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The Colonel showed lively astonishment, and said:

“Why, Hawkins, are you a mind-reader?”

“I? I never thought of such a thing.”

“Well, then how did you happen to drop onto that idea in this curious fashion? It’s just mind-reading, that’s what it is, though you may not know it. Because I have got a private project that requires a Bank of England at its back. How could you divine that? What was the process? This is interesting.”

“There wasn’t any process. A thought like this happened to slip through my head by accident: How much would make you or me comfortable? A hundred thousand. Yet you are expecting two or three of—these inventions of yours to turn out some billions of money—and you are wanting them to do that. If you wanted ten millions, I could understand that—it’s inside the human limits. But billions! That’s clear outside the limits. There must be a definite project back of that somewhere.”

The earl’s interest and surprise augmented with every word, and when Hawkins finished, he said with strong admiration:

“It’s wonderfully reasoned out, Washington, it certainly is. It shows what I think is quite extraordinary penetration. For you’ve hit it; you’ve driven the centre, you’ve plugged the bulls-eye of my dream. Now I’ll tell you the whole thing, and you’ll understand it. I don’t need to ask you to keep it to yourself, because you’ll see that the project will prosper all the better for being kept in the background till the right time. Have you noticed how many pamphlets and books I’ve got lying around relating to Russia?”

“Yes, I think most anybody would notice that—anybody who wasn’t dead.”

“Well, I’ve been posting myself a good while. That’s a great and, splendid nation, and deserves to be set free.” He paused, then added in a quite matter-of-fact way, “When I get this money I’m going to set it free.”

“Great guns!”

“Why, what makes you jump like that?”

“Dear me, when you are going to drop a remark under a man’s chair that is likely to blow him out through the roof, why don’t you put some expression, some force, some noise into it that will prepare him? You shouldn’t flip out such a gigantic thing as this in that colorless kind of a way. You do jolt a person up, so. Go on, now, I am all right again. Tell me all about it. I’m all interest—yes, and sympathy, too.”

“Well, I’ve looked the ground over, and concluded that the methods of the Russian patriots, while good enough considering the way the boys are hampered, are not the best; at least not the quickest. They are trying to revolutionize Russia from within; that’s pretty slow, you know, and liable to interruption all the time, and is full of perils for the workers. Do you know how Peter the Great started his army? He didn’t start it on the family premises under the noses of the Strelitzes; no, he started it away off yonder, privately,—only just one regiment, you know, and he built to that. The first thing the Strelitzes knew, the regiment was an army, their position was turned, and they had to take a walk. Just that little idea made the biggest and worst of all the despotisms the world has seen. The same idea can unmake it. I’m going to prove it. I’m going to get out to one side and work my scheme the way Peter did.”

“This is mighty interesting, Rossmore. What is it you are going to do?”

“I am going to buy Siberia and start a republic.”

“There,—bang you go again, without giving any notice! Going to buy it?”

“Yes, as soon as I get the money. I don’t care what the price is, I shall take it. I can afford it, and I will. Now then, consider this—and you’ve never thought of it, I’ll warrant. Where is the place where there is twenty-five times more manhood, pluck, true heroism, unselfishness, devotion to high and noble ideals, adoration of liberty, wide education, and brains, per thousand of population, than any other domain in the whole world can show?”

“Siberia!”

“Right.”

“It is true; it certainly is true, but I never thought of it before.”

“Nobody ever thinks of it. But it’s so, just the same. In those mines and prisons are gathered together the very finest and noblest and capablest multitude of human beings that God is able to create. Now if you had that kind of a population to sell, would you offer it to a despotism? No, the despotism has no use for it; you would lose money. A despotism has no use for anything but human cattle. But suppose you want to start a republic?”

“Yes, I see. It’s just the material for it.”

“Well, I should say so! There’s Siberia with just the very finest and choicest material on the globe for a republic, and more coming—more coming all the time, don’t you see! It is being daily, weekly, monthly recruited by the most perfectly devised system that has ever been invented, perhaps. By this system the whole of the hundred millions of Russia are being constantly and patiently sifted, sifted, sifted, by myriads of trained experts, spies appointed by the Emperor personally; and whenever they catch a man, woman or child that has got any brains or education or character, they ship that person straight to Siberia. It is admirable, it is wonderful. It is so searching and so effective that it keeps the general level of Russian intellect and education down to that of the Czar.”

“Come, that sounds like exaggeration.”

“Well, it’s what they say anyway. But I think, myself, it’s a lie. And it doesn’t seem right to slander a whole nation that way, anyhow. Now, then, you see what the material is, there in Siberia, for a republic.” He paused, and his breast began to heave and his eye to burn, under the impulse of strong emotion. Then his words began to stream forth, with constantly increasing energy and fire, and he rose to his feet as if to give himself larger freedom. “The minute I organize that republic, the light of liberty, intelligence, justice, humanity, bursting from it, flooding from it, flaming from it, will concentrate the gaze of the whole astonished world as upon the miracle of a new sun; Russia’s countless multitudes of slaves will rise up and march, march!—eastward, with that great light transfiguring their faces as they come, and far back of them you will see-what will you see?—a vacant throne in an empty land! It can be done, and by God I will do it!”





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He stood a moment bereft of earthly consciousness by his exaltation; then consciousness returned, bringing him a slight shock, and he said with grave earnestness:

“I must ask you to pardon me, Major Hawkins. I have never used that expression before, and I beg you will forgive it this time.”

Hawkins was quite willing.

“You see, Washington, it is an error which I am by nature not liable to. Only excitable people, impulsive people, are exposed to it. But the circumstances of the present case—I being a democrat by birth and preference, and an aristocrat by inheritance and relish—”

The earl stopped suddenly, his frame stiffened, and he began to stare speechless through the curtainless window. Then he pointed, and gasped out a single rapturous word:

“Look!”

“What is it, Colonel?”

“IT!”

“No!”

“Sure as you’re born. Keep perfectly still. I’ll apply the influence—I’ll turn on all my force. I’ve brought It thus far—I’ll fetch It right into the house. You’ll see.”

He was making all sorts of passes in the air with his hands.

“There! Look at that. I’ve made It smile! See?”

Quite true. Tracy, out for an afternoon stroll, had come unexpectantly upon his family arms displayed upon this shabby house-front. The hatchments made him smile; which was nothing, they had made the neighborhood cats do that.

“Look, Hawkins, look! I’m drawing It over!”

“You’re drawing it sure, Rossmore. If I ever had any doubts about materialization, they’re gone, now, and gone for good. Oh, this is a joyful day!”

Tracy was sauntering over to read the door-plate. Before he was half way over he was saying to himself, “Why, manifestly these are the American Claimant’s quarters.”

“It’s coming—coming right along. I’ll slide, down and pull It in. You follow after me.”

Sellers, pale and a good deal agitated, opened the door and confronted Tracy. The old man could not at once get his voice: then he pumped out a scattering and hardly coherent salutation, and followed it with—

“Walk in, walk right in, Mr.—er—”

“Tracy—Howard Tracy.”

“Tracy—thanks—walk right in, you’re expected.”

Tracy entered, considerably puzzled, and said:

“Expected? I think there must be some mistake.”

“Oh, I judge not,” said Sellers, who—noticing that Hawkins had arrived, gave him a sidewise glance intended to call his close attention to a dramatic effect which he was proposing to produce by his next remark. Then he said, slowly and impressively—“I am—YOU KNOW WHO.”

To the astonishment of both conspirators the remark produced no dramatic effect at all; for the new-comer responded with a quite innocent and unembarrassed air—

“No, pardon me. I don’t know who you are. I only suppose—but no doubt correctly—that you are the gentleman whose title is on the doorplate.”

“Right, quite right—sit down, pray sit down.” The earl was rattled, thrown off his bearings, his head was in a whirl. Then he noticed Hawkins standing apart and staring idiotically at what to him was the apparition of a defunct man, and a new idea was born to him. He said to Tracy briskly:

“But a thousand pardons, dear sir, I am forgetting courtesies due to a guest and stranger. Let me introduce my friend General Hawkins—General Hawkins, our new Senator—Senator from the latest and grandest addition to the radiant galaxy of sovereign States, Cherokee Strip”—(to himself, “that name will shrivel him up!”—but it didn’t, in the least, and the Colonel resumed the introduction piteously disheartened and amazed),—“Senator Hawkins, Mr. Howard Tracy, of—er—”

“England.”

“England!—Why that’s im—”

“England, yes, native of England.”

“Recently from there?”

“Yes, quite recently.”

Said the Colonel to himself, “This phantom lies like an expert. Purifying this kind by fire don’t work. I’ll sound him a little further, give him another chance or two to work his gift.” Then aloud—with deep irony—

“Visiting our great country for recreation and amusement, no doubt. I suppose you find that traveling in the majestic expanses of our Far West is—”

“I haven’t been West, and haven’t been devoting myself to amusement with any sort of exclusiveness, I assure you. In fact, to merely live, an artist has got to work, not play.”

“Artist!” said Hawkins to himself, thinking of the rifled bank; “that is a name for it!”

“Are you an artist?” asked the colonel; and added to himself, “now I’m going to catch him.”

“In a humble way, yes.”

“What line?” pursued the sly veteran.

“Oils.”

“I’ve got him!” said Sellers to himself. Then aloud, “This is fortunate. Could I engage you to restore some of my paintings that need that attention?”

“I shall be very glad. Pray let me see them.”

No shuffling, no evasion, no embarrassment, even under this crucial test. The Colonel was nonplussed. He led Tracy to a chromo which had suffered damage in a former owner’s hands through being used as a lamp mat, and said, with a flourish of his hand toward the picture—

“This del Sarto—”

“Is that a del Sarto?”

The colonel bent a look of reproach upon Tracy, allowed it to sink home, then resumed as if there had been no interruption—

“This del Sarto is perhaps the only original of that sublime master in our country. You see, yourself, that the work is of such exceeding delicacy that the risk—could—er—would you mind giving me a little example of what you can do before we—”

“Cheerfully, cheerfully. I will copy one of these marvels.”

Water-color materials—relics of Miss Sally’s college life—were brought. Tracy said he was better in oils, but would take a chance with these. So he was left alone. He began his work, but the attractions of the place were too strong for him, and he got up and went drifting about, fascinated; also amazed.





CHAPTER XIX.



Meantime the earl and Hawkins were holding a troubled and anxious private consultation. The earl said:

“The mystery that bothers me, is, where did It get its other arm?”

“Yes—it worries me, too. And another thing troubles me—the apparition is English. How do you account for that, Colonel?”

“Honestly, I don’t know, Hawkins, I don’t really know. It is very confusing and awful.”

“Don’t you think maybe we’ve waked up the wrong one?”

“The wrong one? How do you account for the clothes?”

“The clothes are right, there’s no getting around it. What are we going to do? We can’t collect, as I see. The reward is for a one-armed American. This is a two-armed Englishman.”

“Well, it may be that that is not objectionable. You see it isn’t less than is called for, it is more, and so,—”

But he saw that this argument was weak, and dropped it. The friends sat brooding over their perplexities some time in silence. Finally the earl’s face began to glow with an inspiration, and he said, impressively:

“Hawkins, this materialization is a grander and nobler science than we have dreamed of. We have little imagined what a solemn and stupendous thing we have done. The whole secret is perfectly clear to me, now, clear as day. Every man is made up of heredities, long-descended atoms and particles of his ancestors. This present materialization is incomplete. We have only brought it down to perhaps the beginning of this century.”

“What do you mean, Colonel!” cried Hawkins, filled with vague alarms by the old man’s awe-compelling words and manner.

“This. We’ve materialized this burglar’s ancestor!”

“Oh, don’t—don’t say that. It’s hideous.”

“But it’s true, Hawkins, I know it. Look at the facts. This apparition is distinctly English—note that. It uses good grammar—note that. It is an Artist—note that. It has the manners and carriage of a gentleman—note that. Where’s your cow-boy? Answer me that.”

“Rossmore, this is dreadful—it’s too dreadful to think of!”

“Never resurrected a rag of that burglar but the clothes, not a solitary rag of him but the clothes.”

“Colonel, do you really mean—”

The Colonel brought his fist down with emphasis and said:

“I mean exactly this. This materialization was immature, the burglar has evaded us, this is nothing but a damned ancestor!”

He rose and walked the floor in great excitement.

Hawkins said plaintively:

“It’s a bitter disappointment—bitter.”

“I know it. I know it, Senator; I feel it as deeply as anybody could. But we’ve got to submit—on moral grounds. I need money, but God knows I am not poor enough or shabby enough to be an accessory to the punishing of a man’s ancestor for crimes committed by that ancestor’s posterity.”

“But Colonel!” implored Hawkins; “stop and think; don’t be rash; you know it’s the only chance we’ve got to get the money; and besides, the Bible itself says posterity to the fourth generation shall be punished for the sins and crimes committed by ancestors four generations back that hadn’t anything to do with them; and so it’s only fair to turn the rule around and make it work both ways.”

The Colonel was struck with the strong logic of this position. He strode up and down, and thought it painfully over. Finally he said:

“There’s reason in it; yes, there’s reason in it. And so, although it seems a piteous thing to sweat this poor ancient devil for a burglary he hadn’t the least hand in, still if duty commands I suppose we must give him up to the authorities.”

“I would,” said Hawkins, cheered and relieved, “I’d give him up if he was a thousand ancestors compacted into one.”

“Lord bless me, that’s just what he is,” said Sellers, with something like a groan, “it’s exactly what he is; there’s a contribution in him from every ancestor he ever had. In him there’s atoms of priests, soldiers, crusaders, poets, and sweet and gracious women—all kinds and conditions of folk who trod this earth in old, old centuries, and vanished out of it ages ago, and now by act of ours they are summoned from their holy peace to answer for gutting a one-horse bank away out on the borders of Cherokee Strip, and it’s just a howling outrage!”

“Oh, don’t talk like that, Colonel; it takes the heart all out of me, and makes me ashamed of the part I am proposing to—”

“Wait—I’ve got it!”

“A saving hope? Shout it out, I am perishing.”

“It’s perfectly simple; a child would have thought of it. He is all right, not a flaw in him, as far as I have carried the work. If I’ve been able to bring him as far as the beginning of this century, what’s to stop me now? I’ll go on and materialize him down to date.”

“Land, I never thought of that!” said Hawkins all ablaze with joy again. “It’s the very thing. What a brain you have got! And will he shed the superfluous arm?”

“He will.”

“And lose his English accent?”

“It will wholly disappear. He will speak Cherokee Strip—and other forms of profanity.”

“Colonel, maybe he’ll confess!”

“Confess? Merely that bank robbery?”

“Merely? Yes, but why ‘merely’?”

The Colonel said in his most impressive manner: “Hawkins, he will be wholly under my command. I will make him confess every crime he ever committed. There must be a thousand. Do you get the idea?”

“Well—not quite.”

“The rewards will come to us.”

“Prodigious conception! I never saw such a head for seeing with a lightning glance all the outlying ramifications and possibilities of a central idea.”

“It is nothing; it comes natural to me. When his time is out in one jail he goes to the next and the next, and we shall have nothing to do but collect the rewards as he goes along. It is a perfectly steady income as long as we live, Hawkins. And much better than other kinds of investments, because he is indestructible.”

“It looks—it really does look the way you say; it does indeed.”

“Look?—why it is. It will not be denied that I have had a pretty wide and comprehensive financial experience, and I do not hesitate to say that I consider this one of the most valuable properties I have ever controlled.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I do, indeed.”

“O, Colonel, the wasting grind and grief of poverty! If we could realize immediately. I don’t mean sell it all, but sell part—enough, you know, to—”

“See how you tremble with excitement. That comes of lack of experience. My boy, when you have been familiar with vast operations as long as I have, you’ll be different. Look at me; is my eye dilated? do you notice a quiver anywhere? Feel my pulse: plunk-plunk-plunk—same as if I were asleep. And yet, what is passing through my calm cold mind? A procession of figures which would make a financial novice drunk just the sight of them. Now it is by keeping cool, and looking at a thing all around, that a man sees what’s really in it, and saves himself from the novice’s unfailing mistake—the one you’ve just suggested—eagerness to realize. Listen to me. Your idea is to sell a part of him for ready cash. Now mine is—guess.”

“I haven’t an idea. What is it?”

“Stock him—of course.”

“Well, I should never have thought of that.”

“Because you are not a financier. Say he has committed a thousand crimes. Certainly that’s a low estimate. By the look of him, even in his unfinished condition, he has committed all of a million. But call it only a thousand to be perfectly safe; five thousand reward, multiplied by a thousand, gives us a dead sure cash basis of—what? Five million dollars!”

“Wait—let me get my breath.”

“And the property indestructible. Perpetually fruitful—perpetually; for a property with his disposition will go on committing crimes and winning rewards.”

“You daze me, you make my head whirl!”

“Let it whirl, it won’t do it any harm. Now that matter is all fixed—leave it alone. I’ll get up the company and issue the stock, all in good time. Just leave it in my hands. I judge you don’t doubt my ability to work it up for all it is worth.”

“Indeed I don’t. I can say that with truth.”

“All right, then. That’s disposed of. Everything in its turn. We old operators, go by order and system—no helter-skelter business with us. What’s the next thing on the docket? The carrying on of the materialization—the bringing it down to date. I will begin on that at once. I think—

“Look here, Rossmore. You didn’t lock It in. A hundred to one it has escaped!”

“Calm yourself, as to that; don’t give yourself any uneasiness.”

“But why shouldn’t it escape?”

“Let it, if it wants to. What of it?”

“Well, I should consider it a pretty serious calamity.”

“Why, my dear boy, once in my power, always in my power. It may go and come freely. I can produce it here whenever I want it, just by the exercise of my will.”

“Well, I am truly glad to hear that, I do assure you.”

“Yes, I shall give it all the painting it wants to do, and we and the family will make it as comfortable and contented as we can. No occasion to restrain its movements. I hope to persuade it to remain pretty quiet, though, because a materialization which is in a state of arrested development must of necessity be pretty soft and flabby and substanceless, and—er—by the way, I wonder where It comes from?”

“How? What do you mean?”

The earl pointed significantly—and interrogatively toward the sky. Hawkins started; then settled into deep reflection; finally shook his head sorrowfully and pointed downwards.

“What makes you think so, Washington?”

“Well, I hardly know, but really you can see, yourself, that he doesn’t seem to be pining for his last place.”

“It’s well thought! Soundly deduced. We’ve done that Thing a favor. But I believe I will pump it a little, in a quiet way, and find out if we are right.”

“How long is it going to take to finish him off and fetch him down to date, Colonel?”

“I wish I knew, but I don’t. I am clear knocked out by this new detail—this unforeseen necessity of working a subject down gradually from his condition of ancestor to his ultimate result as posterity. But I’ll make him hump himself, anyway.”

“Rossmore!”

“Yes, dear. We’re in the laboratory. Come—Hawkins is here. Mind, now Hawkins—he’s a sound, living, human being to all the family—don’t forget that. Here she comes.”

“Keep your seats, I’m not coming in. I just wanted to ask, who is it that’s painting down there?”

“That? Oh, that’s a young artist; young Englishman, named Tracy; very promising—favorite pupil of Hans Christian Andersen or one of the other old masters—Andersen I’m pretty sure it is; he’s going to half-sole some of our old Italian masterpieces. Been talking to him?”

“Well, only a word. I stumbled right in on him without expecting anybody was there. I tried to be polite to him; offered him a snack”—(Sellers delivered a large wink to Hawkins from behind his hand), “but he declined, and said he wasn’t hungry” (another sarcastic wink); “so I brought some apples” (doublewink), “and he ate a couple of—”

“What!” and the colonel sprang some yards toward the ceiling and came down quaking with astonishment.

Lady Rossmore was smitten dumb with amazement. She gazed at the sheepish relic of Cherokee Strip, then at her husband, and then at the guest again. Finally she said:

“What is the matter with you, Mulberry?”

He did not answer immediately. His back was turned; he was bending over his chair, feeling the seat of it. But he answered next moment, and said:

“Ah, there it is; it was a tack.”

The lady contemplated him doubtfully a moment, then said, pretty snappishly:

“All that for a tack! Praise goodness it wasn’t a shingle nail, it would have landed you in the Milky Way. I do hate to have my nerves shook up so.” And she turned on her heel and went her way.

As soon as she was safely out, the Colonel said, in a suppressed voice:

“Come—we must see for ourselves. It must be a mistake.”

They hurried softly down and peeped in. Sellers whispered, in a sort of despair—

It is eating! What a grisly spectacle! Hawkins it’s horrible! Take me away—I can’t stand it.

They tottered back to the laboratory.





CHAPTER XX.



Tracy made slow progress with his work, for his mind wandered a good deal. Many things were puzzling him. Finally a light burst upon him all of a sudden—seemed to, at any rate—and he said to himself, “I’ve got the clew at last—this man’s mind is off its balance; I don’t know how much, but it’s off a point or two, sure; off enough to explain this mess of perplexities, anyway. These dreadful chromos which he takes for old masters; these villainous portraits—which to his frantic mind represent Rossmores; the hatchments; the pompous name of this ramshackle old crib—Rossmore Towers; and that odd assertion of his, that I was expected. How could I be expected? that is, Lord Berkeley. He knows by the papers that that person was burned up in the New Gadsby. Why, hang it, he really doesn’t know who he was expecting; for his talk showed that he was not expecting an Englishman, or yet an artist, yet I answer his requirements notwithstanding. He seems sufficiently satisfied with me. Yes, he is a little off; in fact I am afraid he is a good deal off, poor old gentleman. But he’s interesting—all people in about his condition are, I suppose. I hope he’ll like my work; I would like to come every day and study him. And when I write my father—ah, that hurts! I mustn’t get on that subject; it isn’t good for my spirits. Somebody coming—I must get to work. It’s the old gentleman again. He looks bothered. Maybe my clothes are suspicious; and they are—for an artist. If my conscience would allow me to make a change, but that is out of the question. I wonder what he’s making those passes in the air for, with his hands. I seem to be the object of them. Can he be trying to mesmerize me? I don’t quite like it. There’s something uncanny about it.”

The colonel muttered to himself, “It has an effect on him, I can see it myself. That’s enough for one time, I reckon. He’s not very solid, yet, I suppose, and I might disintegrate him. I’ll just put a sly question or two at him, now, and see if I can find out what his condition is, and where he’s from.”

He approached and said affably:

“Don’t let me disturb you, Mr. Tracy; I only want to take a little glimpse of your work. Ah, that’s fine—that’s very fine indeed. You are doing it elegantly. My daughter will be charmed with this. May I sit down by you?”

“Oh, do; I shall be glad.”

“It won’t disturb you? I mean, won’t dissipate your inspirations?”

Tracy laughed and said they were not ethereal enough to be very easily discommoded.

The colonel asked a number of cautious and well-considered questions—questions which seemed pretty odd and flighty to Tracy—but the answers conveyed the information desired, apparently, for the colonel said to himself, with mixed pride and gratification:

“It’s a good job as far as I’ve got with it. He’s solid. Solid and going to last, solid as the real thing.”

“It’s wonderful—wonderful. I believe I could—petrify him.” After a little he asked, warily “Do you prefer being here, or—or there?”

“There? Where?”

“Why—er—where you’ve been?”

Tracy’s thought flew to his boarding-house, and he answered with decision.

“Oh, here, much!”

The colonel was startled, and said to himself, “There’s no uncertain ring about that. It indicates where he’s been to, poor fellow. Well, I am satisfied, now. I’m glad I got him out.”

He sat thinking, and thinking, and watching the brush go. At length he said to himself, “Yes, it certainly seems to account for the failure of my endeavors in poor Berkeley’s case. He went in the other direction. Well, it’s all right. He’s better off.”

Sally Sellers entered from the street, now, looking her divinest, and the artist was introduced to her. It was a violent case of mutual love at first sight, though neither party was entirely aware of the fact, perhaps. The Englishman made this irrelevant remark to himself, “Perhaps he is not insane, after all.” Sally sat down, and showed an interest in Tracy’s work which greatly pleased him, and a benevolent forgiveness of it which convinced him that the girl’s nature was cast in a large mould. Sellers was anxious to report his discoveries to Hawkins; so he took his leave, saying that if the two “young devotees of the colored Muse” thought they could manage without him, he would go and look after his affairs. The artist said to himself, “I think he is a little eccentric, perhaps, but that is all.” He reproached himself for having injuriously judged a man without giving him any fair chance to show what he really was.





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Of course the stranger was very soon at his ease and chatting along comfortably. The average American girl possesses the valuable qualities of naturalness, honesty, and inoffensive straightforwardness; she is nearly barren of troublesome conventions and artificialities, consequently her presence and her ways are unembarrassing, and one is acquainted with her and on the pleasantest terms with her before he knows how it came about. This new acquaintanceship—friendship, indeed—progressed swiftly; and the unusual swiftness of it, and the thoroughness of it are sufficiently evidenced and established by one noteworthy fact—that within the first half hour both parties had ceased to be conscious of Tracy’s clothes. Later this consciousness was re-awakened; it was then apparent to Gwendolen that she was almost reconciled to them, and it was apparent to Tracy that he wasn’t. The re-awakening was brought about by Gwendolen’s inviting the artist to stay to dinner. He had to decline, because he wanted to live, now—that is, now that there was something to live for—and he could not survive in those clothes at a gentleman’s table. He thought he knew that. But he went away happy, for he saw that Gwendolen was disappointed.

And whither did he go? He went straight to a slopshop and bought as neat and reasonably well-fitting a suit of clothes as an Englishman could be persuaded to wear. He said—to himself, but at his conscience—“I know it’s wrong; but it would be wrong not to do it; and two wrongs do not make a right.”

This satisfied him, and made his heart light. Perhaps it will also satisfy the reader—if he can make out what it means.

The old people were troubled about Gwendolen at dinner, because she was so distraught and silent. If they had noticed, they would have found that she was sufficiently alert and interested whenever the talk stumbled upon the artist and his work; but they didn’t notice, and so the chat would swap around to some other subject, and then somebody would presently be privately worrying about Gwendolen again, and wondering if she were not well, or if something had gone wrong in the millinery line. Her mother offered her various reputable patent medicines, and tonics with iron and other hardware in them, and her father even proposed to send out for wine, relentless prohibitionist and head of the order in the District of Columbia as he was, but these kindnesses were all declined—thankfully, but with decision. At bedtime, when the family were breaking up for the night, she privately looted one of the brushes, saying to herself, “It’s the one he has used, the most.”

The next morning Tracy went forth wearing his new suit, and equipped with a pink in his button-hole—a daily attention from Puss. His whole soul was full of Gwendolen Sellers, and this condition was an inspiration, art-wise. All the morning his brush pawed nimbly away at the canvases, almost without his awarity—awarity, in this sense being the sense of being aware, though disputed by some authorities—turning out marvel upon marvel, in the way of decorative accessories to the portraits, with a felicity and celerity which amazed the veterans of the firm and fetched out of them continuous explosions of applause.

Meantime Gwendolen was losing her morning, and many dollars. She supposed Tracy was coming in the forenoon—a conclusion which she had jumped to without outside help. So she tripped down stairs every little while from her work-parlor to arrange the brushes and things over again, and see if he had arrived. And when she was in her work-parlor it was not profitable, but just the other way—as she found out to her sorrow.

She had put in her idle moments during the last little while back, in designing a particularly rare and capable gown for herself, and this morning she set about making it up; but she was absent minded, and made an irremediable botch of it. When she saw what she had done, she knew the reason of it and the meaning of it; and she put her work away from her and said she would accept the sign. And from that time forth she came no more away from the Audience Chamber, but remained there and waited. After luncheon she waited again. A whole hour. Then a great joy welled up in her heart, for she saw him coming. So she flew back up stairs thankful, and could hardly wait for him to miss the principal brush, which she had mislaid down there, but knew where she had mislaid it. However, all in good time the others were called in and couldn’t find the brush, and then she was sent for, and she couldn’t find it herself for some little time; but then she found it when the others had gone away to hunt in the kitchen and down cellar and in the woodshed, and all those other places where people look for things whose ways they are not familiar with. So she gave him the brush, and remarked that she ought to have seen that everything was ready for him, but it hadn’t seemed necessary, because it was so early that she wasn’t expecting—but she stopped there, surprised at herself for what she was saying; and he felt caught and ashamed, and said to himself, “I knew my impatience would drag me here before I was expected, and betray me, and that is just what it has done; she sees straight through me—and is laughing at me, inside, of course.”

Gwendolen was very much pleased, on one account, and a little the other way in another; pleased with the new clothes and the improvement which they had achieved; less pleased by the pink in the buttonhole. Yesterday’s pink had hardly interested her; this one was just like it, but somehow it had got her immediate attention, and kept it. She wished she could think of some way of getting at its history in a properly colorless and indifferent way. Presently she made a venture. She said:

“Whatever a man’s age may be, he can reduce it several years by putting a bright-colored flower in his button-hole. I have often noticed that. Is that your sex’s reason for wearing a boutonniere?”

“I fancy not, but certainly that reason would be a sufficient one. I’ve never heard of the idea before.”

“You seem to prefer pinks. Is it on account of the color, or the form?”

“Oh no,” he said, simply, “they are given to me. I don’t think I have any preference.”

“They are given to him,” she said to herself, and she felt a coldness toward that pink. “I wonder who it is, and what she is like.” The flower began to take up a good deal of room; it obtruded itself everywhere, it intercepted all views, and marred them; it was becoming exceedingly annoying and conspicuous for a little thing. “I wonder if he cares for her.” That thought gave her a quite definite pain.





CHAPTER XXI.



She had made everything comfortable for the artist; there was no further pretext for staying. So she said she would go, now, and asked him to summon the servants in case he should need anything. She went away unhappy; and she left unhappiness behind her; for she carried away all the sunshine. The time dragged heavily for both, now. He couldn’t paint for thinking of her; she couldn’t design or millinerize with any heart, for thinking of him. Never before had painting seemed so empty to him, never before had millinerizing seemed so void of interest to her. She had gone without repeating that dinner-invitation—an almost unendurable disappointment to him. On her part-well, she was suffering, too; for she had found she couldn’t invite him. It was not hard yesterday, but it was impossible to-day. A thousand innocent privileges seemed to have been filched from her unawares in the past twenty-four hours. To-day she felt strangely hampered, restrained of her liberty. To-day she couldn’t propose to herself to do anything or say anything concerning this young man without being instantly paralyzed into non-action by the fear that he might “suspect.” Invite him to dinner to-day? It made her shiver to think of it.

And so her afternoon was one long fret. Broken at intervals. Three times she had to go down stairs on errands—that is, she thought she had to go down stairs on errands. Thus, going and coming, she had six glimpses of him, in the aggregate, without seeming to look in his direction; and she tried to endure these electric ecstasies without showing any sign, but they fluttered her up a good deal, and she felt that the naturalness she was putting on was overdone and quite too frantically sober and hysterically calm to deceive.

The painter had his share of the rapture; he had his six glimpses, and they smote him with waves of pleasure that assaulted him, beat upon him, washed over him deliciously, and drowned out all consciousness of what he was doing with his brush. So there were six places in his canvas which had to be done over again.