The late John Stewart had, in his lifetime, achieved the distinction of being a model husband. He was devoted to his wife in more senses of the word than one; he was content to appear stupid so she might shine the more; content to slave at Mammon's shrine for his wife's sake. His fund of patience, of tolerance, of faith, had been infinite. It was in return for these things that his wife, as he lay in the dying moments of typhoid, whispered to him, with a tremendous suspicion that she had seemed blind to much of her fortune, "John, dear John, you musn't go, not yet. I--I--"

And though John a.s.sured her that he was going to get well, the next day found the promise broken.

Mrs. Stewart, after his death, realized all that he had been to her, all that she, except in his loving fancy, had not been to him. And brooding over such recollections she began to feel the ban of morbidness, the old rooms, the dear, familiar haunts that had once known his voice, were peopled now with sadness, and she resolved to seek escape, for a time at least, from these living voices of a silenced lip. She had some cousins in London; she determined to travel, to visit them. With her went her nearer cousin, Miss Leigh, whose whimsical, cynical sincerities she loved the while she combated them.

So, in the spring, they found themselves in London, then harboring the whirl of society at its swiftest. But that had palled on Mrs. Stewart, and she dragged Miss Leigh off for an apparently aimless tour through Wales, and the Lake district, and on up to Scotland.

September found them in St. Andrews.

Although it was one of the months that const.i.tute the "short season" of that dear old academic village, it was easily possible to escape the crowds of golf-enthusiasts that studded the links with their glaringly colorful costumes. The old castle, the ruins of the cathedral, the legends of the historic, b.l.o.o.d.y occurrences that had taken place here for religion's sake,--all these were full of charms to these two American women, saturated, as is nearly all that Nation, with a peculiar, wistful reverence for things antique.

There were drives, too, that gave opportunities for enjoyment of the Scotch autumn scenery. Along the banks of the Tay, with the solemn Crampians showing dim in the distance.

Mrs. Stewart loved to sit in the silent coolness of the college quadrangles and dream. It seemed to her that only for such places were dreams fit companions.

One day, they were sitting together on the turf that once had marked a cathedral wall. Miss Leigh was reading; Mrs. Stewart idly watching the breakers roll up to the cliffs.

"I beg your pardon!"

The two ladies looked up, and turned to find Lancaster standing before them, with his hat off and a look of amused surprise on his face.

"Well," said Mrs. Stewart, shaking hands heartily, "the world is small as ever, is it not? It's like home, seeing you!"

"It strikes me the same way." He sat down beside them. They noticed that he was browned and furrowed; the marks of travel, the brace of different climes, the scars caught in the thick of life's battle were all sharply dominant in his externals.

"We ought to feel honored," smiled Miss Leigh. "You are such a celebrity nowadays! We have heard the most weird anecdotes about you of late, you know. You are pictured as the Sphinx and the Chimera in one."

"You are still," he answered, "as cruel as ever."

"But we really feel very proud of you," said Mrs. Stewart. "We know each other too well, I hope, to veil our honest opinions. I admire your work immensely; but I think you're terribly bitter sometimes."

"Ah," he laughed gently, "I'm glad it strikes you that way. Bitterness is the only taste that lives after a complete course of life. But we really must talk of something less embara.s.sing than myself. Do tell me the news! How are all the dear familiars?" He paused, and lowered his voice a little. "If it pains you," he said gently, "let us talk of other things. I--have heard. Believe me, I am sorry, very sorry. It is a poor word, but--" he stopped as she looked up at him gratefully for an instant, and then said with an effort at cheerfulness:

"Oh, they were all well, when we left."

"Yes," put in Miss Leigh, "and doing about the same old things. Mr.

Wreath still expounds, in and out of season, the doctrine of his own surpa.s.singly correct theories on veritism in literature; and incidentally takes all occasions to a.s.sail the sincerity of every other living writer. He's an amusing man, and if he had only been given a sense of honor he would find himself an ever re-direct jest. Clarence Miller has written another novel, and all society is wondering whether it will be translated into Magyar or Mongolian. He calls it 'Five Loaves and Two Fishes.' His brother-in-law has composed another comic opera that some people have the originality to declare original. And--but why continue the catalogue? It's just the same ridiculous circus it ever was."

Lancaster laughed. "Thank you. That's really a volume in a nutsh.e.l.l. I wonder if the performers in that circus really know how amusing they are?"

"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Stewart, "but they keep it up nevertheless. Of course, it's only when one gets away from it that one really gets the most entertaining focus on that sort of a thing. I'm sure," she sighed, "I don't seem to belong to those ranks at all, now." She shivered a little. The sun was setting, and a chill breeze blowing off the sea.

"I'm afraid we must go," she said, rising, "but you must be sure and come to see us." She gave Lancaster a small card, and then, with smiles and bows, and rustling of skirts, they were gone.

In the weeks that followed Lancaster availed himself of the privilege accorded in Mrs. Stewart's invitation as often as possible. The three were together almost daily, if only for a few moments. Lancaster was busily employed, the while, in fixing in black-and-white some of the types and features that prevailed in this fashionable corner of Fife.

The London and Paris journals soon gave evidences of his industry.

Fortunately, but few of these papers found their way to St. Andrews, and Lancaster's love of incognito was not disturbed. Sometimes the artist would disappear for days; a fishing-boat would be his hope for the time, and he would drink in the free winds of the sea, and the pa.s.sing joy of that toilsome life of the fishermen. The winds and the freshness of the life were like a tonic to him, but he knew that it would presently pall and he would give way to the fever for the metropolitan whirlpool.

Occasionally Miss Leigh preferred to remain in her apartments, leaving Mrs. Stewart to stroll along the links alone with the young artist. "Do you know," remarked Mrs. Stewart, on one such occasion, "that my cousin's tremendously fond of you?"

Lancaster looked up in surprise: Then he gave a short laugh. "She's tremendously mistaken," he said, "I'm not the sort that anyone should be fond of--now." He looked out over the sea. "There goes a steamer. I suppose it's the Aberdeen boat." He watched it wistfully.

"She thinks," continued Mrs. Stewart, heedless of his abstraction, "that you are a young man much to be envied. Already you have a name that is known far and wide, and all life is yet before you. She--"

He interrupted, bitterly: "Life is all behind me, you should say. All, all! I have tried everything, the good and the evil. The one broke my belief in all things; the other gives me the belief that the only thing to do is to laugh. Strange! I heard that phrase first in your drawing-room, Mrs. Stewart! Suppose we sit down. These rocks are fashioned delightfully for easy chairs."

The sun was burnishing the water with a l.u.s.tre of copper. The sea-gulls moaned as they circled about hungrily. The breakers hissed sullenly below them.

"My philosophy," he went on, after he had seen that Mrs. Stewart was comfortably seated, "is very simple, now. Laugh! That is the text of it."

She mused in silence. "You used to be so different," she murmured, presently. "You were, not so long ago, at the other extreme. You thought everything was solemn, awful, important, that there were majestic duties in life, splendid obligations, and splendid things to live for.

Now,--you say it is all a jest, and the only thing to do is to laugh. I think you have had too much curiosity."

"Perhaps. Curiosity is a guide that takes us into a labyrinth and leaves us there. But why," he shrugged his shoulders impatiently, "why must we be forever talking of this hapless personage, me? Suppose we talk, instead, of you?"

"Oh, no. You are the interesting one. You are a study. I should like to help you. I think you are doing yourself an injustice: letting yourself drift as you are. Your fame, alone, won't bring you happiness."

"I'm not expecting happiness."

Mrs. Stewart watched his face, hard set, with it's bitter drop to the right corner of the mouth, and something of pity came to her. "Once,"

she went on, "it seemed to me that there was a woman who meant for you the same thing as happiness."

"Perhaps." His voice was as hard as before. "That was a very long time ago,--counting by experiences. Why talk of marriage? I don't think I could stand it for an instant; I don't think any woman could stand me.

As I once was--that was different."

"Some women are very patient."

"Yes. And then I should go mad until they came out of their deadly patience into something more exciting. A woman's fury would amuse me vastly, I think." He twisted his stick into the rocks, and outlined vague designs in the sandstone. "Why, supposing, for the sake of the argument, that I asked you to marry me, you would, I am sure, consider me a madman to expect you to make such a fool of yourself?"

She flushed slightly. "Merely for the sake of the argument, I don't say that I would do anything of the sort. I might consider it ill-timed, inconsiderate."

"Ah, I beg your pardon, humbly. I realize that deeply. Merely, I said, for the sake of the argument. I want to show you the utter hopelessness of my position. Suppose then, that I asked you that question, what would you tell yourself? That I was a man, young in years, old in experiences, soured in thought and taste, bitter in mind, selfish, a slave to the most egoistic of epicureanisms. A man who considers nothing too sacred for laughter, or too ridiculous for tears. A man who is a perpetual evidence of the corroding influences of flippancy; whose very art, even, is merely a means for amus.e.m.e.nt. No,--you, clever, shrewd, adaptable woman of the world though you are, would realize at once that to enter into a life-partnership with a man of that sort were to invite immediate misery. Think: the man would be ungovernable, save by his moods; when he should be at home acting as host to a dinner-party he would be tramping the moors in a wild pa.s.sion for solitude? A man who would perpetually fling at his wife the most mordant of sarcasms, merely for the pleasure they caused his powers of creation. If a biting jest came to him, he would hurl it at his wife, without malice, but because she happened to be present. Not even the cleverest woman in the world can decide between the words and the motive in a case like that. No; this man has fed too much on the lees of disenchantment to be himself aught but a sorry-devil of a jester."

She signed. "You have the modern disease in terrible development--self-a.n.a.lysis. It seems to me to be quite as cruel as vivisection. And I think you exaggerate your vices. After all--I may speak frankly, may I not? I am a woman that has ever kept her eyes open--you represent nothing so very dreadful. You are young, impetuous; you have had the bandages of stern puritanism roughly torn from you, and you have had a little of what the world calls 'your fling!' You realize yourself far too much. You are not one whit worse than others. All men worship, for a time, at the shrine of their animal natures, I suppose.

But instead of letting the thought of it all drive you further and further into bitterness, why not resolve to shake off the whole cloak, and put it back into the limbo of thinks henceforth to be avoided?" She paused, and looked at him with a smile. "Get married. I believe, in spite of your fears, that you will make a good husband. Believe me, you will be a much better one than if you had never taught yourself the revolting nausea that the other side of life brings."

"Marry?" he repeated, "why do you harp on that? I tell you, there is no one, no one at all! Unless--" he looked over the breakers to the setting sun, "unless there were a woman somewhere that could understand and forgive. A woman that knew something of the world, of the stings of experience and the hollowness of hope. With a woman like that I might become the owner of the new youth, might sink all these bitternesses, live earnest in ambition and.... But there is no such woman, none...." A sudden light flashed into his eyes, and with pa.s.sion he continued, "Except-yourself. Yes--you are the only one. You know; you understand.

Oh, listen to me, listen! Why tell me that this is a sacrilege, an insult to a memory. Do you suppose I don't know that? I do; I feel it deeply; but I also feel that I am pleading for a helping hand, that I see in you the only chance of safety, that you mean for me a new life, and that I must tell you so now, before the opportunity is gone. Oh, don't tell me I'm a coward--I know that, too, well enough. I confess it; I am a coward, a broken-hearted cur." He groaned, and getting up, began to walk slowly up and down before her. "Is it so impossible? I would--you yourself admitted that hope!--improve. Is there no hope?"

"What a boy you are, what a boy! You have all the headstrong, pa.s.sionate eagerness of youth, and yet you pretend to play the wearied liver of many lives! No, d.i.c.k," her voice grew gentler, and it came to him like a pleasant harmony, "we will do nothing so foolish. You and I are always to be very good friends, and we will help each other always, but not that, not that! You are too young; regret would come to you all too soon. No matter how nicely each of us were to fashion his or her temper to the other's, there would come that thought: for the hope of mere comfort I have sacrificed an idol. For, d.i.c.k, think, think! Dorothy Ware! Do you think I have not watched you, found you out long ago? What was it, d.i.c.k, a tiff? A refusal?"

He stopped in his sentry-go, and began to whistle, softly, '_La donna e Mobile_.' "I--I beg your pardon," he added, hastily, "I fear I forget my manners. Was it a refusal? you ask. Well,--perhaps, perhaps not. At the time, I thought it was. Since then I have found out things--things--Bah, what does it matter!"

"Go on," she said, "tell me!"

"In Germany, I met Wooton--"

She interrupted. "Ah, yes; I remember a terrible cruel picture you drew of a man at a cafe table, drinking. It was his face, unmistakably. Why did you do that?"