Jewel Weed

This particular day had been a hard one. The problems of glass and rugs were unusually complicated, and the interruptions to continuous thought more numerous than usual. Moreover, without warning, like a meteor of magnificent proportions, Swami Ram Juna, with many paraphernalia of travel, had suddenly reappeared to ask for that once-proffered hospitality. Not without state and courtesy could such a being be welcomed; and courtesy takes time.

Finally, to discuss the matter of the outer cover for the next issue of The Aspirant, a henchman invaded his privacy. Sebastian looked over a pile of designs, and chose a flat but lurid young woman, in a sphinx-like attitude against a background of purple trees. Then came the more difficult question of an aphorism to be printed on the table against which the lurid young woman leaned. It was the habit of The Aspirant to convey, even on its outside, wisdom to the world, and the thinking up of smart young aphorisms is not always an easy task. Mr. Early at length evolved: “It has been said of old: ‘Know thyself.’ I say unto thee, ‘Forget thyself. Know thy brother.’”

“That sounds fairly well,” said Mr. Early wearily, and he dismissed the henchman and settled himself in a particularly benevolent arm-chair, in front of a cheerfully-roaring fire. The place was a remote room, decorated not for public inspection but for comfort. Mr. Early was tired. A certain new question had been waiting in the antechambers of his mind, and to-night he determined to give it leisurely attention; for of late it had several times been borne in him that he was getting along in years and that if he did not intend to die a bachelor, it behooved him to move swiftly. The thought had been quickened into livelier vitality when, at a dinner a few nights before, he had watched the face and studied the figure of Miss Madeline Elton.

She was certainly a rare creature. There was a verve, a magnetic quality to her, that he hardly remembered before. Her beauty, her nobility, her purity he felt to be the artistic attributes of womanhood. No, he not only admired them, they charmed him.

“Yes,” said Mr. Early. “By Jove, if she’d lift her little finger at me I believe I’d make a fool of myself over her! And why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I let myself go? I’ve got everything else now. A woman of her bigness likes a man who can do things and who controls other men. By Heaven, I believe we were made for each other!”

Mr. Early grew so excited by the strength of his new passion that he sprang to his feet and walked up and down to luxuriate in the idea.

Proportionately great was his annoyance when a knock invaded his self-communion, and his man’s face appeared at the door to tell him that Mr. Murdock would like to speak with him. While he was yet opening his mouth to anathematize Mr. Murdock, that gentleman entered, familiar and cheerful.

The man who came in was, in his way, a force almost as great and as worthy of regard as Mr. Sebastian Early himself—in fact no less a personage than the power behind the throne of that uncrowned king, William Barry. Though he did not sit on Olympian heights and play with the thunderbolts of jobs and contracts, as Barry did, yet he had an occasional way of interfering in the game, just as in Greek legend Fate loomed large behind the back of Zeus.

Mr. James Murdock was a business genius who dipped into politics, not for office nor yet for glory, but only for gain. Originally a partner of Mr. Early’s, when, just as some one else invented a better hook-and-eye, their business was sold out, Murdock let his many-sidedness run riot in a dozen directions. While Mr. Early’s abilities led him to “get all there was in it” out of the public on its imaginative side, Murdock worked out his fortune in more practical necessities. St. Etienne was a western city, full of growth and therefore full of needs. There were miles and miles of asphalt to be laid; there were wooden sidewalks crying out to be replaced by stone; there were lighting and watering and park-making; and it was astonishing in how many companies, doing these things, Mr. Murdock had a share, and how frequently his companies secured the contracts for doing them. When rival contractors attempted these public works, there were apt to be strikes and complications which seldom occurred when Murdock had the job. Then all went smoothly and merrily. And this shows how friendship rules the world. For Murdock was the friend of Barry; and Barry was the friend of the strike-ordering walking-delegates. If these three elements, representing the city fathers, the contractors and the laborers, were all satisfied with the way the city’s work was being done, who remained to cavil? Certainly not the citizens. St. Etienne’s wheels moved almost without friction.

But Murdock went further than this. His was a fine instinct for organization. He used Barry like a fat pawn, moved down to the king row, until the boss alderman was able to look abroad on his noble army of small officeholders and contractors, who could be trusted, not only to vote as directed (for to vote is a simple and ineffectual thing), but also to bring up their hundreds and thousands of well-trained dogs to vote, and, if need be, to vote again, and then to see that the votes were properly counted.

It was to Murdock’s far-reaching mind that Barry was indebted for the regulation of interests by which almost every man who served the city, and particularly those who served it badly and expensively, was tied to Barry by ties closer than those of brotherly love. Whether official, contractor or working-man, they owed job or contract to the influence that Barry seemed to exercise in the councils of the city. It was by Murdock’s advice that the better residence district was well-policed, well-lighted, well-paved and generally contented with things as they were. By Murdock’s suggestion the city’s interests were zealously guarded in the discussions of the council.

When a committee of the Municipal Club visited that august body to listen to a debate on a certain paving contract, they could not help being impressed by the large knowledge of materials and methods displayed by their representatives, and the unanimity with which they agreed that a particular bid was, if not the cheapest, the most deeply satisfying of those offered. What they could not know was the ingenuity with which Murdock saved both the brain and the time of the council by arranging its debate beforehand. But the committee did mention, among themselves, the incongruity between the actual condition of St. Etienne’s streets and the wisdom of the Solons.

But, though Murdock’s was the brain to originate and systematize schemes of plunder for which Barry alone had been incapable, once in a while the “boss” grew restive under dominion, in spite of the knowledge that, if he should once break with the master mind, he would soon make some fatal mistake and another would become the whole show. So, if the reign of King Barry was for long temperate and orderly, it was because Murdock impressed upon him that royal arrogance breeds discontent and finally revolt, and that by big rake-offs, on the quiet, enough could be gained to satisfy the ambition of a well-regulated man; and that while plundering was done with decency, the reform-talk of the Municipal Clubites would prove no more useful nor ornamental than a Christmas card.

“Don’t hog everything!” as Murdock sagely put it. “Let the other fellow have the small end of the trough, and as long as he ain’t hungry, he won’t squeal.”

With equal sternness he repressed Billy’s fancy for fast horses and Mrs. Billy’s taste for green velvet and diamonds.

“It don’t look well on a salary of eighteen hundred,” he said. “Just you be contented with having things your own way without talking about it. Throw all the dust you like, but don’t let it be gold dust.”

“You cut a pretty wide swath yourself,” Billy growled.

“I ain’t a alderman, serving the city for pure love and a small salary,” grinned the other. “A contractor’s got a right to make money.”

“You make money out o’ me,” said Billy sourly. “You keep me under your big fat ugly thumb. I guess I can run this business alone. I got all the strings pretty well in my own hand.”

“All right, Barry. I’ll be sorry to be on the other side, but if you say so, all right.”

Barry swore a moment under his breath and changed the subject. So matters went on, with Barry still subservient, but growing daily more inclined to believe himself the autocrat he seemed, daily a little less cautious, a little more fixed in his assurance that the officeholders, the delegates and the saloon men constituted, in themselves, a sufficient prop for his dominion, and that Murdock was a nuisance.

“Of course, it’s to his interest to keep me under,” he said to himself, “and I dunno’ whether I’m a fool to let him do it, or whether I’m a fool to try to break away.”

He began to try flyers on his own hook; he gathered many rake-offs of which he said nothing to his mentor; he drank a little more and splurged a little more and looked a little more like a bulldog and less like a man. That the spirit of rebellion was growing up and that the pawn began to take credit to itself for the position of power in which it was placed, came gradually home to Mr. Murdock. It made him at first annoyed, then anxious. So it was that the confidence bred from years of business coöperation drove him this night to look up his old partner.

“Evening, Early,” he said as the door closed behind him. “Beastly cold night out. Wish you’d order me a little something hot to induce me to stay by this comfortable fire of yours.”

Mr. Early waved his hand toward a chair and settled himself without ceremony. There was this comfort in Murdock: they had known each other too long for pose, and, though the old hook-and-eye partnership was dissolved, and Mr. Early had soared into the realms of Art, they were still closely bound by common interests. So Sebastian met him with cheerful resignation.

“Sit down, Jim,” he said. “I don’t mind a nip myself. What’s up?”

“What’s down, you’d better ask. Lord save us! What’s that?” exclaimed Mr. Murdock, as he caught sight of the lurid lady lying amid the litter on the table.

“That’s the cover of my next magazine. Never mind it. It’s not in your line.”

“Well, I should say not,” said the other with a slow grin. “I’ve been pretty much vituperated for some of my business deals, but I never sprung a thing like that on the public. ‘Forget thyself!’ That’s good, Early.” He winked a wink that came more from the soul than from the eye.

“Oh, drop it, Jim,” said Mr. Early, relapsing into the old vernacular. “I’m sick of everything to-night. Here’s your cocktail. Help yourself to a cigar.”

“You ought to get married, instead of sitting here with the blues all by yourself. Tell you, a warm little wife is a nice thing to come home to.”

“Thank you, Jim,” said Mr. Early dryly.

They sank into silence, a comfortable silence, permeated with the fragrance of tobacco, with warmth in the cardiac region, and with that crackle of burning logs that satisfieth the soul. But occasionally Mr. Early shot a sharp glance at his companion, and his study did not reassure him. At last he spoke.

“Well, out with it, Jim. It’s evident that you’ve something on your mind.”

“You’re right, I have,” said Murdock with sudden emphasis. “I don’t know whether you can help me, but it’s second nature for me to try you. I’m getting anxious about Barry and affairs connected with him.”

“What about Barry? I thought you had him in your pocket.”

“Oh, I’ve still got him in the pocket over my heart, and buttoned down tight,” said Mr. Murdock grimly. “It’s because he belongs to me that I’m looking out for him.”

“Well,” said Mr. Early, and he leaned forward nervously to poke the fire that needed no poking.

“Well! In spite of me, Billy’s getting restless. He’s getting worse than restless, and I’m afraid to think how he may break out. You know how he loses his sense once in a while. Have you noticed how the Star has been running him of late?” Mr. Murdock slowly gathered force in stating his grievances.

“Yes, I’ve noticed it,” said Mr. Early.

“The Star is the only paper I haven’t got a strangle hold of—at least so I thought. But some of the other dailies are butting in. Say they’re afraid not to. Of course, an occasional black eye is all in the day’s work. It rather helps things along. Billy expects it, and he isn’t thin-skinned. It doesn’t make much difference as long as our own organs print what they’re told. But, say, this thing is going beyond a joke. Billy has been really cut up over the way this coroner business is getting home to the public. He says if there is going to be squirming, he’ll look out that there are other people squirming besides himself. I suppose that’s meant as a threat for me. You know there are things—even affairs that you are interested in, Sebastian—that are all on the square, you know, and perfectly right, but they take too much explaining for the public ever to understand them.”

“I know,” said Mr. Early, still poking the fire.

“And do you know who is back of the whole rumpus?”

“Who?” demanded Mr. Early sharply, looking up.

“Primarily this infernal next-door neighbor of yours.”

“Percival?”

“Percival. He’s too much of a kid to put himself forward, but he’s really the whole thing. He’s been sneaking around town for months, picking up information. He has a confounded cheerful way of making friends that has cut him out for the job of politics, if he would just put himself on the right side. Of course he has no more idea of practical politics than—” Mr. Murdock looked around for an object of comparison and concluded lamely, “than that girl on your magazine cover. And what do you think is the latest?”

“What?”

“He’s stirred up that mare’s nest of a dude club till they’ve taken to sending a committee to attend every meeting of the council—which is irritating.”

“But not necessarily serious.”

“Not in itself, though it’s getting on Barry’s nerves, as you people of fashion say. To tell you the truth, I’ve had to make a concession to Barry, just to keep him in order. I preferred him right on the council where he is, but he’s got a bee in his top-hat. He wants to run for mayor. I suppose he wants to show people what a great man he really is. I gave in to him on that point. Now here comes in the thing that made me look you up. Barry has some sort of an acquaintance with this Percival fellow, and when he proclaimed his intentions, Percival jumped on him with a flat defiance—told him that he had proof of a disreputable affair in Barry’s career that would queer him with the whole community. How your neighbor got hold of this thing, I’m jiggered if I can guess. I thought I was the only man in the city that knew it, and it has been my chief club to keep Barry in order. But however he got them, Percival’s facts were all square, and Barry collapsed. Now, these two patched up an agreement. Barry promised to give up his candidacy for mayor, and stay in his seat in the council, and Percival, on his part, agreed to keep quiet.”

“Well, that suits you all right.”

“It would if it ended there, but what I started out to tell you is this: the Municipal Club is beginning to take up city politics in earnest. They are organizing systematically in every ward to be ready for a fight for the council in next fall’s election, and, to cap the climax, I was told to-day that they had succeeded in getting Preston to run for mayor. Now you know they could hardly have picked out a worse man, so far as we are concerned. Preston is popular and strong, and he’s perfectly unapproachable. I’d as soon tackle the law of gravitation. It isn’t even pleasant for respectable citizens, like you and me, to come out publicly against the whole movement. We can’t afford to do it. Everything we do has got to be done on the quiet.”

“You needn’t get so hot, Jim. It’ll blow over. This kind of thing always does. It’s only spasmodic. You ought to know that.”

“Well, it’s taking a very inconvenient time for its spasms. It may result in spasmodically losing Billy his seat in the council in November. Nice thing if we didn’t have a clear majority of aldermen next winter, wouldn’t it?” Mr. Murdock was becoming finely sarcastic in his rage.

“I suppose it would be inconvenient,” assented Mr. Early.

“Inconvenient!” growled Murdock. “Is that the strongest swear word you can raise? Do you happen to remember that the lighting franchise expires next fall? Now do we want it renewed, or do we not? Can we afford to lose the biggest thing we’ve got? Do we want Billy to see it through, or do we not?”

“We certainly do.”

“Well, what do you propose to do about it?”

“I don’t see that there is much to do except to sit pat, and let it blow over.”

“Suppose when it blew over it should be a cyclone and you and me in the cellar? No siree, I’m no sitter-down. I’m a fighter, even when I fight in secret. Damn this feller, Percival, and his gift for making friends and stirring up enthusiasm for himself! I suspect he has ambitions. So much the worse for him, if James Murdock is in the ring against him. Do you know my inferences? I am sure he is not one of the invulnerables. The fact that he made a concession to Barry gives him away. He didn’t need to. If Barry can work him by a little flattery and an appeal to their shoddy friendship, he’s not one of your out-and-out, no-compromise, reform-or-die fellows. Say, Early, you know him well. Can’t you get at him?”

Mr. Early gave one of those roundabout motions that suggest a desire to wriggle out of the whole matter, and answered slowly:

“I shouldn’t wonder if the entire business petered out, anyway. It’s almost a year to the next election, and Percival is going to be married in a few weeks to a pretty little girl, who would never stir a man’s ambitions to anything more than a smart carriage and pair. He’s turned idiotic about her, and let’s hope he’ll stay so. Just at present I don’t believe all the boodle and graft in the world would turn a hair on him. Love and politics, my boy, are no more congenial than water and oil—especially if the politics is rancid.”

“We’ll have to go into partnership with the lady to keep him down,” said Murdock with a grin. “I’ve formed more unlikely alliances than that in my time. Why, good Lord! what’s that?” he exclaimed for the second time that night.

His eyes had fallen upon a tall white column at the back of the room, and at his words the column moved forward and displayed the flowing robes, the snowy white turban, the gleaming ruby of Ram Juna.

“Pardon my interruption,” said the Hindu courteously. “I have been out. I am but just returned. And I come to assure myself that all is well with my admirable host.”

“Ah, Murdock, this is my friend, the Swami. He’s going to stay with me while he writes a book. I’ve given him the west ell, off in the quiet of the garden, you know,” said Mr. Early.

“With kindness you give it. Obligation is mine,” said the Swami, with a deferential movement of his hands. “And I go at once to devote myself to my greatest work. But now I have visited a lady, Mrs. Appleton, who has great interest in me, and who desires to form what she calls a class. I call it, rather, a circle of my friends.”

“And what do you do with them?” asked Mr. Murdock, with the same bald curiosity that one displays at the zoo before the performing seals.

“We increase the sum of nobility in the world,” said the Swami softly. “We sit together in long white robes, such as you see on me, and we pour out love upon the universe.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Murdock. He was too astonished to pursue his investigations.

“It is a serene and blessed occupation,” said the Swami.

“And do they—does the class pay for that?” Murdock recovered so far as to ask.

“Pay? Not so!” said the Swami indignantly. “I ask of life no more than a bare existence and that, a thousand times that, is mine, by the benevolence of Mr. Early.”

“They’re devilish pretty women, some of ’em, though. You have that reward,” said Mr. Early jocularly.

The Swami cast on him a glance of cow-like anger, but Mr. Murdock went on persistently: “And they don’t give you any money at all?”

“For myself, no. Some, if it harmonize with their desires, make contribution through me to the great temple in India, where the brothers may assemble, a sacred spot among the lonely hills. Some give to that, but not to me. But I must no longer interrupt. I have made my salute. I go to my remote room.”

With a reverential movement of the head, the white column moved away.

“Gee!” said Mr. Murdock. “Can you stand that kind of thing around all the time?”

“Oh, I’m interested in all kinds of people,” said Mr. Early. “And he’s the most inoffensive creature. I shall hardly see him. He intends to lock himself up out there in his room most of the time. He meditates in silence ten hours a day and comes forth to give a lecture that nobody understands. He’s going to be all the rage.”

“And, of course, if he’s the rage, you have him. I wish you’d make Billy Barry the rage,” said Murdock.

“It’s all I can do to popularize myself,” said Early whimsically. “I’ll think over the situation a bit, Jim, and see if I can see any way out from under. Of course, Percival hasn’t any record by which you can discredit him and keep his mouth shut—at least not yet.”

As Mr. Murdock took a last sip at the cocktail and made an unceremonious exit, again Mr. Early settled himself for a period of repose, and again he was interrupted.

“Pardon,” said the deep voice of the Swami. “You sit alone. Is it permitted that I repose here and join your meditations? For a few moments? In silence, if you will?”

“I wish you’d pour out a little rest,” said Early. “I’m tired.”

“In spirit and in body,” answered the Swami. “The rush of the wheel of life, it exhausts. But I comprehend. I also am a man. The great world of business has its necessities and its value. My outer nature shares in it. Ah, you know not. You think of me only on one side of being. But, like you, I have my sympathies with many things.”

Mr. Early made no reply, but sank deeper into his chair. The two sat long in silence. Sebastian looked at the fire and began to build up a picture of Madeline’s face. The Hindu was apparently lost to the surrounding world, and yet he occasionally darted a glance of swift, animal-like inquiry at his host.

“Neither do I like the young man Percival,” he said placidly, and Mr. Early started.

“It is your next neighbor, Percival, is it not, who annoys?” the Swami inquired equably. “The youth who sneers when first I speak at your house? In India, now, one may do many things that are here impossible. Ah, but yes, you say, here you may do many things that are in India impossible. So goes it. Still more. The same forces exist everywhere; but we in India, we understand the forces that you, brilliant workers with the superficial, you do not understand. I shall be glad to help the benevolent Early, if at any time my services are of value. I know to do many things besides to meditate.”

Mr. Early stared in amazement at the unmoved face before him, a face almost as round and mystifying as the syllable “Om”, on which its thoughts were supposed to be centered.

“And, remember, I, too, dislike the young man Percival,” pursued the Swami blandly.

Mr. Early’s mind suddenly stiffened with horror.

“See here,” he exclaimed, sitting up, “you understand Mr. Percival is no enemy of mine. He is, in fact, a friend. You mustn’t think you’d be doing me a kindness by—ah—injuring him in any way.”

“My understanding,” said the Swami, still unmoved. “Fear no midnight assassination, noble friend. That is petty—and dangerous. I am not oblivious of the conventionalities. But the mind may be reached, as well as the body. Percival may do as I—you—we—wish. The higher animal at all times controls the lower. Perhaps, at some time, I may serve you. But you weary. The body makes demands. I bid you good night.”

He put out a great paw, and Mr. Early grasped it weakly, feeling that he was in the position of one who has started an oil “gusher” and can not control its flow. He might have to light it to get rid of it.

To his own room went Ram Juna, occasionally nodding his head in his serene manner. He carefully locked behind him the door which connected his wing with the rest of the house. A few moments he paused listening, then he crossed his bedroom and the narrow passage that opened on the garden and entered the little unused room beyond. Here all was dark, inky dark, for the heavy shutters on the street side of the room were closed and barred and the shades on the garden front were drawn, shutting out what dim rays the departed sun had left the night. The Swami apparently had no need of greater light, for, neglecting the electric button near the door, he groped quietly about, struck a match and lighted a single candle, with which he returned to the hallway and opened the garden door, standing for a moment with the taper flickering in the rush of cold air that poured in from outside. When he stepped back and closed the door, there stood beside him another man, clean-shaven, lean, sharp-nosed and ferret-eyed, whose footstep was almost as light as that of the Swami himself. Neither of them spoke until they reached the smaller room and the door was locked.

“You shiver, my friend,” said Ram Juna. “The night is cold.”

“Freezin’, an’ so’m I,” said the other shortly. “You keep me waiting a devil of a time.”

“Business, oh my friend, business. Can I utter a word to the ears of your nationality more convincing? I was necessitated to converse with my host, the rich and amiable Early. Ah, the nature of humanity is eternally interesting.”

His companion grinned.

“Which means, being interpreted, you’ve got some lay, I suppose. What is it!”

“Abruptness is to me foreign,” said the Swami, waving his great hand with its combination of fat palm and taper fingers. “It disturbs me. Perhaps, some day, I shall need tell you. The amiable Early is as are all mankind. On the one side he gropes among infinities. Do we not all so? On the other side he is tied by this body of clay to the groveling earth. Are we not all so? Am not even I myself?” The Swami turned benevolently toward the other.

“You bet! And you can sling language about it!” said the man, and he opened his rat’s mouth and laughed without noise. Even Ram Juna’s face relaxed into its Buddha smile, calm, inscrutable, as the two gazed on each other. Suddenly the younger drew himself together.

“Well, I ain’t got no time to spare,” he said. “Are they ready?”

“I, as well as you Americans, can be the votary of business,” answered Ram Juna. “The first principle of business is promptitude. My friend, they are ready.”

“Well, hand ’em over,” said the little man. “Now my job begins; and I guess it’s as ticklish as yours. You may need the skill, but I need the gall.”

“The daring of the leopard when it leaps from the bush where it crouches, the daring which is half cunning, eh, my friend?” said the Swami comfortably. “Here, take the package and go thy way. There will be more in the future. These I brought with me from India, and even the eagle customs found them not. Many night-hours have I spent in preparing them, and mine eyes have been robbed of sleep. It is no slight task to produce a masterpiece.”

“Well, you certainly are a dandy,” said the man, examining the contents of his package. “I never seen anything like it. And those big hands, too.”

“My hands obey the skill of my mind. And here, under the shadow of the Early, I can work with purer courage. This is the perfection of a place. It was the idea of genius to come here. Hold, let me examine the way before thou goest.”

“Aw, there won’t be any body in the garden at this time o’ night, and at this time o’ year.”

“Nay, but it is the wise man who leaves no loophole for mistake,” said the Hindu, with practical caution.

He blew out the light and stepped in darkness to the entrance with the air of one who would refresh his soul by gazing at the stars and wiping out the trivialities of the day. After he had looked at the heavens, his eyes fell with piercing swiftness upon the shadows of the garden, its bushes, manlike or animal-like in the night.

It was as complete a piece of acting as though a large audience had been there to see, but all thrown away on silence and solitude.

“Coast clear?” said a voice behind him.

“All is well,” said the Swami. “Go forth to fortune.”

The door closed softly, and Ram Juna sought the repose he had earned.

Most aggravating of all were the persistent attentions of Miss Madeline Elton. No one likes to be loved as a matter of duty, certainly not Lena Quincy, whose shrewd little soul easily divined that this equable warmth of manner, which she dubbed snippy condescension, sprang from affection for Dick and Mrs. Percival and not for herself. Madeline set Lena’s teeth on edge, and it must be confessed that Lena often did as much for Madeline, but each politely kept her sensations to herself. Miss Elton always assured her optimistic soul that things would come out all right, that love was a great developer, that small vulgarities of mind were the result of association.

Lena, on the other hand, might have broken friendly relations once and for all except that she found Miss Elton both useful and interesting. A friendly and very sly conspiracy between Madeline and Mrs. Percival had for its object the helping out of Lena’s meager trousseau by certain little gifts, and even of money delicately proffered so that it might not wound a sensitive pride; and since Mrs. Percival was a victim to invalidish habits, it fell to Madeline to act as executive committee. But they need not have troubled themselves about delicacy, for Miss Lena greedily gobbled everything that was offered to her, with pretty expressions of gratitude, to be sure, but internal irritation because the donors were not more lavish.

Madeline, who would have shrunk from accepting a gift except from one she really loved, of course expected Lena to feel the same way, and every one of these presents given and taken was to her an assurance strong of a new bond between them. So they shopped together, and Lena modestly picked out some appallingly cheap affair and said:

“You know I feel that is the best I can afford.” And Madeline would whisper, “Take the other, dear, and let the difference be a small wedding present from me. Won’t you be so generous?” and Lena was so generous; but she told herself that they were not doing it for her, but only because they were ashamed that Dick should have a shabby bride. And perhaps she was right. It is pretty hard to analyze human motives, so you may always take your choice, and fix your mind either on the good ones or on the bad ones, whichever suit you best. Doubtless they are both there.

Sometimes Lena wished that she had been given a lump sum and allowed to browse alone, for she felt her taste pruned and pinioned by the very presence of Miss Elton, who, though she never ventured to criticize, had yet a depressing influence on Lena’s exuberant fancies.

Once, after such a silent sacrifice on her part, Madeline and she drove up to the Percivals’ for five-o’clock tea. Her future mother-in-law was in the accustomed seat, and Lena found a footstool near at hand, with a pretty air of affectionate proprietorship that brought a glow to Dick’s face.

“Yes,” said Lena with a charming pout, “I’m utterly played out, getting myself ready for your approval, sir.”

“Poor little girl,” he whispered. “If you only knew what an easy task that ought to be!”

“I’m so glad Madeline can go with you,” Mrs. Percival said, patting the girl’s hand approvingly. “I always think she has such perfect taste. Some people get fine clothes and then make an heroic effort to live up to them, but Madeline has the supreme gift of managing clothes that seem a part of herself.”

It is impossible to tell how a speech like this rankled in Lena. Sometimes she had a wild impulse to stand up and stamp and scream out, “I hate the whole lot of you!” but she never did. She kept on smiling and purring and longing for the freedom which would come when she was safely married, had passed her initiation ceremonies, and could command her own money.

But it was wonderful what a fascination she felt for everything that concerned Miss Elton. Every act, every garment, every inflection of the girl she hated most was interesting to her. She watched Madeline like a cat, and disliked her more and more.

At length came the new year, and the day when Lena sat in a carriage by Dick’s side and was whirled away on that journey that was to take her out of the old and into the new. Her hour-old husband looked at her with an expression half-quizzical, half-adoring as she sat back and glanced up with a heartfelt sigh, secure at last of her position as the wife of Richard Percival. Until this moment she had never wholly believed it.

“I’m glad the wedding’s over,” she said.

“And I. More glad that our married life has begun. Lena, Lena, how beautiful you are! When you came down the aisle, I hardly dared to look at you; and yet it seems to me now that you are more lovely here alone with me. I should think God would have been afraid to make such eyes and lips and hair, sweetheart, knowing that He could never surpass them.”

He softly touched the little curl that crept out from below her hat and kissed the upturned mouth in that ecstasy that borders on awe.

“Now,” he said, “you are never so much as to think of anything unpleasant for the rest of your life. I wonder what you will most like to do?”

“Buy all the clothes I want,” cried Lena with such a deliciously whimsical twist of her little lips that Dick laughed at her irresistible wit. That was coming to be one of Lena’s most fetching little ways, to say what she meant as though it were the last thing in the world that could be expected of her. It was piquant.

It was no time of year to dally in true lovers’ fashion under pine trees in some remote solitude, so Dick took her to cities and theaters and big shops and got his fun out of watching her revel with open purse. Their honeymoon was more full of occupation and less of rapture and sweet isolated intimacy than Dick could have wished, but it was much to watch the color come and go on her cheek in her moments of excitement, to fulfil every capricious whim of her who had been starved in her feminine hunger of caprice, to punctuate the rush of life by celestial moments when she rested a tired but bewildering head against his shoulder and listened silently with drooping lids to all he had to say, to feel that he could answer the admiring glances of other men with the triumphant knowledge, “All this loveliness is mine—only mine.” Lena was so happy, so outrageously happy,—and so shyly affectionate, what could the young husband do but take with content the gifts the gods provided; and Dick was lavish and easily cajoled. The simple trousseau helped out by Miss Elton suddenly swelled to new and magnificent proportions. Lena blossomed and glowed; she tricked herself out in the finery that he provided and paraded before him and the glass until they both laughed with delight. Dick felt that he was playing with a new and sublimated doll, it was all so amusing, so inconsequential, and such fun. Although he wondered a little where it would be appropriate to wear the enormous pink hat with drooping plumes which perched on the showily fluffy head now facing him, he quite appreciated the effect.

“Oh, of course you think I’m stunning,” Lena pouted. “But the question is, what will other people think?”

“Other people aren’t the question at all,” retorted Dick. “Who cares what they think so long as you and I know that you are the very loveliest woman on this whole wide earth—this good old earth.”

When they came home, Lena exulted again in the luxurious rooms that Dick had fitted up for her in fashion more modern than the somber dignity of the rest of the house. Here was another new sensation—a household without bickerings. The elder Mrs. Percival, having accepted the situation, was no niggard in her spirit of courtesy, but very gracious as was her wont, and Lena was astonished to find that she and her new mother-in-law ran their respective lines without collisions. The half-invalid older woman breakfasted in her own room and occupied herself with quiet readings and sewings and drivings, but when she did appear on the family horizon, it was always as a beneficent presence.

Lena purred in the presence of comfort; but when you see a kitten serenely snoozing before the fire, it does not do to leap to the conclusion that this kitten would not know what was expected of her on the back fence at midnight.

If storm and stress should ever come, Dick had himself helped her to feel that beauty would fill the measure, wherever it fell short; that however she might sin, beauty was her sufficient apology.

Mrs. Quincy, established in a little flat with a middle-aged submissive slavey, was as nearly reconciled to fate as her nature would allow. Her rooms were pleasantly furnished, but Lena’s mother was full of the genius of discord, and almost automatically she so rearranged her surroundings that each particular article made strife with its neighbor. Harmony and Mrs. Quincy could not live in the same house. When Lena paid her duty visits (and she was irritated at the frequency with which Dick’s and Madame Percival’s expectations seemed to exact them) she had not only to listen in nauseated impatience to Mrs. Quincy’s minute questions and comments on people and things, but she had also to feel her rapidly-developing tastes offended by her mother’s domestic order.

“Miss Elton’s real kind. She’s been here twice since you was here. And she brought flowers.”

“Mother! And did you have a newspaper on top of that pretty little table?”

“Land sakes! And if I didn’t I should have to watch Sarah every minute to see she didn’t put something hot on it or scratch the mahogany top. I can’t afford to have everything I’ve got spoiled. No knowin’ when I’ll git anything more—dependent as I am on other people.”

“I’ll bring you a pretty table-cover then.”

“I’d like a red one. But I didn’t suppose you’d think of gittin’ one.”

“Oh, mother, red wouldn’t look well in this room.”

“Now, I just think a bit of real bright red would hearten it up. If you don’t git red, you needn’t git any, Lena Quincy, for I won’t use it. Are you goin’ now? Seems to me you got precious little time for your old mother since you put on all your fine lady airs.”

And Lena? Have you ever watched a cecropia moth when it crawls out of its dull gray prison of chrysalis? It is a moist, frail, tottering creature with tiny wings folded against its quivering body, but as the spring sunshine brings to play its magic and infuses its “subtle heats,” there come shivers of growth. Great waves seem to pulsate from the body into the wings, and with each wave goes color and strength. In quick throbs they come at last until they look like a continuous current, and before your eyes is a glorious bird-like creature, with damask wings outspread, and flecked with peacock spots, hiding the slender body within. It feels its strength, spreads and preens itself, and is away to the forest to meet its fate.

Such was Lena in the first months of her marriage. The world’s warmth welcomed her, partly in curiosity, and partly because she was in truth Richard Percival’s wife, and the protégée of Mrs. Lenox, who took every pains to shield her and help her. The ways of that little sphere that calls itself society she found it not difficult to acquire, when to beauty she added the paraphernalia of luxury. A little trick of holding oneself, a turn of speech, a familiarity with a certain set of people and their doings, and the thing is accomplished. Was there ever yet an American girl, whose supreme characteristic is adaptability, who could not learn it in a few months, if she set her mind to it?

As she experienced the true pleasure of being inside, which is the knowledge that there are outsiders raging to make entrance, she spread her wings, did Madame Cecropia, and the only wonder was that she was ever packed away in the dull gray chrysalis. And now every one forgot that ugly thing, when Lena changed her sky but not her heart.

Dick and she lived in a whirl; and if he would have liked, after strenuous days spent in spreading political feelers, to have found at home quiet evenings and old slippers, he was rapidly learning that the position of husband to a young beauty is no sinecure. And he admired and loved her too much to fling even a rose leaf of opposition in her path. The very hardship of her past made him tender to every whim of the present. Dick’s chivalry was deep-grained, as it is in men who have lived among pure and simple women. In everything that wore petticoats he saw something of his mother, fragile, noble, ambitious for those she loved and forgetful of self. When Lena began to show him things that he could not admire, he laid the blame of them, not to her, but to the world that had played the brute to her. And if he tried to change her it was with apology in his heart for daring to criticize. But as Lena came to take for granted the ease and comfort of her new life, she more and more laid aside the pose with which she had at first edified her lord, and spoke her real mind. She had fully acquired the manner and the garments of a lady. She could not see that more was needed.

One gray wintry day, as they walked homeward together from a midday musicale, they passed a grimy little girl who whimpered as she clutched her small person.

“What’s the matter, girlie?” asked Dick, and as he stopped his wife, too, halted perforce.

“My pettitoat’s comin’ down,” sobbed the child.

“Is that all?” said Dick. “I wouldn’t cry about such a little thing. I’ll soon fix it for you.” And he stooped.

“Dick,” said Lena imperatively, “there’s a carriage coming!”

“Let it come!” said Dick. “Sorry I haven’t a safety-pin, girlie, but I guess this one will do till you get home.” That impulsive interest in all varieties of human nature was so natural to him that he took for granted that it was a part of our common nature.

He looked up with a smile to see Lena’s face crimson with wrath and shame. Her expression sobered him.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded.

“It was Mrs. Lenox who drove by,” she urged. “And she looked so amused.”

“I don’t wonder. I’m amused myself,” he replied gaily.

“A nice thing for a gentleman to be seen doing,” Lena went on, with a voice growing shrill like her mother’s. “To play nursemaid to a dirty little street brat!” She had said things like this to him before, but always with that little smile and naughty-child air. Now, for the first time she forgot the smile, and this small omission made an astonishing difference in the impression.

“I don’t know what else a gentleman should do,” answered Dick; “or a lady, either. Mrs. Lenox would have done as much for any baby, her own or another.”

“Much she would!” said Lena sharply. “I’ve been at her house. She has rafts of nurses to do all the waiting on her children. I guess she doesn’t let them trouble her any more than she can help. If she’s unlucky enough to have the squally little things, she keeps away from them.”

Even as she spoke, Lena realized that her acid voice was a mistake, but she said to herself that she was tired of acting, and it did not make any difference what Dick thought now. She was his wife.

“Perhaps you don’t know the whole, Lena,” Dick answered. “I happen to have seen Mrs. Lenox when she was devoting herself to a sick baby, and Madeline has told me of the kind of personal care she gives.”

“The more fool she, when she can get some one else to do it for her,” said Lena, with feminine change of front.

“Is that the way you feel about children?” asked Dick soberly.

“I suppose they are necessary evils,” said Lena with a smart laugh. “But I’d rather they’d be necessary to other women than to me.”

“Well, perhaps that’s a natural feeling, when we’re young and like to be irresponsible; but I fancy, dear, that things look pretty different as we get along and are willing to pay the price for our happinesses—to pay for love with service and self-sacrifice. As for me, I pray that you and I may not some day be childless old folks.”

Lena glanced at him sidewise as they walked, and his somber face showed her that her mistake went deeper than she had suspected.

“I’m sorry I was cross,” she said with pretty contrition, but her prettiness and contrition did not have their usual exhilarating effect on Dick. Lena even turned and laid her hand softly on his arm. Still he did not look at her.

“I wasn’t hurt by your crossness, dear,” he said gently.

Among those to open hospitable doors to the bride and groom was Mr. Early. His house adjoined theirs, and only a hedge separated the two gardens, old-fashioned, with comfortable seats under wide trees on the Percival place, elaborately Italian on Mr. Early’s domain, but spacious both, for St. Etienne had the advantage of doing most of its growth after rapid transit was invented, and had therefore never cribbed and cabined its population into solid blocks of brick and mortar, but had given everybody elbow-room, so that its residence district looked much like the suburbs of older cities.

So Dick and Lena went to dine with Mr. Early, and the bride had the thrilling delight of sitting between her world-famous host and an equally illustrious scholar, who had his head with him, extra size, and was plainly bored to death by his own erudition. It was a large dinner, and Lena was alert to study every one, both what he did and how he did it; but chiefly, from her vantage point at the right hand of her host; did she watch Miss Madeline Elton, who sat near the middle of the table on the other side, where Lena could study her face over a sea of violets. Lena was puzzled. Madeline seemed less reposeful and more charming than she remembered. For an instant she wondered if her own beauty, now tricked out by jewels, was not cheap beside Miss Elton’s undecorated loveliness. She noted that the men around the table looked often in Madeline’s direction. Even Mr. Early occasionally let his attention wander from his suave courtesy toward herself, and Lena resented this. She deeply admired Mr. Early. His was the big and blatant success which she could easily comprehend, and she exulted at the idea of sitting at the post of honor beside a man distinguished over the length and breadth of the land. Once, even her own husband, Richard Percival, leaned forward and gazed at Madeline as she spoke across the table, and there was a look in his face that Lena treasured in her cabinet of unforgiven things. She flushed with anger. Her hatred of Miss Elton was as old as her acquaintance with her husband, and its growth had been parallel.

Then her eyes met the glowing glance of a dark face under a turban of soft white silk, and she turned hastily away.

“I see you are looking at my ceiling, Mrs. Percival,” said Mr. Early. “It is a reproduction of the beautiful fan-tracery in the Henry VII chapel at Westminster. Doubtless you recognize it. But, alas, it is impossible to attain the spiritual beauty of the original until age has laid its sanctifying hand on the carving. This has had but a year of life for each century that the chapel tracery can boast. And, of course, I admit that the effect must be modified by the surroundings. A dining-room can never have the atmosphere of a church, can it, my dear Mrs. Percival? Though I assure you, I have tried to be consistent in all the decorations and the furniture of this room.”

“It’s very beautiful,” said Lena. “And who is the large gentleman with the long white mustaches?”

“Surely you have met Mr. Preston. He is one of our best type of business men, and the candidate that the new reform element, in which your husband is playing an honorable part, is hoping to set up for mayor. It would be a notable thing for this community if we might have a man of his stamp represent our municipality.”

“I have heard Dick speak of him,” said Lena, “And is that the wonderful Hindu of whom I’ve heard? All the ladies are crazy about him, but I never happened to see him before.”

“That is Ram Juna. He has been with me now for two months, and is to stay indefinitely. He is engaged on a work that will, I am convinced, add one more to the sacred books of the world. We need such men in this age of materialism, do we not? And I feel gratefully the beneficent effect of such a presence in my house.”

So Mr. Early went on with ponderous sentences and a sharp look in his eye.

But Lena hardly heard him. She was absorbed in the soft lights and the flowers and the wonderful china, most of which, her host told her, had been made in his own works and was unique in the world. But strange as were all these things, her eyes kept coming back, as if fascinated, to the man-mountain in the silky white robe. The big ruby on his forehead seemed to wink and flash at her, and as often as she looked she met the sleepy eyes fixed on her face. Then she was irresistibly drawn to look again to see if he was still watching. For once, she forgot her big blue eyes and her bright little fluffs of hair and all the execution that they were meant to do on the masculine heart, because there was something different in the way this Oriental surveyed her. It was an unblinking and unemotional study.

Fortunately Mr. Early was content to talk and let her answer in brief. Talking was not Lena’s strong point. Mr. Early went on with his monologue, in platitudes about art, and Lena looked interested, or tried to, while she caught scraps of conversation from farther down the table.

Miss Elton was telling a story of her cooking-class in a certain poor district. She had shown a flabby wife, noted even in that region for her lack of culinary skill, how to make a dish at once cheap, palatable and nutritious.

“And I said, ‘Now Mrs. Koshek, if you’d give that to your husband some night when he comes home tired, don’t you think it would be a pleasant surprise?’ But all I could get out of her was, ‘I’d ruther eat what I’d ruther; I’d ruther eat what I’d ruther.’ And I’m afraid Mr. Koshek is still living on greasy sausages.”

“That might teach you, Miss Elton,” said Mr. Preston, “the futility of trying to improve women by reason. Now a man—”

“Oh, pooh, reason! reason!” exclaimed Mrs. Lenox, turning upon him, “I’m sorry for you poor men, you mistaken servants of boasted reason! Reason is the biggest fallacy on earth. It leads men by the straight path of logic to pure foolishness.”

“And how is your woman’s reason to account for that?” he asked tolerantly.

“Oh, I suppose your premises are never true. Or, if they are, another man’s opposite premises are equally true. So there you are. Two contradictions are equally valid, but being a reasonable man you can’t see more than one of them.”

“And women can see both sides, of course.”

“Truly. And flop from one to the other with lightning rapidity. We are too completely superior to reason to have any respect for or reliance on it. Do you think I try reason on my husband when he is in the wrong in his arguments with me! Not at all. I just say, ‘I’m afraid you are not feeling well, dear.’ And I put a mustard plaster on him. It’s extraordinary how seldom he disagrees nowadays. Or when he’s very obstinately set on an objectionable course, it’s a good plan to say sweetly, ‘I’ll do just as you like, dear.’ He invariably comes back with an emphatic, ‘No—we’ll do as you like.’”

“I relinquish all claims to be called a reasonable being,” said Mr. Lenox with a wry face.

“When we, the unmarried, hear confessions of this kind,” said Madeline, “it gives us an incongruous feeling to remember how happy you, the married, seem, after all.”

“Getting along becomes a habit,” retorted Dick. “Matrimony is like taking opium. It fixes itself on you. I suppose when the hero of Kipling’s poem found out that she was only ‘a rag and a bone and a hank of hair,’ he kept on loving the rag, even while he felt like gnawing the bone and pulling the hair.”

He knew he had said an ugly thing. It wasn’t like him. He flushed as he saw Mrs. Lenox glance sharply at him.

“Dick, Dick, that is heresy,” she exclaimed gaily. “We must pretend there aren’t any vampires, and that we do not know what they are made of. If we tell the naked truth, how can we cry out with conviction that the old world is an harmonious and beautiful place?”

“That isn’t your real philosophy,” he said.

“No, it isn’t,” she said. “I sometimes wish it were. If one could have the temperament to shut one’s eyes and say, ‘I don’t see it; therefore it isn’t true,’ what a very easy thing life would be.”

“I don’t know,” answered Dick. “Going it blind with a dog and a string doesn’t generally make it easier to walk.”

“That’s true,” Madeline put in. “A little dog isn’t a very good guide up the hilly road of righteousness. As for me, I prefer open-eyed obedience to blind obedience.”

“I’ll be bound you prefer obedience anyway,” Dick said in an undertone, and he looked at her as though something in her hurt him. He turned abruptly to Mr. Preston.

“Preston,” he said, “I wish we could hold a special election and put you into the executive chair before your time. Every kind of evil thing is taking advantage of our present lax administration. I believe the crooks of other cities are flying to us on the wings of the wind. One of the plain-clothes men told me to-day that the government detectives have traced a gang of counterfeiters to our beloved city, though they have not succeeded in spotting the rascals’ whereabouts. It’s rather humiliating to find St. Etienne picked out as a good hiding-place for any villany there is going.”

“You needn’t be so sure that a special election or any other kind would carry us in,” laughed Mr. Preston. “I’m not so confident as you seem, Percival, that this community is overwhelmed with the consciousness of its rare opportunity.”

And so the talk drifted on, as usual, to politics.

After dinner, in the drawing-room, Lena saw her husband in conversation with Ram Juna. The two crossed the room, and Dick introduced the new prophet.

“I fear my too constant inspection disturbed you. Myriad pardons for me,” began the Swami in his mellifluous voice. “It is the tribute. When I feel deep interest I am prone to forget all but my study. See, I am the last of a family once powerful and wealthy; yet I hardly regret that heritage that I have lost. I look at you. You are the type of another fate. You are a bride, young, lovely, with the vigor and glory of this new race of America. I envy not, but I wonder. So I look too long.”

Lena glanced discomfited at the retreating back of her husband and said, “I’m sure I didn’t notice anything peculiar.”

A curious gleam came into Ram Juna’s sleepy eyes.

“Ah, then you, like me, love to examine the soul, your own or another’s. You have fellow feeling. So you forgive. May I sit here beside you?”

Lena drew aside her petticoats and the Swami shared her little sofa.

“You see that while you make study of others, I make study of you. I should wish to be your friend. I should in fact fear to have you count me an enemy.”

Lena blinked at him in an uncomprehending way with her big eyes, and he smiled innocently in return.

“A woman who is an enemy is a danger. But men are tough-skinned and hard to kill. Is it not so? And even a woman enemy is often powerless to hurt. But when a woman hates a woman, then the case is different. A woman is easy to hurt. A little blow, even a breath on her reputation or to her pride, and the woman is wounded beyond repair. Is it not so?”

Still Lena stared blankly at him, but as he did not return her gaze, her eyes followed his to the other side of the room where Miss Elton bent over a table, with Mr. Early on one side of her and Dick Percival on the other.

“Oh!” she said with a little gasp. “Oh!” And Ram Juna looked back at her and smiled again.

“Therefore I was right to desire your friendship and not your enmity, was I not?” said he. “I, too, am a good friend and a bad enemy. See, Mr. Early shows some wonderful Japanese paintings. Shall we join them in the inspection?”

And Lena went with wonder, and in her mind there began to form vague clumsy purposes which the Hindu would have despised if he had read them.

Nor did her conversation with her husband in the home-returning carriage tend to soften Lena’s heart.

Dick was in an uncomfortable and irritable state of mind which was strange and disconcerting even to himself. Instead of giving her the big hug that was his habit when they found themselves safely alone, he said sharply,

“Lena, you use too much perfume about you. I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Do I?” asked Lena ominously. “Is there anything else?”

“Well, since you give me the chance to say it, dear,” Dick’s tone was now apologetic, “I’d a little rather you wore your dinner gowns higher. I know many women do wear things like yours to-night, and your dressmaker has dictated to you; but I think the extremes are not well-bred. Just look at the best women. Look at Mrs. Lenox and Madeline—”

But here Lena gave so sharp a little cry of anger that Dick stopped dismayed.

“How dare you?” she screamed. “How dare you hold up a girl you know I hate as an example to me! If she’s so perfect, why didn’t you marry her? I’m sure she wanted you badly enough.”

Dick shrank back a little. To him love—the desire for marriage—was hardly a thing to be touched by outside hands. He wished Lena would not tear down the veils of reticence so ruthlessly.

“Lena, she did not want me at all. Be reasonable.”

“Well, then, you took me just because you couldn’t get her, did you? Everything she does and wears is perfection. And there’s nothing about me that’s right!” Lena had now come to the point of angry tears.

“There’s one thing about you that’s right; and that’s my arms, sweetheart.” Dick spoke sturdily in spite of trepidation, for this was a new experience to him. “You know I love you, Lena, I did not mean to hurt you. I thought only that you were a sweet little inexperienced woman, and that you would welcome any hints from your husband’s worldly wisdom. Come, don’t turn into an Undine, dear, and get the carriage all wet,”—for his wife was now sobbing on his shoulder.

“You’ve told me lots of times that I was perfect,” she cried. “I don’t see why you want to change me now. You’re so inconsistent, Dick.”

“I wish that I could make up for my brutality,” said Dick. “How can I, Lena? I feel like the fellow that threw a catsup bottle at his wife’s head at the breakfast-table and then felt so badly when he saw the nasty stuff trickling down her pretty curls that he brought her home a pair of diamond earrings for dinner.”

“What a horrid vulgar story!” exclaimed Lena.

“Isn’t it?” Dick rejoined. “But vulgar things are frequently true, as we learn with sorrow. Lena, can’t we believe that our marriage certificate had an affection insurance policy given with it? Don’t let us indulge in little quarrels. As you say, they are vulgar. I want love to be not only a rich solid pudding full of plums, but I want it to have a meringue on top.”

As he hoped, this made Lena laugh, and she pulled out her over-scented handkerchief to wipe her eyes. Dick shut his lips tightly, grown too wise to speak.