The darky waited patiently until the several orders had been given. Then he glided away as noiselessly as he had come.

"There is really where the story, as far as I know it, ends," Stanley went on, after he had cooled his throat a little, "The other end of it came to me from Belden the other day. 'Got anything to do Thursday evening?' he asked me. We had been talking of dry-point etching. I told him I thought not. 'Then will you help me jump off?' he went on. Then the whole scene of that winter-night flashed back to me in a sort of wave. I felt, before he answered my question for further information, what his answer would be, 'Yes,' he said, 'it's the same girl. I know her better than I did. Her's is a sad case; very sad. I'm lifting her up out of it.' I didn't say anything, he hadn't asked my opinion. As between man and man there was nothing for me to cavil at; I was invited to a friend's wedding, that was all. I went. I was the only other person present, barring the old German minister that Belden fished out from some dark corner. It was the queerest proceeding! Belden had brought the girl up into a righteous neighborhood some months ago, it seemed; had been paying her way; the neighbors thought she was a person of some means, I suppose. He introduced me to her on the morning of his wedding-day; I think she remembered me, although she has caught manners enough from Belden or her past to conceal what she felt. And so--they were married."

"My G.o.d!" groaned Vanstruther, "what an awful thing to do! Lifting her up out of it, does he say? No! He's bringing himself down to it! That's what it always ends in. Always. Oh, I've known cases! Every man thinks he is going to succeed where the others have failed. For they have failed, there is no doubt about that! Look at the case of Gripler, the Elevated magnate!--he did that sort of thing, and the world says and does the same old thing it has always done--sneers a little, and cuts her! He is having the most magnificent house in all Gotham built for himself, I understand, and they are going to move there, but do you suppose for a minute they will ever get into the circle of the elect?

Not in a thousand years! Don't misunderstand me: I'm not considering merely the society of the 'society column,' I'm thinking of society at large, the entire human body, the ma.s.s of individuals scripturally enveloped in the phrase 'thy neighbor.' The taint never fades; a surface gloss may hide the spot, but some day it blazons itself to the world again in all it's unpleasantness. Take this case of our friend Belden.

We, who sit here, are all men who know the world we live in; we will treat Belden himself as we have always done. We will even argue, in that exaggerated spirit of broadness that might better be called laxness, typical of our time, that the man has done a braver thing than ourselves had courage for had the temptation come to us. We will acknowledge that his motive was a good one. He honestly believes that he will educate the girl into the higher life. He thinks the past can be sunk into the pit of forgetfulness; but there is no pit deep enough to hide the past. We will say that he is putting into action what the rest of the radicals continually vapor about; the equal consideration, in matters of morality, of man and woman. He is remembering that a man, we argue, should in strict ethics demand of a woman no more than himself can bring. But, mark my words, the centuries have been wiser than we knew.

It is ordained that the man who shall take to wife a woman that has what the world meaningly call 'a past,' shall see the ghost of that past shaking the piece of his house for ever and ever."

There was silence for a few moments. Beyond the curtains, someone came in and threw himself down on the sofa. Marsboro, looking vaguely out at window, said, somewhat irrelevantly, "I suppose that will be the end of the Sunday evening seances?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Stanley. "If I know anything about Belden, I shall not be surprised if he asks us all up there again one of these evenings. He has lived so long in Free-and-easy-dom that no thought of what people call 'the proprieties' will ever touch him."

"Heigh!" Vanstruther stretched himself reflectively. "It's a queer life a man leads, a queer life! G.o.d send us all easy consciences!"

"Don't be pathetic!" Stanley frowned. "The life is generally of our own choosing, and if we play the game we should pay the forfeits. Besides which, it is one of the few things I believe in, that the man who has tasted of sin, and in whose mouth the bitters of revulsion have corroded, is the only one who can ever safely be called good. It is different with a woman. If once she tastes--there's an end of her! Oh, I know very well that we never think this way at first. At first--when we are very young--we think there is nothing in the world so delightful as being for ever and ever as white as the driven snow; then Life sends his card, we make his acquaintance, he introduces us to some of his fastest friends, and we, h'm, begin to change our views a little. In accordance with the faint soiling that is gradually covering up the snowy hues of our being, the strictness of our opinions on the matter of whiteness relaxes notably. Arm in arm with Life, we step slowly down the ladder.

Then, if we are in luck, there is a reaction, and we go up again--so far!--only so far, and never any further; if we are particularly fond of Life, we are likely to get very far down indeed; and the end is that Life bids us farewell of his own accord. That is the history of a modern man of the world."

"I believe you are right," said Marsboro, "I know, in my own case at least, that I can remember distinctly how beautiful my young ideal was.

But Life is jealous of ideals; he shatters them with a single whiff of experience. And it happened as you just now said: as I descended, my ideals descended. I only hope"--he sighed, half in jest, half in earnest,--"that I will begin the upward climb and succeed in winning up."

"Ah," a.s.sented Stanley, "that is always the interesting problem. Which it will be: the elevator with the index pointing to 'Up' or the one destined 'Down.' You needn't look so curiously at me, Van, I know what you are wondering. Well you can rest easy in the a.s.surance I give you: the nether slopes are beckoning to me. I became aware of it long ago, reconciled moreover. I live merely for the moment. My senses must amuse me until there is nothing left of them; that is all. But look here: don't think there is no reverse to the medal. I have, fate knows, my moments of being horrified at myself. It is, I presume, at the times when the ghost of my conscience comes to ask why it was murdered." He appeared to be concentrating all his attention on the ashes at the end of his cigarette. "Why, don't you know that there is no longer any meaning for me in any of those words: honor, and truth, and virtue? I have no standards, except my digestion, and my nerves. I don't mistreat my wife simply because it would come back to me in a thousand little annoyances that would grate on my nerves." He sipped slowly at the gla.s.s by his side. "And I'm not worse than some other men!"

"True. All of which is a pity. But we've got off the subject. The villainy of ourselves is too patent a proposition. The question is, by what right we continue to expect of the women we marry that which they dare not expect of us.

"Are you the mouthpiece of the New Woman? Well, the Creator made man king, and the laws of physiology cannot be twisted to suit the New Woman. For it is, in essentials, unfortunately a question of physiological consequences. Wherefore, suppose we stop the argument.

This is not a medical congress!"

Stanley went over to the desk where the periodicals lay, and picking one up, began, with a cigarette in his mouth, to let his eyes rest on the printed pages.

"Will you go, if you're asked?" Marsboro said, presently.

"I?" Stanley looked up carelessly. "Certainly. As far as I'm concerned a man may marry the devil and all his angels. But I wouldn't take my wife or my sister."

Vanstruther laughed dryly. "If women were to apply the t.i.t-for-tat principle," he said, "what terribly small visiting lists most of us fellows would have!"

But Stanley disdained further discussion, and the other men got up to go. When they had pa.s.sed beyond the curtains Stanley laid down the paper he had been reading, and smiled to himself. He was wondering why he had been led into this waste of breath. A man's life was a man's life, and what was the use of cavilling at facts! The only thing to do was to take life lightly and to let nothing matter. Also, one must amuse oneself! If the manner of the amus.e.m.e.nt was distasteful or hurtful to others, why--so much the worse for the others!

So musing, Laurence Stanley pa.s.sed into a light slumber, and dreamed of impossible virtues.

But d.i.c.k Lancaster, who, from the sofa beyond the curtains, had heard all of this conversation, did not dream of pleasant things that night.

In fact, he spent a white night. Like a flood the horrors of self-revelation had come upon him at sound of those arguments and dissections; he saw himself as he was, compared with what he had been; he shuddered and shivered in the grip of remorse.

In the white light of shame he saw whither the wish to taste of life had led him; he realized that something of that hopeless corruption that Stanley had spoken of was already etched into his conscience. Oh, the terrible temptation of all those shibboleths, that told us that we must live while we may! He felt, now that he had seen how deep was the abyss below him, that his feet were long since on the decline, and that from a shy attempt at worldliness he had gone on to what, to his suddenly re-awakened conscience, const.i.tuted dissoluteness.

To the man of the world, perhaps, his slight defections from the puritanic code would have seemed ridiculously vague. But, he repeated to himself with quickened anguish, if he began to consider things from the standpoint of the world, he was utterly lost; he would soon be like those others.

He got up and opened the window of his bed-room. Below him was the hum of the cable; a dense mist obscured the electric lights, and the town seemed reeking with a white sweat. He felt as if he were a prisoner. He began to feel a loathing for this town that had made him dispise himself so much. The roar of it sounded like a wild animal's.

Then a breeze came and swept the mist away, and left the streets shining with silvery moisture. Lights crept out of the darkness, and the veil pa.s.sed from the stars. The wild animal seemed to be smiling. But the watcher at the window merely shrank back a little, closing the window.

Fascinating, as a serpent; poisonous as a cobra! The glitter and glamour of society; the devil-may-care fascinations of Bohemia; they had lured him to such agony as this!

Such agony? What, you ask, had this young man to be in agony about? He was a very nice young man--all the world would have told you that! Ah, but was there never a moment in your lives, my dear fellow-sinners--you men and women of the world--when it came to your conscience like a sword-thrust, that the beautiful bloom of your youth and innocence was gone from you forever and that ever afterward there would be a bitter memory or a bitterer forgetfulness? And was that not agony? Ah, we all hold the masks up before our faces, but sometimes our arms tire, and they slip down, and then how haggard we look! Perhaps, if we had listened to our consciences when they were quicker, we would not have those lines of care upon our faces now. You say you have a complexion and a conscience as clear as the dew? Ah, well, then I am not addressing you, of course. But how about your neighbors? Ah, you admit--? Well, then we will each of us moralize about our neighbor. It is so much pleasanter, so much more diverting!

CHAPTER X

With the coming of morning, Lancaster shook himself out of his painful reveries, and decided that he must escape from this metropolitan prison, if for ever so short a time. He would go out into the country, home. He would go where the air was pure, and all life was not tainted. He walked to a telegraph office and sent a dispatch to his mother, telling of his coming.

Then he went for a walk in the park. Now that he had made up his mind to get out of this choking dungeon for a while he felt suddenly buoyant, refreshed. He tried to forget Stanley and the Imperial Theatre, and all other unpleasant memories of that sort. Some of the park policemen concluded that this was a young man who was feeling very cheerful indeed--else, why such fervid whistling?

When he got to his studio he found some people waiting for him. They had some commercial work for him to do. He shook his head at all of them.

"I'm going out of town for a week," he said, "and I can do nothing until I return. If this is a case of 'rush' you'll have to take it somewhere else."

He turned the key in the door with a wonderful feeling of elation, and the pinning of the small explanatory notice on his door almost made him laugh aloud. He thought of the joy that a jail bird must feel when he sees the gates opening to let him into the free world. No more elevated roads, no more cable cars, no more clanging of wheels over granite, no more deafening shouts of newsboys; no more tortuous windings through streets crowded with hurrying barbarians; no more pa.s.sing the bewildering glances of countless handsome women; no more--town!

There was a train in half an hour. He bought his ticket and strolled up and down the platform. He wondered how the dear old village would look.

He had been away only a little over a year, and yet, how much had happened in that short time! Then he smiled, thinking of the intangible nature of those happenings. There was nothing,--nothing that would make as much as a paragraph in the daily paper. Yet how it had changed him, this subtle flow of soul-searing circ.u.mstances! It was of such curious woof that modern life was made; so rich in things that in themselves were dismally commonplace and matters of course, and yet in total exerted such strong influences; so rich, too, in crime and casuality, that, though served up as daily dishes, yet seemed always far and outside of ourselves!

The novel he purchased to while away the hours between the town and Lincolnville confirmed his thoughts in this direction. It was one of the modern pictures of "life as it is." There was nothing of romance, hardly any action; it was nearly all introspection and contemplations of the complexity of modern existence. The story bored him I immensely, and yet he felt that it was a voice of the time. It was hard to invest today with romance.

Was it, he wondered, a real difference, or was it merely the difference in the point of view? Perhaps there was still romance abroad, but our minds had become too a.n.a.lytical to see the picture of it?--too much engaged in observing the quality of the paint?

His mother was waiting for him at the station. It was pleasant to see how proud she was of this tall young son of hers, and how wistfully she looked deep into his eyes. "You're looking pale, d.i.c.k," she said, holding him at the stretch of her arms. "And your eyes look like they needed sleep."

d.i.c.k gave a little forced laugh and patted his mother's hand.

"Yes, I guess you're right mother. I need a little fresh air and a rest."

"Ah, you shall have both, my boy. And now tell me all you've been doing up there in that big place."

They walked down to the little house wherein d.i.c.k had first seen the light of this world. He looked taller than ever beside the little woman who kept looking him over so wistfully. He told her many things, but he felt that he was talking to her in a language that was rusty on his lips, the language of the country, of simplicity and truth. The language of the world, in which his tongue was now glib, would be so full of mysteries to this sweet mother of his that he must needs eschew it for the nonce. It was a small thing, but he felt it as an evidence of the changes that had been wrought in him.

He told her of his work, of his career. Of the _Torch_, of his subsequent renting of a studio, and free-lance life. Yes, he was making money. He was independent; he had his own hours; work came to him so readily that he was in a position to refuse such as pleased him least.

But, he sighed, it was all in black-and-white, so far. Paint loomed up, as before, merely as a golden dream. In ill.u.s.trating and decorating, using black-and-white mediums, that _was_ where the money lay, and he supposed he would have to stick to that for a time. But he was saving money for a trip abroad.

They talked on and on until nearly midnight. He asked after some of his old acquaintances; he listened patiently to his mother's gentle gossip and tried to feel interested.

"The Wares are back," explained Mrs. Lancaster.

"Ah," d.i.c.k looked up quickly. "Does Dorothy look well?"

"I don't think so, though I'm bound I hadn't the courage to tell her so to her face. She looks just like you do, d.i.c.k,--kinder f.a.gged out."

"Yes. They say traveling is hard work. And her mother?"