please don't," she pleaded; "it's something I don't want you to
see. Oh, why will you? it's just something low and despicable
that you can't notice."
Arthur had gently loosed her hands, and he pointed her to a chair.
He lit a cigar and read the article through without comment. When
he had finished it he walked to the fireplace, struck a match, and
tossed the flaming journal between the brass andirons.
"You are right," he remarked as he came back, dusting his
hands with his handkerchief. "It's quite impossible to comment.
There are extremes of blackguardism for which we have no name.
The only thing necessary is to see that Flavia gets no
wind of this. This seems to be my cue to act; poor girl."
Imogen looked at him tearfully; she could only murmur, "Oh,
why did you read it!"
Hamilton laughed spiritlessly. "Come, don't you worry about
it. You always took other people's troubles too seriously. When
you were little and all the world was gay and everybody happy,
you must needs get the Little Mermaid's troubles to grieve over.
Come with me into the music room. You remember the musical
setting I once made you for the Lay of the Jabberwock? I was
trying it over the other night, long after you were in bed, and I
decided it was quite as fine as the Erl-King music. How I wish I
could give you some of the cake that Alice ate and make you a
little girl again. Then, when you had got through the glass door
into the little garden, you could call to me, perhaps, and tell
me all the fine things that were going on there. What a pity it
is that you ever grew up!" he added, laughing; and Imogen, too,
was thinking just that.
At dinner that evening, Flavia, with fatal persistence,
insisted upon turning the conversation to M. Roux. She had been
reading one of his novels and had remembered anew that Paris set
its watches by his clock. Imogen surmised that she was tortured
by a feeling that she had not sufficiently appreciated him while
she had had him. When she first mentioned his name she was
answered only by the pall of silence that fell over the company.
Then everyone began to talk at once, as though to correct a false
position. They spoke of him with a fervid, defiant admiration,
with the sort of hot praise that covers a double purpose. Imogen
fancied she could see that they felt a kind of relief at what the
man had done, even those who despised him for doing it; that they
felt a spiteful hate against Flavia, as though she had tricked
them, and a certain contempt for themselves that they had been
beguiled. She was reminded of the fury of the crowd in the fairy
tale, when once the child had called out that the king was in his
night clothes. Surely these people knew no more about Flavia
than they had known before, but the mere fact that the
thing had been said altered the situation. Flavia, meanwhile,
sat chattering amiably, pathetically unconscious of her nakedness.
Hamilton lounged, fingering the stem of his wineglass,
gazing down the table at one face after another and studying the
various degrees of self-consciousness they exhibited. Imogen's
eyes followed his, fearfully. When a lull came in the spasmodic
flow of conversation, Arthur, leaning back in his chair, remarked
deliberately, "As for M. Roux, his very profession places him
in that class of men whom society has never been able to accept
unconditionally because it has never been able to assume that
they have any ordered notion of taste. He and his ilk remain,
with the mountebanks and snake charmers, people indispensable to
our civilization, but wholly unreclaimed by it; people whom we
receive, but whose invitations we do not accept."
Fortunately for Flavia, this mine was not exploded until
just before the coffee was brought. Her laughter was pitiful to
hear; it echoed through the silent room as in a vault, while she
made some tremulously light remark about her husband's drollery,
grim as a jest from the dying. No one responded and she sat
nodding her head like a mechanical toy and smiling her white, set
smile through her teeth, until Alcee Buisson and Frau Lichtenfeld
came to her support.
After dinner the guests retired immediately to their rooms,
and Imogen went upstairs on tiptoe, feeling the echo of breakage
and the dust of crumbling in the air. She wondered whether
Flavia's habitual note of uneasiness were not, in a manner,
prophetic, and a sort of unconscious premonition, after all. She
sat down to write a letter, but she found herself so nervous, her
head so hot and her hands so cold, that she soon abandoned the
effort. just as she was about to seek Miss Broadwood, Flavia
entered and embraced her hysterically.
"My dearest girl," she began, "was there ever such an
unfortunate and incomprehensible speech made before? Of course
it is scarcely necessary to explain to you poor Arthur's lack of
tact, and that he meant nothing. But they! Can they be
expected to understand? He will feel wretchedly about it when
he realizes what he has done, but in the meantime? And M. Roux,
of all men! When we were so fortunate as to get him, and he made
himself so unreservedly agreeable, and I fancied that, in his way,
Arthur quite admired him. My dear, you have no idea what that
speech has done. Schemetzkin and Herr Schotte have already sent
me word that they must leave us tomorrow. Such a thing from a
host!" Flavia paused, choked by tears of vexation and despair.
Imogen was thoroughly disconcerted; this was the first time
she had ever seen Flavia betray any personal emotion which was
indubitably genuine. She replied with what consolation she
could. "Need they take it personally at all? It was a mere
observation upon a class of people--"
"Which he knows nothing whatever about, and with whom he has
no sympathy," interrupted Flavia. "Ah, my dear, you could not be
expected to understand. You can't realize, knowing Arthur
as you do, his entire lack of any aesthetic sense whatever. He is
absolutely nil, stone deaf and stark blind, on that side.
He doesn't mean to be brutal, it is just the brutality of utter
ignorance. They always feel it--they are so sensitive to
unsympathetic influences, you know; they know it the moment they
come into the house. I have spent my life apologizing for him
and struggling to conceal it; but in spite of me, he wounds them;
his very attitude, even in silence, offends them. Heavens! Do I
not know? Is it not perpetually and forever wounding me? But
there has never been anything so dreadful as this--never! If I
could conceive of any possible motive, even!"
"But, surely, Mrs. Hamilton, it was, after all, a mere
expression of opinion, such as we are any of us likely to venture
upon any subject whatever. It was neither more personal nor more
extravagant than many of M. Roux's remarks."
"But, Imogen, certainly M. Roux has the right. I
t is a part
of his art, and that is altogether another matter. Oh, this is
not the only instance!" continued Flavia passionately, "I've
always had that narrow, bigoted prejudice to contend with. It
has always held me back. But this--!"
"I think you mistake his attitude," replied Imogen, feeling
a flush that made her ears tingle. "That is, I fancy he is more
appreciative than he seems. A man can't be very demonstrative
about those things--not if he is a real man. I should not think
you would care much about saving the feelings of people who are
too narrow to admit of any other point of view than their own."
She stopped, finding herself in the impossible position of
attempting to explain Hamilton to his wife; a task which, if once
begun, would necessitate an entire course of enlightenment which
she doubted Flavia's ability to receive, and which she could
offer only with very poor grace.
"That's just where it stings most"--here Flavia began pacing
the floor--"it is just because they have all shown such tolerance
and have treated Arthur with such unfailing consideration that I
can find no reasonable pretext for his rancor. How can he fail
to see the value of such friendships on the children's account,
if for nothing else! What an advantage for them to grow up among
such associations! Even though he cares nothing about these
things himself he might realize that. Is there nothing I could
say by way of explanation? To them, I mean? If someone were to
explain to them how unfortunately limited he is in these
things--"
"I'm afraid I cannot advise you," said Imogen decidedly,
"but that, at least, seems to me impossible."
Flavia took her hand and glanced at her affectionately,
nodding nervously. "Of course, dear girl, I can't ask you to be
quite frank with me. Poor child, you are trembling and your
hands are icy. Poor Arthur! But you must not judge him by this
altogether; think how much he misses in life. What a cruel shock
you've had. I'll send you some sherry, Good night, my dear."
When Flavia shut the door Imogen burst into a fit of nervous
weeping.
Next morning she awoke after a troubled and restless night. At
eight o'clock Miss Broadwood entered in a red and white striped
bathrobe.
"Up, up, and see the great doom's image!" she cried, her
eyes sparkling with excitement. "The hall is full of
trunks, they are packing. What bolt has fallen? It's you, ma
cherie, you've brought Ulysses home again and the slaughter has
begun!" she blew a cloud of smoke triumphantly from her lips and
threw herself into a chair beside the bed.
Imogen, rising on her elbow, plunged excitedly into the
story of the Roux interview, which Miss Broadwood heard with the
keenest interest, frequently interrupting her with exclamations
of delight. When Imogen reached the dramatic scene which
terminated in the destruction of the newspaper, Miss Broadwood
rose and took a turn about the room, violently switching the
tasselled cords of her bathrobe.
"Stop a moment," she cried, "you mean to tell me that he had
such a heaven-sent means to bring her to her senses and didn't
use it--that he held such a weapon and threw it away?"
"Use it?" cried Imogen unsteadily. "Of course he didn't! He
bared his back to the tormentor, signed himself over to
punishment in that speech he made at dinner, which everyone
understands but Flavia. She was here for an hour last night and
disregarded every limit of taste in her maledictions."
"My dear!" cried Miss Broadwood, catching her hand in
inordinate delight at the situation, "do you see what he has
done? There'll be no end to it. Why he has sacrificed himself to
spare the very vanity that devours him, put rancors in the
vessels of his peace, and his eternal jewel given to the common
enemy of man, to make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings! He is
magnificent!"
"Isn't he always that?" cried Imogen hotly. "He's like a
pillar of sanity and law in this house of shams and swollen
vanities, where people stalk about with a sort of madhouse
dignity, each one fancying himself a king or a pope. If you
could have heard that woman talk of him! Why, she thinks him
stupid, bigoted, blinded by middleclass prejudices. She talked
about his having no aesthetic sense and insisted that her artists
had always shown him tolerance. I don't know why it should get
on my nerves so, I'm sure, but her stupidity and assurance are
enough to drive one to the brink of collapse."
"Yes, as opposed to his singular fineness, they are
calculated to do just that," said Miss Broadwood gravely, wisely
ignoring Imogen's tears. "But what has been is nothing to what
will be. Just wait until Flavia's black swans have flown! You
ought not to try to stick it out; that would only make it harder
for everyone. Suppose you let me telephone your mother to wire
you to come home by the evening train?"
"Anything, rather than have her come at me like that again. It
puts me in a perfectly impossible position, and he is so
fine!"
"Of course it does," said Miss Broadwood sympathetically,
"and there is no good to be got from facing it. I will stay
because such things interest me, and Frau Lichtenfeld will stay
because she has no money to get away, and Buisson will stay
because he feels somewhat responsible. These complications are
interesting enough to cold-blooded folk like myself who have an
eye for the dramatic element, but they are distracting and
demoralizing to young people with any serious purpose in life."
Miss Broadwood's counsel was all the more generous seeing
that, for her, the most interesting element of this denouement
would be eliminated by Imogen's departure. "If she goes now,
she'll get over it," soliloquized Miss Broadwood. "If she stays,
she'll be wrung for him and the hurt may go deep enough to last.
I haven't the heart to see her spoiling things for herself." She
telephoned Mrs. Willard and helped Imogen to pack. She even took
it upon herself to break the news of Imogen's going to Arthur,
who remarked, as he rolled a cigarette in his nerveless fingers:
"Right enough, too. What should she do here with old cynics
like you and me, Jimmy? Seeing that she is brim full of dates and
formulae and other positivisms, and is so girt about with
illusions that she still casts a shadow in the sun. You've been
very tender of her, haven't you? I've watched you. And to think
it may all be gone when we see her next. 'The common fate of all
things rare,' you know. What a good fellow you are, anyway,
Jimmy," he added, putting his hands affectionately on her
shoulders.
Arthur went with them to the station. Flavia was so
prostrated by the concerted action of her guests that she was
able to see Imogen only for a moment in her darkened sleeping
chamber, where s
he kissed her hysterically, without lifting her
head, bandaged in aromatic vinegar. On the way to the station
both Arthur and Imogen threw the burden of keeping up appearances
entirely upon Miss Broadwood, who blithely rose to the occasion.
When Hamilton carried Imogen's bag into the car, Miss Broadwood
detained her for a moment, whispering as she gave her a large,
warm handclasp, "I'll come to see you when I get back to town;
and, in the meantime, if you meet any of our artists, tell them
you have left Caius Marius among the ruins of Carthage."
The Sculptor's Funeral
A group of the townspeople stood on the station siding of a
little Kansas town, awaiting the coming of the night train, which
was already twenty minutes overdue. The snow had fallen thick
over everything; in the pale starlight the line of bluffs across
the wide, white meadows south of the town made soft, smoke-
colored curves against the clear sky. The men on the siding
stood first on one foot and then on the other, their hands thrust
deep into their trousers pockets, their overcoats open, their
shoulders screwed up with the cold; and they glanced from time to
time toward the southeast, where the railroad track wound along
the river shore. They conversed in low tones and moved about
restlessly, seeming uncertain as to what was expected of them.
There was but one of the company who looked as though he knew
exactly why he was there; and he kept conspicuously apart;
walking to the far end of the platform, returning to the station
door, then pacing up the track again, his chin sunk in the high
collar of his overcoat, his burly shoulders drooping forward, his
gait heavy and dogged. Presently he was approached by a tall,
spare, grizzled man clad in a faded Grand Army suit, who shuffled
out from the group and advanced with a certain deference, craning
his neck forward until his back made the angle of a jackknife
three-quarters open.
"I reckon she's agoin' to be pretty late ag'in tonight,
Jim," he remarked in a squeaky falsetto. "S'pose it's the snow?"
"I don't know," responded the other man with a shade of
annoyance, speaking from out an astonishing cataract of red beard
that grew fiercely and thickly in all directions.
The spare man shifted the quill toothpick he was chewing to
the other side of his mouth. "It ain't likely that anybody from
the East will come with the corpse, I s'pose," he went on
reflectively.
"I don't know," responded the other, more curtly than before.
"It's too bad he didn't belong to some lodge or other. I
like an order funeral myself. They seem more appropriate for
people of some reputation," the spare man continued, with an
ingratiating concession in his shrill voice, as he carefully
placed his toothpick in his vest pocket. He always carried the
flag at the G. A. R. funerals in the town.
The heavy man turned on his heel, without replying, and walked up
the siding. The spare man shuffled back to the uneasy group.
"Jim's ez full ez a tick, ez ushel," he commented commiseratingly.
Just then a distant whistle sounded, and there was a
shuffling of feet on the platform. A number of lanky boys of all
ages appeared as suddenly and slimily as eels wakened by the
crack of thunder; some came from the waiting room, where they had
been warming themselves by the red stove, or half-asleep on the
slat benches; others uncoiled themselves from baggage trucks or
slid out of express wagons. Two clambered down from the driver's
seat of a hearse that stood backed up against the siding. They
straightened their stooping shoulders and lifted their heads, and
a flash of momentary animation kindled their dull eyes at that
cold, vibrant scream, the world-wide call for men. It stirred
them like the note of a trumpet; just as it had often stirred the
man who was coming home tonight, in his boyhood.
The night express shot, red as a rocket, from out the eastward