III.

It was nearly three weeks later that the _Twin Sisters_ rounded Allen’s Island--traveling, as her skipper said, “with a bone in her mouth”--and set her homeward course across the windy and sparkling waters of Muscongus Bay. In the stern the steersman flung his weight on the wheel; in the bow lay Stephen, his hand closed upon the helplessly fluttering leaves of his “Dairy Machinery,” his eyes fixed upon the mound of glittering green foam that swept in perpetual advance of the vessel’s bow.

Through his mind flitted a shifting retrospect of these last weeks upon the sea--the rushing voyage through rock-sown bays and windy fairways; the days of creaking rise-and-fall upon the heavy swell of a dead and scorching sea, or of groping for buoys through the blind white fog; nights under the starlight, nights when the wild summer rain had driven him for shelter to the hot and evil-smelling cabin of the little schooner. And, above all, the ceaseless watch for the great fish that they had come to hunt, the tense excitement of the signal, the swift dark flight of the harpoon; then the breathless chase of the flying keg that marked the flight of the frenzied monster across the sea. In their wild hunts Stephen had shown a reckless audacity, a rapidly acquired skill, that gradually commanded the respect of the cynical and indifferent Captain Jabez himself. “Y’ain’t so bad, for a rusticator,” was his outspoken praise. Stephen sighed in helpless irritation; after all, what was the use of pretending to himself that it was the respect of his fellow man for which he exerted himself in these strenuous exertions to show nautical strength and skill? What was the use, after all, of leaving Pemaquid at all, so long as the very sea foam itself brought him a fantastic vision of white arms flashing from the water, and each curling green wave recalled to him a pair of eyes deeper and more transparent than the sea itself?

“Spoony!” hissed Stephen, in fierce self-contempt, when suddenly the skipper raised a languid cry from the stern.

“There’s the old p’int, Stephen, if you want to see it.”

Sure enough, there were the high brown walls of Pemaquid, bare to the wind and the surrounding ocean. In spite of himself, Stephen’s heart leaped up as he regarded it.

The wind calmed down with the approaching sunset as the _Twin Sisters_ floated slowly in between the breakwaters, recalling to Stephen that first evening when his boat had been met and boarded by a wandering sea nymph. This time the mirrored sunset was empty and bare, the harbor was silent.

“Reckon they’re all busy with their fried lobster an’ hot biscuit, up to the hotel,” remarked Captain Jabez, sourly, as he surveyed their catch, laid out upon the deck--seven great swordfishes, black and shapeless, like elongated kitchen stoves, their skin still glistening from their icy bed in the vessel’s hold. “I thought we’d git a dozen,” he remarked, discontentedly. “Mind, I tell you, it’s just my luck. A catch like that makes me feel like all my folks was sick to home.”

Suddenly from the end of the breakwater a white figure started up, her eyes shielded with a book, her hair reddened brilliantly by the sinking sun.

“For the law’s sakes!” exclaimed Captain Jabez. “See, there’s what’s-her-name, the fish girl, waitin’ to see us land!”

Stephen turned; the world was warm and smiling. Was she really waiting for him? He waved his hat and cried to her. For a moment she stood, white, slim and motionless; then, with a single gesture, lifeless and perfunctory, she turned and walked slowly up to the hotel.

“Of course,” said Stephen to himself, in vain mockery at his own pain. After all, what did it matter? Tomorrow he would leave it forever, this cold and alluring coast of Maine; and with paved streets and the rush of work would come forgetfulness.

Martin welcomed him warmly at the hotel. “Gee, you’re as brown as a nut,” he said, “and old Jabez says you’re the best hand he ever had--worth any two of these native loafers about here. Say, come and sit at my table, and tell us about your trip.”

So, after Glyn had changed to the garb of civilization, he came down and ate his supper, listening to the merry chatter of the little Yale man. Elfrida bowed to him as he entered, but left the table soon after he sat down. “I am going down to the breakwater, to look at those poor swordfish that you killed,” she said, with some reproach, as she passed by him. Her face was severe and unsmiling; it seemed to Glyn that she was paler than usual, and her large eyes were faintly shadowed with dark circles beneath their lids.

“What’s the matter with Miss May?” he asked Martin, abruptly.

The other turned his eyes from her retreating figure. “Oh, yes, I forgot you’d been away. We’ve had great excitements since you were gone, here at little Pemaquid.”

“What was the matter?” cried Stephen, while a thousand terrible possibilities rose in his mind.

Martin began to laugh. “Oh, nothing very thrilling, that I could see. But that girl--you know she’s a queen, but she’s half a freak, too--the good half! Anyone that tries to understand her will have his job cut out for life.”

Glyn raised his cup of tea carelessly. “But what did you say it was that happened?”

“Why, this is the way it was--see if it doesn’t make you tired! Everybody was talking about it. You remember that time last month when you came so near your end, going in with her the night of the dance, she never made a sound. And last week, when she lost a little trifling bracelet in swimming--gee! she burst out crying right there on the pier before everybody!”

A wild thought flitted into Stephen’s mind. “What kind of a bracelet was it?” he inquired, with elaborate indifference.

“Nothing very much, to make a girl cry like that--a girl like Elfie, too, the cold, superior, athletic kind. But, then, she’d been acting queer for some time, didn’t you notice? No, it was since you went away--nervous and quiet, and ready to snap your head off if you spoke to her, always sitting down there on the breakwater, reading--Elfie reading! Just fancy that! Gee! I never saw a girl change so quick before.”

Stephen went on with his supper. “Well, did she find her bracelet?” he inquired, carelessly.

“After the harbor was turned inside out--that’s the excitement, you see. The whole town was out every day. Then she offered a reward--fifty dollars; then a hundred. She wanted to send to Portland for divers. But an old native chap found it at low tide--old Ben, you know, that is always fishing there on the dock. So she paid him, on the nail--a hundred plunks. And her mother said she couldn’t have any autumn clothes, and she said she didn’t care one scrap.”

Stephen lit a cigarette with elaborate pains. “So, I suppose,” he observed, tentatively, “that it was quite an elaborate bit of jewelry.”

“That’s the joke. A hundred dollars would have bought a dozen like it--just clam pearls and silver. Say, it’s a peachy evening. Let’s go and look up some of the crowd, and have a marshmallow toast on the beach.”

Glyn rose. “I’m sorry, Martin, I have to go down and help my skipper ashore with our catch. See you later--business, you see.”

“Three cheers for the bold fisherman!” grinned Martin, as Stephen rushed from the hall with an eagerness which did credit to his sense of duty toward Jabez.

Twilight was drawing down, damp and dusky, over rocks and harbor, as Stephen hurried down to the breakwater. With swift precaution, he stepped along over the loose stones--no one was there. He looked about in desperate search. Then, in a little rocky nook at the extreme point, he caught the glint of a familiar yellow head.

“Elfie!” he called, softly, as he hastened toward her. Her white form rose up; she stood there looking at him, her book still in her hand--looking at him silently.

As he joined her she laughed, a little, nervous laugh. “Oh, Mr. Glyn, is that you?” she said. “And have you come to tell me about your cruise?”

For a moment Stephen stood at a loss. Here before those clear cool eyes, what Martin had told him seemed so absurd, so impossible. His eyes fell upon the book in her hand. Suddenly, as he read the title in the fading light, his heart beat again high and quick.

He put out his hand and gently took the volume from her. “I see that you have been reading about Undine,” he said, tentatively.

She flushed a bright rose color; it was the second time he had ever seen her color change. “Ah!” she cried, in a pale reflection of her old mocking defiance. “The story you told me about--I’m sorry, you know, but, really, I don’t find it very interesting.”

Stephen looked at her. “Elfie----” he said, but she stretched out her hand in sudden embarrassment. “Give it back to me, please,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to be reading it now. Give it to me, please.”

For a moment Stephen stared at her, bewildered at this sudden intensity of appeal. With her old impulsiveness, she flung out her arm to snatch the betraying volume from his grasp. The laces of her sleeve fell back, and there about her wrist Stephen beheld a bracelet--a string of large, irregular pearls, rimmed and linked in silver.

He dropped the book and seized the hand in both of his own.

“So you still think of me sometimes, Elfie?”

She glanced up at him, frowning.

“Why did you go away without saying good-by to me last month?” she asked, with her old air of severity.

“I didn’t want to bother you. I knew you didn’t care.” Beneath the rigid inquisition of her gaze, Stephen stumbled over his words.

“You thought I didn’t care!” She turned her eyes away from him, and twisted the bracelet upon her wrist. “Do _you_ care?” she asked, abruptly.

“Elfrida, you know why I had to come back. You know that I care about nothing else in the world but just you--dear, dearest little Elfie!”

She stepped back. “And yet,” she said, with a catch in her voice, “you went away and left me.”

“But, Elfie dear, what else could I do? After you had laughed at me, after you had refused to let me touch as much as your book when you dropped it here on the beach!”

She began to laugh brokenly. “Don’t you understand?” she said, softly. “I wasn’t going to let you know how silly I was. I couldn’t let you see that I had sent for the book for myself--just because I wanted to read again the story that you had told to me.”

“Elfie! My own dear Elfie!”

She raised her hand. “No, Stephen, one moment! Listen to me.” She leaned toward him a little, standing there white and slender in the gathering dusk, while Stephen listened eagerly. The little waves lapped and gurgled through the rocky spaces of the breakwater; all about them was the quiet evening of the sea.

“Last month, when you told me about Undine, I hated you,” she said, passionately; “because I thought you meant that she was _me_, all the time. And I was bound to show you that I wasn’t weak and silly like that, and that I didn’t care a single scrap! And I didn’t care then, either--not till that night when I was such a beast to you, and made such a fool of myself, and you almost died--all my fault! So next day I was so ashamed of myself, I didn’t dare even to speak to you, until I had told you I was sorry. And just then I was so afraid you’d see that book, that I made you go away--little fool! As though _that_ made any difference!” She paused a moment. “And then in the evening I came back and found that you were really gone away, without a single word!”

She raised her eyes to him slowly, and, to his amazement, he saw that they were bright with the transparent wetness of tears.

“Do you remember,” she whispered, brokenly, “how--that night--I told you that I never intended to shed any tears--planning to live like a little brute? And you gave me these pearls, and told me they were the tears that Undine had wept, after her soul had been given to her. Oh, Stephen! There’s not a night since that night that I haven’t cried myself to sleep thinking of you. So now I know that I have a soul, and I have a heart. And the heart is all yours, if you want it, Stephen!”

[Illustration]

NOW’S THE TIME O’ YEAR

Now’s the time o’ year when the deep skies seem (Look where you will) like the dream of a dream; Toss of gold, floss of gold, weed-tip and tree, And purple like the twilight for the lone late bee.

Now’s the time o’ year when the cider-stills run Amber--luscious amber--in the round red sun; And the bloom on the grape’s like the bloom on the cheeks Of a maid at the tryst when a low voice speaks.

Now’s the time o’ year when the hill-crests call, And the clear rill-music has a tinkling fall; Piper of the South Wind, play up, play! Your hand in mine, love, let us away!

CLINTON SCOLLARD.

PRIDE of RACE

By P. S. Carlson

[Illustration]

At luncheon Bishop Chalmers, ensconced snugly between his hostess, the handsome widow, Mrs. Patricia Danvers, and her equally charming daughter, Miss Isabel, sublimated from the seclusion of boarding school to society two seasons before, listened quietly to the many laudatory comments on his sermon of the previous evening.

The sermon had been delivered in the large and fashionable city church of St. Barnabas. Ostensibly it had been on “Charity”; principally it was a plea for aid for the bishop’s struggling diocese in the South. The bishop had received the invitation to preach from the rector of the rich congregation, a classmate at the theological seminary, who occupied a seat at the left of the hostess.

The rector was wifeless, as was the bishop, and after Mrs. Danvers had satisfied herself that she had paid due deference to the bishop she left him to the tender mercies of the daughter.

Mrs. Danvers, Patricia Hardesty that was, had begun life with a devotion to the church, especially its representatives in this mundane sphere. Her impoverished family, painfully aware that dollars were far scarcer than devotion, insisted on her giving up her maidenly intention of wedding a clergyman and urged on her the necessity of marrying Horace Danvers, by no means religious, many years her senior and “interested in cotton.” Now that the cotton had been shelved for all time by the death of the husband, leaving a magnificent golden fleece in its stead, her devotion to “the cloth” had reasserted itself. Witness the bishop as a guest, the presence of the rector.

To the mind of the widow, worldly-minded, even if a devotee, the rector was the far more desirable prospective _parti_. The bishop was too small to fit her ideal. Her fancy was for large blond men who, in the pulpit, have the appearance of Greek gods brought up to date by the saving grace of the surplice. The rector was one of these.

Although Bishop Chalmers was below medium height, with anything but a robust figure, he had a striking face. It was clean-shaven, ascetic and of cameo-like clearness. The nose itself was indicative of ancestry, the mouth was sensitive yet strong, and his blue eyes were remarkable for their depth and expression of sadness. His silvery gray hair belied his age, not yet fifty years. Pride of vocation and of race showed itself in every feature.

The adoring women of his diocese were accustomed to describe the bishop as one who was never known to smile.

“When his wife died he lost interest in everything but his life work,” they were accustomed to say. “He reveres her memory as that of a saint. Her death cast a shadow over his life, poor little bishop!”

That was not the underlying cause of his sadness. In the ecclesiastical closet--a sanctum the interior of which none might see--a skeleton was concealed.

As Mrs. Danvers glanced to her right with uninterrupted speech to the rector, she smiled with satisfaction to see that the daughter was cleverly holding the attention of the distinguished guest.

The girl had taken up the subject-thread of conversation where her mother had dropped it.

“In your sermon I was greatly impressed by the story you told of the unknown donor who each year sent you the large sum of money for your diocesan work,” she was saying. “It appears so strange that anyone should wish to conceal identity where such good work is concerned. You have no intimation as to his or her identity?” she asked.

The bishop shook his head.

“Not the slightest. The nearest I have approached is to learn the name of the bankers through whom the annual donation is made. It is a good seed sown in a fruitful field, and some day the sower will reap harvest an hundredfold,” he declared, reverently.

Of course Miss Isobel was properly impressed. She said nothing for a little. She was a bright, butterfly sort of creature, whose veil of innocence and apparent ingenuousness hid a nature which delighted in sacrificing dignity and reserve to her mischief-making propensities. She was of the kind ever ready to revert to the subject of round dances or divorce with a High Church dignitary.

This idiosyncrasy asserted itself when she said to her listener, with her well-feigned air of irresponsibility:

“Bishop, I should greatly like to have the pleasure of taking you this afternoon for a spin in my runabout, had I not an engagement to see the Derby run. Besides my promise to go, my favorite jockey is to ride in this race, and I cannot miss the chance of winning or losing kid gloves or bonbons on his horse. I suppose it is very sinful,” she sighed, resignedly, glancing with challenging eyes at the bishop.

Emboldened, though disappointed, perhaps, by the fact that he did not appear shocked or surprised, she continued in a tone wherein earnestness and raillery were mingled:

“Could you reconcile your conscience so far as to accompany me to such a sinful place as the race course, bishop?”

For a time, so long that the silence grew painful, the bishop made no sign that he had heard. She noted a look on his face--was it one of offended dignity or simple disgust at her daring? She could not determine. Already she had framed an apology, when he said, without lifting his eyes:

“Is it really so sinful?” continuing, quickly: “I do not doubt that it is, and, perhaps, it may strike you as being strange and unworthy of my calling, but for just once I should like to see the inside of a race course.”

For some reason the statement struck a chord of sympathy in the girl’s heart. It was in the nature of a confession.

“It is a beautiful sight, bishop,” she hastened to reply, thinking of nothing less inane as her mind struggled to find reason for his admission. “The horses, with their coats like satin, the jockeys in their bright colors, the excited throng of spectators and the velvety greensward. One jockey is a special favorite among the girls of the ‘horsy’ set,” she continued, now fairly advanced in her stride, figuratively speaking. “He’s a darling!”--ecstatically. “I surely believe half the women attend the races simply to see him ride, and all of them make wagers on his mounts.” She paused for a moment and glanced at the bishop. He did not appear offended. “When his horse wins and he returns to the judges’ stand they cheer him and wave their handkerchiefs, and some even throw kisses at him. He doesn’t notice it, though, for he never even smiles, but only looks up at the Blaisdell box.”

“Blaisdell?” echoed the bishop.

“Yes, ex-Secretary Blaisdell. Rumor says that Bettina Blaisdell wants to marry him, but, of course, the family couldn’t countenance such a thing--her becoming the wife of a jockey. It is reported he is of an excellent family, however, and rides under a _nom de course_.”

“And this name--what is it?” inquired the bishop, scarcely above a whisper. Feverishly, almost, he appeared to wait for an answer.

“Nowell--of course it is an assumed one----”

She would have said more, but the words were checked on her lips, and she was staring at her companion in undisguised astonishment. His head was bowed over, and the hand, one finger of which held the episcopal ring, was trembling violently. In a moment he had regained composure.

“Tell me of this race,” he said, in his accustomed well modulated voice. “Does this--jockey”--the word came with an effort--“ride for Mr. Blaisdell altogether? Is it the Blaisdell who was once in the Cabinet?”

Eagerness was evinced in his voice, his expression, the attitude in which he leaned toward his fair informant.

“Ex-Secretary Blaisdell--the one formerly in the senate, you know. He is more interested in the ponies now than in politics,” she said, dropping unconsciously into slang. “He was thinking of selling off all his race horses, when he discovered this jockey, who is said to get a princely salary. Mr. Blaisdell treats him almost as a son.”

The bishop winced.

“And this particular race--you call it the Derby, I believe?” he ventured.

“It’s the greatest racing event of the year. The papers this morning were full of it. Secretary Blaisdell has set his heart on winning it with Nowell and Ixion, his favorite race horse. He is tipped by all the papers, and will be the favorite. That is, it is believed he has the best chance of winning, you know,” she explained. “Ixion and Nowell are a winning combination.”

“Where is the race to take place?” persisted the bishop.

“At the Ravenswood Park race course,” answered the girl, and then, impulsively: “Why, bishop, I might almost be tempted to believe that you are going! Why not let me take you?” she pleaded, coaxingly, with sweet, pursed-up lips and chin stuck out coquettishly toward him.

She pictured to herself what a sensation she would create with a bishop on parade at the races. Well she knew that not a few would be there who would recognize them both, and she could imagine herself the cynosure of the eyes of hundreds of churchgoers transformed into racegoers on this Derby day.

The idea was positively entrancing! With glowing eyes and cheeks flushed at the thought, Miss Danvers awaited the bishop’s reply. It was merely a shake of the head, without comment on her daring.

Then the mother, having overheard the latter part of the conversation, turned to her daughter with gentle reproof:

“I’m surprised at you, Isobel, having the audacity to extend such an invitation to a bishop. It’s shocking bad taste, really. I’m ashamed of you.”

Naturally the conversation drifted into other channels.

During the rest of the meal the bishop was strangely distracted. On more than one occasion his hostess found it necessary to address the same remark to him, whereat he excused himself somewhat lamely for his inattention.

After they had risen from the board he pleaded some matter that needed his especial care, and retired to his chamber. Probably a half hour later Mrs. Danvers and the rector, who remained to talk over church affairs, saw the bishop descend the main stairway near the drawing room.

“He wishes to be alone still. I can tell by his expression,” said the rector. “I know him like a book. A queer man in some ways, but no better anywhere. Inclined too much to melancholy, and a trifle too straitlaced for his advanced age, perhaps.”

In his own chamber the bishop had gone over in his own mind, not once, but a hundred times, the question, at the present the one momentous to him above all others, should he visit the race course that afternoon to see the Derby run? A thousand reasons had suggested themselves why he should not do so. One why he should stood forth clearly and plainly. When all had been turned over in his mind, something told him “Go!”

But how should he go? As he was, his clothes of severe clerical cut singling him out for the sneers of the unrighteous? He would not deny his Master. In his own heart he knew that his presence at the race course meant no intent of desecration of his calling, though he believed horse racing was one of the unpardonable sins.

So his mind was settled that he should go!

At the street corner he bought a newspaper. In it he read that the great Derby would be decided about four P. M. By inquiring casually, he learned that the race course was not many minutes distant.

Hailing a passing cab, he asked, in a voice in which he endeavored to hide the shame he felt:

“To the race course, please. Shall I be in time for the Derby race?”

The half-intoxicated driver looked him over carefully before replying, with a leer:

“All the time you want. I’ll take you right there as cheap as anybody, and I’ll give you a tip besides! If this wasn’t my busy day I’d be inside there, too, quick.”

He pointed his whip indefinitely. “Take my tip, sir,” he added, insinuatingly, holding to the swinging door. “Don’t bet a penny on Ixion. Hotspur is the goods to-day. He’ll beat Ixion a mile. You mind what I’m telling you. I’ve got inside information.”

The bishop’s soul was filled with disgust as he stepped inside.

The cabby slammed to the door, whirled the vehicle sharply around and started.

By and by they ran out of the street into an open space with large gates in front, through which people were passing by the uniformed gatekeepers. The bishop could catch the flutter of flags in the air; men and boys were selling sheets of paper and bawling loudly in his ears. Many cabs and carriages and automobiles were “parked” about the inclosure. He paid the driver, who again took occasion to tell him, in a hoarse whisper:

“Take my tip; you won’t be sorry. Bet it all on Hotspur.”

On either side of the gates the bishop saw booths at whose windows men were selling tickets. Approaching a booth, he tendered a five-dollar bill, receiving in return a badge and three dollars. For a moment he hesitated, and looked at the grinning countenance of the ticket seller.

“How much is--this?” he faltered, holding up the badge.

“Grand stand, two dollars; that’s a grand-stand badge.”

The window shut down with a bang, and the small man in black passed through the turnstile, holding out the badge dumbly to the gatekeeper. The man tore off something and handed the larger portion back to him.

As the bishop passed inside he saw a man attach the--to him--badge of iniquity to the lapel of his coat. He himself held the gaudy bit of pasteboard as if its very touch was defiling, and then tossed it on the ground.

Presently he found himself in front of a stand a quarter of a mile long, black with people. So many never had he seen gathered together at one place.

A band was playing back near the grand stand. Men and women jostled him, laughing, chatting, paying no attention. He heard a young man near him say: “Get your program--one dime,” and gave ten cents for the narrow-leaved “racing card.” He stood holding it mechanically in his hand. Though his eyes rested on the verdant green of the infield, they did not see it. They were looking back into the past of little more than four years before. The racegoers shouldered him heedlessly. He hardly realized the discomfort, he had forgotten the place to which he had come, the sights and scenes of the race course on this great Derby day were forgotten.

How well he remembered the other, the day when the crushing blow had fallen on his heart! That had been the real reason for his sadness.

Until that morning, four years before, as fresh in memory as yesterday, the bishop had thought his only son, at college, would follow in the footsteps of the father. He recollected tearing open the missive in the beloved handwriting, and reading the letter which had burned deeply into his memory and his soul.

As he stood looking back into the past, isolated, though surrounded by thousands, he went over it again:

DEAR FATHER: Your last letter, in which you suggested that it was high time I had made the choice of a profession, set me to thinking. As a result I have made my decision.

Father, you know how fond I have been of horseflesh. Do you remember--but of course you do--when I rode in the tournament three years ago, the youngest knight there, I captured the prize and crowned the queen of beauty? You seemed very proud of me then, and when I crowned mother the queen you complimented me on my good taste.

Near the college grounds is a race course, with training stables attached. Owing to my fondness for thoroughbreds, during the winter I have become acquainted with one of the trainers. I told him I could ride, and he let me exercise one of his best racers. He says that I have an excellent seat and hands, and has asked me to go with him as an apprentice boy, after which I will become a first-class jockey--a big thing nowadays. I think I am exceedingly fortunate in having such an opportunity.

You know, father, I never have been very studious. I would rather sit in the saddle all day than be perched on a stool in an office for a few hours. I have heard you yourself say that a man cannot succeed in his vocation unless he is in sympathy with it.

Please don’t oppose me in my choice, for I know I shall make a great name for myself in the turf world, as you are known in that of the church. Hoping to hear from you soon and favorably, I am,

Affectionately, your son, LIONEL.

At first the little bishop had been highly indignant at his son. The idea of his presuming to couple his own name, as one in the direct line of apostolic succession, with that of a jockey! Surely his son was bereft of his senses.

From wrath the father had changed to heartsickness. Rather in anything else would he have his son engaged than in such a pursuit. He had in mind his own brother, the pride of his mother’s heart, the idol of the family, who, through that same love of horseflesh, had fallen so low that he was either an outcast or the occupant of an unmarked grave in the Western country.

His answer to the letter had been this:

MY DEAR SON: I am sure that you have not reflected deeply on the course which you write me you are bent on pursuing. I cannot consider it as a serious resolve, but regard it rather as the result of sudden impulse on your part induced by the promptings of a man who would lead you away from all that is good and proper to something which is most sinful, degraded and pernicious.

If, after seeing your father in his priestly vestments, you can array yourself in the trappings of Satan--the jockey’s colors--you are not the son I have fondly imagined.

I will not pretend to coerce you in the matter. Yet I counsel you well to consider fully before you take the final step.

Of course if you persist in your wild determination, in future all communication between us must cease. I can advise you no further.

I am glad your dear mother is not alive to share in the pain which your communication has caused me.

YOUR DISAPPOINTED FATHER.

The bishop had hoped, rather than expected, that his son would turn from his resolve. He knew the breed! From the time when their ancestor, Hugh de Chalmers, had started forth to the Crusades, not one had ever retreated. And this same De Chalmers, knighted for some deed of valor on the field of battle, had chosen his coat of arms, which had remained to the house through the vicissitudes of generations. And this coat of arms consisted of field _gules_, horse _argent_, with the motto: “_Ubique honor et equus_” (“Wherever honor and his horse should lead him”). Always the horse had been associated with the Chalmers race, for good or bad, it seemed.

After the two letters there had been no others. The lives of father and son were as those of persons unknown to one another.

The little bishop, sadder than ever--more sanctified, the women of his flock said--went about his work with renewed vigor, if it were possible. They did not know of the derelict.

And the son? Never until this day had the father heard of him.

Try as hard as he had done, the bishop could not put from him the desire, the consuming, yearning wish, once more to look on the face of his only child, even if engaged in his ungodly pursuit. The bishop considered this would be his only chance; he was certain his heart was affected.

Suddenly he came to himself. He was here, but as yet he had seen no horses or jockeys. His son was apparently as far away from him as he had been when he first had become a professional rider. The bishop had supposed men and women, horses and jockeys, were all wallowing together in one slough.

Neither did Bishop Chalmers distinguish the face of an acquaintance. Vaguely he had supposed he would be seen by some who had heard him preach the night before, and who would express astonishment at meeting him there. Where was Miss Danvers?

If he had only known, he would have been aware that the people who would recognize him were in their boxes or grand-stand seats, or in the paddock, where society condescends to jostle elbows with stable boys, proving the truth of the adage enunciated by a true sage: “On the turf, and beneath it, all men are equal.” At least, the bishop was saved from explanation.

It was just after the third race he had arrived. Even now that he had come, he saw no prospect of accomplishing his design. He knew nothing of a paddock.

Looking about him helplessly, his black garments contrasting strangely with the bright costumes of the women, and the “horsy” garb of the male portion, his eyes rested on the figure of a man near him. He was a big, burly fellow, with a good-natured Irish face, the most noticeable feature of which was a huge red mustache. Certainly here was one who could help him, for the man’s attire was as typical of his calling as the bishop’s own. A glittering diamond pin in the shape of a horse’s head was in the cravat, a horseshoe watch charm rested on the double-breasted waistcoat of “loud” pattern.

Chalmers’ eyes caught those of the turf gambler as the latter lifted them, after making an apparently satisfactory calculation on the back of his program.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the bishop. “I--er--as you possibly may guess, I am not well versed in racing matters. Would you please enable me to understand a few things? I believe a jockey named Nowell----” he paused, interrogatively.

“Nowell is it, Blaisdell’s crack jock, ye are askin’ about, now, father?” inquired the man, with an expression of mild surprise. Evidently he mistook the bishop for a priest.

“Yes. Somebody said--I understood he was to ride in the Derby to-day,” continued the bishop, anxiously.

“I see ye ain’t used to racin’ at all, at all, now, father,” laughed the man, good-humoredly. “If ye were, sir, ye would have seen his name on the official jockey board over beyant. Do ye see it now, father? The numbers have been up so long they’ll be takin’ them down shortly. Over beyant, father.”

The bishop’s eyes followed the outstretched finger across the track to where he saw opposite “No. 1” on the board the name “Nowell” in large letters, with other numbers and names below it.

“Let me show ye, father,” said the man, taking the program and turning over the leaves rapidly.

“There ye are--foorth race, the Derby--No. 1, Ixion. That’s the horse Nowell rides. It’s No. 1 on the board, an’ I’m hopin’ he’ll be No. 1 at the finish.”

“Do you attend the races regularly?” asked the bishop, hesitatingly.

“That’s about the size av it, father,” acknowledged the other. “I’m what ye call a ‘regular.’ I don’t suppose annywan is known better about the tracks in this section than Miles Halloran. I play the ponies for a livin’. Mebbe ye’d be scoldin’ me, now, father?” he inquired, indulgently.

The question was ignored.

“Perhaps you can tell me about this jockey Nowell?” the bishop asked again. “Do you know him?”

“Little Nowell?” repeated the man. “I reckon not. Nobody knows him but Blaisdell and the horses. They say his own father don’t know him. But that don’t keep me from playin’ his mounts, father. I’ve been backin’ him ever since he started to ride. That’s why I’m all to the good. I don’t know him, but sure I can tell ye av him, an’ nothin’ but good. He’s as straight as a string.”

“Do you mean that he rides sitting straight up in the saddle?” inquired the bishop, misunderstanding.

“No, no, sir; not that. Sure, if all the boys were like him the bookies would go out of business, I’m thinkin’.”

“Bookies?” repeated the bishop. “Will you kindly elucidate what you mean by bookies?”

“Sure, the bookmakers.”

“Bookmakers--publishers, do I understand you to mean?” inquired the bishop, failing to see the connection between publishers and the race course.

“No, no, father; the layers what takes your long green, your dough, your yellow backs--the ones ye make your bet with, ye know.”

“Oh!” said the bishop.

“This little jock, Nowell, as I was sayin’,” continued Halloran, “is pounds better than any rider in the country.”

Once more the bishop failed to comprehend.

“Pounds? Do you mean in the nature of dollars and cents? Do I understand that his services are so much more valuable than those of any other rider?”

The ill-concealed pride of a father was manifest.

Unable to hide his merriment longer at the dense ignorance displayed by his interrogator, the race-track _habitué_ gave vent to a series of chuckles, ending with spasmodic gasps which threatened to choke him. Finally he said:

“When we say that a horse is so many pounds better than another, we mean that he can pick up so much more weight than another one carries and win out. It’s made by lead carried in the saddle pad. Now, this Darby to-day----”

“Go on, I think I understand,” said the bishop, faintly. “About the Derby----”

“Now, in this here Darby--it’s a mile and a half race--all the horses are three-year-olds, and they carry the same weights.”

“Ah, yes, I see, I see. Then Nowell should win?”--tentatively.

Halloran meditated, frowning deeply.

“Ye seem to take uncommon interest in this jock, sir----” he began.

“You are quite right, Mr. Halloran,” said the bishop. “I--I knew him well some years ago. It was before he became a jockey. His--his mother and father I was well acquainted with.”

“Well, annywan that has been a friend av that lad is all right. I’m goin’ to put ye wise to somethin’. It’s only track gossip, but I believe there’s truth in it. It’s this”--he paused a moment before continuing, impressively: “Nowell will win if he gets through alive. It’s a mighty rough passage he’ll have this day. If he finishes with his neck safe, he’ll have the saints to thank at the end.”

The bishop’s face blanched. He could not understand.

“Is there a plot against his life? Can such a thing be allowed?” he demanded.

“Ye see, it’s this way--all the other jocks is jealous of Nowell, one of them in particular. That’s the Dago, Satanelli. ‘Little Satan,’ they call him, and he’s one of the devil’s own imps. He’s next to Nowell in winning mounts. He rides the second favorite, Hotspur, and it’s said Hotspur’s owner, Cantrell, has promised Satanelli two thousand dollars if he beats Ixion. He don’t have to win--come in ahead of Ixion, that’s all. More’n that, I hear each one of the other jocks has been slipped a hundred-dollar bill if he does all he can to beat Ixion. It’s easy money, you see. They’ll try to beat Nowell now if they have to put him over the fence to do it.”

“I am truly grateful to you for your information,” was the bishop’s reply. “What you say is a terrible state of affairs. Could you not find time to warn him--Nowell, I mean?”

“Why, he knows it, all right, father. Bless your soul, he’s wise as to what’s goin’ on.”

“And still he will go into this death trap set for him! Where can I find the officials?” implored the bishop. “Certainly they cannot be aware of the existing state of things. Mr. Halloran, won’t you help me?”

At the instant the clear notes of a bugle rang out. The bishop and his companion were separated. In some unaccountable manner the air appeared surcharged with electricity. For a second the noise and clamor of the grand stand, the babble of thousands of tongues, were succeeded by a strange stillness.

Again the noise began, but now it was more subdued--the vast crowd seemed to be under a spell. Wondering and bewildered, feeling that he had lost his mainstay, conscious that the crisis was near at hand, Bishop Chalmers looked about him.

He was brought to himself by a friendly hand on the shoulder, a rough but kindly voice in his ear:

“I slipped into the bettin’ ring to put down an extra wad, father. It looks now like everywan thinks Nowell will get through all right. All the big plungers is bettin’ on him, and they know what’s afoot. I thought maybe the little church might be needin’ some money now, and I put down a bet for ye,” he said, with a sly smile.

“Thank God!” was the bishop’s fervent ejaculation. But he was not referring to the wager.

“That was the call to the post, father,” said Halloran. “Come down here by the rail, so ye can get a good look at the boy. It’s the only chance ye’ll have. Right here, up against the rail, with me.”

Leaning over the rail, forgetful of all else, the bishop watched in the direction indicated by his companion for the horses and riders. Soon he saw them trooping out of the paddock gate on the track, in single file, a brave show. He thought he recognized the figure on the leading horse. A mist came before his eyes.

“That’s him--the wan on the big chestnut in front, No. 1, that’s Nowell. Ye’ll be havin’ a good look presently,” whispered the Irishman. “That’s him--the jock with the blue jacket, brown sash, brown cap.”

The bishop’s highly imaginative brain had preconceived this first glimpse of his son. He imagined the boy he had known would be transformed into a rough, profane creature, with heartless laughter and obscene jest to catch the applause of the crowd--young in years, old in crime, a tool of gamblers and blacklegs.

What the father saw, as with trembling fingers he clutched the rail near the judges’ stand, was a bright-faced young man, or, rather, a youth, with the father’s calm, deep blue eyes looking out from under the peak of his jockey cap straight ahead, fearless and confident.

The face had lost its boyish laughter--it wore an earnest, business-like expression. The father felt a thrill of--was it pride? His son was still a Chalmers, going to what might prove his death with unmoved countenance, just as his cavalier ancestor had gone generations before.

The horses--twelve of them--“a big Derby field,” some one said--passed by in parade, one after the other, on their way to the starting post, a half-mile distant around the circular track on which the Derby was to be run. There had been yells for Ixion and Nowell, handclapping and cheering, but the jockey had ridden on without noticing the favor with which he was received; past the grand stand, the field stand and around the turn.

At last the bishop was roused from his contemplation by the voice of Halloran. The plunger explained to him the manner of starting, the positions at the post. Most of it was meaningless to the bishop. He endeavored to understand. It had been his intention first to remain only until he had seen his son, and then go. The startling information given him had changed that.

Nervously expectant, imbued with the general feeling of suspense, Chalmers stood by the side of Halloran, the big Irishman peering through field glasses, shifting uneasily, and muttering to himself incoherently. The bishop watched silently, trying to pick out the blue and brown colors from the jumble of others, a prayer in his heart for one in peril of sudden death.

Would it never end? For minutes and minutes, each one of which added its load of misery to the watcher’s heart, the bishop saw the twisting and turning, the perverse actions of the racers as the starter tried to line them up behind the frail barrier. The wait was nerve racking--would it continue to torture the heart and brain for hours?

A something like a white ribbon flashed upward. For the infinitesimal part of a second--silence.

A roar as of relief from the vast multitude, a cry so concerted that the thousands might have rehearsed it for weeks, sharp, short, distinct and crescendo: “They’re off!”

The tension was broken.

A simultaneous darting forward of the released level line of racers.

A flirt downward of a glaringly yellow flag.

Already the rumble of hoofbeats was heard, approaching closer each fraction of a second. Now the flying racers had reached a position opposite the grand stand. The leaders were sweeping by the bishop and his companion with their marvelous, frictionless, space-devouring strides. A sharp exclamation came from Halloran, a jubilant expression: “I told ye Nowell would get off well. He’s second now, an’ takin’ it easy.”

Even the inexperienced eye of the bishop had picked out instantaneously, well to the fore, the blue and brown of his jockey son.

They had swept past the paddock; they were making the first turn to the back stretch. The grand-stand spectators had risen in their excitement, the occupants of the packed lawn were tip-toe with expectation, eyes strained to lose no move of the Derby contenders well advanced in the struggle for the great prize.

Halloran gave an inarticulate cry--a burst of dismay and sympathy came from the backers of the favorite.

“Bumped into, by----!” was the Irishman’s sharp exclamation, coupled with a fierce oath. One of the flying racers, urged on to terrific pace by its rider, with no thought of saving for the heartbreaking finish, had struck Ixion on the quarter with his shoulder. For a moment the favorite was seen to falter and fall back; the next, under the superb handling of his rider, he had regained his stride and recovered the ground lost to the leaders.

The bishop had merely guessed something had happened. He was brought to full realization by Halloran saying, impersonally:

“They’re up to their devil’s tricks early in the game. They don’t care for foulin’ in this Derby.”

Some man alongside answered, with a sneer:

“I guess they’ll fix Blaisdell’s kid-glove jock to-day. I see his finish. The other boys will see to him, all right--his uppishness.”

Halloran, letting fall the glasses from his face, grabbed the strap, turned on the speaker like a tiger, and said in a tone of deepest menace:

“Ye know me, Cantrell. Another word the like av that, an’ I’ll brain ye right in the presence of his riverence, here. Don’t forget that little jock is a friend av him an’ av me.”

The man was silent.

“Watch yerself, Nowell,” the big fellow cautioned, as if the jockey was in earshot. “It’s all right in the straight. Watch yourself on the last turn for home; it’s there they’ll try to do the dirty work.”

Down the back stretch they raced in a compact bunch, the blue and brown on the rail, the black horse of Satanelli, like an avenging demon, hanging on to Ixion’s quarter, the rest close behind, ready to aid in the devilish work cut out for them by the chief conspirator.

In reality it took but a few seconds, though it seemed minutes, until the far turn was reached. Here the blue and brown, the all yellow of Satanelli, the violets and greens and pinks and blacks and reds and all the other colors of the jockeys, became merged in a maze to the bishop. Whether the positions had changed, how his son was faring, he could only guess by the disjointed utterances of the man beside him. Halloran, on tiptoe, breathing heavily, and with head turning slowly, followed the movements of the racers. The bishop had a sensation of faintness steal over him. For a space he feared he would lose consciousness.

“Oh! Mother of mercies!”--from Halloran. “They pinched him off at the far turn! Bumped into again! He’ll never win now. If the stewards don’t take action now----”

A heavy foot was raised and stamped the ground savagely.

His breath coming in gasps, the bishop watched the expression of the other to try and read the fate of his son. To him the race itself was as a closed book.

Around the far turn they had swept, and the bishop, looking at the other’s face, listening intently, caught the words:

“They’ve got Ixion pocketed. He’ll never get through. If he tries, they’ll put him over the fence, sure. Ye young devils, ye’ve done your work well.”

Now they had reached the turn for home. They had rounded it. A black horse, with the all yellow, was in the lead, a jockey, white and black checks, was alongside, half a length away, both at the whip. Two lengths back, in the middle of the ruck, seemingly hopelessly beaten, apparently shut off with no chance to get through, was the blue and brown.

Between Ixion and the rail two horses nearly on even terms with him; in front Satanelli on Hotspur, and Blashford, the second choice, carrying the black and white “magpie” colors; on Ixion’s whip side a beautiful brown filly, with gray and magenta, the filly so tired she was ready to lean against Ixion’s heaving flank.

So with those in the “first flight,” the racers came down the stretch in a whirlwind finish, the vast crowd, in a frenzy of excitement, shouting frantically, hysterically, the names of the two leaders, Hotspur and Blashford, for it seemed certain one or the other was sure to win. Halloran was silent.

Suddenly the brown filly halted perceptibly in her stride. Now she had fallen back! The racer in front of Ixion, slightly to his right, running gamely and true under the now added incentive of pricking steel in side, had drawn slightly away from under the nose of Ixion, and was pressing hard the two leaders, with evident intention of capturing a portion of the purse. An open gap of daylight showed between the colt in front of Ixion and the completely fagged filly. It was but a chance, but it meant freedom. It was the one thing remaining for Nowell and Ixion.

Rising in his saddle, crouching forward, whip lifted and falling with one lash only, Nowell reined Ixion sharply to the right.

A horse less royally bred than Ixion, an animal with more temper and less courage than this thoroughbred, after the buffeting he had received during the race, would have sulked, or responded at best with feeble effort. Not so with the Blaisdell thoroughbred, under the skillful guidance of a premier jockey.

Ixion checked his stride, almost landing on his haunches, and, with a plunge which threatened to throw his rider over his head, had found an opening, on the extreme outside, it is true, but an unobstructed path to the finish. With tremendous leaps and bounds the horse was recovering his lost ground.

Another second and Ixion’s clean-cut head, outstretched until the upper lip was lifted, baring the grinning teeth, was seen with that of Blashford, fallen back three-quarters of a length behind Hotspur, as yet showing no diminution of his wonderful speed under the cruel rawhide and steel of Satanelli.

Scarcely before that jockey realized it--probably the first intimation he had of his rival’s nearness was the crowd yelling Ixion’s name--the racer had drawn up to Hotspur, changing places with Blashford, now dropping further behind.

Head and head Ixion and Hotspur hung together for a couple of strides.

As a man transformed from a paralyzing grief to sudden great unexpected joy, Halloran was dancing up and down like a madman, pounding the rail with a huge fist.

Ixion and Hotspur were nose and nose. Once more, only, nearing the finish line, did Nowell strike his horse with the whip, and the racer, as if understanding the need, lengthened his stride, passing Hotspur by the small space of a man’s hand at the finish, and winning by so much.

At the instant, with a shrill yell of rage, all the ferocity of his Latin nature roused by defeat when victory seemed assured, Satanelli jerked his right rein, so that his horse “bored” against Ixion, at the same time hitting viciously at that racer’s head with his whip.

His mighty stride as yet unchecked, Ixion swerved, stumbled, fell to his knees and rolled to one side, on the jockey.

Snorting wildly, the colt regained his feet and rushed on as the rest of the field, contesting for third place, rushed up to the finish.

Two of the leading horses jumped clean over the prostrate figure of the jockey in blue and brown; the flying hoofs of another struck it and rolled the body of the little rider to one side. The others, sufficiently far behind, avoided it altogether.

Yells of exultation at the winning of the favorite were checked. They were changed to groans of sympathizing men, screams of terror-stricken, white-faced, fainting women.

When the bishop came to himself he was in the center of the track, kneeling down by his unconscious son, holding the head of the unfortunate in his hands. Uniformed men were by him.

Through a little gate opening from the judges’ stand hurried a large, distinguished-looking man, with gray mustache.

He had the unmistakable air of authority as he stood over the jockey’s form, his uncased field glasses, with the case itself, dangling by his side. The others moved away, all but the bishop. The elderly man, to whom the others gave way, would have lifted the boy in his arms, but the bishop would not release his hold.

“Pardon me, sir; let me have him,” said the gentleman, with something of austerity, as if hinting that the presence of a clergyman was more superfluous than necessary. “What he needs now most of all is prompt medical attention. He is my jockey.”

“And he is my son, sir; my only child,” was the response of the kneeling, dark-garbed figure. He permitted the large man to lift the boy in his arms.

As the ambulance drove sharply on the course, the large man, still clasping the jockey in his arms, looked hard at the anguished face.

It was a brief but all-comprehensive glance. The next instant he had lifted a foot on the step, and with the assistance of the surgeon had deposited the insensible boy on the stretcher inside.

“Drive direct to Fordham,” he commanded. “I will follow immediately.”

Only then did he turn to the bishop.

“I am William T. Blaisdell. You say the boy is your son? You are----?”

His eyes roved over the other’s ministerial dress.

“I am Bishop Chalmers, sir. This young man is my son, my only child,” he repeated, quietly.

“How is it that his name is Nowell? He told me that was his right one?” said the owner, doubtingly.

“It is his own middle name, and his mother’s maiden one,” was the low reply.

“Come with me, bishop,” said Blaisdell, his face softening. “He is a son of whom any father might be proud. Let us hope his injuries are not serious. My automobile is outside here, and we will go direct to the hospital.”

During the swift ride to the hospital, in the wake of the ambulance, Bishop Chalmers, as to a father confessor, unbosomed himself to the quiet, self-contained man beside him. When he had finished the recital, concluding with the remark that he had misjudged his son, and the two men had looked into one another’s eyes, the father saw that Blaisdell’s were filled with tears.

“You have misjudged him sadly,” was Blaisdell’s reply. “No one in any capacity was ever truer to his trust than your son, bishop.

“None ever lived a cleaner life, I know. He had offers innumerable to ride for men who would have paid him extra thousands for retainers. The methods of some on the turf are questionable. As in any other business, it depends altogether on the man. Your son preferred to ride only for me, because he knew that always my horses were ridden to win.”

He was silent a little.

“Although your son received from me a retaining fee of fifteen thousand dollars a year, he seemed to spend but little money,” he continued. “Each year, at his request, I deposited my personal check, payable to him, for the whole amount with my bankers, Relyea & Farnum. As he seemed to spend little, and, like myself, never ventured a wager, it must have accumulated to a good round sum. I always supposed hitherto that the boy had others dependent on him.”

Cringing in his seat, positively cringing, at this latest revelation, Bishop Chalmers heard.

To think how he had mistaken his son! Relyea & Farnum, bankers? Their names were familiar. Now the bishop knew who furnished the seed for his harvest. On this point alone could he not reveal the truth to Blaisdell.

“It was remarkable how he could handle horseflesh,” continued the latter, in a matter-of-fact tone. “No one else could ride Ixion. I verily believe he would have pined away in any other profession. He was not perfectly happy unless he was about horses. Honest? Why, bishop, the whole racing public be----” He checked the word, smiling to himself. He had started to say “bets on him.” “The whole racing public believes in him,” he declared, gravely.

“‘In whatsoever calling,’” murmured the bishop.

The patient had been taken into the operating room, was the report that awaited Blaisdell and the bishop on their arrival at the hospital. Nothing was known regarding his condition. Blaisdell whispered to the obsequious interne who met them:

“I am ex-Secretary Blaisdell. Your patient is the son of Bishop Chalmers here, and in my employ. You will greatly oblige me by sending for my surgeon, Dr. Abercrombie. Leave no stone unturned to save the boy. And, by the way, doctor----”

The departing physician returned to Blaisdell’s side.

“If--er--when he regains consciousness--you might tell him that his father, Bishop Chalmers, is waiting to see him. The news might prove of benefit.”

In the hallway, too excited and interested to remain quiet in the reception room, the bishop and ex-Secretary Blaisdell paced up and down. A few minutes they had passed thus, conversing together gravely, when the click of small, dainty heels, the rustle of a woman’s skirts, were heard on the bare floor.

A tall girl, with light hair; a lovely, highbred creature, gowned in the most approved of summer “creations,” the perfume of whose presence nullified the odor of anæsthetics and antiseptics--a young lady whose features were strikingly like those of Blaisdell--the light of whose blue eyes was dimmed by weeping, threw herself, sobbing, into his arms.

“How did you get here, Bettina?” Blaisdell asked her, with something of reproof in his tone.

“I saw it--the--oh, it was too terrible!” she cried. “I asked where they had taken him, and followed directly. They said you were here.”

Her eyes rested on the bishop, standing near.

“Is it--is it so bad as that, father?” she cried, sobbing anew. “Oh, don’t tell me he is----”

She could not bring herself to say the word.

“This is Bishop Chalmers, daughter,” was Blaisdell’s reply.

“Bishop Chalmers!” gasped the girl, with wide-open eyes. “Why, bishop, I heard you preach on ‘Charity’ last night.”

“On ‘Charity,’ which I so badly lacked--that which I thought I possessed, but which I had so little of for my own son,” said the bishop. “The boy whom you knew simply as Nowell was my son, Miss Blaisdell--Lionel Nowell Chalmers. His father”--he cleared his throat--“was so uncharitable as to deny him the privilege of calling him father.”

“To think that he was the son of a bishop, and now it’s too late! Oh, why would not he tell us!” she cried, reproachfully.

She had burst into a fresh fit of sobbing. Blaisdell, one arm thrown affectionately around the waist of the weeping girl, placed the other on the bishop’s shoulder.

“Your son and my daughter were in love with one another,” he said, simply. “I have no son, and the boy was much at my house. I trusted him fully in everything. I saw the growing attachment between the two. I was certain that he came of good people, but, as a father, and on account of my social position, I had to be sure. I asked him, as he loved Bettina and she him, to tell me who his father was.

“He would not,” continued Blaisdell, after a pause. “I felt sure he had some excellent motive for keeping his secret. I did not press him further, and there the matter rested.”

A pent-up sob came from the soul of the bishop. “So much it would have meant to him,” he said, and added, softly, as if to himself: “As the father, in his priestly vestments, would not recognize the son in his Satan’s trappings, so the son could not acknowledge the father. Oh, Lord, spare him to us yet a while.”

The door opened and a nurse appeared on the threshold. She looked curiously at the group.

“Jockey Nowell is conscious and asking for his father, the bishop,” she stated, with unintentional emphasis on the last word, and then added, in a coldly professional tone:

“He will recover, the physicians say, but his injuries will probably prevent him from riding again--at least not for a very long while.”

Blaisdell drew a sharp breath. His face was troubled.

“That means my retirement from the turf,” he said, with a sigh. “I have lost the one jockey I could trust.”

“And I have gained--a son,” breathed the bishop, starting forward.

Pausing, he took the sobbing girl by the hand.

“You will see him later, daughter,” he whispered.

His face radiant with a smile it had not known for years, the little bishop followed the nurse down the passage.

A door opened and closed noiselessly behind them.

[Illustration]

The PRINCESS’ KINGDOM

By William J. Locke

[Illustration]

That there once was a real Prince Rabomirski is beyond question. That he was Ottilie’s father may be taken for granted. But that the Princess Rabomirski had a right to bear the title many folk were scandalously prepared to deny. It is true that when the news of the prince’s death reached Monte Carlo, the princess, who was there at the time, showed various persons, on whose indiscretion she could rely, a holograph letter of condolence from the czar, and later unfolded to the amiable muddle-headed the intricacies of a lawsuit which she was instituting for the recovery of the estates in Poland; but her detractors roundly declared the holograph letter to be a forgery, and the lawsuit a fiction of her crafty brain. Princess, however, she continued to style herself in Cosmopolis, and princess she was styled by all and sundry, and little Ottilie Rabomirski was called the Princess Ottilie.

Among the people who joined heart and soul with the detractors was young Vince Somerset. If there was one person whom he despised and hated more than Count Bernheim--of the holy Roman empire--it was the Princess Rabomirski. In his eyes she was everything that a princess, a lady, a woman and a mother should not be. She dressed ten years younger than was seemly; she spoke English like a barmaid, and French like a cocotte; she gambled her way through Europe from year’s end to year’s end, and, after neglecting Ottilie for twenty years, she was about to marry her to Bernheim. The last was the unforgivable offense.

The young man walked up and down the Casino terrace of Illerville-sur-Mer, and poured into a friend’s ear his flaming indignation. He was nine-and-twenty, and, though he pursued the unpoetical avocation of sub-editing the foreign telegrams on a London daily newspaper, retained some of the vehemence of undergraduate days when he had chosen the career--now abandoned--of poet, artist, dramatist and irreconcilable politician.

“Look at them!” he cried, indicating a couple seated at a distant table beneath the awning of the café. “Did you ever see anything so horrible in your life? The maiden and the Minotaur. When I heard of the engagement today I wouldn’t believe it until she herself told me. She doesn’t know the man’s abomination. He’s a byword of reproach through Europe. The live air reeks with the scent he pours upon himself. There can be no turpitude under the sun in which the wretch doesn’t wallow. Do you know that he killed his first wife? Oh, I don’t mean that he cut her throat. That’s far too primitive for such a complex hound. There are other ways of murdering a woman, my dear Ross. You kick her body and break her heart and defile her soul. That’s what he did. And he has done it to other women.”

“But, my dear man,” remarked Ross, elderly and cynical, “he is colossally rich.”

“Rich! Do you know where he made his money? In the cesspool of European finance. He’s a Jew by race, a German by parentage, an Italian by upbringing, and a Greek by profession. He has bucket shops and low-down money lenders’ cribs and rotten companies all over the Continent. Do you remember Sequasto & Co.? That was Bernheim. England’s too hot to hold him. Look at him now he has taken off his hat. Do you know why he wears his greasy hair plastered over half his damned forehead? It’s to hide the mark of the beast. He’s anti-Christ! And when I think of that Jezebel from the Mile-End Road putting Ottilie into his arms, it makes me see red. By heavens, it’s touch and go that I don’t slay the pair of them!”

“Very likely they’re not as bad as they’re painted,” said his friend.

“She couldn’t be,” Somerset retorted, grimly.

Ross laughed, looked at his watch and announced that it was time for _apéritifs_. The young man assented, moodily, and they crossed the terrace to the café tables beneath the awning. It was the dying afternoon of a sultry August day, and most of Illerville had deserted tennis courts, _tir aux pigeons_ and other distractions to listen lazily to the band in the Casino shade. The place was crowded; not a table vacant. When the waiter at last brought one from the interior of the café, he dumped it down beside the table occupied by the unspeakable Bernheim and the little Princess Ottilie. Somerset raised his hat as he took his seat. Bernheim responded with elaborate politeness, and Princess Ottilie greeted him with a faint smile. The engaged pair spoke very little to each other. Bernheim lounged back in his chair, smoking a cigar, and looked out to sea with a bored expression. When the girl made a casual remark he nodded rudely without turning his head. Somerset felt an irresistible desire to kick him. His external appearance was of the type that irritated the young Englishman. He was too handsome in a hard, swaggering, black-mustachioed way; he exaggerated to offense the English style of easy dress; he wore a too devil-may-care Panama, a too obtrusive colored shirt and club tie; he wore no waistcoat, and the hems of his new flannel trousers, turned up six inches, disclosed a stretch of tan-colored silk socks, clocked with gold, matching overelegant tan shoes. He went about with a broken-spirited poodle. He was inordinately scented. Somerset glowered at him, and let his drink remain untasted.

Presently Bernheim summoned the waiter, paid him for the tea the girl had been drinking, and pushed back his chair.

“This hole is getting on my nerves,” he said, in French, to his companion. “I am going into the _cercle_ to play _écarté_. Will you go to your mother, whom I see over there, or will you stay here?”

“I’ll stay here,” said the little Princess Ottilie.

Bernheim nodded and swaggered off. Somerset bent forward.

“I must see you alone to-night--quite alone. I must have you all to myself. How can you manage it?”

Ottilie looked at him anxiously. She was fair and innocent, of a prettiness more English than foreign, and the scare in her blue eyes made them all the more appealing to the young man.

“What is the good? You can’t help me. Don’t you see that it is all arranged?”

“I’ll undertake to disarrange it at a moment’s notice,” said Somerset.

“Hush!” she whispered, glancing round. “Somebody will hear. Everything is gossiped about in this place.”

“Well, will you meet me?” the young man persisted.

“If I can,” she sighed. “If they are both playing baccarat, I may slip out for a little.”

“As at Spa.”

She smiled, and a slight flush came into her cheeks.

“Yes, as at Spa. Wait for me on the _plage_ at the bottom of the Casino steps. Now I must go to my mother. She would not like to see me talking to you.”

“The princess hates me like poison. Do you know why?”

“No, and you are not going to tell me,” she said, demurely. “_Au revoir._”

When she had passed out of earshot, Ross touched the young man’s arm.

“I’m afraid, my dear Somerset, you are playing a particularly silly fool’s game.”

“Have you never played it?”

“Heaven forbid!”

“It would be a precious sight better for you if you had,” growled Somerset.

“I’ll take another _quinquina_,” said Ross.

“Did you see the way in which the brute treated her?” Somerset exclaimed, angrily. “If it’s like that before marriage, what will it be after?”

“Plenty of money, separate establishments, perfect independence and happiness for each.”

Somerset rose from the table.

“There are times, my good Ross,” said he, “when I absolutely hate you.”

* * * * *

Somerset had first met the Princess Rabomirski and her daughter three years before, at Spa. They were staying at the same hotel, a very modest one, which, to Somerset’s mind, ill accorded with the princess’ pretensions. Bernheim was also in attendance, but he disposed his valet, his motor car and himself in the luxurious Hôtel d’Orange, as befitted a man of his quality; also he was in attendance not on Ottilie, but on the princess, who at that time was three years younger and a trifle less painted. Now at Illerville-sur-Mer the trio were stopping at the Hôtel Splendide, a sumptuous hostelry, whose season prices were far above Somerset’s moderate means. He contented himself with the little hotel next door, and hated the Hôtel Splendide and all that it contained, save Ottilie, with all his heart. But at Spa, the princess was evidently in low water from which she did not seem to be rescued by her varying luck at the tables. Ottilie was then a child of seventeen, and Somerset was less attracted by her delicate beauty than by her extraordinary loneliness. Day after day, night after night, he would come upon her sitting solitary on one of the settees in the gaming room, like a forgotten fan or flower, or wandering wistfully from table to table, idly watching the revolving wheels. Sometimes she would pause behind her mother’s or Bernheim’s chair to watch their game; but the princess called her a little _porte-malheur_ and would drive her away. In the mornings or on other rare occasions, when the elder inseparables were not playing roulette, Ottilie hovered round them at a distance, as disregarded as a shadow that followed them in space of less dimensions, as it were, wherever they went. In the Casino rooms, if men spoke to her, she replied in shy monosyllables and shrank away. Somerset, who had made regular acquaintance with the princess at the hotel and who took a chivalrous pity on her loneliness, she admitted first to a timid friendship and then to a childlike intimacy. Her face would brighten and her heart beat a little faster when she saw his young, well-knit figure appear in the distance; for she knew he would come straight to her and take her from the hot rooms heavy with perfumes and tobacco on to the cool balcony and talk of all manner of pleasant things. And Somerset found in this neglected little sham princess what his youth was pleased to designate a flower-like soul. Those were idyllic hours. The princess, glad to get the embarrassing child out of the way, took no notice of the intimacy. Somerset fell in love.

It lasted out a three years’ separation during which he did not hear from her. He had written to several addresses, but a cold post office returned his letters undelivered, and his only consolation was to piece together from various sources the unedifying histories of the Princess Rabomirski and Count Bernheim, of the holy Roman Empire. He came to Illerville-sur-Mer for an August holiday. The first thing he did when shown into his hotel bedroom was to gaze out of the window at the beach and the sea. The first person his eyes rested upon was the little Princess Ottilie issuing, alone as usual, from the doors of the next hotel.

He had been at Illerville a fortnight--a fortnight of painful joy. Things had changed. Their interviews had been mostly stolen, for the Princess Rabomirski had rudely declined to renew the acquaintance and had forbidden Ottilie to speak to him. The girl, though apparently as much neglected as ever, was guarded against him with peculiar ingenuity. Somerset, aware that Ottilie, now grown from a child into an exquisitely beautiful and marriageable young woman, was destined by a hardened sinner like the princess for a wealthier husband than a poor newspaper man with no particular prospects, could not, however, quite understand the reason for the virulent hatred of which he was the object. He overheard the princess one day cursing her daughter in execrable German for having acknowledged his bow a short time before. Their only undisturbed time together was in the sea during the bathing hour. The princess, hating the pebbly beach, which cut to pieces her high-heeled shoes, never watched the bathers, and Bernheim, who did not bathe--Somerset, prejudiced, declared that he did not even wash--remained in his bedroom till the hour of _déjeuner_. Ottilie, attended only by her maid, came down to the water’s edge, threw off her peignoir, and, plunging into the water, found Somerset waiting.

Now, Somerset was a strong swimmer. Moderately proficient at all games as a boy and an undergraduate, he had found that swimming was the only sport in which he excelled, and he had cultivated and maintained the art. Oddly enough, the little Princess Ottilie, in spite of her apparent fragility, was also an excellent and fearless swimmer. She had another queer delight for a creature so daintily feminine--the _salle d’armes_--so that the muscles of her young limbs were firm and well-ordered. But the sea was her passion. If an additional bond between Somerset and herself were needed, it would have been this. Yet, though it is a pleasant thing to swim far away into the loneliness of the sea with the object of one’s affections, the conditions do not encourage sustained conversation on subjects of vital interest. On the day when Somerset learned that his little princess was engaged to Bernheim he burned to tell her more than could be spluttered out in ten fathoms of water. So he urged her to an assignation.

At half-past ten she joined him at the bottom of the Casino steps. The shingly _plage_ was deserted, but on the terrace above the throng was great, owing to the breathless heat of the night.

“Thank Heaven you have come,” said he. “Do you know how I have longed for you?”

She glanced up wistfully into his face. In her simple cream dress and burnt straw hat adorned with white roses round the brim, she looked very fair and childlike.

“You mustn’t say such things,” she whispered. “They are wrong now. I am engaged to be married.”

“I won’t hear of it,” said Somerset. “It is a horrible nightmare--your engagement. Don’t you know that I love you? I loved you the first minute I set my eyes on you at Spa.”

Princess Ottilie sighed, and they walked along the boards behind the bathing machines, and down the rattling beach to the shelter of a fishing boat, where they sat down, screened from the world, with the murmuring sea in front of them. Somerset talked of his love and the hatefulness of Bernheim. The little princess sighed again.

“I have worse news still,” she said. “It will pain you. We are going to Paris to-morrow, and then on to Aix-les-Bains. They have just decided. They say the baccarat here is silly, and they might as well play for bonbons. So we must say good-by to-night--and it will be good-by for always.”

“I, too, will come to Aix-les-Bains,” said Somerset.

“No, no,” she answered, quickly. “It would only bring trouble on me, and do no good. We must part to-night. Don’t you think it hurts me?”

“But you must love me,” said Somerset.

“I do,” she said, simply, “and that is why it hurts. Now I must be going back.”

“Ottilie,” said Somerset, grasping her hands, “need you ever go back?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Come away from this hateful place with me--now, this minute. You need never see Bernheim again as long as you live. Listen. My friend Ross has a motor car. I can manage it--so there will be only us two. Run into your hotel for a thick cloak, and meet me as quickly as you can behind the tennis courts. If we go full speed we’ll catch the night boat at Dieppe. It will be a wild race for our life happiness. Come!”

In his excitement he rose and pulled her to her feet. They faced each other for a few glorious moments, panting for breath, and then Princess Ottilie broke down and cried bitterly.

“I can’t, dear, I can’t. I must marry Bernheim. It is to save my mother from something dreadful. I don’t know what it is--but she went on her knees to me, and I promised.”

“If there’s a woman in Europe capable of getting out of her difficulties unaided it is the Princess Rabomirski,” said Somerset. “I am not going to let you be sold. You are mine, Ottilie, and, by Heaven! I’m going to have you. Come.”

He urged, he pleaded, he put his strong arms around her as if he would carry her away bodily. He did everything that a frantic young man could do. But the more the little princess wept, the more inflexible she became. Somerset had not realized before this steel in her nature. Raging and vehemently urging, he accompanied her back to the Casino steps.

“Would you like to say good-by to me to-morrow morning, instead of to-night?” she asked, holding out her hand.

“I am never going to say good-by,” cried Somerset.

“I shall slip out to-morrow morning for a last swim--at six o’clock,” she said, unheeding his exclamation. “Our train goes at ten.” Then she came very close to him.

“Vince, dear, if you love me, don’t make me more unhappy than I am.”

It was an appeal to his chivalry. He kissed her hand and said:

“At six o’clock.”

But Somerset had no intention of bidding her a final farewell in the morning. If he followed her the world over he would snatch her out of the arms of the accursed Bernheim and marry her by main force. As for the foreign telegrams of the _Daily Post_, he cared not how they would be subedited. He went to bed with lofty disregard of Fleet Street and bread and butter. As for the shame from which Ottilie’s marriage would save her sainted mother, he did not believe a word of it. She was selling Ottilie to Bernheim for cash down. He stayed awake most of the night plotting schemes for the rescue of his princess. It would be an excellent plan to insult Bernheim and slay him outright in a duel. Its disadvantages lay in his own imperfections as a duelist, and for the first time he cursed the benign laws of his country. At length he fell asleep; woke up to find it daylight and leaped to his feet in a horrible scare. But a sight of his watch reassured him. It was only five o’clock. At half-past he put on a set of bathing things and sat down by the window to watch the hall door of the Hôtel Splendide. At six out came the familiar figure of the little princess draped in her white peignoir. She glanced up at Somerset’s window. He waved his hand, and in a minute or two they were standing side by side at the water’s edge. It was far away from the regular bathing place marked by the bathing cabins, and further still from the fishing end of the beach, where alone at that early hour were signs of life visible. The town behind them slept in warmth and light. The sea stretched out blue and unrippled in the still air. A little bank of purple cloud on the horizon presaged a burning day.

The little princess dropped her peignoir and kicked off her straw-soled shoes and gave her hand to her companion. He glanced at the little white feet, which he was tempted to fall down and kiss, and then at the wistful face below the blue-silk foulard knotted in front over the bathing cap. His heart leaped at her bewildering sweetness. She was the morning incarnate.

She read his eyes, and flushed pink.

“Let us go in,” she said.

They waded in together, hand in hand, until they were waist deep. Then they struck out, making for the open sea. The sting of the night had already passed from the water. To their young blood it felt warm. They swam near together, Ottilie using a steady breast stroke and Somerset a side stroke, so that he could look at her flushed and glistening face. From the blue of the sea and the blue of the sky and the light blue of the silk foulard, the blue of her eyes grew magically deep.

“There seems to be nothing but you and I in God’s universe, Ottilie,” said he. She smiled at him. He drew quite close to her.

“If we could only go on straight until we found an enchanted island which we could have as our kingdom!”

“The sea must be our kingdom,” said Ottilie.

“Or its depths. Shall we dive down and look for the ‘ceiling of amber, the pavement of pearl,’ and the ‘red gold throne in the heart of the sea’ for the two of us?”

“We should be happier than in the world,” replied the little princess.

They swam on slowly, dreamily, in silence. The mild waves lapped against their ears and their mouths. The morning sun lay at their backs and its radiance fell athwart the bay. Through the stillness came the faint echo of a fisherman on the far beach hammering at his boat. Beyond that and the gentle swirl of the water there was no sound. After a while they altered their course so as to reach a small boat that lay at anchor for the convenience of the stronger swimmers. They clambered up and sat on the gunwale, their feet dangling in the sea.

“Is my princess tired?” he asked.

She laughed in merry scorn.

“Tired? Why, I could swim twenty times as far. Do you think I have no muscle? Feel. Don’t you know I fence all the winter?”

She braced her bare arm. He felt the muscle; then relaxing it by drawing down her wrist, he kissed it very gently.

“Soft and strong--like yourself,” said he. Ottilie said nothing, but looked at her white feet through the transparent water. She thought that in letting him kiss her arm, and feeling as though he had kissed right through to her heart, she was exhibiting a pitiful lack of strength. Somerset looked at her askance, uncertain. For nothing in the world would he have offended.

“Did you mind?” he whispered.

She shook her head and continued to look at her feet. Somerset felt a great happiness pulse through him.

“If I gave you up,” said he, “I should be the poorest-spirited dog that ever whined.”

“Hush!” she said, putting her hand in his. “Let us think only of the present happiness.”

They sat silent for a moment, contemplating the little red-roofed town of Illerville-sur-Mer, which nestled in greenery beyond the white sweep of the beach, and the rococo hotels and the Casino, whose cupolas flashed gaudily in the morning sun. From the northeastern end of the bay stretched a long line of sheer white cliff as far as the eye could reach. Toward the west it was bounded by a narrow headland running far out to sea.

“It looks like a frivolous little Garden of Eden,” said Somerset, “but I wish we could never set foot in it again.”

“Let us dive in and forget it,” said Ottilie.

She slipped into the water. Somerset stood on the gunwale and dived. When he came up and had shaken the salt water from his nostrils, he joined her in two or three strokes.

“Let us go round the point to the little beach the other side.”

She hesitated. It would take a long time to swim there, rest and swim back. Her absence might be noticed. But she felt reckless. Let her drink this hour of happiness to the full. What mattered anything that could follow? She smiled assent, and they struck out steadily for the point. It was good to have the salt smell, and the taste of the brine, and the pleasant smart of the eyes; and to feel their mastery of the sea. As they threw out their flashing white arms and topped each tiny wave, they smiled in exultation. To them it seemed impossible that anyone could drown. For the buoyant hour they were creatures of the element. Now and then a gull circled before them, looked at them unconcernedly, as if they were in some way of his kindred, and swept away into the distance. A tired white butterfly settled for a moment on Ottilie’s head; then light-heartedly fluttered away seaward to its doom. They swam on and on and they neared the point. They slackened for a moment, and he brought his face close to hers.

“If I said: ‘Let us swim on for ever and ever,’ would you do it?”

“Yes,” she said, looking deep into his eyes.

After a while they floated restfully. The last question and answer seemed to have brought them a great peace. They were conscious of little save the mystery of the cloudless ether above their faces and the infinite sea that murmured in their ears strange harmonies of love and death--harmonies woven from the human yearnings of every shore and the hushed secrets of eternal time. So close were they bodily together that now and then hand touched hand and limb brushed limb. A happy stillness of the soul spread its wings over them and they felt it to be a consecration of their love. Presently his arm sought her, encircled her, brought her head on his shoulder.

“Rest a little,” he whispered.

She closed her eyes, surrendered her innocent self to the flooding rapture of the moment. The horrors that awaited her passed from her brain. He had come to the lonely child like a god out of heaven. He had come to the frightened girl like a new terror. He was by her side now, the man whom of all men God had made to accomplish her womanhood and to take all of soul and body, sense and brain, that she had to give. Their salt lips met in a first kiss of passion. Words would have broken the spell of the enchantment cast over them by the infinite spaces of sea and sky. They drifted on and on, the subtle, subconscious movement of foot and hand keeping them afloat. The little princess moved closer to him so as to feel more secure around her the circling pressure of his arm. He laughed a man’s short, exultant laugh, and gripped her more tightly. Never had he felt his strength more sure. His right arm and his legs beat rhythmically, and he felt the pulsation of the measured strokes of his companion’s feet, and the water swirled past his head so that he knew they were making way most swiftly. Of exertion there was no sense whatever. He met her eyes fixed through half-shut lids upon his face. He lost count of time and space. Now and then a little wave broke over their faces and they laughed and cleared the brine from their mouths and drew more close together.

“If it wasn’t for that,” she whispered once, “I could go to sleep.”

Soon they felt the gentle rocking of the sea increase and waves broke more often over them. Somerset was the first to note the change. Loosening his hold of Ottilie, he trod water and looked around. To his amazement, they were still abreast of the point, but far out to sea. He gazed at it uncomprehendingly for an instant, and then a sudden recollection smote him like a message of death. They had caught the edge of the current against which swimmers were warned, and the current held them in its grip and was sweeping them on while they floated foolishly. A swift glance at Ottilie showed him that she, too, realized the peril. With the outgoing tide it was almost impossible to reach the shore.

“Are you afraid?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not with you.”

He scanned the land and the sea. On the arc of their horizon lay the black hull of a tramp steamer going eastward. Far away to the west was a speck of white, and against the pale sky a film of smoke. Landward, beyond the shimmering water, stretched the sunny bay, and the Casino was just visible. Its gilt cupolas shot tiny flames. The green-topped point, its hither side deep in shadow, reached out helplessly for them. Somerset and Ottilie still paused, doing nothing more than keeping themselves afloat, and they felt the current drifting them ever seaward.

“It looks like death,” he said, gravely. “Are you afraid to die?”

Again Ottilie said: “Not with you.”

He looked at the land, and he looked at the white speck and the puff of smoke. Then suddenly his heart leaped with the thrilling inspiration of a wild impossibility.

“Let us leave Illerville and France behind us. Death is as certain either way.”

The little princess looked at him wonderingly.

“Where are we going?”

“To England.”

“Anywhere but Illerville,” she said.

He struck out seaward, she followed. Each saw the other’s face white and set. They had current and tide with them, they swam steadily, undistressed. After a silence she called to him.

“Vince, if we go to our kingdom under the sea, you will take me down in your arms?”

“In a last kiss,” he said.

He had heard--as who has not?--of love being stronger than death. Now he knew its truth. But he swore to himself a great oath that they should not die.

“I shall take my princess to a better kingdom,” he said, later.

* * * * *

Presently he heard her breathing painfully. She could not hold out much longer.

“I will carry you,” he said.

An expert swimmer, she knew the way to hold his shoulders and leave his arms unimpeded. The contact of her light young form against his body thrilled him and redoubled his strength. He held his head for a second high out of the water and turned half round.

“Do you think I am going to let you die--now?”

The white speck had grown into a white hull, and Somerset was making across its track. To do so he must deflect slightly from the line of the current. His great battle began.

He swam doggedly, steadily, husbanding his strength. If the vessel justified his first flash of inspiration, and if he could reach her, he knew how he should act. As best he could, for it was no time for speech, he told Ottilie his hopes. He felt the spray from her lips upon his cheek, as she said:

“It seems sinful to wish for greater happiness than this.”

After that there was utter silence between them. At first he thought exultingly of Bernheim and the Princess Rabomirski, and the rage of their wicked hearts; of the future glorified by his little princess of the unconquerable soul; of the present’s mystic consummation of their marriage. But gradually mental concepts lost sharpness of definition. Sensation began to merge itself into a half-consciousness of stroke on stroke through the illimitable waste. Despite the laughing morning sunshine, the sky became dark and lowering. The weight on his neck grew heavier. At first Ottilie had only rested her arms. Now her feet were as lead, and sank behind him; her clasp tightened about his shoulders. He struggled on through a welter of sea and mist. Strange sounds sang in his ears, as if over them had been clamped great sea shells. At each short breath his throat gulped down bitter water. A horrible pain crept across his chest. His limbs seemed paralyzed, and yet he remained above the surface. The benumbed brain wondered at the miracle.

The universe broke upon his vision as a blurred mass of green and white. He recognized it vaguely as his kingdom beneath the sea, and, as in a dream, he remembered his promise. He slipped round. His lips met Ottilie’s. His arms wound about her, and he sank holding her tightly clasped.

* * * * *

Strange things happened. He was pulled hither and thither by sea monsters welcoming him to his kingdom. In a confused way he wondered that he could breathe so freely in the depths of the ocean. Unutterable happiness stole over him. The kingdom was _real_. His sham princess would be queen in very truth. But where was she?

He opened his eyes and found himself lying on the deck of a ship. A couple of men were doing funny things to his arms. A rosy-faced man in white ducks and a yachting cap stood over him with a glass of brandy. When he had drunk the spirit, the rosy man laughed.

“That was a narrow shave. We got you just in time. We were nearly right on you. The young woman is doing well. My wife is looking after her.”

As soon as he could collect his faculties, Somerset asked:

“Are you the _Mavis_?”

“Yes.”

“I felt sure of it. Are you Sir Henry Ransome?”

“That’s my name.”

“I heard you were expected at Illerville to-day,” said Somerset. “That is why I made for you.”

The two men who had been doing queer things with his arms wrapped him in a blanket and propped him up against the deck cabin.

“But what on earth were you two young people doing in the middle of the English Channel?” asked the owner of the _Mavis_.

“We were eloping,” said Somerset.

The other looked at him for a bewildered moment and burst into a roar of laughter. He turned to the cabin door and disappeared, to emerge a moment afterward followed by a lady in a morning wrapper.

“What do you think, Marian? It’s an elopement.”

Somerset smiled at them.

“Have you ever heard of the Princess Rabomirski? You have? Well, this is her daughter. Perhaps you know of the Count Bernheim, who is always about with the princess?”

“I trod on him last winter at Monte Carlo,” said Sir Henry Ransome.

“He survives,” said Somerset, “and has bought the Princess Ottilie from her mother. He’s not going to get her. She belongs to me. My name is Somerset, and I am foreign subeditor of the _Daily Post_.”

“I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Somerset,” said Sir Henry, with a smile. “And now, what can I do for you?”

“If you lend us some clothes, and take us to any port on earth save Illerville-sur-Mer, you will earn our eternal gratitude.”

Sir Henry looked doubtful. “We have made our arrangements for Illerville,” said he.

His wife broke in:

“If you don’t take these romantic beings straight to Southampton, I’ll never set my foot upon this yacht again.”

“It was you, my dear, who were crazy to come to Illerville.”

“Don’t you think,” said Lady Ransome, “you might provide Mr. Somerset with some dry things?”

* * * * *

Four hours afterward Somerset sat on deck by the side of Ottilie, who, warmly wrapped, lay on a long chair. He pointed to the far-away coast line of the Isle of Wight.

“Behold our kingdom!” said he.

The little princess laughed.

“That is not our kingdom.”

“Well, what is?”

“Just the little bit of space that contains both you and me,” she said.

[Illustration]

THE MOST EXCLUSIVE CITY IN AMERICA

By

Anne Rittenhouse

[Illustration]

The mighty colony of rich tourists who go South with the birds have begun to love two quaint, historic Southern cities. One hears gossip and anecdote of them in the Fifth Avenue clubs and the Philadelphia and Chicago drawing rooms. Many a man has become instantly _persona grata_ in Northern centers because he registered from one of these towns.

Each city has recognized this advent of an army of Northerners in a different way--a way which indicates the heart and soul of the people. Charleston sits and smiles behind its jalousie blinds--a conservative relic of Huguenot days. Augusta leaps eagerly forward to meet them, commercially, if not always socially.

The difference between these two cities lying so close together, separated by the great yellow Savannah River, which leisurely picks its way among the rice savannas, is understood but not defined by the tourists. They are more desirous to enter into the social life, of these two places than they are of any other winter resort, for, while the South is honeycombed with Northern hotels, they are usually laid along the lines that will make capital for promoters. Beyond the climate and the visitors, there is nothing.

Palm Beach is an imitation of Monaco. It is not a city. It is without history. New Orleans is the quaintest city alive in America, but its horizon is broader, its basis more substantial, than any other Southern city, and it is not such a Mecca for the casual traveler. Neither is Richmond, with all its history and picturesque tradition.

Atlanta is the Chicago of the South, and is too busy with its future to remember it has not a cobwebbed past. Aiken, the best-known cottage resort of the South, is a suburb of Augusta. It is but a village in the pines.

This is the reason Charleston and Augusta stand with the Northerners for character study, history and individual charm. Yet thousands of travelers, eager as they are about it, know almost nothing of the core of these two cities. They dwell lovingly on the quaint houses of the one and the great street of the other, but the blinds are jealously down. The wooden shutters of the domestic life are kept closed. So they miss that which is most exquisite, most appealing, in any city--personality.

Charleston is, without doubt, the most exclusive city in America. It gives nothing out to the stranger beyond its physical beauty and tempered climate. One keen observer said of it: “It has only one equal--a German principality, where almost everyone is royal and noble and all intermarried. Other places and social codes exist, of course--New York, Chicago, Denver--but not for Charleston.”

A small child of that city was asked where Charleston was placed. Proudly she said, “It is between the Cooper and the Ashley Rivers, which join and _form_ the ocean.”

When the Bostonian speaks grandly of the _Mayflower_, the Huguenot of Charleston smiles. He is remembering that Jean Ribaut landed a Huguenot emigration in Port Royal fifty-eight years before the Puritans landed in Massachusetts Bay. The Knickerbocker has no boast to make before the South Carolinian, because the Dutch settled New York over half a century later than Port Royal was begun.

Charleston was settled by aristocrats from France, and later from England--men who came from the court and wore the garments and spoke the language of the world’s highest circle. Like New Orleans, it sprang into life as a cultured community. It had not the struggle upward for social position. The great names it held then are its first names to-day. And the world recognizes the bearers of these names as those who have the hallmark of admission into the reserved social corners of America.

The St. Cecilia Society exists in all its former charm and exclusiveness. It is the oldest dancing club in America, as far as the Charlestonian has any record, although the Philadelphian claims this honor for the Quaker City’s famous Assemblies. It has not changed in one iota since the early days of the eighteenth century, and, as far as possible, the names of its managers have continued the same.

Josiah Quincy, who went to Charleston in 1773, says of the city, in his diary: “It far surpasses all I ever saw or ever expect to see in America.”

As early as January, 1734, Charleston had its drama, which was probably the first theatrical performance in America. Its citizens went to college in England; and Mr. Snowden, who knows his Charleston as Thackeray knew his London, says South Carolina headed all the colonies in the list of the London Inns of Court, and up to the time of the Revolution had forty-five law students there.

When the Philadelphian speaks serenely of the Liberty Bell, the Charlestonian smiles and remembers that in 1765 South Carolina took the first step for a Continental Union, and that in Charleston was formulated the first independent constitution in any of the colonies; also that she furnished three of the signers of the Declaration of Independence--Arthur Middleton, Thomas Heyward and Thomas Lynch, Jr. To the world of art it gave Charles Fraser, the great miniaturist; and Malbone also did his work there. The private houses held Gainsboroughs, Stuarts, Romneys and Wests in the eighteenth century.

These are a few of the reasons that give the Charlestonian that serene pride in self, country and relatives. This serenity broods over the city; and the shock of wars, earthquakes, tidal wave and stupendous fires has not shaken it.

Its laws of behavior and its rules of society are without change. Whatever happens in the rest of the world need not be followed there. There is a story told of the sexton of the famous old St. Michael’s, the notable church, and of Crum, the negro whom President Roosevelt made collector of the port. Crum brought several Northerners in a carriage to the door. It was at an hour when no one was allowed in the church. Crum insisted upon going in and taking his guests to the belfry to see the famous bells. The sexton declined to allow it.

The negro collector drew himself up and said to the sexton:

“You surely don’t know who I am. My name is Crum.”

“Well, you could be the whole loaf and you wouldn’t be allowed in St. Michael’s,” was the laconic answer.

It is easily inferred that the sexton was none too sorry to give a verbal blow to the negro collector who persuaded white men from the North to be his guests.

The Charleston negro who belongs to “the quality” shares and echoes his master’s pride of birth and social tradition. The man who for decades has delivered invitations for all the exclusive parties prides himself on knowing every person worth speaking to in the city. A certain Northern woman, who was kindly received in Charleston, gave a large ball. She asked this colored man to carry the invitations for her. In looking over the list, he made several suggestions concerning people who should be crossed out, and those who should be put on.

The Northern woman asked if he was quite sure he knew where all these people lived. His answer was delightful.

“Madam,” he said, “if there is any person in Charleston who lives where I don’t know, that person shouldn’t be invited to your ball.”

Another colored retainer of a famous family has a stiff-necked belief that nothing can happen to such aristocracy. A fire broke out in an adjoining house on a back street, burned through the dividing fence and destroyed the carriages in the stable. The master upbraided the old negro for allowing it to happen when he could easily have removed the traps. He said: “Massa, who’d ever t’ink dey fire would come in we yard!”

Another negro butler, who dominated the household of a certain judge, was serving at table one day when a second judge from up the State was present. Both men were equally well-born of an ancient and honorable ancestry, but the up-country man had not the graces of table etiquette.

When the fish course was served, he said to his host:

“Judge, I’d like to have some rice with this fish.”

“Did you hear the judge?” was asked the negro butler by the host.

The man gave a certain look at his master, then one of extreme annoyance at the guest. Leaning over, he whispered distinctly in the ear of the up-country judge:

“We don’t serve rice with fish in Charleston.”

The inner life of this Huguenot city is little known to the public, because Charleston won’t have it known. The same exclusiveness and privacy pervade her social and domestic system in the beginning of the twentieth as in the eighteenth century.

No detailed description of this feeling could so firmly fix it in the mind of the stranger as a remark made by a member of one of the oldest families in the city. When a certain history of the Revolution was published, it had a chapter on the part played in it by men of South Carolina. Included in this was an intimate description of the bravery of a Charleston general. An ancestor of this man wrote at once to the publisher:

“You will be so kind as to leave out in your next edition all allusions to my ancestor, General ----. What he did in the Revolution is a purely private and family matter, and we do not wish it boldly displayed for the public to read.”

In the next edition of the book the career of the Charlestonian was left out!

This pride, however, works in another way. The well-born Charlestonian expects the world to know who he is and whence he sprang.

This story is told--possibly as a joke, by Charlestonians--of an elderly man at the head of a family a member of which signed the Declaration of Independence. He presented a check to be cashed at a bank in another Southern city. The cashier told him he would have to be identified. To which he replied: “My God, has it come to this, that a M----n must be identified in America!”

Socially, Charleston exercises a spell over the visitor. A famous Northern lawyer, who went South last winter for the first time, could not make up his mind to step off the train into the Charleston station because of his rebellious feeling against that first shot at Sumter; so he went on to Florida. Coming back, he determined to conquer his prejudice and take a look at the Battery and St. Michael’s. He remained for days. His observant criticism for once failed him.

“What people! What culture! What society!” This was all he could say, but his exclamation points grew larger and longer after each phrase.

The first evidence of social quaintness in the town is the way the first families live. Here comes the strain of French blood. The venerable houses are placed among dense foliage, the side, never the front, of the house facing the street. In this side are the parlor and upper bedroom windows, which are never open to the public streets, but covered with wooden shutters. Instead of a front doorbell to ring, there is a small gate with a bell. This you tinkle, and a servant lets you in. There is a long piazza running the full side length of the house, which is often used as a sitting room. The piazza is usually protected by jalousie blinds. If the formal caller finds it deserted, he is shown in the reception room, with closed shutters, but in the warm days all informal entertaining is done on the piazza.

A Western visitor said he knew it would not be as hard for a stranger to pass St. Peter as to get by one of the heirloom butlers at a Charleston gate.

Some of these houses are nearly two centuries old, and in many of them the family name has been unchanged in that time. To sit on those “galleries” of the Charleston aristocracy in the fragrant days of early spring is one of the social memories that cling for life. There are the wonderful voices of the people who are talking. The accent is without imitation. It stands aloof as a study in folklore from any other accent in the South. It is a perceptible mixture of French and English, impossible to imitate or classify.

The air is salty with the breezes that drift past Sumter from the sea, and keen with roses, jasmine and magnolias. The Spanish moss, trailing to the ground from sturdy oaks, is silver in the moonlight, mysterious in the shadow.

The pathways called residence streets are lines between lawns and flowers. There is something here of the atmosphere of New Orleans, something of the pungent odor and nerve-soothing softness, but the Charlestonian is reposeful and the Creole is nervous and _staccato_.

You feel that here is a corner where things need not change, where evolution is not worship, where the strenuous life is not considered and may be thought a trifle vulgar.

It is not the simplicity of the simple-minded, not the stolid repose of the uneducated. It is the calmness of those who have helped to make history, who have achieved much, and who, believing they have no superiors, are not made restless with social ambition.

The stranger who can lead those on the “galleries” to talk of days that have gone, of characters who exist, of quaint traditions that are kept, is fortunate. He has lifted a veil that hides much that is delightful and unique.

It is told of the Charlestonian by his neighbors, that he often criticises some improvement in another part of the South with the remark, “If that change is progress, I want to progress backward.”

Charleston protects her age and her traditions against all newcomers. She is not poor, she has few vagrants, she is not without a solid bank account, she is the greatest phosphate shipping port in the world, but, as a New York editorial writer said of her, “no tragedy that has passed over her, or no change that has been made in America, has ever been able to interrupt her prosperity or discourage her fixed purpose to be comfortable.” She would no more change her architecture, or willingly introduce new blood into her best families, than she would uproot the gravestones of her first inhabitants, who rest in St. Michael’s, or remove the shells of the bombardment from her walls.

Her manners, her society, her behavior in drawing room, ballroom and street, are those of an older and more elegant world. Why should she change? The girls in all other parts of the South may go unchaperoned to balls, but she does not allow her girls to do it. Neither does the exclusive Philadelphian nor the Knickerbocker of New York.

Other clubs use their windows as lounging places for the curious, where idle men may sit and stare at the parade of women who pass on the street. Charleston considers this vulgar. The front windows of its club have drawn blinds. It is also regarded as beneath a gentleman to mention a woman’s name in the club.

Promoters can talk all they wish, but, charm they never so wisely, they can’t persuade the Charlestonian to welcome with delight a horde of unidentified tourists. Cottages are rented here and there for writers and artists and quiet people, but Charleston shakes her head when approached on the subject of huge hotels which will accommodate the man with millions from the swarming centers of America. She does not want her streets, her shops or her atmosphere invaded by aliens.

It is almost impossible to think of her graciously accepting new blood and new customs. The most notable person who came there would, if accepted, owe his reception to the fact that one of her own had said something of him. In this she has her counterpart in the creole of New Orleans.

General John B. Gordon described this feeling in the French city with a story of the Civil War. A Virginia soldier was boasting of General Robert E. Lee during the first year of the war.

“Lee? Lee? I think I have heard General Beauregard speak well of Lee,” answered the Creole zouave, as he rolled his cigarette.

Even the best lovers of innovation should eagerly desire Charleston to retain its serenity. New ways would mean tearing down old places, not at once, but in the end. And this would mean historical desecration.

St. Michael’s, its famous Episcopal church, should never be swamped by incongruous buildings, as New York’s famous old churches have been.

It is to be preserved not only because of its socially exclusive congregation, but because of the manifold troubles it has outlived.

Among its own people it is jestingly referred to as the Chapel of Ease of the St. Cecilia Society, but every South Carolinian ardently loves the old building. It was first opened for service in 1761, and is still the finest piece of church architecture in the South. In 1782 the English took possession of the bells, and sent them to Great Britain. The next year they were bought and sent back to Charleston. When General Sherman was an unwelcome guest in 1865, two bells were stolen and the rest made useless. These were sent to England, and a new set recast by the firm which had made them in 1764. The same patterns were exactly followed, and the bells replaced in 1867. During the great earthquake of 1886, the bells and belfry were fearfully shaken, but no harm came.

Augusta is not without her fine old past, too, but she is sharply different in her modern standpoint from her sister city across the Savannah. She gives Charleston the same adjective that New York kindly bestows on Philadelphia--the word “slow.”

Augusta is a modern. She eagerly discusses and adopts that which is new. She says of the Huguenot city that she “is joined to her idols, let her alone.” And while she may now and then run after new gods, she valiantly protects herself from any such reputation, and refers to Atlanta, the capital city, as “new, so new.”

If Charleston says, “Oglethorpe--adventurers,” too often, Augusta daringly answers back that the morals of the court of Louis were not quite swamped in the French _émigrés_ by Calvinism.

But it is a merry war, a family tiff, in which let the outsider beware of interfering.

Back of the rows of oaks are some splendid specimens of the finest early architecture for residence purposes; spacious homes, with rounded, vaulting white columns to support the arched façades which project over the windows of the second story.

In one of the great houses a ball was given last winter, where six spacious rooms on the lower floor were thrown open to the dancers, two square halls were given over to foliage, loungers and orchestra, and about three hundred guests were easily seated for an elaborate course supper.

These Augustans know how to entertain. They are a prosperous people, and they spend willingly and widely in New York on all the paraphernalia that goes to enhance the modern table. The women buy their clothes in New York whenever possible, and important dressmaking and tailor firms think it worth while to open up for part of the season at the two hotels that lure the Northern traveler. It is not the Northerner they cater to, but the Augustans.

Their social life is lavish and strenuous. The St. Valentine Ball, held once a year, is their oldest and most exclusive social function. While it has on its list the first families, still it is not such an institution as Charleston’s St. Cecilia, and there is constant talk of its being dissolved. It has an exclusive series during the season of dinner dances at its Country Club, which is one of the handsomest in the South.

Far from discouraging tourists’ hotels, Augusta is anxious for them. When the winter emigrants from the ice-swept North come well recommended, they are received into the fashionable life of the place. These people are always dazed at the magnitude and charm of the social life. Less the millionaire splendor, a season in Augusta is quite as time-absorbing as one in New York or Boston.

A New York bride who went there for two weeks on her honeymoon last year attended five balls and dances, twelve luncheons, ten afternoon teas and as many suppers, with a dozen invitations for morning card

## parties. The bridegroom naïvely remarked, “I’ve never been on a

honeymoon before, but this one doesn’t seem like the real thing.”

It is almost certain that no town with equal population in the East compares socially with the brilliancy of private life in this town on the Savannah.

The tea and sandwich afternoon “at homes” of the East are poverty-stricken affairs in the mind of an Augusta hostess.

“I wouldn’t treat a casual caller worse than that,” one of them remarked, after looking at the fare provided at a smart Northern afternoon affair, where the daughter of the house was being introduced to society.

At an Augusta “tea” one receives the daintiest dishes the markets offer, with wines and punch, prepared so as to follow out some artistic color scheme. Massive silver, candelabra, mahogany, lace and embroidered damasks, and profusion of Southern flowers, make these dining rooms a pungent memory with those who have had the good fortune to be asked behind the closed shutters.

Augusta is so modern in its desires and endeavors that it makes two tourists’ hotels, which crown its hills, a part of its social life. One is in Georgia, one in South Carolina, for the city is built on both sides of the Savannah River; and in these are given smart dinners and dances by the residents.

It is true they often refer to the guests of the hotels and to the Aiken cottagers as “the Yankee millionaires,” as though they belonged to another flag, and knew not the star-spangled banner. But if these people have anything to teach, Augusta wants to learn it.

Commercially, she is rapidly going ahead in an extensive cotton and manufacturing business, but her business streets do not give any idea of how progressive is her financial and personal element. There is still the _dolce far niente_ to be expected in every Southern town except Atlanta and Richmond. The victorias still stop in front of drug stores and wait for the clerks to bring soda water out to the occupants on thirsty days; even occasionally one sees an ox team on the central street; but the personal element, the people, have a zestful, sprightly contact with modern life, and leap forward to meet its requirements and demands. The Augustan is modernizing himself and his home. Rapid transit in the business atmosphere may come later. It is bound to come, for the soul of the people has reached out toward it. It now remains merely a question of money; and Augusta is frankly striving after money, and making it.

The Easterner and Westerner do not see beneath the surface of the seeming commercial indolence. They are used to their own spick and span little towns, filled to the brim with bustle, noise, activity and the whoop-la of American get-ahead-of-your-neighbor atmosphere.

It may be that this will never be quite duplicated in a sub-tropical climate. But the business is there, even if the men do walk slowly.

The tourist, looking at commercial externals only, naturally marvels at the gowns of the women, the artistic and lavish homes, the unbridled entertaining and the constant touch its richer members keep with New York, nearly nine hundred miles away. Its people discuss the last play, the best opera and the newest dishes at Sherry’s as easily as they do home gossip. Naturally, this is not true of all the people, but it fairly represents the attitude of the leading set.

The New York trip has been made easy by the “Yankee millionaires,” who have made Augusta part of an elaborate railway and hotel system.

Of course there remains--and praise be that it is so--those of the old _régime_. They are not altogether carried away by this elated modern spirit. They do not entertain tourists or the passing cottager. They are not quite sure but the new spirit may bring the Newport morals. They recoil from the constant phrase, “They do it in New York.”

They remind the imitative younger generation that a well-born Southerner has nothing to learn in manners and morals, and that progress is not always improvement.

They point to Charleston as the dignified ideal of all that is old and best.

They sigh, and say, “Things are not as they used to be.”

To which _Punch_ would again reply, “They never were.”

[Illustration]

THE GATE

I who had wandered a weary mile, harkened a voice and knocked. Lo, Love answered, with song and smile, Though the wind of autumn mocked; All in the dawn I beheld Love’s face, set in a rose of flame-- Oh, song is sweet in a lonely place And Love called me by name!

“Stay while the rose and the song are one, linger with Love for a day!” “And what of the heart at set of sun When it fares on its lonely way?” “Nay, bide with Love in the flower of dawn, only the dawn with me!” “And what of the heart when it wanders on? And what of the night to be?”

“Think not of night, but of Love’s fair face, thine for a golden morn!” Oh, song is sweet in a lonely place, But I turned to the rock and thorn. For had I lingered a fleeting while, what of the Road of Years? I, who had wandered a weary mile, Fared on to the Well of Tears.

VIRGINIA WOODWARD CLOUD.

THE WAY OF A MAN

_By_ Robert Adger Bowen

[Illustration]

The beach was comparatively deserted. After the week-end, which had been unusually gay, the few scattered groups gathered under the hired umbrellas, with here and there the flash of an individual crimson or green parasol, scarcely served to populate the stretch of hot sand.

Near his stand, the Harvard student who was serving as life-guard during the summer months stood, bronzed and athletic, talking to a young fellow whose scant bathing costume revealed the lines and muscles of an Antinous.

“It is the day like this that strains my nerves,” the guard was saying. “When the surf is filled with people, even if some one goes under, there are a score of hands to give rescue, but that girl out there now, beyond the breakers, makes me uneasy.”

“Swims like a fish,” responded the Antinous. “I’ve watched her for days.”

“But she isn’t a fish, and if the realization came to her out there in the water, she’d be altogether like a woman.”

“Since you are ill at ease about her, suppose I swim out, just to relieve your mind?”

The guard nodded. There was the suspicion of a smile about his lips, but he continued to watch the woman in question.

The distance to which the venturesome swimmer had gone was greater than had been apparent from the beach, and before Merrington had made half of it, the eyes of all those upon the sand and of those in the surf were upon the woman and himself. Only the swimmers themselves remained oblivious of the general interest.

Merrington swam on with the free, easy strokes of one to whom deep water conveys no terrors. The very touch of the sea was tonic that July morning, and he stretched his sinuous limbs with the overbounding energy and delight of a perfect manhood. The thought of danger, even to another, seemed an absurd thing to him, so sang the lusty blood in his veins. Yet he swam with unerring, cleaving strokes after the woman, who still went outward.

It was not until he had almost overtaken her that it occurred to him that it might be necessary to formulate an excuse for his following. The action had been so direct as to admit of no misunderstanding. Consequently, as she turned, and found him near her, Merrington spoke.

“Miss Selwyn, if you will pardon me, it is not without danger that you come so far out from shore. My name is Merrington--Geoffrey Merrington.”

She flushed slightly under the clear tan of her skin; then she bowed her crimson ’kerchiefed head gravely.

“Thank you for your trouble, but I have never been drowned yet.”

“Nor have I,” he affirmed, laughing, keeping stroke with her. “Nor do I want to be to-day.”

For answer, she turned her back upon him, and deliberately swam seaward. Merrington followed.

“Miss Selwyn,” he said, presently, when her audacity sent queer sensations about his heart, “may I remind you that this coast has many counter-currents? Believe me, you should not venture out further--not half so far.”

If she heard, she made no sign of doing so. Merrington, with an added determination, cast a glance to shore, where he could see small forms standing together in a way that, even at that distance, spelled anxiety. He caught a glimpse of the guard, erect upon his observation stand. Then he threw out his splendid limbs in strokes that sent him beyond the girl, and, turning, faced her.

“Miss Selwyn, the entire beach is watching us. They will send a boat for us in a moment, and compel our return.”

At that she looked him squarely in the eyes, the fire in her own blazing into full wrath.

“This is an unwarrantable liberty.”

Merrington smiled. It had frequently been said that his smile made him irresistible for any purpose he might have in mind. In all her anger, Jacqueline was conscious of the full-throated tones of his voice.

“It has the highest warrant--that put upon it by Miss Selwyn herself.”

Perhaps it was his words, or, more probably, the masterful man himself, that made her color vividly. Merrington held his clear, bold eyes upon her as she hesitated.

“If I promise you to return now, will you leave me?” she asked, slowly.

“No, Miss Selwyn.”

“Look!” she commanded, imperiously, pointing to the shore.

When Merrington turned his face a second later there was no sign of the girl. It seemed to him minutes before he caught sight of the familiar crimson head, freshly risen from the sea, some distance off. His own existence was apparently forgotten.

At this point of the game something altogether unexpected came over the youth, favored of gods and man, and accustomed to getting what he would. The remembrance of the scorn in the dark eyes that had flashed into his stung him. The recollection of the defiance in the face and a something bewitching in the taunting curves of the full lips, sent a fire that was far from unpleasant through his blood. He stretched out the supple muscles of his arms, and gave chase.

“That was very neatly done, Miss Selwyn,” he said, when his vigorous

## action had brought them together again. “I think I may safely promise,

however, that you will not outwit me again.”

She raised her eyebrows ever so slightly. He was sure there was a twinkle in the downcast eyes, but it was equally evident that the girl did not intend to encourage his presumption by any speech. As he watched her with a swiftly increasing interest, she turned over upon her back with a complacence that was a rebuke, floating unconcernedly past him.

Merrington followed. That he was being remorselessly snubbed for his pains was giving him a novel sensation of self-pity that did not seem to affect his genial humor very acutely. It served to keep him silent, however. When Jacqueline sat up suddenly, the first thing that she saw was Merrington’s gleaming eyes looking into her own. He had been so near to her, when she unexpectedly faced him, that she could not ignore his presence. Had he spoken, she might have used silence to positive purpose. As it was, she said, coldly:

“You are strangely persistent.”

“I am never conquered,” he boasted.

For a brief moment she let her glance sweep over him as he lay in the transparent shadow of the waves. A sense of vexation at his superb virility, at his assured mastery of the situation, left her trembling. Merrington misconstrued the reason.

“You are becoming chilled. We are a long way from the shore. If you were to have a cramp now!”

“You’d have the cheap distinction of being a hero of the beach,” she ejaculated, uncompromisingly rude.

“The poor opinion of the beach would not affect me in the least,” he laughed, softly, “if you did not share it.”

“Mr. Merrington,” she flashed, “if you will swim back to the shore, I shall follow you at an agreeable distance.”

“You have given me the slip once,” he said, slowly. “I am acting _ex officio_; I fear I must be the judge of the agreeableness of the distance.” Abruptly his banter fell from him. The dancing light in his large eyes darkened into intensity. “Won’t you let me see you safely in, Miss Selwyn?”

“Have your own way, then,” she said, with swift impatience, turning toward the land. Merrington kept but an arm’s-length between them.

As they came out of the water, a little distance apart, a tall woman separated herself from a group standing to one side, and bore down upon Jacqueline.

“What a fright you have given us!” she cried. “I came down to the beach to find you, and found instead everyone watching your rescue in mid-ocean. Who was your deliverer?”

“Be sensible, Peggie. I do not know who it was that drove me in by his officious intrusion.”

“Intrusion! Good gracious, Jacqueline, do you think you own the Atlantic?”

Mrs. Le Moyne turned to look at the man, who, having accomplished his purpose, was making his way to the stand of the guard once more. She gave a little cry of surprise, which arrested his attention.

“Geoffrey! Where in the world did you come from?”

“Peggie!” Merrington cried, gleefully. “You don’t mean to say you’re here?”

“I never make useless remarks, Geoffrey. How good you are looking! Of course I needn’t introduce you now to Miss Selwyn. Jacqueline, this is Mr. Merrington, my only and best cousin.”

Jacqueline bowed stiffly, without looking up. She was wringing the water from the skirt of her suit.

“Of course,” Mrs. Le Moyne laughed, “it’s absurd to introduce people that have been across seas together, but Jacqueline said she didn’t know you, Geof. When did you come down, and where are you? But it doesn’t matter. You must come to my cottage. I am just next door to Jacqueline--plenty of room for you.”

Merrington looked at the girl, who apparently did not hear. In a moment she turned, and joined the group which Mrs. Le Moyne had forsaken.

“She will never forgive me for intruding upon her out there,” Merrington said, indicating the sea by a sidewise motion of his head. “She was really in danger, but wouldn’t acknowledge it.”

“And you want her to forgive you! I can see that with half an eye. What a boy you are still, for all your body and legs! Have you let her see that you care for her?”

“Hold on, there,” he laughed, folding his arms as he stood dripping before her. “Don’t be in such a hurry.”

She looked him over carefully.

“Of course you made love to her more or less earnestly,” she said, frankly. “It may only have been with your eyes, but it is a tendency you can’t resist. The only trouble is, you never mean it.”

“If I did, Peggie, she would have none of me, and I did not mean to, because----”

“Why?”

“I should rather do it to better purpose later on.”

“Really!” laughed his cousin. “That is the first time I’ve ever known you willing to put any purpose in the indulgence.”

The gravity of his manner made her serious also.

“Peggie, old girl, this is the first time the indulgence has become a necessity.”

Mrs. Le Moyne glanced over the wide beach, and above, at the almost deserted board walk. Her party had withdrawn under the shade of the promenade, and the bathers had all disappeared. She and Merrington were alone except for a few outstretched figures, their faces covered with newspapers. She turned to her companion.

“Go and get on some clothes,” she said, a hint of amusement about her eyes. “It’s absurd to talk love to a man in such a state of nature as his bathing suit.”