"To a certain extent, yes," said Florian. "I shall call on her this evening."

"For help, yes," said the judge. "She must bring Bra.s.sfield up, so that we can find out about some property matters."

"I don't mean that," said Amidon. "I must call on Miss Waldron--Elizabeth."

"And neglect----" began the judge.

"Everything," said Florian firmly. "This is something that concerns my honor as a gentleman. While it remains in its present state, I can't bother with these property matters. Have I an office?"

"Have you!" said the judge. "Well, just wait until you see them."

"And an office force?"

"Confidential manager named Stevens, as per the notes,"; said Judge Blodgett. "Bookkeeper, a.s.sistant bookkeeper and stenographer. Tried to pump 'em and got frozen out. Yes, you've got an office force."

"Well, then," said Amidon, "we'll go down there in the morning, and I'll tell this man Stevens--is that what you call him?--to show you all through the books and things--going to buy or take a partnership, or something. Then we can go through the business together. We can do it that way, without being suspected, can't we?"

"Maybe," meditatively, "maybe we can. Take a sort of invoice, hey?

But don't you think we'd better have Bra.s.sfield on the witness-stand for a while this evening? A sort of cramming--coaching--review, on the eve of trial, you know?"

"No, no!" answered Florian. "No more of that, if it can be avoided."

The judge stroked his mustache in silence for a time.

"See here," asked he finally, "what did we bring madame and the professor down here for, anyway, I'd like to know?"

"I know," said Amidon, "but, somehow, I feel like getting along without it if I can. As little of her--of their--services as possible, Judge, from now on."

"Oh!" said the judge, in a tone of one who suddenly sees the situation; "all right, Florian, all right. Maybe it's best, maybe it's best.

Abnormal condition, as the professor says, and all that; effect on the mind, and one thing and another. Yes--yes--yes!"

"If I have any duties to perform here, Judge, you must help me to keep straight. I've never had much tendency to go wrong, you know, but that was for lack of temptation, don't you think, Blodgett?"

"Well, well, Florian, I can't say as to that; can't say. Yes--and say!

You'll want to go over to the Waldron residence this evening. I'll take you out and show you the house. By George! It must seem extraordinarily odd to walk about among things you are supposed to know like a book, and to be, in fact, a perfect stranger. Dante could have used that idea, if it had occurred to him."

"An idea for Dante, indeed!" thought Amidon, as he walked toward the house, which, from afar, the judge had pointed out to him. "For the _Inferno_: a soul thrown into a realm full of its friends and enemies, its loves and hates, shorn of memory, of all sense of familiarity, of all its habits, stripped of all the protection of habitude. For the _Inferno_, indeed!--Now this must be the house, with the white columns running up to the top of the second story; crossing the ravine and losing sight of it for a few minutes makes even the house look different. Outside, I can get accustomed to it, in this five-minute inspection. But, inside--oh, to be invisible while I get used to it!

Well, here goes!"

"Ding-a-ling-ting-ting!" rang the bell somewhere back in the recesses of the house, and the footsteps of a man approached the door. Amidon was frightened. He had expected either Elizabeth herself, or a maid to take his card, and was prepared for such an encounter only. A little dark, bright-eyed man opened the door and seized his hand.

"Why, Bra.s.sfield, how are you?" he exclaimed. "Heard you'd got back.

Sorry I couldn't meet you in New York. Got my telegram, I suppose?"

"I just called," said Amidon, "to see Miss Waldron."

"Oh, yes!" said the little man; "nothing but her, now. But she isn't here. Hasn't been for over a week. n.o.body here but me. Can't you stay a while? Say, 'Gene, we put Slater through the lodge while you were gone, and he knows he's in, all right enough. Bulliwinkle took that part of yours in the catacombs scene, and you ought to have heard the bones of the early Christians rattle when he bellered out the lecture. 'Here, among the eternal shades of the deep caves of death, walked once the great exemplars of our Ancient Order!' Why, it would raise the hair on a bronze statue. And when, in the second, they condemned him to the Tarpeian Rock, and swung him off into s.p.a.ce in the Chest of the Clanking Chains, he howled so that the Sovereign Pontiff made 'em saw off on it, and take him out--and he could hardly stand to receive the Grand and Awful Secret. Limp as a rag! But impressed?

Well, he said it was the greatest piece of ritualistic work he ever saw, and he's seen most of 'em. Go to any lodges in New York?"

"No," said Amidon, who had never joined a secret order in his life, "and do you think we ought to talk these things out here?"

"No, maybe not," said the Joiner; "but n.o.body's about, you know. Come in, can't you?"

"No, I must really go, thank you. By the way," said Florian, "where does Miss--er--I must go, at once, I think!"

"Oh, I know how it is," went on his unknown intimate; "nothing but Bess, now. Might as well bid you good-by, and give you a dimit from all the clubs and lodges, until six months after the wedding. You'll be back by that time, thirstier than ever. By the way, that reminds me: the gang's going to give you a blow-out at the club. Kind of an _Auld lang syne_ business, 'champagny-vather an' cracked ice,' chimes at midnight, won't go home till morning, all good fellows and the rest of it. Edgington spoke to you about it, I s'pose?"

"Only in a general way," replied Amidon, wondering who and what Edgington would turn out to be. "I don't know yet how my engagements will be----"

"Oh, nothing must stand in the way of that, you know," the little man went on. "Why, gad! the tenderest feelings of brotherly---- Oh, you don't mean it! But I mustn't keep you. Bessie told me that the plans for your house have come. She's got 'em over there, now. I say, old man, I envy you your evening. Like two birds arranging the nest.

Sorry you can't come in; but, good night. And, say! Your little strawberry blonde is in town! Wouldn't that jar you?"

"Heavens!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Amidon. "How am I ever to get through with this?"

The genuine agony in Florian's tones fixed the attention of the little man, and seemed to arouse some terrible suspicion.

"Why, 'Gene," said he, "you don't mean that there's anything in this blonde matter, do you, that will---- By George! And she's a sister of one of the most prominent A. O. C. M.'s of Pittsburg--and you remember our solemn obligation!"

"No," said Amidon, "I don't!"

"What! You don't!"

"No!" said Florian. "I've forgotten it!"

"Forgotten it!" said his questioner, recoiling as if in horror.

"Forgotten it! And with the sister of the Past Sovereign Pontiff of Pittsburg Lodge No. 863! I tell you, Bra.s.sfield, I don't believe it.

I prefer to think you're bughouse! Cracked! Out of your head! But, 'Gene," added his unknown brother, in a stage-whisper, "if there has been anything between you and anything comes up, you know, Jim Alvord, for one, knowing and understanding your temptations--for the strawberry blondes are the very devil--will stand by you until the frost gathers six inches deep on the very hinges of---- Say, Mary's coming in at the side door. Good night! Keep a stiff upper lip; stay by Bess, and I'll stay by you, obligation or no obligation. 'F. D. and B.', you know: death, perhaps, but no desertion! So long! See you to-morrow."

And Amidon walked from the house of his unfamiliar chum, knowing that his sweetheart but once seen was waiting in her unknown home for him to come to her, and had as a basis for conversation the plans for their house. He could imagine her with the blue-prints unrolled, examining them with all a woman's interest in such things, and himself discussing with her this house in which she expected him to place her as mistress.

And the position she thought she held in his heart--vacant, or---- He leaned against a fence, in bewilderment approaching despair. His mind dwelt with horror on the woman whom he could think of only under the coa.r.s.e appellation of the strawberry blonde. Was there a real crime here to take the place of the imagined putting away of Bra.s.sfield?

Bra.s.sfield! The very name sickened him. "Strawberry blondes, indeed!"

thought Florian; and "Bra.s.sfield, the perjured villain!" Certain names used by the little man in the wrong house came to him as having been mentioned in the notes of the professor and the judge. Alvord, the slangy little chap who took so familiar an att.i.tude toward him--this was the judge's "ministerial" friend! Yet, had there not been mention of "ritualistic work" and "Early Christians" in his conversation? And this woman of whom he spoke,--it took no great keenness of perception to see that the "strawberry blonde" must be the "child of six or eight years" whom he had called "Daisy," and sometimes "Strawberry!" Here was confirmation of Alvord's suspicion, if his allusion to the violation of an "obligation" expressed suspicion. Here was a situation from which every fiber of Amidon's nature revolted, seen from any angle, whether the viewpoint of the careful banker and pillar of society, or that of the poetic dreamer waiting for his predestined mate.

In a paroxysm of dread, he started for the hotel. Then he walked down the street toward the railway station, with the thought of boarding the first train out of town. This resolve, however, he changed, and I am glad to say that it was not the thought of the fortune of which Judge Blodgett had spoken that altered his resolution, but that of the letter which greeted his return to consciousness as Florian Amidon, and the image of the dark-eyed girl with the low voice and the strong figure, who had written it, and who waited for him, somewhere, with the roll of plans. So he began searching again for the house with the white columns; and found it on the next corner beyond the one he had first tried.

Elizabeth sat in a fit of depression at the strangeness of Mr.

Bra.s.sfield's conduct--a depression which deepened as the evening wore on with no visit from him. She sprang to her feet and pressed both hands to her bosom, at the ring of the door-bell, ran lightly to the door and listened as the servant greeted Mr. Bra.s.sfield, and then hurried back to her seat by the grate, and became so absorbed in her book that she was oblivious of his being shown into the room, until the maid had retired, leaving him standing at gaze, his brow beaded with sweat, his face pale and his hands unsteady. The early Christian had entered on his martyrdom.

XI

THE FIRST BATTLE, AND DEFEAT

From Camelot to Cameliard The way by bright pavilions starred, In arms and armor all unmarred, To Guinevere rode Lancelot to claim for Arthur his reward.

Down from her window look't the maid To see her bridegroom, half afraid-- In him saw kingliness arrayed: And summoned by the herald Love to yield, her woman's heart obeyed.