point, for 
 I myself have experienced them. It was when I took Margarita out in a 
 rowboat and she began to rock herself in it. 
   
 "Don't do that, Margarita!" I cried. "That is an idiotic trick." 
   
 She continued to rock it. 
   
 "Do you hear me, Margarita?" I demanded, tapping her foot with some 
 irritation, for she really was irritating. In fact she completely 
 upset the theory that tact and adaptability constitute her sex's chief 
 charm. 
   
 "Of course I hear you. If you kick me, I shall only rock the harder," 
 she answered composedly--and did so. 
   
 Shipping the oars carefully I arose, advanced upon Margarita and boxed 
 her ears with determination. I should have done it in mid-ocean. I 
 doubt if sharks in sight would have deterred me. As I was boxing her 
 ears--beautiful, strong ones, they were, not tiny, selfish, high-set 
 bits of porcelain: W--r M--l (who would have been _Sir_ W--r M--l in 
 England to-day) said of Margarita's ears that they were set 
 convincingly low and that he looked to her to demonstrate one of his 
 favourite tests of longevity--in the very act of this boxing. I 
 repeat, I was cruelly bitten in the wrists, and, snorting with rage, 
 pure, primitive, unchivalrous rage, I fell upon that shameless little 
 Pagan and shook her violently, till the teeth rattled in her head. 
 Over we went, the pair of us, struggling like demons, into the chilly, 
 rational water, and as Margarita, like so many people who live by the 
 sea, was utterly ignorant of the art of swimming and like so many 
 people of her temperament, violently averse to the sudden shock of 
 cold water, it was a subdued and dripping young woman that I dragged 
 to the overturned boat and ultimately towed to shore. I worked hard to 
 get her there and had no time for remorse, but as I hurried her up the 
 beach it flooded over me. 
   
 "What must you think of me?" I asked her through chattering teeth. 
 "You will not care to meet any more of Roger's friends, I fear." 
   
 "Oh, yes," she returned sweetly, looking incomprehensibly lovely--ah, 
 me, that long, smooth line of her hip, that round, sleek head, shining 
 like bronze in the sun! I can see it now--"Oh, yes, I hope he has many 
 more like you, Jerry, but not so strong--you hurt my arm!" 
   
 It is useless to ask me why that should have endeared her a hundred 
 times over to me, who would have given a year of my life to kiss her 
 but might not. 
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER IV (FATE REELS IN) Pg 19 
   
 It did thus endear her, however, and so I know what 
 hot, foolish hope flooded Roger off his footholds of conventions and 
 convictions and floated him away in a warm, alluring sea, where the 
 tropic palm-isles of Fata Morgana were the only shores. I, too, caught 
 a glimpse of those shores; the warmth of that sea was only the blood 
 pounding through my veins, and I knew it, but I shut my eyes and let 
 the waves lap at me a moment. Roger, lucky dog, did not know and did 
 not need to know what was happening to him, and it was not for a 
 moment, but forever, as far as he knew, that he slipped into the 
 current and drifted with it. 
                         
 It was very characteristic of him that his next words had, apparently, 
 no bearing whatever on his state of mind. 
   
 "We are now," he said, "at the station. If you will tell me the name 
 of the town from which you came here, I will see that you get back 
 there. Believe me, it is the only possible thing to do. You cannot 
 stay here. Now, where did you come from?" 
   
 It took some few minutes to convince Roger that the girl literally did 
 not know the name of the station at which she had purchased her ticket 
 to New York. She knew she had travelled all day, and that was all. She 
 had slipped out from her home at dawn or before, left the mysterious 
 Hester Prynne asleep, walked five miles (Hester had said it was five 
 miles to the railroad) to a little town where a girl had sold her the 
 clothes she had on for one of her banknotes and advised her to go to 
 New York if she wished to see the world, "which was what I did wish," 
 said Margarita. 
   
 A young man behind some bars had given her the ticket and some small 
 money back from another note and a kind old man with white hair and a 
 tall black hat had sat beside her after a while, and pressed so hard 
 against her that she had no room for her knees. She had told him of 
 this inconvenience, but to no avail. He had put his arm about her 
 shoulders and asked her why she did not change her plans and come to 
 Boston. Then she had told him that though she wanted friends she did 
 not care for such old ones, and when he still pressed against her she 
 had asked the man with the shining buttons who looked at her ticket if 
 he would not remove the old man, because she did not like to sit so 
 close to anyone, and she was sure the old man was sitting closer all 
 the time. Then he of the buttons took her somewhere else and bade her 
 sit beside a woman, grey-haired also, who would not talk at all, and 
 left her by and by. After this the buttoned man gave her meat between 
 bread. Still later a young man with beautiful, large eyes inquired if 
 he might sit beside her and she agreed gladly. He smelled very good. 
 He asked where she was going and she said to find friends. He said she 
 would find many on Broadway and that easily; she had only to show 
 herself there. He offered to point out the way there and just as all 
 seemed in the best possible way the buttoned man came again, frowned 
 on the good-smelling young man and took his seat. He talked a good 
 deal to Margarita--so much that she could not very well attend to it. 
 At last he gave her a large grey veil and commanded her to wrap her 
 head in it, and he would look after her when they got to New York. But 
 when they did get to New York she eluded him and asked the way to 
 Broadway, and then she met Roger. So, as the young man had said, there 
 were friends on Broadway. But there were none in the town from which 
 she took the ticket and she had no idea what its name was. Hester 
 never mentioned it. She did not believe it had a name. 
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER IV (FATE REELS IN) Pg 20 
   
   
 All this as the cab rested by the kerbstone. It was perfectly obvious 
 that she was speaking the truth. They had patronised this particular 
 driver long enough, anyway, and Roger paid him liberally and led 
 Margarita into the draggled, dusty station; the new one was not then 
 built. Seated beside her in a relatively dim corner he tried to 
 formulate some plan, but the absurd emptiness of the situation baffled 
 even his practical good sense. How could he take this girl to a town 
 that neither he nor she knew the name of? How, on the other hand, 
 could he fling such a projectile as Margarita into any respectable 
 hotel? What would she do--or say? True, he might possibly have 
 presented her as his sister and kept her sternly in view during every 
 possible moment, but she was not sufficiently well dressed to be his 
 sister. And his overcoat was buttoned suspiciously high. Was he to 
 stroll out of the waiting-room and leave her abandoned, like some 
 undesirable kitten, in the corner? The idea was ludicrous: she must be 
 taken care of. Had she thrust herself upon him, enticed him, 
 challenged him? Assuredly not; moved by some completely inexplicable 
 influence, utterly alien to himself, his birth, his training, he had 
 deliberately and persistently questioned her, prolonged a trifling 
 encounter unjustifiably, whirled her away, literally; and now that he 
 had found no suitable place of deposit it was incredible that he 
 should deliver this extraordinary and self-assumed charge to civil 
 authority. It would have been almost as well to lead her back to 
 Broadway, he told himself sternly. The most exotic foreigner would 
 have found herself in better case, it occurred to him, for 
 interpreters of one sort or another can always be found. But Margarita 
 seemed foreign to this planet, very nearly. What should be said of a 
 person who lived on a nameless shore, served by Hester Prynne and 
 Caliban? Who scooped hundreds--perhaps thousands--out of a chest, to 
 flee at dawn from a town whose name she had never heard mentioned, 
 though she had lived within walking distance of it all her life? 
   
 [Illustration: SCOOPED HUNDREDS--PERHAPS THOUSANDS--OUT OF A CHEST, TO 
 FLEE AT DAWN] 
   
 It was absurd--but something must be done. Margarita sat contented and 
 amused, devouring the shabby bustle all around her with her great 
 deep-set eyes, willing, apparently, to sit there indefinitely. 
   
 "Will you let me examine your bag?" Roger said at last, and she handed 
 him the coarse, imitation-leather affair. There was a soiled, cheap 
 handkerchief in it, some four hundred dollars in banknotes, and a torn 
 envelope with a town and state written clearly on it. 
   
 I have tried to write the name of this town, and when I found that 
 impossible, I tried to invent one to take its place, but I could not 
 do it. Surely it is nothing to any of you who may happen to read this 
 poor attempt of mine to pass my time, nothing, and less than nothing, 
 just what may be the name of the utterly unimportant little backwater 
 of a village from which, if you know the way, you may walk four miles 
 or so to Margarita's home. Undoubtedly many of you sail by it often, 
 but it is hidden from you by the rise of the ground, the high rocks 
 and the great, ancient-looking wall that I helped to pile. These and 
 the reefs protect it quite sufficiently. And I do not want you there. 
 
 
 
 PART 1 CHAPTER IV (FATE REELS IN) Pg 21 
   
 It would prove far too interesting a spot to jaded trippers and 
 trotters--and it is amazing how quickly your new countries grow jaded; 
 more eager for fresh scenes than old Japan herself, Nippon the 
 rice-blest, the imperishable, whence I send these words. 
   
 Be satisfied, then, to know that in the direction of this torn 
 envelope Roger held the clew to Margarita's nameless home. Yes, the 
 young woman had sold her the bag with the clothing and advised her to 
 put the banknotes in it. No, she did not know her name. She smelled 
 good--like the young man who advised Broadway. 
   
 "Come, Margarita," said Roger gravely, "let us see when you can 
 start," and she followed him submissively to the wicket, matched her 
 stride to his on his discovery that a train which would take them half 
 way was just about to start, and ran beside him to the steps of the 
 car. He motioned to her to mount and she did so, turning at the top of 
 the steps with a face of sudden terror. 
   
 "You are not going to leave me, Roger Bradley?" she cried, "where am I 
 going?" 
   
 "Certainly I shall not leave you. You are going home," he said 
 quietly, and mounted after her. The guard stared at them, the bell 
 clanged sadly and the train moved out of the station. The play, you 
 see, was well along. 
 
 
 
 PART 2 (IN WHICH THE SPRING FLOWS IN A LITTLE STREAM) CHAPTER V (ROGER FINDS THE ISLAND) Pg 22 
   
   
     O father, mother, let me be, 
       Never again shall I have rest. 
     For as I lay beside the sea, 
     A woman walked the waves to me, 
       And stole the heart out of my breast. 
   
 _Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden._ 
 It goes without saying that I have a retentive memory. Of course I 
 depend very largely upon it for all the small details that Roger has 
 from time to time vouchsafed me in regard to his relations with 
 Margarita, or I could not very well be writing these idle memories, 
 but Roger was always a poor writer--that is to say, so far as comment 
 and amplification and variety of manner may be supposed to make a good 
 one. Witness the following letter, which I received in answer to my 
 plea for details of that strange night journey from New York to 
 Margarita's town. It left a gap in my story of which I never happened 
 to receive any account, and it seemed to me a fairly important gap, 
 though you will see that this was not Roger's view of it. 
   
      DEAR JERRY: 
   
      It is rather late in the day to ask me about that trip to 
      ----. We hardly spoke for a long time, as I am sure I have 
      told you before--either of us. There was no berth to be had 
      for her and no drawing-room car on, so we rode all night in 
      the day coach with a rather mixed lot. I remember they 
      snored and it amused her. She wanted to wake them up and I 
      had to speak sharply to prevent her. The air got very bad 
      and I took her out on the platform for a while. I remember 
      there were any amount of stars and the moon out, too. You 
      know she never talked much. About one o'clock we got to 
      S---- and changed cars for a few minutes' wait.... I think 
      it was then that she asked me abruptly what I meant by a 
      "convent." She said it in French and I saw that she spoke 
      and understood the language, but only in a simple, childish 
      sort of way. I told her it was a big school. "What is that?" 
      she said.... There were a number of Italians on the train, 
      and they were chattering like magpies, but she paid no 
      attention to them, and I was sure she did not understand 
      them. At ---- we got out and I asked her if there would be 
      any livery stable open at that hour, for it was not more 
      than four o'clock. She did not know, of course, what a 
      livery stable was and told me that we must either go in a 
      boat or walk. So we walked. The sun rose while we were 
      walking. I think this is all you wanted. 
   
 There you have it! Could anything be simpler? "I remember there were 
 any amount of stars ... You know she never talked much."--Oh, Roger, 
 Roger! Must you always have the doing and I the telling? Even to this 
 day, though I would cut off this hand for you, I am jealous of you. 
 "The sun rose while we were walking"! Ah me, to walk with Margarita 
 through the dawn! She was the very dawn of life herself, untarnished, 
 unfatigued, unashamed. To me who have known her, other women are as 
 pictures in a gallery--lovely pictures, many of them, but a little 
 faded and fingermarked, somehow. 
   
 We shall have to take that walk for granted. I know that it consisted 
 of a quarter-mile of sleeping village, three quarters of a mile of 
 scattered houses, two miles of widely separated farms and then two 
 last miles of bayberry, salt meadow, coarse grass, rocky sand and 
 blue, inrolling seas. I know how the salty, strengthening air blew 
 Roger's lungs clean of the frightful murk of the car, how the strange, 
 stunted windrocked trees gave an odd, unreal air of Japan to that 
 bleak shore; I can half close my eyes now and lo, Atami and her 
 thundering, surf-swept beach broadens out before me, and the breakers 
 as they come pounding in, chase--not the withered, monkeylike old 
 priest who searches endlessly for something in the sea-weed, girding 
 his clean, faded robe above his bare sticks of legs--but Margarita and 
 
 The camphor trees lose their lacquered green and turn to 
 
 distant chestnut; the scarlet lily fades to a dull rose marsh flower; 
 the lines of the temple are only quaintly-eaved rocks and ledges, and 
 I am over seas again. I wonder if that is the reason I love this place 
 so? But there were no geyser baths there and I had no rheumatism then! 
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER V (ROGER FINDS THE ISLAND) Pg 23 
 Tout lasse, tout casse, tout passe_--even the sciatic nerve, we will 
 hope. 
   
 [Illustration: THE TALL, GAUNT, SILENT WOMAN ... STRIDING THROUGH THE 
 PASTURES] 
   
 Well, then, after they had made what Roger with his usual accuracy in 
 such matters took for nearly five miles, it occurred to him to ask 
 Margarita how it was that she knew her way so well, for she went 
 through pastures, broken walls, here and there a bit of the country 
 road, with the air of long practice. At first she would not tell him. 
 I can imagine that slanting school-boy look, that quietly malicious 
 indrawing of the corners of the mouth: the most enchanting obstinacy 
 conceivable. They were following at the time a narrow beaten path, 
 perhaps a cattle track, but that was not her guide, for often such a 
 path curved and returned aimlessly on itself or branched off quite 
 widely from the direction she took. At first, as I say, she was deaf 
 to his question, but when he repeated it, patiently, I have no doubt, 
 but evidently determined upon an answer, she yielded, as we all yield 
 to Roger in the end, and confessed that she had once followed Hester 
 to the village and back by this road. Hester had never guessed it, 
 never in fact turned her back when once started, and it had been easy 
 to keep her in sight. At the edge of the town Margarita had felt a 
 little shy and apprehensive of her fate if discovered, so she had sat 
 by the wood-side till Hester appeared again and followed her meekly 
 home. 
   
 Since then I have been able to gather some idea of Hester's appearance 
 from various sources, and I own that the situation has always seemed 
 to me picturesque in the extreme: the tall, gaunt, silent woman in her 
 severe, dull dress striding through the pastures, and behind her, 
 stealthily as an Indian--or an Italian avenger--the dark, lovely 
 child, now crouching amongst the bayberry, now defiantly erect, but 
 always graceful as a panther, her hair loose on her slender 
 shoulders. I cannot forbear to add that in this picture of mine, a 
 great vivid letter burns on the woman's breast, inseparable from her 
 name, of course. But this only adds to the sombre power of the 
 picture. It is a thing for Vedder to paint, in witchlike browns and 
 greys. 
   
 Margarita had never made this journey but once, but she followed her 
 old trail with the precision of a savage. I myself have gone that way 
 once only: and then but half of the distance, or a little less. It was 
 not in bayberry time, but through a land smooth and blue-white with 
 snow and with a terror pulling my heart out that I am sure I could 
 never endure again. How we flew over the snow! It was all a ghastly 
 glare, a dancing sun in a turquoise sky ... No, no, one does not live 
 through such things twice and I hate even the memory of it. Even with 
 the boiling geyser rumbling behind me, filling the baths with comfort 
 and oblivion, I shiver to my very marrow. 
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER V (ROGER FINDS THE ISLAND) Pg 24 
   
 After they had followed a certain marshy band of vivid green for 
 several pasture-lengths, Margarita shook her head slightly, retraced 
 her steps and stopped at a point where three or four great flat stones 
 made a sort of causeway across the glistening, muddy strip, and Roger, 
 following her as she jumped lightly over, saw that they stood upon a 
 little rocky promontory joined only by this strange bit of marsh to 
 the mainland. The strip was here not a hundred feet wide, and winding 
 in on either side of this two little inlets crept sluggishly along and 
 lost themselves in the marsh. The promontory was there very barren and 
 it seemed to Roger that the girl was going to lead him out into the 
 shallow cove that faced them, but a few more steps showed him that 
 just here the point of land curved around this cove, which swept far 
 inland, and broadened out wonderfully into several acres of meadow-hay 
 dotted with sparse, stunted cedars. 
   
 Directly before him lay a wet, shining beach, for the tide was half 
 gone, and a hundred yards out, the tops of what might almost have 
 been a built wall of nasty pointed rocks formed a perfect lagoon 
 across the face of the promontory. At high tide these would not show, 
 but they were there, always guarding, always bare-toothed, and as far 
 again beyond them a bell-buoy mounted on a similar ledge seemed to 
 point to the existence of a double barrier. It was a great lonesome 
 bay of the Atlantic that he looked at, its arms on either side 
 desolate, scrubby and forbidding, with not a hint of life. Suddenly, 
 as he stared, wondering, and Margarita stood quiet beside him, a long, 
 quavering bellow came from behind him. 
   
 "It is the cow," said Margarita reassuringly, as he whirled around, 
 "she is calling Caliban to milk her, I suppose." 
   
 Again the impatient, minor bellow rose on the air, and Roger perceived 
 that what he had carelessly passed over as a great sand dune was in 
 reality a square cottage built of sand, apparently, for it was 
 precisely the colour and texture of sand, sloping off in a succession 
 of outbuildings, just as the cliffs and dunes slope, windowless, 
 nearly, from that side at least, and offering only the anxious cow, 
 peering from the furthest outhouse, as evidence of life. Close up to 
 it on one side, the right, a great, cliff-like spur of rock shot up 
 and ran like a wall for fifty feet, then fell away gradually into the 
 sand of the beach which ran up to meet it; the cottage itself was 
 perched on the beach edge, and beyond it, on the left side, the 
 straggling grass began. They moved on toward this house, then, and as 
 they neared it a long, melancholy howl echoed the cow's lament, a howl 
 with a baying, mellow undertone that lingered on the morning air. For 
 it was honest morning now, a September morning, blowing wild-grapes 
 and sea sand and bayberry into Roger's nostrils. As he stared at the 
 house a great hound crept around the corner of it, baying 
 monotonously, but as he saw Margarita he left off and ran to her, 
 arching his brindled head. He was a Danish hound, beautifully brindled 
 and very massive. She fondled him quietly, smiling as he clumsily 
 threw his great paws about her waist, and pushed him down. 
   
 "I am very hungry," said Margarita abruptly, "I think I will have 
 Caliban bring me some warm milk." 
   
 She turned her direction slightly and made for the cow stall, and as 
 he stood by the door Roger saw that whatever the internal structure of 
 the building might be, it was certainly covered with rough sand. 
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER V (ROGER FINDS THE ISLAND) Pg 25 
   
 "Here is Caliban now," she added, and a loutish looking fellow, 
 small-eyed, heavy-lipped and shock-haired, appeared to rise out of the 
 ground before them, dangling a milk pail on his arm. At sight of 
 Margarita his jaw dropped, he shivered violently and appeared ready to 
 faint, but as she called encouragingly to him he mustered courage to 
 approach and feel of her skirt timidly. He was evidently feeble-minded 
 as well as dumb, for with a sort of croak he dropped the bucket and 
 began to dance clumsily up and down, snapping his fingers the while. 
 Plainly he had thought her gone for good and this was his 
 thanksgiving. 
   
 "Milk the cow, Caliban, I am thirsty," said Margarita impatiently, 
 after a moment of this, "and get me some bread. Make haste with it." 
   
 He started on a run for the door furthest from the cow stall and 
 appeared almost immediately with a large silver mug and a huge piece 
 torn from a loaf. Squatting beside the cow he balanced the mug between 
 his knees and deftly milked it full. She seized it, drained it 
 thirstily and began munching her bread, holding the mug out to him 
 again to be filled a second time. She bit great mouthfuls from the 
 loaf, like a child of four, and Roger watched her, half amused, half 
 irritated. 
   
 "You are not accustomed to the exercise of hospitality, I see," he 
 said finally, and as she looked at him over the silver mug 
 inquiringly, he explained. 
   
 "I have walked for more than an hour and I am hungry, too, Miss 
 Margarita," he said. "Won't you offer me anything to eat and drink?" 
   
 She shook her head doubtfully. 
   
 "I need this bread myself," she said, "and no one drinks from this cup 
 but me. I should not like it. If Caliban will get you another ..." 
   
 "Surely he will if you tell him to," Roger suggested mildly. 
   
 "Very well," she returned indifferently, "when he has finished 
 milking, I will," and she continued her meal, adding, "I do not think 
 he likes you, for he shows his teeth. He did that when the doctor came 
 to see my father." 
   
 I asked Margarita a year or two after this to describe for me how she 
 first entertained Roger: I had already a good idea of his initial 
 hospitality to her in the French restaurant. Here is her letter. 
   
      DEAREST JERRY: 
   
      What an odd thing to ask me to tell you--my first 
      hospitality to Roger! But I remember it very well. Only it 
      was not very hospitable, because, of course, I did not know 
      anything about that sort of thing. One has to learn that, 
      like finger bowls and asking people if they slept well. You 
      know I called for some bread and milk and ate them very 
      greedily, standing by the cow so that I could get more when 
      I should want it. By the time I had finished, Caliban had 
      finished milking and then Roger asked me quite politely if I 
      thought he might have something to eat now. You know, dear 
      Jerry, I had never been used to eating with people. All the 
      people I knew ate their meals separately and it never 
      occurred to me that I ought to be there when he ate.  
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER V (ROGER FINDS THE ISLAND) Pg 26 
   
 And 
      then, I was so sleepy--oh, so sleepy! You know I have always 
      felt sleepy and hungry and angry and things like that so 
      much more than other people seem to. I have to sleep and eat 
      when I feel like sleeping and eating. So I only said, "You 
      had better ask Hester to get you a breakfast. I must go to 
      sleep now," and flung myself down on some fresh hay just 
      beside the cow stall, in the sun, and went to sleep! Was not 
      that a dreadful thing to do? But I did it. I do not know how 
      long I slept, nor how Roger looked when I turned my back on 
      him, but when I opened my eyes he was sitting beside me, 
      smoking a cigar and staring at me. He had been there all the 
      time. 
   
      "Did Hester get you a breakfast?" I asked him, stretching 
      myself like a big baby. 
   
      "I have not asked her," he said very quietly, "suppose we go 
      in now and see about it, if you are rested." 
   
      So we went in, but Hester was not in the kitchen, and when I 
      went up to her room and knocked there was no answer, so I 
      supposed she had gone out for the roots and herbs she used 
      to hunt so much. 
   
      "You will have to get it yourself," I told him, "unless 
      Caliban will." 
   
      "Are you not willing to do that much for me, then?" he said, 
      and I felt very strange, though I could not explain why. I 
      think now it was because I began to understand that I ought 
      to have done something I had not. 
   
      "I would get it for you if I could," I said, "but _I_ do not 
      know how to make a breakfast, nor where Hester keeps her 
      things. Why do you not ask Caliban?" 
   
      So then he asked Caliban if he could manage some breakfast 
      for him, but Caliban only stared and walked away. 
   
      "Does he understand?" Roger asked me, and I felt that his 
      voice was not the same as it had been. 
   
      "I am sure he does," I said. "Will you not do as this man 
      asks you, Caliban?" But he only scowled and turned away. 
   
      "You see," I said, "there is nothing to be done until Hester 
      comes." But Roger shook his head and walked over to Caliban. 
   
      I am sure he knew it was not that I grudged him food, but 
      that I had no idea at all of how to set about getting it 
      ready. People always have known that what I say is truth, 
      though much of what I say seems to surprise them. 
   
      "If you will excuse me," he said, "I will try a slightly 
      different method," and I knew he was very angry. He lifted 
      Caliban in the air by the collar of his coat and gave him 
      several sharp blows on each ear and shook him. 
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER V (ROGER FINDS THE ISLAND) Pg 27 
   
 Then he threw 
      him away on the floor. Caliban cried like a young dog and 
      sat upon his knees and covered his face. He meant for Roger 
      to excuse him. I was surprised, for I had always been a 
      little afraid of Caliban. 
   
      "Get up," said Roger, very quietly, "and make me some coffee 
      and whatever else you have. And see that you obey me in 
      future." 
   
      Caliban hurried about and looked here and there and made 
      some coffee and broke eggs in a black pan and cut pieces of 
      bacon. He set a place at the kitchen table and made some 
      biscuits warm in the oven. Roger ate five eggs and a great 
      many pieces of bacon and six biscuits. He gave me some 
      coffee. When he had finished he drew a long breath and gave 
      Caliban a piece of silver money and Caliban kissed it. Then 
      Roger took another cigar and told Caliban to fetch a match 
      and then he asked me if I would like to walk by the sea for 
      a little. 
   
      "I ought to find this Hester of yours," he said, "but I 
      won't just yet. I am too comfortable. Will you come out with 
      me?" 
   
      So I said I would, and that was all my hospitality, dear 
      Jerry. I had learned better when you came, had I not? This 
      letter has been so long that I cannot write any more. 
   
                                             Your MARGARITA. 
   
 My Margarita! The very words are not like any other two words. I think 
 no woman's name is so purely sweet to the ear, so grateful on the 
 tongue. My Margarita! Alas, alas.... 
   
 As to that walk by the sea, I have never been able to get any 
 satisfactory account of it. Any, that is, which could hope to prove 
 satisfactory to one who did not know Roger. Such an one might be 
 incredulous, in face of all that had gone before, when assured that 
 Roger paced back and forth on the firm sand, filling his lungs in the 
 clean sea air, puffing his cigar in perfect silence, Margarita at his 
 heels as silent as he, and the big Danish hound at hers, more silent 
 than either. But so it was. To me who know them both, nothing could 
 seem more natural. They were healthy, well-poised animals, well fed, 
 supplied with plenty of fresh air (a prime necessity to them both) 
 and in congenial company. Neither of them was given to consideration 
 of the past or prognostication of the future; both of them were 
 content. Roger has always had that priceless faculty of reserving 
 mental processes, apparently, until they are necessary. When they are 
 not, he lays them by, as a sportsman lays by his gun, and the teasing, 
 relentless imps that poison the rest of us with futile regrets for the 
 past and vain hopes for the future avoid him utterly. It is the pure 
 Anglo Saxon corner-stone of that great, slow wall which I firmly 
 believe is destined to encircle the world, one day.  
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER V (ROGER FINDS THE ISLAND) Pg 28 
   
 Your slender, 
 brown peoples with their throbbing, restless brains and curious, 
 trembling fingers may--and doubtless will--build the cathedrals and 
 paint the frescoes therein and write the songs to be sung there; but 
 they must hold their land from Roger and his kind and look to him to 
 guard them safe and unmolested there. Or so it seems to me. 
   
 After an hour or so of this walking Caliban approached them, and 
 bending humbly before Roger made it clear that he greatly desired 
 their presence at the cottage. They went after him, Margarita 
 incurious because she was utterly indifferent, Roger wasting no 
 energy, of course, with no facts to proceed upon. At the kitchen he 
 endeavoured to lead them up the narrow stair, and then Margarita asked 
 him if anything was wrong with Hester and if she had sent him. 
   
 He nodded his head violently and led her up the stair. In a few 
 moments she returned. 
   
 "Hester," she said composedly, "is dead." 
   
 "Dead?" Roger echoed in consternation, "are you certain?" 
   
 "Oh, yes," she replied, "she is cold, just like my father. She is 
 sitting in her chair. Her eyes are open and she is dead." 
   
 Roger stared thoughtfully ahead of him. He never doubted her for a 
 moment. It was always impossible to doubt Margarita. 
   
 "I wonder if Caliban will make my breakfast, now?" she added, with a 
 shadow of concern in her voice. "I think he puts more coffee in the 
 pot: I shall be glad of that." 
   
 "For heaven's sake," Roger cried sharply, "are you human, child? This 
 woman, if I understand you, has taken care of you from babyhood!" 
   
 "Of course," said Margarita, "but I do not like her and she does not 
 like me. She liked my father." 
   
 It may seem strange to you that Roger did not immediately ascend the 
 stair and confirm Margarita's report, but he did not. Instead he spoke 
 to Caliban. 
   
 "Is the woman dead?" he asked shortly. 
   
 The clumsy, slow-witted youth nodded his head and sobbed noisily, with 
 strange animal-like grunts and gulps. 
   
 "Has she been dead long, do you think?" Roger asked. 
   
 Caliban raised his hand and checked off the five fingers slowly. It 
 was understood that he indicated so many hours. He placed his hand 
 upon his heart, then shook his head from side to side. Suddenly he 
 shifted his features unbelievably and Roger gazed horrified upon a 
 very mask of death: there was no doubt as to what Caliban had seen. 
   
 This being so Roger thought a moment and then spoke. 
   
 "I am very sleepy, Margarita," he said, "and I don't care to walk back 
 to the village directly, since it would do no especial good. I think I 
 will take a little nap on the beach, if you don't mind, and then I'll 
 go to the village and get help to--to do the various things that must 
 be done. Later I will have a talk with you. 
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER V (ROGER FINDS THE ISLAND) Pg 29 
   
 Tell me once again--you do 
 not know of any friends or relatives of your father's or Hester's?" 
                                                  
 She shook her head, carelessly but definitely. 
   
 "Does Caliban?" 
   
 But this question was beyond the poor lout's intelligence; he could 
 only blubber and fend off possible chastisement. 
   
 "Take another nap, if you can, Margarita," said Roger, "and I will go 
 to the beach. Call me if you want me." 
   
 She went off to her warm straw, threw herself on it like a tired 
 child, and passed quickly into a deep sleep; he tramped for a moment 
 on the beach, then stretched himself in the lee of a sun-warmed rock 
 and fell into the dreamless, renewing rest that he took as his simple 
 due from nature. 
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER VI (FATE CASTS HER DIE) Pg 30 
   
 When he woke it was full sunset. The lonely reefs were red with it, (O 
 Margarita, well I know that hour! Do you remember our talks?) the 
 point of land seemed drowned in it, and with a sense of something 
 inexcusably forgotten and put off, Roger hurried to the house that 
 stood strangely deserted, it seemed, in the dying glow. In just that 
 glow I have watched it, leaning on my oars, and for a few strange 
 minutes, the exact time necessary for the sun to drop behind the 
 coast-hills, I have felt myself a small boy again, crouched in a cane 
 chair before my mother's sewing-table, unable for very terror to drop 
 my feet to the floor as I gazed through wide eyes at the House of 
 Usher, that home of sunset mystery. Such a strange, Poe-like 
 atmosphere could that sanded, secret cottage take upon itself. 
   
 Roger pushed rapidly up the beach and entered the house quietly, so 
 quietly that he caught Margarita's last sentences, which struck him as 
 odd even in his utter ignorance of their connection. She was evidently 
 scolding Caliban, for his grunts and shufflings punctuated her pauses. 
   
 "It is very saucy and unkind of you, Caliban," she was saying, "and 
 you need not think you can do as you like because Hester is dead. I 
 know she can not walk any more. My father could not walk when he was 
 dead. And you need not think that Roger Bradley will not ask, because 
 he will. He knows everything." 
   
 Roger thought that the lout had been teasing her with stupid ghost 
 hints and bade him begone sternly, more vexed than before as he 
 noticed the dim twilight drawing in and realised how late and 
 inconvenient the hour was for all he had to do. 
   
 "Can you get me a lantern, Margarita?" he said shortly. "I must get 
 back to the village and try to bring someone out with me to see about 
 the--all the matters that must be attended to--upstairs." 
   
 "Upstairs?" she repeated, "what matters?" He blessed her indifference 
 then, and explained as gently as he could the necessity for some 
 disposition of her old housekeeper's body. 
   
 "Oh! Hester," she returned, "you cannot do anything to Hester, Roger 
 Bradley, for she has gone." 
   
 "Gone," he echoed stupidly. 
   
 "Go and see," said Margarita, pointing to the stairway, and he took 
 the steps two at a time. The room that she indicated faced the stairs 
 directly. It was furnished plainly with an ugly wooden bed covered 
 with a bright patchwork quilt, a pine bureau and two cheap chairs. The 
 walls were utterly bare and the floor, but for a woven rug near the 
 bed, of the sort so common in New England. And yet there was an air of 
 homely occupation in the plain chamber, a bright, patched cushion in 
 one chair, a basket full of household mending and such matters, on a 
 small table, a pair of spectacles and a worn Bible beside it. The room 
 had that unmistakable air of recent occupation, that subtle atmosphere 
 of use and wont that no art can simulate--and yet it was empty. 
   
 Roger came down the stairs again and summoned Caliban. The fellow lay 
 in a deep sleep, just as he had thrown himself, on the straw beside 
 the cow stall, a full pail of milk beside him. It was hard to wake 
 him, for he scowled and snored and dropped heavily off again after 
 each shaking, but at last he stood conscious before them and appeared 
 to understand Roger's sharp questions well enough, though his only 
 answer was a clumsy twist of his large head and a dismal negative sort 
 of grunt. 
   
 Where was Hester's body? Was she really dead? Had anyone been in the 
 house? What had he been doing all the afternoon? One might as well 
 have asked the great hound in the doorway. Even to threats of violence 
 he was dumb, cowering, it is true, but hopelessly and with no attempt 
 to escape whatever penalty his obstinacy might incur. 
   
 Roger fell into a perplexed silence and the lout dropped back snoring 
 on his straw. 
   
 "I do not see why we came back from Broadway," Margarita observed 
 placidly. "I did not want to, you remember, and now Caliban is too 
 sleepy to get our supper. We shall have to have more bread and milk. 
 Let us eat it on the rocks, Roger Bradley, will you?" 
   
 And Roger, in spite of the fact that he was forty and a conspicuously 
 practical person (or was it, perhaps just _because_ of this fact? I 
 confess I am not quite sure!) actually left that house of mystery 
 carrying a yellow earthen pitcher of milk, a crusty loaf of new bread, 
 a great slice of sage cheese and a blueberry pie, followed by 
 Margarita and the Danish hound, Margarita prattling of Broadway, the 
 dog licking her hand, Roger, I have no sort of doubt, intent on 
 conveying the food in good order to its destination! 
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER VI (FATE CASTS HER DIE) Pg 31 
   
 They sat on the rocks, warm yet with the September sun, and ate with a 
 healthy relish, while the first pale stars came out and the incoming 
 tide lapped the smooth beach. I have been assured that they never in 
 the conversation that followed mentioned the island--though it was not 
 then an island, to be sure--that they were sitting upon, nor the 
 extraordinary events which had happened there and had brought them to 
 
 And I believe it. I also believe, and do not need to be assured, 
 
 that they talked little of anything. They never did. Again and again I 
 have imparted to Roger some or other of Margarita's amazing 
 conversations with me and he has listened to them with the grave 
 interest of a stranger and even questioned me indolently as to my 
 theory of that stage of her development. I must add that he has never 
 seemed surprised at what she said and has occasionally corrected me in 
 my analyses and prophecies with an acuteness that has astonished me, 
 for he was never by way of being analytic, our Roger. When I once 
 remarked to Clarence King (who was devoted to her) apropos of this 
 silence of theirs that it was like the quiet intimacy of the animals, 
 he looked at me deeply for a moment, then added, "Or the angels, 
 maybe?" which, like most of King's remarks, bears thinking of, dear 
 fellow. I never heard him in my life talk so brilliantly as he did one 
 afternoon stretched on the sand by Margarita, while she fed him wild 
 strawberries from her lap and embroidered the most beautiful butterfly 
 on the lapel of his old velveteen jacket, and Roger tried to ride in 
 on the breakers like the South Sea Islanders. 
   
 From time to time Clarence would turn one of those luminous sentences 
 of his and kiss the stained finger tips that fed him (I never did that 
 in my life) and from time to time Roger's splendid tanned body would 
 rise between us and the sun, triumphant on his board or ignominiously 
 flat between the great combers. But he was as calm as the tide and we 
 knew that he would beat it in the end and "get the hang of it" as he 
 promised. She never turned her eyes toward him, that I could see, but 
 I am convinced that she was perfectly aware each time he fell. She 
 never talked much to King and he was always a little jealous of me on 
 that account. But she was very fond of him and always wrote to him 
 when he was off on his ramblings. His letters to her were always in 
 rhyme, the cleverest possible. 
   
 There are, of course, whole pages to be written--if one wanted to 
 write them--of that night on the rocks. I naturally don't want to 
 write them. To say that I have not imagined them would be a stupid 
 lie; I am human. But I have never been able to bring myself to the 
 point of view of the modern lady novelist in these matters. Why is it, 
 by the way, that God has hidden so many things in these latter days 
 from the prudent and revealed them unto spinsters? 
   
 Not that I need to rely on my imagination: Margarita would have saved 
 me that. Once she got the idea that I was interested in those early 
 days, she was perfectly willing to draw upon her extraordinary memory 
 for all the details I could endure. But of course I could not let her. 
 The darling imbecile--could anything have been so hopelessly 
 enchanting as Margarita? It is impossible. If you can picture to 
 yourself a boy--but that is misleading, directly, when I think of her 
 curled close against me on the rocks, her hand on my arm and all my 
 veins tingling under it. She was all woman. And yet who but me who 
 knew her can ever have heard from the lips of any woman such absolute 
 naïveté, such crystal frankness? It was like those dear talks with 
 some lovely, loved and loving child. But that, again, gives you no 
 proper idea. 
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER VI (FATE CASTS HER DIE) Pg 32 
   
 For no child's throat sounds such deep, bell-like tones, 
 such sweet, swooping cadences. And no child's eyes meet yours with 
 that clear beam, only to soften and tremble and swim suddenly with 
 such alluring tenderness that your heart shakes in you and slips out 
 to drown contentedly in those slate-blue depths. No, no, there is no 
 describing Margarita. Perhaps King came nearest to it when he said 
 that she was Eve before the fall, plus a sense of humour! But Eve is 
 distinctly Miltonian to us (unfortunately for the poor woman) and 
 Margarita would have horrified Milton--there is no doubt of it. 
                     
 Well, well, I left them on the moonlit rocks, and there I had better 
 leave them, I suppose. It is so hard for me to make you understand 
 that Roger was incapable of anything low, when I am apparently doing 
 my best to catalogue actions that can be set only too easily in an 
 extremely doubtful light. All I can say is, pick out the best fellow 
 you know, the one you'd rather have to count on, at a pinch, than 
 another, the one you'd swear to for doing the straight thing and 
 holding his tongue about it--then give him five feet eleven and a half 
 inches and blue eyes and you've Roger. This is rather a poor dodge at 
 character drawing: I know a competent author would never throw 
 himself on your mercy so. 
   
 But then, what does it matter? When the members of a man's own 
 household, who have known him from boyhood, fail to understand him and 
 take a satiric pleasure in looking at what he does from the nastiest 
 possible standpoint (none the less nasty because it is a logically 
 possible standpoint) why should I, a confessed amateur, hope to make 
 Roger clear to you if you are determined to misjudge him? 
   
 I find myself still a little sore on this point: unnecessarily so, you 
 may be thinking. But you never had to explain it to the family in 
 Boston, you see--and Sarah. I had. I can see her cold, grey-green eyes 
 to this hour, her white starched shirt and her sharp steel belt 
 buckle--ugh! It should be illegal, in a Republic where there are so 
 many less sensible laws, for any woman to be so ostentatiously 
 unattractive.... 
   
 "Margarita," I said once, very soon after I had met her, "were you 
 ever caught by the tide on those first rocks? See how it has crept up 
 and cut them off." 
   
 "Oh yes, often," she answered, "the first night Roger ever came here, 
 for once. Do you not remember, I told you how he carried the blueberry 
 pie and the milk out there and we ate them? He was so hungry! It was 
 then that he looked at me so----" 
   
 "Blueberry pie," I said hastily, "is very messy, I think, though 
 undoubtedly good. It makes one's mouth so black." 
   
 "I know," she murmured reminiscently, "I told Roger that his mouth was 
 stained and I laughed at him. And then he said that mine was worse, 
 because there was some on my chin--why do you scowl so, Jerry? Is that 
 a wrong thing to tell?" 
   
 "No, no," I assured her, "of course not." 
   
 "I am glad," she said comfortably, "it is very strange that I cannot 
 see the difference, myself. 
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER VI (FATE CASTS HER DIE) Pg 33 
   
 How do you see, Jerry? But I was telling 
 you about the tide, was I not? When Roger said that about my mouth I 
 tried to get the stain off, but I could not, and then Roger said it 
 was no use trying any more and he kissed me." 
   
 Here Margarita paused and patted my hand, tapping each finger nail 
 lightly with her own finger-tips. 
   
 "You need not be afraid, Jerry," she added encouragingly, "I shall not 
 tell any more things about that."      
   
 I drew away my hand irritably. "Well, well, what about the tide?" I 
 said. 
   
 Margarita's repulsed fingers lay loosely upcurled on her knees, which 
 she hunched in front of her, like a boy. 
   
 "Oh, it was only what you asked me, dear Jerry," she answered softly, 
 "while Roger was kissing me that kiss, the tide _did_ come in!" 
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER VII (I RIDE KNIGHT ERRANT) Pg 34 
   
 It is easy to see that I should have made a poor novelist; it has been 
 hard enough for me to give you any idea of scenes I did not myself 
 witness, even though I had Roger and Margarita to help me out and an 
 intimate knowledge of both of them, and when I try to fancy myself 
 composing a tissue of fictitious events "all out of my head," as the 
 children say, my pen drops weakly out of my fingers, in horror at the 
 very thought. 
   
 But now, thank heaven, the pull is over. From now on, I need tell only 
 what I knew and saw, in the strange, interwoven life we three have 
 led. Three only? Nay, Harriet of the true heart, Harriet of the tender 
 hand, could we have been three without you? My fingers should wither 
 before they left your name unwritten. 
   
 I remember so well the night the telegram came. I had been vexed all 
 day. Everything had gone wrong. Roger, to meet whom I had come back 
 early to town, had neither turned up nor sent me any message; the day 
 had been sickeningly hot, with that mid-September heat that comes to 
 the Eastern States after the first crisp days and wilts everything and 
 everybody. I found my rooms atrociously stale and dusty, and worse 
 than that, perfectly useless, since by some miracle of carelessness I 
 had left my keys behind me at the shore and hadn't so much as a clean 
 collar to look forward to. 
   
 The club valet assured me that he had received no call for trunk or 
 bag, but that Roger had assuredly not entered the house for five days. 
 I went into his rooms, but they told me nothing, and I, worse luck, 
 should have been lost in his collar, so I glared angrily at the 
 drawers of linen, wired for my own keys and made for the Turkish bath. 
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER VII (I RIDE KNIGHT ERRANT) Pg 35 
   
 There with a thrill of delight I discovered a complete change of 
 clothing; I had, before leaving for the summer, jumped hastily into 
 dinner things, leaving a heap of forgotten garments behind me and they 
 awaited me now, trim and creased, russet shoes polished, and a 
 wine-colored tie, a particular favourite of mine, topping the fresh 
 linen. It seems absurd, but I recall few moments in my life of such 
 pure, heartfelt thanksgiving. The very colour of life seemed changed 
 for me. I wonder if we do well in despising these small thrills as we 
 do? Surely enough of them sedulously preserved in grateful memory must 
 equal in intensity those great, theoretical moments we all regard as 
 our due but so often pass through life, I am sure, without 
 experiencing. 
   
 However that may be, the little gratifications of that evening are 
 graven in my mind, undoubtedly, you will say, because of the startling 
 climax for which they were preparing me. The clean tingling of my 
 soapy scrub, the delicious coolness of the plunge, the leisurely, 
 fresh dressing all caressed my nerves delightfully. In the plunge a 
 pleasant enough fellow had accosted me and we had splashed together 
 contentedly. I expected to recall his name every moment, for his face 
 was vaguely familiar, but I could not, and when we met in the hall and 
 went down the steps together, it still escaped me. We hesitated a bit 
 on the pavement, and then before I realised it we were hailing a 
 hansom and bound for dinner together. 
   
 It was a pleasant drive up along the river, for a little breeze had 
 sprung up and the watered asphalt smelt cool. We were both comfortably 
 hungry and very placid after our bath and we chatted in a desultory 
 sort of way, I, amused at my utter inability to place the fellow, he 
 quite unconscious, of course, and perfectly certain of me. He asked 
 after Roger, sympathised with our failure to make connections, 
 remarked to my surprise that he had only been out of town for his 
 Sundays (America had not adopted the "week-end" at that time) and 
 asked me, I remember, if I knew anything about a game called 
 basket-ball. It seemed he was anxious to find someone who did. We drew 
 up at last to our white, glistening little table looking out over the 
 water, looked about for possible friends, nodded to the head-waiter 
 and ordered our dinner. It turned out that neither of us had yet 
 celebrated the oyster month, and leaving my unknown to bespeak the 
 blue points, for the more conservative among us clung to the smaller 
 oyster then, I telephoned the club to let Roger know where to find me 
 in case he should appear there. 
   
 Over the soup my companion got on to the subject--somehow--of 
 evolution, and talked about it very ably indeed. It is absurd, but I 
 shall never be able to eat jellied consommé as long as I live without 
 connecting it with the Saurian Period! I remember that those quaint 
 and apparently highly important beasts lasted well into our 
 guinea-chick and lettuce-hearts, and I can see him now, his eager, 
 dark face all lighted with enthusiasm while he spread mayonnaise 
 neatly over the crimson quarters of tomato on his plate, and made 
 short nervous mouthfuls, in order to talk the better. Half amused, 
 half interested I listened, trying to place the fellow, but for the 
 life of me I could not. Was he a scientist, a lecturer, a magazine 
 writer, a schoolmaster? We finished with some Port du Salut and 
 Bar-le-duc--an admitted weakness of mine--and I had decided to 
 regularly pump him and find out his name without his guessing my game, 
 when he began as I supposed, to help me out. 
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER VII (I RIDE KNIGHT ERRANT) Pg 36 
   
   
 "Heavens!" he said with compunction, "you'll think me an awful bore, 
 Jerrolds, but I've been more or less practising on you, haven't I? But 
 you'll remember, perhaps, this used to be a sort of hobby of mine, and 
 I work it into shape nowadays for a young men's club I'm running." 
   
 I yawned and lit a cigar and we sipped our coffee in silence. The 
 plates rattled around us, the curaçoa in my tiny glass smelled sweet 
 and strong, everything was natural, easy, well fed and well groomed 
 (as the phrase goes now) about me, the day and hour were like any 
 other; and yet from that moment on my life was never to be quite the 
 same, for surprise and change were hurrying toward me, and the man 
 opposite--how curiously!--was to be drawn into the wide net that fate 
 had sunk for me and must have even then been preparing to draw 
 smoothly and effectively to the surface. 
   
 We think, when we are young, that we live alone. I recall, as a boy of 
 twenty, certain hot-headed, despairing midnight walks when the horror 
 of my hopeless, unapproachable, unreachable identity surged over me in 
 melancholy waves. Heavens! I would have plunged into a monastery if I 
 had believed that any sort of prayer and fasting could bring me 
 close--really close--to God; for to any human creature, I had learned, 
 I could never be close. After that, we grow into that curious stage of 
 irresponsibility which we deduce from this loneliness, and distress 
 our patient relatives with windy explanations of "matters that concern 
 ourselves alone." And later still, if we have the right kind of women 
 about us, some faint idea of the twisted net we weave--you and I and 
 the other fellow, all together, whether we will or no--comes to us, 
 and we stare awhile and then ... shrug our shoulders or bend our knees 
 or set our jaws, according as we are made. 
   
 I like to believe, now, that a dim idea of what was going to happen 
 was in some mysterious way growing on me before I got the telegram. I 
 am certain that when the head-waiter touched my arm and told me I was 
 wanted at the telephone, a curious oppression fell over my hitherto 
 contented after-dinner spirit which grew into a kind of excitement as 
 I made my way to the booth. And yet I expected nothing more than to 
 hear Roger's voice with some reasonable explanation of his failure to 
 meet me. It was the night porter, however, reading me a telegram 
 missent to the shore and returned to the club. 
   
 "Shall I read it, sir?" 
   
 "Yes, Richard, let's have it." 
   
 He mumbled the name of a place I had never heard of and went on in the 
 peculiarly expressionless style consecrated to messages, thus 
 transmitted. 
   
      "_Please bring bag of clothes and razors here will meet 
      train arriving four thirty Tuesday bring sensible parson 
      don't fail. Roger._" 
   
 I stared at the receiver stupidly. This was Wednesday. 
   
 "That's crazy, Richard," I stammered finally, "bring what? Read it 
 again." 
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER VII (I RIDE KNIGHT ERRANT) Pg 37 
   
   
 "It's quite plain, sir, except the town," and again the strange 
 message reached me. 
   
 "Well," I managed to get out, "it's clear he wants clothes, anyway. 
 Tell Hodgson to pack a complete change for Mr. Bradley and his razors. 
 And see if you can find the name of the place from the chief operator 
 and the correct message. It can't be parson, of course. And look up 
 the next train for that place, if you can, Richard. I'll be down there 
 directly." 
   
 I puffed hard at my dying cigar and went slowly back to the veranda, 
 trying to make sense of that telegram. 
   
 "No bad news, I hope?" my companion inquired kindly, for I suppose I 
 looked worried. 
   
 "No," I said slowly, "only an idiotic sort of telegram from Roger. He 
 wants me to meet him at some place or other at present unknown, and to 
 bring him his razors and a sensible parson." 
   
 My unknown friend burst into a chuckle of laughter. 
   
 "Well," he said cheerfully, "you get the razors and I'll attend to the 
 parson end of it. Any special denomination?" 
   
 I paid for our dinner (he had insisted upon paying the cab) and 
 gathered up my hat and stick. 
   
 "It's absurd," I went on, "perhaps he meant 'person,' though what's 
 the point in that? Anyhow I must start directly. There may be a night 
 train. Would you rather stop here a while?" 
   
 "No, no, let me see you through," he said good-naturedly. "I'm 
 interested. Perhaps he's going to fight a duel with the razors and 
 wants the parson for the other fellow! Perhaps he's made a bet to 
 shave a parson. Perhaps----" 
   
 But I was in no mood for joking. The telegram, so unlike Roger, and 
 yet so unmistakably his, in a way--I have often noted a curious 
 characteristic quality in telegrams--worried me. I wished I had got it 
 in time to make the train he mentioned. I wished I were in that 
 mysterious town. Suppose he had depended on me for it? Suppose he 
 needed me? 
   
 We drove down in silence. My man got out with me at the club and 
 smiled at the Gladstone the porter held out to me. 
   
 "There are the razors, anyhow," he said. 
   
 Richard had the name of the town for me, too (the town I prefer not to 
 tell you) and the next train that would make it: it left in fifteen 
 minutes. 
   
 "And it _is_ parson, sir--p-a-r-s-o-n: there's no mistake. Shall I 
 call you a cab, sir?" 
   
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER VII (I RIDE KNIGHT ERRANT) Pg 38 
   
 I bit through my cigar with irritation. 
   
 "In heaven's name," I cried, "how am I to get a sensible parson in 
 fifteen minutes? In the first place, I don't believe there is such a 
 thing!" 
   
 "Hold on, there," said my friend suddenly, "there is, Jerrolds, for 
 I'm one, and you know it!" 
   
 I started at him. Who in the devil was he? Instinctively I began an 
 apology. 
   
 "I--I didn't recall at the moment----" 
   
 "Between you and me," he cut me short, "I'm just as well pleased that 
 you didn't, Jerrolds! The sooner we get through with all this white 
 choker and black coat business, the sooner we'll amount to something, 
 in my way of thinking. Well, seriously--will I do? Do you know anybody 
 better? Because I'll go, if you don't." 
   
 I grasped his offered hand. 
   
 "Heaven bless you," I thought, "whoever you are!" and, "All right," I 
 said shortly, "it's very kind of you. We'll have to hurry, I'm 
 afraid." 
   
 We had just time to jump for the last platform. I remember 
 apostrophising the Gladstone rather strongly as I fell on its metal 
 clasp, and glancing apologetically at my companion, but he was 
 tactfully deaf, and we found a seat together, by good luck, and 
 settled down for our hot and tiresome night. 
   
 I couldn't very well ask his name by that time, it would have been too 
 absurd. I trusted to Roger to get me out of that difficulty, for he 
 knew Roger, evidently, and me too, though not very well, I judged. He 
 certainly wasn't in my college class, for it would have come up, I was 
 sure, in our talk. Not that we talked much. It was a stuffy, 
 disagreeable ride, and I was alternately vexed with Roger and worried 
 about him. In a hopelessly foolish manner I connected the razors and 
 the parson, too closely for any reasonable inference in regard to the 
 latter. I knew the connection was ridiculous but it was persistent, 
 and as I had lost all hope of placing the man sitting beside me, my 
 mind was altogether in a horrid muddle. Once he asked me abruptly if 
 Roger were an Episcopalian. 
   
 "No," I answered, "he--his people are Unitarians." 
   
 "I'm a Congregationalist, as you know, of course," he went on, "but if 
 it makes no more difference to Roger than it will to me, there'll be 
 no trouble." 
   
 "Anyone would suppose he was going to christen Roger," I thought 
 disgustedly and returned to my troublesome thoughts, replying absently 
 that it would be all right, of course. 
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER VII (I RIDE KNIGHT ERRANT) Pg 39 
   
 We changed cars at S---- and got into a queer little local train 
 filled with young village roughs, whose noisy horseplay annoyed me 
 exceedingly. My mysterious parson, however, was deeply interested in 
 them and related incident after incident in proof of what could be 
 accomplished with this offensive part of the rural population by 
 social organisation under competent direction. He even got out an old 
 letter and proved to me on the back of it, with a stub of a pencil, 
 what a pitiful outlay in money was sufficient to start a practical 
 boys' club, including the rent of a second-hand piano, to be purchased 
 ultimately on the instalment plan. In the midst of this lecture (it 
 was no less) I fell asleep, uncomfortably and rudely, and it was he 
 who shook me awake at last and carried the bag out of the close car. 
   
   
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER VIII (THE MISTS OF EDEN) Pg 40 
   
 The station lights flared pale in the coming dawn. Behind the barred 
 window of the ticket-office, which contained, as its bright lamp 
 showed, a tumbled cot bed and a dilapidated arm-chair, a tousled young 
 man sat playing Patience in his nightshirt on the telegraph table. We 
 battered on his window, and to our amazement he nodded casually and 
 entirely without surprise at us, reached into a corner of his littered 
 room, grasped a pair of oars, and, pushing up the window, poked them 
 out at us between the bars. 
   
 "Mr. Jerrolds, I guess," he remarked. "Mr. Bradley's left the boat for 
 you at the foot of the dock, little ways across the track there. It's 
 kind of a blue boat. You just sight the two reefs and the bell buoy 
 and when you're just opposite of the buoy, turn about and make for the 
 shore. There's a white pole where you land." 
   
 "Have you been sitting up--" I began, but he cut me short impatiently. 
   
 "No, I have insomnia--it's something dreadful the way I have it," he 
 explained. "I'm always sitting up." 
   
 I accepted the oars mechanically. 
   
 "And where is Mr. Bradley stopping?" I asked. 
   
 "Why, over to Miss Prynne's. He met the afternoon train yest'day and 
 the deaf an' dumb feller rowed over to-day, and when you didn't turn 
 up he left the oars. I tell you, he knows more'n you might think, to 
 look at him." 
   
 "Was--is Mr. Bradley well?" I asked. 
   
 "He looked to be well enough yest'day," said the insomniac 
 indifferently, "big feller, ain't he?" 
   
 I shouldered the oars, and followed by my sensible parson with the 
 bag, made for the untidy wharf through the silent village. The blue 
 boat was not hard to discover in the pale, ghostly light; the bay was 
 hardly rippled; it was to be another hot, sticky day.  
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER VIII (THE MISTS OF EDEN) Pg 41 
   
 My companion 
 begged the privilege of the oars.                     
   
 "My old game, you know," he added apologetically, and swept us out on 
 the black, mysterious water with beautiful, clean strokes. He had soon 
 marked down the buoy and was regretting that it would be only a matter 
 of twenty minutes before we must land. 
   
 "Do you know," he added with a boyish sort of smile, "all this is a 
 real adventure to me, Jerrolds, and I can't help enjoying it. It can't 
 be serious, you see--Roger's well. Perhaps"--and he shot a curious 
 glance at me--"perhaps he's going to be married!" 
   
 I laughed a little stiffly. It was difficult to explain to this 
 sensible parson that Bradleys did not marry in this fashion; it wasn't 
 quite complimentary to him. Moreover I didn't know whether he would be 
 sensible enough to understand what two or three of Roger's friends 
 knew very well--that he was unlikely to marry so long as Sue Paynter 
 remained above ground. It had been simple enough, that affair: Sue and 
 Roger had been engaged ten years before the time of which I am 
 writing, they were within a few months of the wedding, and Frederick 
 Paynter, her cousin, had come back from Germany, playing Chopin like a 
 demi-god, and had whirled her off her feet in a fortnight. She broke 
 off the engagement in a rather cruel way, it seemed to me--by 
 telephone--and Roger hung up the receiver (I myself heard him answer 
 slowly, "Very well, dear. I see. Good-bye.") and went to Algiers with 
 
 When we came back they were married and he was having a great 
 
 success, playing before Royalty and all that sort of thing. 
   
 I think it took Sue about a month to find out what any of her men 
 friends could have told her in six seconds, and after that she kept 
 him in Europe as much as she could. She kept up pretty well for three 
 or four years, but at last she came back with her two delicate babies 
 and satisfied everybody's sense of propriety by nursing Frederick 
 while he stayed in America and dining out with him twice a season 
 before he returned to Europe. It was all very regrettable and Sarah 
 would discuss it in her tactful way from time to time till, if I had 
 been Roger, I should have choked her. Sue would not listen to a 
 separation, even, and insisted that Frederick sent her plenty of 
 money, which Roger invested for her, and old Madam Bradley had her 
 often with them in Boston. Roger never discussed it; he didn't need 
 
 But I never knew him to be out of Boston or New York if the 
 
 Paynters were there together, and I remarked that he invariably left 
 word where he could be reached, day or night, when Frederick was 
 playing a series of concerts. 
   
 All this ran through my mind as we cut through the water and the sky 
 grew paler by degrees and the stars faded out. We were opposite the 
 buoy now, dark amongst the dark waves, and we turned at right angles 
 and made for the shore. The tide was high and we glided over the inner 
 reef easily. Soon we could see the eaves of the cottage dimly, a cock 
 crowed sleepily, the white pole pointed out some rough steps cut in 
 the rocks ahead. 
   
 That sudden sense of excitement grew in me again, a nervous longing to 
 get hold of Roger, to get away from my oarsman, for I was worried out 
 of all reason. He, to my satisfaction, at this moment proposed a 
 separation. 
 
 
 
 PART 2 CHAPTER VIII (THE MISTS OF EDEN) Pg 42 
   
   
 "I haven't had half enough of this," he said suddenly, "why don't you 
 land, Jerrolds, if you feel you ought to--though I don't see how we 
 can descend on Miss Prynne or anybody else at this unearthly hour--and 
 I'll pull about for a while? I don't doubt you'd rather see Roger 
 alone, anyhow, at first. When you want me, just give me a hail--I 
 won't be far. And tell him to have plenty of breakfast, will you?" 
   
 I agreed warmly to this and clambered up the slippery steps, still 
 possessed by the same muffled excitement. The beach was hard as a 
 floor under me and I almost ran along it toward the sanded cottage. 
 The merest glance at it showed that no one watched there; the windows 
 were dark. I skirted the rocky wall that protected its back and sides; 
 no one was stirring in stable or outhouse. On the shore side a 
 straggling grass stretch ran down to a sheltered, inland bay; a fair 
 sized vegetable garden, glistening with dew, and a few fruit trees 
 gave a domestic air to the place, utterly unguessed from the 
 forbidding sea front. I wandered toward this little bay and sat in a 
 delightful natural chair of rock to wait for the sunrise. 
   
 I must have lost myself for a few minutes, for when I opened my eyes 
 everything before them was changed, as completely as the scene 
 shifters change a stage picture. The little bay was crowded with 
 rolling seas of white, thick mist, like an Alpine lake. Billow on 
 billow it rolled in, faintly luminous here and there, breaking as 
 smoke breaks, on the beach. As I stared, lost in the beauty of it, two 
 great gold arrows from the sun behind me cut into the thickest of it 
 and tore it like a curtain, and in the rent appeared two human 
 figures, walking as it might be on clouds to earth. More than mortal 
 tall they loomed in the mist, and no marbles I have ever seen--not 
 even that Wonder of Melos--is so immortally lovely as they were. The 
 woman wore a veil of crimson vine-leaves that wound about her hips and 
 dropped on one side nearly to her knee, around the man's neck a great 
 lock of her long hair lay loose and on his head a rough wreath of the 
 red leaves shone in the arrow of sunlight. Beside them a monstrous 
 hound appeared suddenly: a trailing vine dripped like blood from his 
 great jowl. 
   
 I could not have told what she looked like to save my life: she was 
 what the world means when it says woman--beautiful, certainly, but no 
 one person. One arm was on his shoulder, the other hand lay on the 
 animal's head; the mist covered their feet and they appeared as 
 aerial, as unreal as figures in some Assumption. But they were not 
 through with earth, not they: they were humanity triumphant--the very 
 crown and flower of creation. They came up from the sea with the 
 grave, contented smile of the old gods on their faces. Nature, working 
 patiently at her Saurians, had had this in her mind from the 
 beginning, and I believed in that moment that God had indeed allowed 
 her to perfect her last work in His image! For perhaps three 
 heart-beats I saw them there, framed in the luminous mist, and then it 
 rolled over them, swiftly, silently, and wiped them out, and I 
 stumbled from the rock-seat and ran back across the beach, a great 
 lump stiffening my throat and a hard, frightened jealousy nearly 
 stifling me, to my shame and surprise. 
   
 For I had known Roger twenty-five years and yet I had never had the 
 least idea of the man! 
 
 
 
 PART 3 (IN WHICH THE STREAM JOINS WITH OTHERS AND PLUNGES DOWN A CLIFF) CHAPTER IX (MARGARITA MEETS THE ENEMY AND HE IS HERS) Pg 43 
   
 I flung myself down on the beach behind a big rock, so that I was 
 completely cut off from the cottage, and stared at the sun rising, 
 though it might as well have been the moon for all my appreciation of 
 
 So this was it! No wonder he wanted a parson--it was high time, I 
 
 thought virtuously. It cut me that he had never hinted this to me; 
 that we, who had had no secrets from each other for so many years (as 
 I thought) had really been divided by this, for what I inferred had 
 been a long time. And yet a moment's consideration brought home to me 
 the almost certainty that it couldn't have been so very long, after 
 all. There had been, especially in the last year, weeks and even 
 months when Roger and I had not been separated for eight hours at a 
 stretch. He chose to work hard in the typical American fashion; I was 
 obliged to. And I knew his attitude toward the sort of _liaison_ we 
 both despised. He had laboured enough and disgustedly enough at 
 dragging a weak-kneed cousin of his (the black sheep that few large 
 families dispense with) out of a connection of that kind. And anyhow, 
 I knew that people who wore when they were together the look I had 
 seen on those two visions of the mist could never be contented apart! 
   
 Well, well, it was a bad quarter of an hour for me, and I had to get 
 over it as best I could, alone. Women are usually credited with a 
 practical monopoly of jealousy of their own sex, but wrongly, I am 
 sure. We learn earlier to conceal it and, better still, realise the 
 necessity for keeping quiet about it and getting over it. The clock 
 continues to strike, and one's friends continue to marry, and one 
 continues to present silver mugs to one's god-children--_voilà tout!_ 
   
 I suppose the worry and strain of it all, the hot, stuffy, sleepless 
 night and the sudden shock at the last had tired me, for as I lay on 
 the beach, sheltered by the rock, with just enough of the warm sun at 
 my back for comfort, I went off into a doze and lost myself 
 completely. I may have slept two hours, and woke with that perfectly 
 definite sensation of some one's being by and staring at me that 
 disturbs one's deepest dreams. 
 
 
 
 PART 3 CHAPTER IX (MARGARITA MEETS THE ENEMY AND HE IS HERS) Pg 44 
   
 Sitting Turk fashion on the sand near me was a beautiful young woman 
 with great deep set grey eyes and two braids of long dark hair, one 
 falling over either shoulder. Her skin was dark, nearly olive, and her 
 mouth was of that deep, dark red that has always seemed to me so much 
 more alluring than all the coral lips of poetry and convention. She 
 was oddly attired in a short, faded blue serge skirt and a dull red 
 jacket of the sort called at that sartorial epoch a "jersey." Tied 
 around the neck of this was a black silk handkerchief. Black 
 stockings, generously displayed, and worn white tennis shoes completed 
 her costume--a trying one, certainly, and, one would have supposed, 
 sufficiently prejudicial in my eyes, who have always had a confessed 
 preference for the charm of well-selected clothes, and a certain 
 critical judgment in that direction, I am told. 
   
 But Margarita would have moulded a suit of chain-armour, I believe, to 
 her personality. It was quite obvious that she wore no corset, for the 
 tight jersey clung to her round, firm bust and long, supple waist like 
 a glove. Her shoulders were, perhaps, a little shade squared, which 
 only added to the boyishness of the enchanting pose of her head, and 
 the loose handkerchief gave the last touch to the daintily hardy 
 fisher girl she seemed to have chosen for her masquerade. For there 
 was nothing of the peasant about her; race showed in every feature, 
 and the dim, toned colours of her faded clothes appeared the last 
 touch of realistic art. 
   
 "You must wake, now," she said gravely, "and tell me if you are 
 Jerry--are you?" 
   
 "Yes," I said, "I am. And you are----?" 
   
 "I am Margarita," she said. "Did you bring some one who knows how to 
 marry people? Roger said you would." 
   
 "I brought him--he's out there," I answered, pointing to the ocean 
 generally. 
   
 She followed my arm with interest in her eyes. "Oh! Is that where he 
 will do it?" she asked. "Roger did not tell me that. Is he swimming?" 
   
 "I think not," I answered seriously, "I think he is in a boat." 
   
 "I am glad of that," she remarked, "because I cannot swim, myself. And 
 I must be with Roger, you know, when we are being married." 
   
 "It is usual," I admitted. I was really only half aware of the 
 extraordinary character of our conversation. Every one became 
 primitive in talking with Margarita and fell, more or less, into her 
 style of discourse. 
   
 "Have you been married?" she asked placidly, her grave, lovely eyes 
 full on mine. She sat quite motionless, her hands loose in her lap, 
 neither twiddling them aimlessly nor pretending to employ them in the 
 hundred nervous ways common to her sex. 
 
 
 
 PART 3 CHAPTER IX (MARGARITA MEETS THE ENEMY AND HE IS HERS) Pg 45 
   
   
 "No." 
   
 "Neither have I. Neither has Roger. But many people have. It cannot be 
 hard." 
   
 "Oh, no! I believe it is the simplest thing in the world," I said, 
 eyeing her narrowly. Was she teasing me? I wondered. 
   
 "So Roger says," she agreed with obvious relief. "It is only talking. 
 I cannot see why Roger could not learn to do it himself. Can you not 
 do it, either?" 
   
 I shook my head. I was trying to believe that she was not quite sane, 
 but it was impossible. Her mind, I could have sworn, was as vigorous 
 as my own, though there was a difference, evidently. The precise, 
 beautiful articulation of her English gave me a new direction. She 
 must be a foreigner--Italian, for choice, in spite of her English 
 eyes. 
   
 "Marrying people is a business like any other, Miss--I did not hear 
 your last name?" I ventured. 
   
 "I have none," she said. "I mean," correcting herself, "Roger says 
 that I must have one, of course, but I do not happen to have heard 
 it," she added calmly. 
   
 "Ah, well," I said coldly, "it is a mere detail." 
   
 I was seriously vexed with Roger. This young woman passed belief. I 
 decided that she was an actress of the first water and resented being 
 imposed upon. 
   
 "It is the same with my age--how old I am," she continued. "Roger 
 thinks I am twenty years of age. Do you? He is going to ask you." 
   
 "Really, I can't say," I returned shortly, "I am a poor judge of 
 women's ages--or characters," I added pointedly. 
   
 She did not blush nor move. Only her eyes widened slightly and 
 darkened. 
   
 "Roger will ask you," she repeated and I felt, unreasonably, as it 
 seemed to me then, that my tone had hurt her, as one's tone, utterly 
 incomprehensible as the words it utters may be, will hurt a child. 
   
 She sat in silence for a moment, and I, curiously eager for her next 
 remark and conscious suddenly of that strange, muffled excitement that 
 had oppressed me a few hours before, watched her closely, gathering 
 handfuls of sand and spilling them over my knee. 
   
 "Did you ever go to Broadway?" she began again. 
   
 "I have, yes." 
   
 "I did, too," she assured me eagerly. "I think it is beautiful. 
 
 
 
 PART 3 CHAPTER IX (MARGARITA MEETS THE ENEMY AND HE IS HERS) Pg 46 
   
 I 
 should like to live there, should not you? Perhaps," hopefully, "you 
 do live there?" 
   
 "No," I said, still on my guard and uncomfortable, "I don't. Are you 
 planning to live there after you are married?" She shook her head 
 regretfully. 
   
 "I am afraid not," she said, and her voice dropped a full third and 
 coloured with a most absurd and exquisite sombre quality, as Duse's 
 used to in _La Dame aux Camellias_. "Roger would not want to. He will 
 not want me to walk there very much, either. And that is very strange, 
 because there is where I first saw him. But there are places I shall 
 like quite as well, he says, and he will take me there. Will you come, 
 too?" 
   
 "I am afraid," I replied drily, "that I might be a little _de trop_, 
 perhaps. Roger might not care for my society under those 
 circumstances." 
   
 Again she answered my tone rather than my words. 
   
 "Roger loves you," she said simply. 
   
 "He used to," I returned--inexcusably. Oh, yes! utterly inexcusably. 
   
 Again her eyes widened and grew dark, and this time the corners of her 
 mouth curved down pitifully, and I felt a strange heaviness at my 
 heart. 
   
 "You do not love me, do you, Jerry?" she said, and now her voice 
 dropped a good fifth and thrilled like the plucked string of a 
 violoncello, and my nerves vibrated to it and tingled in my wrists. 
   
 "Roger said you would, and I thought you would--and you do not," she 
 said sadly. 
   
 I clenched a handful of the moist sand and leaned toward her, my heart 
 pounding furiously. 
   
 "Are you sorry?" I muttered unsteadily, fixing my eyes on hers. 
   
 She met them fully. Like great grey pools they were, her eyes, honest 
 as mountain springs, clear as rain. They caught me and held me and 
 drenched me in their innocent, warm sweetness; there was not one 
 thought in her head, not one corner in her heart that I was not free 
 to know. Those eyes had never held a secret since they opened into a 
 world that had never, to her knowledge, deceived her. They swam in 
 light, and oh, the depths on depths of love that one could sound 
 there! My last hateful anchor broke clean off and my heart slipped 
 from the stupid rocks of suspicion and self-protection and jealousy, 
 and floated away on the bosom of that sweet, disturbing flood. I 
 forgot Roger, I forgot what had been myself; in that instant, in the 
 utter surrender of her innocent eyes, she became for me all at once 
 the vision I had seen in the mist again, the thing we mean when we say 
 woman--but now she was one single special woman, the vision and the 
 flesh-and-blood reality together. 
   
 "Are you sorry?" I said again, and my voice was not my own. 
 She smiled at me till I caught my breath. "Not now, Jerry," she said 
 softly, "because you do love me, now." 
   
 The sand fell, a tightly moulded shape, out of my hand, and I wrenched 
 my eyes away from her. They smarted and stung, but the pain relieved 
 me and cleared my brain, and I knew suddenly what I have known ever 
 since and shall know till I die. There on the beach, before I had so 
 much as touched her hand, I had fallen senselessly and hopelessly and 
 everlastingly in love with Margarita. 
 
 
 
 PART 3 CHAPTER X (FATE SPREADS AN ISLAND FEAST) Pg 47 
 I don't know how long we sat silent on the beach. Such silence was 
 never embarrassing to her, because it seemed perfectly normal and 
 usual, and I was too busy with my thoughts to feel any sense of 
 restraint. And yet they were hardly thoughts: my head whirled in a 
 confusion of regret and desire, and one moment my blood ran warm with 
 the joy of my discovery, and the next a horrid chill crept over me as 
 I saw my empty years--for if she might not fill them, no one else 
 should. At last I drew a long breath. 
   
 "Are you hungry?" Margarita asked pleasantly. "When I am hungry I do 
 that very often. If you will come now, we will have our breakfast." 
   
 She sprang to her feet with the lithe ease of a boy and held out her 
 hand to me. I took it and we walked thus across the beach to the 
 cottage, and during that walk, with her firm, warm hand fast in mine 
 and her clean, elastic step beside me, I swore to myself that neither 
 she nor Roger should ever regret what she had done to me, nor know it, 
 if I could keep the knowledge from them. The last part of this vow was 
 impossible of fulfillment, finally, but the first, thank God! has 
 never been broken, or even for a moment strained, and I like to hope 
 that this may count a little to my credit, in the ultimate auditing, 
 for she was terribly alluring, this Margarita, and I am no more a 
 stock or a stone than other men, I fancy. 
   
 We walked around to the shore side of the cottage and there stood 
 Roger on its weather-beaten veranda, his hand held out to me eagerly, 
 an anxious, an almost wistful look in his honest blue eyes. He was 
 unusually but not unbecomingly dressed in faded blue serge trousers, 
 too tight for the dictates of fashion, but quite telling in their 
 revelation of his magnificent thighs, tucked into very high wading 
 boots and topped by a grey flannel blouse open at the neck for 
 comfort, with a twisted dull green handkerchief by way of a collar. It 
 was really quite picturesque altogether, and suited him excellently, 
 as all rough-and-ready, notably masculine attire has always done. 
 Curiously enough, he combines with this, when in evening clothes, the 
 least resemblance to a head-waiter I have ever observed in an 
 American; the price they pay, I suppose, for being quite the best 
 dressed business and professional men in the world. 
 
 
 
 PART 3 CHAPTER X (FATE SPREADS AN ISLAND FEAST) Pg 48 
   
 I took all this in, of course, in a fraction of the time it takes to 
 write it, and also the fact that old Roger looked ten years younger 
 than when I had last seen him. He had always been a steady, 
 responsible fellow, you see, one of the men people put things on, and 
 not particularly youthful for his age: a great help to him as a 
 budding young lawyer. 
   
 But now I saw the eyes we used to see on the football field in New 
 Haven, and even, it seemed to me for a moment, the little worried yet 
 patient intentness I knew so well at school when some one of those 
 tiny climaxes (that seemed so terrible then!) depended on him for a 
 fair solution. They used to say so clearly, those honest eyes, that he 
 hoped you agreed with him and that you felt his way was the best way, 
 but that whether or not you agreed, he would have to do it, all the 
 same. 
   
 He had, as I say, his hand out, and I quickly put mine into it, 
 somehow or other not losing Margarita's at the same time. As 
 unconsciously as a child she reached out her other hand to him and we 
 stood like boys and girls in a ring-game, Roger and I looking deep 
 into each other's eyes and holding Margarita tightly. 
   
 "Is it all right, Jerry?" he asked me earnestly. 
   
 "It's all right if you say so, Roger," I answered promptly. All our 
 friendship was packed into that question and answer, and I like to 
 think that I never asked any explanations and that he never thought of 
 giving any till they were more or less unnecessary, the matter being 
 settled. 
   
 "You're not alone, I hope?" he said as we moved, one each side of 
 Margarita, into the house. I dropped her hand abruptly. Up to that 
 moment I had completely forgotten my sensible parson. 
   
 "Not unless he's given me up and rowed back to the town," I assured 
 him contritely, "and I hope to heaven you know who he is, for I don't! 
 He's a thoroughly good fellow, anyhow, and he knows us, and from what 
 I've seen of him he strikes me as just about the man we want." 
   
 "Thank you for that 'we,' Jerry," said Roger soberly, putting his arm 
 over my shoulder, and I realised suddenly and completely that I had 
 taken the jump and cleared my last ditch: Roger's interest in to-day's 
 event, for good or bad, was mine. 
   
 "I'll run and call him," I began, "and mind you mention his name 
 directly, for it's a bit awkward for me all this while." Something 
 struck me and I turned back. 
   
 "By the way," I tried to say easily, "do you want me to--to begin any 
 explanations?" 
   
 He laughed shortly. 
   
 "Good old Jerry!" he said affectionately. "No, I'll manage that when I 
 find out who he is. Hurry him along, for breakfast is ready." 
 
 
 
 PART 3 CHAPTER X (FATE SPREADS AN ISLAND FEAST) Pg 49 
   
 I dashed off to the landing and hailed the boat, now plainly visible 
 on the bright, clear moving sea. She flew in like a swallow, the 
 oarsman coat off and dripping, and evidently royally content. 
   
 "Has Roger got a change for me?" he called as he reached the landing. 
 "I won't keep him ten minutes longer, but I'd like to go over the side 
 here, tremendously." 
   
 I, too, had begun to be conscious of a wrinkled, cinder-coated 
 feeling, and Roger, who had followed me at a distance, turned at my 
 shout and ran back to the cottage, returning with a white armful of 
 linen and towels just as we had slipped into the blue, cold water. I 
 shall never forget his expression of mingled relief, real pleasure and 
 amusement as he recognised my companion's face, bobbing upon the 
 surface. 
   
 "This is mighty good of you, Elder," he said simply, and reached down 
 from the slippery stone to shake the dripping hand held out to him. 
   
 Then it came to me in a flash. Tip Elder, of course! He was supposed 
 to have been christened Tyler, but was never known by any other name 
 than Tippecanoe, for reasons clearer in those days than these, the old 
 political war cry in connection with his boating fame having proved 
 too temptingly obvious to the rest of his class crew. He was in 
 Roger's class; I remembered how, even then, he had dragged Roger down 
 to some boys' club of his to give a boxing lesson once to some of his 
 protégés. He and Russell Dodge had a notable and historic quarrel once 
 because Tip had refused to break an engagement in order to take one of 
 Russell's many feminine incumbrances to a dance. Tip had steadily 
 refused to accept the obligation, and had endured very patiently a 
 vast amount of hectoring from Russell, who was then as now a trifle 
 snobbish and unsteady; but had finally been forced (or so we regarded 
 it, at that hot and touchy period) to accept what was practically a 
 challenge, and we were actually on tiptoe for a duel. Feeling ran high 
 about it, and there might have been a very disagreeable scandal had 
 not Tip's clear common sense and persuasive oratory burst out at the 
 last possible minute from this murky thunder-cloud and effectively 
 swept the whole business out of the way. 
   
 But none of his prayer meetings, nor the trip to the Holy Land that he 
 made in one long vacation ever deceived anyone who knew the fellow 
 into thinking him a prig. He never pretended that his ideals of 
 practical conduct were a bit higher than those of scores of the men 
 who had none of these interests of his. So marked was this absence of 
 the goody-goody in Tip that I, though I recalled his face and vaguely 
 connected him with something or other in the athletic line, never 
 remembered these other characteristics of his until, at Roger's warm 
 greeting, the years rolled back and Tip Elder, oarsman and 
 philanthropist, took his proper place in my memory again. 
   
 We scrambled up the rough landing steps, rubbed down quickly and got 
 into the fresh linen Roger had brought us, talking curt commonplaces, 
 not even embarrassed, in the glow and vigour of that strengthening 
 dip, and I noticed that the underwear, though of the best linen, was 
 somehow a little unfamiliar in its fashion, indescribably antiquated 
 in cut. 
 
 
 
 PART 3 CHAPTER X (FATE SPREADS AN ISLAND FEAST) Pg 50 
   
 "We'll talk at breakfast," said Roger, as we hurried toward the 
 cottage. "I know you're hungry." 
   
 He pushed open the door, and we entered, gazing curiously around us. 
 We stood in a large, square room, evidently a dining and living-room, 
 washed with a greyish plaster, at once warm and cool. There was a 
 deep, wide hearth of faded red brick on one side, and an old oak 
 dresser covered with a very good service of gold-rimmed white china 
 and several pieces of handsome Sheffield plate. The few chairs and 
 settees and the one large table in the centre were all of that solid 
 yet graceful Georgian style that our ancestors brought with them; the 
 bare clean floor and the home-made rugs, taken with this furniture, 
 gave an effect more usual now in a summer cottage than it was then. On 
 the walls were eight or ten water-colour sketches framed in rustic 
 wood; a worn wicker _chaise-longue_ with patchwork cushions, struck a 
 curiously exotic note; two spinning-wheels, a large and a small, 
 flanked the fire and bore every evidence of use, not æstheticism; a 
 silver bowl of unmistakable Queen Anne date, beautifully chased, 
 filled with fiery nasturtiums, stood in strange neighbourliness to a 
 cheap American alarum clock; a lovely, tarnished oval mirror reflected 
 a hideous floral calendar, the advertisement of some seedsman. The 
 room turned in a small ell, and this, which was evidently the kitchen 
 corner of it, could be completely hidden from the rest by a quaint 
 screen, very broad and high, of home manufacture, the body of which 
 was composed of several calfskins beautifully marked and adroitly 
 fitted together. This last gave a touch of quaint antiquity, a hint of 
 the bold and primitive that was deliciously satisfying. I thought it 
 then and still think it a room in ten thousand. It had no other door 
 nor any window opening on the beach, and this produced a softened 
 dimness, a richness, so to speak, of lighting and gloom, a sinking 
 into shadow of the hearth and spinning-wheels, a lightness of the 
 dresser and the polished settle near it that struck the eye with the 
 same contented shock one gets from a mellow Dutch interior--the same 
 impression of previous acquaintance, of a once familiar, only half 
 forgotten home. 
   
 I have since tried to analyse the charm of that room, its inevitable 
 hold upon every one privileged to enter it (and I suppose few rooms in 
 America have held a greater number of really select souls), and I have 
 decided that its spell consisted in its deeply impersonal character; 
 its utter lack of the characteristics, the idiosyncrasies, the 
 imbecilities, even the fascinations of other, no matter how attractive 
 dwelling places. It had the restful aloofness of a studio, with none 
 of its professional limitations; the domesticity of a home, with none 
 of its fatiguing clutter; the freedom of an inn, with none of its 
 stale sense of over-use. And above and through all this ran the note 
 of almost ascetic cleanliness, a purity fairly conventual. Like most 
 men, I have a concealed passion for perfect cleanliness--concealed, 
 because to the sex so ironically intrusted with the duty of domestic 
 lustration cleanliness appears to mean frightful and devastating 
 upheavals resulting in a nauseating odour of soap and furniture 
 polish. When you shall have learned, dear ladies, to _keep_ your 
 domains clean without so furiously _getting_ them clean, you will have 
 earned, in our eyes, your somewhat dubious title of housekeepers. 
 Meanwhile, continue, in heaven's name, to think us the contentedly 
 dirty sex! 
 
 
 
 PART 3 CHAPTER X (FATE SPREADS AN ISLAND FEAST) Pg 51 
   
 From the kitchen ell delicious odours proceeded, and as we sat down 
 around the shining old table with its fine, much-darned linen, and its 
 delicate china eked out where necessary by cheap, coarse, village 
 crockery, a heavy-faced fellow with dull eyes under a shock of hair 
 served us with what, upon mature consideration, I believe to have been 
 the finest breakfast I have ever eaten. A great fresh fish, broiled 
 with bacon, plenty of those delicious corn-meal muffins (I believe 
 they are locally and truly known as "gems") mealy potatoes fried in 
 bacon fat, and a sort of tart jam or marmalade made of wild plums to 
 top off with, the whole washed down with strong coffee and rich cream, 
 melted before our keen-edged appetites like dew before the hungry sun, 
 and we hardly spoke as we filled ourselves. 
   
 Much combined to give a flavour to the meal: the long, worried night, 
 the short, cool plunge, the excitement of our adventure, the mystery 
 of this empty house (for neither Margarita nor any other hostess was 
 present) and in my own case the wild, heady consciousness of that 
 absurd, incredible thing that had just happened to me: the confused 
 yet certain sense that it could never be quite the same with me as it 
 had been before I met that extraordinary girl in the faded red jersey. 
 It was too soon to think about it, I was still stupid from the shock 
 of it, but my blood ran very sweetly through my veins, the delicious, 
 strong air of the beach was in my nostrils and the food was fit for 
 the hunger of the gods. 
   
 
 
 
 PART 3 CHAPTER XI (OUR PARSON PROVES CAPABLE) Pg 52 
   
 At last even we could eat no more, and Roger pulled out an old pipe 
 that I had never seen before, pushed a jar of fragrant tobacco toward 
 us, brought us pipes from the chimney-piece and crossed his legs 
 definitely. 
   
 "I suppose, Tip," he said, "you're wondering why you're here, eh?" 
   
 "A little," said Tip comfortably, "but not too much. To tell you the 
 truth, fellows, I haven't had such a thoroughly good time for--oh, for 
 ten years, I should say! Somehow I feel as if everything but just this 
 actual moment--this breakfast, this pipe, this queer old room--was a 
 sort of dream and these were the only things that mattered." 
   
 "I know," Roger answered quietly, "that's the way one feels here. The 
 place is bewitched, I think. Well, Tip, I want to get married, and I'd 
 rather you'd be the one to do the business than any man I know." 
   
 "I rather suspected it," Tip said, "and I'll be mighty glad to do it 
 for you, Roger. Who is she?" 
   
 There was quite a pause here, and Roger puffed slowly and thoughtfully 
 at the old pipe and looked out of the open door toward the little bay. 
 By and by he spoke, and the concise clearness of what he said was most 
 characteristic of him. 
   
 "Of course I needn't go into all this at all," he began, "unless I 
 wanted to. In fact, my original idea was to have a perfect stranger 
 (as I somehow thought Jerry would bring) marry us without his being 
 any the wiser. But the minute I saw you, Tip, I felt that I'd like you 
 to know. But I'd rather you kept it to yourself." 
   
 He paused a moment, and Tip nodded gravely. 
   
 "Of course you have my word for that," he said. 
   
 "The woman I'm going to marry," Roger went on, in his quiet, practical 
 voice, "was born and brought up on this little peninsula. She has 
 never left it but once in her life. Her mother died when she was a 
 baby, her father a few weeks ago, I should say. She does not know her 
 father's name, nor, consequently, her own. It is evident from this 
 house, the furnishings and the books, that he was a gentleman and an 
 educated one. For as long as she can remember they were served and 
 looked after in every way by a woman called Hester Prynne and this 
 half-witted fellow called Caliban. Of course I have no idea what their 
 real names were. The woman died very recently and the girl was left 
 alone. There was a big chest fairly well filled with money under her 
 father's bed, but not a line or word in it to give any clue. Either 
 her father or mother must have been Italian, I should think, both from 
 her name and her general type, but she knows no Italian whatever--only 
 a simple childish sort of French. She is the only woman I should ever 
 marry if I lived a hundred years, and I want you to do it to-day. Will 
 you?" 
   
 I drew the long breath I had been holding during this speech and felt 
 a great relief. It was all so simple, after all! I hoped Tip wouldn't 
 spoil it, but I was afraid he would. He wasn't at all what one would 
 call a man of the world: he had always felt a terrible responsibility 
 for other people's actions, and this particular action was, to put it 
 mildly, certainly rather unusual. But I had under-estimated both Tip's 
 keenness and the effect of Roger's big, quiet personality. For Tip 
 stared hard at his pipe a moment, then at Roger, then back at the 
 pipe, and said: 
   
 "Surely I will, Roger. And be glad to." And there's Tip Elder for you! 
   
 We smoked awhile longer in silence. Finally Tip began again in a 
 casual sort of way, as if, the main question having been settled, 
 this were a mere detail, but one that he might as well mention. 
   
 "How about the name, Roger?" he asked. "Won't that be a little 
 awkward? At home, you know. I suppose you couldn't wait till you found 
 it out?" 
   
 Roger threw his jaw forward a bit and pursed his mouth, a trick he had 
 when he was bothered but couldn't see any way out of it. 
   
 "No, I couldn't," he said thoughtfully. "In the first place, to tell 
 you the truth, I don't much believe there's any chance of finding it 
 out except by pure accident. There's not a scrap of evidence about the 
 place, and it is undoubtedly intentional. 
 
 
 
 PART 3 CHAPTER XI (OUR PARSON PROVES CAPABLE) Pg 53 
   
 I've opened every book in 
 her father's room and there are no collections of old litter in any 
 closet--there's no attic--and not a letter or bill in the house. A 
 doctor came here once or twice, but he never mentioned her father's 
 name in her hearing, and this Hester told her he came from New York. 
 Caliban did the marketing and paid cash for everything. The telegraph 
 operator, who is the only one I've spoken with in the town, represents 
 the attitude of everybody there, probably, and he thinks, evidently, 
 that an eccentric recluse lives here, and that his housekeeper is 
 pretty close-mouthed and 'unsociable,' as he put it. It's rather 
 strange that they aren't more curious, but she must have known how to 
 deal with them, for whatever interest anybody may have felt died out 
 long ago. They know the man had a daughter and that she's grown now, 
 but this fellow told me that he'd heard she went barefoot most of the 
 time, and there was a half rumour that she was feeble-minded, and that 
 was why they kept so close. He thinks I'm boarding here, apparently. I 
 suppose that any curious boys or tramps that might have been tempted 
 over here were frightened off by the dogs--there used to be a pair of 
 them." 
                                                 
 He paused to fill his pipe again and Tip nodded comprehendingly. 
   
 "I see," he said, "it's an extraordinary situation, isn't it?" 
   
 Another pause, and he added with his eyes carefully off Roger's face: 
   
 "This housekeeper, now--you don't think it's possible----" 
   
 "No, I don't," Roger interrupted shortly. "Both she and the father 
 have told Margarita that she resembled her mother, and that her mother 
 was very good and very beautiful, but that she was not named after 
 her. She died when the child was born, and Hester was with them then. 
 Besides, her father used to correct her for using expressions of 
 Hester's and forbade her to hold her knife and fork as Hester did, and 
 things of that sort. She never ate with them, either. Margarita says 
 that Hester loved her father but was always afraid of him." 
   
 Caliban had the table cleared now, and Tip and I stared into our 
 reflections in the beautiful, shining mahogany where our plates had 
 been. I suppose the same thing was in both our minds. What a strange 
 marriage for a Bradley! What an incongruous effect, in steady old 
 Roger's life! When one considered all the Jacksons and Searses and 
 Cabots he might have married--there was one particular red-cheeked, 
 big-waisted Cabot girl that old Madam Bradley had long and openly 
 favoured--one could but gasp at the present situation. A surnameless 
 Miranda, whose only possessions were a chest of money, a few pieces of 
 old mahogany and a brindled hound! 
   
 "I haven't seen the young lady yet, you know, Roger," Tip reminded him 
 gently at last, and Roger, coming out of his abstraction with a quick 
 smile, stepped to the foot of the stairs and called, "Margarita! 
 Margarita! _Viens, chérie!_" 
   
 She came, hesitating from stair to stair as a child does, and I caught 
 my breath when I saw her--as I have always done whenever she appeared 
 in a new and different dress. For she had taken off the faded jersey 
 and put on a longer, more womanly frock of some sort of clear blue 
 print. 
 
 
 
 PART 3 CHAPTER XI (OUR PARSON PROVES CAPABLE) Pg 54 
   
 It was faded, too, and much washed, evidently, but its dull, 
 soft tone and simple, scant lines only threw out the more strongly her 
 rich colouring and strong, supple figure. The body of it crossed on 
 itself simply in front, like an old-time kerchief, leaving her throat 
 bare to the little hollow at the base of it; around her waist was a 
 belt of square silver plates heavily chased, linked together with 
 delicate silver links. Her long braids were bound around her beautiful 
 round head, and this fashion of hair-dressing, with its classic 
 parting, brought out the purity of her features and the coin-like 
 regularity of them. I saw at once that she was older than I had 
 thought her on the beach: I had not given her twenty then. 
   
 Roger took her hand and led her into the room. 
   
 "This is Margarita," he said simply, but his face told all he did not 
 say, and I thanked heaven that neither Elder nor I had been foolish 
 enough to attempt what we should probably have called reasoning with 
 him. 
   
 "Is this the man that will marry us?" she inquired gravely, taking his 
 offered hand with a lovely, free gesture. 
   
 "Roger is going to give me the pleasure of making him so happy, yes," 
 said Tip, very cordially, I thought, and with more grace than I had 
 believed him capable of. But she did not even smile at him, and it was 
 rather startling, because she had smiled at me, and I hadn't known her 
 long enough to understand that she had absolutely none of the 
 perfunctory motions of lips and eyes that we learn so soon and so 
 unconsciously in this cynical old world. When Margarita didn't feel 
 moved to smile, she didn't, that was all, just as she didn't pretend 
 to look grave at the death of the only woman she had ever known in her 
 life. She had never learned the game, you see. 
   
 "I should like it better if you did it," she said to me, and an 
 idiotic joy filled every crease of my heart. 
   
 "He can't do it, dear," Roger said gently, "only Mr. Elder can," and 
 the look of appeal he turned on Tip would have touched a harder heart 
 than that dear fellow's. 
   
 "You see, old man," he murmured apologetically, "she says just exactly 
 what she thinks, with no frills--she doesn't understand yet...." 
   
 And good old Tip smiled back at him and said he understood, if 
 Margarita didn't, and perhaps she would be willing to make his 
 acquaintance a little and walk out on the beach with him? 
   
 "I want to be your friend, too, Miss Margarita, as well as Roger's," 
 he ended. 
   
 "I will walk with you if Jerry comes too," she said placidly, and so 
 we all laughed--I somewhat unsteadily--and Tip and I took her for a 
 walk. 
   
 And right here I must stop and mention a very interesting thing. 
 Though she saw him often after that, for the intimacy renewed there 
 after so many years never has waned since, and he has woven himself 
 strangely and wholesomely into all our lives, Margarita never cared 
 for Tip. 
 
 
 
 PART 3 CHAPTER XI (OUR PARSON PROVES CAPABLE) Pg 55 
   
 For a long time I did not see why, and always attributed his 
 extraordinary invulnerability to her charm to her lack of interest in 
 him, but suddenly one day it came to me (in my bath, I remember; I 
 squeezed a lot of soap into my eye till I thought I should go blind) 
 and I realised all at once what a fool I had been. She did not care 
 for him just _because_ he did not surrender to her. He was the only 
 man but one that ever had anything to do with her, so far as I know, 
 who was not, in one degree or another, in love with her. He admitted 
 her beauty and charm, he admired her talent, he respected her 
 frankness--but he never was the least little bit in love with her, and 
 except for J--n S----t, who failed to make a great picture of her, for 
 the same reason, I believe, he is the only man I know who ever had the 
 opportunity, of whom that can be said. 
   
 And from the moment their eyes met, Margarita saw this (or felt it, 
 rather, for she had not had sufficient practice in reading people at 
 that time to be able to see it) and--he simply did not exist for her. 
   
 For I must admit it: it was her own particular fault, that. And I must 
 hasten to add that I loved her the more for it. She _was_ heartless in 
 a situation of that sort. It would be folly to deny it. It was as much 
 a part of her enchanting personality, and as little a defect in my 
 indulgent eyes, as the three tiny moles under her chin (true _grains 
 de beauté_) or her utter refusal to affect an interest in people's 
 affairs or to eat the insides of her rolls and bread-slices. All 
 faults, doubtless--but who would have or love a faultless woman? Not 
 I, at any rate, for I loved her and love her and shall love her till 
 my heart is a handful of dust, and she was far from faultless, my 
 Margarita. 
   
 And yet, characteristically enough, it was to Tip that she turned in 
 what was without any doubt the great decision of her life, and Tip 
 that influenced her to it. She knew whom to go to well enough, and she 
 knew that he was the one person qualified to give her absolutely 
 unprejudiced counsel. Oh, yes! she knew. Just as the beasts make for 
 the root or herb or flower that will cure them, she went to him, with 
 an instinct as true as theirs. And I, God forgive me, was a tiny bit 
 jealous of him for that! Men are made of curious clay, my masters, and 
 it's a mad world indeed. 
   
 After we came back from our walk, during which she and I talked, and 
 Tip listened quietly, he moved toward Roger and I left Margarita 
 fondling the dog and joined him. 
   
 "She is a lovely creature, Roger," he said thoughtfully. "I don't want 
 for a moment to meddle, but on the chance that you haven't thought of 
 it, may I suggest one thing?" 
   
 "Fire ahead," said Roger. He had changed his clothes, and appeared in 
 his accustomed business suit; its neat creases and quiet colour made 
 him again the responsible, unromantic lawyer I had known, and took 
 away the last vestige of dramatic oddity from the situation. It all 
 seemed natural and sober enough. 
   
 "Had you thought of taking her to your mother and marrying her there, 
 Roger?" Tip went on quietly. "Supposing she were to adopt her, 
 even--you could arrange all that easily--then there would be no 
 awkwardness. As it is, it might be made a little uncomfortable ...  
 
 
 
 PART 3 CHAPTER XI (OUR PARSON PROVES CAPABLE) Pg 56 
   
 it 
 isn't as if you were a nobody, you know, old man, and you don't know 
 her name, you see, and ..." 
   
 I will own that this struck me as an extremely practical plan for a 
 moment, and I looked hopefully at Roger. But he shook his head. 
   
 "I see what you mean, Tip," said he, "but it's impossible. I wish it 
 weren't. I thought of it, of course. But there are reasons why it 
 won't do. I won't attempt to deny that this will be a blow to my 
 mother. I know her too well to consider for a moment the possibility 
 of her helping me in this way. She--she is very proud and--and she has 
 her own ideas.... My cousin, too--Oh, Lord!" he concluded suddenly, 
 "Jerry'll tell you it wouldn't work." 
   
 Of course it wouldn't. In one flash I saw that dark, determined house 
 on the Back Bay, Madam Bradley's cold, bloodless face and Sarah's 
 malicious eyes probing, probing Margarita's crystal unconsciousness. 
 It seemed to me suddenly that Roger's mother might not, and that Sarah 
 certainly would not, forgive this business. I saw his mother in a 
 series of retrospective flashes, as I had been seeing her for 
 twenty-five years: each time a little more impersonal, a little more 
 withdrawn, a little less tolerant. I remembered the quiet, bitter 
 quarrel with the president of the university to which he would 
 naturally have gone, and its result of sending him to Yale, the first 
 of his name to desert Harvard, to the amazement and horror of his 
 kinsfolk. I remembered the cold resentment that followed his decision 
 to go to work in New York, based very sensibly, I thought, on the 
 impossibility of submission to his uncle's great firm--the head of the 
 family--and the inadvisability of working in Boston under his 
 disfavour. I remembered the banishment of his younger sister on her 
 displeasing marriage (the old lady actually read her out of the family 
 with bell and book) and the poor woman's subsequent social death and 
 bitter decline of health and spirit. I remembered the sad death of his 
 second sister, and the stony philosophy of her impenetrable mother. I 
 remembered the eldest daughter, a brilliant beauty, whose career might 
 have brushed the skirts of actual royalty, and whose mysterious 
 renouncement of every triumph and joy possible to woman (one would 
 suppose) and sudden conversion and retirement to a Roman Catholic 
 order convulsed Boston for a long nine days and broke Madam Bradley's 
 heart so that she never smiled again--and never, it was whispered, 
 forgave the God who had allowed such a shipwreck. That she loved 
 Roger, I must believe; that she was proud of him and looked upon him 
 with a sort of stern, fanatical loyalty as the head of her family, I 
 knew. But I could not see her adopting, or even tolerating, Margarita 
 with the unknown name. No, it wouldn't do. And I told Tip so very 
 decidedly. 
   
 "But if you wanted to take her to my mother, Roger," I ventured, 
 seeing, in fancy, the dear woman cooing over Roger's mysterious, 
 romantic beauty (she adored him and would, moreover, have adopted a 
 chambermaid if I had begged her to), "it could be arranged, I 
 know...." 
   
 "Thank you, Jerry," he interrupted shortly, "but it must be now. I 
 can't have anything happen. Any slip----" I saw his hands clench, and 
 I knew why. Whether Tip knew, I couldn't tell; he never indicated it, 
 then or ever after, good fellow. But he wasn't a fool. 
 
 
 
 PART 3 CHAPTER XI (OUR PARSON PROVES CAPABLE) Pg 57 
   
 "_Mêlez-vous de 
 c'qui vous regarde!_" as we used to say at Vevay, and Tip minded his 
 business well.                                        
   
 "That's all right," he said quickly, "I only thought I'd mention it. 
 How about the license in this state?" 
   
 They talked a little in low tones, and I looked at Margarita and 
 thought of the odd chances of life, and how we are hurried past this 
 and that and stranded on the other, and skim the rapids sometimes, to 
 be wrecked later in clear shallows, perhaps. 
   
 "If you are ready, then?" said Tip, and we all moved across the beach 
 and found ourselves standing on a great, smooth rock that would be cut 
 off in a full high tide, with Caliban, clean and quiet and 
 pathetically attentive, behind us, and with him a curiously familiar 
 stranger, very neatly dressed, with tired eyes. As we grouped 
 ourselves there and Tip pulled a tiny book from his pocket I 
 recollected this stranger's face--it was the telegraph operator! 
 Roger, who forgot nothing, had brought him over for the other witness. 
   
 "Dearly beloved," said Tip in a clear, deep voice, and I woke with a 
 start and realised that old Roger was being married. Margarita, in her 
 graceful, faded blue gown, gazed curiously at him, one hand in 
 Roger's; the noon sun streamed down on us from a cloudless, turquoise 
 sky; the little waves ran up the points of rocks, broke, and fell away 
 musically. 
   
 To appreciate those quaint sentences of the marriage service, you must 
 hear them out under the heavens, alone, with no bridesmaids, no voice 
 that breathed o'er Eden, no flowers but the great handful of flaming 
 nasturtiums Roger had put in her hands (no maiden lilies grew on that 
 rock!) and a quiet man dressed just as other men are dressed, with 
 only the consciousness of his calling to separate him from the rest of 
 
 They held their own, those quaint old phrases, I assure you! But 
 
 it was then I learned to respect them. 
   
 Nevertheless, Roger _had_ forgotten something. 
   
 "Where's the ring?" the telegraph operator motioned to me with his 
 lips. His tired eyes expressed a mild interest. I saw Roger's lips 
 purse; for a moment his eyes left Margarita's face and I knew that he 
 had just remembered it. I looked down vaguely, and my eyes fell upon 
 the worn, thin band on my little finger--my mother's mother's 
 wedding-ring. In one of those lightning flashes of memory I saw 
 myself, a lad again, starting for college, and my mother putting it on 
 my finger. 
   
 "She was the best woman, I believe, that ever lived, Jerry--I took it 
 when she died. I want you to wear it, and perhaps you will think--oh, 
 my darling! I know it is hard to be a good man, but will you try?" 
   
 My dear, dear mother! I think I tried--I hope so. 
   
 I slipped it from my finger--I had taken it off sometimes, but never 
 for so good a reason--and pressed it into Roger's hand. He accepted it 
 as unconsciously as if it had come from heaven--and it was my ring 
 that married Margarita. 
 
 
 
 PART 3 CHAPTER XII (I LEAVE EDEN) Pg 58 
   
 Clear as I am on a thousand little points that concern my first 
 meeting with Margarita, my mind is a perfect blank when I try to 
 recall the events of the next half hour. We must, of course, have left 
 the rock, for I have a dim recollection of drinking healths in that 
 dear old room and signing our names to something. But on what order we 
 left it, of what we spoke, if we spoke at all, and how we at last 
 found ourselves alone, I do not know. And yet it seems to me that some 
 one--was it I?--discussed remedies for insomnia with some one else, 
 and that some third person assured us that nothing but a complete 
 change of scene could be of any lasting benefit. And my reason assures 
 me that Tip and I and the telegraph operator must have been these 
 three, for I seem to see, as if through a dim haze, a beautiful woman 
 in a blue dress sitting under a fruit tree, with a dog's head in her 
 lap, a flaming handful of nasturtiums in her belt, and a man lying at 
 her feet, with his hand in hers and his eyes fixed on her face. This 
 could hardly have been Roger, one would think, for Roger was not a 
 demonstrative man, and certainly not likely to have been so under 
 these circumstances ... and yet, if not Roger, who could it have been? 
   
 After that I remember well enough. Caliban was to row the telegrapher 
 back, as he had brought him over, and as the haggard little fellow 
 advanced to say his good-byes, Margarita and Roger appeared from 
 somewhere to receive them. He shook her hand cordially and tried 
 honestly not to stare too admiringly at her. 
   
 "This has been a great pleasure, Mrs. Bradley, a real pleasure to me," 
 he said, "aside from the romance and--and so forth, you understand. It 
 isn't often I can get off like this in the daytime, and I shouldn't 
 wonder if the air and the water and all made me sleep a little 
 to-night! I little thought when Mr. Bradley asked for an hour of my 
 time to-day that I should be going to the wedding of the Miss Prynne I 
 had heard so much about." 
   
 Tip and I glanced irrepressibly at each other, wondering if this 
 suggestion would commend itself to Roger. But he, I think, had paid no 
 attention to the words, and his smile was merely kindly and polite. So 
 the sleepless one rowed away, the richer by a box of good cigars, and 
 Tip and I were left to plan our own departure. 
   
 For mine, at any rate, Roger seemed in no hurry. 
 
 
 
 PART 3 CHAPTER XII (I LEAVE EDEN) Pg 59 
   
 When Tip assured him 
 that he must, without fail, catch the next possible train, he got a 
 schedule and arranged for a short drive across country to a tiny 
 station that profited by the summer residence of a railroad magnate, 
 and could connect him with an otherwise impossible express; but me he 
 urged to stop on in terms so unmistakably sincere that I saw he really 
 wanted a few more hours of my company, at least; and as I found that a 
 milk-train stopped at the village at ten that night, and had learned 
 from experience that much might be accomplished with a banknote and a 
 cigar and an obliging brakeman, I was glad enough to stay on, and with 
 a curious feeling of return to the actual world I pushed out across 
 the beach with Roger and Margarita, who dropped on the sand with the 
 great dog at their feet. I joined them quietly and we sat, hardly 
 speaking, for at least three long, golden hours. They drew me, a 
 naturally rather talkative person, into one of their deep peaceful 
 silences, and just because there was so much to say, we wisely left it 
 unsaid, and rested like the animals (or the angels, maybe?) in a rich 
 content. 
   
 It was then that I understood the vital principle of the Friends' 
 Meeting House, and realised how much of the heat and vulgarity of life 
 the best Quaker tradition buries under the cool, deep waves of its 
 invaluable Silence. To such artists in life the lack of speech is not 
 repression--far from it. Myself, I have never lived more generously 
 than in that wonderful afternoon, and the few hours that came 
 afterward were mere by-play. 
   
 Later Caliban brought us a picnic supper on the beach and then Roger 
 wrote some letters, gave me many instructions for his partner, listed 
 the matters to be put off for a week and those to be sent to him for 
 personal attention (precious few, these!) and agreed to my suggestion 
 that when he returned to town my mother should meet them and take 
 Margarita in charge for the purchases that must be made before the 
 year of travel he intended to take with his wife--lucky fellow, whose 
 lap Fate had filled with all her gifts!               
   
 He was to let me know when he would come and I was to forward his 
 mother's answer to the letter he had written her; most of their 
 intercourse of late had been of this sort, for his uncle's recent 
 death had opened again the vexed question of Boston residence and his 
 inability to comply with her unreasonable demands had strained anew 
 relations never very close, humanly considered. The unfortunate early 
 years of family restraint, the lack of all those weak and tender 
 intimacies, not uncommon in New England families, had borne their 
 legitimate fruit, and my mother's gentle passionate heart froze at the 
 mere thought of Madam Bradley's icy reserve, while to me, I own, she 
 was never more than an unpleasant abstraction. 
   
 And then the time came and Caliban pulled the boat across and I 
 pressed Margarita's hand and stood up to go. Roger took both my hands 
 and wrung them. 
   
 "I couldn't speak about the ring, Jerry," he said, quickly and very 
 low, "it's no use trying. But you understand?" 
   
 "That's all right, Roger," I muttered hastily, "it's the best use I'm 
 likely to make of it. Good-bye, old fellow. God bless you, Roger," and 
 I stumbled into the boat. 
   
 Caliban pulled hard at the oars and we slid away. I looked at them 
 once. For a full minute--dear fellow--he stared wistfully after me 
 (oh, Roger, you'll never forget, never, I know! 
 Twenty-five years are 
 over and gone to-night, and the close, unrivalled companionship of 
 them, and I am alone from now on--but you'll not forget!) and then 
 they turned to each other and I was no more than a speck on the 
 evening water. "Put your back into it, man; get along, can't you?" I 
 growled to Caliban. We shot ahead and left them to each other, alone 
 under the heavy, yellow moon and the close, secret stars. 
 
 
 
 PART 4 (IN WHICH THE STREAM WINDS THROUGH A SULLEN MARSH AND BECOMES A BROOK) CHAPTER XIII (STRAWS THAT SHOWED THE WIND) Pg 60 
 Alas for this unlucky womb! 
         Alas the breasts that suckled thee! 
     I would ha' laid thee in thy tomb 
       Or e'er that witch had wived with thee! 
   
       Alas my son that grew so strong! 
         Alas those hands I stretched to th' bow! 
     Or e'er thou heardst that wanton's song, 
     I'd shot thee long ago and long, 
         Through the black heart that's shamed me so! 
   
 _Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden._ 
 [TO ROGER FROM HIS COUSIN SARAH] 
   
                                      BOSTON, Sept. 7th, 188-- 
   
      MY DEAR ROGER: 
   
      Your mother, I am sorry to say, is not physically able to 
      answer your surprising and most disturbing letter, and has 
      laid upon me the unpleasant task of doing so. It is, as you 
      somewhat brusquely say, unnecessary to discuss at any length 
      what you have done, since it is irrevocable. We can but 
      feel, however, that a thing so hastily entered upon can be 
      productive of no good (if, indeed, the matter has been as 
      sudden as you lead us to suppose). 
   
      To a woman of your mother's deep family pride this alliance 
      with a nameless girl from the streets, practically, if I am 
      to read your letter aright, can be nothing short of 
      humiliating. She instructs me to tell you that she can take 
      no cognisance of any such connection with any justice to the 
      family interests, and that although you will always be 
      welcome here, she cannot undertake to extend the welcome 
      further with any sincerity of heart. 
   
      I sent, following your suggestions, for Winfred Jerrolds, 
      but I cannot say that his evidently unwilling admissions 
      made the affair any the more palatable--how could they? Some 
      of the inferences I was forced to draw I cannot bring myself 
      to discuss, even with your mother. Winfred's French bringing 
      up and the influence of a weakly affectionate mother have 
      singularly warped his moral perception. It is impossible for 
      us not to feel that had you followed Aunt Miriam's advice 
      and established yourself in Boston, these dreadful results 
      would have been avoided. I try to believe that with the 
      altered standards of the city you have chosen your very 
      fibre has so weakened that you cannot grasp the extent of 
      the mistake you have made. 
   
      Winfred Jerrolds may, as you say, have been your best 
      friend, in one sense, but I fear that sense is a very narrow 
      one. He has certainly succeeded beyond anything he could 
      have hoped in his connection with our family. I always 
      thought his attentions to Uncle Winthrop unnatural in so 
      young a boy, but he was always politic. I am informed by 
      Uncle Searsy's partner that nothing can be done about it; 
      you will be pleased, probably. 
   
      You will realise, I hope, that living as I do with Aunt 
      Miriam, I cannot with propriety take any course counter to 
      hers in the matter of your marriage. It may be that she will 
      be more reconciled with time--I hope so, for it must be a 
      terrible thought for you that she might die with such 
      feelings as she now has for her only son! 
   
                              Your affectionate cousin, 
   
                                       SARAH THAYER BRADLEY. 
   
   
                            [FROM MY MOTHER] 
   
                                            STRATFORD, CONN., 
   
                                              Sept. 7th, 188-- 
   
      MY DARLING BOY: 
   
      This is a hasty note to tell you that I am afraid I cannot 
      come to you and help dear Roger's bride (how interesting and 
      beautiful she must be!) for I must stay and nurse poor old 
      Jeanne, who has had a bad fall putting up the new curtains 
      and nearly fractured her hip. She is in a great deal of pain 
      and cannot bear anyone but me about her. I should enjoy 
      helping Roger's wife with her trousseau--how did he happen 
      to go to the island she lives on? Is she one of the 
      Devonshire Prynnes? Your father knew a Colonel 
      Prynne--cavalry, I think. How you will miss Roger--for it 
      will be different, now, Winfred--it must be, you know. 
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XIII (STRAWS THAT SHOWED THE WIND) Pg 61 
   
 Oh, 
      my dear boy, if only I could help _your_ wife! If only I 
      could see you with children of your own! Don't wait too 
      long. Your father and I had but four years together, but I 
      would live my whole life over again with no change, for 
      those four. I must go to Jeanne, now. 
   
                                        Your loving MOTHER. 
   
   
                         [FROM ROGER'S SISTER] 
   
                                                 NEWTON, MASS., 
   
                                             Sept. 10th, 188-- 
   
      DEAR JERRY: 
   
      I hope you and Roger will not think me unkind, but Walter 
      will not hear of my looking up Roger's wife, as you ask me. 
      You see Mother has just begun to to be nice to him, and we 
      can't afford to lose her good-will, Winfred--we simply 
      can't. I think Roger has a perfect right to marry whom he 
      chooses and I don't believe a word of the horrid things 
      Sarah says. They are not true, are they? But of course 
      they're not. But why did Roger do it so suddenly? Why not 
      let us meet her first? What will people think? She will hate 
      me, I suppose, but Roger knows what we have suffered from 
      Mother and I hope he will understand. Walter's eyes have 
      been very bad, lately, and Mother is going to get Cousin 
      Wolcott Sears to send him on some confidential business to 
      Germany, the voyage will do him so much good! Do explain to 
      Roger--he will understand. And ask him to write to me, if he 
      will. 
   
                                               Yours always, 
   
                                             ALICE BRADLEY-CARTER. 
   
   
                          [FROM ROGER'S UNCLE] 
   
                                        3---- COMMONWEALTH AVE., 
   
                                Boston, Mass., Sept. 12th, 188-- 
   
      MY DEAR ROGER: 
   
      Your mother has communicated to me the facts of your 
      marriage, and while I cannot pretend that I feel the haste 
      and apparent mystery surrounding it are entirely 
      satisfactory to your aunt and myself, I have hastened to 
      point out to your mother that a man of your age and known 
      character is beyond question competent to use his judgment 
      in such a matter and that I cannot believe you so unworthy 
      of the family traditions as she feels you to have shown 
      yourself. 
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XIII (STRAWS THAT SHOWED THE WIND) Pg 62 
   
 In any case, I disapprove heartily of any public 
      break or scandal, and in the event of her failing to reverse 
      her decision, which I believe to be too severe and 
      unjustifiable in view of your consistently clean record in 
      all your family relations, I am writing to offer you, in 
      your aunt's name as well as my own, the hospitality of our 
      house as long as you and Mrs. Bradley care to avail 
      yourselves of it. 
   
      With every hope that this distressing situation may be 
      quietly and privately adjusted, and regards to Mrs. Bradley 
      from your aunt and myself, believe me, 
   
                                   Yours faithfully, 
   
                                            WOLCOTT SEARS. 
   
   
                           [FROM TIP ELDER] 
   
                                             UNIVERSITY CLUB, 
   
                                     NEW YORK, Sept. 13th, 188-- 
   
      DEAR JERRY: 
   
      I can't resist sending you a line to tell you of my 
      encounter with Russell Dodge, just now. You might drop Roger 
      a hint of it if you like, not going into details, of course. 
      I hope it will be for the best. I was so hot at the fellow's 
      impertinence I let myself get caught into a lie, I'm afraid, 
      but like Tom Sawyer's aunt, I can't help feeling "it was a 
      good lie!" 
   
      He was dining here with a set of pretty well-known New York 
      men and I had my back to his table. Suddenly I heard Roger's 
      name and a great deal of laughing and in a moment I found 
      myself overhearing (unavoidably) a disgusting and scandalous 
      piece of gossip. In some strange way a garbled account of 
      his marriage has come in from Boston, and Dodge, with that 
      infernally suggestive way of his, was cackling about Roger's 
      "jumping over the broomstick" with a "handsome gypsy" and 
      letting his relatives believe the thing was serious in order 
      to tease his stiff-necked family. 
   
      I tell you, it made me hot! I jumped up and looked that 
      fellow Dodge as straight in the eye as anyone can look him, 
      and said, "I beg your pardon for this interruption, Dodge, 
      but you happen to be making more of a fool of yourself than 
      usual. As regards the lady you are speaking of, I married 
      her myself at her father's country place, last week, with 
      Winfred Jerrolds as best man." 
   
      He mumbled something or other, but I forced him to apologise 
      plainly, and they all heard him. Then he said that he had 
      understood that no one in Boston even knew what her name 
      was, and I said almost (I hope!) before I thought, "she was 
      a Miss Prynne." 
   
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XIII (STRAWS THAT SHOWED THE WIND) Pg 63 
   
      Then I left for the writing-room. My only excuse is that 
      Roger himself did not correct that fellow from the station 
      when he called her that, and, honestly, I couldn't turn on 
      my heel and leave that last remark open. I'm ready to eat 
      dirt, if need be, but for a fire-eating parson I still think 
      I did pretty well! To think of my running against Dodge 
      again after all these years--you remember our famous duel? 
   
      What a strange day we had out there! Let me know how Roger 
      feels about it. It's sure to be in the papers now, I 
      suppose. The name, I mean--I've quashed the other part, of 
      course. 
   
                                        Yours faithfully, 
   
                                          TYLER FESSENDEN ELDER. 
   
   
                           [FROM SUE PAYNTER] 
   
                                          3--WASHINGTON SQUARE, 
   
                                             Sept. 14th, 188-- 
   
      JERRY DEAR: 
   
      It occurred to me in the middle of the night that you might 
      be excused for thinking me cold and uninterested in your 
      request apropos of Roger's wife, and I can't bear you to 
      think so for a moment. Shall I be quite frank (and how 
      foolish to be anything else with you, dear Win!) and admit 
      that I was just a little hurt that Roger had not told me? It 
      was stupid of me, I know, and I hereby forgive him--before 
      he asks me, _par exemple!_ I do it thus quickly, I am 
      afraid, because of an unusually nasty letter from Sarah. 
      How can a woman be so good and yet so horrid? If Roger has 
      been unwise, all the more reason for us to stand by him! 
   
      But apparently he has not, and you are under the same spell 
      that bewitched him--don't attempt to deny it. Madam Bradley 
      threatens us all with excommunication, it seems, but 
      _n'importe_--she has been kind to me, in her alabaster way, 
      but it is incredible that I should desert Roger after his 
      unspeakable goodness to me. 
   
      I will meet you whenever and wherever you say and give the 
      new Mrs. Roger the benefit of whatever good taste Providence 
      has blessed me with--I am a past mistress of the art of a 
      hasty trousseau, I assure you! And I pray she may wear hers 
      more happily than I did mine. 
   
      Be sure to let me know the moment I am wanted. Let Roger 
      know how glad I am--if he asks. What friends you two are! I 
      wonder if you know what you are losing? Probably not--men 
      don't foresee, I suppose. 
   
                                         Your friend always, 
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XIII (STRAWS THAT SHOWED THE WIND) Pg 64 
   
   
                                                 SUE PAYNTER. 
   
   
                          [FROM MY ATTORNEYS] 
   
                          SEARS, BRADLEY AND SEARS 
   
                      Attorneys and Counsellors-at-Law 
   
 _Cable Address, Vellashta_ 
   
                    2--COURT STREET, BOSTON, MASS. 
   
                                          Sept. 12th, 188-- 
   
       WINFRED JERROLDS, ESQ., 
   
         University Club, 
   
           New York, N. Y. 
   
      DEAR SIR: 
   
      We are instructed by the heirs and next-of-kin of the late 
      Mr. Winthrop Bradley and by Mr. Sears Bradley, as his 
      administrator appointed by the Probate Court, to advise you 
      that the will of Mr. Winthrop Bradley, of the existence of 
      which we have so long felt confident, has finally been 
      discovered in an unexpected way and that you are the 
      principal legatee thereunder. 
   
      We are further instructed to advise you that its genuineness 
      is unquestioned. We are already taking steps to probate the 
      will here and in North Carolina. 
   
      You will see by the will, of which we enclose you copy, that 
      Mr. Winthrop Bradley bequeathed to you $100,000--in bonds of 
      the ---- Co., which bear 4-1/2 per cent. interest, and in 
      addition his lands in ---- and ---- Counties, North 
      Carolina, which aggregate about 12,000 acres, and of which a 
      part has been farmed on shares for a number of years past, 
      bringing in an annual income varying between $75 and $250 
      above the taxes on the whole tract. 
   
      We shall be pleased to receive any instructions you desire 
      to give us in the premises. We remain, 
   
                       Yours very respectfully, 
   
                                SEARS, BRADLEY AND SEARS. 
   
   
                        [ROGER'S TELEGRAM TO ME] 
   
      News of will forwarded in packet from office. More glad than 
      can say, deserve it all. Cold wave here and shall take noon 
      express Thursday. Sail Saturday. 
   
 
 B. 
 
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XIV (THE ISLAND COTTAGE) Pg 65 
   
 I have hitherto said nothing about the Bank, for the best of 
 reasons--I hate it. I hated it, I think, from the day when a letter 
 from one of my father's friends introduced me to it, until the day 
 when the letter from the legal firm of which Roger's uncle had been 
 the brilliant head released me from it. I do not think, however, that 
 many people knew this. I did my work as well as I could, accepted my 
 periodical advances in salary with a becoming gratitude, saved a 
 little each year, and quieted my eruptions of furious disgust with the 
 recollection of my mother's unhindered disposal of her little legacy 
 since the day I left the university. 
   
 If anyone had told me that on a day in early autumn I should suddenly 
 come into a thousand pounds a year and freedom, I should have caught 
 my breath at the very idea, and here was the thing, a fact 
 accomplished, and here was I, not only quite self-contained, but sober 
 beyond my wont, and ready to take the Bank and all its stodgy horror 
 upon my shoulders, if with it I might have had one thing--one woman! 
 The world was before me, where to choose, all the far corners and 
 reaches for which I had inherited the hunger with the blood that ran 
 in my veins--and if I might only have been the first to find one 
 lonely, insignificant point on the Atlantic coast, my heart would have 
 journeyed there, content, and ceased (or so I thought) its wanderings. 
 Truly our joys are tempered for us, and no shorn lamb was ever more 
 carefully protected from the winds of heaven than we from too much 
 joy. It is an actual fact that I regarded my resignation from the 
 drudgery of twelve years, the disposal of my rooms and furniture, the 
 heartening preliminaries with the lawyers, and my booking at the 
 steamship company's offices, with less interest than the successful 
 transportation of Margarita's wedding gift. 
   
 It was with a real thrill of pleasure that I drew out my small 
 savings--a little over a thousand pounds--and with the breathless 
 assistance of Sue Paynter and a famous actress of her acquaintance 
 selected the most perfect single pearl to be purchased for that money. 
 One of the heads of the great firm whose name has been long associated 
 with American wealth and luxury himself lent a discerning hand to the 
 selection, and for the first time I tasted the snobbish joy of sitting 
 at ease in a dainty private room while respectful officials brought 
 the splendours of the Orient to my lordly knees, and lesser buyers 
 hung unattended over the common counters. Except in the purchase of my 
 first gift for my mother--a tiny diamond sword-hilt, in memory of my 
 father--I have never experienced so much pleasure. 
   
 It hung, a great blob of veined, milky whiteness, from a strong but 
 tiny golden chain--a gift for a Rajah, not a bank-official!  
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XIV (THE ISLAND COTTAGE) Pg 66 
   
 I had 
 never expended so much, or half so much, upon a single purchase, and 
 the pale, native thrift of Old and New England together glowed and 
 thrilled scarlet in me, and the lucent, moonlike sphere flushed into a 
 ruby before my dazzled eyes: I knew then how an eager chief will toss 
 away a province for an emerald--if he may lay the jewel upon the neck 
 of all the world for him! 
   
 I had the clasp engraved with her name--itself a pearl--and slipped 
 the delicate case in my pocket. The great comedienne, whom I have 
 always thought the sweetest of women--but one--talked a moment aside 
 at the smiling request of the master jeweller and then whispered 
 laughingly to Sue with the most artfully artless glance at me. Sue, 
 who was a little drawn and white from her enemy neuralgia, murmured to 
 me in French that I had the honour to render desolate Miss L----n 
 R----l, the reigning stage beauty, who was greatly desirous of 
 precisely that pearl and whose too vacillating admirer would doubtless 
 enjoy his bad little quarter hour _à cause de moi_. I do not deny that 
 this put a point to my satisfaction. I was, in fact, idiotically 
 gratified--God and man that is born of woman alone know why. 
   
 I hurried to the dingy station as a boy hurries to the train that will 
 take him home to the holidays, and the tedious hours were miraculously 
 light, the face of the telegraph operator like the face of my best 
 friend, the rough, damp passage in the blue boat a pleasant incident. 
 Caliban had a friendly, stupid grin for me and rowed his best; the 
 very oars knew how I wanted to get to her! 
   
 They stood with a lantern on the landing-steps, in the rough, 
 picturesque clothes I had first seen them in, and we hurried through a 
 thickening drizzle to the warm, light cottage, ridiculously 
 hand-in-hand, the lantern bobbing between us. 
   
 Roger had revived his old school accomplishments and had ready a 
 panful of delicious little sausages in a bath of tomatoes and onions 
 and Worcestershire that sent me back to Vevay in the fraction of a 
 second, and we dipped fragments of the crusty French loaf I had 
 brought in the sauce, in the old Vevay fashion, and drank to their 
 voyage in the last Burgundy from the little wine bin. If anything were 
 needed to place Margarita's father in our estimations, that Burgundy 
 would have done it! After the sweet course of jellied pancakes that 
 Roger had taught Caliban, we fell upon the cigars I had brought, and 
 when Margarita, an apt pupil, had sugared my demi-tasse to my liking, 
 I reached into my pocket and drew out the Russia leather case. My 
 fingers trembled like a boy's as I took out the pearl and clasped it 
 around her beautiful neck, above the soft black handkerchief. 
                                                       
 "If this is not your first wedding present, Mrs. Bradley, I shall be 
 furiously angry," I said with mock severity, to keep down the lump in 
 my throat, for I was absurdly excited. 
   
 "Jerry, you extravagant old donkey, what do you mean by this?" Roger 
 cried huskily, "I never heard of such a thing!" While Margarita, for 
 the first time in our acquaintance a daughter of Eve, ran up to her 
 mirror. She would have been as pleased, I think, with a necklace of 
 iridescent seashells--wherein she differed widely from Miss L----n 
 R----l, as Roger and I agreed. 
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XIV (THE ISLAND COTTAGE) Pg 67 
   
 We talked, of course, of Uncle Winthrop and the old days, of his 
 loving interest in me, the slender little chap with the dead 
 soldier-father, who had taken long walks up and down narrow old Winter 
 Street with him, and mailed his letters, and fenced with his sword, 
 and listened by the hour to his tales of rainy bivouac and last 
 redoubt, of precious drops of brandy to a dying comrade and brave 
 loans of army blankets in the cold dawn. We wondered at the 
 extraordinary chance which had kept the old portfolio, with its worn 
 leather edges that I remembered so well, hidden during the two years 
 that had elapsed since his death, and what secretive instinct had led 
 him to put his last will and testament there. We marvelled at the 
 sagacity which had led him to drop hints as to the existence of such a 
 document so effectively that the family had felt themselves bound to 
 hold the property intact for three years, to give every possible 
 chance of finding it, and had spent many useless dollars in the search 
 for the old servants who were believed (and rightly, as the event 
 proved) to have witnessed it. Our friendship had been more than 
 ordinary in its strength and real sympathy; one of those attractions 
 that laugh at disparity of years and absence of any tie of kinship, 
 and, indeed, up to his death I had been far closer to him than Roger 
 ever was. Dear old Uncle Win! He knew what he would do for me and what 
 it would mean to me, well enough: as a young fellow, he had been tied 
 to _his_ Bank! 
   
 I spoke tentatively of Sue Paynter, and Roger flushed and struck the 
 table in his disgusted excitement. 
   
 "Good heavens, Jerry--I never once thought----" 
   
 Poor Sue! There was nothing more to say. 
   
 "The first thing I want you to do for me, Jerry," said Roger, "is to 
 go through the cottage thoroughly and see if you discover any trace of 
 who lived here. I've done it, of course, but I'd like to have some one 
 else do it, too. Go all by yourself, and I won't give you any hint of 
 my idea, and then we'll compare notes." 
   
 Nothing, just then, could have interested me more, and I started 
 systematically for the cellar steps, lantern in hand. 
   
 The first thing that struck me was the trim neatness of this part of 
 the house, too often--and especially in country districts--neglected. 
 The steps were firm and clean and nearly dustless, the cement floor 
 dry and apparently freshly swept, the walls and ceiling well whitened 
 with lime. Bins of vegetables, a barrel of summer apples, a cask of 
 vinegar on two trestles with a pail thriftily set for the drippings, a 
 wire cupboard with plates of food set there for the cellar coolness, 
 and in one corner a little dairy compartment, built over a spring 
 covered by a wooden trap-door, completed the furnishings of the floor. 
 For the rest, the place was a fairly well-stocked tool-house; a scythe 
 and a grindstone, snow-shovel and ladders were arranged compactly; a 
 watering-pot and rake stood fresh from use by the door. 
   
 A low cow-stall came next and beyond this a fowl roost, both these 
 last noticeably clean and sweet, and this in a day when the microbe 
 and the germ were not such prominent factors in our civilisation as 
 they are at present. 
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XIV (THE ISLAND COTTAGE) Pg 68 
   
   
 I retraced my steps and went through the living-room to the room 
 beyond it, over the shed and dairy. It was a fair-sized study, 
 unmistakably a man's. The end wall held the fireplace, with a large 
 map of the world hung over it. The ocean side of the cottage was 
 windowless and lined with well-used books on pine shelves. These 
 overflowed on the wall which held the entrance door, and where they 
 stopped a sort of trophy of arms was arranged on the wall. An army 
 revolver, a great Western six-shooter, a fine little hunting-piece, a 
 grim Ghoorka knife and an assegai, which I recognised from similar 
 treasures on the barrack wall of an English friend of mine--an 
 infantry major--one or two bayonets, a curious Japanese sword and a 
 curved dagger whose workmanship was quite unknown to me, completed 
 this decoration, which was the only one on the walls. In the centre of 
 the floor stood a large table-desk of well-polished cherry with a 
 heavy glass ink-well, pin-tray, letter-rack, etc., and a fair, clean 
 square of blotting-paper. But none of the customary litter of such a 
 desk was upon it; all was swept and garnished, orderly and bare. The 
 drawers were empty, the ink-well pure, the very pens new. There was 
 not the faintest hint of what work had gone on at that desk. 
   
 I crossed the room and took down a book here and there at random from 
 the shelves. From one or two, evidently old ones, the fly leaves had 
 been neatly cut out; others had no mark of any kind. It came over me 
 with a staggering certainty that here was no careless, makeshift 
 impulse; a methodical, definite annihilation had been intended and 
 accomplished. An extraordinary man had arranged this. What was the 
 secret he had concealed so perfectly, and what had been his motive? 
 What his necessity? Three or four comfortable chairs and a light 
 wicker table completed the furniture of the room, which held--for 
 me--the strange fascination of the living-room, that deep, impersonal 
 sense of culture, that rigorous suppression of whim and irrelevant 
 detail. The man (not so long dead, probably) who stood behind that 
 room had stamped it indelibly, inevitably with the very character he 
 had tried to eliminate from it. One wanted to have known him: one felt 
 instinctively what a firm grip, what a level eye he had. 
   
 The books were almost as little tell-tale as the rest. A fine set of 
 the Encyclopædia Britannica; histories of all sorts, but only the best 
 in every case; a little standard poetry; the great English 
 novelists--Dickens much worn, Meredith's early works, the 
 unquenchable Charles Reade, who has nursed so many fretful 
 convalescents back to the harness; two or three fine editions of 
 Shakespeare, one, a half-dozen small green volumes, worn loose from 
 their bindings; Darwin, Huxley, and a dozen blazers of that wonderful 
 trail, much underlined and cross-indexed, and a really remarkable 
 collection of the great scientific travellers and explorers, that 
 occupied much space; and a fair collection of French fiction and 
 archæological research and German scientific and historical work 
 completed my first rough impression of this library. I have gone over 
 it very carefully since, and amused myself with noting its 
 omissions--quite as significant in such cases as the actual contents. 
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XIV (THE ISLAND COTTAGE) Pg 69 
   
 No classics but the usual school and college text-books; no recent 
 fiction; almost no American literature except the most reliable of the 
 historians; none of the essayists or belle-lettrists, except Carlyle, 
 Macaulay, and such like heavy artillery; nothing whatever of a 
 religious nature but a small, worn Bible thick with dust, on the top 
 shelf among the school-books. And there was not in the whole library 
 one page or line or word to indicate that its owner was conversant 
 with or interested in Italian or Italy. 
       
 O builder of that sand-hued cottage, owner of that manly room of 
 books, how many hours have I devoted to patient study of you! How many 
 nights have I hunted you down, searched you out, compelled you to 
 reveal yourself to me--and how strangely have I succeeded! It has been 
 a labour of love, and I have sometimes felt I know your mind almost as 
 my own. 
   
 In the outside further corner of the room a narrow, steep flight of 
 steps led to the second story and lent a queer little foreign air to 
 the whole. Ascending, I found myself in a small room with one 
 door--its only entrance--and one window. For a moment I had a curious 
 sense of the English barracks and seemed to be in the major's 
 sleeping-room again. A low cot-bed with a narrow rug beside, a pine 
 washing-stand and a chest of drawers, a straight chair and small 
 bed-table with a reflecting candle and match box upon it, and a flat 
 tin bath furnished this room, which was, like all the others, 
 speckless. A small shaving-mirror was attached at convenient height 
 near the window; razor and strop hung beside it. All this I took in at 
 a glance, without turning, but when I did turn and confronted the 
 entrance wall, I caught my breath. For there on the space directly 
 opposite the bed hung what, for a moment, I took to be a portrait of 
 Margarita. 
   
 I moved closer and saw that it was a wonderfully perfect etching of a 
 head by Henner--a first impression, beyond a doubt. It was a girl's 
 head, half life size, almost in profile, white against the dark rain 
 of her hair, which covered her shoulders and bust and blackened all 
 the rest of the picture. The haunting melancholy, the youth, the 
 purity of that face have become so associated with Margarita and her 
 home and that part of my life that I can never separate them, though 
 it has been more than once pointed out to me, and fairly, I dare say, 
 that the picture does not resemble her so much as I think, that her 
 type of beauty is larger, less conventional, infinitely richer, and 
 that, aside from the really unusually suggestive accident of her 
 likeness, it is only a general effect. 
   
 Well, well, it may be. But I dare to believe that I understand, 
 perhaps better than anybody, why it hung facing that bare cot-bed, and 
 what it meant to the man who slept so many years of his life there, 
 dreaming of the woman for whose sake he hung it. He knew what it 
 recalled to him even as I know what it means to me, and to both of us 
 it was more than any portrait. For we are fearfully and wonderfully 
 made so that no reality shall ever content us, and those sudden 
 sunsets and bars of music and the meaning glance of pictured eyes are 
 to teach us this.... 
   
 The picture (etched by Waltner) was framed in a broad band of dull 
 gold, and under it, on a very slender, delicately carved teak-wood 
 stand whose inlaid top just held it, was a silver bowl full of orange 
 and yellow and flaming nasturtiums. They were quite fresh and must 
 have been put there that morning, for the dew was still on the pale 
 leaves. 
   
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XIV (THE ISLAND COTTAGE) Pg 70 
   
 It was inexpressibly touching, this altar-like, vivid touch in the 
 austere room, and I stood, drowned in a wave of pity and passionate 
 regret--for what I could not quite tell--before it, overwhelmed by the 
 close, compelling pressure of these mysterious dead loves: all over 
 now and gone? Ah, who knows? Who can know? Not Darwin nor Huxley, be 
 sure! 
   
 I went down the stairs, crossed the study and living-room, and after a 
 comprehensive glance over the little kitchen ell with its simple 
 _batterie de cuisine_ went up the main staircase, and entered the room 
 over the study. Here again was a surprise, for this room was 
 completely furnished in delicate, light bird's-eye maple, fit for a 
 marquise, all dainty lemon-tinted curves. The exquisite bed was framed 
 for a canopy, but lacked it; the coral satin recesses of the 
 dressing-table had faded almost colourless; the chintz of the slender 
 chairs had lost its pattern. An oval cheval glass reflected the floor 
 on whose long unpolished surface sprawled two magnificent white bear 
 skins. But with these furnishings the elegance ended, for nowhere in 
 the cottage were to be found such curious, mocking contrasts. The 
 walls, which should have displayed wanton Watteau cherubs, were bare, 
 clean grey; instead of a satin coverlet a patchwork quilt covered the 
 fluted bed; no scented glass and ivory and silver-stoppered armoury of 
 beauty crowded the dressing-table, only a plain brush and comb such as 
 one might see in some servant's quarters; the beautiful grained 
 wardrobe's doors, carelessly ajar, spilled no foam and froth of lace 
 and ribbon and silk stocking: only a beggarly handful of clean, 
 well-worn print gowns hung from the shining pegs. A battered tin bath 
 and water-can stood beneath the window, and on a graceful cushioned 
 _prie-dieu_ instead of a missal lay--of all things--a mouse trap. 
   
 I have never in my life stood in a room so contradictory, so utterly 
 unrelated to its supposed intention. Occupied it certainly was: towels 
 and soap and sponge, and nightgown neatly folded on the patchwork 
 quilt, showed that. But of all teasing suggestion of femininity, all 
 the whimsical, rosy privacy of a girl's bedchamber, all the dainty 
 nonsense and pretty purity, half artless, half artful, with which 
 romance has invested this retreat and poetry and song have serenaded 
 it, Margarita's apartment was entirely void. Even its spotlessness was 
 not remarkable in a house so noticeable everywhere for this quality, 
 and as for personality, a nun's cell has more. I think that its utter 
 scentlessness added to the peculiar impression; there was not a 
 suggestion of this feminine allurement; not even the homely lavender 
 or the reminiscent dried roses hinted at the most matter-of-fact 
 housewife's concession to her sex. 
   
 And yet it had its own charm, this strange room, a peculiar French 
 quality, provided, perhaps, by the mingling of yellow furniture and 
 soft grey wall spaces; and a quaint atmosphere of something once alive 
 and breathing and daintily fleshly, cooled and faded and chastened by 
 inexorable time.... 
   
 I slept that night in the room with the etching (the silver bowl was 
 filled with marigolds) and all night I heard the roar of the surf and 
 the hiss of the breaking waves through my busy dreams. 
   
 I woke into a clear storm-swept morning, just after the dawn, very 
 suddenly, and with no apparent reason for the waking. 
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XIV (THE ISLAND COTTAGE) Pg 71 
   
 That is to say, 
 I thought I woke, but knew instantly that it must be a very pleasant 
 and odd species of dream, for there in the quiet light, at the foot of 
 my bed--quite on it, in fact--sat Margarita. She smiled placidly, 
 classic in her long white nightgown, and I smiled placidly back as one 
 does in dreams, and prayed not to wake. 
   
 "You speak when you sleep do you not, Jerry?" she said calmly, 
 "because you called my name, but your eyes were closed." 
   
 Then a cold sweat broke out on my forehead and I clenched my hands 
 under the blankets, for I knew I was awake. 
   
 "Margarita!" I gasped, "what is it? Why are you here?" 
   
 "Because I wanted to talk to you, Jerry," she answered pleasantly. 
 "Roger is asleep. Do you like this little room? It is my father's." 
   
 Her hair hung in two braids; one rosy bare foot showed under her 
 nightgown, as she sat, her hands clasped about her knees, like a boy. 
 The upper button of the gown was loose and I saw my milky, gleaming 
 pearl around her neck; it was no whiter than her even teeth. 
   
 "Get down," I said sternly, "get off the bed immediately and go back 
 to your room. You ought not to have come here!" 
   
 "But I do not want to get down, Jerry--the floor is cold. Roger is 
 asleep and he cannot talk to me. It is like being alone, when anyone 
 is asleep. Do you not want to talk to me, Jerry?" 
   
 "Yes, I want to talk to you, well enough," I answered in a sort of 
 stupor, "but--but you must go. Please go, Margarita!" 
   
 In her abominable perspicacity she answered what I meant, not what I 
 said. 
   
 "No," said she, shaking her head adorably, "I shall not go. Why do you 
 pull the blanket up to your chin so? Are you cold, too?" 
   
 My head was whirling and my breath came uneven through my lips, but I 
 fixed my eyes on the wall over her head, and this time there was, for 
 the best of reasons, no ambiguity in my voice. 
   
 "I beg and implore you, Margarita, to get down at once," I said, as 
 steadily as I could. "It is not at all proper for you to be here, and 
 I do not wish it. If you want to talk to me, I will dress immediately 
 and go out for a walk with you, but not unless you go instantly. Do 
 you understand me?" 
   
 She sighed plaintively and unclasped her hands from her knees. 
   
 "Yes, I understand you, Jerry," she said, dropping her voice that 
 haunting third, "but I would rather----" 
   
 "Are you going?" I cried. 
 "Y-yes, I am going," she murmured, and with what I knew were backward 
 imploring glances and argumentative pouts she slipped down, 
 hesitatingly, hopefully, as a child retreats, and pattered across to 
 the door. 
   
 When I lowered my eyes the room was empty--but where she had sat the 
 blanket was yet warm! 
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XV (FATE PLAYS ME IN THE SHALLOWS) Pg 72 
 To-day I dived into one of my boxes for some warmer underclothing and 
 stumbled upon a pair of rubber-soled shoes for deck wear. They brought 
 the great boat before me in a flash and then the wharves and then the 
 little group that had gathered at the long pier on that Saturday 
 morning so long ago--Wolcott Sears and his wife, Sue, white as a 
 ghost, Tip Elder and I, with Roger and Margarita leaning over the 
 rail. She had on a long, tight-fitting travelling coat of slate grey 
 and a quaint, soft little felt hat with a greyish-white gull that 
 sprawled over the top of it. She looked taller than I had ever seen 
 her, and her hair, drawn up high on her head, made her face more like 
 a cameo than ever, for she was pale from the excitement and fatigue of 
 shopping. On her hand, as she waved it with that lovely, free curve of 
 all her gestures, shone the great star sapphire Roger had bought her, 
 set heavily about with brilliants, a wonderful thing: all cloudy and 
 grey, like her eyes, and then all densely blue, like her eyes, and now 
 stormy and dark, like her eyes, and always, and most of all, like her 
 eyes, with that fiery blue point lurking in the heart of it. 
   
 It was her birth stone--an odd bit of sentimental superstition for 
 Roger to have cherished--and his own as well, for they were both born 
 in September. Her father had told her of this on one of the few 
 occasions when he seemed to have talked with her at any length, and 
 like all his remarks it had made a great impression upon her. Anything 
 more violently at odds with the theory of planetary influence it 
 would be hard to find, for two people more fundamentally unlike each 
 other than Roger and his wife, I never met. 
   
 And yet ... and yet (for I am not so sure as to what is "absurd" now 
 that my half-century milestone is well behind, and those months in 
 Egypt taught me that much of the inexplicable is terribly true) shall 
 I leave out of this rambling tale the moment of attention due the old 
 horoscopist of Paris? I think not. 
   
 He was withered and heavily spectacled and absent-minded to a degree I 
 have never seen equalled. Shall I ever forget the day he made a soapy 
 mixture in a great tin pan in his little garret in the Rue Serpente, 
 produced a long, clean clay pipe, delivered to me a neat if 
 extraordinary little lecture on the experiment he was about to make 
 and the inferences I must draw from it if it succeeded--and then, with 
 his prismatic bubbles all unblown, gravely sat down in the pan! He 
 gazed stupefied at me when I pointed out his error. 
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XV (FATE PLAYS ME IN THE SHALLOWS) Pg 73 
   
 "_Il ne manquerait que ça!_" he snapped at length, and as he had no 
 other suit of clothes, he went resignedly to bed and discoursed there 
 most learnedly. He was seventy-five then and his great treatise was 
 but one-third done: the _concierge_ told me long after his death that 
 his last living act was to burn it, with the tears streaming down his 
 old face, poor old fellow! And yet he was one of the happiest people I 
 have ever known. The _concierge_ was terribly afraid of him, because 
 he had once in his dry, detached way presented that official with a 
 complete chart of his life, temperament and just deserts, neatly done 
 in coloured inks and mounted on cardboard. It was so devilishly 
 accurate that the _concierge_ trembled whenever he passed it, which 
 was frequently, as his wife had it framed and hung it in their 
 bedroom. 
   
 To old Papa Morel, then, I propounded the problem of accounting for 
 Margarita's birth-month having been Roger's, and even within the same 
 week. Pressed for the year of her birth, I made her twenty-two, at 
 which the old man scowled and muttered and traced with his cracked 
 yellow nail devious courses through his great map of the heavens. To 
 tease him I enumerated a few of her qualities and habits, all to be 
 thoroughly accounted for in my estimation, by her strange environment 
 and bringing up; but far from exasperating him further, as I had 
 supposed it would, this recital appeared to please him mightily. 
 Shaking his finger reprovingly, he advised me no longer to mock myself 
 of him, for unknown to myself I had exposed my own deceit: was I so 
 utterly unversed in the heavenly politics as not to know that this 
 person described herself fully as having been born four years previous 
 to the date I had given him, in the year of the eclipse, which was 
 moreover a comet-year and one in which Uranus usurped the throne of 
 reigning planets, and breaking all bounds, shadowed that fateful 
 season? That Aquarius, drawn by him, had imposed himself, too, and 
 affected the very Moon in her courses? Indeed she would be an 
 unbelievable person, that one! But assuredly she was born in the year 
 186--. And when we finally found the year of Margarita's birth, it was 
 precisely the year stated by Papa Morel! He told me, moreover, that 
 she would be a great artist, at which I laughed, for her future life 
 was fairly well mapped out for her, I fancied, knowing Roger as I did. 
 He told me that she would be in grave danger of death within three 
 years, and then, turning to a horoscope of my own which he had 
 insisted upon drawing, he ran his yellow finger down to a point and 
 raising his mild, fanatic eyes to mine, remarked that at precisely 
 that time it was written that I should save life! At which I smiled 
 politely and said that I hoped I should save Margarita's and he 
 replied politely that as to that he did not know. 
   
 [Illustration: PERSONS BORN IN THAT MONTH OF THAT YEAR WILL NEVER BE 
 OTHERWISE THAN FAR OUT OF THE ORDINARY] 
   
 "You will remark," he added, "that persons born in that month of that 
 year will never be otherwise than far out of the ordinary. No. And 
 mostly artists: dramatic, musical--how should I know? You will remark, 
 also, that they will indubitably possess great influence over the 
 lives of others--and why not, with Uranus in that House as he is, 
 opposing the Moon? Ah, yes, her life is not yet lived, that one!" 
   
 But on the Saturday that found us waving from the pier I had not met 
 the good old Morel, and I was not thinking of the planets at all.  
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XV (FATE PLAYS ME IN THE SHALLOWS) Pg 74 
   
 It 
 had just come over me with dreadful distinctness that from now on my 
 life could never, never be the same. When I had first parted from 
 Roger and Margarita, the poetic strangeness of their surroundings, the 
 shock of all the discoveries I had just made, the relief of finding 
 our friendship secured on a new footing, nay, the very darkness of the 
 mild evening through which I was rowed away from them after that 
 exciting day, all combined to blunt my sense of loneliness, to invest 
 it with a gentle, dreamy pathos that made philosophy not too hard. It 
 was like leaving Ferdinand and Miranda on their Isle of Dreams, with 
 my blessing. But here were no Ferdinand and Miranda; only a handsome, 
 well-dressed bride and her handsome, well-dressed husband-lover, 
 sailing off for a brilliantly happy honeymoon and leaving me behind! 
 The excitement was gone, the past was over, the future seemed 
 dreadfully dull. My English blood, the blood of the small land-owner, 
 with occasional military generations, forbade my plunging into the 
 routine of business, in the traditional American fashion, even had the 
 need of it been more pressing. It may as well be admitted here and now 
 that I was not ambitious; I never (fortunately!) felt the need of 
 glory or high places and my simple fortune was to me wealth and to 
 spare--Margarita's pearl was the greatest extravagance of my life. Up 
 to this point I had never seriously realised that all the little, 
 comfortable details of that little, comfortable bachelor life of ours 
 were over and done, the rooms into which we had fitted so snugly, 
 rented, perhaps, at that moment, the table at the club no longer ours 
 by every precedent, the vacations no more to be planned together and 
 enjoyed together. 
   
 The ship drew out into the harbour and I leaned hard on my stick and 
 wondered drearily how long I was likely to live. Oh, I admit the 
 shamefulness of my unmanly state! I might have been drying the 
 orphan's tear or making Morris chairs or purifying local politics, but 
 I wasn't. 
   
 Tip Elder walked over to me and put his hand on my shoulder. 
   
 "Well, _that_ baby's face is washed!" he said cheerily, "as my mother 
 puts it. And I hope it's going to turn out all right. But I don't 
 believe you or I would be in Roger's shoes for a good deal, would we?" 
   
 I turned on him fiercely. 
   
 "Speak for yourself, Elder!" I cried. "I'd give most of this life that 
 I know about and all of the next that you don't, to be for a little 
 while in Roger's shoes! Understand that!" 
   
 And brushing by him and utterly neglecting Sue and the Wolcott 
 Searses, I jumped into a waiting cab and hurried away from that 
 departing vessel, with two-thirds of what I loved in the world on her 
 deck. 
   
 I took one last look at our old rooms, bare and clean, now, for my 
 things were sold and Roger's stored; I gave all my clothes to the 
 house valet, to his intense gratitude, and when, with a nervous blow 
 of my favourite cane--a gift from Roger--in an effort to beat the pile 
 of cloth on the floor into symmetrical shape, the stick broke in the 
 middle, I came as near to an hysterical laugh as I ever came in my 
 life. 
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XV (FATE PLAYS ME IN THE SHALLOWS) Pg 75 
   
 "Take all the other sticks, Hodgson," I said huskily, "and the 
 racquets, if you want them. And give the rod to the night 
 porter--Richard fishes, I know. And take the underwear, too--yes, all 
 of it!" 
   
 "And the trunk, sir? Where would you wish----" 
   
 "O Lord, take the trunk!" I burst out, for the familiar labels, ay, 
 the very dints in the brass lock, carried only sour memories to me, 
 now. 
   
 "But, sir, you've only what you stand in!" the man cried, convinced, I 
 am certain, that I contemplated suicide. "I've got the day to get 
 through, Hodgson," I reassured him, "and the shops will be of great 
 assistance!" 
   
 I left him gloating over his windfall, and plunged into haberdashery. 
   
 Fortunately for my nervous loathing of all my old possessions, I had 
 celebrated Uncle Win's legacy by a prompt visit to my tailor, and the 
 results of this visit went far to stock the new leather trunk that I 
 recklessly purchased for the shocking price such commodities command 
 in America. At the end of a successfully costly day I registered 
 myself, the trunk, with its brilliant identification label, a new 
 silver-topped blackthorn, and the best bull terrier I could get in New 
 York, at the new monster hotel I had never before entered, with a 
 strange feeling of an identity as new as my overcoat. This terrier, by 
 the way, marked my definite division from Roger more than anything 
 else could have done. I have always been fond of animals, dogs 
 especially, and as a little fellow was never without some 
 ignominiously bred cur at my heels; but Roger never cared for them, 
 and little by little I had dropped the attempt to keep one, since he 
 objected to exercising them in town, did not care to bother with them 
 in the country, and absolutely refused to endure the encumbrance of 
 one while travelling. Not that he was ever cruel or careless: when 
 thrown into necessary relations with animals he was far more just and 
 thoughtful of them than many a sentimental animal lover of my 
 acquaintance! Strangely enough, I have never seen a dog or cat that 
 would not go to him in preference to almost anyone else--one of 
 nature's ironies. 
   
 With Kitchener (not of Khartoum, then!) curled at the foot of my bed 
 in a brand new collar, I went to sleep, woke early, and took the first 
 train to Stratford to say good-bye to my mother and receive her 
 congratulations on my legacy. 
   
 Everything was unchanged in the neat little house: only old Jeanne in 
 her bed in a wonderful nightcap marked the visit as different from any 
 other. Years had ceased to leave any mark on my mother since her hair 
 had turned grey, and I might have been a collegian again as I kissed 
 her. 
   
 What extraordinary creatures women are! She knew inside of ten 
 minutes, I am sure, as well as Sarah Bradley had known, how matters 
 stood with me, and whenever I spoke of Margarita an inscrutable look 
 was in her eye and she stroked my arm in a delicate, mute sympathy. 
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XV (FATE PLAYS ME IN THE SHALLOWS) Pg 76 
   
 Nor did she refer to my children any more or her hopes that I would 
 _ranger_ myself and settle down. If she sighed a little at the news of 
 my projected _wander jahr_, she did not beg me to set any term for it, 
 and cheerfully congratulated herself upon my known faithfulness in the 
 matter of correspondence. The tact of the woman! 
   
 She herself cooked our simple dinner to Jeanne's voluble accompaniment 
 of regret: the chicken from her own brood, the salad from her garden, 
 the delicious pastry that her own hands had put into the oven. After 
 dinner, during which we drank Jeanne's health and took her a glass of 
 the wine I always brought with me for the stocking of her 
 unpretentious cellar (the neighbours had never been able to regard 
 this addition to my mother's table without suspicion and regret) my 
 father's favourite brand of cigars was produced and I dutifully smoked 
 one. I had not inherited his taste in this instance, but for years I 
 had respectfully made this filial sacrifice and my mother would have 
 been seriously hurt had I foregone it. 
   
 We talked of anything but what was in our minds: the wonderful late 
 planting of peas; the beauties of Kitchener, who was formally 
 introduced to Jeanne and listened with perfect good breeding to a long 
 account (in French) of the departed family poodle; the kindness of the 
 old parish priest to Jeanne; the war-scare in the East (my mother 
 religiously took in the London Times and watched Russia with unceasing 
 vigilance) the shocking price of meat. Later she brought out my old 
 violin and I played all her favourites while she accompanied me on the 
 little cottage piano my father had bought for her when they began 
 life together. If a tear dropped now and then on the yellow keys, 
 neither of us took it too seriously, and it was a pleasant, soothing 
 evening on the whole. My nerves relaxed unconsciously, and Jeanne's 
 wild applause as one after another of her particular tunes rang out 
 (_Parlons-nous de lui, Grandmère, Sous les Tilleuls_ and _Je sais 
 bien, mon amour_) gave me an absurd thrill of musicianly vanity. 
   
 I slept in my own little room with the prim black walnut bedroom suit, 
 the prize-books in a row on the corner shelf, the worn rug made from 
 the minister's calf that I shot by mistake, and my father's sword, 
 with its faded tassel, over my bed. By some odd chance all my dreams 
 that night were of those boyish days, and it was with sincere surprise 
 that I stared on waking at my long moustache, in the toilet mirror--we 
 were not so universally clean shaven twenty years ago. 
   
 My steamer sailed at noon from Boston, and to my intense delight there 
 was no one on board that I knew. Unattended and unwept Kitchener and I 
 marched up the gang plank, and I pointed out to him the conveniences 
 and eccentricities of his surroundings with the contented confidence 
 known only to the intimate friend of a good dog. For Kitchener and I 
 were already intimate: the cynical philosophy, the sentimental 
 maundering, the firm resolutions I had poured out in his well-clipped 
 ear had brought us very close together, and had he chosen to betray my 
 confidences he could have made a great fool of me, I can tell you. 
   
 I can see him now--good old Kitch! With a great black patch over one 
 roving blue eye and an inky paw, a trim, taut body and a masterful 
 tail, he travelled more miles than fall to the lot of most bull dogs 
 and got quite as much good out of them as most of his fellow 
 travellers. He would have chased an elephant if I had told him to and 
 carried bones to a cat if I had ordered it done. 
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XV (FATE PLAYS ME IN THE SHALLOWS) Pg 77 
   
 He is buried next to 
 Mr. Boffin the poodle, in quiet Stratford, and for many years his 
 grave was tended--for Harriet never forgot. 
   
 Though I had made no formal decision as to where I would go, somewhere 
 in the back of my brain it had been made for me. That astonishing 
 young Anglo-Indian had not at that time reminded us that "when you 
 'ear the East a callin', why, you don't 'eed nothing else" (I quote 
 from memory and far from libraries) but it was true, for all that, and 
 I knew the skies that waited for me--the low, kindling stars, the 
 warm, intimate wind, the very feel of the earth under my feet. 
   
 And yet I did not go there, after all. We were bound for England, and 
 as I travelled up the Devon country and drank in the pure, homelike 
 landscape and strolled by those incomparable (if occasionally 
 malarial) cottages, my father's and grandfather's blood stirred in me, 
 and half consciously, to tell the truth, I found myself on the way to 
 Oxford. By some miracle of chance my old lodgings were free, and 
 before I quite realised what I was doing, I was making myself 
 comfortable in them. 
   
 I should have hated to be obliged to explain to my incredulous 
 American friends what I "did" in those long months, when every week I 
 planned to be off for the South and every week found me still 
 lingering by the emerald close, the grey tower, the quiet, formal 
 place of this backwater of the world. In their sense, of course, I 
 "did" nothing at all. I watched the youth around me (any one of them I 
 might have been, had my father lived) I renewed the quiet, cordial 
 friendships, which, if they never rooted very deep, never, on the 
 other hand, desiccated and blew away; I wrote many letters, and more 
 than this, I formulated once for all, though I did not know it then, 
 such theory of life as I have found necessary ever since. What it may 
 have been does not so much matter: if I have failed to illustrate it 
 in my life, if I have, even, failed to make it reasonably clear in 
 this rough sketch of the most vital interests of my life, it cannot 
 have been very valuable. 
   
 Among my correspondents at this time neither Roger nor his wife was 
 numbered. This was not strange, for he was a poor letter-writer, 
 except for business purposes or in a real necessity, and she had never 
 been taught so much as to write her own name! But I heard from them 
 indirectly, and as Roger, it turned out, supposed me to have gone on a 
 long hunting trip through the Rockies, neither of us was alarmed by 
 the three months' silence. 
   
 A strange, dozing peace had settled over me; though I thought of them 
 often, it was as one thinks of persons and scenes infinitely removed, 
 with which he has no logical connection, only a veiled, softened 
 interest. Margarita seemed, against the background of the moist, 
 pearly English autumn, like some gorgeous and unbelievable tropical 
 bird, shooting, all orange and indigo, across a grey cloud. It was 
 impossible that I, a quiet chess-player sitting opposite his friend, 
 the impractical student of Eastern Religions, could have to do with 
 such a vivid anomaly as she must always be. It was unlikely that the 
 silent, moody man strolling for hours through mist-filled English 
 lanes, pipe in mouth, dog at heels should ever run athwart that lovely 
 troubler of man's mind, that babyish woman, that all-too-well-ripened 
 child. 
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XV (FATE PLAYS ME IN THE SHALLOWS) Pg 78 
   
 My Christmas holidays were quietly passed with the Oriental Professor 
 in his tiny Surrey cottage, where he and his dear old sister, a quaint 
 little vignette of a woman, forgot the world among her pansy beds. She 
 was not visible at that time, however, owing to a teasing influenza 
 which kept her in bed, and our hostess was her trained nurse, a quiet, 
 capable little American, with a firm hand-grip and kind brown eyes, 
 already set in fine, watchful wrinkles. She rarely spoke, except in 
 the obvious commonplaces of courtesy, and our days were wonderfully 
 still. The Professor taught me Persian, in a desultory way, and chess 
 most rigorously, for he was hard put to it for an opponent even partly 
 worthy of his prodigious skill. He was a member of all the most select 
 societies of learning in the world, an Egyptologist of such standing 
 that his pronouncements in that field were practically final, a man 
 called before kings to determine the worth of their national treasures 
 and curiosities--and his greatest pride was that he had beaten the 
 hitherto unmatched mechanical chess-player in public contest and had 
 been invited to settle absolutely the nicest problems in a chess 
 magazine! 
   
 I dwell with a curious fondness upon this placid interval in my life. 
 I supposed myself honestly settled, grown old, grateful for the rest 
 and oblivion my father's old university gave me so generously. When I 
 thought of the feverish, break-neck journey I had planned, of the hot 
 and doubtful reliefs and distractions I had promised myself that day 
 when the lawyers' letter had dropped half read on my knees and I had 
 sniffed my freedom first, I wondered. But, truly, it is all written, 
 and the hour had not yet struck, that was all! 
   
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XVI (MARGARITA COMES TO TOWN) Pg 79 
   
 [FROM SUE PAYNTER] 
   
                                          WASHINGTON SQUARE, 
   
                                             Oct. 16, 188-- 
   
      JERRY DEAR: 
   
      First about the will--how splendid it was! Nothing could 
      have pleased Roger more, I am sure--he told me with that 
      queer, little whimsical grimace of his that it cleared his 
      conscience to feel he was leaving you _something_! What a 
      personality he has, and how, in his quiet unassuming way, he 
      impresses it on us! 
   
      I hear that Sarah made a great fuss about the will, but was 
      advised by Mr. Sears to stop--and stopped! With Madame B. I 
      am of course anathema--I have not heard from her since. The 
      bank, _bien entendu_, is of the past, and you, I hear, are 
      in the far West. How you will revel in the freedom and how 
      good it must have been to kick off the ball and chain! If 
      anyone can be trusted not to abuse leisure, it is you, dear 
      Jerry--you won't appear so culpable, as a poor American 
      always does, somehow, under such circumstances. Even I feel 
      unjustifiably idle now, so I have taken up some of Mr. 
      Elder's fads--what a fine, manly sort of fellow he is!--and 
      may be seen, _moi qui vous parle_, teaching sight-reading to 
      a boy's glee-club! 
   
      But of course you are impatiently waiting for me to turn to 
      Margarita and leave this silly chatter about my egotistic 
      self. _Eh bien_, she is marvellous. For half an hour I hated 
      her, but I couldn't hold out any longer. I have never even 
      imagined such a person. What a pose that would be if any 
      actress were clever enough to avail herself of the 
      un-paralleled opportunities it would give her! Of course I 
      thought it _was_ a pose, at first--I simply couldn't believe 
      in her. But equally of course no woman could deceive another 
      woman very long at that, and she is one to conquer both 
      sexes. When she put her hand in mine and asked if I was 
      going to buy her some dresses on Broadway, I had to kiss 
      her. 
   
      I got very little, just enough for absolute necessity, and 
      gave her a letter to my woman in Paris and another to one I 
      could only afford occasionally, and told her to obey them 
      and take what they gave her. She understood and promised not 
      to buy what happened to strike her--this was necessary, for 
      she begged piteously for a rose pink satin street dress and 
      a yellow velvet opera cloak to wear on the boat! We had a 
      terrible struggle over a corset--she screamed when the 
      _corsetière_ and I got her into one and slapped the poor 
      woman in the face. It took all my diplomacy to cover the 
      affair and I doubt if I could have done it, really, if 
      Margarita herself had not suddenly begun to cry like a 
      frightened baby and begged pardon so sincerely that the 
      woman was melted and ended by offering her sister as a maid! 
      The girl had the best of references, and as she must have 
      someone and Elise has travelled extensively and seems very 
      tactful, she is now (I trust) adjusting the elastic girdle 
      her sister finally induced Margarita to wear. 
   
      I took her to my Sixth Avenue shoe place, and she was so 
      ravished with a pair of pale blue satin _mules_ I got her 
      that she actually leaned down and kissed the clerk who was 
      kneeling before her! Fortunately we were in a private room 
      and he was the cleverest possible young Irishman, who winked 
      gravely at me and took it as naturally as possible--he 
      thought she was not responsible, you see, and assured me 
      that he had an aunt in the old country who was just that 
      way! 
   
      What a beautiful voice she has--have you ever heard it drop 
      a perfect minor third? But what a strange, strange wife for 
      Roger, of all men!  
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XVI (MARGARITA COMES TO TOWN) Pg 80 
   
 I suppose she is the first thoroughly 
      unconventional person he was ever closely connected with--in 
      one way _you_ would seem more natural with her--I suppose 
      because you are more adaptable than Roger. With him, 
      everybody must adapt. Will she! _Voila l'affaire!_ I should 
      say that the young woman would be likely to have great 
      influence over other people's lives, herself. If she and 
      Roger ever clash--! Ah, well, _advienne que pourra_, it's 
      done. 
   
      I gave her for a wedding present that lovely little old 
      daguerreotype of Roger at three years old. It was in an old 
      leather frame, you know, and I had it taken out and put into 
      a little band of steel pearls and hung on a small dark red 
      velvet standard. No one could fail to know him from it--I 
      think it is the most wonderful child portrait I ever saw. He 
      seems to have always had that straight, steady look. There 
      is a tiny curl of yellow baby hair in the back, which amused 
      her very much. That is the only one of him at that age, you 
      know--his mother gave it to me when we were engaged, and I 
      always kept it. 
                                                 
      I am forgetting to tell you about our visit to the Convent, 
      and you must hear it. I love the old place and often go up 
      there to see Mary, when things grow a little too unbearable. 
      She is wonderful--so placid and bright, so somehow just like 
      herself, when you expect something different! Why did she do 
      it, I wonder? I was one of her best friends, and I never 
      knew. Her great executive ability is having its reward, they 
      tell me, and she is likely to be Mother Superior some day. 
   
      I had told her about Margarita and she was deeply interested 
      in her, though the terrible state of the child's soul 
      naturally alarmed her. When I told her that her 
      sister-in-law had never been in a church, nor seen one, 
      unless she had noticed those we passed in New York, she 
      crossed herself hastily and such a look of real, heartfelt 
      pain passed over her face! 
   
      Well, I got my charge safely up there, and everything 
      interested her tremendously from the very beginning. It was 
      the intermission _demi-heure_ of the morning and the girls 
      were all munching their _gouter_ and playing about on the 
      grass. I explained to her why they all wore the same black 
      uniform, and why the honour girls, "_les très-biens_," wore 
      the broad blue sashes under their arms, and why the Sisters 
      kept on their white headdresses in the house, and why the 
      girls all made their little _révérence_ when Mother Bradley 
      came out to meet us. She kissed Margarita so sweetly and 
      held her in her arms a moment--I don't think Roger quite 
      realised how his attitude hurts her: it is the only almost 
      unjust thing I ever knew him to do. In the halls there is a 
      great statue of Christ blessing the children, and Margarita 
      stopped and stared at it several minutes, while we watched 
      her. She seemed so rapt that Mary took my hand excitedly and 
      whispered to me not to disturb her for the world, but wait 
      for what she would say. After a while she turned to me. 
   
      "Why has that woman a beard, Sue?" she asked cheerfully. 
      Imagine my feelings! I did not dare look at Mary. 
 
 
 
 PART 4 CHAPTER XVI (MARGARITA COMES TO TOWN) Pg 81 
   
      We went all through the school-rooms and she was most 
      curious about the globes and blackboards and pianos. We 
      stopped at the door of a tiny music room, and I smiled, as I 
      always do, at the pretty little picture. The young girl with 
      her Gretchen braids of yellow hair, straight-backed in front 
      of the piano, the nervous, grey-haired little music master 
      watchfully posted behind her, beating time, and in the 
      corner the calm-faced Sister, pink-cheeked under her 
      spreading cap, knitting, with constantly moving lips. The 
      music rooms are so wee that the group seemed like a 
      gracefully posed _genre_ picture. Before we knew what she 
      was about, Margarita had slipped in behind the music master 
      and brought both hands down with a crash on the keys, so 
      that the Chopin Prelude ended abruptly in an hysterical wail 
      and the young lady half fell off the stool--only half, for 
      Margarita pushed her the rest of the way, I regret to say. 
      Fortunately Mary was able to get us out of it, but I fear 
      there was no more Prelude that day! Why will women play 
      Chopin, by the way? I never heard one who could--Aus der Ohe 
      is masculine enough, heaven knows, but even that amount of 
      talent doesn't seem to accomplish it. Do you remember 
      Frederick's diatribes on the subject? He used to say that 
      Congress should forbid Chopin to women, on pain of life 
      imprisonment. 
 But you must hear the end of the visit. We went into Mary's 
      room--perfectly bare, you know, with a great crucifix on the 
      wall and below it, part of the woodwork, a little cup for 
      holy water. As soon as she entered the room Margarita 
      paused, and gave a sort of gasp--her hand, which I held 
      tight in mine, grew cold as ice. She moved over slowly to 
      the crucifix, with her eyes glued to it--she seemed utterly 
      unconscious of us, or where she was; she stood directly 
      under the crucifix, with Mary and me on either side of her 
      shaking with excitement, and then she put out her hand in a 
      wavering, unsteady way, like a blind person, dipped her 
      fingers in the empty bowl and began to cross herself! She 
      touched her forehead quickly, then moved her hand slowly 
      down her chest, fumbled toward one side, then drew a long 
      breath and stared at us, winking like a baby. 
   
      "I wish I had some food, Sue," she said, and actually yawned 
      and stretched her arms, like a plow-boy, in our faces. "I 
      think this room makes me hungry. Are you not hungry, Mary?" 
   
      Now, Jerry, what do you make of that? She cannot have seen a 
      crucifix, can she? Nor anyone crossing themselves? She acted 
      like a woman walking in her sleep. If I lived in Boston and 
      were interested in that sort of thing I could swear that she 
      had been a nun in her last incarnation! 
   
      Mary is, of course, much wrought up, and is going to set the 
      whole convent praying for her, I believe. 
 I told Roger about 
      it, but you know what he is--it sounded rather silly as soon 
      as I had it begun. He pointed out that there were plenty of 
      chances for her to have seen the Sisters crossing themselves 
      before crucifixes, and other sensible explanations. But 
      really and truly, Jerry, I was with her every minute, and 
      she did what she had not seen done. 
   
      What do you think of it? 
   
                                        Yours always, 
   
                                           SUE PAYNTER. 
   
 
 
 
 PART 5 (IN WHICH THE BROOK BECOMES A RIVER AND FLOWS BY GREAT CITIES) CHAPTER XVII (OUR PEARL BATHES IN SEINE WATER) Pg 82 
                                  BLEEKS, LITTLE ARCHES, SURREY, 
   
                                              January 2nd, 188-- 
   
      MY DEAR MR. JERROLDS: 
   
      You will be surprised, doubtless, to hear from an old woman 
      who is _perfectly unknown_ to you in all probability, but if 
      your mother is still living she will remember Agatha Upgrove 
      and the cups of tea and dishes of innocent scandal she 
      shared with her, when you were rolling in a perambulator. I 
      write to you instead of to her in order to find out if she 
      is living, in fact, and to renew at sixty-two the friendship 
      of _twenty-six_! You may well wonder at such a sudden 
      impulse after thirty years, almost, of silence, and if you 
      will pardon a garrulous old woman's epistolary ramblings, I 
      will tell you, for you are at the bottom of it. 
   
      My grandniece was summoned hastily to Paris a month ago, to 
      act as bridesmaid to a young school friend, and as no one 
      else could well be spared at that time to go with the child, 
      I offered myself. I am an experienced traveller and even at 
      _my_ age think far less of a trip across the Channel than 
      most of my relatives do of one to India, with which, by the 
      way, I am also familiar. It was when my husband's (and your 
      father's) regiment was ordered to India that your mother and 
      I met. You came very near being born there, did you know it? 
      But the regiment was recalled, and we came back _delighted_, 
      for neither of us liked it. Major Upgrove died of dysentery 
      a year later, and my widowhood and your father's absence in 
      Africa at that time drew your mother and me very close 
      together. One wonders that _such_ intimacies should ever 
      fade, but I have seen it _too often_ to regard it as 
      anything but natural, alas! It was my son, Captain Arthur 
      Upgrove of the ----th Hussars, who taught you to walk--I can 
      see you now, with the lappets of your worked muslin cap 
      flying in the wind, and _such_ a serious expression! 
   
      But to return to my trip to Paris. I established my niece 
      comfortably with her friends, and then betook myself to my 
      own devices till such time as she should need me again. I 
      had not been in Paris for eight years (one settles down so 
      _amazingly_ in provincial England!) and I derived great 
      pleasure from the old scenes of my honeymoon, that sad 
      pleasure which is all that is left to women of my age, who 
      have not their grandchildren to renew their youth in! 
   
      The Major and I had always been _particularly_ attached to 
      the Gardens of the Luxembourg, and there I went and sat 
      musing many hours on end. One morning as I sat watching the 
      children and their _bonnes_, my ear was caught by a shrill 
      scream and I turned and saw a very handsome young woman, 
      beautifully dressed, dragging a cup and ball away from an 
      angry little French boy. I supposed, of course, that she was 
      his mother or his aunt, and only regretted that she should 
      be so rough and undignified in her manner to him, but when 
      his nurse rushed up and angrily questioned the young woman, 
      who fought her off, still clinging to the toy, I realised 
      that something was wrong, and went over to them. Hardly had 
      I got there when a neat-looking lady's maid ran up, chid the 
      young woman severely, and apologised in a rapid flood of 
      French, that I could not follow, to the nurse. Then it was 
      clear (or so I thought) that the poor creature was _not 
      responsible_ and I tried to soothe her, in a quiet way, till 
      her attendant should leave the _bonne_. 
   
      To make a long story short, imagine my surprise when I found 
      that she was not insane at all, only strangely undeveloped. 
      Her maid explained this to me while the curious young thing 
      (a _bride_, too!) actually made friends with the child and 
      begged the cup and ball away successfully! 
   
      She took quite a fancy to me and we talked together in 
      English, as soon as I found out that she was an American. 
      What an _extraordinary_ nation! It quite makes one giddy to 
      think of them. 
 
 
 
 PART 5 CHAPTER XVII (OUR PEARL BATHES IN SEINE WATER) Pg 83 
   
 Fancy a child that had never been taught of 
      the God who made her nor the Saviour who died for her, in a 
      civilised _Christian_ country! And yet she was naturally 
      very sweet, I found, though high-tempered. She spoke 
      beautiful French (they tell me Americans often do) but she 
      seemed to know very little about her native country and had 
      never seen a red Indian nor a buffalo. The Major always 
      regretted so _deeply_ that he had never hunted in North 
      America. 
                         
      During our conversation, which I should hardly dare to 
      repeat, it was so _very_ odd, she told me that she was very 
      glad to have found another friend, for now she had three, 
      besides her husband. 
   
      "And who are the other two, my dear?" I asked her. 
   
      "One is Sue, that is a woman," she answered, "and the other 
      is Jerry, that is a man." 
   
      "Jerry? Jerry?" I repeated, for it sounded strangely 
      familiar. 
   
      "Yes. Do you know him, too?" she asked eagerly. 
   
      "I am afraid not," I said, "but it so happens that I once 
      knew a baby boy whom his mother called Jerry many years ago, 
      in England." 
   
      "_My_ Jerry gave me this pearl," she said, and she showed me 
      a beautiful pearl which she wore. 
   
      "I do not think it likely that the Jerry I knew would be 
      able to afford such presents," I said _rather stiffly_. You 
      must know, Mr. Jerrolds, that we are still _old-fashioned_ 
      in our ideas in England, and fail to realise the quick 
      growth of your amazing American fortunes! 
   
      She persisted, however, and to quiet her I told her that "my 
      Jerry's" right name was Winfred Jerrolds. When she assured 
      me that it _was_ "her Jerry" and described your appearance 
      (exactly your father's, except that he required a 
      _pince-nez_), I began to believe in the _strange 
      coincidence_, and readily agreed to go home with her. She 
      lived in a charming _appartement_ (I have forgotten the 
      street, but they were _au cinquieme_, and there was a queer 
      little hydraulic lift, which I refused to use, preferring my 
      own feet) and she did the honours of it very prettily, upon 
      the whole, like a child that is just learning, looking to 
      her maid constantly for approval. 
   
      This, frankly, did not seem right to me, Mr. Jerrolds. I may 
      be _old-fashioned_, but I cannot think that a woman should 
      learn _etiquette_ from her _maid_, and I must have showed 
      my feeling in my face, for the girl, a capable one, I must 
      say, blushed and said that in her opinion Madame required a 
      governess, a _chaperon_, as it were, and that she believed 
      Monsieur had it in his mind also. 
 
 
 
 PART 5 CHAPTER XVII (OUR PEARL BATHES IN SEINE WATER) Pg 84 
   
 I could not help 
      exclaiming that I knew of the _very person_, and most 
      officiously, I know, I wrote down the address of a second 
      cousin of mine, once removed, then in Paris by the merest 
      chance. 
   
      She is a Miss Jencks, Mr. Jerrolds, and of _unexceptionable_ 
      family: her great-uncle a bishop, her father a retired army 
      officer. She has been governess to the family of the 
      Governor-General of Canada, thus, as you see, enabling her 
      to know just what would be required in American society (the 
      maid told me that Mr. Bradley was most _aristocratic_ and 
      quite wealthy) and has always associated with the _best 
      people_. She is plain, but refined, and unusually well 
      educated, being in Paris now for special art study. She 
      would be moderate in her charges, I am sure, and would take 
      a _real interest_ in young Mrs. Bradley, for she deeply 
      enjoys forming character and manners and has always been 
      considered _most successful_ at it. 
   
      I wrote down the address of her _pension_ and left it with 
      the maid, telling her, so that Mr. Bradley would not think 
      me _too_ forward, that I was an old friend of your mother. 
      Do, if you write to him, say a good word for Miss Jencks, 
      for I am sure he will never regret engaging her. 
   
      Before I left, Mrs. Bradley sang for me, accompanying 
      herself on the piano. Her voice is unusually fine, though 
      she does not sing at all in the English way, but more like a 
      _professional_ opera singer. It was rather startling to me. 
      Barbara Jencks could teach her a little more restraint, I 
      think, to great advantage. But there is no doubt of the 
      beauty of the organ. She is taking lessons of a famous 
      teacher, and the maid says she had made the most _wonderful_ 
      progress in a short time. She is a very loving little 
      creature (I call her little, though she is half a head 
      taller than I!) but though she is so childish, I fancy she 
      has a _very_ strong will and a character of her own. She 
      would have a _great influence_ over anyone that was much 
      with her, I think. 
   
      I am sending this letter in care of your mother's old 
      bankers. I hope so much that I may hear that she is alive 
      and well! I was never better myself. I enclose with this 
      long letter a picture of my son. Like your mother, I have 
      but one, and he is _everything_ to me, as I daresay hers is. 
   
      I trust that you will not come to England without letting me 
      see you at Bleeks, and remain, my dear Mr. Jerrolds, 
   
                                     Your mother's old friend, 
   
                                             AGATHA UPGROVE. 
   
   
                         [FROM ROGER'S DIARY] 
   
                                           PARIS, Feb. 17, '8-- 
 
 
 
 PART 5 CHAPTER XVII (OUR PEARL BATHES IN SEINE WATER) Pg 85 
   
      Weather fine and clear for a week. M. well and very happy. 
      Her voice certainly comes on surprisingly. Mme. M----i very 
      enthusiastic. Miss J. has persuaded her to learn to write. 
      She makes great progress. 
   
   
                                                       Feb. 24. 
   
      To-night we actually gave a little dinner. Friends of Miss 
      J.'s: a sort of practice affair. M. behaved very well, but 
      drank her neighbour's (Miss J.'s cousin's) wine and would 
      not apologise. Miss J. a little inclined to be over-severe, 
      I think. It will be very pleasant to entertain, later, 
      certainly. Spent the morning at the _Bibliothèque 
      Nationale_, reading up _Code Napoleon_. What a man! I never 
      thought enough emphasis laid on that side of him. 
   
   
                                                         Mar. 3. 
   
      Bad weather over for the present. Called at the Legation. M. 
      very quiet and good and looking exquisite in dark blue silk 
      from Sue's crack dressmaker. Enormously admired and very 
      happy. Quite well. Took a few notes to-day on the _Code_. A 
      great lawyer, that man. 
   
   
                                                         Mar. 6. 
   
      Wonderful weather, fine and warm. Chestnuts soon starting. 
      Went to Versailles for the day. M. played cup and ball with 
      R----n, the sculptor, who wants to model her. He gave us a 
      _petit souper_ and M. behaved perfectly. Miss J. certainly 
      an investment. She cannot drag M. into a cathedral, however. 
 
 insists they make her feel queer and then hungry. Says 
 
      her hands get cold. Have told Miss J. cannot have any 
      meddling with religion just yet. (N. B. not at all!) Strange 
      not hearing from Jerry. 
   
   
                                                         Mar. 10. 
   
 
 spoke of old home to-day for first time. Remarked on 
 
      absence of ocean and hoped dog was well. Dog's name appears 
      to be Rosy, which is absurd, as it's not that kind of dog. 
      Obstinate as usual. Miss J. objects to kissing as a 
      disciplinary measure. M. balks at Kings of England in order, 
      and gets no dessert. Odd thing to have happen to your wife! 
      She grows sweeter every day. Am getting quite deep into 
      notes on the _Code_. Really enough for a book. 
   
   
                                                         Mar. 15. 
   
      Weather still holds. Met Stokes and Remsen of my class 
      to-day and went out to St. Cloud with them. Say I look five 
      years younger. 
 
 
 
 PART 5 CHAPTER XVII (OUR PEARL BATHES IN SEINE WATER) Pg 86 
   
 Didn't realise I needed the rest, to tell the 
      truth. Suppose we do work too steadily, over there. But I 
      never felt any ill effects from it. Have cabled Jerry at 
      University Club. Remsen swears he saw him in London last 
      week. Doesn't seem possible, or would have known. M. sang 
      to-day at _musicale_ for Mme. M----i. Great success and 
      looked very beautiful. She gets a high colour singing. Hate 
      Frenchmen as much as I ever did. They're more monkey than 
      man. Magnificent new tenor-barytone just discovered--can't 
      recall the name. Wants to sing with M., who was much taken 
      with him. Worked up a few of my notes: Stokes thought well 
      of them. 
   
   
                                                         Mar. 16. 
   
      Barytone called while I was out with Miss J. yesterday on 
      business. M. told me that he loved her and admits that he 
      kissed her. Went around to his rooms and gave him a good 
      licking this afternoon: warm work, for he is a big fellow. 
 
 cannot see anything out of the way in what she did: told 
 
      me she wished she'd married Jerry, I was so cruel. Miss J. 
      talked to her like a Dutch uncle. Can't have the child 
      treated too harshly for all the Governor-Generals Canada 
      ever had, and told her so. We all got pretty hot, but 
      nothing would budge M. till Elise happened to confide in her 
      that I was a man in a thousand. This for some reason struck 
      her forcibly and she acted like an angel. Women are 
      certainly strange. Nothing more done on the _Code_. 
   
   
                                              FLORENCE, Mar. 26. 
   
      Have been a week here. M. enjoys it very much. She and Miss 
 
 studying Italian day and night: M. takes to it like a 
 
      duck to water. Got a grammar myself and began. M. practises 
      faithfully. Some pleasant old ladies I knew in New Haven 
      called on us to-day and M.'s behaviour could not have been 
      better, I thought, though Miss J. objects to her crossing 
      her ankles. She writes very well now. It is better than a 
      play to hear her and Miss J. arguing over points of 
      etiquette. J. explained the theory of the chaperon, but M. 
      pinned her down to admitting that it did not apply to 
      married women. Then why to her? M. demanded imperiously. J. 
      shuffled a little, then explained that M. was an exceptional 
      married woman. M. inquired if that meant that she was the 
      only married woman that could not be trusted alone with a 
      man. J. replied "Unfortunately, no, Mrs. Bradley!" M. 
      scored, in my opinion. 
   
   
                                                         April 2. 
   
      Long cable to-day about Wilkes case. Cannot possibly attend 
      to it from here. Cabled to make every effort to postpone it. 
      Bound to get in a mess, if they don't. R----should have been 
      disbarred long ago. M. spoke again of the beach at home 
      to-day. The second time since we were married. 
 
 
 
 PART 5 CHAPTER XVII (OUR PEARL BATHES IN SEINE WATER) Pg 87 
   
 Sometimes I 
      think she has no heart, in the ordinary sense, and then 
      again her sweetness and kindness would win over a statue. 
      She cannot, of course, be judged by ordinary standards. 
   
   
                                                         April 6. 
   
      Heard from Jerry to-day. Has been in England all the time, 
      the rascal, playing chess and learning Persian! Has promised 
      to run over to Paris and we are going back there. M. wants 
      to go on with her music lessons. Have never known her so 
      steady at anything. Expected to stay here indefinitely, but 
      must be very patient with her now. Is wonderfully well. 
      Wouldn't mind getting back to work, myself, but she can't 
      very well sail now, I suppose. 
   
   
                                                PARIS, April 11. 
   
      Perfect weather. Paris very gay. As a holiday, all very 
      well: as a business, what a life! Mme. M----i advises stop 
      lessons now for a while. M. very disappointed, but yields 
      finally very gracefully. How changed Jerry will find her! He 
      agrees to stay a fortnight at least, which delights M. And 
      me, too. We must have one of our old walking-trips, perhaps 
      try an ascension. Have got at the _Code_ again. 
   
   
                                                         April 15. 
   
      Weather still holds. Jerry expected to-morrow. M. has taken 
      to reading. She and J. read aloud _David Copperfield_, turn 
      about. What good work it is, after all! Hester taught her to 
      read unknown to her father, who seems to have forbidden it. 
      It was her only disobedience, it seems. I wonder what that 
      woman's real name was? She learned to read from the Psalms, 
      but never read much. The Wilkes case going badly, I'm 
      afraid: no postponement. They will be able to appeal, 
      however. 
 
 
 
 PART 5 CHAPTER XVIII (MY PEARL OF TOO GREAT PRICE) Pg 88 
   
 Kitchener and I were very philosophic as we crossed the Channel that 
 fine day in April. We had got thoroughly fitted to each other, now, 
 the rough edges smoothed down, all idiosyncrasies allowed for; we knew 
 when to press hard, so to speak, and when to go light, and the result 
 was a good, seasoned intimacy that lasted twelve long years. 
   
 I have always been a good sailor, a slight headache in an unusually 
 nasty roll being my only concession to Neptune, and Kitch and I viewed 
 with cynical tolerance the depressing antics of our less fortunate 
 fellow-travellers. As we neared the French coast I realised gradually 
 how good it would be to see Roger again, and found time to regret a 
 little of my solitary lingering through the damp English winter, which 
 seemed more oppressive in retrospect than it had been in reality. 
   
 For Margarita I had only the kindest feelings and the friendliest 
 hopes that she would develop into a good wife for Roger. To marry such 
 a bewitching knot of possibilities was of course more or less a risk, 
 but on the other hand, if any man could succeed in such an 
 undertaking, surely that man was our placid, patient Roger! I had 
 learned patience myself during the winter, by dint of chess and 
 philosophy, and somehow, as the little Channel boat pitched under me 
 and the shifty April clouds rolled along the sky over me, life, as it 
 stretched out for me and Kitchener, was not too gloomy: was even 
 flavoured with a certain easy freedom that rather tickled my 
 middle-aged epicurean palate--for the middle thirties were, even 
 twenty years ago, reasonably middle-aged. 
   
 Nevertheless it was impossible not to remember that my feelings had 
 not always been thus ordered, and when, a few hours later, the guard 
 let me out of the carriage, and I saw only Roger on the platform, I 
 realised that I had braced myself a little for a meeting that did not 
 take place. 
   
 "It's good to see you again, Jerry," he said heartily, "mighty good!" 
 And with his hand gripping mine, I had a moment of whimsical wonder 
 that any woman born should have been able to threaten such a 
 friendship for (or by!) the twinkling of an eye. 
   
 We talked of our plans, mine, such as they were, being only too ready 
 to merge into his, which included a stiff climb through the Swiss 
 Alps; of my Oxford sojourn; of Margarita's music and his readiness to 
 get back to America as soon as she should feel equal to it. It amused 
 me a little to discover how simply Roger accepted his rôle of 
 indulgent American husband: those men are born to it, I believe--there 
 seems no crisis, no period of instruction, even. I never pretended to 
 half his real strength of character, but I could not have imagined 
 myself stopping in circumstances more or less distasteful to me until 
 my wife's whim should release us! I had spoken to no woman for many 
 months, you must remember, but my landlady and the Professor's trained 
 nurse, and unflattering though it may sound to the much-desired sex, I 
 had not been conscious of any special lack, after the first few weeks. 
   
 To this day I have never known the name of the street nor the number 
 of that Paris _appartement_. We were deep in our plans for 
 mountaineering, and except that I noted the wheezy little lift of Mrs. 
 Upgrove's letter, I remember literally nothing about that excursion 
 but the familiar odour of the Paris asphalt, the snapping and cracking 
 of the Gallic horsewhip, and the smoke of my own cigarette which blew 
 into my eyes as I threw it away on entering the house. 
   
 The late afternoon sun poured into the gay little drawing-room, all 
 buff and dull rose, in the charming French style, and full of sweet 
 spring flowers in bowls and square jars of Majolica ware. The height 
 of the _appartement_ made it delightfully airy and bright, and through 
 the western windows I glimpsed the feathery tips of the delicate new 
 green of the trees. 
 
 
 
 PART 5 CHAPTER XVIII (MY PEARL OF TOO GREAT PRICE) Pg 89 
   
 A small grand piano stood near an open window and 
 a gorgeous length of Chinese embroidery on the opposite wall was 
 reflected in a tall, narrow mirror that doubled the apparent size of 
 the room and gave a pleasant depth and richness to all the airy 
 clearness of the spring that seemed to fairly incarnate itself in the 
 spot and the hour. I have never liked Oriental embroideries since that 
 day, and the clogging scent of hyacinth is a thing I would take some 
 trouble to avoid; those sad little spires of violet, pink and white 
 spell only sorrow to one man, at least: sorrow and memories of pitiful 
 and unmanly weakness. 
   
 For standing by the piano, one hand with its cloudy, flashing sapphire 
 white among the pale stiff spikes, her deer-like head dark against the 
 fantastic rose and orange of the embroidered dragons, was Margarita, a 
 lovely smile curving her lips and the warm light in her deep 
 slate-coloured eyes burning down, down into my very vitals. In that 
 one rich, welcome smile all my calm English months melted like wax in 
 a furnace, and Oxford was a drab dream and Surrey a stupid sick-bay! 
 As I faced her, the old wound burst and widened, with that torturing 
 sweet shock that I had relegated sagely to poets and youthful heats, 
 and I knew that I loved her hopelessly, with a love that put out my 
 love for Roger and my mother as the sun puts out the small and steady 
 stars. 
   
 I had left a bewitching, unlikely elf; I found a magnificent woman. 
 She seemed to my gloating eyes to have grown tall, though that might 
 have been the effect of her loosely flowing, long-trained gown, which 
 was as if she had put on a garment of shot green and blue silk and 
 then another over it of rich, yellowish lace. The neck was cut in a 
 sort of square, such as one sees in the pictures of Venetian ladies 
 in the _cinque cento_, and at the base of her full throat lay an 
 antique necklace of aqua marines. Heavens! How perfect she was! As she 
 moved over in her grand free stride and took my hands in both of hers, 
 vitality and glowing strength seemed to pour along her veins into 
 mine; she seemed almost extravagantly alive, and I a pallid, stupid 
 dabbler on the shore of things. Her figure was much fuller; her arm, 
 where the loose lace sleeve fell back from it, was plump and round, 
 and this and the increased softness of her throat and chin added a 
 year or two--yes, three or four--to what I had hitherto believed to be 
 her age. She was a fit mate for Roger now; no longer a captured 
 child-witch. 
   
 I bent over her hands, to cover my emotion, and ceremoniously kissed 
 the backs of them; there was a creamy dimple below each finger now. As 
 I lifted my head and heard Roger's chuckle of delight at my amazement 
 at her, I saw for the first time that we three were not alone in the 
 room, and found myself bowing to a neat, chill British spinster, big 
 and white of tooth, big and flat of waist, big and bony of knuckle. 
 She wore sensible, square-toed boots and the fashion of her clothing 
 suggested a conscientious tailor who had momentarily lost sight of her 
 sex. She bore a _pince-nez_ upon her flat chest, the necessity for 
 which was obvious, but her short-sighted blue eyes were kind and the 
 grasp of her knuckly hand was human. She was a thorough-going lady if 
 she was a trifle grotesque, and my respectful friendship for Barbara 
 Jencks, late of the household of the Governor-General of Canada, has 
 never waned. 
 
 
 
 PART 5 CHAPTER XVIII (MY PEARL OF TOO GREAT PRICE) Pg 90 
   
 "You find Mrs. Bradley somewhat changed, I dare say," she remarked, by 
 way of breaking a rather strained silence, for Roger, never talkative, 
 was hunting among a pile of guide-books and Margarita was staring 
 dreamily into the sunset, now a miracle of golden rose. 
   
 "Somewhat, indeed," I responded politely, my mind darting back to that 
 girl in the red jersey who had sat cross-legged like a Turk on the 
 sand, and told me that I loved her. What would the Governor-General 
 have thought of that girl? 
   
 Again a pause, and now Miss Jencks addressed Margarita, 
 affectionately, but firmly--oh, very firmly! 
   
 "What do you find so absorbing out of the window, my dear?" 
   
 Margarita started like a forgetful child, blushed a little, murmured 
 impatiently in French and then smiled delightfully at me. 
   
 "But this is Jerry, Miss Jencks, Roger's and my Jerry," she said 
 beseechingly. "You do not mean that I must be polite to Jerry?" 
   
 "Most assuredly," returned Miss Jencks. "When a gentleman, even though 
 he be an old friend, makes a journey to see one after a long absence, 
 he expects and deserves to be entertained!" 
   
 Roger caught my eye, made his old whimsical grimace, and rooted deeper 
 into the guide-books. Margarita sighed gently, seated herself in a 
 high carved chair and inquired, with her lips, adorably, after my 
 health and my journey, but laughed naughtily with her eyes, an 
 accomplishment so foreign to my knowledge of her as to reduce me to 
 utter banality; which suited Miss Jencks perfectly, however, so that 
 she resigned the conversational rudder to her pupil and concerned 
 herself with knitting a hideous grey comforter (for the Seaman's Home, 
 I learned later), giving the occupation a character worthy the most 
 _comme-il-faut_ clubman. 
   
 A neat, black uniformed _bonne_ brought in tea, in the English 
 fashion, and Margarita served us most charmingly under the eagle eye 
 of Miss Jencks, eating, herself, like a hungry school-girl, and 
 stealing Roger's cakes impudently when the sometime directress of the 
 Governor-General's household affected a well-bred deafness to her 
 request for more. After tea Miss Jencks departed with her knitting 
 and we three were comfortably silent; Margarita dreamy, I all in a 
 maze at her, Roger relishing my wonder. The hyacinths smelled strong 
 in the growing dusk, the Chinese dragons burned against the wall: 
 colour and odour were alike a frame for her beauty and her richness. I 
 can never wholly separate that hour in my memory from the visions of a 
 fever and the burning heat of worse than the African Desert. 
   
 Later we sat about the candle-shaded dinner table, a meal where 
 English service faded in the greater glory of French cooking, and I 
 rebelled with Roger at Miss Jencks's curtailment of her charge's 
 appetite. 
 
 
 
 PART 5 CHAPTER XVIII (MY PEARL OF TOO GREAT PRICE) Pg 91 
   
 "Surely, Miss Jencks, this _escarole_ is harmless," Roger protested, 
 with a smile at Margarita's empty plate, but when that lady repeated, 
 nodding wisely: 
   
 "I assure you, Mr. Bradley, she is better without it," he succumbed 
 meekly, even slavishly, I thought, and shook his head at Margarita's 
 pleading eyes. 
   
 In the centre of the table was a graceful silver dish, filled with 
 fruit, and as the attendant _bonne_ left the room, Margarita, with a 
 little cooing throaty cry, reached over to it, seized with incredible 
 swiftness two great handfuls of the fruit, and leaping from her seat 
 retreated with her booty to the _salon_. For a second she stood in the 
 doorway, two yellow bananas hugged to her breast among the rich lace, 
 an orange in her elbow, her teeth plunged into a great black Hamburg 
 grape, her eyes two dark blue mutinies. 
   
 Roger burst into a Homeric laugh and even Miss Jencks smiled 
 apologetically. 
   
 "I suppose we must let her have the fruit," she conceded, "an old 
 friend like Mr. Jerrolds will make allowance--" 
   
 "We expect the child in June," said Roger simply, and then something 
 seemed literally to give way in my brain and I clutched the 
 table-cloth as a sharp hard pain darted through my temples. Strange, 
 unbelievable though it may seem, I had never thought of such a thing 
 as this! 
   
 [Illustration: FOR HOURS AND HOURS I WALKED, MUTTERING AND CURSING] 
   
 My face must have excused my brusque departure, my utter inability to 
 eat or drink another mouthful. I muttered something about a rough 
 voyage and my land-legs (I, who never knew the meaning of 
 _mal-de-mer_!) and I know my forehead must have been drawn, for Miss 
 Jencks pressed _sal volatile_ upon me solicitously. Roger, manlike, 
 let me get off immediately and alone, as I begged, and once at the 
 bottom of the interminable stairs, I flung myself into a wandering 
 _fiacre_, and drove through the merry, lighted Paris boulevards, a 
 helpless prey to passions black and bitter--to a wicked, seething 
 jealousy such as I had never dreamed possible to a decent man. 
   
 _That_ was the deep throat, the large and lovely arm! _That_ was the 
 dreamy, full-fed calm, the woman ruminant! God! how the thought 
 tortured and tore at me! I, who had thought myself cured and a 
 philosopher--a kindly philosopher! My first fit of love for her had 
 carried its exaltation with it, but in this grinding, physical rage 
 there was only shame and madness. 
   
 I caught, somehow, a train for Calais, I stumbled onto a boat there in 
 a driving rain, and walked the deck in it all night. I travelled 
 blindly to Oxford and tramped through soggy, steaming lanes, through 
 sheets of drizzle, through icy runnels and marshy grass. For hours and 
 hours I walked, muttering and cursing, my teeth chattering in my head, 
 my brain on fire, my feet slushing in my soaking boots. I did not know 
 clearly where I was, I did not know why I was walking nor where, but 
 walk I must, like the convicts on the treadmill. Something laughed 
 horribly in the air just behind me and said like a parrot, over and 
 over again: 
   
 "We expect the child in June! We expect the child in June!  
 We expect 
 the child--" 
   
 I hit out with my blackthorn stick. "Damn you and your child!" I cried 
 wildly, and fell face forward in a marshy puddle. 
 
 
 
 PART 5 CHAPTER XIX (FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS) Pg 92 
 Long periods of time passed; days perhaps, perhaps years. Some one, I 
 know, turned with difficulty on his side, so that the puddle did not 
 choke his mouth and nostrils. Some one, by and by, felt something warm 
 and wet and rough against his icy cheek and was grateful for the 
 feeling. Some one was reading to me from a book which described the 
 sensations of a man lifted up and carried in a broken balloon that 
 could only ride a foot from the ground, bumping and jarring horribly, 
 and I was that man, in some strange way, and at the same time I was 
 the illustrations that accompanied the tale. I read the story myself 
 finally, aloud and very shrilly, as that unfortunate man bumped along. 
 After days of this cold journey, the man fell out of the balloon into 
 a warm lake and was delighted with the change, for his very soul was 
 chilled--until he realised, at first dimly, that the water was growing 
 hotter every minute and that the intention was to torture him to 
 death! I was that man, moreover, and I kicked and screamed wildly, 
 though every motion in the boiling water was agony. Just at the point 
 when my breath was failing and my heart slowed, they turned off the 
 water in the lake from a tap, and as it slowly receded, I was safe 
 again, and knew I could fall asleep. 
   
 Long I slept, and dreamed inexpressibly, and then I would feel the 
 insidious lapping of the warm lake, rejoice a moment in the comforting 
 heat, then realise with horror that the temperature was rising slowly 
 but surely, and the inferno would begin all over again. Every joint 
 and muscle was red-hot, each burning breath cut me like a knife. 
   
 I could not count how many times this happened, but I prayed loudly 
 for the man to die (he had been confirmed, so he had a legal right to 
 pray) and after a long time I began to have hopes that he would, for 
 he discovered a way of drawing his face down under the boiling water 
 and ceasing to breathe. Whenever he did this, a cold, smarting rain 
 drove through the water on his face and forced him to breathe, but he 
 managed to sink deeper and deeper, till at last he felt the throb of 
 the great world on its axle going round, and saw the stars below him, 
 and knew he was nearly free. 
   
 "More oxygen!" said a tiny, dry voice far off in infinite space, "more 
 oxygen!" 
   
 I grew light and rose to the surface; the stars went out. 
   
 "More oxygen!" said the voice again, louder now and close to me. I 
 fought to sink back again but it was useless; I burst up to the 
 surface and breathed the sweet, icy air against my will. 
 
 
 
 PART 5 CHAPTER XIX (FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS) Pg 93 
   
   
 "Now the mustard again, over the heart," said the voice, "and try the 
 brandy." 
   
 Something ran like fire through my veins, I opened my eyes, stared 
 into a black, bearded face and said distinctly: 
   
 "You nearly lost that man. He heard the thing going round." 
   
 Then I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. 
   
 I was very weak and tired when I woke, but quite composed. That 
 feeling of gentleness and conscious pathos that floods the weak and 
 empty and lately racked body was mine, and I looked pensively at the 
 white, blue-veined hand that lay so lax on the counterpane. What a 
 siege it had been for the poor devil that owned that hand! For I 
 realised that I had been very, very ill indeed. 
   
 As I studied the hand it was lifted gently from the counterpane by 
 another and clasped lightly but firmly at the wrist. The arm above 
 this hand was clad in striped blue and white gingham; a full white 
 apron fell just at the limit of my sidewise vision. I was far too 
 weak to raise my eyes, but it occurred to me that this must be my 
 landlady, for I recognised the footboard of my bed. And yet it was not 
 at all like my room. The arm-chair was gone, the books were gone, the 
 student lamp was gone, although it was my sitting-room. Then why was 
 the bed there? I frowned impatiently and then the white apron lowered 
 itself, a white collar appeared, and above it a face which was 
 perfectly familiar to me, though I could not attach any name to it. 
   
 "What can I do for you, Mr. Jerrolds? a drink, perhaps?" said a clear, 
 competent voice, and I knew at once who she was--the Professor's 
 sister's trained nurse. For one dreadful moment I feared I _was_ the 
 Professor's sister--it seemed to me it must be so, that there was no 
 other course open to me, for that was the person Miss Buxton nursed! 
 Then, as she repeated my name quietly, it was as if a veil had been 
 drawn, and I understood everything. My bed had been moved into the 
 study; her bed was in my room. Doubtless the Professor had sent for 
 her. 
   
 I felt thirsty, and hungry, too, a fact known to her, apparently, for 
 in a moment she brought me a bowl of delicious broth, which she fed me 
 very neatly by the spoonful. It made another man of me, that broth, 
 and I watched her record it on a formidable chart, devoted to my 
 important affairs, with great interest. 
   
 "Have I been ill long?" I asked, and my voice sounded hollow and 
 rather high to my critical sense. 
   
 "Two weeks, Mr. Jerrolds," she said promptly, "quite long enough, 
 wasn't it? It has been most interesting: a very pretty case, indeed." 
   
 "What was it?" 
   
 "Inflammatory rheumatism," she said, with a gratifying absence of 
 doubt or delay (such a relief to a sick person!) "and a great deal of 
 fever, very high. You ran a remarkable temperature, Mr. Jerrolds." 
 
 
 
 PART 5 CHAPTER XIX (FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS) Pg 94 
   
   
 I received this information with the peculiar complacence of the 
 invalid. It seemed to me to denote marked ability and powers beyond 
 the common, that fever! 
   
 "How did I get here?" 
   
 She sat in a low chair by the bed and regarded me pleasantly out of 
 the kind, wise, brown eyes. 
   
 "I will tell you all about it," she said, "because I am sure you will 
 be easier, but after I am through I want you to try to compose 
 yourself and go off to sleep, because this will be enough talking for 
 now, and I want you to be fresh for the doctor. Do you understand?" 
   
 I dropped my eyelids in token of agreement and she went on. 
   
 "You remember that you complained of feeling unwell in Paris at Mr. 
 Bradley's house. You probably had quite a temperature then, though you 
 might not have known it. You came directly back to Oxford, but for 
 forty-eight hours no one knew where you were, for the people here 
 supposed you there. Finally, when Mr. Bradley telegraphed, they grew 
 anxious here, and while they were wondering what to do, your dog ran 
 in, acting so strangely that they suspected something and followed 
 him. He led them directly to you and they found you unconscious in a 
 marshy old lane about six miles out from the town. They brought you 
 here in a horse blanket, the Professor sent for me, and we have been 
 taking care of you ever since. Mr. Bradley has been here twice, but 
 you were too ill to see anybody; he saw that everything possible was 
 being done. I shall write him directly that you are on the uphill road 
 now, and that care and patience are all you need. 
   
 "Now, take this medicine, Mr. Jerrolds, and repay me for this long 
 story by going directly to sleep." 
   
 I took it, lay for a moment in a dreamy wonder, and drifted off. As 
 she had said, the uphill journey had begun. 
   
 That afternoon I saw the doctor, a grizzled, kindly man, and it was he 
 who told me what I had already somehow divined--that I owed my life to 
 Harriet Buxton. 
   
 "I never saw such nursing," he said frankly; "the woman has a real 
 genius. It was nip and tuck with you, Mr. Jerrolds, and she simply set 
 her teeth and _wouldn't_ give up! One can't wonder the American nurses 
 get such prices--they're worth it. Now it's hold hard and cultivate 
 your patience, and get back that two or three stone we lost during the 
 siege, and then good-bye to me!" 
   
 But oh, how long it was! Day after day, and night after night, and day 
 after day again I counted the pieces of furniture in the bare, dull 
 room and read faces into the hideous wall-paper and stared into the 
 empty window. The little night-light punctuated the dark; the feeble 
 sunlight struggled through the rain. 
 
 
 
 PART 5 CHAPTER XIX (FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS) Pg 95 
   
 The few kindly friends who called 
 upon me I could not see; their sympathetic commonplaces were 
 unendurable to my weakened nerves. Had it not been for the return, now 
 and then, of the pains I had suffered in my delirium, mercifully less 
 and less violent, which made the periods of their absence hours of 
 comparative pleasure, I think I should have grown into a hopeless 
 nervous invalid from sheer ennui. I had never been ill that I remember 
 since the days of my childish maladies, and I fretted as only such an 
 one can and must fret under the irksome novelty of pain, weakness and 
 irritation. 
   
 How Harriet Buxton bore with my whims and fads and downright rudeness, 
 I cannot tell. When in a fit of contrition I asked her this, she 
 smiled and said that men were generally irritable. 
   
 "But I should go mad if I were obliged to humour the caprices of such 
 a bear as I!" 
   
 "But you are not a nurse!" she answered quietly. 
   
 After ten days of steady convalescence, when I was propped up a little 
 upon my pillows and could feed myself very handily from an 
 ever-increasingly varied _menu_, I asked suddenly if she had heard 
 from Roger lately. 
   
 "Yes," she said promptly, "only yesterday. I was waiting till you 
 asked. Before I give you the letter I must tell you that they are no 
 longer in Paris: they have gone back to America." 
   
 "America?" I echoed vaguely, with a half-shocked consciousness that I 
 did not care very much one way or the other where they were. 
   
 "Yes, Mr. Bradley came in the day before they sailed, but you were far 
 too ill to see him. At the same time I saw no reason why you should 
 not pull through, and told him so. Mrs. Bradley suddenly expressed a 
 wish to go to her old home, and though for some reasons they did not 
 like to let her begin a sea voyage, for other reasons they wanted to 
 gratify her. She grew quite determined and they decided to allow it. 
 You know she expects her baby in June." 
   
 "Yes I know," I said quietly. I remembered the man who had tramped the 
 wet lanes, but to-day he seemed to me a wicked fool, justly punished 
 for his folly. For I knew, though no one had told me, that I should 
 never be the same after this sickness. The very fibres of my soul had 
 been twisted and burned in that white-hot furnace of my delirium, and 
 though Nature might forgive me, she could never forget. Every winter 
 she would take her toll, every damp season she would audit my account, 
 after every exposure or fatigue she would lightly tap some shrinking 
 nerve and whisper "Remember!" A passion whose strength I had never 
 suspected had brought me to this bed, and in this bed that same 
 passion had struggled and shrivelled and died. It was with no mock 
 philosophy that I thought of Margarita. No, the fool knew his folly 
 now. But it was a folly of which I had no need, I verily believe, to 
 feel ashamed. It was not that I was the sort of monk we are told the 
 Devil would be, when he was sick, although my physical weakness may 
 have lain--God knows!--at the root of it, once. No, I had changed. 
 Those who have gone through some such change (and I wonder, sometimes, 
 how many of the passive, unremarkable people I pass on the street, in 
 the fields, in hotels, have gone through such) know how well I knew 
 the truth of this matter and how little likely I was to deceive 
 myself. 
 
 
 
 PART 5 CHAPTER XIX (FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS) Pg 96 
   
 I loved her, yes, and shall love her while consciousness 
 remains with me, but it would never again be bitter in my mouth and 
 black in my heart. 
   
 "Let me see the letter, please, Miss Buxton," I asked, and she brought 
 it, cutting it for me with her neat accuracy of motion and 
 conservation of energy. I spread the single sheet open and began, but 
 I never read more than one line of that letter. 
   
 For it began, 
   
      _Dear old Jerry:_ 
   
      _Ever since Kitchener found you, I have  changed_-- 
   
 "Kitch! Kitch!" I cried, overcome with shame and penitence. "Oh, Miss 
 Buxton, do you--does anybody--" 
   
 "He is just outside," she said, "I will have him sent up at once. I 
 thought you would want him soon, Mr. Jerrolds. And don't worry--he has 
 never been neglected." 
   
 I clutched the sheet in my impatience. Very soon there was a scurrying 
 through the hall, a little gasping snuffle, a small, sharp bark. Then 
 he was on the bed before I saw his good brindled head, almost, and in 
 my arms. I pressed my face against his dear, quivering coat, I 
 surrendered my cheek to his warm, rough tongue, I translated each 
 happy convulsive wriggle. 
   
 "Dear old Kitch--good fellow!" I muttered, none too steadily, for I 
 was not strong yet, and he seemed suddenly the only friend on whom I 
 could unreservedly count. Roger had wished to stay with me, I knew, 
 but of course he must go with his wife, and I am glad that I never 
 grudged his absence a moment. For this cause shall a man leave his 
 life-long friend and cleave only to her, and there is no other way. 
 But nothing, nothing could separate Kitch and me! 
   
 Miss Buxton left us alone together and we discussed the situation 
 gravely and thoroughly and assured each other that it was only a 
 matter of patience, now, and then, away together! 
   
 My spirits rose from the day he came in, and in another week I had 
 advanced to a deep cushioned chair in the window for an hour a day. 
 But it was not a very interesting window, commanding as it did my 
 neighbour's eight-foot garden wall crowned with inhospitable broken 
 glass, and though I appreciate the marvel of the spring as much, I 
 suppose, as most of us, I could never occupy myself very long with 
 natural beauties exclusively, and the trees and the grass could not 
 satisfy my craving for human interest. Now that I was ready for them, 
 all my friends were off for their Easter holiday, and I would not keep 
 the Professor from his spring gardening, though he offered manfully. I 
 have never cared for games, with the single exception of his beloved 
 chess, and my eyes soon tired of reading. 
   
 And so at last, in default of something more to my mind, I turned to 
 my nurse and determined to make that silent woman talk. At first it 
 was difficult, for I tried to discover her feelings, her attitude, her 
 history. 
 
 
 
 PART 5 CHAPTER XIX (FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS) Pg 97 
   
 As to the first two of these I met only failure and the last 
 was pathetically simple. An orphan she was, a bread-winner, an 
 observer. I say it was pathetic, but not that _she_ was. Things are 
 changing rapidly with women, I can see that plainly, but twenty years 
 ago a man still felt, ridiculously perhaps, that a kindly, competent 
 woman, however successful in her chosen profession, must needs be, in 
 the very nature of the case, even more kindly and more competent with 
 a child on her lap and an arm about her waist. If in the new doctrine 
 of the Brotherhood of Man it is admitted that we owe each our debt to 
 humanity and posterity, I, for one, have never been able to understand 
 why women should not pay that debt in the coinage most obviously 
 provided them for the purpose. The Brotherhood of Man is a great idea, 
 but surely without the Motherhood of Woman it would grow a little 
 shadowy and impractical. (I speak as a fool!) 
   
 And so, I repeat, there was something a little pathetic to me in 
 Harriet Buxton's life, though nothing in the least pathetic in her 
 personality or her actions. Do not turn on me too fiercely, dear 
 ladies, and demand of me with your well-known remorseless logic, what 
 would have become of me if Harriet Buxton had not been beside me in my 
 delirium, with nothing but a clinical thermometer on her knee, and a 
 white apron around her waist. Do not, I beg you, for I shall shock all 
 your strict habits of mind by taking refuge in blind, illogical 
 instinct and reiterating my firm conviction that though I perish, 
 truth is so, and that Nature had a better use for Harriet's lap and 
 waist. She had! (as you used to say in the old emotional era) she 
 had!! _She had!!!_ 
                               
 Well, in despair of eliciting anything romantic from her, I languidly 
 inquired as to her travels. They were not extensive: this was her 
 first "trip abroad." It had been rather a failure, in a way, for 
 although she had been engaged with the understanding that her passage 
 was to be paid both ways, her patient on recovery had decided to spend 
 the summer abroad, and had made it very evident that she did not 
 consider herself any longer responsible for her nurse under these 
 circumstances! 
   
 "You should have taken legal advice," I expostulated, "the woman was 
 dishonest. It was shocking, Miss Buxton--surely you could have done 
 something?" 
   
 "Perhaps," she admitted, "but I had no friends here and it was hard 
 enough to get my salary, anyway. I could have gone with Mrs. Bradley 
 if I had been free. As it was, I sent them another American nurse I 
 knew of in London, who was glad to go back." 
   
 "Why didn't you send her to me and go yourself?" I questioned 
 curiously, "if you want to go so much?" 
   
 She looked at me in sincere surprise. 
   
 "Why, I had already accepted your case, Mr. Jerrolds," she said. 
   
 Alas, Harriet! Why, why were you not teaching your simple code of 
 honour to some sturdy, kilted Harry? 
   
 
 
 
 PART 5 CHAPTER XIX (FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS) Pg 98 
   
 There seemed to be nothing more to be got from Miss Buxton, and we 
 began to discuss the best winter climate for me, for I understood 
 perfectly that for more years than the doctor cared to impress upon me 
 just now I must avoid damp and chill. We discussed Nassau, Bermuda, 
 Florida, and I mentioned North Carolina. Then Harriet Buxton opened 
 her lips and spoke, and in a few amazed moments it became clear to me 
 that I was in the presence of a fanatic. 
   
 For she had been in North Carolina, and this State that for me had 
 spelled only a remarkably curative air and a deplorably illiterate 
 population represented the hope of this woman's life, the ambition of 
 her days and nights, the Macedonia that cried continually in her ears, 
 "Come over and help us!" 
   
 For a year she had lived there in the western mountains, giving her 
 duty's worth of hours to a wealthy patient, bargaining for so much 
 free time to devote to that strange, pathetic race of pure-blooded 
 mountaineers, tall, serious, shy Anglo-Saxons, our veritable elder 
 brothers, ignorant appallingly, superstitious incredibly, grateful and 
 generous to a degree. As she talked, rapidly now, with flushing cheeks 
 and kindling eyes, she brought vividly before me these pale and 
 patient people, welcoming her with eager hands, hanging on her 
 wonderful skill, listening like chidden children to her horrified 
 insistence upon long-forgotten decencies and sanitary measures never 
 guessed. As my questions grew her confidence grew with them, and at 
 last she went quickly to her room to return with a thick, black book, 
 which she thrust into my hands. 
   
 "It's my diary," she explained. "If you are really interested you may 
 read it. Oh Mr. Jerrolds, to think of the money that goes to Africa 
 and India and slums full of Syrians and Russian Jews, when these 
 Americans--our real kin, you know!--are putting an axe under the bed, 
 with the blade up, to check a hæmorrhage! If they were Zulus," she 
 added, flashing, "some one might do something for them." 
   
 [Illustration: HER WEEKLY CHECK, PLUS A DRAFT FOR A HUNDRED POUNDS] 
   
 I could not keep myself from staring at her: with that flush, those 
 kindling brown eyes and that heaving bosom, my nurse was near to being 
 a handsome woman! And all because the natives of North Carolina had no 
 adequate hospital service. Can you imagine anything more 
 extraordinary? I opened the book curiously; not, of course, that I 
 cared tuppence for the natives, but that I had actually begun to feel 
 interested in Harriet Buxton. 
             
 I should never have thought of it again, probably, but for Harriet 
 herself, for now that the magic string had been touched, her heart 
 overflowed to its echoes, and my waking hours were filled with 
 anecdotes touching, brutal or humourous, of her years of joy and 
 labour. Her cottage rent had cost her forty dollars, her clothes 
 nothing, her food had come largely from the grateful people. Over and 
 over again she returned to her ridiculously pitiful calculations. She 
 could live for one hundred dollars a year. She could have the use of a 
 deserted schoolhouse, free. Two hundred dollars would fit up a tiny 
 hospital and lending-closet, with linen, rubber articles, simple 
 sick-room conveniences. If she had five hundred, she would start on 
 that and trust to getting help to go on with. She could stay there a 
 year, then nurse for a year, and go back with the money she had saved. 
   
 
 
 
 PART 5 CHAPTER XIX (FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS) Pg 99 
   
 And so on, and so on, and so on! The floods of North Carolina needs 
 that swept over my helpless head would have drowned a stronger brain 
 than mine. In vain I tried to dam this tide of confidences and hopes 
 and ha'penny economies: it was useless. After a week, during which 
 actual photographs, hideous blue prints, the first advance guard of 
 that flood of amateur photography destined to wash over the world, 
 were brought out for my edification, I rebelled and declared myself 
 cured. 
   
 "And to get rid of you," I added crossly, "I am going to give you 
 this," and I handed her her weekly cheque, plus a draft for a hundred 
 pounds. "Take it, and get off to those benighted natives, for heaven's 
 sake!" 
   
 She stared at it, at me, at it again, then choked and fled to her 
 room. I felt like a fool. 
   
 Later, when I saw what it really meant to the absurd creature, I 
 surreptitiously copied bits of the sordid little diary, and sent them 
 to Roger with a slight account of her, and suggested that he mention 
 this matter to Sarah (who had recently washed her hands of the 
 American negro on the occasion of his having bitterly disappointed her 
 hopes in a brutal race riot) and give that philanthropist's energies a 
 new direction. 
   
 I saw Harriet off to her boat, tried in vain to get a half hour of 
 rational conversation on topics unrelated to the western mountains of 
 North Carolina, agreed hastily to all directions as to my health, held 
 Kitch up to be kissed, and went back to my sunny garden-corner, for it 
 was full May now, and my strength was growing with the flowers. 
   
 I thought that chapter ended, and was startled and not a little shaken 
 by the thick letter that found me planning my lonely summer early in 
 June. It was from Harriet, a curious, incoherent screed; tiresomely 
 detailed as to her plans, painfully brief as to important issues. She 
 had found a letter from Mr. Bradley awaiting her arrival, she had 
 followed his suggestions and interested Miss Sarah Bradley, his 
 cousin, in her schemes, with the result that the Episcopal 
 organisation had sent a deaconess for a year to work under Harriet's 
 direction and a contribution toward fitting out the little hospital. 
 She had gone to see Roger and thank him personally and found him on an 
 island, with Mrs. Bradley in sudden and acute need of both nurse and 
 physician, the former with a broken leg, the latter gone to New York 
 for the day, as his prospective patient was supposed to be in no 
 immediate need of him. She had hastily set the nurse's leg, 
 telegraphed for the doctor, then devoted herself to Mrs. Bradley, who, 
 though beautifully strong and well, developed sudden complications and 
 gave her quite a little trouble. Things were rather doubtful and hard 
 for five or six hours, but fortunately the doctor had left full 
 supplies for the occasion and the other nurse was able to give the 
 anæsthetic--she was dragged on a sofa by a deaf and dumb man, who ran 
 five miles to the village just before. It ended triumphantly at dawn 
 and Mrs. Bradley had a lovely little girl--the image of her father. 
 Both were doing well. 
 
 
 
 PART 5 CHAPTER XIX (FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS) Pg 100 
   
 Mr. Bradley had overestimated her services, and as she could not dream 
 of accepting the fee he offered her, he had insisted upon paying a 
 salary for three years to a young physician (selected by the doctor, 
 who arrived at noon) who was to give his entire time and strength to 
 the mountain hospital and superintend the affair, now grown into a 
 real institution, since Mr. Elder had volunteered to supply a young 
 fellow from his club, anxious to act as orderly and assistant for the 
 sake of the training, and Mrs. Paynter, a friend of Mr. Bradley's, had 
 managed to get a full dispensary supply at cost prices from 
 connections of hers in the wholesale drug line. 
   
 "And it all comes from you, Mr. Jerrolds," the letter ended, "all 
 owing to your wonderful, your noble interest, in this work! You told 
 Mr. Bradley, and though he is not justified in thinking I saved her 
 life, it is perfectly true that those cases give us a great deal of 
 trouble sometimes, and I was very fortunate in having had a great deal 
 of maternity work in the mountains, when I had to act all alone and do 
 rather daring things. But I got the practice there, and so if I did 
 save your friend's life (or the baby's, which is nearer the truth, I 
 confess to you, Mr. Jerrolds!) you have amply rewarded the cause that 
 gave me the training to do what I did! 
   
                                              "Your grateful 
   
                                            "HARRIET BUXTON." 
   
 I sat under the glass-topped wall, the letter between my knees, 
 staring at the brick walk bordered with green turf. How strange it 
 was, how incredibly strange! A curious sense of watchful, relentless 
 destiny grew in me. Truly it slumbered not nor slept! I, who had 
 cursed that child unborn, had reached over seas and helped it into the 
 world! I, who had been jealous of my friend, had sent him a friend 
 indeed! I, who had grudged Margarita husband and child (for in my 
 black, cruel fever I did this) had given her back to both! 
   
 I pondered these things long (as if the thread in the tapestry should 
 marvel at its devious windings) and then summoned my landlady. 
   
 "Mrs. Drabbit," said I, "I am thinking of going to America." 
 
 
 
 PART 6 (IN WHICH YOU ARE SHOWN THE RIVER'S VERY SOURCES, FAR UNDERGROUND) CHAPTER XX (A GARDEN GLIMPSE OF EDEN) Pg 101 
   
 It was mid-August, however, before I reached that part of America that 
 was destined to mean so much to me. A visit to Mrs. Upgrove, my 
 mother's old friend, extended itself beyond my plans, largely because 
 of the pleasant acquaintance I formed there with her son, then 
 Captain, now Major Upgrove, one of the most charming men I have ever 
 encountered. Next to Roger he has become my best friend, incidentally 
 disproving a theory of mine that warm friendships between men are not 
 likely to be formed after thirty. Even as I write this chapter I am 
 looking forward to his visit, and the slim Hawaiian girls are looking 
 forward, too, I promise you, with wonderful, special garlands, and 
 smiles that many a handsome young sailor may jingle his pockets in 
 vain to win! 
   
 What is it, that strange, lasting charm that wins every woman-thing of 
 every age and colour? His mother told me that he had it in the cradle, 
 that the nurses were jealous over him and the sweet-shop women put his 
 pennies back into his pockets! Yes, Lona, and yes, Maiti, the 
 silver-haired Major is coming surely, and you shall surely dance! 
 Never mind the wreaths for me, dear hypocrites--they were never woven 
 for bald heads! 
   
 It was warm, almost as warm as this languid, creamy beach, the day I 
 clambered, none too agile, over the thwarts of Caliban's boat and made 
 my way up the sandy path to the cottage. 
   
 "I'm afraid the fever took it out of you, Jerry," Roger said, looking 
 hard at me, and I nodded briefly and he gripped my hands a little 
 harder. 
   
 "I'm glad you're here," he said. 
   
 Through the dear old room we stepped and out the further door, and 
 here a surprise met me. The straggling grass stretch was now a 
 rolling, green-hedged lawn, quartered by homelike brick paths. Two 
 long ells had been added to the house, running at right angles 
 straight out from it at either end, making a charming court of the 
 door yard and doubling the size of the building; the fruit trees had 
 been pruned and tended; an old grape arbour raised and trained into a 
 quaint sort of _pergola_, a strange sight, then, in America; a 
 beautiful old sun-dial drowsed in a tangle of nasturtiums. A delicate, 
 dreamy humming led my eyes to a group of beehives (always dear to me 
 because of the _Miel du Chamounix_ and our happy, sweet-toothed 
 boyhood!) and near a border of poppies, marigold and hardy mignonette 
 a great hound lay, vigilant beside a large, shallow basket, shaded by 
 a gnarled wistaria clump. 
 
 
 
 PART 6 CHAPTER XX (A GARDEN GLIMPSE OF EDEN) Pg 102 
   
 The basket was filled with something white, 
 and as we stood in the door, a woman dressed in trailing white, with 
 knots of rich blue here and there, came through a green gate in the 
 side hedge and moved with a rich, swooping step toward the basket. 
 Behind her through the open gate I saw a further lawn white with 
 drying linen, and a quick, pleasant glimpse of a brown, broad woman in 
 an old-world cap, paring fruit under an apple tree, a yellow cat 
 basking at her feet. 
   
 The white-clad figure leaned over the basket, her deep-brimmed garden 
 hat completely shading her face, lifted from it a struggling, tiny 
 doll-creature, with a reddish-gold aureole above its rosy face, 
 dandled it a moment in her arms, then sank like a settling gull into 
 the hollow of a low seat-shaped boulder near the wistaria, fumbled a 
 moment at the bosom of her lacy gown, and while I held my breath, 
 before I could turn my eyes, gave it her breast. It pressed its 
 wandering, blind hands into that miraculous, ivory globe (that 
 pattern of the living world) and through the dense, warm stillness of 
 that garden spot, where the bees' hum was the very music of silence, 
 there sounded, so gradually that I could not tell when the first notes 
 stirred the soundlessness, a curious cooing and gurgling, a sort of 
 fluty chuckle, a rippling, greedy symphony. It was not one voice, for 
 below the cheeping treble of the suckling mite ran a lowing undertone, 
 a murmurous, organ-like music, a sort of maternal fugue, that imitated 
 and dictated at once that formless, elemental melody. Even as we stood 
 riveted to the threshold, the sounds echoed in the air above us, 
 seemed to descend mystically from the very heavens themselves, and as 
 my heart swelled in me, a flock of pigeons swept down from some 
 barnyard eyrie and dropped musically, in a cloud of grey and amethyst, 
 beneath the pear tree. They crooned together there, the woman, the 
 child and the birds, and truly it was not altogether human, that 
 harmony, but like the notes of the pure and healthy animals (or the 
 angels, may be?) that guard this living world from the fate of the 
 frozen and exhausted moon. 
   
 "I--I can't get used to it," said Roger abruptly, "it--it seems too 
 much, somehow," and we turned back into the room. 
   
 "It's not a bit too much for you, Roger!" I answered heartily (thank 
 God, how heartily!) and we drew deep breaths and welcomed Miss Jencks, 
 in irreproachable white duck--I had almost written white ducks--and 
 talked about my momentous health. 
   
 Miss Jencks had abandoned her seaman's comforters for a cooler form of 
 handiwork, suspiciously tiny in shape, but she pursued it relentlessly 
 while we discussed the changes in the cottage; the gardens, the corn 
 and asparagus planned for another season; the ducks quartered near the 
 fresh-water brook; the tiny dairy built for her over the spring; the 
 brick-wall for Roger's pet wall fruit; the piano dragged by oxen from 
 the village; the sail-boat, manned now and then by our enthusiastic 
 telegrapher: the wondrous size and health of the tiny Mary. 
   
 She was called, as one who knew Roger might have expected, for his 
 mother, after the old tradition, too, that gave every eldest daughter 
 of the Bradleys that lovely name. No bitter obstinacy, no unyielding 
 pride of Madam Bradley's could alter in his calm mind the course of 
 his duty, and I never heard a harsh word from him concerning the 
 matter. Margarita cared absolutely nothing about it and never, he told 
 me, expressed the faintest curiosity as to his family or their 
 relations with her. 
 
 
 
 PART 6 CHAPTER XX (A GARDEN GLIMPSE OF EDEN) Pg 103 
   
 Soon she was with us, dear and beautiful, with only a tiny lavender 
 shadow under those cloudy eyes--misty just now and a little empty, 
 with that placid emptiness of the nursing mother--to mark the change 
 that my not-to-be-deceived scrutiny soon discovered. We left the 
 sleepy Mary slowly patrolling the brick walks in a pompous 
 perambulator propelled by a motherly English nurse under Miss Jencks's 
 watchful eye, and strolled, in our customary hand-in-hand, to the 
 boat-house, a low, artfully concealed structure, all but hidden under 
 a jagged cliff, and faced wherever necessary with rough cobbled 
 sea-stones sunk in wet cement and hardened there. The right wing of 
 the cottage stood out unavoidably at one point against the skyline, 
 and Roger, who had developed a surprising gift of architecture and a 
 sort of rough landscape gardening, was planning an extension of the 
 artificial sea-wall to cover this. 
   
 He worked at this himself, drenched with sweat, tugging at the stones, 
 while Caliban and a mason from the village set them and threw sand 
 over the wet plaster (the method which we decided must have been 
 adopted by the builder of the cottage), and I, too weak yet to help in 
 this giant's play, criticised the effect from a rowboat outside the 
 lagoon, telegraphing messages by means of a handkerchief code. Often 
 Margarita would come with me, embroidering placidly in the bow of the 
 boat, under her wide hat. She detested sewing, and refused utterly to 
 learn any form of it, to Miss Jencks's sorrow, but had invented a 
 charming fashion of embroidery for herself and worked fitfully at tiny 
 white butterflies in the corner of my cambric handkerchiefs--the one 
 and only form this art of hers ever took. It became a sort of emblem 
 and insignia of her, and Whistler, who began coming to them, I think, 
 the year after that, or the next, made much of this fanciful bond 
 between them. It was she who worked the black butterfly upon the lapel 
 of his evening coat which created such a sensation in Paris one 
 season. 
   
 Once while shooting in the Rockies with Upgrove, six or eight years 
 ago, I pulled out an old buckskin tobacco pouch, turned it hopefully 
 inside out in the search for a stray thimbleful, and discovered in a 
 corner of the lining a faded yellow silk butterfly, all unknown to me 
 till then! She must have worked it surreptitiously, like a 
 mischievous, affectionate child; and as I held it in my hands, and 
 stared at the graceful absurd thing, the lonely camp faded before me; 
 the sizzling bacon, the rough shelter, the whistling guide, slipped 
 back into some inconsequential past, and I lay again on the sun-warmed 
 rocks, watching a yellow-headed toddler prying damp pebbles from the 
 beach, to pile them later in her tolerant lap. Oh, Margarita! Oh, the 
 happy days! 
 
 
 
 PART 6 CHAPTER XXI (HESTER PRYNNE'S SECRET) Pg 104 
   
 I remember so well the morning of the great discovery. It was one of 
 those damp, rainy, grey days when happy people can afford to realise 
 contentment indoors, and we were a very comfortable group indeed: 
 Margarita sorting music, Roger drawing plans for a new chimney, Miss 
 Jencks shaking a coral rattle for the delectation of the tiny Mary, 
 who lay in her shallow basket under the lee of the great 
 spinning-wheel, and I hugging the fire and watching them. I considered 
 Roger's reforms in the matter of chimneys too thorough-going for the 
 slender frame of the house and told him so. 
   
 "You'll batter the thing to pieces," I said, "see here!" and lifting 
 my stick, which I had been poking at the baby after the irrelevant 
 fashion of old bachelor friends, I hit out aimlessly at the side of 
 the fireplace and struck one of the bricks a smart blow on one end. It 
 turned slightly and slipped out of its place, and as I shouted 
 triumphantly and pulled it away, I displaced its neighbour, too, and 
 poked scornfully at a third. This, however, was firm as a rock, as 
 well as all the others near it, and with a little excited suspicion of 
 something to come I put my hand into the small, square chamber and 
 grasped a dusty, oblong box, of tin, from the feel of it. 
   
 "Roger!" I gasped, "look here!" 
   
 "Well, well," he answered vaguely, "don't pull the place down on us, 
 Jerry, that's all!" 
   
 "But Mr. Jerrolds appears to have discovered a secret hiding-place," 
 Miss Jencks explained succinctly, and then they both stared at me 
 while I drew out from a good arm's reach a tin dispatch box, thick 
 with dust, a foot long and half as wide. I wiped the dust from its 
 surface, and on the cover we read (for Roger and Miss Jencks were at 
 my elbow now, I assure you!) written neatly with some sharp instrument 
 on the black japanned surface, the name _Lockwood Lee Prynne_. With 
 shaking fingers I lifted the lid, which opened readily, then 
 recollecting myself, passed the box to Roger. He glanced curiously at 
 Margarita, but she was absorbed in her music and as lost to us as a 
 contented child. He held the box on his knees, pushed back the lid 
 completely and lifted the top paper of all from the pile. It was badly 
 burned at the edges, as were the packets of letters, the columns 
 clipped from yellowed newspapers, the legal-looking paper with its 
 faded seal and the rough drawings on stained water-colour paper that 
 lay beneath it. It required no highly developed imagination to infer 
 that the contents of the box had been laid on the fire, to be snatched 
 away later. 
   
 Miss Jencks and I were frankly on tiptoe with excitement, but old 
 Roger's hand was steady as a rock as he unfolded the stiff yellow 
 parchment and spread before us the marriage certificate of Lockwood 
 Lee Prynne and Maria Teresa--alas, the shape of a fatally hot coal had 
 burned through the rest of the name! We skipped eagerly to the next 
 place of handwriting, the officiating clergyman and the parish--for 
 the form was English--but disappointment waited for us there, too, for 
 the same coal had gone through two thicknesses of the folded paper, 
 and only the date, Jan. 26, 186-, broke the expanse of print. The 
 initials of one witness "H.L." and the Christian name "Bertha," of 
 another, had escaped the coal on the third fold, and that was all. 
   
 Roger drew a long breath. 
 
 
 
 PART 6 CHAPTER XXI (HESTER PRYNNE'S SECRET) Pg 105 
   
 "So it's Prynne, after all," he said quietly, and unfolded the next 
 paper. 
   
 This was a few lines of writing in a careful, not-too-well-formed 
 hand, on a leaf torn from an old account-book, to judge from the 
 rulings. 
   
 "Sept. 24, 186-. The child was born at four this morning," it said 
 abruptly. "It may not live and she can't possibly. The Italian woman 
 baptised it out of a silver bowl. It is a dreadful thing, for now if 
 it does live it will be Romish, I suppose, but he said to let her have 
 her way, so it had to be. He is nearly crazy. He will kill himself, I 
 think. He knows she must die. It is named after her mother and an 
 outlandish lot of other names for different people. As soon as she is 
 dead the Italian woman is going back to Italy. I shall never leave 
 him." 
   
 The leaf was folded here and several lines badly burned. At the bottom 
 of the leaf I could just make out one more line. 
   
 "I cannot be sorry she is dying if I burn in hell for it. Hester 
 Prynne." 
   
 Roger and I stared at each other, the same thought in our minds. I had 
 imagined many things about the mysterious Hester, but never that she 
 bore that name, as a matter of simple fact. The connection with 
 Caliban had been too much for my overtrained imagination, and heaven 
 knows what baseless theories I had woven around what was at best (or 
 worst) a mere coincidence. For me the scarlet letter had flamed upon 
 what I now know to have been a blameless breast, and in my excited 
 fancy a stormy nature had suffered picturesque remorse where, as a 
 matter of fact, only a deep and patient devotion had endured its 
 unrecorded martyrdom of love unguessed and unreturned. So much for 
 Literature! 
   
 Next came two folded half-columns from a newspaper, one containing 
 only that dreadful list of the dead that our mothers read, 
 white-cheeked and dry-eyed, in the war time. Opposite the names of 
 Col. J. Breckenridge Lee and Lieut. J. Breckenridge Lee, Jr., were 
 hasty, blotted crosses. The other half-column, cut from another and 
 better printed sheet, recorded with a terrible, terse clearness the 
 shocking deaths of the aged Col. J.B. Lee and his son Lieut. J.B. Lee, 
 Jr., of the Confederate Army, at the hand of his son-in-law, Capt. 
 Lockwood Prynne, who was defending an encampment of the Northern 
 forces from a skirmishing party led by the rebel officers. Captain 
 Prynne recognised what he had done as the young lieutenant caught his 
 father in his arms and turned to stagger back, and rushing forward had 
 endeavoured to drag them to safety, receiving a shot himself that 
 shattered his arm, wounding him severely. His recovery was doubtful. 
   
 Under our sympathetic eyes the old tragedy lived again, the crisp, 
 cruel lines seemed printed in blood. It needed only the letter that 
 lay beneath to make everything clear. 
   
 "Dear Bob," the letter began in the unmistakable neat hand we had read 
 on the top of the box, "I cannot leave you without this word. I cannot 
 explain--my brain is on fire, I think--but try to judge with lenience. 
 
 
 
 PART 6 CHAPTER XXI (HESTER PRYNNE'S SECRET) Pg 106 
   
 Blood-poisoning set in, and my father died in hospital last week. On 
 his dying bed I swore to him that I would never raise my hand against 
 his country. I can't repeat all he said, but he's right, Bob, the 
 South is wrong! Secession is wrong. I brought the body home, but 
 mother could not come to the funeral. She is not at all violent, but 
 she will never be the same again--she didn't know me, Bob. I can't 
 describe how pitiful she is. Uncle James was her twin brother, you 
 know, and they were everything to each other. When we heard of Fort 
 Sumter she was nearly wild, and I promised her with my hand on her 
 Bible never to fight the South. I meant it then--my friends, my home 
 and you all. But I would have got her to release me if I could. But 
 she couldn't release me now, and I would die before I broke that 
 promise, the way she is now. I can't stay here. I couldn't look 
 anybody in the face. I wish I could be shot. I may be, yet. I am going 
 to Italy to see about those silk-worms for the plantation, that 
 father was interested in. The war can't last much longer and it will 
 be something to do. Mother is well looked after and I can't stay in 
 this country--it's not decent. Can you write to me, Bob? I don't ask 
 much--just write a line. What could I do? Write, for God's sake. 
   
                                        "LOCKWOOD LEE PRYNNE." 
   
 Below this signature, in a different hand, was scrawled: 
   
 "I return this letter. I have nothing to say. 
   
                                    "R. S. L." 
   
 Alas, alas, the pity of it! The grey moss and the blue forget-me-nots 
 grow together now over many a nameless grave, and Northern youth and 
 Southern maid pull daisy petals beside the sunken cannon ball; but the 
 ancient scar ploughed deep, and old records like this have heat enough 
 in them yet to sear the nerves of us who trembled, maybe, in the womb, 
 when those black lists of the wounded trembled in our mother's hands. 
   
 What a hideous thing it is! Can any bugle's screaming cover those 
 anguished cries, or any scarlet stripes soak up the spreading blood? 
 Bullets are merciful, my brothers, beside the cruel holes they pierce 
 in hearts they never touched. 
   
 Roger laid the papers and letter reverently to one side, and I, who 
 had been reading over his shoulder, brushed impatiently at my eyes. (I 
 was not entirely a well man yet, remember!) Below the newspaper lay a 
 signed deed, formally conveying a parcel of twenty acres of land, 
 carefully measured and described, to Lockwood Lee Prynne, his heirs 
 and assigns, and all the rest of the legal jargon. This was hardly 
 burned at all. 
   
 Of the two slim packets of letters one was badly charred: parts of it 
 fell away in Roger's hands, as he carefully opened it. I cannot 
 transcribe them literally, or even to any great length, for they are 
 too sad, and no good end would be served by commemorating to what 
 extent that fierce furnace of the Civil War burned away the natural 
 ties of kindred and neighbour and home. Enough that the few remaining 
 members spared out of what must have been a small family cut 
 Margarita's father definitely off from them, in terms no man could 
 have tried with any self-respect to modify. 
 
 
 
 PART 6 CHAPTER XXI (HESTER PRYNNE'S SECRET) Pg 107 
   
 His father, a Northerner, 
 who had identified himself since his Southern marriage with his wife's 
 interests and kinsfolk, had lost touch with his own people, and a few 
 death notices, slipped in among the letters, seemed to point to an 
 almost complete loneliness, which Roger afterward verified. The other 
 packet held two letters only, one in Italian (which language I 
 learned, after a fashion, in order to read it) the other in French. 
 The Italian letter was not only scorched badly, but so blistered--one 
 did not need to ask how--that parts were quite illegible. The writer, 
 a man, evidently, a young man, probably, conveyed in satire so keen, a 
 contempt so bitter, a hatred so remorseless, that it was difficult to 
 believe it a letter from a brother to his sister. Beneath the 
 polished, scornful sentences--vitriol to a tender young heart--surged 
 a tempest of primitive rage that thrust one back into the Renaissance, 
 with its daggers and its smiles. "_Let me tell you, then, once and for 
 all_," ran one sentence, breaking out fiercely, "_that there is but 
 one country on earth which can shelter you and that villain--his own! 
 There I scorn to put my foot or allow the foot of any member of your 
 family, but let him or his victim leave it--and so long as I live my 
 vengeance shall search you out and wipe out this insult to my house, 
 my country and my church!_" The opening page was missing and the last 
 one was badly burned, so we had absolutely no clue as to the family 
 name. 
   
 Roger and I puzzled out enough of it to gather vaguely what the 
 situation must have been, and when we read the second letter it was 
 all clear. This second letter was burned and blistered, too, but its 
 simple, naïve repetitions, its tender terror, its brave, affectionate 
 persistence, left little, even in their fragmentary condition, for us 
 to guess. I will give only a page here and there. 
                                                 
 "_I have tried for four months not to write, but what you told me last 
 has proved too strong for me and I must.... Oh, my dear one, my more 
 than sister in this world, how could you have been permitted this 
 deadly sin? It may be I shall be damned for even this one letter--my 
 only one, for you must not write again. Sister Lisabetta suspects me 
 already, and asked me last week why I should talk with the baker's 
 daughter so secretly? So if she brings another letter I shall tell her 
 to destroy it. Write to me no more._" 
   
 Ah, now we knew! Strange indeed was the blood that ran in Margarita's 
 blue-veined wrist! No light and fleeting passion had brought her into 
 this world. 
   
 ".... _When I remember that it was I who brought you the first letter, 
 I weep for hours. God forgive me, and Our Lady, but I thought it was 
 only some idle nonsense of Sister Dolores--she was always so light, 
 Dolores! They have sent her back to Spain--I know you loved her best! 
 Sister Lisabetta found a bit of your gown caught on the cypress tree. 
 How dared you risk your life so? I swore I knew nothing, nor did I, 
 about what she asked me. The Archbishop came...._" 
   
 I think I see the little figure slipping from bough to bough under the 
 stars, the odour of all the vineyards is in my nostrils, the splashing 
 of the Convent fountain sounds in my ears! 
   
 ".... _I could not sleep at night after that wicked letter of how you 
 love him--how dare you, a vowed nun, write such sinful words? 
 
 
 
 PART 6 CHAPTER XXI (HESTER PRYNNE'S SECRET) Pg 108 
   
 It must 
 be, as they say, wrong to pray for you! Do not try to excuse yourself 
 because your brother devoted you against your will--you were happy 
 till he climbed the tree and saw you! Only Satan can make it so that 
 one wicked look between the eyes should make a man and woman mad 
 for--I will not remember that sinful letter, I will not! Maria, thou 
 art lost!_" 
   
 And so, even as she and Roger looked and could not look away and never 
 after lost each other's eyes, even so, her mother looked at her lover 
 and looking, lost (or so she thought) her soul! The wheel turns ever, 
 as Alif taught me. 
   
 ".... _What good can such a marriage do? No Catholic could marry you, 
 I am sure. It is no marriage. Your brother wrote you the truth. I do 
 not wonder that you will never read or speak an Italian word 
 again--you have disgraced Italy. But as he says, you are no true 
 Italian--your English mother and her Protestant blood has made this 
 horrible thing possible. Her death was a judgment on you._" 
   
 Oh, these cruel, gentle women! And on these breasts we long to lay our 
 heads! 
   
 ".... _I do not wonder that all his countrymen are against him, and 
 that he must live alone all his days. Even in that wild land blasphemy 
 has its deserts, then. But I cannot help being glad for you that his 
 kinswoman will be your servant, for you are ill fitted to grow maize 
 with the painted savages, ma  plus  douce! But how strange that even a 
 distant relative of one so comme  il  faut should be of a sort to do 
 this!_ 
   
 "_Alas, I talk as if I were again of the world! If Raoul had not died, 
 I should have been...._" 
   
 Here the letter was blotted beyond recognition for a whole, closely 
 written page. It must have been tender here, and one sees the poor 
 Maria fairly kissing it to pieces. I was grateful to the writer. 
   
 ".... _That you should be a mother! And soon! I cannot comprehend it. 
 My head swims. Reverend Mother dreamed of you so, suckling it, with a 
 halo around your head, and she awoke in terror and told Sister 
 Lisabetta, who let it out. The devil put it into her dream, to tempt 
 her, Sister Lisabetta says, for she was always too fond of you. She 
 fasted three days and one heard her groaning in the night--she was as 
 white as paper. Oh, Maria, to feel it at one's breast, tugging there! 
 I think I am going mad. Never write again, for I shall never read it, 
 nor know if it is born._" 
   
 Truly God permits strange things. And yet celibacy is as old as 
 civilisation, and the Will to Live has denied itself since first It 
 was conscious. It cannot be pished and pshawed away, by you or me or 
 another. 
   
 "... _I will get this to the baker's daughter, and then when I am sure 
 it is gone, I will confess it all, and whatever penance Reverend 
 Mother puts upon me, I shall be only glad.  
 
 
 
 PART 6 CHAPTER XXI (HESTER PRYNNE'S SECRET) Pg 109 
 It may be I shall be cut 
 off from Our Blessed Lord longer than I can bear, and then I shall 
 die, but I think I shall be forgiven finally, for something tells me 
 so, and until I gave you the letter, that day near the fountain, I 
 cannot think of any very great sin, can you, Maria? We were always 
 good, we three. But now I am alone, for they will never let Dolores 
 back. She grew so thin--my heart ached for her._ 
                                                   
 "_Adieu, adieu--I have tried to hate you, as I ought, but your grey 
 eyes look and look at me in the night, and I feel you tapping my 
 fingers as you used to do--oh, if they will let me I will pray for you 
 every day till I die, and Our Lady will remember that you were always 
 good until he looked at you!_ 
   
 "_For the last time--_ 
   
                                       "_Your Joséphine._" 
   
 Under this letter was hidden a crude little sketch of the cloister-end 
 of some building on a sheet of drawing-paper, and near it, just 
 outside a high wall, a fair outline of a thick cypress. There was 
 nothing else in the box. 
   
 Nor did we ever learn another word or syllable of the life of those 
 two in their lonely cottage. Whether Prynne built it himself or hired 
 labourers for the work we never tried to discover. That he buried 
 himself there with the passion of his lonely life, that these flaming 
 lovers, cast off by God and the world, thought both well lost for what 
 they found in each other, who can doubt? The love she inspired in him 
 I can understand, for I have known her daughter; the love he woke in 
 her, she being what she was, I do not dare to guess. What must that 
 woman's soul have been? What storm of love must have swept her from 
 her cloister-harbour--and on to what rocks, over what eternal depths! 
 Deal gently with her, Church of her betrayal! Forgive her sins, I beg 
 you, for she loved much. 
 
 
 
 PART 6 CHAPTER XXII (FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK) Pg 110 
   
 I find to my surprise that these rambling chapters, intended, in the 
 first place, as a sort of study of Margarita's development under the 
 shock of applied civilisation, have grown rather into a chronicle of 
 family history, a detail of tiny intimate events and memories that 
 must surely disappoint Dr. M----l, at whose urgent instance they were 
 undertaken. Margarita was, indeed, at that time, a fit subject for the 
 thoughtful scientist, and hardly one of her conversations with her 
 friends but would serve as a text for some learned psychological 
 dissertation. But it would have been hard, even for a stony _savant_, 
 to dissect that adorable personality! The points that I had intended 
 to discuss are lost, I find, in her smile; the interest of her 
 relations with the world, as it burst upon her in all its 
 complications and problems, a grown woman, but ignorant as a savage 
 and innocent as a child, is as nothing beside the interest of her 
 relations with us who formed for so long her little special world. 
 However, I cannot offer my scientist nor his distinguished colleague, 
 Professor J----s, a mere tangle of personal reminiscences, so I must 
 try to recall, as accurately as may be, the circumstances of 
 Margarita's introduction to orthodox Christianity. At Miss Jencks's 
 earnest petition Roger, who had grown really attached--as had we 
 all--to the good creature, had finally yielded and allowed her to 
 impart the outline of the New Testament story to her charge. I found 
 her later, a moist handkerchief crumpled in her hand and a tiny worn 
 leather volume on her lap. 
   
 "It didn't do, then?" I inquired sympathetically, for her plain, 
 competent face was more disturbed by grief than I had ever seen it. 
   
 "Mr. Jerrolds," she demanded seriously, "_do you think she has a 
 soul?_ Of course that is wrong," she added hastily, "and I should not 
 say such a thing, but do you know she treats it just like any other 
 story? It means nothing to her. She has no respect for the most sacred 
 things, Mr. Jerrolds!" 
   
 "But how could she have, dear Miss Jencks?" I urged gently. "They are 
 not sacred to her, you must remember. She is what you would call a 
 heathen, you know." 
   
 Miss Jencks folded her handkerchief thoughtfully. 
   
 "Yes, I know," she began, "but think, Mr. Jerrolds, think how gladly, 
 how gratefully the heathen receive the Gospel! I shall never forget 
 how the missionary described it that dined with the Governor-General 
 once. It was in Lent, I remember, and the poor man regretted that it 
 should be, he had eaten fish so steadily in the Islands! It was only 
 necessary for him to tell the simple Gospel story, and it won them 
 directly." 
   
 I bowed silently--it was at once the least and the most that I could 
 do. 
   
 "And more than that, Mr. Jerrolds," the good woman continued, 
 unburdening herself, clearly, of the results of many days of thought, 
 "look at those wonderful conversions in the slums! Look what this 
 Salvation Army is doing! The Governor-General used to say they were 
 vulgar and that it was all claptrap, but that never seemed to me quite 
 fair. We must have left something undone, we and the Dissenters, Mr. 
 Jerrolds, if this General B----h can reach people we have lost. Isn't 
 that so?" 
   
 To this I agreed heartily, and after a moment she went on. 
   
 "Why, the roughest, vilest men weep like children when they understand 
 Our Lord's sacrifice, Mr. Jerrolds, and what it did for them, and 
 surely if they, thieves and drunkards and--and worse, can be so 
 touched, Mrs. Bradley...." 
   
 "Perhaps," I suggested as gently as I could, "it is just because Mrs. 
 Bradley is neither a thief nor a drunkard nor worse, dear Miss Jencks, 
 that she does not feel the necessity for weeping. 
 
 
 
 PART 6 CHAPTER XXII (FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK) Pg 111 
   
 The emotionalism of 
 the convert is a curious thing, and the sense of sin together with 
 vague memories of that Story, connected with childhood and childhood's 
 innocence, may produce a state of mind responsible for a great deal 
 that we could hardly expect from Mrs. Bradley." 
   
 "But we are all sinners, Mr. Jerrolds!" Again I bowed. 
   
 "Surely you believe this, Mr. Jerrolds?" 
   
 "I should not care for the task of convincing Mrs. Bradley of it," I 
 replied dexterously. 
   
 "That was the trouble," she admitted mournfully. "I told her about 
 Adam and Eve, but she said that whatever they had done was no affair 
 of hers, and it could not be wrong to eat apples, anyway, she told me, 
 they were so good for the voice." 
   
 I choked a little here. 
   
 "She is very literal," I said hastily, "and the apple has symbolised 
 discord in more than one mythology." 
   
 "I showed her that beautiful picture of the Crucifixion," Miss Jencks 
 added in a low, troubled voice, "and do you know, Mr. Jerrolds, she 
 refused to look at it or hear about it as soon as she understood! She 
 said it was an ugly story and the picture made her hands cold. She 
 said it could do no good to kill anyone because _she_ had done wrong. 
 'Religion is too bloody, Miss Jencks,' she said. 'I do not think I 
 like it. If I were you I should try to forget it.' Isn't it terrible, 
 Mr. Jerrolds?" 
   
 Poor Barbara Jencks! You were an Englishwoman and it was twenty years 
 ago! 
   
 "Leave thou thy sister when she prays," says the poet, and with all 
 due respect for his presumable nobility of intention, it is certainly 
 the easiest course to pursue! I left Miss Jencks. 
   
 She followed me a little later, however, and told me that she was not 
 entirely without hopes, for Margarita had been greatly taken with the 
 Revelation of St. John the Divine, and had committed to memory whole 
 chapters of it, with incredible rapidity, saying that it would make 
 beautiful music. That very evening she sang it to us, or rather, 
 chanted it, striking chords of inexpressible dignity and beauty on the 
 piano--the pure Gregorian--by way of accompaniment. It was impossible 
 that she could have heard such chords, for she had never attended a 
 church service in her life and such intervals formed no part of her 
 vocal instruction. 
   
 Afterward, I read Ecclesiastes to her, and she did the same thing with 
 it, saying that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever 
 heard--she did not care for Shakespeare, by the way, then or later. 
 Tip Elder came to us for a week at that time, and the tears stood in 
 the honest fellow's eyes as Margarita, her head thrown back, her own 
 eyes fixed and sombre, her rich, heart-shaking voice vibrating like a 
 tolling bell, sent out to us in her lovely, clear-cut enunciation the 
 preacher's warning. 
   
 _Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil 
 days come not...._ 
 
 
 
 PART 6 CHAPTER XXII (FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK) Pg 112 
   
   
 Oh, the poetry of it, the ageless beauty! 
   
 _Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken...._ 
   
 Her voice was grave, like a boy's, and yet how rich with subtle 
 promises! It was mellow, like a woman's, but not mellow from 
 bruising--the only way, Mme. M----i told me once. Those poor women! 
   
 _Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit 
 shall return unto God who gave it._ 
   
 I can see her now ... there are those, I know, who have guessed my 
 poor secret, and who wonder that I do not "console myself," in the 
 silly phrase of the day. How could I? The twitter of the Hawaiian 
 girls is like that of the beach-birds in my ears, after that 
 golden-ivory voice! 
   
 It was in October, I think, that she began to grow restless. Roger was 
 full of plans for the coming winter, and had even gone so far as to 
 all but complete the formalities of renting a house in New York, when 
 she startled us all by inquiring of me when I intended to start for 
 Italy. 
   
 "For I am coming with you," she concluded placidly. 
   
 "I'm afraid not, _chérie_," said Roger, "I must get to work, you know. 
 You can take lessons in New York, all you want." 
   
 "But I do not care to go to New York," she returned quietly. "I like 
 Paris better. I need not nurse the baby, now, and I can sing a great 
 deal. Jerry can take me." 
   
 "Mr. Bradley means he must be in New York to continue his professional 
 career, dear Mrs. Bradley," Miss Jencks interposed, "and you must go 
 with him, of course." 
   
 "Why?" asked Margarita. 
   
 "Because a wife's place is by her husband," said Miss Jencks, after a 
 pause which neither Roger nor I volunteered to fill. 
   
 "But why?" Margarita inquired again. "_I_ cannot do Roger's 
 pro--professional career!" 
   
 "No, my dear, but you can help him greatly in it," Miss Jencks 
 instructed placidly (she was invaluable, was Barbara, when it was a 
 matter of proper platitude, which flowed from her lips with the ease 
 of water from a tap--and she believed it, too!) "a man needs a woman 
 in his home. Her influence--" 
   
 "Yes, I know, you have told me that before. But you could stay with 
 Roger, Miss Jencks, and be that influence," said Margarita sweetly, 
 "and I could go with Jerry." Was she impish, or only ingenuous, I 
 wonder? One could never tell. 
   
 "How about the baby?" Roger demanded cheerfully. 
 
 
 
 PART 6 CHAPTER XXII (FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK) Pg 113 
   
   
 "I am not going to nurse it any more," said the mother of little Mary 
 quietly. "Madame said I had better stop it now--it will be better for 
 my voice. So it will not need me. Dolledge knows all about taking care 
 of it." 
   
 "But, my dear, are you sure it will be good for Mary not to nurse her? 
 She is not six months old, you know," Miss Jencks suggested mildly. 
   
 Margarita leaned her round chin into the cup of her hands and gazed 
 thoughtfully at her mentor. 
   
 "Then why do you not nurse her, dear Miss Jencks?" she asked. 
   
 At this Roger and I left the room hastily. I am unable to state what 
 the late directress of the Governor-General's family said or did! 
   
 It was the next day, I remember, that I was called to New York on 
 business connected with my mother's small affairs, and while there I 
 was greatly surprised and not a little amused to receive a telegram 
 from Roger asking me to engage passage for himself, Margarita, Miss 
 Jencks, Dolledge and the baby, on my own boat, if possible, if not, to 
 change my sailing to fit theirs. It is only fair to say that Sears, 
 Bradley and Sears had recently become involved in a complicated 
 lawsuit of international interests and importance, and Roger took some 
 pains to inform me of the very handsome retaining-fee which his 
 knowledge of the workings of English law combined with his proficiency 
 in French quite justified him in accepting in consideration of his 
 giving the greater part of his time to this case--a case almost 
 certain to drag through the winter and require his presence in London 
 and his constant correspondence with Paris. 
   
 I received this information as gravely as he offered it, but, to use 
 his own phrase, I reserved my decision as to whether the lack of that 
 same international case would have kept the Bradley ménage in New 
 York. 
   
        *       *       *       *       * 
   
 I stayed in Paris long enough to see Margarita and wee Mary, with 
 their respective guardians, installed comfortably and charmingly in 
 the _Rue Marboeuf_, bade Roger god-speed across the Channel (I could 
 tell from the set of his shoulders how he would plunge into the work 
 there and how well-earned would be his flying trips Parisward!) and 
 then struck south into Italy, bent on a private errand of my own. 
   
 This was nothing less than the tracing, if possible, of Margarita's 
 Italian ancestry, a mission, needless to say, laid upon me by no one, 
 as she knew nothing of this and Roger, apparently, cared less. My 
 reasons for undertaking this search, which I well knew might prove 
 endless and was almost sure to be long, were a little obscure, even to 
 myself, but I now believe them to have sprung principally from my 
 smouldering rage against Sarah Bradley and her ugly insinuations--a 
 subject I have not dwelt upon in this narrative. But I have thought 
 much of it, and I believe now that my vow was registered from the hour 
 of the finding of the dispatch box which solved one-half of the 
 problem. 
 
 
 
 PART 6 CHAPTER XXII (FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK) Pg 114 
   
   
 Sue Paynter was of great assistance to me here, and by judicious 
 questionings of Mother Bradley at the Convent and artless suggestions 
 and allusions when with the other good nuns, to whom she was honestly 
 attached and whom she often visited, she actually procured for me a 
 few vague clues, breathless rumours of those tragedies that rear, now 
 and then, their jagged, warning heads above the smooth pools of 
 cloister life. News travels fast and far among those quiet retreats; 
 some system of mysterious telegraphy links Rome and Quebec and New 
 York, and it was not without the name of a tiny town or two tucked 
 away in my mind and at least three noble families jotted down on the 
 inside cover of my bank-book that I started on my wild-goose chase. 
   
 They were, however, quite useless. Two of the noble families had held 
 no greater sinner than a postulant whose ardour had cooled during her 
 novitiate, and the third had paid for what was at best (or worst) a 
 slight indiscretion with a broken spirit and rapidly failing health. 
 It required no great exercise of detective powers to beg the genial 
 little doctor of each tiny neighbourhood for Italian lessons and I 
 learned more than his language from each. They were veritable hoards 
 of gossip and information of all sorts, and my ever ready and 
 unsuspected note-book held more than verb-contractions and strange 
 vagaries of local idiom. 
   
 It was from none of these, however, that I got my first clue, but from 
 the boatman who took me out at sunset for the idle, lovely hour that I 
 love best in Italy and which her name always brings before me. 
 Rafaello was a big, burned creature, beautiful as Antinöus and as 
 simple and faithful as a dog. He took a huge delight in teaching me 
 all the quaint terms of his fisher dialect, and many a deep argument 
 have we held, I gazing into the burning sulphur of the clouds, he with 
 mobile features flashing and classic brown fingers never still, while 
 he expounded to me his strange, half pagan, half Christian fatalism. 
 He was of the South, "well toward the Boot Heel, signore," but Love, 
 the master mariner, had driven him out of his course and brought him 
 within fifty miles of Rome to court a fickle beauty of the hills, 
 whose brother had come down for the wood-cutting and was friendly to 
 his suit. 
   
 "These marsh people are a poor sort," said Rafaello contemptuously. 
 "Not that I would take a wife from them, God forbid! Here they have 
 great tracts, with buffalo and wild pig--yes, I have seen them myself, 
 rooting through the wild oak--but have they the brains to invite the 
 foreign _signori_ to hunt there and earn fortunes by it? No. Have they 
 even strength to cut their own timber? Again, no. They lie and shiver 
 with malaria. Not that they are not a little better now," he admitted, 
 shifting the sail so that we looked toward the headlands of Sardinia, 
 a cloud of lateens drifting like gnats between, "now they are 
 ploughing on the plains, the boats are out, the bullocks are busy, and 
 the wind is putting a little strength into the poor creatures. I swear 
 the best man among them is an old woman I took across in my _felucca_ 
 to pleasure my girl's brother--she tended him once when he chopped 
 through his foot near her hut just on the edge of the hills. Seventy 
 years, or nearly, and tough and wiry yet, and can help neatly with a 
 boat. And money laid by, too, but is she idle? Never. She spins her 
 hemp and weaves osiers into baskets and changes them for goats' hams. 
 That with _polenta_ keeps her all winter--and well, too. 
 
 
 
 PART 6 CHAPTER XXII (FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK) Pg 115 
   
 She is very 
 close. The money, no one knows where it came from." 
                                                          
 [Illustration: SHE SPINS HER HEMP AND WEAVES OSIERS INTO BASKETS AND 
 CHANGES THEM FOR GOATS' HAMS] 
   
 Thus Rafaello babbled on, steering cleverly and suddenly into one of 
 the vast, unhealthy lagoons that shelter so many of the winged winter 
 visitors of Italy--visitors unrecorded in the hotels, unnoted by the 
 guides, but of greater interest than many tourists. 
   
 I, listening idly to him, caught my breath at the flight of flaming, 
 rosy flamingoes that lighted inland, just beyond us, miracles of 
 flower-like beauty. 
   
 "From Egypt, _excellenz'_: They are not due till November, but the 
 winter will be cold and they started early. In March they will start 
 back. Why? How should I know? Who sends the wild duck, for that 
 matter? I have seen a half-mile of them at one flight bound for this 
 place. It may be the good God warns them and they go." 
   
 "It may be, Rafaello." 
   
 "But then, _excellenz'_, does he send the brown water-hens, too, and 
 if so, why not tell them of the young nobleman whom I brought here to 
 shoot only last week? Is it likely God did not know I would bring him? 
 Of course not." 
   
 "Perhaps they know, but must go, nevertheless," I ventured, and we 
 were silent and thoughtful. Did they? Did they fly, helpless, to their 
 death, bound by some fatal certainty? Was Alif right, and is it 
 written for us all? 
   
 "That young Roman was very generous," Rafaello resumed after a while. 
 "A few more like him, and she will think twice before she refuses 
 again. How I bear it, I can't tell. Pettish she is, certainly, but oh, 
 _signore_, lovely, lovely, like _un angiolin'_! It was from a 
 nobleman--a foreigner, anyway, I suppose it is all one--that old 
 'Cina got her money, Lippo thinks. He hunted, too, Lippo says, and 
 'Cina's brother waited on him--he came from these parts. He took her 
 brother north with him afterward, and well he did, too, for not many 
 good Catholics would help him in what he did, and that brother was 
 wicked enough, I suppose. She has little enough religion herself, the 
 old woman--they say her money is for making peace with the church. For 
 when it comes to the last rattle in the throat, _excellenz'_, the 
 boldest is glad of a little help," said Rafaello knowingly. 
   
 Night was on us now, and I, well knowing that the air was poisonous 
 for me, could not bring myself to order the boat home. There, while 
 Perseus burned above us and off toward Rome Orion hung steady as a 
 lamp in a shrine, I lost myself in strange, deep thinking, and the 
 marshes were the desert for me and Alif and Rafaello were the same, 
 and I--who was I? What was I? 
   
 "The _signore_ sleeps?" the man inquired timidly. "I think it is not 
 good to sleep here. Shall we go back?" 
   
 "I'm not sleeping, Rafaello, but I suppose we'd better turn. 
 
 
 
 PART 6 CHAPTER XXII (FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK) Pg 116 
   
 I heard 
 all you said. And what had this wicked foreigner done?" 
   
 "He stole a nun out of a holy convent, _excellenz'_," said Rafaello in 
 a low voice. 
   
 I felt my heart jump. 
   
 "Near here?" I asked, as carelessly as I could. 
   
 "Oh, no, far away--I do not know. Nobody knows. It was only 'Cina and 
 his sister came from here. Mother of God, does the _signore_ think any 
 woman born hereabouts would have blood enough for that? Look you, 
 _signore_, she climbed down a tree and went with him in the night! A 
 professed nun! Oh, no doubt she is burning now, that one! For no woman 
 need take the veil, that is plain, but once taken, one is as good as 
 married to God himself, and then to take a man after! Oh, no. She is 
 certainly burning," concluded Rafaello with simple conviction. 
   
 "But I thought you said she was alive and made baskets," I said, 
 persistently stupid. 
   
 "No, no, the _signore_ misunderstands. That is 'Cina, who went with 
 her when they sailed away, being sent for by her brother. The wicked 
 one died, of course, and 'Cina came back with all the money. She 
 nearly died, herself, on the great ship. She ate nothing--not a bite 
 nor a scrap--for four days, she was so sick." 
   
 "He was an Englishman, I suppose?" 
   
 "No. From the _signore's_ country. Not, of course, that they are all 
 like that," Rafaello added politely, "but the truth must be told, he 
 was." 
   
 Now it was that my studies in Italian temperament came to my 
 assistance quite as strongly as my knowledge of the rough fisher 
 _patois_. The Italian must not be questioned nor know that anything of 
 interest or importance hangs on his answer. Even as the Oriental he 
 must be handled guilefully, and it was with a guileful yawn that I 
 dismissed the subject. 
   
 "It takes an Italian to believe that wild story, Rafaello," I said. 
 "I'm afraid your old 'Cina was teasing Lippo. It all sounds fishy to 
 
 Are we nearly in? I feel cold." 
 
   
 "Indeed no, _signore_, it is the truth. (We shall be in in eight 
 minutes by the _signore's_ watch.) 'Cina will never again speak to an 
 Englishman or--or one from the _signore's_ country. It is a vow. She 
 would die first. Lippo got a chance for her to stand at her spinning 
 for a crazy Englishman to paint in a picture--good money for it, 
 too!--and she spat in his face. Perhaps the _signore_ will believe 
 that?" 
   
 Again I yawned. 
   
 "Those stories mean nothing," I said, quivering with impatience. "They 
 are but as old legends without names--and dates and places. Old women 
 like 'Cina never can give those names and dates and places.  
 
 
 
 PART 6 CHAPTER XXII (FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK) Pg 117 
   
 They do 
 not know if it was ten or twenty or fifty years ago, nor if the man 
 were Austrian or English, or the woman Italian or French or Spanish. 
 Pin them down, and they begin to make excuses. But I don't know why we 
 discuss it--it is not very interesting, even if it is true. 
 Nevertheless, and because you seem offended, Rafaello, and I merely 
 want to show you that I am right, I will cheerfully give a good 
 English sovereign to you or Lippo or the old woman herself, if she can 
 so much as tell you the name of this famous nun and the name of her 
 seducer. You will find she cannot, and then, since I am willing to 
 wager something, you must take me for a fishing-trip free a whole day, 
 in the _felucca_. Is it a bargain?" 
   
 His teeth gleamed as he swore it was a bargain and I watched him 
 bustle off from the quay with an excitement I had not felt since my 
 recovery. What would he discover--for that he would discover something 
 I did not doubt. What was Margarita's mother? Some fisher girl, whose 
 father had won an English lady's-maid with his flashing smile? Some 
 little shopkeeper's daughter? Child, perhaps, of some sprig of 
 nobility, caught by a pair of cool, grey English eyes? I did not know, 
 but I felt certain that the old 'Cina did. 
   
 I cannot linger too long over this part of my story, drawn out already 
 far beyond my idle scheme, and enough is said when I tell you that the 
 name brought me by the childishly triumphant Rafaello opened my eyes 
 and pursed my lips into an amazed whistle. 
   
 Our little Margarita! Here was something to startle even steady old 
 Roger. Only a few names in Italy are worthy to stand beside the 
 splendid if impoverished House forced by pride to place its unwedded 
 (because undowered) daughter in the convent that needs no _dot_. 
 Obscure in financial realms alone, it required little search to put my 
 finger on the epitaph of that brother of the cruel letter (a Cardinal 
 before his death), on the father's pictured cruel face--he scorned to 
 eat with the mushroom Romanoffs!--on the carved door-posts where 
 Emperors had entered in the great Italian days, even on the gorgeous 
 sculptured mantel-piece sold by Margarita's grandfather, an impetuous 
 younger brother at the time of his mad marriage with an English 
 beauty, whirled from the stage, whose brightest ornament contemporary 
 record believed she was destined to become, had he not literally 
 carried her, panting, from the scene of her first triumph. 
   
 [Illustration: THE GLOOMY, FADED GLORIES OF THE MUSTY PALACE] 
   
 Some idea of the relentless iron hands that tamed that brilliant, 
 baffled creature--and hers was the only strain in Margarita that 
 genius need be called on to vindicate!--I won from the old caretaker, 
 a family retainer, who showed me, on a proper day, over the gloomy, 
 faded glories of the musty palace. She was always heretic at heart, 
 the old gossip mumbled, with furtive glances from my gold piece to the 
 pictured lords above her, as if afraid they would revenge themselves 
 for this tittle-tattle, heretic and light. A servant or a duke, a 
 flower-seller or His Eminence, all was one to her crazy English 
 notions. And the truth--how the mad creature told it! Blurted it out 
 to everyone, so that they had to keep her shut up, finally. And would 
 have her dogs about her--eating like Christians! And no money, when 
 all was said. _Her children?_ Four sons, all dead now, and their souls 
 with Christ--one, of the Sacred College.  
 
 
 
 PART 6 CHAPTER XXII (FATE LAUGHS AND BAITS HER HOOK) Pg 118 
   
 Never a generation without 
 the red hat, thank God. No daughters. _Not so much as one?_ Why should 
 there be? Some were spared daughters, when there was no money, and a 
 blessing, too. 
   
 _What figure had been cut from that group of four youths, cut so that 
 a small hand that grasped a cup-and-ball showed plainly against one 
 brother's sleeve?_ She did not know--how should she? Perhaps a cousin. 
 It was painted by a famous Englishman and kept because it might bring 
 money some day. _Then why cut it?_ How should she know? There were no 
 daughters and the hour was up. Would the _signore_ follow her? 
   
 And Sarah was alarmed for the Bradley blood! Sarah feared for the 
 pollution of that sacred fluid derived from English yeomen (at best), 
 filtered through the middle-class expatriates of a nation itself 
 hopelessly middle class beside the pure strain of a race of kings that 
 was old and majestically forgotten ere Romulus was dreamed of! Back, 
 back through those mysterious Etruscans, back to the very gods 
 themselves, an absolutely unbroken line, stretched the forefathers of 
 Margarita. Long before Bethlehem meant more than any other obscure 
 village, long before its Mystic Babe began there his Stations of the 
 Cross and brought to an end at Calvary the sacrifice that sent his 
 agents overseas to civilise the savage Britons and make those 
 middle-class yeomen possible, Margarita's ancestors had forgotten more 
 gods than these agents displaced and had long ceased their own bloody 
 and nameless sacrifices to an elder Jupiter than ever Paul knew. 
 Etruscan galleys swarmed the sea, Etruscan bronze and gold were 
 weaving into lovely lines, Etruscan bowls were lifted to luxurious and 
 lovely lips at sumptuous feasts, in a gorgeous ritual, before the 
 natives of a certain foggy island had advanced to blue-woad 
 decoration! Her people's tombs lie calm and contemptuous under the 
 loose, friable soil of that tragic land that has suffered Roman, 
 Persian and Goth alike (wilt thou ever rise up again, O Mater 
 Dolorosa? Is the circle nearly complete? Would that I might see thee 
 in the rising!) they lie, too, under the angular and reclining forms 
 of many a British spinster tourist, panoplied in Baedeker and 
 stout-soled boots, large of tooth and long of limb, eating her 
 sandwiches over the cool and placid vaults where the stone seats and 
 biers, the black and red pottery, the inimitable golden jewelry, the 
 casques and shields of gold, the ivory and enamel, the amber and the 
 amulets, lie waiting the inevitable Teutonic antiquary. The very ashes 
 of the great Lucomo prince and chieftain lying below this worthy if 
 somewhat unseductive female would fade in horror away into the air, if 
 one of his gods, Vertumnus, perhaps, or one of the blessed Dioscuri, 
 should offer him such a companion or hint to him that the creature was 
 of the same species as the round-breasted lovelinesses that sport upon 
 the frescoes of his tomb, among the lotus flowers. 
   
 Poor Sarah--I can forgive her when I consider the pathos of her. 
 
 
 
 PART 7 (IN WHICH THE RIVER LEAPS A SUDDEN CLIFF AND BECOMES A CATARACT) CHAPTER XXIII (FATE SPREADS HER NET) Pg 119 
   
     Ay cross your brow and cross your breast 
       For never again ye'll smile, Sir Hugh! 
     Ye flouted them that loved ye best, 
       Now ye must drink as ye did brew. 
   
     Syne she was warm against your side, 
       And now she's singing the rising moon, 
     She'll float in on the floating tide, 
       And ye'll hold her soon and ye'll lose her soon! 
   
 _Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden._ 
   
                                        PARIS, March 4th, 188-- 
   
      JERRY DEAR: 
   
      Frederick died here a week ago. His heart, you know, was 
      never very good, and the strain of his last concerts was too 
      much for him. They were very successful, and just before I 
      came over, the poor fellow had sent me--in one of his 
      periodical fits of reform, _Dieu merci!_--some beautiful 
      jewels, chains, aigrettes and a gorgeous diamond collar, 
      begging me to sell them, but on no account to wear them, as 
      if I would! I sold them pretty well--it's all for the 
      babies, you know. Poor Frederick--I'm not sure his reforms 
      were not the hardest to bear! 
   
      He has been for so long so less than nothing to me that the 
      sense of freedom is startling. I'm glad I came as soon as I 
      heard he was sinking--it was not so very sudden. I was with 
      him to the last, and the strangest people came to see 
      him--it was tragically funny. He seemed just like a poor, 
      disreputable brother to me, and nothing mattered, really, 
      except to get him what little comfort one could. 
   
      I brought the children over, and I think we shall stay here 
      indefinitely. I have a nice little _appartement_ not too far 
      from the Bradleys, though, of course, I couldn't afford to 
      live there! and such a dear, sensible bonne (_à tout faire_, 
      of course) who gets the children into the park every day for 
      me when I'm busy. For I am very seriously busy, and how, do 
      you think? I wrote a long, gossippy letter to Alice Carter 
      who loves _chiffons_, poor soul, though Madam Bradley 
      doesn't give her many, telling her what was being worn and 
      where, and how, and gave her a little account of a 
      fashionable _fête_ that a friend of mine had described to 
      me, and the dear creature actually took the trouble of 
      copying it, omitting personalities, of course, and showing 
      it to a friend of Walter's, an amazing young man who is 
      starting some woman's magazine with a phenomenal 
      circulation, already. He offered her a really good price for 
      it and said if I would do the same kind of letter every 
      month, he would pay one hundred dollars for each one--five 
      hundred _francs_! Of course I accepted, and now I spend two 
      days a week in the shops, getting ideas and making sketches. 
      You see I am a business woman, really, Jerry. I have always 
      believed that plenty of women would do better at their 
      husband's business, and let them hire housekeepers or attend 
      to the house themselves! Look at the French women! 
   
      It seems so good to be here--it always agreed with me, _la 
      belle France_, and the children seem well, too--for them. 
      Little Susy really has some colour. They are especially fond 
      of the _Parc Monceau_, and this charming out-of-door life 
      that is so easy here will do wonders for them, I'm sure. 
      That east wind of Boston--ugh, how I loathe it! 
   
      I feel so busy and so self-respecting--independence agrees 
      with me. You see, with my few hundreds from father, and 
      these letters, and the little income Roger got for me, with 
      the principal put away for the children, I shall do very 
      well indeed and owe "nothing to nobody." And when Susy gets 
      old enough, I'm going to have her taught something--trade or 
      profession, _n'importe!_--that will make her as independent 
      as I am to-day. I think it is criminal not to. Then she 
      needn't marry unless she wants to. 
   
      I wonder if you realise how many women marry to get away 
      from home? Few men do, I imagine. It's not particularly 
      flattering to you, _messieurs_, but it's the truth. I had 
      four sisters, and I know! 
   
      You have heard, I suppose, that Margarita is actually in 
      training for the opera? It was very exciting--Mme. M----i is 
      really at the bottom of it, I think, though everybody agrees 
      with her to this extent: the child really has extraordinary 
      talent, and with her face and figure will be sure of 
      success, one would think. Of course her voice is not 
      phenomenal--I doubt if it is big enough for the New York 
      opera house. How Frederick used to rail at that building! 
      They wanted him to play there once, you know, at some big 
      benefit. He always said no respectable human voice could be 
      judged there--it seems the acoustics is wrong. But it is an 
      exceptionally fine voice, nevertheless, and so pure and 
      unspoiled. She had nothing to unlearn, literally, and her 
      acting, Madame says, is superb. She can memorise anything, 
      and in such a short time! 
   
      But for a Bradley! Madame is furious that she is married. 
      There are plenty to have babies and live in America, she 
      says, without her little Marguerite! _M. le mari_ does not 
      appreciate what a jewel he wishes to shut up, she says--but 
      I am not so sure of that! 
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXIII (FATE SPREADS HER NET) Pg 120 
   
 Whether he is really going to let 
      her or is only humouring her, I don't know. It is rather an 
      embarrassing situation, _au fond_, because you know what she 
      is--calm, lovely, enchanting--what you will, but absolutely 
      immovable! Reasoning has no effect upon her, and then, to 
      tell the truth, she has reasons of her own. Her desire for 
      this is very strong, and her affection for Roger is not 
      strong enough, apparently, to make her sacrifice herself. Do 
      you think she has any soul, really? I mean, what we 
      understand by that--something that takes more than two years 
      of ordinary life to grow. Passionate, yes. Intelligent, yes. 
      But a real soul? _Je m' en doute._ 
                               
      "Of course I love Roger, Sue," she said to me, "but why 
      should I not do what I want to just because I love him? I 
      can love him and sing, too." 
   
      Then Miss Jencks advances to the fray, with pleasant 
      platitudes about giving up what we like for those we love. 
   
      "But Roger loves me, too," says _la Margarita_--"why does he 
      not give up what _he_ likes because he loves me?" 
   
      Tableau! _Que faire alors?_ 
   
      It is really rather complicated, I think, Jerry, though you 
      will probably not agree with me, when I explain what I mean. 
      I have done a great deal of thinking in the years since my 
      marriage--I have been forced to. Things which would never 
      have occurred to me, never come into my horizon if, for 
      instance, I had married Roger; things which would never, I 
      can see, be likely to come into the horizon of the happily 
      (and prosperously) married, have come to me and I have been 
      obliged, in my poor way, to philosophise over them. 
   
      Have you ever read Ibsen's play, the "Doll's House"? I don't 
      think it has been acted in America, and probably won't be, 
      unless, perhaps, in Boston. But get it and read it. It is to 
      show that a woman is a personality, aside from her family 
      relations, and must live her life, finally, herself. At 
      least, so I understand it. It is to be acted in London soon, 
      and I am going to try to see it--the theatre seems to mean 
      so much more, this side the water! One really takes it 
      seriously, somehow, along with the other arts. But then, 
      there is no duty on art here! 
   
      Will you tell me, Jerry, why, if Margarita really is an 
      artist and has a great gift, she should not use it? It may 
      not be what would best please her husband (and you know, 
      Jerry, I would cut off my hand for Roger! But I must say 
      what I think) but if she sees a career open to her of fame, 
      money and satisfaction, why should the fact of her marriage 
      prevent it? As far as fame goes, she could be better known 
      than Roger; as far as money goes, she could almost certainly 
      earn more than he can; as far as what _Nora_, in the play I 
      spoke of, calls "her duties towards herself," she could 
      surely develop more fully.  
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXIII (FATE SPREADS HER NET) Pg 121 
   
 That is, if it is necessary for a 
      woman to develop herself fully in any but the physical 
      sense--and isn't it? 
   
      It is all very perplexing and I do so wish it had happened 
      to any one but Roger! He is much hurt, I know, though he 
      conceals it well, of course, in his quiet, steadfast sort of 
      way. What a man he is! He would never be willing, I am sure, 
      to go back to his profession in New York and leave Margarita 
      alone in Europe, exposed to all the temptations and scandal 
      and dangers that seem almost inevitable in the life she is 
      preparing for. They might as well be completely and legally 
      separated, in that case. He has money enough without 
      practising law, of course, but he would never be idle--he 
      loves his work--and as for hanging about as her business 
      manager--I wish you could have seen his face when Madame 
      suggested it! I explained to her it was not precisely the 
      sort of thing his family were accustomed to do. She can't 
      understand it, of course--she has the French idea of a 
      lawyer. When I told her that Mr. Bradley was really _vrai 
      propriétaire_ and well-to-do aside from his practice, she 
      had more respect for him. 
   
      "Then he will not need to occupy himself," she said 
      triumphantly, "and all the better. Let him rent an estate 
      and live _en gentilhomme_!" 
   
      She has promised to go back to America for the summer for 
      two months--she can learn her _rôles_ there, she says, and 
      Roger wants to go. _Eh bien!_ We shall have to wait. 
   
      The child is beautiful--so strong and well, and so 
      ridiculously the image of Roger. She is trying to stand 
      now--think of it! My poor little rats were two years old 
      before they could. 
   
                                  _A vous toujours_, 
   
                                              SUE. 
   
   
                          [FROM MY ATTORNEYS] 
   
                      SEARS, BRADLEY AND SEARS, 
   
                  Attorneys and Counsellors-at-Law. 
   
 Cable Address, Valleshta. 
   
                   2-- COURT STREET, BOSTON, MASS. 
   
                                           March 10th, 188-- 
   
          WINFRED JERROLDS, Esq., 
   
            Cf., Coutts Bros., 
   
              Cairo, Egypt. 
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXIII (FATE SPREADS HER NET) Pg 122 
   
      DEAR SIR: 
   
      Pursuant to our letters to you of six weeks ago, we had our 
      Mr. James go to the North Carolina plantation to investigate 
      and report on the property. He was almost at once approached 
      with offers to buy the property on terms which surprised 
      him. He communicated with us and we took the responsibility 
      of sending one of our best mining experts to look over the 
      ground. We found that Pittsburg men had been making heavy 
      purchases of land a few miles west across the range and had 
      also been buying tracts adjacent to your lands both north 
      and south; they had also had a party of engineers all over 
      your lands under the guise of a fishing party. 
   
      The expert, Mr. Minton, reported that he found heavy 
      outcroppings of coal on both sides of the valley, of 
      excellent steaming quality. The veins apparently extend 
      through your lands into the higher lands north and south of 
      yours. West of you but a few miles these Pittsburg people 
      have acquired large bodies of iron ore. But the most 
      important fact of all is that the valley is the most 
      practical route for a railroad across the range west of you, 
      from the coast to the iron lands already mentioned, for many 
      miles in either direction. 
   
      We have been negotiating for three weeks with these 
      Pittsburg people and they have finally made us an offer 
      which we enclose. Briefly, it amounts to $300,000 in five 
      per cent. mortgage bonds, $250,000 in stock (this of 
      problematic value) and a royalty of ten cents per ton on all 
      coal mined on your lands, with an agreement to mine at least 
      50,000 tons annually until your coal measures are 
      practically exhausted. 
   
      In view of your unwillingness to come here and yourself 
      engineer a rival development company, not to speak of the 
      difficulty of enlisting adequate capital in the face of the 
      purchases already made by our Pittsburg friends, we think 
      you cannot do better than accept this offer. Whether we can 
      get as good an one later is doubtful. We have promised an 
      answer by cable from you within three days of your receipt 
      of this letter. 
   
      Congratulating you on these most fortunate discoveries, we 
      remain, 
   
                              Yours very respectfully, 
   
                                SEARS, BRADLEY AND SEARS. 
   
   
                            [FROM TIP ELDER] 
   
                                       UNIVERSITY CLUB, NEW YORK, 
   
                                                March 20th, 188-- 
   
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXIII (FATE SPREADS HER NET) Pg 123 
      DEAR JERRY: 
   
      I needn't say how hearty my congratulations are on your good 
      luck, need I? What a hit that was! And what a fine use you 
      are making of it, too! Of course I'll help all I can. I must 
      hurry to catch this mail-boat, so I will just cut short and 
      merely say that Latham and Waite, of Union Square, seem to 
      have put in the best bid for the work and I have told them 
      to send you the detailed budget and contracts as soon as 
      they can get them ready. They have connections with a big 
      brick-yard in Tennessee and say that they can put you up a 
      very good little hospital, three wards, operating-room, six 
      private rooms, diet kitchen, dispensary, nurses' dormitory 
      and suite for superintendent, including one elevator, for 
      close under $65,000, on very good terms of payment. This 
      will include all fittings (hardware, etc.) and two fine, 
      large piazzas, with arrangements for sun parlour, if 
      desired. Also four bathrooms. Miss Buxton has selected the 
      site, as I suppose she has written you, and Miss Bradley has 
      secured another deaconess-nurse for the permanent staff. 
      Young Collier has done marvellously well down there, and the 
      generous endowment you offer will take care of two more 
      boys, Miss Buxton says. Dr. McGee says that Collier has a 
      real gift for surgery--I think I have got a scholarship for 
      him at Johns Hopkins, next year. 
   
      What a fine little woman that nurse is! She can't speak of 
      you without her eyes filling with tears. I teased her a 
      little by saying that if she had not begged you for the use 
      of that deserted farm-house on your land for a convalescent 
      home, you would never have learned about the coal and 
      probably sold the land for a song, so the credit was really 
      hers--you ought to have seen the sparks in her eyes! 
   
      "You have really made him a rich man," I told her. 
   
      "I wish I could," she said very soberly, "but it's not money 
      Mr. Jerrolds needs." 
   
      What do you suppose she meant? Anyhow, you've got it, old 
      fellow, whether you need it or not, haven't you? 
   
      The hundred you sent me (you knew I didn't need any "fee") 
      has gone into fitting up my club gymnasium. It went a good 
      way, too. I miss Mrs. Paynter's suggestions--she is a good 
      business-woman. What a release, that blackguard's death! 
      Strong words for a minister, perhaps you think, but I tell 
      you, my blood boils when I think what she endured. I gave up 
      my grandfather's hell, long ago, but some men make you long 
      to believe in purgatory! 
   
      I heard in a round-about way from Roger's brother-in-law 
      Carter (Yale '8--, isn't he?) that Mrs. Bradley was going on 
      the stage. I was afraid of it last summer. 
   
      Miss Bradley is a good woman, but not much like Roger, is 
      she? Queer, how people get into the same family. 
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXIII (FATE SPREADS HER NET) Pg 124 
   
   
      Hoping the rheumatism is all right now, and that you'll make 
      use of me, in any way you can, I am 
   
                                   Yours faithfully, 
   
                                     TYLER FESSENDEN ELDER. 
   
   
                         [FROM ROGER'S SISTER] 
   
                                                NEWTON, MASS., 
   
                                              April 2nd, 188-- 
   
      DEAR JERRY: 
   
      I can't resist, in spite of your warning, letting you know 
      how deeply we appreciate your generous offer for the 
      children. You know, of course, that we never felt the 
      slightest claim. It would not have been so much, anyway, if 
      it had been divided, and father always felt that people had 
      a right to leave their money as they chose, if they had any 
      rights in it at all, he said. I believe he thought it ought 
      to go to the State, or something. He and Mr. C--l S--z used 
      to talk about it evenings, I remember. 
   
      But to provide so generously for them in your will--it was 
      truly kind and Walter feels it very much. I hope it will be 
      long before they get it, Jerry. Of course Roger will have a 
      son some day and then you will be giving it to Roger 
      Bradley, as you say, and it won't have been out of the 
      family really--you were just like one of us for so many 
      years. And dearer to Uncle Win than any of us, I am sure. 
   
      With deepest gratitude again from Walter and myself, and 
      hopes that you are quite well now, 
   
                                Yours always, 
   
                                   ALICE BRADLEY CARTER. 
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXIV (OUR SECOND SUMMER IN EDEN) Pg 125 
   
 That winter had been my introduction to Egypt. I have never since let 
 more than three winters, at most, go by without revisiting the 
 strange, haunted place; next to Nippon the fairy country it is dearest 
 to me of all the warm corners of the earth--and I have dragged my 
 twinging, tortured muscles to them all. Only last winter--for many 
 months have passed since I copied those last letters into my 
 manuscript, and I paid dear for a last attempt at a February in New 
 York--I strolled through Cairo streets, drew gratefully into my 
 nostrils the extraordinary mixture of odours that differentiates Cairo 
 from every place in the world (how the great cities are stamped 
 indelibly each with her own nameless atmosphere, by the way! And yet 
 not quite nameless, for London's is based on street mud and 
 flower-trays, Rome is garlic and incense, Paris is watered asphalt, 
 New York is untended horses and tobacco-smoke, and Tokyo is rice 
 straw) and as I strolled, a strange thing happened to me. 
   
 I was passing by a street-seller of scarabs, a treacherous-looking 
 wretch, whose rolling eyes glanced covetously at the scarab--better 
 than any of his--that I wore at my scarf-knot, and pressed against him 
 to avoid a great black with a tray of brass bowls and platters on his 
 head. Just ahead of me a lemonade-merchant uttered his wailing, minor 
 cry, and as the crowd jostled in the narrow, dirty lane, my eye was 
 caught by a coffee-coloured woman, a big Juno, with flashing teeth and 
 a neck like a bronze tower. Across her shoulders sat a naked baby who 
 held his balance by his two chubby hands buried in her thick black 
 hair, one leg dropping over each splendid breast. She caught my eye, 
 and laughed outright as the child kicked out with one fat foot and 
 struck the brasses on the tray so that it tipped and swayed 
 dangerously. 
   
 I stood there, lost in a maze of Cairo streets, and the babel of the 
 shrieking, blue-clad donkey-boys was the scream of gulls to my ears 
 and the sun on the swaying brass platters was the reflection of a 
 polished sun-dial. The turquoises on the scarab-seller's tray were 
 turquoises about Margarita's waist, the lemonade was borne by Caliban, 
 and the child that rode astride those strong shoulders had hair like 
 corn-silk burned in the sun and eyes as blue as any turquoise! For so 
 had she held her baby, walking with that free, noble stride, and so 
 she had laughed and met my eyes, and so the child had clutched her 
 hair, in the summer just passed. 
   
 So vivid was the impression that I stood, as I say, in a maze, and the 
 scarab-seller and he of the brass tray cursed me heartily as they 
 struggled for balance in the pushing, screaming, reeking crowd. How 
 meaningless that phrase, "real life!" Years and years of actual 
 happenings in my life have been less real than those seconds in the 
 Cairo streets, when down the alley-ways of sound and sight, across the 
 intricate network of that spongy, grey tissue in my skull, this tiny, 
 deathless, unimportant memory led my soul away from the present and 
 left me, an unconscious, stupid, mechanical toy, to block the Cairo 
 traffic, while I--the real I--lived far away. Truly the poets and the 
 children are our only realists, and Time and Space have fooled the 
 rest of us unmercifully. 
   
 I find that trivial recollections of this sort interest me far more in 
 the recording than my sensations as a wealthy man. These last were, 
 indeed, strikingly few. Beyond the pleasure of buying old Jeanne a 
 Cashmere shawl, the hidden ambition of her life, and giving orders for 
 Harriet's hospital (for I seemed to have brought the natives of North 
 Carolina down on my shoulders, somehow--and that without the faintest 
 interest in them!) my amazing good fortune made less impression upon 
 me, as a matter of fact, than Uncle Winthrop's first legacy. What was 
 there for me to do with it?  
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXIV (OUR SECOND SUMMER IN EDEN) Pg 126 
   
 Roger refused to touch a penny; my mother, 
 beyond a little increase in her charity fund and a pony phæton, was 
 merely bewildered when asked to make any suggestions, and would have 
 handed purses to every tramp in New England if she had been given the 
 means; my father's people were well-to-do, and the conferring of 
 benefactions has always been difficult for me, anyway. The only way 
 for me would be to drop gold-pieces on needy thresholds by night and 
 run away--a startling occupation for a rheumatic bachelor, surely! I 
 do not know how to receive thanks--they embarrass me frightfully. To 
 stand smugly with a philanthropic smile while the widow and the orphan 
 weep around my knees, is something I should be forever unable to 
 achieve. Harriet's hospital was not a charity--it was something to 
 keep the ridiculous creature busy--her yacht, her picture gallery, her 
 stud-farm, if you will. 
   
 As for me, I had none of these tastes. I bought the one or two 
 pictures I had always wanted, that were within my means (most of them 
 weren't within anybody's!) I put a piano in my new rooms, laid in a 
 little wine for my appreciative friends, bespoke the unshared services 
 of Hodgson, who was unfortunately necessary to me now that every 
 sudden damp day crippled my right shoulder (he came to me wearing one 
 of my old suits, by the way) and put a new steam-launch into Roger's 
 concealed boat-house. I presented Margarita with another and a larger 
 gift of pearls, it is true, but without one-tenth of the choking 
 excitement with which I had clasped that first single one upon her 
 neck. 
   
 The lady herself, however, balanced this equation; she was greatly 
 delighted, and if she had not, perhaps, perfectly appreciated the 
 first offering, more than atoned by her rapturous recognition of the 
 second. 
   
 "And how they must have cost!" she cried. "Jerry, you are too 
 generous--but I do love them!" 
   
 To think of Margarita's estimating the value of a gift! 
   
 We had famous talks that August, while Roger sweated at his new 
 task--making an island for us, no less!--and _petite Marie_ gathered 
 shells and buried them in tiny, wave-washed graves. 
   
 She took to reading that summer, and I read _Pendennis_ and _David 
 Copperfield_ aloud and she embroidered great grey butterflies all over 
 her grey gown for _Faust_, and the big brindled hound slept at our 
 feet near the beehives. 
   
 "Which do you like best?" I asked her curiously. 
   
 "Oh, the one about Mr. Pendennis is the prettiest," she answered 
 promptly, "I should have liked the man that made that book the best. 
 But Mr. Dickens knows about more things. He makes more different kinds 
 of people." 
   
 "Thackeray has been called cynical," I suggested. 
   
 "What is that, Jerry?" 
   
 I explained, and she shook her head. 
   
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXIV (OUR SECOND SUMMER IN EDEN) Pg 127 
   
 "O no, that is not cynical. That is the way things are, Jerry. Only 
 everybody does not say so." 
   
 "Do you think," I asked, "that people really talk the way Mr. Micawber 
 talks? I never heard anybody. And certainly nobody ever talked like 
 his wife." 
   
 "No," she said thoughtfully, "I never did, either. But there must be a 
 good many people _like_ them, Jerry, I am sure. And if they knew as 
 many long words as Mr. Dickens, that is the way they _would_ talk, I 
 think." 
   
 I have never heard a better criticism of the literary giant of the 
 nineteenth century. 
   
 She never made the slightest secret of her affection for me nor of our 
 thorough comprehension of each other and our similarity of tastes. 
 Quiet always, or almost always, with Roger, with me she chattered like 
 a bird, and I could give her opinion on many matters of which he knew 
 nothing. 
   
 "Jerry and I like Botticelli and caviar sandwiches and street songs 
 and Egypt, and Roger does not," she told Clarence King once--I can 
 hear him roar now. 
   
 "I can talk better to you than to Roger," she confided to me one day 
 on the rocks; "if it were the custom to have two husbands, Jerry, I 
 should like you for the other--but it is not," she added mournfully. 
   
 I agreed to this with regret and she went on thoughtfully. 
   
 "You see, Roger would not like it, even if it _was_ the custom, so I 
 could not, anyway." 
   
 "That is very amiable of you," I said. 
   
 "It is strange how I always think of what he would like," she added, 
 with perfect sincerity, I am sure. "One day when he would not let me 
 have any more bread--it was so bad for my voice, you know--I got very 
 angry and spoke crossly to him, but still he would not, and I told him 
 that since he did not want me to sing he had better let me spoil my 
 voice, if I wanted to--and you would think he would, would you not, 
 Jerry?" 
   
 "No," I answered soberly, "no, Margarita, I wouldn't. He knew you 
 really wanted your voice more than the bread, so he gave you what you 
 wanted." 
   
 "Yes. But that day I was so angry, I planned how much more free I 
 should be if he were to die--was it not terrible, Jerry?--and then I 
 got so interested I could not stop, and I made a dying sickness for 
 him like my father's, and Miss Buxton came, and then I got a black 
 frock like Hester when my father died, and then we--you and I--made a 
 grave for him with my father's grave on the little point, and then 
 (this was all in my mind, you see, Jerry) I was so sad I cried and 
 cried--as I do in _Marguerite_, all over my cheeks, and then, what do 
 you think?" 
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXIV (OUR SECOND SUMMER IN EDEN) Pg 128 
   
   
 "Heavens, child, what can I think? I don't know," I said unsteadily, 
 revolving God knows what of possibilities in my presumptuous and 
 selfish heart. 
   
 "Why," she said simply, "I felt so badly that I went to Roger (in my 
 mind) to tell him about it and show him the beautiful grave we had 
 made and my black frock (I had a little pointed bonnet with white 
 under the front, like the widows in Paris) and suddenly I remembered 
 that I could not show him--he would be dead! You see that would have 
 been very bad, for I had been planning all the time that he would be 
 there to--to--well, _that he would be there_! You see what I mean, 
 don't you, Jerry? Roger has to be there." 
   
 "Yes, I see," I said, very low, filled with sickening shame, "he has 
 to be there, my dear." 
   
 "And so I stopped all that dying sickness directly," she continued 
 comfortably, "because it was too silly, if I could not tell him about 
 it afterwards, you see. 
   
 "And yet he was very cross to me about the bread," she burst out 
 childishly. "Why do I think he has to be there, Jerry? He cannot talk 
 to me nearly so nicely as you can--he does not understand. Why must he 
 be there?" 
   
 I choked and laughed at once. 
   
 "Because you love him, you silly Margarita!" I declared. 
   
 "That must be it," she agreed, with a serious, long look at me out of 
 those deep-sea coloured eyes. 
   
 Ah, me! 
   
 How we worked at that canal! Caliban and two swarthy Italians and 
 Roger and I--for I marked out the course of it in an artfully natural 
 curve and put in the stakes. There were eighty-odd feet across the 
 part of the peninsula we selected, and it bade fair to wear us all out 
 and last forever, till I seized the occasion of a business trip that 
 took Roger away for four days and hired a great gang of labourers who 
 finished it all up, so that he walked into his island home across a 
 foot-bridge, to his great and boyish delight. What a big boy he was, 
 after all! Not that I did not share his pleasure in the Island: it 
 gave me a delicious feeling of security and distance from the rest of 
 the world. With the help of the gang I had been able to widen our 
 channel considerably and it took a very respectable bridge indeed to 
 span the gap. We had made plans for a regular drawbridge, but later 
 we abandoned them, and chopped even the old one down. The water has 
 washed and washed and worn away since, on the island side, and now one 
 must be bent upon a swim indeed who cares to venture among the jagged 
 ledges and mill-races that my blasting made. 
   
 We piped our spring too--a beauty--up through the dairy cellar to the 
 kitchen, and Caliban was saved many a weary trip. 
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXIV (OUR SECOND SUMMER IN EDEN) Pg 129 
   
 Some years afterward 
 I took my chance during another absence of the lord of the Island, and 
 a hurried and astonished set of plumbers installed a luxurious 
 bathroom in either ell of the cottage--a surprise for his birthday. 
 Profiting by a winter in Bermuda, I copied their roof reservoirs, 
 allowing one to each ell, sanded without, whitewashed within, an 
 architectural measure which made the skyline even more rocky and wild, 
 in appearance, from the water. Before we left, that autumn, we planted 
 fifty evergreens, pines, hemlocks and spruces, in a broad belt just 
 opposite the Island, masking it completely from the shore, and hardly 
 a year passed after that without thickening and lengthening that 
 concealing wall. Oh, we guarded our jewel, I can tell you! 
   
 It was that summer, I think, that Whistler came to us and drew that 
 series of sepia sketches that frames the big fireplace. They are on 
 the plaster itself--a sort of exquisite fresco--and Venice sails, 
 Holland wind-mills and London docks cluster round the faded bricks 
 with an indescribably fascinating effect. At my urgent request I was 
 allowed to protect them with thin tiles of glass riveted through the 
 corners into the plaster: how the collectors' mouths water at the 
 sight of them! 
   
 Stevenson came a few years later: all the quaint comforts and intimate 
 beauties hidden away behind the boulders plainly caught his elfish, 
 childlike fancy--it was he who made the little grotto beyond the 
 asparagus bed, lined the pool in it with unusual shells and coloured 
 pebbles, fitted odd bits of looking-glass here and there, and wrote a 
 poem on a smooth stone at the door for little Mary, to whom he 
 dedicated it. 
   
     "The purple pool of mussel shells, 
     All full of salty ocean smells, 
     The coral branches in the wall-- 
     And you the mermaid queen of all ..." 
   
 She used to recite it all very charmingly. Roger never wanted it 
 printed in the _Child's Garden of Verses_, where it properly 
 belongs--one of the best of them, in my opinion. 
   
 He and Margarita talked together by the hour and I have seen his 
 dog-like brown eyes fixed on her an hour at a time. I asked him once 
 if he intended to "put her in a story"--the quaint query of the 
 layman, so strangely irritating to the book-man--and he shook his 
 loose-locked head slowly. 
   
 "They say I can't do women, you know," he said, "and nobody would 
 believe her if I put her in, she's too artistically effective." 
   
 And here am I doing it! Fools rush in ... 
   
 It may seem odd that Roger and I should not discuss the opera 
 business, but we didn't. That it hurt him I knew, for I knew Roger. 
 Anglo-Saxon to the backbone, the position which his wife as a 
 successful operatic star must put him in could be nothing but highly 
 distasteful to him. It is one thing to snatch your wife from the 
 stage, as Margarita's noble grandfather had done, and enjoy her in 
 your home; it is quite another to see her snatched from your home to 
 that stage, after you have married her.  
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXIV (OUR SECOND SUMMER IN EDEN) Pg 130 
   
 But I have never known a 
 juster man, and though he talked little of the "rights" of women, and 
 then in a brief, blunt fashion that would have exasperated the 
 fast-emerging sex most terribly, he nevertheless respected the rights 
 of every human creature most scrupulously. Though he had the private 
 appreciation of the unmistakable good points of the harem-seclusion 
 shared by every healthy male, he would never have shut Margarita into 
 a New York house or a honeymoon-island against her will, and I think 
 he was too proud to reason with her on the only lines open to him. I 
 think, too, that his quiet refusal to take any strong measures may 
 have been based, partly, on the full appreciation of the risk he ran 
 in marrying such a bundle of possibilities as Margarita. One of the 
 greatest passions that ever (I firmly believe) mated two people had 
 whirled him out of the conventional current of his life, and because 
 it had, in its course, brought him into the rapids, he was enough of a 
 man to set his teeth and take it quietly, knowing that when he left 
 the calm, green-bordered stream for the adventure of flood tide, he 
 did it with his eyes open--a grown man. Or so, at least, I take it 
 that he reasoned: he acted as if he had. 
   
 Again, it would have been difficult for me to discuss the matter for 
 another reason than Roger's perfectly characteristic reserve. Much as 
 I regretted that this issue should have arisen in Roger's household, 
 like Sue Paynter I had a secret sympathy with Margarita. Roger was 
 never fond of the stage, and I was. He preferred chamber-music and 
 symphony to opera, and was never deeply sensible to the solo voice, 
 though a good critic of it. The glamour of the stage--that lime-light 
 that has eternally dazzled the sons of Adam--had little effect upon 
 him: he was the last man in the world to marry an actress. Now, I was 
 not. Judie, the naughty creature, had once her charm for me. I have 
 stood in a crowd to see the Jersey Lily, and the Queen of English 
 comediennes could have had me for a turn of her thick lashes--before I 
 knew Margarita. My paternal grandmother was part French, and I have 
 always observed that a mixture of blood predisposes its inheritors to 
 dramatic triumphs--or enjoyments, if no more. 
   
 So he dug at his canal and Margarita practised her Jewel Song (it was 
 a shade high for her: she was not a pure soprano, but had one of those 
 flexible mezzos that tempt their trainers to all sorts of 
 _tours-de-force_) and Dolledge tended Mary and Miss Jencks developed 
 Caliban.                                                          
   
 The good woman was utterly unhappy without some subject on which to 
 exercise her really remarkable powers of education. Mary's attendant 
 resented bitterly any rival in her certainly well-filled sphere, and 
 Margarita was far beyond her one-time mentor now, and regarded her 
 with the affectionate tolerance of a princess for her old nurse. This 
 was hard on the devoted Barbara, for she adored Margarita, and to find 
 oneself gently sliding to the foot of the pedestal, when one has not 
 so long ago been occupied in moulding the statue, cannot be very 
 enlivening, though one be never so philosophical. 
   
 In truth I had at that time a strange sensation: I found that I had 
 insensibly drifted into a state of mind in which we five, Roger, Miss 
 Jencks, Dolledge, Caliban and I seemed to be at home, contented, 
 occupied, attached by every interest domestic and romantic, to the 
 spot that was dearest on earth to us, while Margarita, a brilliant 
 bird of passage, but lingered with us for the moment, before she took 
 up her journey through the world--for that she was destined for the 
 world, who could doubt?  
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXIV (OUR SECOND SUMMER IN EDEN) Pg 131 
   
 We were, to use the homely old figure, like a 
 circle of motherly hens, staring fatalistically, sadly or disgustedly, 
 according to our several barnyard temperaments, at our daring, 
 iridescent duckling as she breasted the (to her) familiar flood. 
   
 For it was familiar: there are people for whom--taken though they may 
 have been from the most secluded corner of the earth, unprepared, 
 undisciplined, unwarned, the great world, the glitter of its 
 footlights, the shock of its tournaments, the cruelty of its 
 victories, the coldness of its neglect, have absolutely no terrors. 
 They face it superbly, as one should face a mob, and the great world, 
 like any proper mob, licks their feet and fawns on them. Admiration is 
 their due; devotion is no more than the sky above them or the earth 
 under them; they keep the divine, expectant _hauteur_ of childhood and 
 rule us, like the children, through our pity and our wonder. And 
 Margarita was one of these. 
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXV (THE ISLAND TOMB) Pg 132 
   
 But to go back to Miss Jencks and Caliban. It was Harriet Buxton who 
 had suggested that the boy was not so deaf as we had thought, only 
 stupid, and that his dumbness might yield to the methods then being so 
 successfully used with that afflicted child who has since triumphed so 
 brilliantly over more than human obstacles. Although, as Harriet 
 pointed out, I have always felt that too much credit was given in that 
 case to the pupil and too little to the teacher. The distance between 
 English words of one syllable and Greek tragedy is only a matter of 
 time: the distance between blank chaos and those one-syllabled words 
 might well have seemed eternal! 
   
 Not that Miss Jencks had quite such a task ahead of her. Caliban had 
 been trained into habits of relentless cleanliness, and an almost 
 mechanical regularity of routine work. It was his clumsy hands that 
 had arranged the flaming nasturtiums in the silver bowl under the 
 Henner etching, his rude pantomime that purchased the bi-weekly bone 
 for the mysteriously named Rosy, his weather wisdom that was sought 
 when it was a question of an extended sailing party. In fact, I am 
 inclined to think, in view of his subsequent progress, that some of 
 his ignorance was feigned, as is often the case in these instances of 
 arrested mental development. However that may have been, on the 
 occasion of this visit I found him marvellously improved, his hair 
 cut, his nondescript garments evolved into a modest sort of livery, 
 his vocabulary no longer a series of grunts, his very pantomime more 
 elastic. Margarita never changed her old methods of communication with 
 him, but the rest of us, at Miss Jencks's earnest entreaty, fatigued 
 ourselves amiably in order to elicit the guttural "yes" and "no" and 
 "do not know" she had so laboriously taught him. 
   
 Best of all, his disposition had altered to a very considerable 
 extent, and this improvement on his old surliness was of the greatest 
 assistance to us on the occasion I must now narrate. 
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXV (THE ISLAND TOMB) Pg 133 
   
 It was I--strangely fated to discover so many of the links in this 
 wonderfully twined chain of Margarita's life--who stumbled by the 
 merest chance on the last one really needed to complete the story. 
 Zealous for the perfection of our Island, I selected a deep gully, 
 filled with heavy boughs and loose unsightly rocks, as the next point 
 for improvement, and bespoke the services of Caliban for the purpose. 
 Greatly to my surprise, for he was attached to me, and always showed 
 pleasure at rowing me over for my visits, he refused point blank to 
 help me and even tried, in a series of clumsy ruses, to start me at 
 work elsewhere. Vexed, but quite unsuspicious, I set to work by myself 
 at pulling off the upper boughs, trusting to shame him into helping me 
 with the stones, which seemed to have been tossed there in a sort of 
 midden. When he found that I was persistent in my plan, he sat down at 
 the edge of the gully, buried his face in his clumsy hands and wept 
 silently, shuddering at every bough I lifted. Greatly interested now, 
 I called Roger, and we worked together, assisted by the good-natured 
 Italian retained now as gardener and assistant boatman (his name was 
 Rafaello, and he was a not-too-unhappy bachelor, for, as he said, a 
 girl who would run off with a man's rival a week before the wedding 
 would have made but a doubtful wife for the most patient of husbands!) 
   
 As we neared the bottom of the gully Caliban grew more and more 
 excited: now he would peer in fearfully, now run off a few yards, but 
 he could never get very far away, for great as was his terror and 
 sorrow, curiosity was stronger and he must be near, it seemed, at all 
 costs. 
   
 [Illustration: AH, FAITHFUL CALIBAN, WHAT HOURS OF TERRIBLE TUITION 
 MADE THY TASK CLEAR TO THEE!] 
   
 Suddenly, as the last rotting bough was lifted from one end of the 
 gully, my eye was caught by a series of stones wonderfully matched in 
 size, eight or ten of them arranged in a sort of rough cross, and when 
 with a quick thrill of apprehension I pushed aside the withered pine 
 tree that covered the rest of the stones, the foot of the cross 
 elongated, and the symbol of Calvary was seen to extend over a 
 slightly raised oblong mound of earth. There was no mistaking that 
 shape nor those dimensions; whoever has heard the rattle of that last 
 remorseless handful and struggled with that almost nauseating 
 rebellion at the sight of the raw clods, so unsightly in the smooth, 
 peaceful green, knows that mound for what it is, and we knew this. 
 Silently we cleared away the rest, and then the grave I had discerned 
 fell into its true and illuminating relation to two other and 
 evidently older crosses--at the feet of both and at right angles to 
 them. In her death as in her life that gaunt, austere Hester was 
 faithful, and like the stone hound at the ancient knight's bier she 
 guarded her master's last sleep. 
   
 We took off our caps reverently; we needed no monument, no epitaph to 
 name for us those exiled, unblessed graves. Prynne had made the first 
 cross, we knew, twenty-seven years ago; Hester had made the second a 
 few days before Roger visited the island. And the third? Ah, faithful 
 Caliban, what hours of terrible tuition made thy task clear to thee? I 
 shudder at the picture of that indefatigable New England woman 
 illustrating in terrible pantomime the duties that would devolve upon 
 her loutish servant at her death.  
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXV (THE ISLAND TOMB) Pg 134 
   
 But the lesson had been learned, the 
 third coffin taken from the boat-house, the body laid within it at the 
 graveside, carried swiftly from the house wrapped in a sheet, the lid 
 nailed down, the earth filled in. 
                                   
 Gaspingly he verified my quiet questions and surmises--I have enough 
 New England blood to know what ghastly forethought we are capable 
 of!--and slowly he calmed himself, seeing that we were neither 
 frightened nor angry ... 
   
 One end of the island repeats on a tiny scale the formation of the 
 original peninsula. Three quaint red cedars stand pointed and forever 
 green, more like the cypresses of Italy than anything in America; 
 around its rocky beach the waves beat incessantly, but its grass is 
 fresh and green, for there is a little spring there. Under the 
 cypresses lie three flat graves, two side by side, one across their 
 feet, and over each lies a flat carved table of marble--rich carvings 
 that once stretched under three heavy mullioned windows over the back 
 doors of an old Italian palace. There are only initials on these 
 tables, initials and the numerals of years, but they are not utterly 
 unblest. Good Parson Elder read the most beautiful burial service in 
 the world over them, broken by the tears of a trusty servant; the 
 children and the children's children of the crumbling bodies under two 
 of those tables stood over them hand in hand; and Nature, who bears no 
 grudge nor ever excommunicates the fruitful, brings to the sunlight 
 every year the yellow daffodils and white narcissus, the wild rose and 
 beach bayberry, the marigold and asters that love has planted there. 
   
 It may be that further clues, more detailed accounts of that secret 
 island life, were hidden in those coffins; we never tried if it was 
 
 Unknown and lonely they lived, unknown and lonely they had wished 
 
 to lie in death, and so we left them, safe even from ourselves, who 
 loved them for the wonderful child they had given us. And I like to 
 think that God is no less forgiving than the Nature through which he 
 tries to lead us to him. 
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXVI (A HANDFUL OF MEMORIES) Pg 135 
   
 They left in October that year; Margarita to get ready for her 
 _début_, Roger, quiet and inscrutable, to work, as he said, at his 
 treatise on Napoleon. He had grown deeply interested in this and spent 
 most of his leisure at it, and it had gone far beyond his first idea 
 of an essay. I did not go with them, but took the occasion for a 
 filial visit to my mother and a grudging journey to North Carolina, 
 where I stared uncomprehendingly at the chaotic hospital, a litter of 
 bricks and scantling, listened to tiresome and enthusiastic statistics 
 from young Collier and Dr. McGee, distributed papers of sweets to a 
 ward of convalescent and sticky infants, and refused to take a 
 toilsome journey around the borders of my one-time coal-lands. They 
 were no longer mine--why should I care to view them? 
   
 Just before I left for Paris, where Captain Upgrove was to join me, I 
 remembered some drawings I had planned to make in order to get the 
 dimensions of the rambling, old-fashioned garden behind the house where I 
 intended to put a certain ancient shallow stone basin I had in mind, and 
 then beg Roger to pipe the spring into it for a sort of fountain-pool. 
 There was such a basin on an old, decaying estate some miles out of our old 
 school-town: Roger and I knew it well, for we had often been invited there 
 by a friend of my mother's to drink tea and eat rusk and fresh butter and 
 _confiture_ (of field strawberries--delicious!) and--of all things--broiled 
 bacon, because Roger was devotedly fond of it and never got it at school. 
 How many June half-holidays have we hung over that old carved basin, 
 teasing the goldfish, stopping up the tiny fountain till it spouted all 
 over us, sailing beetles across it on linden leaves, or lolling full-fed 
 and lazy, smoking contraband cigarettes of caporal! I knew well how pleased 
 he would be when he saw that battered dolphin that threw the water and the 
 funny little stone frogs at each corner, and I had a shrewd idea that old 
 Mrs. Y---- would not object to parting with it, moss and lichen and all, if 
 one made it worth her while! 
   
 A cold, rainy week--the delayed equinox--caught and held me on the 
 island, huddled over the fire, and it was then that I conceived the 
 famous idea of the furnace. I had planned many a pleasant autumn 
 there, for it was now the best of America to me, and if such weeks as 
 this were possible (and probable) there would be little comfort for me 
 away from the chimney corner--which has never been my favourite post, 
 by the way. Caliban and Agnès, the cook, a kindly Normandy woman, did 
 their best for me and for the ravenous gang of workmen that laboured 
 (in the slight intervals between their meals!) at the monstrous, 
 many-mouthed iron tube in the cellar; while I chafed and scolded at 
 the delays, unwilling to leave the men, weary of my dear Island now 
 its chief jewel was gone, irritated by the tramping feet and tuneless 
 whistling where I had heard so much the patter of _petite Marie's_ 
 slippers and the rich melody of her mother's voice. 
   
 It was then that I fell upon Lockwood Prynne's library and learned 
 more of his mind, I believe, than anyone else could ever know. I wish 
 I had known the man himself. The little I have been able to find out 
 about him in the South (the war practically wiped out the family) only 
 confirmed my first idea of him. I actually succeeded in tracking an 
 old album of daguerreotypes to a shiftless darkey cabin and 
 identifying a picture of him as a boy from a half-blind negro mammy, 
 with one of his father in full uniform and a singularly beautiful head 
 that I am sure from the likeness of the brow and the set of the eyes 
 must have been his mother, though here the old slave could not or 
 would not help me. I rescued, too, for Margarita, a rich carved 
 mahogany chair from a cow stall ("ole Marse Lockwood's pay chair") and 
 a graceful, brass-handled serving-table, "what his grandpa done leave 
 fo' li'l Marse Lockwood fer ter rec'leck' him by." I picked up a 
 silver cup, at a roadside auction (and bid high for it against a Fifth 
 Avenue dealer) engraved with his mother's coat-of-arms, and 
 shamelessly inveigled Margarita into taking it, later, and giving me 
 in return the silver bowl that stood for so long under the Henner 
 etching. It stands there still, but not in the old place. Not Caliban, 
 but Hodgson fills that bowl to-day and every day that I am in America 
 with the most beautiful flowers Uncle Winthrop's money can buy; though 
 Lockwood Prynne no longer lies in the army cot that faces it, one of 
 his best friends does--a friend who loves him no less, that he never 
 saw his face. 
   
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXVI (A HANDFUL OF MEMORIES) Pg 136 
   
 Well, we got that furnace in and fifty tons of coal, too, towed over 
 in an old scow and binned down in the cellar, and when I saw the bills 
 for this last, I received the impression (which I have never been able 
 wholly to abandon) that I must have been underpaid for those 
 coal-lands! 
   
 Many a time have we discussed it since, with a curious, frightened 
 wonder: why should that furnace have seemed so all-important to me? At 
 best we expected to spend but few days at the Island when it could 
 have been necessary; Margarita had grown up among Atlantic winters and 
 had more times than she could count broken the ice in her bedroom 
 ewer; such a luxurious whim would never have occurred to Roger, who, 
 like most men of his type, expected every one to be as hardy as 
 himself--how many generations of his ancestors had stoically toasted 
 their shins while their backs were freezing! It must be, as Margarita 
 teasingly insists, that my pathetic care for my rheumatic old bones 
 was at the bottom of it all, and that I was rapidly assimilating one 
 of the cardinal doctrines of the swollen purse, that no sum could be 
 ill spent when spent for my comfort. 
   
 Well, well, let it go at that--to use the bluff, pertinent phrase of 
 the present day. Though Barbara Jencks would have died before she had 
 let it go at anything like that, I assure you, and has spent many an 
 eager moment of shy, persistent effort to make me comprehend the 
 inscrutable and sleepless interest of Providence, an interest which 
 had intended, from the time of the Exodus, if I seize her idea 
 correctly, that a hot-air plant should complete the summer home of 
 Roger Bradley--a man who had less interest in Providence than anyone I 
 know! Poor Barbara! As I hung about the house that mellow autumn, I 
 fell, more than once, into musing laughter, as here and there some 
 piece of furniture, some picture or dish or oddment brought back to me 
 her uncounted, endless assaults on Margarita's simple, healthy and (to 
 the orthodox English woman) baseless scheme of existence. Not that it 
 should have been dignified by so philosophical a term as "scheme": 
 Margarita was given to the practice of life, not its theory. I never 
 tired of watching the extraordinary effect of her downright mental 
 processes upon the mass of perfunctory, inherited ideas whose edges, 
 once sharp-milled and fresh from some startling Mint, we have dulled 
 and misshapen with generations of unthinking, accustomed barter. 
   
 For instance, a treasure of a Spode fruit dish that I had picked up at 
 a dewy Devonshire farm, all clotted cream and apple-cheeked children, 
 caught my eye as it lay on the piano, and I found myself chuckling as 
 I recalled the unfortunate eddy of doctrine into which the innocent 
 bit of china had whirled us. Margarita had asked what the quaint 
 Scriptural figures upon it illustrated, and Miss Jencks, every ready, 
 had explained to her the parable of the labourers in the vineyard and 
 the marvel of the late comer's good fortune. 
   
 "And that is a very beautiful thought, my dear," she concluded, "is it 
 not?" 
   
 Margarita stared at her in frank surprise. 
   
 "Beautiful?" she echoed, "you call it beautiful that so many poor men 
 should work hard so long, and then have to see the lazy ones who came 
 in late be paid as much as they for one-tenth as much work?  
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXVI (A HANDFUL OF MEMORIES) Pg 137 
   
 I do not 
 know what you mean by beautiful; it was certainly very unfair." 
   
 "My dear, my dear!" poor Barbara fluttered, "it had the approval of 
 our Lord, remember." 
   
 "He was probably not one of the ones who had worked all day, then," 
 Margarita replied blandly. 
   
 "It was not an actual occurrence," said Miss Jencks, a little coldly, 
 as Roger's irrepressible chuckle echoed from the porch outside, "it 
 was merely a parable--a lesson." 
   
 "Oh!" (The exquisite, falling melody of that simple monosyllable 
 expressed so perfectly, through such a trained larynx, all the sudden 
 lack of interest!) "It never happened, then? So of course it does not 
 matter. But why do you call it a lesson, Miss Jencks?" 
   
 "Because it teaches Christian charity," said Barbara firmly. 
   
 Margarita turned away and dismissed the subject. 
   
 "If I ever hired myself to anybody, I would rather he had been taught 
 fairness than Christian charity," she observed, and left Miss Jencks 
 clutching the fruit plate pathetically, her eyes fixed hopelessly on 
 
 For it was always my delicate task to soothe the poor lady after 
 
 these theological encounters: Roger's uncompromising treatment of the 
 situation had a way of uncomfortably resembling his wife's! 
   
 "You know, dear Miss Jencks," I began, as seriously as I could, "she 
 is not really cynical--she is no more irreverent than a child would 
 
 Surely some of your pupils, sometimes ..." 
 
   
 "Never, Mr. Jerrolds, never!" the bulwark of the Governor-General's 
 family protested tearfully, "never, I assure you!" 
   
 "Well, well," I said, "it's all the same--they might have. You see, 
 she pays these things the great compliment of taking them 
 seriously--and literally. And they wouldn't work, Miss Jencks, some of 
 them, if one tried them, you know. Just consider the labour unions for 
 one thing: suppose Roger were to pay off his workmen on that 
 principle--they'd fling his money in his face." 
   
 [Illustration: HE SKETCHED HER IN CHARCOAL, DRESSED (HE WOULD HAVE IT) 
 IN BLACK] 
   
 "Then what would you say to the Prodigal Son?" she shot at me 
 defiantly. 
   
 "I say that it's very beautiful and that I'm old enough to hope it may 
 be true," I told her, "but for heaven's sake, Miss Jencks, don't try 
 Mrs. Bradley with it--not just now, at any rate!" 
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXVI (A HANDFUL OF MEMORIES) Pg 138 
   
 Then there was her guitar, a small one, of lemon-coloured pear wood, 
 curiously inlaid: Whistler got it for her in one of those old pawn 
 shops near the London wharves, and we used to wonder what happy 
 sailor, burnt and eager for the town, had brought it for what waiting 
 girl all the long miles, and how it had crept at last, ashamed and 
 stained, into that dingy three-balled tomb of so many hopes and 
 keepsakes. He sketched her in charcoal, dressed (he would have it) in 
 black, with a Spanish comb in her hair and the guitar on a broad 
 ribbon of strange deep Chinese blue; behind her, on an aerially 
 slender perch, stands a gaudy Mexican parrot. It does not look like 
 her to us who know her well (though, curiously enough, all strangers 
 consider it an extremely fine likeness) but as a _tour de force_ it is 
 remarkable, and amongst the plain, Saxon furnishings of the Island 
 living-room it stands out with an extraordinary vividness--an 
 unmistakable bit of Southern Europe, the perfectly conscious 
 sophistication of old cities and sunny, secret streets, worn uneven 
 and discoloured before Raleigh started across seas. 
   
 Roger never liked it, I believe, and I have always suspected the 
 impish James of deliberately putting us face to face with Margarita's 
 foreign strain and the tiny, deep gulf that cut her off, in some parts 
 of her nature, so hopelessly from us. And he made us see it, too, that 
 Puck of all painters, even as he had intended, and we were forced 
 to thank him for it, for it was too beautiful to have gone undone, and 
 he knew it. And Jimmie's dead, worse luck, and one of his most devoted 
 collectors told me last week that he really thought the psychological 
 moment for selling out had arrived, for he'd never go any higher! And 
 we're all grass, that to-day is and to-morrow goes into the oven, and 
 there's no doubt of it, my brothers. 
   
 But how she used to sing _O sole mio_, with that sweet, piercing 
 Italian cry, a real _cri du coeur_ (except for the trifling fact 
 that there was no more heart in it, really, than there is in most 
 Italian singing! I suppose that while the art of song remains among 
 the children of men, that particular child who is able to throw his 
 voice most easily into what Mme. M----i used to call "ze frront of ze 
 face" and detach it from the throat, where the true feelings lie 
 gripped, will continue to thrill the other children with his or her 
 "heart in the voice!") And how she would drag the rhythm, deliciously, 
 intentionally, and shade the downward notes, and hang a breath too 
 long on the phrase-ends, as only Italians dare! And how the distilled 
 essence of Italy dripped out of those luscious, tender, mocking 
 folk-songs, till the vineyards steeped before us, and the white 
 city-squares baked in the noon sun, and the ardent sailor sang to his 
 brown girl over the quaint, bobbing, weighted nets! 
   
 The men who dug the ice-house and piled the coast wall and blasted out 
 trenches for draining would stop and lean on their picks, when her 
 resonant, golden humming, like a drowsy contralto bee, floated out 
 from the verandah vines to them: I have seen their faces clear and 
 their dull eyes focus suddenly on some distant, darling memory, while 
 they dropped back for a precious minute into the past that you think 
 is all bread and cheese and beer, because, forsooth, they never sat 
 beside you in white gloves when Margarita sang! 
   
 Go to--there was Spring and a girl for every man of them, once, and 
 both were the same as yours. 
 
 
 
 PART 7 CHAPTER XXVI (A HANDFUL OF MEMORIES) Pg 139 
   
 I had to go into her room at that time, to make sure that the floor 
 should not be unduly marred and that, according to the best of my poor 
 judgment (Roger should have planned it all, as a matter of fact) the 
 registers might be inserted in the best places; and as I moved among 
 the dainty luxuries that replaced the almost sordid bareness of that 
 room when I had first seen it, I realised, with surprise but with 
 clear certainty, that the change was only apparent, not deep or 
 inherent. They were all there, to be sure, the pretty paraphernalia 
 that modern woman (and ancient, too, for the matter of that!) has 
 found necessary to preserve and augment her mystery and charm; ivory 
 and silver and crystal and fluted frills and scented silk. Oh, yes, 
 they were all there, but there was no atmosphere of Margarita amongst 
 them all: she had escaped out of them and given them the slip as 
 effectually as in the old, bare days of the brush and comb and the 
 print gown on a peg in the unscented closet. She was simply not there, 
 that was all, and the most infatuated lover in all the Decameron would 
 have felt that here was not the place for self-indulgent raptures. 
 Margarita used her sleeping-room as a snail uses his shell or a bird 
 its nest: it was impersonal, deserted, out of commission, now--the 
 room, merely, of a beautiful woman, who might have been any woman, 
 with a woman's need of comfort, warmth, clear air, and cleanliness 
 pushed to an arrogance of physical purity. 
   
 My mother's bedroom was her own as definitely as her blue-veined, 
 pointed hands; Sue Paynter's, into which I went once to lift out her 
 little son in one of his illnesses, was like no one's else in the 
 world, individual, intense; even old Madam Bradley's, in its clear 
 whites and polished dark wood, translated to my boyish, awed soul, a 
 sense of her impenetrable character. 
   
 But not so Margarita's. It was furnished and decorated in grey-blue 
 tints, because I had suggested this. It had odd touches of greyish 
 rose, because Whistler had insisted on it. It was fitted with old 
 mahogany, because Roger liked this and collected it here and there. 
 But of all the personality that her father-lover had known how to 
 build into his home of exile, there was absolutely none. 
   
 Was it because there were no work-baskets, spilling lace and bits of 
 ribbon, no photographs, no keepsakes, hideous perhaps, but dear for 
 what they represent, no worn girlhood's books, no shamefaced toys, 
 lingering from the nursery, no litter of any other member of her 
 family? Perhaps. Mme. Modjeska, then, and even now one of the greatest 
 actresses on our stage, called it an unwomanly room, but I am not 
 quite sure that this is precisely what she meant. 
   
 No, the most vivid impression the room could make upon me was one that 
 brings a reminiscent chuckle even to-day. As my eye fell on the 
 antique dressing-table, I seemed to see, suddenly and laughably, 
 Margarita, sweeping down the stairs, enveloped in a billowy 
 _peignoir_, her hair loose, her eyes flashing furiously, in her 
 extended finger and thumb, held as one would hold a noxious adder, a 
 thin navy-blue necktie. 
   
 "Is that yours?" she demanded tragically of her husband. 
   
 "Why, yes, I believe it is," said Roger, with the grave politeness 
 that years of intimacy could never take from him. 
   
 "I found it _on my dressing-table_!" she thundered, and her voice 
 echoed like an angry vault, "_on--my--dressing-table_!" 
   
 She dropped it like a toad at his feet, swept us all with the 
 lightning of her eyes, coldly, distastefully, and swam up the stairs, 
 an avenging goddess, deaf to Roger's matter-of-fact apology, blind to 
 Miss Jencks's deprecating blushes. As for me, so under the spell of 
 that voice have I always been, that I swear I thought her hardly 
 used--the darling vixen! 
   
   
 
 
 
 PART 8 (IN WHICH THE RIVER RUSHES INTO PERILOUS RAPIDS) CHAPTER XXVII (WE BRING OUR PEARL TO MARKET) Pg 140 
 I did not hear Margarita sing in opera till the night of her _début_ 
 in _Faust_. Roger, on the contrary, was allowed to attend the last 
 rehearsals: Margarita honestly wished for his criticism, which she 
 knew from the very fact of his utter aloofness from her professional 
 interests would be perfectly unbiased and sincere. It was not without 
 a secret thrill of pleasure through my disappointment that I 
 acquiesced in her decree; I knew that she would be nervous with me, 
 from my very sympathy with her. 
   
 I can see the _Opéra_ now--the lights, the jewels, the moustaches, the 
 white shirt-bosoms, the lorgnettes, the fat women with programmes, the 
 great, shrouding curtain. 
   
 Sue was there, pallid with excitement, and Tip Elder, who had come 
 over for a much-needed holiday, and Walter Carter, who had been on an 
 errand to Germany, and who had (of all unexpected people!) convinced 
 Madam Bradley that her own hard pride should no longer be forced to 
 regulate her children's enmities, and come to extend the olive-branch 
 to Roger. 
   
 I was as nervous as could be and Roger, I think, was not quite so calm 
 as he seemed and gnawed his lower lip steadily. 
   
 But Margarita, one would suppose, had not only no nerves but not even 
 any self-consciousness. She told us afterward that before the curtain 
 rose she was nearly paralysed with terror and was convinced that her 
 voice had gone--it caught in her throat. She could not remember the 
 words of the _Jewel Song_ and her stomach grew icy cold--if Roger had 
 been there, she said, she would have begged him to take her away and 
 hide her on the Island! But he was not there. No one was there but 
 Madame and her maid, and she could not run away alone. 
   
 When she sat spinning at her wheel behind the layers of gauze, and 
 _Faust_ saw her in his dream, her legs shook so that she could not 
 work the treadle. But when she paced slowly onto the scene in her grey 
 gown all worked with tiny, nearly invisible little butterflies--they 
 had made her put aside the big ones--she was as calm and composed as 
 the chorus around her and her voice was as beautiful as I have ever 
 heard it. 
   
 "The child was born for the stage, there is no doubt!" Sue whispered 
 to me excitedly, and I nodded hastily, not wishing to lose a note or a 
 movement. 
   
 It was her best-known part and she was very lovely and magnetic in it, 
 but I do not think it really suited her so well as the Wagner dramas 
 would have, later. It is with _Marguerite_ as a great English 
 comedienne expressed it to me some years later, of _Juliet_: one must 
 be forty to play it properly--and then one is too old to play it 
 properly! 
   
 But what a gait she had! Her stride just fitted the stage, her 
 carriage of neck and head was such as great artists have worked years 
 to attain--and she was unconscious of it. Her eyes looked sky-blue 
 under the blonde wig, and the blonde tints were lovely, if not so 
 fascinatingly surprising as her own. 
   
 When she stopped, fixed her great eyes upon _Faust_ reproachfully and 
 sang, like a sweet, truthful child, 
   
     _Non, monsieur, je ne suis belle! 
     Ni belle, ni demoiselle...._ 
   
 a little sigh of pleasure ran through the audience: she won them then 
 and there. It seemed incredible that she was acting--it seemed that 
 she must be real and that the others were trying to surround her with 
 the reality she expected, as best they could. She had the sweet 
 purity of tone--the candour, if I may so call it, often associated 
 with delicate, small voices and singers of cool, rather inexpressive 
 temperaments. But _Brünhilde_ was the part for her, and _Brünhilde_ 
 was not cool and anything but inexpressive. 
   
 The only _Marguerite_ I have ever seen since that resembled hers was 
 Mme Calvé's, and the French artist seemed studied and conscious beside 
 Margarita. 
 
 
 
 PART 8 CHAPTER XXVII (WE BRING OUR PEARL TO MARKET) Pg 141 
   
 You see, she _was_ young, she _was_ sincere and ingenuous, 
 she _was_ slender and beautiful--and she had a fresh and lovely voice, 
 well trained, into the bargain. She would never have made a great 
 coloratura soprano. Neither her voice nor her temperament inclined to 
 this. She belonged, properly speaking, to the advance guard of the 
 natural method, the school of intelligence and subtle dramatic skill. 
 I cannot imagine Margarita a stout, tightly laced, high-heeled 
 creature, advancing to the footlights, jewelled finger-tips on massive 
 chest, emitting a series of _staccato_ fireworks interspersed with 
 trills and scales apropos of nothing in this world or the next. 
   
 Such performances constituted Roger's main objection to the opera, and 
 though he was considered Philistine once, it is amusing to see how the 
 tide of even popular opinion is setting his way, now. 
   
 So in the great final trio, Margarita did not show at her best, 
 perhaps; the situation seemed strained, unreal, and the final shriek a 
 little high for her. But oh, what a lovely creature she was, alone in 
 her cell! What lines her supple figure gave the loose prison robe, 
 what poignant, simple, cruelly deserted grief, poured from her big, 
 girlish eyes! And I do not believe anyone will ever again make such 
 exquisite pathos of the poor creature's crazed return to her first 
 meeting with her lover. So clearly did she picture to herself this 
 early scene that we all saw it too, and lived it over again with the 
 poor child. 
   
     _"Ni belle, ni demoiselle ..."_ 
   
 [Illustration: IT WAS AFTER THE GARDEN LOVE-SCENE THAT SHE WON HER 
 RECALLS] 
   
 It was the whole of love betrayed, abandoned, yet loving and 
 forgiving, that little phrase; and I staunchly insist that the good 
 Papa Gounod deserves credit for it, sentimentalist though he be! 
   
 It was after the garden love-scene that she won her recalls, over and 
 over again. Above the great sheaf of hot-house daisies I sent up to 
 the footlights she bowed and bowed and bowed again and smiled, and the 
 jewels flashed on her white shoulders and the yellow braids shook at 
 her deep, triumphant breaths, as she beamed out over us all, the 
 wonderful, all-embracing smile of the born artist, that cannot be 
 taught. Part of that brilliant smile came straight into my misted 
 eyes, back in the loge, and so extraordinary is the power of such a 
 success, so completely does that row of footlights cut off the victor 
 from us who applaud below, that I, even I, who had literally taught 
 this girl some of the ordinary reserves of decent society, who had 
 found her a savage (socially speaking) only two years ago, now bowed 
 low to her, dazed, humble as the man beside me who never saw her 
 before. 
   
 How they pounded and cried, those amusing, sophisticated, babyish 
 Parisians! 
   
 "_Brava, la petite!_" I hear the old gentleman now that turned to me 
 in amazement, chattering like a well-preserved, middle-aged monkey; 
 "but it is that it is an American, they tell me? _Ça y est, alors!_ It 
 is extraordinary, then, _impayable! Je n'en reviens pas!_" 
   
 "And why, Monsieur?" I asked. 
 
 
 
 PART 8 CHAPTER XXVII (WE BRING OUR PEARL TO MARKET) Pg 142 
   
   
 "For the reason, simply, that it is well known how they are cold, 
 those women, cold as ice, every one. But this one--Monsieur, I have 
 seen many _Marguerites_, I who speak to you, but never before has it 
 arrived to me to envy that fat _Faust_!" 
   
 And I (to whom he spoke) believed him thoroughly, I assure you. Though 
 I doubt if the portly tenor was much flattered, for he had accepted 
 the rôle with the idea of carrying off the honours of the evening, 
 and exhibited, in the event, not a little of that acrimony which is so 
 curiously inseparable from any collection of the world's great 
 song-birds. Ever since Music, heavenly maid, was young, she has been 
 so notoriously at variance with her fellow-musicians as to force the 
 uninitiated into all sorts of cynical conclusions! Such as the 
 necessity for some kind of handicap for all these harmonies, some 
 make-weight for these unnaturally perfect chords. And it is but due to 
 the various artists to admit that they supply these counter-checks 
 bravely. 
   
 Well I suppose they would be too happy if it were all as harmonious as 
 it sounds, and we should all (the poor songless rest of us) kill 
 ourselves for jealousy! And if the fat _Faust_ had really been as 
 supremely blissful as he should have been when Margarita, with that 
 indescribably lovely bending twist of her elastic body, drooped out of 
 her canvas, rose-wreathed cottage window and threw her white arms 
 about his neck in the most touching and suggestive abandon I have ever 
 seen on the operatic stage--why, we should have been regretfully 
 obliged to tear him to pieces, Roger and I and Walter Carter (I am 
 afraid) and the well-preserved Frenchman! 
   
 She was not so philosophical as Goethe nor so saccharine as Gounod, 
 our Margarita, and I don't know that I am more sentimental than 
 another; but when the poor child in all her love and ignorance and 
 simple intoxication with that sweet and terrible brew that Dame Nature 
 never ceases concocting in her secret still-rooms, handed her white 
 self over so trustfully to the plump and eager _tenore robusto_, a 
 sudden disgust and fury at the imperturbable unfairness of that same 
 inscrutable Dame washed over me like a wave and I could have wept like 
 the silly Frenchman. 
   
 Do not be too scornful of that sad and sordid little stage story, ye 
 rising generation--it is not for nothing that the great stupid public 
 of older days, ignorant alike of Teutonics and chromatics, but wise in 
 pity and terror, as old Aristotle knew, took it to their commonplace 
 hearts! Do not trouble yourselves to explain to me that Gretchen was 
 but an episode in a great cosmic philosophy; I knew it once, when I 
 was young like you. But I am nearly sixty now--worse luck!--and I see 
 why the cosmic philosophy has been quietly buried and the episode 
 remains immortal! And so will you some day. 
   
 It was a great success for Madame and she basked in it; she had even a 
 compliment for Roger. In our gay little supper, afterward, we had all 
 a kind word--an almost pathetically kind word--for Roger. Margarita 
 herself had never been so attentive to him, so eager for his 
 ungrudging praise, so openly affectionate with him. He was very kind, 
 very gentle, but in a quiet way he discouraged her demonstrative 
 sweetness and led her to talk of her professional future. 
 
 
 
 PART 8 CHAPTER XXVII (WE BRING OUR PEARL TO MARKET) Pg 143 
   
 In her eyes 
 as she looked at him over her wine-glass I seemed to see something I 
 had never seen before, a sort of frightened pity; not the terror of a 
 child cut off by the crowd from its guardian, but rather the fear of 
 one who sees a one-time comrade on the other side of a widening flood, 
 and regrets and fears for him and pities his loss and loneliness, but 
 is driven by Destiny and cannot cross over. I wondered if the others 
 saw it too, but dared not discover. 
   
 It was not altogether a happy _petit souper_, you see; I often think 
 of it when I assist at similar gatherings, and wonder to myself if in 
 all the glory and under all the triumph there is not some dark spot 
 unknown to us flattering guests, some tiny gulf that is growing 
 relentlessly, though we throw in never so many flowers and jewels to 
 fill it. The wheel turns ever, and no pleasure of ours but is built on 
 the shifting sand of some one's pain, even as Alif told me. 
   
 We had the _Valentin_ of the opera, a dapper little Frenchman, with us 
 (I forget his name: he had been very kind to Margarita and stood 
 between her and the senseless jealousy of the big, handsome tenor more 
 than once) and I heard him as we left the table remark significantly 
 to Mme. M----i, with a glance at Roger, 
   
 "Monsieur is not artiste, then?" 
   
 "Surely that sees itself?" returned the famous teacher with a shrug. 
   
 "_Un mari complaisant, alors?_" said the baritone lightly. 
   
 Madame had never liked Roger, and was, moreover, a somewhat prejudiced 
 person, but even her feelings could not prevent the irrepressible 
 chuckle that greeted this. 
   
 "Do not think it, my friend--_jamais de la vie!_" she answered 
 quickly, with a frank grimace as she caught my eye and guessed that I 
 had overheard. 
   
 No, one could not image Roger as the "husband of his wife." It simply 
 couldn't be supposed. 
   
 I had very little to say to him that night, myself. I felt clumsy and 
 tactless, somehow, and certain that what I might say would be too much 
 or too little. 
   
 It was Tip whose cheery, "How wonderfully fine she was, Roger! How 
 proud you must be of her!" saved the day and gave us a chance to shake 
 hands and leave them in the flower-filled coupé. 
   
 Well, after that it was all the same thing. Exercise, practice, 
 performance, success; then sleep, and exercise again, _da capo_. 
   
 She was a prima donna now, our little Margarita, a successful artist, 
 a public character. "Margarita Josépha," Madame had christened her, 
 for twenty years ago simple American surnames found no favour with the 
 impressario, and "_cette charmante Mme. Josépha_," "_artiste vraiment 
 ravissante_," etc., etc., the critics called her. 
 
 
 
 PART 8 CHAPTER XXVII (WE BRING OUR PEARL TO MARKET) Pg 144 
   
 As _Juliet_ she looked her loveliest, as _Marguerite_ she acted her 
 best, as _Aïda_ she sang most wonderfully. Indeed it was this last 
 that captured London and gave rise to the much exaggerated affair of 
 the Certain Royal Personage. She sang _Aïda_ twelve times in one 
 season (going to London from Paris) and the boys whistled the airs 
 through the streets and the bands played from it whenever she rode in 
 the Park. I myself saw the diamond bracelet Miss Jencks returned to 
 the Duke of S---- (we did not tell Roger, by mutual consent, till much 
 later) and the Queen's pearl-set brooch when she sang at Windsor 
 marked at least one satisfying unanimity among members of the royal 
 family. 
   
 I took Mary, long afterward, to hear Mme. G----i in the part Margarita 
 made famous in London, and when the tears rolled down the child's face 
 as poor _Aïda_ (that barbaric romanesque) dies in melody, portly 
 though starving, and unconvincingly pale, I wished she might have seen 
 her mother. There was a death! Nothing in _Aïda's_ life could possibly 
 have become her like Margarita's leaving of it, I am sure. 
   
 Roger ceased to go after the first performances, and indeed he was 
 very busy, and crossed the ocean more than once in the American 
 interests of his French and English _clientèle_. But whoever stopped 
 at home or went, whoever applauded or yawned, whoever approved of the 
 present status of the Bradley family or disapproved, one gaunt figure 
 never left Margarita's side from the moment she left her door till she 
 returned to it (except for the inevitable separations of the actual 
 stage-scene, and I think she regretted the necessity for these!) This 
 figure was Barbara Jencks's, and hers were the cool, uncompromising 
 eyes into which the enraptured devotee gazed when he followed his card 
 into the drawing-room, hers the strong and knuckly hands that put his 
 flowers into water and his more valuable expressions of regard back 
 into their velvet cases, previous to re-addressing them. She drove 
 with Margarita, when Sue Paynter did not, and would have ridden with 
 her, I verily believe, had not Carter and I volunteered to supply that 
 deficiency. 
   
 It was she who received that astonished and, I fear, disappointed kiss 
 from the German officer at Brussels, when the students drew 
 Margarita's carriage home from the opera house after her astonishing 
 triumph in the last act of _Siegfried_. It was an absurd part for 
 her--she had never done _Elsa_ nor _Elizabeth_, and Mme. M----i was 
 very angry with her. Herr M----l, the great director, spent the 
 summer in Italy and Switzerland and was with our party nearly all of 
 the time. Purely to please himself he taught Margarita the rôle of 
 _Brünhilde_ in _Siegfried_ and insisted on her singing it that winter 
 in Brussels under him. It was wonderful, and showed me what her real 
 _forte_ was to be. She was _Brünhilde_, she did not need to act it. 
 How the Master himself would have revelled in her! 
   
 She was very teachable--one of the most certain indications of her 
 great capacities. Her _Marguerite_ was almost entirely her own, for 
 she had not learned how to use dramatic instruction; her _Aïda_ was 
 almost Madame's own, for she had learned, then, and besides, did not 
 understand the character; her _Brünhilde_ was herself, trained and 
 assisted into the best canons of interpretation by a loyal Wagnerian. 
 It is a short part, of course, but it showed what she could have done 
 with the rest of it. At thirty-five she could have done the whole 
 _Ring_; at forty I believe no one could have equalled her. 
 
 
 
 PART 8 CHAPTER XXVII (WE BRING OUR PEARL TO MARKET) Pg 145 
   
   
 Carter got himself snarled hopelessly into a tangle with the 
 government officials in Berlin (he was no diplomat, though a good 
 fellow, and wild about Margarita, so that poor little Alice had more 
 than one bad quarter-hour, I'm afraid) and it took Roger a great deal 
 of Bradley influence with the American consul and a lot of patient 
 correspondence to unravel his unlucky brother-in-law. This gave Roger 
 a good excuse for being in and near Germany; whether he would have 
 stayed without it, I don't know. 
   
 The work on Napoleon was done: he had laboured over it in Rome during 
 the summer, and Margarita had been very sweet, refusing more than one 
 invitation (at Sue Paynter's earnest request) to stay with him. But it 
 was only too evident that she did not wholly wish to stay and that 
 such a situation could not last long. Herr M----l kept her interested, 
 and Seidl, whom he sent for to hear her practising for _Siegfried_, 
 was most enthusiastic about her and displayed his admiration a little 
 too strongly for our peace of mind. His was a developing, forcing 
 influence, and Margarita showed the effect of it wonderfully; he 
 inspired her to her best efforts, and Mme. M----i was terribly jealous 
 of him. Personally, I could not but feel that his undoubtedly great 
 influence upon her mind and methods represented one of his many 
 invaluable contributions to the musical history of America--but I 
 speak as an observer, merely, of an American artist, not as a husband! 
   
 Roger and he had what must be confessed was a quarrel (though the 
 newspaper accounts of a duel were, of course, absurd) over the 
 advisability of her singing privately for a young German princeling 
 whom Seidl was very anxious to honour--he was then introducing the 
 Wagnerian dramas into America and had not been long director of the 
 Metropolitan Opera House, New York. It all smoothed over and we agreed 
 to forget it, all of us, but Seidl's pride was hurt and Roger had done 
 what I had not seen him do for fifteen years--lost his temper badly. 
 He was not pleasant in a temper, old Roger, like all men of strong, 
 controlled natures, and Margarita learned a lesson that day that she 
 never forgot, I suppose. I believe if on the strength of that 
 impression he had carried her off bodily--flung her over his 
 saddle-bow, as it were, and ceased to respect her rights for 
 twenty-four hours, we should all have been spared much strain and 
 suffering. But he regretted his violence and told her so, which was 
 fatal, or so it seemed to me. There are occasions when not to take 
 advantage of a woman is to be unfair to her, and Margarita was very 
 much a woman. 
   
 Well, well, it's all over now, and we have no need to regret that we 
 did not try a different way. It may be we should have had to pay a 
 greater price--for nothing lacks its price-mark on life's counter, 
 more's the pity, and if we are deceived by long credit-accounts, the 
 more fools we! 
 
 
 
 PART 8 CHAPTER XXVIII (ARABIAN NIGHTS IN ENGLAND) Pg 146 
   
   
 I had much to reconstruct that season in regard to Margarita. I had 
 found her once before, in Paris, no longer a child, but a woman; I 
 found her now no woman merely, but a woman of the world. It seems 
 incredible, indeed, and I have puzzled over it many an hour when the 
 demon of sciatica has clawed at my hip and Hodgson's faithful hands 
 have dropped fatigued from his ministrations. How she did it, how an 
 untrained, emotional little savage, with hands as quick to strike as 
 the paws of a cub lioness, with tongue as unbridled as the tongue of a 
 four-year-old, with no more religion than a Parisian _boulevardier_, 
 with not one-tenth the instruction of a London board-school child--how 
 such a creature became in two years an (apparently) finished product 
 of civilisation, I am at a loss to comprehend. That she did it is 
 certain. My own eyes have seen Boston Brahmins drinking her tea 
 gratefully; my own ears have heard New York fashionables babbling in 
 her drawing-room. As for London, she dominated one whole season, and 
 not to be able to bow to her, when she rode on her grey gelding of a 
 morning, was to argue oneself unbowed to! Paris can never forget her, 
 for did she not invent an entirely new _Marguerite_? And the Republic 
 of Art is not ungrateful. She would have been a social success in 
 Honolulu or Lapland, the witch! 
   
 Whether her ancestor the prince or her ancestress the actress made her 
 development possible, whether her Connecticut grandfather or her 
 Virginia grandmother taught her, how much she owed her bandit father 
 who defied the world and her mother, the nun, who won it--both for 
 love--who shall say? 
   
 When I look back on those wonderful months I find that the fanciful 
 sprite whose province it is to tint imperishably the choice pictures 
 that shall brighten the last grey days, has selected for my gallery 
 not those hours when the footlights stretched between us, though one 
 would suppose them beyond all doubt the most brilliant, but quaint, 
 unexpected bits, sudden, unrehearsed scenes that stand out like tiny, 
 jewelled landscapes viewed through a reversed telescope, or white 
 sudden statues at the end of a dark corridor. 
   
 There is that delicious afternoon when we went, she and I and Sue 
 Paynter and an infatuated undergrad, to Oxford together, and ate 
 strawberries and hot buttered tea-cake and extraordinary little buns 
 choked with plums, and honey breathing of clover and English meadows, 
 and drank countless cups of strong English tea with blobs of yellow, 
 frothing cream atop. Heavens, how we ate, and how we talked, and how 
 tolerantly the warm, grey walls, ivy-hung and statue-niched, smiled 
 through the long, opal English sunset at our frivolous and ephemeral 
 chatter! They have listened to so much, those walls, and we shall 
 perish and wax old as a garment, and still the tea and strawberries 
 shall brew and bloom along the emerald turf, and infatuated youths 
 shall cross their slim, white-flannelled legs and hang upon the voice 
 of their charmer. Not the pyramids themselves give me that sense of 
 the continuity of the generations, the ebb and flow of youth and 
 youth's hot loves and hot regrets and the inexorable twilight that 
 makes placid middle age, as do those grey walls and blooming closes of 
 what I sometimes think is the very heart's core of England. My 
 mother's countrymen may fill London with their national caravanseries 
 and castles with their nation's lovely (if somewhat nasal) daughters, 
 but Oxford shall defy them forever. 
 
 
 
 PART 8 CHAPTER XXVIII (ARABIAN NIGHTS IN ENGLAND) Pg 147 
   
   
 The infatuated undergrad was the owner of a banjo, an instrument 
 hitherto unknown to Margarita and in regard to which she was vastly 
 curious, and at her request he and three of his mates blushingly sang 
 for her some of the American negro melodies then so popular among 
 them. She was delighted with them and soon began to hum and croon 
 unconsciously, the velvet of her voice mingling most piquantly with 
 their sweet throaty English singing. By little and little her tones 
 swelled louder and more bell-like: theirs softened gradually, till the 
 harmony, so simple, yet so inevitable, dwindled to the nearest echo 
 and barely breathed the quaint, primitive words: 
   
     _"Nellie was a lady-- 
     Last night she died ..."_ 
   
 Those deep tones of hers, stolen from envious contraltos, turned in 
 our ears to a mourning purple; a sombre, tender gloom haunted us, and 
 the sorrow of life, that alone binds us together who live, hung like a 
 lifting cloud over all who came within the magic radius of her voice. 
 The people gathered like bees to a honeycomb from all sides; black 
 caps and pale clear draperies drifted into a wondering circle; the 
 clink of cups, the murmur of gentle English voices died softly away 
 and the silence that was always her royal right spread around her. 
   
     _"Toll the bell for lovely Nell, 
     My dark ... Virginia ... bride!"_ 
   
 Who they were, those listening hundreds, I could not say for my life. 
 I suppose they must have been some garden party--I distinctly recall 
 the gaiters of a bishop and the coloured linings of more than one 
 doctor's hood among them. They are as sudden, as unexplained in my 
 memory, as those crowds in dreams, so definite, so individualised, 
 where haunting, special faces stand out and hands clasp and shoulders 
 touch--and all fades away. Around the vivid emerald lawn they group 
 themselves, and Margarita, a pearl in pearly trailing laces, sits on 
 a stone bench, defaced and mossy, in the centre, at the back; the lads 
 adore at her feet, the banjo drops tinkling handfuls of chords at 
 intervals, the birds flutter through the ivy overhead, the watered 
 turf smells strong and sweet in the fanlike rays of the slow sun; 
 bright pencils of yellow light fall like stained glass among the 
 immemorial ivy; the day goes, softly, pensively.... 
   
     _"Toll the bell for lovely Nell ..."_ 
   
 "Ah-h-h!" they sigh and melt, and I see nothing more. But the picture 
 is safe. 
 
 
 
 PART 8 CHAPTER XXVIII (ARABIAN NIGHTS IN ENGLAND) Pg 148 
   
 Then there was the famous house-party down in Surrey, whither the 
 elect of England, for some reason or other, seem to gravitate; whether 
 because the long midsummer Surrey days appear to them the last stage 
 on the way to a peaceful, well-ordered heaven, in case they expect to 
 spend eternity there, or a temporary solace, in case they don't! Sue, 
 to whom all musical Europe opened its doors on poor Frederick's 
 account, had taken Margarita, to whom the said doors were gladly 
 opening on her own, to one of the famous country houses of a county 
 famous for such jewels, and when Roger and I turned up there, who 
 should our host be but one of my old schoolmates at Vevay--younger son 
 of a younger son, then, and unimportant to a degree, but advanced 
 since by one of those series of family holocausts that so change 
 English county history, to be the head of a great house and lord of 
 more acres than seems quite discreet--until one is in a position to 
 slap the lord on the shoulder! 
   
 To Sue and me the soft-shod luxury, the studious, ripe comfort of the 
 great, hedged establishment, were frankly marvellous, accustomed as we 
 were to the many grades and stages of domestic prosperity between this 
 rose-lined ease and little-a-year; but Margarita, to whom the old red 
 jersey of the Island was no more real than the barbaric trappings of 
 _Aïda_, who accepted shells from Caliban or diamonds from 
 _Mephistopheles_ with equal _sang-froid_, displayed an indifference 
 to her surroundings as regal as it was sincere. Indeed, the two 
 simplest people at that party (famous for years in country-house 
 annals as the most brilliant gathering of well-mixed rank and talent 
 that ever fought with that arch-enemy of the leisured classes, 
 _Ennui_, and throttled him successfully for seventy-two hours) were 
 the wife of an American attorney-at-law and the eldest son of 
 England's greatest duke--the most eligible _parti_ in the United 
 Kingdom, a youth of head-splitting lineage and fabulous possessions. 
   
 They sat together on the floor of a chintz-hung breakfast room, 
 spinning peg-tops all over the polished wax, for two rainy hours 
 before dinner (which function was delayed half an hour to please them, 
 to the awed wonder of the lesser guests and the apoplectic amusements 
 of the young peer's father) and were the only occupants of the great 
 house, except three collie pups who sat with them, to see nothing odd 
 in the performance, though Saint-Saens was come over from Paris to 
 accompany Margarita on the piano and the princess of a royal family 
 was dressed in her palpitating best for the best reason in the world 
 not unconnected with the son of an historic house! 
   
 Du Maurier drew a picture of it for _Punch_ in his very best manner 
 (it went the length and breadth of England) and then, at Roger's grave 
 request, withdrew it from the all-but-printed page and gracefully 
 presented him with it. It was wonderfully characteristic of both of 
 them and prettily done on both sides, to my old-fashioned way of 
 thinking. 
   
 Well, it was after that top-spinning that Margarita and the Fortunate 
 Youth jumped up carelessly, kicked away the tops, and raced each other 
 to the noble music room, a magnificent gallery, all oak and Romneys 
 and Lelys, and there the Fortunate Youth sat down at the piano 
 (Saint-Saens standing amused in the curve of it) and began to play the 
 accompaniment of one of Tosti's great popular waltz-songs. It is no 
 longer in favour, your waltz-song, though I have lived through a 
 sufficient number of musical fashions to be reasonably certain of its 
 return to power, some day, but then it was at its height, and 
 subalterns hummed them to military bands, from Simla to Quebec, and 
 soft eyes dropped under those subalterns' right shoulders and soft 
 hearts melted as the chorus was repeated by request, and the dawn 
 found them still dancing--bless the happy days! 
 
 
 
 PART 8 CHAPTER XXVIII (ARABIAN NIGHTS IN ENGLAND) Pg 149 
   
 Now Providence had seen fit (displaying thus an astonishing lack of 
 socialistic wisdom and an altogether regrettable tendency to give to 
 those to whom much had already been given) to bestow upon this 
 Fortunate Youth enough musical ability to have made the fortune of a 
 pair of Blind Toms, so that he could play any and all instruments, 
 instinctively, apparently, and almost equally well. He played also by 
 ear, with the greatest ease, the most complicated harmonies, and could 
 accompany anybody's singing or playing of anything whatever--if he 
 happened to be in the mood for it. 
   
 "It is a thousand pities that one could not have found him in the 
 gutter, that boy," as M. Saint-Saens confided to me, "it would have 
 been of service to him!" 
   
 Which remark, being overheard, scandalised many good British souls 
 horribly and caused the youth to blush with perfectly ingenuous and 
 modest pleasure. 
   
 He sat down at the great Steinway and ran his long white fingers 
 loosely over the keys, and said to Margarita, while the butler gazed 
 in agony at his mistress, and the other guests, all arrayed for one of 
 the climaxes of one of England's most temperamental importations from 
 the kitchens of France, stood divided between interest and foreboding, 
   
 "I say, Mrs. Bradley, can you sing _'Bid me Good-bye and Go'?_ I'm 
 awfully fond of that." 
   
 "I can sing it if it is here," said Margarita placidly, "why not?" 
   
 "Oh, it's safe to be here," he answered easily, and sure enough, it 
 was there, in a cabinet close by. 
   
 Well, it was banal enough, heaven knows--how else could it have been 
 popular? Lincoln was not a musician, so far as I know, but he knew 
 that one can't fool all the people all the time! And the good Tosti, 
 however light he may ring nowadays, had one little bit of information 
 not always at the disposal of modern song-writers--he understood how 
 to write for the human voice. Which has always seemed to me a very 
 valuable acquisition, if one happens to be in the song-writing trade. 
   
 So when Margarita, with a quick glance at the obvious little melody, 
 put her hands behind her back like a school-girl--she was dressed in a 
 tight, plain little jacket and skirt of English tweeds, with stiff 
 white collar and cuffs and thick-soled boots, and what used to be 
 called an "Alpine hat"--and began to sing, to a slow waltz rhythm, one 
 might not have expected much: indeed, the youth hummed audaciously 
 with her, at first, and the other men, not one of whom was within many 
 degrees of nonentity, beat time carelessly. 
   
     "_Is_ there a single _joy_ or pain 
     That I may _never_ know?" 
   
 Stop a bit! What caught at your heart and worried you, Colonel, and 
 stabbed a little under your D. S. O.? Were you quite fair to that 
 lovely, high-spirited creature you married, all those years ago? 
   
     "_Take_ back your love, it is in vain ..." 
   
 
 
 
 PART 8 CHAPTER XXVIII (ARABIAN NIGHTS IN ENGLAND) Pg 150 
   
 Ah, Lady Mary, you are a good twelve stone nowadays, but when that 
 poor younger cousin gave you that look in the garden and the roses 
 crawled over the old dial in the moonlight, you were slighter, and 
 crueler! 
   
     "_Bid_ me good-_bye_ and _go_!" 
   
 It was a waltz, oh, yes, but it was a very Dance of Death to those of 
 us who had any parting to look back to, that changed our life--and we 
 could never go back again and make it better; never any more. That was 
 what cut so, and Margarita, dark and slim like a plain brown 
 nightingale, who leaves plumage to the raucous peacock because it 
 matters so little what she, the real queen of us all, wears--Margarita 
 spelled it out remorselessly, to the tune of a mess-room waltz, and 
 told us that youth is only once and so sweet and for so little time! 
 And the boy beside her smiled with pleasure and embroidered her rich, 
 clear-cut phrasing and annotated it and threw jewels and flowers of 
 unexpected chords through it and mocked the sad, charming fatalism of 
 it as only spendthrift youth can. 
   
     "_You_ do not _love_ me, no! 
     _Bid_ me good-_bye_ and go ..." 
                               
 Cruel Margarita, how could you make the tears splash down the cheeks 
 of the poor little princess, who knew what was expected of her and had 
 no greater sin on her conscience than a tiny lock of her yellow hair 
 always warm, now, in the breast of a ridiculous second cousin on a 
 sheep-ranch in far Dakota, U. S. A.? 
   
     "Good-_bye_, good-_bye_, 'tis better so ..." 
   
 They stand so still in this picture, those big, non-committal British, 
 each gnawing his lip a little under the drooping mustache; the women's 
 shoulders are ivory against the panelled oak and bowls of Guelder 
 roses in Chinese bowls; that beautiful line from the base of the 
 throat to the top of the _corsage_ which America has not to give her 
 daughters, as yet, heaves and droops; the Romneys smile behind their 
 wax candles in sconces. It is only a waltz of the street, but she has 
 bewitched us with it, has our Margarita. 
   
 But strongest and clearest of all, keen in light and dense in shadow 
 like a Rembrandt, I see that extraordinary night in Trafalgar Square, 
 that night that surely lives unique in the memory of Nelson and the 
 Lions, though most that shared it may be, and doubtless are--for they 
 were not for various reasons long-lived classes of people--dead and 
 dust by now. How and why we found ourselves at Trafalgar Square I 
 could not tell, though I went to the stake for it this minute. But I 
 think it must have been that Margarita wanted to walk through the 
 streets, a form of exercise for which she took fitful fancies at odd 
 times, and that I, as was mostly the case, went with her. 
   
 We were all alone, for Roger, who shared our walks usually, when he 
 was not too busy, had just left for Berlin an hour earlier, on one of 
 his patient unravellings of Carter's diplomatic tangles. 
   
 It had been a dull, damp day--the kind of day that tried Margarita 
 terribly in England, for she was much under the influence of the 
 weather, and _le beau temps_ brought out her plumage like her Mexican 
 parrot in Whistler's portrait. 
 
 
 
 PART 8 CHAPTER XXVIII (ARABIAN NIGHTS IN ENGLAND) Pg 151 
   
 Looking back at it all, too, I seem to 
 feel, though with no definite reason for it, that she was perturbed 
 and excited about something known only to herself, for she was 
 strangely irritable on our walk, contradicted me fiercely, inquired 
 testily who Nelson might be, then chid me for a dry old schoolmaster, 
 when I told her, and such like flighty vagaries, inseparable, I 
 believed, from her sex in general and her temperament in particular. 
 If I have never taken the trouble to defend myself from the accusation 
 of thinking The Pearl perfect in her somewhat spoiled relations with 
 her best friends at this period of her life, it is because I have 
 always considered that such people as are too inelastic in their views 
 of human nature to realise that Margarita merely exhibited _les 
 défauts de ses qualités_ (as who of us does not, at one time or 
 another?) are unworthy even my argumentative powers, which are not 
 great, as I perfectly understand. 
   
 So she unsheathed her sharp little female claws and patted me 
 mercilessly with them, and contrived to make me seem to myself a 
 tactless, blundering fool to her heart's content that night, striding 
 easily beside me, meanwhile, like a boy, though she had refused to 
 change her high-heeled bronze slippers for more sensible footgear and 
 carried the unreasonably long train of her black lace dinner gown 
 over her arm. Roger did not care for her in black, and she seldom wore 
 it, but had ordered this a few days ago from the great Worth, who then 
 ruled those fortunate ladies who could afford to number themselves 
 among his subjects with a sway he has since, I am assured, been forced 
 to divide among other monarchs--the only monarchs left now to a 
 Republic that has never denied that one divine succession through all 
 her revolutions. For that monarchy Paris never will sing _ça ira_; for 
 that principle she knows no cynicism; that wonderful juggernaut, the 
 Fashion, shall never rumble across channel, it seems! 
                                                       
 I had derided myself for a sentimentalist and spinner of fine theories 
 when I had thought I detected a little defiance in her first 
 assumption of this midnight black robe, with its startling corals on 
 her arm and neck, and the foreign-looking comb behind her high-dressed 
 hair, the whole bringing out markedly that continental strain that 
 amused Whistler (naughty Jimmie!) and displeased Roger. But when she 
 appeared in it that night determined on a dinner where most of the 
 guests were highly distasteful to Roger, who had congratulated himself 
 on a quiet evening at home; when she had dragged him to it at the risk 
 of losing his only train and teased him shamefully all through it by 
 the most ridiculous flirtation with one of the worst _roués_ of Europe 
 (Margarita was so fundamentally honest and so thoroughly attached to 
 her husband that such performances could only be doubly painful to 
 him, since they were obviously intended maliciously) when she sent him 
 off before the long dinner's close without any but the most casual 
 _adieux_ and without the remotest intention of accompanying him, I was 
 uncomfortably forced to the conclusion that this long-trained, inky 
 dress was a veritable devil's livery, that she had put it on 
 deliberately and that there would be no stopping her till the mood was 
 off. 
   
 And now I find myself about to write a most unjustifiable thing, in 
 view of the possibility of these idle memories falling somehow, 
 sometime, somewhere, into the hands of that ubiquitous Young Person to 
 whom all print is free as air in these enlightened days.  
 
 
 
 PART 8 CHAPTER XXVIII (ARABIAN NIGHTS IN ENGLAND) Pg 152 
   
 In America it 
 has been the rule, to suppress such print as could not brave this 
 freedom; in France, to suppress such Young Persons as could! There is 
 something to be said for both methods, and each has, perhaps, its 
 defects; the one producing more stimulating Young Persons, the other 
 enjoying more virile prose. 
   
 Be that as it may, I am quite aware that my duty to the youth of Anglo 
 Saxondom should lead me to state, sadly but firmly, that such conduct 
 as Margarita displayed on the night in question could have had but one 
 result--that of filling me, her friend and admirer, with a grieved 
 displeasure and disgust; that her unwomanly carelessness as to the 
 feelings of others and her wanton disregard of the wishes and comfort 
 of those who should have been dearest to her lowered her in my    
 estimation and greatly detracted from her charm in my eyes. But I am 
 not writing particularly for the Young Person and candour compels me 
 to state that she was quite as interesting to me as ever! I didn't 
 think she had treated Roger very handsomely--true; but Roger had known 
 that he was marrying a delicious vixen when he married Margarita, you 
 see, and if I had begun to lecture her, there were too many others who 
 would have been only too delighted to relieve her of my society. She 
 abused her power sometimes, I admit it--but then, she had the power! 
 And oh, the balm she kept for the wounds she gave! 
   
 As I have said, I have not the remotest idea of how or why we 
 confronted Nelson and the Lions, I cannot by any effort of memory see 
 us arriving or leaving; but I see myself pausing in my lecture on 
 English history, as a lighted transparency, a straggling crowd and a 
 band bear down upon us suddenly out of nowhere. It is a poor, vicious 
 sort of crowd, the gutter-sweepings of London; pale, stunted lads, 
 haggard, idle slatterns, a handful of women of the street, a trio of 
 tawdry flower girls. Around the band, which turns out to be only a big 
 drum and a clattering tambourine, a group of men and women in a 
 vaguely familiar uniform, the women in ugly coal-scuttle bonnets. 
   
 "What is that, Jerry?" says Margarita. 
   
 "That is the Salvation Army--let's get along," I answer. 
   
 But she will not, for she is curious, and I resign myself to the 
 inevitable and wait. Their crude appeals are symbols born of a deep 
 knowledge of the human heart they fight to win--gleaming light and 
 rhythmic drum: the first groping of savagery, the last pinnacle of the 
 most highly organised religious spectacle the world has yet 
 elaborated. They gather near the fountain, they group about their 
 lighted banner, and a drawling cockney voice afflicts the air. I can 
 see the circle now--they form in the classic amphitheatre that knows 
 no century nor country; a humpback pushing a barrow of something 
 before him stops near us; a woman, coughing frightfully, leans on it, 
 muttering to herself, staring at Margarita's scarf-wrapped head. 
   
 The cockney's address begins, "O my brothers ..." but I do not attend: 
 I want to get Margarita out of the growing crowd, listless, but lifted 
 for a moment from their sordid treadmill of existence by the light and 
 the muffled, rhythmic crush and the high-pitched sing-song. They must 
 have followed for a long way, for they are churnings from the very 
 dregs of London and alien to Trafalgar Square, and the officer on his 
 beat looks at them suspiciously enough. 
   
 
 
 
 PART 8 CHAPTER XXVIII (ARABIAN NIGHTS IN ENGLAND) Pg 153 
   
 "Won't you give us a song, lieutenant?" says the speaker suddenly, 
 "pipe h'up there, friends--many a sinner's saved his soul with a 
 song--w'y not some o' you? Are you ready, lieutenant?" 
   
 I can see her so plainly, the pretty, worn little creature; pale as 
 death and in no condition for street singing, evidently, but plucky 
 and borne along by the very zeal of the Crusaders. The other woman, 
 who cannot sing, shakes the tambourine, a great, burly fellow, some 
 rescued navvy, thuds at the drum, and her sweet, thin little voice 
 rises, shrill, but wonderfully appealing, through the night. 
   
     _"I need Thee every hour, 
     Most gracious Lord!"_ 
   
 It is not difficult now to see why the crowd followed; her voice is 
 like a child's lost in the wood, but brave, and sure of ultimate 
 protection; it has a curious effect of the country and the hedgerows. 
 They listen eagerly, they like it. 
   
 "Come, Margarita, I think we ought to get away--the crowd is getting 
 thicker. People are staring at us." 
   
 "No, no, Jerry, let me alone! Oh, see the poor woman, she is too ill 
 to sing! She has lost her voice--do you know it?" 
   
 And so she has. With a clutch at her throat and a pathetic turn of her 
 eyes to the speaker, the little lieutenant shakes her head at him and 
 is dumb. He seats her deftly on a camp stool by the drummer, pats her 
 shoulder, sends a friendly gutter-rat with the face of a sneak-thief 
 for water, and turns to the crowd. 
   
 "Come now, friends, the lieutenant 'ere 'as lost 'er voice along o' 
 you, an' tryin' to save yer! Can't you pipe up, some o' you? If some 
 of you'd sing a bit with us, now, maybe we'd be able to take back 
 _one_ soul to Christ with us to-night. Can't one o' yer sing?" 
   
 "I will sing!" says some one near me--and it is Margarita! 
   
 I clutch her cape fiercely, but it slips off in my hand and she is at 
 the drum, and the lane that opened for her closes for me, and I fight 
 in vain to reach her--Oh, it must be a dream! 
   
     "I _need_ Thee every _hour_...." 
   
 Ah-h-h! The crowd sighs with the old familiar joy, the magic of the 
 golden voice slips like a veil over the cruel angles of their broken 
 lives and mists and softens everything. 
   
 She has a slip of printed paper in her hand and reads seriously from 
 it; some one holds the transparency near her shoulder for light--her 
 white shoulders, bare in Trafalgar Square! 
   
 [Illustration: THEY ARE STILL AS DEATH, TRANCED IN THOSE LIQUID 
 BELL-TONES] 
   
     "I _need_ Thee every _hour_, 
       Most _gracious_ Lord, 
 
 
 
 PART 8 CHAPTER XXVIII (ARABIAN NIGHTS IN ENGLAND) Pg 154 
 No _tender_ voice like _thine_ 
       Can _peace_ afford...." 
   
 They are still as death, tranced in those liquid bell-tones. The great 
 drum shivers, as it shivered, of old, a tom-tom, across the African 
 desert; the old, primal thrill creeps through my blood--good heavens, 
 is this fear? Is it superstition? _Is it religion?_ 
   
     "I _need_ Thee--oh, I _need_ Thee!" 
   
 The woman sobs like a damned soul beside me; a man coughs huskily. 
 Will no one stop her? They have wedged me so that I cannot breathe, I 
 feel them gathering from the nearby streets. And there she stands, 
 coral like blood on her bare neck, the scarf fallen from her black 
 hair, the plea of all humanity pouring in a great anguished stream of 
 melody out of her white throat. 
   
     "I _need_ Thee oh, I _need_ Thee, 
     Ev'ry _hour_ I need Thee!" 
   
 The tambourine shudders barbarically across the smooth flood of her 
 voice: it is the tingling crash of the Greek Mysteries--and I had 
 thought it vulgar! 
   
 I hear hansoms jingling up--what will Roger say? He would kill them 
 all, if he could, I know, and yet no one there would hurt a hair of 
 her head--and does she not belong to the public? 
   
 God knows the poor devils need something--is it that, then? Is it a 
 real thing? Do people fight for it like that? For this imperious Voice 
 is agonising for something and the drum is the beat of its heart. 
   
 "Gawd's frightful hard on women," the poor creature beside me moans, 
 and lo, the little dumb lieutenant is by her side miraculously, and 
 like a shifting kaleidoscope the crowd lets them through and she 
 kneels, shaking, by the drum. 
   
 Their white faces heap in layers before me; drawn, wolfish, brutal in 
 the flaring lights they peer and gasp and sob, like uncouth 
 inhabitants of another world--wait a bit, Jerry, it is your world, 
 just the same, and perhaps you are responsible for it? Ugh! 
   
     "I _need_ Thee ..." 
   
 "Gad, it's little Joséfa!" 
   
 The clear English voice cuts across the hush, and, 
   
 "What a lark!" answers a deeper bass. 
 
 
 
 PART 8 CHAPTER XXVIII (ARABIAN NIGHTS IN ENGLAND) Pg 155 
   
   
 He is a very important and highly conventional personage, nowadays, 
 that slender pink dandy, with five grown daughters and a Constituency; 
 but if by any odd chance he should read this, I will wager he forgets 
 what he is actually looking at for a moment and sees against the black 
 shadows and rising night fog of Trafalgar Square a beautiful, 
 black-robed woman in red corals lifted to an empty barrow by two eager 
 club-dandies and held there by a gigantic Guardsman--the best fencer 
 in Europe, once! 
   
 Oh, Bertie, the Right Honourable now, the always honourable then, do 
 you know that there were tears on your pink cheeks? And your noble 
 friend, who broke up his establishment in St. John's Wood the next day 
 and founded the Little Order of the Sons of St. Francis, does he know 
 that the lightning stroke that blinded him like Saul of Tarsus and 
 sent him reeling from Piccadilly to the slums, lighted for a moment, 
 as it fell, the way of a dazed, rheumatic bachelor from America, who 
 saw the terror in his eyes and the sweat on his forehead as he held 
 his corner of the barrow and Margarita drove him to his God? 
   
     "Ev'ry _hour_ I _need_ Thee ..." 
   
 The fog rolls over us, the lights flare through a sea of mist; the 
 Honourable Bertie produces a hansom, from his pocket apparently, and 
 the wild, dark etching is wiped out like a child's picture on a slate. 
   
 Margarita falls asleep on my shoulder, I gain my usual philosophical 
 control, gradually, and realise, now the echoes of that agonised 
 pleading have ceased to disturb my soul, that the woman beside me is 
 not even a Christian, technically speaking, and knew not, literally, 
 what she did! 
   
 The magic of the Golden Voice--ah, what magic can cope with it? Of all 
 the pictures hers has painted for me on those miraculous, grey-tissued 
 walls where memory lives, this strange coarse-tinted sketch--a very 
 Hogarth in its unsparing contrasts--stands out the clearest. At night, 
 when I close my eyes and think "London," then does that poor sister of 
 the streets moan to me that "Gawd's frightful hard on women," and 
 fight her way to Margarita--who has been favoured beyond most women, 
 and knows not God--at least, not that implacable deity of the London 
 slum! Whenever I hear or read the phrase "Salvation Army" then do I 
 see a young exquisite with a white camellia in his buttonhole, gazing 
 like a hypnotised Indian Seer at a crude transparency blotted with 
 unconvincing texts, then rushing off to found a celibate order--from 
 Margarita, who was no more celibate that Ceres the bountiful! 
   
 Ah, well, the Way is a Mystery, as Alif said, and who am I that I 
 should expect to solve it, when kings and philosophers have failed? At 
 any rate, I have my pictures safe. 
   
 
 
 
 PART 8 CHAPTER XXIX (FATE GRIPS HER LANDING NET) Pg 156 
   
 She sang her French rôles in Germany and three times in _Siegfried_, 
 and was getting ready for Paris again when a long letter from Alice 
 Carter besought us all to come to Boston as quickly as might be. Old 
 Madam Bradley had been stricken suddenly with paralysis. One side of 
 her body was beyond movement, but the other was as yet unimpaired, and 
 by a series of questions they had found out that she wanted to see 
 Roger--and Roger's wife--before she died. Nor was this enough, for the 
 proud, afflicted old creature, when their ingenuity had failed, traced 
 left-handed upon a slate, with infinite effort, my initials: evidently 
 she wanted to make her peace in this world before she left it. 
   
 Margarita demurred a little and I, for one, should be the last to 
 blame her. Greater knowledge of the world and especially her 
 acquaintance with Walter Carter, who did not hesitate to blame his 
 mother-in-law, had taught her to appreciate Madam Bradley's neglect, 
 and her feeling for death had none of the sacred respect custom breeds 
 in us--at least outwardly. She had just begun to study _Lohengrin_ and 
 a charming week at a French _château_ with Sue had given her a taste 
 for the society she liked and ornamented so well. She suggested that 
 Roger and I should go alone, leaving her with Sue, and we (Sue and I) 
 trembled for the outcome, for she seemed rather determined, to us. 
   
 But we had not counted sufficiently on Roger's sense of what was right 
 and just. What might be considered a slighting of his personal claims 
 he could endure patiently; what was due to his family and position he 
 could not ignore. Quietly he cancelled Margarita's early contracts, 
 secured passage and dismissed the servants. 
   
 "Be ready to sail on Saturday, _chérie_," he said, "I want my mother 
 to see you very much, and Mary, too." 
   
 "Very well," said Margarita, round-eyed and breathing fast, and 
 Barbara Jencks clapped her hands noiselessly. She adored Roger, as did 
 all his servants and dependents, for that matter. 
   
 We reached Boston with the first early snows, and though his mother's 
 face was set and her hand steady as she laid it on his head, I think 
 they understood each other and were grateful from their hearts for 
 that hour of reconciliation. For Margarita the stately silver-haired 
 figure with immovable features and fixed, withdrawn gaze held some 
 unexpected and inexplicable charm. She kissed Madam Bradley willingly, 
 set the little Mary on her lap and beguiled the child with every 
 graceful wile to laugh and crow and exhibit her tiny vocabulary. She 
 sang by the hour, so that the gloomy house--brightened now, for the 
 baby's health--echoed with her lovely notes. Bradleys and Searses and 
 Wolcotts flocked to meet her and spread her fame and charm abroad; and 
 Roger forgot for a while the load he carried and seemed like himself 
 again. Even Sarah capitulated, and that before very long, too. I saw 
 her actually wiping away a tear as she watched Madam Bradley lift with 
 great effort her cold white finger and trace the outline of her 
 grandchild's face: the little Mary was the image of her father and a 
 fine Bradley, with only her mother's quick motions and mobile smile to 
 remind one of that side of her ancestry. 
   
 Of course Madam Bradley was not demonstrative, nor even cordial, from 
 any ordinary point of view, but from hers, and in the light of our 
 knowledge of her, there was a tremendous difference. Already she had 
 given little Mary a beautiful diamond cross and the famous Bradley 
 silver tea-service. Sarah had softened wonderfully, too, and seemed 
 to feel that since her aunt did not die, it was incumbent upon her to 
 pay her debt to heaven by burying the hatchet. I don't think I ever 
 quite did Sarah justice, so far as her feeling for Madam Bradley 
 went--she appeared to be deeply and genuinely attached to her and was 
 sick with anxiety when the stroke took her.  
 
 
 
 PART 8 CHAPTER XXIX (FATE GRIPS HER LANDING NET) Pg 157 
   
 She shared perfectly the 
 grandmother's feeling over the baby, and Margarita's good taste in 
 presenting Roger with such a perfect Bradley was set down to her 
 credit with vigorous justice. For she never forgave poor Alice for the 
 brown little Carters. Alice's children resembled their father, and 
 Sue's (almost grandchildren, in that house) were sickly and 
 comparatively unattractive; but Margarita's daughter, perfect in 
 health, beautiful as a baby angel, active, daring, and enchantingly 
 affectionate, satisfied the old lady's pride completely and she sat 
 for hours contentedly watching her sprawl on an Indian blanket on the 
 floor. 
                                           
 Either the comfort of renewed relations with her children mended her 
 health or the fatality of the shock was overestimated, for she did not 
 die, not then nor for many years, but lived, happier, perhaps in her 
 affliction than before it, for the bond between her and Roger and 
 Mother Mary, strengthened when she was preparing for death, never 
 loosened again, and more than once, a black-robed, white-coiffed 
 figure has visited the home of her father's like a slim shadow, and 
 carried with her one of the Church's greatest blessings, surely--the 
 healing of old wounds and the restoring of human loves. 
 
 
 
 PART 9 (IN WHICH THE RIVER FINDS THE SEA) CHAPTER XXX (A TERROR IN THE SNOW) Pg 158 
   
     Like a white snake upon the sands 
       She's writhing in the crispy foam, 
     She holds her soul in her open hands, 
       And now she staggers and now she stands, 
     And now she runs to her husband's home! 
   
     O I have seen a wife at rest, 
       That croons the babe upon her knee, 
     She lies upon her goodman's breast 
       As gentle as a bird at nest, 
     The mermaid's saved her soul from Sea! 
   
 _Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden._ 
   
 Well, they stayed the month nearly out, and then Roger took a fancy to 
 see the Island in winter, and I, hugging to my breast the 
 consciousness of that furnace, was easily persuaded to go with them: 
 it is January, February and March that punish me so fearfully in the 
 North, and really only the last two of those. I had thought Margarita 
 a little _distraite_ and cold to us all, toward the last, and feared 
 she was resenting her exile: she took a short trip to New York, 
 accompanied, of course, by the faithful Jencks, and I had visions of 
 American contracts, but Roger never mentioned the subject--didn't even 
 ask her why she went, I believe, she hated to be questioned so. 
   
 We found everything in first-rate order (I had written ahead to light 
 the furnace) and you should have seen Roger's face when he noticed the 
 registers in the big room! Like a boy's when some good-natured trick 
 has been played upon him. Suppose we had not had them nor the coal--it 
 makes me cold now to think of it. 
   
 I find I can't write about it very fully, after all, and I must be 
 forgiven if I cut it short. It's a little too near, yet, after all the 
 years. I know I never want to see snow again--it is the most cruel 
 blue-white in the world. 
   
 We stopped the night, of course, and in the morning Roger and 
 Margarita went for a walk on the crust, for it had snowed all night 
 and the evening before--the great, fat, grey clouds were full of 
 it--and we thought we were in for another blizzard like last year's. 
 It had "let up" for a little, as they say about there, but Roger was 
 afraid to risk going away till it had definitely ended, so they went 
 for their walk, and I chatted with Miss Jencks by the fire. They had 
 been gone about an hour when we heard a great scratching and whining 
 at the door (I thought for a moment it was Kitch) and Rosy bounded in, 
 snapping his teeth and glaring fearfully. We both jumped up and he 
 flew at me and caught my sleeve in his teeth--for a moment, I confess, 
 I felt a little queer, for I had seen him throw Caliban and hold 
 him--then, as I drew back, he uttered the most heartrending howl I 
 have ever heard, and spun wildly around, and at that moment I felt 
 suddenly that something was up and that I was wanted. Miss Jencks felt 
 it at exactly that moment, too, and ran for my great-coat before I 
 asked her. 
   
 She says that I said, 
   
 "Where are they, old fellow? Go seek!" but I don't remember it. I know 
 that she said in a low voice, 
   
 "I shall be of no use--I can't run--but I will have everything ready," 
 though she says I must have imagined it. 
   
 Rosy flew through the door and I after him--she had the sense to bring 
 me my heavy arctic overshoes, or I should have slipped in a 
 minute--and I ran for about fifty yards. 
   
 Then something stopped me. Where it came from, _what_ did it, I don't 
 know and can never know, but I swear I heard a low, distinct voice 
 close to me (not a cry, mind you, but a quiet, hoarse voice) saying, 
   
 "Get a rope. Get a rope." 
   
 I checked like a scared horse and nearly fell. 
   
 "Get a rope," I heard again, "_get a rope_." 
 
 
 
 PART 9 CHAPTER XXX (A TERROR IN THE SNOW) Pg 159 
   
 Then, cursing at myself for a crazy fool, I actually turned, with Rosy 
 showing his teeth at me, and dashed back (all those precious yards!) 
 and grabbed a pile of rope Caliban had brought out to bind some big 
 logs for hauling and abandoned under the eaves when we arrived on the 
 island. Rosy was far ahead now, but he had gone through the crust at 
 intervals and I tracked him by that. 
   
 [Illustration: I LEANED OVER THE BANK AND CRIED THAT I WAS THERE, BUT 
 SHE NEVER STOPPED--IT WAS TERRIBLE] 
   
 Suddenly the wind--it was blowing a steady gale behind me--shifted, 
 and I heard a succession of terrible cries, great hoarse, high 
 shrieks, like nothing human and yet unlike any animal. Wordless, 
 throat-tearing screams they were, and I shouted back, against the 
 head-on wind, 
   
 "Coming! Coming! Hold on! I'm coming!" till I coughed and strangled 
 and had to stop. 
   
 How I ran! I never did it before and certainly never can again. Rosy's 
 tracks curved and twisted, and I felt I was losing time, but dared not 
 risk missing them, for I was coming nearer to that awful voice 
 steadily, though it echoed so I should have been helpless without any 
 other guide. 
   
 Well, I found them. Roger up to his shoulders in icy water, his head 
 dropped back, white, on her arm, and she up to her waist on a slippery 
 ledge under the highest point of the bank--the bank that I blasted 
 out! She was caught, I could see, on a jagged point by her heavy, 
 woollen skirt (it was made in London, bless it!) and must have wedged 
 her foot, besides, in some way, for she had his whole weight; her lips 
 were blue. She wore a blood-red cape, all merry and Christmas-like 
 against the white ledges, and her hair streamed in the wind. Her head 
 was thrown back like a hound's and those blood-curdling screams poured 
 out of it; her eyes were shut. Now and then Rosy bayed beside her, 
 scratching at the snow, and where the water was not frozen in the 
 protected pools it swirled like a mill-race around the nasty, pointed 
 rocks. 
   
 I leaned over the bank and cried that I was there, but she never 
 stopped--it was terrible. Finally I made a slip-noose and actually 
 managed to fling it over his head--Roger had taught me to do that at 
 school, twenty years ago--and that stopped her, hitting against her 
 cheek, and she opened her eyes. 
   
 "Put it under his arms, can you?" I cried, and after several efforts, 
 for she was nearly frozen stiff, the brave, clever creature did, and 
 I got it around a tree on the edge. Then I stopped, panting, for I 
 realised that I could do no more. The run had taken all the strength 
 out of me--I couldn't have dragged a cat--and she was little more than 
 a foot below me! 
   
 I can't write about it. My arms ache now, just as my infernal 
 shoulders ached with that paralysing, numb ache then. 
   
 "Listen!" I cried, for she had begun to scream again, "listen, 
 Margarita, or I will beat you! Is he unconscious?" 
 
 
 
 PART 9 CHAPTER XXX (A TERROR IN THE SNOW) Pg 160 
   
 She nodded. 
   
 "Can you hold on five minutes, with his weight gone?" 
   
 She blinked in a sort of stupid assent. 
   
 "Could you for ten? Are you braced solid?" 
   
 Again she blinked, and with an inspiration I plunged my shaking hand 
 into my great-coat pocket and pulled out a brandy-flask. Miss Jencks 
 had taken it from the sideboard. 
   
 I tied it into my handkerchief, opened, and swung it down to her, and 
 she got her lips around it and coughed it down. It acted instantly and 
 she could move a little, and while I encouraged her, and after several 
 heartrending failures, which nearly spilled all the brandy, she got it 
 into his mouth between his teeth, as his big body swung in the noose. 
 It ran over his chin and down his neck, but a little got in, and his 
 eyelids quivered. Soon he coughed, and I dared not wait another 
 second. 
   
 "I am going for Caliban," I said very distinctly, "we will pull you 
 out in a few minutes. Let him alone and hang on, do you hear? Don't 
 scream any more--you are safe. Pour all the brandy into him--tell him 
 he is tied fast. Don't try to move--you may slip, and tear your skirt. 
 Hold on!" 
   
 Then I turned my back on them and ran, or rather stumbled off. I 
 leaned over and kissed her forehead, first. 
   
 I remember muttering, "I never asked before--if You or Anybody is 
 there, save them! Take me and save them!" and then I stumbled on and 
 on.... 
   
 It was not too long. Caliban was coming with his big wood-sled and 
 more rope and blankets, and as I caught sight of him the most 
 extraordinary thought flew into my mind, which worked with a dreadful 
 clearness, for I saw them stiffen and sink and slip away every second. 
 Rosy bayed just then, and as my heart sank, for I thought they were 
 gone, it suddenly occurred to me what Rosy's name must have been! 
   
 "It's _Rosencrantz_!" I muttered, "and the one Margarita insists was 
 called 'Gildy' was _Guildenstern_, and they were _Hamlet's_ 
 friends--poor Prynne!" Perhaps that wasn't idiotic--I laughed as I 
 stumbled along! 
   
 Well, they were there, and Roger was enough himself to strike out with 
 his feet a little and avoid hindering us, if he couldn't help much. I 
 made another noose for her, and she hung in it while Caliban dragged 
 him up--the fellow had the strength of an ox and showed wonderful 
 dexterity--and later crawled down the rocks and cut her skirt through 
 with his big clasp-knife. She was the hardest to move, for her foot 
 was caught--all that saved her. I thought we should break her ankle 
 before we could get her. 
 
 
 
 PART 9 CHAPTER XXX (A TERROR IN THE SNOW) Pg 161 
   
 We laid them on the sledge, wrapped in blankets, poured in more 
 brandy, and Caliban attached Rosy to it by his collar--an old trick of 
 his, it seems--and they dragged us all home, for my worthless legs 
 gave out completely. 
   
 Miss Jencks and Agnès rubbed them and mustard-bathed them and I wrote 
 telegrams for Caliban to take in the launch--wrote them as well as I 
 could in the clutches of a violent chill, with my teeth like castanets 
 and my hands palsied--and even as I wrote, it came to me that 
 Margarita had repeated monotonously, all the way home, in a hoarse, 
 painful voice (but, mercifully, a low one) "get a rope, get a rope, 
 get a rope." 
   
 It was the voice I had heard, that turned me back! 
   
 She was all right, but very weak and sore and with a little fever--not 
 much. She was perfectly conscious of everything within an hour, and 
 told us about it: how she had slipped and Roger had hit his head and 
 strained himself in going after her. She thinks she held him under the 
 arms ten minutes, screaming all the time! She sent Rosy back, finally, 
 though at first he refused to go. 
   
 Roger was delirious for five days and very dangerously ill for three 
 weeks--it was double pneumonia. Miss Jencks had seen it before and it 
 was her prompt measures before we could get the doctor or Harriet that 
 saved him, they think. It was a bad age for pneumonia; Harriet said 
 she would rather have pulled Margarita through it. She brought a 
 deaconess from the little dispensary with her and one or the other was 
 watching him like a cat every second, for three weeks. It was a 
 nurse's case, the doctor said, though he stopped the first week. 
   
 When Margarita came to herself after an hour or so, she asked for me, 
 and as I knelt by her bed and she turned her great eyes on me I caught 
 my breath, for I was looking at a new woman. I can't describe it 
 better than by saying that she had a soul! There had always been 
 something missing, you see, though I would never have admitted it, if 
 she hadn't got it then. But it was there. 
   
 It was very pathetic, those first days when Roger was delirious: she 
 was nearly so herself. And yet it was not wholly grief--there was a 
 definite reason for it, which we all felt, somehow, but she would not 
 give it. 
   
 "Will he not know me for a minute, a little minute, Harriet?" she 
 would beg, so piteously, and Harriet would soothe her and try to give 
 her hope. The fifth day he was very low and the doctor told us to make 
 up our minds for anything: he hadn't slept all night. I took Harriet 
 by the shoulders and asked her if she could not possibly make him 
 conscious--before. I don't know why I asked her and not the doctor, 
 but I did. She promised me she would try (I think she had nearly 
 given up hope, herself) and at three the next morning she called me 
 and said that I might have a chance--that he might know us for a 
 moment. Margarita was by the bed: her face was enough to break your 
 heart. 
   
 "Only a minute, Harriet--only a little minute!" she pleaded like a 
 baby. I don't know what insane vow I didn't offer ... He opened his 
 eyes and they fell on her. She put her hand on his forehead and said 
 very plainly. 
 
 
 
 PART 9 CHAPTER XXX (A TERROR IN THE SNOW) Pg 162 
   
   
 "Listen, Roger, you must listen. It is I--Margarita, _Chérie_, you 
 know. Do you hear?" 
   
 His eyes looked a little conscious, and Harriet held his pulse and 
 slipped something into his mouth. In a moment we all knew that he knew 
 us. 
   
 "Now say one thing, Mrs. Bradley--quickly!" Harriet whispered. 
   
 Margarita bent like a flash and whispered in his ear very swiftly: her 
 whole body was tense. You should have seen his eyes--he was old Roger 
 again! I could see his hand press hers and she kissed him just as the 
 flash went by, and he took to muttering again. 
   
 Harriet pushed her away and put her hand on his forehead, then nodded 
 at the deaconess. 
   
 "Call the doctor!" she said sharply, and I thought it was all over.... 
   
 But it was the turn, and after that by hair's breadths and hair's 
 breadths they pulled him over. 
   
 "Now he knows, Jerry," Margarita said to me, and went to bed herself. 
   
 It was a good week after that, when the doctor had gone and we were 
 all breathing naturally again, that Harriet asked me abruptly if I had 
 noticed Mrs. Bradley's voice. I said yes, that it was still decidedly 
 husky. She looked at me so sadly, so strangely, that my nerves fairly 
 jumped--we had all been on edge for a month--and I commanded her 
 rather sharply to say what she meant and be done with it. 
   
 "Is her voice injured?" 
   
 "I am afraid so, yes," she said gently. 
   
 "But surely time and rest and proper treatment," I began, but she 
 shook her head. 
   
 "The doctor examined her throat before he left," she said. "Of course 
 he had no laryngoscope with him, but he didn't need one, really. The 
 vocal cords are all stretched--he said the specialists might help her 
 and take away a great deal of the hoarseness, but that in his opinion 
 she can never stand the strain of public singing again: he thinks 
 excitement alone would paralyse the cords." 
   
 "Who's to tell her?" I said quietly. 
   
 You see, we'd all been stretched so taut that we couldn't use any more 
 energy in exclamations or regrets. 
   
 "I thought you might," she said, but I shook my head. 
   
 "Miss Jencks--" I began, but it appeared that Miss Jencks felt unequal 
 to it. So Harriet told her, of course, on the principle that when one 
 has a heavy load he may as well carry a little more, I suppose. 
   
 
 
 
 PART 9 CHAPTER XXX (A TERROR IN THE SNOW) Pg 163 
   
 And after all it wasn't so bad; for Margarita came down to me a little 
 later, and told me she had known it all the time! 
   
 "But, of course, dear child," I said hopefully, "Doctor ---- is not a 
 throat specialist, you know, and we can but try some of those famous 
 fellows, a little later. Perhaps in a year or two----" 
   
 "You are very good to me, Jerry," she said, "but it is no use. I know. 
 I shall never sing again. I am sorry, because----" 
   
 "Sorry?" I cried, "why, of course you are sorry! What do you mean?" 
   
 "Because," she continued placidly, "it will not be so much to give 
 Roger." 
   
 "Give Roger?" I echoed stupidly, "how 'give Roger'?" 
   
 "I was not going to sing any more, anyway," she said. 
   
 For a moment I was dazed and then the simplicity of it all flashed 
 over me. 
   
 "Why, Margarita!" I cried--and that is all the comment I ever made. 
   
 "That was what I wanted to tell him when he did not know me," she 
 explained. "I--I was going to tell him the night--the night it 
 happened." 
   
 "And does he know it now?" 
   
 "Of course. That is why he got well," she said promptly. 
   
 And do you know, I'm not sure she was wrong? That life was killing 
 him--I mean it ran across his instincts and feeling and beliefs, every 
 way. 
   
 There was no doubt she meant it. She never referred to the subject 
 again. 
   
 He wanted her to see somebody else about her throat, but she 
 absolutely refused to leave the Island till he was out of bed--Sarah 
 came on with the baby two weeks later--and they sat by him all day 
 nearly, the two of them, and he hardly let go her hand. He had changed 
 a great deal in one way--his hair was quite silvered. But it was very 
 becoming. 
   
 I didn't leave till I saw him in a dressing-gown in a long chair by 
 the fire. Harriet went back to her hospital, and when Roger was up to 
 it they went South for a bit before he began to work again. 
   
 The day before I left he did an odd thing--one of the two or three 
 impractical, sentimental things I ever knew him to do in his life. He 
 asked me to bring him his history of Napoleon--it had been packed into 
 their luggage by mistake--and deliberately laid it on the heart of the 
 fire! I cried out and leaned forward to snatch it--to think of the 
 labour it represented!--but he put his hand on my arm. 
 
 
 
 PART 9 CHAPTER XXX (A TERROR IN THE SNOW) Pg 164 
   
 "Don't, Jerry--I hate every page of it!" he said. 
   
 Well, I have been wondering these twenty years if perhaps they'll talk 
 about it--the whole thing--some day. At the time, we all acted as if 
 it were the most natural thing in the world for Margarita to settle 
 down as a _haus frau_--perhaps when _Nora_ got done with her studies 
 of life (for I read Sue's Ibsen, you see) that is what she did, after 
 all! 
   
 At any rate, I frankly hope so. For if all the wisdom and experience 
 and training that the wonderful sex is to gain by its exodus from the 
 home does not get back into it ultimately, I can't (in my masculine 
 stupidity) quite see how it's going to get back into the race at all! 
 And then what good has it done? I hope Mr. Ibsen knows! 
 
 
 
 PART 9 CHAPTER XXXI (FATE EMPTIES HER CREEL) Pg 165 
   
 [FROM SUE PAYNTER] 
   
                                       PARIS, Feb. 10th., 189-- 
   
      JERRY DEAR: 
   
      What must you think of me for delaying so long to write, 
      after the few curt words I found for you that night? I hope 
      you know that something must have kept me and have forgiven 
      me already. Poor little Susy was taken very sick the night 
      you sailed, with violent pains and a high fever. Fortunately 
      there is a good American doctor here--a Doctor Collier--and 
      we pulled her through, though it seemed a doubtful thing at 
      one time. The doctor decided that she had appendicitis (I 
      never heard of it before) and operated immediately on her, 
      which undoubtedly saved her life. It seems that Mother 
      Nature is not quite so clever as we have always thought her 
      and has left a very dangerous little _cul-de-sac_ somewhere, 
      that ought not to be there, so modern science takes it out. 
      Isn't that strange? The doctor has just come over to operate 
      for this in Germany somewhere; he was an assistant of Dr. 
      McGee, whom you sent to the South, and can't say enough of 
      the magnificent work he is doing there. He was much 
      interested to find I knew all about it and that Uncle Morris 
      stocked the dispensary. Isn't the world small? 
   
      I hope you're not feeling too badly about Margarita--don't. 
      Of course I understand what the stage has lost, and you will 
      confess that I was as anxious for her career as anybody, 
      even when I was sorriest for Roger. I wanted her to have her 
      rights as an artist. But if _she_ doesn't want them--ah, 
      that's a different pair of sleeves altogether. She has sent 
      me her latest photograph, and the eyes are all I need. Of 
      course, I have no such brilliant future to sacrifice, but if 
      I had, I am sure I should throw a dozen of them over the 
      windmill for two eyes like hers to-day! 
   
      I don't know why I am prosing along at this rate and 
      avoiding the main object of this letter. I must plunge right 
      into it, I suppose, and get it over. 
   
      Don't think I don't appreciate all your kind, your generous, 
      offer meant, Jerry. I thought of it so often and so long 
      before I gave you that brusque answer. And it tempted me for 
      a moment--indeed it did. I think, as you say, that we could 
      travel very comfortably together and we have many of the 
      same tastes--I know no one so sympathetic as you. As for 
      "nursing a rheumatic, middle-aged wanderer through assorted 
      winter-climates," that is absurd, and you know it, though I 
      should be glad enough to do it, if it _were_ true, as far as 
      that goes. I know all you would do for the children, and how 
      kind you would be to them. Not that I like that part, 
      though, to be quite frank. I could never love another 
      woman's children (especially if I loved their father) and I 
      can't understand the women that do. So I always imagine a 
      man in the same position. And I can't help feeling, Jerry, 
      that if you _really_ loved me--loved me in the whole crazy 
      sense of that dreadful world, I mean--that you wouldn't 
      speak so sweetly about the children: how could you? How can 
      any man--I couldn't, if I were one! 
   
      But this is very unfair, because you never said you did love 
      me in that way--don't imagine that I thought so for a 
      moment. Jerry dear, my best friend now, for I must not count 
      on Roger any more, do you think I am blind? Do you think I 
      have been blind for three years? And will you think me a 
      romantic, conceited fool when I say that unless I--even I, a 
      widow and a jilt, who hurt a good man terribly and got well 
      punished for it!--can have the kind of love that you can 
      never give me, because you gave it to someone else three 
      years ago, I don't want to accept your generous kindness? 
      You see, I know how you can love, Jerry, just as I see now 
      that I never knew how Roger could until those same three 
      years ago. Of course he didn't either--would he ever have 
      known the difference, I wonder, if we had married? 
   
      And there is another reason, too. You might just as well 
      know it, for my conceit is not pride really, and it may be 
      you know it already. Whatever love Frederick failed to kill 
      in me--and the very idea of passionate love almost nauseates 
      me, even yet--is not in my power to give you, Jerry dear. It 
      might, some day, later, wake again, but it would not be your 
      touch that could wake it. 
   
      Now, since this is so of both of us, don't you see, dear, 
      that things are better as they are? I promise you that if I 
      ever need help, I will come to you _first of all_, since 
      what you really want is to help me and make me comfortable 
      and give me the pleasure of wide travel, you generous 
      fellow! And if ever you _really_ need me, Jerry--but you 
      won't, I am sure.  
 
 
 
 PART 9 CHAPTER XXXI (FATE EMPTIES HER CREEL) Pg 166 
   
 No one else is quite what you are to me, 
      or can be, now, and we must always be what we have always 
      been--the best of friends. Tell me that you know I am right, 
      and then let us never discuss it again. 
   
                                      Yours _always_, 
                               
                                                 SUE. 
   
   
                             UNIVERSITY CLUB, May 20th, 189-- 
   
      DEAR JERRY: 
   
      Have just got back from a little Western trip (my brother 
      and I exchanged pulpits for a month) and learned of Roger's 
      illness and the accident. What a terrible thing, and how 
      fortunate they were! I always liked that big dog, the fine, 
      faithful fellow. Mrs. Bradley's leaving the stage was no 
      great surprise to me: she came to New York to ask my advice 
      about it just before the accident. We had a long talk, and 
      though she by no means agreed at the time to everything I 
      said on the subject, she did not seem opposed, herself, to 
      much of it, in fact, she seemed very anxious to do the fair 
      thing, it seemed to me. She appreciated perfectly that the 
      more she did in one way the less she could do in 
      another--how wonderful it is to think that she has never 
      been to school in her life! It almost seems as if so much 
      schooling were unnecessary, doesn't it, when association 
      with educated people can do so much in three years. Or 
      perhaps it is only women that could absorb so quickly. 
   
      I hope the doctors are wrong about her voice. They all say 
      it will be a little husky always (though less and less so 
      with time) and that singing, except in the quietest, 
      smallest way, will be impossible. It does not seem to matter 
      very much to her. She is looking very well indeed (you know, 
      of course, that she is expecting another child in the 
      autumn--Roger told me). He is quite magnificent with his 
      thick, silvery hair, I think. Mr. Carter, who dined with me 
      here at the club a night or two ago (he gave my boys a fine 
      talk on German customs and military games) tells me that he 
      hopes (Roger, I mean) to be able to do a great deal of his 
      work on the Island--certainly all the summer and autumn. He 
      seems to be turning into a sort of consulting lawyer, like a 
      surgeon. Besides that great text-book business I suppose you 
      know about. He says there are two or three years' work on 
      that alone. 
   
      I hope that you agree with me that Mrs. Bradley is much 
      better off in her husband's home, fulfilling the natural 
      duties of her sex. You seemed to think in your last that 
      Mrs. Paynter would not, to my great surprise. What in the 
      world is the matter with the women, nowadays? Where shall we 
      be if the finest specimens of them have no leisure to 
      perpetuate the race? Are only the stupid and unoriginal, 
      unattractive ones to have this responsibility? I wish I 
      dared get up a sermon on these lines; I may try yet! 
 
 
 
 PART 9 CHAPTER XXXI (FATE EMPTIES HER CREEL) Pg 167 
   
   
      You know Mrs. Paynter well, Jerry--do you think there is any 
      chance for me there? I have been for ten years proving that 
      a minister need not be married, and I've done it, too, but 
      it was only because I never met the woman I wanted. I have, 
      now, but she won't have me. Does that mean it's final? I 
      don't know much about women, but I can't believe one like 
      her would refuse just to be asked again. Tell me what you 
      think. She seems very decided, though she sympathises 
      thoroughly with my work. 
   
                               Yours faithfully, 
   
                                  TYLER FESSENDEN ELDER. 
   
   
                         [FROM MY ROUGH DIARY] 
   
     May 30, 189-- 
   
     Have just written Tip Elder how sorry I am about Sue, but 
     that he'd better give it up. She'll never marry. How 
     curiously we three are twisted into the Bradley weaving! 
   
 
 so happy and beautiful--the past seems a dream. Voice 
 
     lovely still, but not quite under her control always, and a 
     tiny roughness in it that humanises, somehow--it was _too_ 
     clear before, though that sounds absurd. 
   
     Everybody wondering how everybody else will take her 
     retirement. Strangely enough, no one regrets much, 
     personally, but all sure the others will! Are we all more 
     clear-sighted than we suppose--or more sentimental? Surgeon 
     from Vienna has pronounced condition final. Either she is a 
     wonderful actress or else we have overestimated her vocation; 
     she seems absolutely contented. And yet, think of her 
     triumphs! And of course, her greatest successes were all to 
     come. Madame M---- is furious, but told Sue she had never 
     trusted Roger--he was always too silent! "He has absorbed a 
     great artist like so much blotting-paper!" she said. But he 
     has got something into her eyes that Madame never saw there: 
     we all agree on that. How did Alif put it--"Tis Allah sets 
     the price, brother--we have but to pay." Well, she's paid. 
     And old Roger, for that matter, and Sue, and Tip--and I. Who 
     keeps the shop, I wonder? 
   
 
 
 
 PART 9 CHAPTER XXXII (THE SUNSET END) Pg 168 
 To-day I went to Mary's wedding, and it has made me very thoughtful. 
 She was very lovely--a great, blooming blonde, the image of Roger. 
 They were a fine pair, as he held her on his arm: he looking younger 
 than his sixty years, she older than her twenty, for all the children 
 are wonderfully mature and well-developed. 
   
 She was nearly as tall as young Paynter, whose slenderness, however, 
 is like steel. I well remember when Dr. McGee took him to North 
 Carolina and made him over--a weak, irritable little precocity of 
 twelve or so. He never ate or slept in a house for three years, and I 
 think that the birds and trees of that period got into his opera and 
 made it what it is, the musical event of a decade. He works best in 
 Paris, and they will live there, after a honeymoon on the Island. 
   
 I don't think Mary was ever the favourite child, though each of the 
 six thinks it is, Margarita is so wonderful with them! She cannot hide 
 from me, who watch every light in her eye, that young Roger, the 
 second child and oldest boy, means a shade more to her than the 
 others, just as Roger, when he sits alone with Sue, the second 
 daughter, talks to her more confidentially than to any of the others, 
 and watches her yellow head most steadily when they are all swimming, 
 off the Island wharf. They are both fine, big girls, just as Roger and 
 my namesake are fine, big, steady fellows and little Lockwood is a 
 fine, big, handsome child. 
   
 But my foolish old heart lost itself long ago to a pair of slate-blue eyes 
 set in an olive face under dark, strong waves of hair, and when into that 
 large, blonde brood there came a perfect baby Margarita, a slender, dark 
 thing who flashed the summer twilight sky at one from under her long dark 
 lashes, I claimed her for mine and mine she is--my Peggy. She is alone 
 among the others, my precious black swan: her quaint, dreamy thoughts are 
 not their practical, sunny clear-headedness, her self-peopled, solitary 
 wanderings are not their merry comradeships, her lovely, statuesque 
 movements are not their athletic tumbles. She stood to-day at her mother's 
 knee in just the attitude S----n painted them for me, her eyes clouded with 
 awe just as the bloom upon her mother's sweeping gown of velvet clouded its 
 elusive blue, the soft plume upon her bride-maiden's hat leaned against the 
 rich lace on her mother's breast. How beautiful they were! As I stared at 
 them and their eyes lighted at the same moment with just the same dear 
 smile, so that they were more than ever wonderfully alike, I heard a woman 
 whisper behind me that the gentleman the beautiful Mrs. Bradley and her 
 picturesque little daughter were smiling at was the child's godfather, an 
 old friend--all his money left to her and his namesake, her brother. Before 
 the whisper had ended Margarita the woman had turned her eyes toward her 
 husband--they could not leave him long that day--but Margarita the child 
 kept hers on me, and under them the years rolled back and I seemed to see a 
 grave young girl sitting on the sand in a faded jersey, looking down into 
 my heart and telling me that I loved her! 
   
 How many times since have I not seen her on that beach, cradling her 
 rosy babies in her strong, smooth arms, murmuring with her graceful 
 daughters, judging mildly between some claim of her tall, eager sons! 
 How many summer evenings have I sat with Peggy in my arms and watched 
 her pace that silvering beach with her husband, hand in hand like 
 young lovers! I think they forget utterly that Time slips by, he 
 passes them so gently. 
 
 
 
 PART 9 CHAPTER XXXII (THE SUNSET END) Pg 169 
   
 It is a favourite claim of ours who are bidden to that home that it is 
 an enchanted isle, and that he only brushes it with his wings, gliding 
 over, and turns the scythe away and holds the hour-glass steady. Even 
 the children feel it: it is a half-jesting, half-serious plaint with 
 them that the goats, the donkeys, and the ponies to which they 
 successively transfer their affections can never secure immortal youth 
 by a yearly sojourn in that happy kingdom. I offered once to rebuild 
 our old bridge--to make it a drawbridge, even, and thus keep our 
 treasure safe, but after a long council it was rejected. 
   
 "It wouldn't be a really island, then, you see, Jerry dear," said my 
 Peggy (always deputed to bear an ultimatum to me) "and we like it 
 better an island--don't you?" 
   
 Of course it must be an island! It was marked out for an island when 
 first the waters were gathered up and the dry land appeared. I think 
 all the happy places are islands--I should like to make one of Italy. 
 I am convinced that when the Garden of Eden is definitely settled (and 
 Major Upgrove is trying to persuade me to come with him to find it--he 
 has a theory) it will be found to be a secret isle in some great 
 estuary or arm of that ageless Eastern river suspected by the major. 
 Surely that mysterious Apple (of whose powers Margarita was once so 
 sceptical) never grew on any vulgar, easily-to-be-come-at mainland! 
 No, it lurks to-day in its own island Paradise, and the angel with the 
 flaming sword cut the land apart from all common ground so that the 
 furrows smoked beneath it as the floods raced in. If we find it--the 
 major and I--shall we bring some apples back to Peggy? In truth, I am 
 none too sure. Why my darling's sex has been so eager for that Apple 
 is not yet entirely evident--though I am not too stupidly obstinate to 
 admit that it may be evident, one day. But the fact remains that Eve 
 certainly regretted it, and Adam, one would suppose, must have, for he 
 has been settling dressmaker's accounts ever since! 
   
 As to the position held by this father of mankind among the Bradley 
 children, by the way, volumes might be written. To suppose that 
 Barbara Jencks, their bond slave in all else, has remitted an atom of 
 her zeal in bringing them into the state of religious conviction 
 enjoyed by the Governour-General's family, would indicate the densest 
 ignorance of her character. And success has not been entirely lacking, 
 for my namesake delights in the battles of the Kings and Sue's sweet 
 life is a very Sermon on the Mount. But Lockwood still sacrifices to 
 Pan among the beehives and propitiates the Thunder God with favourite 
 kittens, and Roger the Second long ago informed his would-be mentor, 
 to her horror, that if a fellow tried to be like his father and told 
 the truth and worked hard, he thought that fellow could take his 
 chances with God! Dear, obstinate lad, with your cleft chin and your 
 blue eyes, it is not your grandmother, who leaves her Emerson and her 
 Psalms unread together, when she can fill her keen, proud eyes with 
 you, that will deny your simple creed! 
   
 But my little Peggy has outgrown Pan, and scorns to appease her baby 
 brother's deities. 
   
 "I asked Roger," she said to me one late afternoon, when we sat in her 
 mother's rocky seat and watched the red sun sink, "why the sun was 
 here--just so that we could see things? And he said yes. 
 
 
 
 PART 9 CHAPTER XXXII (THE SUNSET END) Pg 170 
   
 And the moon 
 the same way, for night. But that little blind girl I see in the Park, 
 in New York, _she_ can't see things, Jerry dear. She never can. What 
 is that for?" 
                                                             
 "I can't tell, sweetheart." 
   
 "You don't know, Jerry dear?" 
   
 "No, Peggy, I don't know." 
   
 "But someone knows?" 
   
 "That I can't tell, either." 
   
 She turned her serious, deep eyes on me. 
   
 "But, Jerry dear, nothing can be that someone--_Someone_--don't know, 
 can it? That wouldn't be right. There must be _Some one_?" 
   
 "I hope so, sweetheart." 
   
 She stared quietly at the rosy ball that sank, below us and far away, 
 at the rim of the sea--Margarita's sea. 
   
 "I know there is, Jerry," she said simply. "Look at that, the way I 
 do, and you'll know, too." 
   
 And just then, I thought I did ... 
   
 Sue was at the wedding, of course, grey, and a little worn, now, but 
 dressed _à merveille_ and delightful in her pride at her genius-boy. 
 His sister, a wonderful, modern young woman, has learned her "trade," 
 indeed, though one that her mother never dreamed of, and will 
 decorate, furnish and supply with everything from ancestral portraits 
 to patent mouse-traps any structure from a hotel to a steam-yacht that 
 you may place in her capable, college-bred hands. A remarkable 
 achievement is young Susan--the achievement of the _fin de siècle_ 
 generation. At the wedding-breakfast she described to me her last 
 "job"; the putting in commission of a dilapidated fifteenth-century 
 _château_ for its new oil-king owner--he was born in a bog-cabin in 
 Ireland and never tasted anything but potatoes and stir-about till he 
 was fourteen. But Susan has raked Europe for a service fit for him to 
 eat his cabbage from and Asia for rugs fit for his no longer bare 
 feet, and has deposited his good American cheque in her bank. She is 
 improving the occasion of her American visit by an extended hunt for 
 old silver and brasses and china for a great country house on the 
 Hudson--its many-millioned mistress will pay well for her "imported" 
 treasures! 
   
 Truly is Susan a lesson to us, and wide would be her 
 great-grandmother's eyes could she see Susan disposing of her girlish 
 samplers and draping her camel's-hair shawl behind a Hawthorne jar. 
 And I am bound to admit that Susan is not marrying, though her mother 
 was struggling with two delicate children at her age. No, Susan has 
 no need to "marry to get away from home." As fast as this 
 accomplished young woman establishes herself in a charming house, some 
 envious person buys it of her, and she moves serenely to a new one, a 
 contented, self-respecting Arab with a bank account. 
 
 
 
 PART 9 CHAPTER XXXII (THE SUNSET END) Pg 171 
   
   
 Ah, well, perhaps it will be, as her mother triumphantly declares, all 
 the more honour to the man who gets her, after all! We oldsters must 
 not be stubborn, nowadays. 
   
 My mother, like old Mrs. Upgrove, is living still; well and happy, 
 both of them, thank God, and as proud of their sons as if either had 
 ever done anything to deserve it. Neither of them has much to say of 
 Margarita, I have noticed, though both fondle her children, a little 
 absently, perhaps, and feign to wonder what it is we see in Peggy that 
 blinds us to the excellencies of the others--stouter children and more 
 respectful, my dear! 
   
 And Death, that spares them both, and old Madam Bradley, too 
 (eighty-eight now and half paralysed for nearly twenty years!), what 
 had we done that he should take away one whom we and the world--her 
 world--could so ill spare? Does _Someone_, indeed, know why, my 
 sweetheart Peggy? I try to think so, but it is hard to see. 
   
 Nine years ago Harriet put Peggy into her mother's arms and praised 
 the little thing and kissed them both, and then told Roger that she 
 must leave them, for she felt ill and would not risk the 
 responsibility of further nursing. She would send a good nurse 
 straight from New York, she said, and Roger himself took her there, 
 leaving the doctor with Margarita, as soon as he dared. He brought 
 back the other nurse, wired me to look after Harriet, and left her 
 comfortable in the little apartment of a good friend of hers, with a 
 promise of a speedy return. He never saw her alive again. 
   
 Dr. McGee, even then a famous physician and devotedly attached to her, 
 worked day and night over her, but it was useless; the over-strained, 
 busy heart had given way and she lived only three days, growing 
 feebler with every hour. 
   
 I was sitting beside her in the afternoon, trying to be cheerful, 
 trying to cheer her with those futile subterfuges we are forced to, 
 trying to get it all clear in my own troubled mind, when she smiled 
 whimsically at me and begged me to spare myself such pain. 
   
 "A nurse is the last person to need such talk, dear Mr. Jerrolds," she 
 whispered to me, and as the good deaconess who had been her first 
 helper in her chosen work burst into tears and stumbled from the room, 
 she put out her hand and I took it silently. 
   
 "What you have been--what you have been, Harriet!" I muttered 
 unsteadily, and then her eyes met mine. 
   
 "What have I been?" her lips barely formed the words, "do you know?" 
   
 There in her soft brown eyes I saw at last--at once. God knows I never 
 guessed before. They met mine so calmly, so honestly, so 
 fearlessly--alas, they could be fearless now! 
   
 "And I have been such a fool--such a brute!" 
   
 "Hush! you never knew," she whispered, "you could not help it, my 
 dear. It was so from the very first--when you saw my diary." 
 
 
 
 PART 9 CHAPTER XXXII (THE SUNSET END) Pg 172 
   
   
 "But I might--I might have----" 
   
 Again she smiled whimsically. 
   
 "O no," she said quietly, "there was no chance for me, of course. I 
 never dreamed of it, my dear. But--but I wanted you to know it. There 
 has never been anybody but you." 
   
 I tried to speak, but could not, and again, but the words dried on my 
 lips. Then I saw that she was sleeping--from exhaustion, probably, and 
 sat by her in silence till the deaconess came back, red-eyed, and sent 
 me away. I bent over her and kissed her cheek, before I left, and I am 
 sure that her lips moved and that the hand I had held while she slept 
 pressed mine faintly. But she did not open her eyes, and in the 
 morning the message came that she had drifted easily away, in that 
 same sleep before dawn. 
   
 Gone--and I never knew, never faintly surmised, never considered! 
   
 Gone--and there had never been anybody but me! 
   
 Ah, Peggy, there had need be _Someone_ that knows, to make good the 
 pity of it, the cruelty of it, the senseless waste of it! 
   
 But we three, whom she gave so generously to each other, whom, in 
 turn, she tended back to life, into whose lives she has grown as a 
 tree grows, can we call her love wasted? 
   
 Nor is it among us alone that her memory flourishes. No woman in all 
 those mountain parishes she loved so well faces her dark hour of 
 travail without blessing her name and the name of her messengers, 
 whom, in the endowment called in memorial of her, Margarita sends to 
 them, to tend them and the children they bear, as Harriet helped her 
 and hers. She lies among them, a stone's throw from the corner-stone 
 she laid nearly twenty years ago, now, and many visitors have never 
 seen the tablet that lies along her grave--so thick the flowers are 
 always lying there. 
   
 "Mother says you are not to look so sad, Jerry dear, because it isn't 
 me that Freddy's marrying!" says Peggy softly, behind me, and I come 
 back to the present, with a jerk. 
   
 "Not Freddy, perhaps," I answer with pretended severity, "but some 
 other young sprig no better than Freddy, and then poor old Jerry may 
 go hang!" 
   
 She slips her firm little hand--Margarita's hand--into mine shyly. 
   
 "Now, Jerry, how silly you are!" she says, looking carefully to see if 
 I am teasing her or by any chance in earnest. 
   
 "How can I marry a young sprig, when I am going to marry you?" 
   
 "Since when?" I inquire sardonically. 
   
 "Why, Jerry!" 
 
 
 
 PART 9 CHAPTER XXXII (THE SUNSET END) Pg 173 
   
   
 Her big eyes open wide, she plants herself before me and stares 
 accusingly. 
   
 "You know very well--you can't have forgotten? You and I and little 
 Jerry and Miss Jencks are going round the world when I am sixteen! To 
 Japan, and see the wistaria and the cherry blossoms and the five 
 hundred little stone Buddha-gods that get all wet with spray and the 
 red bridge nobody may walk on!" 
   
 "Anywhere else?" 
   
 "Yes, to Vevay and see where Mr. Boffin used to live and old Joseph 
 that told you when you were all grown big and went back, 
   
 "_C'est moi, Monsieur, qui suis Joseph: j' ai nettoyé les premières 
 bottes de Monsieur!_" 
   
 How well I remember those first formidable boots, and my manly 
 feelings when I clumped them down in the hall before my door for 
 Joseph to clean! Jerry and Peggy and I are going over every foot of 
 the old grounds--the school, where the little fellows still sport 
 their comfortable, round capes; the way, well trodden still, I'll 
 wager, to the old _patisserie_ with its tempting windows of 
 indigestible joys; the natatorium where we dived like frogs; the 
 English church where we learned the Collects and eyed the young 
 ladies' school gravely till it blushed individually and collectively; 
 the famous field where I fought the grocer's boy who cried "_à bas les 
 Anglais!_" three days running. (He beat me, incidentally.) 
   
 I find that all the old memories come back very sweetly: I had a happy 
 childhood, on the whole, one that never lacked love and sympathy. 
 Believe me, ye parents, who think that these days will soon be 
 forgotten, they make a difference, these idle memories, and life is 
 inexpressibly richer if those early days are rich in pleasant little 
 adventures and cheery little experiences, cheerily shared! I have more 
 to remember than Roger, whose early boyhood was, though far wealthier 
 than mine, strangely poorer from the lack of just this mellow glow 
 over and through it. 
   
 And Margarita's? We shall never know what filled those silent, 
 childish hours of hers, alone with the dogs and the gulls. Her quaint 
 lonely games, her towers of sand and shell, her musings by the tide, 
 her dreams on the sun-warmed rocks--I fancy I see them all in watching 
 Peggy. She cannot tell herself. 
   
 "I began to live," she says, "when I met Roger." 
   
 "You have lived a great deal, since, have you not, Margarita?" I say, 
 a little wistfully, perhaps, she is so splendid and so complete, and 
 one seems so broken and colourless and middle-aged beside her. 
   
 "A great deal. Yes, I suppose so," she answers, and her eye rests 
 quickly but surely on Roger, on each of the yellow heads, then on the 
 dark one, and then, at last, on me. 
 
 
 
 PART 9 CHAPTER XXXII (THE SUNSET END) Pg 174 
   
 "You have given up a great deal for those handsome heads, Margarita," 
 I go on, under the spur of some curious impulse, "did you never regret 
 it? You had the world at your feet, Madame used to say, and you gave 
 it up ..." 
   
 She looks at me with the only eyes in the world that can make me 
 forget Peggy's, and gives me both her hands (one with a flashing, 
 cloudy star sapphire burning on it) in that free, lovely gesture so 
 characteristic of her. 
   
 "Don't, Jerry!" she says in her sweet, husky voice, and Roger hearing 
 it, turns slightly from his guests and gives her a swift, strong look. 
 The gay wedding crowd melts away, the clatter of the wine-glasses is 
 the wash of pebbles on the beach, her hand in mine seems wet with 
 flying spray, as she speaks in that rich, vibrating voice, for me 
 alone: 
   
 "I had the world at my feet--yes, Jerry dear, and I nearly lost it, 
 did I not? I did not know, you see. And I have it now, Jerry, I have 
 it now!" (O, Susan of the bank account, who need not marry to get away 
 from home, will that look come to your eyes and glow there till your 
 face is too bright for an elderly bachelor to bear? Indeed, I hope it 
 may!) 
   
 "There is only one world for a woman, Jerry," says Margarita softly, 
 "and no one can be happy, like me, till she lives in it--the hearts 
 that love her. His and theirs--and yours, dear Jerry, O always yours!" 
   
 His and Theirs and Mine! 
   
 Amen to that, my dear, and surely if there is _Someone_ that knows, He 
 knows that what you say is true! 
   
        *       *       *       *       * 
 
 
 Publication Date: January 30th 2015 https://www.bookrix.com/-mk496e398f1e345