Chapter IV: Part 4

She told me not long after this, "When I saw Gladys loved you, of course I loved you too." And I hereby soberly record the statement that to have a woman fall thoroughly in love with him is the most uncomfortable experience which can ever befall any man.

I am tolerably sure I never made any amorous declaration. Rather, it simply bewildered me to observe the shameless and irrational infatuation this woman presently bore for me, and before it I was powerless. When I told her frankly I did not love her, had never loved her, had no intention of ever loving her, she merely bleated, "You are cruel!" and wept. When I attempted to restrain her paroxysms of anguish, she took it as a retraction of what I had told her.

I would then have given anything in the world to be rid of Gillian Hardress. This led to scenes, and many scenes, and played the very devil with the progress of my second novel. You cannot write when anyone insists on sitting in the same room with you, on the irrelevant plea that she is being perfectly quiet, and therefore is not disturbing you. Besides, she had no business in my room, and was apt to get caught there.

3

I remember one of these contentions. She is abominably rouged, and before me she is grovelling, as she must have seen some actress do upon the stage.

"Oh, I lied to you," she wailed; "but you are so cruel! Ah, don't be cruel, Jack!"

Then I lifted the scented woman to her feet, and she stayed motionless, regarding me. She had really wonderful eyes.

"You are evil," I said, "through and through you are evil, I think, and I can't help thinking you are a little crazy. But I wish you would teach me to be as you are, for tonight the hands of my dead father strain from his grave and clutch about my ankles. He has the right because it is his flesh I occupy. And I must occupy the body of a Townsend always. It is not quite the residence I would have chosen-- Eh, well, for all that, I am I! And at bottom I loathe you!"

"You love me!" she breathed.

I thrust her aside and paced the floor. "This is an affair of moment. I may not condescend to sell, as Faustus did, but of my own volition must I will to squander or preserve that which is really Robert Townsend."

I wheeled upon Gillian Hardress, and spoke henceforward with deliberation. You must remember I was very young as yet.

"I have often regretted that the colour element of vice is so oddly lacking in our life of to-day. We appear, one and all, to have been born at an advanced age and with ladylike manners, and we reach our years of indiscretion very slowly; and meanwhile we learn, too late, that prolonged adherence to morality trivialises the mind as hopelessly as a prolonged vice trivialises the countenance. I fear this has been said by someone else, my too impetuous Jill, and I hope not, for in that event I might possibly be speaking sensibly, and to be sensible is a terrible thing and almost as bad as being intelligible."

"You are not being very intelligible now, sweetheart. But I love to hear you talk."

"Meanwhile, I am young, and in youth--_il faut des emotions_, as Blanche Amory is reported to have said, by a novelist named Thackeray, whose productions are now read in public libraries. Still, for a respectable and brougham-supporting person, Thackeray came then as near to speaking the truth as is possible for people of that class. In youth emotions are necessary. Find me, therefore, a new emotion!"

"So many of them, dear!" she promised.

"I do not love you, understand,--and your husband is my friend, and I admire him. But I am I! I have endowments, certain faculties which many men are flattering enough to envy--and I will to make of them a carpet for your quite unworthy feet. I will to degrade all that in me is most estimable, and in return I demand a new emotion."

4

Well, but women are queer. There is positively no way of affronting them, sometimes. She had not even the grace to note that I had taken a little too much to drink that night.... But over all this part of my life I prefer to pass as quickly as may be expedient.

5

I remembered, anyway, after Gillian had gone from my room, to write Bettie Hamlyn a post-card. It was no longer, strictly speaking, the twenty-third, but considerably after midnight, of course. Still, it was the writing regularly when I loathed writing letters that counted with Bettie, I reflected; and virtually I was writing on the twenty-third, and besides, Bettie would never know.

6

And thereafter Gillian Hardress made almost no concealment of her feeling toward me, or employed at best the flimsiest of disguises. All that winter she wrote to me daily, and, when the same roof sheltered us, would slip the scribblings into my hand at odd moments, but preferably before her husband's eyes. She demanded an account of every minute I spent apart from her, and never believed a syllable of my explanations; and in a sentence, she pestered me to the verge of distraction.

And always the circumstance which chiefly puzzled me was the host of men that were infatuated by Gillian Hardress. There was no doubt about it; she made fools of the staidest, if for no better end than that the spectacle might amuse me.

"Now you watch me, Jack!" she would say. And I obediently would watch her wriggling beguilements, and the man's smirking idiocy, with bewilderment.

For in me her allurements aroused, now, absolutely no sensation save that of boredom. Often I used to wonder for what reason it seemed impossible for me, alone, to adore this woman insanely. It would have been so much more pleasant, all around.

But, I repeat, I wish to have done with this portion of my life as quickly as may be expedient. I am not particularly proud of it. I would elide it altogether, were it possible, but as you will presently see, that is not possible if I am to make myself intelligible. And I find that the more I write of myself the more I am affected by the same poor itch for self-exposure which has made Pepys and Casanova and Rousseau famous, and later feminine diarists notorious.

Were I writing fiction, now, I would make the entire affair more plausible. As it stands, I am free to concede that this chapter in my life history rings false throughout, just as any candid record of an actual occurrence does invariably. It is not at all probable that a woman so much older than I should have taken possession of me in this fashion, almost against my will. It is even less probable that her husband, who was by ordinary absurdly jealous of her, should have suspected nothing and have been sincerely fond of me.

But then I was only twenty-two, as age went physically, and he looked upon me as an infant. I was, I think, quite conscientiously childish with Jasper Hardress. I prattled with him, and he liked it. And so often, especially when we three were together--say, at luncheon,--I was teased by an insane impulse to tell him everything, just casually, and see what he would do.

I think it was the same feeling which so often prompted her to tell him, in her flighty way, of how profoundly she adored me. I would wriggle and blush; and Jasper Hardress would laugh and protest that he adored me too. Or she would expatiate upon this or that personal feature of mine, or the becomingness of a new cravat, say; and would demand of her husband if Jack--for so she always called me,--wasn't the most beautiful boy in the world? And he would laugh and answer that he thought it very likely.

7

They were Americans, I should have said earlier, but to all intents they lived abroad, and had done so for years. Hardress's father had been thoughtful enough to leave him a sufficient fortune to countenance the indulgence of this or any other whim, so that the Hardresses divided the year pretty equally between their real home at Negley and a tiny chateau which they owned near Aix-les-Bains. I visited them at both places.

It was a pleasant fiction that I came to see Gladys. Regularly, I was told off to play with her, as being the only other child in the house. It was rather hideous, for the little girl adored me, and I was beginning to entertain an odd aversion toward her, as being in a way responsible for everything. Had Gillian Hardress never found me cuddling the child, whose sex was visibly a daily aggrievement to Jasper Hardress, however conscientiously he strove to conceal the fact,--so that in consequence "I have to love my precious lamb for two, Jack,"--Gillian would never, I think, have distinguished me from the many other men who, so lightly, tendered a host of gallant speeches.... But I never fathomed Gillian Hardress, beyond learning very early in our acquaintance that she rarely told me the truth about anything.

Also I should have said that Hardress cordially detested Charteris, just as Bettie Hamlyn did, because for some reason he suspected the little novelist of being in love with Hardress's wife. I do not know; but I imagine Charteris had made advances to her, in his own ambiguous fashion, as he was apt to do, barring strenuous discouragement, to every passably handsome woman he was left alone with. I do know he made love to her a little later.

Hardress distrusted a number of other men, for precisely the same reason. Heaven only is familiar with what grounds he had. I merely know that Gillian Hardress loathed John Charteris; she was jealous of his influence over me. But me her husband never distrusted. I was only an amusing and ingenuous child of twenty-two, and not for a moment did it occur to him that I might be in love with his wife.

Indeed, I believe upon reflection that he was in the right. I think I never was.

8

"Yes," I said, "I am to meet the Charterises in Genoa. Yes, it is rather sudden. I am off to-morrow. I shall not see you dear good people for some time, I fancy...."

When Hardress had gone the woman said in a stifled voice: "No, I will not dance. Take me somewhere--there is a winter-garden, I know--"

"No, Jill," said I, with decision. "It's no use. I am really going. We will not argue it."

Gillian Hardress watched the dancers for a moment, as with languid interest. "You fear that I am going to make a scene. Well! I can't. You have selected your torture chamber too carefully. Oh, after all that's been between us, to tell me here, to my husband's face, in the presence of some three hundred people, without a moment's warning, that you are 'off to-morrow!' It--it is for good, isn't it?"

"Yes," I said. "It had to be--some time, you know."

"No, don't look at me. Watch the dancing, I will fan myself and seem bored. No, I shall not do anything rash."

I was uncomfortable. Yet at bottom it was the theatric value of this scene which impressed me,--the gaiety and the brilliance on every side of her misery. And I did not look at her. I did just as she ordered me.

"I was proud once. I haven't any pride now. You say you must leave me. Oh, dearest boy, if you only knew how unhappy I will be without you, you could not leave me. Sweetheart, you must know how I love you. I long every minute to be with you, and to see you even at a distance is a pleasure. I know it is not right for me to ask or expect you to love me always, but it seems so hard."

"It's no use, Jill--"

"Is it another woman? I won't mind. I won't be jealous. I won't make scenes, for I know you hate scenes, and I have made so many. It was because I cared so much. I never cared before, Jack. You have tired of me, I know. I have seen it coming. Well, you shall have your way in everything. But don't leave me, dear! oh, my dear, my dear, don't leave me! Oh, I have given you everything, and I ask so little in return--just to see you sometimes, just to touch your hand sometimes, as the merest stranger might do...."

So her voice went on and on while I did not look at her. There was no passion in this voice of any kind. It was just the long monotonous wail of some hurt animal.... They were playing the _Valse Bleu_, I remember. It lasted a great many centuries, and always that low voice was pleading with me. Yes, it was uncommonly unpleasant; but always at the back of my mind some being that was not I was taking notes as to precisely how I felt, because some day they might be useful, for the book I had already outlined. "It is no use, Jill," I kept repeating, doggedly.

Then Armitage came smirking for his dance. Gillian Hardress rose, and her fan shut like a pistol-shot. She was all in black, and throughout that moment she was more beautiful than any other woman I have ever seen.

"Yes, this is our dance," she said, brightly. "I thought you had forgotten me, Mr. Armitage. Well! good-bye, Mr. Townsend. Our little talk has been very interesting--hasn't it? Oh, this dress _always_ gets in my way--"

She was gone. I felt that I had managed affairs rather crudely, but it was the least unpleasant way out, and I simply had not dared to trust myself alone with her. So I made the best of an ill bargain, and remodeled the episode more artistically when I used it later, in _Afield_.

11.

_He Postures Among Chimney-Pots_

I met the Charterises in Genoa, just as I had planned. Anne's first exclamation was, "Heavens, child, how dissipated you look! I would scarcely have known you."

Charteris said nothing. But he and I lunched at the Isotta the following day, and at the conclusion of the meal the little man leaned back and lighted a cigarette.

"You must overlook my wife's unfortunate tendency toward the most unamiable of virtues. But, after all, you are clamantly not quite the boy I left at Liverpool last October. Where are your Hardresses now?"

"In London for the season. And why is your wife rushing on to Paris, John?"

"Shopping, as usual. Yes, I believe I did suggest it was as well to have it over and done with. Anne is very partial to truisms. Besides, she has an aunt there, you know. Take my advice, and always marry a woman who is abundantly furnished with attractive and visitable relations, for this precaution is the true secret of every happy marriage. We may, then, regard the Hardress incident as closed?"

"Oh, Lord, yes!" said I, emphatically.

"Well, after all, you have been sponging off them for a full year. The adjective is not ill-chosen, from what I hear. I fancy Mrs. Hardress has found you better company after she had mixed a few drinks for you, and so--But a truce to moral reflections! for I am desirous once more to hear the chimes at midnight. I hear Francine is in Milan?"

"There is at any rate in Milan," said I, "a magnificent Gothic Cathedral of international reputation; and upon the upper gallery of its tower, as my guidebook informs me, there is a watchman with an efficient telescope. Should I fail to meet that watchman, John, I would feel that I had lived futilely. For I want both to view with him the Lombard plain, and to ask him his opinion of Cino da Pistoia, and as to what was in reality the middle name of Cain's wife."

2

Francine proved cordial; but John Charteris was ever fickle, and not long afterward an Italian countess, classic in feature, but in coloring smacking of an artistic renaissance, had drawn us both to Switzerland, and thence to Liege. It was great fun, knocking about the Continent with John, for he knew exactly how to order a dinner, and spoke I don't know how many languages, and seemed familiar with every side-street and back-alley in Europe. For myself, my French as acquired in Fairhaven appeared to be understood by everybody, but in replying very few of the natives could speak their own foolish language comprehensibly. I could rarely make head or tail out of what they were jabbering about.

I was alone that evening, because Annette's husband had turned up unexpectedly; and Charteris had gone again to hear Nadine Neroni, the new prima donna, concerning whom he and his enameled Italian friend raved tediously. But I never greatly cared for music; besides, the opera that night was _Faust_; the last act of which in particular, when three persons align before the footlights and scream at the top of their voices, for a good half hour, about how important it is not to disturb anybody, I have never been able to regard quite seriously.

So I was spending this evening sedately in my own apartments at the Continental; and meanwhile I lisped in numbers that (or I flattered myself) had a Homeric tang; and at times chewed the end of my pencil meditatively. "From present indications," I was considering, "that Russian woman is cooking something on her chafing-dish again. It usually affects them that way about dawn."

I began on the next verse viciously, and came a cropper over the clash of two sibilants, as the distant clamour increased. "Brutes!" said I, disapprovingly. "Sere, clear, dear--Now they have finished, '_Jamais, monsieur_', and begun crying, 'Fire!' Oh, this would draw more than three souls out of a weaver, you know! Mere, near, hemisphere--no, but the Greeks thought it was flat. By Jove! I do smell smoke!"

Wrapping my dressing-gown about me--I had afterward reason to thank the kindly fates that it was the green one with the white fleurs-de-lis, and not my customary, unspeakably disreputable bath-robe, scorched by the cigarette ashes of years,--I approached the door and peeped out into the empty hotel corridor. The incandescent lights glimmered mildly through a gray haze which was acrid and choking to breathe; little puffs of smoke crept lazily out of the lift-shaft just opposite; and down-stairs all Liege was shouting incoherently, and dragging about the heavier pieces of hotel furniture.

"By Jove!" said I, and whistled a little disconsolately as I looked downward through the bars about the lift-shaft.

"Do you reckon," spoke a voice--a most agreeable voice,--"we are in any danger?"

The owner of the voice was tall; not even the agitation of the moment prevented my observing that, big as I am, her eyes were almost on a level with my shoulder. They were not unpleasant eyes, and a stray dream or two yet lingered under their heavy lids. The owner of the voice wore a strange garment that was fluffy and pink,--pale pink like the lining of a sea-shell--and billows of white and the ends of various blue ribbons peeped out about her neck. I made mental note of the fact that disordered hair is not necessarily unbecoming; it sometimes has the effect of an unusually heavy halo set about the face of a half-awakened angel.

"It would appear," said I, meditatively, "that, in consideration of our being on the fifth floor, with the lift-shaft drawing splendidly, and the stairs winding about it,--except the two lower flights, which have just fallen in,--and in consideration of the fire department's probable incompetence to extinguish anything more formidable than a tar-barrel, --yes, it would appear, I think, that we might go further than 'dangerous' and find a less appropriate adjective to describe the situation."

"You mean we cannot get down?" The beautiful voice was tremulous.

And my silence made reply.

"Well, then," she suggested, cheerfully, after due reflection, "since we can't go down, why not go up?"

As a matter of fact, nothing could be more simple. We were on the top floor of the hotel, and beside us, in the niche corresponding to the stairs below, was an iron ladder that led to a neatly-whitewashed trapdoor in the roof. Adopting her suggestion, I pushed against this trap-door and found that it yielded readily; then, standing at the top of the ladder, I looked about me on a dim expanse of tiles and chimneys; yet farther off were the huddled roofs and gables of Liege, and just a stray glimpse of the Meuse; and above me brooded a clear sky and the naked glory of the moon.

3

I lowered my head with a distinct sigh of relief.

"I say," I called, "it is infinitely nicer up here--superb view of the city, and within a minute's drop of the square! Better come up."

"Go first," said she; and subsequently I held for a moment a very slender hand--a ridiculously small hand for a woman whose eyes were almost on a level with my shoulder,--and we two stood together on the roof of the Hotel Continental. We enjoyed, as I had predicted, an unobstructed view of Liege and of the square, wherein two toy-like engines puffed viciously and threw impotent threads of water against the burning hotel beneath us, and, at times, on the heads of an excited throng erratically clad.

But I looked down moodily, "That," said I, as a series of small explosions popped like pistol shots, "is the cafe; and, oh, Lord! there goes the only decent Scotch in all Liege!"

"There is Mamma!" she cried, excitedly; "there!" She pointed to a stout woman, who, with a purple? shawl wrapped about her head, was wringing her hands as heartily as a bird-cage, held in one of them, would permit. "And she has saved Bill Bryan!"

"In that case," said I, "I suppose it is clearly my duty to rescue the remaining member of the family. You see," I continued, in bending over the trap-door and tugging at the ladder, "this thing is only about twenty feet long; but the kitchen wing of the hotel is a little less than that distance from the rear of the house behind it; and with this as a bridge I think we might make it. In any event, the roof will be done for in a half-hour, and it is eminently worth trying." I drew the ladder upward.

Then I dragged this ladder down the gentle slant of the roof, through a maze of ghostly chimneys and dim skylights, to the kitchen wing, which was a few feet lower than the main body of the building. I skirted the chimney and stepped lightly over the eaves, calling, "Now then!" when a muffled cry, followed by a crash in the courtyard beneath, shook my heart into my mouth. I turned, gasping; and found the girl lying safe, but terrified, on the verge of the roof.

"It was a bucket," she laughed, "and I stumbled over it,--and it fell--and--and I nearly did,--and I am frightened!"

And somehow I was holding her hand in mine, and my mouth was making irrelevant noises, and I was trembling. "It was close, but--look here, you must pull yourself together!" I pleaded; "because we haven't, as it were, the time for airy badinage and repartee--just now."

"I can't," she cried, hysterically. "Oh, I am so frightened! I can't!"

"You see," I said, with careful patience, "we must go on. I hate to seem too urgent, but we _must_, do you understand?" I waved my hand toward the east. "Why, look!" said I, as a thin tongue of flame leaped through the open trap-door and flickered wickedly for a moment against the paling gray of the sky.

She saw and shuddered. "I'll come," she murmured, listlessly, and rose to her feet.

4

I heaved another sigh of relief, and waving her aside from the ladder, dragged it after me to the eaves of the rear wing. As I had foreseen, this ladder reached easily to the eaves of the house behind the rear wing, and formed a passable though unsubstantial-looking bridge. I regarded it disapprovingly.

"It will only bear one," said I; "and we will have to crawl over separately after all. Are you up to it?"

"Please go first," said she, very quiet. And, after gazing into her face for a moment, I crept over gingerly, not caring to look down into the abyss beneath.

Then I spent a century in impotence, watching a fluffy, pink figure that swayed over a bottomless space and moved forward a hair's breadth each year. I made no sound during this interval. In fact, I do not remember drawing a really satisfactory breath from the time I left the hotel-roof, until I lifted a soft, faint-scented, panting bundle to the roof of the Councillor von Hollwig.

5

"You are," I cried, with conviction, "the bravest, the most--er--the bravest woman I ever knew!" I heaved a little sigh, but this time of content. "For I wonder," said I, in my soul, "if you have any idea what a beauty you are! what a wonderful, unspeakable beauty you are! Oh, you are everything that men ever imagined in dreams that left them weeping for sheer happiness--and more! You are--you, and I have held you in my arms for a moment; and, before high heaven, to repurchase that privilege I would consent to the burning of three or four more hotels and an odd city or so to boot!" But, aloud, I only said, "We are quite safe now, you know."

She laughed, bewilderingly. "I suppose," said she, "the next thing is to find a trap-door."

But there were, so far as we could discover, no trapdoors in the roof of the Councillor von Hollwig, or in the neighbouring roofs; and, after searching three of them carefully, I suggested the propriety of waiting till dawn to be melodramatically rescued.

"You see," I pointed out, "everybody is at the fire over yonder. But we are quite safe here, I would say, with an entire block of houses to promenade on; moreover, we have cheerful company, eligible central location in the very heart of the city, and the superb spectacle of a big fire at exactly the proper distance. Therefore," I continued, and with severity, "you will please have the kindness to explain your motives for wandering about the corridors of a burning hotel at four o'clock in the morning."

She sat down against a chimney and wrapped her gown about her. "I sleep very soundly," said she, "and we did both museums and six churches and the Palais de Justice and a deaf and dumb place and the cannon-foundry today,--and the cries awakened me,--and I reckon Mamma lost her head."

"And left you," thought I, "left you--to save a canary-bird! Good Lord! And so, you are an American and a Southerner as well."

"And you?" she asked.

"Ah--oh, yes, me!" I awoke sharply from admiration of her trailing lashes. The burning hotel was developing a splendid light wherein to see them. "I was writing--and I thought that Russian woman had a few friends to supper,--and I was looking for a rhyme when I found you," I concluded, with a fine coherence.

She looked up. It was incredible, but those heavy lashes disentangled quite easily. I was seized with a desire to see them again perform this interesting feat. "Verses?" said she, considering my slippers in a new light.

"Yes," I admitted, guiltily--"of Helen."

She echoed the name. It is an unusually beautiful name when properly spoken. "Why, that is my name, only we call it Elena."

"Late of Troy Town," said I, in explanation.

"Oh!" The lashes fell into their former state. It was hopeless this time; and manual aid would be required, inevitably. "I should think," said my compatriot, "that live women would be more--inspiring"

"Surely," I assented. I drew my gown about me and sat down. "But, you see, she is alive--to me." And I dwelt a trifle upon the last word.

"One would gather," said she, meditatively, "that you have an unrequited attachment for Helen of Troy."

I sighed a melancholy assent. The great eyes opened to their utmost. The effect was as disconcerting as that of a ship firing a broadside at you, but pleasanter. "Tell me all about it," said she, coaxingly.

"I have always loved her," I said, with gravity. "Long ago, when I was a little chap, I had a book--_Stories of the Trojan War_, or something of the sort. And there I first read of Helen--and remembered. There were pictures--outline pictures,--of quite abnormally straight-nosed warriors, with flat draperies which amply demonstrated that the laws of gravity were not yet discovered; and the pictures of slender goddesses, who had done their hair up carefully and gone no further in their dressing. Oh, the book was full of pictures,--and Helen's was the most manifestly impossible of them all. But I knew--I knew, even then, of her beauty, of that flawless beauty which made men's hearts as water and drew the bearded kings to Ilium to die for the woman at sight of whom they had put away all memories of distant homes and wives; that flawless beauty which buoyed the Trojans through the ten years of fighting and starvation, just with delight in gazing upon Queen Helen day by day, and with the joy of seeing her going about their streets. For I remembered!" And as I ended, I sighed effectively.

"I know," said she.

"'Or ever the knightly years had gone With the old world to the grave, I was a king in Babylon And you were a Christian slave.'"

"Yes, only I was the slave, I think, and you--er--I mean, there goes the roof, and it is an uncommonly good thing for posterity you thought of the trap-door. Good thing the wind is veering, too. By Jove! look at those flames!" I cried, as the main body of the Continental toppled inward like a house of cards; "they are splashing, actually splashing, like waves over a breakwater!"

I drew a deep breath and turned from the conflagration, only to encounter its reflection in her widened eyes. "Yes, I was a Trojan warrior," I resumed; "one of the many unknown men who sought and found death beside Scamander, trodden down by Achilles or Diomedes. So they died knowing they fought in a bad cause, but rapt with that joy they had in remembering the desire of the world and her perfect loveliness. She scarcely knew that I existed; but I had loved her; I had overheard some laughing words of hers in passing, and I treasured them as men treasure gold. Or she had spoken, perhaps--oh, day of days!--to me, in a low, courteous voice that came straight from the back of the throat and blundered very deliciously over the perplexities of our alien speech. I remembered--even as a boy, I remembered."

She cast back her head and laughed merrily. "I reckon," said she, "you are still a boy, or else you are the most amusing lunatic I ever met."

"No," I murmured, and I was not altogether playacting now, "that tale about Polyxo was a pure invention. Helen--and the gods be praised for it!--can never die. For it is hers to perpetuate that sense of unattainable beauty which never dies, which sways us just as potently as it did Homer, and Dr. Faustus, and the Merovingians too, I suppose, with memories of that unknown woman who, when we were boys, was very certainly some day, to be our mate. And so, whatever happens, she

"Abides the symbol of all loveliness, Of beauty ever stainless in the stress Of warring lusts and fears.

"For she is to each man the one woman that he might have loved perfectly. She is as old as youth, she is more old than April even, and she is as ageless. And, again like youth and April, this Helen goes about the world in varied garments, and to no two men is her face the same. Oh, very often she transmutes her fleshly covering. But through countless ages I, like every man alive, have followed her, and fought for her, and won her, and have lost her in the end,--but always loving her as every man must do. And I prefer to think that some day--" But my voice here died into a whisper, which was in part due to emotion and partly to an inability to finish the sentence satisfactorily. The logic of my verses when thus paraphrased from memory, seemed rather vague.

"Yes--like Pythagoras" she said, a bit at random. "Oh, I know. There really must be something in it, I have often thought, because you actually do remember having done things before sometimes."

"And why not? as the March Hare very sensibly demanded." But now my voice was earnest. "Yes, I believe that Helen always comes. Is it simply a proof that I, too, am qualified to sit next to the Hatter?" I spread out my hands in a helpless little gesture. "I do not know. But I believe that she will come,--and by and by pass on, of course, as Helen always does."

"You will know her?" she queried, softly.

Now I at last had reached firm ground. "She will be very tall," I said, "very tall and exquisite,--like a young birch-tree, you know, when its new leaves are whispering over to one another the secrets of spring. Yes, that is a ridiculous sounding simile, but it expresses the general effect of her--the _coup d'oeil_, so to speak,--quite perfectly. Moreover, her hair will be a miser's dream of gold; and it will hang heavily about a face that will be--quite indescribable, just as the dawn yonder is past the utmost preciosity of speech. But her face will flush and will be like the first of all anemones to peep through black, good-smelling, and as yet unattainable earth; and her eyes will be deep, shaded wells where, just as in the proverb, truth lurks."

But now I could not see her eyes.

"No," I conceded, "I was wrong. For when men talk to her as--as they cannot but talk to her, her face will flush dull red, almost like smouldering wood; and she will smile a little, and look out over a great fire, such as that she saw on the night when Ilium was sacked and the slain bodies were soft under her stumbling feet, as she fled through flaming Troy Town. And then I shall know her."

My companion sighed; and the woes of centuries weighed down her eyelids obstinately. "It is bad enough," she lamented, "to have lost all one's clothes--that new organdie was a dream, and I had never worn it; but to find yourself in a dressing-gown--at daybreak, on a strange roof--and with an unintroduced lunatic--is positively terrible!"

The unintroduced lunatic rose to his feet and waved his hand toward the east. The dawn was breaking in angry scarlet and gold that spread like fire over half the visible horizon; the burning hotel shut out the remaining half with tall flames, which shouldered one another monotonously, and seemed lustreless against the pure radiance of the sky. Chill daylight showed in melting patches through the clouds of black smoke overhead.

It was a world of fire, transfigured by the austere magnificence of dawn and the grim splendour of the shifting, roaring conflagration; and at our feet lay the orchard of the Councillor von Hollwig, and there the awakened birds piped querulously, and sparks fell crackling among apple-blossoms.

"Ilium is ablaze," I quoted; "and the homes of Pergamos and its towering walls are now one sheet of flame."

She inspected the scene, critically. "It does look like Ilium," she admitted. "And that," peering over the eaves into the deserted by-street, "looks like a milkman."

I was unable to deny this, though an angry concept crossed my mind that any milkman, with commendable tastes and feelings, would at this moment be gaping at the fire at the other end of the block, rather than prosaically measuring quarts at the Councillor's side-entrance. But there was no help for it, when chance thus unblushingly favoured the proprieties; in consequence I clung to a water-pipe, and explained the situation to the milkman, with a fretted mind and King's College French.

I turned to my companion. She was regarding the burning hotel with an impersonal expression.

"Now I would give a deal," I thought, "to know just how long you would prefer that milkman to take in coming back."

12.

_He Faces Himself and Remembers_

Into the lobby of the Hotel d'Angleterre strolled, an hour later, a tall young man, in a green dressing-gown, and inquired for Charteris. The latter, in evening dress, was mournfully breakfasting in his new quarters.

Charteris sprang to his feet. I saw, with real emotion, that he had been weeping; but now he was all flippancy. "My dear boy! I have just torn my hair and the rough drafts of several cablegrams on your account! Sit down at once, and try the bacon, since, for a wonder, it is not burnt--and, in passing, I had thought of course that you were."

Instead, I took a drink, and went to sleep upon the nearest sofa.

2

I was very tired, but I awakened about noon and managed to procure enough clothes to make myself not altogether unpresentable to the public eye. Charteris had gone already about his own affairs, and I did not regret it, for I meant, without delay, to follow up my adventure of the night before.

But when I had come out of the Rue de la Casquette, and was approaching the statue of Gretry, I came upon a very ornately-dressed woman, who was about to enter en open carriage. I stared; and preposterous as it was, I knew that I was not mistaken. And I said aloud, "Signorina!"

It was a long while before she said, "Don't--don't ever call me that again!" And since the world in general appeared just then to be largely flavoured with the irresponsibility of dreams, it did not surprise me that we were presently alone in somebody's sitting-room.

"I have seen you twice in Liege," she said. "I suppose this had to come about. I would have preferred to avoid it, though. Well! _che sara!_ You don't care for music, do you? No,--otherwise you would have known earlier that I am Nadine Neroni now."

"Ah!" I said, very quietly. I had heard, as everybody had, a deal concerning the Neroni. "I think, if you will pardon me, I will not intrude upon Baron von Anspach's hospitality any longer," I said.

"That is unworthy of you,--no, I mean it would have been unworthy of a boy we knew of." There was a long pier-glass in these luxurious rooms. She led me to it now. "Look, Bobbie. We have altered a little, haven't we? I at least, am unmistakable. 'Their eyes are different, somehow', you remember. You haven't changed as much,--not outwardly. I think you are like Dorian Gray. Yes, as soon--as soon as I could afford it, I read every book you ever talked about, I think. It was damnably foolish of me. For I've heard things. And there was a girl I tried to help in London--an Agnes Faroy--"

"Ah!" I said.

"She had your picture even then, poor creature. She kissed it just before she died. She didn't know that I had ever heard of you. She never knew. Oh, how _could_ you!" the Neroni said, with something very like a sob, "Or were you always--just that, at bottom?"

"And have you ever noticed, Mademoiselle Neroni, that every one of us is several people? In consequence I must confess to have been wondering--?"

"Well! I wasn't. You won't believe it now, perhaps. And it doesn't matter, anyhow." Her grave voice lifted and upon a sudden was changed. "Bobbie, when you had gone I couldn't stand it! I couldn't let you ruin your life for me, but I could not go on as I had done before--Oh, well, you'll never understand," she added, wearily. "But Von Anspach had always wanted me to go with him. So I wrote to him, at the Embassy. And after all, what is the good of talking--now!"

We two were curiously quiet. "No, I suppose there is no good in talking now." We stood there, as yet, hand in hand. The mirror was candid. "Oh, Signorina, I want to laugh as God laughs, and I cannot!"

3

But I lack the heart to set down all that brief and dreary talk of ours. How does it matter what we said? We two at least knew, even as we talked, that all we said meant in the outcome, nothing. Yet we talked awhile and spoke, I think, quite honestly.

She was not unhappy; and there were inbred Lichfeldian traditions which prompted me to virtuous indignation over her defects in remorse and misery. There were my memories, too.

"I don't sing very well, of course, but then I'm not dependent on my singing, you know. Oh, why not be truthful? And Von Anspach always sees to it I get the tendered of criticism--in print. And, moreover, I've a deal put by. I'm a miser, _he_ says, and I suppose I am, because I know what it is to be poor. So when the rainy day comes--as of course it will,--I'll have quite enough to purchase a serviceable umbrella. Meanwhile, I have pretty much everything I want. People talk of course, but it is only on the stage they ever drive you out into a snow-storm. Besides, they don't talk to _me_."

In fine, I found that the Neroni was a very different being from Miss Montmorenci....

4

Then I left her. I had not any inclination just now to pursue my fair Elena. Rather I sat alone in my new bedroom, thinking, confusedly, first of Amelia Van Orden, and how I danced with her a good eight years ago; of that woman who had come to me in remote Fairhaven, coming through the world's gutter, unsullied,--because that much I yet believe, although I do not know.... She may have been always the same, even in the old days when Lichfield thought her "fast," and she was more or less "compromised,"--and years before I met her, a blind, inexperienced boy. Only she may then have been a better actress than I suspected.... I thought, in any event, of those execrable rhymes that likened her to the Lady in _Comus_, moving serene and unafraid among a rabble of threatening bestial shapes; and I thought of the woman who would, by this time, be with Von Anspach.

For here again were inbred Lichfieldian traditions of the sort I rarely dare confess to, even to myself, because they are so patently hidebound and ridiculous. These traditions told me that this woman, whom I had loved, was Von Anspach's harlot. I might--and I did--endeavor to be ironical and to be broadminded and to be up-to-date about the whole affair, and generally to view the matter through the sophisticated eyes of the author of The Apostates, that Robert Etheridge Townsend who was a connoisseur of ironies and human foibles; but these futilities did no good at all. Lichfield had got at and into me when I was too young to defend myself; and I could no more alter the inbred traditions of Lichfield, that were a part of me, than a carpet could change its texture. My traditions merely told me that the dear woman whom I remembered had come--in fleeing from discomforts which were unbearable, if that mattered--to be Von Anspach's harlot: and finding her this, my traditions declined to be the least bit broadminded. In Lichfield such women were simply not respectable; nor could you get around that fact by going to Liege.

There was in the room a _Matin,_ which contained a brief account of the burning of the Continental, and a very lengthy one of the Neroni's appearance the night before. Drearily, to keep from thinking, I read a deal concerning _la gracieuse cantatrice americaine._ Whether or not she had made a fool of me with histrionics in Fairhaven, there was no doubt that she had chosen wisely in forsaking Lethbury, and the round of village "Opera Houses." She had chosen, after all, and precisely as I had done, to make the most of youth while it lasted; and she appeared, just now, to harvest prodigally.

"On jouait Faust," I read, "et jamais le celebre personnage de Goethe n'adore plus exquise Gretchen. Miss Nadine Neroni est, en effet, une ideale Marguerite a la taille bien prise, au visage joli eclaire des deux yeux grands et doux. Et lorsqu'elle commenca a chanter, ce fut un veritable ravissement: sa voix se fit l'interprete revee de la divine musique de Gounod, tandis que sa personne et son coeur incarnaient physiquement et moralement l'heroine de Goethe"....

And so on, for Von Anspach had "seen to it," prodigally. And "Oh, well!" I thought; "if everybody else is so extravagantly pleased, what in heaven's name is the use of my being squeamish? Besides, she is only doing what I am doing, and getting all the pleasure out of life that is possible. She and I are very sensible people. At least, I suppose we are. I wonder, though? Meanwhile, I had better go and look for that preposterously beautiful Elena. And a fig for the provincial notions of Lichfield, that are poisoning me with their nonsense! and for the notions of Fairhaven, too, I suppose--"

5

Then Charteris came into the room. "John," said I, "this is a truly remarkable world, and only hypercriticism would venture to suggest that it is probably conducted by an inveterate humourist. So lend me that pocket-piece of yours, and we will permit chance to settle the entire matter. That is the one intelligent way of treating anything which is really serious. You probably believe I am Robert Etheridge Townsend, but as a matter of fact, I am Hercules in the allegory. So! the beautiful lady or America? Why, the eagle flutters uppermost, and from every mountain side let praises ring. Accordingly I am off."

"And you will cross half the world," said Charteris, "in the green dressing-gown, or in the coat which Byam borrowed for you this morning? I do not wish to seem inquisitive, you understand--"

"No, I believe I am through with borrowed coats--as with yours, for instance. But I am quite ready to go in my own dressing-gown if necessary--"

I wheeled at the door.

"By the way, I am done with you, John. I am fond of you, and all that, and I sincerely admire my chimney-pot coquette--of whom you haven't heard,--but, after all, there are real people yonder. And by God, even after two years of being pickled in alcohol and chasing after women that are quite used to being chased--well, even now I am one of those real people. So I am done with you and this perpetual making light of things--!"

"The Declaration of Independence," Charteris observed, "is undoubtedly the best thing in imaginative literature that we Americans have as yet accomplished; but I am sufficiently familiar with it, thank you, and I find, with age, that only the more untruthful platitudes are endurable. Oh, I predicted for you, at our first meeting, a life without achievements but of gusto! Now, it would appear, you plan to prance among an interminable saturnalia of the domestic virtues. So be it! but I warn you that the house of righteousness is but a wayside inn upon the road to being a representative citizen."

"You are talking nonsense," I rapped out--"and immoral nonsense."

"It is very strange," John Charteris complained, "how so many of us manage to reduce everything to a question of morality,--that is, to the alternative of being right or wrong. Now a man's personality, as somebody or other very properly observes, has many parts besides the moral area; and the intelligent, the artistic, even the religious part, need not necessarily have anything to do with ethics--"

"Ah, yes," said I, "so there is a train at noon--"

"And a virtuous man," continued Charteris, amicably, "is no more the perfect type of humanity than an intellectual man. In fact, the lowest and certainly the most disagreeable type of all troublesome people is that which combines an immaculate past with a limited understanding. The religious tenets of this class consist of an unshakable belief that the Bible was originally written in English, and contains nothing applicable to any of the week-days. And in consequence--"

I left him mid-course in speech. "Words, words!" said I; and it appeared to me for the moment that words were of astonishingly trivial import, however carefully selected, which was in me a wholesome, although fleet, apostacy of yesterday's creed. And I sent a cablegram to Bettie Hamlyn.

6

It was on the trip homeward I first met with Celia Reindan. I then considered her a silly little nuisance....

For I crossed the Atlantic in a contained fury of repentance for the wasted months. I had achieved nothing that was worthy of me, and presently I would be dead. Why, I might die within the five minutes! I might never see the lagging minute-hand of my little traveling clock pass that next numeral, say! The thought obsessed me, especially at night. Once, in a panic, I rose from my berth, and pushed the minute-hand forward a half-hour. "Now, I have tricked You!" I said, aloud; for nervously I was footing a pretty large bill. At twenty-three one has the funds wherewith to balance these accounts....

I wanted to live normally--to live as these persons thick about me, who seemed to grow up, and mate, and beget, and die, in the incurious fashion of oxen. I wanted to think only from hand to mouth, to think if possible not at all, and to be guided always in the conduct of my life by gross and obvious truisms, so that I must be judged at last but as one of the herd. "And what is accustomed--what holds of familiar usage--had come to seem the whole essence of wisdom, on all subjects"; for I wanted just the sense of companionship, irrevocable and eternal and commonly shared with every one of my kind. And yonder was Bettie Hamlyn.... "Oh, make a man of me, Bettie! just a common man!"

And Bettie might have done it, one considers, even then, for I was astir with a new impetus. Now, with a grin, the Supernal Aristophanes slipped the tiniest temptation in my way; to reach Fairhaven I was compelled to spend some three hours of an April afternoon in Lichfield, where upon Regis Avenue was to be met, in the afternoon, everyone worth meeting in Lichfield; and Stella drove there on fine afternoons, under the protection of a trim and preternaturally grave tiger; and the afternoon was irreproachable.

7

By the way she looked back over her shoulder, I knew that Stella had not recognized me. I stood with a yet lifted hat, irresolute.

"By Jove!" said I, in my soul, "then the Blagdens are in Lichfield! Why, of course! they always come here after Lent. And Bettie would not mind; to call on them would be only courteous; and besides, Bettie need not ever know. And moreover, I was always very fond of Peter."

So the next afternoon but four, Stella was making tea for me....

13.

_He Baits Upon the Journey_

"You are quite by way of being a gentleman," had been Stella's greeting, that afternoon. Then, on a sudden, she rested both hands upon my breast. When she did that you tingled all over, in an agreeable fashion. "It was uncommonly decent of you to remember", said this impulsive young woman. "It was dear of you! And the flowers were lovely."

"They ought to have been immortelles, of course," I apologised, "but the florist was out of them. Yes, and of daffodils, too." I sat down, and sighed, pensively. "Dear, dear!" said I, "to think it was only two years ago I buried my dearest hopes and aspirations and--er--all that sort of thing."

"Nonsense!" said Stella, and selected a blue cup with dragons on it. "At any rate," she continued, "it is very disagreeable of you to come here and prate like a death's-head on my wedding anniversary."

"Gracious gravy!" said I, with a fine surprise, "so it is an anniversary with you, too?" She was absorbed in the sugar-bowl. "What a coincidence!" I suggested, pleasantly.

I paused. The fire crackled. I sighed.

"You are such poor company, nowadays, even after the advantages of foreign travel," Stella reflected. "You really ought to do something to enliven yourself." After a little, she brightened as to the eyes, and concentrated them upon the tea-making, and ventured a suggestion. "Why not fall in love?" said Stella.

"I am," I confided, "already in that deplorable condition." And I ventured on sigh number two.