"In the first place, she knows nothing at all about art, which is an
enormous advantage."

"Bravo!"

"In the second place, she knows nothing about anything else, which is
better still."

"Cynic! You hate clever women," cried Jacobus.

"There's a reason."

"All the same, Bennett's right. The wife of an artist should be a
creature of impulses and not ideas."

"True."

"In the third place," continued Bennett, "she believes Rantoul is a
demigod. Everything he will do will be the most wonderful thing in the
world, and to have a little person you are madly in love with think that
is enormous."

"All of which is not very complimentary to the bride," said Herkimer.

"Find me one like her," cried Bennett.

"Ditto," said Chatterton and Jacobus with enthusiasm.

"There is only one thing that worries me," said Bennett, seriously.
"Isn't there too much money?"

"Not for Rantoul."

"He's a rebel."

"You'll see; he'll stir up the world with it."

Herkimer himself had approved of the marriage in a whole-hearted way.
The childlike ways of Tina Glover had convinced him, and as he was
concerned only with the future of his friend, he agreed with the rest
that nothing luckier could have happened.

Three years passed, during which he received occasional letters from
his old chum, not quite so spontaneous as he had expected, but filled
with the wonder of the ancient worlds. Then the intervals became longer,
and longer, and finally no letters came.

He learned in a vague way that the Rantouls had settled in the East
somewhere near New York, but he waited in vain for the news of the stir
in the world of art that Rantoul's first exhibitions should produce.

His friends who visited in America returned without news of Rantoul;
there was a rumor that he had gone with his father-in-law into the
organization of some new railroad or trust. But even this report was
vague, and as he could not understand what could have happened, it
remained for a long time to him a mystery. Then he forgot it.

Ten years after Rantoul's marriage to little Tina Glover, Herkimer
returned to America. The last years had placed him in the foreground of
the sculptors of the world. He had that strangely excited consciousness
that he was a figure in the public eye. Reporters rushed to meet him on
his arrival, societies organized dinners to him, magazines sought the
details of his life's struggle. Withal, however, he felt a strange
loneliness, and an aloofness from the clamoring world about him. He
remembered the old friendship in the starlit garret of the Rue de
l'Ombre, and, learning Rantoul's address, wrote him. Three days later he
received the following answer:

_Dear Old Boy:_

I'm delighted to find that you have remembered me in your fame. Run
up this Saturday for a week at least. I'll show you some fine
scenery, and we'll recall the days of the Café des Lilacs together.
My wife sends her greetings also.

Clyde.

This letter made Herkimer wonder. There was nothing on which he could
lay his finger, and yet there was something that was not there. With
some misgivings he packed his bag and took the train, calling up again
to his mind the picture of Rantoul, with his shabby trousers pulled up,
decorating his ankles with lavender and black, roaring all the while
with his rumbling laughter.

At the station only the chauffeur was down to meet him. A correct
footman, moving on springs, took his bag, placed him in the back seat,
and spread a duster for him. They turned through a pillared gateway,
Renaissance style, passed a gardener's lodge, with hothouses flashing in
the reclining sun, and fled noiselessly along the macadam road that
twined through a formal grove. All at once they were before the house,
red brick and marble, with wide-flung porte-cochère and verandas, beyond
which could be seen immaculate lawns, and in the middle distances the
sluggish gray of a river that crawled down from the turbulent hills on
the horizon. Another creature in livery tripped down the steps and held
the door for him. He passed perplexed into the hall, which was fresh
with the breeze that swept through open French windows.

[Illustration: Rantoul, ... decorating his ankles with lavender and
black]

"Mr. Herkimer, isn't it?"

He turned to find a woman of mannered assurance holding out her hand
correctly to him, and under the panama that topped the pleasant effect
of her white polo-coat he looked into the eyes of that Tina Glover, who
once had caught his rough hand in her little ones and said timidly:

"You'll always be my friend, my best, just as you are Clyde's, won't
you? And I may call you Britt or Old Boy or Old Top, just as Clyde
does?"

He looked at her amazed. She was prettier, undeniably so. She had
learned the art of being a woman, and she gave him her hand as though
she had granted a favor.

"Yes," he said shortly, freezing all at once. "Where's Clyde?"

"He had to play in a polo-match. He's just home taking a tub," she said
easily. "Will you go to your room first? I didn't ask any one in for
dinner. I supposed you would rather chat together of old times. You have
become a tremendous celebrity, haven't you? Clyde is so proud of you."

"I'll go to my room now," he said shortly.

The valet had preceded him, opening his valise and smoothing out his
evening clothes on the lace bedspread.

"I'll attend to that," he said curtly. "You may go."

He stood at the window, in the long evening hour of the June day,
frowning to himself. "By George! I've a mind to clear out," he said,
thoroughly angry.

At this moment there came a vigorous rap, and Rantoul in slippers and
lilac dressing-gown broke in, with hair still wet from his shower.

"The same as ever, bless the Old Top!" he cried, catching him up in one
of the old-time bear-hugs. "I say, don't think me inhospitable. Had to
play a confounded match. We beat 'em, too; lost six pounds doing it,
though. Jove! but you look natural! I say, that was a stunning thing you
did for Philadelphia--the audacity of it. How do you like my place? I've
got four children, too. What do you think of that? Nothing finer. Well,
tell me what you're doing."

Herkimer relented before the familiar rush of enthusiasm and questions,
and the conversation began on a natural footing. He looked at Rantoul,
aware of the social change that had taken place in him. The old
aggressiveness, the look of the wolf, had gone; about him was an
enthusiastic urbanity. He seemed clean cut, virile, overflowing with
vitality, only it was a different vitality, the snap and decision of a
man-of-affairs, not the untamed outrush of the artist.

They had spoken scarcely a short five minutes when a knock came on the
door and a footman's voice said:

"Mrs. Rantoul wishes you not to be late for dinner, sir."

"Very well, very well," said Rantoul, with a little impatience. "I
always forget the time. Jove! it's good to see you again; you'll give us
a week at least. Meet you downstairs."

When Herkimer had dressed and descended, his host and hostess were still
up-stairs. He moved through the rooms, curiously noting the contents of
the walls. There were several paintings of value, a series of drawings
by Boucher, a replica or two of his own work; but he sought without
success for something from the brush of Clyde Rantoul. At dinner he was
aware of a sudden uneasiness. Mrs. Rantoul, with the flattering smile
that recalled Tina Glover, pressed him with innumerable questions, which
he answered with constraint, always aware of the dull simulation of
interest in her eyes.

Twice during the meal Rantoul was called to the telephone for a
conversation at long distance.

"Clyde is becoming quite a power in Wall Street," said Mrs. Rantoul,
with an approving smile. "Father says he's the strength of the younger
men. He has really a genius for organization."

"It's a wonderful time, Britt," said Rantoul, resuming his place.
"There's nothing like it anywhere on the face of the globe--the
possibilities of concentration and simplification here in business. It's
a great game, too, matching your wits against another's. We're building
empires of trade, order out of chaos. I'm making an awful lot of money."

Herkimer remained obstinately silent during the rest of the dinner.
Everything seemed to fetter him--the constraint of dining before the
silent, flitting butler, servants who whisked his plate away before he
knew it, the succession of unrecognizable dishes, the constant jargon of
social eavesdroppings that Mrs. Rantoul pressed into action the moment
her husband's recollections exiled her from the conversation; but above
all, the indefinable enmity that seemed to well out from his hostess,
and which he seemed to divine occasionally when the ready smile left her
lips and she was forced to listen to things she did not understand.

When they rose from the table, Rantoul passed his arm about his wife and
said something in her ear, at which she smiled and patted his hand.

"I am very proud of my husband, Mr. Herkimer," she said with a little
bob of her head in which was a sense of proprietorship. "You'll see."

"Suppose we stroll out for a little smoke in the garden," said Rantoul.

"What, you're going to leave me?" she said instantly, with a shade of
vague uneasiness, that Herkimer perceived.

"We sha'n't be long, dear," said Rantoul, pinching her ear. "Our chatter
won't interest you. Send the coffee out into the rose cupola."

They passed out into the open porch, but Herkimer was aware of the
little woman standing irresolutely tapping with her thin finger on the
table, and he said to himself: "She's a little ogress of jealousy. What
the deuce is she afraid I'll say to him?"

They rambled through sweet-scented paths, under the high-flung network
of stars, hearing only the crunching of little pebbles under foot.

"You've given up painting?" said Herkimer all at once.

"Yes, though that doesn't count," said Rantoul, abruptly; but there was
in his voice a different note, something of the restlessness of the old
Don Furioso. "Talk to me of the Quarter. Who's at the Café des Lilacs
now? They tell me that little Ragin we used to torment so has made some
great decorations. What became of that pretty girl in the creamery of
the Rue de l'Ombre who used to help us over the lean days?"

"Whom you christened Our Lady of the Sparrows?" "Yes, yes. You know I
sent her the silk dress and the earrings I promised her."

Herkimer began to speak of one thing and another, of Bennett, who had
gone dramatically to the Transvaal; of Le Gage, who was now in the
forefront of the younger group of landscapists; of the old types that
still came faithfully to the Café des Lilacs,--the old chess-players,
the fat proprietor, with his fat wife and three fat children who dined
there regularly every Sunday,--of the new revolutionary ideas among the
younger men that were beginning to assert themselves.

"Let's sit down," said Rantoul, as though suffocating.

They placed themselves in wicker easy-chairs, under the heavy-scented
rose cupola, disdaining the coffee that waited on a table. From where
they were a red-tiled walk, with flower beds nodding in enchanted sleep,
ran to the veranda. The porch windows were open, and in the golden
lamplight Herkimer saw the figure of Tina Glover bent intently over an
embroidery, drawing her needle with uneven stitches, her head seeming
inclined to catch the faintest sound. The waiting, nervous pose, the
slender figure on guard, brought to him a strange, almost uncanny
sensation of mystery, and feeling the sudden change in the mood of the
man at his side, he gazed at the figure of the wife and said to himself:

[Illustration: Our Lady of the Sparrows]

"I'd give a good deal to know what's passing through that little head.
What is she afraid of?"

"You're surprised to find me as I am," said Rantoul, abruptly breaking
the silence.

"Yes."

"You can't understand it?"

"When did you give up painting?" said Herkimer, shortly, with a sure
feeling that the hour of confidences had come.

"Seven years ago."

"Why in God's name did you do it?" said Herkimer, flinging away his
cigar angrily. "You weren't just any one--Tom, Dick, or Harry. You had
something to say, man. Listen. I know what I'm talking about,--I've seen
the whole procession in the last ten years,--you were one in a thousand.
You were a creator. You had ideas; you were meant to be a leader, to
head a movement. You had more downright savage power, undeveloped, but
tugging at the chain, than any man I've known. Why did you do it?"

"I had almost forgotten," said Rantoul, slowly. "Are you sure?"

"Am I sure?" said Herkimer, furiously. "I say what I mean; you know it."

"Yes, that's true," said Rantoul. He stretched out his hand and drank
his coffee, but without knowing what he did. "Well, that's all of the
past--what might have been."

"But why?"

"Britt, old fellow," said Rantoul at last, speaking as though to
himself, "did you ever have a moment when you suddenly got out of
yourself, looked at yourself and at your life as a spectator?--saw the
strange strings that had pulled you this way and that, and realized what
might have been had you turned one corner at a certain day of your life
instead of another?"

"No, I've gone where I wanted to go," said Herkimer, obstinately.

"You think so. Well, to-night I can see myself for the first time," said
Rantoul. Then he added meditatively, "I have done not one single thing I
wanted to."

"But why--why?"

"You have brought it all back to me," said Rantoul, ignoring this
question. "It hurts. I suppose to-morrow I shall resent it, but to-night
I feel too deeply. There is nothing free about us in this world, Britt.
I profoundly believe that. Everything we do from morning to night is
dictated by the direction of those about us. An enemy, some one in the
open, we can combat and resist; but it is those that are nearest to us
who disarm us because they love us, that change us most, that thwart our
desires, and make over our lives. Nothing in this world is so
inexorable, so terribly, terribly irresistible as a woman without
strength, without logic, without vision, who only loves."

"He is going to say things he will regret," thought Herkimer, and yet
he did not object. Instead, he glanced down the dimly flushed path to
the house where Mrs. Rantoul was sitting, her embroidery on her lap, her
head raised as though listening. Suddenly he said:

"Look here, Clyde, do you want to tell me this?"

"Yes, I do; it's life. Why not? We are at the age when we've got to face
things."

"Still--"

"Let me go on," said Rantoul, stopping him. He reached out
absent-mindedly, and drank the second cup. "Let me say now, Britt, for
fear you'll misunderstand, there has never been the slightest quarrel
between my wife and me. She loves me absolutely; nothing else in this
world exists for her. It has always been so; she cannot bear even to
have me out of her sight. I am very happy. Only there is in such a love
something of the tiger--a fierce animal jealousy of every one and
everything which could even for a moment take my thoughts away. At this
moment she is probably suffering untold pangs because she thinks I am
regretting the days in which she was not in my life."

"And because she could not understand your art, she hated it," said
Herkimer, with a growing anger.

"No, it wasn't that. It was something more subtle, more instinctive,
more impossible to combat," said Rantoul, shaking his head. "Do you know
what is the great essential to the artist--to whoever creates? The
sense of privacy, the power to isolate his own genius from everything in
the world, to be absolutely concentrated. To create we must be alone,
have strange, unuttered thoughts, just as in the realms of the soul
every human being must have moments of complete isolation--thoughts,
reveries, moods, that cannot be shared with even those we love best. You
don't understand that."

"Yes, I do."

"At the bottom we human beings come and depart absolutely alone.
Friendship, love, all that we instinctively seek to rid ourselves of,
this awful solitude of the soul, avail nothing. Well, what others shrink
from, the artist must seek."

"But you could not make her understand that?"

"I was dealing with a child," said Rantoul. "I loved that child, and I
could not bear even to see a frown of unhappiness cloud her face. Then
she adored me. What can be answered to that?"

"That's true."

"At first it was not so difficult. We passed around the world--Greece,
India, Japan. She came and sat by my side when I took my easel; every
stroke of my brush seemed like a miracle. A hundred times she would cry
out her delight. Naturally that amused me. From time to time I would
suspend the sittings and reward my patient little audience--"

"And the sketches?"

"They were not what I wanted," said Rantoul with a little laugh; "but
they were not bad. When I returned here and opened my studio, it began
to be difficult. She could not understand that I wanted to work eighteen
hours a day. She begged for my afternoons. I gave in. She embraced me
frantically and said; 'Oh, how good you are! Now I won't be jealous any
more, and every morning I will come with you and inspire you.'"

"Every morning," said Herkimer, softly.

"Yes," said Rantoul, with a little hesitation, "every morning. She
fluttered about the studio like a pink-and-white butterfly, sending me a
kiss from her dainty fingers whenever I looked her way. She watched over
my shoulder every stroke, and when I did something that pleased her, I
felt her lips on my neck, behind my ear, and heard her say, 'That is
your reward.'"

"Every day?" said Herkimer.

"Every day."

"And when you had a model?"

"Oh, then it was worse. She treated the models as though they were
convicts, watching them out of the corners of her eyes. Her
demonstration of affection redoubled, her caresses never stopped, as
though she wished to impress upon them her proprietorship. Those days
she was really jealous."

"God--how could you stand it?" said Herkimer, violently.

"To be frank, the more she outraged me as an artist, the more she
pleased me as a man. To be loved so absolutely, especially if you are
sensitive to such things, has an intoxication of its own, yes, she
fascinated me more and more."

"Extraordinary."

"One day I tried to make her understand that I had need to be alone. She
listened to me solemnly, with only a little quiver of her lips, and let
me go. When I returned, I found her eyes swollen with weeping and her
heart bursting."

"And you took her in your arms and promised never to send her away
again."

"Naturally. Then I began to go out into society to please her. Next
something very interesting came up, and I neglected my studio for a
morning. The same thing happened again and again. I had a period of wild
revolt, of bitter anger, in which I resolved to be firm, to insist on my
privacy, to make the fight."

"And you never did?"

"When her arms were about me, when I saw her eyes, full of adoration and
passion, raised to my own, I forgot all my irritation in my happiness as
a man. I said to myself, 'Life is short; it is better to be loved than
to wait for glory.' One afternoon, under the pretext of examining the
grove, I stole away to the studio, and pulled out some of the old
things that I had done in Paris--and sat and gazed at them. My throat
began to fill, and I felt the tears coming to my eyes, when I looked
around and saw her standing wide-eyed at the door.

"'What are you doing?' she said.

"'Looking at some of the old things.'

"'You regret those days?'

"'Of course not.'

"'Then why do you steal away from me, make a pretext to come here? Isn't
my love great enough for you? Do you want to put me out of your life
altogether? You used to tell me that I inspired you. If you want, we'll
give up the afternoons. I'll come here, I'll be your model, I'll sit for
you by the hour--only don't shut the door on me!'

"She began to cry. I took her in my arms, said everything that she
wished me to say, heedlessly, brutally, not caring what I said.

"That night I ran off, resolved to end it all--to save what I longed
for. I remained five hours trudging in the night--pulled back and forth.
I remembered my children. I came back,--told a lie. The next day I shut
the door of the studio not on her, but on myself.

"For months I did nothing. I was miserable. She saw it at last, and said
to me:

"'You ought to work. You aren't happy doing nothing. I've arranged
something for you.'

"I raised my head in amazement, as she continued,
clapping her hands with delight:

"'I've talked it all over with papa. You'll go into his office. You'll
do big things. He's quite enthusiastic, and I promised for you.'

"I went. I became interested. I stayed. Now I am like any other man,
domesticated, conservative, living my life, and she has not the
slightest idea of what she has killed."

"Let us go in," said Herkimer, rising.

"And you say I could have left a name?" said Rantoul, bitterly.

"You were wrong to tell me all this," said Herkimer.

"I owed you the explanation. What could I do?"

"Lie."

"Why?"

"Because, after such a confidence, it is impossible for you ever to see
me again. You know it."

"Nonsense. I--"

"Let's go back."

Full of dull anger and revolt, Herkimer led the way. Rantoul, after a
few steps, caught him by the sleeve.

"Don't take it too seriously, Britt. I don't revolt any more. I'm no
longer the Rantoul you knew."

"That's just the trouble," said Herkimer, cruelly.

When their steps sounded near, Mrs. Rantoul rose hastily, spilling her
silk and needles on the floor. She gave her husband a swift, searching
look, and said with her flattering smile:

"Mr. Herkimer, you must be a very interesting talker. I am quite
jealous."

"I am rather tired," he answered, bowing. "If you'll excuse me, I'll go
off to bed."

"Really?" she said, raising her eyes. She extended her hand, and he took
it with almost the physical repulsion with which one would touch the
hand of a criminal. The next morning he left.




III


When Herkimer had finished, he shrugged his shoulders, gave a short
laugh, and, glancing at the clock, went off in his curt, purposeful
manner.

"Well, by Jove!" said Steingall, recovering first from the spell of the
story, "doesn't that prove exactly what I said? They're jealous, they're
all jealous, I tell you, jealous of everything you do. All they want us
to do is to adore them. By Jove! Herkimer's right. Rantoul was the
biggest of us all. She murdered him just as much as though she had put a
knife in him."

"She did it on purpose," said De Gollyer. "There was nothing childlike
about her, either. On the contrary, I consider her a clever, a
devilishly clever woman."

"Of course she did. They're all clever, damn them!" said Steingall,
explosively. "Now, what do you say, Quinny? I say that an artist who
marries might just as well tie a rope around his neck and present it to
his wife and have it over."

"On the contrary," said Quinny, with a sudden inspiration reorganizing
his whole battle front, "every artist should marry. The only danger is
that he may marry happily."

"What?" cried Steingall. "But you said--"

"My dear boy, I have germinated some new ideas," said Quinny,
unconcerned. "The story has a moral,--I detest morals,--but this has
one. An artist should always marry unhappily, and do you know why?
Purely a question of chemistry. Towsey, when do you work the best?"

"How do you mean?" said Towsey, rousing himself.

"I've heard you say that you worked best when your nerves were all on
edge--night out, cucumbers, thunder-storm, or a touch of fever."

"Yes, that's so."

"Can any one work well when everything is calm?" continued Quinny,
triumphantly, to the amazement of Rankin and Steingall. "Can you work on
a clear spring day, when nothing bothers you and the first of the month
is two weeks off, eh? Of course you can't. Happiness is the enemy of the
artist. It puts to sleep the faculties. Contentment is a drug. My dear
men, an artist should always be unhappy. Perpetual state of
fermentation sets the nerves throbbing, sensitive to impressions.
Exaltation and remorse, anger and inspiration, all hodge-podge, chemical
action and reaction, all this we are blessed with when we are unhappily
married. Domestic infelicity drives us to our art; happiness makes us
neglect it. Shall I tell you what I do when everything is smooth, no
nerves, no inspiration, fat, puffy Sunday-dinner-feeling, too happy,
can't work? I go home and start a quarrel with my wife."

"And then you _can_ work," cried Steingall, roaring with laughter. "By
Jove, you _are_ immense!"

"Never better," said Quinny, who appeared like a prophet.

The four artists, who had listened to Herkimer's story in that gradual
thickening depression which the subject of matrimony always let down
over them, suddenly brightened visibly. On their faces appeared the look
of inward speculation, and then a ray of light.

Little Towsey, who from his arrival had sulked, fretted, and fumed,
jumped up energetically and flung away his third cigar.

"Here, where are you going?" said Rankin in protest.

"Over to the studio," said Towsey, quite unconsciously. "I feel like a
little work."




ONE HUNDRED IN THE DARK


They were discussing languidly, as such groups do, seeking from each
topic a peg on which to hang a few epigrams that might be retold in the
lip currency of the club--Steingall, the painter, florid of gesture and
effete, foreign in type, with black-rimmed glasses and trailing ribbon
of black silk that cut across his cropped beard and cavalry mustaches;
De Gollyer, a critic, who preferred to be known as a man about town,
short, feverish, incisive, who slew platitudes with one adjective and
tagged a reputation with three; Rankin, the architect, always in a
defensive explanatory attitude, who held his elbows on the table, his
hands before his long sliding nose, and gestured with his fingers;
Quinny, the illustrator, long and gaunt, with a predatory eloquence that
charged irresistibly down on any subject, cut it off, surrounded it, and
raked it with enfilading wit and satire; and Peters, whose methods of
existence were a mystery, a young man of fifty, who had done nothing and
who knew every one by his first name, the club postman, who carried the
tittle-tattle, the _bon mots_ and the news of the day, who drew up a
petition a week and pursued the house committee with a daily grievance.

About the latticed porch, which ran around the sanded yard with its
feeble fountain and futile evergreens, other groups were eying one
another, or engaging in desultory conversation, oppressed with the
heaviness of the night.

At the round table, Quinny alone, absorbing energy as he devoured the
conversation, having routed Steingall on the Germans and archæology and
Rankin on the origins of the Lord's Prayer, had seized a chance remark
of De Gollyer's to say:

"There are only half a dozen stories in the world. Like everything
that's true it isn't true." He waved his long, gouty fingers in the
direction of Steingall, who, having been silenced, was regarding him
with a look of sleepy indifference. "What is more to the point, is the
small number of human relations that are so simple and yet so
fundamental that they can be eternally played upon, redressed, and
reinterpreted in every language, in every age, and yet remain
inexhaustible in the possibility of variations."

"By George, that is so," said Steingall, waking up. "Every art does go
back to three or four notes. In composition it is the same thing.
Nothing new--nothing new since a thousand years. By George, that is
true! We invent nothing, nothing!"

"Take the eternal triangle," said Quinny hurriedly, not to surrender his