Chapter IV: Part II: I (2)

His companion--the physician--turned and nodded. "I know what you are thinking about," he announced; and with the rapt expression of a seer, half to Mistrial, half to the ceiling, "It is always the case," he continued; "I never knew a father yet that did not wonder what the child would be; and the mothers, oh! the mothers! Some of them know all about it beforehand: they want a girl, and a girl it will be; or they want a boy, and a boy they are to have. I remember one dear, good soul who was so positive she was to have a boy that she had all the linen marked with the name she had chosen for him. H'm. It turned out to be twins--both girls. And I remember--"

But Mistrial had ceased to listen. He was off again discounting the inheritance in advance--discounting, too, the diabolism of his revenge. The latter, indeed, was unique, and withal so grateful, that now the consummation was at hand it fluttered his pulse like wine. He had ravened when first he learned the tenour of the will, and his soul had been bitter; but no sooner had this thing occurred to him than it resolved itself into a delight. To his disordered fancy its provisions held both vitriol and opopanax--the one for Thorold, the other for himself.

The doctor meanwhile was running on as doctors do. "Yes," Mistrial heard him say, "she was most unhappy; no woman likes a rival, and when that rival is her own maid, matters are not improved. For my part, the moment I saw how delicate she was, I thought, though I didn't dare to say so, I thought her husband had acted with great forethought. The maid was strong as an ox, and in putting her in the same condition as his wife he had simply and solely supplied her with a wet-nurse. But then, at this time particularly, women are so unreasonable. Not your good lady--a sweeter disposition--"

Whatever encomium he intended to make remained unfinished. From the room beyond a cry filtered; he turned hastily and disappeared. The cry subsided; but presently, as though in the interval the sufferer had found new strength or new torture, it rose more stridently than before. And as the rumor of it augmented and increased, a phrase of the physician's returned to Mistrial. "Everything is going very nicely," he told himself, and began to pace the floor.

A fraction of an hour passed, a second, and a third. The cry now had changed singularly; it had lost its penetrating volume, it had sunk into the rasping moan of one dreaming in a fever. Suddenly that ceased, the silence was complete, and Mistrial, a trifle puzzled, moved out into the hall. There he caught again the murmur of her voice. This time she was talking very rapidly, in a continuous flow of words. From where he stood Mistrial could not hear what she was saying, and he groped on tip-toe down the hall. As he reached the door of the room in which she was, the sweet and heavy odor of chloroform came out and met him there; but still the flow of words continued uninterruptedly, one after the other, with the incoherence of a nightmare monologuing in a corpse. Then, without transition, in the very middle of a word, a cry of the supremest agony rang out, drowning another, which was but a vague complaint.

"It's a boy," the nurse exclaimed.

And Justine through a rift of consciousness caught and detained the speech. "So much the better," she moaned; "he will never give birth."

V.

"We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord."

To this, Mistrial, garbed in black, responded discreetly, "Amen."

He was standing opposite the bier. At his side was Justine. Before him Dr. Gonfallon, rector of the Church of Gethsemane,--of which the deceased had been warden,--was conducting the funeral rites. To the left was Thorold. Throughout the length and breadth of the drawing-room other people stood--a sprinkling of remote connections, former constituents, members of the bar and of the church, a few politicians; these, together with a handful of the helpless to whom the dead statesman had been trustee, counsellor too, and guide, had assembled there in honor of his memory. At the door, sharpening a pencil, was a representative of the Associated Press.

For the past few days obituaries of the Hon. Paul Dunellen varied from six inches to a column in length. One journal alone had been circumspect. No mention of the deceased had appeared in its issues. But in politics that journal had differed with him--a fact which accounted sufficiently for its silence. In the others, however, through biographies more or less exact, fitting tributes had been paid. The _World_ gave his picture.

Yet now, as Dr. Gonfallon, in words well calculated to impress, dwelt on the virtues of him that had gone, the tributes of the newspapers seemed perfunctory and trite. Decorously, as was his custom, he began with a platitude. Death, that is terrible to the sinner, radiant to the Christian, imposing to all, was here, he declared, but the dusk of a beautiful day which in departing disclosed cohorts of the Eternal beckoning from their glorious realm. Yet soon he warmed to his work, and eulogies of the deceased fell from him in sonorous periods, round and empty. He spoke of the nobility of his character, the loyalty he displayed, not to friends alone, but to foes as well. He spoke of that integrity in every walk of life which had won for him the title of Honest Paul--a title an emperor might crave and get not. He spoke too of the wealth he had acquired, and drew a moral from the unostentatiousness of his charities, the simplicity of his ways. He dwelt at length on the fact that, however multiple the duties of his station had been, his duty to his Maker was ever first. Then, after a momentary digression, in which he stated how great was the loss of such as he, he alluded to the daughter he had left, to that daughter's husband, sorely afflicted himself, yet, with a manliness worthy of his historic name, comforting the orphan who needed all his comfort now; and immediately from these things he lured another moral--an appeal to fortitude and courage; and winding up with the customary exordium, asked of Death where was its sting.

Where was it indeed? A day or two later Mistrial found time to think of that question and of other matters as well. It was then six weeks since the birth of the child, and Justine, fairer than ever before, was ministering to it in the adjacent room. Now and again he caught the shrill vociferation of its vague complaints. It was a feeble infant, lacking in vitality, distressingly hideous; but it lived, and though it died the next minute, its life had sufficed.

Already the will had been read--a terse document, and to the point; precisely such an one as you would have expected a jurist to make. By it the testator devised his property, real and personal, of whatever nature, kind, and description he died seized, to his former partners in trust for the eldest child of his daughter Justine, to its heirs, executors, and assigns forever. In the event of his daughter's demise without issue, then over, to Guy Thorold, M.D.

No, the sting concerning which Dr. Gonfallon had inquired was to Mistrial undiscerned. There was indeed a prick of it in the knowledge that if the old man had lasted much longer it might have been tough work to settle the bills; but that was gone now: Honest Paul paid all his debts, and he had not shirked at Nature's due. He was safely and securely dead, six feet under ground at that, and his millions were absolute in his grandson. Yes, absolute. At the thought of it Mistrial laughed. The goal to which for years he had striven was touched and exceeded. He had thrown the vitriol, the opopanax was his.

We all of us pretend to forgive, to overlook, to condone, we pretend even to sympathize with, our enemy. Nay, in refraining from an act that could injure him who has injured us, we are quite apt to consider ourselves the superior of our foe, and not a little inclined to rise to the heights of self-laudatory quotation too. It is an antique virtue, that of forbearance; it is Biblical, nobly Arthurian, and chivalresque. But when we smile at an injury, it is for policy's sake--because we fear, rarely because we truly forgive, more rarely yet because of indifference. Our magnanimity is cowardice. It takes a brave man to wreak a brave revenge.

Mistrial made few pretensions to the virtues which you and I possess. He was relentless as a Sioux, and he was treacherous as the savage is; he had no taste for fair and open fight. However his blood had boiled at the tableau of imaginary wrongs, however fitting the opportunity might have been on the afternoon when he met his enemy at the city's fringe, he had the desire but not the courage to annihilate him there. But later, when the possibility which he had intercepted came, he feted, he coaxed it; and now that the hour of triumph had rung, his heart was glad. In the disordered closets of his brain he saw Thorold ravening at the trap into which he had fallen, and into which, in falling, he had lost the wherewithal to call the world his own. Ten million in exchange for an embrace! Verily, mused Mistrial, he will account it exceeding dear. And at the thought of what Thorold's frenzy must be, at the picture which he drew of him cursing his own imprudence and telling himself again and again, until the repetition turned into mania, that that imprudence could never be undone, he exulted and laughed aloud.

Money, said Vespasian, has no odor. To our acuter nostrils it has: so nauseating even can it be, that we would rather be flung in the Potter's-field than catch the faintest whiff. But Mistrial, for all the sensitiveness that ancestry is supposed to bring, must have agreed with the Roman. To him it was the woof of every hope; whatever its provenance, it was an Open Sesame to the paradise of the ideal. He would have drawn it with his teeth from a dung-heap, only he would have done it at night.

There are men that can steal a fortune, yet can never cheat at cards, and Mistrial was one of their race; he could not openly dishonor himself in petty ways. Many a scoundrel has a pride of his own. It is both easy and difficult to compare a bandit to a sneak-thief, Napoleon to Cartouche. Mistrial had nothing of the Napoleon about him, and he was lacking even in the strength which Cartouche possessed. But among carpet highwaymen commend me to his peer.

And now, as he thought of the will, Gonfallon's query recurred to him, and he asked himself where was that sting? Not in the present, surely--for that from a bitterness had changed to a delight; and as for the future, each instant of it was sentient with invocations, fulfilled to the tips with the surprises of dream. The day he had claimed but a share in; the morrow was wholly his. He could have a dwelling in Mayfair and a marble palace on the Mediterranean Sea. For a scrap of paper he would never miss there was a haunt of ghosts dozing on the Grand Canal. In spring, when Paris is at her headiest, there, near that Triumphal Arch which overlooks the Elysian Fields, stood, _entre cour et jardin_, an hotel which he already viewed as his own. And when he wearied of the Old World, there was the larger and fuller life of the New. There was Peru, there was Mexico and Ecuador; and in those Italys of the Occident were girls whose lips said, Drink me; whose eyes were of chrysoberyl and of jade. _Ah, oui, les femmes; tant que le monde tournera il n'y aura que ca._ With blithe anticipation he hummed the air and snapped his fingers as Capoul was wont to do. At last he saw himself the Roland Mistrial that should have been, prodigal of gold, sultanesque of manner, feted, courted, welcomed, past-master in the lore and art of love.

There were worlds still to be conquered; and before his hair grizzled and the furrows came he felt conscious of the possession of a charm that should make those worlds his own. He had waited indeed; he had toiled and manoeuvred; but now the great clock we call Opportunity had struck. Let him but ask, and it would be given. Wishes were spaniels; he had but a finger to raise, and they fawned at his feet. And then, as those vistas of which we have all caught a glimpse rose in melting splendor and swooned again through sheer excesses of their own delights, suddenly he bethought him of the multiples of one and of two.

Heretofore he had taken it for granted that if Dunellen left the estate to his grandchild the income accruing therefrom would, until the grandchild came of age, pass through his own paternal hands. And in taking this for granted he had recalled the fable that deals not of the prodigal son, but rather of the prodigal father. That income should spin. By a simple mathematical process than with which no one was more familiar, he calculated that, at five per cent, ten million would represent a rent-roll of five hundred thousand per annum. Of that amount a fraction would suffice to Justine and to her son. The rest--well, the rest he knew of what uses he could put it to.

But now, suddenly, with that abruptness with which disaster looms, there came to him a doubt. He rememorated the provisions of the will, and in them he discerned unprompted some tenet of law or of custom which, during the legal infancy of the child, might inhibit the trustees from paying over any larger amount than was needful for its maintenance and support. Then at once the fabric of his dreams dissolved. The vitriol had corroded, but the savor of the opopanax had gone. For a little while he tormented his mustache and nibbled feverishly at a finger-nail. To see one's self the dupe of one's own devices is never a pleasant sight. Again he interrogated what smattering of law he possessed; but the closer he looked, the clearer it seemed to be that in its entirety the income of the estate could not pass through his hands. From five hundred thousand the trustees might in their judgment diminish it to some such pocket-money as ten; they could even reduce it to five; and, barring an action, he might be unable to persuade them that the sum was absurd. The idea, nude and revolting as Truth ever is, raised him to an unaccustomed height of rage; he would not be balked, he declared to himself; he would have that money or--

Or what? The contingency which he then interviewed, one which issued unsummoned from some cavern in his mind, little by little assumed a definite shape. He needed no knowledge of the law to tell him that he was that brat's heir. Did it die at that very moment the estate became absolute in him. There would be no trustees then to dole the income out. The ten millions would be his own. As for the trustees, they could deduct their commission and retire with it to New Jersey--to hell if it pleased them more. But the estate would be his. That there was no gainsaying. Meanwhile, there was the brat. He was a feeble child; yet such, Mistrial understood, had Methusaleh been. He might live forever, or die on the morrow. And why not that night?

As this query came to him, he eyed its advance. It was yet some distance away, but as it approached he considered it from every side. And of sides, parenthetically, it had many. And still it advanced: when it started, its movements were so slow they had been hardly perceptible; nevertheless it had made some progress; then surer on its feet it tried to run; it succeeded in the effort; at each step it grew sturdier, swifter in speed; and now that it reached him it was with such a rush that he was overpowered by its force.

He rose from his seat. For a moment he hesitated. To his forehead and about his ears a moisture had come. He drew out a handkerchief; it was of silk, he noticed--one that he brought from France. Absently he drew it across his face; its texture had detained his thought. Then on tip-toe he moved out into the corridor and peered into the room at the end of the hall.

It was dimly lighted, but soon he accustomed himself to the shadows and fumbled them with his eyes. On the bed Justine lay; sleep had overtaken her; her head was aslant on the pillow, her lips half closed; the fingers of one hand cushioned her neck; the other hand, outstretched, rested on the edge of a cradle. She had been rocking it, perhaps. From the floor above sank the sauntering tremolo of a flute, very sweet in the distance, muffled by the ceiling and wholly subdued. In the street a dray was passing, belated and clamorous on the cobblestones. But now, as Mistrial ventured in, these things must have lulled Justine into yet deeper sleep; her breath came and went with the semibreves a leaf uses when it whispers to the night; and as he moved nearer and bent over her the whiteness of her breast rose and fell in unison with that breath. Yes, surely she slept, but it was with that wary sleep that dogs and mothers share. A movement of that child's and she might awake, alert at once, her senses wholly recovered, her mind undazed.

Mistrial, assured of her slumber, turned from the bed to the cradle, and for a minute, two perhaps, he stood, the eyebrows raised, the handkerchief pendent in his hand, contemplating the occupant. And it was this bundle of flesh and blood, this lobster-hued animal, that lacked the intelligence a sightless kitten has,--it was this that should debar him! _Allons donc!_

His face had grown livid, and his hand shook just a little; not with fear, however, though if it were it must have been the temerity of his own courage that frightened him. At the handkerchief which he held he glanced again; one twist of it round that infant's throat, a minute in which to hold it taut, and it would be back in his pocket, leaving strangulation and death behind, yet not a mark to tell the tale. One minute only he needed, two at most; he bent nearer, and as he bent he looked over at his wife; but still she slept, her breath coming and going with the same regular cadence as before, the whiteness of her breast still heaving; then very gently, with fingers that were nervously assured, he ran the handkerchief under the infant's neck: but however deftly he had done it, the chill of the silk must have troubled the child; its under lip quivered, then both compressed, the flesh about the cheek-bones furrowed, the mouth relaxed, and from it issued the whimper of unconscious plaint. The call may have stirred the mother in some dream, for a smile hovered in her features; yet immediately her eyes opened, she half rose, her hand fell to her side, and, reaching out, she caught and held the infant to her.

"My darling," she murmured; and as the child, soothed already, drowsed back again into slumber, she turned to where her husband stood. "What is it?"

From above, the tremolo of the flute still descended; but the dray long since had passed, and the street now was quiet.

"What is it?" she repeated. She seemed more surprised than pleased to see him there.

Mistrial, balked in the attempt, had straightened himself; he looked annoyed and restless.

"Nothing," he answered, and thrust the handkerchief back in his pocket, as a bandit sheathes his dirk. "Nothing. I heard that bastard bawling, and I came in to make him stop."

"Bastard? Is it in that way you speak of your child?"

As she said this she made no visible movement; yet something in her attitude, the manner in which she held herself, seemed to bid him hold his peace, and this he noticed, and in noticing resented. "There," he muttered; "drop the Grand Duchess, will you? The brat is Thorold's; you know it, and so do I."

For a little space she stared as though uncertain she had heard aright, but the speech must have re-echoed in her ears; she had been sitting up, yet now as the echo reached her she drooped on the pillow and let her head fall back. In her arms the child still drowsed. And presently a tear rolled down her face, then another.

"Roland Mistrial, you have broken my heart at last."

That was all; the ultimate words even were scarcely audible; but the tears continued--the first succeeded by others, unstanched and undetained. Grief had claimed her as its own. She made no effort to rebel; she lay as though an agony had come from which no surcease can be. And as one tear after the other passed down and seared her face there was a silence so deathly, so tangible, and so convincing, that he needed no further sign from her to tell him that the charge was false. In all his intercourse with her, whatever cause of complaint there had been, never had he seen her weep before; and now at this unawaited evidence of the injustice and ignominy of his reproach he wished she would be defiant again, that he might argue and confute. But no word came from her--barely a sob; nothing, in fact, save these tears, which he had never seen before. And while he stood there, visited by the perplexity of him to whom the unawaited comes, unconsciously he went back to the wooing of her: he saw her clear eyes lifted in confidence to his own, he heard again the sweet confession of her love, he recalled the marks and tokens of her trust, and when for him she had left her father's house; he saw her ever, sweet by nature, tender-hearted, striving at each misdeed of his to show him that in her arms there was forgiveness still. And he recalled too the affronts he had put upon her, the baseness of his calculations, the selfishness of his life; he saw the misery he had inflicted, the affection he had beguiled, the hope he had tricked, and for climax there was this supreme reproach, of which he knew now no woman in all the world was less deserving than was she. And still the tears unstanched and undetained passed down and seared her cheeks; in the mortal wound he had aimed at her womanhood all else seemingly was forgot. She did not even move, and lay, her child tight clasped, the image of Maternity inhabited by Regret.

And such regret! Mistrial, unprompted, could divine it all. The regret of love misplaced, of illusions spent, the regret of harboring a ruffian and thinking him a knight. Yes, he could divine it all; and then, as such things can be, he grieved a moment for himself.

But soon the present returned. Justine still was weeping; he no longer saw her tears, he heard them. Surely she would forgive again. It could not be that everything had gone for naught. He would speak to her, plead if need were, and in the end she would yield. She must do that, he told himself, and he groped after some falsity that should palliate the offence. He would tell her that he had been drinking again; he would deny his own words, or, if necessary, he would insist she had not heard them aright. Indeed, there was nothing that might have weight with her which he was not ready and anxious to affirm. If she would but begin, if in some splendor of indignation such as he had beheld before she would rise up and upbraid him, his task would be diminished by half. Anything, indeed, would be better than this, and nothing could be worse; it was not Justine alone that the tears were carrying from him, it was the Dunellen millions as well. Oh, abysses of the human heart! As he queried with himself, at the very moment he was experiencing his first remorse, the old self returned, and it was less of the injury he had inflicted that he thought than of the counter-effect that injury might have on him. In the attempt to throttle the child he had been balked, yet of that attempt he believed Justine to be suspicionless. Other opportunities he would have in plenty; and even were it otherwise, the child was weakly, and croup might do its work. With the future for which he had striven, there, in the very palm of his hand, how was it possible that he should have made this misstep? But he could retrieve it, he told himself; he was a good actor, it was not too late. For a little while yet he could still support the mask, and, recalling the sentimental reveries of a moment before, the forerunner of a sneer came and loitered beneath the fringes of his mustache.

"Justine!" He moved a step or two to where she lay. "Justine--"

His voice was very low and penitent, but at the sound of it she seemed to shrink. "Could she _know_?" he wondered.

Then immediately, through the scantness of the apartment, he heard the outer bell resound. Enervated as he was, the interruption affected him like a barb. There was some one there whom he could vent his irritation on. He hurried to the hall, but a servant had preceded him. The door was open, and on the threshold Thorold stood.

Mistrial nodded--the nod of one who is about to throw his coat aside and roll his shirt-sleeves up. "Is it for your bill you come?" he asked.

Thorold hesitated, and his face grew very black. He affected, however, to ignore the taunt. He turned to the servant that still was waiting there. "Is my cousin at home?" he asked.

"She is," Mistrial announced, "but not to you."

"In that case," Thorold answered, "I must speak to someone in her stead."

Mistrial made a gesture, and the servant withdrew.

"I have to inform my cousin," Thorold continued, "that Mr. Metuchen came to me this evening and said that when my uncle died he was in debt--"

"Stuff and nonsense!"

"He asked me to come and acquaint Justine with the facts. They are here." With this Thorold produced a roll of papers. "Be good enough to explain to her," he added, "that this is the inventory of the estate." And, extending the documents to his host, he turned and disappeared.

In the cataleptic attitude of one standing to be photographed Mistrial listened to the retreating steps; he heard Thorold descend the stairs, cross the vestibule, and pass from the house. It seemed to him even that he caught the sound of his footfall on the pavement without. But presently that, too, had gone. He turned and looked down the hall. Justine's door was closed. Then at once, without seeking a seat, he fumbled through the papers that he held. The gas-jet above his head fell on the rigid lines. In the absence of collusion--and from whence should such a thing come?--in the absence of that, they were crystal in their clarity.

There were the assets. Shares in mines that did not exist, bonds of railways that were bankrupt, loans on Western swamps, the house on Madison Avenue, mortgaged to its utmost value, property on the Riverside, ditto. And so on and so forth till the eye wearied and the heart sickened of the catalogue. Then came the debit account. Amounts due to this estate, to that, and to the other, a list of items extending down an entire page of foolscap and extending over onto the next. There a balance had been struck. Instead of millions Honest Paul had left dishonor. Swindled by the living, he had swindled the dead.

"So much for trusting a man that bawls Amen in church," mused Mistrial.

As yet the completeness and amplitude of the disaster had not reached him. While he ran the papers over he feigned to himself that it was all some trick of Thorold's, one that he would presently see through and understand; and even as he grasped the fact that it was not a trick at all, that it was truth duly signed and attested, even then the disaster seemed remote, affecting him only after the manner of that wound which, received in the heat of battle, is unnoticed by the victim until its gravity makes him reel. Then at once in the distance the future on which he had counted faded and grew blank. Where it had been brilliant it was obscure, and that obscurity, increasing, walled back the horizon and reached up and extended from earth to sky. The papers fell from his nerveless hand, fright had visited him, and he wheeled like a rat surprised. Surely, he reflected, if safety there were or could be, that safety was with Justine.

In a moment he was at her door. He tried it. It was locked. He beat upon it and called aloud, "Justine."

No answer came. He bent his head and listened. Through the woodwork he could hear but the faintest rustle, and he called again, "Justine."

Then from within came the melody of her voice: "Who is it?"

"It is I," he answered, and straightened himself. It seemed odd to him she did not open the door at once. "I want a word with you," he added, after a pause. But still the door was locked.

"Justine," he called again, "do you not hear me? I want to speak to you."

Then through the slender woodwork at his side a whisper filtered, the dumb voice of one whom madness may have in charge.

"It is not to speak you come, it is to kill."

"Justine!" he cried. All the agony of his life he distilled into her name, "Justine!"

"You killed your child before, you shall not kill another now."

VI.

"City Hall!"

The brakemen were shouting the station through the emptiness of the "Elevated."

In the car in which Mistrial sat a drunken sailor lolled, and a pretty girl of the Sixth Avenue type was eating a confection. Above her, on a panel opposite, the advertisement of a cough remedy shone in blue; beyond was a particolored notice of tennis blazers: and, between them, a text from Mark, in black letters, jumped out from a background of white:

"What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

During the journey from his home Mistrial had contemplated that text. Not continuously, however. For a little space his eyes had grazed the retreating throngs over which the train was hurrying, and had rested on the insufferable ugliness of the Bowery. Once, too, he had found himself staring at the girl who sat opposite, and once he had detected within him some envy of the sailor sprawling at her side. But, all the while, that text was with him, and to the jar of the car he repeated for refrain a paraphrase of his own: "How shall it damage a man if he lose his own soul and gain the whole world?"

How indeed? Surely he had tried. For three years the effort had been constant. It was because of it he had married, it was for this he had sought to throttle his child. What his failure had been, Dunellen's posthumous felony and Justine's ultimate reproach indistinctly yet clearly conveyed. No, the world was not gained; he had played his best and he had lost: he could never recover it now.

And as the brakeman bawled in his face, the paraphrase of the text was with him. He rose and passed from the car. Beneath he could discern a grass-plot of the City Park. In spite of the night it was visibly green. The sky was leaden as a military uniform that has been dragged through the mud. From a window of the Tribune Building came a vomit of vapor. And above in a steeple a clock marked twelve.

The stairway led him down to the street. For a moment he hesitated; the locality was unfamiliar. But a toll-gate attracted him; he approached it, paid a penny, and moved onto the bridge. There, he discovered that on either side of him were iron fences and iron rails; he was on the middle of the bridge, not at the side. A train shot by. He turned again and reissued from the gate.

On the corner was another entrance, and through it he saw a carriage pass. It was that way, he knew; and he would have followed the carriage, but a policeman touched him on the arm.

"Got a permit?"

Mistrial shook his head. Why should he have a permit? And, moved perhaps by the mute surprise his face expressed, the policeman explained that the ordinary pedestrian was allowed to cross only through the safeguards of the middle path.

"I will get a cab," he reflected, and for his convenience he discerned one loitering across the way. This he entered, gave an order to the driver, and presently, after paying another toll, rolled off the stonework on to wood.

He craned his neck. Just beyond, a column of stone rose inordinately to the lowering sky; he could see the water-front of the city; opposite was Brooklyn, and in front the lights of Staten Island glowed distantly and dim. The cab was moving slowly. He took some coin from his pocket, placed it on the seat, opened the door, and, stepping from the moving vehicle, looked at the driver. The latter, however, had not noticed him and was continuing his way leisurely over the bridge and on and into the night. Mistrial let him go undetained. He had work now to do, and it was necessary for him to do it quickly; at any moment another carriage might pass or some one happen that way.

Beneath, far down, a barge was moving. He could see the lights; they approached the bridge and vanished within it. The railing, now, he saw was too high to vault, and moreover there was a bar above it that might interfere. He tossed his hat aside and clambered on the iron rail.

"You'll get six months for that," some one was crying.

But to the threat Mistrial paid no heed. He had crossed the rail, his hands relaxed, and just as he dropped straight down to the river below, he could see a policeman, his club uplifted, hanging over the fence, promising him the pleasures of imprisonment. Such was his last glimpse of earth. A multitude of lights danced before his eyes; every nerve in his body tingled; his ears were filled with sudden sounds; he felt himself incased in ice; then something snapped, and all was blank.

The next day a rumor of the suicide was bruited through the clubs.

"What do you think of it, Jones?" Yarde asked.

The novelist plucked at his beard. There were times when he himself did not know what he thought. In this instance, however, he had already learned of the disaster that had overtaken the Dunellen estate, and weaving two and two sagaciously together, he answered with a shrug.

"What do I think of it? I think he died like a man who knew how to live"--an epitaph which pleased him so much that he got his card-case out and wrote it down.

THE END.

By the same Author.

A TRANSACTION IN HEARTS.
EDEN.
THE TRUTH ABOUT TRISTREM VARICK.
MR. INCOUL'S MISADVENTURE.
A TRANSIENT GUEST.
THE ANATOMY OF NEGATION.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF DISENCHANTMENT.

Belford, Clarke & Co's New Books

The Truth about Tristem Varick. By EDGAR SALTUS.

"Our admiration for the perfection of its style, the brilliancy
of its expressions, and the exquisite art with which the story
has been handled, is unbounded."--_Lippincott's Magazine._

"The plot is admirable, style exquisite; as a piece of art the
style demands unstinted commendation."--_St. John's (N. B.)
Progress._

"A very surprising but fascinating love-story."--_Amsterdam
Democrat._

Eden. By EDGAR SALTUS.

"Mr. Saltus is an artist; his brilliant epigrammatic touch is
as rare as it is exquisite; and to find fault with such a novel
as 'Eden' because it is not Bunyan's 'Pilgrim Progress,' is
absurd."--_Boston Traveller._

"'Eden' is the best he has ever written. It Is a capital story,
told in scholarly and clever English, and any one who begins to
read it will not want to lay it aside until the end is
reached."--_Baltimore American._

A Transaction in Hearts. By EDGAR SALTUS.

Saltus' latest novel, and in some respects his best. In the
character of Christopher Gonfallon the author aims a terrible
blow at the hypocrisy of those who, setting themselves up as
examples and leaders of men, fall before the temptations of the
beast in their own natures. The recreant minister, the evil
enigma, Claire, and the pure, sweet wife, make a trinity of
characters rarely found in modern fiction.

The Philosophy of Disenchantment. By EDGAR SALTUS.

A philosophical work which entitles the author to a first place
in the ranks of modern thinkers. Even those who disagree with
his conclusions cannot deny him a vigorous and pointed logic,
keen insight, and powerful reasoning.

The Anatomy of Negation. By EDGAR SALTUS.

A work of superlative excellence and worth.

Divided Lives. By EDGAR FAWCETT.

"A spirited story; the interest is well sustained throughout,
and the characters are firmly and clearly drawn."--_N. Y.
Tribune._

"The book is written in very choice English, and the style is
flowing and harmonious."--_N. Y. Truth._

"A thoroughgoing society novel, whose style moves like a
waltz."--_Richmond States._

Miriam Ballestier. By EDGAR FAWCETT.

"A pathetic and absorbing story of thrilling
interest."--_Syracuse Herald._

"The last chapter, in particular, is one of the most beautiful
things in American literature; the picture of Miriam going out
into the night on her mission of sublime self-sacrifice
deserves to live forever in the memory."--_Chicago Herald._

Monte Rosa, the Epic of an Alp. By STARR HOYT NICHOLS.

"It is an account in poetic form of an Alpine mountain,
beginning with its birth, describing its form, appearance,
grandeur, its relations to man physically and metaphysically,
and ending with the probable ending of the mountain. It is one
of the most successful of recent attempts to wed science and
poetry."--_Albany Journal._

Memories of the Men who Saved the Union. By DONN PIATT.

"Piatt's sketches of the great coterie of men mentioned are of
absorbing interest, and no one who takes up the book will lay
it down without obtaining new ideas of the character and
motives of those so high in place during the
rebellion"--_Quincy Whig._

"They are the interesting recollections of one who was
personally acquainted with the illustrious men of whom he has
written, and who had, as well officially as socially,
opportunities of studying the character of each, of which he
has availed himself in writing one of the ablest books we have
had the pleasure to welcome from America."--_Westminster
Review._

The Lone Grave of the Shenandoah. By DONN PIATT.

"Eminently original, they are delightful to read. So
extraordinary a compound of poetry and practicality as our
author, if sought through the world, could not probably be
found."--_Washington Post._

"They are sketches, quaint, delicate, humorous, fanciful,
examples of the art of short story-writing in its
perfection."--_Chicago News._

The Protective Tariff: What it Does for Us. By HERMAN LIEB.

"It is clear in style and argument, taking strong ground for
the immediate reduction of war taxes and the putting of the
nation on a peace footing as regards the necessities of life
for the common people."--_Michigan Courier._

Life of Emperor William I., the Founder of the German Empire. By HERMAN LIEB.

"General Lieb has done historical literature a great service in
giving it a life of one of the greatest rulers of the
nineteenth century. It is printed on good paper, in clear type,
and profusely illustrated. An edition is also issued in the
German language for those who want the history of their
fatherland in their own tongue."--_New London Telegram._

Henry Ward Beecher, Christian Philosopher, Pulpit Orator, Patriot, and Philanthropist. Illustrated with a biographical sketch by THOS. W. HANDFORD.

"As a pulpit orator he was during life the peer of any living,
and his utterances will go on converting men, and fitting them
for earth and heaven. As a patriot, loving his country, and
willing to make any sacrifice for its sustenance and
upbuilding, he was at all times conspicuous."--_Chicago
Inter-Ocean._

"It is much for a man worthy of a biography that he should fall
into the hands of a congenial spirit, and that the biography
should be a labor of love."--_Chicago Herald._

Dinnerology. By "Pan."

Experiments in economical cooking, brightly and interestingly
related.

Her Strange Fate. By CELIA LOGAN.

"'Her Strange Fate' belongs to that healthy sensational school,
at the head of which stand the works of Chas. Reade, wherein
the romantic and dramatic sides of real life are depicted.
There is no morbid analysis, no feverish imagination. No one
who begins the book will be willing to lay it down until the
last page is reached."--_Philadelphia Press._

A Blue-Grass Thoroughbred. By "TOM JOHNSON."

A richly colored picture of a comparatively unknown but
wonderfully interesting section of the United States, the
Blue-grass region of Kentucky. From end to end the book is a
rapidly moving panorama of brilliant pictures.

A Slave of Circumstance. By E. DE LANCEY PIERSON.

"An interesting work."--_N. Y. Herald._

"A book well written; continually alluring, especially in the
love scenes."--_Washington National Republican._

"The very first paragraph of the book arouses the reader's
interest, and that interest is maintained to the end."--_Sunday
News._

"It is extremely interesting, vividly national, and develops an
unusually original idea."--_Baltimore American._

The Shadow of the Bars. By E. DE LANCEY PIERSON.

"A brilliant and interesting love-story."--_Boston
Commonwealth._

The Black Ball. By E. DE LANCEY PIERSON.

Mr. Pierson's latest and best work, alive with humor and
genuine pathos, at once fantastic and intensely human.

A Dream and a Forgetting. By JULIAN HAWTHORNE.

"A delightful story, told with a charming idyllic sweetness by
this successor of the Seer of Salem."--_Texas Siftings._

"Without much doubt the best piece of work that Mr. Hawthorne
has yet turned out. It is intensely interesting."--_Springfield
(Mass.) Union._

"If it has a fault it is that of brevity."--_Cleveland Leader._

"One of the most perfect pieces of work that Mr. Hawthorne has
ever done in fiction. It has the Hawthorne atmosphere, the
imaginative beauty, the touch of the mystic in it."--_Boston
Traveller._

The Professor's Sister. By JULIAN HAWTHORNE.

"There is no other American writer of the day who can present a
mystery and unfold it in all its details with such consummate
skill as Hawthorne."--_Richmond States._

"Is, without doubt, not only one of the very best that this
author has yet achieved, but it is not too much to say that it
will rank with the strongest novels that have been given to the
public in years."--_Nashville American._

"Human passions and actual life are well mixed into the warp
and woof of the plot, and some striking characters are evolved
in admirable narrative, and colloquial style."--_N. Y. Truth._

Kisses of Fate. By E. HERON-ALLEN.

"A collection of clever tales, three in number, the merit of
which is not suggested in the title he has chosen to give them,
while in grace and finish they reflect to his credit."--_Albany
Union._

Princess Daphne. By E. HERON-ALLEN.

"Somewhat unorthodox, but highly interesting."--_Reading
Union._

"Weird stories are in vogue at present, and some are good and
far more are the reverse. This is one of the best."--_Baltimore
News._

"The book is written in an attractive style, and is intensely
interesting."--_Albany Express._

Among the Tramps. By "UNCLE TIM."

A volume of rare interest and information, from the pen of a
writer thoroughly conversant with that philosophy which bears
upon the well-being of society and every-day life.

Confessions of a Society Man.

"The book is interesting throughout because of the rapid and
continual shifting of incidents which is its chief
characteristic."--_Philadelphia Bulletin._

"The love-making in it is charming. It is interesting up to the
very end."--_Nashville American._

A Tramp Actor. By ELLIOT BARNES.

"There are good things in the book, and it is endowed with an
excellent moral."--_N. Y. Sun._

Forty Tears on the Rail. By C. B. GEORGE.

"The book is destined to have a very extended reading, as its
pages are not only interesting, but instructive."--_Keokuk
Democrat._

The Friend to the Widow. By MAJA SPENCER.

"This is a love-story pure and simple, but just one of those
stories that form most delightful reading, free from heroics
and wild sensations."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._

Why Was It? By LEWIS BENJAMIN.

"The chief charm of the book lies in the simple manner of
telling the story, and in the fact that its basis and its
incidents are precisely such as may be picked up almost
anywhere, at any time."--_Nashville American._

The Wrong Man. By GERTRUDE GARRISON.

"'The Wrong Man' is not in the least sensational--not the kind
of a story to set people talking about its possible
consequences on the minds of unseasoned readers. Nothing
feverish, questionable, or coarse in it. Much rare qualities
does it possess, which give it distinction in these days of
rankly flavored fiction."--_Philadelphia Herald._

A Boston Girl. By REV. ARTHUR SWAZE.

"Those who read 'A Boston Girl' will like it, and those who do
not read it will, if they only knew it, miss spending an
agreeable hour or two."--_San Francisco Call._

A Drummer's Diary. By CHARLES S. PLUMMER.

What Dreams May Come. By Mrs. Gertrude Atherton.

"The interest of the story lies in its all-absorbing plot, its
strong dramatic treatment, and the bold handling of one of the
most difficult and least used subjects of
literature."--_Rochester Herald._

"There is good work and strong work in the book, and it is
quite enough to make one hope it is not the last the authoress
will write."--_N. Y. Journalist._

Bella-Demonia. By SELINA DOLARO. Madame Dolaro's Posthumous Novel.

This work, founded on a drama by Madame Dolaro, shortly to be
produced, is an historical novel of pure incident. It is
composed of a series of startling dramatic situations, founded
on facts not hitherto published in connection with the
Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8, of which it is an accurate history
of absorbing interest.

Mes Amours: Poems. Passionate and Playful. By SELINA DOLARO.

"Some of them are from her own pen; she is the inspiration of
the others. A few of the latter are really quite clever verses,
but not nearly as bright as her annotation of them all."--_N.
Y. Graphic._

"There is many a laugh to be had from reading the book."--_Town
Topics._

"These verses are full of spirit and life, and the merry mood
sings between the lines like the contented streamlet between
wind-swept hillsides."--_Albany Journal._

That Girl from Texas. By JEANETTE H. WALWORTH.

"Is one of the nicest girls ever introduced to readers. Well
told, and decidedly interesting."--_New London Telegraph._

A Splendid Egotist. By JEANNETTE H. WALWORTH (author of "That Girl from Texas").

A brilliant society novel by this gifted author, and one of the
best she has written.

History of New York. By JEANNETTE H. WALWORTH. In words of one syllable. Richly illustrated. Illuminated board cover.

"This book is well calculated to give young children just about
the historical knowledge in that direction which their minds
are prepared to absorb and retain."--_Oswego Palladium._

His Way and Her Will. By FANNIE ATMAR MATHEWS.

"Is a novel of more than usual merit. Its characters are strong
in word and action, and although it is a love story, its
sentiment is manly, and not mawkish."--_N. H. News._

"The characters are drawn with a firm and free hand, and the
story has that symmetry of construction which shows the
practical workman. The literary style is finished and
graceful."--_Baltimore News._

Studies in Social Life. A Review of the Principles, Practices, and Problems of Society. By GEORGE C. LORIMER.

"The subject is a living one, he has gone to the heart of it,
developed his thoughts in an attractive manner, pointed out
clearly its existing evils and their causes, and advances
theories of remedies which will stand practical
test."--_Hamilton Republican._

"It is a serious work, deserving to be widely read. It deals
with so many subjects that an epitome of its contents is
impossible here; but we would call special attention to the
chapter on the vices of society."--_N. Y. World._

Eating and Living. By SIR HENRY THOMPSON.

The Everyday Cook Book. By MISS M. C. NEILL. Oil-cloth cover (kitchen style).

The Kentucky Cookery Book. By MRS. PETER A. WHITE.

Political Oratory of Emery A. Storm, from Lincoln to Garfield. By ISAAC E. ADAMS.

"Not only valuable as examples of perfect argument and
matchless eloquence, but as a rich contribution to the
political history of our country."--_Burlington Post._

The People and the Railways. By APPLETON MORGAN.

"It is a popular discussion of some railway problems, and it
takes the ground that a railway company is a useful public
servant, and not necessarily a crushing monopoly."--_Epoch._

"The book is carefully written, and Mr. Morgan presents his
side of the argument with clearness and great
ability."--_Chicago Herald._

Men, Women, and Gods. By HELEN GARDENER.

"The writer of this volume has read the Bible with open eyes.
The mist of sentimentality has not clouded her vision. She has
had the courage to tell the result of her investigations. She
has been quick to discover contradictions. She appreciates the
humorous side of the stupidly solemn. She says what she thinks,
and feels what she says."--_Robt. H. Ingersoll._

The Veteran and His Pipe. By ALBION W. TOURGEE.

"Judge Tourgee maintains his old familiar force and style, and
in 'The Veteran and His Pipe' employs himself in giving to
soldiers particularly (although the book will be interesting to
all readers) something that they will greatly enjoy."--_St.
Joseph_ (Mo.) _Herald._

Divorced. By MRS. MADELEINE VINTON DAHLGREN.

"This is a masterly discussion of one of the burning questions
of the age, dealt with according to the logic of facts. The
plot is most ingenious, and the characters are sketched with a
powerful hand."--_Trenton Times._

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