It, and Other Stories

IV

It wasn't from shame that G. G. signed another name than his own to the stories that he was making at the rate of one every two months. He judged calmly and dispassionately that they were "going to be pretty good some day," and that it would never be necessary for him to live in a city. He signed his stories with an assumed name because he was full of dramatic instinct. He wanted to be able—just the minute he was well—to say to Cynthia:

"Let us be married!" Then she was to say: "Of course, G. G.; but what are we going to live on?" And G. G. was going to say: "Ever hear of so-and-so?"

Cynthia: Goodness gracious! Sakes alive! Yes; I should think I had! And, except for you, darlingest G. G., I think he's the very greatest man in all the world!

G. G.: Goosey-Gander, know that he and I are one and the same person—and that we've saved seventeen hundred dollars to get married on!

(Tableau not to be seen by the audience.)

So far as keeping Cynthia and his father and mother in ignorance of the fledgling wings he was beginning to flap, G. G. succeeded admirably; but it might have been better to have told them all in the beginning.

Now G. G.'s seventeen hundred dollars was a huge myth. He was writing short stories at the rate of six a year and he had picked out to do business with one of the most dignified magazines in the world. Dignified people do not squander money. The magazine in question paid G. G. from sixty to seventy dollars apiece for his stories and was much too dignified to inform him that plenty of other magazines—very frivolous and not in the least dignified—would have been ashamed to pay so little for anything but the poems, which all magazines use to fill up blank spaces. So, even in his own ambitious and courageous mind, a "married living" seemed a very long way off.

He refused to be discouraged, however. His health was too good for that. The doctor pointed to him with pride as a patient who followed instructions to the letter and was not going to die of the disease which had brought him to Saranac. And they wrote to G. G's father—who was finding life very expensive—that, if he could keep G. G. at Saranac, or almost anywhere out of New York, for another year or two, they guaranteed—as much as human doctors can—that G. G. would then be as sound as a bell and fit to live anywhere.

This pronouncement was altogether too much of a good thing for Fate. As G. G's father walked up-town from his office, Fate raised a dust in his face which, in addition to the usual ingredients of city dust, contained at least one thoroughly compatible pair of pneumonia germs. These went for their honey-moon on a pleasant, warm journey up G. G's father's left nostril and to house-keeping in his lungs. In a few hours they raised a family of several hundred thousand bouncing baby germs; and these grew up in a few minutes and began to set up establishments of their own right and left.

G. G.'s father admitted that he had a "heavy cold on the chest." It was such a heavy cold that he became delirious, and doctors came and sent for nurses; and there was laid in the home of G. G.'s father the corner-stone of a large edifice of financial disaster.

He had never had a partner. His practice came to a dead halt. The doctors whom G. G.'s mother called in were, of course, the best she had ever heard of. They would have been leaders of society if their persons had been as fashionable as their prices. The corner drug store made its modest little profit of three or four hundred per cent on the drugs which were telephoned for daily. The day nurse rolled up twenty-five dollars a week and the night nurse thirty-five. The servant's wages continued as usual. The price of beef, eggs, vegetables, etc., rose. The interest on the mortgage fell due. And it is a wonder, considering how much he worried, that G. G.'s father ever lived to face his obligations.

Cynthia, meanwhile, having heard that G. G. was surely going to get well, was so happy that she couldn't contain the news. And she proceeded to divulge it to her father.

"Papa," she said, "I think I ought to tell you that years ago, at Saranac—that Christmas when I went up with the Andersons—I met the man that I am going to marry. He was a boy then; but now we're both grown up and we feel just the same about each other."

And she told her father G. G.'s name and that he had been very delicate, but that he was surely going to get well. Cynthia's father, who had always given her everything she asked for until now, was not at all enthusiastic.

"I can't prevent your marrying any one you determine to marry, Cynthia," he said. "Can this young man support a wife?"

"How could he!" she exclaimed—"living at Saranac and not being able to work, and not having any money to begin with! But surely, if the way we live is any criterion, you could spare us some money—couldn't you?"

"You wish me to say that I will support a delicate son-in-law whom I have never seen? Consult your intelligence, Cynthia."

"I have my allowance," she said, her lips curling.

"Yes," said her father, "while you live at home and do as you're told."

"Now, papa, don't tell me that you're going to behave like a lugubrious parent in a novel! Don't tell me that you are going to cut me off with a shilling!"

"I shan't do that," he said gravely; "it will be without a shilling." But he tempered this savage statement with a faint smile.

"Papa, dear, is this quite definite? Are you talking in your right mind and do you really mean what you say?"

"Suppose you talk the matter over with your mother—she's always indulged you in every way. See what she says."

It developed that neither of Cynthia's parents was enthusiastic at the prospect of her marrying a nameless young man—she had told them his name, but that was all she got for her pains—who hadn't a penny and who had had consumption, and might or might not be sound again. Personally they did not believe that consumption can be cured. It can be arrested for a time, they admitted, but it always comes back. Cynthia's mother even made a physiological attack on Cynthia's understanding, with the result that Cynthia turned indignantly pink and left the room, saying:

"If the doctor thinks it's perfectly right and proper for us to marry I don't see the least point in listening to the opinions of excited and prejudiced amateurs."

The ultimatum that she had from her parents was distinct, final, and painful.

"Marry him if you like. We will neither forgive you nor support you."

They were perfectly calm with her—cool, affectionate, sensible, and worldly, as it is right and proper for parents to be. She told them they were wrong-headed, old-fashioned, and unintelligent; but as long as they hadn't made scenes and talked loud she found that she couldn't help loving them almost as much as she always had; but she loved G. G. very much more. And having definitely decided to defy her family, to marry G. G. and live happily ever afterward, she consulted her check-book and discovered that her available munition of war was something less than five hundred dollars—most of it owed to her dress-maker.

"Well, well!" she said; "she's always had plenty of money from me; she can afford to wait."

And Cynthia wrote to her dress-maker, who was also her friend!

My dear Celeste: I have decided that you will have to afford to wait for your money. I have an enterprise in view which calls for all the available capital I have. Please write me a nice note and say that you don't mind a bit. Otherwise we shall stop being friends and I shall always get my clothes from somebody else. Let me know when the new models come....

V

On her way down-town Cynthia stopped to see G. G.'s mother and found the whole household in the throes occasioned by its head's pneumonia.

"Why haven't you let me know?" exclaimed Cynthia. "There must be so many little things that I could have done to help you."

Though the sick man couldn't have heard them if they had shouted, the two women talked in whispers, with their heads very close together.

"He's better," said G. G.'s mother, "but yesterday they wanted me to send for G. G. 'No,' I said. 'You may have given him up, but I haven't. If I send for my boy it would look as if I had surrendered,' And almost at once, if you'll believe it, he seemed to shake off something that was trying to strangle him and took a turn for the better; and now they say that, barring some long names, he will get well.... It does look, my dear, as if death had seen that there was no use facing a thoroughly determined woman."

At this point, because she was very much overwrought, G. G.'s mother had a mild little attack of hysteria; and Cynthia beat her on the back and shook her and kissed her until she was over it. Then G. G.'s mother told Cynthia about her financial troubles.

"It isn't us that matters," she said, "but that G. G. ought to have one more year in a first-rate climate; and it isn't going to be possible to give it to him. They say that he's well, my dear, absolutely well; but that now he should have a chance to build up and become strong and heavy, so that he can do a man's work in the world. As it is, we shall have to take him home to live; and you know what New York dust and climate can do to people who have been very, very ill and are still delicate and high-strung."

"There's only one thing to do for the present," said Cynthia—"anybody with the least notion of business knows that—we must keep him at Saranac just as long as our credit holds out, mustn't we?—until the woman where he boards begins to act ugly and threatens to turn him out in the snow."

"Oh, but that would be dreadful!" said G. G.'s mother. Cynthia smiled in a superior way.

"I don't believe," she said, "that you understand the first thing about business. Even my father, who is a prude about bills, says that all the business of the country is done on credit.... Now you're not going to be silly, are you?—and make G. G. come to New York before he has to?"

"It will have to be pretty soon, I'm afraid," said G. G.'s mother.

"Sooner than run such risks with any boy of mine," said Cynthia, with a high color, "I'd beg, I'd borrow, I'd forge, I'd lie—I'd steal!"

"Don't I know you would!" exclaimed G. G.'s mother. "My darling girl, you've got the noblest character—it's just shining in your eyes!"

"There's another thing," said Cynthia: "I have to go down-town now on business, but you must telephone me around five o'clock and tell me how G. G.'s father is. And you must spend all your time between now and then trying to think up something really useful that I can do to help you. And"—here Cynthia became very mysterious—"I forbid you to worry about money until I tell you to!"

Cynthia had a cousin in Wall Street; his name was Jarrocks Bell. He was twenty years older than Cynthia and he had been fond of her ever since she was born. He was a great, big, good-looking man, gruff without and tender within. Clever people, who hadn't made successful brokers, wondered how in the face of what they called his "obvious stupidity" Jarrocks Bell had managed to grow rich in Wall Street. The answer was obvious enough to any one who knew him intimately. To begin with, his stupidity was superficial. In the second place, he had studied bonds and stocks until he knew a great deal about them. Then, though a drinking man, he had a head like iron and was never moved by exhilaration to mention his own or anybody else's affairs. Furthermore, he was unscrupulously honest. He was so honest and blunt that people thought him brutal at times. Last and not least among the elements of his success was the fact that he himself never speculated.

When the big men found out that there was in Wall Street a broker who didn't speculate himself, who didn't drink to excess, who was absolutely honest, and who never opened his mouth when it was better shut, they began to patronize that man's firm. In short, the moment Jarrocks Bell's qualities were discovered, Jarrocks Bell was made. So that now, in speculative years, his profits were enormous.

Cynthia had always been fond of her big, blunt cousin, as he of her; and in her present trouble her thoughts flew to him as straight as a homing aeroplane to the landing-stage.

Even a respectable broker's office is a noisome, embarrassing place, and among the clients are men whose eyes have become popped from staring at paper-tapes and pretty girls; but Cynthia had no more fear of men than a farmer's daughter has of cows, and she flashed through Jarrocks's outer office—preceded by a very small boy—with her color unchanged and only her head a little higher than usual.

Jarrocks must have wondered to the point of vulgar curiosity what the deuce had brought Cynthia to see him in the busiest hour of a very busy day; but he said "Hello, Cynthia!" as naturally as if they two had been visiting in the same house and he had come face to face with her for the third or fourth time that morning.

"I suppose," said Cynthia, "that you are dreadfully busy; but, Jarrocks dear, my affairs are so much more important to me than yours can possibly be to you—do you mind?"

"May I smoke?"

"Of course."

"Then I don't mind. What's your affair, Cynthia—money or the heart?"

"Both, Jarrocks." And she told him pretty much what the reader has already learned. As for Jarrocks's listening, he was a perfect study of himself. He laughed gruffly when he ought to have cried; and when Cynthia tried to be a little humorous he looked very solemn and not unlike the big bronze Buddha of the Japanese. Inside, however, his big heart was full of compassion and tenderness for his favorite girl in all the world. Nobody will ever know just how fond Jarrocks was of Cynthia. It was one of those matters on which—owing, perhaps, to his being her senior by twenty years—he had always thought it best to keep his mouth shut.

"What's your plan?" he asked. "Where do I come in? I'll give you anything I've got." Cynthia waived the offer; it was a little unwelcome.

"I've got about five hundred dollars," she said, "and I want to speculate with it and make a lot of money, so that I can be independent of papa and mamma."

"Lots of people," said Jarrocks, "come to Wall Street with five hundred dollars, more or less, and they wish to be independent of papa and mamma. They end up by going to live in the Mills Hotel."

"I know," said Cynthia; "but this is really important. If G. G. could work it would be different."

"Tell me one thing," said Jarrocks: "If you weren't in love with G. G. what would you think of him as a candidate for your very best friend's hand?"

Cynthia counted ten before answering.

"Jarrocks, dear," she said—and he turned away from the meltingness of her lovely face—"he's so pure, he's so straight, he's so gentle and so brave, that I don't really think I can tell you what I think of him."

There was silence for a moment, then Jarrocks said gruffly:

"That's a clean-enough bill of health. Guess you can bring him into the family, Cynthia."

Then he drummed with his thick, stubby fingers on the arm of his chair.

"The idea," he said at last, "is to turn five hundred dollars into a fortune. You know I don't speculate."

"But you make it easy for other people?"

He nodded.

"If you'd come a year ago," he said, "I'd have sent you away. Just at the present moment your proposition isn't the darn-fool thing it sounds."

"I knew you'd agree with me," said Cynthia complacently. "I knew you'd put me into something that was going 'way up."

Jarrocks snorted.

"Prices are at about the highest level they've ever struck and money was never more expensive. I think we're going to see such a tumble in values as was never seen before. It almost tempts me to come out of my shell and take a flyer—if I lose your five hundred for you, you won't squeal, Cynthia?"

"Of course not."

"Then I'll tell you what I think. There's nothing certain in this business, but if ever there was a chance to turn five hundred dollars into big money it's now. You've entered Wall Street, Cynthia, at what looks to me like the psychological moment."

"That's a good omen," said Cynthia. "I believe we shall succeed. And I leave everything to you."

Then she wrote him a check for all the money she had in the world. He held it between his thumb and forefinger while the ink dried.

"By the way, Cynthia," he said, "do you want the account to stand in your own name?"

She thought a moment, then laughed and told him to put it in the name of G. G.'s mother. "But you must report to me how things go," she said.

Jarrocks called a clerk and gave him an order to sell something or other. In three minutes the clerk reported that "it"—just some letter of the alphabet—had been sold at such and such a price.

For another five minutes Jarrocks denied himself to all visitors. Then he called for another report on the stock which he had just caused to be sold. It was selling "off a half."

"Well, Cynthia," said Jarrocks, "you're fifty dollars richer than when you came. Now I've got to tell you to go. I'll look out for your interests as if they were my own."

And Jarrocks, looking rather stupid and bored, conducted Cynthia through his outer offices and put her into an elevator "going down." Her face vanished and his heart continued to mumble and grumble, just the way a tooth does when it is getting ready to ache.

Cynthia had entered Wall Street at an auspicious moment. Stocks were at that high level from which they presently tumbled to the panic quotations of nineteen-seven. And Jarrocks, whom the unsuccessful thought so very stupid, had made a very shrewd guess as to what was going to happen.

Two weeks later he wrote Cynthia that if she could use two or three thousand dollars she could have them, without troubling her balance very perceptibly.

"I thought you had a chance," he wrote. "I'm beginning to think it's a sure thing! Keep a stiff upper lip and first thing you know you'll have the laugh on mamma and papa. Give 'em my best regards."

VI

If it is wicked to gamble Cynthia was wicked. If it is wicked to lie Cynthia was wicked. If the money that comes out of Wall Street belonged originally to widows and orphans, why, that is the kind of money which she amassed for her own selfish purposes. Worst of all, on learning from Jarrocks that the Rainbow's Foot—where the pot of gold is—was almost in sight, this bad, wicked girl's sensations were those of unmixed triumph and delight!

The panic of nineteen-seven is history now. Plenty of people who lost their money during those exciting months can explain to you how any fool, with the least luck, could have made buckets of it instead.

As a snowball rolling down a hill of damp snow swells to gigantic proportions, so Cynthia's five hundred dollars descended the long slopes of nineteen-seven, doubling itself at almost every turn. And when, at last, values had so shrunk that it looked to Jarrocks as if they could not shrink any more, he told her that her account—which stood in the name of G. G.'s mother—was worth nearly four hundred thousand dollars. "And I think," he said, "that, if you now buy stocks outright and hold them as investments, your money will double again."

So they put their heads together and Cynthia bought some Union Pacific at par and some Steel Common in the careless twenties, and other standard securities that were begging, almost with tears in their eyes, to be bought and cared for by somebody. She had the certificates of what she bought made out in the name of G. G.'s mother. And she went up-town and found G. G.'s mother alone, and said:

"Oh, my dear! If anybody ever finds out you will catch it!"

G. G.'s mother knew there was a joke of some kind preparing at her expense, but she couldn't help looking a little puzzled and anxious.

"It's bad enough to do what you have done," continued Cynthia; "but on top of it to be going to lie up and down—that does seem a little too awful!"

"What are you going to tell me?" cried G. G.'s mother. "I know you've got some good news up your sleeve!"

"Gambler!" cried Cynthia—"cold-blooded, reckless Wall Street speculator!" And the laughter that was pent up in her face burst its bonds, accompanied by hugs and kisses.

"Now listen!" said Cynthia, as soon as she could. "On such and such a day, you took five hundred dollars to a Wall Street broker named Jarrocks Bell—you thought that conditions were right for turning into a Bear. You went short of the market. You kept it up for weeks and months. Do you know what you did? You pyramided on the way down!"

"Mercy!" exclaimed G. G.'s mother, her eyes shining with wonder and excitement.

"First thing you knew," continued Cynthia, "you were worth four hundred thousand dollars!"

G. G.'s mother gave a little scream, as if she had seen a mouse.

"And you invested it," went on Cynthia, relenting, "so that now you stand to double your capital; and your annual income is between thirty and forty thousand dollars!"

After this Cynthia really did some explaining, until G. G.'s mother really understood what had really happened. It must be recorded that, at first, she was completely flabbergasted.

"And you've gone and put it in my name!" she said. "But why?"

"Don't you see," said Cynthia, "that if I came offering money to G. G. and G. G.'s father they wouldn't even sniff at it? But if you've got it—why, they've just got to share with you. Isn't that so?"

"Y-e-e-s," admitted G. G.'s mother; "but, my dear, I can't take it. Even if I could, they would want to know where I'd gotten it and I'd have nothing to say."

"Not if you're the one woman in a million that I think you are," said Cynthia. "Tell me, isn't your husband at his wit's end to think how to meet the bills for his illness and all and all? And wouldn't you raise your finger to bring all his miserable worries to an end? Just look at the matter from a business point of view! You must tell your husband and G. G. that what has really happened to me happened to you; that you were desperate; that you took the five hundred dollars to speculate with, and that this is the result."

"But that wouldn't be true," said G. G.'s mother.

"For mercy's sake," said Cynthia, "what has the truth got to do with it! This isn't a matter of religion or martyrdom; it's a matter of business! How to put an end to my husband's troubles and to enable my son to marry the girl he loves?—that's your problem; and the solution is—lie! Whom can the money come from if not from you? Not from me certainly. You must lie! You'd better begin in the dark, where your husband can't see your face—because I'm afraid you don't know how very well. But after a time it will get easy; and when you've told him the story two or three times—with details—you'll end by believing it yourself.... And, of course," she added, "you must make over half of the securities to G. G., so that he will have enough money to support a wife."

For two hours Cynthia wrestled with G. G.'s mother's conscience; but, when at last the struggling creature was thrown, the two women literally took it by the hair and dragged it around the room and beat it until it was deaf, dumb, and blind.

And when G. G.'s father came home G. G.'s mother met him in the hall that was darkish, and hid her face against his—and lied to him! And as she lied the years began to fall from the shoulders of G. G.'s father—to the number of ten.

VII

Cynthia was also met in a front hall—but by her father.

"I've been looking for you, Cynthia," he said gravely. "I want to talk to you and get your advice—no; the library is full of smoke—come in here."

He led her into the drawing-room, which neither of them could remember ever having sat in before.

"I've been talking with a young gentleman," said her father without further preliminaries, "who made himself immensely interesting to me. To begin with, I never saw a handsomer, more engaging specimen of young manhood; and, in the second place, he is the author of some stories that I have enjoyed in the past year more than any one's except O. Henry's. He doesn't write over his own name—but that's neither here nor there.

"He came to me for advice. Why he selected me, a total stranger, will appear presently. His family isn't well off; and, though he expects to succeed in literature—and there's no doubt of it in my mind—he feels that he ought to give it up and go into something in which the financial prospects are brighter. I suggested a rich wife, but that seemed to hurt his feelings. He said it would be bad enough to marry a girl that had more than he had; but to marry a rich girl, when he had only the few hundreds a year that he can make writing stories, was an intolerable thought. And that's all the more creditable to him because, from what I can gather, he is desperately in love—and the girl is potentially rich."

"But," said Cynthia, "what have I to do with all this?"

Her father laughed. "This young fellow didn't come to me of his own accord. I sent for him. And I must tell you that, contrary to my expectations, I was charmed with him. If I had had a son I should wish him to be just like this youngster."

Cynthia was very much puzzled.

"He writes stories?" she said.

"Bully stories! But he takes so much pains that his output is small."

"Well," said she, "what did you tell him?"

"I told him to wait."

"That's conservative advice."

"As a small boy," said her father, "he was very delicate; but now he's as sound as a bell and he looks as strong as an elk."

Cynthia rose to her feet, trembling slightly.

"What was the matter with him—when he was delicate?"

"Consumption."

She became as it were taller—and vivid with beauty.

"Where is he?"

"In the library."

Cynthia put her hands on her father's shoulders.

"It's all right," she said; "his family has come into quite a lot of money. He doesn't know it yet. They're going to give him enough to marry on. You still think he ought to marry—don't you?"

They kissed.

Cynthia flew out of the room, across the hall, and into the library.

They kissed!

THE TRAP

"Well," says the owner, "you slip out to yon Zoo and you put it up to yon one-armed Hindu that a white Noah named Bower has been ordered to carry pairs of all the Indian fauna from Singapore to Sydney; and you tell him to shake his black panther and 'come along with.'"

"What will you pay?" I asked.

The owner winked his eye. "What will I promise?" said he. "I leave that to you."

But I wasn't bluffed. The owner always talked pagan and practised Christian; loved his little joke. They called him "Bond" Hadley on the water-front to remind themselves that his word was just as good.

I settled with Yir Massir in a long confab back of the snake-house, and that night Hadley blew me to Ivy Green's benefit at the opera-house.

Poor little girl! There weren't fifty in the audience. She couldn't act. I mean she couldn't draw. The whole company was on the bum and stone-broke. They'd scraped out of Australia and the Sandwich Islands, but it looked as if they'd stay in Calcutta, doing good works, such as mending roads for the public, to the end of time.

"Ivy Green is a pretty name for a girl," said the owner.

"And Ivy Green is a pretty girl," I said; "and I'll bet my horned soul she's a good girl."

To tell the truth, I was taken with her something terrible at first sight. I'd often seen women that I wanted, but she was the first girl—and the last. It's a different sort of wanting, that. It's the good in you that wants—instead of the bad.

Her little face was like the pansies that used to grow in mother's dooryard; and a dooryard is the place for pansies, not a stage. When her act was over the fifty present did their best; but I knew, when she'd finished bobbing little curtsies and smiling her pretty smile, she'd slip off to her dressing-room and cry like a baby. I couldn't stand it. There were other acts to come, but I couldn't wait.

"If Ivy Green is a pretty name for a girl, Ivy Bower is a prettier name for a woman," I said. "I'm going behind."

He looked up, angry. Then he saw that I didn't mean any harm and he looked down. He said nothing. I got behind by having the pull on certain ropes in that opera-house, and I asked a comedian with a face like a walrus which was Miss Green's dressing-room.

"Friend of hers?" he says.

"Yes," says I, "a friend."

He showed me which door and I knocked. Her voice was full of worry and tears.

"Who's there?" she said.

"A friend," said I.

"Pass, friend," said she.

And I took it to mean "Come in," but it didn't. Still, she wasn't so dishabilled as to matter. She was crying and rubbing off the last of her paint.

"Miss Green," I said, "you've made me feel so mean and miserable that I had to come and tell you. My name is Bower. The boys call me 'Right' Bower, meaning that I'm lucky and straight. It was lucky for me that I came to your benefit, and I hope to God that it will be lucky for you."

"Yes?" she says—none too warm.

"As for you, Miss Green," I said, "you're up against it, aren't you? The manager's broke. You don't know when you've touched any salary. There's been no balm in your benefit. What are you going to do?"

This time she looked me over before she spoke.

"I don't know," she said.

"I don't have to ask," said I, blushing red, "if you're a good girl. It's just naturally obvious. I guess that's what put me up to butting in. I want to help. Will you answer three questions?"

She nodded.

"Where," said I, "will you get breakfast to-morrow?—lunch to-morrow?—and dinner to-morrow?"

"We disband to-night," she said, "and I don't know."

"I suppose you know," said I, "what happens to most white girls who get stranded in Indian cities?"

"I know," she said, "that people get up against it so hard that they oughtn't to be blamed for anything they do."

"They aren't," I said, "by—Christians; but it's ugly just the same. Now——"

"And you," she said, flaring up, "think that, as long as it's got to be, it might as well be you! Is that your song and dance, Mr. Smarty?"

I shook my head and smiled.

"Don't be a little goat!" I said; and that seemed to make her take to me and trust me.

"What do you want me to do?" she asked.

"I'll tell you," I said; and I found that it wasn't easy. "First place," I said, "I've got some money saved up. That will keep you on Easy Street till I get back from Sydney. If by that time nothing's turned up that you want of your own free heart and will, I'll ask you to pay me back by—by changing your name."

She didn't quite follow.

"That," said I, "gives you a chance to look around—gives you one small chance in a million to light on some man you can care for and who'll care for you and take care of you. Failing that, it would be fair enough for you to take me, failing a better. See?"

"You mean," she said, "that if things don't straighten out, it would be better for me to become Mrs. Bower than walk the streets? Is that it?"

I nodded.

"But I don't see your point of view," she cried. "Just because you're sorry for a girl don't mean you want to make her your wife."

"It isn't sorrowing," I said. "It's wanting. It's the right kind of wanting. It's the wanting that would rather wait than hurt you; that would rather do without you than hurt you."

"And you'll trust me with all your savings and go away to Australia—and if I find some other man that I like better you'll let me off from marrying you? Is that it?"

"That's about it," I said.

"And suppose," says she, "that you don't come back, and nobody shows up, and the money goes?"

That was a new point of view.

"Well," said I, "we've got to take some chances in this world."

"We have," said she. "And now look here—I don't know how much of it's wanting and how much of it's fear—but if you'll take chances I will."

She turned as red as a beet and looked away.

"In words of two syllables," said I, "what do you mean?"

"I mean," she said—and she was still as red as a beet, but this time she looked me in my eyes without a flinch in hers—"that if you're dead sure you want me—are you?—if you're dead sure, why, I'll take chances on my wanting you. I believe every word you've said to me. Is that right?"

"Every word," I said. "That is right."

Then we looked at each other for a long time.

"What a lot we'll have to tell each other," she said, "before we're really acquainted. But you're sure? You're quite sure?"

"Sure that I want you? Yes," I said; "not sure that you ought not to wait and think me over."

"You've begun," she said, "with everything that's noble and generous. I could never look myself in the face again if I felt called upon to begin by being mean."

"Hadn't you better think it over?" I said. "Hadn't you?"

But she put her hands on my shoulders.

"If an angel with wings had come with gifts," she said, "would I have thought them over? And just because your wings don't show——"

"It isn't fair," I mumbled. "I give you a choice between the streets and me and you feel forced to choose me."

But she pulled my head down and gave me a quick, fierce kiss.

"There," said she—"was that forced? Did you force me to do that? No," she said; "you needn't think you're the only person in the world that wants another person.... If you go to Australia I don't wait here. I go too. If you sink by the way, I sink. And don't you go to thinking you've made me a one-sided bargain.... I can cook for you and mend for you and save for you. And if you're sick I can nurse you. And I can black your boots."

"I thought," said I, "that you were just a little girl that I wanted, but you turn out to be the whole world that I've got to have. Slip the rest of your canvas on and I'll hook it up for you. Then we'll find some one to marry us—'nless you'd rather wait."

"Wait?" said she, turning her back and standing still, which most women haven't sense enough to do when a man's ten thumbs are trying to hook them up. "I've been waiting all my life for this—and you!"

"And I," said I, splitting a thumb-nail, "would go through an eternity of hell if I knew that this was at the end of it—and you!"

"What is your church?" she asked of a sudden.

"Same as yours," I said, "which is——"

"Does it matter," said she, "if God is in it? Do you pray?"

"No," said I; "do you?"

"Always," she said, "before I go to bed."

"Then I will," said I; "always—before we do."

"Sometimes," she said, "I've been shaken about God. Was to-night—before you came. But He's made good—hasn't He?"

"He has," I said. "And now you're hooked up. And I wish it was to do all over again. I loved doing it."

"Did you?" said she.

Her eyes were bright and brave like two stars. She slipped her hand through my arm and we marched out of the opera-house. Half a dozen young globe-trotters were at the stage-door waiting to take a chance on Miss Green as she came out, but none of them spoke. We headed for the nearest city directory and looked up a minister.

II

I had married April; she cried when she thought she wasn't good enough for me; she smiled like the sun when I swore she was.

I had married June; she was like an armful of roses.

We weren't two; we were one. What alloy does gold make mixed with brass? We were that alloy. I was the brass.

We travelled down to Singapore first-class, with one-armed Yir Massir to look after us—down the old Hoogli with the stubs of half-burned Hindus bobbing alongside, crows sitting on 'em and tearing off strips. We ran aground on all the regular old sand-bars that are never twice in the same place; and one dusk we saw tigers come out of the jungle to drink. We'd both travelled quite some, but you wouldn't have thought it. Ivy Bower and Right Bower had just run away from school for to see the world "so new and all."

Some honey-moons a man keeps finding out things about his wife that he don't like—little tricks of temper and temperature; but I kept finding out things about mine that I'd never even dared to hope for. I went pretty near crazy with love of her. At first she was a child that had had a wicked, cruel nightmare—and I'd happened to be about to comfort her when she waked and to soothe her. Then she got over her scare and began to play at matrimony, putting on little airs and dignities—just like a child playing grown-up. Then all of a sudden it came to her, that tremendous love that some women have for some of us dogs of men. It was big as a storm, but it wasn't too big for her. Nothing that's noble and generous was too big for her; nor was any way of showing her love too little. Any little mole-hill of thoughtfulness from me was changed—presto!—into a chain o' mountains; but she thought in mountains and made mole-hills of 'em.

We steamed into Singapore and I showed her the old Boldero, that was to be our home, laid against the Copra Wharf, waiting to be turned into an ark. The animals weren't all collected and we had a day or two to chase about and enjoy ourselves; but she wasn't for expensive pleasures.

"Wait," she said, "till you're a little tired of me; but now, when we're happy just to be together walking in the dust, what's the use of disbursing?"

"If we save till I'm tired of you," says I, "we'll be rich."

"Rich it is, then," said she, "for those who will need it more."

"But," says I, "the dictionary says that a skunk is a man that economizes on his honey-moon."

"If you're bound to blow yourself," says she, "let's trot down to the Hongkong-Shanghai Bank and buy some shares in something."

"But," says I, "you have no engagement ring."

"And I'm not engaged," says she. "I'm a married woman."

"You're a married child."

"My husband's arm around my waist is my ring," says she; "his heart is my jewel."

Even if it had been broad daylight and people looking, I'd have put her ring on her at that. But it was dark, in a park of trees and benches—just like Central Park.

"With this ring," says I, "I thee guard from all evil."

"But there is no evil," said she. "The world's all new; it's been given a fresh start. There's no evil. The apple's back on the tree of knowledge. Eden's come back—and it's spring in Eden."

"And among other items," says I, "that we've invoiced for Sydney is a python thirty feet long."

"Look!" says she.

A girl sat against one of the stems of a banyan, and a Tommy lay on his back with his head in her lap. She was playing with his hair. You could just see them for the dark.

"'And they lived on the square like a true married pair,'" says I.

"Can't people be naughty and good?" says she.

"No," says I; "good and naughty only."

"Suppose," says she, "you and I felt about each other the way we do, but you were married to a rich widow in Lisbon and I was married to a wicked old Jew in Malta—would that make you Satan and me Jezebel?"

"No," says I; "only me. Nothing could change you." She thought a little.

"No," says she; "I don't think anything could. But there isn't any wicked old Jew. You know that."

"And you know about the rich widow?"

"What about her?" This said sharp, with a tug at my arm to unwrap it.

"She was born in Singapore," said I, "of a silly goose by an idle thought. And two minutes later she died."

"There's nothing that can ever hurt us—is there?—nothing that's happened and gone before?"

Man that is born of woman ought not to have that question put up to him; but she didn't let me answer.

"Because, if there is," she said, "it's lucky I'm here to look after us."

"Could I do anything that you wouldn't forgive?"

"If you turned away from me," she said, "I'd die—but I'd forgive."

Next daylight she was leaning on the rail of the Boldero watching the animals come over the side and laughing to see them turn their heads to listen to what old Yir Massir said to them in Hindustani. He spoke words of comfort, telling them not to be afraid; and they listened. Even Bahut, the big elephant, as the slings tightened and he swung dizzily heavenward, cocked his moth-eaten ears to listen and refrained from whimpering, though the pit of his stomach was cold with fear; and he worked his toes when there was nothing under them but water.

"The elephant is the strongest of all things," I said, "and the most gentle."

Her little fingers pressed my arm, which was like marble in those days.

"No," said she—"the man!"

III

That voyage was good, so far as it went, but there's no use talking about it, because what came afterward was better. We'd no sooner backed off the Copra Wharf and headed down the straits, leaving a trail of smoke and tiger smell, than Ivy went to house-keeping on the Boldero. There are great house-keepers, just as there are great poets and actors. It takes genius; that's all. And Ivy had that kind of genius. Yir Massir had a Hindu saying that fitted her like a glove. He looked in upon her work of preparing and systematizing for the cramped weeks at sea and said: "The little mem-sahib is a born woman."

That's just what she is. There are born idiots and born leaders. Some are born male and some female; but a born woman is the rarest thing in the world, the most useful and the most precious. She had never kept house, but there was nothing for her to learn. She worked things so that whenever I could come off duty she was at leisure to give all her care and thought to me.

There was never a millionaire who had more speckless white suits than I had, though it's a matter almost of routine for officers to go dirty on anything but the swell liners. Holes in socks grew together under her fingers, so that you had to look close to see where they'd been. She even kept a kind of dwarf hibiscus, with bright red flowers, alive and flourishing in the thick salt air; and she was always slipping into the galley to give a new, tasty turn to the old sea-standbys.

The crew, engineer, and stokers were all Chinks. Hadley always put his trust in them and they come cheap. We had forty coolies who berthed forward, going out on contract to work on a new government dry-dock at Paiulu. I don't mind a Chink myself, so long as he keeps his habits to himself and doesn't over-smoke; but they're not sociable. Except for Yir Massir and myself, there was no one aboard for Ivy to talk to. Yir Massir's duty kept him busy with the health of the collection for the Sydney Zoo, and Ivy found time to help, to advise, and to learn. They made as much fuss between them over the beasts as if they had been babies; and the donkey-engine was busy most of the day hoisting cages to the main-deck and lowering them again, so that the beasts could have a better look at the sea and a bit of sun and fresh air. As it was, a good many of the beasts and all the birds roomed on the main-deck all the time. Sometimes Yir Massir would take out a chetah—a nasty, snarling, pin-headed piece of long-legged malice—and walk him up and down on a dog-chain, same as a woman walks her King Charlie. He gave the monkeys all the liberty they could use and abuse; it was good sport to see them chase themselves and each other over the masts and upper-works.

The most you can say of going out with a big tonnage of beasts is that, if you're healthy and have no nerves, you can just stand it. Sometimes they'll all howl together for five or six hours at a time; sometimes they'll all be logy and still as death, except one tiger, who can't make his wants understood and who'll whine and rumble about them all round the clock. I don't know which is worse, the chorus or the solo. And then, of course, the smell side to the situation isn't a matter for print. If I say that we had twenty hogsheads of disinfectants and deodorizers along it's all you need know. Anyhow, according to Yir Massir, it was the smell that killed big Bahut's mate. And she'd been brought up in an Indian village and ought to have been used to all the smells, from A to Z.

One elephant more or less doesn't matter to me, especially when it's insured, but Yir Massir's grief and self-reproach were appalling; and Ivy felt badly too. It was as much for her sake as Yir Massir's that I read a part of the burial service out of the prayer-book and committed the body of "this our sister" to the deep. It may have been sacrilegious, but I don't care. It comforted Ivy some and Yir Massir a heap. And it did this to me, that I can't look at a beast now without thinking that—well, that there's not such an awful lot of difference between two legs and four, and that maybe God put Himself out just as much to make one as the other.

We swung her overside by heavy tackle. What with the roll of the ship and the fact that she swung feet down, she looked alive; and the funeral looked more like a drowning than a burial.

We had no weights to sink her; and when I gave the word to cut loose she made a splash like a small tidal wave and then floated.

We could see her for an hour, like a bit of a slate-colored island with white gulls sitting on it.

And that night Yir Massir waited on us looking like some old crazy loon out of the Bible. He'd made himself a prickly shirt of sackcloth and had smeared his black head and brown face with gray ashes. Big Bahut whimpered all night and trumpeted as if his heart were broken.

IV

I've often noticed that when things happen it's in bunches. The tenth day south of the line we had a look at almost all the sea-events that are made into woodcuts for the high-school geographies. For days we'd seen nothing except sapphire-blue sea, big swells rolling under a satin finish without breaking through, and a baby-blue sky. On the morning of the tenth the sea was streaked with broad, oily bands, like State roads, and near and far were whales travelling south at about ten knots an hour, as if they had a long way to go.

We saw heaps of porpoises and heaps of flying-fish; some birds; unhewn timber—a nasty lot of it—and big floats of sea-weed. We saw a whale being pounded to death by a killer; and in the afternoon as perfect an example of a brand-new coral island as was ever seen. It looked like a ring of white snow floating on the water, and inside the ring was a careened two-master—just the ribs and stumps left. There was a water-spout miles off to port, and there was a kind of electric jump and thrill to the baked air that made these things seem important, like omens in ancient times. Besides, the beasts, from Bahut the elephant to little Assam the mongoose, put in the whole day at practising the noises of complaint and uneasiness. Then, directly it was dark, we slipped into a "white sea." That's a rare sight and it has never been very well explained. The water looks as though it had been mixed with a quantity of milk, but when you dip it up it's just water.

About midnight we ran out of this and Ivy and I turned in. The sky was clear as a bell and even the beasts were quiet. I hadn't been asleep ten minutes and Ivy not at all, when all at once hell broke loose. There was a bump that nearly drove my head through a bulkhead; though only half awake I could feel to the cold marrow of my bones that the old Boldero was down by the head. The beasts knew it and the Chinks. Never since Babel was there such pandemonium on earth or sea. By a struck match I saw Ivy running out of the cabin and slipping on her bath-wrapper as she went. I called to her, but she didn't answer. I didn't want to think of anything but Ivy, but I had to let her go and think of the ship.

There wasn't much use in thinking. The old Boldero was settling by the head and the pumps couldn't hold up the inflood. In fifteen minutes I knew that it was all up with us—or all down, rather—and I ordered the boats over and began to run about like a maniac, looking for Ivy and calling to her. And why do you suppose I couldn't find her? She was hiding—hiding from me!

She'd heard of captains of sinking ships sending off their wives and children and sweethearts and staying behind to drown out of a mistaken notion of duty. She'd got it into her head that I was that kind of captain and she'd hid so that she couldn't be sent away; but it was all my fault really. If I'd hurried her on deck the minute I did find her we'd have been in time to leave with the boats. But I stopped for explanations and to give her a bit of a lecture; so when we got on deck there were the boats swarming with Chinks slipping off to windward—and there at our feet was Yir Massir, lying in his own blood and brains, a wicked, long knife in his hand and the thread outpiece of a Chink's pigtail between his teeth.

I like to think that he'd tried to make them wait for us, but I don't know. Anyhow, there we were, alone on a sinking deck and all through with earthly affairs as I reckoned it. But Ivy reckoned differently.

"Why are they rowing in that direction?" she says. "They won't get anywhere."

"Why not?" says I.

She jerked her thumb to leeward.

"Don't you feel that it's over there?—the land?" she says. "Just over there."

"Why, no, bless you!" says I. "I don't have any feeling about it.... Now then, we've got to hustle around and find something that will float us. We want to get out of this before the old Boldero goes and sucks us down after."

"There's the life-raft," says she; "they left that."

"Yes," says I; "if we can get it overboard. It weighs a ton. You make up a bundle of food on the jump, Ivy, and I'll try to rig a tackle."

When the raft was floating quietly alongside I felt better. It looked then as if we were to have a little more run for our money.

We worked like a couple of furies loading on food and water, Ivy lowering and I lashing fast.

"There," says I at last; "she won't take any more. Come along. I can help you down better from here."

"We've got to let the beasts loose," says she.

"Why?" says I.

"Oh, just to give 'em a chance," she says.

So I climbs back to where she was standing.

"It's rot!" I says. "But if you say so——"

"There's loads of time," says she—"we're not settling so fast. Besides, even if I'm wrong about the land, they'll know. They'll show us which way to go. Big Bahut, he knows."

"It don't matter," I says. "We can't work the raft any way but to leeward—not one man can't."

"If the beasts go the other way," says she, "one man must try and one woman."

"Oh, we'll try," says I, "right enough. We'll try."

The first beast we loosed was the python. Ivy did the loosing and I stood by with a big rifle to guard against trouble; but, bless you, there was no need. One and all, the beasts knew the old Boldero was doomed, and one and all they cried and begged and made eyes and signs to be turned loose. As for knowing where the nearest land was—well, if you'd seen the python, when he came to the surface, make a couple of loopy turns to get his bearings and his wriggles in order, and then hike off to leeward in a bee-line—you'd have believed that he—well, that he knew what he was talking about.

And the beasts, one and all, big and little, the minute they were loosed, wanted to get overboard—even the cats; and off they went to leeward in the first flush of dawn, horned heads, cat heads, pig heads—the darnedest game of follow-my-leader that ever the skies looked down on. And the birds, white and colored, streaked out over the beasts. There was a kind of wonder to it all that eased the pinch of fear. Ivy clapped her hands and jumped up and down like a child when it sees the grand entry in Buffalo Bill's show for the first time—or the last, for that matter.

There was some talk of taking a tow-line from around Bahut's neck to the raft; but the morning breeze was freshening and with a sail rigged the raft would swim pretty fast herself. Anyway, we couldn't fix it to get big Bahut overboard. The best we could do was to turn him loose, open all the hatches, and trust to his finding a way out when the Boldero settled.

He did, bless him! We weren't two hundred yards clear when the Boldero gave a kind of shudder and went down by the bows, Bahut yelling bloody murder. Then, just when we'd given him up for lost, he shot up from the depths, half-way out of water. After blowing his nose and getting his bearings he came after the raft like a good old tugboat.

We stood up, Ivy and I did, and cheered him as he caught up with us and foamed by.

The worst kind of remembering is remembering what you've forgotten. I got redder and redder. It didn't seem as if I could tell Ivy; but I did. First I says, hopeful:

"Have you forgotten anything?"

She shakes her head.

"I have," says I. "I've left my rifle, but I've got plenty of cartridges. I've got a box of candles, but I've forgotten to bring matches. A nice, thoughtful husband you've got!"

V

The beasts knew.

There was land just around the first turn of the world—land that had what might be hills when you got to 'em and that was pale gray against the sun, with all the upper-works gilded; but it wasn't big land. You could see the north and south limits; and the trees on the hills could probably see the ocean to the east.

They were funny trees, those; and others just like them had come down to the cove to meet us when we landed. They were a kind of pine and the branches grew in layers, with long spaces between. Since then I've seen trees just like them, but very little, in florists' windows; only the florists' trees have broad scarlet sashes round their waists, by way of decoration, maybe, or out of deference to Anthony Comstock.

The cove had been worked out by a brook that came loafing down a turfy valley, with trees single and in spinneys, for all the world like an English park; and at the upper end of the valley, cutting the island in half lengthwise, as we learned later, the little wooded hills rolled north and south, and low spurs ran out from them, so as to make the valley a valley instead of a plain.

There were flocks of goats in the valley, which was what made the grass so turfy, I suppose; and our own deer and antelopes were browsing near them, friendly as you please. Near at hand big Bahut, who had been the last but us to land, was quietly munching the top of a broad-leafed tree that he'd pulled down; but the cats and riffraff had melted into the landscape. So had the birds, except a pair of jungle-fowl, who'd found seed near the cove and were picking it up as fast as they could and putting it away.

"Well," says I, "it's an island, sure, Ivy. The first thing to do is to find out who lives on it, owns it, and dispenses its hospitality, and make up to them."

But she shook her head and said seriously:

"I've a feeling, Right," she says—"a kind of hunch—that there's nobody on it but us."

I laughed at her then, but half a day's tramping proved that she was right. I tell you women have ways of knowing things that we men haven't. The fact is, civilization slides off 'em like water off a duck; and at heart and by instinct they are people of the cave-dwelling period—on cut-and-dried terms with ghosts and spirits, all the unseen sources of knowledge that man has grown away from.

I had sure proofs of this in the way Ivy took to the cave we found in a bunch of volcano rock that lifted sheer out of the cove and had bright flowers smiling out of all its pockets. No society lady ever entered her brand-new marble house at Newport with half the happiness.

Ivy was crazy about the cave and never tired of pointing out its advantages. She went to house-keeping without any of the utensils, as keen and eager as she'd gone to it on the poor old Boldero, where at least there were pots and pans and pepper.

We had grub to last a few weeks, a pair of blankets, the clothes we stood in, and an axe. I had, besides, a heavy clasp-knife, a watch, and seven sovereigns. The first thing Ivy insisted on was a change of clothes.

"These we stand in," says she, "are the only presentable things we've got, and Heaven only knows how long they've got to last us for best."

"We could throw modesty to the winds," I suggested.

"Of course you can do as you please," she said. "I don't care one way or the other about the modesty; but I've got a skin that looks on the sun with distinct aversion, and I don't propose to go through a course of yellow blisters—and then turn black."

"I've seen islanders weave cloth out of palm fibre—most any kind," I said. "It's clumsy and airy; but if you think it would do——"

"It sounds scratchy."

"It is, but it's good for the circulation."

Well, we made a kind of cloth and cut it into shapes, and knotted the shapes together with more fibre; then we folded up our best and only Sunday-go-to-meeting suits and put the fibre things on; and then we went down to the cove to look at ourselves in the water. And Ivy laughed.

"We're not clothed," she said; "we're thatched; and yet—and yet—it's accident, of course, but this skirt has got a certain hang that——"

"Whatever that skirt's got," I said, "these pants haven't; but if you're happy I am."

Well, there's worse situations than desert-islanding it with the one woman in the world. I even know one man who claims he was cast away with a perfect stranger that he hated the sight of at first—a terribly small-minded, conventional woman—and still he had the time of his life. They got to like each other over a mutual taste for cribbage, which they played for sea-shells, yellow with a pink edge, until the woman went broke and got heavily in debt to the man. He was nice about it and let her off. He says the affair must have ended in matrimony, only she took a month to think it over; during that month they were picked up and carried to Honolulu; then they quarrelled and never saw each other again.

"Ivy," said I one day, "we'll be picked up by a passing steamer some day, of course, but meanwhile I'd rather be here with you than any place I can name."

"It's Eden," she said, "and I'd like to live like this always. But——"

"But what?"

"But people grow old," she said, "and one dies before another. That's what's wrong with Eden."

I laughed at her.

"Old! You and I? We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, Ivy Bower."

"Right Bower," says she, "you don't understand——"

"How not understand?"

"You don't understand that Right Bower and Ivy Bower aren't the only people on this island."

She didn't turn a fiery red and bolt—the way young wives do in stories. She looked at me with steady, brave, considering eyes.

"Don't worry, dear," she says after a time; "everything will be all right. I know it will."

"I know it too." I lied.

Know it? I was cold with fright.

"Don't be afraid," said she. "And—and meanwhile there's dinner to be got ready—and you can have a go at your firesticks."

It was my ambition to get fire by friction. Now and then I got the sticks to smoke and I hoped that practice would give me the little extra speed and cunning that makes for flame. I'd always been pretty good at games, if a little slow to learn.