Chapter II: Part 2

And besides—so Kennaston’s thoughts strayed at times—these massed books, which his predecessor at Alcluid had acquired piecemeal through the term of a long life, were a part of that predecessor’s personality. No other man would have gathered and have preserved precisely the same books, and each book, with varying forcefulness, had entered into his predecessor’s mind and had tinged it. These parti-colored books, could one but reconstruct the mosaic correctly, would give a candid portrait of “your Uncle Henry in Lichfield,” which would perhaps surprise all those who knew him daily in the flesh. Of the fact that these were unusual books their present owner and tentative explorer had no doubt whatever. They were perturbing books.

Now these books by their pleasant display of gold-leaf, soberly aglow in lamplight, recalled an obscure association of other tiny brilliancies; and Felix Kennaston recollected the bit of metal he had found that evening.

Laid by the lamp, it shone agreeably as Kennaston puckered his protruding brows over the characters with which it was inscribed. So far as touched his chances of deciphering them, he knew all foreign languages were to him of almost equal inscrutability. French he could puzzle out, or even Latin, if you gave him plenty of time and a dictionary; but this inscription was not in Roman lettering. He wished, with time-dulled yearning, that he had been accorded a college education....

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IV

How There Was a Light in the Fog

AS she came toward him through the fog, “How annoying it is,” she was saying plaintively, “that these moors are never properly lighted.”

“Ah, but you must not blame Ole-Luk-Oie,” he protested. “It is all the fault of Beatricê Cenci....”

Then Kennaston knew he had unwittingly spoken magic words, for at once, just as he had seen it done in theaters, the girl’s face was shown him clearly in a patch of roseate light. It was the face of Ettarre.

“Things happen so in dreams,” he observed. “I know perfectly well I am dreaming, as I have very often known before this that I was dreaming. But it was always against some law to tell the people in my nightmares I quite understood they were not real people. To-day in my daydream, and here again to-night, there is no such restriction; and lovely as you are, I know that you are just a daughter of sub-consciousness or of memory or of jumpy nerves or, perhaps, of an improperly digested entrée.”

“No, I am real, Horvendile—but it is I who am dreaming you.”

“I had not thought to be a part of any woman’s dream nowadays.... Why do you call me Horvendile?”

She who bore the face of Ettarre pondered momentarily; and his heart moved with glad adoration.

“Now, by the beard of the prophet! I do not know,” the girl said, at last.

“The name means nothing to you?”

“I never heard it before. But it seemed natural, somehow—just as it did when you spoke of Ole-Luk-Oie and Beatricê Cenci.”

“But Ole-Luk-Oie is the lord and master of all dreams, of course. And that furtive long-dead Roman girl has often troubled my dreams. When I was a boy, you conceive, there was in my room at the first boarding-house in which I can remember dieting, a copy of the Guido portrait of Beatricê Cenci—a copy done in oils, a worthless daub, I suppose. But there was evil in the picture—a lurking devilishness, which waited patiently and alertly until I should do what that silent watcher knew I was predestined to do, and, being malevolent, wanted me to do. I knew nothing then of Beatricê Cenci, mark you, but when I came to learn her history I thought the world was all wrong about her. That woman was evil, whatever verse-makers may have fabled, I thought for a long while.... To-day I believe the evil emanated from the person who painted that particular copy. I do not know who that person was, I never shall know. But the black magic of that person’s work was very potent.”

And Kennaston looked about him now, to find fog everywhere—impenetrable vapors which vaguely showed pearl-colored radiancies here and there, but no determinable forms of trees or of houses, or of anything save the face of Ettarre, so clearly discerned and so lovely in that strange separate cloud of roseate light.

“Ah, yes, those little magics”—it was the girl who spoke—“those futile troubling necromancies that are wrought by portraits and unfamiliar rooms and mirrors and all time-worn glittering objects—by running waters and the wind’s persistency, and by lonely summer noons in forests—how inconsequently they fret upon men’s heart-strings!”

“As if some very feeble force—say, a maimed elf—were trying to attract your attention? Yes, I think I understand. It is droll.”

“And how droll, too, it is how quickly we communicate our thoughts—even though, if you notice, you are not really speaking, because your lips are not moving at all.”

“No, they never do in dreams. One never seems, in fact, to use one’s mouth—you never actually eat anything, you may also notice, in dreams, even though food is very often at hand. I suppose it is because all dream food is akin to the pomegranates of Persephone, so that if you taste it you cannot ever return again to the workaday world.... But why, I wonder, are we having the same dream?—it rather savors of Morphean parsimony, don’t you think, thus to make one nightmare serve for two people? Or perhaps it is the bit of metal I found this afternoon—”

And the girl nodded. “Yes, it is on account of the sigil of Scoteia. I have the other half, you know.”

“What does this mean, Ettarre—?” he began; and reaching forward, was about to touch her, when the universe seemed to fold about him, just as a hand closes....

* * * * *

And Felix Kennaston was sitting at the writing-table in the library, with a gleaming scrap of metal before him; and, as the clock showed, it was bedtime.

“Well, it is undoubtedly quaint how dreams draw sustenance from half-forgotten happenings,” he reflected; “to think of my recollecting that weird daub which used to deface my room in Fairhaven! I had forgotten Beatricê entirely. And I certainly never spoke of her to any human being, except of course to Muriel Allardyce.... But I would not be at all surprised if I had involuntarily hypnotized myself, sitting here staring at this shiny piece of lead—you read of such cases. I believe I will put it away, to play with again sometime.”

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V

Of Publishing: With an Unlikely Appendix

SO Kennaston preserved this bit of metal. “No fool like an old fool,” his commonsense testily assured him. But Felix Kennaston’s life was rather barren of interests nowadays....

He thought no more of his queer dream, for a long while. Life had gone on decorously. He had completed _The Audit at Storisende_, with leisured joy in the task, striving to write perfectly of beautiful happenings such as life did not afford. There is no denying that the typed manuscript seemed to Felix Kennaston—as he added the last touches, before expressing it to Dapley & Pildriff—to inaugurate a new era in literature.

Kennaston was yet to learn that publishers in their business capacity have no especial concern with literature. To his bewilderment he discovered that publishers seemed sure the merits of a book had nothing to do with the advisability of printing it. Herewith is appended a specimen or two from Felix Kennaston’s correspondence.

DAPLEY & PILDRIFF—“We have carefully read your story, ‘The Audit
at Storisende,’ which you kindly submitted to us. It is needless
for us to speak of the literary quality of the story: it is in
fact exquisitely done, and would delight a very limited circle
of readers trained to appreciate such delicate productions. But
that class of readers is necessarily small, and the general
reader would, we fear, fail to recognize the book’s merit and be
attracted to it. For this reason we do not feel—and we regret to
confess it—that the publication of this book would be a wise
business enterprise for us to undertake. We wish that we could,
in justice to you and ourselves, see the matter in another
light. We are returning the manuscript to you, and we remain,
with appreciation of your courtesy, etc.”

PAIGE TICKNOR’S SONS—“We have given very careful consideration
to your story, ‘The Audit at Storisende,’ which you kindly
submitted to us. We were much interested in this romance, for it
goes without saying that it is marked with high literary
quality. But we feel that it would not appeal with force and
success to the general reader. Its appeal, we think, would be to
the small class of cultured readers, and therefore its
publication would not be attended with commercial success.
Therefore in your interest, as well as our own, we feel that we
must give an unfavorable decision upon the question of
publication. Naturally we regret to be forced to that
conclusion, for the work is one which would be creditable to any
publisher’s list. We return the manuscript by express, with our
appreciation of your courtesy in giving us the opportunity of
considering it, and are, etc.”

And so it was with The Gayvery Company, and with Leeds, McKibble & Todd, and with Stuyvesant & Brothers. Unanimously they united to praise and to return the manuscript. And Kennaston began reluctantly to suspect that, for all their polite phrases about literary excellence, his romance must, somehow, be not quite in consonance with the standards of that person who is, after all, the final arbiter of literature, and to whom these publishers very properly deferred, as “the general reader.” And Kennaston wondered if it would not be well for him, also, to study the all-important and exigent requirements of “the general reader.”

Kennaston turned to the publishers’ advertisements. Dapley & Pildriff at that time were urging every one to read _White Sepulchers_, the author of which had made public the momentous discovery that all churchgoers were not immaculate persons. Paige Ticknor’s Sons were announcing a new edition of _The Apostates_, a scathing arraignment of plutocratic iniquities, which was heralded as certain to sear the soul to its core, more than rival Thackeray, and turn our highest social circles inside out. Then the Gayvery Company offered _Through the Transom_, a daring study of “feminism,” compiled to all appearance under rather novel conditions, inasmuch as the brilliant young author had, according to the advertisements, written every sentence with his jaws set and his soul on fire. The majority of Leeds, McKibble & Todd’s adjectives were devoted to _Sarah’s Secret_, the prize-winner in the firm’s $15,000 contest—a “sprightly romance of the greenwood,” whose undoubted aim, Kennaston deduced from tentative dips into its meandering balderdash, was to become the most sought-after book, in all institutes devoted to care of the feeble-minded. And Stuyvesant & Brothers were superlatively acclaiming _The Silent Brotherhood_, the latest masterpiece of a pornographically gifted genius, who had edifyingly shown that he ranked religion above literature, by retiring from the ministry to write novels.

Kennaston laughed—upon which side of the mouth, it were too curious to inquire. Momentarily he thought of printing the book at his own expense. But here the years of poverty had left indelible traces. Kennaston had too often walked because he had not carfare, for a dollar ever again to seem to him an inconsiderable matter. Comfortably reassured as to pecuniary needs for the future, he had not the least desire to control more money than actually showed in his bank-balances: but, even so, he often smiled to note how unwillingly he spent money. So now he shrugged, and sent out his loved romance again.

* * * * *

An unlikely thing happened: the book was accepted for publication. The Baxon-Muir Company had no prodigious faith in _The Audit at Storisende_, as a commercial venture; but their “readers,” in common with most of the “readers” for the firms who had rejected it, were not lacking in discernment of its merits as an admirable piece of writing. And the more optimistic among them protested even to foresee a possibility of the book’s selling. The vast public that reads for pastime, they contended, was beginning to grow a little tired of being told how bad was this-or-that economic condition: and pretty much everything had been “daringly exposed,” to the point of weariness, from the inconsistencies of our clergy to the uncleanliness of our sausage. In addition, they considered the surprising success of Mr. Marmaduke Fennel’s eighteenth-century story, _For Love of a Lady_, as compared with the more moderate sales of Miss Elspeth Lancaster’s _In Scarlet Sidon_, that candid romance of the brothel; deducing therefrom that the “gadzooks” and “by’r lady” type of reading-matter was ready to revive in vogue. At all events, the Baxon-Muir Company, after holding a rather unusual number of conferences, declared their willingness to publish this book; and in due course they did publish it.

There were before this, however, for Kennaston many glad hours of dabbling with proofsheets: the tale seemed so different, and so infernally good, in print. Kennaston never in his life found any other playthings comparable to those first wide-margined “galley proofs” of _The Audit at Storisende_. Here was the word, vexatiously repeated within three lines, which must be replaced by a synonym; and the clause which, when transposed, made the whole sentence gain in force and comeliness; and the curt sentence whose addition gave clarity to the paragraph, much as a pinch of alum clears turbid water; and the vaguely unsatisfactory adjective, for which a jet of inspiration suggested a substitute, of vastly different meaning, in the light of whose inevitable aptness you marveled over your preliminary obtuseness:—all these slight triumphs, one by one, first gladdened Kennaston’s labor and tickled his self-complacency. He could see no fault in the book.

His publishers had clearer eyes. His Preface, for one matter, they insisted on transposing to the rear of the volume, where it now figures as the book’s tolerably famous Colophon—that curious exposition of Kennaston’s creed as artist. Then, for a title, _The Audit at Storisende_ was editorially adjudged abominable: people would not know how to pronounce Storisende, and in consequence would hold back from discussing the romance or even asking for it at bookdealers. _Men Who Loved Ettarre_ was Kennaston’s ensuing suggestion; but the Baxon-Muir Company showed no fixed confidence in their patrons’ ability to pronounce Ettarre, either. Would it not be possible, they inquired, to change the heroine’s name?—and Kennaston assented. Thus it was that in the end his book came to be called _Men Who Loved Alison_.

But to Kennaston her name stayed always Ettarre....

The book was delivered to the world, which received the gift without excitement. The book was delivered to reviewers, who found in it a well-intentioned echo of Mr. Maurice Hewlett’s earlier mediæval tales. And there for a month or some six weeks, the matter rested.

Then one propitious morning an indignant gentlewoman in Brooklyn wrote to _The New York Sphere_ a letter which was duly printed in that journal’s widely circulated Sunday supplement, _The Literary Masterpieces of This Week_, to denounce the loathsome and depraved indecency of the nineteenth and twentieth chapters, in which—while treating of Sir Guiron’s imprisonment in the Sacred Grove of Caer Idryn, and the worship accorded there to the sigil of Scoteia—Kennaston had touched upon some of the perverse refinements of antique sexual relations. The following week brought forth a full page of letters. Two of these, as Kennaston afterward learned, were contributed by the “publicity man” of the Baxon-Muir Company, and all arraigned obscenities which Kennaston could neither remember or on re-reading his book discover. Later in this journal, as in other newspapers, appeared still more denunciations. An up-to-the-minute bishop expostulated from the pulpit against the story’s vicious tendencies, demanding that it be suppressed. Thereafter it was no longer on sale in the large department-stores alone, but was equally procurable at all the bookstands in hotels and railway stations. Even the author’s acquaintances began to read it. And the Delaunays (then at the height of their vogue as exponents of the “new” dances) introduced “the Alison amble”; and from Tampa to Seattle, in certain syndicated cartoons of generally appealing idiocy, newspaper readers were privileged to see one hero of the series knock the other heels over head with a copy of Kennaston’s romance. And women wore the “Alison aigrette” for a whole season; and a new brand of cheap tobacco christened in her honor had presently made her name at least familiar in saloons. _Men Who Loved Alison_ became, in fine, the novel of the hour. It was one of those rare miracles such as sometimes palm off a well-written book upon the vast public that reads for pastime.

And shortly afterward Mr. Booth Tarkington published another of his delightful romances: one forgets at this distance of time just which it was: but, like all the others, it was exquisitely done, and sold neck and neck with _Men Who Loved Alison_; so that for a while it looked almost as if the American reading public was coming to condone adroit and careful composition.

But presently the advertising columns of magazines and newspapers were heralding the year’s vernal output of enduring masterworks in the field of fiction: and readers were again assured that the great American novel had just been published at last, by any number of persons: and so, the autumnal predecessors of these new _chefs d’œuvre_ passed swiftly into oblivion, via the brief respite of a “popular” edition. And naturally, Kennaston’s romance was forgotten, by all save a few pensive people. Some of them had found in this volume food for curious speculation.

That, however, is a matter to be taken up later.

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VI

Suggesting Themes of Universal Appeal

SO Felix Kennaston saw his dream vulgarized, made a low byword; and he contemplated this travestying, as the cream of a sardonic jest, with urbanity. Indeed, that hour of notoriety seemed not without its pleasant features to Felix Kennaston, who had all a poet’s ordinary appetite for flattery. Besides, it was droll to read the “literary notes” which the Baxon-Muir people were industriously disseminating, by means of the daily journals, concerning Felix Kennaston’s personality, ancestry, accomplishments, recreations and preferences in diet. And then, in common with the old woman famed in nursery rhyme, he was very often wont to observe, “But, lawk a mercy on me! this is none of I!”

It was droll, too, to be asked for autographs, lectures, and for donations of “your wonderful novel.” It was droll to receive letters from remote mysterious persons, who had read his book, and had liked it, or else had disliked it to the point of being goaded into epistolary remonstrance, sarcasm, abuse, and (as a rule) erratic spelling. It troubled Kennaston that only riffraff seemed to have read his book, so far as he could judge from these unsolicited communications; and that such people of culture and education as might have been thrilled by it—all people whose opinions he might conceivably value—seemed never to write to authors....

And finally, it was droll to watch his wife’s reception of the book. To Kennaston his wife stayed always a not unfriendly mystery. She now could not but be a little taken aback by this revelation of his abilities, he reflected—with which she had lived so long without, he felt, appreciation of them—but certainly she would never admit to either fact. He doubted very much if Kathleen would ever actually read _Men Who Loved Alison_; on various pretexts she had deferred the pleasure, and seemed, with perverted notions of humor, to esteem it a joke that she alone had not read the book of which everybody was talking. Such was not Kennaston’s idea of humor, or of wifely interest. But Kathleen dipped into the volume here and there; and she assuredly read all the newspaper-notices sent in by the clipping-bureau. These she considered with profound seriousness.

“I have been thinking—you ought to make a great deal out of your next novel,” she said, one morning, over her grapefruit; and the former poet wondered why, in heaven’s name, it should matter to her whether or not the marketing of his dreams earned money, when they had already a competence. But women were thus fashioned....

“You ought to do something more up-to-date, though, Felix, something that deals with real life—”

“Ah, but I don’t particularly care to write about a subject of which I am so totally ignorant, dear. Besides, it isn’t for you to fleer and gibe at a masterpiece which you never read,” he airily informed her.

“I am saving it up for next summer, Felix, when I will have a chance to give every word of it the reverence it deserves. I really don’t have any time for reading nowadays. There is always something more important that has to be attended to—For instance, the gasoline engine isn’t working again, and I had to ’phone in town for Slaytor to send a man out to-day, to see what is the matter this time.”

“And it is messy things like that you want me to write about!” he exclaimed. “About the gasoline engine going on another strike, and Drake’s forgetting to tell you we were all out of sugar until late Saturday night! Never mind, Mrs. Kennaston! you will be sorry for this, and you will weep the bitter tears of unavailing repentance, some day, when you ride in the front automobile with the Governor to the unveiling of my various monuments, and have fallen into the anecdotage of a great man’s widow.” He spoke lightly, but he was reflecting that in reality Kathleen did not read his book because she did not regard any of his doings very seriously. “Isn’t this the third time this week we have had herring for breakfast?” he inquired, pleasantly. “I think I will wait and let them scramble me a couple of eggs. It is evidently a trifle that has escaped your attention, my darling, during our long years of happy married life, that I don’t eat herring. But of course, just as you say, you have a number of much more important things than husbands to think about. I dislike having to put any one to any extra trouble on my account; but as it happens, I have a lot of work to do this morning, and I cannot very well get through it on an empty stomach.”

“We haven’t had it since Saturday, Felix.” Then wearily, to the serving-girl, “Cora, see if Mr. Kennaston can have some eggs.... I wish you wouldn’t upset things so, Felix. Your coffee will get stone-cold; and it is hard enough to keep servants as it is. Besides, you know perfectly well to-day is Thursday, and the library has to be thorough-cleaned.”

“That means of course I am to be turned out-of-doors and forced to waste a whole day somewhere in town. It is quite touching how my creature comforts are catered to in this house!”

And Kathleen began to laugh, ruefully. “You are just a great big baby, Felix. You are sulking and swelling up like a frog, because you think I don’t appreciate what a wonderful husband I have and what a wonderful book he has written.”

Then Kennaston began to laugh also. He knew that what she said was tolerably true, even to the batrachian simile. “When you insisted on adopting me, dear, you ought to have realized what you were letting yourself in for.”

“—And I do think,” Kathleen went on, evincing that conviction with which she as a rule repeated other people’s remarks—“that you ought to make your next book something that deals with real life. _Men Who Loved Alison_ is beautifully written and all that, but, exactly as the _Tucson Pioneer_ said, it is really just colorful soapbubbly nonsense.”

“Ah, but is it unadulterated nonsense, Kathleen, that somewhere living may be a uniformly noble transaction?” he debated—“and human passions never be in a poor way to find expression with adequate speech and action?” Pleased with the phrase, and feeling in a better temper, he began to butter a roll.

“I don’t know about that; but, in any event, people prefer to read about the life they are familiar with.”

“You touch on a disheartening truth. People never want to be told anything they do not believe already. Yet I quite fail to see why, in books or elsewhere, any one should wish to be reminded of what human life is actually like. For living is the one art in which mankind has never achieved distinction. It is perhaps an obscure sense of this that makes us think the begetting of mankind an undiscussable subject, and death a sublime and edifying topic.”

“Yes—? I dare say,” Kathleen assented vaguely. “This herring is really very good, Felix. I think you would like it, if you just had not made up your mind to be stubborn about it—” Then she spoke with new animation: “Felix, Margaret Woods was in Louvet’s yesterday morning, having her hair done for a dinner they gave the railroad crowd last night, and of all the faded washed-out looking people I ever saw—! And I can remember her having that hideous brown dress long before she was married. Of course, it doesn’t make any difference to me that she didn’t see fit to invite us. She was one of your friends, not mine. I was only thinking that, since she always pretended to be so fond of you, it does seem curious the way we are invariably left out.”

So Kennaston did not embroider verbally his theme—of Living Adequately—as he had felt himself in vein to do could he have found a listener.

“Some day,” he ruefully reflected, “I shall certainly write a paper upon The Lost Art of Conversing with One’s Wife. Its appeal, I think, would be universal.”

Then his eggs came....

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VII

Peculiar Conduct of a Personage

SHORTLY afterward befell a queer incident. Kennaston, passing through a famed city, lunched with a personage who had been pleased to admire _Men Who Loved Alison_, and whose remunerative admiration had been skilfully trumpeted in the public press by Kennaston’s publishers.

There were some ten others in the party, and Kennaston found it droll enough to be sitting at table with them. The lean pensive man—with hair falling over his forehead in a neatly-clipped “bang,” such as custom restricts to children—had probably written that morning, in his official capacity, to innumerable potentates. That handsome bluff old navy-officer was a national hero: he would rank in history with Perry and John Paul Jones; yet here he sat, within arms’-reach, prosaically complaining of unseasonable weather. That bearded man, rubicund and monstrous as to nose, was perhaps the most powerful, as he was certainly the most wealthy, person inhabiting flesh; and it was rumored, in those Arcadian days, that kingdoms did not presume to go to war without securing the consent of this financier.

And that exquisitely neat fellow, looking like a lad unconvincingly made-up for an octogenarian in amateur theatricals, was the premier of the largest province in the world: his thin-featured neighbor was an aeronaut—at this period really a _rara avis_—and went above the clouds to get his livelihood, just as ordinary people went to banks and offices. And chief of all, their multifarious host—the personage, as one may discreetly call him—had left unattempted scarcely any rôle in the field of human activities: as ranchman, statesman, warrior, historian, editor, explorer, athlete, coiner of phrases, and re-discoverer of the Decalogue, impartially, he had labored to make the world a livelier place of residence; and already he was the pivot of as many legends as Charlemagne or Arthur.

The famous navy-officer, as has been said, was complaining of the weather. “The seasons have changed so, since I can remember. We seem to go straight from winter into summer nowadays.”

“It has been rather unseasonable,” assented the financier; “but then you always feel the heat so much more during the first few hot days.”

“Besides,” came the judicious comment, “it has not been the heat which was so oppressive this morning, I think, as the great amount of humidity in the air.”

“Yes, it is most unpleasant—makes your clothes stick to you so.”

“Ah, but don’t you find, now,” asked the premier gaily, “that looking at the thermometer tends to make you feel, really, much more uncomfortable than if you stayed uninformed as to precisely how hot it was?”

“Well! where ignorance is bliss it is folly to be wise, as I remember to have seen stated somewhere.”

“By George, though, it is wonderful how true are many of those old sayings!” observed the personage. “We assume we are much wiser than our fathers: but I doubt if we really are, in the big things that count.”

“In fact, I have often wondered what George Washington, for example, would think of the republic he helped to found, if he could see it nowadays.”

“He would probably find it very different from what he imagined it would be.”

“Why, he would probably turn in his grave, at some of our newfangled notions—such as prohibition and equal suffrage.”

“Oh, well, all sensible people know, of course, that the trouble with prohibition is that it does not prohibit, and that woman’s place is the home, not in the mire of politics.”

“That is admirably put, sir, if you will permit me to say so. Still, there is a great deal to be said on both sides.”

“And after all, is there not a greater menace to the ideals of Washington and Jefferson in the way our present laws tend uniformly to favor rich people?”

“There you have it, sir—to-day we punish the poor man for doing what the rich man does with entire impunity, only on a larger scale.”

“By George, there are many of our so-called captains of industry who, if the truth were told, and a shorter and uglier word were not unpermissible, are little better than malefactors of great wealth.”

This epigram, however heartily admired, was felt by many of the company to be a bit daring in the presence of the magnate: and the lean secretary spoke hastily, or at any rate, in less leisurely tones than usual:

“After all, money is not everything. The richest people are not always the happiest, in spite of their luxury.”

“You gentlemen can take it from me,” asserted the aeronaut, “that many poor people get a lot of pleasure out of life.”

“Now, really though, that reminds me—children are very close observers, and, as you may have noticed, they ask the most remarkable questions. My little boy asked me, only last Tuesday, why poor people are always so polite and kind—”

“Well, little pitchers have big ears—”

“What you might call a chip of the old block, eh?—so that mighty little misses him?”

“I may be prejudiced, but I thought it pretty good, coming from a kid of six—”

“And it is perfectly true, gentlemen—the poor are kind to each other. Now, I believe just being kind makes you happier—”

“And I often think that is a better sort of religion than just dressing up in your best clothes and going to church regularly on Sundays—”

“That is a very true thought,” another chimed in.

“And expressed, upon my word, with admirable clarity—”

“Oh, whatever pretended pessimists in search of notoriety may say, most people are naturally kind, at heart—”

“I would put it that Christianity, in spite of the carping sneers of science so-called, has led us once for all to recognize the vast brotherhood of man—”

“So that, really, the world gets better every day—”

“We have quite abolished war, for instance—”

“My dear sir, were there nothing else, and even putting aside the outraged sentiments of civilized humanity, another great or prolonged war between any two of the leading nations is unthinkable—”

“For the simple reason, gentlemen, that we have perfected our fighting machines to such an extent that the destruction involved would be too frightful—”

“Then, too, we are improving the automobile to such an extent—”

“Oh, in the end it will inevitably supplant the horse—”

“It seems almost impossible to realize how we ever got along without the automobile—”

“Do you know, I would not be surprised if some day horses were exhibited in museums—”

“As rare and nearly extinct animals? Come, now, that is pretty good—”

“And electricity is, as one might say, just in its infancy—”

“The telephone, for instance—our ancestors would not have believed in the possibilities of such a thing—”

“And, by George, they talk of giving an entire play with those moving-picture machines—acting the whole thing out, you know.”

“Oh, yes, we live in the biggest, brainiest age the world has ever known—”

“And America is going to be the greatest nation in it, before very long, commercially and in every way....”

So the talk flowed on, with Felix Kennaston contributing very little thereto. Indeed, Felix Kennaston, the dreamer, was rather ill-at-ease among these men of action, and listened to their observations with perturbed attention. He sat among the great ones of earth—not all of them the very greatest, of course, but each a person of quite respectable importance. It was the sort of gathering that in boyhood—and in later life also, for that matter—he had foreplanned to thrill and dazzle, as he perfectly recollected. But now, with the opportunity, he somehow could not think of anything quite suitable to say—of anything which would at once do him justice and be admiringly received.

Therefore he attempted to even matters by assuring himself that the talk of these efficient people was lacking in brilliance and real depth, and expressed sentiments which, microscopically viewed, did not appear to be astoundingly original. If these had been less remarkable persons he would have thought their conversation almost platitudinous. And not one of these much-talked-about men, whatever else he might have done, could have written _Men Who Loved Alison_! Kennaston cherished that reflection as he sedately partook of a dish he recollected to have seen described, on menu cards, as “Hungarian goulash” and sipped sherry of no very extraordinary flavor....

He was to remember how plain the fare was, and more than once, was to refer to this meal—quite casually—beginning “That reminds me of what Such-an-one said once, when I was lunching with him,” or perhaps, “The last time I lunched with So-and-so, I remember—” With such gambits he was able, later on, to introduce to us of Lichfield several anecdotes which, if rather pointless, were at least garnished with widely-known names.

There was a Cabinet meeting that afternoon, and luncheon ended, the personage wasted scant time in dismissing his guests.

“It has been a very great pleasure to meet you, Mr. Kennaston,” quoth the personage, wringing Kennaston’s hand.

Kennaston suitably gave him to understand that they shared ecstasy in common.

“Those portions of your book relating to the sigil of Scoteia struck me as being too explicit,” the personage continued, bluffly, but in lowered tones. The two stood now, beneath a great stuffed elk’s head, a little apart from the others. “Do you think it was quite wise? I seem to recall a phrase—about birds—”

But Kennaston’s thoughts were vaguely dental. And there is no denying Kennaston was astounded. Nor was he less puzzled when, as if in answer to Kennaston’s bewildered look, the personage produced from his waistcoat pocket a small square mirror, which he half-exhibited, but retained secretively in the palm of his hand. “Yes, the hurt may well be two-fold—I am presupposing that, as a country-gentleman, you have raised white pigeons, Mr. Kennaston?” he said, meaningly.

“Why, no, they keep up such a maddening cooing and purring on warm days, and drum so on tin roofs”—Kennaston stammered—“that I long ago lost patience with the birds of Venus, whatever the tincture of their plumage. There used to be any number of them on our place, though—”

“Ah, well,” the personage said, with a wise nod, and a bright gleam of teeth, “you exercise the privilege common to all of us—and my intended analogy falls through. In any event, it has been a great pleasure to meet you. Come and see me again, Mr. Kennaston—and meanwhile, think over what I have said.”

* * * * *

And that was all. Kennaston returned to Alcluid in a whirl of formless speculations. The mirror and the insane query as to white pigeons could not, he considered, but constitute some password to which Kennaston had failed to give the proper response.

The mystery had some connection with what he had written in his book as to the sigil of Scoteia.... And he could not find he had written anything very definite. The broken disk was spoken of as a talisman in the vague terms best suited to a discussion of talismans by a person who knew nothing much about them. True, the book told what the talisman looked like; it looked like that bit of metal he had picked up in the garden.... He wondered if he had thrown away that bit of metal; and, searching, discovered it in the desk drawer, where it had lain for several months.

Laid by the lamp, it shone agreeably as Kennaston puckered his protruding heavy brows over the characters with which it was inscribed. That was what the sigil looked like—or, rather, what half the sigil looked like, because Ettarre still had the other half. How could the personage have known anything about it? unless there were, indeed, really some secret and some password through which men won to place and the world’s prizes?... Blurred memories of Eugène Sue’s nefarious Jesuits and of Balzac’s redoubtable Thirteen arose in the background of his mental picturings....

No, the personage had probably been tasting beverages more potent than sherry; there were wild legends, since disproved, such as seemed then to excuse that supposition: or perhaps he was insane, and nobody but Felix Kennaston knew it.... What could a little mirror, much less pigeons, have to do with this bit of metal?—except that this bit of metal, too, reflected light so that the strain tired your eyes, thus steadily to look down upon the thing....

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VIII

Of Vain Regret and Wonder in the Dark

“MADAM,” he was insanely stating, “I would not for the world set up as a fit exponent for the mottoes of a copybook; but I am not all base.”

“You are,” flashed she, “a notorious rogue.”

It was quite dark. Kennaston could not see the woman with whom he was talking. But they were in an open paved place, like a courtyard, and he was facing the great shut door against which she stood, vaguely discernible. He knew they were waiting for some one to open this door. It seemed to him, for no reason at all, that they were at Tunbridge Wells. But there was no light anywhere. Complete darkness submerged them; the skies showed not one glimmer overhead.

“That I am of smirched repute, madam, I lack both grounds and inclination to deny. Yet I am not so through choice. Believe me, I am innately of wellnigh ducal disposition; and by preference, an ill name is as obnoxious to me as—shall we say?—soiled linen or a coat of last year’s cut. But then, _que voulez-vous?_ as our lively neighbors observe. Squeamishness was never yet bred in an empty pocket; and I am thus compelled to the commission of divers profitable peccadilloes, once in a blue moon, by the dictates of that same haphazard chance which to-night has pressed me into the service of innocence and virtue.”

She kept silence; and he went on in lightheaded wonder as to what this dream, so plainly recognized as such, was all about, and as to whence came the words which sprang so nimbly to his lips, and as to what was the cause of his great wistful sorrow. Perhaps if he listened very attentively to what he was saying, he might find out.

“You do not answer, madam. Yet think a little. I am a notorious rogue: the circumstance is conceded. But do you think I have selfishly become so in quest of amusement? Nay, I can assure you that Newgate, the wigged judge, the jolting cart, the gallows, is no pleasant dream o’ nights. But what choice had I? Cast forth to the gutter’s miring in the susceptible years of infancy, a girl of the town’s byblow, what choice had I, in heaven’s name? If I may not live as I would, I must live as I may; in emperors and parsons and sewer-diggers and cheese-mites that claim is equally allowed.”

“You are a thief?” she asked, pensively.

“Let us put it, rather, that I have proved in life’s hard school an indifferent Latinist, by occasionally confounding _meum_ with _tuum_.”

“A murderer?”

“Something of the sort might be my description in puritanic mouths. You know at least what happened at The Cat and Hautbois.”

(“_But what in the world had happened there?_” Kennaston wondered.)

“And yet—” The sweet voice marveled.

“And yet I have saved you from Lord Umfraville? Ah, madam, Providence labors with quaint instruments, dilapidating Troy by means of a wood rocking-horse, and loosing sin into the universe through a half-eaten apple. Nay, I repeat, I am not all base; and I have read somewhere that those who are in honor wholly shipwrecked will yet very often cling desperately to one stray spar of virtue.”

He could tell her hand had raised to the knocker on the closed door. “Mr. Vanringham, will you answer me a question?”

“A thousand. (_So I am Vanringham._”)

“I have not knocked. I possess, as you know, a considerable fortune in my own right. It would be easy for a strong man—and, sure, your shoulders are prodigiously broad, Mr. Cut-throat!—very easy for him to stifle my cries and carry me away, even now. And then, to preserve my honor, I would have no choice save to marry that broad-shouldered man. Is this not truth?”

“It is the goddess herself, newly stolen from her well. _O dea certé!_”

“I am not absolutely hideous, either?” she queried, absent-mindedly.

“Dame Venus,” Kennaston observed, “may have made a similar demand of the waves at Cythera when she first rose among their billows: and I doubt not that the white foaming waters, amorously clutching at her far whiter feet, laughed and murmured the answer I would give did I not know your question was put in a spirit of mockery.”

“And yet—” she re-began.

“And yet, I resist all these temptations? Frankly, had you been in my eyes less desirable, madam, you would not have reached home thus uneventfully; for a rich marriage is the only chance adapted to repair my tattered fortunes; and the devil is cunning to avail himself of our flesh’s frailty. Had you been the fat widow of some City knight, I would have played my lord of Umfraville’s part, upon my pettier scale. Or, had I esteemed it possible for me to have done with my old life, I would have essayed to devote a cleaner existence to your service and worship. Indeed, indeed, I speak the truth, however jestingly!” he said, with sudden wildness. “But what would you have? I would not entrust your fan, much less your happiness, to the keeping of a creature so untrustworthy as I know myself to be. In fine, I look upon you, madam, in such a rapture of veneration and tenderness and joy and heartbreaking yearning, that it is necessary I get very tipsy to-night, and strive to forget that I, too, might have lived cleanlily.”

And Kennaston, as he spoke thus, engulfed in darkness, knew it was a noble sorrow which possessed him—a stingless wistful sorrow such as is aroused by the unfolding of a well-acted tragedy or the progress of a lofty music. This ruffian longing, quite hopelessly, to be made clean again, so worshipful of his loved lady’s purity and loveliness, and knowing loveliness and purity to be forever unattainable in his mean life, was Felix Kennaston, somehow.... What was it Maugis d’Aigremont had said?—“I have been guilty of many wickednesses, I have held much filthy traffic such as my soul loathed; and yet, I swear to you, I seem to myself to be still the boy who once was I.” Kennaston understood now, for the first time with deep reality, what his puppet had meant; and how a man’s deeds in the flesh may travesty the man himself.

But the door opened. Confusedly Kennaston was aware of brilliantly-lighted rooms beyond, of the chatter of gay people, of thin tinkling music, and, more immediately, of two lackeys, much be-powdered as to their heads, and stately in new liveries of blue-and-silver. Confusedly he noted these things, for the woman had paused in the bright doorway, and all the loveliness of Ettarre was visible now to him, and she had given a delighted cry of recognition.

“La, it is Horvendile! and we are having the same dream again!”

This much he heard and saw as her hand went out gladly toward him. Then as she touched him the universe seemed to fold about Felix Kennaston, just as a hand closes, and he was sitting at the writing-table in the library, with a gleaming scrap of metal before him.

* * * * *

He sat thus for a long while.

“I can make nothing of all this. I remember of course that I saw Muriel Allardyce stand very much like that, in the doorway of the Royal Hotel, at the Green Chalybeate—and how many years ago, good Lord!... And equally of course the most plausible explanation is that I am losing my wits. Or, else, it may be that I am playing blindfold with perilous matters. Felix Kennaston, my friend, the safest plan—the one assuredly safe plan for you—would be to throw away this devil’s toy, and forget it completely.... And, I will, too—the very first thing to-morrow morning—or after I have had a few days to think it over, any way....”

But even as he made this compact it was without much lively faith in his promises.

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_Book Third_

══════════════════════

“Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of long day.

“Come, as thou cam’st a thousand times,
A messenger from lovelier climes,
To smile on our drear world, and be
As kind to others as to me!”

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I

They Come to a High Place

HE was looking down at the most repulsive old woman he had ever seen. Hers was the abhorrent fatness of a spider; her flesh appeared to have the coloring and consistency of dough. She sat upon the stone pavement, knitting; her eyes, which raised to his unblinkingly, were black, secretive, and impersonally malevolent; and her jaws stirred without ceasing, in a loose chewing motion, so that the white hairs, rooted in the big mole on her chin, twitched and glittered in the sunlight.

“But one does not pay on entering,” she was saying. “One pays as one goes out. It is the rule.”

“And what do you knit, mother?” Kennaston asked her.

“Eh, I shall never know until God’s funeral is preached,” the old woman said. “I only know it is forbidden me to stop.”

So he went past her, aware that through some nameless grace the girl whom he had twice seen in dreams awaited him there, and that the girl’s face was the face of Ettarre. She stood by a stone balustrade, upon which squatted tall stone monsters—weird and haphazard collocations, as touched anatomy, of bird and brute and fiend—and she in common with these hobgoblins looked down upon a widespread comely city. The time was a bright and windy morning in spring; and the sky, unclouded, was like an inverted cup which did not merely roof Ettarre and the man who had come back to her, but inclosed them in incommunicable isolation. To the left, beyond shimmering tree-tops, so far beneath them that it made Felix Kennaston dizzy to look, the ruffling surface of a river gleamed.... It was in much this fashion, he recalled, that Ettarre and Horvendile had stood alone together among the turrets of Storisende.

“But now I wonder where on the face of—or, rather, so far above the face of what especial planet we may happen to be?” Kennaston marveled happily—“or east of the sun or west of the moon? At all events, it hardly matters. Suffice it that we are in love’s land to-day. Why worry over one particular inexplicable detail, where everything is incomprehensible?”

“I was never here before, Horvendile; and I have waited for you so long.”

He looked at her; and again his heart moved with glad adoration. It was not merely that Ettarre was so pleasing to the eye, and distinguished by so many delicate clarities of color—so young, so quick of movement, so slender, so shapely, so inexpressibly virginal—but the heady knowledge that here on dizzying heights he, Felix Kennaston, was somehow playing with superhuman matters, and that no power could induce him to desist from his delicious and perilous frolic, stirred, in deep recesses of his being, nameless springs. Nameless they must remain; for it was as though he had discovered himself to possess a sixth sense; and he found that the contrivers of language, being less prodigally gifted, had never been at need to invent any terms wherewith to express this sense’s gratification. But he knew that he was strong and admirable; that men and men’s affairs lay far beneath him; that Ettarre belonged to him; and, most vividly of all, that the exultance which possessed him was a by-product of an unstable dream.

“Yet it is not any city of to-day,” he was saying. “Look, how yonder little rascal glitters—he is wearing a helmet of some sort and a gorget. Why, all those pigmies, if you look closely, go in far braver scarlets and purples than we elect to skulk about in nowadays; and there is not an office-building or an electric-light advertisement of chewing-gum in sight. No, that hotchpotch of huddled gables and parapets and towers shaped like lanterns was stolen straight out of some Doré illustration for Rabelais or _Les Contes Drolatiques_. But it does not matter at all, and it will never matter, where we may chance to be, Ettarre. What really and greatly matters, is that when I try to touch you everything vanishes.”

The girl was frankly puzzled. “Yes, that seems a part of the sigil’s magic....”

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II

Of the Sigil and One Use of It

IT proved that this was indeed a part of the sigil’s wonder-working: Kennaston learned by experience that whenever, even by accident, he was about to touch Ettarre his dream would end like a burst bubble. He would find himself alone and staring at the gleaming fragment of metal.

Before long he also learned something concerning the sigil of Scoteia, of which this piece of metal once formed a part; for it was permitted him to see the sigil in its entirety, many centuries before it was shattered: it was then one of the treasures of the Didascalion, a peculiar sort of girls’ school in King Ptolemy Physcon’s city of Alexandria, where women were tutored to honor fittingly the power which this sigil served. But it is not expedient to speak clearly concerning this; and the real name of the sigil was, of course, quite different from that which Kennaston had given it in his romance.

So began an odd divided life for Felix Kennaston. At first he put his half of the sigil in an envelope, which he hid in a desk in the library, under a pile of his dead uncle’s unused bookplates; whence, when occasion served, it was taken out in order that when held so as to reflect the lamplight—for this was always necessary—it might induce the desired dream of Ettarre.

Later Kennaston thought of an expedient by which to prolong his dreams. Nightly he lighted and set by his bedside a stump of candle. Its tiny flame, after he had utilized its reflection, would harmlessly burn out while his body slept with a bit of metal in one hand; and he would be freed of Felix Kennaston for eight hours uninterruptedly. To have left an electric-light turned on until he awakened, would in the end have exposed him to detection and the not-impossible appointment of a commission in lunacy; and he recognized the potentialities of such mischance with frank distaste. As affairs sped, however, he could without great difficulty buy his candles in secret. He was glad now he was well-to-do, if only because, as an incidental result of materially bettered fortunes, he and his wife had separate bedrooms.

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III

Treats of a Prelate and, in Part, of Pigeons

THE diurnal part of Kennaston’s life was largely devoted to writing _The Tinctured Veil_—that amazing performance which he subsequently gave to a bewildered world. And for the rest, his waking life went on in the old round.