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Title: Sleeping Fires

Author: Gertrude Atherton

Release Date: November, 2004  [EBook #6884]
[This file was first posted on February 6, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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SLEEPING FIRES

A NOVEL

BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON





SLEEPING FIRES




I


There was no Burlingame in the Sixties, the Western Addition was a
desert of sand dunes and the goats gambolled through the rocky
gulches of Nob Hill. But San Francisco had its Rincon Hill and South
Park, Howard and Fulsom and Harrison Streets, coldly aloof from the
tumultuous hot heart of the City north of Market Street.

In this residence section the sidewalks were also wooden and uneven
and the streets muddy in winter and dusty in summer, but the houses,
some of which had "come round the Horn," were large, simple, and
stately. Those on the three long streets had deep gardens before
them, with willow trees and oaks above the flower beds, quaint ugly
statues, and fountains that were sometimes dry. The narrower houses
of South Park crowded one another about the oval enclosure and their
common garden was the smaller oval of green and roses.

On Rincon Hill the architecture was more varied and the houses that
covered all sides of the hill were surrounded by high-walled gardens
whose heavy bushes of Castilian roses were the only reminder in this
already modern San Francisco of the Spain that had made California a
land of romance for nearly a century; the last resting place on this
planet of the Spirit of Arcadia ere she vanished into space before
the gold-seekers.

On far-flung heights beyond the business section crowded between
Market and Clay Streets were isolated mansions, built by prescient
men whose belief in the rapid growth of the city to the north and
west was justified in due course, but which sheltered at present
amiable and sociable ladies who lamented their separation by vast
spaces from that aristocratic quarter of the south.

But they had their carriages, and on a certain Sunday afternoon
several of these arks drawn by stout horses might have been seen
crawling fearfully down the steep hills or floundering through the
sand until they reached Market Street; when the coachmen cracked
their whips, the horses trotted briskly, and shortly after began to
ascend Rincon Hill.

Mrs. Hunt McLane, the social dictator of her little world, had
recently moved from South Park into a large house on Rincon Hill that
had been built by an eminent citizen who had lost his fortune as
abruptly as he had made it; and this was her housewarming. It was safe
to say that her rooms would be crowded, and not merely because her
Sunday receptions were the most important minor functions in San
Francisco: it was possible that Dr. Talbot and his bride would be
there. And if he were not it might be long before curiosity would be
gratified by even a glance at the stranger; the doctor detested the
theatre and had engaged a suite at the Occidental Hotel with a private
dining-room.

Several weeks before a solemn conclave had been held at Mrs. McLane's
house in South Park. Mrs. Abbott was there and Mrs. Ballinger, both
second only to Mrs. McLane in social leadership; Mrs. Montgomery, Mrs.
Brannan, and other women whose power was rooted in the Fifties; Maria
and Sally Ballinger, Marguerite McLane, and Guadalupe Hathaway, whose
blue large talking Spanish eyes had made her the belle of many
seasons: all met to discuss the disquieting news of the marriage in
Boston of the most popular and fashionable doctor in San Francisco,
Howard Talbot. He had gone East for a vacation, and soon after had
sent them a bald announcement of his marriage to one Madeleine Chilton
of Boston.

Many high hopes had centered in Dr. Talbot. He was only forty,
good-looking, with exuberant spirits, and well on the road to fortune.
He had been surrounded in San Francisco by beautiful and vivacious
girls, but had always proclaimed himself a man's man, avowed he had
seen too much of babies and "blues," and should die an old bachelor.
Besides he loved them all; when he did not damn them roundly, which he
sometimes did to their secret delight.

And now he not only had affronted them by marrying some one he
probably never had seen before, but he had taken a Northern wife; he
had not even had the grace to go to his native South, if he must
marry an outsider; he had gone to Boston--of all places!

San Francisco Society in the Sixties was composed almost entirely of
Southerners. Even before the war it had been difficult for a
Northerner to obtain entrance to that sacrosanct circle; the
exceptions were due to sheer personality. Southerners were
aristocrats. The North was plebeian. That was final. Since the war,
Victorious North continued to admit defeat in California. The South
had its last stronghold in San Francisco, and held it, haughty,
unconquered, inflexible.

That Dr. Talbot, who was on a family footing in every home in San
Francisco, should have placed his friends in such a delicate position
(to say nothing of shattered hopes) was voted an outrage, and at Mrs.
McLane's on that former Sunday afternoon, there had been no pretence
at indifference. The subject was thoroughly discussed. It was
possible that the creature might not even be a lady. Had any one ever
heard of a Boston family named Chilton? No one had. They knew nothing
of Boston and cared less. But the best would be bad enough.

It was more likely however that the doctor had married some obscure
person with nothing in her favor but youth, or a widow of practiced
wiles, or--horrid thought--a divorcee.

He had always been absurdly liberal in spite of his blue Southern
blood; and a man's man wandering alone at the age of forty was almost
foredoomed to disaster. No doubt the poor man had been homesick and
lonesome.

Should they receive her or should they not? If not, would they lose
their doctor. He would never speak to one of them again if they
insulted his wife. But a Bostonian, a possible nobody! And homely, of
course. Angular. Who had ever heard of a pretty woman raised on
beans, codfish, and pie for breakfast?

Finally Mrs. McLane had announced that she should not make up her
mind until the couple arrived and she sat in judgment upon the woman
personally. She would call the day after they docked in San
Francisco. If, by any chance, the woman were presentable, dressed
herself with some regard to the fashion (which was more than Mrs.
Abbott and Guadalupe Hathaway did), and had sufficient tact to avoid
the subject of the war, she would stand sponsor and invite her to the
first reception in the house on Rincon Hill.

"But if not," she said grimly--"well, not even for Howard Talbot's
sake will I receive a woman who is not a lady, or who has been
divorced. In this wild city we are a class apart, above. No loose
fish enters our quiet bay. Only by the most rigid code and
watchfulness have we formed and preserved a society similar to that
we were accustomed to in the old South. If we lowered our barriers we
should be submerged. If Howard Talbot has married a woman we do not
find ourselves able to associate with in this intimate little society
out here on the edge of the world, he will have to go."




II


Mrs. McLane had called on Mrs. Talbot. That was known to all San
Francisco, for her carriage had stood in front of the Occidental
Hotel for an hour. Kind friends had called to offer their services in
setting the new house in order, but were dismissed at the door with
the brief announcement that Mrs. McLane was having the blues. No one
wasted time on a second effort to gossip with their leader; it was
known that just so often Mrs. McLane drew down the blinds, informed
her household that she was not to be disturbed, disposed herself on
the sofa with her back to the room and indulged in the luxury of
blues for three days. She took no nourishment but milk and broth and
spoke to no one. Today this would be a rest cure and was equally
beneficial. When the attack was over Mrs. McLane would arise with a
clear complexion, serene nerves, and renewed strength for social
duties. Her friends knew that her retirement on this occasion was
timed to finish on the morning of her reception and had not the least
misgiving that her doors would still be closed.

The great double parlors of her new mansion were thrown into one and
the simple furniture covered with gray rep was pushed against soft
gray walls hung with several old portraits in oil, ferrotypes and
silhouettes. A magnificent crystal chandelier depended from the high
and lightly frescoed ceiling and there were side brackets beside the
doors and the low mantel piece. Mrs. McLane may not have been able to
achieve beauty with the aid of the San Francisco shops, but at least
she had managed to give her rooms a severe and stately simplicity,
vastly different from the helpless surrenders of her friends to
mid-victorian deformities.

The rooms filled early. Mrs. McLane stood before the north windows
receiving her friends with her usual brilliant smile, her manner of
high dignity and sweet cordiality. She was a majestic figure in spite
of her short stature and increasing curves, for the majesty was
within and her head above a flat back had a lofty poise. She wore her
prematurely white hair in a tall pompadour, and this with the rich
velvets she affected, ample and long, made her look like a French
marquise of the eighteenth century, stepped down from the canvas. The
effect was by no means accidental. Mrs. McLane's grandmother had been
French and she resembled her.

Her hoopskirt was small, but the other women were inclined to the
extreme of the fashion; as they saw it in the Godey's Lady's Book
they or their dressmakers subscribed to. Their handsome gowns spread
widely and the rooms hardly could have seemed to sway and undulate
more if an earthquake had rocked it. The older women wore small
bonnets and cashmere shawls, lace collars and cameos, the younger
fichus and small flat hats above their "waterfalls" or curled
chignons. The husbands had retired with Mr. McLane to the smoking
room, but there were many beaux present, equally expectant when not
too absorbed.

Unlike as a reception of that day was in background and costumes
from the refinements of modern art and taste, it possessed one
contrast that was wholly to its advantage. Its men were gentlemen and
the sons and grandsons of gentlemen. To no one city has there ever
been such an emigration of men of good family as to San Francisco in
the Fifties and Sixties. Ambitious to push ahead in politics or the
professions and appreciating the immediate opportunities of the new
and famous city, or left with an insufficient inheritance
(particularly after the war) and ashamed to work in communities where
no gentleman had ever worked, they had set sail with a few hundreds
to a land where a man, if he did not occupy himself lucratively, was
unfit for the society of enterprising citizens.

Few had come in time for the gold diggings, but all, unless they had
disappeared into the hot insatiable maw of the wicked little city,
had succeeded in one field or another; and these, in their dandified
clothes, made a fine appearance at fashionable gatherings. If they
took up less room than the women they certainly were more decorative.

Dr. Talbot and his wife had not arrived. To all eager questions Mrs.
McLane merely replied that "they" would "be here." She had the
dramatic instinct of the true leader and had commanded the doctor not
to bring his bride before four o'clock. The reception began at three.
They should have an entrance. But Mrs. Abbott, a lady of three chins
and an eagle eye, who had clung for twenty-five years to black satin
and bugles, was too persistent to be denied. She extracted the
information that the Bostonian had sent her own furniture by a
previous steamer and that her drawing room was graceful, French, and
exquisite.

At ten minutes after the hour the buzz and chatter stopped abruptly
and every face was turned, every neck craned toward the door. The
colored butler had announced with a grand flourish:

"Dr. and Mrs. Talbot."

The doctor looked as rubicund, as jovial, as cynical as ever. But
few cast him more than a passing glance. Then they gave an audible
gasp, induced by an ingenuous compound of amazement, disappointment,
and admiration. They had been prepared to forgive, to endure, to make
every allowance. The poor thing could no more help being plain and
dowdy than born in Boston, and as their leader had satisfied herself
that she "would do," they would never let her know how deeply they
deplored her disabilities.

But they found nothing to deplore but the agonizing necessity for
immediate readjustment. Mrs. Talbot was unquestionably a product of
the best society. The South could have done no better. She was tall
and supple and self-possessed. She was exquisitely dressed in dark
blue velvet with a high collar of point lace tapering almost to her
bust, and revealing a long white throat clasped at the base by a
string of pearls. On her head, as proudly poised as Mrs. McLane's,
was a blue velvet hat, higher in the crown than the prevailing
fashion, rolled up on one side and trimmed only with a drooping gray
feather. And her figure, her face, her profile! The young men crowded
forward more swiftly than the still almost paralyzed women. She was
no more than twenty. Her skin was as white as the San Francisco fogs,
her lips were scarlet, her cheeks pink, her hair and eyes a bright
golden brown. Her features were delicate and regular, the mouth not
too small, curved and sensitive; her refinement was almost excessive.
Oh, she was "high-toned," no doubt of that! As she moved forward and
stood in front of Mrs. McLane, or acknowledged introductions to those
that stood near, the women gave another gasp, this time of
consternation. She wore neither hoop-skirt nor crinoline. Could it be
that the most elegant fashion ever invented had been discarded by
Paris? Or was this lovely creature of surpassing elegance, a law unto
herself?

Her skirt was full but straight and did not disguise the lines of
her graceful figure; above her small waist it fitted as closely as a
riding habit. She was even more _becomingly_ dressed than any
woman in the room. Mrs. Abbott, who was given to primitive sounds,
snorted. Maria Ballinger, whose finely developed figure might as well
have been the trunk of a tree, sniffed. Her sister Sally almost
danced with excitement, and even Miss Hathaway straightened her
fichu. Mrs. Ballinger, who had been the belle of Richmond and was
still adjudged the handsomest woman in San Francisco, lifted the
eyebrows to which sonnets had been written with an air of haughty
resignation; but made up her mind to abate her scorn of the North and
order her gowns from New York hereafter.

But the San Franciscans on the whole were an amiable people and they
were sometimes conscious of their isolation; in a few moments they
felt a pleasant titillation of the nerves, as if the great world they
might never see again had sent them one of her most precious gifts.

They all met her in the course of the afternoon. She was sweet and
gracious, but although there was not a hint of embarrassment she made
no attempt to shine, and they liked her the better for that. The
young men soon discovered they could make no impression on this
lovely importation, for her eyes strayed constantly to her husband;
until he disappeared in search of cronies, whiskey, and a cigar: then
she looked depressed for a moment, but gave a still closer attention
to the women about her.

In love with her husband but a woman-of-the-world. Manners as fine
as Mrs. McLane's, but too aloof and sensitive to care for leadership.
She had made the grand tour in Europe, they discovered, and enjoyed a
season in Washington. She should continue to live at the Occidental
Hotel as her husband would be out so much at night and she was rather
timid. And she was bright, unaffected, responsive. Could anything be
more reassuring? There was nothing to be apprehended by the socially
ambitious, the proud housewives, or those prudent dames whose amours
were conducted with such secrecy that they might too easily be
supplanted by a predatory coquette. The girls drew little unconscious
sighs of relief. Sally Ballinger vowed she would become her intimate
friend, Sibyl Geary that she would copy her gowns. Mrs. Abbott
succumbed. In short they all took her to their hearts. She was one of
them from that time forth and the reign of crinoline was over.




III


The Talbots remained to supper and arrived at the Occidental Hotel
at the dissipated hour of half past nine. As they entered their suite
the bride took her sweeping skirts in either hand and executed a pas
seul down the long parlor.

"I was a success!" she cried. "You were proud of me. I could see it.
And even at the table, although I talked nearly all the time to Mr.
McLane, I never mentioned a book."

She danced over and threw her arms about his neck. "Say you were
proud of me. I'd love to hear it."

He gave her a bear-like hug. "Of course. You are the prettiest and
the most animated woman in San Francisco, and that's saying a good
deal. And I've given them all a mighty surprise."

"I believe that is the longest compliment you ever paid me--and
because I made a good impression on some one else. What irony!"

She pouted charmingly, but her eyes were wistful. "Now sit down and
talk to me. I've scarcely seen you since we arrived."

"Oh! Remember you are married to this old ruffian. You'll see enough
of me in the next thirty or forty years. Run to bed and get your
beauty sleep. I promised to go to the Union Club."

"The Club? You went to the Club last night and the night before and
the night before that. Every night since we arrived--"

"I haven't seen half my old cronies yet and they are waiting for a
good old poker game. Sleep is what you want after such an exciting
day. Remember, I doctor the nerves of all the women in San Francisco
and this is a hard climate on nerves. Wonder more women don't go to
the devil."

He kissed her again and escaped hurriedly. Those were the days when
women wept facilely, "swooned," inhaled hartshorn, calmed themselves
with sal volatile, and even went into hysterics upon slight
provocation. Madeleine Talbot merely wept. She believed herself to be
profoundly in love with her jovial magnetic if rather rough husband.
He was so different from the correct reserved men she had been
associated with during her anchored life in Boston. In Washington she
had met only the staid old families, and senators of a benignant
formality. In Europe she had run across no one she knew who might
have introduced her to interesting foreigners, and Mrs. Chilton would
as willingly have caressed a tiger as spoken to a stranger no matter
how prepossessing. Howard Talbot, whom she had met at the house of a
common friend, had taken her by storm. Her family had disapproved,
not only because he was by birth a Southerner, but for the same
reason that had attracted their Madeleine. He was entirely too
different. Moreover, he would take her to a barbarous country where
there was no Society and people dared not venture into the streets
lest they be shot. But she had overruled them and been very happy--at
times. He was charming and adorable and it was manifest that for him
no other woman existed.

But she could not flatter herself that she was indispensable. He
openly preferred the society of men, and during that interminable sea
voyage she had seen little of him save at the table or when he came
to their stateroom late at night. For her mind he appeared to have a
good-natured masculine contempt. He talked to her as he would to a
fascinating little girl. If he cared for mental recreation he found
it in men.

She went into her bedroom and bathed her eyes with eau de cologne.
At least he had given her no cause for jealousy. That was one
compensation. And a wise married friend had told her that the only
way to manage a husband was to give him his head and never to indulge
in the luxury of reproaches. She was sorry she had forgotten herself
tonight.




IV


Dr. Talbot had confided to Mrs. McLane that his wife was inclined to
be a bas bleu and he wanted her broken of an unfeminine love of
books. Mrs. McLane, who knew that a reputation for bookishness would
be fatal in a community that regarded "Lucile" as a great poem and
read little but the few novels that drifted their way (or the
continued stories in Godey's Lady's Book), promised him that
Madeleine's intellectual aspirations should be submerged in the
social gaieties of the season.

She kept her word. Dinners, receptions, luncheons, theatre parties,
in honor of the bride, followed in rapid succession, and when all had
entertained her, the less personal invitations followed as rapidly.
Her popularity was not founded on novelty.

No girl in her first season had ever enjoyed herself more naively
and she brought to every entertainment eager sparkling eyes and
dancing feet that never tired. She became the "reigning toast." At
parties she was surrounded by a bevy of admirers or forced to divide
her dances; for it was soon patent there was no jealousy in Talbot's
composition and that he took an equally naive pride in his wife's
success. When alone with women she was quite as animated and
interested, and, moreover, invited them to copy her gowns. Some had
been made in Paris, others in New York. The local dressmakers felt
the stirrings of ambition, and the shops sent for a more varied
assortment of fabrics.

Madeleine Talbot at this time was very happy, or, at least, too busy
to recall her earlier dreams of happiness. The whole-hearted devotion
to gaiety of this stranded little community, its elegance, despite
its limitations, its unbounded hospitality to all within its guarded
portals, its very absence of intellectual criticism, made the formal
life of her brief past appear dull and drab in the retrospect. The
spirit of Puritanism seemed to have lost heart in those trackless
wastes between the Atlantic and the Pacific and turned back. True,
the moral code was rigid (on the surface); but far from too much
enjoyment of life, of quaffing eagerly at the brimming cup, being
sinful, they would have held it to be a far greater sin not to have
accepted all that the genius of San Francisco so lavishly provided.

Wildness and recklessness were in the air, the night life of San
Francisco was probably the maddest in the world; nor did the gambling
houses close their doors by day, nor the women of Dupont Street cease
from leering through their shuttered windows; a city born in delirium
and nourished on crime, whose very atmosphere was electrified and
whose very foundations were restless, would take a quarter of a
century at least to manufacture a decent thick surface of
conventionality, and its self-conscious respectable wing could no
more escape its spirit than its fogs and winds. But evil excitement
was tempered to irresponsible gaiety, a constant whirl of innocent
pleasures. When the spirit passed the portals untempered, and drove
women too highly-strung, too unhappy, or too easily bored, to the
divorce courts, to drink, or to reckless adventure, they were
summarily dropped. No woman, however guiltless, could divorce her
husband and remain a member of that vigilant court. It was all or
nothing. If a married woman were clever enough to take a lover
undetected and merely furnish interesting surmise, there was no
attempt to ferret out and punish her; for no society can exist
without gossip.

But none centered about Madeleine Talbot. Her little coquetries were
impartial and her devotion to her husband was patent to the most
infatuated eye. Life was made very pleasant for her. Howard, during
that first winter, accompanied her to all the dinners and parties,
and she gave several entertainments in her large suite at the
Occidental Hotel. Sally Ballinger was a lively companion for the
mornings and was as devoted a friend as youth could demand. Mrs.
Abbott petted her, and Mrs. Ballinger forgot that she had been born
in Boston.

When it was discovered that she had a sweet lyric soprano,
charmingly cultivated, her popularity winged another flight; San
Francisco from its earliest days was musical, and she made a
brilliant success as La Belle Helene in the amateur light opera
company organized by Mrs. McLane. It was rarely that she spent an
evening alone, and the cases of books she had brought from Boston
remained in the cellars of the Hotel.




V


Society went to the country to escape the screaming winds and dust
clouds of summer. A few had built country houses, the rest found
abundant amusement at the hotels of The Geysers, Warm Springs and
Congress Springs, taking the waters dutifully.

As the city was constantly swept by epidemics Dr. Talbot rarely left
his post for even a few days' shooting, and Madeleine remained with
him as a matter of course. Moreover, she hoped for occasional long
evenings with her husband and the opportunity to convince him that
her companionship was more satisfying than that of his friends at the
Club. She had not renounced the design of gradually converting him to
her own love of literature, and pictured delightful hours during
which they would discuss the world's masterpieces together.

But he merely hooted amiably and pinched her cheeks when she
approached the subject tentatively. He was infernally over-worked and
unless he had a few hours' relaxation at the Club he would be unfit
for duty on the morrow. She was his heart's delight, the prettiest
wife in San Francisco; he worked the better because she was always
lovely at the breakfast table and he could look forward to a brief
dinner in her always radiant company. Thank God, she never had the
blues nor carried a bottle of smelling salts about with her. And she
hadn't a nerve in her body! God! How he did hate women's nerves. No,
she was a model wife and he adored her unceasingly. But
companionship? When she timidly uttered the word, he first stared
uncomprehendingly, then burst into loud laughter.

"Men don't find companionship in women, my dear. If they pretend to
they're after something else. Take the word of an old stager for
that. Of course there is no such thing as companionship among women
as men understand the term, but you have Society, which is really all
you want. Yearnings are merely a symptom of those accursed nerves.
For God's sake forget them. Flirt all you choose--there are plenty of
men in town; have them in for dinner if you like--but if any of those
young bucks talks companionship to you put up your guard or come and
tell me. I'll settle his hash."

"I don't want the companionship of any other man, but I'd like yours."

"You don't know how lucky you are. You have all of me you could
stand. Three or four long evenings--well, we'd yawn in each other's
faces and go to bed. A bull but true enough."

"Then I think I'll have the books unpacked, not only those I
brought, but the new case papa sent to me. I have lost the resource
of Society for several months, and I do not care to have men here
after you have gone. That would mean gossip."

"You are above gossip and I prefer the men to the books. You'll ruin
your pretty eyes, and you had the makings of a fine bluestocking when
I rescued you. A successful woman--with her husband and with Society--
has only sparkling shallows in her pretty little head. Now, I must
run. I really shouldn't have come all the way up here for lunch."

Madeleine wandered aimlessly to the window and looked down at the
scurrying throngs on Montgomery Street. There were few women. The men
bent against the wind, clutching at their hats, or chasing them along
the uneven wooden sidewalks, tripping perhaps on a loose board. There
were tiny whirlwinds of dust in the unpaved streets. The bustling
little city that Madeleine had thought so picturesque in its novelty
suddenly lost its glamour. It looked as if parts of it had been flung
together in a night between solid blocks imported from the older
communities; so furious was the desire to achieve immediate wealth
there were only three or four buildings of architectural beauty in
the city. The shop windows on Montgomery Street were attractive with
the wares of Paris, but Madeleine coveted nothing in San Francisco.

She thought of Boston, New York, Washington, Europe, and for a
moment nostalgia overwhelmed her. If Howard would only take her home
for a visit! Alas! he was as little likely to do that as to give her
the companionship she craved.

But she had no intention of taking refuge in tears. Nor would she
stay at home and mope. Her friends were out of town. She made up her
mind to go for a walk, although she hardly knew where to go. Between
mud and dust and hills, walking was not popular in San Francisco.
However, there might be some excitement in exploring.

She looped her brown cloth skirt over her balmoral petticoat, tied a
veil round her small hat and set forth. Although the dust was flying
she dared not lower her veil until she reached the environs, knowing
that if she did she would be followed; or if recognized, accused of
the unpardonable sin. The heavy veil in the San Francisco of that
day, save when driving in aggressively respectable company, was
almost an interchangeable term for assignation. It was as
inconvenient for the virtuous as indiscreet for the carnal.

Madeleine reached the streets of straggling homes and those long
impersonal rows depressing in their middle-class respectability, and
lowered the veil over her smarting eyes. She also squared her
shoulders and strode along with an independent swing that must
convince the most investigating mind she was walking for exercise only.

Almost unconsciously she directed her steps toward the Cliff House
Road where she had driven occasionally behind the doctor's spanking
team. It was four o'clock when she entered it and the wind had
fallen. The road was thronged with buggies, tandems, hacks, phaetons,
and four-in-hands. Society might be out of town but the still gayer
world was not. Madeleine, skirting the edge of the road to avoid
disaster stared eagerly behind her veil. Here were the reckless and
brilliant women of the demi-monde of whom she had heard so much, but
to whom she had barely thrown a glance when driving with her husband.
They were painted and dyed and kohled and their plumage would have
excited the envy of birds in Paradise. San Francisco had lured these
ladies "round the Horn" since the early Fifties: a different breed
from the camp followers of the late Forties. Some had fallen from a
high estate, others had been the mistresses of rich men in the East,
or belles in the half world of New York or Paris. Never had they
found life so free or pickings so easy as in San Francisco.

Madeleine knew that many of the eminent citizens she met in Society
kept their mistresses and flaunted them openly. It was, in fact,
almost a convention. She was not surprised to see several men who had
taken her in to dinner tooling these gorgeous cyprians and looking
far prouder than when they played host in the world of fashion. On
one of the gayest of the coaches she saw four of the young men who
were among the most devoted of her cavaliers at dances: Alexander
Groome, Amos Lawton, Ogden Bascom, and "Tom" Abbott, Jr. Groome was
paying his addresses to Maria Ballinger, "a fine figure of a girl"
who had inherited little of her mother's beauty but all of her
virtue, and Madeleine wondered if he would reform and settle down.
Abbott was engaged to Marguerite McLane and looked as if he were
having his last glad fling. Ogden Bascom had proposed to Guadalupe
Hathaway every month for five years. It was safe to say that he would
toe the mark if he won her. But he did not appear to be nursing a
blighted heart at present.

Madeleine's depression left her. _That_, at least, Howard would
never do. She felt full of hope and buoyancy once more, not realizing
that it is easier to win back a lover than change the nature of man.

When Madeleine reached the Cliff House, that shabby innocent-looking
little building whose evil fame had run round the world, she stared
at it fascinated. Its restaurant overhung the sea. On this side the
blinds were down. It looked as if awaiting the undertaker. She
pictured Howard's horror when she told him of her close contact with
vice, and anticipated with a pleasurable thrill the scolding he would
give her. They had never quarrelled and it would be delightful to
make up.

"Not Mrs. Talbot! No! Assuredly not!"

Involuntarily Madeleine raised her veil. She recognized the voice of
"Old" Ben Travers (he was only fifty but bald and yellow), the Union
Club gossip, and the one man in San Francisco she thoroughly
disliked. He stood with his hat in his hand, an expression of
ludicrous astonishment on his face.

"Yes, it is I," said Madeleine coolly. "And I am very much
interested."

"Ah? Interested?" He glanced about. If this were an assignation
either the man was late or had lost courage. But he assumed an
expression of deep respect. "That I can well imagine, cloistered as
you are. But, if you will permit me to say so, it is hardly prudent.
Surely you know that this is a place of ill repute and that your
motives, however innocent, might easily be misconstrued."

"I am alone!" said Madeleine gaily, "and my veil is up! Not a man
has glanced at me, I look so tiresomely respectable in these stout
walking clothes. Even you, dear Mr. Travers, whom we accuse of being
quite a gossip, understand perfectly."

"Oh, yes, indeed. I do understand. And Mrs. Talbot is like Caesar's
wife, but nevertheless--there is a hack. It is waiting, but I think
I can bribe him to take us in. You really must not remain here
another moment--and you surely do not intend to walk back--six miles?"

"No, I'll be glad to drive--but if you will engage the hack--I
shouldn't think of bothering you further."

"I shall take you home," said Travers firmly. "Howard never would
forgive me if I did not--that is--that is--"

Madeleine laughed merrily. "If I intend to tell him! But of course I
shall tell him. Why not?"

"Well, yes, it would be best. I'll speak to the man."

The Jehu was reluctant, but a bill passed and he drove up to
Madeleine. "Guess I can do it," he said, "but I'll have to drive
pretty fast."

Madeleine smiled at him and he touched his hat. She had employed him
more than once. "The faster the better, Thomas," she said. "I walked
out and am tired."

"I saw you come striding down the road, ma'am," he said
deferentially, "and I knew you got off your own beat by mistake. I
think I'd have screwed up my courage and said something if Mr.
Travers hadn't happened along."

Madeleine nodded carelessly and entered the hack, followed by
Travers, in spite of her protests.

"I too walked out here and intended to ask some one to give me a
lift home. I am the unfortunate possessor of a liver, my dear young
lady, and must walk six miles a day, although I loathe walking as I
loathe drinking weak whiskey and water."

Madeleine shrugged her shoulders and attempted to raise one of the
curtains. The interior was as dark as a cave. But Travers exclaimed
in alarm.

"No! No! Not until we get out of this. When we have reached the
city, but not here. In a hack on this road--"

"Oh, very well. Then entertain me, please, as I cannot look out. You
always have something interesting to tell."

"I am flattered to think you find me entertaining. I've sometimes
thought you didn't like me."

"Now you know that is nonsense. I always think myself fortunate if I
sit next you at dinner." Madeleine spoke in her gayest tones, but in
truth she dreaded what the man might make of this innocent escapade
and intended to make a friend of him if possible.

She was growing accustomed to the gloom and saw him smile fatuously.
"That sends me to the seventh heaven. How often since you came have I
wished that my dancing days were not over."

"I'd far rather hear you talk. Tell me some news."

"News? News? San Francisco is as flat at present as spilled
champagne. Let me see? Ah! Did you ever hear of Langdon Masters?"

"No. Who is he?"

"He is Virginian like myself--a distant cousin. He fought through the
war, badly wounded twice, came home to find little left of the old
estate--practically nothing for him. He tried to start a newspaper in
Richmond but couldn't raise the capital. He went to New York and wrote
for the newspapers there; also writes a good deal for the more
intellectual magazines. Thought perhaps you had come across something
of his. There is just a whisper, you know, that you were rather a bas
bleu before you came to us."

"Because I was born and educated in Boston? Poor Boston! I do recall
reading something of Mr. Masters' in the _Atlantic_--I suppose it
was--but I have forgotten what. Here, I have grown too frivolous--and
happy--to care to read at all. But what have you to tell me
particularly about Mr. Masters?"

"I had a letter from him this morning asking me if there was an
opening here. He resents the antagonism in the North that he meets at
every turn, although they are glad enough of his exceptionally
brilliant work. But he knows that San Francisco is the last
stronghold of the South, and also that our people are generous and
enterprising. I shall write him that I can see no opening for another
paper at present, but will let him know if there happens to be one on
an editorial staff. That is a long journey to take on an uncertainty."

"I should think so. Heavens, how this carriage does bounce. The
horses must be galloping."

"Probably." He lifted a corner of the curtain. "We shall reach the
city soon at this rate. Ah!"

Madeleine, in spite of the bouncing vehicle, had managed heretofore
to prop herself firmly in her corner, but a violent lurch suddenly
threw her against Travers. He caught her firmly in one of his lean
wiry arms. At the moment she thought nothing of it, although she
disliked the contact, but when she endeavored to disengage herself,
he merely jerked her more closely to his side and she felt his hot
breath upon her cheek. It was the fevered breath of a man who drinks
much and late and almost nauseated her.

"Come come," whispered Travers. "I know you didn't go out there to
meet any one; it was just a natural impulse for a little adventure,
wasn't it? And I deserve my reward for getting you home safely. Give
me a kiss."

Madeleine wrenched herself free, but he laughed and caught her
again, this time in both arms. "Oh, you can't get away, and I'm going
to have that kiss. Yes, a dozen, by Jove. You're the prettiest thing
in San Francisco, and I'll get ahead of the other men there."

His yellow distorted face--he looked like a satyr--was almost on
hers. She freed herself once more with a dexterous twisting motion of
her supple body, leaped to the front of the carriage and pounded on
the window behind the driver.

"For God's sake! You fool! What are you doing? Do you want a scandal?"

The carriage stopped its erratic course so abruptly that he was
thrown to the floor. Madeleine already had the door open. She had all
the strength of youth and perfect health, and he was worn out and
shaken. He was scrambling to his feet. She put her arms under his
shoulders and threw him out into the road.

"Go on!" she called to the driver. And as he whipped up the horses
again, his Homeric laughter mingling with the curses of the man in
the ditch, she sank back trembling and gasping. It was her first
experience of the vileness of man, for the men of her day respected
the women of their own class unless met half way, or, violently
enamoured, given full opportunity to express their emotions.

Moreover she had made a venomous enemy.

What would Howard say? What would he do to the wretch? Horsewhip
him? Would he stop to think of scandal? The road had been deserted.
She knew that Travers would keep his humiliation to himself and the
incidents that led up to it; but if she told her husband and he lost
his head the story would come out and soon cease to bear any
semblance to the truth. She wished she had some one to advise her.
What _did_ insulted women do?

But she could not think in this horrible carriage. It would be at
least an hour before she saw Howard. She would bathe her face in cold
water and try to think.

The hack stopped again and the coachman left the box.

"It's only a few blocks now, ma'am," he said, as he opened the door.
"I haven't much time--"

Madeleine almost sprang out. She opened her purse. He accepted the
large bill with a grin on his good-natured face.

"That's all right, Mrs. Talbot. I wouldn't have spoke of it nohow.
The Doctor and me's old friends. But I'm just glad old Ben got what
he deserved. The impudence of him! You--well!--Good day, ma'am."

He paused as he was climbing back to the box.

"If you don't mind my giving ye a bit of advice, Mrs. Talbot--I've
seen a good bit of the world, I have--this is a hot city, all right--
I just wouldn't say anything to the doctor. Trouble makes trouble.
Better let it stop right here."

"Thanks, Thomas. Good-by."

And Madeleine strode down the street as if the furies pursued her.




VI


Madeleine was spared the ordeal of confession; it was six weeks
before she saw her husband again. He telegraphed at six o'clock that
he had a small-pox patient and could not subject her to the risk of
contagion. The disease most dreaded in San Francisco had arrived some
time before and the pest house outside the city limits was already
crowded. The next day yellow flags appeared before several houses.
Before a week passed they had multiplied all over the city. People
went about with visible camphor bags suspended from their necks, and
Madeleine heard the galloping death wagon at all hours of the night.
Howard telegraphed frequently and sent a doctor to revaccinate her,
as the virus he had administered himself had not taken. She was not
to worry about him as he vaccinated himself every day. Finally he
commanded her to leave town, and she made a round of visits.

She spent a fortnight at Rincona, Mrs. Abbott's place at Alta, in
the San Mateo valley, and another with the Hathaways near by. Then,
after a fortnight at the different "Springs" she settled down for the
rest of the summer on the Ballinger ranch in the Santa Clara valley.
All her hostesses had house parties, there were picnics by day and
dancing or hay-rides at night. For the first time she saw the
beautiful California country; the redwood forests on the mountains,
the bare brown and golden hills, the great valleys with their forests
of oaks and madronas cleared here and there for orchard and vineyard;
knowing that Howard was safe she gave herself to pleasure once more.
After all there was a certain satisfaction in the assurance that her
husband could not be with her if he would. She was not deliberately
neglected and it was positive that he never entered the Club. She
told no one but Sally Ballinger of her adventure, and although
Travers was a favorite of her mother, this devoted friend adroitly
managed that the gentleman to whom she applied many excoriating
adjectives should not be invited that summer to "the ranch."




VII


Langdon Masters arrived in San Francisco during Madeleine's third
winter. He did not come unheralded, for Travers bragged about him
constantly and asserted that San Francisco could thank him for an
editorial writer second to none in the United States of America. As a
matter of fact it was on Masters' achievement alone that the editor of
the _Alta California_ had invited him to become a member of his staff.

Masters was also a cousin of Alexander Groome, and arrived in San
Francisco as a guest at the house on Ballinger Hill, a lonely outpost
in the wastes of rock and sand in the west.

There was no excitement in the female breast over his arrival for
young men were abundant; but Society was prepared to welcome him not
only on account of his distinguished connections but because his
deliberate choice of San Francisco for his future career was a
compliment they were quick to appreciate.

He came gaily to his fate filled with high hopes of owning his own
newspaper before long and ranking as the leading journalist in the
great little city made famous by gold and Bret Harte. He was one of
many in New York; he knew that with his brilliant gifts and the
immediate prominence his new position would give him the future was
his to mould. No man, then or since, has brought so rare an
assortment of talents to the erratic journalism of San Francisco; not
even James King of William, the murdered editor of the _Evening
Bulletin_. Perhaps he too would have been murdered had he remained
long enough to own and edit the newspaper of his dreams, for he had a
merciless irony, a fearless spirit, and an utter contempt for the
prejudices of small men. But for a time at least it looked as if the
history of journalism in San Francisco was to be one of California's
proudest boasts.

Masters was a practical visionary, a dreamer whose dreams never
confused his metallic intellect, a stylist who fascinated even the
poor mind forced to express itself in colloquialisms, a man of
immense erudition for his years (he was only thirty); and he was
insatiably interested in the affairs of the world and in every phase
of life. He was a poet by nature, and a journalist by profession
because he believed the press was destined to become the greatest
power in the country, and he craved not only power but the utmost
opportunity for self-expression.

His character possessed as many antitheses. He was a natural lover
of women and avoided them not only because he feared entanglements
and enervations but because he had little respect for their brains.
He was, by his Virginian inheritance, if for no simpler reason, a bon
vivant, but the preoccupations and ordinary conversational subjects
of men irritated him, and he cultivated their society and that of
women only in so far as they were essential to his deeper
understanding of life. His code was noblesse oblige and he privately
damned it as a superstition foisted upon him by his ancestors. He was
sentimental and ironic, passionate and indifferent, frank and subtle,
proud and democratic, with a warm capacity for friendship and none
whatever for intimacy, a hard worker with a strong taste for loafing--
in the open country, book in hand. He prided himself upon his iron
will and turned uneasily from the weeds growing among the fine
flowers of his nature.

Such was Langdon Masters when he came to San Francisco and Madeleine
Talbot.




VIII


He soon tired of plunging through the sand hills between the city
and Ballinger Hill either on horseback or in a hack whose driver, if
the hour were late, was commonly drunk; and took a suite of rooms in
the Occidental Hotel. He had brought his library with him and one
side of his parlor was immediately furnished with books to the
ceiling. It was some time before Society saw anything of him. He had
a quick reputation to make, many articles promised to Eastern
periodicals and newspapers, no mind for distractions.

But his brilliant and daring editorials, not only on the pestiferous
politics of San Francisco, but upon national topics, soon attracted
the attention of the men; who, moreover, were fascinated by his
conversation during his occasional visits to the Union Club. Several
times he was cornered, royally treated to the best the cellar
afforded, and upon one occasion talked for two hours, prodded merely
with a question when he showed a tendency to drop into revery. But as
a matter of fact he liked to talk, knowing that he could outshine
other intelligent men, and a responsive palate put him in good humor
with all men and inspired him with unwonted desire to please.

Husbands spoke of him enthusiastically at home and wives determined to
know him. They besieged Alexina Ballinger. Why had she not done her
duty? Langdon Masters had lived in her house for weeks. Mrs. Ballinger
replied that she had barely seen the man. He rarely honored them at
dinner, sat up until four in the morning with her son-in-law (if she
were not mistaken he and Alexander Groome were two of a feather),
breakfasted at all hours, and then went directly to the city. What
possible use could such a man be to Society? He had barely looked at
Sally, much less the uxoriously married Maria, and might have been
merely an inconsiderate boarder who had given nothing but unimpaired
Virginian manners in return for so much upsetting of a household. No
doubt the servants would have rebelled had he not tipped them
immoderately. "Moreover," she concluded, "he is quite unlike our men,
if he _is_ a Southerner. And not handsome at all. His hair is black
but he wears it too short, and he had no mustache, nor even
sideboards. His face has deep lines and his eyes are like steel. He
rarely smiles and I don't believe he ever laughed in his life."

Society, however, had made up its mind, and as the women had no
particular desire to make that terrible journey to Alexina
Ballinger's any oftener than was necessary, it was determined (in
conclave) that Mrs. Hunt McLane should have the honor of capturing
and introducing this difficult and desirable person.

Mr. McLane, who had met him at the Club, called on him formally and
invited him to dinner. Hunt McLane was the greatest lawyer and one of
the greatest gentlemen in San Francisco. Masters was too much a man
of the world not to appreciate the compliment; moreover, he had now
been in San Francisco for two months and his social instincts were
stirring. He accepted the invitation and many others.

People dined early in those simple days and the hours he spent in
the most natural and agreeable society he had ever entered did not
interfere with his work. Sometimes he talked, at others merely
listened with a pleasant sense of relaxation to the chatter of pretty
women; with whom he was quite willing to flirt as long as there was
no hint of the heavy vail. He thought it quite possible he should
fall in love with and marry one of these vivacious pretty girls; when
his future was assured in the city of his enthusiastic adoption.

He met Madeleine at all these gatherings, but it so happened that he
never sat beside her and he had no taste for kettledrums or balls. He
thought her very lovely to look at and wondered why so young and
handsome a woman with a notoriously faithful husband should have so
sad an expression. Possibly because it rather became her style of
beauty.

He saw a good deal of Dr. Talbot at the Club however and asked them
both to one of the little dinners in his rooms with which he paid his
social debts. These dinners were very popular, for he was a
connoisseur in wines, the dinner was sent from a French restaurant,
and he was never more entertaining than at his own table. His guests
were as carefully assorted as his wines, and if he did not know
intuitively whose minds and tastes were most in harmony, or what lady
did not happen to be speaking to another at the moment, he had always
the delicate hints of Mrs. McLane to guide him. She was his social
sponsor and vastly proud of him.




IX


Madeline went impassively to the dinner. His brilliancy had
impressed her but she was indifferent to everything these days and
her intellect was torpid; although when in society and under the
influence of the lights and wine she could be almost as animated as
ever. But the novelty of that society had worn thin long since; she
continued to go out partly as a matter of routine, more perhaps
because she had no other resource. She saw less of her husband than
ever, for his practice as well as his masculine acquaintance grew
with the city--and that was swarming over the hills of the north and
out toward the sand dunes of the west. But she was resigned, and
inappetent. She had even ceased to wish for children. The future
stretched before her interminable and dull. A railroad had been built
across the continent and she had asked permission recently of her
husband to visit her parents: her mother was now an invalid and Mr.
Chilton would not leave her.

But the doctor was more nearly angry than she had ever seen him. He
couldn't live without her. He must always know she was "there."
Moreover, she was run down, she was thin and pale, he must keep her
under his eye. But if he was worried about her health he was still
more worried at her apparent desire to leave him for months. Did she
no longer love him? Her response was not emphatic and he went out and
bought her a diamond bracelet. At least she was thankful that it had
been bought for her and not sent to his wife by mistake, an
experience that had happened the other day to Maria Groome. The town
had rocked with laughter and Groome had made a hurried trip East on
business. But Madeleine no longer found consolation in the reflection
that things might be worse. The sensation of jealousy would have been
a welcome relief from this spiritual and mental inertia.

She wore a dress of bright golden-green grosgrain silk trimmed with
crepe leaves a shade deeper. The pointed bodice displayed her
shoulders in a fashion still beloved of royal ladies, and her soft
golden-brown hair was dressed in a high chignon with a long curl
descending over the left side of her bust. A few still clung to the
low chignon, others had adopted a fashion set by the Empress Eugenie
and wore their hair in a mass of curls on the nape of the neck; but
Madeleine received the latest advices from a sister-in-law who lived
in New York; and as femininity dies hard she still felt a mild
pleasure in introducing the latest cry in fashion. As she was the
last to arrive she would have been less than woman if she had not
felt a glow at the sensation she made. The color came back to her
cheeks as the women surrounded her with ecstatic compliments and
peered at the coiffure from all sides. The diamond bracelet was
barely noticed.

"I adopt it tomorrow," said Mrs. McLane emphatically. "With my white
hair I shall look more like an old marquise than ever."

One of the other women ran into Masters' bedroom where they had left
their wraps and emerged in a few moments with a lifted chignon and a
straggling curl. Amid exclamations and laughter two more followed
suit, while the host and the other men waited patiently for their
dinner. It was a lively party that finally sat down, and it was the
gayest if the most momentous of Masters' little functions.

His eyes strayed toward Madeleine more than once, for her success
had excited her and she had never looked lovelier. She was at the
other end of the table and Mrs. McLane and Mrs. Ballinger sat beside
him. She interested him for the first time and he adroitly drew her
history from his mentor (not that he deluded that astute lady for an
instant, but she dearly loved to gossip).

"She is going through one of those crises that all young wives must
expect," she concluded. "If it isn't one thing it's another. She is
still very young, and inclined to be romantic. She expected too much--
of a husband, mon dieu! Of course she is lonely or thinks she is. Too
bad youth never can realize that it is enough to be young. And with
beauty, and means, and position, and charming frocks! She will grow
philosophical--when it is too late. Meanwhile a little flirtation
would not hurt her and Howard Talbot does not know the meaning of the
word jealousy. Why don't you take her in hand?"

"Not my line. But it seems odd that Talbot should neglect her. She
looks intelligent and she is certainly beautiful."

"Oh, Howard! He is the best of men but the worst of husbands."

Her attention was claimed by the man on her right and at the same
moment Madeleine's had evidently been drawn to the wall of books
behind her. She turned, craned her neck, forgetting her partner.

Then, Masters saw a strange thing. Her eyes filled with tears and
she continued to stare at the books in complete absorption until her
attention was laughingly recalled.

"Now, that is odd," thought Masters. "Very odd."

She felt his keen gaze and laughed with a curious eagerness as she
met his eyes. He guessed that for the first time he had interested her.




X


After dinner the men went into his den to smoke, but before his
cigar was half finished he muttered something about his duty to the
ladies and returned to the parlor. As he had half expected, Madeleine
was standing before the books scanning their titles, and as he
approached she drew her hand caressingly across a shelf devoted to
the poets. The other women were gossiping at the end of the long room.

"You are fond of books!" he said abruptly.

She had not noticed his reappearance. She was startled and exclaimed
passionately, "I loved them--once! But it is a long time since I have
read anything but an occasional novel."

"But why? Why?"

He had powerful gray eyes and they magnetized the truth out of her.

"My husband thinks it is a woman's sole duty to look charming. He
was afraid I would become a bluestocking and lose my charm and spoil
my looks. I brought many books with me, but I never opened the cases
and finally gave them to the Mercantile Library. I have never gone to
look at them."

"Good heaven!" He had never felt sorrier for a woman who had asked
alms of him in the street.

She was looking at him eagerly. "Perhaps--you won't mind--you will
lend me--I don't think my husband would notice now--he is never at
home except for breakfast and dinner--"

"Will I? For heaven's sake look upon them as your own. What will you
take with you to-night?"

"Oh! Nothing! Perhaps you will send me one tomorrow?"

"One? I'll send a dozen. Let us select them now."

But at this moment the other men entered and she whispered
hurriedly, "Will you select and send them? Any--any--I don't care
what."

The doctor came toward them full of good wine and laughter. The
books meant nothing to him. He had forgotten his wife's inexplicable
taste for serious literature. He now found her quite perfect but was
worried about her health. The tonics and horseback riding he had
prescribed seemed to have little effect.

"I am going to take you away and send you to bed," he said jovially.
"No sitting up after nine o'clock until you are yourself again, and
not another ball this winter. A wife is a great responsibility,
Masters. Any other woman is easier to prescribe for, but the wife of
your bosom knows you so well she can fool you, as no woman who
expects a bill twice a year would dare to do. Still, she's pretty
good, pretty good. She's never had an attack of nerves, nor fainted
yet. And as for 'blues' she doesn't know the meaning of the word.
Come along, sweetheart."

Madeleine smiled half cynically, half wistfully, shook hands with
her host and made him a pretty little speech, nodded to the others
and went obediently to bed. The doctor, whose manners were courtly,
escorted her to the door of their parlor and returned to Masters'
rooms. The other women left immediately afterward, and as it was
Saturday night, he and his host and Mr. McLane talked until nearly
morning.




XI


By the first of June Fashion had deserted the city with its winds
and fogs and dust, and Madeleine was one of the few that remained.
Her husband had intended to send her to Congress Springs in the
mountains of the Santa Clara Valley, but she seemed to be so much
better that he willingly let her stay on, congratulating himself on
the results of his treatment. She was no longer listless and was
always singing at the piano when he rushed in for his dinner.

If he had been told that the cure was effected by books he would
have been profoundly skeptical, and perhaps wisely so. But although
Madeleine felt an almost passionate gratitude for Masters, she gave
him little thought except when a new package of books arrived, or
when she discussed them briefly with him in Society. He had never
called.

But her mind flowered like a bit of tropical country long neglected
by rain. She had thought that the very seeds of her mental desires
were dead, but they sprouted during a long uninterrupted afternoon
and grew so rapidly they intoxicated her. Masters had sent her in
that first offering poets who had not become fashionable in Boston
when she left it: Browning, Matthew Arnold and Swinburne; besides the
Byron and Shelley and Keats of her girlhood. He sent her Letters and
Essays and Memoirs and Biographies that she had never read and those
that she had and was glad to read again. He sent her books on art and
she re-lived her days in the galleries of Europe, understanding for
the first time what she had instinctively admired.

It was not only the sense of mental growth and expansion that
exhilarated her, after her long drought, but the translation to a new
world. She lived in the past in these lives of dead men; and as she
read the biographies of great painters and musicians she shared their
disappointments and forgot her own. Her emotional nature was in
constant vibration, and this phenomenon was the more dangerous, as
she would have argued--had she thought about it at all--that having
been diverted to the intellect it must necessarily remain there.

If she had belonged to a later generation no doubt she would have
taken to the pen herself, and artistic expression would--possibly--
have absorbed and safe-guarded her during the remainder of her
genetic years; but such a thing never occurred to her. She was too
modest in the face of master work, and only queer freakish women
wrote, anyhow, not ladies of her social status.

Although her thoughts rarely strayed to Masters, he hovered a sort
of beneficent god in the background of her consciousness, the author
of her new freedom and content; but it was only after an unusually
long talk with him at a large dinner given to a party of
distinguished visitors from Europe, shortly before Society left town,
that she found herself longing to discuss with him books that a week
before would have been sufficient in themselves.

The opportunity did not arise however until she had been for more
than a fortnight "alone" in San Francisco. She was returning from her
daily brisk walk when she met him at the door of the hotel. They
naturally entered and walked up the stairs together. She had
immediately begun to ply him with questions, and as she unlocked the
door of her parlor she invited him to enter.

He hesitated a moment. Nothing was farther from his intention than
to permit his interest in this charming lonely woman to deepen;
entanglements had proved fatal before to ambitious men; moreover he
was almost an intimate friend of her husband. But he had no
reasonable excuse, he had manifestly been sauntering when they met,
and he had all the fine courtesy of the South. He followed her into
the hotel parlor she had made unlike any other room in San Francisco,
with the delicate French furniture and hangings her mother had bought
in Paris and given her as a wedding present. A log fire was blazing.
She waved her hand toward an easy chair beside the hearth, threw
aside her hat and lifted her shining crushed hair with both hands,
then ran over to a panelled chest which the doctor had conceded to be
handsome, but quite useless as it was not even lined with cedar.

"I keep them in here," she exclaimed as gleefully as a naughty
child; and he had the uneasy sense of sharing a secret with her that
isolated them on a little oasis of their own in this lawless waste of
San Francisco.

She had opened the chest and was rummaging.

"What shall it be first? How I have longed to talk with you about a
dozen. On the whole I think I'd rather you'd read a poem to me. Do
you mind? I know you are not lazy--oh, no!--and I am sure you read
delightfully."

"I don't mind in the least," he said gallantly. (At all events he
was in for it.) "And I rather like the sound of my own voice. What
shall it be?"

And, alas, she chose "The Statue and the Bust."




XII


He was disconcerted, but his sense of humor come to his rescue, and
although he read that passionate poem with its ominous warning to
hesitant lovers, with the proper emphasis and as much feeling as he
dared, he managed to make it a wholly impersonal performance. When
he finished he dropped the book and glanced over at his companion.
She was sitting forward with a rapt expression, her cheeks flushed,
her breath coming unevenly. But there was neither challenge nor
self-consciousness in her eyes. The sparkle had left them, but it
was their innocence, not their melting, that stirred him profoundly.
With her palimpsest mind she was a poet for the moment, not a woman.

Her manners never left her and she paid him a conventional little
compliment on his reading, then asked him if he believed that people
who could love like that had ever lived, or if such dramas were the
peculiar prerogative of the divinely gifted imagination.

He replied drily that a good many people in their own time loved
recklessly and even more disastrously, and then asked her
irresistibly (for he was a man if a wary one) if she had never loved
herself.

"Oh, of course," she replied simply. "I love my husband. But
domestic love--how different!"

"But have you never--domestic love does not always--well--"

She shrugged her shoulders and replied with the same disconcerting
simplicity, "Oh, when you are married you are married. And now that
your books have made me so happy I never find fault with Howard any
more. I know that he cannot be changed and he loves me devotedly in
his fashion. Mrs. McLane is always preaching philosophy and your
books have shown me the way."

"And do you imagine that books will always fill your life? After the
novelty has worn off?"

"Oh, that could never be! Even if you went away and took your books
with you I should get others. I am quite emancipated now."

"This is the first time I ever heard a young and beautiful woman
declare that books were an adequate substitute for life. And one sort
of emancipation is very likely to lead to another."

She drew herself up and all her Puritan forefathers looked from her
candid eyes. "If you mean that I would do the things that a few of
our women do--not many (she was one of the loyal guardians of her
anxious little circle)--if you think--but of course you do not. That
is so completely out of the question that I have never given it
consideration. If my husband should die--and I should feel terribly
if he did--but if he should, while I was still young, I might, of
course, love another man whose tastes were exactly like my own. But
I'd never betray Howard--nor myself--even in thought."

The words and all they implied might have been an irresistible
challenge to another man. But to Masters, whose career was inexorably
mapped out,--he was determined that his own fame and that of
California should be synchronous--and who fled at the first hint of
seduction in a woman's eyes, they came as a pleasurable reassurance.
After all, mental companionship with a woman was unique, and it was
quite in keeping that he should find it in this unique city of his
adoption. Moreover, it would be a very welcome recreation in his
energetic life. If propinquity began to sprout its deadly fruit he
fancied that she would close the episode abruptly. He was positive
that he should, if for no other reason than because her husband was
his friend. He might elope with the wife of a friend if he lost his
head, but he would never dishonor himself in the secret intrigue. And
he had not the least intention of leaving San Francisco. For the time
being they were safe. It was like picking wild flowers in the field
after a day's hot work.

"Now," she said serenely, "read me 'Pippa Passes.'"




XIII


Nevertheless, he stayed away from her for a week. At the end of that
time he received a peremptory little note bidding him call and
expound Newman's "Apologia" to her. She could not understand it and
she must.

He smiled at the pretty imperiousness of the note so like herself;
for her circle had spoiled her, and whatever her husband's
idiosyncrasies she was certainly his petted darling.

He went, of course. And before long he was spending every afternoon
in the charming room so like a French salon of the Eighteenth Century
that the raucous sounds of San Francisco beyond the closed and
curtained windows beat upon it faintly like the distant traffic of a
great city.

Masters had asked himself humorously, Why not? and succumbed. There
was no other place to go except the Club, and Mrs. Talbot was an
infinitely more interesting companion than men who discussed little
besides their business, professional, or demi-monde engrossments. It
was a complete relaxation from his own driving work. He was writing
the entire editorial page of his newspaper, the demand for his
articles from Eastern magazines and weekly journals was incessant;
which not only contributed to his pride and income, but to the glory
of California. He was making her known for something besides gold,
gamblers, and Sierra pines.

But above all he was instructing and expanding a feminine but really
fine mind. She sat at his feet and there was no doubt in that mind,
both naive and gifted, that his was the most remarkable intellect in
the world and that from no book ever written could she learn as much.
He would have been more than mortal had he renounced his pedestal and
he was far too humane for the cruelty of depriving her of the
stimulating happiness he had brought into her lonely life. There was
no one, man or woman, to take his place.

Nor was there any one to criticize. The world was out of town. They
lived in the same hotel, and he rarely met any one in their common
corridor. At first she mentioned his visits casually to her husband,
and Howard grunted approvingly. Several times he took Masters snipe
shooting in the marshes near Ravenswood, but he accepted his friend's
attitude to his wife too much as a matter of course even to mention
it. To him, a far better judge of men than of women, Langdon Masters
was ambition epitomized, and if he wondered why such a man wasted
time in any woman's salon, he concluded it was because, like men of
any calling but his own (who saw far too much of women and their
infernal ailments) he enjoyed a chat now and then with as charming a
woman of the world as Madeleine. If anyone had suggested that Langdon
Masters enjoyed Madeleine's intellect he would have told it about
town as the joke of the season.

Madeleine indulged in no introspection. She had suffered too much in
the past not to quaff eagerly of the goblet when it was full and ask
for nothing more. If she paused to realize how dependent she had
become on the constant society of Langdon Masters and that literature
was now no more than the background of life, she would have shrugged
her shoulders gaily and admitted that she was having a mental
flirtation, and that, at least, was as original as became them both.
They were safe. The code protected them. He was her husband's friend
and they were married. What was, was.

But in truth she never went so far as to admit that Masters and the
books she loved were not one and inseparable. She could not imagine
herself talking with him for long on any other subject, save,
perhaps, the politics of the nation--which, in truth, rather bored
her. As for small talk she would as readily have thought of
inflicting the Almighty in her prayers.

Nor was it often they drifted into personalities or the human
problems. One day, however, he did ask her tentatively if she did not
think that divorce was justifiable in certain circumstances.

She merely stared at him in horror.

"Well, there is your erstwhile friend, Sibyl Geary. She fell in love
with another man, her husband was a sot, she got her divorce without
legal opposition, and married Forbes--finest kind of fellow."

"Divorce is against the canons of Church and Society. No woman
should break her solemn vows, no matter what her provocation. Look at
Maria Groome. Do you think she would divorce Alexander? She has
provocation enough."

"You are both High Church, but all women are not. Mrs. Geary is a
mere Presbyterian. And at least she is as happy as she was wretched
before."

"No woman can be happy who has lost the respect of Society."

"I thought you were bored with Society."

"Yes, but it is mine to have. Being bored is quite different from
being cast out like a pariah."

"Oh! And you think love a poor substitute?"

"Love, of course, is the most wonderful thing in the world. (She
might be talking of maternal or filial love, thought Masters.) But it
must have the sanction of one's principles, one's creed and one's
traditions. Otherwise, it weighs nothing in the balance."

"You are a delectable little Puritan," said Masters with a laugh
that was not wholly mirthful. "I shall now read you Tennyson's
'Maud,' as you approve of sentiment, at least. Tennyson will never
cause the downfall of any woman, but if you ever see lightning on the
horizon don't read 'The Statue and the Bust' with the battery therof."




XIV


When people returned to town they were astonished at the change in
Madeleine Talbot, especially after a summer in the city that would
have "torn their own nerves out by the roots." More than one had
wondered anxiously if she were going into the decline so common in
those days. They had known the cause of the broken spring, but none
save the incurably sanguine opined that Howard Talbot had mended it.
But mended it was and her eyes had never sparkled so gaily, nor her
laugh rung so lightly since her first winter among them. Mrs. McLane
suggested charitably that her tedium vitae had run its course and she
was become a philosopher.

But Madeleine _reviva_ did not suggest the philosopher to the
most charitable eye (not even to Mrs. McLane's), particularly as
there was a "something" about her--was it repressed excitement?--
which had been quite absent from her old self, however vivacious.

It was Mrs. Abbott, a lady of unquenchable virtue, whose tongue was
more feared than that of any woman in San Francisco, who first
verbalized what every friend of Madeleine's secretly wondered: Was
there a man in the case? Many loyally cried, Impossible. Madeleine was
above suspicion. Above suspicion, yes. No one would accuse her of a
liaison. But who was she or any other neglected young wife to be above
falling in love if some fascinating creature laid siege? Love dammed
up was apt to spring a leak in time, even if it did not overflow,
and--well, it was known that water sought its level, even if it could
not run uphill. Mrs. Abbott had lived for twenty years in San
Francisco, and in New Orleans for thirty years before that, and she
had seen a good many women in love in her time. This climate made a
plaything of virtue. "Virtue--you said?--Precisely. She's _not there_
or we'd see the signs of moral struggle, horror, in fact; for she's
not one to succumb easily. But mark my words, _she's on the way_."

That point settled, and it was vastly interesting to believe it
(Madeleine Talbot, of all people!), who was the man? Duty to mundane
affairs had kept many of the liveliest blades and prowling husbands
in town all summer; but Madeleine had known them all for three years
or more. Besides, So and So was engaged to So and So, and So and So
quite reprehensibly interested in Mrs. So and So.

The young gentlemen were discreetly sounded, but their lack of
anything deeper than friendly interest in the "loveliest of her sex"
was manifest. Husbands were ordered to retail the gossip of the Club,
but exploded with fury when tactful pumping forced up the name of
Madeleine Talbot. They were harridans, harpies, old-wives, infernal
scandalmongers. If there was one completely blameless woman in San
Francisco it was Howard Talbot's wife.

No one thought of Langdon Masters.

He appeared more rarely at dinners, and had never ventured in public
with Madeleine even during the summer. When his acute news sense
divined they were gossiping and speculating about her he took alarm
and considered the wisdom of discontinuing his afternoon visits. But
they had become as much a part of his life as his daily bread.
Moreover, he could not withdraw without giving the reason, and it was
a more intimate subject than he cared to discuss with her. Whether he
was in love with her or not was a question he deliberately refused to
face. If the present were destroyed there was no future to take its
place, and he purposed to live in his Fool's Paradise as long as he
could. It was an excellent substitute for tragedy.

But Society soon began to notice that she no longer honored
kettledrums or the more formal afternoon receptions with her
presence, and her calls were few and late. When attentive friends
called on her she was "out." The clerk at the desk had been asked to
protect her, as she "must rest in the afternoon." He suspected
nothing and her word was his law.

When quizzed, Madeleine replied laughingly that she could keep her
restored health only by curtailing her social activities; but she
blushed, for lying came hardly. As calling was a serious business in
San Francisco, she compromised by the ancient clearing-house device
of an occasional large "At Home," besides her usual dinners and
luncheons. When Masters was a dinner guest he paid her only the
polite attentions due a hostess and flirted elaborately with the
prettiest of the women. Madeleine, who was unconscious of the gossip,
was sometimes a little hurt, and when he avoided her at other
functions and was far too attentive to Sally Ballinger, or Annette
McLane, a beautiful girl just out, she had an odd palpitation and
wondered what ailed her. Jealous? Well, perhaps. Friends of the same
sex were often jealous. Had not Sally been jealous at one time of
poor Sibyl Geary? And Masters was the most complete friend a woman
ever had. She thought sadly that perhaps he had enough of her in the
afternoon and welcomed a change. Well, that was natural enough. She
found herself enjoying the society of other bright men at dinners,
now that life was fair again.

Nevertheless, she experienced a sensation of fright now and again,
and not because she feared to lose him.




XV


There is nothing so carking as the pangs of unsatisfied curiosity.
They may not cause the acute distress of love and hate, but no tooth
ever ached more incessantly nor more insistently demanded relief.
That doughty warrior, Mrs. Abbott, in her own homely language
determined to take the bull by the horns. She sailed into the
Occidental Hotel one afternoon and up the stairs without pausing at
the desk. The clerk gave her a cursory glance. Mrs. Abbott went where
she listed, and, moreover, was obviously expected.

When she reached the Talbot parlor she halted a moment, and then
knocked loudly. Madeleine, who often received parcels, innocently
invited entrance. Mrs. Abbott promptly accepted the invitation and
walked in upon Masters and his hostess seated before the fire. The
former had a book in his hand, and, judging from the murmur that had
penetrated her applied ear before announcing herself, had been
reading aloud. ("As cozy as two bugs in a rug," she told her friends
afterward.)

"Oh, Mrs. Abbott! How kind of you!" Madeleine was annoyed to find
herself blushing, but she kept her head and entered into no
explanation. Masters, with his most politely aloof air, handed the
smiling guest to the sofa, and as she immediately announced that the
room was too warm for her, Madeleine removed her dolman. Mrs. Abbott
as ever was clad in righteous black satin trimmed with bugles and
fringe, and a small flat bonnet whose strings indifferently supported
her chins. She fixed her sharp small eyes immediately on Madeleine's
beautiful house gown of nile green camel's hair, made with her usual
sweeping lines and without trimming of any sort.

"Charming--charming--and so becoming with that lovely color you
have. New York, I suppose--"

"Oh, no, a seamstress made it. You must let me get you cake and a
glass of wine." The unwilling hostess crossed over to the hospitable
cupboard and Mrs. Abbott amiably accepted a glass of port, the while
her eyes could hardly tear themselves from the books on the table by
the fire. There were at least a dozen of them and her astute old mind
leapt straight at the truth.

"I thought you had given all your books to the Mercantile Library,"
she remarked wonderingly. "We all thought it so hard on you, but
Howard is set in his ways, poor old thing. He was much too old for
you anyhow. I always said so. But I see he has relented. Have you
been patronizing C. Beach? Nice little book store. I go there myself
at Christmas time--get a set in nice bindings for one of the children
every year."

"Oh, these are borrowed," said Madeleine lightly. "Mr. Masters has
been kind enough to lend them to me."

"Oh--h--h, naughty puss! What would Howard say if he found you out?"

Masters, who stood on the hearth rug, looked down at her with an
expression, which, she afterward confessed, sent shivers up her
spine. "Talbot is a great friend of mine," he said with deliberate
emphasis, "and not likely to object to his wife's sharing my library."

"Don't be too sure. The whole town knows that Howard detests
bluestockings and would rather his wife had a good honest flirtation
than stuffed her brains.... Pretty little head." She tweaked
Madeleine's scarlet ear. "Mustn't put too much in it."

"I'm afraid it doesn't hold much," said Madeleine smiling; and
fancied she heard a bell in her depths toll: "It's going to end! It's
going to end!" And for the first time in her life she felt like
fainting.

She went hurriedly over to the cupboard and poured herself out a
glass of port wine. "I had almost forgotten my tonic," she said. "It
has made me quite well again."

"Your improvement is nothing short of miraculous," said the old lady
drily. "It is the talk of the town. But you are ungrateful if you
don't give all those interesting books some of the credit. I hope
Howard is properly grateful to Mr. Masters.... By the way, my young
friend, the men complain that you are never seen at the Club during
the afternoon any more. That is ungrateful, if you like!--for they
all think you are the brightest man out here, and would rather hear
you talk than eat--or drink, which is more to the point. Now, I must
go, dear. I won't intrude any longer. It has been delightful, meeting
two such clever people at once. You are coming to my 'At Home'
tomorrow. I won't take no for an answer."

There was a warning note in her voice. Her pointed remarks had not
been inspired by sheer felinity. It was her purpose to let Madeleine
know that she was in danger of scandal or worse, and that the sooner
she scrambled back to terra firma the better. Of course she could not
refrain from an immediate round of calls upon impatient friends, but
she salved her conscience by asserting roundly (and with entire
honesty) that there was nothing in it as yet. She had seen too much
of the world to be deceived on _that_ point.




XVI


After Masters had assisted Mrs. Abbott's large bulk into her
barouche, resisting the impulse to pitch it in headfirst, he walked
slowly up the stairs. He was seething with fury, and he was also
aghast. The woman had unquestionably precipitated the crisis he had
hoped to avoid. To use her favorite expression, the fat was in the
fire; and she would see to it that it was maintained at sizzling
point. He ground his teeth as he thought of the inferences, the
innuendos, the expectations, the constant linking of his name with
Madeleine's. Madeleine!

It was true, of course, that the gossip might stop short of scandal
if she entered the afternoon treadmill once more and showed herself
so constantly that the most malignant must admit that she had no time
for dalliance; it was well known that he spent the morning and late
afternoon hours at the office.

But that would mean that he must give her up. She was the last woman
to consent to stolen meetings, even were he to suggest them, for the
raison d'etre of their companionship would be gone. And that phase
could end in but one way.

What a dreamer he had been, he, a man of the world, to imagine that
such an idyll could last. Perhaps four perfect months were as much as
a man had any right to ask of life. Nevertheless, he experienced not
the slightest symptom of resignation. He felt reckless enough to
throw his future to the winds, kidnap Madeleine, and take the next
boat to South America. But his unclouded mind drove inexorably to the
end: her conscience and unremitting sense of disgrace would work the
complete unhappiness of both. Divorce was equally out of the question.

As he approached her door he felt a strong inclination to pass it
and defer the inevitable interview until the morrow. He must step
warily with her as with the world, and he needed all his self-control.
If he lost his head and told her that he loved her he would not
save a crumb from his feast. Moreover, there was the possibility
of revealing her to herself if she loved him, and that would mean
utter misery for her.

Did she? He walked hastily past her door. His coolly reasoning brain
felt suddenly full of hot vapors.

Then he cursed himself for a coward and turned back. She would feel
herself deserted in her most trying hour, for she needed a reassuring
friend at this moment if never before. He had rarely failed to keep
his head when he chose and he would keep it now.

But when he entered the room his self-command was put to a severe
test. She was huddled in a chair crying, and although he scoffed at
woman's tears as roundly as Dr. Talbot, they never failed to rain on
the softest spot in his nature. But he walked directly to the hearth
rug and lit a cigarette.

"I hope you are not letting that old cat worry you." He managed to
infuse his tones with an amiable contempt.

But Madeleine only cried the harder.

"Come, come. Of course you are bruised, you are such a sensitive
little plant, but you know what women are, and more especially that
old woman. But even she cannot find much to gossip about in the fact
that you were receiving an afternoon caller."

"It--is--is--n't--only that!"

"What, then?"

"I--I'll be back in a moment."

She ran into her bedroom, and Masters took a batch of proofs from
his pocket and deliberately read them during the ten minutes of her
absence. When she returned she had bathed her eyes, and looked quite
composed. In truth she had taken sal volatile, and if despair was
still in her soul her nerves no longer jangled.

He rose to hand her a chair, but she shook her head and walked over
to the window, then returned and stood by the table, leaning on it as
if to steady herself.

"Shall I get you a glass of port wine?"

"No; more than one goes to my head."

He threw the proofs on the table and retreated to the hearth-rug.

"I suppose this means that you must not come here any more?"

"Does it? Are you going to turn me adrift to bore myself at the Club?"

"Oh, men have so many resources! And it is you who have given all. I
had nothing to give you."

"You forget, my dear Mrs. Talbot, that man is never so flattered as
when some woman thinks him an oracle. Besides, although yours is the
best mind in any pretty woman's head I know of--in any woman's head
for that matter--you still have much to learn, and I should feel very
jealous if you learned it elsewhere."

"Oh, I could learn from books, I suppose. There are many more in the
world than I shall ever be able to read. But--well, I had a friend
for the first time--the kind of friend I wanted."

"You are in no danger of losing him. I haven't the least intention
of giving you up. Real friendships are too rare, especially those
founded on mental sympathy, and a man's life is barren indeed when
his friends are only men."

"Have you had any woman friends before?" Her eyelids were lowered
but she shot him a swift glance.

"Well--no--to be honest, I cannot say I have. Flirtations and all
that, yes. During the last eight years, between the war and earning
my bread, I've had little time. Everything went, of course. I wrote
for a while for a Richmond paper and then went to New York. That was
hard sledding for a time and Southerners are not welcome in New York
Society. If I bore you with my personal affairs it is merely to give
you a glimpse of a rather arid life, and, perhaps, some idea of how
pleasant and profitable I have found our friendship."

She drooped her head. He ground his teeth and lit another cigarette.
His hand trembled but his tones were even and formal.

"I shall go to Mrs. Abbott's tomorrow."

"Quite right. And if a man strays in flirt with him--if you know how."

"There are four other At Homes and kettledrums this week and I shall
go to those also. I don't know that I mind silly gossip, but it would
not be fair to Howard. I shouldn't like to put him in the position of
some men in this town; although they seem to console themselves! But
Howard is not like that."

"Not he. The best fellow in the world. I think your program
admirable." He saw that he was trying her too far and added hastily:
"It would be rather amusing to circumvent them, and it certainly
would not amuse me to lose your charming companionship. I have fallen
into the habit of imposing myself upon you from three until five or
half-past. Perhaps you will admit me shortly after lunch and let me
hang round until you are ready to go out?"

She looked up with faintly sparkling eyes; then her face fell.

"There are so many luncheons."

"But surely not every day. You could refuse the informal affairs on
the plea of a previous engagement, and give me the list of the
inevitable ones the first of the week. And at least you are free from
impertinent intrusion before three o'clock."

"Yes, I'll do that! I will! It will be better than nothing."

"Oh, a long sight better. And nothing can alter the procession of
the seasons. Summer will arrive again in due course, and if your
friends are not far more interested in something else by that time it
is hardly likely that even Mrs. Abbott will sacrifice the comforts of
Alta to spy on any one."

"Not she! She has asthma in San Francisco in summer." Madeleine
spoke gaily, but she avoided his eyes. Whether he was maintaining a
pose or not she could only guess, but she had one of her own to keep
up.

"You must have thought me very silly to cry--but--these people have
all been quite angelic to me before, and Mrs. Abbott descended upon
me like the Day of Judgment."

"I should think she did, the old she-devil, and if you hadn't cried
you wouldn't have been a true woman! But we have a good half hour
left. I'd like to read you--"

At this moment Dr. Talbot's loud voice was heard in the hall.

"All right. See you later. Sorry--"




XVII


Madeline caught at the edge of the table. Had he met Mrs. Abbott?
But even in this moment of consternation she avoided a glance of too
intimate understanding with Masters. She was reassured immediately,
however. The Doctor burst into the room and exclaimed jovially:

"You here? What luck. Thought you would be at some infernal At Home
or other. Just got a call to San Jose--consultation--must take the
next train. Come, help me pack. Hello, Masters. If I'd had time I'd
have looked you up. Got some news for you. Wait a moment."

He disappeared into his bedroom and Madeleine followed. He had not
noticed the books and Masters' first impulse was to gather them up
and replace them in the chest. But he sat down to his proofs instead.
The Doctor returned in a few moments.

"Madeleine will finish. She's a wonder at packing. Hello! What's
this?" He had caught sight of the books.

"Some of mine. Mrs. Talbot expressed a wish--"

"Why in thunder don't you call her Madeleine? You're as much her
friend as mine.... Well, I don't mind as much as I did, for I find
women are all reading more than they used to, and I'm bound to say
they don't have the blues while a good novel lasts. Ouida's a pretty
good dose and lasts about a week. But don't give her too much serious
stuff. It will only addle her brains."

"Oh, she has very good brains. Mrs. Abbott was here just now, and
although she is not what I should call literary--or too literate--
she seemed to think your wife was just the sort of woman who should
read."

"Mrs. Abbott's a damned old nuisance. You must have been overjoyed
at the interruption. But if Madeleine has to put on pincenez--"

"Oh, never fear!" Madeleine was smiling radiantly as she entered.
Her volatile spirits were soaring. "My eyes are the strongest part of
me. What did you have to tell Mr. Masters?" "Jove! I'd almost
forgotten, and it's great news, too. What would you say, Masters, to
editing a paper of your own?"

"What?"

"There's a conspiracy abroad--I won't deny I had a hand in it--no
light under the bushel for me--to raise the necessary capital and have
a really first-class newspaper in this town. San Francisco deserves
the best, and if we've had nothing but rags, so far--barring poor
James King of William's _Bulletin_--it's because we've never had a man
before big enough to edit a great one."

"I have no words! It is almost too good to be true!"

Madeleine watched him curiously. His voice was trembling and his
eyes were flashing. He was tall but had drawn himself up in his
excitement and seemed quite an inch taller. He looked about to wave a
sword and lead a charge. Establishing a newspaper meant a hard fight
and he was eager for the fray.

She had had but few opportunities to study him in detail unobserved.
She had never thought him handsome, for he was clean shaven, with
deep vertical lines, and he wore his black hair very short. Her
preference was for fair men with drooping moustaches and locks
sweeping the collar; although her admiration for this somewhat
standardized type had so far been wholly impersonal. Even the doctor
clipped his moustache as it interfered with his soup, and his rusty
brown hair was straight, although of the orthodox length. But she had
not married Howard for his looks!

She noted the hard line of jaw and sharp incisive profile. His face
had power as well as intellect, yet there was a hint of weakness
somewhere. Possibly the lips of his well-cut mouth were a trifle too
firmly set to be unselfconscious. And his broad forehead lacked
serenity. There was a furrow between the eyes.

It was with the eyes she was most familiar. They were gray,
brilliant, piercing, wide apart and deeply set. She had noted more
than once something alert, watchful, in their expression, as if they
were the guardians of the intellect above and defied the weakness the
lower part of his face barely hinted to clash for a moment with his
ambitions.

She heard little of his rapid fire of questions and Howard's
answers; but when the doctor had pulled out his watch, kissed her
hurriedly, snatched his bag and dashed from the room, Masters took
her hands in his, his eyes glowing.

"Did you hear?" he cried. "Did you hear? I am to have my own
newspaper. My dream has come true! A hundred thousand dollars are
promised. I shall have as good a news service as any in New York."

Madeleine withdrew her hands but smiled brightly and made him a
pretty speech of congratulation. She knew little of newspapers and
cared less, but there must be something extraordinary about owning
one to excite a man like Langdon Masters. She had never seen him
excited before.

"Won't it mean a great deal harder work?"

"Oh, work! I thrive on work. I've never had enough. Come and sit
down. Let me talk to you. Let me be egotistical and talk about
myself. Let me tell you all my pent-up ambitions and hopes and
desires--you wonderful little Egeria!"

And he poured himself out to her as he had never unbosomed himself
before. He stayed on to dinner--she had no engagement--and left her
only for the office. He had evidently forgotten the earlier episode,
and he swept it from her own mind. That mind, subtle, feminine,
yielding, melted into his. She shared those ambitions and hopes and
desires. His brilliant and useful future was as real and imperative
to her as to himself. It was a new, a wonderful, a thrilling
experience. When she went to bed, smiling and happy, she slammed a
little door in her mind and shot the bolt. A terrible fear had shaken
her three hours before, but she refused to recall it. Once more the
present sufficed.




XVIII


Madeleine went to Mrs. Abbott's reception, but there was nothing
conciliatory nor apologetic in her mien. She had intended to be
merely natural, but when she met that battery of eyes, amused,
mocking, sympathetic, encouraging, and realized that Mrs. Abbott's
tongue had been wagging, she was filled with an anger and resentment
that expressed itself in a cold pride of bearing and a militant
sparkle of the eye. She was gracious and aloof and Mrs. McLane
approved her audibly.

"Exactly as I should feel and look myself," she said to Mrs.
Ballinger and Guadalupe Hathaway. "She's a royal creature and she has
moved in the great world. No wonder she resents the petty gossip of
this village."

"Well, I'll acquit her," said Mrs. Ballinger tartly. "A more cold-blooded
and unattractive man I've never met."

"Langdon Masters is by no means unattractive," announced Miss
Hathaway out of her ten years' experience as a belle and an
unconscionable flirt. "I have sat in the conservatory with him
several times. It may be that Mrs. Abbott stepped in before it was
too late. And it may be that she did not."

"Oh, call no woman virtuous until she is dead," said Mrs. McLane
lightly. "But I won't hear another insinuation against Madeleine
Talbot."

Mrs. Abbott kissed the singed brand it had been her mission to
snatch in the nick of time and detained her in conversation with
unusual empressement. Madeleine responded with an excessive
politeness, and Mrs. Abbott learned for the first time that sweet
brown eyes could glitter as coldly as her own protuberant orbs when
pronouncing judgment.

Madeleine remained for two hours, bored and disgusted, the more as
Masters' name was ostentatiously avoided. Even Sally Ballinger, who
kissed her warmly, told her that she looked as if she hadn't a care
in the world and that it was because she had too much sense to bother
about men!

She had never been treated with more friendly intimacy, and if she
went home with a headache it was at least a satisfaction to know that
her proud position was still scandal-proof.

She wisely modified her first program and drifted back into
afternoon society by degrees; a plan of defensive campaign highly
approved by Mrs. McLane, who detested lack of finesse. The winter was
an unsatisfactory one for Madeleine altogether. Society would not
have bored her so much perhaps if that secret enchanting background
had remained intact. But her intercourse with Masters was necessarily
sporadic. Her conscience had never troubled her for receiving his
visits, for her husband not only had expressed his approval, but had
always urged her to amuse herself with men. But she felt like an
intriguante when she discussed her engagement lists with Masters, and
she knew that he liked it as little. His visits were now a matter for
"sandwiching," to be schemed and planned for, and she dared not ask
herself whether the persistent sense of fear that haunted her was
that they both must betray self-consciousness in time, or that the
more difficult order would bore him: their earlier intimacy had
coincided with his hours of leisure. After all, he was not her lover,
to delight in intrigue; and in time, it might be, he would not think
the game worth the candle. She dreaded that revived gossip might
drive him from the hotel, and that would be the miserable beginning
of an unthinkable end.

There were other interruptions. He paid a flying visit to Richmond
to visit the death-bed of his mother, and he took a trip to the
Sandwich Islands to recover from a severe cold on the chest.
Moreover, his former placidity had left him, for one thing and
another delayed the financing of his newspaper. One of its founders
was temporarily embarrassed for ready money, another awaited an
opportune moment to realize on some valuable stock. There was no
doubt that the entire amount would be forthcoming in time, but
meanwhile he fumed, and expressed himself freely to Madeleine. That
he might have a more poisonous source of irritation did not occur to
her.

Fortunately she did not suspect that gossip was still rife.
Madeleine might have a subtle mind but she had a candid personality.
It was quite patent to sharp eyes that she was unhappy once more,
although this time her health was unaffected. And Society was quite
aware that she still saw Langdon Masters, in spite of her perfunctory
appearances; for suspicion once roused develops antennae that
traverse space without effort and return with accumulated minute
stores of evidence. Masters had been seen entering or leaving the
Talbot parlor by luncheon guests in the hotel. Old Ben Travers, who
had chosen to ignore his astonishing and humiliating experience and
always treated Madeleine with exaggerated deference, called one
afternoon on her (in company with Mrs. Ballinger) and observed
cigarette ends in the ash tray. Talbot smoked only cigars. Masters
was one of the few men in San Francisco who smoked cigarettes and
there was no mistaking his imported brand. Mr. Travers paid an
immediate round of visits, and called again a fortnight later, this
time protected by Mrs. Abbott. There were several books on the table
which he happened to know Masters had received within the week.

When the new wave reached Mrs. McLane she announced angrily that all
the gossip in San Francisco originated in the Union Club, and refused
to listen to details. But she was anxious, nevertheless, for she knew
that Madeleine, whether she recognized the fact or not, was in love
with Langdon Masters, and she more than suspected that he was with
her. He went little into society, even before his mother's death,
pleading press of work, but Mr. McLane often brought him home quietly
to dinner and she saw more of him than any one did but Madeleine. Men
had gone mad over her in her own time and she knew the stamp of
baffled passions.

It was on New Year's Day, during Masters' absence in Richmond, that
an incident occurred which turned Society's attention, diverted for
the moment by an open divorce scandal, to Madeleine Talbot once more.




XIX


New Year's Day in San Francisco was one of pomp and triumphs, and
much secret heart-burning. Every woman who had a house threw it open
and the many that lived in hotels were equally hospitable. There was
a constant procession of family barouches, livery stable buggies and
hacks. The "whips" drove their mud-bespattered traps with as grand an
air as if on the Cliff House Road in fine weather; and while none was
ignored whose entertaining was lavish, those who could count only on
admiration and friendship compared notes eagerly during the following
week.

But young men in those days were more gallant or less snobbish than
in these, and few pretty girls, however slenderly dowered, were
forgotten by their waltzing partners. The older men went only to the
great houses, and frankly for eggnog. Mrs. Abbott's was famous and so
was Mrs. McLane's. Ladies who lived out of town the year round, that
their husbands might "sleep in the country!" received with their more
fortunate friends.

It had been Madeleine's intention to have her own reception at the
hotel as usual, but when Mrs. McLane craved her assistance--Marguerite
was receiving with Mrs. Abbott, now her mother-in-law--she consented
willingly, as it would reduce her effort to entertain progressively
illuminated men to the minimum. She felt disinclined to effort of
any sort.

Mrs. McLane, after her daughter's marriage, had tired of the large
house on Rincon Hill and the exorbitant wages of its staff of
servants, and returned to her old home in South Park, furnishing her
parlors with a red satin damask, which also covered the walls. She
had made a trip to Paris meanwhile and brought back much light and
graceful French furniture. The long double room was an admirable
setting for her stately little figure in its trailing gown of
wine-colored velvet trimmed with mellowed point lace (it had been
privately dipped in coffee) and her white high-piled hair. There was
no watchful anxiety in Mrs. McLane's lofty mien. She knew that the
best, old and young, would come to her New Year's Day reception as a
matter of course.

Mrs. Ballinger had also gratefully accepted Mrs. McLane's
invitation, for Sally had recently married Harold Abbott and was
receiving on Rincon Hill, and Maria was in modest retirement. She
wore a long gown of silver gray poplin as shining as her silver hair;
and as she was nearly a foot taller than her hostess, the two ladies
stood at opposite ends of the mantelpiece in the front parlor with
Annette McLane and two young friends between.

The reception was at its height at four o'clock. The rooms were
crowded, and the equipages of the guests packed not only South Park
but Third Street a block north and south.

Madeleine sat at the end of the long double room behind a table and
served the eggnog. The men hovered about her, not, as commonly, in
unqualified admiration, or passed on the goblets, slices of the
monumental cakes, and Peter Job's famous cream pie.

She had taken a glass at once and raised her spirits to the
necessary pitch; but its effect wore off in time and her hand began
to tremble slightly as she ladled out the eggnog. She had not heard
from Masters since he left and her days were as vacant as visible
space. She had felt nervous and depressed since morning and would
have spent the day in bed had she dared.

Mr. McLane, Mr. Abbott, Colonel "Jack" Belmont, Alexander Groome,
Mr. Ballinger, Amos Lawton and several others were chatting with her
when Ben Travers sauntered up to demand his potion. He had already
paid several visits, and although he carried his liquor well, it was
patent to the eyes of his friends he was in that particular stage of
inebriation that swamped his meagre stock of good nature and the
superficial cleverness which made him an agreeable companion, and set
free all the maliciousness of a mind contracted with years and
disappointments: he had never made "his pile" and it was current
history that he had been refused by every belle of his youth.

He made Madeleine a courtly bow as he took the goblet from her
hands, not forgetting to pay her a well-turned compliment on those
hands, not the least of her physical perfections. Then he balanced
himself on the edge of the table with a manifest intention of joining
in the conversation. Madeleine felt an odd sense of terror, although
she knew nothing of his discoveries and communications; there was a
curious hard stare in his bleared eyes and it seemed to impale her.

He began amiably enough. "Best looking frocks in this house I've
seen today. At least five from Paris. Mrs. McLane brought back four
of them besides her own. Seen some awful old duds today. 'Lupie
Hathaway had on an old black silk with a gaping placket and three
buttons off in front. Some of the other things were new enough, but
the dressmakers in this town need waking up. Of course yours came
from New York, Mrs. Talbot. Charming, simply charming."

Madeleine wore a gown of amber-colored silk with a bertha of fine
lace and mousseline de soie, exposing her beautiful shoulders. The
color seemed reflected in her eyes and the bright waving masses of
her hair.

"Madame Deforme made it," she said triumphantly. "Now don't
criticize our dressmakers again."

"Never criticize anybody but can't help noticing things. Got the
observing eye. Nothing escapes it. How are you off for books now that
Masters has deserted us?"

Madeleine turned cold, for the inference was unmistakable, and she
saw Mr. McLane scowl at him ferociously, But she replied smilingly
that there was always the Mercantile Library.

"Never have anything new there, and even C. Beach hasn't had a new
French novel for six months. If Masters were one of those considerate
men, now, he'd have left you the key of his rooms. Nothing
compromising in that. But it would be no wonder if he forgot it, for
I hear it wasn't his mother's illness that took him to Richmond, but
Betty Thornton who's still a reigning toast. Old flame and they say
she's come round. Had a letter from my sister."

Madeleine, who was lifting a goblet, let it fall with a crash. She
had turned white and was trembling, but she lifted another with an
immediate return of self-control, and said, "How awkward of me! But I
have had a headache for three days and the gas makes the room so warm."

And then she fainted.

Mr. McLane, who was more impulsive than tactful, took Travers by the
arm and pushed him through the crowd surging toward the table, and
out of the front door, almost flinging him down the front steps.

"Damn you for a liar and a scandalmonger and a malicious old woman!"
he shouted, oblivious of many staring coachmen. "Never enter my house
again."

But the undaunted Travers steadied himself and replied with a leer,
"Well, I made her give herself dead away, whether you like it or not.
And it'll be all over town in a week."

Mr. McLane turned his back, and ordering the astonished butler to
take out the man's hat and greatcoat, returned to a scene of
excitement. Madeleine had been placed full length on a sofa by an
open window, and was evidently reviving. He asked the men who had
overheard Travers' attack to follow him to his study.

"I want every one of you to promise me that you will not repeat what
that little brute said," he commanded. "Fortunately there were no
women about. Fainting women are no novelty. And if that cur tells the
story of his dastardly assault, give him the lie. Swear that he never
said it. Persuade him that he was too drunk to remember."

"I'll follow him and threaten to horsewhip him if he opens his
mouth!" cried Colonel Belmont, who had been a dashing cavalry officer
during the war. He revered all women of his own class, even his wife,
who rarely saw him; and he was so critical of feminine perfections of
any sort that he changed his mistresses oftener than any man in San
Francisco. "I'll not lose a moment." And he left the room as if
charging the enemy.

"Good. Will the rest of you promise?"

"Of course we'll promise."

But alas, wives have means of extracting secrets when their
suspicions are alert and clamoring that no husband has the wit to
elude, man being too ingenuous to follow the circumlocutory methods
of the subtler sex. Not that there was ever anything subtle about
Mrs. Abbott's methods. Mr. Abbott had a perpetual catarrh and it had
long since weakened his fibre. It was commonly believed that when
Mrs. Abbott, her large bulk arrayed in a red flannel nightgown, sat
up in the connubial bed and threatened to pour hot mustard up his
nose unless he opened his sluices of information he ingloriously
succumbed.

At all events, how or wherefore, Travers' prediction was fulfilled,
although he shiveringly held his own tongue. The story was all over
town not in a week but in three days. But of this Madeleine knew
nothing. The doctor, who feared typhoid fever, ordered her to keep
quiet and see no one until he discovered what was the matter with
her. Her return to Society and Masters' to San Francisco coincided,
but at least her little world knew that Dr. Talbot had been
responsible for her retirement. It awaited future developments with a
painful and a pleasurable interest.




XX


The rest of the season, however, passed without notable incident.
But it was known that Madeleine saw Masters constantly, and she was
so narrowly observed during his second absence that the nervousness
it induced made her forced gaiety almost hysterical. During the late
spring her spirits grew more even and her migraines less frequent;
sustained as she was by the prospect of her old uninterrupted
relations with Masters.

But more than Mrs. Abbott divined the cause of her ill-suppressed
expectancy and never had she received so many invitations to the
country. Mrs. McLane spent her summers at Congress Springs, but even
she pressed Madeleine to visit her. Sally Abbott lived across the Bay
on Lake Merritt and begged for three days a week at least; while as
for Mrs. Abbott and Mr. and Mrs. Tom, who lived with her, they would
harken to no excuses.

Madeleine was almost nonplussed, but if her firm and graceful
refusals to leave the doctor had led to open war she would have
accepted the consequences. She was determined that this summer she
had lived for throughout seven long tormented months should be as
unbroken and happy as the other fates would permit. She had a full
presentiment that it would be the last.

Masters glided immediately into the old habit and saw her oftener
when he could. Of course no phase ever quite repeats itself. The
blithe unconsciousness of that first immortal summer was gone for
ever; each was playing a part and dreading lest the other suspect it.
Moreover, Masters was irritated almost beyond endurance at the
constant postponement of the financial equipment for his newspaper.
The man who had promised the largest contribution had died suddenly,
and although his heir was more than eager to be associated with so
illustrious an enterprise he must await the settlement of the estate.

"I am beginning to believe I never shall have that newspaper,"
Masters said gloomily to Madeleine. "It looks like Fate. When the
subject was first broached there was every prospect that I should get
the money at once. It has an ugly look. Any man who has been through
a war is something of a fatalist."

They were less circumspect than of old and were walking out the old
Mission Road. In such moods it was impossible for him to idle before
a fire and read aloud. Madeleine had told her husband she would like
to join Masters in his walks occasionally, and he had replied
heartily: "Do you good. He'll lead you some pretty tramps! I can't
keep up with him. You don't walk half enough. Neither do these other
women, although my income would be cut in half if they did."

It was a cool bracing day without dust or wind and Madeleine had
started out in high spirits, induced in part by a new and vastly
becoming walking suit of forest green poplin and a hat of the same
shade rolled up on one side and trimmed with a drooping grey feather.
Her gloves and shoes were of grey suede, there was soft lace about
her white throat and a coquettish little veil that covered only her
eyes.

She always knew what to say when Masters was in one of his black
moods, and today she reminded him of the various biographies of great
men they had read together. Had not all of them suffered every
disappointment and discouragement in the beginning of their careers?
Overcome innumerable obstacles? Many had been called upon to endure
grinding poverty as well until they forced recognition from the
world, and he at least was spared that. If Life took with one hand
while she gave with the other, the reverse was equally true; and also
no doubt it was a part of her beneficence that she not only
strengthened the character by preliminary hardships, but amiably
planned them that success might be all the sweeter when it came.

Masters laughed. "Incontrovertible. Mind you practice your own
philosophy when you need it. All reverses should be temporary if
people are strong enough."

She lost her color for a moment, but answered lightly: "That is an
easy philosophy for you. If one thing failed you would simply move on
to another. Men like you never really fail, for your rare abilities
give you the strength and resource of ten men."

"I wonder! The roots of strength sometimes lie in slimy and
corrupting waters that spread their miasma upward when Life frowns
too long and too darkly. Sometimes misfortunes pile up so
remorselessly, this miasma whispers that a man's chief strength
consists in going straight to the devil and be done with it all. A
resounding slap on Life's face. An insolent assertion of the
individual will against Society. Or perhaps it is merely a
disposition to run full tilt, hoping for the coup de grace--much as I
felt when I lay neglected on the battlefield for twenty-four hours
and longed for some Yank to come along and blow out my brains."

"That is no comparison," she said scornfully. "When the body is
whole nothing is impossible. I should feel that the Universe was
reeling if I saw you go down before adversity. I could as readily
imagine myself letting go, and I am only a woman."

"Oh, I should never fear for you," he said bitterly. "What with your
immutable principles, your religion, and your proud position in the
Society of San Francisco to sustain you, you would come through the
fiery furnace unscathed."

"Yes, but the furnace! The furnace!"

She threw out her hands with a gesture of despair, her high spirits
routed before a sudden blinding vision of the future. "Does any woman
ever escape that?"

One of her hands brushed his and he caught it irresistibly. But he
dropped it at once. There was a sound of horses' hoofs behind them.
He had been vaguely aware of cantering hoof-beats in the distance for
several minutes.

Two men passed, and one of them took off his hat with a low mocking
sweep and bowed almost to the saddle. It was old Ben Travers.

"What on earth is he doing in town?" muttered Masters in
exasperation. No one had told him of the New Year's Day episode, but
he knew him for what he was.

Madeleine was fallowing the small trim figure on the large chestnut
with expanded eyes, but she answered evenly enough: "He has some
ailment and is remaining in town under Howard's care."

"Liver, no doubt," said Masters viciously. "Too bad his spleen
doesn't burst once for all."

He continued unguardedly, "Well, if he tries to make mischief,
Howard will tell him bluntly that we walk together with his
permission and invite him to go to the devil."

Her own guard was up at once, although it was not any gossip carried
to Howard she feared. "He has probably already forgotten us," she
said coldly. "Have you finished that paper for _Putnam's?_"

"Three days ago, and begun another for the _Edinburgh Review_.
That is the first time I have been invited to write for an English
review."

"You see!" she cried gaily. "You are famous already. And ambitious!
You were once thinking of writing for our _Overland Monthly_
only. Bret Harte told me you had promised him three papers this year."

"I shall write them."

"Perfunctory patriotism. You'd have to write the entire magazine and
bring it out weekly to get rid of all your ideas and superfluous
energy."

"Well, and wouldn't the good Californians rather read any magazine
but their own? Even Harte is far better known in the East than here.
I doubt if I've heard one of his things mentioned but 'The Heathen
Chinee.' He has been here so long they regard him as a mere native.
If I am advancing my reputation in the East I am making it much
faster than if I depended upon the local reputation alone. San
Francisco is remarkably human."

"When I first came here--it seems a lifetime ago!--I never saw an
Eastern magazine of the higher class and rarely a book. I believe you
have done as much to wake them up as even the march of time. They read
newspapers if they won't read their own poor little _Overland_. And
you are popular personally and inspire a sort of uneasy emulation. You
are a sort of illuminated bridge. Now tell me what your new paper is
about."




XXI


A while later they came to the old Mission Dolores, long ago the
center of a flourishing colony of native Indians, who, under the
driving energy of the padres, manufactured practically every simple
necessity known to Spain. There was nothing left but the crumbling
church and its neglected graveyard, alone in a waste of sand. The
graves of the priests and grandees were overrun with periwinkle, and
the only other flower was the indestructible Castilian rose. The
heavy dull green bushes with their fluted dull pink blooms surrounded
by tight little buds, were as dusty as the memory of the Spaniard in
California.

They went into the church to rest. Madeleine had never taken any
interest in the history of her adopted state, and as they sat in a
pew at the back, surrounded by silence and a deep twilight gloom,
Masters told her the tragic story of Rezanov and Concha Arguello, who
would have married before that humble altar and the history of
California changed if the ironic fates had permitted. The story had
been told him by Mrs. Hathaway, who was the daughter of one of the
last of the grandees, and whose mother had lived in the Presidio when
Rezanov sailed in through the Golden Gate and Concha Arguello had
been La Favorita of Alta California.

The little church was very quiet. The rest of the world seemed far
away. Madeleine's fervid yielding imagination swept her back to that
long-forgotten past when a woman to whom the earlier fates had been
as kind as to herself had scaled all but the highest peaks of
happiness and descended into the profoundest depths of despair. Her
sympathies, enhanced by her own haunting premonition of disaster,
shattered her guard. She dropped her head into her hands and wept
hopelessly. Masters felt his own moorings shake. He half rose to
flee. But he too had been living in the romantic and passionate past
and he too had been visited by moments of black forebodings. Love had
tormented him to the breaking point before this and his ambition had
often been submerged in his impatience for the excess of work which
his newspaper would demand, exhausting to body and imagination alike.
He had long ceased to doubt that she loved him, but her self-command
had protected them both. He had believed it would never desert her
and when it did his pulses had their way. He took her in his arms and
strained her to him as if with the strength of his muscles and his
will he would defy the blundering fates.

Madeleine made no resistance. She was oblivious of everything but
the ecstasy of the moment. When he kissed her she clung to him as
ardently, and felt as mortals may, when, in dissolution, they have
the vision of unmortal bliss. She had the genius for completion and
neither the past nor the future intruded upon the perfect moment when
love was all.

But the moment was brief. A priest entered and knelt before the
altar. She disengaged herself and adjusted her hat with hands that
trembled violently, then almost ran out of the church. Masters
followed her. As they descended the steps Travers and his companion
passed again, after their short canter down the peninsula. He stared
so hard at Madeleine's revealing face that he almost forgot to take
off his hat, and half reined in as if he would pause and gratify his
curiosity; but thought better of it and rode on.

Masters and Madeleine did not exchange a word until they had walked
nearly a mile. But his brain was working as clearly as if passion had
never clouded it, and although he could see no hope for the future he
was determined to gain time and sacrifice anything rather than lose
what little he might still have of her. He said finally, in a matter-
of-fact voice:

"I want you to use your will and imagination and forget that we ever
entered that church."

"Forget! The memory of it will scourge me as long as I live. I have
been unfaithful to my husband!"

"Oh, not quite as bad as that!"

"What difference? I had surrendered completely and forgotten my
vows, my religion, every principle that has guided my life. If--if--
circumstances had been different that would not have been the end. I
am a bad wicked woman."

"Oh, no, you are not. You are a terribly good one. If you were not
you would take your life in your hands and make it over."

He did not dare mention the word divorce, and lest it travel from
his mind to hers and cause his immediate repudiation, he added hastily:

"You were immortal for a moment and it should be your glory, not a
whip to scourge you. The time will come when you will remember it
with gratitude and without a blush. You know now what you could be
and feel. If we part at least you will have been saved from the
complete aridity--"

"Part?" She looked at him for the first time, and although she had
believed she never could look at him again without turning scarlet,
there was only terror in her eyes.

"I have been afraid of banishment."

"It was my fault as much as yours."

"I am not so sure. We won't argue that point. Is anything perfect
arguable? But if I am to stay in San Francisco I must see you."

"I'll never see you alone again."

"I have no intention of pressing that point! But the open is safe
and you must walk with me every day."

"I don't know! Oh--I don't know! And I think that I should tell
Howard."

"You will not tell Howard because you are neither cowardly nor
cruel. Nor will you ruin a perfect memory that belongs to us alone.
You do love me and that is the end of it--or the beginning of God
knows what!"

"Love!" She shivered. "Yes, I love you. Why do poets waste so many
beautiful words over love? It is the most terrible thing in the world."

"Let us try to forget it for the present," he said harshly. "Forget
everything we cannot have--"

"You have your work. You have only to work harder than ever. What
have I?"

"We will walk together every day. We can take a book out on the
beach and sit on the rocks. Read more fiction. That is its mission--
to translate one for a time from the terrible realities of life. Your
religion should be of some use to you. It is almost a pity there is
no poverty out here. Sink your prejudices and seek out poor Sibyl
Forbes. Every woman in town has cut her. In healing her wounds you
could forget your own. Above all, use your will. We are neither of us
weaklings, and it could be a thousand times worse. Nothing shall take
from us what we have, and there may be a way out."

"There is none," she said sadly. "But I will do as you tell me. And
I'll forget--not remember--if I can."




XXII


The end came swiftly. The next day Ben Travers drove down to
Rincona. Mrs. Abbott listened to his garnished tale with bulging eyes
and her three chins quivering with excitement. She had heard no
gossip worth mentioning since she left town, and privately she hated
the summer and Alta.

"You should have seen her face when she came out of that church,"
cried Travers for the third time; he was falling into the senile
habit of repeating himself. "It was fairly distorted and she looked
as if she had been crying for a week. Mark my words, Masters had been
making the hottest kind of love to her--he was little more composed
than she. Bet you an eagle to a dime they elope within a week."

"Serve Howard Talbot right for marrying a woman twenty years younger
than himself and a Northerner to boot. Do you think he suspects?"

"Not he. Now, I must be off. If I didn't call on the Hathaways and
Montgomerys while I'm down here they'd never forgive me."

"Both have house parties," said Mrs. Abbott enviously. "Just like
you to get it first! I'd go with you but I must write to Antoinette
McLane. She'll _have_ to believe that her paragon is headed for
the rocks this time."

Mrs. McLane was having an attack of the blues when the letter
arrived and did not open her mail until two days later. Then she
drove at once to San Francisco. She was too wise in women to
remonstrate with Madeleine, but she went directly to Dr. Talbot's
office. It was the most unpleasant duty she had ever undertaken, but
she knew that Talbot would not doubt his wife's fidelity, and she was
determined to save Madeleine. She had considered the alternative of
going to Masters, but even her strong spirit quailed before the
prospect of that interview. Besides, if he were as deeply in love
with Madeleine as she believed him to be, it would do no good. She
had little faith in the self-abnegation of men where their passions
were concerned.

Dr. Talbot was in his office and saw her at once, and they talked
for an hour. His face was purple and she feared a stroke. But he
heard her quietly, and told her she had proved her friendship by
coming to him before it was too late. When she left him he sat for
another hour, alone.




XXIII


It was six o'clock. San Francisco was enjoying one of its rare heat
waves and Madeleine had put on a frock of white lawn made with a low
neck and short sleeves, and tied a soft blue sash round her waist. As
the hour of her husband's reasonably prompt homing approached she
seated herself at the piano. She could not trust herself to sing, and
played the "Adelaide." The past three days had not been as unhappy as
she had expected. She had visited Sibyl Forbes, living in lonely
splendor, and listened enthralled to that rebellious young woman (who
had received her with passionate gratitude) as she poured out
humiliations, bitter resentment, and matrimonial felicity. Madeleine
had consoled and rejoiced and promised to talk to the all-powerful
Mrs. McLane.

Twice she had gone to hear John McCullough at his new California
Theatre, with another dutiful doctor's wife who lived in the hotel,
and she had walked for three hours with Masters every afternoon. He
had always found it easy to turn her mind into any channel he chose,
and he had never exerted himself to be more entertaining even with her.

Today he had been jubilant and had swept her with him on his high
tide of anticipation and triumph. Another patriotic San Franciscan
had come to the rescue and the hundred thousand dollars lay to
Masters' credit in the Bank of California. He had taken his offices
an hour after the deposit was made; his business manager was engaged,
and every writer of ability on the other newspapers was his to
command. "Masters' Newspaper" had been the talk of the journalistic
world for months. He had picked his staff and he now awaited only the
presses he had ordered that morning from New York.

Madeleine had sighed as she listened to him dilate upon an active
brilliant future in which she had no place, but she was in tune with
him always and she could only be happy with him now. Moreover, it was
an additional safeguard. He would be too busy for dreams and human
longings. As for herself she would go along somehow. Tears, after
all, were a wonderful solace. Fear had driven her down a light
romantic by-way of her nature. Even if days passed without a glimpse
of him she could dwell on the pleasant thought that he was not far
away, and now and then they would take a long walk together.

The door opened and Dr. Talbot entered. His face was no longer
purple. It was sallow and drawn. Her hands trailed off the keys, her
arms fell limply. Not even during an epidemic, when he found little
time for sleep, had his round face lost its ruddy brightness, his
black eyes their look of jovial good-fellowship, his mouth its
amiable cynicism.

"Something has happened," she said faintly. "What is it?"

"Would you mind sitting here?" He fell heavily into a chair and
motioned to one opposite. She left the shelter of the piano with
dragging feet, her own face drained of its color. Ben Travers! She
knew what was coming.

His arms lay limply along the arms of his chair. As she gazed at him
fascinated it seemed to her that he grew older every minute. And she
had never seen any one look as sad.

"I have been a bad husband to you," he said. And the life had gone
out of even his voice.

"Oh! No! No! you have been the best, the kindest and most indulgent
of husbands."

"I have been worse than a bad husband," he went on in the same
monotonous voice. "I have been a failure. I never tried to understand
you. I didn't want to understand what might interfere with my own
selfish life. You have a mind and I ordered you to feed it husks. You
asked me for the companionship that was your right and I told you to
go and amuse yourself as best you could. I fooled myself with the
excuse that you were perfect as you were, but the bald truth was that
I liked the society of men better, and hated any form of mental
exertion unconnected with my profession. I plucked the rarest flower
a good-for-nothing man ever found and I didn't even remember to give
it fresh water. It is a wonder you didn't wilt before you did. You
were wilting--dying mentally--when Masters came along. You found in
him all that I had denied you. And now I have the punishment I
deserve. You no longer love me. You love him."

"Oh--Oh--" Madeleine twisted her hands in her lap and stared at
them. "You--you--cannot help being what you are. I long since ceased
to find fault with you--"

"Yes, when you ceased to love me! When you found that we were
hopelessly mismated. When you gave up."

"I--I'm very fond of you still. How could I help it when you are so
good to me?"

"I have no doubt of your friendship--or of your fidelity. But you
love Masters. Can you deny it?"

"No."

"Are you preparing to elope with him?"

"Oh! No! No! How could you dream of such a thing?"

"I am told that every one is expecting it."

"I would no more elope than I would ask for a divorce. I may be
sinful enough to love a man who is not my husband, but I am not bad
enough for that. And people are very stupid. They know that Langdon
Masters' future lies here. If I were as wicked a woman as that, at
least he is not a fool. Why, only today he received the capital for
his newspaper."

"And do you know so little of men and women as to imagine that you
two could go on indefinitely content with the mere fact that you love
each other? I may not have known my own wife because I chose to be
blind, but a doctor knows as much about women in general as a father
confessor. Men and women are not made like that! It seems that every
one but myself has known for months that Masters is in love with you;
and Masters is a man of strong passions and relentless will. He has
used his will so far to curb his passions, principally, no doubt, on
my account; he is my friend and a man of honor. But there are moments
in life when honor as well as virtue goes overboard."

"But--but--we have agreed never to see each other alone again--
except out of doors."

"That is all very well, but there are always unexpected moments of
isolation. The devil sees to that. And while I have every confidence
in your virtue--under normal conditions--I know the helpless yielding
of women and the ruthless passions of men. It would be only a
question of time. I may have been a bad husband but I am mercifully
permitted to save you, and I shall do so."

He rose heavily from his chair. "Do you know where I can find
Masters?"

She sprang to her feet and for the first time in her life her voice
was shrill.

"You are not going to kill him?"

"Oh, no. I am not going to kill him. There has been scandal enough
already. And I have no desire to kill him. He has behaved very well,
all things considered. I am almost as sorry for him as I am for you--
and myself! Do you know where he is?"

"He is probably dining at the Union Club--or he may be at his new
offices. They are somewhere on Commercial Street."

He went out and Madeleine sat staring at the door with wide eyes and
parted lips. She felt no inclination to tears, nor even to faint,
although her body could hardly have been colder in death. She felt
suspended in a vacuum, awaiting something more dreadful than even
this interview with her husband had been.




XXIV


Dr. Talbot turned toward the stairs, but it occurred to him that
Masters might still be in his rooms and he walked to the other end of
the hall. A ringing voice answered his knock. He entered. Masters
grasped him by the hand, exclaiming, "I was going to look you up
tonight and tell you the good news. Has Madeleine told you? I have my
capital! And I have just received a telegram from New York saying
that my presses will start by freight tomorrow. That means we'll have
our newspaper in three weeks at the outside--But what is the matter,
old chap? I never saw you look seedy before. Suppose we take a week
off and go on a bear hunt? It's the last vacation I can have in a
month of Sundays."

"I have come to tell you that you must leave San Francisco."

"Oh!" Masters' exuberance dropped like a shining cloak from a figure
of steel. He walked to his citadel, the hearth rug, and lit a
cigarette.

"I suppose you have been listening to the chatter of that infernal
old gossip, Ben Travers."

"Ben Travers knows me too well to bring any of his gossip to me. But
he has carried his stories up and down the state; not only his--more
recent discoveries, but evidence he appears to have been collecting
for months. But he is only one of many. It seems the whole town has
known for a year or more that you see Madeleine for three or four
hours every day, that you have managed to have those hours together,
no matter what her engagements, that you are desperately in love with
each other. The gossip has been infernal. I do not deny that a good
deal of the blame rests on my shoulders. I not only neglected her but
I encouraged her to see you. But I thought her above scandal or even
gossip, and I never dreamed it was in her to love--to lose her head
over any man. She was sweet and affectionate but cold--my fault
again. Any man who had the good fortune to be married to Madeleine
could make her love him if he were not a selfish fool. Well, I have
been punished; but if I have lost her I can save her--and her
reputation. You must go. There is no other way."

"That is nonsense. You exaggerate because you are suffering from a
shock. You know that I cannot leave San Francisco with this great
newspaper about to be launched. If it is as bad as you make out I
will give you my word not to see Madeleine again. And as I shall be
too busy for Society it will quickly forget me."

"Oh, no, it will not. It will say that you are both cleverer than
you have been in the past. If you leave San Francisco--California
--for good and all--it may forget you; not otherwise."

"Do you know that you are asking me to give up my career? That I
shall never have such an opportunity in my life again? My whole
future--for usefulness as well as for the realization of my not
ignoble ambitions--lies in San Francisco and nowhere else?"

"Don't imagine I have not thought of that. And San Francisco can ill
afford to spare you. You are one of the greatest assets this city
ever had. But she will have to do without you even if you never can
be replaced. I had the whole history of the affair from Mrs. McLane
this afternoon. No one believes--yet--that things have reached a
climax between you and Madeleine. On the contrary, they are expecting
an elopement. But if you remain, nothing on God's earth can prevent
an abominable scandal. Madeleine's name will be dragged through the
mud. She will be cut, cast out of Society. Even I could not protect
her; I should be regarded as a blind fool, or worse, for it will be
known that Mrs. McLane warned me. No woman can keep her mouth shut.
She and other powerful women--even that damned old cut-throat, Mrs.
Abbott--are standing by Madeleine loyally, but they are all alert for
a denouement nevertheless. If you go, that will satisfy them.
Madeleine will be merely the heroine of an unhappy love-affair, and
although nothing will stop their damned clacking tongues for a time,
they will pity her and do their best to make her forget."

"I cannot go. It is impossible. You are asking too much. And, I
repeat, I'll never see her again. Mrs. McLane can be made to
understand the truth. I'll leave the hotel tomorrow."

"You love Madeleine, do you not?"

"Yes--I do."

"Then will you save her from ruin in the only way possible. It is
not only her reputation that I fear. You know yourself, I fancy. You
may avoid her, but you will hardly deny that if circumstances threw
you together, alone, temptation would be irresistible--the more so as
you would have ached for the mere sound of her voice every minute. I
know now what it means to love Madeleine."

Masters turned his back on Talbot and leaned his arms on the mantel-shelf.
He saw hideous pictures in the empty grate.

The doctor had not sat down. Not a muscle of his big strong body had
moved as he stood and pronounced what was worse than a sentence of
death on Langdon Masters. He averted his dull inexorable eyes, for he
dared not give way to sympathy. For the moment he wished himself dead
--and for more reasons than one! But he was far too healthy and
practical to contemplate a dramatic exit. No end would be served if
he did. Madeleine's sensitive spirit would recoil in horror from a
union haunted by the memory of the crime and anguish of the husband
she had vowed to love and obey. Not Madeleine! His remorseless
solution was the only one.

Masters turned after a time and his face looked as old as Talbot's.

"I'll go if you are quite sure it is necessary. If you have not
spoken in the heat of the moment."

"If I thought for a month it would make no difference. If you
remain, no matter what your circumspection Madeleine will rank in the
eyes of the world with those harlots over on Dupont Street. And be as
much of an outcast. You know this town. You've lived in it for a year
and a half. It's not London, nor even New York. Nothing is hidden
here. It lives on itself; it has nothing else to live on. It is
almost fanatically loyal to its own until its loyalty is thrown in
its face. Then it is bitterer than the wrath of God. You understand
all this, don't you?"

"Yes, I understand. But--couldn't you send Madeleine to her parents
in Boston for six months--she has never paid them a visit--but no, I
suppose the scandal would be worse--"

"Far worse. It would look either as if she had run away from me or
as if I had packed her off in disgrace. If I could leave my practice
I'd take her abroad for two years, but I cannot. Nor--to be frank--do
I see why I should be sacrificed further."

"Oh, assuredly not." Masters' tones were even and excessively polite.

"You will take the train tomorrow morning for New York?"

"I cannot leave San Francisco until after the opening of the banks.
The money must be refunded. Besides, I prefer to go by steamer. There
is one leaving tomorrow, I believe. I want time to think before I
arrive in New York."

"And you will promise to have no correspondence with Madeleine
whatever?"

"You might leave us that much!"

"The affair shall end here and now. Do you promise?"

"Very well. But I should like to see her once more."

"That you shall not! I shall not leave her until you are outside the
Golden Gate."

"Very well. If that is all--"

"Good-by. You have behaved--well, as our code commands you to
behave. I expected nothing less. Don't imagine I don't appreciate
what this means to you. But you are a man of great ability. You will
find as hospitable a field for your talents elsewhere. San Francisco
is the chief loser. I wish you the best of luck."

And he returned to Madeleine.




XXV


Madeleine came of a brave race and she was a woman of intense pride.
She spent a week at Congress Springs and she took her courage in her
teeth and spent another at Rincona. There was a house party and they
amused themselves in the somnolent way peculiar to Alta. Bret Harte
was there, a dapper little man, whose shoes were always a size too
small, but popular with women as he played an excellent game of
croquet and talked as delightfully as he wrote. His good humor could
be counted on if no one mentioned "The Heathen Chinee." He had always
admired Madeleine and did his best to divert her.

Both Mrs. McLane and Mrs. Abbott were disappointed that they were
given no opportunity to condole with her; but although she gave a
fair imitation of the old Madeleine Talbot, and even mentioned
Masters' name with a casual indifference, no one was deceived for a
moment. That her nerves were on the rack was as evident as that her
watchful pride was in arms, and although it was obvious that she had
foresworn the luxury of tears, her eyes had a curious habit of
looking through and beyond these good ladies until they had the
uncomfortable sensation that they were not there and some one else
was. They wondered if Langdon Masters were dead and she saw his ghost.

The summer was almost over. After a visit to Sally Abbott on Lake
Merritt, she returned to town with the rest of the fashionable world.
People had never been kinder to her; and if their persistent
attentions were strongly diluted with curiosity, who shall blame
them? It was not every day they had a blighted heroine of romance,
who, moreover, looked as if she were going into a decline. She grew
thinner every day. Her white skin was colorless and transparent. They
might not have her for long, poor darling! How they pitied her! But
they never wished they had let her alone. It was all for the best.
And what woman ever had so devoted a husband? He went with her
everywhere. He, too, looked as if he had been through the mill, poor
dear, but at least he had won a close race, and he deserved and
received the sympathy of his faithful friends. As for that ungrateful
brute, Langdon Masters, he had not written a line to any one in San
Francisco since he left. Not one had an idea what had become of him.
Did he secretly correspond with Madeleine? (They would have permitted
her that much.) Would he blow out his brains if she died of
consumption? He was no philanderer. If he hadn't really loved her
nothing would have torn him from San Francisco and his brilliant
career; of course. Duelling days were over, and the doctor was not
the man to shoot another down in cold blood, with no better excuse
than the poor things had given him. It was all very thrilling and
romantic. Even the girls talked of little else, and regarded their
complacent prosperous swains with disfavor. "The Long Long Weary Day"
was their favorite song. They wished that Madeleine lived in a moated
grange instead of the Occidental Hotel.

Madeleine had had her own room from the beginning of her married
life in San Francisco, as the doctor was frequently called out at
night. When Howard had returned and told her that Masters would leave
on the morrow and that she was not to see him again, she had walked
quietly into her bedroom and locked the door that led to his; and she
had never turned the key since.

Talbot made no protest. He had no spirit left where Madeleine was
concerned, but it was his humble hope to win her back by unceasing
devotion and consideration, aided by time. He not only never
mentioned Masters' name, but he wooed her in blundering male fashion.
Not a day passed that he did not send her flowers. He bought her
trinkets and several valuable jewels, and he presented her with a
victoria, drawn by a fine sorrel mare, and a coachman in livery on
the box.

Madeleine treated him exactly as she treated her host at a dinner.
She was as amiable as ever at the breakfast table, and when he
deserted his club of an evening, she sat at her embroidery frame and
told him the gossip of the day.




XXVI


One evening at the end of two long hours, when he had heroically
suppressed his longing for a game of poker, he said hesitatingly, "I
thought you were so fond of reading. I don't see any books about. All
the women are reading a novel called 'Quits.' I'll send it up to you
in the morning if you haven't read it."

For the first time since Masters' departure the blood rose in
Madeleine's face, but she answered calmly:

"Thanks. I have little time for reading, as I have developed quite a
passion for embroidery and I practice a good deal. This is a
handkerchief-case for Mrs. McLane. Of course I must read 'Quits,'
however, and also 'The Initials.' One mustn't be behind the times. If
you'll step into Beach's tomorrow and order them I'll be grateful."

"Of course I will. Should--should--you like me to read to you? I'm a
pretty bad reader, I guess, but I'll do my best."

"Oh--is there an earthquake?"

"No! But your nerves are in a bad state. I'll get you a glass of
port wine."

He went heavily over to the cupboard, but his hand was shaking as he
poured out the wine. He drank a glass himself before returning to her.

"Thanks. You take very good care of me." And she gave him the
gracious smile of a grateful patient.

"I don't think you'd better go out any more at night for a while.
You are far from well, you know, and you're not picking up."

"A call for you, I suppose. Too bad."

There had been a peremptory knock on the door. A coachman stood
without. Would Dr. Talbot come at once? A new San Franciscan was
imminent via Mrs. Alexander Groome on Ballinger Hill.

The doctor grumbled.

"And raining cats and dogs. Why couldn't she wait until tomorrow?
We'll probably get stuck in the mud. Damn women and their everlasting
babies."

She helped him into his overcoat and wished him a pleasant good-night.
It was long since she had lifted her cheek for his old hasty kiss,
and he made no protest. He had time on his side.

She did not return to her embroidery frame but stood for several
moments looking at the chest near the fireplace. She had not opened
it since Masters left. His library had been packed and sent after him
by one of his friends, but no one had known of the books in her
possession. Masters certainly had not thought of them and she was in
no condition to remember them herself at the time.

She had not dared to look at them! Tonight, however, she moved
slowly toward the chest. She looked like a sleep-walker. When she
reached it she knelt down and opened it and gathered the books in her
arms. When her husband returned two hours later she lay on the floor
in a dead faint, the books scattered about her.




XXVII


It was morning before he could revive her, and two days before she
could leave her bed. Then she developed the hacking cough he dreaded.
He took her to the Sandwich Islands and kept her there for a month.
The even climate and the sea voyage seemed to relieve her, but when
they returned to San Francisco she began to cough again.

Do women go into a decline these days from corroding love and hope
in ruins? If so, one never hears of it and the disease is
unfashionable in modern fiction. But in that era woman was woman and
little besides. If a woman of the fashionable world she had Society
besides her family and housekeeping. She rarely travelled, certainly
not from California, and if one of her band fell upon evil days and
was forced to teach school, knit baby sacques, or keep a boarding-house,
she was pitied but by no means emulated. Madeleine had neither
house nor children, and more money than she could spend. She had
nothing to ask of life but happiness and that was for ever denied
her. Masters had never been out of her mind for a moment during her
waking hours, and she had slept little. She ate still less, and kept
herself up in Society with punch in the afternoon and champagne at
night. Only in the solitude of her room did she give way briefly to
excoriated nerves; but the source of her once ready tears seemed dry.
There are more scientific terms for her condition these days, but she
was poisoned by love and despair. Her collapse was only a matter of
time.

Dr. Talbot knew nothing about psychology but he knew a good deal
about consumption. He had also arrested it in its earlier stages more
than once. He plied Madeleine with the good old remedies: eggnog, a
raw egg in a glass of sherry, port wine, mellow Bourbon whiskey and
cream. She had no desire to recover and he stood over her while she
drank his potions lest she pour them down the washstand; and some
measure of her strength returned. She fainted no more and her cough
disappeared. The stimulants gave her color and her figure began to
fill out again. But her thoughts, save when muddled by her tonics,
never wandered from Masters for a moment.

The longing to hear from him grew uncontrollable with her returning
vitality. She had hoped that he would break his promise and write to
her once at least. He knew her too well not to measure the extent of
her sufferings, and common humanity would have justified him. But his
ship might have sunk with all on board for any sign he gave. Others
had ceased to grumble at his silence; his name was rarely mentioned.

If she had known his address she would have written to him and
demanded one letter. She had given no promise. Her husband had
commanded and she had obeyed. She had always obeyed him, as she had
vowed at the altar. But she had her share of feminine guile, and if
she had known where to address Masters she would have quieted her
conscience with the assurance that a letter from him was a necessary
part of her cure. She felt that the mere sight of his handwriting on
an envelope addressed to herself would transport her back to that
hour in Dolores, and if she could correspond with him life would no
longer be unendurable. But although he had casually alluded to his
club in New York she could not recall the name, if he had mentioned it.

She went to the Mercantile Library one day and looked over files of
magazines and reviews. His name appeared in none of them. It was
useless to look over newspaper files, as editorials were not signed.
But he must be writing for one of them. He had his immediate living
to make.

What should she do?

As she groped her way down the dark staircase of the library she
remembered the newspaper friend, Ralph Holt, who had packed his books
--so the chambermaid had informed her casually--and whom she had met
once when walking with Masters. He, if any one, would know Masters'
address. But how meet him? He did not go in Society, and she had
never seen him since. She could think of no excuse to ask him to
call. Nor was it possible--to her, at least--to write a note and ask
him for information outright.

But by this time she was desperate. See Holt she would, and after a
few moments' hard thinking her feminine ingenuity flashed a beacon.
Holt was one of the sub-editors of his newspaper and although he had
been about to resign and join Masters, no doubt he was on the staff
still. Madeleine remembered that Masters had often spoken of a French
restaurant in the neighborhood of the _Alta_ offices, patronized
by newspaper men. The cooking was excellent. He often lunched there
himself.

She glanced at her watch. It was one o'clock. She walked quickly
toward the restaurant.




XXVIII


She entered in some trepidation. She had never visited a restaurant
alone before. And this one was crowded with men, the atmosphere thick
with smoke. She asked the fat little proprietor if she might have a
table alone, and he conducted her to the end of the room, astonished
but flattered. A few women came to the restaurant occasionally to
lunch with "their boys," but no such lady of the haut ton as this. A
fashionable woman's caprice, no doubt.

Her seat faced the room, and as she felt the men staring at her, she
studied the menu carefully and did not raise her eyes until she gave
her order. In spite of her mission and its tragic cause she
experienced a fleeting satisfaction that she was well and becomingly
dressed. She had intended dropping in informally on Sibyl Forbes,
still an outcast, in spite of her intercession, and wore a gown of
dove-colored cashmere and a hat of the same shade with a long lilac
feather.

She summoned her courage and glanced about the room, her eyes casual
and remote. Would it be possible to recognize any one in that smoke?
But she saw Holt almost immediately. He sat at a table not far from
her own. She bowed cordially and received as frigid a response as
Mrs. Abbott would have bestowed on Sibyl Forbes.

Madeleine colored and dropped her eyes again. Of course he knew her
for the cause of Masters' desertion of the city that needed him, and
the disappointment of his own hopes and ambitions. Moreover, she had
inferred from his conversation the day they had all walked together
for half an hour that he regarded Masters as little short of a god.
He was several years younger, he was clever himself, and nothing like
Masters had ever come his way. He had declared that the projected
newspaper was to be the greatest in America. She had smiled at his
boyish enthusiasm, but without it she would probably have forgotten
him. She had resented his presence at the time.

Of course he hated her. But she had come too far to fail. He passed
her table a few moments later and she held out her hand with her
sweetest smile.

"Sit down a moment," she said with her pretty air of command; and
although his face did not relax he could do no less than obey.

"I feel more comfortable," she said. "I had no idea I should be the
only lady here. But Mr. Masters so often spoke to me of this
restaurant that I have always meant to visit it." She did not flutter
an eyelash as she uttered Masters' name, and her lovely eyes seemed
wooing Holt to remain at her side.

"Heartless, like all the rest of them," thought the young man
wrathfully. "Well, I'll give her one straight."

"Have you heard from him lately?" she asked, as the waiter placed
the dishes on the table. "He hasn't written to one of his old friends
since he left, and I've often wondered what has become of him."

"He's gone to the devil!" said Holt brutally. "And I guess you know
where the blame lies--Oh!--Drink this!" He hastily poured out a glass
of claret. "Here! Drink it! Brace up, for God's sake. Don't give
yourself away before all these fellows."

Madeleine swallowed the claret but pushed back her chair. "Take me
away quickly," she muttered. "I don't care what they think. Take me
where you can tell me--"

He drew her hand through his arm, for he was afraid she would fall,
and as he led her down the room he remarked audibly, "No wonder you
feel faint. There's no air in the place, and you've probably never
seen so much smoke in your life before."

At the door he nodded to the anxious proprietor, and when they
reached the sidewalk asked if he should take her home.

"No. I must talk to you alone. There is a hack. Let us drive
somewhere."

He handed her into the hack, telling the man to drive where he liked
as long as he avoided the Cliff House Road. Madeleine shrank into a
corner and began to cry wildly. He regarded her with anxiety, and
less hostility in his bright blue eyes.

"I'm awfully sorry," he said. "I was a brute. But I thought you
would know--I thought other things--"

"I knew nothing, but I can't believe it is true. There must be some
mistake. He is not like that."

"That's what's happened. You see, his world went to smash. That was
the opportunity of his life, and such opportunities don't come twice.
He has no capital of his own, and he can't raise money in New York.
Besides, he didn't want a newspaper anywhere else. And--and--of-course,
you know, newspaper men hear all the talk--he was terribly hard hit.
I couldn't help feeling a little sorry for you when I heard you
were ill and all the rest; but today you looked as if you had
forgotten poor Masters had ever lived--just a Society butterfly and a
coquette."

"Oh, I'm not blaming you! Perhaps it is all my fault. I don't know!--
But _that_! I can't believe it. I never knew a man with as strong a
character. He--he--always could control himself. And he had too much
pride and ambition."

"I guess you don't know it, but he had a weak spot for liquor. That
is the reason he drank less than the rest of us--and that did show
strength of character: that he could drink at all. I only saw him
half-seas over once. He told me then he was always on the watch lest
it get the best of him. His father drank himself to death after the
war, and his grandfather from mere love of his cups. Nothing but a
hopeless smash-up, though, would ever have let it get the best of
him.... He was terribly high-strung under all that fine repose of
his, and although his mind was like polished metal in a way, it was
full of quicksilver. When a man like that lets go--nothing left to
hold on to--he goes down hill at ten times the pace of an ordinary
chap. I--I--suppose I may as well tell you the whole truth. He never
drew a sober breath on the steamer and he's been drunk more or less
ever since he arrived in New York. Of course he writes--has to--but
can't hold down any responsible position. They'd be glad to give him
the best salary paid if he'd sober up, but he gets worse instead of
better. He's been thrown off two papers already; and it's only
because he can write better drunk than most men sober that he sells
an article now and again when he has to."

Madeleine had torn her handkerchief to pieces. She no longer wept.
Her eyes were wide with horror. He fancied he saw awful visions in
them. Fearing she might faint or have hysterics, he hastily extracted
a brandy flask from his pocket.

"Do you mind?" he asked diffidently. "Sorry I haven't a glass, but
this is the first time I've taken the cork out."

She lifted the flask obediently and took a draught that commanded
his respect.

She smiled faintly as she met his wide-eyed regard. "My husband
makes me live on this stuff. I was threatened with consumption. It
affects me very little, but it helps me in more ways than one."

"Well, don't let it help you too much. I suppose the doctor knows
best--but--well, it gets a hold on you when you are down on your luck."

"If it ever 'gets a hold' on me it will because I deliberately wish
it to," she said haughtily. "If Langdon Masters--has gone as far as
you say, I don't believe it is through any inherited weakness. He has
done it deliberately."

"I grant that. And I'm sorry if I offended you--"

"I am only grateful to you. I feel better now and can think a
little. Something must be done. Surely he can be saved."

"I doubt it. When a man starts scientifically drinking himself to
death nothing can be done when there is nothing better to offer him.
May I be frank?"

"I have been frank enough!"

"Masters told me nothing of course, but I heard all the talk. Old
Travers let out his part of it in his cups, and news travels from the
Clubs like water out of a sieve. We don't publish that sort of muck,
but there were innuendoes in that blackguard sheet, _The Boom_. They
stopped suddenly and I fancy the editor had a taste of the horsewhip.
It wouldn't be the first time.... When Masters sent for me and told me
he was leaving San Francisco for good and all, he looked like a man
who had been through Dore's Hell--was there still, for that matter. Of
course I knew what had happened; if I hadn't I'd have known it the
next day when I saw the doctor. He looked bad enough, but nothing to
Masters. He had less reason! Of course Masters threw his career to the
winds to save your good name. Noblesse oblige. Too bad he wasn't more
of a villain and less of a great gentleman. It, might have been better
all round. This town certainly needs him."

"If he were not a great gentleman nothing would have happened in the
first place," she said with cool pride. "But I asked you if there
were no way to save him."

"I can think of only two ways. If your husband would write and ask
him to return to San Francisco--"

"He'd never do that."

"Then you might--you might--" He was fair and blushed easily. Being
secretly a sentimental youth he was shy of any of the verbal
expressions of sentiment; but he swallowed and continued heroically.
"You--you--I think you love him. I can see you are not heartless,
that you are terribly cut up. If you love him enough you might save
him. A man like Masters can quit cold no matter how far he has gone
if the inducement is great enough. If you went to New York--"

He paused and glanced at her apprehensively, but although she had
gasped she only shook her head sadly.

"I'll never break my husband's heart and the vows I made at the
altar, no matter what happens."

"Oh, you good women! I believe you are at the root of more disaster
than all the strumpets put together!"

"It may be. I remember he once said something of the sort. But he
loved me for what I am and I cannot change myself."

"You could get a divorce."

"I have no ground. And I would not if I had. He knows that."

"No wonder he is without hope! But I don't pretend to understand
women. You'll leave him in the gutter then?"

"Don't!--Don't--"

"Well, if he isn't there literally he soon will be. I've seen men of
your set in the gutter here when they'd only been on a spree for a
week. Take Alexander Groome and Jack Belmont, for instance. And after
the gutter it is sometimes the calaboose."

"You are cruel, and perhaps I deserve it. But if you will give me
his address I will write to him."

"I wouldn't. He might be too drunk to read your letter, and lose it.
Or he might tear it up in a fury. I don't fancy even drink could make
Langdon Masters maudlin, and the sight of your handwriting would be
more likely to make him empty the bottle with a curse than to awaken
tender sentiment. Anyhow, it would be a risk. Some blackguard might
get hold of it."

"Very well, I'll not write. Will you tell the man to drive to the
Occidental Hotel?"

He gave the order and when he drew in his head she laid her hand on
his and said in her sweet voice and with her soft eyes raised to his
(he no longer wondered that Masters had lost his head over her), "I
want to thank you for the kindness you have shown me and the care you
took of me in that restaurant. What you have told me has destroyed
the little peace of mind I had left, but at least I'm no longer in
the dark. I will confess that I went to that restaurant in the hope
of seeing you and learning something about Masters. Nor do I mind
that I have revealed myself to you without shame. I have had no
confidant throughout all this terrible time and it has been a relief.
I suppose it is always easier to be frank with a stranger than with
even the best of friends."

"Thanks. But I'd like you to know that I am your friend. I'd do
anything I could for you--for Masters' sake as well as your own. It's
an awful mess. Perhaps you'll think of some solution."

"I've thought of one as far as I am concerned. I shall drink myself
to death."

"What?" He was sitting sideways, embracing his knees, and he just
managed to save himself from toppling over. "Have you gone clean out
of your head?"

"Oh, no. Not yet, But I shall do as I said. If I cannot follow him I
can follow his example. Why should he go to the dogs and I go through
life with the respect and approval of the world? He is far greater
than I--and better. I can at least share his disgrace, and I shall
also forget--and, it may be, delude myself that I am with him at
times."

"My God! The logic of women! How happy do you think _that_ will
make your husband? Good old sport, the doctor--and as for religion--
and vows!"

"One can stand so much and no more. I have reached the breaking
point here in this carriage. It is that or suicide, and that would
bring open disgrace on my husband. The other would only be suspected.
And I'll not last long."

The hack stopped in front of the hotel. She gave him her hand after
he had escorted her to the door. "Thank you once more. And I'd be
grateful if you would come and tell me if you have any further news
of him--no matter what. Will you?"

"Yes," he said. "But I feel like going off and getting drunk,
myself. I wish I hadn't told you a thing."

"It wouldn't have made much difference. If you know it others must,
and I'd have heard it sooner or later. I hope you'll call in any case."

He promised; but the next time he saw her it was not in a drawing-room.




XXIX


Madeleine had reached the calmness of despair once more, and this
time without a glimmer of hope. Life had showered its gifts
sardonically upon her before breaking her in her youth, and there was
still a resource in its budget that it had no power to withhold. She
was a firm believer in the dogmas of the Church and knew that she
would be punished hereafter. Well, so would he. It might be they
would be permitted to endure their punishment together. And
meanwhile, there was oblivion, delusions possibly, and then death.

It was summer and there were no engagements to break. The doctor was
caught in the whirlwind of another small-pox epidemic and lived in
rooms he reserved for the purpose. He did not insist upon her
departure from town as he knew her to be immune, and he thought it
best she should remain where she could pursue her regimen
uninterrupted; and tax her strength as little as possible. If he did
not dismiss her from his mind at least he had not a misgiving. She
had never disobeyed him, she appeared to have forgotten Masters at
last, she took her tonics automatically, and there were good plays in
town. In a few months she would be restored to health and himself.

He returned to the hotel at the end of six weeks. It was the dinner
hour but his wife was not at the piano. He tapped on the door that
led from the parlor to her bedroom, and although there was no
response he turned the knob and entered.

Madeleine was lying on the bed, asleep apparently.

He went forward anxiously; he had never known her to sleep at this
hour before. He touched her lightly on the shoulder, but she did not
awaken. Then he bent over her, and drew back with a frown. But
although horrified he was far from suspecting the whole truth. He had
been compelled to break more than one patient of too ardent a
fidelity to his prescriptions.

He forced an emetic down her throat, but it had no effect. Then he
picked her up and carried her into the bath room and held her head
under the shower. The blood flowed down from her congested brain. She
struggled out of his arms and looked at him with dull angry eyes.

"What do you mean?" she demanded. "How dared you do such a thing to
me?"

"You had taken too much, my dear," he said kindly. "Or else it
affects you more than it did--possibly because you no longer need it.
I shall taper you off by degrees, and then I think we can do without
it."

"Without it? I couldn't live without it. I need more--and more--"
She looked about wildly.

"Oh, that is all right. They always think so at first. In six months
you will have forgotten it. Remember, I am a doctor--and a good one,
if I say so myself."

She dropped her eyes. "Very well," she said humbly. "Of course you
know best."

"Now, put on dry clothes and let us have dinner. It seems a year
since I dined with you."

"I haven't the strength."

He went into the parlor and returned with a small glass of cognac.
"This will brace you up, and, as I said, you must taper off. But I'll
measure the doses myself, hereafter."

She put on an evening gown, but with none of her old niceness of
detail. She merely put it on. Her wet hair she twisted into a knot
without glancing at the mirror. As she entered the parlor she
staggered slightly. Talbot averted his eyes. He may have had similar
cases, and, as a doctor, become hardened to all manifestations of
human weakness, but this patient was his wife. It was only temporary,
of course, and a not unnatural sequel. But Madeleine! He felt as a
priest might if a statue of the Virgin opened its mouth and poured
forth a stream of blasphemy.

Then he went forward and put his arm about her. "Brace up," he said.
"I hear the waiters in the dining-room. They must not see you like
this. Where--where have you taken your meals?"

"In my bedroom."

"I hoped so. Has any one seen you?"

"I don't know--no. I think not. I have been careful enough. I do not
wish to disgrace you."

He was obliged to give her another glass of cognac, and she sat
through the dinner without betraying herself, although she would eat
nothing. She was sullen and talked little, and when the meal was over
she went directly to bed.

Dr. Talbot followed her, however, and searched her wardrobe and
bureau drawers. He found nothing. When he returned to the parlor he
locked the cupboard where he kept his hospitable stores and put the
key in his pocket. But he did not go out, and toward midnight he
heard her moving restlessly about her room. She invited him eagerly
to enter when he tapped.

"I'm nervous, horribly nervous," she said. "Give me some more cognac
--anything."

"You'll have nothing more tonight. I shall give you a dose of
valerian."

She swallowed the noxious mixture with a grimace and was asleep in a
few moments.




XXX


The doctor was still very busy but he returned to the hotel four
times a day and gave her small doses of whatever liquor she demanded.
In a short time he diluted them with Napa Soda water. She was always
pacing the room when he entered and looked at him like a wild animal
at bay. But she never mentioned Masters' name, even when her nerves
whipped her suddenly to hysterics; and although he sometimes thought
he should go mad with the horror of it all, he had faith in his
method, and in her own pride, as soon as the first torments wore
down. She refused to walk out of doors or to wear anything but a
dressing gown; she took her slender meals in her room.

But Madeleine's sufferings were more mental than physical, although
she was willing the doctor should form the natural conclusion. She
was possessed by the fear that a cure would be forced upon her; she
was indifferent even to the taste of liquor, and had merely preferred
it formerly to bitter or nauseous tonics; in Society it had been a
necessary stimulant, when her strength began to fail, nothing more.
After her grim decision she had forced large quantities down her
throat by sheer strength of will. But she had found the result all
that she had expected, she had alternated between exhilaration and
oblivion, and was sure that it was killing her by inches. Now, she
could indulge in neither wild imaginings nor forget. And if he cured
her!--but her will when she chose to exert it was as strong as his,
and her resource seldom failed her.

One day in her eternal pacing she paused and stared at the keyhole
of the cupboard, then took a hairpin from her head and tried to pick
the lock. It was large and complicated and she could do nothing with
it. She glanced at the clock. The doctor would not return for an
hour. She dressed hastily and went out and bought a lump of soft wax.
She took an impress of the keyhole and waited with what patience she
could summon until her husband had come and gone. Then she went out
again. The next day she had the key and that night she needed no
valerian.

Doctor Talbot paced the parlor himself until morning. But he did not
despair. He had had not dissimilar experiences before. He removed his
supplies to the cellar of the hotel and carried a flask in his pocket
from which he measured her daily drams.

The same chambermaid had been on her floor for years, and was
devoted to her. She sent her out for gin on one pretext or another,
although the woman was not deceived for a moment; she had "seen how
it was" long since. But she was middle-aged, Irish, and sympathetic.
If the poor lady had sorrows let her drown them.

Madeleine was more wary this time. She told her husband she was
determined to take her potions only at noon and at night; in the
daytime she restrained herself after four o'clock, although she took
enough to keep up her spirits at the dinner-table to which she had
thought it best to return.

The doctor, thankful, no longer neglected his practice, and left
immediately after dinner for the Club as she went to her room at once
and locked the door. There was no doubt of her hostility, but that,
too, was not unnatural, and he was content to wait.

Society returned to town, but she flatly refused to enter it. Nor
would she receive any one who called. The doctor remonstrated in
vain. He trusted her perfectly and a glass of champagne at dinner
would not hurt her. If she expected to become quite herself again she
must have diversions. She was leading an unnatural life.

She deigned no answer.

He warned her that tongues would wag. He had met several of the
women during the summer and told them her lungs were healed.... No
doubt he had been over-anxious, mistaken--in the beginning. He wished
he had given her a tonic of iron arsenic and strychnine, alternated
with cod-liver oil. But it was too late for regrets, and at least she
was well on the road to recovery; if she snubbed people now they
would take their revenge when she would be eager for the pleasures of
Society again.

Madeleine laughed aloud.

"But, my dear, this is only a passing phase. Of course your system
is depressed but that will wear off, and what you need now, even more
than brandy twice a day, is a mental tonic. By the way, don't you
think you might leave it off now?"

"No, I do not. If my system is depressed I'd go to pieces altogether
without it."

"I'll give you a regular tonic--"

"I'll not take it. You are not disposed to use force, I imagine."

"No, I cannot do that. But you'll accept these invitations--some of
them?" He indicated a pile of square envelopes on the table. He had
opened them but she had not given them a passing glance.

"Society would have the effect of arresting my 'cure.' I hate it. If
you force me to go out I'll drink too much and disgrace you."

"But what shall I tell them?" he asked in despair. "I see some of
them every day and they'll quiz my head off. They can't suspect the
truth, of course, but--but--" he paused and his ruddy face turned a
deep brick red. He had never mentioned Masters' name to her since he
announced his impending departure, but he was desperate. "They'll
think you're pining, that's what! That you won't go out because you
take no interest in any one but Langdon Masters."

She was standing by the window with her back to him, looking down
into the street. She turned and met his eyes squarely.

"That would be quite true," she said.

"You do not mean that!"

"I have never forgotten him for a moment and I never shall as long
as I live." She averted her eyes from his pallid face but went on
remorselessly. "If you had been merciful you would have let me die
when I was so ill. But you showed me another way, and now you would
take even that from me."

"Do--do you mean to say that you tried to drink yourself to death?"

"Yes, I mean that. And if you really cared for me you would let me
do it now."

"That I'll never do," he cried violently. "I'll cure you and you'll
get over this damned nonsense in time."

"I never shall get over it. Don't delude yourself for an instant."

He stared at her with a sickening sense of impotence--and despair.
He thought she had never looked more beautiful. She wore a graceful
wrapper of pale blue camel's hair and her long hair in two pendent
braids. She was very white and she looked as cold and remote as the
moon.

"Madeleine! Madeleine! You have changed so completely! I cannot
believe that you'll never be the same Madeleine again. Why--you--you
look as if you were not there at all!"

"Only my shell is here. The real me is with him."

"Curse the man! Curse him! Curse him! I wish I'd blown out his
brains!" He threw his arms about wildly and she wondered if he would
strike her. But he threw himself into a chair and burst into heavy
sobbing. Madeleine ran out of the room.




XXXI


"I tell you it's true. You needn't pooh-pooh at me, Antoinette
McLane. I have it on the best authority."

"Old Ben Travers, I suppose!"

"No, it's not Ben Travers, although he'll find it out soon enough.
Her chambermaid knows my cook. She is devoted to Madeleine,
evidently, and cried after she had told it, but--well, I suppose it
was too good for any mere female to keep."

"Servants' gossip," replied Mrs. McLane witheringly. "I should think
it would be beneath your self-respect to listen to it. Fancy
gossiping with one's cook."

"I didn't," replied Mrs. Abbott with dignity. "She told my maid, and
if we didn't listen to our maids' gossip how much would we really
know about what goes on in this town?"

Mrs. McLane, Mrs. Ballinger, Guadalupe Hathaway and Sally Abbott
were sitting in Mrs. Abbott's large and hideous front parlor after
luncheon, and she had tormented them throughout the meal with a
promise of "something that would make their hair stand on end."

She had succeeded beyond her happy expectations. Mrs. McLane's eyes
were flashing. Mrs. Ballinger looked like a proud silver poplar that
had been seared by lightning. Sally burst into tears, and Miss
Hathaway's large cold Spanish blue eyes saw visions of Nina Randolph,
a brilliant creature of the early sixties, whom she had tried to save
from the same fate.

"Be sure the bell boys will find it out," continued Mrs. Abbott
unctuously. "And when it gets to the Union Club--well, no use for us
to try to hush it up."

"As you are trying to do now!"

"You needn't spit fire at me. I feel as badly as you do about it. If
I've told just you four it's only to talk over what can be done."

"I don't believe there's a word of truth in the story. Probably that
wretched servant is down on her for some reason. Madeleine Talbot!
Why, she's the proudest creature that ever lived."

"She might have the bluest blood of the South in her veins,"
conceded Mrs. Ballinger handsomely. "I pride myself on my imagination
but I simply cannot _see_ her in such a condition."

"If it's true, it's Masters, of course," said Miss Hathaway. "The
only reason I didn't fall in love with him was because it was no use.
But he's the sort of man--there are not many of them!--who would make
a woman love him to desperation if he loved her himself. And she'd
never forget him."

"I don't believe it," said Mrs. Ballinger coldly. "I never believed
that Madeleine was in love with Langdon Masters. A good woman loves
only her husband."

"Oh, mamma!" wailed Sally. "Madeleine is young, and the doctor's a
dear but he wasn't the sort of a man for her at all. He just
attracted her when she was a girl because he was so different from
the men she knew. But Langdon is exactly suited to her. I guessed it
before any of you did. It worried me dreadfully, but I sympathized--I
always admired Langdon--if he'd looked at me before I fell in love
with Hal I believe I'd have married him--but I wish, oh, how I wish,
Madeleine could get a divorce."

"Sally Ballinger!" Her mother's voice quavered. "This terrible
California! If you had been brought up in Virginia--"

"But I wasn't. And I mean what I say. And--and--it's true about
Madeleine. I went there the other day and she saw me--and--oh, I
never meant to tell it--it's too terrible!"

"So," said Mrs. McLane. "So," She added thoughtfully after a moment.
"It's a curious coincidence. Langdon Masters is drinking himself to
death in New York. Jack Belmont returned the other day--he told Mr.
McLane."

She had been interrupted several times, Madeleine for the moment
forgotten.

"Why didn't Alexander Groome know? He's his cousin and bad enough
himself, heaven knows."

"Oh, poor Langdon! Poor Langdon! I knew he could love a woman like
that--"

"He has remarkable powers of concentration!"

"I'll wager Mr. Abbott heard it himself at the Club, the wretch!
He'll hear from me!"

"Oh, it's too awful," wailed Sally again. "What an end to a romance.
It was quite perfect before--in a way. And now instead of pitying
poor Madeleine and wishing we were her--she--which is it?--we'll all
be despising her!"

"It's loathsome," said Mrs. Ballinger. "I wish I had not heard it. I
prefer to believe that such things do not exist."

"Good heavens, mamma, I've heard that gentlemen in the good old
South were as drunk as lords, oftener than not."

"As lords, yes. Langdon Masters is in no position to emulate his
ancestors. And Madeleine! No one ever heard of a lady in the South
taking to drink from disappointed love or anything else. When life
was too hard for them they went into a beautiful decline and died in
the odor of sanctity."

"They get terribly skinny and yellow in the last stages--"

"Sally!"

"Well, I don't care anything about Langdon Masters," announced Mrs.
Abbott. "He's left here anyway, and like as not we'll never see him
again. This is what I want to know: Can anything be done about
Madeleine Talbot? Of course Howard poured whiskey down her throat
until it got the best of her. But he should know how to cure her.
That is if he knows the worst."

"You may be sure he knows the worst," said Mrs. McLane. "How could
he help it?"

"That maid said she bought it on the sly all the time. Don't you
suppose he'd put a stop to that if he knew it?"

"Well, he will find it out. And I'll not be the one to tell him. One
ordeal of that sort is enough for a lifetime."

"Why not give her a talking to? She has always seemed to defer more
to you than to any one else." Mrs. Abbott made the admission
grudgingly.

"I am willing to try, if she will see me. But--if she knows what has
happened to Masters--and ten to one she does--he may have written to
her--I don't believe it will do any good. Alas! Why does youth take
life so tragically? When she is as old as I am she will know that no
man is worth the loss of a night's sleep."

"Yes, but Madeleine isn't old!" cried Sally. "She's young--young--
and she can't live without him. I don't know whether she's weaker or
stronger than Sibyl, but at any rate Sibyl is happy--"

"How do you know?"

"Can't you see it in her face at the theatre? Oh, I don't care! I'll
tell it! Madeleine asked me to lunch to meet her one day last winter
and I went. We had a splendid time. After lunch we sat on the rug
before the fire and popped corn. Oh, you needn't all glare at me as if
I'd committed a crime. It's hard to _be_ hard when you're young, and
Sibyl was my other intimate friend. But that's not the question at
present. I've had an idea. Perhaps I could persuade Madeleine to stay
with me. Now that I know, perhaps she won't mind so much. I only got
in by accident. There's a new man at the desk and he let me go up--"

"Well, what is your idea?" asked Mrs. McLane impatiently. "What
could you do with her if she did visit you--which she probably will
not."

"I might be able to cure her. She wouldn't see anything to drink.
Hal has sworn off. There's not a drop in sight, and not only on his
account but because the last butler got drunk and fell in the lake.
We'll not have any company while she's there. And I'd lock her in at
night and never leave her alone in the daytime."

"That is not a bad idea at all," said Mrs. McLane emphatically. "But
don't waste your time trying to persuade her. Go to Howard. Tell him
the truth. He will give her a dose of valerian and take her over in a
hack at night."

"I don't like the idea of Sally coming into contact with such a
dreadful side of life--"

"But if I can save her, mamma?"

"Maria is Alexander Groome's wife and she has no influence over him."

"Oh, Maria! If he were my husband I'd lead him such a dance that
he'd behave himself in self-defence. Maria is too much like you--"

"Sally Ballinger!"

"I only meant that you are an angel, mamma dear. And of course you
are so enchanting and beautiful papa has always toed the mark. But
Maria is good without being any too fascinating--"

"Sally is right," interrupted Mrs. McLane. "I am not sure that her
plan will succeed. But no one has thought of a better. If Madeleine
has a deeper necessity for stupefying her brain than shattered
nerves, I doubt if any one could save her. But at least Sally can
try. We'd be brutes if we left her to drown without throwing her a
plank."

"Just what I said," remarked Mrs. Abbott complacently. "Was I not
justified in telling you? And when you get her over there, Sally, and
her mind is quite clear, warn her that while she may do what she
chooses in private, if she elects to die that way, just let her once
be seen in public in a state unbecoming a lady, and that is the end
of her as far as we are concerned."

"Yes," said Mrs. McLane with a sigh. "We should have no choice. Poor
Madeleine!"




XXXII


Madeleine awoke from a heavy drugged sleep and reached out her hand
automatically for the drawer of her commode. It fumbled in the air
for a moment and then she raised herself on her elbow. She glanced
about the room. It was not her own.

She sprang out of bed. A key turned and Sally Abbott entered.

"What does this mean?" cried Madeleine. "What are you doing here,
Sally? Why did Howard move me into another room?"

"He didn't. You are over at my house. He thought the country would
be good for you for a while and I was simply dying to have you--"

"Where are my clothes? I am going back to the city at once."

"Now, Madeleine, dear." Sally put her arm round the tall form which
was as rigid as steel in her embrace. But she was a valiant little
person and strong with health and much life in the open. "You are
going to stay with me until--until--you are better."

"I'll not. I must get back. At once! You don't understand--"

"Yes, I do. And I've something for you." She took a flask from the
capacious pocket of her black silk apron and poured brandy into a
glass.

Madeleine drank it, then sank heavily into a chair.

"That is more than he has been giving me," she said suspiciously.
"How often did he tell you to give me that?"

"Four times a day."

"He's found out! He's found out!"

"That chambermaid blabbed, and of course he heard it. I--I--saw him
just after. He felt so terribly, Madeleine dear! Your heart would
have ached for him. And when I asked him to let you come over here he
seemed to brighten up, and said it was the best thing to do."

Madeleine burst into tears, the first she had shed in many months.
"Poor Howard! Poor Howard! But it will do no good."

"Oh, yes, it will. Now, let me help you dress. Or would you rather
stay in bed today?"

"I'll dress. And I'm not going to stay, Sally. I give you fair
warning."

"Oh, but you are. I've locked up your outdoor things--and my own!
I'll only let you have them when we go out together."

"So you have turned yourself into my jailer?"

"Yes, I have. And don't try to look like an outraged empress until
your stays are covered up. Put on your dress and we'll have a game of
battledore and shuttlecock in the hall. It's raining. Then we'll have
some music this afternoon. My alto used to go beautifully with your
soprano, and I'll get out our duets. I haven't forgotten one of the
accompaniments--What are you doing?"

Madeleine was undressing rapidly. "I haven't had my bath. I seldom
forget that, even--where is the bath room? I forget."

"Across the hall. And leave your clothes here. Although you'd break
your bones if you tried to jump out of the window. When you've
finished I'll have a cup of strong coffee ready for you. Run along."




XXXIII


Lake Merritt, a small sheet of water near the little town of
Oakland, was surrounded by handsome houses whose lawns sloped down to
its rim. Most them were closed in summer, but a few of the owners,
like the Harold Abbotts, lived there the year round. At all times,
however, the lawns and gardens were carefully tended, for this was
one of Fashion's chosen spots, and there must be no criticism from
outsiders in Oakland. The statues on the lawns were rubbed down after
the heavy rains and dusted as carefully in summer. There were grape-vine
arbors and wild rose hedges, and the wide verandas were embowered.
In summer there were many rowboats on the lake, and they lingered
more often in the deep shade of the weeping willows fringing the
banks. The only blot on the aristocratic landscape was a low brown
restaurant kept by a Frenchman, known as "Old Blazes." It was a resort
for gay parties that were quite respectable and for others that
were not. Behind the public rooms was a row of cubicles patronized
by men when on a quiet spree (women, too, it was whispered). There
were no cabinet particuliers. Old Blazes had his own ideas of propriety;
and no mind to be ousted from Lake Merritt.

Madeleine had found Sally Abbott's society far more endurable, when
she paid her round of visits after Masters' departure, than that of
the older women with their watchful or anxious eyes, and she had no
suspicion that Sally had guessed her secret long since. If love had
been her only affliction she would have been grateful for her society
and amusing chatter, for they had much in common. But in the
circumstances it was unthinkable. Not only was she terrified once
more by the prospect of being "cured," but her shattered nerves
demanded far more stimulation and tranquilizing than these small
daily doses of brandy afforded.

Her will was in no way affected. She controlled even her nerves in
Sally's presence, escaped from it twice a day under pretext of taking
a nap, and went upstairs immediately after dinner. She had a large
room at the back of the house where she could pace up and down unheard.

She pretended to be amiable and resigned, played battledoor and
shuttlecock in the hall, or on the lawn when the weather permitted,
sang in the evenings with Sally and Harold, and affected not to
notice that she was locked in at night. She refused to drive, as she
would have found sitting for any length of time unendurable, but she
was glad to take long walks even in the rain--and was piloted away
from the town and the railroad.

Sally wrote jubilant letters to Dr. Talbot, who thought it best to
stay away. The servants were told that Mrs. Talbot was recovering
from an illness and suspected nothing.

It lasted two weeks. Sally had inexorably diminished the doses after
the seventh day. Madeleine's mind, tormented by her nerves, never
ceased for a moment revolving plans for escape.

As they returned from a walk one afternoon they met callers at the
door and it was impossible to deny them admittance. Madeleine excused
herself and went up to her room wearing her coat and hat instead of
handing them to Sally as usual. She put them in her wardrobe and
locked the door and hid the key. At dinner it was apparent, however,
that Sally had not noticed the omission of this detail in her daily
espionage, for the visitors had told her much interesting gossip and
she was interested in imparting it. Moreover, her mind was almost at
rest regarding her captive.

Madeleine, some time since, had found that the key of another door
unlocked her own, and secreted it. She had no money, but she had worn
a heavy gold bracelet when her husband and Sally dressed her and they
had pinned her collar with a pearl brooch. Sally followed her to her
room after she had had time to undress and gave her the nightly
draught, but did not linger; she had no mind that her husband should
feel neglected and resent this interruption of an extended honeymoon.

Madeleine waited until the house was quiet. Then she went down the
heavily carpeted stairs and let herself out by one of the long French
windows. She had made her plans and walked swiftly to the restaurant.
She knew "Old Blazes," for she had dined at his famous hostelry more
than once with her husband or friends.

There was a party in the private restaurant. She walked directly to
one of the cubicles and rang for a waiter and told him to send M'sieu
to her at once.

"Old Blazes" came immediately, and if she expected him to look
astonished she was agreeably disappointed. Nothing astonished him.

She held out her bracelet and brooch. "I want you to lend me some
money on these," she said. "My husband will redeem them."

"Very well, madame." (He was far too discreet to recognize her.) "I
will bring you the money at once."

"And I wish to buy a quart of Bourbon, which I shall take with me.
You may also bring me a glass."

"Very well, madame."

He left the room and returned in a moment with a bottle of Bourbon,
from which he had drawn the cork, a glass, and a bottle of Napa Soda.
He also handed her two gold pieces. He had been a generous friend to
many patrons and had reaped his reward.

"I should advise you to leave by the back entrance," he said. "Shall
I have a hack there--in--"

"Send for it at once and I will take it when I am ready. Tell the
man to drive on to the boat and to the Occidental Hotel."

"Yes, Madame. Good-night, Madame."

He closed the door. Madeleine left the restaurant three quarters of
an hour later.




XXXIV


Colonel Belmont, Alexander Groome, Amos Lawton, Ogden Bascom and
several other worthy citizens, were returning from a pleasant supper
at Blazes'. They sat for a time in the saloon of the ferry boat El
Capitan with the birds of gorgeous plumage they had royally
entertained and then went outside to take the air; the ladies
preferring to nap.

"Hello! What's that?" exclaimed Groome. "Something's up. Let's
investigate."

At the end of the rear deck was a group of men and one or two women.
They were crowding one another and those on the edge stood on tiptoe.
Belmont was very tall and he could see over their heads without
difficulty.

"It's a woman," he announced to his friends. "Drunk--or in a dead
faint--"

A man laughed coarsely. "Drunk as they make 'em. No faint about that
--Hi!--Quit yer shovin'--"

Belmont scattered the crowd as if they had been children and picked
up the woman in his arms.

"My God!" he cried to his staring companions, and as he faced them
he looked about to faint himself. "Do you see who it is? Where can we
hide her?"

"Whe-e-ew!" whistled Groome, and for the moment was thankful for his
Maria. "What the--"

"I've got my hack on the deck below," said one of the gaping crowd.
"She came in it. Better take her right down, sir. I never seen her
before but I seen she was a lady and tried to prevent her--"

"Lead the way.... I'll take her home," he said to the others. "And
let's keep this dark if we can."

When the hack reached the Occidental Hotel he gave the driver a
twenty-dollar gold piece and the man readily promised to "keep his
mouth shut." He told the night clerk that Mrs. Talbot had sprained
her ankle and fainted, and demanded a pass key if the doctor were
out. A bell boy opened the parlor door of the Talbot suite and
Colonel Belmont took off Madeleine's hat, placed her on the bed, and
then went in search of the doctor.

When Madeleine opened her eyes her husband was sitting beside her.
He poured some aromatic spirits of ammonia into a glass of water and
she drank it indifferently.

"How did I get here?" she asked.

He told her in the bitterest words he had ever used.

"You are utterly disgraced. Some of those men may hold their tongues
but others will not. By this time it is probably all over the Union
Club. You are an outcast from this time forth."

"That means nothing to me. And I warned you."

"It is nothing to you that you have disgraced me also, I suppose?"

"No. You made an outcast of Langdon Masters. You wrecked his life
and will be the cause of his early death. Meanwhile he is in the
gutter. I am glad that I am publicly beside him.... Still, I would
have spared you if I could. You are a good man according to your
lights. If you had heeded my warning and made no foolish attempts to
cure me, no one would have been the wiser."

"Several of the women knew it. And if you had taken advantage of the
opportunity given you by Sally I think they would have guarded your
secret. You have publicly disgraced them as well as yourself and your
husband."

"Well, what shall you do? Throw me into the street? I wish that you
would."

"No, I shall try to cure you again."

"And have a wife that your friends will cut dead? You'd be far
better off if I _were_ dead."

"Perhaps. But I shall do my duty. And if I can cure you I'll sell my
practice and go elsewhere. To South America, perhaps."

"Scandal travels. You would never get away from it. Better stay here
with your friends, who will not visit my sins on your head. They will
never desert you. And you cannot cure me. Did you ever know any one
to be cured against his will?"

"I shall lock you in these rooms and you can't drink what you
haven't got."

"I've circumvented you before and I shall again."

"Then," he cried violently, "I'll put you in the Home for Inebriates!"

She laughed mockingly. "You'll never do anything of the sort. And I
shouldn't care if you did. I should escape."

"Have you no pride left?"

"It is as dead as everything else but this miserable shell. As dead
as all that was great in Langdon Masters. Won't you let me die in my
own way?"

"I will not."

She sighed and moved her head restlessly on the pillow. "You mean to
do what is right, I suppose. But you are cruel, cruel. You condemn me
to live in torment."

"I shall give you more for a while than I did before. I was too
abrupt. I wouldn't face the whole truth, I suppose."

"I'll kill myself."

"I have no fear of that. You are as superstitious as all religious
women--although much good your religion seems to do you. And you have
the same twisted logic as all women, clever as you are. You would
drink yourself to death if I would let you, but you'd never commit
the overt act. If you are relying on your jewels to bribe the
servants with, you will not find them. They are in the safe at the
Club. And I shall discontinue your allowance."

"Very well. Please go. I should like to take my bath."

He was obliged to attend an important consultation an hour later,
but he did not lock the doors as he had threatened. He wanted as
little scandal in the hotel as possible, and he believed her to be
helpless without money. The barkeeper was an old friend of his, and
when he instructed him to honor no orders from his suite he knew,
that the man's promise could be relied on. The chambermaid was
dismissed.

As soon as she was alone Madeleine wrote to her father and asked him
for a thousand dollars. It was the first time she had asked him for
money since her marriage; and he sent it to her with a long kindly
letter, warning her against extravagance. She had given no reason for
her request, but he inferred that she had been running up bills and
was afraid to tell her husband. Was she ill, that she wrote so
seldom? He understood that she had quite recovered. But she must
remember that he and her mother were old people.

Several days after her return she had sold four new gowns, recently
arrived from New York and unworn, to Sibyl Forbes.




XXXV


Ralph Holt ran down the steps of a famous night restaurant in north
Montgomery Street on the edge of Chinatown. It was a disreputable
place but it had a certain air of brilliancy, although below the
sidewalk, and was favored by men that worked late on newspapers, not
only for its excellent cuisine but because there was likely to be
some garish bit of drama to refresh the jaded mind.

The large room was handsomely furnished with mahogany and lit by
three large crystal chandeliers and many side brackets. It was about
two thirds full. A band was playing and on a platform a woman in a
Spanish costume of sorts was dancing the can-can, to the noisy
appreciation of the male guests. Along one side of the room was a bar
with a large painting above it of bathing nymphs. The waiters were
Chinese.

Holt found an unoccupied table and ordered an oyster stew, then
glanced about him for possible centres of interest. There were many
women present, gaudily attired, but they were not the elite of the
half-world. Neither did the gentlemen who made life gay and care-free
for the haughty ladies of the lower ten thousand patronize anything
so blatant. They were far too high-toned themselves. Their standards
were elevated, all things considered.

But the women of commerce, of whatever status, had no interest for
young Holt save as possible heroines of living drama. He had a lively
news sense, and although an editor, and of a highly respectable sheet
at that, he could become as keen on the track of a "story" as if he
were still a reporter.

But although the night birds were eating little and drinking a great
deal, at this hour of two in the morning, the only excitement was the
marvellous high kicking of the black-eyed scantily clad young woman
on the stage and the ribald applause of her admirers.

His eye was arrested by the slender back of a woman who sat at a
table alone drinking champagne. She was so simply dressed that she
was far more noticeable than if she had crowned herself with jewels.
His lunch arrived at the moment, and it was not until he had
satisfied his usual morning appetite that he remembered the woman and
glanced her way again. Two men were sitting at her table, apparently
endeavoring to engage her in conversation. They belonged to the type
loosely known as men about town, of no definite position, but with
money to spend and a turn for adventure.

It was equally apparent that they received no response to their
amiable overtures, for they shrugged their shoulders in a moment,
laughed, and went elsewhere. More than one woman sat alone and these
were amenable enough. They came for no other purpose.

Holt paid his account and strolled over to the table. When he took
one of the chairs he was shocked but not particularly surprised to
see that the woman was Mrs. Talbot. The town had rung with her story
all winter, and he had heard several months since that she had
obtained money in some way and left her husband. The report was that
Dr. Talbot had traced her to lodgings on the Plaza, but she had not
only refused to return to him but to tell him where she had obtained
her funds. She had informed him that she had sufficient money to keep
her "long enough," but the doctor had his misgivings and directed his
lawyers to pay the rent of the room and make an arrangement with a
neighboring restaurant to send in her meals. Then he had gone off on
a sea voyage. Holt had seen him driving his double team the day
before, evidently on a round of visits. The sea, apparently, had done
him little good. Nothing but age, no doubt, would shatter that superb
constitution, but he had lost his ruddy color and his face was drawn
and lined.

Madeleine had not raised her eyes. She looked like an effigy of well-bred
contempt, and Holt did not wonder that she suffered briefly from
the attentions of predatory males in search of amusement. Moreover,
she was very thin, and the sirens of that day were voluptuous. They
fed on cream and sweets until the proper curves of bust and hips were
achieved, and those that appeared in the wrong place were held flat
with a broad "wooden whalebone."

Holt was surprised to find her so little changed. It was evident she
was one of those drinkers whom liquor made pallid not red; her skin
was still smooth and her face had not lost its fine oval. But it was
only a matter of time!

"Mrs. Talbot."

She raised her eyes with a faint start and with an expression of
haughty disdain. But as she recognized him the expression faded and
she regarded him sadly.

"You see," she said.

"It's a crime, you know."

"Have you any news of him?"

"Nothing new. It takes time to kill a man like that."

"I hope he is more fortunate than I am! It hasn't the effect that it
did. It keeps my nerves sodden, but my brain is horribly clear. I no
longer forget! And death is a long time coming. I am tired always,
but I don't break."

"You shouldn't come to such places as this. If a man was drunk
enough you couldn't discourage him."

"Oh, I have been spoken to in places like this and on the street by
men in every stage of intoxication and by men who were quite sober.
But I am able to take care of myself. This sort of man--the only sort
I meet now--likes gay clothes and gay women."

"All the same it's not safe. Do you only go out at night?"

"Yes--I--I sleep in the daytime."

"Look here--I have a plan--I won't tell you what it is now--but
meanwhile I wish you would promise me that you will not go out alone--
to hells of this sort--again. I can make an arrangement for a while
at the office to get off earlier, and I'll take you wherever you want
to go. Is it a bargain?"

"Very well," she said indifferently. Then she smiled for the first
time, and her face looked sweet and almost girlish once more. "You
are very kind. Why do you take so much interest? I am only one more
derelict. You must have seen many."

"Well, I'm just built that way. I took a shine to you the day in
that old ark we ambled about in, and then I'm as fond of Masters as
ever. D'you see? Now, let's get out of this. I'm going to see you
home."

"Home!"

"Well, I'm glad the word gives you a shock, anyway. It's where you
ought to be."

They left the restaurant and although, when they reached the
sidewalk, she took his arm, he noticed that she did not stagger.

They walked up the hill past the north side of the Plaza. The
gambling houses of the fifties and early sixties had moved elsewhere,
and although there were low-browed shops on the east side with
flaring gas jets before them even at this hour, the other three
sides, devoted to offices and rooming-houses, were respectable. There
were a few drunken sailors on the grass, who had wandered too far
from Barbary Coast, but they were asleep.

"I never am molested here," she said. "I don't think I have ever met
any one. Sometimes I have stood in the shadow up there and looked
down Dupont Street. What a sight! Respectable Montgomery Street is
never so crowded at four in the afternoon. And the women! Sometimes I
have envied them, for life has never meant anything to them but just
that. I never saw one of those painted harlots who looked as if she
had even the remnants of a mind."

"Well, for heaven's sake keep your distance from Dupont Street. If
some drunken brute caught you lurking in the shadows it might appeal
to his sense of humor to toss you on his shoulder and run the length
of the street with you--possibly fling you through one of the windows
of those awful cottages into some harlot's lap, if she happened to be
soliciting at the moment. Then she'd scratch your eyes out.... You
know a lot about taking care of yourself," he fumed.

"Oh, I never go there any more," she said indifferently. "I'm tired
of it."

"I can understand you leaving your husband and wishing to live alone
--natural enough!--but what I cannot understand is that you, the
quintessence of delicate breeding, should walk the streets at night
and sit in dives. I wonder you can stand being in the room with such
women, to say nothing of the men."

"It has been my hope to forget all I represented before, and danger
means nothing to me. Moreover, there are other reasons. I must have
exercise and air. I do not care to risk meeting any of my old
friends. I must get away from myself--from solitude--during some part
of the twenty-four hours. And--well--the die was cast. I was publicly
disgraced. It doesn't matter what I do now, and when I sit in that
sort of place I can imagine that he is in similar ones on the other
side of the continent. I told you that I intended to be no better
than he--and of course as I am a woman I am worse."

"I suppose you would not be half so charming if you were not so
completely feminine. But just how many of these night hells have you
been to?"

"I can't tell. I've been to far worse dives than that. I've even
been in saloons over on Barbary Coast. But although I've been hurt
accidentally several times in scuffles, and a bullet nearly hit me
once, I seem to bear a charmed life. I suppose those do that want to
die. And although they treat me with no respect they seem to regard
me as a harmless lunatic, and--and--I take very little when I am out.
I have just enough pride left not to care to be taken to the
calaboose by a policeman."

"Good God! How can you even talk of such things? Some day you will
regret all this horribly."

"I'll never regret anything except that I was born."

"Well, here we are. I'll not take you up to your rooms. Don't give
them a chance at that sort of scandal whatever you do. It's lucky for
you that alcohol doesn't send you along a still livelier road to
perdition. It does most women."

"I see him every moment. Even if I did not, I do not think--well, of
course if things were different I should not be an outcast of any
sort. And don't imagine that my refinement suffers in these new
contacts. The underworld interests me; I had never even tried to
imagine it before. I am permitted to remain aloof and a spectator. At
times it is all as unreal as I seem to myself, sitting there. But I
never feel so close to vice as to complete honesty. I have often had
glimpses of blacker sins in Society."

"Well, I'm glad it's no worse. To tell you the truth, I've avoided
looking you up, for I didn't know--well, I didn't want to see you
again if you were too different. Good-night. I'll meet you at this
door tonight at twelve sharp."




XXXVI


There were doctors' offices on the first floor and Madeleine climbed
wearily the two flights to her room. Her muscles felt as tired as her
spirit, but she had an odd fancy that her skeleton was of fine
flexible steel and not only indestructible but tenacious and
dominant. It defied the worst she could do to organs and soul.

She unlocked her door and lit the gas jet. It was a decent room,
large, with the bed in an alcove, and little uglier than those grim
double parlors of her past that she had graced so often. But her own
rooms at the hotel had been beautiful and luxurious. They had
sheltered and pampered her body for five years, and her father's
house was a stately mansion, refurnished, with the exception of old
colonial pieces, after the grand tour in Europe. This room, although
clean and sufficiently equipped, was sordid and commonplace, and the
bed was as hard as the horsehair furniture. Her body as well as her
aesthetic sense had rebelled more than once.

But she would never return; although she guessed that the complete
dissociation from her old life and its tragic reminders had more than
a little to do with the loathing for drink that had gradually
possessed her. She had not admitted it to Holt, but it required a
supreme effort of will to take a glass of hot whiskey and water at
night, the taste disguised as much as possible by lime juice, and
another in the daytime. She had no desire to reform! And she longed
passionately to drown not only her heart but her pride. Now that her
system was refusing its demoralizing drug she felt that horror of her
descent only possible to a woman who has inherited and practised all
the refinements of civilization. She longed to return to those first
months of degraded oblivion, and could not!

The champagne or brandy she was forced to order in the dives she
haunted, in order to secure a table, merely gave her tone for the
moment.

Her nerves were less affected than her spirits. She had hours of
such black depression that only the faint glimmering star of religion
kept her from suicide. She had longer seasons for thought on Masters
and his ruin--and of the hours they had spent together. One night she
went out to Dolores and sat in the dark little church until dawn. She
had nothing of the saint in her and felt no impulse to emulate Concha
Arguello, who had become the first nun in California; moreover,
Razanov had died an honorable death through no fault of his or his
Concha's. She and Langdon Masters were lost souls and must expiate
their sins in the eyes of the world that heaped on their heads its
pitiless scorn.

Madeleine threw off her hat and dropped into the armchair, oblivious
of its bumps. She began to cry quietly with none of her former
hysteria. Holt was nearer to Masters than any one she knew, and she
was grateful that he had not seen her in her hours of supreme
degradation. If he ever saw Masters again he would tell him of her
downfall, of course--and the reason for it; but at least he could
paint no horrible concrete picture. For the first time she felt
thankful that she had not sunk lower; been compelled, indeed, against
her will, to retrace her steps. She even regretted the hideous
episode of the ferry boat, although she had welcomed the exposure at
the time. Her pride was lifting its battered head, and although she
felt no remorse, and was without hope, and her unclouded
consciousness foreshadowed long years of spiritual torment and
longing with not a diversion to lighten the gloom, she possessed
herself more nearly that night than since Holt had given her what she
had believed to be her death blow.

If she could only die. But death was no friend of hers.




XXXVII


That afternoon Holt called on Dr. Talbot in his office. Half an hour
later, looking flushed and angry, he strolled frowning down Bush
street, then turned abruptly and walked in the direction of South
Park. He did not know Mrs. McLane but he believed she would see him.

He called at midnight--and on many succeeding nights--for Madeleine
and took her to several of the dives that seemed to afford her
amusement. He noticed that she drank little, and had a glimmering of
the truth. Newspaper men have several extra senses. It was also
apparent that the life she had led had not made her callous. As he
insisted upon "treating" her she would have none of champagne but
ordered ponies of brandy.

Now that she had a cavalier she was stared at more than formerly,
and there was some audible ribald comment which Holt did his best to
ignore; but as time wore on those bent on hilarity or stupor ceased
to notice two people uninterestingly sober.

Holt talked of Masters constantly, relating every incident of his
sojourn in San Francisco he could recall, and of his past that had
come to his knowledge; expatiating bitterly upon his wasted gifts and
blasted life. The more Madeleine winced the further he drove in the
knife.

One night they were sitting on a balcony in Chinatown. In the
restaurant behind them a banquet was being given by a party of
Chinese merchants, and Holt had thought the scene might amuse her.
The round table was covered with dishes no larger than those played
with in childhood and the portions were as minute. The sleek
merchants wore gorgeously embroidered costumes, and behind them were
women of their own race, dressed plainly in the national garb, their
stiff oiled hair stuck with long pins lobed with glass. They were
evidently an orchestra, for they sang, or rather chanted, in high
monotonous voices, as mournful as their gray expressionless faces. In
two recesses, extended on teakwood couches, were Chinamen presumably
of the same class as the diners, but wearing their daily blue silk
unadorned and leisurely smoking the opium pipe. The room was heavily
gilded and decorated and on the third floor as befitted its rank.
Chinamen of humbler status dined on the floor below, and the ground
restaurant accommodated the coolies.

On the little balcony, their chairs wedged between large vases of
growing plants, Madeleine could watch the function without attracting
attention; or lean over the railing and look down upon the narrow
street hung with gay paper lanterns above the open doors of shops
that flaunted the wares of the Orient under strange gilt signs. There
were many little balconies high above the street and they were as
brilliantly lit as for a festival. From several came the sound of
raucous instrumental music or that same thin chant as of lost souls
wandering in outer darkness. The street was thronged with Chinamen of
the lower caste in dark blue cotton smocks, pendent pigtails, and
round coolie hats.

It was eight o'clock, but it was Holt's "night off" and as he had
told her that morning he could get a pass for the dinner, and that it
was time she "changed her bill," she had risen early and met him at
her door.

It was apparent that she took a lively interest in this bit of
Shanghai but a step out of the Occident, for her face had lost its
heavy brooding and she asked him many questions. It was an hour
before Masters' name was mentioned, and then she said abruptly:

"You tell me much of his life out here and before he came, but you
hardly ever say anything about the present."

"That sort of life is much of a muchness."

"How do you hear?"

"One of the _Bulletin_ men--Tom Lacey--went East just after Masters
did. He is on the _Times_. Several of us correspond with him."

"Has--has he ever been--literally, I mean--in the gutter?"

"Probably. He was in a hospital for a time and when he came out
several of his friends tried to buck him up. But it was no use. He did
work on one of the newspapers--the _Tribune_, I believe--about half
sober until he had paid his hospital bill with something to spare.
Then he went to work in the same old steady painstaking way to drink
himself to death."

"Wh--why did he go to the hospital? Was he very ill?"

"Busted the crust of a policeman and got his own busted at the same
time."

"How is it you spared me this before?"

He pretended not to see her tears, or her working hands.

"Didn't want to give you too heavy doses at once, but you are so
much stronger that I chanced it. He's been in more than one
spectacular affair. One night, in front of the City Prison, he tossed
the driver off a van as if the man had been a dead leaf, and before
the guard had time to jump to his seat he was on the box and had
lashed the horses. He drove like mad all over New York for hours, the
prisoners inside yelling and cursing at the top of their lungs. They
thought it was a new and devilishly ingenious mode of punishment.
When the horses dropped he left the van where it stood and went home.
There was a frightful row over the affair. Masters was arrested, of
course, but bailed out. He has friends still and some of them are
influential. The trial was postponed a few times and then dropped.
His rows are too numerous to mention. When he was here and sober he
betrayed anger only in his eyes, which looked like steel blades run
through fire, and with the most caustic tongue ever put in a man's
head. But when he's in certain stages of insobriety his fighting
instincts appear to take their own sweet way. At other times, Lacey
writes, he is as interesting as ever and men sit round eagerly and
listen to him talk. At others he simply disappears. Did I tell you he
had come into a little money--just recently?"

"No, you did not. Why doesn't he start a newspaper?"

"He's probably forgotten he ever wanted one--no, I don't fancy he
ever forgets anything. Only death will destroy that brain no matter
how he may obfuscate it. And I guess there are times when he can't,
poor devil. But he couldn't start a newspaper on what he's got. It's
just enough to buy him all he wants without the necessity for work."

"How did he get it?"

"His elder brother--only remaining member of the immediate family--
died and left him the old plantation in Virgina--what there is left
of it; and a small income from two or three old houses in Richmond.
Masters told me once that when the war left them high and dry he
agreed to waive his share in the estate provided his brother would
take care of his mother and the old place. The estate comes to him
now, but in trust. At his death, without legal heir, it goes to a
cousin."

"Oh, take me home, please. I can't stand those wailing women any
longer."




XXXVIII


A month later there was a tap on Madeleine's door. She rose earlier
these days and opened it at once, assuming that it was a message from
Holt. But Mr. McLane stood there.

"How are you, Madeleine? May I come in?" He shook her half-extended
hand as if he were paying her an afternoon call at the Occidental
Hotel, and sat down on the horsehair sofa with a genial smile;
placing his high silk hat and gold-headed cane beside him.

"Glad to see you looking so well. I've wanted to call for a long
time, but as you dropped us all like so many hot potatoes, I
hesitated, and was delighted today when Howard gave me an excuse."

"Howard?"

"Yes, he wants you to go back to him."

"That I'll never do."

"Don't be hasty. He is willing to forget everything--he asked me to
make you understand that he would never mention the subject. He will
also put your share of your father's estate unreservedly in your
hands as soon as the usual legal delays are over. You knew that your
father was dead, did you not? And your mother also?"

"Oh yes, I knew. It didn't seem to make any difference. I knew I
never should see them again anyhow."

"Howard was appointed trustee of your inheritance, but as I said, he
does not mean to take advantage of the fact. I am informed, by the
way, that your brother never told your parents that you had left
Howard. He knew nothing beyond the fact, of course."

"Well, I am glad of that."

She had no intention of shedding any tears before Mr. McLane. Let
him think her callous if he must.

"About Howard?"

"I'll never go back to him. I never want to see him again."

"Not if he would take you to Europe to live? There is an opening for
an American doctor in Paris."

"I never want to see him again. I know he is a good man but I hate
him. And if I did go back it would be worse. You may tell him that."

"Is your decision irrevocable?"

"Yes, it is."

"Then I must tell you that if there is no prospect of your return he
will divorce you."

"Divorced--I divorced?" Her eyes expanded with horrified
astonishment. But only for a moment. She threw back her head and
laughed. "That was funny, wasn't it? Well, let him do as he thinks
best. And he may be happy once more if I am out of his life
altogether. He won't have much trouble getting a divorce!"

"He will obtain it on the ground of desertion."

"Oh! Well, he was always a very good man. Poor Howard! I hope he'll
marry again and be happy."

"Better think it over. I--by the way--I'm not sure the women
wouldn't come round in time; particularly if you lived abroad for a
few years."

She curled her lip. "And I should have my precious position in
Society again! How much do you suppose that means to me? Have the
fatted calf killed and coals of fire poured on my humbled head! Do
you think I have no pride?"

"You appear to have regained it. I wish you could regain the rest
and be the radiant creature you were when you came to us. God! What a
lovely stunning creature you were! It hurts me like the devil, I can
tell you. And it's hurt the women too. They were fond of you. Do you
know that Sally is dead?"

"Yes. She had everything to live for and she died. Life seems to
amuse herself with us."

"She's a damned old hag." He rose and took up his hat and cane.
"Well, I'll wait a week, and then if you don't relent the proceedings
will begin. I shan't get the divorce. Not my line. But he asked me to
talk to you and I was glad to come. Good-by."

She smiled as she shook hands with him. As he opened the door he
turned to her again.

"That young Holt is a good fellow and has a head on his shoulders.
Better be guided by him if he offers you any advice."




XXXIX


Almost insensibly and without comment Madeleine fell into the habit
of sleeping at night and going abroad with Holt in the daytime. Nor
did he take her to any more dives. They went across the Bay, either
to Oakland or Sausalito, and took long walks, dining at some inn
where they were sure to meet no one they knew. She had asked him to
buy her books, as she did not care to venture either into the
bookstores or the Mercantile Library. She now had a part of her new
income to spend as she chose, and moved into more comfortable rooms,
although far from the fashionable quarter. She was restless and often
very nervous but Holt knew that she drank no longer. There had been
another revolution of the wheel: she would have a large income,
freedom impended, the future was hers to dispose of at will. Her
health was excellent; she had regained her old proud bearing.

"What are you going to do with it?" he asked her abruptly one
evening. They were sitting in the arbor of a restaurant on the water
front at Sausalito and had just finished dinner. The steep promontory
rose behind them a wild forest of oak and pine, madrona and
chaparral. Across the sparkling dark green water San Francisco looked
a pale blue in the twilight and there was a banner of soft pink above
her. Lights were appearing on the military islands, the ferry boats,
and yachts. "You will be free in about a month now. Have you made any
plans? You will not stay here, of course."

"Stay here! I shall leave the day the decree is granted, and I'll
never see California again as long as I live."

"But where shall you go?"

"Oh--it would be interesting to live in Europe."

"Whether you have admitted it to yourself or not you have not the
remotest idea of going to Europe."

"Oh?"

"You are going to Langdon Masters. Nothing in the world could keep
you away from him--or should."

"I wish women smoked. You look so placid. And I am glad you smoke
cigarettes."

"Why not try one?"

"Oh, no!" She looked scandalized. "I never did that--before. The
other was for a purpose, not because I liked it."

"I am used to your line of ratiocination. But you haven't answered
my question."

"Did you ask one?"

"In the form of an assertion, yes."

"You know--the Church forbids marriage after divorce."

"Look here, Madeleine!" Holt brought his fist down on the table with
such violence that she half started to her feet. "Do you mean to tell
me you are going to let any more damn foolishness wreck your life a
second time?"

"You must not speak of the Church in that way."

"Let that pass. I am not going to argue with you. You've argued it
all out with yourself unless I'm much mistaken. Are you going to let
Masters kill himself when you can save him? Are you going to condemn
yourself to a miserably solitary, wandering, aimless life, in which
you are no good to yourself, your Church, or any one on earth--and
with a crime on your soul?"

I--I--haven't admitted to myself what I shall do. It has seemed to
me that when I am free I shall simply go--"

"And straight to Masters. As well for a needle to try to run away
from a magnet."

"Oh, I wonder! I wonder!" But she did not look distressed. Her face
was transfigured as if she saw a vision. But it fell in a moment,
that inner glowing lamp extinguished.

"He may no longer want me. He may have forgotten me. Or if he
remembers it must only be to remind himself that I have ruined his
life. He may hate me."

"That is likely! If he hated you he'd have pulled up long ago. He
knows he still has it in him to make a name for himself, whether he
owns a newspaper or not. If he's gone on making a fool of himself
it's because his longing for you is insupportable; he can forget you
in no other way."

"Can men really love like that?" The inner lamp glowed again.

"A few. Not many, perhaps. Langdon's one of them. Case of a rare
whole being chopped in two by fate and both halves bleeding to death
without the other. There are a few immortal love affairs in the
world's history, and that's just what makes 'em immortal."

She did not answer, but sat staring at the rosy peaceful light above
the fiery city that had burnt out so many lives. Then her face
changed suddenly. It was set and determined, almost hard. He thought
she looked like a beautiful Medusa.

"Yes," she said. "I am going to him. I suppose I have known it all
along. At all events I know it now."

"And what is your plan?"

"I have had no time to make one yet."

"Will you listen to mine?"

"Do not I always listen to you with the greatest respect?" She was
the charming woman again. "Mr. McLane told me that I was to follow
your advice--I have an idea you have engineered this whole affair!--
But if he hadn't--well, I have every reason to be humbly grateful to
you. If this terrible tangle ever unravels I shall owe it to you."

"Then listen to me now. What I said--that his actions prove that he
cares for you as much as ever--is true. But--you might come upon him
in a condition where he would not recognize you, or was morose from
too much drink or too little; and for the moment he would hate you,
either because you reminded him too forcibly of what he had been and
was, or because it degraded him further to be seen by you in such a
state. He could make himself excessively disagreeable sober. Drunk,
panic stricken, reckless, I should think he might achieve a
masterpiece in that line that would make you feel like ten cents....
This is my plan. I'll go on at once and prepare him. Get him down to
his home in Virginia on one pretence or another, sober him up by
degrees, and then tell him all you have been through for his sake,
and that as soon as you are free you will come to him. He'll be a
little more like himself by that time and can stand having you look
at him.... It'll be no easy task at first; and I'll have to taper him
off to prevent any blow to his heart. There may be relapses, and the
whole thing to do over; but I shall use the talisman of your name as
soon as he is in a condition to understand, and shall succeed in the
end. Once let the idea take hold of him that he can have you at last
and it is only a question of time."

She made no reply for a moment. She sat with her eyes on his as he
spoke. At first they had opened widely, melted and flashed. But they
narrowed slowly. As he finished she turned her profile toward him and
he had never seen a cameo look harder.

"That would be an easy way out," she said. "But it does not appeal
to me. Nothing easy appeals to me these days. I'll fight my own
battles and overcome my own obstacles. Besides, he's mine. He shall
owe nothing to any one but to me. I'll find him and cure him myself."

"But you'll have a hard time finding him. He disappears for weeks at
a time. Even Tom Lacey might not be able to help you."

"I'll find him."

"You may have to haunt the most abominable places."

"You seem to forget that I have haunted a good many abominable
places. And if they are good enough for him they are good enough for
me."

"New York has the worst set of roughs in the world. Our hoodlums are
lambs beside them."

"I have no fear of anything but not finding him in time."

"But that is not the worst. You should not see him in that state.
You might find him literally in the gutter. He might be a sight you
never could forget. No matter what you made of him you never could
obliterate such a hideous memory. And he might say things to you that
your outraged pride would never forgive."

"I can forget anything I choose. Nor could anything he said, nor
anything he may have become, horrify me. Don't you think I have
pictured all that? I think of him every moment and I am not a coward.
I have imagined things that may be worse than the reality."

"Hardly. But there is another danger. You might kidnap him and get
him sobered up, only to lose him again. He might be so overcome with
shame that he would cut loose and hide where you would never find
him. Remember, his pride was as great as yours."

"I'd track him to the ends of the earth. He's mine and I'll have him."

Holt stared at her for a moment in perplexity, then laughed. "You
are a liberal education, Madeleine. Just as I think I really know you
at last you break out in a new place. Masters will have an
interesting life. You must be a sort of continued-in-our-next story
for any one who has the right to love and live with you. But for any
one else who has loved you it must be death and damnation."

She stole a glance at him, wondering if he loved her. If he did he
had never made a sign, and at the moment he seemed to be appraising
her with his sharp cool blue eyes.

"I was thinking of the doctor," he said calmly. "Although, of
course, there must have been a good many in a more or less idiotic
state over the reigning toast."

"The reigning toast!... Well, I'll never be that again. But it
won't matter if--when--You are to promise me you will not write to
him!"

"Oh, yes, I promise." Holt had been rapidly formulating his own
plans. "But you'll let me give you a letter to Lacey? It's a wild
goose chase but a little advice might help."

"I should have asked you for a line to Mr. Lacey. I don't wish to
waste time if I can help it."

He rose. "Well, there's a pile of blank paper and a soft pencil
waiting for me. I've an editorial to write on the low-lived politics
of San Francisco, and another on the increasing number of murders in
our fair city. Look at the fog sailing in through the Golden Gate,
pushing itself along like the prow of a ship. You'll never see
anything as beautiful as California again. But I suppose that worries
you a lot."

She smiled, a little mysterious smile, but she did not reply, and
they walked down to the ferry slip in silence.




XL


Madeline went directly from the train to Printing House Square and
had a long talk with "Tom" Lacey. He had been advised of her coming
and her quest and had already made a search for Masters, but without
result. This he had no intention of imparting, however, but told her
a carefully prepared story.

Masters had been writing regularly for some time and it was
generally believed among his friends that he had pulled up in a
measure, but where he was hiding himself no one knew. Cheques and
suggestions were sent to the Post Office, but he had no box, nor did
he call for his mail in person.

He appeared no more at the restaurants in Nassau or Fulton Streets,
or in Park Row, and it would be idle to look for him up town. It was
apparent that he wished to avoid his friends, and to do this
effectually he had probably hidden himself in one of the rabbit
warrens of Nassau Street, where the King of England or the Czar of
all the Russias might hide for a lifetime and never be found. But
Masters could be "located," no doubt of that. "It only needs patience
and alertness," said Lacey, looking straight into Madeleine's
vigilant eyes. "I have a friend on the police force down there who
will spot him before long and send for me hot-foot."

It was Lacey's intention to sublet a small office in one of the
swarming buildings, put a cot in it and a cooking stove, and transfer
Masters to it as soon as he was found. He knew what some of Masters'
haunts were and had no intention that this delicate proud woman
should see him in any of them.

When she told him that she should never leave Masters again after
his whereabouts had been discovered, he warned her not to take rooms
in a hotel. There would be unpleasant espionage, possibly newspaper
scandal. There was nothing for it but Bleecker Street. It was
outwardly quiet, the rooms were large and comfortable in many of
those once-fashionable houses, and it was the one street in New York
where no questions were asked and no curiosity felt. It was no place
for her, of course--but under the circumstances--if she persisted in
her idea of keeping Masters with her until his complete recovery--

"My neighbors will not worry me," she said, smiling for the first
time. "It seems to be just the place. I already feel bewildered in
this great rushing noisy city. I have lived in a small city for so
long that I had almost forgotten there were great ones; and I should
not know what to do without your advice. I am very grateful."

"Glad to do anything I can. When Holt wrote me you were coming and
there was a chance to pull Masters out of the--put him on his legs
again, I went right up in the air. You may count on me. Always glad
to do anything I can for a lady, too. I used to see you at the
theatre and driving, Mrs. Talbot, and wished I were one of the
bloods. Seems like a fairy tale to be able to help you now."

He had red hair and slate-colored eyes, a snub nose and many
freckles, but she thought him quite beautiful; he was her only friend
in this terrifying city, and there was no doubt she could count on him.

"How shall I go about finding a lodging in Bleecker Street?" she
asked. "I stayed at the Fifth Avenue Hotel when I visited New York
with my mother, and as I know nothing of the other hotels, I left my
luggage at the depot until I should have seen you. I didn't dare go
where I might run into any one. Californians are beginning to visit
New York. Moreover, my brother and his family live here and I
particularly wish to avoid them."

"A theatrical troupe is just leaving town--so there should be
several empty rooms. A good many of them hang out there when in New
York. There is one thing in your favor. Your--pardon me--beauty won't
be so conspicuous in Bleecker Street as it would be in hotels. It
isn't only actresses that lodge there, but--well--those ladies so
richly dowered by nature they command the longest pocketbooks, and
the owners thereof sometimes have a pew in Trinity Church and a seat
on the Stock Exchange. The great world averts its eyes from Bleecker
Street, and you will be as safe in there as the most respectable
sinner. Nor will you be annoyed by rowdyism in the street, although
you may hear echoes of high old times going on in some of the houses
patronized by artists and students--it's a sort of Latin Quarter,
too. Little of everything, in fact. Now, come along. We'll take a
hack, get your luggage, and fix you up."

"And you'll vow--"

"To send for you the moment Masters is located? Just rely on Tom
Lacey."




XLI


Madeline took two floors of a large brown stone house in Bleecker
Street, and the accommodating landlady found a colored wench to keep
her rooms in order and cook her meals. A room at the back and facing
the south was fitted up for Masters. It was a masculine-looking room
with its solid mahogany furniture, and as his books were stored in
the cellar of the Times Building she had shelves built to the ceiling
on the west wall. Lacey obtained an order for the books without
difficulty, and Madeleine disposed of several of her long evenings
filling the shelves. When she had finished, one side of the large
room at least looked exactly like his parlor in the Occidental Hotel.
She also hung the windows with green curtains and draped the
mantelpiece with the same material. Green had been his favorite color.

She had rebelled at giving up her original purpose of making a
personal search for Masters, but one look at New York had convinced
her that if Lacey would not help her she must employ a detective.
Nevertheless, she went every mid-day to one or other of the
restaurants below Chambers Street; and, although nothing had ever
terrified her so much, she ventured into Nassau Street at least once
a day and struggled through it, peering into every face.

Nassau Street was only ten blocks long and very narrow, but it would
seem as if, during the hours of business, a cyclone gathered all the
men in New York and hurled them in compact masses down its length
until they were met by another cyclone that drove them back again.
They filled the street as well as the narrow sidewalks, they poured
out of the doorways as if impelled from behind, and Madeleine
wondered they did not jump from the windows. No one sauntered, all
rushed along with tense faces; there were many collisions and no one
paused to apologize, nor did any one seem to expect it. There were
hundreds, possibly thousands, of offices in those buildings high for
their day, and every profession, every business, every known or
unique occupation, was represented. There were banks and newspaper
buildings, hotels, restaurants, auction rooms, the Treasury and the
old Dutch Church that had been turned into the General Post Office.
There were shops containing everything likely to appeal to men,
although one wondered when they found time for anything so frivolous
as shopping; second-hand book stores, and street hawkers without
number.

In addition to the thousands of men who seemed to be hurrying to and
from some business of vital import, there were the hundred thousand
or more who surged through that narrow thoroughfare every day for
their mail. The old church looked like a besieged fortress and
Madeleine marvelled that it did not collapse. She was thankful that
she was never obliged to enter it. Holt and her lawyer had been
instructed to send their letters to Lacey's care, and Lacey when
obliged to communicate with her, either called or sent his note by a
messenger.

Madeleine was so hustled, stepped on, whirled about, that she
finally made friends with an old man who kept one of the secondhand
shops, and, comparatively safe, used the doorway as her watch tower.

One day she thought she saw Masters and darted out into the street.
There she fought her way in the wake of a tall stooping man with
black hair as mercilessly as if she were some frantic woman who had
risked her all on the Stock Exchange. He entered the door of one of
the tall buildings, and when she reached it she heard the sound of
footsteps rapidly mounting.

She followed as rapidly. The footsteps ceased. When she arrived at
the fourth floor she knocked on every door in turn. It was evidently
a building that housed men of the dingiest social status. Every man
who answered her peremptory summons looked like a derelict. These
were mere semblances of offices, with unmade beds, sometimes on the
floor. In some were dreary looking women, partners, no doubt, of
these forlorn men, whose like she sometimes saw down in the street.
But her breathless search was fruitless. She knew that one of the men
who grudgingly opened his door--looking as if he expected the police--
was the man she had followed, and she was grateful that it was not
Masters.

She went slowly down the rickety staircase feeling as if she should
sink at every step. It had been her first ray of hope in two weeks
and she felt faint and sick under the reaction.

She found a coupe in Broadway and was driven to her lodgings. The
maid was waiting for her in the doorway, evidently perturbed.

"There's a strange gentleman upstairs in the parlor, ma'am," she
said. "Not Mr. Lacey. I didn't want to let him in but he would. He
said--"

She thrust the girl aside and ran up the steps. But when she burst
into the parlor the man waiting for her was Ralph Holt.

She dropped into a chair and began to cry hysterically. He had dealt
with her in that state before, and Amanda had lived in Bleecker
Street for many years. She was growing bored with the excessive
respectability of her place, and was delighted to find that her
mistress was human. Cold water, sal volatile, and hartshorn soon
restored Madeleine's composure. She handed her hat to the woman and
was alone with Holt.

"I thought--perhaps you understand--"

"I understand, all right. I hope you are not angry with me for
following you."

"I am only too glad to see you. I never knew a city could be so big
and heartless. I have felt like a leaf tossed about in a perpetual
cold wind. When did you arrive?"

"The day after you did."

"What? And you--you--have been looking for him?"

"That is what I came for--partly. Yes, Lacey and I have combed the
town."

Madeleine sprang to her feet. "You've found him! I know it! Why
don't you say so?"

"Well, we know where he is. But it's no place for you."

"Take me at once. I don't care what it is."

"But I do. So does Lacey. His plan was to shanghai him and sober him
up. But--well--it is your right to say whether he shall do that or
not. You wanted to find him yourself. But Five Points is no place for
you, and I want your permission to carry out Lacey's program."

"What is Five Points?"

"The worst sink in New York. Just imagine the Barbary Coast of San
Francisco multiplied by two thousand. There is said to be nothing
worse in London or Paris."

"If you and Mr. Lacey do not take me there I shall go alone."

"Be reasonable."

"My reason works quite as clearly as if my heart were chloroformed.
Langdon will know, when I track him to a place like that, what he
means to me."

"He probably will be in no condition to recognize you."

"I'll make him recognize me. Or if I cannot you may use your force
then, but he shall know later that I went there for him. Have you
seen him?"

Holt moved uneasily and looked away. "Yes, I have seen him."

"You need not be so distressed. I shall not care what he looks like.
I shall see _him_ inside. Did you speak to him?"

"He either did not recognize me or pretended not to."

"Well, we go now."

"Won't you think it over?"

"I prefer your escort to that of a policeman. I shall not be so
foolish as to go alone."

"Then we'll come for you at about eleven tonight. It would be
useless to go look for him now. People who lead that sort of life
sleep in the day time. I have not the faintest idea where he lives."

"Very well, I shall have to wait, I suppose."

Holt rose. "Lacey and I will come for you, and we'll bring with us
two of the biggest detectives we can find. It's no joke taking a
woman--a woman like you--Good God!--into a sewer like that. Even
Lacey and I got into trouble twice, but we could take care of
ourselves. Better dine with me at Delmonico's and forget things for a
while."

"I could not eat, nor sit still. Nor do I wish to run the risk of
meeting my brother; or any one else I know. Come for me promptly at
eleven or you will not find me here."




XLII


Langdon Masters awoke from a sleep that had lasted all day and
glowered out upon the room he occupied in Baxter Street. It was as
wretched as all tenements in the Five Points, but it had the
distinguishing mark of neatness. Drunk as he might be, the drab who
lived with him knew that he would detect dirt and disorder, and that
her slender hold on his tolerance would be forfeited at once. There
were too many of her sort in the Five Points eager for the position
of mistress to this man who treated them as a sultan might treat the
meanest of his concubines, rarely throwing them a word, and
alternately indulgent and brutal. They regarded him with awe, even
forgetting to drink when, in certain stages of his cups, he
entertained by the hour in one or other of the groggeries a circle of
the most abandoned characters in New York--thieves, cracksmen,
murderers actual or potential, "shoulder-hitters," sailors who came
ashore to drink the fieriest rum they could find, prostitutes, dead-beats,
degenerates, derelicts--with a flow of talk that was like the
flashing of jewels in the gutter. He related the most stupendous
adventures that had ever befallen a mortal. If any one of his
audience had heard of Munchausen he would have dismissed him as a
poor imitation of this man who would seem to have dropped down into
their filthy and lawless quarter from a sphere where things happened
unknown to men on this planet. They dimly recognized that he was a
fallen gentleman, for at long intervals good churchmen from the
foreign territory of Broadway or Fifth Avenue came to remonstrate and
plead. They never came a second time and they usually spent the
following week in bed.

But Masters was democratic enough in manner; it was evident that he
regarded himself as no better than the worst, and nothing appeared to
be further from his mind than reform of them or himself. He had now
been with them for six months and came and went as he pleased. In the
beginning his indestructible air of superiority had subtly irritated
them in spite of his immediate acceptance of their standards, and
there had been two attempts to trounce him. But he was apparently
made of steel rope, he knew every trick of their none too subtle
"game," and he had knocked out his assailants and won the final
respect of Five Points.

And if he was finical about his room he took care to be no neater in
his dress than his associates. Although he had his hair cut and his
face shaved he wore old and rough clothes and a gray flannel shirt.

Masters, after his drab had given him a cup of strong coffee and a
rasher, followed by a glass of rum, lost the horrid sensations
incident upon the waking moment and looked forward to the night with
a sardonic but not discontented grin. He knew that he had reached the
lowest depths, and if his tough frame refused to succumb to the
vilest liquor he could pour into it, he would probably be killed in
some general shooting fray, or by one of the women he infatuated and
cast aside when another took his drunken but ever ironic fancy. Only
a week since the cyprian at present engaged in washing his dishes had
been nearly demolished by the damsel she had superseded. She still
wore a livid mark on her cheek and a plaster on her head whence a
handful of hair had been removed by the roots. He had stood aloof
during the fracas in the dirty garish dance house under the sidewalk,
laughing consumedly; and had awakened the next night to find the
victor mending her tattered finery. She made him an excellent cup of
coffee, and he had told her curtly that she could stay.

If, in his comparatively sober moments, the memory of Madeleine
intruded, he cast it out with a curse. Not because he blamed her for
his downfall; he blamed no one but himself; but because any
recollection of the past, all it had been and promised, was
unendurable. Whether he had been strong or weak in electing to go
straight to perdition when Life had scourged him, he neither knew nor
cared. He began to drink on the steamer, determined to forget for the
present, at least; but the mental condition induced was far more
agreeable than those moments of sobriety when he felt as if he were
in hell with fire in his vitals and cold terror of the future in his
brain. In New York, driven by his pride, he had made one or two
attempts to recover himself, but the writing of unsigned editorials
on subjects that interested him not at all was like wandering in a
thirsty desert without an oasis in sight--after the champagne of his
life in San Francisco with a future as glittering as its skies at
night and the daily companionship of a woman whom he had believed the
fates must give him wholly in time.

He finally renounced self-respect as a game not worth the candle.
Moreover, the clarity of mind necessary to sustained work embraced
ever the image of Madeleine; what he had lost and what he had never
possessed. And, again, he tormented himself with imaginings of her
own suffering and despair; alternated with visions of Madeleine
enthroned, secure, impeccable, admired, envied--and with other men in
love with her! Some depth of insight convinced him that she loved him
immortally, but he knew her need for mental companionship, and the
thought that she might find it, however briefly and barrenly, with
another man, sent him plunging once more.

His friends and admirers on the newspaper staffs had been loyal, but
not only was he irritated by their manifest attempts to reclaim him,
but he grew to hate them as so many accusing reminders of the great
gifts he was striving to blast out by the roots; and, finding it
difficult to avoid them, he had, as soon as he was put in possession
of his small income, deliberately transferred himself to the Five
Points, where they would hardly be likely to trace him, certainly not
to seek his society.

And, on the whole, this experience in a degraded and perilous quarter,
famous the world over as a degree or two worse than any pest-hole
of its kind, was the most enjoyable of his prolonged debauch. It
was only a few yards from Broadway, but he had never set foot in that
magnificent thoroughfare of brown stone and white marble,
aristocratic business partner of Fifth Avenue, since he entered a
precinct so different from New York, as his former world knew it,
that he might have been on a convict island in the South Seas.

The past never obtruded itself here. He was surrounded by danger and
degradation, ugliness unmitigated, and a complete indifference to
anything in the world but vice, crime, liquor and the primitive
appetites. Even the children in the swarming squalid streets looked
like little old men and women; they fought in the gutters for scraps
of refuse, or stood staring sullenly before them, the cry in their
emaciated bodies dulled with the poisons of malnutrition; or making
quick passes at the pocket of a thief. The girls had never been
young, never worn anything but rags or mean finery, the boys were in
training for a career of crime, the sodden women seemed to have no
natural affection for the young they bore as lust prompted. Men beat
their wives or strumpets with no interference from the police. The
Sixth Ward was the worst on Manhattan, and the police had enough to
do without wasting their time in this congested mass of the city's
putrid dregs; who would be conferring a favor on the great and
splendid and envied City of New York if they exterminated one another
in a grand final orgy of blood and hate.

The irony in Masters' mind might sleep when that proud and
contemptuous organ was sodden, but it was deathless. When he thought
at all it was to congratulate himself with a laugh that he had found
the proper setting for the final exit of a man whom Life had equipped
to conquer, and Fate, in her most ironic mood, had challenged to
battle; with the sting of death in victory if he won. He had beaten
her at her own game. He had always aimed at consummation, the
masterpiece; and here, in his final degradation, he had accomplished
it.

This morning he laughed aloud, and the woman--or girl?--her body was
young but her scarred face was almost aged--wondered if he were going
mad at last. There was little time lost in the Five Points upon
discussion of personal peculiarities, but all took for granted that
this man was half mad and would be wholly so before long.

"Is anything the matter?" she asked timidly, her eye on the door but
not daring to bolt.

"Oh, no, nothing! Nothing in all this broad and perfect world. Life
is a sweet-scented garden where all the good are happy and all the
bad receive their just and immediate deserts. You are the complete
epitome of life, yourself, and I gaze upon you with a satisfaction as
complete. I wouldn't change you for the most silken and secluded
beauty in Bleecker Street, and you may stay here for ever. The more
hideous you become the more pleased I shall be. And you needn't be
afraid I have gone mad. I am damnably sane. And still more damnably
sober. Go out and buy me a bottle of Lethe, and be quick about it.
This is nearly finished."

"Do you mean rum?" She was reassured, somewhat, but he had a fashion
of making what passed for her brain feel as if it had been churned.

"Yes, I mean rum, damn you. Clear out."

He opened an old wallet and threw a handful of bills on the floor.
"Go round into Broadway and buy yourself a gown of white satin and a
wreath of lilies for your hair. You would be a picture to make the
angels weep, while I myself wept from pure joy. Get out."




XLIII


Madeleine had forced herself to eat a light dinner, and a few
minutes before eleven she drank a cup of strong coffee; but when she
entered upon the sights and sounds and stenches of Worth Street she
nearly fainted.

The night was hot. The narrow crooked streets of the Five Points
were lit with gas that shone dimly through the grimy panes of the
lamp posts or through the open doors of groggeries and fetid shops.
The gutter was a sewer. Probably not one of those dehumanized
creatures ever bathed. Some of the children were naked and all looked
as if they had been dipped in the gutters and tossed out to dry. The
streets swarmed with them; and with men and women between the ages of
sixteen and forty. One rarely lived longer than that in the Five
Points. Some were shrieking and fighting, others were horribly quiet.
Men and women lay drunk in the streets or hunched against the
dripping walls, their mouths with black teeth or no teeth hanging
loosely, their faces purple or pallid. Screams came from one of the
tenements, but neither of the two detectives escorting the party
turned his head.

Madeleine had imagined nothing like this. Her only acquaintance with
vice had been in the dens and dives of San Francisco, and she had
pictured something of the same sort intensified. But there was hardly
a point of resemblance. San Francisco has always had a genius for
making vice picturesque. The outcasts of the rest of the world do
their worst and let it go at that. Moreover, in San Francisco she had
never seen poverty. There was work for all, there were no beggars, no
hungry tattered children, no congested districts. Vice might be an
agreeable resource but it was forced on no one; and always the
atmosphere of its indulgence was gay. She had witnessed scenes of
riotous drunkenness, but there was something debonair about even
those bent upon extermination, either of an antagonist or the
chandeliers and glass-ware, and she had never seen men sodden save on
the water front. Even then they were often grinning.

But this looked like plain Hell to Madeleine, or worse. The Hell of
the Bible and Dante had a lively accompaniment of writhing flames and
was presumably clean. This might be an underground race condemned to
a sordid filthy and living death for unimaginable crimes of a
previous existence. Even the children looked as if they had come back
to Earth with the sins of threescore and ten stamped upon their weary
wicked faces. Madeleine's strong soul faltered, and she grasped
Holt's arm.

"Well, you see for yourself," he said unsympathetically. "Better go
back and let me bring him to you. One of our men can easily knock him
out--"

"I'm here and I shall go on. I'll stay all night if necessary."

Lacey looked at her with open adoration; he had fallen truculently
in love with her. If Masters no longer loved her he felt quite equal
to killing him, although with no dreams for himself. He hoped that if
Masters were too far gone for redemption she would recognize the fact
at once, forget him, and find happiness somewhere. He was glad on the
whole that she had come to Five Points.

"What's the program?" asked one of the detectives, kicking a
sprawling form out of the way. "Do you know where he hangs out?"

"No," said Lacey. "He seems to go where fancy leads. We'll have to
go from one groggery to another, and then try the dance houses,
unless they pass the word in time. The police are supposed to have
closed them, you know."

"Yes, they have!" The man's hearty Irish laugh startled these
wretched creatures, unused to laughter, and they forsook their apathy
or belligerence for a moment to stare. "They simply moved to the
back, or to the cellar. They know we believe in lettin' 'em go to the
devil their own way. Might as well turn in here."

They entered one of the groggeries. It was a large room. The ceiling
was low. The walls were foul with the accumulations of many years, it
was long since the tables had been washed. The bar, dripping and
slimy, looked as if about to fall to pieces, and the drinks were
served in cracked mugs. The bar-tender was evidently an ex-prize-
fighter, but the loose skin, empty of muscle, hung from his bare arms
in folds. The air was dense with vile tobacco smoke, adding to the
choice assortment of stenches imported from without and conferred by
Time within. Men and women, boys and girls, sat at the tables
drinking, or lay on the floor. There they would remain until their
drunken stupor wore off, when they would stagger home to begin a new
day. A cracked fiddle was playing. The younger people and some of the
older were singing in various keys. Many were drinking solemnly as if
drinking were a ritual. Others were grinning with evident enjoyment
and a few were hilarious.

The party attracted little general attention. Investigating
travellers, escorted by detectives, had visited the Five Points more
than once, curious to see in what way it justified its reputation for
supremacy over the East End of London and the Montmartre of Paris;
and although pockets usually were picked, no violence was offered if
the detectives maintained a bland air of detachment. They did not
even resent the cologne-drenched handkerchiefs the visitors
invariably held to their noses. As evil odors meant nothing to them,
they probably mistook the gesture for modesty.

Madeleine preferred her smelling salts, and at Holt's suggestion had
wrapped her handkerchief about the gold and crystal bottle. But she
forgot the horrible atmosphere as she peered into the face of every
man who might be Masters. She wore a plain black dress and a small
black hat, but her beauty was difficult to obscure. Her cheeks were
white and her brown eyes had lost their sparkle long since, but men
not too drunk to notice a lovely woman or her manifest close
scrutiny, not only leered up into her face but would have jerked her
down beside them had it not been for their jealous partners and the
presence of the detectives. There was a rumor abroad that the new
City Administration intended to seek approval if not fame by cleaning
out the Five Points, tearing down the wretched tenements and
groggeries, and scattering its denizens; and none was too reckless
not to be on his guard against a calamity which would deprive him not
only of all he knew of pleasure but of an almost impregnable refuge
after crime.

The women, bloated, emaciated with disease, few with any pretension
to looks or finery, made insulting remarks as Madeleine examined
their partners, or stared at her in a sort of terrible wonder. She
had no eyes for them. When she reached the end of the room, looking
down into the faces of the men she was forced to step over, she
turned and methodically continued her pilgrimage up another lane
between the tables.

"Good God!" exclaimed Holt to Lacey. "There he is! I hoped we should
have to visit at least twenty of these hells, and that she'd faint or
give up."

"How on earth can you distinguish any one in this infernal smoke?"

"Got the eyes of a cat. There he is--in that corner by the door.
God! What a female thing he's got with him."

"Hope it'll cure her--and that we can get out of this pretty soon.
Strange things are happening within me."

There was an uproar on the other side of the room. One man had made
up his mind to follow this fair visitor, and his woman was beating
him in the face, shrieking her curses.

A party of drunken sailors staggered in, singing uproariously, and
almost fell over the bar.

But not a sound had penetrated Madeleine's unheeding ears. She had
seen Masters.

His drab had not taken his invitation to bedeck herself too
literally, nor had she ventured into Broadway. But after returning
with the rum she had gone as far as Fell Street and bought herself
all the tawdry finery her funds would command. She wore it with tipsy
pride: a pink frock of slazy silk with as full a flowing skirt as any
on Fifth Avenue during the hour of promenade, a green silk mantle,
and a hat as flat as a plate trimmed with faded roses, soiled
streamers hanging down over her impudent chignon. She was attracting
far more attention than the simply dressed lady from the upper world.
The eyes of the women in her vicinity were redder with envy than with
liquor and they cursed her shrilly. One of the younger women, carried
away by a sudden dictation of femininity, made a dart for the fringed
mantle with obvious intent to appropriate it by force. She received a
blow in the face from the dauntless owner that sent her sprawling,
while the others mingled jeers with their curses.

Masters was leaning on the table, supporting his head with his hands
and laughing. He had passed the stage where he wanted to talk, but it
would be morning before his brain would be completely befuddled.

Madeleine's body became so stiff that her heels left the floor and
she stood on her toes. Holt and Lacey grasped her arms, but she did
not sway; she stood staring at the man she had come for. There was
little semblance of the polished, groomed, haughty man who had won
her. His face was not swollen but it was a dark uniform red and the
lines cut it to the bone. The slight frown he had always worn had
deepened to an ugly scowl. His eyes were injected and dull, his hair
was turning gray. His mouth that he had held in such firm curves was
loose and his teeth stained. She remembered how his teeth had flashed
when he smiled, the extraordinary brilliancy of his gray eyes.... The
groggery vanished ... they were sitting before the fire in the
Occidental Hotel....

The daze and the vision lasted only a moment. She disengaged herself
from her escorts and walked rapidly toward the table.




XLIV


Masters did not recognize her at once. Her face lay buried deep in
his mind, covered with the debris of innumerable carouses, forgotten
women, and every defiance he had been able to fling in the face of
the civilization he had been made to adorn. As she stood quite still
looking at him he had a confused idea that she was a Madonna, and his
mind wandered to churches he had attended on another planet, where
pretty fashionable women had commanded his escort. Then he began to
laugh again. The idea of a Madonna in a groggery of the Five Points
was more amusing than the fracas just over.

"Langdon!" she said imperiously. "Don't you know me?"

Then he recognized her, but he believed she was a ghost. He had had
delirium tremens twice, and this no doubt was a new form. He gave a
shaking cry and shrank back, his hands raised with the palms outward.

"Curse you!" he screamed. "It's not there. I _don't_ see you!"

He extended one of his trembling hands, still with his horrified
eyes on the apparition, filled his mug from a bottle and drank the
liquor off with a gulp. Then he flung the mug to the floor and
staggered to his feet, his eyes roving to the men behind her. "What
does this mean?" he stammered. "Are you here or aren't you--dead or
alive?"

"We're here all right," said Holt, in his matter-of-fact voice. "And
this really is she. She has come for you."

"Come for me--for me!" His roar of laughter was drunken but its note
was even more ironic than when his mirth had been excited by the mean
drama of the women. He fell back in his chair for he was unable to
stand. "Well, go back where you came from. There's nothing here for
you. Tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse.... Here--what's your name?"
he said brutally to his companion. "Go and get me another mug."

But the young woman, who had been gaping at the scene, suddenly
recovered herself. She ran round the table and flung her arms about
his neck. "He's my man!" she shrieked. "You can't have him." And she
sputtered obscenities.

Madeleine reached over, tore her from Masters, dragged her across
the table, whirled her about, and flung her to the floor. The
neighborhood shrieked its delight. The rest of the room took no
notice of them. The drunken sailors were still singing and many took
up the refrain.

"No," said Madeleine. "He's mine and I'll have him."

"Now I know you are not Madeleine," cried Masters furiously, and
trying to rise again. "She never was your sort, you damned whore, to
fight over a man in a groggery. She was a lady--"

"She was also a woman," said Madeleine coolly. "And never more so
than now. You are coming with me."

"I'll see you in hell first."

"Well, I'll go there with you if you like. But you'll come home with
me first."

"Even if you were she, I've no use for you, I'd forgotten your
existence. If I'd remembered you at all it was to curse you. I'll
never--never--" His voice trailed off although his eyes still held
their look of hard contempt.

His companion had pulled herself to her feet with the aid of an
empty chair. She made a sudden dart at Madeleine, her claws extended,
recognizing a far more formidable rival than the harlot she had
hammered and displaced. But Madeleine had not forgotten to give her
the corner of an eye. She caught the threatening arm in her strong
hand, twisted it nearly from its socket, and the woman with a wild
shriek of pain collapsed once more.

Masters began to laugh again, then broke off abruptly and began to
shudder violently. He stared as if the nightmare of his terrible
years were racing across his vision.

"Now," said Madeleine. "I've fought for you on your own field and
won you. You are mine. Come."

"I'll come," he mumbled. He tried to rise but fell back. "I'm very
drunk," he said apologetically. "Sorry."

He made no resistance as Holt and Lacey took him by his arms and
supported him out of the groggery and out of the Five Points to a
waiting hack; Madeleine and the detectives forming a body-guard in
the rear.




XLV


It was two months before Madeleine saw him again. He was installed
in his room, two powerful nurses attended him day and night, and Holt
slept on a cot near the bed. He was almost ungovernable at first, in
spite of the drugs the doctor gave him, but these had their effect in
time; and then the tapering-off process began, combined with hotly
peppered soups and the vegetable most inimical to alcohol; finally
food in increasing quantity to restore his depleted vitality. In his
first sane moment he had made Holt promise that Madeleine should not
see him, and she had sent word that she would wait until he sent for
her.

Madeleine took long walks, and drives, and read in the Astor
Library. She also replenished her wardrobe. The color came back to
her cheeks, the sparkle to her eyes. She had made all her plans. The
house in Virginia was being renovated. She would take him there as
soon as he could be moved. When he was strong again he would start
his newspaper. Holt and Lacey were as overjoyed at the prospect of
being his assistant editors as at the almost unbelievable rescue of
Langdon Masters.

He had remained in bed after the worst was over, sunk in torpor,
with no desire to leave it or to live. But strength gradually
returned to his wasted frame, the day nurse was dismissed, and he
appeared to listen when Holt talked to him, although he would not
reply. One day, however, when he believed himself to be alone, he
opened his eyes and stared at the wall covered with his books, as he
had done before through half-closed lids. Then his gaze wandered to
the green curtains. But his mind was clear. He was visited by no
delusions. This was not the Occidental Hotel.

It was long since he had read a book! He wondered, with his first
symptom of returning interest in life, if he was strong enough to
cross the room and find one of his favorite volumes. But as he raised
himself on his elbow Holt bent over him.

"What is it, old fellow?"

"Those books? How did they get here?"

"Lacey brought them. You remember, you left them in the _Times_
cellar."

"Are these your rooms?"

"No, they are Madeleine Talbot's."

He made no reply, but he did not scowl and turn his back as he had
done whenever Holt had tentatively mentioned her name before. The
sight of his familiar beloved books had softened his harsh spirit,
and the hideous chasm between his present and his past seemed visibly
shrinking. His tones, however, had not softened when he asked curtly
after a moment:

"What is the meaning of it all? Why is she here? Is Talbot dead?"

"No, he divorced her."

"Divorced her? Madeleine?" He almost sat upright. Mrs. Abbott could
not have looked more horrified. "Is this some infernal joke?"

"Are you strong enough to hear the whole story? I warn you it isn't
a pretty one. But I've promised her I would tell you--"

"What did he divorce her for?"

"Desertion. There was worse behind."

"Do you mean to tell me there was another man? I'll break your neck."

"There was no other man. I'll give you a few drops of digitalis,
although you must have the heart of an ox--"

"Give me a drink. I'm sick of your damn physic. Don't worry. I'm out
of that, and I shan't go back."

Holt poured him out a small quantity of old Bourbon and diluted it
with water. Masters regarded it with a look of scorn but tossed it off.

"What was the worse behind?"

"When she heard what had become of you--she got it out of me--she
deliberately made a drunkard of herself. She became the scandal of
the town. She was cast out, neck and crop. Every friend she ever had
cut her, avoided her as if she were a leper. She left the doctor and
lived by herself in one room on the Plaza. I met her again in one of
the worst dives in San Francisco--"

"Stop!" Masters' voice rose to a scream. He tried to get out of bed
but fell back on the pillows. "You are a liar--you--you--"

"You shall listen whether you relish the facts or not. I have given
her my promise." And he told the story in all its abominable details,
sparing the writhing man on the bed nothing. He drew upon his
imagination for scenes between Madeleine and the doctor, of whose
misery he gave a harrowing picture. He described the episode on the
boat after her drinking bout at Blazes', of the futile attempts of
Sally Abbott and Talbot to cure her. He gave graphic and hideous
pictures of the dives she had frequented alone, the risks she had run
in the most vicious resorts on Barbary Coast. Not until he had seared
Masters' brain indelibly did he pass to Madeleine's gradual rise from
her depths, the restoration of her beauty and charm and sanity. It
was when she was almost herself again that Talbot had offered to
forgive her and take her to Europe to live, offering divorce as the
alternative.

"Of course she accepted the divorce," Holt concluded. "That meant
freedom to go to you."

Masters had grown calm by degrees. "I should never have dreamed even
Madeleine was capable of that," he said. "And there was a time when I
believed there was no height to which she could not soar. She is a
great woman and a great lover, and I am no more worthy of her now
than I was in that sink where you found me. Nor ever shall be. Go out
and bring in a barber."

Holt laughed. "At least you are yourself again and I fancy she'll
ask no more than that. Shall I tell her you will see her in an hour?"

"Yes, I'll see her. God! What a woman."




XLVI


Madeleine made her toilette with trembling hands, nevertheless with
no detail neglected. Her beautiful chestnut hair was softly parted
and arranged in a mass of graceful curls at the back of the head. She
wore a house-gown of white muslin sprigged with violets, and a long
Marie Antoinette fichu, pale green and diaphanous. Where it crossed
she fastened a bunch of violets. She looked like a vision of spring,
a grateful vision for a sick room.

When Holt tapped on her door on his way out the second time,
muttering characteristically: "Coast clear. All serene," she walked
down the hall with nothing of the primitive fierce courage she had
exhibited in Five Points. She was terrified at the ordeal before her,
afraid of appearing sentimental and silly; that he would find her
less beautiful than his memory of her, or gone off and no longer
desirable. What if he should die suddenly? Holt had told her of his
agitation. This visit should have been postponed until he had slept
and recuperated. She had sent him word to that effect but he had
replied that he had no intention of waiting.

She stood still for a few moments until she felt calmer, then turned
the knob of Masters' door and walked in.

He was sitting propped up in bed and she had an agreeable shock of
surprise. In spite of all efforts of will her imagination had
persisted in picturing him with a violent red face and red injected
eyes, a loose sardonic mouth and lines like scars. His face was very
pale, his eyes clear and bright, his hair trimmed in its old close
fashion, his mouth grimly set. Although he was very thin the lines in
his cheeks were less pronounced. He looked years older, of course,
and the life he had led had set its indelible seal upon him, but he
was Langdon Masters again nevertheless.

His eyes dilated when he saw her, but he smiled whimsically.

"So you want what is left of this battered old husk, Madeleine?" he
asked. "You in the prime of your beauty and your youth! Better think
it over."

She smiled a little, too.

"Do you mean that?"

"No, I don't! Come here! Come here!"




XLVII


In the winter of 1878-79 Mrs. Ballinger gave a luncheon in honor of
Mrs. McLane, who had arrived in San Francisco the day before after a
long visit in Europe. The city was growing toward the west, but
Ballinger House still looked like an outpost on its solitary hill and
was almost surrounded by a grove of eucalyptus trees.

Mrs. Abbott grumbled as she always did at the long journey, skirting
far higher hills, and through sand dunes still unsubdued by man and
awaiting the first dry wind of summer to transform themselves into
clouds of dust. But a sand storm would not have kept her away. The
others invited were her daughter-in-law, who had met Mrs. McLane at
Sacramento, Guadalupe Hathaway, now Mrs. Ogden Bascom, Mrs.
Montgomery, Mrs. Yorba, whose husband had recently built the largest
and ugliest house in San Francisco, perched aloft on Nob Hill;
several more of Mrs. McLane's favorites, old and young, and Maria
Groome, born Ballinger, now a proud pillar of San Francisco Society.

The dining-room of Ballinger House was long and narrow and from its
bow window commanded a view of the Bay. It was as uncomely with its
black walnut furniture and brown walls as the rest of that
aristocratic abode, across whose threshold no loose fish had ever
darted; but its dingy walls were more or less concealed by paintings
of the martial Virginia ancestors of Mrs. Ballinger and her husband,
the table linen had been woven for her in Ireland, the cut glass
blown for her in England; the fragile china came from Sevres, and the
massive silver had travelled from England to Virginia in the reign of
Elizabeth. The room may have been ugly, nay, ponderous, but it had an
air!

The women who graced the board were dressed, with one or two
exceptions, in the height of the mode. Save Maria Groome each had
made at least one trip to Europe and left her measurements with
Worth. Maria did not begin her pilgrimages to Europe until the
eighties, and then it was old carved furniture she brought home;
dress she always held in disdain, possibly because her husband's
mistresses were ever attired in the excess of the fashion.

Mrs. Ballinger was now in her fifties but still one of the most
beautiful women in San Francisco; and she still wore shining gray
gowns that matched the bright silver of her hair to a shade. Her
descendants had inherited little of her beauty (Alexina Groome as yet
roaming space, and, no doubt, having her subtle way with ghosts old
and new).

Mrs. McLane had discharged commissions for every woman present
except Maria, and their gowns had been unpacked on the moment, that
they might be displayed at this notable function. They wore the new
long basque and overskirt made of cloth or cashmere, combined with
satin, velvet or brocade, and with the exception of Mrs. Abbott they
had removed their hats. Chignons had disappeared. Hair was
elaborately dressed at the back or arranged in high puffs with two
long curls suspended. Marguerite Abbott and Annette wore the new
plaids. Mrs. Abbott had graduated from black satin and bugles to
cloth, but her bonnet was of jet.

"Now!" exclaimed Mrs. McLane, who had been plied with eager questions
from oysters to dessert. "I've told you all the news about the
fashions, the salon, the plays, the opera, all the scandals of Paris I
can remember but you'll never guess my _piece de resistance_."

"What--what--" Tea was forgotten.

"Well--as you know, I was in Berlin during the Congress--"

"Did you see Bismark--Disraeli--"

"I did and met them. But they are not of half as much interest to
you as some one else--two people--I met."

"But who?"

"Can't you guess?"

"I know!" cried Guadalupe Bascom. "Langdon and Madeleine Masters."

"No! What would they be doing in Berlin?" demanded Mrs. Ballinger.
"I thought he was editing some paper in New York."

"'Lupie has guessed correctly. It's evident that you don't keep up.
We're just the same old stick-in-the-muds. 'Lupie, how did you guess?
I'll wager you never see a New York newspaper yourself."

"Not I. But one does hear a little Eastern news now and again. I
happen to know that Masters has made a success of his paper and it
would be just like him to go to the Congress of Berlin. What was he
doing there?"

"Oh, nothing in particular. Merely corresponding with his paper,
and, in the eyes of many, eclipsing Blowitz."

"Who is Blowitz?"

"Mon dieu! Mon dieu! But after all London is farther off than New
York, and I don't fancy you read the _Times_ when you are there--
which is briefly and seldom. Paris is our Mecca. Well, Blowitz--"

"But Madeleine? Madeleine? It is about her we want to hear. What do
we care about tiresome political letters in solemn old newspapers?
How did she look? How dressed? Was she ahead of the mode as ever?
Does she look much older? Does she show what she has been through....
Oh, Antoinette--Mrs. McLane--Mamma--how tiresome you are!"

Mrs. Abbott had not joined in this chorus. She had emitted a series
of grunts--no less primitive word expressing her vocal emissions when
disgusted. She now had four chins, her eyes were alarmingly
protuberant, and her face, what with the tight lacing in vogue, much
good food and wine, and a pious disapproval of powder or any care of
a complexion which should remain as God made it, was of a deep
mahogany tint; but her hand still held the iron rod, and if its veins
had risen its muscles had never grown flaccid.

"Abominable!" she ejaculated when she could make herself heard. "To
think that a man and a woman like that should be rewarded by fame and
prosperity. They were thoroughly bad and should have been punished
accordingly."

"Oh, no, they were not bad, ma chere," said Mrs. McLane lightly.
"They were much too good. That was the whole trouble. And you must
admit that for their temporary fall from grace they were sufficiently
punished, poor things."

"Antoinette, I am surprised." Mrs. Ballinger spoke as severely as
Mrs. Abbott. She looked less the Southerner for the moment than the
Puritan. "They disgraced both themselves and Society. I was glad to
hear of their reform, but they should have continued to live in
sackcloth for the rest of their lives. For such to enjoy happiness
and success is to shake the whole social structure, and it is a blow
to the fundamental laws of religion and morality."

"But perhaps they are not happy, mamma." Maria spoke hopefully,
although the fates seemed to have nothing in pickle for her erratic
mate. "Mrs. McLane has not yet told us--"

"Oh, but they are! Quite the happiest couple I have ever seen, and
likely to remain so. That's a case of true love if ever there was
one. I mislaid my skepticism all the time I was in Berlin--a whole
month!"

"Abominable!" rumbled Mrs. Abbott. "And when I think of poor Howard--
dead of apoplexy--"

"Howard ate too much, was too fond of Burgundy, and grew fatter
every year. Madeleine could reclaim Masters, but she never had any
influence over Howard."

"Well, she could have waited--"

"Masters was pulled up in the nick of time. A year more of that
horrible life he was leading and he would have been either
unreclaimable or dead. It makes me believe in Fate--and I am a good
Churchwoman."

"It's a sad world," commented Mrs. Ballinger with a sigh. "I confess
I don't understand it. When I think of Sally--"

Mrs. Montgomery, a good kind woman, whose purse was always open to
her less fortunate friends, shook her head. "I do not like such a
sequel. I agree with Alexina and Charlotte. They disgraced themselves
and our proud little Society; they should have been more severely
punished. Possibly they will be."

"I doubt it," said Mrs. Bascom drily. "And not only because I am a
woman of the world and have looked at life with both eyes open, but
because Masters had success in him. I'll wager he's had his troubles
all in one great landslide. And Madeleine was born to be some man's
poem. The luxe binding got badly torn and stained, but no doubt she's
got a finer one than ever, and is unchanged--or even improved--inside."

"Oh, do let me get in a word edgeways," cried young Mrs. Abbott.
"Tell me, Mamma--what does Madeleine look like? Has she lost her
beauty?"

"She looked to me more beautiful than ever. I'd vow Masters thinks
so."

"Has she wrinkles? Lines?"

"Not one. Have we grown old since she left us? It's not so many
years ago?"

"Oh, I know. But after all she went through.... How was she dressed?"

"What are her favorite colors?"

"Who makes her gowns?"

"Has she as much elegance and style as ever?"

"Did she get her mother's jewels? Did she wear them in Berlin?"

"Is she in Society there? Is her grand air as noticeable among all
those court people as it was here?"

"Oh, mamma, mamma, you are so tiresome!"

Mrs. McLane had had time to drink a second cup of tea.

"My head spins. Where shall I begin? The gowns she wore in Berlin
were made at Worth's. Where else? She still wears golden-brown, and
amber, and green--sometimes azure--blue at night. She looked like a
fairy queen in blue gauze and diamond stars in her hair one night at
the American Legation--"

"How does she wear her hair?"

"There she is not so much a la mode. She has studied her own style,
and has found several ways of dressing it that become her--sometimes
in a low coil, almost on her neck, sometimes on top of her head in a
braid like a coronet, sometimes in a soft psyche knot. There never
was anything monotonous about Madeleine."

"I'm going to try every one tomorrow. Has she any children?"

"One. She left him at their place in Virginia. I saw his picture. A
beauty, of course."

Mrs. Ballinger raised her pencilled eyebrows and glanced at Maria.
Mrs. Abbott gave a deep rumbling groan.

"Poor Howard!"

"He dreed his weird," said Mrs. McLane indifferently. "He couldn't
help it. Neither could Madeleine."

"Well, I'd like to hear something more about Langdon Masters,"
announced Guadalupe Bascom. "That is, if you have all satisfied your
curiosity about Madeleine's clothes. He is the one man I never could
twist around my finger and I've never forgotten him. How does he
look? He certainly should carry some stamp of the life he led."

"Oh, he looks older, of course, and he has deeper lines and some
gray hairs. But he's thin, at least. His figure did not suffer if his
face did--somewhat. He looks even more interesting--at least women
would think so. You know we good women always have a fatal weakness
for the man who has lived too much."

"Speak for yourself, Antoinette." Mrs. Ballinger looked like an
effigy of virtue in silver. "And at your age you should be ashamed to
utter such a sentiment even if you felt it."

"My hair may be as white as yours," rejoined Mrs. McLane tartly.
"But I remain a woman, and for that reason attract men to this day."

"Is Masters as brilliant as ever--in conversation, I mean? Is he
gay? Lively?"

"I cannot say that I found him gay, and I really saw very little of
him except at functions. He was very busy. But Mr. McLane was with
him a good deal, and said that although he was rather grim and quiet
at times, at others he was as brilliant as his letters."

"Does he drink at all, or is he forced to be a teetotaller?"

"Not a bit of it. He drinks at table as others do; no more, no less."

"Then he is cured," said Mrs. Bascom contentedly. "Well, I for one
am glad that it's all right. Still, if he had fallen in love with me
he would have remained an eminent citizen--without a hideous interval
he hardly can care to recall--and become the greatest editor in
California. Have they any social position in New York?"

"Probably. I did not ask. They hardly looked like outcasts. You must
remember their story is wholly unknown in fashionable New York.
Scarcely any one here knows any one in New York Society; or has time
for it when passing through.... But I don't fancy they care
particularly for Society. In Berlin, whenever it was possible, they
went off by themselves. But of course it was necessary for both to go
in Society there, and she must have been able to help him a good deal."

"European Society! I suppose she'll be presented to the Queen of
England next!--But no! Thank heaven she can't be. Good Queen Victoria
is as rigid about divorce as we are. Nor shall she ever cross my
threshold if she returns here." And Mrs. Abbott scalded herself with
her third cup of tea and emitted terrible sounds.

Mrs. Yorba, a tall, spare, severe-looking woman, who had taught
school in New England in her youth, and never even powdered her nose,
spoke for the first time. Her tones were slow and portentious, as
became one who, owing to her unfortunate nativity, had sailed slowly
into this castellated harbor, albeit on her husband's golden ship.

"We may no longer have it in our power to punish Mrs. Langdon
Masters," she said. "But at least we shall punish others who violate
our code, even as we have done in the past. San Francisco Society
shall always be a model for the rest of the world."

"I hope so!" cried Mrs. McLane. "But the world has a queer fashion
of changing and moving."

Mrs. Ballinger rose. "I have no misgivings for the future of our
Society, Antoinette McLane. Our grandchildren will uphold the
traditions we have created, for our children will pass on to them our
own immutable laws. Shall we go into the front parlor? I do so want
to show it to you. I have a new set of blue satin damask and a
crystal chandelier."


THE END




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*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*

