SSm

iWfSimgggf tHBHIUlfim

ipii

Ilifi

:c«»ittstS5~s£c3SJH5JV!

li^sp

MR I HAND SMi ^ BOOK STORE

TACRES or

• 33 M A

CtNClNNAT

THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

WILLIAM ROSE BENET

THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

BY

WILLIAM ROSE BENET

' •

NEW Xr YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO MY FRIEND DMITRI

M295968

CONTENTS

CHAPTER *AGB

I SUPPOSE WE HAVE LUNCH n

II RICHARD TERRILL SPEAKING 19

III THE PERSISTENCE OF JANE 25

IV MR. GARTNER GETS A LETTER 33

V TUPTON AND THE TEN 37

VI UNCLE ARTHUR THINKS NOTHING OF IT 45

VII BESSIE, SOLUS 50

VIII "THE GIRL WHO WAS BURNED UP" 54

IX ORDEAL 7°

X UNCLE ARTHUR SYMPATHIZES WITH

XERXES 91

XI HELEN AND THE CHINA ANIMALS 100

XII THE CHRISTIAN MARTYR OF "THE COLOS SEUM" 113

XIII Ms. BY ANON 125

XIV CORY AT CAN'T REMEMBER 135 XV "I AM RICHARD TERRILL" 144

XVI TRAGIC INTERLUDE 155

XVII MR. DUFFITT is QUITE MISTAKEN 158

XVIII BESSIE ENLIVENS BREAKFAST 166

XIX ADELA LOOKS EIGHTEEN 173

XX SIRENA UNDER SUSPICION 182

XXI A QUIET EVENING 194

XXII WHO SHE MIGHT BE 203

XXIII IT COMES TO Miss CROME 214

XXIV UNCLE ARTHUR'S BOMBSHELL 221

vii

Till

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

XXV CORYAT is INOPPORTUNE

XXVI A FERMENT OF MINDS

XXVII THE MISOGYNIST CALLS

XXVIII A REVELATION AND A RESCUE

XXIX Miss ANN COLE AGAIN

XXX SLADE FACES THE INCREDIBLE

XXXI ADELA THINKS IT OVER

XXXII AWAKENING

XXXIII UNMISTAKABLY MRS. VENTRESS

XXXIV THE PERPLEXITY OF BEING A CROWD XXXV UNCLE ARTHUR'S HOUR

XXXVI FINALLY, THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

243 248

253 26l 266 269

275 282

287 293 295

THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

CHAPTER I: SUPPOSE WE HAVE LUNCH

FLORA SIBLEY stood just outside the bronze doors of the north entrance to the New York Public Library, drawing on her suede gloves. From the top of the marble steps to Forty-second Street she surveyed the passersby without any real apprehension of their existence. She was slightly above the average height, rather slender. She wore, if exactitude be demanded, a navy-blue tricotine and a smart black hat, the latter nicely adjusted upon her dexterously arranged brown hair. She had a straight nose and a pleas ing, quizzical mouth. Her eyebrows were pronouncedly curved, giving her an expression of surprise even when she was not particularly surprised. She had dark eyes.

But how many men can describe a woman ? I shall dodge hastily behind the useful phrase "unique charm". Flora had it. It was enhanced by an aloof, slightly astringent manner, an innate shyness she had never quite conquered from girlhood.

Flora was a "p°P" novelist — but you wouldn't have known it. In conversation you could not have connected her with the lapses into mediocrity and sentimentality so frequent in her books, with the facile literary compromises she had made for so many years. You could only feel, if you hap pened to know who she was at a dinner or a reception, that such dual personality bordered upon the incredible. In conversation she could be witty, even brilliant. It was her

ii

12 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

quotidian return to the typewriter, upon which she "dashed off" both first drafts and revisions, that exerted the malign influence. Then, from her flying ringers, spattered that treacle of romance without which the mere bread and butter of life is, to most of us, both stale and unprofitable. Most of us were, after all, responsible for Flora.

By the courage and cleverness of her own brain she had forged a weapon of style. After persistent unsuccess she had also forged the tools to blunt and dull it. Finally she had fashioned her literary self not in her own but in the Public's image. Yet nobility persisted in her face, for she was fundamentally a fighter, possessed of a natural spiritual courage against odds. She had merely misapplied it.

Her maternal instinct was strong. She often pitied other people to excruciation, quite sincerely. Her characters be came to her as the people she pitied. Then she could refuse them nothing, money, children, countryhouses, candy-box love-affairs, hairbreadth rescues, hummingbirds and roses. It wasn't good for them. And any social criticism implied in the works of this authoress was always smoothed over with a large solution of faith, hope and charity. Some problems necessitated laying it on pretty thick.

Flora was thirty-five. She had begun writing novels ten years ago and had produced just exactly ten. She had made a pot of money. O Flora ! But I like Flora very much, in spite of my natural brutality. You couldn't help it.

So she stood, half-smiling at her own thoughts, at the top of marble steps to a tawdry newspaper-blown street. Any man in love with her, as he looked at her, might have felt his pulse accelerate. Her small pugnacious chin was tilted upward.

Wherever she went, would not her thousand photo graphic likenesses follow her? But that was what gave her the half -smile. She recalled some of them. She took such an abominable picture. She remembered her own particular gallery of them: Orphant Annie, The Pride of the Harem, The Super-Clubwoman, Pride's Purge, Maybelle the Movie

SUPPOSE WE HAVE LUNCH 13

Star, Old Mother Hubbard, Vampirina, She herself had bestowed the titles. No, they'd never in the world !

She grasped her small suede handbag with decision. Sun light and a breeze brought colour to her cheek. Her air was distinguished. She was almost beautiful.

She was beautiful to a certain straw-hatted gentleman in heather-mixture cheviot, pausing in his stride along the opposite side of Forty-Second Street. He halted in front of a window displaying a large oil portrait of an atrabilious individual whose painted nose supported a pair of imita tion tortoiseshell eyeglasses. The eyeglasses were real. That was what people said when they loitered in front of the win dow. But Richard Coryat's back was toward it.

He got himself immediately across the street between a Dodge, a cross-town car and a brown and white taxi. He met Flora as she descended to the pavement.

"I called last night, but "

"O, I'm so sorry. A friend of mine was ill and leaving town. (Well, Lucy had certainly been leaving town, in a month, and she looked ill!) I should have called you up, or left a message. I forgot. How are you ?"

"Splendidly — now," he couldn't help adding. " Which way are you going? Mightn't we ?"

"Well, to tell the truth," Flora smiled, "I'm sure I don't

know. I've just been looking) up something in there, j »

"Won't you lunch with me?"

"No — I'm afraid that yes, suppose we do. Dutch.

I'm an independent person, you know, Mr. Coryat."

After all, why not? She had been rather mean to him probably. She could go back to her Gramercy Park apart ment or to the National Arts Club. But after all, why not? He looked agreeable. He was interesting if too persistent. They were at the corner. His fingers barely touched her el bow as they crossed Forty-Second Street. They walked slowly up the Avenue.

"You got my note about 'Golden Windfall' ?"

14 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

Her eyes had turned toward him, her head was slightly bent.

"Yes. I'm glad you agree with me. But I knew you'd appreciate it."

"Why?"

"Why, because — oh, I don't know. It's your sort of a book."

"How about my own books?"

"Well, to make a horrible confession, I've been so busy this last month getting settled I haven't had a chance to read them yet. And you see I was away from America for ten years. I'm frightfully ignorant about your work really. But I certainly intend to remedy that."

"Don't!"

"Why not?"

"They're awful!"

"I refuse to believe it !" he laughed.

"They are, they're atrocious. I'm sick of them. It's your fault though."

"How?"

"Terrill's book. Don't you know that you and he are responsible for a positively suicidal mood on the part of this particular lady novelist?"

"Good Lord, what do you mean?"

"Oh, don't be scared," she laughed, and then was grave. "I simply mean I seem to have come to a turning-point. 'Golden Windfall' did it. Of course you couldn't know. And you couldn't know that I opened Terrill's book with a feeling of great superiority and a decided aversion to him. But, it's curious, he has convinced me as no one else has ever been able to convince me of the obligations of a talent. 'The artistic conscience' ! ( She laughed shortly — rather harshly.) You see I had become pretty case-hardened, I guess. And then, of course, I have made money. And there's so much trifling and idling in the name of Art. So much buncombe. But he got me."

"But I know you're exaggerating "

SUPPOSE WE HAVE LUNCH 15

Flora gave him a swift side-glance.

"No," she almost snapped, with an expressionless face. "It's worse than you think."

He changed the topic to suggest a tea-room on West Forty-sixth Street. Seated at a corner table near the win dow, they confided the appeasement of their hunger to an entirely indifferent waitress. She returned in five minutes having forgotten the order. "What was it you said ?" They told her all over again.

Flora opened her handbag and scrutinized its interior intently, moving her face about with great seriousness. Rich ard Coryat realised, when she raised her eyes, that he had been staring at her. He thought he had rarely seen such a thoroughly honest gaze. Yet it was veiled to him. Her own work must be infinitely better than she thought.

"Do you know," said Flora, and then suddenly curtailed her sentence. What she had been going to ask would never do. She must escape him. Yes, even after his introducing her to Terr ill's book. He had become altogether too inter ested. She wished, in fact, to get rid of all of them, editors, publishers, literary acquaintances. The thing to do was to

make a complete break. She would go back . She as

suddenly smiled to herself at this persistent invasion of her creative imagination.

The fish and salad having made its appearance, with rolls and pots of tea, she listened to Coryat as he talked of Paris and the Riviera. His voice was light, high, with a certain harsh, hurt strain in it. He told some interesting stories. He became animated as he talked, his greenish blue eyes sparkled. His lean brown face with its deep but not promi nent jaw and somewhat broad and uptilted nose was at tractively homely. His light brown hair was thick, difficult to part properly and inclined toward curliness. He had a characteristic habit of tilting his head upward and back with great suddenness. He betrayed nervousness by the restless gestures of his hands. His ears were too large, his mouth was broad and firm, half-hidden beneath a close-cropped

16 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

mustache that had come out sandy. He was not above the average height and, in the street, save for the keenness of his gaze, you might easily have passed him as the average man.

"What do you intend to do now, Mr. Coryat?"

"Not foreign correspondence any more at any rate. I don't really know. I'm tired of journalism. This inheri tance I told you about . Of course I really intend to

write, but I don't know exactly what. There's a different feel to things over here, on first reacquaintance at any rate. Seems so much all Business. But then Europe's a ruin. France is about the only real intellectual centre. But the War's spoiled most things. I certainly got fed up on fracas — as well as on discipline — in the Legion. Yet it seems to me I hate worse the stupor I find over here — a stupor as to ideas. Of course that sounds superior. I don't mean it so. As a matter of fact I am getting back my old love for New York, love like hatred. It certainly hasn't lost its fascination, though it's changed. But socially and politically and so on, doesn't the country seem dead to you ? Look at this administration."

"Well, I admit we seem to care very little for personality over here. At least now. It wasn't so, certainly. But in dustrialism has us, and moulds. Take our writers. Well," she smiled ruefully, "take me. I'm a grand example of the American idea of success, in literature. You'd better go home and read my books — if you can stand it."

"Oh, come !" he said unbelievingly ; "but if standardisation is the cry to-day, as it certainly was in the War, I think just the same that we're bound to swing out of it again. There are a number of signs. Certainly order and system under special privilege and convention are really figments of the imagination — any real order, any real system "

"You're a Socialist, are you?"

"No. Not an anything-ist. Satisfactory social systems are a problem. The point is, under any system, the attitude of the people. I'm certainly not for the present amount of

SUPPOSE WE HAVE LUNCH 17

special privilege. Yet — there's personal liberty too. Maybe the anarchists have, after all, the best doctrine for the indi vidual soul. Only I don't believe it. I believe in some sys tem. Not too much. Socialism might easily become as auto cratic as capitalism, in a different way. Here's what I mean. The spirit in this country. I believe you're right about the individual. Who wants another war? I certainly don't. War is a rotten thing. I've seen it and I know. But in a crisis like a great war there comes certainly a new spirit, a solidarity. Something more than mere comfort and ease. An ideal. Something burning. Now that that's left us "

"Maybe it hasn't !"

"Yes, I think it has. The present lies with the individual. If I'm purged of any jingoism I had, as well as of old-line socialism — for I had both in a sense — I'm also against the moulds of this present phase of industrialism. I'm for the growth of the individual now as the only thing that will resurrect us from the grave we've fallen into with our dead. And I don't mean the old Puritanical idea of character either. I mean the life that makes itself felt by courage and pioneer ing, by thinking for itself — not by mob formulas."

Like the opinions voiced in most casual conversation, his own tripped and stumbled over each other. You could have annihilated some of his easy summaries. Flora, like most of us, picked out merely the phrases that applied to her own immediate problem. She liked the eagerness in his eyes and a certain suppressed scorn in his voice. Also, he seemed to know the names of things.

"So you're an individualist?"

"H'm," he drew his compressed lips inward. "I don't know. At present we're all slaves to mechanism. Perhaps more so because we're a democracy, we're f ormularised. The proper expression of personality — the characteristic differ ences between human beings — well, call it the first person singular, in two senses, is what interests me most. Over here I find types, not people. In Europe, and even — para doxically — in the war, despite all the regimenting of every-

18 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

thing, and the discipline — I found people. It was due, I guess, to the crisis. Men and women revealed themselves. Now, over here at least, they've crept back into convention. There's more real life in Minetta Lane than all upper New York. There's a type of business man, a type of society woman, a type of flapper, yes, and a type of everything else. You say there's a type of American novelist. There's the suburb type and the city type. It may be silly of me — or it may be a snap-judgment — but I want people, not types."

"People," murmured Flora Sibley. "Yes. Real people. I want them too."

A silence fell between them as he drew out a silver ciga rette case, chose a cigarette, and tapped it upon the table.

CHAPTER II: RICHARD TERRILL SPEAKING

MR. CORYAT was interesting, yes. But the fact re mained that she wanted to escape him, to escape them all. She sat at the window of her sitting-room looking out over green, sunny Gramercy Park. The things she had lived for seemed now particularly worthless. She had fulfilled certain responsibilities, of course, paid certain debts. That much was true, but .

Why had he happened to lend her that book? She didn't know. But wasn't she glad after all? She knew she was. However, the mental disgust returned. She could see her self as she must have looked at two of that last Sunday morning, when she had finished the last page of "Golden Windfall." She could see herself getting up from the dav enport, walking slowly toward the open window, standing staring out upon the mysteriously moonlit park. The mental nausea. Good Heavens! Well, it was true. And it was the test.

She had never heard of the writer before. Richard Ter- rill. Richard Terrill. What in heaven's name was the mat ter with American publishers not to have heard of him? Well, they would now. That was her first duty, to spread knowledge of his book. He must be an Englishman. It was an English book. How old was he, she wondered. How in heaven's name had he managed to show her her very own problem so keenly yet so kindly?

First emotional impressions did not live. But he had said something living. The truth of it was burned in her heart. Yet, on analysis, it was simple enough and something she had seen all along. However, the words were now a part of her, they had irrevocably changed her.

19

20 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

The puppet procession began again to pass through the clear light of what he had said. The puppets proceeded out of the shadow, showed in the light for an instant with a startling clarity of detail, sank again into the shadow. She had been so proud of Sallie Pryor — at least leave her Sallie Pryor! Sallie stood in that light with the jerky gestures of a grimacing doll, leered, disappeared grotesquely. The light was utterly pitiless.

Clarriby Null of "The Wiseacres". Clarriby came creep ing avoidingly into the light — stood and blinked in it. The light began to blacken his edges. It burst through. It con sumed him with little eating flames. He was a slight shower of infinitesimal ashes.

Tortured, lugubrious shapes, pitifully processional. Bar ker Straik, George Phillips, little laughing Nelly Madox, Jane Orgue, the Cranes, the Busbees — all incredibly gal vanized painted pasteboard. Or floating ghosts that faded piecemeal in the light. The words of their wraithlike voices hummed about her. The lives of her puppets swept round her like a sea — voices of age, of childhood, from the froth and ferment of her brain. The skein of all their lives hung on a hook in the blank wall of her mind. She had tugged threads from it, knotted them into patterns, patterns that also passed into that light and were consumed like a spider- web under a burning-glass. It was too awful !

It was desperately unkind not even to leave her Sallie Pryor. An enormous public had liked Sallie. One hun dred thousand copies of "The June Bug" had been printed. Sallie had made her fortune. The light was cruel, unkind. The man's book was hideous, untrue. The man was an idiot, or simply an ineffectual angel. What he saw as art was really a supersensitive and impossibly stern avoidance of the compromises necessary in real life. Life was simple. You needed distraction and money. You worked for money. You made the most of your ability. The public would buy certain things. You gave them that. No one who had not come the hard, practical road to financial success could pos-

RICHARD TERRILL SPEAKING 21

sibly know how sweet it was to have fought your way, met your obligations, gained once more ease, leisure, a bright world of royalties, nice clothes, decorous applause. And

no one who had not been through ! Her indignant

thought paused.

But she had made her way, at least. She saw perfectly clearly the road behind her. A girl's idealistic decision and disastrous experiment; the escape; persistent brave effort; the man, the woman who had helped her. The development of a gift at first desperately meagre.; the bleak interim; finally — what the world knew as "success". Suddenly, one day, the grasp of the box-of-tricks, the formula. Labour ing over the denouement of her tenth short story, she had seen. She was perfectly conscious at the time, — she must have been; yet, somehow, not at all conscious. She knew that it was not her idea of good writing, of what she could really do. But the desperation of her mind at the time stifled the thought. And the formula had proved correct. Read the reviews !

Then why had this book of Terrill's intruded to shatter the dream? It was surely a beneficent dream enough. A world of bright laughter, sound sermons, happy people, wholesome moods. A beneficent dream that had cheered the lives of thousands ! She smiled grimly. That phrase was from the jacket of "Rosemary and Rue". But wasn't it true? It had. Always the happy ending. Always the sweetmeats and bonbons tucked into the lavendered folds of the story. Always the delight in life — or had it been merely in "laying it on thick"? Had she grown to believe it was life? She must have. It was accepted as life. It was thoroughly wholesome and uplifting. Good heavens !

That girl had been so excruciatingly unhappy. Wistful, hard-worked, hungry, romantic, sentimental, — then crushed. Then so bravely trying to build up the fairy story that might have come true. She had thought, at least, to make it come true for others. Then how had she lost the substance for the shadow?

22 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

A long accumulation of small scraps of advice and coun sel came to her, from many a successful writer, from many a seasoned editor ; advice to which she hungrily listened, ad vice that had finally crystallised itself into The Formula. She remembered now beginnings in so different a vein. Two pages of that third, often-rejected story for instance, "The Barrier". She closed her eyes to see the two figures in those pages pass under that scathing light of Ten-ill's words. Of all the characters her teeming thought had created those two alone did not move like automata. Their small but distinct voices rang true in her inner ear. She had finally torn that story into strips, and from strips into fine frag ments.

That girl; the girl of those days, lean, suffering, puzzled, embittered, in her frayed grey wrapper and tousled hair, scribbling desperately in that back hall room of Mrs. Mur- trie's, writing on the varnish-peeled wash hand-stand, the big white crockery basin and pitcher (with their impossible red-lily decoration) standing beside her upon the thread bare piece of carpet to which she had removed them. Oh (suddenly), to have her back, that thin, passionate, intoler ably shy, madly battling girl of ten years ago !

Well, to work! That manuscript in the binder had to be shipped off to Harvey Wick of "The Criterion". She rose from her cretonned chair, unlocked her desk, and spent the next fifteen minutes or so correcting a few sentences. Then she reached for the notebook she had tossed on the table and worked steadily for half an hour "pointing up" the reference to the Boxer outbreak. It was four o'clock when she had finished, and she had invited Mr. Seelye to tea at the National Arts at 4:30. He was connected with the Bo- zarre Picture Corporation. The moving-picture rights of "Rosemary and Rue" were under consideration. Flora Sib- ley sighed, closed and locked her big desk, and called softly

for Marie.

* * *

RICHARD TERRILL SPEAKING 23

Flora nibbled a butter-thin and listened to Mr. Irwin Seelye. His face distinctly resembled a Regensburg cigar sign. It had creamed lobster and "The Follies of 1920" Written large all over it. Mr. Seelye inhaled his tea.

"They'll eat it!" pronounced Mr. Seelye. "See if they don't. They'll eat it. Home and mother." He beamed gelatinously at her.

"The only trouble being," said Flora sweetly, "that I've chucked the whole business now, Mr. Seelye."

"You mean the royalties? Well now I'll tell you "

"No, I mean I'm tired of the whole business. I'm going away."

"Oh! Oh, vacation. Course you're tired. Should think so. 'Mount of work you turn out. But you needn't worry 'bout the picture till you get good and rested. We could go right ahead with it. We'd have to do that anyway."

"You don't understand me. I've just delivered my last novel to Harvey Wick according to contract. I had to. But I'm out of it now. I've decided not to sell any more movie rights."

"Well, what is your figure?"

"I must repeat that you misunderstand me, Mr. Seelye. The rights to 'Rosemary and Rue' simply aren't on the market. I should have told you that at once — but you looked tired and I wanted you to have some tea. Pardon me if I haven't broken it especially gently."

"Well, what d'you — why, but — but, Miss Sibley, you really don't mean that?"

"I'm afraid I do. You see I'm just sickened suddenly — of the whole thing."

"But of what?"

"Of writing rot, of purveying rot, of stuffing the public with rot. I'm through."

The belligerent small chin was in evidence. Flora's eyes stared straight ahead of her at nothing in particular.

"Well, now of course, Miss Sibley," the tone was meant to be pacifying. "You know really that there's no reason

24 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

at all for you to talk that way. Not the slightest. Look how your work goes. Look how good it is. Haven't 'I just been telling you that the public'11-eat up 'Rosemary and Rue'?"

"Yes, that's the whole trouble. I believe they would."

"But isn't this reasonable!" Flora suddenly sat up very straight and looked at him with clear wideieyes. "Isn't this reasonable. I have made all the money I want. That, as all of us know is 'the object in view'. Well, I've made enough. But I've just come to see what I've made it by. We needn't go into that. I'm through, that's all."

"Sorry," she said a few moments later, at the door»of the National Arts, to this rather dazed myrmidon of the pro ducers. "I see you don't quite understand it. Perhaps I'm wrong. Only I don't think so. Good-bye!"

Mr. Irwin Seelye paused to light a fat cigar as he reached Fourth Avenue. He tilted it toward the not- far-distant Metropolitan Tower and looked vaguely up and down the street.

"Now I wonder," he said to himself, "just what she is holding out for ! Well, — she's bound to snap out of it."

He began to walk slowly south on Fourth Avenue. He continued to wonder.

Flora, meanwhile, returning to her apartment, called in Marie. It was not on the matter of dinner. Later she held several telephone conversations and made several tappoint- ments, one with her friend Phil Bruston of the Park Avenue Bank. Fortunately he was not out of town. She experi enced a strange thrill in the thought that she was setting wheels in motion. She knew now that she had finally de cided.

CHAPTER III: THE PERSISTENCE OF JANE

THREE weeks later, in his rooms on the opposite side of Gramercy Park, Richard Coryat was filling a pipe from a large glass humidor on the table in his sitting-room. He had seen Flora several times lately. Now, it seemed, she was gone. Still vivid before the lens of his thought floated a likeness of her face. He liked smart black hats and blue tricotine. He liked peculiarly-arched eyebrows. He

liked dark eyes. He liked . His mouth drew down

lugubriously at the corners. He exhaled through his nose sharply and shook his head. He shrugged. He went over and relapsed deeply into the Chesterfield before the empty fireplace. He sat puffing at a pipe he had forgotten to light.

His face sharpened as he sat in thought, his cheeks drew gaunt. His left arm came up on the back of the Chester field, and his head leaned upon his left hand. His hand kept smoothing back his hair with a softly grinding motion of the heel of it upon his left temple. His teeth showed as he bit the stem of his pipe again and again.

Flora — and Jane. He wondered what on earth Jane could be doing now. He wondered for the ten thousand two hundred and twenty-fifth time in eighteen years whether he had acted like a cad. He didn't see how he had. But he wondered. That the ache should be so keen — still — at times — what did that imply? Well then, the implication was correct. He still loved her.

But was it that ? A man's physical hunger was so treacher ous; and he had avoided women. Was it that? Could it be that only? Was it the old possessiveness, that issue on which they had broken? No. That wasn't true. It simply wasn't. He had learned that lesson.

25

26 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

Had he? And should he want to find her? He cer tainly wondered what she was doing.

She had dismissed him. He was young — what a kid he was then, what an infant ! What a goings-on he had made within himself about his pride! What a horrible thing, and what an incredibly childish thing it had been anyway! How proud they both were! As Lucifer. Lucifer had brought the light. Lucifer matches. His pipe wasn't lit! He felt along the table backing the couch for matches. The tobacco seethed as it caught and he popped his lips with the first exhalations.

Nineteen years ago he had been one of the most prom ising young newspapermen in New York. A year later, in considerable bitterness of spirit, he had decided to leave the United States altogether. He had.

He had gone first to South America on a fruit company steamer. He had knocked around Rio and then sailed for France. Journalistic facility, an ability to live through dis comforts and rough experiences, kept him on his feet. Also, despite his sorrow, he possessed an intense interest in life. He enjoyed new sights and new people. Once in France he had gained a livelihood by writing for the Paris edition of a Chicago paper. He applied himself to a work of fiction and went to England. It found a publisher and actually brought him some royalties. He lived in cheap lodgings and made enough pickings from journalism to support mind and body for several years. This whole period of his life, how ever, was somewhat depressing to remember. But his fasci nation with the human comedy had pulled him through. He had made friends and acquaintances. He had returned to France before the War, sporadically affluent, in general im pecunious. When the War broke out he had enlisted in the Foreign Legton at the instance and for the companionship of a friend. He had certainly seen action? He had been wounded and had spent several months in a French hospital. After the Armistice he had gone back to journalism. The War had not improved his position. For all the rapid-fire

THE PERSISTENCE OF JANE 27

work he had turned out in fifteen years no literary reputa tion was his. His one novel was now completely forgotten. He wondered to-day, rather dismally, how it had ever man aged to sell at all.

He had expected things of the War. A gallant end in ac tion. The nearest he got to it was being buried by a shell in an abri. After that it seemed to him that anticlimax piled upon anticlimax, until, after he recovered from his wound, he was reduced to the position of a mere military clerk in a Paris office. Once out of uniform he had begun to write again, from his war experience and from various memories of his intermittent wanderings before the war, in Spain, in South America, in Algeria.

One morning he had experienced mental paralysis in the news that his Aunt Clara Bowers of Pittsburgh had chosen to remember him upon her deathbed to this end, that, "I give, devise and bequeath to my nephew, Richard Ripston Coryat, his heirs and assigns forever, one undivided half of the re mainder of my estate real and personal." Aunt Clara had died a wealthy old lady. It came to ten thousand a year, that remainder. He had forgotten all about Aunt Clara. Hadn't seen her since he was a freckled boy of ten who used to greatly prize the pumpkin pie she was fond of mak ing. The only reason he could attribute in his own mind for this startling bequest was a remark that floated back through the shimmering mists of time, made by him in a voice breaking, — no, not with emotion, — with the advance of young manhood : "Gee, Aunt Clara, I like your pies !"

It was the truth. And it was all he could remember. Out of the conquered past unravishable financial relief born of an early passion for pie. Superb irony. He hardly remem bered even what Aunt Clara had looked like, save that she wore a silk shawl and was rather stout, and that her house on a hill had two cast-iron dogs on the front lawn. Well, God bless her anyway! He pinched himself a number of times. It was, to him, one of the oddest things that could possibly have happened. Which was, after all, a strange

28 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

belief to be cherished by one so familiar with the news of the world in the daily press.

For a while after that it was difficult for him to take him self seriously. He strove hard enough, of course, to remem ber Aunt Clara and evoke some more fundamental reason than pie for the bequest. He tried to imagine he had always been her favourite nephew — that she had loved little boys — that his father had been her favourite brother. He simply couldn't remember. His mother had still been alive when Aunt Clara was indulging her culinary propensities. His father had followed her to the grave while Richard was a senior in high school. Uncle Jim had taken him to live in Brooklyn. Aunt Clara was never mentioned by Uncle Jim. They were not related and did not like each other. Aunt Clara had completely faded out of all recollection. She had never written, certainly. Yet she had been "of sound and disposing mind, and capable of executing a valid deed". There was no flaw in the disposition of her property. There you were.

It irritated him in a manner he discovered to be petty, that after a tragic love-affair and an ensuing life of rather threadbare grimness, after a war hallucination that broke down in absurd unheroic anticlimax, after days and weeks and months he so well remembered in which he had seemed the sport of destiny, he should suddenly be set upon his feet with genuine opportunity after the manner of a short story in the Saturday Evening Post. Had life then any genuine sequence or dignity? But there it was. The gro tesque side of life was always poking its waggish face around the corner of his mind whenever he became comfortable in one of his dream selves; those dream selves we all fashion of a high solitary grandeur.

No. Jane would have made her way. But why hadn't he heard of it? She was going to write books. He knew books. There were no books of hers on the market. But then she had also begun to be interested in social conditions. Perhaps she had "gone in" for that. He had inquired. She

THE PERSISTENCE OF JANE 29

had left the "Sphere", — oh, it must have been that next year. Nobody knew down there where she was now. New city editors, new managing editors had come and gone. Blakely and Fitch, those two old timers, remembered, remembered her and him. Remembered their engagement. He remem bered that one Spring. Benches in Washington Square. Hansoms. Good God, there were hansoms then, not taxis ! Eighteen years ago. "The Black Cat". Finzetti's. Well. "The Cat" was still in evidence. Finzetti had gone back to Italy before the War, he heard.

And Lord, how different prices were then, not to mention wages. How could a girl like that live on twelve dollars a week. But she did. And really they both had lived rather royally, in spite of the boarding house. The basement din ing-room where that strange Mr. Quigley who worked in a bank had put a bunch of violets at her place the day after they had announced their engagement. The fuss of pleasure old Mrs. Staples had made, the woman who looked exactly like a head of lettuce, with her green flounces. How they had laughed at that! What a string of intimately amused little jokes they had had over the others. That person — what was his name? — that man who had been a policeman. The one they called between themselves The Habitual Henchman. What in the devil was his name?

Well, who could possibly have imagined he wouldn't have found anyone else after all, anyone to supplant those mem ories. In a certain light it was rather ridiculous. But then . . . Miss Sibley now was certainly charming . . . But . . .

Jane often came in and sat on a chair in his living-room. She had done that in Paris and in London too, in Rio and at Cairo. She still had on the brown street dress in which he had last seen her, and the hat so out of fashion nowadays. She tortured a minute cambric handkerchief in small square hands and her eyes were full of tears. She had brown hair and brown eyes, like pools in a forest. He had once told her that. She looked at him under level brows. Her chin trembled but her lower lip was bitten white. She sat and

30 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

looked at him, without anger. Looked through him. He had been a cad.

Of course you could always see the door- jamb or the wall-corner, or whatever was hung upon or stood against the wall, through the diaphaneity of Jane. She usually came after midnight. Once she came in the afternoon on a street in Pernambuco. That was a comparatively short time after the break. She looked up at him and took his arm. That was the hardest to bear. Walking in the sunlight, along the white street, with the white houses glaring. With Jane on his arm — a Jane no one else could see. She suddenly left him, crossing a square . . .

No, all this money meant for him must be the opportunity to do some really creative writing, the chance he had cov eted through years of time-serving. Could he ever do an other novel? Should he begin with — what? Some more articles, till he got his hand in ?

Another thing that perplexed him was his having gone over to call on Flora Sibley that afternoon and his finding out from the elevator-man at the desk that she had sublet her apartment and vanished. He had talked to the sub-leasers. They did not know her plans or where she had gone. A Mr. Bruston was handling the matter for her. Coryat had not seen her for a week. He had called up three days before and had heard her voice. She had given him no intimation of her intention. Oh, well, after all, why should she? Yet her going seemed to leave a certain vacancy. He must read that book of hers he had bought to-day at Brentano's. Her books couldn't be as bad as she had intimated.

He settled himself under the standing lamp in a comfort able corner. He was in his brown dressing-gown. He began to read "Rosemary and Rue". The small cased clock ticked upon the mantle across the room. The light from the lamp lay in a golden pool -about him. Outside the nearby window vines dripped and the rain whispered softly.

The expression upon Richard Coryat's face grew more and more pained. Twice he snorted, twice he sniffed, thrice

THE PERSISTENCE OF JANE 31

he stared up with harassed disbelief in his eyes. Finally the book dropped from his hands. It was too unbelievable !

She couldn't have written it. A woman like that couldn't. He closed the book and took it up in its picture jacket. The cover design was that of a stalwart young man in khaki and high-laced boots embracing a frail, blonde young woman clad in some material that looked like window-curtain. The young woman clung to him upon a rocky hilltop. The young man's face was uplifted. The illustrator had evidently in tended to endue him with exaltation. He had succeeded in making him look as if he were sniffing a smelter. Some thing was evidently burning. This impression was increased by a conflagrate sunset behind the two figures.

Unfortunately the contents of the book was of a piece with the cover.

She couldn't have written it.

She had. There was her name. Under it, God save the mark, "Thirtieth Thousand".

He opened the book and began to go through it again, hastily, but with a careful scanning of pages. One halted him. He settled himself to read. He read it and the two following. The tension in his face relaxed. Then it came again. He skipped several chapters. Again a page halted him. Again he read.

A half hour passed. At the end of it, Coryat laid the book down again with a sigh. Flashes — decided flashes — amid a welter of absolutely inexcusable sentimentality. She could write like that on the pages whose corners he had dog eared, and yet, she could write — all the rest!

He stared at nothing, and Jane grew out of the chair op posite. She sat demurely, hands quiet in her lap. They were working at the diminutive handkerchief. Her eyes were on him now. They were full of tears.

"Oh, Jane, Jane, Jane!"

He had not spoken the words, but it was exactly as if he had spoken them. The room was full of words. Full of her own low last word to him. "Good-bye!"

32 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

He wondered what she was doing.

She had built a new life by now. She did not need or want him. She had fought through to some new happiness. He was still a selfish fool. An incredibly selfish fool.

He wanted somebody. He was intolerably lonely.

He was a beastly idiot, a perfect infant. Strong, per haps, when the outlook was absolutely blank. Weak in the hour of opportunity. This money. His writing.

He wanted Jane.

His loneliness illuminated his mind with a dry, harsh light that showed it intolerably empty. Across the cracked and broken tesserae of the floor of a ruined palace sparse thought rustled like dry leaves. He had actually seen such a ruin once. Near Ombos.

He sat up and looked around him. He felt weak in bone and sinew. Outside his window the rain rustled. It had probably suggested the rustling of those leaves.

Jane. Flora. Why had she left without a single word for him? But why should she?

He would sleep like the dead to-night. He hoped he would never wake up. After all, who was dependent upon him?

"Oh, what did I do to you, Jane?"

He was in a nice state of mind indeed He was a pre posterous ass. He had better go to bed.

He would start the first of those articles to-morrow. To morrow he was to lunch with Lin Jessup at the Players. And with an old acquaintance who had arranged the meeting at Coryat's intimation. "The Coming Age", after all, might want what he wanted to write . . .

CHAPTER IV: MR. GARTNER GETS A LETTER

ON a certain afternoon in May, Jake Gartner, post master of Tupton, Pennsylvania, came out of the yel low-painted brick building at the corner of Market and Willow Streets and stood looking across at the platform of the Railroad Station, where a seedy individual in a grey sweater occupied himself with a painted tin chocolate and gum machine that stood against the station building. He had removed the front of the machine and was scooping chinking handfuls of change into the pocket of his sweater. He returned the front to its place, locked it with a click and jingle of keys, and picked up the long container he had re moved for replenishment. He came across the street toward Mr. Gartner.

"Been a hot day a'ready, ain't it Abe?'* The gentleman addressed as Abe jerked his head in reply and spat accu rately over his shoulder into the gutter. His agency for the station candy machines gave him, over and above his com bination news room and billiard parlor, an importance in his own eyes.

"Yeah. Any nooze?"

"Not much. Jase'll have a chance to get their place rented for the Battells now though."

"Who? Jase Duffit? Why?"

"Letter from a New York lady. Thinks she wants to live here. Askin' about proputty."

"Thasso ? That's a queer one. Thinka wantin' here when yeh could live in N'York."

"What I thought. We-el, I guess I'll be gettin' home to supper. Goin' home yerself ?"

"Yeah. It's after seven aint it. That six o'clock train

33

84 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

makes me a busy time 'thout help. S'pose you'll be back here again workin' till all hours."

"Not to-night. Got another touch o' my asthmy. Kil- kevin'll do the extra sortin'. We-el, I'll be movin', I guess. S'long Abe."

"S'long Jake. See ye to-morrow."

Mr. Gartner passed rather importantly down Willow Street, looking across at the Livery Stable. He waved with a loose gesture to Jackson Weil who sat just outside the door of the latter smoking a pipe and caressing a black- spotted carriage dog. He turned into Monument and crossed the street toward a decent white house with a small iron- fenced front yard.

Mr. Gartner found supper already upon the table and his wife, coming in from the kitchen, with flushed face and disordered hair, her hands disposing the latter's moist tend rils, sat down to help him to a veal chop and smoking baked beans. She began to discuss the salient features of the day's routine.

"Got a letter I got to take up to Jase Duffit," remarked Mr. Gartner, finally, after rolling his secret for a while luxuriously upon his mental palate. He produced it with that casualness that always lends such flavor to a matter of import.

"What's that?" returned his wife, halting mid-way in mastication. She looked at him with frank suspicion, the way of most indurated wives.

"Lady in New York wants to rent a furnished house here. References look good. Seems sort of high-toned. You know the Battells have been after Jase to rent their place if he could fer summer an' fall."

"Huh. My land, what's she want t' come here fer? How many of her is there?"

To this odd mathematical question Mr. Gartner returned simply :

"Self and maid."

MR. GARTNER GETS A LETTER 35

"Maid," sniffed Mrs. Gartner. "Maid, indeed." Which latter ejaculation seemed strikingly inferential.

"Well," she added, rising to clear away the plates and bring back saucers for the apple-sauce, "Some has them, I s'pose. New York must be a queer place. So full o' these transients. But what's my lady think she's goin' to do in Tupton, I wonder?"

"Do?" Mr. Gartner's tone expressed a mild surprise. "Do? Nothing. Why should she? Live here."

Mrs. Gartner vouchsafed a somewhat acrid smile in the general direction of the knitted dining-room motto.

"She'll find it dead. Dead enough." She said between mouthfuls of apple-sauce. "Guess she thinks she's comin' here fer peace and quiet. Plenty o' that. An' niggers. Let's see the letter," she added suddenly, a new acquisitive note in her voice.

Her husband drew an envelope from his inner breast pocket. "Careful of it," he warned. "Gotta show it to Jase."

Mrs. Gartner's only reply to this was a rather embittered stare which she meant to make dignified. She held the blue notepaper somewhat away from her and read it with her head turned slightly sideways and tilted. Her lips were primly drawn together.

"I don't know as we want her in Tupton," she remarked as she finished deciphering. "It smells," she added, sniffing. "Vi'lets."

"Well, what if it does? Jase wants to rent that house, don't he? And you can see by the way she writes she's a lady. (Mrs. Gartner interrupted at this point with another sardonic sniff.) See what she says about a quiet spot "

"Why don't she go to the mountains? Don't she know it's hot as the hinges down here along in July?"

"Guess she don't. But what have you got against her, Ag? You don't even know her. Here, gimme that letter back !"

Mrs. Gartner returned it with a somewhat contemptuous

36 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

flirt. "Adela Ventress," was all she would add, "Ain't it a name !" Mr. Gartner ignored this cryptic addition.

"Guess I'll go over to Jase's right now/' he said, a trifle importantly, after a second or two. His wife made no reply but rose to clear away the dishes.

When Mr. Gartner returned an hour later he heard the creak of his wife's rocking on the porch as he stooped to unlatch the gate. A midge-infested arc-lamp on Willow near the Livery Stable threw jigging shadows from the young leafage of the trees. The lisp of his step as he came up the walk stopped the rocking. His shoes thumped on the steps. The other rocker, the one with the leather seat, complained of his weight. A slow creaking, now duo- toned began again.

"Jase say?" questioned Mrs. Gartner after a while in a a low voice.

"Thinks the Battell place might suit her. He'll write her to-morra."

"Warm, aint it?" His wife's voice was almost wistful. His own rocking stopped. Then, "Yeah," he said. "It's a warm evening." He began rocking again.

The minute, melodic sawing sound of an insect in the grass proceeded intermittently. Down Monument Street the Courthouse clock struck its faint half -hour chime. Voices came indistinguishably from Elm Street.

CHAPTER V: TUPTON AND THE TEN

ONCE round the curve behind Meldon Ridge, with the Knob lifting into prominence above low rolling hills on your right, before the iron forefoot of the swaying train the land dipped into sunlight from the shadows between high slopes. At the risk of a weeping eye, if you craned from a clicked-up window on the right side of the train, the silver cincture of the Passamint River glittered full into view, and beyond it the red and white toy-box town set in its nest of green.

But the first you really saw of Tupton was the Jail. The further shore of the Passamint lifted an abrupt embank ment crowned by old Court Street, and on the other side of old Court Street rose that high, brown, barred bastille. Churlishly it faced inward toward the town, its back to the river.

Nearer, as the train rumbled on the high trestled bridge, the eye overlooked Courthouse Square down Monument Street. Then, with a steady clanging from the engine's bell, the train slowed past Wilder's farm and the Poplar Street crossing, brazenly tolling its way through the heart of Tup- ton and past a solid block of old-fashioned red brick resi dences, upright as prim old ladies in lace and mitts, the cushioned stone stoops below their Corinthian-pilastered doorways set back from a clean and wide brick walk.

But if you watched Tupton approach from a window on the left-hand side of the train, no such portent as the Jail suddenly stabbed you in the eye. Beyond the silver eddies of the Passamint, there bending south and running west, slept the green pastures and the red and cream buildings of The Three Farms — Cripps', beyond the weeping wil-

37

88 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

lows on the river-bank, Sayres', with the flashing weather cock of a running horse, Wilder's furthest off ; beyond them all the dim roofs of residences on Popular and Sycamore.

Northwest also rose the Hill, the yellow roof of the Insti tute gleaming over the trees behind .the Axter Road; east of it the Hyde place with its strange Gothic tower, between them Judge Lindon's old mansion, white and sprawled. And for backdrop of the scene the pale spires of smoke from The Works still further north seemed phantom fingers weaving a perspicuous curtain of faint lemon and violet, that floated and veiled the further valley.

Thus the first two views of Tupton. The tracks of the Meldon Valley Railroad cleft the town in two like a sword.

The first settlers of that part of Pennsylvania were Scotch- Irish and German. The Scotch-Irish were bitterish Pres byterians. Isaiah Scott, Prothonotary of Meldon County, had entertained greasy Tuscarora and Shawnee sachems at dinner in the courthouse in Tupton's early years, dispensing cider and wine. Wolves from the lower slopes of the Blue Ridge had howled around the frontier town. As far back as 1760 a worthy settler named Ephraiam Axter had re ceived by patent some three hundred acres that became known as Quarry Hill. That part of the country was found to be fairly rich in areas of iron ores and limestone. This Axter had later purchased three ore banks in North Mountain. He then took out a patent for some sixteen hun dred acres including the land between the ore banks. Such was the rise of the present Meldon Iron Works that con stituted the largest industry near Tupton. Far back a certain shrewd Adolphus Hyde had become sole owner.

Yet in spite of its iron works, Tupton had remained fairly obscure, while the town of Barrack Falls further north and the real shipping point for Hyde's manufactured iron had grown into a cheap, blatant, noisy young metropolis. Meanwhile the descendants of the original Scotch-Irish and German families of Tupton, with a strong infusion of Eng-

TUPTON AND THE TEN 39

lish stock, had replenished the earth in conservatism and strong provincial pride.

The town was small, the principal families traced back to the Revolution. Southeast of the town was a negro set tlement in the region locally known as the Bottom. The principal residence section was now on the Northwest side of Market Street, along which ran the somewhat antiquated rolling-stock of the Meldon Railroad. Here Poplar, Syca more and Ivy ran northwest from Market in parallel maple and chestnut-shaded lines. Market was some ninety feet wide, Poplar, Sycamore and Ivy at least sixty. Northeast of The Old Residence Block on the opposite side of Market was the Railroad Station. On this side of town Laurel Street ran straight north from the stone-parapeted vehicle bridge over the Passamint, to turn northeast across Oak, Elm, and Willow at the intersection of Oak and Monument. The large and ancient Presbyterian Church occupied a tree- shaded green at this point. The lane to the Bottom mean dered off downhill from a point southeast of the church. On both sides, between the old residence block and the sta tion, Market Street was lined with quite modern stores. There were other stores along Monument and Laurel. There was also a Memorial Library, and there was the historic Tupton Institute, which had never had more than one hun dred pupils. The latter was a semi-colonial structure, with a yellow roof and a monstrosity of a cupola. It looked down upon the chief residence district of Tupton from the lower slope of The Hill.

Within the last twenty-five years a change had gradually come upon the town. Certain newer tradespeople had pros pered. The descendants of more ancient tradespeople looked upon their inevitable advance in social standing with per plexity and suspicion. Manners had changed also, strange opinions were often heard in certain quarters. Deference to family and professional standing was felt to be going by the board.

That, at least, was the undercurrent of much of the con-

40 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

versation in the Old Residence Block. The families of the Old Residence Block were intimate with each other since childhood. They comprised, on Market Street, the Brattles, the Corneliuses, the Jeremiah Mixters, the Uttersons, the Adolphus Frazees. In their high-stooped brick residences they formed the thin red line of Tupton's defence, the front line. Separated from them only by adjoining rear lawns, trim garden paths, berry bushes and, in several instances, a tall shady chestnut encircled near its base by a green wooden seat, the six corresponding residences on Monu ment Street might have been called the second line. Flank ing these were the three houses facing Oak and the three facing Larch, namely the Burleys, the Syles, the Reynolds; the MacConliss's, the Vrooms, the Webbers. Against the invasion of questionable taste, odd manners, unconvention- ality, any new ideas, the old Residence Block presented a compactness of resistance comparable, in a military sense, only to that of the old-time British Square.

In the Old Residence Block life was primarily a matter of ritual. It still proceeded with a leisurely decorum. It acknowledged without unseemly question the pre-eminence of its fathers' gods. Whether this was manifested in the per petual asseveration of Mr. Utterson, the retired lawyer, that "You will never change human nature, sir !" or in the ex asperation of Jeremiah Mixter with the successes of woman suffrage; with Adolphus Frazee, the Railroad Official's staunch Republicanism and implacable hatred of Woodrow Wilson, with old General Brattle's passionate militarism or Dr. John Cornelius's impending apoplexy at any mention of a world-state, the governing principles remained the same.

True, the Monument Street phalanx was perhaps weak ened by the presence of the young Harry Persons and the temperamental Rebecca Stone, 'but, after all, these younger folk were saplings of the same soil, seeded from equally venerable family trees. And they were insulated respec tively, to mix a metaphor, by the Miss Babbitts and the Cravens, by Alexander Pennyfeather and Miss Sophia

TUPTON AND THE TEN 41

Crome. Besides, Harry Persons was a trusted protege of Cephas Hyde, present lord of the Hill; the temperamental Rebecca Stone's great-grandfather had raised the Meldon Fencibles and his Revolutionary sword still hung in the hall. "These young people under our wing," as old General Brat tle had been heard to refer to them with leonine rumbling, "are, after all, — ahem! — sound to the core." They were therefore generously permitted a somewhat lighter attitude toward life, they were indulged in a few harmless heresies.

It did not even matter that Rebecca Stone was known to peruse both Schopenhauer and Nietzche, and sometimes quoted openly and without shame from Bernard Shaw. True, at the very beginning of the war she had announced herself a pacifist, thereby giving General Brattle one of the shocks of his life, but she had shown her mettle eventually, having probably made more Red Cross bandages than any other woman in Tupton. True it irritated Adolphus Frazee that she seemed, in spite of everything, still to admire Wil son; it rubbed Dr. John Cornelius decidedly the wrong way that she would not admit the League of Nations to be the abhorrent sham he considered it. Nevertheless, she remained a Stone.

So the Ten of Tupton, despite immaterial inner dif ferences, stood foursquare to every changing wind of doc trine. Within their portiered drawing-rooms and behind their bowed green and white wooden shutters they con served the aristocratic social principle. By their edict alone all real amenities in intercourse with the other less fortu nate inhabitants of the town were fostered and perpetu ated. The smoke of their chimneys spiring bluely upward through the hushed evening must have been a delicious in cense in the nostrils of the Most High.

They bowed the knee in two temples only, both gleaming sepulchrally white from the triangular Green faced by the houses on Monument Street. There the First Presbyterian and the Protestant Episcopal churches stood side by side. Between these two denominations there had existed feuds

42 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

of old. To-day, however, in face of the invasion of "these tradespeople", all differences had been buried. The old residents were the principal pew-holders in both edifices, the largest donators in both to the salary of minister and rector and to the weekly collections, the staunch backbone of customary observance. Hardly one Sunday of the year saw any one of them missing from their ancient seats. To the devout in Tupton, and there were many, this was a con tinual source of edification and self-congratulation. With such a solid phalanx of respectability their rooted centre, they need certainly never fear for the moral tone of their town.

But there were also, alas, the outliers. Take Arthur Pol lock, for instance. While he held, unquestionably, the re gard of the first families and also came of old stock, he resided on Sycamore Street. His Emporium was certainly nothing against him. His fathers had founded it. As a general store it was rooted in the memory of all the old inhabitants. Pollock was also a Republican in sympathy, though not what could ever satisfy the high principles of Adolphus Frazee as a wholly loyal party man. He was too subject to eccentric outbursts of irascibility against what he denounced as "peculation" and "outrageous imbecility in office". This was applied principally, it must be admitted, to officials in the State capitol.

But then Pollock was a thorn in the flesh of those who sought to conserve that high tradition of manners dating from the period of the Civil War. Pollock was sometimes too outspoken, too brusque, too careless of the conventions. Certain of his stories in mixed gatherings had been thought in questionable taste. He lacked respect for a number of criteria of conduct essentially sacred to the Ten. He had upon occasion proved too rude and boisterous. This at least was the opinion of the women who upheld the social standards of the inner citadel, and their men, with a se cret somewhat lugubrious regard for Pollock, outwardly at least concurred. At stag gatherings they greeted him more

TUPTON AND THE TEN 43

genially, but theirs after all was not the ball and sceptre of social office.

And if Arthur Pollock was an outlier, how much more so his brother-in-law, Dr. Charles Gedney. He was the recluse of the town. He had married one of the Cripps girls, as Martha, his late wife, was still referred to by some, an odd, saturnine woman who had experienced, it seemed, more than her share of family tragedy. She had not sought to mingle with the elect of the town, and, to tell the truth, after a few vague first advances, had not been sought after. Before the death of Arthur Pollock's wife these two families had kept a good deal to themselves. Twenty years ago the Gedney's eldest daughter, Gertrude, had disappeared from home and had never been heard from since. It had been the nine-days' wonder of the time.

To-day the relicts of both the House of Pollock and the House of Gedney were still asked to the various Tupton entertainments. They were not unkindly discussed by the arbiters of taste. The men were greeted by their first names by the men of the Ten. Dr. Gedney had, after all, been for many years one of the bulwarks of the Institute whither the few scions of the Ten had repaired for their earlier educa tion before departing for boarding-school or college. But he and his wife had seemed to hide themselves away. After his daughter's disappearance and his wife's later death his younger growing adopted daughter came only gradually within cognizance of the first families.

Then Bessie Cripps Gedney, orphaned child of Martha's brother, had formed school friendships with young Betty Cornelius and young Laura Brattle. Mrs. Brattle and Mrs. Cornelius found her a well-behaved young person. They politely permitted the friendship. It remained in both cases, however, tinged with formality.

Aside from the outliers — and others who should be men tioned were the James Battells (whose home a Mrs. Ven- tress from New York had just rented for the summer), not to say Mrs. Ralph Harris the stoic of Sycamore Street, now

44. THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

last remaining evidence of her scattered family, her boys being prominent elsewhere in politics and industry — most of the underlings and tradespeople lived on the wrong side of town (in the Ten's opinion, at least,) infesting Ivy, Syca more, and Poplar Streets, where both Arthur Pollock and Doctor Gedney happened to be so unfortunately situated. Moreover, the new mercantile class whose invasion the Old Residence Block so patricianly resisted, had, in many in stances, blossomed forth with pleasant brand-new houses set in their own comfortable gardens. They had brought the raucous Victrola and the ubiquitous Ford to Tupton. Their young people formed their own chattering society. Some of them chewed gum, most of them indulged in slang, many of them forced their way into the hallowed Institute to re ceive their education.

They permeated the town like a not yet virulent pestilence. They quickened its life with the cheap and noisy. Their fathers made money and instituted new places of amuse ment, like turning the old Fair Grounds into a Midway Park, like starting the Star Theatre, a moving-picture "palace" on Willow Street, like proclaiming a new young people's tennis club beyond Ivy Street. Was not the dignified if dilapidated tan-bark court under the weeping willow trees in a corner of the Institute Grounds enough in all conscience? These young people in the summer buzzed about Tupton in white flannel trousers, and striped sport skirts, in sport shirts, sneakers, and georgette blouses, to the scandalisation by fits of giggles and gawkish horseplay of the sedate older resi dents. They went often on unchaperoned picnics into the country, and they danced eternally on their porches to the most rackety music. They destroyed the evening hush of the streets and their observance of the Sabbath was a dis grace — or rather, their lack of observance. So much, then, for the patricians and the hoi polloi.

CHAPTER VI: UNCLE ARTHUR THINKS NOTH ING OF IT

I THINK nothing of it!" said Uncle Arthur Pollock stoutly, rising slightly on his toes as he stood braced before the empty fireplace. He thrust out his lower lip in a way that made his chin recede. His sack suit (in much need of pressing) was dark blue with the faintest thread of red in it. It had been made to order. Uncle Arthur's clothes had to be made to order. Across one of the gray corduroy waistcoats he affected ran a heavy red-gold watch-chain.

He was huge. He had a scar that ran across his left cheek from under the eye over to opposite the lobe of the ear. He had large stick-out oyster-shaped ears that were always fiery-red and gave an aggressive, attentive aspect to his face. He had a wide mouth drooping at the corners. His countenance was ruddy and round. His sandy hair was thinned and fragile, yet stood up with remarkable wiriness across the arc of his pate, from ear to ear. His mustache was sandy, brief and irregular as if bitten. One eyebrow was perpetually higher than the other and the eye under it slightly bloodshot and strained. For Uncle Arthur was astigmatic and would not admit it. He also would not wear glasses. He thought nothing of them. That was his fa vourite expression.

You may be surprised and a bit perturbed by Uncle Arthur. All I can say is that he did really have that effect upon people. He wore his clothes baggilly, yet they were never old clothes. He had partially retired from business, but still kept a watchful eye on his famous store, a drygoods store, the oldest and largest in Tupton. He had not got his scar shooting wildebeeste or struggling with catamounts

45

46 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

on the brinks of terrific precipices. He had got it by falling downstairs at the age of thirty-seven and hitting his face on a brass stair-tread. It had cut his face open and he had been in bed for two months. Partly shock and partly be cause Uncle Arthur was a person who liked to be petted while he damned it. Nowadays he spent most of his time thinking nothing of it and watching the hennery life of some gamecocks he kept in a wired enclosure in his back-yard on Poplar Street, though he paid a visit to the store every day also. His house on Poplar Street was an enormous affair, the oldest house in Tupton. It was full of glass cases of stuffed things, birds, small animals, even reptiles — stuffed. Cases of butterflies. That is, those were in the library and drawing-room on the lower floor.

Dr. Gedney, who sat regarding his brother-in-law, was a man of about fifty-five, Uncle Arthur's age. He was as neat as wax. Black clothes, a black bow tie, very white linen, a prominent nose long and earnest, and small, black eyes that bored like gimlets. Pronounced chin and a high white forehead. Black hair — a black mustache.

There was a pervasive eccentricity about Uncle Arthur and a sort of sunset glow. His spasmodic irascibilty and overwhelming scorn of most ideas hardly mitigated this effect. They only made the sunset somewhat stormy. But the black and white of Dr. Gedney — for his countenance was of a fine clear pallor accentuated by jetty mustache and hair — conferred more true restfulness, if more astringency. Where Uncle Arthur's presence was pervasive but ambigu ous, Dr. Gedney 's had the compactness and accentuation of an exclamation point and the frosty stillness of a winter's night. His lips were thinly chiselled — his teeth white and regular — where Uncle Arthur's were extraordinarily crooked and coloured like old ivory. Till he spoke you would have taken Dr. Gedney for a man of infinite deter mination. When he did speak, however, his voice had the still-born quality of the utterance of a very shy man who talks little and only to his intimates. It rustled dry and un-

UNCLE ARTHUR THINKS NOTHING OF IT 47

certainly. His eyes changed when he spoke. They dimmed. They dreamed. When roused, however, he became aston ishingly staccato.

"Now, Arthur," said Dr. Gedney. "Don't adopt that in sufferable attitude. There isn't the slightest reason to sup- pose

Uncle Arthur unexpectedly flirted a large blue and white handkerchief from some bulge of his person and snorted into it. His slightly bulbous nose became even redder.

" nothing of it!" said Uncle Arthur from behind his

handkerchief. "Positively nothing!"

Bessie had been watching all this from the ottoman in front of a book-case on the opposite side of the room, the book-case that had the big luggable books in it. She was also looking at the illustrations of Le Sage's "Gil Bias". She would look and then watch. She wondered what Uncle Arthur was "nothing"ing about this time. Her mind was not on her elders. A thin sunbrowned child of sixteen, black hair still tied behind with a dark blue ribbon. A cross- barred blue gingham dress. Black stockings and sandals. Large dark eyes with long lashes, elfishly bright. A slightly uptilted nose, a short upper lip and a mouth the colour and texture of a roseleaf. Very much the amusing child still, in many ways, but with a mind of her own.

All that there were of the Gedneys now — the Doctor and Bessie — and Bessie was really a Cripps. Then there was Annie, in the kitchen, cook, housemaid and nurse of old.

"There isn't the slightest reason to suppose," went on Dr. Gedney, in his rustly voice, "that this Mrs. Ventress could possibly be a bad influence upon anybody. The drawings Bessie has shown me are excellent, I think, and she is most interested. I think my plan an admirable one."

Bessie was not listening.

"At your age !" puffed Uncle Arthur, for answer. "Don't fool yourself, Charley !"

"Arthur," said the Doctor in an even fainter voice than

48 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

before, "I had thought better of your intelligence. Well, we'll talk about something else."

In the pause that followed, Bessie heard the hall clock ticking. She realised that this murmuring on the part of her adopted father and explosiveness on the part of her uncle must have been just another of the only semi-intelligible wrangles between older people. It touched her conscious ness only as blurry noise that distracted her a little from con templation of the pictures. Her father and her uncle were always arguing something — usually something that seemed to her incredibly uninteresting. Meanwhile Dr. Gedney, ris ing to get his briar pipe from the table, discovered her pres ence.

"Doing, Bessie?" he asked.

"A — ah," Bessie exhaled in a soft sigh.

"Reading," with a comfortable unction.

" 'Gil Bias", said the Doctor, looking. "Too old for you." To him she remained about eight years old.

"Fun," returned Bessie succinctly.

"Damn — excuse me," said the Doctor stumbling on the rug. "Where's my pipe?"

"On the Bible," said Bessie without looking up. She turned a page.

The Doctor refilled his pipe at the green bowl on the table and made some pother about getting it to draw. Bessie, regarding him from behind his back, thought him a straight and nice-looking father. She felt sorry for him, in the way all women do.

Uncle Arthur was running his large hands through his hair. He felt somewhat put upon by the discovery of Bessie. Nevertheless .

"Phryne has four chicks, Bess!" he boomed.

"Oh, no!" said Bessie, raising a flushed beaming counten ance from the estimation of a wood-cut. "Oh, I must see them!"

Outside the house the late spring afternoon was still bright. The low-ceilinged long brown room, with its two

UNCLE ARTHUR THINKS NOTHING OF IT 49

book-cluttered tables and its walls of glass-doored book cases, was mellowed with late light. Uncle Arthur, before the empty fireplace, seemed a romantic, somewhat Falstaffian figure.

'To-morrow," he announced, "come round in the morn ing. They're in the brood coop. I must go. Charley, do not be a fool. I've told you my reasons. "

He glared, yet with a certain benignancy, upon Dr. Ged- ney.

"Oh, it's settled," said the Doctor's wispy voice that so belied his authoritative face. "But you'll see."

"Well — great hippopotami !" ejaculated Uncle Arthur de spairingly, and departed with rolling gait from the room. In the hall and before the hall-door slammed, Bessie heard him conclude with superb abnegation,

"As for me — I utterly refuse to be a party to it. I repeat that I think absolutely nothing of it — nothing whatever !"

CHAPTER VII: BESSIE, SOLUS

THE design, topped by two reclining cupids who sup ported a medallion with plump shoulders and faced out wards to confront two balancing butterflies, enclosed what looked like a black slate. On it, in white lettering, stood the words :

HERE

Is INTERRED THE SOUL

OF THE LICENTIATE PETER GARCIAS

This volume of the picaresque adventures of the Sage of Santillane was Smollett's translation illustrated by Jean Gigoux. The book was backed with tooled almost olive green leather. It had leather corners. Its boards were covered inside and out with that streaked paper used for legal volumes, looking as if bands of color had run on a stained glass pane and congealed in irregular layers of drops. Blue, yellow and green, on an ox-blood foundation.

Aqui est a encerranda et alma del Pedro Garcias! Bessie pondered the finding of the hundred ducats in the leathern purse under the tombstone. One hundred ducats — the soul of the Licentiate! Yet the adventures were said to contain "moral instructions." The idea that Alain Rene Le Sage had also made a paraphrastic translation of the Letters of Aristenetus delighted her. She had such a wholly dim and glamorous idea of what it might all be about. "The Devil on Two Sticks." That was another name that intrigued her. Le Sage's character was said to have been "truly amiable". This pleased her especially. She smiled to herself.

50

BESSIE, SOLUS 51

At the top of Book IV an engraving of Gil Bias reclin ing on a couch and reading in a long-paged narrow book was, to her mind, extremely well drawn. His face, with its sparse square beard and aristocratic mustache, his romantic cam bric shirt with open collar and deep rolled-back cuffs, be came, as she gazed, the very face and habiliments of her Ideal. The hands were well-treated, the left especially, in a position that showed the draughtsman's knowledge of anat omy. On the other hand, how monstrously insipid was the picture of the jade Laura on the page preceding ! What an idiot mouth. If that were a coquette! She was so much more convincing in the thumbnail panel, the various faces of her "crowd of relations" so amusing. But living with the seven deadly sins must, somehow, have been quite too treacly. Gil Bias had surely exhibited his good sense by revolting from it.

The pages of the book were rough and yellowed, and the queer pictures seemed rooted in the text. In modern books they were so detached, so unlike the people one imagined. These seemed to fit better, even at their worst. How many initial letters, tailpieces, thumbnail decorations and vignettes there were! That seemed the only way a book should be illustrated — in some such apparently impromptu fashion. The "go-to," formal sort of pictures, were the worst; posy, attitudinizing, simpering, losing all grace and motion of line, hard and wooden. That sketch of the horrible face of the crone Leonarda on page fifty-eight, just a bare outline, but worth a hundred Spencerian-haired Lauras. That was it, such drawing was like those flourishy eagles with sheaves of arrows in their claws that went with advertisements of courses in "expert penmanship." Ugh! How she hated Spencerian handwriting !

Bessie suddenly raised her eyes from the page and won dered what Uncle Arthur's "reasons" had been. They must have been divulged before her wraithlike entry into the liv ing room. She came even farther awake from the book upon her knee and her fascination with its illustrations.

52 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

What was her father's plan? Was he going to do what she asked? She shoved the big leather-backed book into its opening in the shelf and remained on her knees for a mo ment, thinking. Then she dusted her hands, scrambled up, and went slimly into the hall, arms at sides, thin hands point ing slightly behind her. She tilted on her toes and peered. There was no one in the rather dim hall. Her father had gone into his study (which should have been the parlor) on the other side of the newel-posted stair-foot. There he would be refilling his pipe from the hammered brass bowl at the large table. He would be doing it by the open window that looked out on the side yard where the leaves of the apple-tree glittered in the six o'clock sunlight.

The hall was dim and somewhat dingy. Bessie climbed the stairs. Oh, that was it — of course ! Uncle Arthur didn't want Mrs. Ventress to teach her drawing. She wondered again as to his "reasons".

Bessie's room had a marble mantlepiece over a now empty coal grate. The China Animals were its chief feature. These were mainly an array of those fascinating families one could procure some twenty years ago in small brown paste board boxes stuffed with cotton. They had been bequeathed her by her cousin, Slade Breckinridge, an editor on the Colosseum Magazine in New York. Slade's typhoid at the age of six, when he had lost his curls and the gnome-like voice of his emaciated convalescence had croaked at his mother, "Pack boxes!" — was the primary association these tiny purplish spaniels, bears and deer evoked. Bessie had been told it many times by Aunt Sally. Then there was the "gentle face" dog (first g hard, as in gutter). He had abided with sundry chippings and regluings from the same precari ous past. There were the See, Hear and Speak-No-Evil Monkeys, in their bright jackets, given her by Slade on his return from that trip to San Francisco. There was Eunice, the china cow, forever at grazing gaze with a slight cast in her eye and one foreleg gone at the knee. Eunice had an incision in her back. She was a bank. The Chinaness of the

BESSIE, SOLUS 53

Animals gleamed across Bessie's bedroom. Dimity curtains fluttered at her window. The woolly brown hearthrug un der the black tin shield of the grate was often a seat more favoured than either the cretonned wicker basket-chair or the gray corduroy cushioned window-seat. She dove now for the hearthrug and sat quiet upon it, in the dusk, under the China Animals, nursing her knees.

She breathed a name all to herself, after a moment. Her thoughts were in another house entirely. Her expression was dreamy and benign. "Adda!" said Bessie. "Adela!" And then, with enormous satisfaction, "I simply didn't know there were such people !" There was a pleasant sympathetic silence. Bessie cupped her chin in both palms. "She gives you the impression," pronounced the young pythoness sol emnly and finally, "of — of a great unhappy grandeur!"

But even by this last remark the China Animals seemed to remain quite unimpressed.

CHAPTER VIII: "THE GIRL WHO WAS BURNED UP"

DR. GEDNEY did not practice medicine. He had been an instructor at the Tupton Institute. Now he had re lapsed into doing nothing much, so far as Tupton could dis cover. He had written several school-books. He was now engaged, it was rumoured, upon a history of Meldon County. His father had been old Judge Gedney of the Circuit Court. Dr. Gedney himself had a Litt.D. from a small New Eng land college.

His wife's death had driven a naturally recluse tempera ment even more in upon itself, that and the loss of his daugh ter. Yet there were those who let it be understood that they considered him better off since his wife had died. "She was certainly very peculiar," Mrs. Harris, the stoic of Sycamore Street, would often allow, folding stout, work-creased hands in her ample lap. Mrs. Harris spoke little and was rarely moved toward censure. She knew what she knew about life, but she kept it mostly to herself. She irradiated benignancy. Hers was a strong character that had endured much with out embitterment. But when she said that about Mrs. Ged ney, now fifteen years deceased, her eyes narrowed a little and her mouth was firm.

Miss Sophia Crome, whose house was the last in the Old Residence Block at the corner of Monument and Oak, was of the opposite opinion. But then Miss Crome would doubt less have found the personality of John Calvin wholly charming. She was a relic — was Miss Crome. At least, that was what Uncle Arthur called her: "That relic!" He never got any farther in his description. It was Miss Crome's opinion that Mrs. Gedney had been "a most upright

54

"THE GIRL WHO WAS BURNED UP" 55

She said that with an unctuous pursing of dry lips. Her steel spectacles glimmered like the eyes of a cat as she said it.

As for Dr. Gedney, he rarely saw any neighbours. He read, wrote, or pottered about his yard during the day. He read with or without Bessie at home in the even ings. He and Bessie usually had dinner at the Pollocks' once a week. Several times a week he and Uncle Arthur would play checkers together, visiting each other's homes. But most of his life was submerged in that other life af forded by books. He read chiefly philosophy and history (pastimes unbewildering, even fascinating, to his retentive memory and analytical mind). Contemporary affairs, the affairs of the town of Tupton, made little impression upon him. He poked his pipe full of rather rank tobacco, with one long, lean forefinger, and went on reading.

Bessie went in and out of his house as she listed. He usually knew why she was out — at school, at the gymnasium, at the library, at the Brattles, at the Corneliuses. It was one of those places. She was a dear child, dark and quiet and quite fond of reading. With a head in the air of her own. No need to worry about her. Arthur worried entirely too much. Arthur was so fussy. Fussiness ran in that family. Dr. Gedney smiled a sad, haunted smile. Ineffably silly of Arthur, this last business. . . .

Bessie's father was sitting in a large leather chair by the window. The seams of the back of it had burst and the black horsehair stuffing was apparent. He arose now, in his absent-minded way, and went over to his desk by the south wall. After some fumbling he produced from a side-drawer an oblong box of unpainted tin. There was more fumbling with his key-ring, which he wore at the end of his watch- chain instead of a watch. His watch he always carried without fob or other attachment in his upper vest-pocket on the right-hand side. That was typical. Yet he had not broken the crystal once in ten years. That also was typical. He was an unhandy man though. The key stuck in the lock

56 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

of the box and he made some pother getting it open. He kept saying something softly under his breath. As a matter of record the words were, "Oh, dear, oh, dear. . . ." They were his habitual method of expression of his sense of minor annoyances.

In the box, with some other papers, was a small packet secured by a rubber band. Beside this band were traces of another, dark vestiges of rubber. The packet had at one time been put away for a long period. The paper in the packet proved somewhat discoloured and faded as Dr. Ged- ney unfolded it. He removed the outer sheet and spread it out upon his knee. It was the first picture she had ever drawn.

Three remarkable individuals could be distinguished in the foreground. The hat of one floated in a detached man ner half an inch above its head. The arms and legs were excessively spidery. The hands were equipped with at least ten skeleton fingers arranged like rays. The faces of the figures were noseless and their eyes and mouths were large wobbly circles. This gave them an aspect of breathless sur prise. Their hair was a voluminous huddle of scratchy lines. To their left a house half their height and even narrower than any one bulging body blazed merrily with carmine water-color flames. In the midst of it stood "The Girl Who Was Burned Up". She was twice as tall as the house and bore a certain weird facial resemblance to a cat. Her writh ing mien expressed considerable discomfort. This effort at art was entitled "The Flight of the Family". The printing necessary to display the slogan properly wandered all over the bottom half of the large sheet of ruled tablet paper. The printed letters were enormous and askew.

Dr Gedney had seated himself with the tin box in his lap. He studied the picture without smiling. His eyes wandered from it and came to rest on a large framed photograph in the shadow of the southeast corner of the room. It had been done by that man in Barrack Falls.

Gertrude had looked nothing like her. It was astonishing

"THE GIRL WHO WAS BURNED UP" 57

that any mother and daughter could have so little resem bled each other. Martha had always taken a good photo graph. The querulous lines about the mouth had been retouched away in the photograph. The hard glint in the eyes was not apparent. The bearing of the sitter possessed dignity. The thin aquiline nose alone gave indication in its curve of nostril of that remorseless, accipitrine will. Yet the mouth was smiling a little. The pose was placid. Mar tha's figure had always been rather graceful. Her head, with its now absurdly out-of-date bonnet, was held high. Her burnt-umber hair had its decided fluffiness. Her large hands clutched each other in her lap. It was an example of photography before the days of softening artistic shadows and blurred outlines and backgrounds. Simply a likeness. A very good likeness — in everything but the essentials of character. A proud and resolute woman, you would have said, but possessed also of wisdom and kindliness. That was how most of them had seen her, he supposed. Yes, he supposed so.

It was strange about Martha. Martha had always acted from the first as if, if he had not actually ever been unfaith ful to her, he were, nevertheless, always upon the verge of being so. This attitude was implicit. It had been conveyed for many years by an accumulation of eyebrow-raisings, acrid half-sentences, slight shrugs, impatient sighs, hours of taciturn surveillance. It had been emphasized by furious unexplained tearfulness that ceased as swiftly as it came, typhoons of unreasonableness that whirled and passed. Completely erased, so far as Martha was concerned, but not from his own consciousness. Phenomena of woman nature. These exhibitions did not occur, either, at those times when all women are overwrought and strange to themselves. They were not the result of illness or poor health. They were simply habitual. In self-defense, Dr. Gedney had come to disregard them entirely. He could never hope to unravel the devious tangle of reasoning — or was it merely perverted instinct — which precipitated them upon him. He had tried

i58 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

to analyze in the earlier days, to explain Martha to herself. A disastrous idea ! Then he had tried to discover in himself the faults and shortcomings that might account for Martha's suspicions. He had tried to remedy them. But he groped in the dark.

Yet, in tender moments that constantly grew fewer, she softened and became again some likeness of the girl he had loved, standing under the peach-trees of her father's farm. She was again, fleetmgly, the kind-eyed person in whose voice he could never have imagined that harsh querulousness, in whose heart he would never have thought of suspecting that self-consuming frenzy of jealousy. Here also was no matter of spirit fighting body and agonising a delicately- adjusted soul between two intense passions. Dr. Gedney had always exercised punctilious consideration toward his wife. Martha cared little for the pleasures of the mind. She was a regular church-goer. She was regular in the conventional duties of housekeeping. But from the first moment she had entered their new home she had commenced a frustrated brooding. She made few friends. In the early days she had seemed ardent. He had loved her, certainly, both with passion and devotion. But gradually she had re vealed herself in intimacy as what he came to privately call "a secret woman." She read little and soon lost interest in his study and teaching, save as the means which procured them their livelihood. She allowed its claims up to a cer tain point. But if, in scholarly absorption, he transgressed the tacitly-understood time-limit of devotion to these mat ters by so much as fifteen minutes, there was always immi nence of hurricane. His natural absent-mindedness had fought against him in this regard for years. He had striven to conquer it. How faint the victory had been was shown by the fact that after her death he had easily relapsed into his old bookwormish habits. Yet that very absent-mindedness had appeared to be one of his peculiar charms to her during their courtship. It was an odd mismating.

It was not excitement or gaiety that she desired. At first

"THE GIRL WHO WAS BURNED UP" 59!

he had actually proved more gregarious than she. But all simple foregatherings became a strain. Afterward a mood he had never understood settled upon her. She looked side- wise at him with deep suspicion. She said cutting things that misinterpreted and perverted his innermost thoughts. Such misunderstanding at first aroused chill surprise, then protest. Then came dumbness. How could he ever make her see ? There came also, with time, a mechanical deafness to insinuation. An elaborate ritual of forgetting was formu lated. It served, finally. It was like repeating a cabalistic sentence. Boiled down, it doubtless seems ridiculously naive. Its sum and substance were the words, eternally re peated in his thought, "Pay no attention, pay no attention, pay no attention!"

The pass to which he came increased his insulation from intuitive contacts with actual life. His absentmindedness had already begun, the instinct for self-preservation had completed the process. Charles Gedney began to move through life like a noctambulist. He also stood in the midst of his married life like Abednego in the furnace. Sometimes the heat of that irradiating jealousy might have shrivelled his soul if he had not refused to be conscious of it. It took such strange forms. He had even known it to obtain to a fav ourite chair of his, to a stray cat he had fed with milk and kept in the house overnight, to a term's examination papers.

Yet she did not desire a passionate devotion. Not at all. She simply doubted entirely and yet desired entire allegiance. He had never been critical of her thought or action. Mildly remonstrative on occasion, perhaps. But even such mild remonstrances added fuel to the furnace. In one aspect it was supremely pathetic, this coinstantaneous wretchedness, and rage that his every thought could not be completely hers. The many other women she imagined existed only in her imagination. But that made them no less actual to her. And a wildly passionate nature in bond to a narrow, fearful, un- discriminating mind, fashioned brightly burning hell of her peculiar temperament.

60 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

Gertrude had been born in a period of comparative peace, though to outward appearances the Gedney household was never otherwise. Gertrude had been loved hungrily by her mother through her earliest years. She was more drawn toward her father. A tragic triangular situation came into being. First it was that her mother occupied the position of slaving for Gertrude, while Gertrude besieged a somewhat disturbed father with endearments. Some premonition told Charles Gedney what might come of his too easy and natu ral manifestation of parental pleasure. But he came to think that Gertrude had charms to soothe any breast, to obliterate the strained strangeness of past years. Besides, she was too entirely adorable and amusing in her attentions. He remem bered the very hour when he had seen his mistake — inevit able perhaps.

It was the story of "The Three Bears". Gertrude had come into his study uninvited and had sidled up to the desk where he was correcting papers about five o'clock of a rainy Sunday afternoon in the Fall. She stood by the side of the desk with her large brown eyes and floppy curls. A flat green book was clutched to her side.

"You will read," she said in her amusingly solemn voice, with its intonation unconsciously imitated from that of her mother, "here." Then she held the book up in front of her face in an embarrassed manner. Then she laughed. Ger trude's early laughter could almost be said to crinkle her hair. It filled the small face with delightful animation. Suddenly she was beside him, clasping him round the arm tightly and burying her curls in his sleeve. She looked up again, mischievously, and began to climb upon his knee. He gave over Latin exercises for the afternoon.

It was half through the story of "The Three Bears" that Martha appeared in the doorway. Though not a particu larly thin woman she had a way of looking gaunt upon occasion. She stood in the door Gertrude had left open and regarded the two figures silhouetted against the sunset light of the window. Gertrude was curled in her father's lap.

"THE GIRL WHO WAS BURNED UP" 61

His head was bent to read properly. It was almost time to light the gas.

"Gertrude, you have disobeyed me," said Martha in a queer, repressed tone.

Gertrude looked up and brushed the brown curls back from her face with a small hand. "Father's readin' !" she said succinctly.

"Gertrude, you have disobeyed me," repeated Martha in that same strained tone. As Charles Gedney peered round his small daughter's shoulder at his wife her eyes actually seemed to him to gleam like a cat's in the gathering shadows of the room? It was an impression he was a long time for getting. "I'm reading to her," said the husband, his soul suddenly shaken by a strange tremor that he did not like to acknowledge.

"Gertrude, come here," said Mrs. Gedney, as if unaware of the intrusion of his remark.

For answer Gertrude clasped both arms about her father's neck and he felt her whole small body quiver as she snuggled farther into his arms.

"What is the matter, Martha? What is it? What is it, Gertrude?" the confused man asked.

"I am speaking to Gertrude," said his wife. She had moved farther into the room. By the conflagration of the sunset without, which now lit the room with weird brilliance, he suddenly perceived the glittering tears in her eyes. But her features were set in a strange inexorable mould.

"What is the matter?" he said again, uncomfortably. "Won't you explain to me?" Gertrude's head burrowed further into his waistcoat.

"I am speaking to Gertrude," his wife repeated. "If she does not choose to hear me "

"But what has she done? What is it, Martha? I was just reading her a story. Surely "

He had made a bad blunder. There was a hint, if only a hint, of aggravation in his tone, but worse than that, there was a hint of partnership in this difference, with Gertrude,

62 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

and a suspicion, unbearable to his wife, that he perceived an emotion in her which she had never admitted to herself.

"Is — is this my child or yours?" The voice seemed strained almost to breaking. It was not her ordinary voice. "Gertrude," this strange voice said again, and this time it quavered with a note of hysteria, "Come here — at once !"

"Shan't", vouchsafed Gertrude muffled into her father's watch pocket. But he was sure that only he had heard it.

Suddenly Martha Gedney's face broke into one of those distortions that precede weeping. Her arms shook at her sides. She controlled her features by a violent effort. She turned. With a fierce rustle of her dress she left the room. But not before she had directed at the two a glance the in tensity of which Dr. Gedney had never forgotten. Her teeth had showed above her lower lip as her eyes blazed green.

The instant her mother left the room, Gertrude's head had bobbed up. With another shock, Dr. Gedney perceived that she was laughing. His involuntary championship had been for a child in terror. But Gertrude was gay.

"Nice Fa-ther," she said in her rich drawl. "Poo-oor Maw-ther," she added astonishingly. She slipped hastily from his arms and ran out of the room.

The next development had been that, on ascending the stairs, Dr. Gedney had found Gertrude beating at her Mother's locked door with soft calls to her within. There was no response. The questions, and then the entreaties of Dr. Gedney elecited no response either. Finally there came a single harsh, "Go away!"

In misery of mind he gave Gertrude her supper and put her to bed. In the same misery and growing fear of what might — though it seemed a nightmarish impossibility — hap pen behind that locked door, he tried to eat his evening meal, and cursed himself for his nerves. In the midst of the meal he heard a footstep on the stair and his wife walked into the room. Her hair showed no disorder, her eyes no trace of tears, her face was composed though unsmiling. "You can

"THE GIRL WHO WAS BURNED UP" 63

help me to some of those scrambled eggs," she remarked in her peremptory manner, unfolding her napkin.

Neither then nor thereafter was the incident of her father's reading to Gertrude alluded to between them. He read to her afterwards, frequently. But from that moment he perceived the change between mother and daughter. Now it was the small person who had to sue for attention. The indifference of her mother became a permanent silent indictment. And often now the small cheeks burned from the irradiation of the furnace. Nothing was said, everything was implied. After repeated repulses of affection, Gertrude lived through her most bitter moment of deep realisation.

The upshot of it all was that she ran away from home at the age of sixteen, and Tupon had never seen her again. There had been — after a merely formal relation for several years — a most violent difference of opinion with her mother as to the choice of a career. It was a scene Dr. Gedney had come in upon about eight o'clock one July evening, after a visit to the Pollocks — a scene he never sought to remember and hustled from his thought as soon as it began to be visualized. And Martha had accepted Gertrude's disap pearance far more stoically than anyone else in the town. In fact, he had once or twice caught her smiling a strange secret smile to herself. Some years later she had adopted the orphan baby of her brother, George Cripps, whose wife had died several years before he himself had been killed in a railway accident just beyond Barrack Falls. Then, sud denly, after a brief illness, Martha herself had died with stony decision.

* * *

Only a minute or two had elapsed since Dr. Gedney had first taken up the drawing of "The Girl Who Was Burned Up." He roused himself with a sigh and replaced it in the tin box. He replaced the tin box in the desk drawer. There was Annie's step in the hall. The door squeaked its usual squeak as she gingerly opened it.

"Supper's ready, sir."

64 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

"Thank you, Annie. Call Miss Bessie."

But Bessie's own voice said from behind the portly, kindly-faced figure,

"I'm all ready, father."

They sat down in the pleasant dining-room to the blue and white china and the jade bowl on the centerpiece wherein Bessie had just arranged some nasturtiums from the border. Bessie fidgeted a little upon her chair and then broke a raisin bun.

"Uncle Arthur's funny, isn't he?" she ventured with an absent-minded air.

"Eh?" said Doctor Gedney. "Funny? Oh, yes. Arthur is amusing. But irritating, sometimes," he added.

"Why?" said Bessie, round-eyed.

"Why, Bess, I thought that was what you meant. You said he was funny."

"Oh, no, not that way. He doesn't irritate me at least. But he's so — so pishing and pshawing."

The corners of her father's eyes wrinkled with his smile.

"You find that amusing? It is, of course."

"What were his reasons ?"

"Reasons for what? Oh, but — why, when were you listening? When did you come in?"

"Oh, Fa-ther," Bessie laughed. "You are — you are ador able!"

"Adorable? How?"

"Why, I was there all the time. Just quietly. Don't you know I'm always there — quietly?"

"Well I must say ! Why, of course I don't know it. You shouldn't do that, Bess. What did you hear?"

"Oh, Uncle Arthur pishing and pshawing. Why doesn't he like Mrs. Ventress?"

The question came in a more serious tone. Dr. Gedney regarded his younger daughter — for so she had become to him — with surprised eyes.

"Well, it was about that, if you want to know. Of course, Arthur "

"THE GIRL WHO WAS BURNED UP" 65

"But I do know. He's the funniest thing about women, don't you think? He's so distrustful."

Doctor Gedney looked at her without answering immedi ately. He remembered Arthur's wife. A faint ironic smile tinged his lips. They were all in the same boat — human beings.

"Arthur, I admit, is rather a misogynist," he said.

"A what ?" asked Bessie. "I suppose that means he hates women. Well, he does."

"Not hate them," returned her father, helping himself to another creamed potato. "I don't suppose he does trust them, exactly. Well, his reasons were rather absurd in this case, if you ask me."

"I do. What were they?"

"He simply says we know nothing about Mrs. Ventress, and that I haven't even seen her yet, and that, being a stranger here, she may be anything or anybody, and that she may be a bad influence for you — and — oh, Arthur is rather annoying."

"Amusing," substituted Bessie. "How could he know" — her eyes took on again that far-away expression. "How could he poss-ibly know " She left her sentence un finished.

"Know what?"

"My dear good angel father," said his daughter, teetering on her chair with some suppressed excitement and waving a creamed potato on her fork as if she were conducting an orchestra, "how could you know either?"

"What on earth do you mean, Bess ? Do stop waving that thing. What is it?"

"Mrs. Ventress," intoned Bessie, her eyes sparkling with amusement at her own solemnity of utterance, "is a mythical woman."

"What on earth ? Here, have a bun. What on earth

do you mean by that?"

"She is too lovely. I simply didn't know there were such

66 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

people. And, oh, Father, she can draw like a streak," she finished hurriedly.

"Yes, that's what you told me. But I must see her, I suppose. If only to be able to answer Arthur more cate gorically. He never will. Catch him out of his museum or his chicken yards. Yet he comes around and paints this direful portrait "

"My, and how she has improved that house already," ex claimed his daughter, teetering still more before his anxious eyes. "The loveliest blue curtains. Oh, she does look so perfectly adorable in that big grey hat when she's weeding. I don't know, I'm sure," Bessie wondered, her eyes blissful and her mouth full of chop, "why she should have taken such a fancy to me!"

"Yes, I wonder," returned Dr. Gedney, affectionately ironical. "But you really don't know much about her, Bessie, after all."

"Plenty. She's true-blue. You can tell. And she's so interesting. And there is," his daughter's voice filled with genuine gravity, "such a real affinity between us."

"Oh, there is," the Doctor's eyebrows lifted in an amazed way and he laughed suddenly through his nose. "Oh, there is — I must say — well, well is there really?" He recovered his gravity. "Well, Bess, of course I shall have to look into this — but, I dare say you're right, I dare say. Affinity. Well, well. Remarkable. Affinity. Remarkable, I must say."

"It's a perfectly good word," said Bessie, "isn't it?"

"To be sure. Certainly. A perfectly good word. Affinity. My soul. Yes, of course. A perfectly good word."

It was easy enough to see, by the way he looked at her and by the manner of his teasing, that Doctor Gedney quite adored his adopted — and now his only — child. But after sparkling, his eyes dimmed to dreaminess again. Again Ger trude came to him, but this time as the girl of sixteen, the girl of twenty-one years ago. It was almost as if she, in stead of Bessie, were sitting on the opposite side of the table,

"THE GIRL WHO WAS BURNED UP" 67

lifting her knapkin. A slight, shadowy figure to be sure, with braided brown hair, and eyes of a thoughtful brown as she lifted them. She had grown up a silent and studious girl who kept her thoughts to herself. She had read much with her father in that household so overshadowed by her mother's strangeness. Demonstrative at first, and flighty in temperament, the growing aloofness and attitude of morose disinterest in her mother had gradually changed her. Her school life became her main interest. She moved about her home intent only upon the books she was studying. Her happiest hours seemed those in her father's study of an evening, when he was outlining to her some epoch of history or helping her with a Latin translation. Then her eyes brightened in a way he loved, and her head tilted more and more on one side in some animated discussion. She kindled to a scene in history or to a beautiful line of verse with charming exclamation and gesture. But at meals or in the library living-room she was almost completely silent under the continual sidewise scrutiny of her mother. What she said then was neither inspired or delighted. She dealt in practical things, ordinary bits of town news, mere requests for things on the table, and departed as soon as possible to her own room on the second floor, from which she would descend later to her father's study.

Dr. Gedney usually sat alone for half an hour or so with his wife after supper. Martha Gedney always had her knit ting. The long ivory needles clicked continually. Little was said. There was always a certain amount of distrust in the occasional glances Martha raised. She sat rehearsing in wardly all the things she could never forgive. The dreamy scholar opposite searched his mind for the millionth time or the ways of his offending. Upstairs for this half hour Ger trude was alone with her green-shaded lamp and her scat tered papers. She had come to love her own book-cluttered room as a fortress into which she could retire from the at mosphere of the house.

The ticking click of the ivory needles, that long stern face

68 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

above them, eyelids dropped as the compressed lips counted. "Spin, spin, Atropos, spin — The intermittent glitter of raised eyes and raised needles. Again the desolating dili gence of dark stitching.

Dr. Gedney would knock out his pipe carefully into the proper receptacle and rise with an embarassed murmur to his wife. He would cross the room and the hall, closing the door of his study softly behind him. For another half hour or so the three persons in their separate rooms were silent, the two scholars immersed in their books, the third waiting and thinking. With the sound of Gertrude's light step on the stair, Martha Gedney would finally raise her bent head and nod to herself slowly. The signification of a pythia who sees the decree of unjust gods fulfilled. Dr. Gedney had overseen it, without intending to — twice, from the hall.

The ticking click of the ivory needles, knitting time to eternity, knitting his thought to a close-stitched web-work of pain. The desolating diligence of that dark stitching. . , forever and forever. . . .

"Oh, you funny father — do pay some attention !" It was Bessie's voice. "You're not eating your baked apple."

-Why— oh, I'm sorry. What is it, Bess?"

"Are you going to call on Mrs. Ventress, and tell her — or shall I? I'll see her to-morrow."

"I — why no, I hadn't intended calling just yet. When will you see her? After school?"

"Yes. I'm always passing her house then and she's usu ally in the garden. Shall I tell her I can take drawing les sons?"

"Yes, I think so. Why, yes, I guess so. I must call on her, of course. I suppose so. Why, yes, you can arrange it, can't you, Bess?"

His absent-minded eyes hardly saw her.

"And Uncle Arthur didn't have any effect, did he?"

"Arthur? What? Oh, Arthur! Oh, that! Oh, no, Ar thur is rather impetuous, you know. Gets these remarkable ideas. I didn't really pay attention to him this afternoon.

"THE GIRL WHO WAS BURNED UP" 69

He means well, of course. He's very fond of you, Bess. As long as you learn drawing. That's what you want, isn't it? Well — so you really think Mrs. Ventress can help you?"

"Oh, you remarkable father ! Was anyone ever so way off in space. Why, you saw those drawings of hers. Don't you remember ?"

"Of course. Yes, of course. So I did. I told Arthur about them, in fact. Didn't I ? Well, you'll see her tomor row. Fix it up."

He had finished his coffee and rose, a rapier-like figure in black and white, despite his scholar's stoop. He smiled benignly in the general direction of Bessie, and turned to ward the living-room.

CHAPTER IX: ORDEAL

THE Battell place stood at the intersection of the Axter Road and the Farm Road beyond Wilder 's. The Axter Road, paralleling Tupton's Market Street, ran on past the Battell place and more recently built bungalows or more pre tentious houses to the County line. It was unmacadamed, but well kept, lined with tall and beautiful trees. The houses were set back from it with lawns and low hedges.

Architecturally the Battell place had no claims to beauty. It was gambrel-roofed with three projecting second story windows in front that gave it an appearance somewhat snail- eyed. A north wing had been tacked on which entirely de stroyed whatever original symmetry it may have had. A porch projected to the west, a very pleasant place to spend the morning sewing, but having nothing at all to do with mass values. It was a wooden house, and therefore a myth ological sort of edifice in times like these. It had a de lightful small apple-orchard behind it, a high box hedge all around, pleasant flower beds and a broad white gravel path leading up to it. It had, I fear, a good deal of unnecessary gimcrackery about its trimmings. It had originally — loath some thought — been painted maroon. Now it was white with cream facings, and that helped a little. It was a stiff and antique house with what seemed a pleasanter smile than formerly.

Inside the staircase climbed too rigidly and turned too abruptly, but time had given it the tone of old oak and its carpet, its wall on the left, and the rear wall on the landing repeated the pleasing blue of the hall. A short window-seat had been built below the too-narrow window on the landing. The effect was cramped but rather quaint. An atrocious

70

ORDEAL 71

chandelier had, however, been removed from the lower hall ceiling. By squinting upward you could but barely mark the slight scar it had left on the creamy surface.

Mrs. Ventress had done little "making over" of the house, hers being such a short period of occupancy. But her eye for harmonizing colour was excellent and she had improved certain details.

To-day she stood near the hedge about her front lawn, with clippers poised in her hand. On the other side of the hedge and up the white, hot Axter Road, proceeded an abundant coloured woman with a laundry basket on her head. Her shuffling footsteps came nearer. She stopped suddenly, put down the basket, and, with arms akimbo, spoke over her shoulder:

"C'mon now, Jazz! C'mon, baby! Else ah gwine leave yuh. Nobuddy ain' gwine huht yuh, Jazz. C'mon, baby. Don' ack so carntakerous."

Mrs. Ventress, in her wide floppy hat, peered to see what person had evoked this deluge of ejaculation. Some twenty yards back on the white road she espied the cause of it. A large black cat was sitting on the crown of the road washing its paws with its tongue.

Suddenly it looked up, licked its whiskers in a sly fashion and then came flexuously bounding toward the coloured woman, tail held erect. Ten yards off it as suddenly stopped again and resumed a sedentary paw-washing.

"C'mon now, Ja-azz," complained the laundress with a rich intonation, rolling the cat's name forth with unction. "Yuh do beat Hell. C'mon, baby. Ain't no one gwine huht yuh."

She was aware of Mrs. Ventress's light laughter from across the hedge. She faced it with a sudden sunrise grin of domino teeth. "Ay-yah," she chuckled wheezily, "ain't dat cat a caution. Ah'll say she is." She stooped to resume her burden, then straightened. "Youse Miss Ventress, aincha. Raickon dis yoh landry. Wait, ah'll bring it in."

72 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

"That's a very modern name you've got for your cat," said Adela from behind the hedge.

"Yas'm. Cat's name Jazzbell, out de Bible. Ise Mefdis Pisk mahseff. Wait hyah, I'll tote dis up'n yoh po'ch. Well, say, dat's some wash."

The heavily laden wicker basket scraped on the boards under the wistaria vine.

"You're Dinah White, aren't you?" Mrs. Ventress asked, coming across the grass.

"Yas'm. Ise Dinah. Gotta lotta linen aincha?" The broad face beamed. "You wan't in, time I got it las' Mon day."

"No, I had gone down street to get one or two things."

"Yas'm. Rele nice maid dat Murree yoh got. Speaks funny donshe?"

"She's French," said Adela.

"Dasso? French? Dasso? Hey now, yoh Jazzbell, aincha comin' long, tall?"

The cat so continually addressed lifted large expression less topaz eyes. Perceiving nothing of particular interest in the white face and the black face lifted above the hedge, it relapsed again to licking.

"You said you were — when you were talking about the cat — that you were — I didn't quite catch it," said Adela, smiling quizzically at her.

"Wot I say? 'Bout her name out de Bible? Ise Mefdis Pisk. Pasto Robutts circumjexted dat name."

"You're what?" asked Adela, her brows even more wrinkled.

"Mefdis Pisk. Down tuh de Mefdis Pisk Chu'ch. Dat's mah damnation. Ah goes reglah. Well now, Jazz, you'n Ise bettuh be movin' fo' home."

With an ample wave of her arm in farewell and an as surance that she would be "dis way t'morrah" to collect her basket with more soiled linen, she swayed with a rolling gait out of the front yard. She halted in the middle of the road again with arms akimbo, regarding the cat.

ORDEAL 73

"My gawd, Jazz," she ejaculated finally, "yoh is a trile on mah patience. You suah is. Wuss dan wot dat Patch is you is. Ah, clah "

"Who's Patch?" Mrs. Ventress exhibited further interest.

"Patch? Oh, he's mah dawg. Rele name's Patcherotter. Some artis' tole me dat name. See, Patch's had a lotta dis- tempah. Sump'n book 'bout it — same kinda case. All ah know. He sho was one quaint an' quizzical man, dat Mistah Lanyon. He paint hyah all one summah. Kin to de Co'- neliuses. . . . Well, Jazz," Dinah suddenly bawled, "aincha gwine come. C'mon, baby, Ise gwine way f'm hyah. Ise gwine leave yuh. Cross mah heaht, ah is. Ise through."

She turned with an indignant waddle. Her puffing form diminished down the road. The black cat finally bestirred itself. It ceased to polish its fur, looked around idly, got up and stretched. Then suddenly it was away again after Dinah, with light pantherine leaps, and its tail waving like a plume.

Adela turned back toward the porch after an amused assimilation of this episode. Her eyes and mouth were still puckered as she bent over the laundry basket. Tupton was certainly proving a town for character. She thought them over as she propped open the screen door and began lifting and carrying the laundered linen into the cool and high- ceilinged hall that held the scent of heliotrope she had picked from one of the flower-beds that morning. Marie would carry the linen upstairs for her. As she went back and forth she cast occasional glances into the two large rooms on either side of the hall. In the northeast parlour there was haircloth, of course, and that big framed steel-engraving of "The Stag at Bay". But, despite her own modern ideas of interior decoration, it only seemed an added piquancy. Be sides, it was where one "received callers". The southwest parlour, opening upon the dining-room behind it was the room she had chosen for actually living in. There she had re arranged the furniture and removed or rehung pictures to excite Bessie's admiration. What an odd little girl, Bessie !

74 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

She and that Miss Crome had so far been the only visitors. What a contrast !

Bessie had come in impulsively, yet shyly, peering about her like a bird. The screen door had squeaked, and there was Bessie. Adela had been discovered on her knees in the southwest room beside a large trunk-suitcase containing, among other impedimenta, an old portfolio. She looked up and smiled. Bessie smiled. "Hello !" said Bessie. "I hope you don't mind. I've come to see you." Five minutes after they were both sitting together on the floor, turning over the drawings.

"But — my ! — why didn't you keep it up ?" asked the dark child after a while, fixing adoring eyes upon the older woman.

"Well," said Adela slowly, "oh, that's a long story. I got turned off — took up something else. And now I'm sick of

that. This seems " she held one drawing up at arm's

length and cocked her head on one side. "It really isn't so bad, is it? You see, I haven't resurrected these for a long, long time."

"Bad?" said Bessie. "I should say not. Where did you study?"

"I had a knack, as a girl. You'll let me see some of your own things some time?"

"Oh, but mine are so awful! You won't want to."

"Yes, but I do. Maybe I could help you. I'm just going to take it up again for fun. Once — for a short while — I did

some regular work at it " Mrs. Ventress's voice rather

trailed away.

"Oh, would you ?" Bessie's eyes were sparkling. "There's no really good course at the Institute. At least I think — and Slade says he's sure I could make lots of money in adver tising."

"Oh, that's your ambition? And who's Slade?"

"My cousin. He's an editor in New York. He really is awfully clever. He writes poetry. And I do so want to do

ORDEAL 75

something. But — but I'm not father's real daughter, you know. You see — you see, Gertrude "

Adela realised. She looked at Bessie long and search- ingly. The child's eyes were cast down. There was a silence.

Then Bessie lifted her own eyes and Adela's turned aside.

"You'll know it sooner or later," said the child to the woman. "You know — she ran away — Gertrude; well, she was really my cousin; her mother adopted me, afterward. I never knew her, or — or my own parents. I was just think ing, Father — you see I always think of him as my father — says she used to draw too. She was valedictorian, the year she ran away. Then her mother died. It's — it's all made father pretty sad," she finished awkwardly.

Adela sat without replying, her head bent over the draw ings. She nodded her head in sympathy. Bessie could not see her face. "I see," said Mrs. Ventress softly, sympa thetically. "I see," she repeated in an even lower tone, slightly shuffling the drawings.

"But can't we draw together — some evenings — at any time that's convenient to you. I really would love to help if there's any way I can. I could show you everything I know myself. Of course, not regular lessons, and just for

our amusement " She was not looking directly at the

child.

"Oh, you are an angel! I'd simply adore to. But wouldn't it be imposing ? Could we, next Monday evening ? Today's Friday. Do you suppose we could?"

"Why, of course, if your father doesn't mind. Could you have supper here on Monday evening?"

"Oh, could we ? Oh, I really would so love to. I'm sure father won't mind. I'll tell him all about it," stated Bessie, scrambling up. "It's awfully kind of you. But you're sure. It won't be imposing. I shouldn't impose."

"No," said Adela in amusement. "It certainly won't be imposing. And I'll make a nice salad for us.

76 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

"And then we'll draw. And you must bring your own work to show me."

Bessie departed as one walking in a trance, looking back ward and smiling. She waved joyfully from beyond the high hedge. Her hair tossed and flopped as she started briskly toward Poplar Street.

The visit of Miss Crome had been otherwise. Marie had informed Adela, who was lying down one afternoon, that a lady was in the parlour (the real northeast parlour it proved). Entering the doorway, Adela had felt Marie to be mistaken. This was not so much a lady as a ramrod.

Miss Sophia Crome sat stiffly upon the extreme edge of the most uncomfortable hair-cloth upholstered chair, clutch ing tightly in her right hand the ivory handle of a faded lavendar sunshade. Her nose seemed as sharp as an awl, and her steel spectacles, supported by its bony ridge, seemed to glitter with something beyond the ordinary properties of steel and glass. Her dress was stiff gray poplin, high at the neck and long in the sleeves. It gave the effect of crackling fiercely as she shifted in her chair. Her lisle thread gloves seemed permanently to clothe her discoverably bony hands.

She looked up with bright eyes and compact creased jaws that reminded Adela at once of the ebony-plastroned turtle with which a passing black boy had frightened Marie the day before. She bobbed at Adela a bonnet badly mismated to her tightly slicked and knotted iron-gray hair. She sat then with an entirely artificial smile, rubbing the fingers of her gloved hands together, fidgeting in her seat, nodding slightly as if to peculiarly satisfactory thoughts within herself.

Adela seated herself opposite upon the small sofa, in her gracefully lounging way. She smiled and attempted to be affable.

"We are glad to greet a newcomer " began Miss

Crome. She smiled, and Adela immediately distrusted her entirely. Miss Crome hugged herself, bent forward a little,

ORDEAL 77

and began to put questions. She nodded at the replies. She nodded and looked, with down-drawn upper lip, at the ceil ing. Immediately she discovered that Adela, though evi dently married, did not mention her husband. She nodded at that. She nodded at the indefinite reply to her question as to Adela's occupation in New York. To the general rea son for Adela's coming to Tupton, rest and change of scene, she nodded still more briefly with eyes uplifted. She went on nodding like a mandarin, till, from initial irritation, sup pressed laughter began to rise and fill the whole being of her hostess, showing itself only in the added sparkle of her eyes, which eyelids strove to veil. But, despite all subter fuge, once Miss Crome caught and understood that laugh ing light. She nodded at the discovery till the stiff feather of her bonnet quivered vehemently.

Thereafter the inquisition ceased. Local history began. The Corneliuses were a most estimable family. Mr. Cor nelius was a victim of hay-fever, a positive victim. He was the town's oldest physician. Mrs. Cornelius was a godly woman. She was also President of the Ladies Aid. The Cornelius children were flighty. This evidently, but not in the same sense as charity, covered a multitude of sins. Dr. Gedney was a queer man. Miss Crome could not un derstand him. His wife had been most estimable — most estimable. Mr. Pollock was the brother-in-law. His wife was deceased. This particular calamity was mentioned as with implication. Bessie and Gertrude were touched upon. Very sad, that case. The Brattles kept a good deal to them selves. A very old family. The father, who held an inter est in the Meldon Ironworks, had been brevetted a General in the Civil War. In line with the Brattles, the really old residents of Tupton kept to themselves. Stores had ruined Tupton. Tupton had a proud colonial history.

The families at the three different farms did not mingle much with the people of the town. Never had. The Say res were recent. The Cripps were an old and peculiar family. Mr. Whinnymuir was the undertaker, a god-fearing man.

,78 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

Mr. Brixton was the sexton of the Presbyterian Church. He lived next to Mr. Whinnymuir on Laurel Street. Miss Crome supposed that Mrs. Ventress was a Presbyterian. No? How strange! Dr. Amendis was the pastor of the Presbyterian Church. He was indeed the Lord's right hand and had seven children. Mrs. Ventress would doubtless take an interest in the Ladies Aid of the Episcopal Church. No? She was not an Episcopalian? Doubtless she was a Methodist. It would be so strange to think that she was a Unitarian! A Quaker? There were several Quakers in Tupton. Surely not a Catholic?

Miss Crome was puzzled. No, but Mrs. Ventress must be joking. She must have some real religion. An Agnos tic? Of what denomination was that a sect? Of none? Surely — but that was being the same as an atheist! The bonnet nodded violently. The jaws became still more creased, the lips still more pursed. The spectacles flashed in positive agitation. The ramrod began to quiver. The eyes sought far corners for refuge and found none. Miss Crome was standing. Her head was nodding like that of one with an uncontrollable nervous affection. She really must be going. She hoped Mrs. Ventress would call. She had come to welcome her to Tupton. Agnostic — but, dear, dear! Yes, a pretty house. Mr. and Mrs. Battell were such estimable, god-fearing people. Estimable. So estim able. Moving stiffly to the door, it was most unfortunate that at that very moment Miss Crome suddenly came face to face with The Desecration. This was in the shape of a small jade dish of Adela's set upon a pie-crust table belong ing to the Battells.

Marie had been requested to remove what reposed in it, and had forgot. Miss Crome's eyes stared unbelievingly as she glared at the half-smoked Melachrino which had long since gone out and now presented but a blackened stump. Miss Crome's eyes rolled heavenward and she sniffed an imperceptible sniff. She said nothing, however. She paused only an instant. She smiled in a glaringly arti-

ORDEAL 79

ficial way as she said good-bye at the door. She did not repeat her invitation to call. She moved down the path like a rigid automaton in bristling poplin. Turning toward Pop lin Street her acute, parrot-like profile swam along the top of the hedge, austere and forbidding. Behind her the clouds above the Hill were piled grey for rain. The sunlight of the day had gone. In the porch Adela stood with finger and thumb at her mouth, biting her lip. But when her hand dropped she was seen to be smiling. Her laughter, the moment that she entered the house, surprised Marie in the upper hall. Marie was glad that this strange change of scene seemed to be doing her mistress so much good.

Yes, there were characters in Tupton. Indubitably ! Mr. Gartner, for instance, at the Post Office, who had, ever since her arrival, treated her with special consideration. A funny little embarrassed man. Jason Duffit who was rather portly, almost incoherent, and puffed. There was something pe culiar about his eyes. She did not quite like the look in them. The tradespeople she had found inquisitive and ap praising, but pleasant and obliging upon the whole. By now the town seemed to have accepted her. She had arrived quietly and had been driven to her new home in the herdic of Alexis White. He wore a faded and tattered porter's cap and a permanent placating smile. He met all trains for the Conestoga House and conveyed many old residents to their destinations. A new and extremely intermittent trol ley system, running down one street only, hardly availed for proper transportation to the station, though it was some times useful if one wished to get, between trains, to Barrack Falls. Alexis White was as black and shiny as a shoe- button. He was the husband of Dinah, and they lived in a small house on the road to the Bottom, with the cat Jezebel, the dog, Patch, and an odd assortment of piccaninnies. Dinah always seemed to be vague about the exact number. But the Bottom was so full of picanninies, and they mingled so together, that this was, perhaps, excusable.

80 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

Adela finished removing and folding the laundry and called to Marie. It was half-past three in the afternoon.

While the maid disposed of the linen, Mrs. Ventress pro ceeded about the mahogany dining-room table in a leisurely manner, setting it for a simple supper. This was the eve ning of Bessie's coming, to which Dr. Gedney had assented. She was glad Bessie was coming. She wondered certain things about the child, wistfully, And, laying down a but- terknife at Bessie's place, the old dull pain manifested itself again, the perpetuated pain of lovely memory. If he had only lived . . . Their home. She might have been setting the table . . . Two deep lines came between her brows.

That was why there had never been any other, never could be any other. A strange thing, but true. All that she would have done for him . . . Oh, well, her temperament was not to be sad. Suddenly she shrugged and snapped her fingers. Then she stood perfectly quiet, rigidly erect. Her face set. It looked ten years older. They had understood, they two. They had understood. Life. That was all. Her

tenseness relaxed and she went on quietly setting the table. * * *

Miss Crome had been a self-appointed pursuivant. Miss Crome considered herself the Eyes of Tupton. Half of Tupton looked upon Miss Crome as a silly eccentric old gossip, and half of it accepted her at her own valuation. The half that accepted her were The Ten. Not so the hoi polloi whose number increased and flourished. This also was the half of Tupton that evinced only a passing interest in the coming of Adela Ventress. They, in their own par lance had "sized her up" early. She was a "good-looker" but quiet, retiring, "slow" (in some mysterious connota tion), and too old. They put her down immediately as a "lady". They supposed The Ten would take her up. But she was not for them, though they had adopted an affable enough attitude toward her with some covert admiration, on the part of the girls, for the way she dressed. And that she was "from New York" leant a certain glamour. They

ORDEAL 81

returned her courtesy with their own best courtesy, but she was not one of them. They passed her by.

Of course, upon the part of the whole town there had originally been much conjecture and gossip about the new comer. If she had appeared in an underslung French car, with a theatrical rake to her hat, and evidences of over- preparation in her complexion, the sprightlier element of Tupton would have solidly been "for her", no matter how the Old Residence Block might have shivered with repulsion. As it was, Adela repelled them somewhat by a cultivated intonation and an aloofness from their festivities. When ever any of the "newer element" passed her gate afoot or in somewhat rattling cars, she was perceived quietly weed ing, picking flowers, or reading upon the porch. Again, they had several times met her walking alone, a book tucked under her arm, a sunshade resting against her shoulder. They had decided that she was partly a snob and partly "queer".

In the stores of the shopping block on Market Street you would have heard only vague expressions of goodwill. If Dinah White might speak for The Bottom, the impression was that Adela was a "right stylish lady" and "she treats yuh right". Mrs. Gartner represented another stratum of local opinion.

"Something funny about that New York lady of yours, / think," she told her husband, the possessive intimation being mere domestic malice. "I hear nobody gets on with her very well. She's too standoffish. About the only one seems real friendly to her is that young Bessie Gedney. And an older woman like that's not good for such a young girl. They're together all the time. That Doctor Gedney don't seem to have the sense he was born with. He never seems to know whether he has a child or not. Those two are thicker'n thieves. Wish she was my child. I'd put a stop to it. It's got around she's teaching her drawing "

"Who's teaching which ?" interrupted Mr. Gartner, spear ing a fried potato at his supper.

82 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

"That Mrs. Ventress teaching Bessie of course. A child like that. There's something wrong about it."

"'Bout what? Drawin' pictures? Seems sort of foolish but I can't say's I see any harm to it," returned Mr. Gartner.

"Course not," his spouse glared. "I mean such a friend ship. And this Mrs. Ventress never does go to church either. Ain't been seen in one. And both the Presbyterian and 'Piscopal ministers have called."

"Well," said Mr. Gartner liberally. "There's some don't hold by religion "

Mrs. Gartner bristled.

" 'Tain't whether you hold by it or don't hold by it/ she pronounced. "It's goin' to church and keepin' civilised."

This way of putting it seemed final.

"Jase Duffit was sayin' somethin' to me like that," an swered Mr. Gartner. "He's real shocked at some things that Miss Crome told him about Mrs. Ventress. B'lieve she found her smokin' a cigarette. 'We-el,' I told him, 'there's no 'countin' for tastes. Guess it won't more'n give her a sore throat."

"S'pose you'd like to see me smokin' a pipe?' his wife in terrogated acidly.

"We-el," returned Mr. Gartner, "at that, my grandmam done it. Remember as a boy seein' her puff at a clay. It looked rele perculiar."

This anecdote had never yet failed to plunge Mrs. Gart ner into resentful and morose brooding. Her lips puckered tightly. She answered nothing.

Mr. Gartner felt the silence. "Come, Ag," he remarked with a lugubrious smile. "Come out of it. I'm sorry. I didn't mean nothin'. But I daresay that woman's all right," he added. "You know well as I how talk gits around."

"After all," he continued later, "Jase Duffitt rented her the house and the Battells was satisfied. Jase even met that New York feller come down to vouch f er her. An' I under stand she paid up in advance. But Jase is perculiar too. He's always believin' stories, ever since I've known 'm. He's

ORDEAL 83

fidgety-like. And you know after all there's somethin' sly about Jase, somethin' I never liked someway. Can't just explain it. He's honest enough, I guess. But he listens too much to that Miss Crome, an' her tongue wags at both ends. Do you like that woman, Ag?"

"Miss Sophia Crome is a perfect lady's far's I've seen," said Mrs. Gartner, with asperity, rattling dishes in the sink. "She may wag her tongue, but I'm sure she don't mean no harm by it. She ain't standoffish and peculiar anyway. She's rele neighbourly."

"Yes," ruminated Mr. Gartner. "She's neighbourly, as you call it, and then again she ain't. That is, you might put it, she's too nosey. She goes around too much spreading gossip."

"I ain't," was Mr. Gartner's last remark on that particular subject that evening, "I ain't so keen f er that Sophia Crome."

And, after all, Adela's relations with the tradespeople of the town excited no criticism. She seemed to know how to run her own house and she paid her bills. True, there was some discussion of the occupation and whereabouts of her husband. She was evidently not a widow. She was, as evidently, a lady. A few ingenuously inquisitive souls who had evinced an undue interest in her married state had re tired baffled, not by ambiguity or rudeness, but by a calm and dexterous changing of the subject, with perfect good nature. Not possessing Mrs. Ventress's aplomb they with drew to mull over their own conjectures. It was believed, however, that she and her husband had separated.

There was much conjecture in certain quarters. Two people in the town never met now that they did not con jecture. Miss Crome already knew all that Jason Duffitt could supply as to Mrs. Ventress's identity. It was not much, save that she had been properly vouched for and had paid for the house in advance. On the other hand Jason listened with puffy interest to Miss Crome's weighing of probabili ties. Meanwhile a shadow like a dark dog lay asleep in the June sunshine of Market Street, where daily the conversing

84 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

and huckstering populace passed. The shadow sometimes raised a vague ill-shapen head to sniff at trivial things. Adela, as she passed back and forth to market or her favour ite stores walked unaware of the shadow, that potential guardian of the public peace of mind that can be tragically aroused to run baying through the streets of the most som nolent of villages.

Miss Crome's call had resulted in what, to her, seemed dubious discoveries. Several other incursions upon Adela's initial isolation thickened the mystery. Mrs. Adolphus Frazee, for instance, had called, in the Frazee's new and glossy Packard, a magnificent concession to the spirit of the times. Mrs. Frazee, sleek, pursed and portly in her blue dress with white facings, her blue but otherwise indescrib able hat perking neatly from above her eminently sensible coiffure, had laid, with an air, upon Marie's extended tray, two cards engraved "Mr. Adolphus Frazee", "Mrs. Frazee". With the phantom presence of the temporarily absent Adolphus supporting her, she had swept into the northeast parlour.

Adela had come in from the vegetable garden. She wore a dark blue house dress with a Dutch neck and elbow sleeves. It gave her a youthful appearance. She had stopped to wash her hands and tidy her hair, but she still looked slightly distrait with digging.

"How do you do. I am Mrs. Frazee," said that lady, with quite a self-satisfied intonation, nodding slightly, slightly rising.

"Don't get up," said Adela quickly. "How do you do. I've been gardening. You'll excuse me, won't you."

They exchanged the ordinary conversational openings for several minutes, during which time Mrs. Frazee noted that Adela's skirt was quite short and that she crossed her knees.

By a most unfortunate turn of topic they got on the sub ject of Labour, and Mrs. Ventress expressed a rather cloudy sympathy with the West Virginian miners. Upon the sub ject of Servants she seemed, however, more "sound" — ex-

ORDEAL 85

cept that she declared she had had small trouble in securing a cook.

"Do you expect your husband to join you for the sum mer?" inquired Mrs. Frazee in her impeccable manner.

"My husband!" Adela returned, evidently quite at sea for a moment. "Oh ! My husband ! No. No, he won't be out here. Business, business — in New York."

Mrs. Frazee nodded gravely and let it be understood that she saw. She cast down her eyes as Adela slightly turned her head away. Evidently, considered Mrs. Frazee, viewing nevertheless the bitten lip and half-closed eyes of her agi tation, — quite evidently they were, as people had said, sep arated.

Mrs. Frazee said nothing more for a moment. Mrs. Ventress turned the subject to other matters. Mrs. Vent- ress's lips were certainly very red. Mrs. Frazee won dered . Mrs. Ventress spoke of herself, in passing, as

a feminist. Mrs. Frazee did not exactly understand, but

she thought that Adolphus . Mrs. Ventress certainly

was not so enthusiastic about the League of Nations as was Rebecca Stone. Still, she quoted from one of Senator Lodge's speeches and ridiculed it in one biting sentence.

Tht — tht — Mrs. Frazee was sure that Adolphus !

Adolphus, however, did not believe in Prohibition either. Mrs. Ventress had said she saw no harm in cocktails. Well, of course, Mrs. Frazee had known that that was New York. Mrs. Ventress got on books and mentioned several novels Mrs. Frazee had not read. Mrs. Frazee spoke of "Pen- dennis.'' Mrs. Ventress got Mrs. Frazee mixed up on "Pen-

dennis." She had not read it for so long . Mrs. Ventress

begged her pardon, but wasn't Rosie Mackenzie in "The Newcomes" instead? And didn't Mrs. Frazee like Captain Costigan? Well, no, Mrs. Frazee had never quite approved Captain Costigan. He was, well, rather outlandish. Mrs. Frazee quoted inaccurately in illustration. Mrs. Ventress said wasn't that said, though, by Major Pendennis? Mrs. Ventress quoted smilingly to the point. Mrs. Frazee felt un-

86 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

comfortable. Mrs. Frazee must be going. Couldn't Mrs. Ventress come to dinner next Monday? So delighted to have her. She would like her to see her new dahlias. Well, good-bye. — yes, yes, good-bye. . . .

Others from the Old Residence Block had called. The Miss Babbitts had found her too girlish. "She is rather pretty, but she seems too well aware of it. She swears too. She said 'Damn !' when her dress caught in the door. You heard her, Clara!" Thus the elder Miss Babbitt, whose idea of extreme frivolity was still a game of croquet on their seemly back lawn. The Miss Babbitts were fifty and fifty-two. They lived in the days of the Civil War. They wore black for parents dead thirty years ago. They re sembled perambulating vegetables. They had vegetable faces. The stouter Miss Babbitt looked like a potato, the leaner like a carrot. Their entire lives had been spent in provincial affluence and the parental domicile. Life was something they had heard about, but they had not been in troduced.

"Hardly pretty, I should say," the Potato Miss Babbitt supplied. "Rather affected for a woman of her evident age. But what seems rather sad is that she has so little sense of humour. She did not smile once at that story of Uncle Harry and Mrs. Mixter's horse. That is always the test, to me."

Mrs. Ventress had come to dinner at Mrs. Frazee's in what seemed a very sheer black net. She seemed entirely unconscious of her white neck and arms. Mrs. Frazee could not be unconscious of them. It was apparent that neither General Brattle nor young Harry Persons were uncon scious. It was grave that Adolphus seemed so Conscious. It was unnecessary that Mrs. Ventress should have dressed in that manner.

It went quite smoothly for a while. Mrs. Ventress was perhaps too much engaged in conversation with the men on her right and left. Conversation should be more general. However, Mr. Mixter launched forth on the subject of

ORDEAL 87

women. It was as certain as fate. Mrs. Ventress spiritedly did not concur. She was being satiric. She was making Mr. Mixter listen. The whole table was listening.

Mr. Jeremiah Mixter was answering. He was annoyed. Adolphus was plunging in. Adolphus always plunged so. Mrs. Ventress was a bright defiance. Rebecca Stone, though she could not get a word in, was looking at Mrs. Ventress with a new interest, from the opposite side of the table. Mrs. Ventress had shrugged very slightly and had resumed eating her fish. She was talking to young Harry Persons on her left.

General Brattle and Dr. John Cornelius had joined in anathematising the world-state idea. Mrs. Ventress was still talking to Harry Persons, about the theatre. The con versation anent the world-state crackled generally. Mrs. Ventress had ventured the opinion that an international court to adjudicate the claims of all nations, might, in spite of present disappointments, lie among the possibilities of future civilisation. Dr. John was sonorously quoting Sena tor Borah. Mrs. Ventress had said something flippant about Senator Borah. Rebecca Stone laughed at it, and Mrs. Ventress looked across the table, smiling at her. Finally, it seemed that she was somehow teasing General Brattle about Preparedness. General Brattle was gobbling like a bubblyjock. He was being very crushing, saying, "But my dear young lady !" Mrs. Ventress was being humour ous about her age. Mrs. Frazee sighed heavily. This would never do. Really, really! She signalled her husband that they were to rise.

Harry Persons said afterward that Mrs. Ventress was an extraordinarily interesting woman. General Brattle had, however, departed without saying good-night to her. Adolphus was irritated. Jeremiah Mixter seemed for once to have nothing to say. Next day the feminine element, meeting at tea at the Miss Babbitts' expressed in various feminine fashion their distaste. There was something un womanly ; there was a hard veneer, a sophistication ; she had

88 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

told Mr. Burley a story, oh, no, not exactly improper, but just a trifle too witty. She was a pretty little thing, but Randolph Utterson had used the right word, "opinionated" ; she was faded looking and General Brattle, even though so Conscious, had said she was tiresome ; she moved in quite — oh, quite — a different world, the Carrotish Miss Babbitt was sure. Only Rebecca Stone, coming in late, with her air of eye-glassed independence, absent-mindedly asked them all what on earth they were all talking about and pronounced Mrs. Ventress "an acquisition". She, Rebecca, intended go ing to see her to-morrow. She, Mrs. Ventress, had read "Candide".

No one else present had read "Candide". And anyway that was exactly like Rebecca. There was a feeling that she would not be at all good for Rebecca. She would "en courage" her.

Mrs. Ventress called upon Mrs. Frazee when Mrs. Fra- zee was out. She did not leave a card. That seemed, well — too casual. Mrs. Ventress was passing Jeremiah Mixter on the street, with the Gedney girl, and did not see him. Mrs. Ventress and the Gedney girl seemed too intimate. Rebecca Stone had borrowed several books from Mrs. Vent ress. They were French novels. It was no secret now that Mrs. Ventress smoked cigarettes. Caroline Utterson also had heard her swear again. She did not go to church. She rarely crossed Market Street. Rebecca Stone reported that Mrs. Ventress was now reading Nietzche. Harry Persons had met Mrs. Ventress by accident one afternoon — or was it? — and had walked down Sycamore Street with her. Mrs. Harry Persons declared herself not at all worried, but both the Miss Babbitts felt outraged. Poor little Ethel !

There is no predicting the silliness of small communities — and then, of course, there are innumerable instances large and small beside that of Giordano Bruno who was burned at the stake because he felt that Aristotle was, perhaps, too provincially hasty in believing the earth to be the centre of the universe.

ORDEAL 89

Adela took many long walks by herself past the farms and through the fields near Tupton. Unwittingly by so doing she broke unwritten law for one of her caste. She was seen climbing over a rail fence. She was even, once, — * and this was regarded as a fiery portent — overlooked from the passing car of Dr. John Cornelius, wading in the shal lows of the Passamint near the bridge beyond the Cripps farm. True, the place chosen was secluded. If Dr. Cor nelius had not had carburetor trouble at that point . A

book lay open on the bank, beside a pair of small discarded Oxfords. But really ! A married woman ! By the way, you know, she never mentions her husband! No, Mrs. Frazee is absolutely certain he is not dead. Not dead — but wading !

There is some wildness there is something . It was

agreed that There Was Something.

Meanwhile, except for her roaming and reading, (the scandalous incident of the wading was the only occasion of its kind, fortunately) the subject of all these almost daily discussions continued to conduct her household and her daily affairs in a competent, unobtrusive manner. At least she had sealed to her Dinah White. At least the grocery boy from Ratcliffe's confided to her the true facts about his collection of snapping-turtles and his mastery of an out- drop. At least Bessie Gedney continued to find her a won derful exemplar in the art of making things look like some thing in a few lines. At least the tradespeople with whom she had to do began to look forward to her pleasant manner and her smile and her pretty clothes as she entered their stores from the morning glare of Market Street.

As to Tupton society, it is indubitable that Adela's des tiny was to fall between two stools. While the all-powerful Ten certainly accepted her as a "lady", they soon came to look upon her askance. She seemed to them a potential in cendiary. She puzzled and irritated them by possession of too much general information. She had an exasperating way of questioning all statements made ex cathedra. And that was the prerogative, unimpeached heretofore, of their

90 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

accepted leaders. That her manner in argument was charm ingly well-bred made it particularly hard to bear. Their pet prejudices seemed to cause her more quiet amusement than discomfiture. She had now withdrawn gracefully into her own silence. She bowed agreeably to all of them upon the street, but had quietly manoeuvred herself into the posi tion of remaining quite outside their influence. Finally, she had committed the unpardonable sin of momentarily shak ing The Ten's confidence in themselves. Highly Abderitan ! The natives of that section of Thrace were famed of old, as you know, for a certain lack of intelligence. They could not forgive her, so they tried to forget her. And as the Other Half Rome had already adopted that attitude, for other reasons, Adela found herself singularly alone in Tup- ton, so far as local society was concerned. And this suited her exactly. It was deeply restful.

CHAPTER X: UNCLE ARTHUR SYMPATHIZES WITH XERXES

IN the rear of Uncle Arthur's big back-yard was a chicken- house about fourteen by twenty-four with shrubbery against the fence to the north of it and a wired run extending parallel to its westward facing front. Its ridgepole was about seven feet from the ground, its roof covered with tar- paper. In the run the game chickens strutted and pecked. The black-breasted ones with their greyish-brown, salmon- breasted hens; the red pyle cocks with orange hackle and saddle, and their white hens; the orange-legged Cornish Indians in bright brown and glossy green. They made a fine showing.

"And what's the jet black one?" asked Bessie.

"Black Sumatra. You don't see so many round here. There's the hen too — good layer and a good mother. I'll bet that's a seven-pound hen. The blacks have heavier feath ers. But that red Game's the standard fowl. Those Indian Games are the heaviest. There's a hen weighs eight and a half. I cured that brown red Game hen, that dark one with the lemon hackle — cured her of the roup. You can't if it's advanced. That one over there, with the lemon colour lacing."

"How did you?"

"That !" Uncle Arthur turned around and pointed to the cellar-door near which stood a red-banded silverly shining kerosene oil can.

"Or rather I filled a sewing-machine can from it and got the oil into her nose and beak. Then of course I put some condition powder into her mash and aconite in her drinking water. Looks pretty now, don't she?"

Bessie nodded.

91

92 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

Uncle Arthur was meditatively full of his subject and went on spasmodically.

"Of course these aren't what they call 'pit' fowl. They're exhibition birds. Remember when I showed them at the Meldon County Fair ? Long leg and neck's what you want. What you must have. Short-feathered saddle. Short hackle. Pit fowl have lots of hackle. Notice these don't. There's a duck-wing. Ain't that a beauty?"

He pointed out a golden male with straw-coloured neck and saddle and a shining coppery back. A blue-black bar striped each wing.

"Where's Ptolemy?" asked Bessie, peering.

"The one your father named? He's that Sumatra — with the long tail. The one lifting his feet over there. Got three spurs on his leg — see?"

"My, you know a lot about them, Uncle Arthur !"

"Oh, no. Very little. A hobby of mine. Old man must have his hobby, you know. Want to see inside?"

He entered the small door in the west end and stood in the four-foot alleyway on the north side of the building. Bessie peered around at the nest-boxes, the platform-raised roosts and the dust-box in the corner. It was smelly. The feed-trough ran low near the floor in front and beyond her. There was a water-dish at the end of the feed-trough. The floor was boarded.

"What's that box for?"

"Dust. Fowls get verminous in late fall and winter if they can't get a dust-bath. Get it in the summer — but in cold weather they're so cooped up. I'll fill that from the Axter Road. Good fine dust there."

They returned outside and visited the several brood coops set in another wired inclosure. The flaps of the coops were up and yellow and brown puffballs cheeped up and down behind a netting to the spasmodic clucking of their alert mothers. Bessie indulged in many pointings, adorations, exclamations. Uncle Arthur puffed at his pipe and went over to examine a ripening pear-tree for scale.

UNCLE ARTHUR SYMPATHIZES 93

"So Slack's coming for the Fourth/' he remarked finally, when he had satisfied himself that the spray-pump was not needed just yet.

Bessie turned and came over to him.

"He'll get here to-morrow night. Won't it be nice to see him?"

"Right you are, Bess. It will be nice. How long is he going to stay?"

"Just till Monday. Over the Fourth. But he's promised" Bessie emphasized, "to come later for his vacation too. Don't you like Slade, Uncle Arthur ? I think he's fine, don't you?"'

Her relative cast a sidelong quizzical glance at her, re moved his grey cap and scratched the top of his head. His astigmatic eye twinkled like a spark. "Yes," he nodded judgmatically. "I like Slade. Like him all right. He's a nice boy. Don't understand some of his ideas. That stuff he writes is way over my head. But I like Slade. He's got a lot to learn, but he knows it. His mother used to worry about him, but he seems doing well in this magazine work. Haven't seen him, let's see, going on two years. He's got good manners, that boy. He may amount to something."

"But he isn't a boy, Uncle Arthur! Why he's really assistant editor of the Colosseum. And there's that book of his poetry. He didn't have to pay for it being published, you know. They "

"Poetry — mm !" said Uncle Arthur, rolling his astigmatic eye. "Well, you know, Bess, my taste runs to chickens. He didn't have to pay for it — no. But neither did it pay him. Fell pretty flat. He told me so himself. Well, it's his hobby — only it seems to me hobbies are more in line for us old fellows. Still, he's done well for himself."

"But Uncle Arthur — you are — er — preposterous. Slade's a real writer. He has the gift. Father thinks so. Don't you see that what he writes is the really important thing — not the magazine work? Don't you see that, you funny old Uncle Arthur?"

94 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

In her Bessieish way she was doing what looked like a few minuet steps in front of him. Her black hair was in a tangle about her face and her black eyes were sparkling. She tossed her hair back from her eyes with the aid of both hands, and then stood gracefully slouching with a hand on either hip, her head slightly cocked on one side.

Uncle Arthur was looking away over the top of the house.

"Eh ! Oh, all right, Bess. Well, what's he going to bring with him? Fire-crackers?"

"Fire-crackers !" Bessie's lip curled with pleasing scorn. "Though of course we'll have some fireworks in the orchard that night. Uncle Arthur, you know we'll have fireworks in the orchard?" she finished pleadingly, with a strangely childish reversal of the semi-adult tone with which she had begun.

"Oh, absolutely, Bess, — we'll have fireworks," Uncle Ar thur promised, his enormous girth slightly agitated by inner laughter. "Slade'll make a fizzle of the pinwheels again, though. Remember two years ago?"

"He won't!" she answered with spirit. "You know he won't. You're teasing. And of course I suppose Adela will be invited," she added in a very dignified tone.

"Adela?" Uncle Arthur immediately frowned suspicion. "Adela who?"

"Mrs. Ventress. She's my best friend now in Tupton and she's the most adorable person and you know she has been teaching me drawing and she would simply love the fireworks I'm sure and she gets so little fun."

The sentence streamed forth with a total lack of punc tuation. It was possessed of cumulative earnestness.

Uncle Arthur's frown had deepened. He bit his lip. The grey cap had been replaced, much over his nose. He seemed extremely interested in contemplating the ridgepole of his house from several angles. His colour heightened and a certain stubborn oaken quality seemed to creep into the bag- giness of his clothes.

"Look here, Bess, I think nothing of it!" he said. "I—

UNCLE ARTHUR SYMPATHIZES 95

er — I've been meaning to speak to you for some time about

that. I — er — you know I don't like — I mean to say "

his voice got thicker, preluding, as Bessie well knew, some sort of outburst. Uncle Arthur could never express his deepest emotions. His endeavours at tact always culmi nated in some explosive phrase which hardly clarified the situation.

"Oh, Goliath," he suddenly exclaimed. "It's— the trouble is — well, what do any of us know about that woman, Bess. I've been seriously worried. About you. You know Charley — oh Mammonites ! — you know your father. It seems ut terly inexcusable of him. Why did he do it? Oh, great leaping trout! I am inclined utterly to give it up!"

His agitation was apparent in the irascible bumbling of his syllables and the vast shrugging of his shoulders. He began to walk up and down with his hands behind his back.

Bessie had expected something of the kind. She stood slowly scraping the toe of one low tan shoe into the dirt around the root of an apple tree. Her hair flopped over her eyes. She said nothing.

Uncle Arthur quickened the pace of his short walking to and fro. He glanced at her ever and anon worriedly out of the corner of his better eye. He crammed his cap more fiercely upon his head. He bit upon his pipe.

Suddenly Bessie raised her head, shook back her hair and laughed. He halted with pipe drooping from his lip, in front of her.

"Oh, you great goose," she said in the occasional ageless feminine tone that always checkmated him. "What is the matter? As if she could hurt me!"

"Well, it is that !" said her huge relative in a tone singu larly boyish and contrite for all his years. But he reverted almost immediately to the more pompous.

"It's this, Bess. If Charley won't see it properly, why I do. There's talk about it already in the town. It isn't good for you to see so much of a so much older woman none of us know hardly at all. It isn't good for any young girl,

96 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

these sudden great intimacies with older women — least of all when no one knows anything about her. Now she may be all right — she may be all right — (though Uncle Arthur's eyes denied the possibility of it) — I'm not saying she isn't," he hastened on as he saw Bessie opening her mouth to reply. "I ain't saying she isn't — she may be all right — " (he was obviously stalling for another flow of ideas), "she may be, but the fact is your father and I are your guardians and we can't see you running into any harm — and — oh, Charley wouldn't see the side of a barn until he ran into it — so I

have to take it upon myself, to take it upon myself Bess,

you simply oughtn't to see any more of that woman. It's bad for you, and you must know it yourself, and the whole town is talking!"

He ended with great vehemence, avoided his niece's di lating eyes and, removing his jammed cap with some diffi culty, again applied hands to his hair, which now stood up in every direction across his pate like the ill-arranged halo of some wild and preposterous saint.

Bessie's eyes grew wider and wider and her mouth opened and shut. She began to teeter toe and heel and swing her arms a little. A bon chat bon rat!

"Uncle Arthur," she said quite primly, "while appreciat ing your — your solicitation — but that's not the word I mean, I must tell you that Mrs. Ventress is one of the finest women I have ever met. And furthermore (how well that word rolled off the tongue) and furrrthermore," said Bessie impressively, "I consider her in every way a perfectly fit companion for me. And furrrthermore — after that — (Her head was back and her mouth open to draw breath for a crushing climax). "Furthermore, after that," she repeated, "if you think I care what the sneaky gossips of this town like Miss Crome say about my most utterly and extremely nice Adela, why I can tell you I simply don't care what that Miss Crome or any other slithery gossip in this town says, and it isn't true anyway — and if you don't let her come to

UNCLE ARTHUR SYMPATHIZES 97

the fireworks, I mean Adela, which I know you wouldn't really not do, you will most certainly break my heart."

It was not so arresting a group of closing periods as she had planned. It did not satisfy her. But she delivered it in a most dignified manner. Any ambiguity could not be mistaken by Uncle Arthur.

He remained planted before her like a solid oak. But then he began to walk up and down again. He blew his nose violently. The scar on his left cheek burned. He put on an evidently artificial smile, as convincing to Bessie as if he had suddenly attached to his chin a false purple beard. He waved large hands.

"Now, Bess," he said, "you know perfectly well I in tended no insult to your friend. I — she may be all right, perfectly all right. I don't really think, though, that we should invite her to the fireworks. And then do think of Slade too, you know. (This was deep.) He won't want to have strangers about I'm sure, — just a family party. And we'll have such a pleasant time. Don't spoil it. It — " sud denly the explosiveness returned. The mask dropped. The incoherently incensed small-boy face purpled. "It ain't fair, Bess. Who is this woman, anyhow? Great Hippopotami, who is she? I'd like to know. Oh, holy dancing Zebra, it does seem too bad, I must say "

"Uncle Arthur," his niece answered, standing straight and speaking gravely, "I do believe you're jealous."

"Jealous! Great painted Snails! Jealous? Of what? Of that woman? Bess, can't you see that you really ought not to go around there so much? You ought not to,^I should think, (aggrievedly) if only that it worries your poor old uncle. I think absolutely nothing of it!"

Bessie stamped her small foot. "Stop it, Arthur. (It had long been her custom to call him Arthur when she was angry with him.) I won't have you saying 'this woman', 'this woman', 'this woman'. It's too silly. And you seem

to think me " the voice melted all at once into a tone of

the most intense lassitude. "Oh, Arthur, you seem to think

98 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

me such a child. I'm not a child any more, I'm not, I'm not. And you know it! You know perfectly well I can take care of myself. You know perfectly well I'm fond of you too, and still at the same time that I won't be bossed. Father doesn't boss me "

(At this point the enormous relative raised hands, but not in piety, to heaven, and ejaculated a smothered "Char ley!") "I won't be. I won't be. Now you know you'll be polite and ask my dear, my adored, my beloved Adela to the fireworks, and say no more about it!"

"I will if I don't see her I will if I don't see her "

interrupted Uncle Arthur with wide waving of his hands. "Oh, well, have it your own way! But I refuse to be a party to it. I utterly refuse to be a party to it. You may bring her if you like, and I will sit indoors among all the vicious mosquitoes and suffer from my hay fever. What does it matter. Infernal hinges of Erebus, what does it matter! You always have your own way. I tell you it is stark peril. But who am I then. Only your uncle. Why should I be listened to? And I had looked forward so to seeing Slade. Oh, well, I sympathize with Xerxes ! Whips and manacles ! It is all too horrible !"

He waved his hands and heaved his girth in a Gargantaun gesture of abandonment and stumped off toward the house, his grey cap in his hand. Bessie recognised his complete capitulation in the reference to Xerxes. Uncle Arthur al ways fell back upon the famous Persian's passion whenever the last remnants of his inexpressiveness utterly failed. His mortal despair in any given situation was inseparably con nected in his mind with that indignant monarch striving to chasten the Hellespont. But who shall bridle the sea?

The sixteen-year-old child stood staring after him with her head on one side. Her inner being was far more de lighted than depressed. She even did several more minuet steps. She then started after him, in a half-skipping run, had caught his arm before he had reached the steps of the

UNCLE ARTHUR SYMPATHIZES 99

side-porch, and five minutes later they were bending together over a case of stuffed birds in the parlour, with the utmost affection and mutual interest. Mrs. Ventress was not al luded to again that afternoon.

CHAPTER XI: HELEN AND THE CHINA ANIMALS

nOP— pop-pop— BANG !— pop— pop-pop-pop ! JL The heavy breather on the bed flung one brown arm across his chest. His body looked shapeless under the wrinkled sheet, hunched up like a bundle. His open eyes were rested by the white ceiling, but it was smotheringly warm. With an effort of will he turned on his side and picked up his watch from the chair.

6:30.

He sat up, his light hair in great disorder, his blue eyes wild and staring. They calmed as he regarded the green bureau, the lighter apple-green of the wall-paper, his clothes in a heterogeneous huddle upon a chair, his collar and necktie in disorder upon the bureau. The Glorious Fourth!

Pop — pop-pop - Bang ! Bang — pop - pop.

Slade's lean brown hands went round his knees. His chin lay for a moment upon them. He yawned enormously.

Too early for breakfast. Breakfast was at eight. When had he better take his bath? Did Uncle Charles get up early ?

He scrambled from bed and padded to the door, opened it a crack, listened. The bathroom was across the hall. A thin mosquitoish sound came from Dr. Gedney's room be yond it. Otherwise the house was quite quiet. Should he run his bath ?

Too early. Might disturb them. He went back and sat on his bed, scratching his head.

Rafe's voice, the voice of memory, sang clearly in his inner ear.

100

HELEN AND THE CHINA ANIMALS 101

"Keep your head down — Alleymand! Keep your head down — Alleymand ! Late last night, by the jfar-shell light, We sa-aw you — we sa-a-aw you ! You were something — something wire When we 0/>ened up with rapid-fire. If you want to see your father In the .Fa-ther-land, Keep your head down, Alley mand !"

Ground school at Columbus. Singing along the barrack bunks at night, after lights out, promptly cut into by a snarling yelp from the cadet in charge. Texas. Coughing at Kelly Field. Coughing your heart out. The fine black Texas dust. Stealing into the lavatory to choke off your coughing that roused grumblings and pyrotechnic cursing, — and to smoke the fag that sometimes helped.

The War! Good heavens, how infinitely far away that all was!

The patriotism of The Colosseum. Maybe that was the only reason they had taken him on after the War, even though he had never got across, and the Armistice had found him bored to tears at desk work in Washington. About ten Lieutenants for every trivial job. Damn the War! How terribly excited he had been — and to be stuck in the D.M.A. ! Well, he wanted to forget all that forever. Fizzle. Fail ure. Bunk. Such bunk! So much hideous bunk! Good lord!

Stagger, camber, angle of incidence, flying wires, landing wires, joy-stick, elevators, "keep her nose on the hori zon". . .

"Keep your head down, Alleymand. . . !"

Good fun though at Hicks — especially when they

thought their squadron was going to Mineola. The eternal morning drone of the planes. "Con-tact!" The leather- hooded figure in goggles peering over the coaming of the cockpit. The mechanic revving-up, then dangerously but dexterously swinging the prop. The roar of it, and the

102 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

rushing wind. The bus turned toward the field and let go. The cold air in his face. The jouncing rush, tail up, diminishing across the turf, blowing off the ground like a feather, rising, rising ... a droning speck in the clean, clear blue of the Texas sky. . .

Gosh!

What an incredible other life it all seemed ! Raf e thought go too. Rafe and he had long since talked themselves out upon it all. Fed up. Forever. Completely. But some times it sang in the blood again.

Who is this woman Bess wants me to meet? Bess is certainly getting darn pretty. Did I send that man's manu script back with my letter? Must have. No? Sure, I must have. Didn't they ever know what was good, though? Why the devil did Old T. B. turn down that poem of Jean Doncett's?

Have to go around the Village more with Rafe. How he loved it! Oh, well, when you're working in advertising. A relief, maybe. But you ran into so many of the same people in an editorial office. Mustn't get stodgy, though. Wonder when I'd better manoeuvre for another raise?

Wasn't it warm! Whew! Must be hot in New York. Always hot on the Fourth. Was that a tap? "Yes?"

"Slade, you can get your bath now."

"Thanks, Bess. All right."

* * *

Clothed in blue coat and white flannels, and considerably cooler, he sat at breakfast with Bessie and his uncle.

"What are you two doing this morning?" asked the Doctor.

"I'm going to take Slade over to see Adela," Bessie said.

"Oh, Mrs. Ventress. Well oh, all right. Not going

to stay there all morning though, are you?"

"Oh, no, that's just part of it. I'm going to take Slade for a walk — if it isn't too hot."

"Thought Slade wanted to play tennis?'

"The Institute court is so bad this year "

HELEN AND THE CHINA ANIMALS 103

"Oh, no, I really don't care at all about that," interrupted Slade. "Anything Bessie wants to do, Uncle Charles. You aren't coming with us?"

"I think not. I've got some pottering about to do," Dr. Gedney always referred thus to his writing. "You two go. You'll meet the famous Mrs. Ventress, Slade. Bessie's told you about her?"

"Yes. Sounds nice. My, your drawing has improved, Bess," he added, turning to his cousin.

"Do you really think so? It's all her. But you hadn't seen anything for some time, had you?"

"Not for two years. Why, you certainly ought to be able to get work to do in New York."

"Oh, Slade! Really?"

"Sure. I'm positive of it. But what do you think, Uncle Charles? Would you let her go?"

"Well," said Dr. Gedney, "Bessie's young yet— not through school. Better let that rest a little while. But I know she wants it. And I think she could do it. But we'd

better let it " His voice trailed away into silence. It

always made him rather nervous to think of Bessie's leaving

him,

* * *

"There she is," said Bessie, clutching Slade's arm and pointing over the hedge. What he saw was principally a hat and a grey dress. Mrs. Ventress was bending over a small flower-bed of blue lobelia edged with white alyssum. She had chamois gloves on, with holes for the knuckles. She was doing something with a trowel.

"Oo-oo !" called Bessie softly.

Adela straightened and turned. Her wide grey hat and the cool daintiness of her dress set off her pretty colour. Her fair skin had gained a tanned warmth from walks and working in the garden. Her smile was odd and delightful.

"Hello. Who have you there?"

"This is my cousin, Slade," Bessie presented, as Mrs. Ventress came toward them. Slade removed his straw hat

104 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

and shook hands over the hedge. He had a pleasant three- cornered grin.

"Bessie's certainly been singing your praises," he said.

"Has she? Well, we've had some nice times, haven't we, Bessie? Won't you come in? Do you mind sitting on the porch steps? I like it."

Slade sat on the step below the two women.

"Isn't he nice?" asked Bessie, suddenly tousling his hair. "Now Slade will hate me. He hates that."

"Oh, I don't really believe so," said Adela, amused.

Slade dug in the walk with a small stick. "You've cer tainly helped her a lot with her drawing," he said seriously, looking up. "I want her to come to New York and try her luck after she graduates. By the way, you come from there don't you?"

"Yes. I'm here resting. I was doing a little work "

"What kind of work?"

"Oh, a little writing. I got tired of it. As I had a little money, I decided to come here for a while."

"Writing? What kind of thing?"

"Oh, nothing much," said Mrs. Ventress. "Nothing you ever read, I'm sure. Quite unimportant. Just a sort of means of making a living. But I've stopped it. I don't have to any more. I'm — in a way — trying to find myself."

"How do you mean?"

"Oh, thinking of taking up something else and wonder ing what it is to be. Anyway, this is a vacation. So don't let's talk about my 'work'." She smiled.

"I know she writes awfully well," said Bessie with con viction, "and that she's hiding it from us. She won't tell me a thing, Slade. She's the worst woman!"

She looked at Adela adoringly.

"I'm sure she does," said Slade. "You're coming over to Uncle Arthur's this evening, aren't you?" he asked Mrs. Ventress. "For the fireworks?"

"Why, Bessie has been kind enough to invite me. But I haven't met your Uncle — as a matter of fact I haven't

HELEN AND THE CHINA ANIMALS 105

even met your Uncle Charles yet — so I hardly know "

"Oh, yes, you are/' said Bessie. "That's all settled. This afternoon there's a parade too, the firemen's, down Market Street. But I don't suppose you'd care to come with us?"

"Well, I'll tell you, you'd better leave me out of that. You two go along. I'm an old and stodgy person. You'd bet ter, really. I don't care much for fanfare. Didn't they start in early this morning with the fire-crackers though? Of course you heard them?"

"They woke me up," answered Slade. "I sleep very lightly — they always do."

As he looked at Adela he felt that he had never seen a more charming face. How pretty and graceful she was, and how young she looked. What was her story?

"Do you like New York?" he asked.

"I did, I used to. I don't know. I wanted to get away from it. It's a fascinating city, of course — and I've oc casionally hated it as I've hated nothing else in the world."

"Check," said Slade. "So have I. Gets on all one's nerves sometimes. Too many impressions to take in at once. Three ring circus.'

"You're on a magazine there, aren't you? I wonder if you know " But Adela caught herself up.

"Who?"

"Oh, nothing — just someone I used to know who was in the publishing business. But that was long before your time of course. Do you like it?" she added to change the subject.

"Yes. It's good fun. I've learned a lot. I wanted to write myself "

"Slade does write," interpolated Bessie. "Beautiful poetry."

"Oh no" said Slade embarrassedly. "No, Bess. I brought out one book. That was a year ago. But that teaches you something."

"I can see it sometime, can't I ?" asked Adela.

"Why, yes," said Slade, looking up again with the same

106 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

half-embarrassed, half -speculative expression in his eyes. "If you want to. Do you write poetry?"

"Oh, no. But there are certain things I like. I might like yours."

"You wouldn't," said Slade promptly, slightly gloomy. "But I'm going on with it," he added. He laughed rather ruefully. "I can't seem to cure myself."

"That's a good sign, I should think. But you're pretty busy, aren't you, with the office?"

"Fairly. And of course it's congenial work. But after all, it's all in myself if I ever amount to anything. I may come to the point where I see I can't write. I haven't yet. Meanwhile, as I said, I'm learning."

"How do you like it here ?" he asked a moment later.

"Very much. I'm not so sure the people like me "

"Oh, they do I" Bessie sprang to her defence against her own suspicion.

"No, I'm not at all so sure they do. Perhaps I've kept too much to myself. But after all, that's what I came down here for. And I am getting a thorough rest. Oh, I love this old garden. I love the quiet. I think I'll stand the hot weather all right, too. It hasn't proved so very hot yet. Well, you two will want to be running along. What time am I expected at your Uncle's, Bessie?"

"Oh, Slade and I will call for you," said Bessie. "About eight o'clock."

"Good. I'll be ready."

"There'll be some ice-cream!" (Bessie smiled at her own childishness.)

"Better still ! Good-bye," laughed Adela.

"Good-bye," they smiled from the gate.

"Yes, she certainly is most attractive," commented Slade as they walked home. "Awfully nice. She has beautiful eyes, hasn't she?"

He seemed abstracted. Bessie ran into a eulogium of Mrs. Ventress's many singular merits.

The afternoon proved hot and noisy. Standing on grocery

HELEN AND THE CHINA ANIMALS 107

boxes, Slade and Bessie watched for a little while the Fire men's parade. Then it bored them. A small hole was burned in Bessie's dress by a youthful patriot's brown stick of punk. The pervading gunpowdery smell was everywhere in their nostrils, and the dust. Desultory popping and crackling down Market Street continued through their light supper. They stopped for Mrs. Ventress while the day was still light. She awaited them all in white. She looked per fectly attired and dainty and cool. Slade noticed the rose- leaf colour in her face. He did not realise that he was staring.

"Oh, how lovely you look," called the more articulate Bes sie, and ran up the steps to kiss her friend. They linked arms. They proceeded toward Sycamore Street and Uncle Arthur's.

It was dusk by the time they arrived. It was just the family. Dr. Gedney and Uncle Arthur were already taking a turn under the apple trees. Uncle Arthur was a white blur in a panama suit, Dr. Gedney a blur, as to clothes, of dark blue. The faces of both were indistinct in the shadowy orchard. Slade began to light the Chinese lanterns that lay telescoped upon the grass.

After the introduction of a slightly shy Adela, Uncle Arthur turned to a wooden box in which reposed the pin- wheels, flower-pots and Roman candles. Wicker chairs had been set out. Dr. Gedney seated himself in the dim light next to Mrs. Ventress with Bessie on his other side. The Chinese lanterns swayed to a slight breeze and hung like bizarre softly-glowing giant fruit from the glimmering boughs. Slade set off some red fire and came distributing sparklers.

Uncle Arthur attached a pinwheel and delivered himself of several of his odd exclamations as it stuck and spent its golden stream of fire upon the ground. Slade grinned. Presently the company were busy with the Roman candles.

Mrs. Ventress even lighted a nigger-chaser which imper illed her silk stockings. Coloured fire burnt about them,

108 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

smokily and vividly. Outside the illumination made by the fireworks the night upon the orchard was blue-black, sil vered by the faint moon.

Dr. Gedney was a shy man. He had exchanged a few rather stereotyped remarks with Adela, always looking at her sideways, not seeing her very well. Bessie had rattled on at a great rate. Slade had been rather silent, absorbed in their entertainment. So had Uncle Arthur. After the fireworks faded they all seated themselves in the last glim mering of the lanterns. "Slade," said Uncle Arthur, "the ice-cream's on the back steps." "I'll help," said Bessie, jumping up. "And can't I?" asked Adela, rising. For answer Bessie reached for her hand. She nodded apology to the two men, who murmured something. Slade leading, Adela and Bessie picked their way up a shadowy and crunchy gravel path, and, in the light of the unshaded electric bulb in the ceiling of the back porch, found the freezer.

Slade's first attempt to disinter the ice-cream from its ice-pack was clumsy, and before he knew it a pair of firm white arms had taken his task away. His own hands, at the slight brushing touch, suddenly seemed enormous and ungainly. The scent of Adela's hair was upon his senses as she bent her head. She became very small, to be pro tected. He stepped quickly away from her. He stood re garding her as she knelt over the dasher, and began a prac tical skillful disinterment of the metal container of the ice-cream.

"Slade ! Don't let her do that ! She's not strong enough." Bessie was at the top of the porch steps, entering the kitchen for the cakes.

He came forward again, protesting, but Mrs. Ventress waved him aside. She could do it. Give her a chance.

A miller moth fluttered and blundered about the electric bulb above the porch steps. The nape of Adela's neck was white, the dark bronze hair above it strayed in two crinkly curls. Her white forearms tugged at the dasher.

Slade leaned forward and her face turned upward toward

HELEN AND THE CHINA ANIMALS 109

him. Her eyes danced. "Beautiful ice-cream!" she said with mock awe. It came out really perfectly and was dis tributed to the plates Bessie had brought. Slade reached over and purloined a piece of less salty ice from the freezer. It bulged his cheek. He looked up at Bessie, now standing with a plate in each hand. His light hair curled moistly upon his forehead.

"With neatness and dispatch," remarked Slade.

"Yes, but Adela did all the work," said Bessie.

Slade was repentant. "I'm so sorry. You certainly did," he turned to Adela. She evidently wasn't listening.

She was standing on the lower step gazing out into the dark orchard. Her profile caught the light. Her brows seemed sombre.

"What?" she asked, turning toward him with the vague expression of a person interrupted in reverie.

"I say you were so quick I'm afraid I wasn't much help."

"What? Oh no! No indeed. But look, children!"

"What is it?"

"Just the moon!"

It had floated clear of silver-edged cloud, cloud that had long dimmed it. It glowed as bright as a fire-balloon above the massed mysterious shadow of the trees, round and buoy ant. The night sky was a deep plum-blue. Adela had raised one arm, pointing toward it, her face lifted.

It lasted but an instant. Slade drew in his breath. His face looked puzzled. But Bessie's eyes were quick. She was glancing at him keenly. Meanwhile her friend had turned perfectly naturally and picked up a plate. Slade secured two. The next instant they were all on their way over the wet grass, Indian file, rejoining Dr. Gedney and Uncle Arthur.

In deep shadow they sat in a half-circle, eating ice-cream, pistache and vanilla, aware of the bright moon through black raggedly-silhouetted foliage. A silence held them, broken only by the tink of spoon on plate and the scratch of the match to Uncle Arthur's cigar.

110 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

Slade stood on the other side of Scamander under high dark battlements. On the broad height of those battle ments a woman of silver walked in blue moonlight. In his mouth was a taste of blood and tears. In his heart was a murmuring of fire. The dark, blood-stained shadows of the plain were beautiful, beautiful as the strictness of a sword the metallic brilliance of the moon. Most beautiful the poise and sway of the woman who walked between earth and heaven, slowly and proudly.

A young, plantigrade, biped mammal — in trouble as usual.

Mrs. Ventress was laughing at him softly. "You are a thousand miles away. Your uncle asked you something."

Uncle Arthur was leaning forward. "Eh, Slade?"

"I beg your pardon, sir. I didn't hear you."

"I was saying that the pinwheels were managed better this Fourth."

"Not the one I watched you with. How about that one?"

"Oh, well," returned Uncle Arthur. "Aren't there excep tions to every rule?"

Both laughed.

Uncle Arthur resumed his smoking. Slade was sitting next to his Uncle Charles. Adela and Bessie on his other side were talking together in low voices. The ice-cream was finished. The sitters were blurred in shadow.

"Well," said Dr. Gedney's voice, "I think we shall have to go, Arthur. This has certainly been very pleasant. What do you think, Bess?"

"Yes, we ought to," said Bessie, rising, after a murmur to Mrs. Ventress who answered it with an assenting mur mur. She rose also.

"I'm very glad to have met you," Uncle Arthur was all courtesy. "Bessie has told me "

Bessie smiled to herself in the darkness. Slade moved past her toward Mrs. Ventress.

"Have a nice time?" asked his cousin, peering for his face.

"Great! Wasn't it? (Good-night, sir!) Yes, I cer-

HELEN AND THE CHINA ANIMALS 111

tainly did. Good night for a poem, isn't it. Something

He broke off. Dr. Gedney and Mrs. Ventress were ahead of them. He could hear his uncle answering a question in that shy, dry voice of his.

Of course she wasn't Trojan Helen at all. But what a beautiful gesture ! And how darned nice and natural ! What had her life been? Why had she looked so sad?

"Slade!" Bessie was lightly shaking his arm.

"Yeah— I'm sorry— what?"

"Don't push me off the path like that, that's all. Here's the gate."

"I am sorry."

"Thinking up your poem?"

"Uh — oh, no — I was just mooning, I guess. Isn't it a nice night?"

Bessie did not answer immediately. Then she said in- consequently.

"The moonlight's so bright on the road, I think I'll dance."

She was suddenly on ahead of them, running, twirling. If she had not been so graceful you might have called it capering. She skipped.

The Scythe hung low in the Eastern heaven, Regulus its bright star near the earth. The sky coruscated with an incrustation of stars. Up to them, up and up, glittered the Dream, beatific, solitary as their light. . . .

Bessie was waiting for Slade and the other two at Mrs. Ventress's gate. They were all mildly amused at her. There was persiflage. Adela thanked them all and said good night. Bessie waved at her in an airy manner. Adela flirted her hand and smiled. Bessie wove a saraband ahead of the two men on the way home. Her father kept saying absently, "No, do come back here !" Slade seemed absent- minded. At the Gedney gate Bessie fell into step with them. "Ooh, I'm tired. Wasn't it fun though." She was a little breathless. "I am tired. I'm going right up. Good night." She had disappeared when they entered the small hall.

THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

She stood in the dark of her room, slowly undressing and regarding the China Animals. In the dark, she made a face at them. She moved over to the window and stood, her dark hair falling below her shoulders, regarding the now golden moon. She straightened her shoulders with a shrug, cocked her head.

"I don't care," she said, almost inaudibly.

She made another face at the China Animals before she knelt to say her prayer.

CHAPTER XII: THE CHRISTIAN MARTYR OF "THE COLOSSEUM"

SLADE journeyed back to the junction the next morning, where you caught the train for Philadelphia. Bessie had seemed to him a little odd at breakfast. Some new ele ment had entered their natural camaraderie, or did he only fancy it? He didn't quite understand.

When the time had come to go down to the station she accompanied him naturally enough, in the rattly herdic, but she had little to say. She said good-bye with some humour ous remark and urged him to come again soon, waved even, as the weathered old cars got under way and the windows began to pass. But there was something that his subcon scious mind stored away, something puzzling.

Bessie was a clever child. He liked to be with her. She was vivid and refreshing. They had been companions off and on for a number of years, from the time when a young ster of fourteen had sat on the porch of the Gedney house (upon a certain visit his father and he had paid their cousins) drawing misshapen caricatures for the delectation of a black-eyed, black-haired infant of six. The infant of six had beamed upon him with whole-hearted appreciation of his amazing artistry. She was growing up fast, cer tainly. She was one of the few relatives he cared about. She was a nice child.

She certainly could draw, if he knew anything about it. How nice of Mrs. Ventress to help her! What was Mrs. Ventress's story ? Wasn't she reticent about herself ! How kind though, kind and beautiful. "Really one of the love liest looking women I've ever seen in my life!"

A fantastic joke occurred to him that he would like to

113

THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

write her. It referred to the ice-cream. It would amuse her. He could see her smile and the way her eyebrows went up even more. He could hear, faintly, her laughter. He wondered, innocently enough, whether she wrote an

amusing letter. Sure to. ...

* * *

Bessie was singularly quiet when she came to Adela for drawing on Tuesday. Teased gently as to her thoughts, she assumed a far-away smile that held the faintest touch of bitterness. She then favoured her older friend with a long candid glance. She then burst into a typically Bessieish fit of high spirits, and rattled off a lot of nonsense. But she did not answer directly any questions. She turned them off with the mischievousness of an elf. She was moody youth personified. Once she actually seemed to be trying to pick a slight quarrel with Adela over a discussion of illustrators. But she left the house waving a gay farewell.

* * *

Slade found the manuscripts piled up for him on his desk at The Colosseum office. The mousy Associate Editor hardly seemed aware of his absence or return. He was still hunting in the rat's nest of his roll-top for the papers he seemed always just on the point of finding — and never quite did. He was scratching his head in the same way, behind the ear; stalking into the office of the Editor-in-Chief to voice opinions on current politics in the same resonant accents, thence to return to the inextricable mixing of the papers upon his desk.

Slade departed that evening for his room on Charles Street in Greenwich Village, with a brief-case full of manu scripts he intended reading overnight.

* * *

The offices of The Colosseum Publishing Company were in a high building on the North side of Union Square, directly below the offices of a prominent collar company and above those of an Armenian Rug Firm. The gold-lettered firm-names of all three emblazoned the rather dingy stone

CHRISTIAN MARTYR OF "THE COLOSSEUM" 115

structure and called to you from across the Square. The rather cramped and rickety elevator, in which you ascended in charge of a lean and seedy individual, was quite behind the times so far as modern efficiency was concerned. It let you out in a narrow hallway, confronted by a length of plate glass behind which the accounting department fussed with its ledgers and comptometers. On your left a glass-panelled door opened upon an information desk and telephone switch board in close proximity to the Cashier's cage. The further semicircular sweep of the enclosing counter held books dis played under glass. Beyond and behind it were various desks, back of them all the offices of the officers of the Com pany. Passing around the enclosing counter and to the rear, away from the tall south-facing windows on Union Square, you turned to your left again into a dark high-ceilinged hall way. The first spacious and portiered door to your right admitted you to the reception room of The Colosseum- Magazine. It 'was all impressive, the thick carpets under your feet made progress noiseless.

The offices were ancient, an antique legend haunted about their shape, immaterial trumpets seemed softly to bruit an cient fame from the four dusty corners of that high-ceilinged reception-room, so secretly placed in the very heart of this aloof and eminent publishing organization that its one small window, opening upon an air-shaft, was totally insufficient to provide it with illumination. All day through, winter or summer, a large shallow marble-white bowl hung upon four bronze chains above the center of the room, suffused gold- tinged reflected lighting, a subdued radiance inoffensive to the hallowed walls hung with the choicest work of now- eminent illustrators.

On your left, as you entered the doorway, stood a small brown-corduroy-upholstered sofa, catacornered between the door you had entered and the high wide entrance to the fur ther realms of the Art Department. Across the room, directly in front of you, in limine of a further vista of large apartments, stood two desks. The one on the left-hand, in

116 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

full view against the wall, was a wide typewriter desk with a drop-light over it. The one on the opposite side of the vaulted entrance to the editorial rooms was a high roll-top tucked away in the corner by the air-shaft window and backed by a green-curtained book-case. These flanked the awe-inspiring vista of more soft-piled carpet under high ceil ings, with glimpses of two desks in the editorial rooms be yond — and of the tall south windows beside them that again caught sight of the sky above the Square.

The atmosphere of the editorial rooms was a vatic silence, broken only by occasional soft footsteps, whisperings, rust lings of papers, and undertoned by the hum of distant con versation. The penetrator into these mystic precincts was bound to feel the unbidden awe steal over him.

At a flat-topped desk in the room beyond the reception- room, Slade sat all day, reading or editing manuscripts. Across the room sat Miss Peabody in her immaculate neat ness of dress, with her pleasantly sardonic smile. She sat up very straight and read book manuscripts, while Slade read for the magazine. She knew exactly how to manage any man in the office. She had been known to remark that any man was shamefully easy to manage. Few could equal her sedate but withering scorn of the things she didn't like. Also there was always a mischievous look in her eyes.

Slade liked her for these things, and for the fact that his occasional outbursts, when manuscripts were turned down that he had wanted accepted, and vice versa, appeared both to amuse and please her. In a less childish and far more effective way she often herself besieged the Powers that Were. Her feeling for good writing was uncompromising and intuitive. Both she and Slade frequently held con ferences of mutiny against some of the policies and pre dilections of the Editor and Associate Editor.

From nine in the morning till five in the evening, with an hour off for lunch which was frequently stretched to an hour and a half, Slade pored over the literary work of other people and secretly wrote an occasional verse. He was not

CHRISTIAN MARTYR OF "THE COLOSSEUM" 117

especially gregarious at lunch-time. Sometimes he called up Rafe who toiled in an advertising agency on 44th Street, and they met at some half-way point for a meal together. Some times he went out with a group of other men in the office. Sometimes he wandered alone over to Scheffel Hall on East 1 7th Street or up Broadway to Madison Square lunchrooms. At five o'clock he left the office, usually to walk home, though he quite as usually came to work in the morning via

the Sixth Avenue "L."

* * *

Upon this particular hot afternoon he turned south on Broadway past Union Square, traversed I4th Street to Fifth Avenue and proceeded down that thoroughfare toward the Washington Square Arch, where the zone of high buildings sacred to silks, stockings, cloaks and suits became a district of lower buildings mixed with apartment houses and private residences, and marked off by two historic churches.

Young Breckinridge was slightly above the average height, fair of skin, blue-eyed, with close-cropped light brown hair. His clothes were never sufficiently pressed. His neckties displayed too great an affection for raw color. His fingers, that were now occupied with pipe-bowl and brief-case, bore stains of ink and nicotine. He was twenty-four. He had been with the Colosseum for four years. He had, within that time, risen from addressing envelopes and entering manuscripts to first reader of all manuscripts submitted, at a salary amounting to forty dollars a week. His features had a certain healthy and agreeable ugliness, and he needed to shave only every other day. His teeth were white and regular, his grin frank and pleasant. His eyes were always either absent-minded or amused. His temperament was essentially easygoing, with spasms of red rebellion, against everything, spasms that usually manifested themselves only in his poetry.

He and Rafe lived in two rooms upon the top floor of a tall, narrow, high-stooped brick house in the upper part of Charles Street. The smaller room was Slade's. There was

118 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

just space enough in it for a bed, a bureau and a diminutive, rickety-legged table. It had two doors, one at the head of his bed, opening directly on the dingy, dark, narrow hall, one near the window opening upon Rafe's larger room. Rafe's wider bed was made up like a couch in the daytime, with a worn imitation tapestry cover. Both rooms were lit at night by tattered redly-glowing welsbachs. In an alcove at the rear of Rafe's room was a washstand. At the front of the room were two windows, with a large writing table between, under the light. The street in the summer even ings was full of the wild din of all the children of the neigh borhood at play. Later, when the children went to bed, the cats came out and started musical activities. The windows across the street always showed stout women in kimonos or bovine men in shirt-sleeves elbow-hunched upon the sills. The house always smelt slightly of mould and cooking vege tables. On the floor below them lived a Village dramatist who believed he was a Rosicrucian. In another cubby-hole hall bedroom in the rear on their own floor slept a Princeton man of their own ages who declaimed Homer in the original Greek every morning while dressing. His name was Jerry Callender, and he assisted in running the Book Review Sec tion of a large metropolitan newspaper. As he had a wide circle of friends he was always out in the evenings. In the mornings, when all three were up and hanging over the stair- rail to see if the bathroom on the floor below was clear, they mutually indulged in song, dance and badinage. The Rosi crucian had filed several claims that this disturbed his mystic morning slumbers. But they were three against one.

This evening, when -he had entered the dark first-floor hallway, at about a quarter of six, and mounted creakingly and with long-legged strides to the top and third floor, Slade found Rafe sprawled out upon his couch bed, reading "The Lake", by George Moore.

"H'lo," said Rafe.

"H'lo. You're early."

"Yeah. They turned that account over to Lapham after

CHRISTIAN MARTYR OF "THE COLOSSEUM" 119

all. Know what I mean? Made me sore. I got that bank stuff in shape to-day, but there wasn't much else to do. I quit at half-past four. Old Pooley was out and you could have fried eggs on his desk. Maybe that damned mouser Mitchell will chalk it up against me, but I don't care. Old Pooley likes my stuff and I don't soldier usually. . . . A- a-a-a-a-h!" Rafe raised his long corded brown arms and stretched with a grotesque yawn. "Why be a slave all your life. Damn advertising. It's the greatest lot of bunk in the world. But a man must live. Where you going to dinner ?"

"I don't know. I've got some stuff to read to-night."

Slade had divested himself of coat and shirt and stood in a singlet lighting a cigarette in cupped hands. He threw the burnt match in the general direction of the window.

"Here, quit that! Who keeps this room clean? Defilin' house of refuge !"

"House of ill-fame," returned Slade grinning, and knelt upon the chest of the prostrate figure — whereupon the pros trate figure arose and wrestled with him.

But it was too warm. After a few seconds of grinning, gasping gripping of each other, swaying back and forth in unsuccessful attempts at a throw, they desisted. Rafe went back to the wash-basin and began soaking his head with a great splutter. Slade returned to his room, completely re moved all apparel and wrapped himself in a towel-material dressing-gown. A moment later he was running a bath be low.

"Hey!" Rafe shouted down the stair-well, "want to go over to Christine's?"

"Don't care," Slade yelled back. !'Sure!"

Half an hour later they left the house together. * * *

Slade returned to his hall-bedroom at about ten o'clock. He had broken away from a group who were going over to the Blue Horse on Christopher Street. As he climbed the stairs the tag-end of an economic argument between Bur- wash, a Socialist, and Edgren, who upheld something called

120 THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

the sovereignty of the Ultimate Consumer, still rang in his ears.

"You mean to tell me," it was Burwash on the aggressive, "that for a hundred million people in close communication, the social organization originally intended for about one- sixth that number, loosely in touch, is suitable?"

"No, but "

"If institutions don't accord with the facts of nature they result in revolution!"

"Yes, but "

"To-day we have substituted the — the turbine for the pad dle wheel, the telegraph and telephone for the ox-cart, and yet "

"But you don't get me, Bur. What's the purpose of an industrial system anyway? To feed the ultimate consumer. And right to-day the ultimate consumer has a certain sovereignty over conditions as they are, if he knew how to use it. They aren't organised, that's all. The drift is out of productive and into negotiative occupations, and into an accelerated accumulation of interest-bearing securities. The shop-counter ' '

"Oh, I know, now you're going into commercial credit. But I tell you that doesn't touch the root of it."

"And I say it does."

"Property is robbery!"

"Very likely; but don't forget the rest of Prudhomme. 'Possession is liberty' !"

"And we mean to get it "

"But not in the right way. Over the shop-counter "

The argumentative voices died away in Slade's brain. He entered his room and stood lighting the Welsbach while an "L" train groaned raucously on a far curve. It was very hot in the cubicle when the Welsbach was lit. A baby was </