The Arch-Satirist

"The least we can do is to apologize, and we do it—thus."—Page [299]

THE
ARCH-SATIRIST

BY

FRANCES DE WOLFE FENWICK

ILLUSTRATED BY
CHARLES COPELAND

"Justice had been done, and Time, the Arch-Satirist,
had had his joke out."—THOMAS HARDY.

BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.

Published, March, 1910

COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD Co.

All Rights Reserved

Entered at Stationer's Hall, London

THE ARCH-SATIRIST

Norwood Press
BERWICK & SMITH CO.
Norwood, Mass., U. S. A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

1. ["Half Devil and Half Child"]
2. [A Visit to Agatha]
3. ["Forsaken Guts and Creeks"]
4. [A Brilliant Match]
5. ["Blind Fools of Fate"]
6. ["Life at its End"]
7. [A Short Repentance]
8. ["Punchinello"]
9. ["Just a Few of the Girls"]
10. ["A Fin-de-siecle Pair"]
11. [Visitors and Disclosures]
12. [The Views of Two Women]
13. [Rejected Addresses]
14. [A Decision to be Reached]
15. ["Be Pitiful, O God!"]
16. [The Hockey Match]
17. [A Scandal Verified]
18. [Mrs. Hadwell's Fancy Dress Ball]
19. [Agatha "Does Her Duty" and is Rewarded]
20. [The Twins under a New Aspect]
21. [A Lie Which Is Part a Truth]
22. [Whispering Tongues]
23. [When Love Is Done]
24. [Mrs. Langham-Green Pays Her Debt; and Mrs. Waite, Hers]
25. [The Shadows Fall]

THE ARCH-SATIRIST

CHAPTER I

"HALF DEVIL AND HALF CHILD"

"Then the preacher preached of Sin ... fair of flower and bitter of fruit."—Juliana Horatia Ewing.

"To me the idea of slaving for a life-time in order to die rich is a pitiful sort of insanity. That's the Italian in me, I suppose. I would think it wiser to drink—drink deep and long and gloriously—and die of it—die in a ditch if necessary! Then I would have lived some sort of life, anyway, and enjoyed it after my fashion. But I'm not going to live or die that way. I'm going to take everything in life that's worth having, and I'm going to enjoy—and enjoy—and enjoy! The devil, himself, can't cheat me of it. I've long arrears of happiness to make up and by God——I'll make them!" The speaker broke off, coughing horribly; a gleam of intense rage shone in his great, wild eyes and his thin nostrils quivered, furiously. Poor slight earth-worm! caught in the whirlwind of Destiny and tossed hither and thither! compelled to falsify his weak boasts even as he uttered them! The man who sat opposite, smoking and lounging in the dim light of the studio, withdrew his gaze with an effort from his visitor's frail form and frenzied face; there seemed something indecent in gazing thus openly at the contortions of a naked soul.

"Have a little hot Scotch for the cough," he suggested, reluctantly. "What's the use? I may just as well give it to him, here," he added to himself. "The boy's trebly doomed and a drop more or less isn't going to make any difference either way." He busied himself with a spirit lamp and glasses and soon his visitor was gulping down the proffered draught, greedily.

"That's good!" he exclaimed. "That puts life in me. I feel as if I could write something now—something worth while."

"Something unfit for reading, I suppose you mean," returned his host, cheerfully.

The boy laughed easily and settled back among the cushions of his easy chair with panther-like grace.

"Not a bit of it," he answered, gaily. "I only write them after gin. The best thing I ever did was gin—'Sin's Lure.' You read it?"

"I did."

"Strong, wasn't it?"

"Strong, yes. So is a—so are various other things strong. Just the sort of thing a diseased, vice-racked, dissipated young—genius—like you might be expected to produce. What bothers me now is your prose. Anything more uncharacteristic"—

The boy laughed and gazed at the older man, intently and mischievously.

"Nothing morbid about that, is there?"

"Nothing. Bright, dainty, unerringly truthful, delightfully witty—how in thunder do you do it? You must have two souls."

"Two! I've got a dozen."

The boy lit a cigarette and puffed it, meditatively. The man smoked a well-coloured pipe and gazed steadily at his visitor. Seen thus, they were an ill-assorted pair.

Gerald Amherst, the owner of the studio, was an artist, uncursed overmuch by the artistic temperament. His strong, sane face and massive figure suggested the athlete, the pose and substance of his attitude the successful business man. Nor did the omens lie. He was an athlete in his leisure moments, a business man at all times. Art was his occupation, his delight; but he never forgot that she was also his bread-winner. Amherst painted good, sometimes exceptional pictures; and he demanded—and obtained—good, sometimes exceptional prices for them. For the rest he was thirty-four, fine-looking, well-bred, honest—and popular. Friends came to him as flies come in July to ordinary mortals.

So alien was his visitor that he hardly seemed to belong to the same world. Lithe, long-limbed, sinuous, with features of almost feminine delicacy and charm and hands that made the artist soul in Gerald vibrate pleasurably. The eyes—deep-set, hollow, passionate—were the eyes of a lost soul; impenetrable, fathomless, and lurid.

Strange, alluring, repellent personality! where the seeds of a thousand sins—sown centuries before—bore hideous fruit. Madness, vice, disease, and death—and, through them all, the golden fire of genius! This boy's age was nineteen; and no second glance was needed to tell that the fierce, straining spirit must soon leave its wretched tenement behind and fare forth into darkness. In the meantime—Amherst puffed at his pipe and thought. A year ago this boy had been a pet and idol of Montreal society; to-day his open corruptness had closed all doors to him save those of a few, who, like Amherst, forgave the madman in the genius, and the beast in the dying boy.

Then, too, our hero was an artist; and Leo Ricossia was a model such as artist seldom sees. He was graceful as some young wild animal; his delicately nervous body could form no pose that was not pleasing. As for his face—thin-lipped, wide-eyed, luminous—"Ricossia will never write a poem so wonderful as his face," a brother-artist had once remarked; and Amherst fully concurred in the opinion.

Ricossia spoke presently, his dark eyes heavy with thought.

"You think it possible that one may have ten souls?"

"I think it probable that one soul may have twenty outlooks, and all of them vile, when he has soaked in sufficient gin. But how an unhealthy mind can produce healthy stuff—that's beyond me. Your prose is healthy, and what's more, it's fine. It ranks with"—He stopped abruptly, amazed and confounded by the glitter in Ricossia's eye.

"You—you don't think it better than my poetry? You can't!"

"I think—in a sense—it is better!" Amherst spoke slowly and Ricossia leaned forward to catch his words with an avidity which seemed disproportioned to the matter in hand. "In another sense it's not so good, of course. The poems are unhealthy, feverish, abnormal—but, in their way, they're efforts of genius. The stories are simply very unusually clever prose—healthy, witty, and clean. Personally I prefer them."

"You—you miserable Philistine!"

The boy leaned back as though relieved and his scarlet lips parted in a smile of startling sweetness. The eyes had lost their wild gleam now and were simply wells of dusky kindness and fellowship; the eyes of an intelligent, friendly brute with something added. Gerald noted the change with unflagging interest; as a study the boy never palled.

"You think I'm a bad lot, don't you?"

"I think you're as bad as the worst. But a chap like you isn't to be judged by ordinary standards."

"Yet," pursued Ricossia, slowly, "you allow that I can write clean stuff. Perhaps in spite of it all, underneath it all—my soul is clean."

"I hope so; but I don't believe it for a moment. No, I can't account for it that way."

"Possibly," suggested the other, puffing fitfully, "possibly, then, my unclean spirit has gained control of some healthy, human soul which it dominates."

"Possibly you're talking awful rot," returned the other, good-humouredly but a trifle impatiently.

"Possibly I am."

The poet smiled softly and leaned back, making a lovely thing of the corner where he lounged.

"Healthy people often have a liking for me," he observed. "You, for instance—the healthiest man I know. And the healthiest woman—Miss Thayer."

"That'll do."

"What do you mean?"

"That you mustn't speak of her."

"Why?"

"You ought to know."

The boy stared, uncomprehendingly; then threw himself back, chuckling inaudibly.

"You didn't understand me," he said at last, his beautiful eyes bright with amusement. "She has far too much sense to be attracted by me in the ordinary way. I meant only"—

"I don't care what you meant. I don't like to talk to you about her and I won't. If she did bestow a good deal of attention on you at one time it was before she knew your real character; she regarded you just as a sick, inspired boy. None of them ever speak of you, now; you ought to know that."

Ricossia fixed his great eyes on the speaker's face with an impenetrable expression, then shook with silent laughter.

"We'll talk on some less delicate subject," he said at last with a keen, bright glance at the other man, replete with subtle mockery. "Still," he added, softly, "you'll allow—leaving all personalities out of the question—that I have a magnetic attraction for all women, good and bad—even if I am ostracized from polite society."

"I'll allow nothing—I don't want to discuss it, I tell you," said Amherst, irritably. "There are some things and some people one doesn't care to hear you mention, you young— Can't you understand that?"

"Perfectly!" returned the boy, laughing. His laugh was an uncanny thing, so melodious and bell-like as to be startlingly unmasculine. Amherst liked it no better than the rest of him—and found it equally attractive.

After all, he mused, his momentary irritation subsiding, our ideas of what a man should be were arbitrary. Certainly there was a beauty of disease; a beauty even of corruption, which, while no one cared to imitate, no one, on the other hand, could deny the existence of. Here was a living example; the scapegoat of heredity, laden down with sin, weighted with disease, yet possessed of how many goodly gifts! And all to end in—what? The passion of the hot heart, the sweat of the over-active brain—all, all for nothing. An evil life and an early grave. Retribution, yes; but retribution, really, for the sins of the dead men whose deeds lived, poisoning the life and rotting the blood in the veins of this, their human puppet. And these dead men, what of them? What of their life, endlessly self-renewed, unceasingly sinned against until this, the last representative of a name that had once been great, went to fertilize the waiting earth. "About all he is fit for, too," mused Gerald grimly enough, noting the signs plainly written on the face of the boy. Then his mood changed. How pitiful! This beautiful creature, in nature a cross between a satyr and an elfin, in face, nothing short of a god; this "vessel of a more ungainly make" "leaning all awry"; this marionette of the scornful gods, dancing gaily enough, to every tune the devil chose to play him; this strange, only half human being of the unbridled will, the untempered desires. And only nineteen!

The studio showed bright with candle-light and lamp-light. A fire of wood and coal glowed and chattered on the hearth. It was all very quiet, very restful. The boy still lingered among the rich-hued cushions and his face showed an unwonted sense of peace.

The poetic instincts which an Italian father, an Irish grandmother, had bequeathed to him responded amazingly to this atmosphere of cosy, sinless warmth. He was quite capable of rising to heights of extraordinary mental spirituality at such moments, though quite incapable of applying the first principle of morality to his daily life.

Gerald Amherst thought, as he had thought many times before, of the strange inequalities of life. Here was he, thirty-four, the possessor of a sound body, a clear conscience, a healthy mind and a sufficient income. He reflected on these various advantages with no sense of personal merit, feeling that they had been bequeathed to him as truly as had the old mahogany chest which formed one of the chief ornaments of his room. He had certainly started as well equipped as most to play the great game of life.

What if he, too, had had this boy's heritage? He tried, smiling a little, to imagine himself a Ricossia; a doomed, reckless, light-hearted being who chose to spend his few remaining years in hopeless vice. As he thought, a sudden pity for the boy overtook him as it had very often done before, a sudden curiosity as to what really transpired behind the black veil which we all hang between our inmost selves and the eyes of our fellow-humans. Did the boy ever feel regret or shame or loathing for himself or reluctance to continue in his vile career? Would he confess to it if he did? Amherst, pressed by a sudden desire to know more of his whimsical visitant, questioned him, soberly.

"I say—Leo!"

"Well, old man?"

"You've been going it a bit, lately, haven't you? Drinking pretty hard? Drugs, too, of some sort, I fancy. You look pretty seedy."

The boy started and glanced hastily in a polished, steel mirror which hung near. What he saw evidently re-assured him, for he tossed his black head and smiled, carelessly.

"I think I look pretty fit," he said, coolly. "I'd hate to think otherwise. My word! I don't know what I'd do if—some fellows show that sort of thing so. Swollen faces, purple round the nose and all that—you know?"

"I know."

"But I'm not in that class, yet, thank the Lord."

"Yes, but suppose the Lord went back on you and handed you the red nose and the pimples and all the other ornaments which rightfully belong to you—what then?"

"Then?—oh, then, I'd end it very quickly. I can't bear to have an ugly object in the room with me; do you think I could bear to be one myself? Chloral's painless."

"Yes, and cheap. The idea of suicide appeals to you, then?"

"Not especially," answered the boy, beginning to stir, restlessly. "But one must do something if the worst comes to the worst."

"I wonder, if you feel like that, that you continue to live. Do you really think your life's worth living?"

"No," answered Ricossia, calmly. "Do you think yours is?"

Gerald stopped half-way in an answer, struck by a sudden thought. Was his life worth living? It was a good life as lives go; but if he could exchange it now, to-night, for total oblivion, absolute insurance against future pain, old age, illness, sorrow—would he, or would he not? He hesitated.

"I ask you," pursued Ricossia, quietly, "because, just now, as I leaned back here in your comfortable chair with your fire dancing in my eyes and your good drink warming the very cockles of my heart, I thought of you and, for a moment, envied you. Then I thought of your life. Your tiresome routine of work, exercise, wholesome food, good air, sound sleep—God! how do you stand it? I'd go mad!"

"You think your own life preferable?"

"My life is life of a kind. My cough's a devilish nuisance but I can always purchase oblivion with a few cents—oblivion! Have you ever known what it is to want sleep? No? I thought not. Wait until you have. Then know what it is to want sleep and to get it; to drop off to slumber, lulled with pleasant thoughts, dreams, fancies, and to feel no pain, no bother, nothing but a delicious drowsiness. Of course the waking up is bad—but you don't think of that; if you did, I suppose you'd take a bigger dose once for all."

"I'm not paid to induce you to commit suicide, but, feeling as you do, I wonder what on earth you live for?"

"So do I. So do most of us. But of course there is only one answer to that question; namely, that Nature has implanted in the breast of the tiniest insect that lives and crawls on the face of this globe not only the desire to live but the intention to live. It's an instinct. We all have it. Life is a horrible thing, really. This world is an unspeakable place. But none of us wants to leave it all the same. That may be because it is the only life we have or it may be because there's a worse life waiting. But I don't believe that, someway. Though the Creator seems pretty cruel at times I think perhaps old Khayyam did him no injustice. 'He's a good fellow and 'twill all be well.' And now, Amherst, yarning always makes me restless and dry and the night's still young. I'm going to get drunk."

"Hold on!" expostulated Amherst, genuinely shocked and startled, he could hardly tell why, at this most unexpected and unpleasant ending to their talk. "Don't do it, Ricossia. How can you? What—what can you expect from the 'Good Fellow' if you fly in his face, that way? It's devilish, that's what it is. Stay and let me fix you up for the night, you young fool, you!"

Ricossia laughed. "You're a funny old boy, Amherst," he observed, meditatively. "I wonder what it feels like to have a conscience. I'd rather have a drink—a series of drinks! 'My Clay with long oblivion has gone dry.' As for the 'Good Fellow'—I haven't seen anything of him, yet. Have you? But the other old Boy is howling to be fed, so I'm off. Good-night."

CHAPTER II

A VISIT TO AGATHA

"This life of ours is a wild Æolian harp of many a joyous

strain—

But under them all there runs a loud, perpetual wail as of

souls in pain."—Longfellow.

Agatha Ladilaw had made a pink dress and was embroidering it with roses. Each of us has some particular talent; Agatha's was dressmaking. Her parents were not wealthy and therefore she could not indulge in the "creations" affected by many of her friends; but by dint of constant industry, excellent taste and unusual skill, she contrived to be always charmingly costumed. True, with a figure that might have stepped out of a Fifth Avenue shop window and a face which any colour rendered lovely, she did not confront the difficulties of ordinary mortals.

As physical perfection is rare and as Agatha Ladilaw was, in her way, an unusually fine specimen of purely mundane and limited loveliness, a pen picture of her as she sat may be of interest.

Nature in planning Agatha had done unusually well. She had not only bestowed upon her a great amount of comeliness, but she had, apparently, taken pride in finishing her work in a way that is not common. How often a pretty face is spoilt by an irregular nose, a large ear, an imperfect contour of cheek or brow! In Agatha's case, however, no pains had been spared to produce a thoroughly bewitching whole. While face and form were sufficiently classical in outline to satisfy the most exacting, there was a warmth, a colour, a radiance about her, born partly of exuberant youth, partly of brilliant health. Her eyes were wonderful; purple pansies, black-lashed, white-lidded; her hair was a ripe chestnut, deepening to auburn, lightening to gold. Her skin had that pure satin whiteness peculiar to extreme youth; her hands were plump, dimpled, tapering, with pink palms and transparent nails. Her teeth were white, tiny and sharp; when she smiled, her pink cheeks broke into enchanting dimples which added the last touch of enticement to her kitten-like charms.

Nature had planned her upon classic lines—a sort of pocket edition Venus. Agatha, however, after a careful perusal of the fashion plates every spring, moulded her figure in accordance with the latest "craze." When long waists and narrow hips held sway, Agatha presented a faultlessly correct outline; when the coquettish athlete adorned magazine covers, Agatha might have passed for her sister. How all this was accomplished with no injury to health is a mystery which only the corsetiere can solve; Agatha at all times might have sat for a picture of Hebe.

For the rest, she was slightly under medium height, a fact which she publicly deplored, but for which she was secretly grateful. She did not admire tall girls; in fact, she did not admire anybody or anything which differed very greatly from her extremely attractive self. She had an intense and artistic appreciation of her various good points and looked with pity on those to whom the fairies had been less lavish. One who came in for a share of this ingenuous pity was her cousin, Lynn Thayer.

This young lady had dropped in at the time the chapter opens, for a cup of tea, in accordance with a long-deferred promise. As she sank into an easy-chair and loosened her furs she smiled at Agatha with a smile which held no tinge of envy. For Lynn, while cherishing in common with many plain women an enthusiastic admiration for beauty, enjoyed it in much the same way that she enjoyed music; intensely, even emotionally, but impersonally. Notwithstanding, she attached an exaggerated importance to it and affected her small cousin more than she otherwise might have done because she possessed it in such unstinted measure.

As she sat, idly watching Agatha's white fingers moving through the pink draperies of the gown which she was embroidering, the thought of Leo Ricossia occurred to her and she mentally compared them. Both were beautiful to an extraordinary degree; but Agatha's beauty suggested roses, kittens, Cupids, everything that was soft and appealing, exquisite and empty, while Ricossia's beauty suggested storm, flaming sunset, glorious music. His was, in short, the beauty of a young caged tiger, Agatha's the loveliness of a very perfect white Persian kitten. Lynn laughed as this simile presented itself to her mind; it seemed to her singularly apropos. What different worlds they inhabited, these two radiant young creatures! Ricossia represented the pagan element, Agatha was the last word of civilized young-ladyship. The world was wide enough to contain both; nay, this little, stately old city was wide enough for that. They lived within an hour's distance of one another, as far asunder in thought, life, knowledge, ideals as is this little earth from "the last star's uttermost distance."

Lynn Thayer's and Agatha Ladilaw's mothers had been sisters and both had been beauties. Lynn, however, as her maternal relatives were fond of remarking, had "taken after her father." Though her face was pleasing it was rather plain; plain, not ugly; for its plainness consisted rather in lack of positive beauty than in any particular defect. Her hair was brown and abundant, her eyes deep-set and giving the effect of brown to the casual observer, although, as a matter of fact, they were a dark greyish green. Her skin was colourless, her mouth, large and thin-lipped, her nose, ordinary. However, her figure was excellent of its kind, tall, straight, flat-backed, and, while delicately proportioned, giving the effect of considerable reserve strength. Her movements, too, were graceful, but graceful somewhat as a young boy's are graceful, alert, easy, noiseless and entirely lacking in effort or self-consciousness. Perhaps her only positive beauty consisted in her teeth which, though not dainty like Agatha's, were white and regular. It would hardly be fair to say that her face lacked expression, but it was not a mobile face; habits of self-control and repression had stamped themselves too deeply in her nature not to show elsewhere. Her bearing was dignified and even distinguished and her voice well-modulated and soft. As a whole, she was the sort of girl whom one might meet any day in any city of the continent; a girl who was no longer young, yet showed no signs of age; a girl who could never be pretty, yet would hardly be considered ugly; a girl who wore dark coloured tailor-made costumes and looked like a lady in them; a girl who closely resembled scores of other girls the world over.

Lynn Thayer occupied a somewhat unusual position in Montreal. Her mother had been a pretty woman of fashion, her father a well-to-do man. However, her father dying shortly after his marriage and her mother losing all her money in a way which shall be explained elsewhere, Lynn had been left penniless. Her father's only living brother had offered her a home and a dress allowance; but she had refused the latter, had qualified as a public school teacher, and was earning a regular salary in one of the Board Schools. As both her father's and her mother's relatives were people of some wealth and much social standing, she occupied an anomalous position in what is known as "society." As a young girl she had "gone out" quite a little; now for reasons which shall presently develop, she went only to the homes of intimate friends and was seldom seen in public.

Oddly enough Lynn Thayer possessed a considerable fascination for both sexes. All men and most women liked her. She had never been pretty and was no longer a young girl, but her attraction had rather augmented than diminished as time went by. Debutantes, secure in the possession of unimpeachable gowns and rosy cheeks, often looked with amazement at the alacrity with which their partners left them for a dance with Miss Thayer. Probably these same partners would have found it difficult to explain why, themselves. Lynn always created the impression that she was a nice girl; a positive "nice girl," not a negative "nice girl." People liked her. Children "took to her" at once, dogs followed her; cats jumped on her knee without waiting for an invitation. Beyond an admirable figure and a pretty wit she possessed no surface charms; but something about her attracted and inspired confidence and trust. It is difficult to say why one excellent person is universally liked, another excellent person universally detested, another excellent person universally respected and shunned. Lynn Thayer belonged to the first class, that was all.

Certainly no two girls could resemble one another less than the cousins. Lynn was at best "a nice-looking girl," Agatha was "a dream." She showed to excellent advantage, too, in her mother's house where everything had been planned with an eye to the petted daughter as the central figure.

It was a very pretty sitting-room where Agatha Ladilaw sat, this cold January day. Without, the sharp air cut like a knife; within, all was comfort, warmth, cosiness. It would be difficult to imagine Agatha in anything but elegant and graceful surroundings. She was like a lovely, white, Persian kitten who had fed on cream and lain on cushions all her life; and, someway, one always knew that she would continue to feed on cream and lie on silk even if she lost her fur and her teeth in the course of time. If certain natures carry within themselves the elements of tragedy, others carry within themselves not only the desire for the soft things of life but the capacity for obtaining them. To the latter class Agatha undoubtedly belonged. Her beautiful aunt, Lynn's mother, had made rather a mess of her life, in spite of the fact that she had had all and more than Agatha possessed in the way of beauty and fascination. One knew instinctively that Agatha would never fall into her mistakes. In the first place she would not wait till twenty-five before marrying; in the second place she would never dislike any man who fed and clothed her sumptuously; in the third place she would never be carried away by any indiscreet and expensive infatuation. In short Agatha was quite the most correct thing in young ladies, eminently satisfactory and desirable.

The room where Agatha liked to sit with embroidery or sewing was long, low, light. The bay-window was filled with plants, and the fragrance of mignonette and jasmine hung about the rose-coloured curtains which draped the alcove and separated it from the rest of the room. The furniture was light and artistic rather than costly; easy chairs upholstered in rose-patterned chintz; mission-wood tables, bookcases and "rockers"; the inevitable "cosy corner," cushioned to the last degree of comfort; a green carpet displaying a border of various-coloured roses; a silver-laden tea-table, a table containing books and magazines—mostly uncut; another containing one beautiful vase of cut flowers. Presently, when dusk arrived, the room would be suffused with rose-coloured lamp-light, but, at present, the winter sun flooding the room and the tiny fire which burned on the hearth gave a sufficient suggestion of cheer.

Agatha in her pink environment sewing on a pink dress gave one a delightful sense of the eternal fitness of things. One forgot, for the time being, the bitter January wind howling outside, the flock of black cares that dog the footsteps of ordinary mortals. Agatha certainly had her place in the scheme of the universe, just as the Persian kitten has. If the kitten were thrust out into the world and told to earn its cream—that would be another story.

Agatha, as has before been stated, would never have to earn her cream, otherwise than by existing and ornamenting. She would always be cheerfully ready to pay for it whenever necessary in the coin with which Nature had so richly endowed her. Therefore it will at once be seen that Agatha was a most satisfactory girl; everything that a young lady ought to be; just the sort of person who could be depended upon to give Society no shocks and her parents no anxiety.

Lynn almost wished that Agatha would not think it necessary to talk; the fire-lit, rose-decorated room and the beautiful little occupant who sat, absorbed in her draperies, were both so eminently satisfactory from an artistic point of view that she would have preferred to lounge idly, and enjoy them. Everything about Agatha was so attractive, so feminine, in such charming taste. The delicate white fingers moving in and out of the pink draperies; the graceful pose of the pretty figure in the easy chair; the absorbed, almost spiritual expression of the great, violet eyes; all charmed Lynn, even while she realized their misleadingness and realized, too, that, by breaking into these absorbed meditations, one was liable to disturb nothing more important than the set of an imaginary train. Soon, however, Agatha spoke; slowly and with something resembling an effort.

"Lynn, what do you think of Harry Shaftan, the General's nephew?"

"He's a nice boy."

"Nicer than Howard Pyle or Jimmy Gresham?"

"I believe I like him better."

"What do you think of the others?"

"Why? Are you engaged to any of them?" asked Lynn, laughing.

"Oh, no! That is—I mean to say—yes. I mean, I'm engaged to them all."

Lynn leaned back and gasped. Agatha continued to embroider.

"And—may I ask which one you intend to marry?"

"I don't know, exactly," confessed Agatha, poising her needle on her pink lip and gazing reflectively heavenward. "They're all nice; but I don't think I'll marry any of them."

"Agatha Ladilaw! What do you mean?"

"Why, lots of engagements are broken," said Agatha, looking surprised. "Lots and lots of them. If I found that I didn't really love any of these men—that the real passion of my life was yet to come—you wouldn't advise me to marry them, would you?" She looked at her cousin with an air of virtuous surprise and Lynn shouted.

"Oh, Agatha, you're a treat!" she exclaimed, with intense enjoyment. "A veritable, living treat!"

"I really don't see why," said Agatha, coldly, proceeding to thread a needle with an offended air. "And if you're going to laugh about serious subjects like love and marriage, why, I won't talk about them, that's all."

This consummation was far from Lynn's desire; and by dint of earnest and respectful entreaties she finally induced her small cousin to continue.

"What made you accept them all in the first place?" she asked with interest.

"Why, they all wanted me," said Agatha, simply. "And it's so hard to say no to a nice man. Even if he isn't nice, it's not easy. And you said yourself that they"—

"But, Agatha?"

"Yes?"

"Doesn't it seem queer to—well, to let three men kiss you at the same time?"

"The idea!" said Agatha, haughtily. "Of course they don't all do it at once. I very seldom see more than one of them in the same evening."

"Oh, don't be silly, Agatha; you must know what I mean. Doesn't it seem—isn't it a little hard to"—

"Why, no," said Agatha, staring, "it's the easiest thing in the world."

"Dear me! You don't feel at all sneaky or confused about it?"

"Confused? Why, no. You see, I've always been engaged to two or three people more or less ever since I was fifteen; of course before that it wasn't really necessary."

"How do you mean?"

"Why, to be engaged, you know! one didn't have to be. But after you're fifteen, it seems rather fast, somehow, to let people kiss you that you're not engaged to."

"I had no idea you were so particular," murmured Lynn, bending down to hide a smile.

"Oh, I always think a girl can't be too particular about those things," said Agatha, firmly. "Because suppose someone happened to see you! All you have to do then is to say, 'To tell you the truth, I'm engaged to Mr. ——,' whichever one it was. And there you are!"

"And suppose the same person found you with one of the others—what then?"

"Oh, that would be very unlucky. I don't believe I would ever be so unlucky as that. And, Lynn, now that I have taken you into my confidence and told you things, won't you make a friend of me? and let me give you a little advice?"

"Why, yes," said Lynn, smiling.

"It's about Mr. Lighton. You know he is so eligible and it would be so dreadful if, by any mismanagement, you let him slip through your fingers."

"Oh!"

"Yes, indeed; and men are so deceitful," continued Agatha, piously, "you can't tell a thing about them, you really can't. Now there was a case I knew; it was something like yours only not so disappointing, for the man had only two thousand a year. But he kept running after this girl, just the way Lighton does after you, and everybody thought he meant something. People kept expecting to hear the engagement announced; but it never came off."

"What was the trouble?"

"Why, you know, it was the queerest thing! he kept calling and calling and every time you'd think he was going to propose; but he never did. So the girl got mad. She said she simply wasn't going to stand it a moment longer, so she packed her trunk and went off to stay with some people in Toronto. She was not going to have any such nonsense. But it didn't do any good, for he married some one else."

"What a sad story!"

"Isn't it?" agreed Agatha, oblivious of sarcasm. "But she was very lucky, for she met someone who had quite six hundred a year more than the first man had, and he proposed to her quite quickly, and so then of course they were married, and I sent them a centrepiece that I had embroidered, myself. It was a very handsome one but you see Toronto is a nice place to stay in."

"Oh, I quite see why you sent it. I also see why you told me the story. It has a moral. If the man who is rushing you doesn't propose after a reasonable space of time—go to Toronto! Isn't that the idea?"

"You are so clever," said Agatha with an apologetic smile, "that sometimes I don't quite understand you. But if you mean that you think that I am advising you to go to Toronto, that isn't right, because any other place would do as well. Except that, of course, there are quite a good many men in Toronto."

"And you think that one of them might be induced to accept me?"

"Why not?" said Agatha, encouragingly. "But, of course, you wouldn't be at all likely to make another match like Mr. Lighton. So that is why I want you to be so particularly careful. You don't take these things seriously enough, Lynn, you know you don't. You must remember that you are getting on."

"Every year brings me nearer the grave, but no nearer matrimony," commented Lynn, assuming an appropriately funereal aspect.

"Oh, don't say that!" cried Agatha, looking genuinely shocked. "Please don't! It sounds so dreadfully as if it might be— And I am sure Mr. Lighton is most attentive and Mr. Amherst and two or three others call pretty often, don't they?"

"Yet," said her cousin, solemnly, "I think myself, Agatha, that there is just one little thing which is going to effectually prevent Mr. Lighton from marrying me. You mark my words! as sure as I stand here just so surely will I never be Mrs. Lighton. This one little obstacle is going to stand in the way."

"Why, what can it be?" queried Agatha, with intense interest.

"You have no idea?"

"Why, no."

"I thought that you wouldn't have," returned Lynn, very gravely.

"It won't prevent him from proposing, will it?"

"Not a bit of it. It will only prevent him from marrying—that is, from marrying me."

"Oh, how dreadful!" cried Agatha in genuine distress. "And to think of all the men you have refused, Lynn! and I suppose that there isn't one you could get back at a pinch."

"I fear not. The majority are either dead or married and the Grave and the Other Woman do not disburse."

"No, indeed," sighed her mentor. "And it's so necessary for you to marry, Lynn, for if Uncle Horace died to-morrow he would leave Aunt Lucy everything and there would be nothing left for you. Oh, what a pity that your mother's money was all spent."

"Yes, it seems a little unfortunate."

"That dreadful Italian! What a pity Aunt Clara married him after your father died. And didn't they have a son? What has become of him?"

"My dear Agatha, how should I know?" said Lynn, restlessly. "Don't you remember that, when Uncle Horace adopted me, he did it with the distinct understanding that I was to hold no communication with my mother and my little half-brother?"

"Oh, how dreadful! How could you bear to be parted from your own dear mother for ever?"

Lynn surveyed the questioner with a slight smile.

"Oh, I enjoyed the feeling that I brought in six hundred a year. I knew that it would procure my mother more pleasure than my society could, and that, with six hundred a year, her baby boy, and an occasional kiss from the biggest blackguard the Lord ever let loose on earth, she would be as happy as she could ever be. Poor mother! she was pretty, they say, even when she lay dead; her beauty didn't do her much good, but, on the other hand, my ugliness hasn't profited me, greatly. On the whole, I wish I looked like her."

"Aunt Clara was so awfully pretty and that Italian she married was so wonderfully handsome! the boy must have been a perfect little beauty."

"He was." Lynn spoke without enthusiasm.

"Weren't you fond of him?

"Very."

"Wouldn't you like to see him, again?"

"No—yes"—

"I don't believe you cared much about him, really."

Lynn looked at her and smiled.

"I was nine when he was born. My own father had died when I was a baby and my earliest recollections are those of seeing my mother crying half the day because my stepfather was out and laughing and chatting wildly because he was in. She never noticed me. I was an ugly little thing and she worshipped beauty—as I do. Besides, there are certain people who seem to suck the lifeblood of all who care for them, and my stepfather was of these; her love for him was a feverish thing, a thing that absorbed and tortured and finally killed her. Such is the perfect justice of the universe! no good man or woman ever receives that idolatrous love; it is only the vile, the utterly selfish, the heartlessly cruel—oh, here! what am I saying? To return to my story; I had a nurse till we grew too poor, then I looked after myself. Then ... the baby came. The baby! Oh, Agatha, if you had seen him! He was so beautiful, so utterly dear and heavenly, and no one had ever cared for me, and he—the very first time I saw him he put out his tiny hand and the little fingers twined about mine ... oh, my baby, my baby, how could I ever love anything in earth or heaven as I loved you? Well! for three years I was always with him and then—and then Uncle Horace wanted to adopt me, to rescue me, as he called it. And—I went. I was twelve years old at the time—in years—and I realized, in the bitterest moment of my life, that to go meant money and comfort and pleasure for him—my idol! All I could do for him was to leave him—I saw it plainly—and I went without a word. I went. I wonder if any misery in after life can ever compare with the agony of that last hour when I sat, holding him in my arms and rocking him to and fro—and waiting. The carriage came at last to take me to the station and I kissed the wonderful little face and looked into the marvellous baby eyes and went! Oh, my baby, my baby, if I ever have a child of my own, will he, can he, ever be to me what you were, I wonder!—dear me, what a lot of nonsense I'm talking, Agatha! You mustn't mind."

"Not at all," said Agatha, politely, "it's interesting. I had no idea that you were so fond of babies, Lynn. But it seems so queer that you don't know where he is, now. What became of him when your mother died? He was about ten, wasn't he? for I remember you were nineteen."

"Yes, he was ten. Oh, he lived at school and then with his father till the latter died of consumption. That was two years ago."

"And now?"

"Why, now—he is probably living somewhere else. He is a man, you see, and able to take care of himself."

"But, oh, Lynn dear, you show so little feeling," said Agatha, with dainty reproach. "Not to care what has become of that boy—when you used to be so fond of him."

"Oh, we forget everybody and everything—in time," returned Lynn, listlessly. "At least," she added in a lower voice, "I hope we do."

"Yes, I suppose so," said Agatha, comfortably. "Lynn, did you ever see anything so sweet as that last rosebud I've just made? And it's given me such a lovely idea. The very next fancy dress ball I'm asked to, I'll go as the Queen of the Roses. Don't you think that will be lovely? Pale pink, you know, with garlands of rosebuds and a rose-wreath. Ring for tea, won't you, please? I'm dying for a cup, and it's getting too dark to work."

CHAPTER III

"FORSAKEN GUTS AND CREEKS"

"If we have loved but well

Under the sun,

Let the last morrow tell

What we have done."

—Bliss Carman.

On an exceptionally disreputable Montreal street stood a particularly unsavoury old studio building. Like other unsavoury things it had an interesting history, having, in its palmy days, belonged to an English duke. The duke was now dust and the studio building unpopular with the constabulary. Yet an air of former greatness enveloped it and its large, spacious halls and lofty ceilings bore mute and pathetic testimony to the grandeur of former days.

In an apartment which a duchess had once inhabited rats and spiders revelled, unrebuked, save when, once a week, a wild-eyed slattern clattered noisily in and attacked them with broom and scrubbing-brush. Sometimes the heavy old-fashioned door was locked and she went away rejoicing; sometimes it was merely closed, in which case she entered fearlessly and performed her tasks as expeditiously and abominably as possible. Frequently, during these revels, the lithe form of Mr. Ricossia might have been discerned, stretched upon the studio couch in deep and peaceful slumber. Even the prosaic and work-harrowed drudge of the Chatham was wont to pause occasionally and gaze with something approaching awe at the frail form and beautiful face of the opium-drugged consumptive. A spiritual majesty lay on his brow and his whole being seemed expressive of an unearthly peace and a sombre loveliness. Like some dark, fallen star he lay quiescent in the dim light of the studio; a thing to make one's heart ache when one reflected that he, too, was born of a human mother.

Mr. Ricossia's movements were uncertain, however; and one fine January evening found him sitting at the studio table, smoking and scribbling, busily. Presently the door opened; he looked up, pleasantly, showing no surprise, and bent over his writing.

"Just a minute!" he said, in a low voice.

The visitor nodded, closed the door quietly, and stood as though waiting. Presently she raised a thick veil and fixed her eyes intently on the writer. They were sombre eyes, not over large but somewhat expressive; and as she watched the other occupant of the studio, they dilated and glowed in a way that was almost fierce and wholly human. So might a fire-tortured martyr have regarded in death the symbol of his faith, the cross for which he died.

Presently the woman spoke.

"I can only stay a few minutes, my darling," she said in a low voice, vibrating with painful tenderness. "There is the money."

The boy sprang to his feet and grasped it, his dark eyes aflame with eagerness. Hastily, greedily, he counted it over, then put it in his pocket and turned to the woman with a brilliant smile.

"That is fine," he said, his flute-like voice making melody in the studio and in his hearer's heart. "You must have done well, lately. How much have you sold altogether?"

"A long story to the 'Alhambra,' a funny skit to the 'Woman's Hearth' and an article or two to some smaller concerns. Try to make it last, for I had to spend nearly all my month's salary—oh, Liol, Liol!"

A burst of coughing interrupted her and turned her wind-flushed face white. She stood in silence, knowing that nothing infuriated the dying boy like sympathy, and held her breath, waiting for the paroxysm to pass. So long did it last, however, that she forgot all caution and, rushing to the sick man's side, caught his hand and screamed aloud.

"Oh, Liol, Liol, do you want to kill me? Won't you go to that retreat? and try to live for my sake? Oh try, only try! I can't bear it! I thought I could, but I can't. Oh, for God's sake, go! try it, only try it for a little while"—

He snatched his hand away and flung himself on the couch, shaking with weakness and fury.

"Again?" he cried, raging. "You ask me again to go to one of those vile cures? after all I've said and sworn? God in Heaven! how often must I tell you that, if I've only a few months to live, I'm going to live! not die by inches. Fool that you are!"

She covered her face with her hands and turned away from him.

"Go to those beastly mountains," he snarled, venomously. "Go where all that makes life worth living will be out of reach and I dogged by a pack of vile, prying doctors and attendants! If you're tired of keeping me I'll take an extra dose and end it to-night!"

"Liol!"

"Then don't madden me! Here! you said you couldn't stay long, didn't you? My last poems are on the table. Send a couple more to 'Hosmer's Monthly'—they asked for them—God! is this another fit coming on? ... There! I feel better. It passes sometimes and I daresay I'll outlive you all, yet." His face brightened and became luminous with hope and defiance. The terrible paroxysm of coughing had flooded his dusky cheeks with rose; his black hair curled limply back from his damp forehead; his magnificent eyes expanded and fired with the consumptive's cheating illusion of future health. Beside his glowing, burning beauty Lynn Thayer seemed one of those daughters of earth who, in former ages, loved the sons of God. She devoured him with her eyes in a silence so tense and sorrow-laden that the very air seemed to vibrate with it.

"Ah God, how I love you," she said at last, hopelessly. "And you—oh, Liol, Liol, you never even kissed me, to-night."

"What? Never even kissed you?" answered the other, good-humouredly. "Well, but, my dear old girl, you must remember that the fool doctors say that consumption's catching. They're right, too; I caught it from my father, curse him! I wouldn't be where I am to-day if it wasn't for him." His face darkened, moodily; then he shrugged his shoulders and held out his arms with a smile that was more mirthful than tender.

Lynn Thayer walked swiftly to the couch, dropped on her knees beside it and buried her face in the frail shoulder of its occupant. She remained thus for a few minutes while he wound thin arms about her and murmured endearments which held a perfunctory note even to her love-deafened ears. Presently she rose.

"Leo Ricossia is making quite a name by his prose writing," she said with forced cheerfulness. "I must try to keep it up, Liol. Do you remember when I called you 'Liol' once, before some people and they thought it so funny and we were so worried about it? Yet you see no one has ever suspected anything."

"No. If they did, I suppose it would have to come out," said the boy, slowly.

"What?"

Lynn started and looked confounded.

"What?" she cried. "Break my word to my dead mother? Tell who you are? how she made me promise to keep you and watch over you until you died and let no one know who you were?—What are you dreaming of, Liol?"

"Why, it's nothing to me," returned the other, watching her composedly. "Girls must go into heroics over something, I suppose; but you must see for yourself that all this would look pretty badly if it came out and wasn't explained, and it would hardly be worth while to lose your reputation and your home and your position too, for an oath to a dead woman. Too bad you have to come here by night, but, of course, day-time is impossible, for people would be sure to see you, whereas the chances are ten to one against it in the dark and dressed as you are. That absurd oath! What was it now? And she was going to come back and curse you, too, if you broke it, wasn't she?" He laughed.

"Our mother, Liol!" said Lynn, in a choked voice.

"Yes, our mother. I've almost forgotten what she looked like even, but I suppose you remember her better than I do, though I don't see why you should, considering the length of time that you were away from her and—see here, Lynn, you've been here an ungodly time; I don't want to hurry you, but—oh, I say! Amherst is puzzling his brains out as to how I can write such healthy, humourous prose. You would have shouted if you had heard him, the other night."

"Perhaps. But I must go, directly."

Lynn shivered and drew her fur a little more closely about her throat.

"I must go now, Liol," she repeated in a low voice. "Good-bye. And don't—but there! what's the use of talking? Do as you please, dear; only try to love me a little if you can. You're all I've got."

"Mighty little at that, too! You have but little here below nor will you have that little long—there, don't look like that, old girl! I'm only joking, you know."

With this joke ringing in her ears Lynn left; passed down the rickety stairs, through the dark doorway, out upon the noisy street. It was not a savoury neighbourhood this, where her brother had elected to take up his abode. In fact, it was not a place for a lady at any hour of the day or night. In face of an overpowering compulsion, however, a woman sometimes forgets that she is a lady, and this was what had happened in Lynn's case. The love which, in the majority of instances, is divided among parents, brothers, sisters, husband, children, had been concentrated upon one object. A foolish vow exacted by a delirious and dying woman had become the important thing in Lynn Thayer's life, the keeping of it a sacred duty.

We are usually punished both for our follies and our virtues, and Lynn was certainly severely punished for hers. Ricossia, as he was called, in Montreal, kept her on a constant rack of uncertainty and suspense. Daily, hourly, she expected to hear of his death and, sometimes, in moments of more than usual bitterness and grief, she almost wished that he were safe in the grave and incapable of doing himself or her more harm. The unworthiness of the loved object, moreover, made life proportionately bitter; the necessity for constant deceit and stealth was a cruel necessity to one of her nature, and the witty tales which helped to procure her brother the luxuries he craved were frequently written in anguish of heart and despair of spirit. Poor Punchinello, dancing gaily on the night his love died and his heart was broken, has many a modern prototype.

Yet through all the disgust and grief which his nature and actions caused her, her love never faltered. To her, the drinking, drug-crazed youth in whose degenerate nature there was not a trace of anything high or kind was the baby brother of early days; the baby brother whom she had tended, adored, sacrificed and been sacrificed for during the most impressionable years of her life. The tiny creature had crept into the lonely heart of the child, satisfying every want, sweetening every bitterness. There had been nothing else in Lynn's life that had held comparison with this.

CHAPTER IV

A BRILLIANT MATCH

"Love is a pastime for one's youth; marriage, a provision for one's old age."—Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler.

"For life is not the thing we thought and not the thing we plan,

And woman, in a bitter world, must do the best she can."

—Robert Service.

In order that the reader may more fully understand the foregoing chapters and the predicament in which certain of the characters find themselves, it is necessary to ask him to return with us to a period some thirty years before, when a certain young lady, known as Clara Brooks, had just made a most sensible match.

Now, as this was the first sensible thing that Miss Brooks had ever been known to do, it naturally attracted some attention and created some discussion. For she was one of those impossible beings who want to be happy and who, instead of viewing happiness in the light of a series of discreetly conducted flirtations, ending in marriage with the most eligible of the flirtees, had persisted in prolonging these flirtations to a really indiscreet period of time and had even carried her folly so far as to refuse two or three really desirable offers. She had a vague yet fairly positive idea that marriage, in order to be at all happy or satisfactory, must be based on mutual love and esteem, and, because of this antiquated and most unfortunate notion, she had remained unmarried until the age of twenty-five.

This attitude of Clara's laid her open to much well-deserved censure. There were two opinions about it; the first being that she had no common sense, whatever; the second being that she was unfortunately romantic and fanciful, yet somewhat to be commended in that her ideals were of a slightly higher order than those of the average girl. There was not much truth in either of these views. Clara Brooks, like most of the rest of the world, was supremely selfish, though not unpleasantly so. She loved love; she also loved money; she wanted to be happy, whatever the price she paid for happiness; and she did not care to do anything that she thought likely to militate against her happiness. That was all.

It seemed very hard to Clara, who possessed beauty of quite an unusual order, a wheedling tongue, and a pretty taste in dress, that she could not marry both for love and money. She would have preferred to marry for love, however, if she had been obliged to make a choice. This was partly because she had never known poverty and could not compute its discomforts with any degree of accuracy; but, also, because she was one of those women who are capable of an overpowering infatuation and who are, therefore, instinctively on the watch for a possible object which may awaken it. The object had not appeared; Clara was twenty-five, and twenty-five, at the period of which I write, was not the twenty-five of to-day. Only people of unusual fascination and prettiness, such as Miss Brooks, dared to be unmarried at twenty-five. Already her enemies were beginning to brand her with the awful stigma of "old maid," already her friends were beginning to murmur plaintively, "What can she be thinking about?"

Clara's thoughts ended in a very usual fashion. As Prince Charming had not arrived; as the time was fast approaching when she would be relegated to the dreadful social lumber room where all such derelicts of love were stowed by grieving relatives in the "good old days"; as enemies were, as has before been said, beginning to murmur "old maid" behind her back, and friends, "silly girl" to her face; for all these reasons and for fifty others, Clara Brooks suddenly made up her mind to accept a well-to-do and silent man, by name Lowden Thayer, who for some time past had been obviously attracted by her undoubted charms. Now the sky brightened for Clara. She, as a bride-to-be, received many handsome wedding presents, a number of compliments on her most unexpected good sense, and a vast amount of eminently imbecile advice from well-meaning ignoramuses of both sexes.

The wedding was a fine one; all Clara's relatives were pleased to know that she was settled and would be provided for until the day of her death no matter how ugly or unpleasant or incapable she became with age; and all Lowden Thayer's relatives were pleased to think that he had married at all, though the majority of them felt that he had made a most unsuitable choice. Wherein they were undoubtedly right.

After the honeymoon, the Thayers took up their abode in a handsome house in a fashionable quarter of Montreal; the gentleman went to business every day and the lady began to receive and return calls from the elite of what is known as "society."

She had many calls of all kinds to return, for she had fulfilled the whole duty of civilized woman; she had married, and married well. Within a year she further absolved herself of blame by bringing into the world a little, helpless infant, bald and thin and red-faced, who howled most objectionably and seemed as indignant at having existence thus forced upon it as though it knew what existence really was. Probably it was no prophetic instinct but some more prosaic ailment that led Clara's infant daughter to make night hideous with her cries. Be that as it may, its mother conceived something that almost amounted to dislike for the ugly little voyager upon the sea of life for whose existence she was responsible. She loved men and boys; why then should she give birth to a daughter? She loved beauty; why should her first-born be devoid even of hair? Besides ... the baby resembled its father; the "good match" which Fate had compelled her to make, much against her wishes; the detested crumple in her bed of roses; the hated benefactor to whose unwise fancy she was indebted for board and clothing, place in society and honourable title of "married woman"; the loathed necessity which spoilt everything—even her child—for her.

This much, however, must be said for Clara Thayer; though the child meant less than nothing to her, she did not neglect it on that account. She may have been an unnatural mother, but she was not a soulless brute, and she therefore attended carefully to its wants and saw that it lacked for nothing that she could give it. What she could not give it, it necessarily went without; but she did her duty so far as she was able and was unexpectedly and munificently rewarded. For when her little girl was three years of age its father died, leaving her a wealthy and beautiful widow.

Now when Fortune is too kind to us Fate sometimes plays a grim joke, in order to level us with the vast mass of toiling, yearning, disappointed, suffering fellow-humans. This is what Fate did with Clara Thayer.

She was young, rich, beautiful, able to marry whom she pleased and live as she liked without let or hindrance. Fate had given her good coin with which to purchase anything her vagrant fancy might light upon. She might have chosen whom she would. Therefore she chose an extremely good-looking scoundrel whose Irish mother and Italian father had bequeathed to him, together with the light-hearted fascinations of their kindred natures, the sum total of every vice of which both lands are capable. The sweet kindness of heart and warm devotion to cause and kindred which characterize the Italian and Irish races lay in the softness of his dark eyes, the velvet smoothness of his voice, but were quite absent from his nature. This Clara Thayer did not know; and, had she known, it is more than probable that she would not have cared. For the first time in her life she was in the grip of a perfectly irrational fascination, an infatuation which drove her as a whirlwind might drive wheat. The infatuation ended, moreover, only when her life did.

This was, perhaps, a natural ending to Clara Thayer's career. It was natural, too, that people should refer to her as that poor girl who made "such a sensible first match" and "such an idiotic second one." As a matter of fact it would be difficult to determine which of Clara's two marriages was the more idiotic. Her first was for money, her second, for love. Her first supplied her with good food, pretty clothes and unlimited boredom. Her second gave her sharp rapture and equally poignant pain. Possibly, if she had remained unmarried she might have encountered worse things than any of these. Of the three wishes which the bad fairy, Life, gives the average woman it is difficult to say which is the least fraught with unhappiness.

"Woman in a bitter world must do the best she can." Clara Brooks did the best she could and bad was the best.

However she died at forty-five, and many women live to be old.

CHAPTER V

"BLIND FOOLS OF FATE"

"Blind fools of fate and slaves of circumstance,

Life is a fiddler and we all must dance."

—Robert Service.

When Clara Thayer gave birth to a daughter she was, as has been before stated, disappointed. When that daughter developed the appearance and characteristics of its father Clara began to dislike it. In vain she reasoned with herself, in vain upbraided herself, secretly and severely, in vain called herself "an unnatural mother." The sad fact remained that she did not care for the child. It had no pretty ways, no graceful tricks; its eyes were dull, its skin was pale, its hair ordinary. If it had resembled her she would have loved it; if it had resembled her mother, her father, anyone for whom she cared, she would have idolized it. It resembled no one, however, but her husband, and, although when Clara had married Lowden Thayer she had been supremely indifferent to him, that indifference had, unfortunately, deepened into a positively appalling dislike. Not dislike for his character which she respected; not dislike for his attitude toward her which left nothing to be desired; no, dislike for the man, himself, dislike for his personality, his manners, his way of entering a room, his way of brushing his hair, his way of walking, talking, breathing.

It is easy here for the reader to throw down this veracious account of a real woman with the single comment that she was unreasonable and ungrateful. It is true that she was unreasonable but not that she was ungrateful. She knew all that she owed to her husband, she sometimes hated herself for her lack of feeling, and she strove earnestly to hide her dislike and to do her duty in a way befitting a wife and mother. It was a bitter addition to what seemed to her an already difficult life when the child, to whose advent she had looked with so much hope and longing, turned out the counterpart of her husband. Instead of a distraction it was a perpetual reminder of the galling chain; instead of a delight it represented merely another disagreeable duty.

Clara was generally considered a model wife and mother; every domestic obligation was scrupulously performed, every connubial and matronly demand upon her time, health and patience, uncomplainingly complied with. When Mr. Thayer died, however, four years after their marriage, Clara felt only an unspeakable relief; and when, nine years later, Mr. Thayer's brother offered to adopt Lynn, on condition that her mother gave her up, entirely, Clara felt only that a burden had been lifted from her shoulders.

She had one child by her second husband after she had been married to him five years, and that child was a boy who combined his father's picturesque, foreign beauty with his mother's refinement and grace. To him, she was an adoring mother; he was second in her heart only to Guido Allardi. Just as Lynn had been the image of the man whom Clara had disliked, so Lionel was the image of the man whom she worshipped. There was no wish or choice in the matter; she always felt sorry that she could not care for Lynn, and she sometimes wished, in moments of bitterness, that Lionel did not resemble his father so closely. It was a rare retribution of Fate, this! the unloved child of the unloved father who was all that a mother could wish and the idolized child of the idolized father who inherited from him every trait that could break a mother's heart. If Lowden Thayer could have looked into the future he would have been amply revenged. It is improbable, however, that he wanted revenge; he wanted his wife's love and, failing that, he wanted rest. He never had the first but we may reasonably hope that he had the latter.

"Love's eyes are very blind," but they are never so blind as not to perceive dislike on the part of the loved object, however conscientiously that dislike may be hidden. Lowden Thayer was a just man; he saw that his wife did her best and he, on his part, did his best, hid his sorrow manfully, and, when he died, willed Clara all his property, unhampered by any galling restrictions.

The little daughter whom he left behind developed in a rather interesting fashion.

The widely diverse natures of Lowden Thayer and his wife mingled oddly in her. She had her father's face but her mother's pliant, graceful figure and movements. She inherited from her father a useful brain, capable of assimilating considerable knowledge and of reasoning accurately and carefully; but she had her mother's brilliancy and lively wit. She had her father's industry, business ability, and sense of justice, and her mother's love of popularity and social gayety. From both she inherited one thing in overwhelming measure; the capacity for any amount of silent, tenacious affection which no ill-treatment could shake, no disillusionment alter. Another thing, too, she had from both; the ability to suffer in silence, keeping a cool and careless front to the world and hiding a bleeding heart and a broken spirit behind a smiling face and manner. Lynn was thus, in many ways, not so unlike her mother as that mother supposed.

At the time when Lynn was adopted by her uncle Horace she was twelve years of age. The next seven years were very busy ones. Child though she was, she felt keenly the fact that her uncle had taken her into his home in fulfilment of a sense of duty, rather than from motives of affection. She determined that she would be indebted to him for nothing more than was absolutely necessary. In pursuance of this idea she begged to be allowed to train for a teacher and, on graduating, insisted on taking a position which offered itself. Her uncle made little objection; he cherished the common masculine delusion that women who live at home have nothing to do with their time and he thought it rather a good idea that some of this time should be occupied. The idea of his niece being a public school teacher did not exactly appeal to his sense of the fitness of things; but, after all, since the girl was bent on it, "let her do as she likes" was his ultimatum. Therefore Lynn did as she liked; and events which shortly afterwards transpired made her think with horror of the fact that, had she followed her aunt's wishes, she would have been without any money that she could call her own.

It was when she was nineteen that she received a letter in an unknown handwriting. Its contents were brief and pregnant. Her mother was dying; would Lynn visit her in New York before she died? as there was much that she had to say. The letter ended with an injunction to hide the matter from her uncle and aunt, who would never allow her to travel alone, and would insist on accompanying her, which her mother did not wish.

It would be difficult to describe the effect which this letter had upon Lynn. She had always known that she held no place in her mother's heart, and that knowledge was a settled grief, not an active sorrow. The letter gave her a dull pain, almost like the pain which one would experience, could the corpse of a dead friend whom one had mourned, then almost though not quite forgotten, suddenly come to life and demand recognition.

Lynn had held no communication with her mother since she had lived with her uncle in Montreal. To her literal and very punctilious mind the fact that this correspondence was debarred as a condition of adoption rendered it out of the question. Besides, it must be remembered that there had been no tender, anguished parting of mother and child; Clara had, as always, behaved prettily and politely, had kissed the plain little face, distorted with difficult feeling, and had inwardly congratulated herself that this child of Lowden Thayer had inherited his silent, unemotional nature. Otherwise she would have felt more hesitation about sending her among strangers. As it was—the child was a good child, who could be depended upon to give little or no trouble to her guardians, and she had so little feeling that one place was likely to be much like another place to her. True, Clara reflected with a slight qualm, true, the child was devoted to her little brother; but children soon forget. It would be a criminal sentimentality and one for which the girl would have a right to reproach her in the future, did she neglect this excellent chance of having her provided for. So she kissed her once again, trying to smile at her with affection and kindness, told her that she must not altogether forget her mother and her little brother, though it was not likely that she would see them again for a little while; and watched the train steaming out of the crowded station with mingled feelings of pity, relief, self-congratulation, and some faint stirring of sorrow that she could not feel more spontaneous affection for her own child. Her own child!—that recalled Lionel to her mind and her eyes brightened and gleamed. How beautiful he was! how dear! how sweet that Fate should give her this one lovely thing to offset her disappointment in the other direction! And how delightful that the six hundred which Horace Thayer had allowed her for the future should be tied up so tightly that only she could have access to it. Little Lionel need not lack for everything while she had that to fall back upon.

It may be asked if no thought of her dead husband, no perception of the difference between him and Allardi ever caused her to draw painful contrasts and inferences. Yes, these thoughts, these comparisons did occur to her sorrowfully enough at times; she frequently bewailed the ugly Fate which made the faithful dead abhorrent, the unprincipled and worthless living dear to her. But facts are facts. The dead was abhorrent, the living was dear. So with her children. Despite the fact that, although at the time of which we write, Lionel was a baby, he already displayed traits which made her uneasy; despite the fact that Lynn had been almost pathetically "good" from babyhood, humbly devoted to her mother, utterly subservient to every whim of her baby brother; despite these facts, Clara had for Lynn, at best, a sort of affectionate tolerance, while for Lionel she had an overpowering love.

Do not, dear reader, wholly bury poor Clara under the weight of your virtuous indignation. She had an unfortunate disposition, that was all. The worthless attracted, the worthy annoyed her. She was no more to blame than the child who seizes some pernicious sweetmeat and refuses even to look at the nourishing and expensive meal which awaits his pleasure.

This much, at least, it is desired that the reader keep clearly in mind when judging Clara Allardi. Both in her "mariage de convenance" and in her "love-match" she made the best of what she had; tried not to visit upon Lowden Thayer the dislike which marriage with him had awakened; endeavoured to bear patiently with Guido Allardi's vagaries and steadily refused to leave him even when all her own money had been squandered and when he was incapable of making enough to support her, comfortably. This last, though, can scarcely be attributed to her for righteousness. The real reason that she stayed with the Italian was because she could not leave him; she was like a parasite, drawing her very breath through him and unable to exist away from him.

Poor Clara Allardi! "Blind fool of fate and slave of circumstance!" When her unloved daughter responded to the letter which had caused her such mingled pain and joy, she found the former favourite of fortune living—or, rather, dying—in the modern equivalent of the historic garret, a squalid tenement in an unfashionable and ragged quarter of the great city of New York. Her mother's husband, Lynn did not see; the strain of attending to his sick wife had proved unsupportable and, after a short time, he had taken his departure, leaving no address. Lynn hoped that he would not return until she had left New York; she felt, seeing her mother and remembering what that mother had been in the past, that she could scarcely have borne the burden of his presence. Her fears, however, were unnecessary; Clara Allardi had been dead several days before that husband returned and his absence had troubled Lynn more than his presence could have done; for it was from him that she was obliged to ask the boon which crippled her future yet filled her life for many years.

This, however, is anticipating. We must return to the time when Lynn took up her abode in her mother's "home" once more and did what she could for the comfort of that mother. She had complied with Clara's request in so far that she had told her guardians of her destination; she had gone to the principal of the school where she taught and had asked for leave of absence, offering to pay a substitute; then had packed a valise and left a note for her aunt, explaining her mother's condition and begging that her uncle would not follow or bother about her. This was merely a figure of speech on Lynn's part; Horace Thayer was a man who never bothered about anything in the universe but himself. Lynn realized, however, that her aunt, who had a real affection for her, ought to know her whereabouts and the object of her journey; though, in the face of her mother's strangely insistent entreaties, she was strongly tempted to use a long-standing New York invitation from a school friend, as a pretext.

She found her mother delirious and very weak. She talked incoherently, but recognized Lynn and greeted her with something like eagerness, in the way that one would greet a useful friend rather than in the way that one would greet a child whom one had not seen for many years. Lynn, however, had steeled herself to bear what she had anticipated would not be an especially joyous reunion and took stoically whatever arrows the joyous fates chose to drive in her direction.

Must the truth be confessed? It was not the thought of seeing her mother before she died that had formed Lynn's chief object in hastening to New York. While she would, in any case, have used every effort to further her mother's dying wish, it must be confessed that there was little more than a bitter, dull grief in the prospect of seeing the latter, again. But there was another, darling prospect. The child! the little boy who had been three when she left him, would be ten, now. Oh, to see him, again! the one being who had always clung to her, loved her, satisfied her. The dear, unutterably dear little mortal whose arrival into the world had changed the face of life for her. How had she lived without him all these years? she wondered; was he as beautiful as ever, as full of life and sweetness? and—had he come to resemble his father as much as he had promised to do? The thought depressed her for a moment; she remembered how, as a child, it had infuriated her to hear people remark upon the wonderful likeness between Allardi and his infant son. Then her brow cleared. He was really more like her mother than his father, she insisted to herself; as he had her high-bred clearness of outline, so he would inherit her delicate refinement, her ineradicable fastidiousness of mind. She lost herself in hopeful musing, almost forgetting in the joy of seeing her little brother once more that her mother's grave would probably be dug before she returned again to Montreal.

CHAPTER VI

"LIFE AT ITS END"

The April morning broke softly, implacably chill. There was a hint of cruelty in the frolicsome spring breeze that danced through the half-opened window, a hint of sorrow in the few faint tremulous notes of "half-awakened birds," preparing once more to face the strange world of which they knew so little. There was something ominous in the softness of the spring air, something that chilled one's blood with a faint terror.

Over the dreary tenements and horrible, rearing buildings of New York broke the pitiless day. The lovely rose of dawn softened all that was bare and bleak and gave it a semblance of tenderness and repose.

There was silence in the room where Death lay waiting. The body of Clara Allardi lay stretched upon a bed in slumber, her wasted hand, blue-veined, marble-white, plucking mechanically at the quilt, her restless voice muttering vaguely of things that had long since passed away; lips that had laughed, pulses that had leaped, hearts that had broken, long, long ago. Death, itself, might have laughed to hear her; but her daughter did not laugh.

Clara's face was blue-veined now and hollow-eyed, but, even so, was lovely; delicately, uselessly lovely, with the flawless pulchritude of a marble statue, the sickening, unearthly hue of ivory. Clara Allardi had been very beautiful in her day, had had her share of the kingdoms of this world and the glories of them; she lay dying in a New York tenement, unloved, uncared-for, an old woman at the age of forty-five.

Nature "red of tooth and claw" is sometimes more horrible in tender mood than in fierce; this riot of delicate colour and tremulous song in the face of grisly Death seemed to Lynn Thayer insulting and indecorous. The tragedy of the breaking day and of the ebbing life gnawed at her heart. She sat silent, watching the dying with hungry eyes that held no trace of personal grief, only a dumb heart-craving for something she had never known.

In the farther end of the room lay a child who slept peacefully, his scarlet lips half-parted in a smile, his delicate arms thrust outside the bed-clothes and half-bared. The long black lashes which lay on the glowing dusk of his cheek; the thickness of the clustering curls which shaded his low brow; the almost insolent regularity of his childish features: all proclaimed him to be Guido Allardi's son. He was an ideal and faithful representative of the old, Italian race to which his father belonged; before the family, ruined and disgraced, had sought refuge in America, many such a face had been seen in the family portrait gallery. Probably none quite so beautiful; beauty such as this child's is rare and the possessors of it are seldom quite human. Perhaps this fact may have given rise to the old Greek myths of the gods descending in human shape and proceeding to the performance of most ungodlike actions.

Lynn's thoughts wandered sometimes to the cot where the boy lay, looking as much out of place in the sordid setting which the room afforded as some strange tropical plant. As she thought of him, her face insensibly cleared. The baby brother of her childhood days had proved a fulfilled delight. As beautiful as in infancy and with the same caressing, clinging ways which had made him so dear to her then, he had justified, to her, her loving remembrance of him. She cherished a hidden thought of which she was half ashamed yet which held a very real sweetness; namely, that, in spite of the long years of separation, the boy loved and clung to her and, as of old, seemed to prefer her society to that of his mother. She failed to realize that the stock of bonbons and toys with which she had provided herself had induced the affection which the child showed so freely; she did not know that he would have left his dying mother with equal alacrity for anyone who would have fed him with chocolates. So little do we comprehend what is passing in the minds of those most near and dear to us; even in the crystal mind of a child there are depths which it is just as well not to probe too deeply.

In the bare and comfortless room where these three were congregated Life and Death were present and one more—Judgment. Judgment, the dread avenger who dogs the steps of Sin. Judgment which, after the fashion of Judgment, would fall most heavily on the innocent head, most cruelly on the undeserving. Could Lynn have looked into the future and seen the awful harvest of corruption which the sleeping child would reap it may be wondered whether she would not have killed him as he lay, out of sheer pity.

Ah, the tragedy of Life! Life that takes from us one by one all the glittering baubles with which she has amused our childish hours—the rose-hued hopes, the crimson loves, the golden ambitions—and gives us in their place—what? The dying moaned as though these thoughts had found an echo in her heart; then lay still, looking straight in front of her with eyes which, though glazed and uncertain, held a certain intelligence.

"Mother—are you better? do you understand me?" asked Lynn very softly, bending over the bed.

Clara Allardi turned her head slightly; her lips moved.

"There was something, something you wanted to say," cried Lynn, desperately. "If you could only tell me now; it will not take long, will it?"

Her mother's face brightened into life; an anxious gleam shone in her eyes which now held no uncertainty, but were the homes of an insistent purpose, a keen desire. She struggled a moment, then spoke, faintly.

"Your brother?"—

"Yes. Yes."

"Not really—only your half-brother—but you always cared just as much"—

"More. Oh, mother, a thousand times more. Don't waste time in saying all this. Is it something you want me to do for Lionel? Surely you know that anything I could do would be all too little—tell me, just tell me what it is. I swear to do it, whatever it may be."

"See to him. His father—you know"—

"I know."

"—Doesn't understand children—the little fellow may be hungry, cold"—Clara Allardi's voice broke into a pitiful quaver which shook Lynn's composure, terribly.

"Mother," she said, growing white and speaking distinctly, "you are wasting time and you may not have much more time. You know—you must know—that, while I live, Liol shall want for nothing that I can give him. He can never be cold—or hungry—or friendless—or—loveless—while I live. You must know all that. I have my teacher's salary; if that is not enough I will get money in some other way; I have some saved, I have some jewelry—oh, don't talk of anything so trivial, so absurd, as the idea of Lionel ever wanting for anything which I can give him. You understand all that, don't you, mother?"

Her mother's face cleared, then clouded.

"You may marry—change?" she muttered, looking wistfully at her daughter.

"Never!" said Lynn, choking. "You don't understand me, mother. I could never think of marriage while Liol was dependent on me; and, as for change—if that is all, you can die happy."

"Swear," said her mother, faintly.

Lynn hesitated. "I don't like swearing," she returned, reluctantly, "but, if it will make you any happier—I swear by everything in heaven and earth—by God Almighty—by the memory of my father—that I will do exactly as I have said. I will look after Lionel always, always, no matter what it costs me. Now are you satisfied?"

"You won't be hard on him—he is," she winced, "he is—Guido's child. We don't—don't always understand foreigners—women don't always—understand—men. You will remember?—you will think of his heritage—and be merciful? I have always had to be." Her voice dropped and broke in a dry sob.

"If he develops into what your husband is," returned Lynn, quietly, "it will make no difference. You don't understand me, mother. Just as you never left the other one, because you couldn't, because you wouldn't have cared to live away from him; so I—I couldn't desert Liol. I have always loved him; how dearly you have never even guessed. I shall always love him and—and when he leaves his father and goes to a good school and knows only good people"—

"It's in his blood," said his mother, faintly. "Already—already it shows. You—you must make—allowances. Another thing!" she attempted to raise herself in the bed and her eyes shone with a feverish glitter, "another thing, Lynn! No one must know." Her voice grew firmer, her hand more steady. "You remember the conditions—when your uncle"—

"I remember them well. But, dear mother, you don't think Uncle Horace would hold me to them—now?"

"Horace is hard—a hard man. When—if—Liol did take after his father—they would never let you see him—or know him. No. If I am to die in peace you must swear never to tell a living soul that he is your brother. If anyone at all knew—your uncle might find out—oh, Lynn, promise?"

Lynn spoke, slowly. "You have not thought, mother. This secrecy will lead to all sorts of complications. Uncle Horace is a hard man, but he is just. He will grumble and think me a fool, but he can't refuse his consent. At present—for a while—it won't matter, not telling anyone about Liol; but later on—oh, mother, don't ask me to promise that. Let me use my discretion about it, won't you?"