Then why, as he had put it to her, did she take up with him? Young, beautiful, talented as she was, why had she wasted herself on a scrub? Pity? Hardly; she wasn’t sentimental. There was no explaining her. But in this passion that had seemed so fearless and so fated-to-be, his own position now looked to him ridiculous. Hedger ground his teeth so loud that his dog, trotting beside him, heard him and looked up.

  While they were having supper at the oysterman’s, Hedger planned his escape. Whenever he saw her again, everything he had told her, that he should never have told anyone, would come back to him; ideas he had never whispered even to the painter whom he worshipped and had gone all the way to France to see. To her they must seem his apology for not having horses and a valet, or merely the puerile boastfulness of a weak man. He would catch the train out to Long Beach tonight, and tomorrow he would go on to the north end of Long Island, where an old friend of his had a summer studio among the sand dunes, and he would stay until things came right in his mind. And she could find a smart painter, or take her punishment.

  When he went home, Eden’s room was dark; she was dining out somewhere. He threw his things into a hold-all he had carried about the world with him, strapped up some colours and canvases, and ran downstairs.

  CHAPTER VII

  FIVE DAYS LATER Hedger was a restless passenger on a dirty, crowded Sunday train, coming back to town. Of course he saw now how unreasonable he had been in expecting a Huntington girl to know anything about pictures; here was a whole continent full of people who knew nothing about pictures and he didn’t hold it against them. What had such things to do with him and Eden Bower? When he lay out on the dunes, watching the moon come up out of the sea, it had seemed to him that there was no wonder in the world like the wonder of Eden Bower. He was going back to her because she was older than art, because she was the most overwhelming thing that had ever come into his life.

  He had written her yesterday, begging her to be at home this evening, telling her that he was contrite, and wretched enough.

  Now that he was on his way to her, his stronger feeling unaccountably changed to a mood that was playful and tender. He wanted to share everything with her, even the most trivial things. He wanted to tell her about the people on the train, coming back tired from their holiday with bunches of wilted flowers and dirty daisies; to tell her that the fish-man, to whom she had often sent him for lobsters, was among the passengers, disguised in a silk shirt and a spotted tie, and how his wife looked exactly like a fish, even to her eyes.

  He could tell her, too, that he hadn’t even unstrapped his canvases — that ought to convince her.

  In those days passengers from Long Island came into New York by ferry. Hedger had to be quick about getting his dog out of the express car in order to catch the first boat. The East River, and the bridges, and the city to the west, were burning in the conflagration of the sunset; there was that great home-coming reach of evening in the air.

  The car changes from Thirty-fourth street were too many and too perplexing; for the first time in his life Hedger took a hansom cab for Washington Square. Cæsar sat bolt-upright on the worn leather cushion beside him, and they jogged off, looking down on the rest of the world.

  It was twilight when they drove down lower Fifth Avenue into the Square, and through the Arch behind them were the two long rows of pale violet lights that used to bloom so beautifully against the gray stone and asphalt. Here and yonder about the Square hung globes that shed a radiance not unlike the blue mists of evening, emerging softly when daylight died, as the stars emerged in the thin blue sky. Under them the sharp shadows of the trees fell on the cracked asphalt and the sleeping grass. The first stars and the first lights were growing silver against the gradual darkening, when Hedger paid his driver and went into the house — which, thank God, was still there! On the hall table lay his letter of yesterday, unopened.

  He went upstairs with every sort of fear and every sort of hope clutching at his heart; it was as if tigers were tearing him. Why was there no gas burning in the top hall? He found matches and the gas bracket. He knocked, but got no answer; nobody was there. Before his own door were exactly five bottles of milk, standing in a row. The milk-boy had taken spiteful pleasure in thus reminding him that he forgot to stop his order.

  Hedger went down to the basement; it, too, was dark. The janitress was taking her evening airing on the basement steps. She sat waving a palm-leaf fan majestically, her dirty calico dress open at the neck. She told him at once that there had been “changes.” Miss Bower’s room was to let again, and the piano would go tomorrow. Yes, she left on Saturday, she sailed for Europe with friends from Chicago. They arrived on Friday, heralded by many telegrams. Very rich people they were said to be, though the man had refused to pay the nurse a month’s rent in lieu of notice — which would have been only right, as the young lady had agreed to take the rooms until October:

  Mrs. Foley had observed, too, that he didn’t overpay her or Willy for their trouble, and a great deal of trouble they had been put to, certainly. Yes, the young lady was very pleasant, but the nurse said there were rings on the mahogany table where she had put tumblers and wine glasses. It was just as well she was gone. The Chicago man was uppish in his ways, but not much to look at. She supposed he had poor health, for there was nothing to him inside his clothes.

  Hedger went slowly up the stairs — never had they seemed so long, or his legs so heavy. The upper floor was emptiness and silence. He unlocked his room, lit the gas and opened the windows. When he went to put his coat in the closet, he found, hanging among his clothes, a pale, flesh-tinted dressing gown he had liked to see her wear, with a perfume — oh, a perfume that was still Eden Bower! He shut the door behind him and there, in the dark, for a moment he lost his manliness. It was when he held this garment to him that he found a letter in the pocket.

  The note was written with a lead pencil, in haste: She was sorry that he was angry, but she still didn’t know just what she had done. She had thought Mr. Ives would be useful to him; she guessed he was too proud. She wanted awfully to see him again, but Fate came knocking at her door after he had left her. She believed in Fate. She would never forget him and she knew he would become the greatest painter in the world. Now she must pack. She hoped he wouldn’t mind her leaving the dressing gown; somehow, she could never wear it again.

  After Hedger read this, standing under the gas, he went back into the closet and knelt down before the wall; the knot hole had been plugged up with a ball of wet paper — the same blue notepaper on which her letter was written.

  He was hard hit. Tonight he had to bear the loneliness of a whole lifetime. Knowing himself so well, he could hardly believe that such a thing had ever happened to him; that such a woman had lain happy and contented in his arms. And now it was over. He turned out the light and sat down on his painter’s stool before the big window. Cæsar, on the floor beside him, rested his head on his master’s knee. We must leave Hedger thus, sitting in solitude with his dog, looking up at the stars.

  CHAPTER VIII

  COMING, EDEN BOWER!

  This legend, in electric lights over the Manhattan Opera House, for weeks announced her return to New York, after years of spectacular success in Paris. She came at last, under the management of an American Opera Company, but bringing her own chef d’orchestre.

  One bright December afternoon Eden Bower was going down Fifth Avenue in her car, on the way to her broker in Williams street. Her thoughts were entirely upon stocks — Cerro de Pasco, and how much she should buy of it — when she suddenly looked up and realized that she was skirting Washington Square. She had not seen the place since she rolled out of it in an old-fashioned four-wheeler to seek her fortune, eighteen years ago.

  “Arretez, Alphonse. Attendez-moi,” she called, and opened the door before he could reach it. The children who were streaking over the asphalt on roller skates saw a lady in a long fur coat and short, high-heeled shoes alight from a French car and pace slowly about the Square, holding her muff to her chin. This spot, at least, had changed very little, she reflected; the same trees, the same fountain, the white arch, and over yonder Garibaldi, drawing the sword for freedom. There, just opposite her, was the old red brick house.

  “Yes, that is the place,” she was thinking. “I can smell the carpets now, and the dog — what was his name? That grubby bathroom at the end of the hall, and that dreadful Hedger — Still, there was something about him, you know—”

  She glanced up and blinked against the sun. From somewhere in the crowded quarter south of the Square a flock of pigeons rose, wheeling quickly upward into the brilliant blue sky. She threw back her head, pressed her muff closer to her chin, and watched them with a smile of amazement and delight. So they still rose, out of all that dirt and noise and squalor, fleet and silvery, just as they used to rise that summer when she was twenty and went up in a balloon on Coney Island!

  Alphonse opened the door and tucked her robes about her. All the way down town her mind wandered from Cerro de Pasco, and she kept smiling and looking up at the sky.

  When she had finished her business with the broker, she asked him to look in the telephone book for the address of M. Gaston Jules, the picture dealer, and slipped the paper on which he wrote it into her glove. It was five o’clock when she reached the French Galleries, as they were called. On entering, she gave the attendant her card, asking him to take it to M. Jules. The dealer appeared very promptly and begged her to come into his private office, where he pushed a great chair toward his desk for her and signaled his secretary to leave the room.

  “How good your lighting is in here,” she observed, glancing about. “I met you at Simon’s studio, didn’t I? Oh, no! I never forget anybody who interests me.” She threw her muff on his writing table and sank into the deep chair. “I have come to you for some information that’s not in my line. Do you know anything about an American painter named Hedger?”

  He took the seat opposite her. “Don Hedger? But, certainly! There are some very interesting things of his in an exhibition at V— ‘s. If you would care to—”

  She held up her hand. “No, no. I’ve no time to go to exhibitions. Is he a man of any importance?”

  “Certainly. He is one of the first men among the moderns. That is to say, among the very moderns. He is always coming up with something different. He often exhibits in Paris, you must have seen—”

  “No, I tell you I don’t go to exhibitions. Has he had great success? That is what I want to know.”

  M. Jules pulled at his short gray mustache. “But, Madame, there are many kinds of success,” he began cautiously.

  Madame gave a dry laugh. “Yes, so he used to say. We once quarreled on that issue. And how would you define his particular kind?”

  M. Jules grew thoughtful. “He is a great name with all the young men, and he is decidedly an influence in art. But one can’t definitely place a man who is original, erratic, and who is changing all the time.”

  She cut him short. “Is he much talked about at home? In Paris, I mean? Thanks. That’s all I want to know.” She rose and began buttoning her coat. “One doesn’t like to have been an utter fool, even at twenty.”

  “Mais, non!” M. Jules handed her her muff with a quick, sympathetic glance. He followed her out through the carpeted showroom, now closed to the public and draped in cheesecloth, and put her into her car with words appreciative of the honour she had done him in calling.

  Leaning back in the cushions, Eden Bower closed her eyes, and her face, as the street lamps flashed their ugly orange light upon it, became hard and settled, like a plaster cast; so a sail, that has been filled by a strong breeze, behaves when the wind suddenly dies. tomorrow night the wind would blow again, and this mask would be the golden face of Clytemnestra. But a “big” career takes its toll, even with the best of luck.

  THE END

  Tom Outland’s Story

  I

  THE THING THAT side-tracked me and made me so late coming to college was a somewhat unusual accident, or string of accidents. It began with a poker game, when I was a call boy in Pardee, New Mexico.

  One cold, clear night in the fall I started out to hunt up a freight crew that was to go out soon after midnight. It was just after pay day, and one of the fellows had tipped me off that there would be a poker game going on in the card-room behind the Ruby Light saloon. I knew most of my crew would be there, except Conductor Willis, who had a sick baby at home. The front windows were dark, of course. I went up the back alley, through a tumble-down ice house and a court, into a ‘dobe room that didn’t open into the saloon proper at all. It was crowded, and hot and stuffy enough. There were six or seven in the game, and a crowd of fellows were standing about the walls, rubbing the white-wash off on to their coat shoulders. There was a bird-cage hanging in one window, covered with an old flannel shirt, but the canary had wakened up and was singing away for dear life. He was a beautiful singer — an old Mexican had trained him — and he was one of the attractions of the place.

  I happened along when a jack-pot was running. Two of the fellows I’d come for were in it, and they naturally wanted to finish the hand. I stood by the door with my watch, keeping time for them. Among the players I saw two sheep men who always liked a lively game, and one of the bystanders told me you had to buy a hundred dollars’ worth of chips to get in that night. The crowd was fussing about one fellow, Rodney Blake, who had come in from his engine without cleaning up. That wasn’t customary; the minute a man got in from his run, he took a bath, put on citizen’s clothes, and went to a barber. This Blake was a new fireman on our division. He’d come up town in his greasy overalls and sweaty blue shirt, with his face streaked up with smoke. He’d been drinking; he smelled of it, and his eyes were out of focus. All the other men were clean and freshly shaved, and they were sore at Blake — said his hands were so greasy they marked the cards. Some of them wanted to put him out of the game, but he was a big, heavy-built fellow, and nobody wanted to be the man to do it. It didn’t please them any better when he took the jack-pot.

  I got my two men and hurried them out, and two others from the row along the wall took their places. One of the chaps who left with me asked me to go up to his house and get his grip with his work clothes. He’d lost every cent of his pay cheque and didn’t want to face his wife. I asked him who was winning.

  “Blake. The dirty boomer’s been taking everything. But the fellows will clean him out before morning.”

  About two o’clock, when my work for the night was over and I was going home to sleep, I just dropped in at the card-room to see how things had come out. The game was breaking up. Since I left them at midnight, they had changed to stud poker, and Blake, the fireman, had cleaned everybody out. He was cashing in his chips when I came in. The bank was a little short, but Blake made no fuss about it. He had something over sixteen hundred dollars lying on the table before him in banknotes and gold. Some of the crowd were insulting him, trying to get him into a fight and loot him. He paid no attention and began to put the money away, not looking at anybody. The bills he folded and put inside the band of his hat. He filled his overalls pockets with the gold, and swept the rest of it into his big red neckerchief.

  I’d been interested in this fellow ever since he came on our division; he was close-mouthed and unfriendly. He was one of those fellows with a settled, mature body and a young face, such as you often see among working-men. There was something calm, and sarcastic, and mocking about his expression — that, too, you often see among working-men. When he had put all his money away, he got up and walked toward the door without a word, without saying good-night to anybody.

  “Manners of a hog, and a dirty hog!” little Barney Shea yelled after him. Blake’s back was just in the doorway; he hitched up one shoulder, but didn’t turn or make a sound.

  I slipped out after him and followed him down the street. His walk was unsteady, and the gold in his baggy overalls pockets clinked with every step he took. I ran a little way and caught up with him. “What are you going to do with all that money, Blake?” I asked him.

  “Lose it, to-morrow night. I’m no hog for money. Damned barber-pole dudes!”

  I thought I’d better follow him home. I knew he lodged with an old Mexican woman, in the yellow quarter, behind the round-house. His room opened on to the street, by a sky-blue door. He went in, didn’t strike a light or make a stab at undressing, but threw himself just as he was on the bed and went to sleep. His hat stuck between the iron rods of the bed-head, the gold ran out of his pockets and rolled over the bare floor in the dark.

  I struck a match and lit a candle. The bed took up half the room; on the dresser was a grip with his clean clothes in it, just as he’d brought it in from his run. I took out the clothes and began picking up the money; got the bills out of his hat, emptied his pockets, and collected the coins that lay in the hollow of the bed about his hips, and put it all into the grip. Then I blew out the light and sat down to listen. I trusted all the boys who were at the Ruby Light that night, except Barney Shea. He might try to pull something off on a stranger, down in Mexican town. We had a quiet night, however, and a cold one. I found Blake’s winter overcoat hanging on the wall and wrapped up in it. I wasn’t a bit sorry when the roosters began to crow and the dogs began barking all over Mexican town. At last the sun came up and turned the desert and the ‘dobe town red in a minute. I began to shake the man on the bed. Waking men who didn’t want to get up was part of my job, and I didn’t let up on him until I had him on his feet.