



Produced by Al Haines.





                        *David Graham Phillips*


                                _*The*_*
                             HUNGRY HEART*

                              _*A NOVEL*_



                          NEW YORK AND LONDON
                        D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
                                  1909




                          Copyright, 1909, by
                        D. APPLETON AND COMPANY



                      _Published September, 1909_




                           *THE HUNGRY HEART*



                                  *I*


Courtship and honeymoon of Richard Vaughan and Courtney Benedict are
told accurately enough by a thousand chroniclers of love's fairy tales
and dreams.  Where such romances end in a rosily vague "And they lived
happily ever after," there this history begins.  Richard and Courtney
have returned from Arcady to reality, to central Indiana and the Vaughan
homestead, across the narrow width of Wenona the lake from Wenona the
town.

The homecoming was late in a June evening, with a perfumed coolness
descending upon the young lovers from the grand old trees, round the
Vaughan house like his bodyguard round a king.  Next morning toward
eight Courtney, still half asleep, reached out hazily.  Her hand met
only the rumpled linen on Richard's side of the huge fourposter. She
started up, brushed back the heavy wave of auburn hair fallen over her
brow, gazed down at his pillow.  The dent of his head, but not he.  Her
eyes searched the dimness. The big room contained only a few large
pieces of old mahogany; at a glance she saw into every corner.  Alone in
the room.  Her eyes, large and anxious now, regarded the half-open door
of the dressing room to the rear.

"Dick!" she called hopefully.

No answer.

"Dick!" she repeated, a note of doubt in her voice.

Silence.

"Dick!" she repeated reproachfully.  It was the first morning she had
awakened without the sense of his nearness that had become so dear, so
necessary.  It was the first morning in this house strange to her--in
this now life they were to make beautiful and happy together.  She gave
a forlorn sigh like a disappointed child, drew up her knees, rested her
elbows upon them, and her small head upon her hands.  Sitting there in
the midst of that bed big enough for half a dozen as small as she, she
suggested a butterfly poised motionless with folded wings.  A moment and
she lifted her drooped head.  How considerate of him not to wake her
when the three days and nights on train had been so wearing!

Swift and light as a butterfly she sprang from the bed, flung open the
shutters of the lake-front windows.  In poured summer like gay cavalcade
through breach in gloomy walls--summer in full panoply of perfume and
soft air and sparkling sunshine.  She almost laughed aloud for joy at
this timely rescue.  She gazed away across the lake to the town where
she was born and bred!  "Home!" she cried.  "And so happy--so utterly
happy!"  Her expression, her whole manner, her quick movements gave the
impression of the impulsive self-unconsciousness of a child.

It was a radiant figure, small and perfect like a sun sprite, that
issued from the room three quarters of an hour later to flit along the
polished oak hall, to descend a stairway glistening like hall above and
wider and loftier hall below.  With hair piled high on her small head,
with tail of matinee over her arm and tall heels clicking merrily on the
steps, she whistled as she went.  Some people--women--criticised that
laughter-loving mouth of hers as too wide for so small a face.  It
certainly did not suggest a button-hole.  But no one could have found
fault with the shape of the mouth or with the coloring, whether of the
lips or within, or with her teeth, pearl white and seeming the whiter
for the rose bronze of her skin--the shade that seems to be of the
essence of youth, health, and summer.  Her nose was rather large, but
slender and well shaped.  It was the nose of mobility, of sensitiveness,
of intelligence, not at all of repose.  And there were her eyes, of a
strange soft emerald, with long dark lashes; the brows long also and
only slightly curved, and slender yet distinct.  These eyes were her
greatest beauty--greater even than her skin.  It would have been
difficult to say whether in them or in her mouth lay her greatest charm,
for charm is not always beauty, and beauty often wholly lacks charm.

But woman feels that figure determines the woman--"the woman" meaning,
of course, efficiency as a man catcher.  It was upon Courtney's flawless
figure that the sour glance of old Nanny, the head servant, rested--old
Nanny, whose puritanism aggravated for her by suppression all the damned
charms of "the flesh."  Nanny had reigned supreme in that house ever
since Dick Vaughan was left alone; so from the first news of the
engagement she had been hating Courtney, whom she regarded as her
supplanter.  As Courtney entered the dining room, stiff and dim and
chilly, like all the rooms in that house, old Nanny was superintending
fat, subdued Mazie at work at the breakfast table.  It occupied the
exact center of the room, formal as for a state banquet.

"Good morning," cried Courtney in her charming manner of bright
friendliness.  "Good morning, Mazie.  Am I late?  Where's Richard?"  Her
voice was deeper than one would have expected, but low and musical.

Mazie smiled a welcome, then cast a frightened glance of apology at
Nanny, who did not smile.  "Mr. Richard's down to the Smoke House," said
she.

The Smoke House was the laboratory Dick's grandfather, Achilles Vaughan,
had built for him on the site of the smoke house of the pioneer Vaughan,
settler there when Wenona was a trading post in New France.  "Of
course!" said Courtney.  "I might have known.  He wanted to go last
night, but I wouldn't let him."

Nanny scowled at this innocent, laughing "I wouldn't let him."  She
turned on Mazie, who was gazing open-mouthed at Courtney's simple, fresh
finery.  "What'r ye gawkin' here fur, with your mouth hangin' like a
chicken with the gaps?" she demanded in a fierce aside.  Mazie lumbered
through the door into the kitchen.  "As I was saying," continued Nanny
to her new mistress, "he's put in most nigh all his time down to that
there smoke house day and night--ever since his aunt, Miss Eudosia,
died. Yes, an' before that, while Colonel 'Kill, his grandfather, was
still alive.  He's got sleeping rooms and everything in the upstairs.
He often don't come here even to meals for weeks.  Mazie or Jimmie carry
'em to him."

Courtney nodded.  "A regular hermit.  It was the merest chance that we
happened to meet."

"You was the first young woman he'd laid an eye on in a long time."

Nanny's tone was colorless.  Only a very stupid woman puts both barb and
poison on a shaft when either is enough. Courtney, who understood and
felt remorseful about the old woman's jealous anger, answered with
good-humored gentleness: "I guess that _was_ why I got him.  But he'll
not be a hermit any more."

"He's begun already," said Nanny.

"We mustn't allow it," replied Courtney, not quite so good-humoredly.
The old woman's steady bearing down was having its effect.

"There's no goin' agin nature.  The Vaughan men ain't ever bothered much
about women.  They don't let foolishness detain 'em long.  And this
one's his gran'paw over agin.  When he gits at his work, he's like a dog
after a rabbit."

"It seems a little chilly and damp in here," said Courtney.  "Do help me
open the windows.  I love sun and air."

"Miss Eudosia--" began Nanny, and checked herself with a considerable
shortening of the distance between chin and end of nose.

Courtney understood what that beginning meant.  But she ignored.  "And,"
she went on, busying herself with curtains and fastenings, "we'll move
the table in front of this big window.  I like breakfast near the window
in summer, near the fire in winter."

Nanny lowered upon the small straight young figure, so bright and
graceful.  "Miss Eudosia--" she began fiercely. Again she checked
herself, but it was to say with bitterness, "But then she's dead--and
forgot."

"No, indeed!" protested Courtney.  "You'd have thought she'd gone only a
few months ago instead of four years if you'd heard Richard talking
about her yesterday. And I'm sure she'd have done what I'm suggesting if
she'd happened to think of it."  Then with a look that might have
softened any but a woman resolved to hate another woman: "Do try to
humor me in little things, Nanny.  I'll be very meek about things that
do matter.  I've had no experience in keeping house.  You'll teach me,
won't you?"

Nanny stood inflexible, her wrinkled hands folded tightly at the waist
line of her black alpaca.  She could not help Courtney displace that
table from its ancient site. It was as if this frivolous, whistling,
useless chit of an ornamental wife were violating the sacred Eudosia's
coffin--the graves of all the Vaughans--for traditions are graves, and
Nanny, like all who live by tradition, lived among graves.  After a time
Courtney, more nervous under those angry eyes than she showed, got the
table at the open window.  The room was livable now, and after she had
rearranged the dishes the table looked invitingly human.  But her
buoyant young enthusiasm had oozed away.  With wistful gaze out over
prim lawns and flower beds, stiff and staid as Sunday, she said: "I
guess I'll bring Richard to breakfast."

"He et before he went."

"Oh!"  Courtney's tone showed that she was hurt. But she instantly
brightened.  "I'll get him to come and sit with me while I have
breakfast."

A covert sneering smile in the depths of Nanny's eyes made her flush
angrily.  "If I was you I wouldn't interrupt him," said the old woman.
"He don't allow it."

"How absurd!" cried Courtney.  But straightway she was amazed and
shocked at herself--on this her first morning in the new and beautiful
life, to be drawn nearer a vulgar squabble than in all her nineteen
years--and with an old woman toward whom it would be cowardice not to be
forbearing.  "I'm cross because I'm hungry," she said contritely.
"While breakfast's coming I'll run down for him."

"He's set in his ways," said Nanny.

"He'll not mind me--this once."  And she took up her train and went by
the long French window to the broad veranda with its big fluted pillars.
At the end steps she paused.  Yes, it was summer in the Vaughan grounds
as elsewhere.  But that prodigal wanton had there been caught, had had
her tresses sleeked and bound, her luxuriant figure corseted and clad in
the most repellant classical severity.  Courtney, of the eyes keen for
color and form and fitness of things, felt rebuked and subdued once
more.  She glanced farther round, saw Nanny's parchment face and
sinister gaze watching and hating her. There is a limit beyond which
youth refuses to be suppressed and compressed, and defiantly expands in
more than its natural gay audacity.  This climax of Nanny,
representative of Vaughans not so rigid in death as they had been in
life, was just the necessary little-too-much.  With a laugh and a toss
of the head, she swung her skirts very high indeed above her pretty
ankles and ran like a young antelope across the lawn, and into and along
the path leading away toward the eastern part of the grounds. Through a
carefully artificial thicket of lilacs, elders, and snowballs she sped,
then through a small wood with not a spray of underbrush anywhere.  She
came out in a clearing at the water's edge.  Before her, one of its
walls rising sheer from the retaining wall of the lake, stood the
laboratory.

She paused astonished.  She had expected a temporary sort of structure.
Before her rose a fitting temple for the mysteries of the "black art."
It was a long two-story building of stone and brick, not visible from
the lake proper because it stood upon the bank of a deep, narrow inlet.
The weather had stained its walls into the semblance of age wherever
they showed through the heavy mantle of bitter-sweet that overspread
even the roof.  Around the place hung an air of aloofness and seclusion,
of mystery, that appealed to her young instinct for the romantic.  The
brick path divided into two.  One went to what was obviously the
entrance to the second-story bachelor suite; the other turned to the
left, rounded the corner of the house, ended at the massive iron door of
the laboratory proper.

This door was wide open.  Courtney stood upon the threshold like a
bright bird peering from the sunshine into the entrance to a cave.  The
air that came out was heavy with the odors of chemicals, but not sharp
or especially unpleasant.  Besides, in high school and college she had
done a good deal at chemistry, enough to be seized of its fascination.
She stood gazing into a big high-ceilinged room, filled with a
bewildering variety of unusual articles--gigantic bottles, cylinders,
vials, jars of glass, of stone, of metal; huge retorts with coils of
pipe, lead and rubber; lamps and balances and mortars; tiers on tiers of
crowded shelves of glass and porcelain and iron; drying ovens,
distilling apparatus, condensers and generators, crushers and
pulverizers, cupels and cupel trays, calorimeters and crucibles and
microscopes; floor all but filled with batteries and engines and
machines of gold and platinum, of aluminum and copper, of brass and
steel and glass and nickel.  A thousand articles, in the orderly
confusion that indicates constant use.

She was more and more amazed as she stared and reflected.  "He works
with all these things!" thought she, depressed for no clear reason.  "I
had no idea--no idea!"

She ventured a step farther.  In a twinkling her expression of wonder
and vague pain vanished before a love light that seemed to stream not
from her face only, but from her whole body, with those rare eyes of
hers as radiating centers.  She was seeing Richard--near a window, so
standing that his long high-bred face was in profile to her.  He was
tall, well above six feet; his careless flannels revealed the strong,
slender, narrow form of the pioneers and their pure-blooded descendants.
His fairish hair was thick and wavy--"Thank Heaven, not curly!" thought
Courtney.

She did not interrupt.  She preferred to watch him, to