Chapter II: Part 2

Many toasts were uproariously honored, the health of each member of the party in turn, then the country of each: France and England first, out of courtesy to the ladies, Italy next, since this beautiful and extraordinary meeting of distinguished people (as Mellin remarked in a short speech he felt called upon to make) took place in that wonderful land, then the United States. This last toast the gentlemen felt it necessary to honor by standing in their chairs.

[_Song: The Star-Spangled Banner--without words--by Mr. Cooley and chorus._]

When the cigars were brought, the ladies graciously remained, adding tiny spirals of smoke from their cigarettes to the layers of blue haze which soon overhung the table. Through this haze, in the gentle light (which seemed to grow softer and softer) Mellin saw the face of Helene de Vaurigard, luminous as an angel's. She _was_ an angel--and the others were gods. What could be more appropriate in Rome? Lady Mount-Rhyswicke was Juno, but more beautiful. For himself, he felt like a god too, Olympic in serenity.

He longed for mysterious dangers. How debonair he would stroll among them! He wished to explore the unknown; felt the need of a splendid adventure, and had a happy premonition that one was coming nearer and nearer. He favored himself with a hopeful vision of the apartment on fire, Robert Russ Mellin smiling negligently among the flames and Madame de Vaurigard kneeling before him in adoration. Immersed in delight, he puffed his cigar and let his eyes rest dreamily upon the face of Helene. He was quite undisturbed by an argument, more a commotion than a debate, between Mr. Pedlow and young Cooley. It ended by their rising, the latter overturning a chair in his haste.

“I don't know the rudiments, don't I!” cried the boy. “You wait! Ole Sneydie and I'll trim you down! Corni says he'll play, too. Come on, Mellin.”

“I won't go unless Helene goes,” said Mellin. “What are you going to do when you get there?”

“Alas, my frien'!” exclaimed Madame de Vaurigard, rising, “is it not what I tol' you? Always you are never content wizout your play. You come to dinner an' when it is finish' you play, play, play!”

“_Play_?” He sprang to his feet. “Bravo! That's the very thing I've been wanting to do. I knew there was something I wanted to do, but I couldn't think what it was.”

Lady Mount-Rhyswicke followed the others into the salon, but Madame de Vaurigard waited just inside the doorway for Mellin.

“_High_ play!” he cried. “We must play high! I won't play any other way.--I want to play _high_!”

“Ah, wicked one! What did I tell you?”

He caught her hand. “And you must play too, Helene.”

“No, no,” she laughed breathlessly.

“Then you'll watch. Promise you'll watch me. I won't let you go till you promise to watch me.”

“I shall adore it, my frien'!”

“Mellin,” called Cooley from the other room. “You comin' or not?”

“Can't you see me?” answered Mellin hilariously, entering with Madame de Vaurigard, who was rosy with laughter. “Peculiar thing to look at a man and not see him.”

Candles were lit in many sconces on the walls, and the card-table had been pushed to the centre of the room, little towers of blue, white and scarlet counters arranged upon it in orderly rows like miniature castles.

“Now, then,” demanded Cooley, “are the ladies goin' to play?”

“Never!” cried Madame de Vaurigard.

“All right,” said the youth cheerfully; “you can look on. Come and sit by me for a mascot.”

“You'll need a mascot, my boy!” shouted Pedlow. “That's right, though; take her.”

He pushed a chair close to that in which Cooley had already seated himself, and Madame de Vaurigard dropped into it, laughing. “Mellin, you set there,” he continued, pushing the young man into a seat opposite Cooley. “We'll give both you young fellers a mascot.” He turned to Lady Mount-Rhyswicke, who had gone to the settee by the fire. “Madge, you come and set by Mellin,” he commanded jovially. “Maybe he'll forget you ain't a widow again.”

“I don't believe I care much about bein' anybody's mascot to-night,” she answered. There was a hint of anger in her tired monotone.

“What?” He turned from the table and walked over to the fireplace. “I reckon I didn't understand you,” he said quietly, almost gently. “You better come, hadn't you?”

She met his inscrutable little eyes steadily. A faint redness slowly revealed itself on her powdered cheeks; then she followed him back to the table and took the place he had assigned to her at Mellin's elbow.

“I'll bank,” said Pedlow, taking a chair between Cooley and the Italian, “unless somebody wants to take it off my hands. Now, what are we playing?”

“Pokah,” responded Sneyd with mild sarcasm.

“Bravo!” cried Mellin. “That's _my_ game. Ber-_ravo!_”

This was so far true: it was the only game upon which he had ever ventured money; he had played several times when the wagers were allowed to reach a limit of twenty-five cents.

“You know what I mean, I reckon,” said Pedlow. “I mean what we are playin' _fer_?”

“Twenty-five franc limit,” responded Cooley authoritatively. “Double for jacks. Play two hours and settle when we quit.”

Mellin leaned back in his chair. “You call that high?” he asked, with a sniff of contempt. “Why not double it?”

The fat man hammered the table with his fist delightedly. “'He's game,' she says. 'He's the gamest little Indian ever come down the big road!' she says. Was she right? What? Maybe she wasn't! We'll double it before very long, my boy; this'll do to start on. There.” He distributed some of the small towers of ivory counters and made a memorandum in a notebook. “There's four hundred apiece.”

“That all?” inquired Mellin, whereupon Mr. Pedlow uproariously repeated Madame de Vaurigard's alleged tribute.

As the game began, the intelligent-looking maid appeared from the dining-room, bearing bottles of whisky and soda, and these she deposited upon small tables at the convenience of the players, so that at the conclusion of the first encounter in the gentle tournament there was material for a toast to the gallant who had won it.

“Here's to the gamest Indian of us all,” proposed the fat man. “Did you notice him call me with a pair of tens? And me queen-high!”

Mellin drained a deep glass in honor of himself. “On my soul, Chan' Pedlow, I think you're the bes' fellow in the whole world,” he said gratefully. “Only trouble with you--you don't want to play high enough.”

He won again and again, adding other towers of counters to his original allotment, so that he had the semblance of a tiny castle. When the cards had been dealt for the fifth time he felt the light contact of a slipper touching his foot under the table.

That slipper, he decided (from the nature of things) could belong to none other than his Helene, and even as he came to this conclusion the slight pressure against his foot was gently but distinctly increased thrice. He pressed the slipper in return with his shoe, at the same time giving Madame de Vaurigard a look of grateful surprise and tenderness, which threw her into a confusion so evidently genuine that for an unworthy moment he had a jealous suspicion she had meant the little caress for some other.

It was a disagreeable thought, and, in the hope of banishing it, he refilled his glass; but his mood had begun to change. It seemed to him that Helene was watching Cooley a great deal too devotedly. Why had she consented to sit by Cooley, when she had promised to watch Robert Russ Mellin? He observed the pair stealthily.

Cooley consulted her in laughing whispers upon every discard, upon every bet. Now and then, in their whisperings, Cooley's hair touched hers; sometimes she laid her hand on his the more conveniently to look at his cards. Mellin began to be enraged. Did she think that puling milksop had as much as a shadow of the daring, the devilry, the carelessness of consequences which lay within Robert Russ Mellin? “Consequences?” What were they? There were no such things! She would not look at him--well, he would make her! Thenceforward he raised every bet by another to the extent of the limit agreed upon.

Mr. Cooley was thoroughly happy. He did not resemble Ulysses; he would never have had himself bound to the mast; and there were already sounds of unearthly sweetness in his ears. His conferences with his lovely hostess easily consoled him for his losses. In addition, he was triumphing over the boaster, for Mr. Pedlow, with a very ill grace and swearing (not under his breath), was losing too. The Countess, reiterating for the hundredth time that Cooley was a “wicked one,” sweetly constituted herself his cup-bearer; kept his glass full and brought him fresh cigars.

Mellin dealt her furious glances, and filled his own glass, for Lady Mount-Rhyswicke plainly had no conception of herself in the role of a Hebe. The hospitable Pedlow, observing this neglect, was moved to chide her.

“Look at them two cooing doves over there,” he said reproachfully, a jerk of his bulbous thumb indicating Madame de Vaurigard and her young protege. “Madge, can't you do nothin' fer our friend the Indian? Can't you even help him to sody?”

“Oh, perhaps,” she answered with the slightest flash from her tired eyes. Then she nonchalantly lifted Mellin's replenished glass from the table and drained it. This amused Cooley.

“I like that!” he chuckled. “That's one way of helpin' a feller! Helene, can you do any better than that?”

“Ah, this dear, droll Cooley!”

The tantalizing witch lifted the youth's glass to his lips and let him drink, as a mother helps a thirsty child. “_Bebe!_” she laughed endearingly.

As the lovely Helene pronounced that word, Lady Mount-Rhyswicke was leaning forward to replace Mellin's empty glass upon the table.

“I don't care whether you're a widow or not!” he shouted furiously. And he resoundingly kissed her massive shoulder.

There was a wild shout of laughter; even the imperturbable Sneyd (who had continued to win steadily) wiped tears from his eyes, and Madame de Vaurigard gave way to intermittent hysteria throughout the ensuing half-hour.

For a time Mellin sat grimly observing this inexplicable merriment with a cold smile.

“Laugh on!” he commanded with bitter satire, some ten minutes after play had been resumed--and was instantly obeyed.

Whereupon his mood underwent another change, and he became convinced that the world was a warm and kindly place, where it was good to live. He forgot that he was jealous of Cooley and angry with the Countess; he liked everybody again, especially Lady Mount-Rhyswicke. “Won't you sit farther forward?” he begged her earnestly; “so that I can see your beautiful golden hair?”

He heard but dimly the spasmodic uproar that followed. “Laugh on!” he repeated with a swoop of his arm. “I don't care! Don't you care either, Mrs. Mount-Rhyswicke. Please sit where I can see your beautiful golden hair. Don't be afraid I'll kiss you again. I wouldn't do it for the whole world. You're one of the noblest women I ever knew. I feel that's true. I don't know how I know it, but I know it. Let 'em laugh!”

After this everything grew more and more hazy to him. For a time there was, in the centre of the haze, a nimbus of light which revealed his cards to him and the towers of chips which he constantly called for and which as constantly disappeared--like the towers of a castle in Spain. Then the haze thickened, and the one thing clear to him was a phrase from an old-time novel he had read long ago:

“Debt of honor.”

The three words appeared to be written in flames against a background of dense fog. A debt of honor was as promissory note which had to be paid on Monday, and the appeal to the obdurate grandfather--a peer of England, the Earl of Mount-Rhyswicke, in fact--was made at midnight, Sunday. The fog grew still denser, lifted for a moment while he wrote his name many times on slips of blue paper; closed down once more, and again lifted--out-of-doors this time--to show him a lunatic ballet of moons dancing streakily upon the horizon.

He heard himself say quite clearly, “All right, old man, thank you; but don't bother about me,” to a pallid but humorous Cooley in evening clothes; the fog thickened; oblivion closed upon him for a seeming second....

VII. The Next Morning

Suddenly he sat up in bed in his room at the Magnifique, gazing upon a disconsolate Cooley in gray tweeds who sat heaped in a chair at the foot of the bed with his head in his hands.

Mellin's first sensation was of utter mystification; his second was more corporeal: the consciousness of physical misery, of consuming fever, of aches that ran over his whole body, converging to a dreadful climax in his head, of a throat so immoderately partched it seemed to crackle, and a thirst so avid it was a passion. His eye fell upon a carafe of water on a chair at his bedside; he seized upon it with a shaking hand and drank half its contents before he set it down. The action attracted his companion's attention and he looked up, showing a pale and haggard countenance.

“How do you feel?” inquired Cooley with a wan smile.

Mellin's head dropped back upon the pillow and he made one or two painful efforts to speak before he succeeded in finding a ghastly semblance of his voice.

“I thought I was at Madame de Vaurigard's.”

“You were,” said the other, adding grimly: “We both were.”

“But that was only a minute ago.”

“It was six hours ago. It's goin' on ten o'clock in the morning.”

“I don't understand how that can be. How did I get here?”

“I brought you. I was pretty bad, but you--I never saw anything like you! From the time you kissed Lady Mount-Rhyswicke--”

Mellin sat bolt upright in bed, staring wildly. He began to tremble violently.

“Don't you remember that?” asked Cooley.

Suddenly he did. The memory of it came with inexorable clarity, he crossed forearms over his horror-stricken face and fell back upon his pillow.

“Oh,” he gasped. “Un-speakable! Un-speakable!”

“Lord! Don't worry about that! I don't think she minded.”

“It's the thought of Madame de Vaurigard--it kills me! The horror of it--that I should do such a thing in her house! She'll never speak to me again, she oughtn't to; she ought to send her groom to beat me! You can't think what I've lost--”

“Can't I!” Mr. Cooley rose from his chair and began to pace up and down the chamber. “I can guess to within a thousand francs of what _I_'ve lost! I had to get the hotel to cash a check on New York for me this morning. I've a habit of carrying all my money in bills, and a fool trick, too. Well, I'm cured of it!”

“Oh, if it were only a little _money_ and nothing else that I'd lost! The money means nothing.” Mellin choked.

“I suppose you're pretty well fixed. Well, so am I,” Cooley shook his head, “but money certainly means something to me!”

“It wouldn't if you'd thrown away the most precious friendship of your life.”

“See here,” said Cooley, halting at the foot of the bed and looking at his stricken companion from beneath frowning brows, “I guess I can see how it is with you, and I'll tell you frankly it's been the same with me. I never met such a fascinating woman in my life: she throws a reg'ler ole-fashioned _spell_ over you! Now I hate to say it, but I can't help it, because it plain hits me in the face every time I think of it; the truth is--well, sir, I'm afraid you and me have had little red soldier-coats and caps put on us and strings tied to our belts while we turned somersets for the children.”

“I don't understand. I don't know what you're talking about.”

“No? It seems to get more and more simple to me. I've been thinking it all over and over again. I can't _help_ it! See here: I met Sneyd on the steamer, without any introduction. He sort of warmed into the game in the smoking-room, and he won straight along the trip. He called on me in London and took me to meet the Countess at her hotel. We three went to the theatre and lunch and so forth a few times; and when I left for Paris she turned up on the way: that's when you met her. Couple of days later, Sneyd came over, and he and the Countess introduced me to dear ole friend Pedlow. So you see, I don't rightly even know who any of 'em really _are_: just took 'em for granted, as it were. We had lots of fun, I admit that, honkin' about in my car. We only played cards once, and that was in her apartment the last night before I left Paris, but that one time Pedlow won fifteen thousand francs from me. When I told them my plans, how I was goin' to motor down to Rome, she said _she_ would be in Rome--and, I tell you, I was happy as a poodle-pup about it. Sneyd said he might be in Rome along about then, and open-hearted ole Pedlow said not to be surprised if _he_ turned up, too. Well, he did, almost to the minute, and in the meantime she'd got _you_ hooked on, fine and tight.”

“I don't understand you,” Mellin lifted himself painfully on an elbow. “I don't know what you're getting at, but it seems to me that you're speaking disrespectfully of an angel that I've insulted, and I--”

“Now see here, Mellin, I'll tell you something.” The boy's white face showed sudden color and there was a catch in his voice. “I was--I've been mighty near in _love_ with that woman! But I've had a kind of a shock; I've got my common-sense back, and I'm _not_, any more. I don't know exactly how much money I had, but it was between thirty-five and thirty-eight thousand francs, and Sneyd won it all after we took off the limit--over seven thousand dollars--at her table last night. Putting two and two together, honestly it looks bad. It looks _mighty_ bad! Now, I'm pretty well fixed, and yesterday I didn't care whether school kept or not, but seven thousand dollars is real money to anybody! My old man worked pretty hard for his first seven thousand, I guess, and”--he gulped--“he'd think a lot of me for lettin' go of it the way I did last night, _wouldn't_ he? You never _see_ things like this till the next morning! And you remember that other woman sat where she could see every hand _you_ drew, and the Countess--”

“Stop!” Mellin flung one arm up violently, striking the headboard with his knuckles. “I won't hear a syllable against Madame de Vaurigard!” Young Cooley regarded him steadily for a moment. “Have you remembered yet,” he said slowly, “how much _you_ lost last night?”

“I only remember that I behaved like an unspeakable boor in the presence of the divinest creature that ever--”

Cooley disregarded the outburst, and said:

“When we settled, you had a pad of express company checks worth six hundred dollars. You signed all of 'em and turned 'em over to Sneyd with three one-hundred-lire bills, which was all the cash you had with you. Then you gave him your note for twelve thousand francs to be paid within three days. You made a great deal of fuss about its being a 'debt of honor.'” He paused. “You hadn't remembered that, had you?”

Mellin had closed his eyes. He lay quite still and made no answer.

“No, I'll bet you hadn't,” said Cooley, correctly deducing the fact. “You're well off, or you wouldn't be at this hotel, and, for all I know, you may be fixed so you won't mind your loss as much as I do mine; but it ought to make you kind of charitable toward my suspicions of Madame de Vaurigard's friends.”

The six hundred dollars in express company checks and the three hundred-lire bills were all the money the unhappy Mellin had in the world, and until he could return to Cranston and go back to work in the real-estate office again, he had no prospect of any more. He had not even his steamer ticket. In the shock of horror and despair he whispered brokenly:

“I don't care if they 're the worst people in the world, they're better than I am!”

The other's gloom cleared a little at this. “Well, you _have_ got it!” he exclaimed briskly. “You don't know how different you'll feel after a long walk in the open air.” He looked at his watch. “I've got to go and see what that newspaper-man, Cornish, wants; it's ten o'clock. I'll be back after a while; I want to reason this out with you. I don't deny but it's possible I'm wrong; anyway, you think it over while I'm gone. You take a good hard think, will you?”

As he closed the door, Mellin slowly drew the coverlet over his head. It was as if he covered the face of some one who had just died.

VIII. What Cornish Knew

Two hours passed before young Cooley returned. He knocked twice without a reply; then he came in.

The coverlet was still over Mellin's head.

“Asleep?” asked Cooley.

“No.”

The coverlet was removed by a shaking hand.

“Murder!” exclaimed Cooley sympathetically, at sight of the other's face. “A night off certainly does things to you! Better let me get you some--”

“No. I'll be all right--after while.”

“Then I'll go right ahead with our little troubles. I've decided to leave for Paris by the one-thirty and haven't got a whole lot of time. Cornish is here with me in the hall: he's got something to say that's important for you to hear, and I'm goin' to bring him right in.” He waved his hand toward the door, which he had left open. “Come along, Cornish. Poor ole Mellin'll play Du Barry with us and give us a morning leevy while he listens in a bed with a palanquin to it. Now let's draw up chairs and be sociable.”

The journalist came in, smoking a long cigar, and took the chair the youth pushed toward him; but, after a twinkling glance through his big spectacles at the face on the pillow, he rose and threw the cigar out of the window.

“Go ahead,” said Cooley. “I want you to tell him just what you told me, and when you're through I want to see if he doesn't think I'm Sherlock Holmes' little brother.”

“If Mr. Mellin does not feel too ill,” said Cornish dryly; “I know how painful such cases sometimes--”

“No.” Mellin moistened his parched lips and made a pitiful effort to smile. “I'll be all right very soon.”

“I am very sorry,” began the journalist, “that I wasn't able to get a few words with Mr. Cooley yesterday evening. Perhaps you noticed that I tried as hard as I could, without using actual force”--he laughed--“to detain him.”

“You did your best,” agreed Cooley ruefully, “and I did my worst. Nobody ever listens till the next day!”

“Well, I'm glad no vital damage was done, anyway,” said Cornish. “It would have been pretty hard lines if you two young fellows had been poor men, but as it is you're probably none the worse for a lesson like this.”

“You seem to think seven thousand dollars is a joke,” remarked Cooley.

Cornish laughed again. “You see, it flatters me to think my time was so valuable that a ten minutes' talk with me would have saved so much money.”

“I doubt it,” said Cooley. “Ten to one we'd neither of us have believed you--last night!”

“I doubt it, too.” Cornish turned to Mellin. “I hear that you, Mr. Mellin, are still of the opinion that you were dealing with straight people?”

Mellin managed to whisper “Yes.”

“Then,” said Cornish, “I'd better tell you just what I know about it, and you can form your own opinion as to whether I do know or not. I have been in the newspaper business on this side for fifteen years, and my headquarters are in Paris, where these people are very well known. The man who calls himself 'Chandler Pedlow' was a faro-dealer for Tom Stout in Chicago when Stout's place was broken up, a good many years ago. There was a real Chandler Pedlow in Congress from a California district in the early nineties, but he is dead. This man's name is Ben Welch: he's a professional swindler; and the Englishman, Sneyd, is another; a quiet man, not so well known as Welch, and not nearly so clever, but a good 'feeder' for him. The very attractive Frenchwoman who calls herself 'Comtesse de Vaurigard' is generally believed to be Sneyd's wife, though I could not take the stand on that myself. Welch is the brains of the organization: you mightn't think it, but he's a very brilliant man--he might have made a great reputation in business if he'd been straight--and, with this woman's help, he's carried out some really astonishing schemes. His manner is clumsy; _he_ knows that, bless you, but it's the only manner he can manage, and she is so adroit she can sugar-coat even such a pill as that and coax people to swallow it. I don't know anything about the Italian who is working with them down here. But a gang of the Welch-Vaurigard-Sneyd type has tentacles all over the Continent; such people are in touch with sharpers everywhere, you see.”

“Yes,” Cooley interpolated, “and with woolly little lambkins, too.”

“Well,” chuckled Cornish, “that's the way they make their living, you know.”

“Go on and tell him the rest of it,” urged Cooley.

“About Lady Mount-Rhyswicke,” said Cornish, “it seems strange enough, but she has a perfect right to her name. She is a good deal older than she looks, and I've heard she used to be remarkably beautiful. Her third husband was Lord George Mount-Rhyswicke, a man who'd been dropped from his clubs, and he deserted her in 1903, but she has not divorced him. It is said that he is somewhere in South America; however, as to that I do not know.”

Mr. Cornish put the very slightest possible emphasis on the word “know,” and proceeded:

“I've heard that she is sincerely attached to him and sends him money from time to time, when she has it--though that, too, is third-hand information. She has been _declasse_ ever since her first divorce. That was a 'celebrated case,' and she's dropped down pretty far in the world, though I judge she's a good deal the best of this crowd. Exactly what her relations to the others are I don't know, but I imagine that she's pretty thick with 'em.”

“Just a little!” exclaimed Cooley. “She sits behind one of the lambkins and Helene behind the other while they get their woolly wool clipped. I suppose the two of 'em signaled what was in every hand we held, though I'm sure they needn't have gone to the trouble! Fact is, I don't see why they bothered about goin' through the form of playin' cards with us at all. They could have taken it away without that! Whee!” Mr. Cooley whistled loud and long. “And there's loads of wise young men on the ocean now, hurryin' over to take our places in the pens. Well, they can have _mine_! Funny, Mellin: nobody would come up to you or me in the Grand Central in New York and try to sell us greenbacks just as good as real. But we come over to Europe with our pockets full o' money and start in to see the Big City with Jesse James in a false mustache on one arm, and Lucresha Borgy, under an assumed name, on the other!”

“I am afraid I agree with you,” said Cornish; “though I must say that, from all I hear, Madame de Vaurigard might put an atmosphere about a thing which would deceive almost any one who wasn't on his guard. When a Parisienne of her sort is clever at all she's irresistible.”

“I believe you,” Cooley sighed deeply.

“Yesterday evening, Mr. Mellin,” continued the journalist, “when I saw the son of my old friend in company with Welch and Sneyd, of course I tried to warn him. I've often seen them in Paris, though I believe they have no knowledge of me. As I've said, they are notorious, especially Welch, yet they have managed, so far, to avoid any difficulty with the Paris police, and, I'm sorry to say, it might be hard to actually prove anything against them. You couldn't _prove_ that anything was crooked last night, for instance. For that matter, I don't suppose you want to. Mr. Cooley wishes to accept his loss and bear it, and I take it that that will be your attitude, too. In regard to the note you gave Sneyd, I hope you will refuse to pay; I don't think that they would dare press the matter.”

“Neither do I,” Mr. Cooley agreed. “I left a silver cigarette-case at the apartment last night, and after talkin' to Cornish a while ago, I sent my man for it with a note to her that'll make 'em all sit up and take some notice. The gang's all there together, you can be sure. I asked for Sneyd and Pedlow in the office and found they'd gone out early this morning leavin' word they wouldn't be back till midnight. And, see here; I know I'm easy, but somehow I believe you're even a softer piece o' meat than I am. I want you to promise me that whatever happens you won't pay that I O U.”

Mellin moistened his lips in vain. He could not answer.

“I want you to promise me not to pay it,” repeated Cooley earnestly.

“I promise,” gasped Mellin.

“You won't pay it no matter what they do?”

“No.”

This seemed to reassure Mr. Cooley.

“Well,” he said, “I've got to hustle to get my car shipped and make the train. Cornish has finished his job down here and he's goin' with me. I want to get out. The whole thing's left a mighty bad taste in my mouth, and I'd go crazy if I didn't get away from it. Why don't you jump into your clothes and come along, too?”

“I can't.”

“Well,” said the young man with a sympathetic shake of the head, “you certainly look sick. It may be better if you stay in bed till evening: a train's a mighty mean place for the day after. But I wouldn't hang around here too long. If you want money, all you have to do is to ask the hotel to cash a check on your home bank; they're always glad to do that for Americans.” He turned to the door. “Mr. Cornish, if you're goin' to help me about shipping the car, I'm ready.”

“So am I. Good-by, Mr. Mellin.”

“Good-by,” Mellin said feebly--“and thank you.”

Young Cooley came back to the bedside and shook the other's feverish hand. “Good-by, ole man. I'm awful sorry it's all happened, but I'm glad it didn't cost you quite as much money as it did me. Otherwise I expect it's hit us about equally hard. I wish--I wish I could find a _nice one_”--the youth gulped over something not unlike a sob--“as fascinatin' as her!”

Most people have had dreams of approaching dangers in the path of which their bodies remained inert; when, in spite of the frantic wish to fly, it was impossible to move, while all the time the horror crept closer and closer. This was Mellin's state as he saw the young man going. It was absolutely necessary to ask Cooley for help, to beg him for a loan. But he could not.

He saw Cooley's hand on the doorknob; saw the door swing open.

“Good-by, again,” Cooley said; “and good luck to you!”

Mellin's will strove desperately with the shame that held him silent.

The door was closing.

“Oh, Cooley,” called Mellin hoarsely.

“Yes. What?”

“J-j-just good-by,” said Mellin.

And with that young Cooley was gone.

IX. Expiation

A multitudinous clangor of bells and a dozen neighboring chimes rang noon; then the rectangular oblongs of hot sunlight that fell from the windows upon the carpet of Mellin's room began imperceptibly to shift their angles and move eastward. From the stone pavement of the street below came the sound of horses pawing and the voices of waiting cabmen; then bells again, and more bells; clamoring the slow and cruel afternoon into the past. But all was silent in Mellin's room, save when, from time to time, a long, shuddering sigh came from the bed.

The unhappy young man had again drawn the coverlet over his head, but not to sleep: it was more like a forlorn and desperate effort to hide, as if he crept into a hole, seeking darkness to cover the shame and fear that racked his soul. For though his shame had been too great to let him confess to young Cooley and ask for help, his fear was as great as his shame; and it increased as the hours passed. In truth his case was desperate. Except the people who had stripped him, Cooley was the only person in all of Europe with whom he had more than a very casual acquaintance. At home, in Cranston, he had no friends susceptible to such an appeal as it was vitally necessary for him to make. His relatives were not numerous: there were two aunts, the widows of his father's brothers, and a number of old-maid cousins; and he had an uncle in Iowa, a country minister whom he had not seen for years. But he could not cable to any of these for money; nor could he quite conjure his imagination into picturing any of them sending it if he did. And even to cable he would have to pawn his watch, which was an old-fashioned one of silver and might not bring enough to pay the charges.

He began to be haunted by fragmentary, prophetic visions--confused but realistic in detail, and horridly probable--of his ejectment from the hotel, perhaps arrest and trial. He wondered what they did in Italy to people who “beat” hotels; and, remembering what some one had told him of the dreadfulness of Italian jails, convulsive shudderings seized upon him.

The ruddy oblongs of sunlight crawled nearer to the east wall of the room, stretching themselves thinner and thinner, until finally they were not there at all, and the room was left in deepening grayness. Carriages, one after the other, in unintermittent succession, rumbled up to the hotel-entrance beneath the window, bringing goldfish for the Pincio and the fountains of Villa Borghese. Wild strains from the Hungarian orchestra, rhapsodical twankings of violins, and the runaway arpeggios of a zither crazed with speed-mania, skipped along the corridors and lightly through Mellin's door. In his mind's eye he saw the gay crowd in the watery light, the little tables where only five days ago he had sat with the loveliest of all the anemone-like ladies....

The beautifully-dressed tea-drinkers were there now, under the green glass dome, prattling and smiling, those people he had called his own. And as the music sounded louder, faster, wilder and wilder with the gipsy madness--then in that darkening bedchamber his soul became articulate in a cry of humiliation--

“God in His mercy forgive me, how raw I was!”

A vision came before his closed eyes; the maple-bordered street in Cranston, the long, straight, wide street where Mary Kramer lived; a summer twilight; Mary in her white muslin dress on the veranda steps, and a wistaria vine climbing the post beside her, half-embowering her. How cool and sweet and good she looked! How dear--and how _kind_!--she had always been to him.

Dusk stole through the windows: the music ceased and the tea-hour was over. The carriages were departing, bearing the gay people who went away laughing, calling last words to one another, and, naturally, quite unaware that a young man, who, five days before, had adopted them and called them “his own,” was lying in a darkened room above them, and crying like a child upon his pillow.

X. The Cab at the Corner

A ten o'clock, a page bearing a card upon a silver tray knocked upon the door, and stared with wide-eyed astonishment at the disordered gentleman who opened it.

The card was Lady Mount-Rhyswicke's. Underneath the name was written:

If you are there will you give me a few minutes? I am waiting in a cab at the next corner by the fountain.

Mellin's hand shook as he read. He did not doubt that she came as an emissary; probably they meant to hound him for payment of the note he had given Sneyd, and at that thought he could have shrieked with hysterical laughter.

“Do you speak English?” he asked.

“Spik little. Yes.”

“Who gave you this card?”

“Coachman,” said the boy. “He wait risposta.”

“Tell him to say that I shall be there in five minutes.”

“Fi' minute. Yes. Good-by.”

Mellin was partly dressed--he had risen half an hour earlier and had been distractedly pacing the floor when the page knocked--and he completed his toilet quickly. He passed down the corridors, descended by the stairway (feeling that to use the elevator would be another abuse of the confidence of the hotel company) and slunk across the lobby with the look and the sensations of a tramp who knows that he will be kicked into the street if anybody catches sight of him.

A closed cab stood near the fountain at the next corner. There was a trunk on the box by the driver, and the roof was piled with bags and rugs. He approached uncertainly.

“Is--is this--is it Lady Mount-Rhyswicke?” he stammered pitifully.

She opened the door.

“Yes. Will you get in? We'll just drive round the block if you don't mind. I'll bring you back here in ten minutes.” And when he had tremulously complied, “_Avanti, cocchiere_,” she called to the driver, and the tired little cab-horse began to draw them slowly along the deserted street.

Lady Mount-Rhyswicke maintained silence for a time, while her companion waited, his heart pounding with dreadful apprehensions. Finally she gave a short, hard laugh and said:

“I saw your face by the corner light. Been havin' a hard day of it?”

The fear of breaking down kept him from answering. He gulped painfully once or twice, and turned his face away from her. Light enough from a streetlamp shone in for her to see.

“I was rather afraid you'd refuse,” she said seriously. “Really, I wonder you were willin' to come!”

“I was--I was afraid not to.” He choked out the confession with the recklessness of final despair.

“So?” she said, with another short laugh. Then she resumed her even, tired monotone: “Your little friend Cooley's note this morning gave us all a rather fair notion as to what you must be thinkin' of us. He seems to have found a sort of walkin' 'Who's-Who-on-the-Continent' since last night. Pity for some people he didn't find it before! I don't think I'm sympathetic with your little Cooley. I 'guess,' as you Yankees say, 'he can stand it.' But”--her voice suddenly became louder--“I'm not in the business of robbin' babies and orphans, no, my dear friends, nor of helpin' anybody else to rob them either!--Here you are!”

She thrust into his hand a small packet, securely wrapped in paper and fastened with rubber bands. “There's your block of express checks for six hundred dollars and your I O U to Sneyd with it. Take better care of it next time.”

He had been tremulous enough, but at that his whole body began to shake violently.

“_What_!” he quavered.

“I say, take better care of it next time,” she said, dropping again into her monotone. “I didn't have such an easy time gettin' it back from them as you might think. I've got rather a sore wrist, in fact.”

She paused at an inarticulate sound from him.

“Oh, that's soon mended,” she laughed drearily. “The truth is, it's been a good thing for me--your turning up. They're gettin' in too deep water for me, Helene and her friends, and I've broken with the lot, or they've broken with me, whichever it is. We couldn't hang together after the fightin' we've done to-day. I had to do a lot of threatenin' and things. Welch was ugly, so I had to be ugly too. Never mind”--she checked an uncertain effort of his to speak--“I saw what you were like, soon as we sat down at the table last night--how new you were and all that. It needed only a glance to see that Helene had made a mistake about you. She'd got a notion you were a millionaire like the little Cooley, but I knew better from your talk. She's clever, but she's French, and she can't get it out of her head that you could be an American and not a millionaire. Of course, they _all_ knew better when you brought out your express checks and talked like somebody in one of the old-time story-books about 'debts of honor.' Even Helene understood then that the express checks were all you had.” She laughed. “I didn't have any trouble gettin' the _note_ back!”

She paused again for a moment, then resumed: “There isn't much use our goin' over it all, but I want you to know one thing. Your little friend Cooley made it rather clear that he accused Helene and me of signalin'. Well, I didn't. Perhaps that's the reason you didn't lose as much as he did; I can't say. And one thing more: all this isn't goin' to do you any harm. I'm not very keen about philosophy and religion and that, but I believe if you're let in for a lot of trouble, and it only _half_ kills you, you can get some good of it.”

“Do you think,” he stammered--“do you think I'm worth saving?”

She smiled faintly and said:

“You've probably got a sweetheart in the States somewhere--a nice girl, a pretty young thing who goes to church and thinks you're a great man, perhaps? Is it so?”

“I am not worthy,” he began, choked suddenly, then finished--“to breathe the same air!”

“That's quite right,” Lady Mount-Rhyswicke assured him. “Think what you'd think of her if she'd got herself into the same sort of scrape by doin' the things you've been doin'! And remember _that_ if you ever feel impatient with her, or have any temptations to superiority in times to come. And yet”--for the moment she spoke earnestly--“you go back to your little girl, but don't you tell her a word of this. You couldn't even tell her that meetin' you has helped me, because she wouldn't understand.”

“Nor do I. I can't.”

“Oh, it's simple. I saw that if I was gettin' down to where I was robbin' babies and orphans....” The cab halted. “Here's your corner. I told him only to go round the block and come back. Good-by. I'm off for Amalfi. It's a good place to rest.”

He got out dazedly, and the driver cracked his whip over the little horse; but Mellin lifted a detaining hand.

“_A spet_,” called Lady Mount-Rhyswicke to the driver. “What is it, Mr. Mellin?”

“I can't--I can't look you in the face,” he stammered, his attitude perfectly corroborative of his words. “I would--oh, I would kneel in the dust here before you--”

“Some of the poetry you told me you write?”

“I've never written any poetry,” he said, not looking up. “Perhaps I can--now. What I want to say is--I'm so ashamed of it--I don't know how to get the words out, but I must. I may never see you again, and I must. I 'm sorry--please try to forgive me--I wasn't myself when I did it--”

“Blurt it out; that's the best way.”

“I'm sorry,” he floundered--“I'm sorry I kissed you.”

She laughed her tired laugh and said in her tired voice the last words he was ever destined to hear from her:

“Oh, I don't mind, if you don't. It was so innocent, it was what decided me.”

One of the hundreds of good saints that belong to Rome must have overheard her and pitied the young man, for it is ascribable only to some such special act of mercy that Mellin understood (and he did) exactly what she meant.