Chapter V: Part 5

"I don't mean--anything silly," said she, untruthfully. "Why," she continued, with a certain lack of relevance, "why not fall in love with somebody else?" Thereupon, I regret to say, her glance strayed toward the mirror. Oh, she was vain,--I grant you that. But I must protest she had a perfect right to be.

"Yes," said I, quite gravely, "that is the reason."

"Nonsense!" said Stella, and tossed her head. She now assumed her most matronly air, and did mysterious things with a perforated silver ball. I was given to understand I had offended, by a severe compression of her lips, which, however, was not as effective as it might have been. They twitched too mutinously.

2

Stella was all in pink, with golden fripperies sparkling in unanticipated localities. Presumably the gown was tucked and ruched and appliqued, and had been subjected to other processes past the comprehension of trousered humanity; it was certainly becoming.

I think there was an eighteenth-century flavour about it,--for it smacked, somehow, of a patched, mendacious, dainty womanhood, and its artfulness was of a gallant sort that scorned to deceive. It defied you, it allured you, it conquered you at a glance. It might have been the last cry from the court of an innocent Louis Quinze. It was, in fine, inimitable; and if only I were a milliner, I would describe for you that gown in some not unbefitting fashion. As it is, you may draft the world's modistes to dredge the dictionary, and they will fail, as ignominiously as I would do, in the attempt.

For, after all, its greatest charm was that it contained Stella, and converted Stella into a marquise--not such an one as was her sister, the Marquise d'Arlanges, but a marquise out of Watteau or of Fragonard, say. Stella in this gown seemed out of place save upon a high-backed stone bench, set in an _allee_ of lime-trees, of course, and under a violet sky,--with a sleek abbe or two for company, and with beribboned gentlemen tinkling on their mandolins about her.

I had really no choice but to regard her as an agreeable anachronism the while she chatted with me, and mixed hot water and sugar and lemon into ostensible tea. She seemed so out of place,--and yet, somehow, I entertained no especial desire upon this sleety day to have her different, nor, certainly, otherwhere than in this pleasant, half-lit room, that consisted mostly of ambiguous vistas where a variety of brass bric-a-brac blinked in the firelight.

We had voted it cosier without lamps or candles, for this odorous twilight was far more companionable. Odorous, for there were a great number of pink roses about. I imagine that someone must have sent them--because there were not any daffodils obtainable, by reason of the late and nipping frost--in honour of Stella's second wedding anniversary.

3

"Peter says you talk to everybody that way," quoth she,--almost resentfully, and after a pause.

"Oh!" said I. For it was really no affair of Peter's. And so--

"Peter, everybody tells me, is getting fat," I announced, presently.

Stella witheringly glanced toward the region where my waist used to be. "He isn't!" said she, indignant.

"Quite like a pig, they assure me," I continued, with relish. She objected to people being well-built. "His obscene bloatedness appears to be an object of general comment."

Silence. I stirred my tea.

"Dear Peter!" said she. And then--but unless a woman of Stella's sort is able to exercise a proper control over her countenance, she has absolutely no right to discuss her husband with his bachelor friends. It is unkind; for it causes them to feel like social outcasts and lumbering brutes and Peeping Toms. If they know the husband well, it positively awes them; for, after all, it is a bit overwhelming, this sudden glimpse of the simplicity, and the credulity, and the merciful blindness of women in certain matters. Besides, a bachelor has no business to know such things; it merely makes him envious and uncomfortable.

Accordingly, "Stella," said I, with firmness, "if you flaunt your connubial felicity in my face like that, I shall go home."

She was deaf to my righteous rebuke. "Peter is in Washington this week," she went on, looking fondly into the fire. "I had planned a party to celebrate to-day, but he was compelled to go--business, you know. He is doing so well nowadays," she said, after a little, "that I am quite insufferably proud of him. And I intend for him to be a great lawyer--oh, much the greatest in America. And I won't ever be content till then."

"H'm!" said I. "H'm" seemed fairly non-committal.

"Sometimes," Stella declared, irrelevantly, "I almost wish I had been born a man."

"I wish you had been," quoth I, in gallant wise. "There are so few really attractive men!"

Stella looked up with a smile that was half sad.

"I'm just a little butterfly-woman, aren't I?" she asked.

"You are," I assented, with conviction, "a butterfly out of a queen's garden--a marvellous pink-and-gold butterfly, such as one sees only in dreams and--er--in a London pantomime. You are a decided ornament to the garden," I continued, handsomely, "and the roses bow down in admiration as you pass, and--ah--at least, the masculine ones do."

"Yes,--we butterflies don't love one another overmuch, do we? Ah, well, it scarcely matters! We were not meant to be taken seriously, you know,--only to play in the sunlight, and lend an air to the garden and--amuse the roses, of course. After all," Stella summed it up, "our duties are very simple; first, we are expected to pass through a certain number of cotillions and a certain number of various happenings in various tete-a-tetes; then to make a suitable match,--so as to enable the agreeable detrimentals to make love to us, with perfect safety--as you were doing just now, for instance. And after that, we develop into bulbous chaperones, and may aspire eventually to a kindly quarter of a column in the papers, and, quite possibly, the honour of having as many as two dinners put off on account of our death. Yes, it is very simple. But, in heaven's name," Stella demanded, with a sudden lift of speech, "how can any woman--for, after all, a woman is presumably a reasoning animal--be satisfied with such a life! Yet that is everything--everything!--this big world offers to us shallow-minded butterfly-women!"

Personally, I disapprove of such morbid and hysterical talk outside of a problem novel; there I heartily approve of it, on account of the considerable and harmless pleasure that is always to be derived from throwing the book into the fireplace. And, coming from Stella, this farrago doubly astounded me. She was talking grave nonsense now, whereas Nature had, beyond doubt, planned her to discuss only the lighter sort. So I decided it was quadruply absurd, little Stella talking in this fashion,--Stella, who, as all knew, was only meant to be petted and flattered and flirted with.

And therefore, "Stella," I admonished, "you have been reading something indigestible." I set down my teacup, and I clasped my hands. "Don't tell me," I pleaded, "that you want to vote!"

She remained grave. "The trouble is," said she, "that I am not really a butterfly, for all my tinsel wings. I am an ant."

"Oh," said I, shamelessly, "I hadn't heard that Lizzie had an item for the census man. I don't care for brand-new babies, though; they always look so disgracefully sun-burned."

The pun was atrocious and, quite properly, failed to win a smile or even a reproof from the morbid young person opposite. "My grandfather," said she in meditation, "began as a clerk in a country store. Oh of course, we have discovered, since he made his money and since Mother married a Musgrave, that his ancestors came over with William the Conqueror, and that he was descended from any number of potentates. But he lived. He was a rip at first--ah, yes, I'm glad of that as well, --and he became a religious fanatic because his oldest son died very horribly of lockjaw. And he browbeat people and founded banks, and made a spectacle of himself at every Methodist conference, and everybody was afraid of him and honoured him. And I fancy I am prouder of Old Tim Ingersoll than I am of any of the emperors and things that make such a fine show in the Musgrave family tree. For I am like him. And I want to leave something in the world that wasn't there before I came. I want my life to count, I want--why, a hundred years from now I _do_ want to be something more than a name on a tombstone. I--oh, I daresay it _is_ only my ridiculous egotism," she ended, with a shrug and Stella's usual quick smile,--a smile not always free from insolence, but always satisfactory, somehow.

"It's late hours," I warned her, with uplifted forefinger, "late hours and too much bridge and too many sweetmeats and too much bothering over silly New Women ideas. What is the sense of a woman's being useful," I demanded, conclusively, "when it is so much easier and so much more agreeable all around for her to be adorable?"

She pouted. "Yes," she assented, "that is my career--to be adorable. It is my one accomplishment," she declared, unblushingly,--yet not without substantiating evidence.

After a little, though, her gravity returned. "When I was a girl--oh, I dreamed of accomplishing all sorts of beautiful and impossible things! But, you see, there was really nothing I could do. Music, painting, writing--I tried them all, and the results were hopeless. Besides, Rob, the women who succeed in anything like that are always so queer looking. I couldn't be expected to give up my complexion for a career, you know, or to wear my hair like a golf-caddy's. At any rate, I couldn't make a success by myself. But there was one thing I could do, --I could make a success of Peter. And so," said Stella, calmly, "I did it."

I said nothing. It seemed expedient.

"You know, he was a little--"

"Yes," I assented, hastily. Peter had gone the pace, of course, but there was no need of raking that up. That was done with, long ago.

"Well, he isn't the least bit dissipated now. You know he isn't. That is the first big thing I have done." Stella checked it off with a small, spear-pointed, glinting finger-nail. "Then--oh, I have helped him in lots of ways. He is doing splendidly in consequence; and it is my part to see that the proper people are treated properly."

Stella reflected a moment. "There was the last appointment, for instance. I found that the awarding of it lay with that funny old Judge Willoughby, with the wart on his nose, and I asked him for it--not the wart, you understand,--and got it. We simply had him to dinner, and I was specially butterfly; I fluttered airily about, was as silly as I knew how to be, looked helpless and wore my best gown. He thought me a pretty little fool, and gave Peter the appointment. That is only an instance, but it shows how I help." Stella regarded me, uncertainly. "Why, but an authorman ought to understand!"

Of a sudden I understood a number of things--things that had puzzled. This was the meaning of Stella's queer dinner the night before, and the ensuing theatre-party, for instance; this was the explanation of those impossible men, vaguely heralded as "very influential in politics," and of the unaccountable women, painfully condensed in every lurid shade of satin, and so liberally adorned with gems as to make them almost valuable. Stella, incapable by nature of two consecutive ideas, was determined to manipulate the unseen wires, and to be, as she probably phrased it, the power behind the throne....

"Eh, it would be laughable," I thought, "were not her earnestness so pathetic! For here is Columbine mimicking Semiramis."

Yet it was true that Peter Blagden had made tremendous strides in his profession, of late. For a moment, I wondered--? Then I looked at this butterfly young person opposite, and I frowned. "I don't like it," I said, decisively. "It is a bit cold-blooded. It isn't worthy of you, Stella."

"It is my career," she flouted me, with shrugging shoulders. "It is the one career the world--our Lichfield world--has left me. And I am doing it for Peter."

The absurd look that I objected to--on principle, you understand-- returned at this point in the conversation. I arose, resolutely, for I was really unable to put up with her nonsense.

"You are in love with your husband," I grumbled, "and I cannot countenance such eccentricities. These things are simply not done--"

She touched my hand. "Old crosspatch, and to think how near I came to marrying you."

"I do think of it--sometimes. So you had better stop pawing at me. It isn't safe."

I wish I could describe her smile. I wish I knew just what it was that Stella wanted me to say or do as we stood for a moment silent, in this pleasant, half-lit room where brass things blinked in the firelight.

"Old crosspatch!" she repeated....

"Stella," said I, with dignity, "I wish it distinctly understood that I am not a funny old judge with a wart on his nose."

Whereupon I went away.

14.

_He Participates in a Brave Jest_

Stella drove on fine afternoons, under the protection of a trim and preternaturally grave tiger. The next afternoon, by a Lichfieldian transition, was irreproachable. I was to remember, afterward, wondering in a vague fashion, as the equipage passed, if the boy's lot was not rather enviable. There might well be less attractive methods of earning the daily bread and butter than to whirl through life behind Stella. One would rarely see her face, of course, but there would be such compensations as an unfailing sense of her presence, and the faint odour of her hair at times and, always, blown scraps of her laughter or shreds of her talk, and, almost always, the piping of the sweet voice that was stilled so rarely.

Perhaps the conscienceless tiger listened when she was "seeing the proper people were treated properly"? Yes, one would. Perhaps he ground his teeth? Well, one would, I suspected. And perhaps--?

There was a nod of recognition from Stella; and I lifted my hat as they bowled by toward the Reservoir. I went down Regis Avenue, mildly resentful that she had not offered me a lift.

2

A vagrant puff of wind was abroad in the Boulevard that afternoon. It paused for a while to amuse itself with a stray bit of paper. Presently the wind grew tired of this plaything and tossed between the eyes of a sorrel horse. Prince lurched and bolted; and Rex, always a vicious brute, followed his mate. One fancies the vagabond wind must have laughed over that which ensued.

After a moment it returned and lifted a bit of paper from the roadway, with a new respect, perhaps, and the two of them frolicked away over close-shaven turf. It was a merry game they played there in the spring sunlight. The paper fluttered a little, whirled over and over, and scuttled off through the grass; with a gust of mirth, the wind was after it, now gained upon it, now lost ground in eddying about a tree, and now made up the disadvantage in the open, and at last chuckled over its playmate pinned to the earth and flapping in sharp, indignant remonstrances. Then _da capo_.

It was a merry game that lasted till the angry sunset had flashed its final palpitant lance through the treetrunks farther down the roadway. There were gaping people in this place, and broken wheels and shafts, and a policeman with a smoking pistol, and two dead horses, and a horrible looking dead boy in yellow-topped boots. Somebody had charitably covered his face with a handkerchief; and men were lifting a limp, white heap from among the splintered rubbish.

Then wind and paper played half-heartedly in the twilight until the night had grown too chilly for further sport. There was no more murder to be done; and so the vagabond wind was puffed out into nothingness, and the bit of paper was left alone, and at about this season the big stars--the incurious stars--peeped out of heaven, one by one.

3

It was Stella's sister, the Marquise d'Arlanges, who sent for me that night. Across the street a hand-organ ground out its jingling tune as Lizzie's note told me what the playful wind had brought about. It was a despairing, hopeless and insistent air that shrilled and piped across the way. It seemed very appropriate.

The doctors feared--Ah, well, telegrams had failed to reach Peter in Washington. Peter Blagden was not in Washington, he had not been in Washington. He could not be found. And did I think--?

No, I thought none of the things that Stella's sister suggested. Of a sudden I knew. I stood silent for a little and heard that damned, clutching tune cough and choke and end; I heard the renewed babblement of children; and I heard the organ clatter down the street, and set up its faint jingling in the distance. And I knew with an unreasoning surety. I pitied Stella now ineffably, not for the maiming and crippling of her body, for the spoiling of that tender miracle, that white flower of flesh, but for the falling of her air-castle, the brave air-castle which to her meant everything. I guessed what had happened.

Later I found Peter Blagden, no matter where. It is not particularly to my credit that I knew where to look for him. Yet the French have a saying of infinite wisdom in their _qui a bu boira_. The old vice had gripped the man, irresistibly, and he had stolen off to gratify it in secret; and he had not been sober for a week. He was on the verge of collapse even when I told him--oh, with a deliberate cruelty, I grant you,--what had happened that afternoon.

Then, swiftly, his demolishment came; and I could not--could not for very shame--bring this shivering, weeping imbecile to the bedside of Stella, who was perhaps to die that night. Such was the news I brought to Stella's sister; through desolate streets already blanching in the dawn.

Stella was calling for Peter. We manufactured explanations.

4

Nice customs curtsey to death. I am standing at Stella's bedside, and the white-capped nurse has gone. There are dim lights about the room, and heavy carts lumber by in the dawn without. A petulant sparrow is cheeping somewhere.

"Tell me the truth," says Stella, pleadingly. Her face, showing over billows of bedclothes, is as pale as they. But beautiful, and exceedingly beautiful, is Stella's face, now that she is come to die.

It heartened me to lie to her. Peter had been retained in the great Western Railway case. He had been called to Denver, San Francisco and--I forget today just why or even whither. He had kept it as a surprise for her. He was hurrying back. He would arrive in two days. I showed her telegrams from Peter Blagden,--clumsy forgeries I had concocted in the last half-hour.

Oh, the story ran lamely, I grant you. But, vanity apart, I told it with conviction. Stella must and should die in content; that much at least I could purchase for her; and my thoughts were strangely nimble, there was a devilish fluency in my speech, and lie after lie was fitted somehow into an entity that surprised even me as it took plausible form. And I got my reward. Little by little, the doubt died from her eyes as I lied stubbornly in a drug-scented silence; a little by a little, her cheeks flushed brighter, and ever brighter, as I dilated on this wonderful success that had come to Peter Blagden, till at last her face was all aflame with happiness.

She had dreamed of this, half conscious of her folly; she had worked toward this consummation for months. But she had hardly dared to hope for absolute success; it almost worried her; and she could not be certain, even now, whether it was the soup or her blue silk that had influenced Allardyce most potently. Both had been planned to wheedle him, to gain this glorious chance for Peter Blagden....

"You--you are sure you are not lying?" said Stella, and smiled in speaking, for she believed me infinitely.

"Stella, before God, it is true!" I said, with fervour. "On my word of honour, it is as I tell you!" And my heart was sick within me as I thought of the stuttering brute, the painted female thing with tumbled hair, and the stench of liquor in the room--Ah, well, the God I called to witness strengthened me to smile back at Stella.

"I believe you," she said, simply. "I--I am glad. It is a big thing for Peter." Her eyes widened in wonder and pride, and she dreamed for just a moment of his future. But, upon a sudden, her face fell. "Dear, dear!" said Stella, petulantly; "I'd forgotten. I'll be dead by then."

"Stella! Stella!" I cried, and very hoarsely; "why--why, nonsense, child! The doctor thinks--he is quite sure, I mean--" I had a horrible desire to laugh. Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven.

"Ah, I know," she interrupted. "I am a little afraid to die," she went on, reflectively. "If one only knew--" Stella paused for a moment; then she smiled. "After all," she said, "it isn't as if I hadn't accomplished anything. I have made Peter. The ball is at his feet now; he has only to kick it. And I helped."

"Yes," said I. My voice was shaken, broken out of all control. "You have helped. Why, you have done everything, Stella! There is not a young man in America with his prospects. In five years, he will be one of our greatest lawyers,--everybody says so--everybody! And you have done it all, Stella--every bit of it! You have made a man of him, I tell you! Look at what he was!--and then look at what he is! And--and you talk of leaving him now! Why, it's preposterous! Peter needs you, I tell you--he needs you to cajole the proper people and keep him steady and--and--Why, you artful young woman, how could he possibly get on without you, do you think? Oh, how can any of us get on without you? You _must_ get well, I tell you. In a month, you will be right as a trivet. You die! Why, nonsense!" I laughed. I feared I would never have done with laughter over the idea of Stella's dying.

"But I have done all I could. And so he doesn't need me now." Stella meditated for yet another moment. "I believe I shall always know when he does anything especially big. God would be sure to tell me, you see, because He understands how much it means to me. And I shall be proud--ah, yes, wherever I am, I shall be proud of Peter. You see, he didn't really care about being a success, for of course he knows that Uncle Larry will leave him a great deal of money one of these days. But I am such a vain little cat--so bent on making a noise in the world, --that, I think, he did it more to please my vanity than anything else. I nagged him, frightfully, you know," Stella confessed, "but he was always--oh, _so_ dear about it, Rob! And he has never failed me--not even once, although I know at times it has been very hard for him." Stella sighed; and then laughed. "Yes," said she, "I think I am satisfied with my life altogether. Somehow, I am sure I shall be told about it when he is a power in the world--a power for good, as he will be,--and then I shall be very perky--somewhere. I ought to sing _Nunc Dimittis_, oughtn't I?" I was not unmoved; nor did it ever lie within my power to be unmoved when I thought of Stella and how gaily she went to meet her death....

5

"Good-bye," said she, in a tired voice.

"Good-bye, Stella," said I; and I kissed her.

"And I don't think you are a mess. And I _don't_ hate you." She was smiling very strangely. "Yes, I remember that first time. And no matter what they said, I always cared heaps more about you, Rob, than I dared let you know. And if only you had been as dependable as Peter--But, you see, you weren't--"

"No, dear, you did the right thing--what was best for all of us--"

"Then don't mind so much. Oh, Bob, it hurts me to see you mind so much! You aren't--being dependable, like Peter, even now," she said, reproachfully....

Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven.

15.

_He Decides to Amuse Himself_

I came to Fairhaven half-bedrugged with memories of Stella's funeral, --say, of how lightly she had lain, all white and gold, in the grotesque and horrid box, and of Peter's vacant red-rimmed eyes that seemed to wonder why this decorous company should have assembled about the deep and white-lined cavity at his feet and find no answer. Nor, for that matter, could I.

"But it was flagrant, flagrant!" my heart screeched in a grill of impotent wrath. "Eh, You gave me power to reason, so they say! and will You slay me, too, if I presume to use that power? I say, then, it was flagrant and tyrannical and absurd! 'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first, Loving not, hating not, just choosing so!' O Setebos, it wasn't worthy of omnipotence. You know it wasn't!" In such a frame of mind I came again to Bettie Hamlyn.

2

It was very odd to see Bettie again. I had been sublimely confident, though, that we would pick up our intercourse precisely where we had left off; and this, as I now know, is something which can never happen to anybody. So I was vaguely irritated before we had finished shaking hands, and became so resolutely boyish and effusive in my delight at seeing her that anyone in the world but Bettie Hamlyn would have been quite touched. And my conversational gambit, I protest, was masterly, and would have made anybody else think, "Oh how candid is the egotism of this child!" and would have moved that person, metaphorically anyhow, to pat me upon the head.

But Bettie only smiled, a little sadly, and answered:

"Your book?--Why, dear me, did I forget to write you a nice little letter about how wonderful it was?"

"You wrote the letter all right. I think you copied it out of _The Complete Letter Writer_. There was not a bit of you in it."

"Well, that is why I dislike your book--because there was not a bit of _you_ in it. Of course I am glad it was the big noise of the month, and also a little jealous of it, if you can understand that phase of the feminine mind. I doubt it, because you write about women as though they were pterodactyls or some other extinct animal, which you had never seen, but had read a lot about."

"Which attests, in any event, my morals to be above reproach. You should be pleased."

"To roll it into a pill, your book seems pretty much like any other book; and it has made me hold my own particular boy's picture more than once against my cheek and say, 'You didn't write books, did you, dear? --You did nicer things than write books'--and he did .... I hear many things of you...."

"Oh, well!" I brilliantly retorted, "you mustn't believe all you hear." And I felt that matters were going very badly indeed.

"Robin, do you not know that your mess of pottage must be eaten with you by the people who care for you?--and one of them dislikes pottage. Indeed, I _would_ have liked the book, had anybody else written it. I almost like it as it is, in spots, and sometimes I even go to the great length of liking you,--because 'if only for old sake's sake, dear, you're the loveliest doll in the world.' There might be a better reason, if you could only make up your mind to dispense with pottage...."

The odd part of it, even to-day, is that Bettie was saying precisely what I had been thinking, and that to hear her say it made me just twice as petulant as I was already.

"Now, please don't preach," I said. "I've heard so much preaching lately--dear," I added, though I am afraid the word was rather obviously an afterthought.

"Oh, I forgot you stayed over for Stella Blagden's funeral. You were quite right. Stella was a dear child, and I was really sorry to hear of her death."

"Really!" It was the lightest possible additional flick upon the raw, but it served.

"Yes,--I, too, was rather sorry, Bettie, because I have loved Stella all my life. She was the first, you see, and, somehow, the others have been different. And--she disliked dying. I tell you, it is unfair, Bettie,--it is hideously unfair!"

"Robin--" she began.

"And why should you be living," I said, in half-conscious absurdity, "when she is dead? Why, look, Bettie! even that fly yonder is alive. Setebos accords an insect what He grudges Stella! Her dying is not even particularly important. The big news of the day is that the President has started his Pacific tour, and that the Harvard graduates object to his being given an honorary degree, and are sending out seven thousand protests to be signed. And you're alive, and I'm alive, and Peter Blagden is alive, and only Stella is dead. I suppose she is an angel by this. But I don't care for angels. I want just the silly little Stella that I loved,--the Stella that was the first and will always be the first with me. For I want her--just Stella--! Oh, it is an excellent jest; and I will cap it with another now. For the true joke is, I came to Fairhaven, across half the world, with an insane notion of asking you to marry me,--you who are 'really' sorry that Stella is dead!" And I laughed as pleasantly as one may do in anger.

But the girl, too, was angry. "Marry you!" she said. "Why, Robin, you were wonderful once; and now you are simply not a bad sort of fellow, who imagines himself to be the hit of the entire piece. And whether she's dead or not, she never had two grains of sense, but just enough to make a spectacle of you, even now."

"I regret that I should have sailed so far into the north of your opinion," said I. "Though, as I dare assert, you are quite probably in the right. So I'll be off to my husks again, Bettie." And I kissed her hand. "And that too is only for old sake's sake, dear," I said.

Then I returned to the railway station in time for the afternoon train. And I spoke with no one else in Fairhaven, except to grunt "Good evening, gentlemen," as I passed Clarriker's Emporium, where Colonel Snawley and Dr. Jeal were sitting in arm chairs, very much as I had left them there two years ago.

3

It was a long while afterward I discovered that "some damned good-natured friend," as Sir Fretful has immortally phrased it, had told Bettie Hamlyn of seeing me at the theatre in Lichfield, with Stella and her marvellous dinner-company. It was by an odd quirk the once Aurelia Minns, in Lichfield for the "summer's shopping," who had told Bettie. And the fact is that I had written Bettie upon the day of Stella's death and, without explicitly saying so, had certainly conveyed the impression I had reached Lichfield that very morning, and was simply stopping over for Stella's funeral. And, in addition, I cannot say that Bettie and Stella were particularly fond of each other.

As it was, I left Fairhaven the same day I reached it, and in some dissatisfaction with the universe. And I returned to Lichfield and presently reopened part of the old Townsend house .... "Robert and I," my mother had said, to Lichfield's delectation, "just live downstairs in the two lower stories, and ostracise the third floor...." And I was received by Lichfield society, if not with open arms at least with acquiescence. And Byam, an invaluable mulatto, the son of my cousin Dick Townsend and his housekeeper, made me quite comfortable.

Depend upon it, Lichfield knew a deal more concerning my escapades than I did. That I was "deplorably wild" was generally agreed, and a reasonable number of seductions, murders and arsons was, no doubt, accredited to me "on quite unimpeachable authority, my dear."

But I was a Townsend, and Lichfield had been case-hardened to Townsendian vagaries since Colonial days; and, besides, I had written a book which had been talked about; and, as an afterthought, I was reputed not to be an absolute pauper, if only because my father had taken the precaution, customary with the Townsends, to marry a woman with enough money to gild the bonds of matrimony. For Lichfield, luckily, was not aware how near my pleasure-loving parents had come, between them, to spending the last cent of this once ample fortune.

And, in fine, "Well, really now--?" said Lichfield. Then there was a tentative invitation or two, and I cut the knot by accepting all of them, and talking to every woman as though she were the solitary specimen of feminity extant. It was presently agreed that gossip often embroidered the actual occurrence and that wild oats were, after all, a not unheard-of phenomenon, and that though genius very often, in a phrase, forgot to comb its hair, these tonsorial deficiencies were by the broadminded not appraised too strictly.

I did not greatly care what Lichfield said one way or the other. I was too deeply engrossed: first, in correcting the final proofs of _Afield_, my second book, which appeared that spring and was built around--there is no harm in saying now,--my relations with Gillian Hardress; secondly, in the remunerative and uninteresting task of writing for _Woman's Weekly_ five "wholesome love-stories with a dash of humor," in which She either fell into His arms "with a contented sigh" or else "their lips met" somewhere toward the ending of the seventh page; and, thirdly, in diverting myself with Celia Reindan....

4

That, though, is a business I shall not detail, because it was one of the very vulgarest sort. It was the logical outgrowth of my admiration for her yellow hair,--she did have extraordinary hair, confound her! --and of a few moonlit nights. It was simply the result of our common vanity and of her book-fed sentimentality and, eventually, of her unbridled temper; and in nature the compound was an unsavoury mess which thoroughly delighted Lichfield. Lichfield will be only too glad, even nowadays, to discourse to you of how I got wedged in that infernal transom, and of how Celia alarmed everybody within two blocks of her bedroom by her wild yells.

5

I had meanwhile decided, first, to write another and a better book than _The Apostates_ or _Afield_ had ever pretended to be; and afterward to marry Rosalind Jemmett, whom I found, in my too-hackneyed but habitual phrase, "adorable." For this Rosalind was an eminently "sensible match," and as such, I considered, quite appropriate for a Townsend.

The main thing though, to me, was to write the book of which I had already the central idea,--very vague, as yet, but of an unquestionable magnificence. Development of it, on an at all commensurate scale, necessitated many inconveniences, and among them, the finding of someone who would assist me in imbuing the love-scenes--of which there must unfortunately be a great many--with reality; and for the tale's _milieu_ I again pitched upon the Green Chalybeate,--where, as you may remember, I first met with Stella.

So I said a not unpromising farewell to Rosalind Jemmett, who was going into Canada for the summer. She was quite frankly grieved by the absolute necessity of my taking a rigorous course of the Chalybeate waters, but agreed with me that one's health is not to be trifled with. And of course she would write if I really wanted her to, though she couldn't imagine _why_--But I explained why, with not a little detail. And she told me, truthfully, that I was talking like an idiot; and was not, I thought, irrevocably disgusted by my idiocy. So that, all in all, I was not discontented when I left her.

Then I ordered Byam to pack and, by various unveracious representations, induced my Uncle George Bulmer--as a sort of visible and outward sign that I forgave him for declining to lend me another penny--to accompany me to the Green Chalybeate. Besides, I was fond of the old scoundrel....

6

When I began to scribble these haphazard memories I had designed to be very droll concerning the "provincialism" of Lichfield; for, as every inhabitant of it will tell you, it is "quite hopelessly provincial," --and this is odd, seeing that, as investigation will assure you, the city is exclusively inhabited by self-confessed cosmopolitans. I had meant to depict Fairhaven, too, in the broad style of _Cranford_, say; and to be so absolutely side-splitting when I touched upon the Green Chalybeate as positively to endanger the existence of any apoplectic reader, who presumed to peruse the chapter which dealt with this resort.

But, upon reflection, I am too familiar with these places to attempt to treat them humorously. The persons who frequent their byways are too much like the persons who frequent the byways of any other place, I find, at bottom. For to write convincingly of the persons peculiar to any locality it is necessary either to have thoroughly misunderstood them, or else perseveringly to have been absent from daily intercourse with them until age has hardened the brain-cells, and you have forgotten what they are really like. Then, alone, you may write the necessary character studies which will be sufficiently abundant in human interest.

For, at bottom, any one of us is tediously like any other. Comprehension is the grave of sympathy; scratch deeply enough and you will find not any livelily-coloured Tartarism, but just a mediocre and thoroughly uninteresting human being. So I may not ever be so droll as I had meant to be; and if you wish to chuckle over the grotesque places I have lived in, you must apply to persons who have spent two weeks there, and no more.

For the rest, Lichfield, and Fairhaven also, got at and into me when I was too young to defend myself. Therefore Lichfield and Fairhaven cannot ever, really, seem to me grotesque. To the contrary, it is the other places which must always appear to me a little queer when judged by the standards of Fairhaven and Lichfield.

16.

_He Seeks for Copy_

I had aforetime ordered Mr. George Bulmer to read _The Apostates_, and, as the author of this volume explained, from motives that were purely well-meaning. To-night I was superintending the process.

"For the scene of the book is the Green Chalybeate," said I; "and it may be my masterly rhetoric will so far awaken your benighted soul, Uncle George, as to enable you to perceive what the more immediate scenery is really like. Why, think of it! what if you should presently fall so deeply in love with the adjacent mountains as to consent to overlook the deficiencies of the more adjacent cafe! Try now, nunky! try hard to think that the right verb is really more important than the right vermouth! and you have no idea what good it may do you."

Mr. Bulmer read on, with a bewildered face, while I gently stirred the contents of my tall and delectably odored glass. It was "frosted" to a nicety. We were drinking "Mamie Taylors" that summer, you may remember; and I had just brought up a pitcherful from the bar.

"Oh, I say, you know!" observed Uncle George, as he finished the sixth chapter, and flung down the book.

"Rot, utter rot," I assented pleasantly; "puerile and futile trifling with fragments of the seventh commandment, as your sturdy common-sense instantly detected. In fact," I added, hopefully, "I think that chapter is trivial enough to send the book into a tenth edition. In _Afield_, you know, I tried a different tack. Actuated by the noblest sentiments, the heroine mixes prussic acid with her father's whiskey and water; and 'Old-Fashioned' and 'Fair Play' have been obliging enough to write to the newspapers about this harrowing instance of the deplorably low moral standards of to-day. Uncle George, do you think that a real lady is ever justified in obliterating a paternal relative? You ought to meditate upon that problem, for it is really a public question nowadays. Oh, and there was a quite lovely clipping last week I forgot to show you--all about Electra, as contrasted with Jonas Chuzzlewit, and my fine impersonal attitude, and the survival of the fittest, and so on."

But Uncle George refused to be comforted. "Look here, Bob!" said he, pathetically, "why don't you brace up and write something--well! we'll put it, something of the sort you _can_ do. For you can, you know."

"Ah, but is not a judicious nastiness the market-price of a second edition before publication?" I softly queried. "I had no money. I was ashamed to beg, and I was too well brought up to steal anything adroitly enough not to be caught. And so, in view of my own uncle's deafness to the prayers of an impecunious orphan, I have descended to this that I might furnish butter for my daily bread." I refilled my glass and held the sparkling drink for a moment against the light. "This time next year," said I, as dreamily, "I shall be able to afford cake; for I shall have written _As the Coming of Dawn_."

Mr. Bulmer sniffed, and likewise refilled his glass. "You catch me lending you any money for your--brief Biblical words!" he said.

"For the reign of subtle immorality," I sighed, "is well-nigh over. Already the augurs of the pen begin to wink as they fable of a race of men who are evilly scintillant in talk and gracefully erotic. We know that this, alas, cannot be, and that in real life our peccadilloes dwindle into dreary vistas of divorce cases and the police-court, and that crime has lost its splendour. We sin very carelessly--sordidly, at times,--and artistic wickedness is rare. It is a pity; life was once a scarlet volume scattered with misty-coated demons; it is now a yellow journal, wherein our vices are the hackneyed formulas of journalists, and our virtues are the not infrequent misprints. Yes, it is a pity!"

"Dearest Robert!" remonstrated Mr. Bulmer, "you are sadly _passe_: that pose is of the Beardsley period and went out many magazines ago."

"The point is well taken," I admitted, "for our life of to-day is already reflected--faintly, I grant you,--in the best-selling books. We have passed through the period of a slavish admiration for wickedness and wide margins; our quondam decadents now snigger in a parody of primeval innocence, and many things are forgiven the latter-day poet if his botany be irreproachable. Indeed, it is quite time; for we have tossed over the contents of every closet in the _menage a trois_. And I--_moi, qui vous parle_,--I am wearied of hansom-cabs and the flaring lights of great cities, even as so alluringly depicted in _Afield_; and henceforth I shall demonstrate the beauty of pastoral innocence."

"Saul among the prophets," Uncle George suggested, helpfully.

"Quite so," I assented, "and my first prophecy will be _As the Coming of Dawn_."

Mr. Bulmer tapped his forehead significantly. "Mad, quite mad!" said he, in parenthesis.

"I shall be idyllic," I continued, sweetly; "I shall write of the ineffable glory of first love. I shall babble of green fields and the keen odours of spring and the shamefaced countenances of lovers, met after last night's kissing. It will be the story of love that stirs blindly in the hearts of maids and youths, and does not know that it is love,--the love which manhood has half forgotten and that youth has not the skill to write of. But I, at twenty-four, shall write its story as it has never been written; and I shall make a great book of it, that will go into thousands and thousands of editions. Yes, before heaven, I will!"

I brought my fist down, emphatically, on the table.

"H'm!" said Mr. Bulmer, dubiously; "going back to renew associations with your first love? I have tried it, and I generally find her grandchildren terribly in the way."

"It is imperative," said I,--"yes, imperative for the scope of my book, that I should view life through youthful and unsophisticated eyes. I discovered that, upon the whole, Miss Jemmett is too obviously an urban product to serve my purpose. And I can't find any one who will."

Uncle George whistled softly. "'Honourable young gentleman,'" he murmured, as to himself, "'desires to meet attractive and innocent young lady. Object: to learn how to be idyllic in three-hundred pages.'"

There was no commentary upon his text.

"I say," queried Mr. Bulmer, "do you think this sort of thing is fair to the girl? Isn't it a little cold-blooded?"

"Respected nunky, you are at times very terribly the man in the street! Anyhow, I leave the Green Chalybeate to-morrow in search of _As the Coming of Dawn_."

"Look here," said Mr. Bulmer, rising, "if you start on a tour of the country, looking for assorted dawns and idylls, it will end in my abducting you from some rustic institution for the insane. You take a liver-pill and go to bed! I don't promise anything, mind, but perhaps about the first I can manage a little cheque if only you will make oath on a few Bibles not to tank up on it in Lichfield. The transoms there," he added unkindlily, "are not built for those full rich figures."

Next morning, I notified the desk-clerk, and, quite casually, both the newspaper correspondents, that the Green Chalybeate was about to be bereft of the presence of a distinguished novelist. Then, as my train did not leave till night, I resolved to be bored on horseback, rather than on the golf-links, and had Guendolen summoned, from the stable, for a final investigation of the country roads thereabouts.

Guendolen this afternoon elected to follow a new route; and knowing by experience that any questioning of this decision could but result in undignified defeat, I assented. Thus it came about that we circled parallel to the boardwalk, which leads uphill to the deserted Royal Hotel, and passed its rows of broken windows; and went downhill again, always at Guendolen's election; and thus came to the creek, which babbled across the roadway and was overhung with thick foliage that lisped and whispered cheerfully in the placid light of the declining sun. It was there that the germ of _As the Coming of Dawn_ was found.

For I had fallen into a reverie over the deplorable obstinacy of my new heroine, who declined, for all my labours, to be unsophisticated; and taking advantage of this, Guendolen had twitched the reins from my hand and proceeded to satisfy her thirst in a manner that was rather too noisy to be quite good form. I sat in patience, idly observing the sparkling reflection of the sunlight on the water. I was elaborating a comparison between my obstinate heroine and Guendolen. Then Guendolen snorted, as something rustled through the underbrush, and turning, I perceived a Vision.

The Vision was in white, with a profusion of open-work. There were blue ribbons connected with it. There were also black eyes, of the almond-shaped, heavy-lidded variety that I had thought existed only in Lely's pictures, and great coils of brown hair which was gold where the chequered sunlight fell upon it, and two lips that were inexpressibly red. I was filled with pity for my tired horse, and a resolve that for this once her thirst should be quenched.

Thereupon, I lifted my cap hastily; and Guendolen scrambled to the other bank, and spluttered, and had carried me well past the Iron Spring, before I announced to the evening air that I was a fool, and that Guendolen was describable by various quite picturesque and derogatory epithets. And I smiled.

"Now, Robert Etheridge Townsend, you writer of books, here is a subject made to your hand!" And then:

"Only 'twixt the light and shade Floating memories of my maid Make me pray for Guendolen."

After this we retraced our steps. I was peering anxiously about the roadway.

"Pardon me," said I, subsequently; "but _have_ you seen anything of a watch--a small gold one, set with pearls?"

"Heavens!" said the Vision, sympathetically, "what a pity! Are you sure it fell here?"

"I don't seem to have it about me," I answered, with cryptic, but entire veracity. I searched about my pockets, with a puckered brow. "And as we stopped here--"

I looked inquiringly into the water.

"From this side," observed the Vision, impersonally, "there is less glare from the brook."

Having tied Guendolen to a swinging limb, I sat down contentedly in these woods. The Vision moved a little, lest I be crowded.

"It might be further up the road," she suggested.

"Oh, I must have left it at the hotel," I observed.

"You might look--" said she, peering into the water.

"Forever!" I assented.

The Vision flushed, "I didn't mean--" she began.

"But I did," quoth I,--"and every word of it."

"Why, in that case," said she, and rose to her feet, "I'd better--" A frown wrinkled her brow; then a deep, curved dimple performed a similar office for her cheek. "I wonder--" said she.

"Why, you would be a bold-faced jig," said I, composedly; "but, after all there is nobody about. And, besides,--for I suspect you of being one of the three dilapidated persons in veils who came last night,--we are going to be introduced right after supper, anyway."

The Vision sat down. "You mentioned your sanatorium?" quoth she.

"The Asylum of Love," said I; "discharged--under a false impression, --as cured, and sent to paradise.

"Oh!" said I, defiant, "but it _is_!"

She looked about her. "The woods _are_ rather beautiful," she conceded, softly.

"They form a quite appropriate background," said I. "It is a veritable Eden, before the coming of the snake."

"Before?" she queried, dubiously.

"Undoubtedly," said I, and felt my ribs, in meditative wise. "Ah, but I thought I missed something! We participate in a historic moment. This is in Eden immediately after the creation of--Well, but of course you are acquainted with that famous bull about Eve's being the fairest of her daughters?"

"It is _quite_ time," said she, judicially, "for me to go back to the hotel, before--since we are speaking of animals,--your presence here is noticed by one of the squirrels."

"It is not good," I pleaded, "for man to be alone."

"I have heard," said she, "that--almost any one can cite scripture to his purpose."

I thrust out a foot for inspection. "No suggestion of a hoof," said I; "and not the slightest odour of brimstone, as you will kindly note; and my inoffensive name is Robert Townsend."

"Of course," she submitted, "I could never think of making your acquaintance in this irregular fashion; and, therefore, of course, I could not think of telling you that my name is Marian Winwood."

"Of course not," I agreed; "it would be highly improper."

"--And it is more than time for me to go to supper," she concluded again, with a lacuna, as it seemed to me, in the deduction.

"Look here!" I remonstrated; "it isn't anywhere near six yet." I exhibited my watch to support this statement.

"Oh!" she observed, with wide, indignant eyes.

"I--I mean--" I stammered.

She rose to her feet.

"--I will explain how I happened to be carrying two watches--"

"I do not care to listen to any explanations. Why should I?"

"--upon," I firmly said, "the third piazza of the hotel. And this very evening."

"You will not." And this was said even more firmly. "And I hope you will have the kindness to keep away from these woods; for I shall probably always walk here in the afternoon." Then, with an indignant toss of the head, the Vision disappeared.

3

I whistled. Subsequently I galloped back to the hotel.

"See here!" said I, to the desk-clerk; "how long does this place keep open?"

"Season closes latter part of September, sir."

I told him I would need my rooms till then.

17.

_He Provides Copy_

So it was Uncle George Bulmer who presently left the Green Chalybeate, to pursue Mrs. Chaytor with his lawless arts. I stayed out the season.