CHAPTER V

IN WHICH ADRIAN MAKES DISQUIETING ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE LONG ARM OF COINCIDENCE

Adrian sat well back in the car. The tires ate up the long perspectives of white road, while the brave music of the engines made accompaniment to the lyrics of his thought. On either side the lines of poplars galloped, and behind them the great gold, green and rusty-red squares of the crops, marked only by the nature of their respective growths, innocent of dividing fence or hedge-row, swished back, half the circle, as on a turn-table. In the valleys herds of oxen and stout-built, white-bellied, tortoise-shell cows moved leisurely through the rich meadow-grass. Prosperous gray homesteads, flanked by mellow wide-ranging barns and sheds, orchards of reddening apples, and yards containing a cheerfully garrulous population of poultry, calves, and pigs, came into view only to vanish backward along with the rest. In places, tracts of forest, the trees crowded and for the most part very tall and slight, as is the habit of northern French woodlands, made a dark stain amid the gilded brightness, casting long shadows across the downward-sloping pastures at their foot. A note of pastel blue in farmers' and peasants' clothing, now and again of lustrous dappled gray in the barrel or buttocks of some well-shaped draught-horse, of orange or rose in a child's frock or walled garden close, of white in airing linen, struck momentarily into observation. But dominant was the gilt of the level sunlight, the gold of the harvest, and the silver powdering dust of the highway. All these found sublimated repetition in the iridescence of a sunset modulated to rare half-tones by the near neighborhood of the sea. And Adrian sat well back in the car, restful yet keen, affected sensuously and passively rather than consciously and actively by the fair, fruitful landscape fleeting to right and left of him, revising his impressions of the past day.

Those impressions were, as he told himself, in a high degree both stimulating and poetic. He had been happy, very happy; but his happiness was of the traveling rather than the stationary order. No touch of satiety showed in it; rather much haunting solicitation of the Unattained and the Beyond. From Pisgah height he had beheld the Land of Promise, for the first time reasonably secure of entrance into that ardently coveted and most delectable country. But the waters of Jordan still rolled between; and whether these would pile themselves politely apart, bidding him cross dry-shod, or whether a pretty smart bit of swimming would be required before he touched the opposite bank, he was as yet by no means sure. _Enfin_--he could swim for it, if all came to all, and would swim for it gaily and strongly enough!

As that afternoon he first caught sight of Gabrielle St. Leger standing, tall and svelte in her light summer dress, upon a grass-grown mound on the turn of the slope, her strong yet pliant figure detaching itself in high relief against the immense expanse of Ste. Marie's blue lagoons and gleaming sands, Adrian apprehended that she too suffered those solicitations of the Unattained and the Beyond. Her attitude, indeed, was eloquent of questioning expectation. It recalled to him the superb and ill-fated drawing of her, uplifted amid the cruel and witty obscenities of poor René Dax's studio--the exalted Madonna of the Future, her child upon her arm, going forth from things habitual and familiar in obedience to the call of Modernity, of the new and tremendous age. Resemblance was there; yet as he looked a difference in her to-day's attitude soon disclosed itself to this analytic though ardent lover. For, assuredly, the sentiment of this second and living picture of her was less abstract, more warm and directly human? Not devotion to a Cause, to an impersonal ideal or idea, inspired that outlooking of questioning expectation across the shimmering levels to the freedom of the open sea, but some stirring of the heart, some demand of her sweet flesh for those natural joys which were its rightful portion. This difference--and then another, which, even here by himself in the rapidly running car, Adrian approached sensitively and with inward deprecation. In to-day's picture she had been alone. She had not carried her child on her arm; so that only the woman, beautiful and youthful, not the already made mother, was present.

And the above fact, it must be owned, contributed in no small degree to the young man's content. A thousand times, notwithstanding his love of analysis, he had refused and shied away from analysis of precisely this--namely, the feeling he entertained toward little Bette. She was a delicious being, granted; but she was also poor Horace St. Leger's child, and from much which this implied Adrian did quite incontestably shrink. _La belle Gabrielle_ might still be, as he sincerely believed still was, essentially _la Belle au Bois Dormant_, just as he himself was the princely adventurer selected by Providence for the very agreeable task of waking her up. Yet, during that protracted sleep of hers, things had happened, primitive and practical things, to the actuality of which delicious Mademoiselle Bette's existence bore indubitable witness. Hence to carry away with him that other picture of Gabrielle as seen to-day, interrogating the fair sunlit spaces unaccompanied, gave him quite peculiar satisfaction. In the glow of which his thoughts now turned affectionately to the memory of poor Horace St. Leger. For wasn't _la belle Gabrielle_, after all, his, and not Adrian's, discovery? And wasn't he, Adrian, consequently under a gigantic debt of gratitude to Horace for so speedily taking his departure and leaving the coast clear? He might have lived on--agonizing reflection!--ten, twenty, even--since centenarians are at present so conspicuously the fashion--a good thirty years longer; lived on, indeed, until it ceased to matter much whether he took his departure or not. Thinking over all which, Adrian forgave the poor man his abbreviated enjoyment of paternity, and in so doing made his final peace with the existence of little Bette.

Not to have done so would, in his opinion, have betrayed a culpably ungenerous and churlish spirit. The more as when--her attention attracted by the pretty outcry of little Bette herself and of Madame Vernois--Gabrielle turning her gaze landward became aware of his presence, the light in her face and quick welcoming gesture of her hand showed his advent as far from displeasing to her. Both expression and

## action struck him so spontaneous and unstudied that, without undue

vanity, he might well believe himself to count for something in those allurements of the Beyond and the Unattained. Delightfully certain it was, in any case, that she descended with haste from her grassy monticule, and--he could most joyfully have sworn--put some restraint upon herself so as to advance and offer her greetings with due soberness and dignity.

All through his visit her manner had remained gentle, serious, touched even with a hint of embarrassment. From these signs he drew most hopeful auguries. After tea, under the quite perceptibly out-of-joint noses of the two excellent young Americans, she had drawn him aside and plied him with questions respecting his nursing of René Dax. In response he gave her a detailed account of the last two months. With the artist's happy faculty for playing two mutually destructive parts at one and the same time in all sincerity, he mourned René's mental affliction and felt the pity of it while looking into Gabrielle's eyes, watching her every change of expression and reveling in the emotion his eloquent recital evoked. Her quickness of sympathy and comprehension were enchanting. Never had he found her so responsive. Never had he felt so closely united to her in sentiment.--And that the egregious Tadpole, of all living creatures, should prove so excellent a stalking-horse!

Putting aside the high delight of having Madame St. Leger as a listener, he found sensible relief in speaking freely of the subject. For the responsibility of his position had been severe and wearing. Especially had it been so during those, at first, frequently recurrent periods of acute mania, when his affection and philosophy alike were strained to breaking-point, making him doubt whether the protracted struggle to keep wayward soul and distempered body together was either merciful or obligatory. If this unhappy lunatic of genius was so passionately desirous of letting loose that same wayward soul of his through a gaping wound in his throat, why the deuce should he, Adrian, in company with three or four other strong and healthy men, be at such tremendous pains to prevent it? Mightn't the poor Tadpole know very much best what was best for him? And wouldn't it, therefore, be more humane and intelligent to leave nicely sharpened razors within easy reach, ignoring the probable consequences of such intentional negligence? Are there not circumstances which render connivance at suicide more than permissible? Time and again he had argued the vexed question with himself as to the binding necessity, even the practical morality, of preserving human life when, through disease, life has so cruelly lost its distinctively human characteristics and values.

"And," Gabrielle St. Leger remarked, with a smile edged by engagingly gentle mockery, "then invariably ended, against your better judgment, by still carefully removing the razors!"

That same smile dwelt in the young man's memory as singularly rich with promise, justifying the belief that a lifetime spent in _la belle Gabrielle's_ society would fail to exhaust her power of--to put it vulgarly--jumping the unexpected upon you, and bracing your interest by the firing off of all manner of fine little surprises. Monotony, he thanked Heaven, would very certainly not be among the dangers to be feared in marriage with Madame St. Leger!

But while his imagination played about these agreeable matters the music of the engines changed its tune, the brakes gripped under Martin the chauffeur's boot-sole, and the car slowed down to a crawl in passing a flock of sheep. Two large dogs, bobtailed and shaggy, their red mouths widely open as they raced barking to and fro, rounded up the scared and scattering flock into a compact, bleating, palpitating mass of bister color picked out with rusty black upon the dust-whitened strip of turf by the roadside. The shepherd, tall and lean, a long staff in his hand, his felt hat, hawk-nosed face, unkempt beard, ragged cloak and string-girt leggings, presenting a study in rich browns and umbers under the last glinting gold of the sunset, gesticulated and shouted, directing the evolutions of the racing dogs in a harsh and guttural patois. The scene, a somewhat violent pastoral, stamped itself as a picturesque inset upon the wide-margined page of Adrian's reflections.

The sheep once safely cleared and the pace again quickening, his thought centered complacently upon the moment of his farewells. For surely these showed handsomely on the credit side of his day's pleasure?

The friendly little company--not exclusive of the forgiving though cheapened Americans--had gathered at the hotel entrance to witness his start. Anastasia's voice and manner were rich with meaning and affectionate admonition as she invited him speedily to return. In the expression of Madame Vernois's refined face he seemed to read something approaching appeal as she gracefully seconded that invitation. While Gabrielle herself--she standing a little apart from the rest, nearer to the waiting automobile--answered, not lightly, but with a sweet and grave dignity, on his asking her:

"And you, _chère Madame et amie_, have I your invitation also? May I soon come back? Without your sanction it would, perhaps, be preferable, be wiser, more desirable for me to stay away."

"I, too, hope you may find it possible soon to return here. If your doing so depends in any degree upon my sanction I give that sanction readily."

And thus speaking she had looked him full in the eyes. Whereupon, though furiously unwilling to quit the dear sight and sound of her, this very modern young god mounted up into his very modern car in quite celestial serenity of spirit.

But as the dusk deepened and the lights of Rouen multiplied in the distance, happy retrospect gave place to happy on-looking, since, at nine and twenty, no sound and wholesome man seriously questions the existence of earthly bliss.

Yes, a week, possibly even a few days, would suffice to assure him all went well with René in his new quarters. Then he might reckon himself at liberty to return to Ste. Marie and the dear people there. And, once there, no overstrained delicacy should withhold him from putting it to the touch with Gabrielle St. Leger. Bowing to Anastasia's advice, he would risk saying the word too much, so as to avoid the greater danger of saying the word too little;--risk it the more gladly because he gratefully believed it mightn't prove the word too much, but the word acceptable, even the word actually, though silently and proudly, waited for. The immediate consequence of which belief was that, the car striking into the town through the _Faubourg Beauvosine_ and traveling the Boulevard and the _rue St. Hilaire_ successively, it appeared to Adrian in act of traversing an altogether heavenly city, whose now poetic ancient buildings, now stately new ones, were alike built of silver, and whose deep-resounding streets, in the growing brilliance of the lamp-light, were paved with gold. Such extravagant tricks, even in this machine-made, mammon-worshiping twentieth century, can love still contrive to play upon the happy lover!

On the way to the hotel, where he had left his light traveling baggage when passing through from Caen in the morning, Adrian alighted at the central post-office, in the _rue Jeanne d'Arc_, to claim his two-days' mail forwarded from Paris.

Coming out, he stood awhile at the edge of the pavement verifying the several items. Two consignments of proofs--this pleased him. A slim one from the office, containing, as he knew, his fortnightly _chronique_ of current home and foreign politics for the forthcoming number of the Review. The other--and his glance settled upon it affectionately--was stouter, holding the slips of a story of some forty pages. Into that story he had put all the imaginative and verbal skill of which he, as yet, felt himself capable. It was a drama, at once pathetic and brutal, of the Paris underworld which he had this year so intimately investigated during his unsuccessful search for Bibby Smyrthwaite. He felt keen to know how it looked and read in print; for in the back of his mind lurked a hope that just conceivably it might prove a little masterpiece and assure his place among those writers of contemporary fiction whose literary output really counts.

And here for the moment it must be owned the lover was called upon to make room for the artist, while Adrian promised himself the best of good hours, after dinner to-night, in revising punctuation, correcting misprints, and leisurely making those carefully considered alterations in wording so absorbing to one emulous of combining grace and high finish with pungency and vivacity of style. Tenderly he laid the packet down on the seat of the waiting car, and raised his eyes as in invocation to the star-pierced blue of the summer sky roofing the perspective of silver-gray houses and silver-gilt street. For mightn't he take it as a fortunate omen that the proofs should come to hand on this so fortunate day? Omen that the story would strike home and its readers acclaim him as a doer of notable and living work?

He glanced rapidly at the envelopes of his private letters; and, while thus occupied, became aware that Martin, the chauffeur, was engaged--as not infrequently--in an altercation. The man was a clever driver, and to him, Adrian, a willing and trustworthy servant. But his temper was inconveniently inflammable, and he inclined to pick quarrels with half the men and make amorous overtures to more than half the women he met, thus involving both himself and his master in superfluously dramatic incidents. Under provocation his language became variegated and astonishingly ripe. Epithets of the latter description he was now in process of discharging upon some individual who had knocked up against him, in passing, as he stood at the edge of the pavement bending down to examine the tire of the near front wheel of the car.

"Martin, stop that, if you please," Adrian said, warningly, over his shoulder, and returned to the survey of his letters.

There was one from Anastasia Beauchamp. Bless the dear woman, wasn't she indeed a jewel of a friend! And there was one, black-bordered, and addressed, though less neatly than usual, in Joanna Smyrthwaite's small, scholarly handwriting. Adrian was conscious of impatience, of an unreasoning sense of injury. For why, of all days in the year, should he hear from Joanna to-day? He had thought of her seldom lately, owing to preoccupation with and anxiety regarding René Dax; and it struck him as a rather wanton smirching of his delightful day's record and subtle menace to the success of his precious little story that the rather unpleasant matter of poor Joanna should thus obtrude itself. Undefinable apprehension of coming trouble flashed through his mind.

All this was a matter of seconds; but during those seconds, the voice of the choleric chauffeur had risen from a gusty snarl into the screech of a blazing sky-rocket, bursting finally into a star-shower of unrecordable invective.

Adrian, imposingly tall in his long dust-colored frieze motor-coat, wheeled round upon the man angrily.

"Ah, _par exemple!_ but this is intolerable!" he exclaimed. "Have I not already commanded you to be silent? Do you propose to disgrace me, as well as yourself, by fighting in the open street? Behave respectably, not like an idiot. Do you hear--get in behind your steering-wheel and keep quiet until I am ready to start."

"But, Monsieur, the fellow has grossly insulted me. He cannoned into me by design, the thrice filthy animal, the sodden ass, and would have rolled me in the gutter had I not skilfully braced myself. Clearly his intention was robbery. He is a danger to society, a thief, a pickpocket. Only let Monsieur look for himself, and declare whether a more verminous gaol-bird has ever been presented for his inspection?"

And looking, Adrian beheld the chauffeur, fiery-eyed, with bristling black mustache, and, struggling in his vicious grip, Joanna Smyrthwaite herself--Joanna dissipated, degraded, with prominent, blear blue eyes and weak hanging underlip, masquerading in man's attire, as in those infamous, now obliterated drawings upon René Dax's studio wall.

Disgust, and a vague apprehension of something unnatural and outside reason, seized on Adrian Savage. The sight was loathsome, to a degree, both in suggestion and in fact. Then he understood; and, understanding, suffered a moment of acute indecision. But a crowd was collecting. The police might arrive upon the scene. Making a strong effort to surmount his disgust, he said:

"Let him go, Martin. I know him. I will explain to you presently. Now I require your help."

Then he added rapidly, in English:

"Pardon my servant's rudeness. In the end you shall not have cause to regret it. You are William Smyrthwaite--Bibby--are you not?"

Martin relinquished his hold sulkily. His victim, dazed and breathless, stood at bay; a ring of curious, contemptuous faces behind him, and Adrian, stern, yet excited, and with difficulty repressing evidences of his repugnance, in front.

"And, if I am Bibby Smyrthwaite, what the devil is that to you?" he answered petulantly in English. "I never set eyes on you before. Why should you interfere with me? Haven't I as much right to the pavement as that liveried brute of yours? I've got a job as cab-washer. If I'm late at the yard I shall forfeit my pay. And I want my pay."

His loose-lipped mouth twisted miserably and tears began to dribble down his sunken cheeks.

"Let me go," he blubbered. "I haven't done you any harm, and I want my pay."

Then Adrian, moved by compassion, came close to him and spoke kindly.

"See here, my poor boy," he said. "I am commissioned by persons who have a regard for you to provide for you. You need not worry about your pay. I will take care of all that. For months I have tried to find you to tell you this. I am Adrian Savage, a cousin of your late father, and his executor."

The tears ceased, and the young man's face was overspread by an expression of almost imbecile rapture. Adrian turned sick. Exactly thus had Joanna looked, more than once.

"Is my father dead, then?" Bibby asked.

"Yes, he is dead," Adrian replied, in bewilderment.

Bibby reeled forward and squatted on the broad footboard of the car, his head thrown back, holding his sides, his thin, loose-jointed limbs and body writhing with and shaken by hysterical laughter.

"Dead!" he quavered out--"dead! By God! they've got him at last, then--got him, the stinking, slave-driving old hypocrite! And, please God, they're cooking him now--now--at this very identical minute--cooking him to a turn, down in hell."

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