The Sound of Thunder: A Novel
Author: Taylor Caldwell
Date: 2016-11-15 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Historical; General; Sagas; Romance; 20th Century; Historical Fiction
Description: From the New York Times –bestselling author of Captains and the Kings : A self-made man sacrifices everything for his family in turn-of-the-century New York. The son of a socialist German shopkeeper, Edward Enger has one dream: to turn his father’s modest delicatessen into an empire. With an astute head for business and talent for making money, he achieves success beyond his wildest imagination. Yet something is keeping him from enjoying his extraordinary good fortune. Fourteen-year-old Edward believed he would love ten-year-old Margaret Proster all the days of his life . . . until she moved a
Publisher: Open Road Media

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The Sound of Thunder

A Novel

Taylor Caldwell

For George and Helene Slotkin

“There will always be the sound of thunder, and chaos and ruin and death, in the affairs of men and nations until they achieve God and enter into His tranquility.”

LAO-TSE

PART ONE

“Should there be a son or a nephew or a cousin in the family who is capable and courageous enough to do all the work, then the other members need not disturb themselves, or save their money, or labor. For it has been shown by the gods that it is their intention that The Strong One must carry the burden.”

OLD CHINESE SAYING

EPILOGUE

Dawns always came too soon for Margaret, who loved the night. But this dawn would never come. She was certain of it. She stood at the window and looked over the twisted, silent snarl of the trees against a sky left milky white by the falling moon. Was that pale magenta streak in the east the dawn at last? The streak did not brighten; it lay coldly in the east like a wound that had bled too much and had no more blood to give. Like my heart, thought Margaret, like my heart all through this night. Her eyes were so parched that they felt dusty and stiff; she had no tears at all. She had tried to pray, but the terror in her had been a black storm through which no shafts of prayer could penetrate; they had been tossed aside, and had fallen, impotent. Could you reach the ear of God if you could not pray, if the agonized tempest of your despair and fear rose between you and Him, a towering, dense pillar of fulminating darkness? There was not even a cry in her; her very brain was mute and cowering; it had no words.

This was grief; this was the very deadness of grief. This was anguish, even if dumb. It was necessary to scream out to God, to grasp one of His shining feet as they went on their meaningless business through constellations beyond meaning. “Father,” she whispered, and her lips were as dusty as her eyes, and the word, she believed, went no farther than her tongue. She rubbed her dry palms together, and the slight sound was a hiss. All she had to offer God was a threat: If—he—dies, then I’ll hate You. I’ll hate You! But one did not threaten God, the Church said. One did not tempt God. But God was merciless. Was He, was He? Are You merciless? her mangled heart demanded. Yes, You’ve been merciless—all the days of his life.

She leaned her cold forehead against the colder glass of the window and felt no chill. She was conscious of no exhaustion, no sinking in herself. There was only rigidity, the rigidity of powerful resistance. To God. Now she stood between God and His ravenous and impersonal cruelty. She was a battlement of defense. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away—” He gave, but He took away, when it was wrong, when it was unjust, when it was monstrous. She did not think of her children. What did children matter if he whom you loved more than children, more than God—and yes, she loved Ed more, much more—was dying? Dying, because he had given so much, with faith, with both hands loaded with gifts, asking only that they be accepted and used for the benefit of the receiver! Dying, because flesh and blood could endure only so much work, so much anxiety, so much bewilderment and disillusion and betrayal, so much false accusation and shrill hatred, so much ungrateful grasping and greed!

Her body was empty and cold and starved and withered as she stood by the broad window looking for the morning. For she was alone. There was no Ed now to put his good arms about her and murmur comfort to her, and draw her head to his shoulder so that she could cry out her frozen tears of anguish. Her children? They were nice children, even thoughtful, even loving, but they were only children after all. They would surmount this; they would grieve awhile, but youth ran in them like a torrent, and it would take them away, and she would be desolate forever. Unless, she thought numbly, unless I choose not to live. She challenged God: If Ed dies, then I won’t live. I’ll follow him, cursing You.

But—what if there were no God at all, no God to listen to either importunities or despair or grief or challenges? What if there were no God? It would, in a way, be easier if there were no God, if there were no Ear. Never to suffer this again, never to watch the years go by, the fearful years as Ed grew older and more tired and more baffled and despondent—the years, the years! There had never been anything for her, really, but Ed. Neither father nor mother, neither sister nor brother, no children, no other joy, no other fulfillment, no other hope—but her husband. Now a lancelike pain of sheer torture ran through her stumbling mind, through her dimming mind. “Ed, Ed,” she whispered. She saw the long dim estate of trees and grass through the window; it was a cemetery, not a home any longer. When had it stopped being either a home or a delight? She could not quite remember. She put her hand to her cheek. Yes, now she remembered. It was when Ed had taken out a mortgage on this big and lovely mansion and had told her that as co-owner she must sign the papers with him. The mortgage had been necessary, in spite of Ed’s vast holdings, because there had been, and still was, a depression, and there were literally thousands of people dependent on him. Margaret had smiled and nodded encouragingly at her husband while she signed, but upon the signing the house became only a house to her, and not a home. Ed had never known this. Or had he?

Something quickened in the region of her heart, like a bitter and ruthless fire. It was hatred. Hatred for them all, all of them, Ed’s mother, his three brothers, his sister. But the fire could not expand the withered tensity of her body; it raged like a death, but it raged in iron, without heat.

I mustn’t hate, thought Margaret incoherently. I’ve been hating them for years, but I mustn’t hate now! Not now! Perhaps God will hear me and punish me! (Where was the loving and merciful Father of Whom the Church spoke? She could remember only the vengeful and punitive God of her young Sunday-school days, Who “smote.” He smote the just and the unjust. He had struck down Ed as purposelessly as lightning struck a tree, and for no more intelligent reason, unless to punish her, Margaret, for her presumption to hate, when hate was “forbidden.”)

She hurried frantically to placate God. “You won’t take him, will You?” She spoke in herself with the voice of a cringing and terrified slave. “You’ll be kind, won’t You, God? Not Ed, God, not Ed—just anyone else in the world. Me, for instance. Take my eyes, my life, give me an awful disease, strike me down, do anything to me, kill me now, give my strength to Ed. He’s so strong; it won’t hurt him so badly for me to be gone. Not as it will hurt me to lose him. He was never taught much about You, but You understand, don’t You?” Margaret’s thoughts began to spin. “You and I know there’s nothing after death, don’t we? We know there isn’t a You. It’s a secret between us.” She felt quite sly, and nodded over and over to the magenta slit in the east.

Someone was taking her arm urgently; someone had seen her nodding, had seen her fixed, cunning smile, her silent, moving lips. “Mrs. Enger, you must take that pill Dr. Bullitt gave you; you must! You’ve got to rest a little. You’ve stood by this window for hours. Won’t you sit down for a minute, please?” It was the nurse. The tiny night light on the table near the bed showed her broad blunt face in large masses of dimness and vague illumination. She was greatly concerned. Margaret stared blankly at her; her mouth retained the fixity of her deathly grimace. She shook her head and resisted the pull of the nurse’s hand. Her voice came faintly through her shriveled throat. “I can’t, I can’t. Let me alone, please. How—?” and her voice fainted.

“Mr. Enger is resting comfortably. Look, you can see for yourself.”

But Margaret was paralyzed. She could not go to the large bed where her husband lay, hardly breathing. She could not look at Ed’s unconscious face, for she could not follow him into the dark mazes and convolutions of time and suffering, the involutions of mystery through which death draws the naked and shivering soul. Ed was alone on that long and terrible journey, and her voice, her touch, her cry, could not reach him. She saw his retreating back, the tall wide back which was so strong, which she loved. Her spirit lifted appealing hands to that back but he did not turn.

“There, that’s right,” said the nurse in a low and kindly voice. “Let me put this stool under your feet. Now just swallow this and here’s the glass of, water—We’ve got to keep up our strength.”

“He’s dying; he will soon be dead,” Margaret whispered, and the whisper was a rustle. She tried to see the nurse’s face through a mist. She grasped the other woman’s arm. She prayed, “Save him. Save him. I’ll give you—I’ll give you—”

“There,” said the nurse comfortingly. “Look, the door of your room is open. We’ll lie down and have a little sleep.” She was a middle-aged woman and had been a nurse for many years, but it always tore at her heart to see grief. And this poor lady, this pretty, slender lady, opened misery and pain in her again. “I’ll call you, Mrs. Enger, if there’s the slightest change. He’s breathing real quiet now. The—the cardiogram wasn’t so bad,” she added, lying in her compassion. “I’ve seen worse. I’m sure he’ll make it, with the help of God. Honest. I wouldn’t tell you a fib, Mrs. Enger. I’ve seen worse cases up and around, good as new in three months.” (She prayed inwardly, Now, dear Blessed Mother, you won’t hold that against me, will you, and I’ll go to confession Saturday. You’ve got to lie sometimes, to help people.)

But not Ed, thought Margaret. Ed isn’t going to live. God hates me; He’ll take Ed, and Ed won’t remember, because there won’t be Ed any more, no Ed for me any more, because there is no God.

“The doctor wouldn’t have left him, if he—well, if he—was in any real danger,” lied the nurse again, and remembered how many times she had told this to so many other piteous wives, or parents, and how many times it had been only a consoling falsehood. “Now would he?”

She left Margaret in the chair into which she had practically forced her. She had a stethoscope of her own, and she put the plugs in her ears and pressed the disk against the white silk which covered Edward Enger’s chest. She listened intently, her lips tight, her eyes sorrowful. The heart fluttered feebly; it wavered, skipped, almost stopped, then took up its weary pulsing again. Doctors didn’t like nurses using stethoscopes on their patients; they didn’t like nurses taking blood pressures, and using their own judgment, when the holy saints knew that if it weren’t for nurses many people wouldn’t live. But Mary Hurtz did these things in the doctors’ absences, and had often saved lives. She glanced at the hypodermic syringe, swathed in cotton, on the bedside table. At six o’clock, Dr. Bullitt had said sternly. It was only half past four. Mary took up the syringe, shot a drop or two from the top, then plunged the needle firmly into the arm of the unconscious man. She studied his square, gray face, with the purplish hollows under the eyes, the purplish tints in the furrows about his big mouth and under his chin. She stood there, bent over Edward, watching intently. Then she applied the stethoscope to his chest again. The wavering heart was hardly struggling now. Cold water seeped over Edward’s forehead, lay in the hollow between nose and lip, ran from his temples.

Then his stricken heart, rallying, gave a leap, a few running beats, as if in haste; it jumped once or twice. And then it was beating more steadily, more determinedly, as if by an actual act of his submerged will. He moved his head, moaned almost inaudibly. Mary nodded with satisfaction. Six o’clock, says the doctor! Why, the poor man would’ve been dead by then! She moved lightly, for all her weight, to Margaret, who was half lying in prostration now in the round red chair which matched the red brocade curtains at the windows. The little light in the room evoked twinkling flashes of gold from the draperies but made Margaret’s face ghostly and without substance under the tangled, bright waves of her hair.

“There!” said Mary proudly. “He’s doing fine. Really fine, Mrs. Enger. Why, in a couple of hours he’ll be awake and you can speak to him. Now won’t you go to bed and lie down?” she added coaxingly.

“No,” said Margaret. She lifted her arms heavily and ran her slender fingers through the shoulder-length mass of her hair, and it stood about her face in a halo of distraction. “I can’t leave, not even for a minute. Thank you,” she added dully, with an automatic politeness. She raised her head and looked blindly at the nurse. The night light glimmered briefly in the blue of her eyes between her thick gilt lashes. Her pointed face was the color of death itself, and her lips, wide and sensitive, were absolutely white. She still wore the tan, tailored suit she had put on yesterday afternoon to go shopping, and her yellow silk blouse. Even in her distraught condition, her numbing anguish, she was a pretty woman in her middle forties, and Mary studied her approvingly.

Margaret dropped her head on her breast. She returned to her thoughts. What was it that Ed was always saying? “All the days of my life.” She had been curious about that phrase, even when she had first met him, over twenty-two years ago, curious about the buoyancy with which he said it, the grim lightness, the casual humor. She had told him, for he did not know, that it came from the Twenty-third Psalm, and she had repeated the whole Psalm to him. He had seemed disappointed, she never knew why, though she suspected that he had believed it to come from another source. It had been a sort of “excelsior!” to him, and then a bitterness. Oh, Ed, Ed, said Margaret in herself, and her dusty eyes ached.

She turned her head. The dawn was here at last, the reluctant, hidden dawn. She pushed herself to her feet and went to the window again. The magenta slit had vanished, and the cold eastern sky had turned a far and remote green. Its weird light lay over the landscape, revealing it rather than giving it life. Now Margaret could see, very clearly, the long line of the March-bound lawns, the trunks of the immobilized trees, the stiff black branches, the little mounds of corroded snow scattered here and there like the mounds of graves. Like Ed’s grave will be soon, she thought. The bells of St. Michael’s Church, half a mile away, began to clang, discordantly to Margaret’s ears. That would be the first Mass; two or three of the servants would be leaving by the back door. Would they pray for Ed? Would they remember? Did anyone remember a man except his wife? His children, his brothers, his sisters, his servants, his friends, his associates, his employees or employer, all those he had helped? “No, no,” said Margaret aloud, and shook her head. She swallowed dryly.

Then she saw a yellowish gleam on the crystal-coated arborvitae near the living-room window. Was it possible that Ed’s family were keeping their own vigil, as she had kept hers, all this terrible night? She started away from the window. She did not look at the bed; it was not Ed there, moaning faintly. Ed was far away, remembering nothing, forgetting everything. Margaret knew that if she went to the bed she would begin to scream beyond her control, that something would break in her and disintegrate and she would fly wildly into a darkness of her own, and without her volition. She brushed by Mary as she ran from the room, and the nurse jumped with alarm.

The broad hall outside was lightless and chill, and the thick carpet hushed Margaret’s flying footsteps as she passed closed mahogany doors. Now she was racing down that curved and stately staircase, which seemed to float from floor to floor. The great chandelier hung from the ceiling; it still burned, with its mauve and shadowy pendants and prisms shaking in a slight draft. All the lamps were lit in the long living room, and exhausted murmurs crept through the dead air.

Margaret, at the foot of the staircase, paused and caught her breath. She ran her hands over her disordered hair, over her slim hips and arms, as if to draw herself together, as if to make of herself a compact and avenging force. She threw back her head with that valiant gesture which Edward had always loved, and her chin became poised again in the position which Gregory had termed “arrogant, without any reason for her being arrogant.” Now Margaret’s eyes flashed with an almost fiery blue, and her white lips became stern. She went into the living room in silence. There were Gregory and Sylvia and Ralph and Margo and David. They were weary and silent, Ralph smoking steadily as always, the Venetian glass ashtray near his elbow filled to overflowing, the ashes spilling on the polished walnut table.

It had been too much to expect, of course, that Ed’s mother would be keeping vigil, too. No doubt she was sleeping smugly, in her big bedroom with the faded chintzes. Margaret had spoken to none of them tonight, except Gregory, who had precipitated Edward’s attack and whom she now hated even more than she hated the others. Even in her numbness Margaret was surprised to see David, who had not been at home when the terror had happened. But Edward despised him more than he despised the others, and accordingly Margaret despised him, too.

Someone had been bringing coffee into this vast living room which Margaret and Edward had furnished with such pride and satisfaction. The mighty silver service had been placed on the big drop-leaf table near the golden marble fireplace, in which ashy logs still smoldered. Margaret’s best Spode coffee set lay scattered on other tables, the dregs black and cold under the stately silver or crystal lamps. No one noticed Margaret on the threshold of the room. Sylvia, thin and dark as a lifeless twig, but chic as usual, and with her narrow lips painted their usual dark red, was now speaking. “I’m worn out,” she murmured. Her face was stark and white as bone, and her tilted black eyes had blurred with fatigue. “I wonder how—” She stopped suddenly, and her white throat revealed a sudden spasm, and she clenched her hands together. She moved her long and narrow body, in its tight-bodiced, wide-skirted black dress, as if trying to find a more comfortable position in the Louis Fifteenth chair. Her black hair, drawn harshly back from her cold bleak temples, was rolled into a big knob on her neck, and because of the dye used to keep any gray from showing, it had no lights or shadows in it. “Oh, God,” she murmured again. “He’s our brother, isn’t he? Why hasn’t someone been down—?”

David, her oldest brother, stood near her, his slender hand on the back of her chair. He was elegant and distinguished as always, and dressed in black as always, and though more than a year older than his brother, Edward, he had a patrician agelessness. His lean head was bent, his aquiline profile brooding and still. “There’s just the nurse,” he said to his sister comfortingly. “And you could hardly expect Margaret to leave him just now. I’ve been up to the door a dozen times, but it’s shut and there’s no sound behind it. We’ve just got to wait, I’m afraid.”

Ralph, the youngest, said in his robust voice, “Dr. Bullitt told me it wouldn’t necessarily be fatal. Why, millions of people have coronaries every day, and over fifty per cent, now, recover well from such accidents. I don’t see why Bullitt wouldn’t let us call an ambulance and take him to the Clinic—Alone here, with a nurse, and a tank of oxygen, and nothing else—If he dies—” He was a big and ruddy man with a mass of auburn hair and a round face so vigorous in expression that at times he resembled a strong child.

Margo, Gregory Enger’s wife, had been crying strenuously, and her bold face had a crumpled look. Streaks of straight blonde hair were strewn over her wide forehead, and she kept pushing them automatically out of her small blue eyes which were so swollen now. Her air of animal power and simplicity had dwindled; her broad and usually laughing mouth was pinched and gray. “Jesus!” she exclaimed. “How’d anyone know that he had a bad heart, anyway? You’d never think a man like Ed would drop down—like that.” She shivered, and her eyes strayed guiltily around the room.

Gregory, sitting apart from them all, said savagely, “Shut up! For God’s sake, shut up! Haven’t you done enough, damn you?”

Margo sat upright, in outrage. “Me! I did it?” Now she flushed violently. “It was you! I’ve been thinking, sitting here. I’ve been thinking of Dad and Mom, and how they won’t even talk to me any more—because of you and what you taught me. Damn you yourself! You can bet I’ve been doing some thinking, old Greg!”

She stared at him furiously, seeing her husband now as a whole, this forty-three-year-old man who was a feebler copy of Edward, this sophisticated man with light gray eyes that were always dancing maliciously. They were not dancing now. They had a haunted expression, and his big mouth was jerking, and he was deadly pale under the darkness of his complexion. He was leaning forward in his chair, his tightly clasped hands between his knees, and he had not spoken all this night until now for all his customary loquaciousness and witty banter.

“You and Margo were with him, and Margaret, when it happened,” said Sylvia. Her voice rose sharply, and she turned in her chair to study him the better. “You never did tell us what happened, or why. Tell us now.”

“Nothing,” he said, sullenly, and again his mouth jerked as if in torment. “He’d just come home from—” He stopped and colored. “I think it was from New York. Margo and I just happened to pass the library, and he was in there with Margaret, and we talked a little, and then he collapsed.”

“I think you’re lying,” said Sylvia, in a slow and bitter voice. “You were always a liar, Greg. And you won’t tell us the truth now.”

“Yes,” said Margaret, in the arched doorway. “He’s a liar. You all are.”

They started, then gazed at her with fear and withdrawal, except for David, who took a step or two toward her. But she halted him with a fierce motion of her hand. She came into the room, walking silently and gracefully, tall and straight and poised in her severe suit. Her deep blue eyes, sunken and deadened with grief, moved from one face to another. Ralph rose heavily, but Gregory dropped his head lower and his jawbone struck out against the taut flesh, like a white ridge.

“Why do you stay here?” cried Margaret, passionately. She had begun to shiver, and she tried to make her body rigid so that they would not see. “You don’t care for Ed. Ed, to you, was always the peasant, the stupid one of the family, the treasury of the family, the dolt, whose only reason for being alive was to serve and support you. And did you permit him to serve you, and did you take his life from him!”

“Now look here,” said Ralph, “you don’t know what you’re saying, Margaret. I know this is awful for you, but you won’t let anybody come near you, not even my own wife, Violette, and you always liked her, didn’t you? You haven’t any right to insult us. Ed’s our brother; you’ve only known him about twenty-two years; we’ve known him all our lives. He’s our flesh and blood—”

“How kind of you to remember that all at once,” said Margaret, the passion in her voice rising. “Have you just remembered because you’re wondering what Ed has left you in his will?”

“I resent that,” said Sylvia, and the slash of her lips stood out in the bony pallor of her face. David, who had returned to her, put his hand firmly on her shoulder. He looked at Margaret with sadness. “I know how you hate us,” he said, “and I’m not going to deny you have reason, more reason than you know. But there are things you don’t know, too, and this isn’t the time or place to tell you. However, please, Margaret, I want you to understand, just a little, without exaggeration or too much hate—”

“I understand everything!” exclaimed Margaret, twisting her hands together. Now the haggard eyes sparkled with desperate loathing. “Do you think I’d believe anyone but my husband?”

“Oh, God,” said Margo, in her loud voice, and she glared at Gregory. “A wife’s an idiot to believe her husband, and don’t I know it now!”

“Our own brother,” said Ralph, “and you won’t let any of us go near him.”

“No,” said Margaret. “Not your brother. Not ever again your brother. Just my husband.”

“Margaret,” David pleaded. But she turned and left them then, and silence followed her. The stairs rose before her endlessly; she climbed forever into the darkness of the upper hall. She had to lean against the balustrade for a moment, for there was such a constriction in her throat and chest, such a rage of pain. Perhaps I’m going to die, too, she thought, and the pain relaxed, as if she had heard a promise of deliverance.

The cold and pearl-colored light of the early morning stood at the window of the bedroom now, like a hovering presence. Mary turned to Margaret with a smile. “We’re doing fine, just fine,” she said, and wiped her moist red face, and then her glittering glasses, with a man’s big white handkerchief. “Just look at his color. Practically normal. And his heart’s beating steadily. I just listened.”

For the first time Margaret came to the bed, no sensation in her feet or legs. She stood beside her husband and looked down at him. His face was faintly colored, as if with fever, against the white pillows. His eyes were closed and his breath was ragged. Margaret could feel nothing; something in her breast, as enormous and heavy as a stone, was dragging her down. She leaned against the bed, and her head dropped weightily.

Then she heard a tired whisper. “Margaret?”

She turned her head with a powerful effort. Edward’s gray eyes, still filmed with suffering, were smiling up at her. She slipped to her knees because she could no longer stand. She let her head fall beside Edward’s head. He moved his hand feebly and took her fingers and pressed them against his cheek. “Darling,” he murmured. “You’re cold.”

“Ed,” she said. “Oh, Ed.” Oh, my darling, my life, my blood, my hope, my God.

“It’s all right,” he replied. “Don’t worry, dear. It’ll be all right.” He moved in his fearful distress and pain. “All the days of my life.”

She lifted her head and she thought clearly, Yes, he is dying. “You’ve forgotten the rest of it, sweetheart,” she said. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

For a long moment or two he regarded her with the strangest expression, but it was as if he were remembering something, looking far back into the recesses of his spirit. His light eyes darkened and withdrew, pondering, and no longer seemed to see his wife. Even when she took his hand and held it tightly, he still did not see.

She kissed him then on his lips, which were so hushed and cold, and there was a great quietness in her now, as if a silent abyss had opened in her and her heart had fallen into it.

“Forever,” she whispered. “Forever.” Forever, my dear, for always. To the end of time.

His darkened eyes closed in soundless peace, and the nurse’s compassionate hand touched Margaret’s head. “‘Surely goodness and mercy—’” a voice said, but Margaret did not hear it.

Her whole life seemed centered in Ed’s hand, to which she clung, and all her consciousness was in that hand. Was it becoming a little warmer, or was it that her own hand was turning to ice? She began a groaning litany.

“Father, don’t take him. Almighty God, don’t take him. Christ, Our Lord, spare him for me. Father, have mercy. Christ, have mercy—”

CHAPTER I

In a few minutes he would have to go to help his father. Far off, in the hot Sunday quiet of early evening he could hear the Vesper bells ringing, sweet and unearthly against the gold and fiery rose of the western sky. A dusty breeze sang dryly in the trees; the houses, the street, lay entranced in stupefied silence, the cobblestones gray with grime, splattered here and there with the brown of horse manure. It was so still that Edward Enger, fourteen years old, heard distinctly the distant and languid clop-clop of a horse going home, and the serene rattle of some buggy or carriage filled with a happy family replete from a picnic, a drive along the river, or a visit to relatives. He had never ridden in a buggy or, better, a carriage. But it was good, sitting this way on the curb, with no one around and only the sky and the bells for company. It was awfully good, even if a person was tired out after a long day’s work. Across the narrow and cobbled streets he could see the quiet porches trailing wistaria, purple in the mauve shadows that filled the air, the Chinese prisms voiceless, the comfortable chairs cushioned and waiting, the tenantless hammocks. The upper windows of the houses opposite reflected the sky and seemed to burn with an inner fire. A dog barked, surfeited and content, out of sight, resting after the heat.

Edward thought School Road, where he lived, about the nicest street in the city of Waterford, though it was lower middle class and no home contained any luxuries such as he had seen elsewhere. On this block, only his own home, behind him on a narrow green lawn, and the Witlocks’, boasted a piano. Well, it was something to have a piano! Edward lifted his head proudly. He pressed his big brown hand against his shirt pocket. Five dollars there! Four of them, tomorrow, would go for David’s piano. (It was always “David’s piano,” when the family spoke of it, though Edward was paying on time for that glorious instrument. Four dollars a week. Fifteen more weeks. Then it would truly be “David’s piano.”) Edward sighed, frowned a little. He hated buying on time. So did his parents. But David had to have that piano. “I suppose he did have to have it,” said Edward aloud. He had taken off his hot and aching shoes, and his large feet, brown as his hands, refreshed themselves in the cooling dust of the gutter. “He couldn’t have waited until I’d paid off the whole thing. The teacher said he had to have it, for practice.”

He leaned his throbbing back against the trunk of the great old elm behind him, and felt the comfort of companionship. Sylvia said it made the house dark and gloomy, and Mr. and Mrs. Enger, who loved the tree, had yet been eager to sacrifice it for the sake of Sylvia’s “nerves.” She hated shadows and the quiet of serene old branches. Sylvia was all quickness and impatience. But for once Edward had raised his voice, in a house where his voice was seldom permitted to be heard or heeded. (“That dolt!” Sylvia would say.) He, Edward, had said, “If you cut down that tree, David don’t get more payments on his piano. Hear?” Sylvia had replied with contempt, “The word is ‘doesn’t,’ stupid. But what can you expect of an uneducated person?”

Edward shook his head, remembering. He had wanted to remind Sylvia, thirteen years old and in first-year high, that he had had to leave school at the age of fourteen because he was needed. But a quarrel with Sylvia inevitably brought pain to his father’s face, and annoyance into his mother’s eyes, and cutting remarks from the other children. Edward’s parents were sorry that he had had to leave school. When the decision had been made for him, he had expressed his awkwardly spoken wish to be a physicist. “What!” David had cried with mirth. “You? Why, you’re no good at anything but mathematics!” David, the pianist, had not, of course, understood that mathematics was the most important requisite. But Mrs. Enger had begun to frown, and Edward had said no more. His room was crowded with old second-hand books on physics, and he read them and hid them whenever anyone entered. Maybe he was a fool, at that, thinking of being a scientist when there was so much genius in the family: David the pianist, Sylvia who produced the school plays, Gregory who would probably be a famous writer, and Ralph who would be an artist. “Yeah,” said Edward aloud, rubbing his blistered feet in the dust. “Cost me a dollar last week for that box of water colors.”

But still, after he had spoken in a loud, firm voice, no one had dared to suggest that the tree be cut down. “I like her,” he had said. “I’ve got a name for her. Margaret. She looks like a Margaret.” After he had warned them, no one had dared to jeer as usual.

Edward, who hated the very scent of power, and who instinctively suspected power and the users of power, had been ashamed when he had silenced his family. He had been a bully. He despised bullies. He had wanted to apologize. But an apology would bring death, he knew, for “Margaret.” He had often yielded in the past and catastrophe had followed for himself or something he had loved. He looked up at the mighty tree now and smiled. “If I’d said I was sorry about Sylvia’s nerves, you wouldn’t be up there today, Margaret. You’d be firewood for the kitchen stove.” The tree, as if in response, bent her lovely green crest, and it glittered with the sunset light, and a bird rose from it, singing. Edward listened. Now birds were something! You’d think that David, at least, the pianist who would be famous, would listen to birds, especially at dawn and at sunset. But David hated the out-of-doors. “So crude.” David was fifteen. For an instant, and only for an instant, Edward addressed David in his heart: “You’re daffy.” Then he hurriedly turned away from the revealing truth, remembering that his father, who had actually shaken Wagner’s hand in Germany, and who played the flute, had declared, with an ecstatic clapping of his little fat hands, that David was a genius, with the soul of a musician. Pa ought to know! Besides, Pa had a bad heart and loved serenity and affection in a family. Nothing disturbed him so much as quarreling and angry voices. “Seems as if it’s me that’s always got to keep peace, for Pa’s sake,” said Edward, smiling up at Margaret, who suddenly showed him a high branch covered with the golden light of the falling sun. “And Ma’s temper,” he added. Margaret drew her boughs together in the rising wind and stood like a goddess, crowned with fire. There was a small, sharp catch of joy in Edward’s chest. He was glad that no one else on the street saw this illuminated glory. There was not a single footfall on the sidewalks. “I’ve just got to be alone with you, Margaret,” said Edward. “If there’s anybody else around, you just go far back into yourself and you don’t even speak to me.” There was love in his rough and youthful voice. Margaret smiled down at him, like a celestial mother. She promised him something, mysteriously, and there was a lilting, a joy, in his heart. Gosh, he was only fourteen! There was a whole life ahead. He wished he did not have to work all day Sunday. He’d like to go to Sunday school with the other kids and learn about … About what? Why, God, he supposed.

He looked at the sunset. God was only for people who did things, who had missions. “You and me,” Mr. Enger had said to Edward in his native German, “we were born to serve.”

“I suppose Pa’s right,” Edward grunted, looking up at his beloved tree.

“Margaret” clamored in a sudden gust, distressfully. Edward could not interpret, for this was a new voice. He was pondering on the strange and urgent message to him when he heard the brisk flutter of wings and a scrabbling in the dust. A young brown hen flew determinedly on his knee, and he laughed and took her in his hands and cuddled her under his chin. “How’d you get out, Betsy?” he asked with severity. “Thought I’d penned you in good.” The hen pecked feverishly at his lips and cheeks, in her frantic affection. He had bought her at Easter in the local five-and-ten; five cents. “You ain’t worth even five cents,” he told her lovingly as she pecked at his ear. “Not five cents, you rascal. Gee, you were cute when you were a kid, just a yellow ball of cotton batting. Never mind, you’re cute now, too.” He ruffled the brown feathers on her neck with his mouth and she squirmed with delight. “Why, you’re just a kid, anyways. But you got to get back in your pen. Never can tell what’ll happen to you out here.”

Betsy pushed her head against his neck, then inside his sweat-heavy shirt. She clucked her love. He stroked her gently, eased his back against the tree. Hell of a thing, working all day Sunday, mowing lawns, cleaning out cellars, brushing out furnaces, getting ready for the winter, washing windows, cranking ice-cream freezers, scrubbing down porches, mopping over buggies and carriages, piling up manure in barns, currying horses. Seemed like everybody left their chores to be done on a Sunday while they went to church or out to dinner somewhere. But he couldn’t complain; he made more on a Sunday than on weekdays, when he helped his father full time in the store. His father paid him five dollars a week, which was his own. But there was always a call on it before he could buy what he wished for himself. He could keep one dollar of his Sunday earnings. He scratched Betsy’s stomach and she held up one claw to give him more room, rolling her eyes in ecstasy. “I’m going to make you a real pen, not just that crate,” he told her.

The Vesper bells died into a vibrant silence, and mauve shadows in the street melted into gold. Mr. Enger, according to the laws of the state, was permitted to open his shop for public service from six to eight on Sundays. Women always forgot that bottle of milk, or some dill pickles, or a package of crackers or a loaf of bread, or there was unexpected company needing ham or cooked corned beef. “I’ve got to go, Betsy,” said Edward, scratching the bird’s wings. “Pa can’t keep things going all by himself on Sunday nights.”

He stood up, a tall and robust boy, wide of shoulder, straight of back, long of sturdy limb. Holding his hen, he pushed his feet into his shoes. He winced, for his feet had swollen and the blisters hurt. He tossed his dark brown hair, shaggy and damp with sweat, off his forehead, so that the new breeze could cool him. Never, in anybody’s memory, had there been such a hot August like this. Everybody said so. But it had been hot last year, too, and the year before. It kept a fellow dodging under trees, out of the sun, on the way to work or school. School. He had had to leave school in June, after he had finished the ninth grade. He decided not to think of school; it hurt too bad. Well, school wasn’t for his kind, so that ended it.

He turned toward his home, a tall, lean clapboarded house painted light gray with dark gray trimming, its attic window a slash of scarlet in the sunset. The narrow porch was small and cramped, but filled with neat chairs, each with a white cotton pad where a head could rest. Clipped bushes surrounded it, but no climbing vines. The house had a prim apperance, respectable and colorless. Edward loved color; there was practically no color in any room, just old browns and dark reds and navy blues and dark, polished woods. “I sure would like to see some scarlets and golds and greens somewhere,” Edward said to Betsy as he started for the house. Just then David, in the parlor, began on the piece he had been endlessly practicing. Edward knew it was a part of the “Moonlight Sonata.” Beethoven. His father had told him.

He stopped, Betsy held to his chest, and listened, and his gray eyes, fringed with thick black lashes, opened wide and filled with light. Why, he knew what that music sounded like! Like great white angels moving slowly down golden stairs, with golden shadows on their half-extended wings, their faces grave and majestic, their lips carved like marble, their garments flecked with radiance which shifted and fell like rain. He must have dreamt it sometime. Even Betsy was motionless, listening. “God,” he whispered prayerfully, “I can just see it; they’ve been talking to You, haven’t they?”

Then he shuddered, for David had spitefully broken into the very heart of the music with a tinny, syncopated sound, “Meet me at the fair!… St. Louis, Louie … Meet me at the fair!” It was the derisive laughter of devils beneath the golden stairs.

“Shut up, shut up,” Edward muttered. “That’s what I’m paying four dollars a week for? Why can’t you play the thing through when you start it? Just because Pa isn’t there? You know he hates that St. Louis thing.”

The street, so calm, so silent, so without humanity, suddenly became clamorous with ugly and discordant voices, though not a creature, except the birds, tenanted it as yet. The beauty was gone, the hallowed splendor of the sunset, the quiet meditation of the trees, the warmth, the color, the shine of light against wood and brick. Edward, bending his head, went up the rear wood-planked walk to the yard. Here there was nothing except carefully cropped grass. No tree, no flower, no border. Just grass. Edward had built Betsy a little shelter against the wood garage shed with its sloping cover. He tenderly placed the protesting bird inside, checked her water and seed, ruffled her feathers. He was feeling slightly sick and was afraid that the hen felt his mood. “I’m all right,” he said. “Time for birds to be asleep, hear?”

The hen whimpered through the wire netting. “Don’t be afraid,” he murmured. “I’m coming home soon. Half past eight. See?”

He went away, turned his back on the house, and began to trudge the four streets to his father’s delicatessen. His big brown neck, his square brown chin, were drawn in, and he had pushed his hands into the pockets of his old trousers. No use feeling gloomy about that damn David. David was a genius. He, Edward, supposed geniuses must sometimes get tired of their own gifts and break loose. He forgave David almost at once. Why, hadn’t Pa often told him that no one could understand a person who had a gift? They lived in a world of their own, beyond criticism, beyond the knowing of other men. There was Wagner, with the bad temper and the screams, and the way he hit other musicians over the shoulder with his cane, and the swearing and everything. Why, even the Kaiser had been afraid of him, and all the grand ladies at the court. “In Germany we understand these things, these geniuses,” Mr. Enger had often told Edward dolefully. “But not in America. America has no soul.”

The little sick nagging in him would not go away, though he began to whistle softly. He was not even aware that he was whistling the first few bars of the “Moonlight Sonata”; he was only, after a time, aware of a kind of mysterious comforting, as though a hidden voice had spoken. He met no one on his way to the store. He might have been moving in a landscape of narrow streets and cobbled roads and planked sidewalks and empty porches, completely drained of human life. He passed the drugstore, and, as always, he stopped a moment to admire the big green and yellow jars in the window. The sunset was mirrored in them, in exquisite detail, and the piercing silver secret of the evening star. That would be Jupiter, far down in the lake of crimson, hardly seen. Edward wished that Ralph, his brother, eight years old, could see this miniature sunset and the flickering steadfast speck of the planet. He had just the deep scarlet for it, in the paintbox Edward had bought him at his father’s suggestion. A scarlet deeper than blood, more depthless than blood, more living than blood. There could be no blue in it at all; that would spoil it. There must be a way to give life and movement to paint, thought Edward. Well, little Ralph would find that out someday. His father took him to the small art gallery every Wednesday afternoon while Edward kept store alone. Ralph would come back, jumping and excited, black eyes distended, his mouth babbling incoherently. Yes, he was a genius.

Edward went on. His whistling became hardly audible. Then he hummed richly. “All the days of my life, all the days, all the days of my life.” He had invented the music for the splendor of this phrase; it was noble, like the words. He did not know where he had heard the words, but they had affected him deeply. “All the days, the days, the days of my life!” His voice soared out, pure and strong and masculine, like an angel’s voice, and the words he sang were a reverent chant. He lifted his chin, and the last light of the sun illuminated his dark, broad face, with the square nose, the patient, humorous young mouth, the broad brown forehead, the dimpled chin, the indomitable curve of youthful cheek, and the full gray eyes. His step quickened, as if to a marching song of soldiers bent on a holy war. He was tall and full of vitality, and he threw back his shoulders and was joyful. He forgot he was only fourteen years old and that he had worked since six that morning and that he was tired. He forgot that he was only Edward Enger and had no right to dreams. He was free, under the silent sky, under the last crimson burning of the sun. “My life, my life!” he sang as he bounded up the three wooden steps of his father’s delicatessen.

The shop was small but almost incredibly neat, the two little windows polished to a blazing crystal, the wooden floor whitely scrubbed, the wooden counters without a stain. It was a Lilliputian delicatessen, but very compact, shining, and complete. Here hung no twisted lengths of sticky flypaper from the white ceiling, and no dishes filled with fly poison on the counters, and no clots of flies hovering over exposed food. Mr. Enger believed in screens; Ralph, his youngest child, had painted a sign on the outer door: “Please Close!” This so startled customers, drawn as it was in the brightest red, that they hastily obeyed. Even the two barrels of pickles, one dill, one sweet, had been covered with fabric fly screens over a clean white towel. One could be sure, said the approving housewives, that the cloves one saw in the pungent liquid were really cloves. But the towels, renewed every day, and the screens did not inhibit the luscious fragrance of the barrels, which mingled with the saliva-evoking scents of smoked ham and corned beef. It was Edward’s duty, at six in the morning, to scrub out the little shop, to shine up the meat slicers, to apply suds to the counters, to polish the windows, to align the bottles and tins on the shelves and dust them, to replenish the ice under the counters where galvanized cans held their treasures of vanilla and strawberry and chocolate ice cream and bottles of milk. It was his duty to clear away every crumb from the glass case which held doughnuts and loaves of crusty bread, and to polish the glass. The firm cheese, round and resolute as a wheel, had its own glass container, with its own sparkling knife.

“You can eat off the floors,” said the local housewives, who were not so careful of their own floors. “You wouldn’t believe Mr. Enger was a foreigner, would you? So neat.”

Edward was proud of the shop. It would be his one day, his father had promised him. He took pleasure in the polishing and the scrubbing, whistling between his teeth under the lighted gas lamp flickering away in the dark mornings. He hated dirt of any kind. Until last June his mother had done most of the work in this shop before it opened, but now she was too old and too tired. After all, she was thirty-six and her husband was thirty-four, and people of that age could not work like a boy. On Fridays at five o’clock, when the city of Waterford still slept, Edward would accompany his father to the wholesale market three miles away, pulling a large cart behind him. He loved the market with its bustle, its brawny men, its comings and its goings, its teams of horses and big wagons, its clamor under yellow gas jets. He was already a shrewd bargainer and buyer. Mr. Enger, who was timid and gentle, permitted his son to attend to the business of purchase, but it was he who at the end laid the gold-and-green dollar bills on the counters. Then they would return in the darkness of predawn, Edward hauling the heaped wagon as if it contained nothing. The bread, wrapped in Mrs. Enger’s white towels, was still hot from the bakery, the shrouded hams steamed under their wrappings, the barrels of pickles were sweeter than the morning air. The stacked tins would rattle merrily; the cold butter leaned against them, the sacks of roasted but unground coffee would emit wafts of divine perfume. They were sweetest of all, in their mingled fragrance, in the winter, but at any time of the year they inspired the spirit.

Once last spring Mr. Heinrich Enger had said to his stalwart son in his gutteral Bavarian accent: “It is good, Edward, that the mother does not need to accompany me any longer in these mornings. It is her delicacy. After all, one needs to remember that she was a Von. But I have told you. A Von! From the big Schloss on the mountain! To condescend to a miserable little burgher like Heinrich Enger, the Gnädige Frau. What a mystery is life. Ah, my parents, God be with them, would not have believed it. A Von.”

Edward would murmur appreciatively, but one of his black eyebrows had taken on a skeptical lift lately, in spite of his respect for his parents. His mother was a huge and massive woman, with a shapeless, down-turned mouth fixed in severity, with light blue eyes and a fleshy nose and an amorphous figure, great of breast and hip. Her one claim to comeliness was a mass of hair so pale of color that it was almost silvery, and the sun brought out dim golden crests on its waves. She spent the evening hours, between mending, combing out that mass for the admiration of her children. She was not Edward’s favorite parent, for she domineered over her little fat husband, a head shorter than herself, and told endless tales of the grandeur of her family, the Von Brunners. “The blond Von Brunners,” she would say, looking disparagingly at the bald and glittering head of her small and rotund husband, who had only a fringe of black Bavarian hair to embellish his sphere of a skull. Edward hated to see his father bow his head meekly, until he finally understood, only a month ago, that Maria’s affectionate contempt for Heinrich in some way mysteriously enhanced his stature. Edward, growing to maturity, daily marveled at the revelations displayed to him of the complexities of human nature.

On these journeys to the market, Edward with new curiosity, had discreetly questioned his innocent father. It seemed that Heinrich had played the flute in a tiny cluster of musicians at a Gasthaus, in the village of Dorfinger, in the shadow of the amethyst Bavarian Alps. The Schloss, it finally emerged, was an old but revered ruin on a foothill, and the Von Brunners had lost most of their money during the Franco-Prussian War. For the last three generations they had made beer, good beer, but not so good as that made in Munich, which the discriminating had preferred. Maria Von Brunner had been only a very poor relation, an orphan of distant connection, and she had come to the Schloss to teach the family’s children. Before that she had been a “Fräulein” for some Englishers. “So educated, so dainty,” Heinrich had sighed, unaware that his son was drawing some very sharp conclusions from the narrative. One day she had graciously accompanied the family to the Gasthaus and had admired Heinrich and his flute. “Ah, that day, that day!” Heinrich had said, closing his eyes as if before a dazzling light. “I can see her still, with her hair like silver under her big plumed hat, and her noble smile! And I, but a flutist, with but twelve marks a week! An angel, to bow her head in my direction, a Von Brunner! I could not look at her; it would have been a desecration.”

“But she married you, Pa,” Edward had said, trying to keep his voice dispassionate. “You must not have been so bad.” His German was very correct; the family spoke it under the stern tutelage of the mother.

Heinrich shook his head in wonder. “Ach, it was a miracle. The family was unkind to your mother. She had no money, though they had little more. Her father had been a Herr Professor in Munich and one knows that Herr Professors make no fortunes. The family paid her very little. I was then a man of twenty.” He paused. “And she was almost twenty-three,” Edward added somewhat grimly to himself. “I dared to speak to her one day.” Heinrich went on. “I had saved my money. I was going to America, where the streets were paved with gold and where even musicians could become rich.”

Heinrich laughed with gentle bitterness. He shook his head again. “It was a miracle. Ach, yes. I dared to speak to the Fraulein Von Brunner and tell her my dream, and she smiled at me like the moon itself and said it was her dream also. And so, and so, we were married.” He paused. At this point he would invariably become confused. It appeared that the Von Brunners had not been too averse to their Maria’s marrying the little fat flutist at the Gasthaus. “They were very kind, for such unkind people,” Heinrich would murmur. “They gave Maria, your mother, a fine trousseau, as the French say. They also gave her five hundred marks. They gave us their blessing. And so we came to America.”

Two months ago Edward, the always kind, had said ironically, “And the five hundred marks helped with the passage money.”

“I have told you that their kindness was also a miracle,” Heinrich had answered crossly. He had changed the subject. “There is no room in America for a flutist. I have the flute. I had hoped that David would like it, but he prefers the piano. I knew the business of a Gasthaus, for often I assisted when ours was very crowded. I saw there were no things like a Gasthaus in this country, though I have heard there is in Milwaukee where the Indians reside. But we had no money, I worked for some years in a delicatessen, and your mother was saving and careful, and so we came to this very misbegotten place and opened a delicatessen of our own. Your mother’s sensitive soul has never recovered from the shattering of her dreams. However, I make an excellent living. I have five children and a house with only one thousand dollars mortgage, and four of my children are the geniuses. It is the Von Brunner blood. But my children are dark like the Engers and this is a cross; your mother hardly forgives me.”

Edward had suddenly pressed his father’s small but bulky arm, and Heinrich had smiled that sweet, shy smile of his in gratitude. “It was in March, 1887, when we came to America, and your brother David was born eight months later in Albany. Your mother was determined to be American, so you have the American names. It is so sad that she must always try to forget her family, who were so unkind. I should have preferred German names, in remembrance. For are we not Germans?”

“We’re Americans,” Edward had said, stoutly.

He loved his father, so small, so fat, so innocent and so gentle, with a fierce protectiveness. He stood between his father and his mother, with inexorable partisanship.

Edward was always glad to see his father, to see the smile on the round and chubby features, so flushed and beaming, so kind, so self-deprecating, so eager to please. He had the sweetest temper; he was rarely vexed or impatient. The housewives, sometimes forgetting he was a “foreigner,” had a deep affection for him. He never shortchanged; he was invariably anxious to oblige. The cookie box was usually open for a child; he had a special cylindrical glass jar filled with striped peppermint drops for the poorer of the children who entered the shop. Sometimes when things were going very well he would give a few of these children a one-cent ice-cream cone, generously filled. At Christmas he had a box of peppermint canes for all children, poor or middle-class, wrapped in tinsel paper, or pink suckers in holiday wrappers. At Easter there were tiny chocolate rabbits. Mrs. Enger did not approve of this waste, but on this her husband, usually so meek and docile and humble, stood firm.

Once he had said: “I remember the Christmas in Dorfinger, the Christmas my father died. We had boots on Christmas, and sometimes an orange and nuts, but this Christmas we had nothing. Nor on the following Christmases. I remember I looked in the shop windows.” But he had said this but once and had then quailed under the pale eyes of his wife, the former Fraulein Von Brunner, who had never known a starving Christmas or the yearning unhappiness in a child’s heart. One did not speak of near-starvation to a Gnädige Frau.

Edward, this evening, saw that his father, perched like a cherub on a stool near the till, seemed depressed. He had his account books spread out before him. He hardly glanced up at his son as he bounded in. He sighed. “It is not doing well, this August,” he remarked.

“It never does well in August,” said Edward cheerfully. “You always forget, Pa.”

“But I hope,” said Heinrich. “The mother needs a fine winter coat this year. Thirty-five dollars it is, laid away in the Cohen store. Thirty dollars still owed.”

“She’ll have it out before the first snow,” said Edward in English. He saw a pile of flat tins near his father’s elbow. “No sale?”

“Only three this month,” said Heinrich in a lugubrious voice. It was a cross to his wife that his English was still poor, and he relapsed into this language, speaking slowly and carefully. But, as Sylvia said discontentedly, “Even when Pa speaks English, he still speaks German.” “What is this, that I cannot sell the English tongue? A fine tongue! A bargain. The Norwegian sardines,” and he waved his short arms in despair, “they are twenty-five cents. The English tongue is so the much better. And more! Little sardines in oil! For one sandwich. The tongue is a meal for a family. With the flavor! Smoked like a delicious.”

“A delicacy,” said Edward. He picked up one of the long flat tins. He frowned. “I forget. What do we sell this for?”

“Twenty-five cents.”

“Too cheap—twenty-five cents. You have to sell things.” Edward considered; then he went behind the counter, found a square of white cardboard and a red pencil. He printed on it: “English smoked tongue, an exclusive import. During August only, thirty-two cents.”

He held the card up triumphantly before his father, who was aghast. He fell back into German in his agitation. “That is impossible! That is robbery. The women speak of Enger’s. Reasonable. Sensible. Twelve cents’ profit! Do not be absurd, my optimistic son. No one will pay thirty-two cents. There will be laughter.”

“They will pay,” said Edward. He took the pile of tins, stacked them in a pyramid. Then he crushed red tissue paper and made a circle about the pile. Against them he stood his card. “I’ll eat every can myself and pay you wholesale for them if you don’t sell every one before the end of August. That will be in ten days. If you don’t give the idea that something is first-rate and exclusive, you don’t sell. This’ll make the women fight over the tongue. Besides it is an exclusive, by the way. No delicatessen within five miles of here sells it for that price. And are the women going to run there to make comparisons? Even if they do, they’ll find bigger shops and bigger prices. We’re doing them a favor. You’ll see.”

“Are you teaching me to sell, Edward?” But Heinrich, so worried, smiled.

“I’ve been reading some new methods of merchandising in the Retailer’s Journal,” said Edward. “People have more money these days. If we don’t take advantage of their purses, someone else will. How many tins do we have besides these?”

“Forty,” said Heinrich, becoming despondent again. He pointed to a shelf. Edward promptly cleared away the tongue, hiding it under the counter on a shelf. “Exclusive,” he said. “We’ve just got these. When we’re down to half a dozen, we bring out the others. But only a few at a time.”

He went to the rear of the store where the toilet stood in a little closet with a washbowl. He scrubbed his hands, changed to a long white shirt he kept there. He combed his thick dark hair. When he emerged, there were two women in the store. After examining the tongue and exclaiming over it and announcing it was just the thing for the Sunday late supper, each bought a tin apiece. Heinrich beamed, but with sheepishness. He wrapped each tin carefully in a sheet of tissue paper like a jewel and tied it with a colored string. “Hah, you’re learning merchandising yourself, Pa,” said Edward teasingly. “You forgot to use the butcher paper or the newspaper or a bag.”

“One cannot say that Heinrich Enger does not learn new methods,” said his father, with some pompousness. He tapped his tiny fat fingers, which were sprinkled with black hair, on the counter and thrust out his plump pink lips. His nails were rosy and round. “But we are robbers,” he said. “It is not right, it is not Christian. I do not think the Reverend Mr. Yaeger will appreciate it.”

“The Reverend Mr. Yaeger will appreciate an extra nickel in the box,” said Edward cynically. “From all of us.” Then he remembered he had no time for church nor for the Wednesday evening socials. “I never met him. Do you like him?”

“A young man, but so wise!” said his father with sudden enthusiasm. “Did I tell you? Your mother’s family knew his family in Munich. He is new here. He was appointed by the church board only six weeks ago, and already he is a success. Such eloquence. It moves the heart. That is why I do not think he will approve.”

“He’s a Lutheran, not a priest,” said Edward, hardily. “You don’t confess to a Protestant minister. He can’t even forgive your sins. Why make a fuss? Give him an extra dollar at Christmas.” He stretched his arms out with exhilaration. “With the way things are going to go around here after today, you can give him two dollars, and he’ll fall on your neck and kiss you.”

“Such language,” said Heinrich. “Two dollars! The mother will be angry. You must remember she is a gentlewoman, a gracious lady. She will not approve of this already.”

“We won’t tell her then,” said Edward, doubting the righteousness attributed to his mother. “We’ll keep our dark and bloody secrets to ourselves. Besides, you’re underselling butter. I’ve struck an average on the market. It’s twenty-one cents a pound after today.”

“No one will buy,” said Heinrich, alarmed.

“Yes, they will. Where are the fancy wrappers with the yellow daisies on them? Oh, I’ve got them. We’re going to cut the bulk butter into pounds and wrap the pounds separately and show a dummy on the counter. We’ve got to get some extra money for our efforts. Sanitary. Sweet cream. Country-fresh. Give me another card and the red pencil. Who’s going to tell the difference between our bulk butter and the nicely wrapped pounds?”

“Taste,” groaned Heinrich, paralyzed by this audacity and mendaciousness.

“Taste!” said Edward. “Taste’s all in the mind. We’ll keep some bulk butter but push these cut pounds. Pa, you’re right in the way of the scale. The women will say they never ate such butter. You’ll never sell bulk again, after a few days. They’ll be standing in line to get this. You know something? I’m going to cut the pounds into four long quarters. That’ll sweep ’em off their feet.”

Heinrich watched with complete helplessness. But he took care that Edward weighed scrupulously. After a moment or two he even evinced an interest himself. With boyish squeals he introduced a new innovation. Each quarter must be wrapped in the daisy paper. “Pa, you’re a genius,” said Edward, reverently. “I am not so much the fool,” said Heinrich, glowing with modesty. He became excited. “Good straight quarters! No cutting and weighing for quarters and half-pounds! We sell cold, golden quarters by themselves! It is worth the extra money, the cutting, the wrapping.”

Edward stood and smiled at his father. “A real genius,” he said. Somewhere he found a small empty box the size of a pound of butter and covered it with the daisy paper and wrote another sign: “Quarters, half-pounds, pounds, untouched by human hands. Fresh every day. Daisy Butter, unrivaled.”

He looked around for new conquests, but his father said, hastily: “Is it not enough genius for the day? One must not press even genius. Let us consider in quiet and repose.”

It was becoming dark; the street outside floated in deep purple twilight, lit by the moonlike globes of street lamps. A little girl came in. Heinrich, discontentedly checking the money in the till, turned as she slapped the door behind her. He regarded all mankind with maudlin love, but he retained a special love for children. His eye, so perceptive, saw that this child looked too thin, too spindly, and that her cotton frock, a bulky blue-and-white check, was obviously second-hand, its bloused front hanging over the string of faded blue ribbon at the waist, its skirt wide and bunched. Her long black cotton stockings were too big for her, too, wrinkling over her emaciated legs, dropping over the top of her high black button shoes with the scuffed toes. Yet she was so clean, and even the ugly clothes, even the frill of coarse machine lace around the neck, could not hide her cleanness, her immature beauty.

“Ach, now, little one,” said Heinrich, leaning his dimpled elbows on the counter, his small black eyes sparkling. “You are just in time. We are closing. It is eight o’clock.” He reached under the counter and decided that this time it was not to be a one-cent cone but a five-cent one, heaped with three flavors. The little girl watched him as he soberly filled the rich cone and then held it out to her. However, she put her hands behind her back. “There isn’t any extra money,” she said in a very careful and pretty voice.

“We always give the last customer on Sunday night the big cone free,” said Heinrich. “It is a superstition with us. Here, it is dripping already.”

The little girl took the cone eagerly and gazed at Heinrich with thought. “You’re such a nice man,” she said, and licked. Edward, who had too many brothers and a sister, was bored. He was putting away some cracker boxes, rearranging some cans of soup. There had been eighteen customers tonight, more than on any August Sunday evening he could remember. Ten of them had bought the “Daisy Butter, Untouched by Human Hands, Sanitary, Country-fresh, Sweet cream. Our Specialty.” Edward had told the customers, “We are in the business of supplying the neighborhood with the best.” Heinrich, newly distressed, had averted his head at this salesmanship and had colored a bright red. Edward had even opened one of the icy quarters and had permitted the customers to taste off the end of a gleaming knife. They had ecstatically pronounced it the finest butter they had ever eaten. Edward had smiled. “It is not robbery, the extra few cents,” he had admonished his father again during an interlude. “It’s specially wrapped, the wrappers cost us money, we cut it up for the customers’ convenience, and we’re entitled to that profit.”

“I haf not seen you before,” said Heinrich to the child. “You are new, is it not?”

“I came from the orphanage yesterday,” said the child, leaning against the counter to relax herself as she absorbed the delight of the ice cream. At this, Edward turned abruptly and gave her his full attention. What a homely kid in those sloppy clothes made for an older girl! Then he saw that she was not homely at all. She had a small pointed face, the tapering chin cleft by an extraordinarily long deep dimple, the thin nose very dainty, the mouth wide and full and the color of coral. Her cheekbones were flushed with the same coral, were wide, and gave delicate strength to her appearance. And she had eyes of the purest, most intense blue Edward had ever seen, set in lashes like fringes of gilt, and a long mass of light brown hair hanging in waves and rolls over her shoulders and far down her back. Why, she was a pretty kid! And look at those gilded eyebrows, not just curved like other people’s, but starting low at the inner corner of the eyes and flashing straight upward like a bird’s wings. Too bad she was only about ten years old; she would be a corker when she was fourteen or sixteen. A corker! When all that skinniness was gone and the bones did not show in her arms and legs.

“You are living with some people, you haf a new mama and papa?” said Heinrich with loving compassion.

“Well, yes,” replied the child, thoughtfully. “But not just that way.” She sucked happily at the strawberry layer. “It’s Mr. and Mrs. Baumer. Mr. and Mrs. Hans Baumer.”

“Baumer!” said Heinrich sharply, and his smile vanished, and his white-coated, tubby body straightened in shock. “I know those Baumers.”

“What did they do with Josie?” asked Edward, coming to the counter.

“She wasn’t any good. She didn’t wash the floors right and she didn’t polish good,” said the child. “They sent her back to the orphanage on Friday. I am much better than Josie.” She showed them her little hands. They were sore-knuckled and fragile, and scored with soap and hot water and abrasives. “I’m not afraid of work. I washed all the floors in the orphanage. Mrs. Goetz said I was better than anybody.”

“There was Aggie before Josie, and Ellen before Aggie. They’ve had a whole stream of kids, working them to death and then sending them back,” Edward reminded his father under his breath. “Goddamn slave drivers, getting kids from the orphanage and making them sick and starving them. Should be a law.”

Heinrich nodded; his distress became more intense. This child, this little one, this very pretty little one! And those Baumers, mean, middle-aged, tightfisted, cruel, hated by the whole neighborhood, and with all that money! But what could one do? There was no law to protect these nameless, exploited children, in the year of Our Lord, 1904. Any monster could secure one of these innocents, under the pretext of adoption “if satisfactory.” The Baumers, childless and sullen-eyed and with hard, malevolent mouths, never had found any of the little girls satisfactory. They worked them from dawn to night, grudgingly sent them to school as required by law, half-fed them, clothed them poorly from church rummage sales, and then, as the children sickened, they sent them packing back to the orphanage. But the orphanage was overcrowded, badly supported from city and private funds, and eternally looking for “good homes” for the abandoned girls and boys. Who, besides God, cared for them? And perhaps, it seemed, not even God.

“How about a ham sandwich?” asked Edward. “I’m just going to fix myself one.”

The little girl looked nervous. “I was supposed to come right back after getting the milk and the bread and half a pound of butter and six eggs.” But her beautiful eyes filled with longing, and she licked her lips. “Haven’t had any dinner today. Mrs. Baumer doesn’t have big dinners on Sundays, just some cold things, and there wasn’t anything left over.”

“Won’t take a second,” said Edward, and cut a very thick slice of the pink and fragrant ham, heavily buttered two pieces of bread, and slapped the whole thing together. “Here. And I’m just going to drink half a bottle of milk. You can have the other half. Mustard?”

“No, thank you,” she said, politely. She had eaten the cone; she sank her even white teeth into the sandwich with gratitude, and looked over the immensity of it with radiant eyes like the sky at noonday. “Um. This is good,” she said, her mouth filled. “Best ham I ever tasted. First time we had ham was at Easter. I like ham.” She stopped chewing and became nervous again. “This isn’t charity, is it? You won’t tell Mrs. Baumer?”

“It isn’t charity,” said Edward. “I just like to have company when I eat. Good ham, isn’t it? Hate to eat alone. Here, I’ll put the milk in a glass.”

Heinrich, so easily moved, was speechless with tears. “You just come in when you feel hungry and eat with me,” said Edward. “I’m here every day. If there’s a customer, you can just go back in that closet and we won’t tell a soul. What’s your name?”

The child swallowed ravenously before answering. “Meg. Meg Proster. I came in the P’s. That’s why it’s Proster. Mrs. Goetz makes up the names. I came in the P’s when I was a baby. But it’s really Margaret, not Meg.”

“Margaret?” said Edward. “Your name is Margaret?” He put his sandwich down. Yes, she was a Margaret, with all that beauty and sweetness, with that white forehead broad with serenity and steadfastness. Her hair shone like the crest of a great elm tree in the sun. A sapling of a Margaret. “I have a tree with that name,” he said impulsively, and out of his tender remembrance, and then blushed.

The little girl nodded solemnly. “There was a tree in the orphanage yard,” she said as if all this were quite understandable. “But he was a he. I called him Eddie. He was really an Eddie, big like you; he had leaves like big hands.”

“My name’s Eddie, too,” said Edward. “Ed. That’s what they call me.”

Her face became luminous with surprise and happiness. She nodded. “Yes, you’re an Eddie.” Then her small face dimmed sorrowfully, and her gilded eyebrows drew together in pain. “They killed Eddie. One of the boys was climbing him, and he fell and broke his head, the boy I mean, and so they cut Eddie down. I cried and cried. The birds flew away; Eddie took care of them and they cried like me when Eddie fell over on his side. He died.” Her eyes filled with tears.

She took another last bite of the sandwich, sniffled, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Ach, the poor little one,” murmured Heinrich, in German. “They have the aching hearts, the little ones, and no one hears. Only the flute can give them a voice, the lonely flute singing all alone.”

“Never mind, Margaret,” said Edward. “You can have my tree with me. I’ll show her to you.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. I got to work for my keep every day. That’s only right, Mrs. Baumer giving me a home, a real home, all to myself, and my own bed. Besides, they’re buying a farm. We’re going to move next week. A big farm.” Her eyes lighted with joy again. “Lots of trees. Maybe I’ll find an Eddie there just for myself!”

“Ach, yes, so I heard,” said Heinrich. There was always food on a farm, and even ugly human voracity could not always prevent a child from taking an egg, or sipping milk from a pail, or pulling a peach from a tree, or hiding a handful of nuts. This little one would not starve on a farm, as the others had starved. The misery in Heinrich’s heart loosened; he had not known there was such a tightness in his chest until now. He put his hand to it. He must remember what the doctor had told him, no excitement, no emotion, no strain. But what could one do for such a pain, such a drawing-together of hurt flesh? The pain began in the spirit.

“Where is the farm?” asked Edward, already bereaved.

“Oh, it’s a long way,” replied Margaret, waving one thin arm vaguely. “Millions of miles away.”

“Near Albany. I heard already,” said Heinrich, in English. “It was the Websters who told me. The Baumers haf enough money; it is always the farm they want, and they saved. Fifty miles.”

“I’ll come to see you,” said Edward. But he knew, he knew. He would never see Margaret again. Margaret Proster. In the P’s. He was only fourteen and Margaret was only ten, but he loved her. He wanted to touch her hair, to smooth the back of his hand against her cheek, to rub her dimpled chin. He loved her as a man loves a woman. He wanted to shelter her hungry body in his strong arms, and take care of her forever. Forever. Something nagged at his mind. He whistled dolorously and thought: All the days of my life.

CHAPTER II

Heinrich had great terror of and respect for the law. Edward had once tried to explain that laws were made by men, the mundane laws apart from the natural laws of God, and that foolish laws could be broken, and should be broken. He had even quoted Thomas Jefferson (his hero) to that effect. “But what is this Thomas Jefferson?” Heinrich has asked petulantly. “Law is law; it must be obeyed, not broken, not changed.”

“But this is America,” Edward had said.

Heinrich had only looked at him reproachfully and anxiously. Laws were immutable. One learned that in the old country.

So, on the very striking of eight o’clock, Heinrich resolutely closed his shop on Sundays and refused to serve any customer hastening in, pleading. “It is the law,” Heinrich would say, locking the till. “But my baby needs milk. I forgot until the last minute,” the woman might plead. “It is the law,” Heinrich would say, with distress, wondering how customers could be so stupid as not to understand.

When his back was turned, Edward would sometimes drop a bottle of milk in a bag, thrust it into the customer’s hand, and whisper that she could pay another time. It had happened tonight; the mother of five children had rushed in for a loaf of bread. Heinrich talked of law and turned his back; Edward gave her the bread. There was no use arguing with Pa, to whom law was a dragon that must be placated by absolute obedience. I’d sure hate to be living in Europe, Edward had thought, nodding pleasantly to the woman who hid the bread under her apron, thankfully.

Father and son, after carefully locking the doors, walked homeward in the warm blue darkness of the summer night. The churches were not yet spilling out their throngs of worshipers. The windows of houses showed golden rectangles through the trees. Edward looked up at the moon; it was great and red, almost a fiery red, and he pointed it out to his father, who stopped to contemplate it. Heinrich was a worrier. He regarded the moon with alarm and shook his head. “On the moon, it is blood,” he murmured. “For ten years, before the war between France and Germany, there were moons with blood on them. It is an omen.”

“Now, Pa, don’t start worrying,” said Edward. “Where’s there even anybody thinking of wars? Sure, we had the Spanish-American War, a little war, and Teddy Roosevelt, charging around, thought it was made just for him. But no other wars.”

“There will be a war,” said Heinrich with sad positiveness. “You will see.”

They walked on, their heels clacking softly on the walks. Edward whistled tonelessly between his teeth. Then he cleared his throat. “Pa, I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time. Your flute. Could I use your flute once in a while?”

“My flute, you, my son?” Heinrich was astonished. “It is not you who is the musical genius. It is David.”

“I’d still like to use the flute, Pa. I can read notes. I learned some in school and I’ve taught myself to read better. Bet you I can learn to play the flute pretty good!”

Heinrich considered, worried again. He understood these things. The mediocre soul attempting to express itself. But that led to envy and frustration. He winced in himself. Besides, it would disturb the pure genius of his oldest son, David, to hear the shrillness of a flute at the lips of one born only to serve. He shook his head. “Ach, no, Eddie. That would not do. One must think of the sensibilities of David.” He relapsed into German. “It is hard to comprehend these things. You would practice in the house. The mother would shiver. It would destroy the harmony, the little harmony that exists in a house blessed by many with the artistic temperament. You would be unhappy; the others, who have delicate souls, would be devastated. I am thinking of your harmonica. You had to give it away, at last, and you paid two dollars for it. It hurt the ears.”

I played the harmonica very well, thought Edward, with some anger. I didn’t hurt anybody. Miss Johns had me play at Christmas. He shrugged. “All right, Pa, don’t worry. Keep your flute. For some grandchild.” He patted his father’s fat shoulder and Heinrich sighed. “You are so sensible, Eddie. You understand.”

A feller sometimes gets tired of understanding, Edward reflected. But understanding was demanded of people who weren’t geniuses. It was the least they could do for the gifted ones. Besides, he loved his father deeply and tenderly. Nothing must disturb Pa, so harried in “a house blessed by many with the artistic temperament.”

“Genius cannot be acquired,” said Heinrich. “All else can, to further that genius.” They walked along in mutual silence; then Heinrich, with tears in his voice, said: “I must confess something to you, my son, something I have never confessed to another. I was not a genius; I played the flute only adequately, in spite of many years of prayer and pain and study. What are these if one is not gifted? For years I did not know the truth.”

“Sure, Pa,” said Edward, with pity.

“It isn’t enough for a man’s soul to be moved by music, to adore music, to comprehend it,” Heinrich went on, with grief. “I suffered, and still suffer, these things. When I listen to Beethoven or Wagner, I am changed, I am illuminated, I am transported to another realm. Yet, on my flute, I was the squeak of a mouse. I was the crow in the forest. It was the mother who finally enlightened me, with her superior knowledge and honesty. But I have done very well in the shop,” he added with a pleading note in his voice, an asking note.

“Wonderful,” said Edward. It was probably true that Heinrich was no genius, but it was also true that Maria Enger could be coldly objective. “One of these days,” said Edward, “we’ll expand. We’ll have a lot of clerks. We’ll have the best delicatessen in the whole country! Why, we can do like the Atlantic & Pacific! We can have branch delicatessens. With you supervising and buying.”

Heinrich touched his son’s sleeve paternally and with indulgence. “Ach, Eddie, you have the soaring mind. That is because you are young. There must be restraint, prudence.” Edward did not answer. Heinrich looked at the moon again and pursed his lips. “It is blood there,” he said.

They were two streets from home now. Heinrich stopped and rubbed his forehead, after removing his stiff straw hat. He coughed. “Eddie,” he said. Edward stopped also and grinned. “A pinochle game, eh? All right, Pa. You go ahead and have your game with Mr. Wolfsohn. I won’t snitch.”

“Such language. If you cannot speak correctly, in this English, you must learn to do it.” But Heinrich smiled uneasily. “This ‘snitch.’ It is sneak, is it not?”

“Sure, Pa. I won’t sneak.”

Heinrich rolled the brim of the hat in his little plump hands. “It is, of course, still Sunday,” he said, uncertainly.

“There’s no law against playing pinochle on Sundays,” said Edward, with affectionate impatience. “And isn’t there something in the Bible about the Sabbath being made for man and not man for the Sabbath?”

Heinrich rebuked him. “It is very bad, Eddie, that you have no interest in church.”

Edward did not remind his father that the household was so arranged, and all his work, that he did not have time for such an interest. Heinrich went on: “Yes, it is true, the Sabbath for man. Besides,” he continued, with more spirit, “when Meyer and I play pinochle on Sunday, I give my winnings to the church plate. It is working for good, hein?”

“Sure, Pa, sure. Besides, it isn’t Mr. Wolfsohn’s Sabbath. His was yesterday. There’s no sin on his soul. Not that there’s any on yours, either,” Edward added hastily. “I’m sure God won’t hold pinochle against you.” He laughed, a vision coming into his mind of his father explaining miserably to the Shining Host. Poor Pa, who had no pleasure except those small games and an occasional glass of beer!

“Tonight,” Edward said earnestly, “you go ahead and have that beer. It’s hot and you deserve to have a cold drink. I won’t sneak. And I’ll tell Ma that—now what excuse can I give her tonight?”

They stood under a street lamp and gave all their serious attention to this matter. “We can’t say a sick friend,” said Edward. “We used that three times before. How about me saying that you stayed at the store to do some extra cleaning up?”

Heinrich frowned. “But then the mother will reproach you, asking why you had not stayed.” He said this simply, with no thought of all the work his son had done that day. The mother would reproach the big, healthy boy, and there would be reproaches for him, Heinrich, in addition. “It is a hard thing that a young man should leave his father to do these burdensome things alone,” Maria would say. “You indulge him too much, Heinrich. He was always your favorite.”

Heinrich looked up at Edward and saw his face in the lamplight, a suddenly tight and brooding face, for Edward was remembering. “How strange is your expression,” said Heinrich, in German. “What is it, Eddie?”

Edward recalled himself. Poor Pa. In some ways Pa was pretty dumb. But then most people were dumb. All you had to do was read history, in the books you sometimes got from the library and sometimes had time to read when everybody else was asleep.

“I’m wondering what kind of excuse we can give,” said Edward. “This one’ll have to stand up.”

“Stand up?” repeated Heinrich. “What is it, this standing up?”

Edward said in German, “Invulnerable.” Heinrich nodded. They considered again. “Ma doesn’t like Mr. Wolfsohn,” said Edward. “And she knows about those pinochle games, though not the Sunday ones. We can’t use Mr. Wolfsohn tonight.” He rubbed his shaggy hair, distracted. “Oh, I know. You couldn’t go to church tonight, so you went to Mr. Yaeger and gave him a dollar. Ma will like that.”

“But I want to see Meyer,” Heinrich objected. “It is a long way to Mr. Yaeger. Besides, there would be no dollar given.”

Edward hesitated. Five dollars in his pocket, four for the piano, one for himself. Then he hardened himself. He held out his hand. “Give me the dollar,” he said. “I’ll take it. And then you can say you had a long talk with Mr. Yaeger about church affairs. After all, you’re on the board.”

“You do not give to the church, my son,” said Heinrich, reproachfully.

Edward sighed. “All right, Pa. I’ll take the dollar to Mr. Yaeger, my own dollar.”

Heinrich beamed. “You are the good son, Eddie.” He put on his hat with a flourish. “I am blessed in my children.”

Yeh, thought Edward, with lack of charity, thinking of the bicycle he was saving for and which was still only a mirage in the distance.

“And, with the long way, how will you explain to the mother how it is that you are late?” asked Heinrich, again worried.

“Easy,” said Edward. “I stayed to clean up.”

Now all obstacles had been removed. Heinrich marched away briskly, small and round as a young robin and as eager. Then, as Edward watched him, he suddenly wheeled on his small feet and came back, his face glistening rotundly under the street lamp. He pushed something into Edward’s hand. “My son,” he said in a very singular voice, and hurried off.

Edward looked at the little crumple in his hand. Two dollars. His young eyes moistened. My son. As if Pa had only one son. Edward shrugged. Then he thought, But Pa really has only one son—me. The others are my mother’s sons. Poor Pa. Poor Pa, with his flute and his dreams. Poor Pa, who sat at his own table at home and was not there. Only a meek and empty space, a little murmuring sometimes, a little hope that he would be seen. No one ever saw him except Eddie. “He’s not so dumb,” said Edward aloud, and with fierceness. “He sees lots of things.”

The south wind suddenly roared softly to the night, a warm and tropical roar, speaking of the Spice Islands and the unknown seas and palms against the moon. Edward heard it and listened, entranced. The acrid odor of the cobbled streets was swept away in the fragrance of cinnamon and clove and the scent of mysterious salt waters. How this was, Edward did not know; he was content to accept it. He began walking. He addressed God. “You know,” he said as a child speaks to a father, “You tell me stories, wonderful things. I don’t know who You are, but You’re sure good to me!” He felt very humble, and very exalted, and was full of gratitude.

Then suddenly he thought of little Margaret with the gilt lashes and brows. “Now look,” he said urgently to God. “That’s just a kid with no parents and no real home. An awful nice kid. Ten years old, maybe. I don’t expect I’ll ever see her again. She’s going a long way to a farm. Just take care of her, please. You will, please? She understands about things. Don’t let anybody hurt her, will You?”

The wind roared again, a great and mystic voice, and Edward’s tight features relaxed in a contented smile. He’d never forget Margaret. How could he have believed God would forget such a nice little thing? Trusting, like a bird. Like Betsy.

Buggies and carriages began to rattle and sway along the streets, filled with women who daintily held the brims of flower-laden hats, their gloves very white and conspicuous, the men accompanying them very stiff and stately, as befitted people who had just been edified at church. A distant streetcar groaned around a turn. People eddied on the sidewalks, chatting in subdued voices. Sunday voices, thought Edward. The churches he passed were still brightly lighted; he could see the emptying pews, the smiles of neighbors and friends as they accosted each other in the aisles, the figures of ministers waiting by the door to greet each parishioner. I’d hate to be a minister, having to grin at everybody, whether you liked them or not, thought Edward, suddenly and dismally conscious of his old clothing, his soiled shirt, his dusty boots. He wished he could be among those leaving the churches, going home to quiet houses, to a cup of hot cocoa and cookies, to serene beds. What did those people have to worry about? Look at the frills on those women, the black coats and derbies on the men! Not a care in the world. He walked on; the trolleycars wove closer to him, on the next street, sparks flying from the wire. People boarded them, still talking or laughing in their Sunday voices.

The wind sang of golden beaches and enameled foam under a sun thousands of miles away. Edward smiled and forgot he was a pariah, “born to serve.”

He clattered on a new stretch of concrete sidewalk. Made a lot of noise, concrete. On planks, now, silky and gray from the weather, you could walk easy and your blisters didn’t hurt so bad. Edward hoped that the planked walks would always be there, but people were talking of their removal. Waterford was a “progressive” city. Now why, he asked himself, does everything progressive have to be so hard and noisy and not friendly? Like one of those automobiles you could see sometimes, howling and banging along the streets and smelling to high heaven? He was glad that his mother did not like gaslight but preferred the soft glow of kerosene lamps. Besides, it was cheap and he liked it even if one of his chores was to wash and polish the chimneys every day before going to the store. In fact, it gave him pleasure to make the glass brilliant.

He was now entering a very lonely street, narrow, many of the houses dark though it was only fifteen minutes to nine, some of the houses lighted. He could hear hammocks creaking, the slow rumble of rocking chairs, the giggling of young girls, the youthful baritones of “admirers,” and occasionally the cry of a wakeful child. I wonder what most people live for, Edward asked himself. What, for instance, am I living for? Well, we have geniuses in the family, and that’s something. These people on the porches, behind the trees, are just contented to go on and on, getting nowhere except for a little raise in pay and bringing up kids, and then the kids will bring up kids, and that’s all there’ll be to it. No end, no beginning. I guess they aren’t ambitious. Not to be ambitious, in the Enger household, was to be an animal.

What do I want, me, just myself? Edward demanded silently. Funny, I never thought of that before. Well, I’ve got to have money, a lot of money, so I can help the rest of them get somewhere. David, Sylvia, Greg, Ralph. They’ve got to have a chance. There’ll never be much money in a delicatessen, not with all those on Pa’s neck and mine. David and the rest of them were already talking loftily of education, and opportunities. It takes cash, thought Edward, somewhat grimly. Where do they think it’s coming from? They never ask themselves. Just take things for granted. And David talking of New York and music teachers. All for granted. It’s a load, thought Edward confidently, a load I’ve got to lift.

Ma’s just like them. Edward smiled in the darkness. A Von, it seemed, never questioned whether things would be given her, largely. The wind was stirring the Chinese prisms on the porches; the warm air was full of fairy tinkling, a delicate song about strange and unknown places, of lands never to be seen, of voices never to be heard. Edward was suddenly filled with yearning. His brothers and his sister would see and hear, and he supposed that was fine. After all, they were geniuses.

He stopped a moment to watch clouds of witless insects whirling about a corner street light, throwing themselves upon the glass, desperately trying to extinguish themselves, having their little hour before death. Like those people on the porches, thought Edward.

The First Lutheran Church of Waterford was closed and dark. Next to it was the Reverend Mr. Yaeger’s house, a little house, small and meek as Heinrich. Edward considered it, standing on the walk leading to the stoop. Well, people sure didn’t take care of their ministers, and that was a fact. More Lutherans in this town than any other sect or religion, and the First Lutheran Church, next to the parsonage, was hardly less mean than the house. And when I was a kid, up to ten when I had to quit Sunday school to work, I thought of being a minister! Edward commented to himself, trying to laugh. People didn’t deserve their pastors and their priests. That little old Catholic church, now, near the Enger house—why, the church was neat and clean but cheap-looking, and the young priest looked all worn out most of the time, and his coat was visibly patched at the elbows. Edward shook his head. We don’t deserve ’em, he said inwardly. He went up the battered steps to the stoop and pulled at the bell, which tinkled wearily.

One light only was burning in the house, at the window near the door. Edward glanced in. The minister was sitting at his desk with his face in his hands; he lifted his head at the sound of the bell and Edward saw his face. The minister, thin and tall, rose to his feet with an effort and came to the door, the bare gaslight showing his tired and hopeless features and thin brown hair. Then the door opened and he looked out at Edward, puzzled.

“Hello, Mr. Yaeger,” said Edward, speaking cheerily. “I’m Ed Enger, Mr. Heinrich Enger’s son. You know, from the delicatessen.”

“Oh, yes,” said the minister, in a dull voice. “Will you come in, Ed?” He had never seen Edward before. But he had heard of him from members of the Enger family. This would be the lout, the dolt, the stupid boy of the family. How old was he? About seventeen, a big hulk of a youth.

“Thanks, Mr. Yaeger, but I’ve got to go on home. Pa just wanted you to have some money for the plate. He couldn’t go to church tonight and he missed this morning. He had a headache.” Edward paused. He knew that one of the two dollars his father had given him was meant for himself, a wordless offering of love and helpless perplexity and understanding. Edward hesitated. Then he pushed the two dollars into the minister’s hand.

“Why, that’s very generous of Mr. Enger,” said the minister, with surprise and pleasure. Susan needed another pair of shoes for school. Two dollars would buy them! One of the minister’s most urgent worries suddenly disappeared, and he thanked his God with humility and gratitude. After all, a salary of nine hundred dollars a year did not provide too well for a family of five, even if one had a wife who was an expert at remodeling clothing and making one penny do the work of ten. Then the minister’s face saddened. “You said for the plate, Ed?”

Edward gazed at him and understood with that almost miraculous intuition of his. “No, sir. Not for the plate. It’s something for you personally. Pa was talking only tonight about how ministers have a hard time, specially when they’ve got families, and he said to me, ‘You go and give this to Mr. Yaeger with my compliments.’”

“Why,” said the minister, blinking dryly, “that’s very kind of your father.” He stood and stared at Edward, whose tanned face was turning red. Edward looked down at his boots. “Mr. Yaeger, I don’t come to church—often. There’s things I have to do on Sundays. I make five dollars most of the time—”

“On Sundays?” repeated the minister, with some rebuke and sternness. “You work on Sundays and so can’t come to church?”

Edward’s color became deeper. “Well, yes, sir. It’s something I’ve sort of got to do. So I want to make up for it.” He thrust his hand into his pocket and felt the five dollars in bills and silver. Hell, he didn’t really need the one dollar which his parents permitted him to keep. What was a bicycle, anyway? Besides, he would make it up in a couple of weeks. He brought out a rumpled bill and gave it to the minister. “That’s my own contribution,” he said, awkwardly.

The minister regarded the bill in his hand. Three dollars altogether! This extra dollar would buy a fine roast for five people, a roast which would last three days. Again he stared at Edward, who was retreating backward down the steps. “Well,” said Edward, “guess I got to say good night, Mr. Yaeger. It’s getting late.”

“Good night, Ed,” said the minister. He watched Edward go down the walk and then down the street. The boy passed under a lamp. Why, thought the minister, he’s not seventeen, he’s not a man! He’s only a boy, only the age of my own Howard! He has the face of a child. Mr. Yaeger stepped onto the stoop and, with something aching in his heart, he called to Edward. But Edward had disappeared into the black shadow of some murmurous trees and was gone. The minister stood on the stoop for a considerable time, the night breeze stirring his thin hair, and when he went inside the house, he felt, in some mysterious way, that he had seen with an inner eye, and he was more saddened than before. He smoothed the crushed bills on his desk and looked down at them. Then he put aside one of the bills, gently, and touched it with a tender hand. There would be no roast, after all. This would go to his own personal charity, in the secret name of Edward Enger. His sadness disappeared, and he smiled like a youth. A minister sometimes had his own rich rewards.

Edward, whistling through his teeth, continued on his way. If he went around a few blocks, he would pass the Erie Canal. He hurried. He heard a churchbell sound the stroke of nine. Ma would be mad. But he hurried onward to his favorite rendezvous with himself. He did not often have these opportunities.

The houses thinned. It was very quiet now, with only that great copper moon standing in the black sky above the black and whispering trees. Edward reached the bank of the canal, and all at once he was at peace. The canal was empty of any barges; the dark water lay motionless, without a ripple. It might have been some wide, deep creek in the heart of a forest, with trees bending over it and the tall grasses and rushes sighing to themselves. Edward leaned against a tree. The moon made a sharp and bloody hole in the water, sinking down endlessly. Blood on the moon. War. All at once Edward thought of this with seriousness and mystery. He remembered that his father was a very timid man, afraid of almost everything. But still he had spoken with anxious surety. Gee, thought Edward, people weren’t that dumb any longer, making up wars. For what? This was America, not Europe. He looked at the red and ominous eye in the water. His spirit became burdened, though he shrugged. “Do I have to worry about other people all the time?” he asked himself severely. “I’ve got my own family to worry about.” Why did he have to think of Mr. Yaeger and all those people in the houses, or sitting on the porches and laughing in the night? He thought of little Margaret and the Baumers, and he sagged against the tree.

He forced his thoughts away. Now he wished he was an artist, like little Ralph. He would paint the canal like this: black as ink, with the scarlet hole in it from the moon. The trees, black too, shadows in the background. No moon in the sky. That would take away the effect. Maybe a few little blots on the banks huddled together, looking at the terrible omen in the water, beyond speech, and cursing themselves, and perhaps crying without sound. Edward suddenly remembered something from a Sunday-school lesson years ago. “God be merciful to me, a sinner.”

I sure wish I was an artist, a genius, thought Edward, instead of being dumb like I am.

He was unutterably depressed. He slowly left the canal, his head bent. Now he walked faster. The church clock dolorously struck fifteen minutes after the hour. He stopped to listen. It was the voice of doom, tolling over the city.

He would have to run very fast or Ma would really be mad. He had to be up at five tomorrow, to go to the market with his father. He trotted through the silent streets, and under the lamps, and he sweated. If he only had a bicycle, he could make it faster. He counted the payments necessary. In the spring, if he was lucky, he would have enough for the bicycle. His nebulous misery lifted.

He was near his home now. He was trotting very fast, and he collided with a silent walker on the street, and jumped back with an exclamation of apology. “Gosh, Father Jahle, I’m sorry!” he said. “I didn’t see you.”

The slender young priest settled his hat, which Edward had caused to slide to the side of his head. “That’s all right, Simon,” he answered. “Late tonight, aren’t you?” His large brown eyes looked affectionately at Edward, but his expression was grave and still. There were deep hollows under his wide cheekbones, and his mouth was very pale. He coughed, a long, wracking cough, and Edward winced as he always winced at that sound.

“Yes. Had to do something for Pa,” replied the boy. He grinned at the priest and went on. “One of these days, you’ll have to tell me why you call me Simon, Father.”

“I thought you were going to ask your minister,” said the priest, catching his breath and rubbing his concave chest as if it pained him.

“Well, it seems like I never have time to ask him,” Edward said. He was embarrassed. He could not explain to the priest that his work devoured so much of his time that there was nothing left. That would be disloyalty to his parents. Then he saw that the priest was gazing at him deeply, and he stepped aside, his embarrassment increasing, and called over his shoulder, “Good night, Father!” He trotted on.

The priest watched him until the night had sucked him in, and he thought: “Yes, Simon. But the cross is not too heavy to bear in God’s service, not yet. May the day never come, young Simon, when it will be too heavy, for then your heart will break.” He walked down the street, his hands behind his back, and he prayed for the boy whose footsteps he could no longer hear.

Edward was in sight of his own home when he heard the softest and sweetest of music on the warm air, almost a whisper of music, melancholy and meditative, as if some disembodied soul spoke of sorrow. It was one with the night and the rising wind and the black shadows of the trees stretching across the cobbled streets. A Negro boy of Edward’s own age was leaning against a tree in the flickering light of the street lamp and he was playing a harmonica, his lanky body bent forward from the tree, his fingers glimmering, his dusky curls trembling.

“Billy!” said Edward, with pleasure. “What’re you doing out here so late?”

Billy continued to play and Edward listened. The Negro boy’s face was withdrawn, the color of bronze, and as smooth. His feet were bare, and his blue shirt and black trousers were patched and frayed. It was a fine harmonica, made in Germany, and it had cost two dollars, and Edward had given it to Billy as a gift. As always, when Edward listened to the frail and wailing organ, notes of the instrument when Billy played it, he forgot his own regret at having had to part with it and he was grateful and exalted. Billy, his friend, was also a genius. He would be famous someday, Edward would insist. Billy would gaze at him cynically but he never answered with bitterness. “I guess I’ll just be happy if I learn to play it right,” he invariably said. “I guess you deserve that, for giving it to me.”

The mournful music ended without a flourish; the last notes drifted from the harmonica like a few moonlit moths. Billy said, “You forgot we were going to walk to the canal tonight, after your old man closed up.”

“I’m awfully sorry,” said Edward. “But he wanted me to do something for him, and it was kind of important, and I got there late.”

Billy shrugged. “It don’t matter,” he said, and lifted himself away from the tree. “Next Sunday night?”

“Sure, Billy.” Edward paused. He thought of his friend’s long walk back to the black ghetto where he lived, with the leaning old wooden houses, the dirty street thronged with half-starved children, the cowed old women with the kerchiefs on their heads, and the weary men with their dinner pails. “I wish I could walk a ways with you, Billy, but it’s awful late.”

“Don’t matter,” said Billy, patiently. “You got your own troubles.” He wiped the harmonica lovingly with a shred of soiled cloth, wrapped it up, and put it in his pocket. Then he smiled at Edward and his smile was inexpressibly sweet and comprehending, his white teeth glittering in the lamplight. “Sure going to miss you at school, though.”

“That’s right,” said Edward. The two boys stood in silence and looked at each other, and Billy thought, Boy, you got worse troubles than me, even if you eat regular. After a few moments Billy lifted his hand nonchalantly in farewell and glided, rather than walked, into the shadows of the trees. Crickets suddenly shrilled to the night, and there was a scent of old hot dust in the air as the wind rose and the dry trees clattered. I wish I could do something for him, really something, Edward said in himself. How does a feller get to be a millionaire?

His home was dark, except for the light of an oil lamp on the kitchen table. Edward opened the back door, and stepped into the kitchen. To his surprise he saw that his mother was sitting at the table, reading quietly, the white oilcloth no paler than her extraordinary hair, which rolled back from her large and flabby face in a high pompadour. Her big and formless body, in its black Sunday silk, was braced with high dignity against the back of the chair, and she held the book as she had been taught as a child—with both hands, one at the side, the other at the bottom. In spite of her bulk and gracelessness, she had a stately air of breeding, not affected but instinctive.

She rarely, if ever, read in the kitchen, though she worked there. She never served her family any meal, except breakfast, in the kitchen, which was the cheeriest room in the house, with its wide black stove trimmed with bright nickel, its gay white-and-red linoleum, its ticking cuckoo clock from the Black Forest, its chairs padded with chintz, and its red-and-white checked curtains at the windows. The family would have preferred to eat here, but they dared not offend the mother’s sense of propriety, and permitted themselves to be crowded in the lightless and narrow dining room, which was too small for so large a family.

Maria Enger lifted her pale and formidable eyes when her son entered the kitchen and put aside her book with measured movements. “You are very late,” she said in her very correct high German. “Where is your father?” Her mouth had no determined outlines, and practically no color, and it was wide, yet it gave an impression of an unyielding and resolute nature, ponderously strict and hard. Her voice was low and well-bred, and she rarely if ever raised it in vehemence or excitement.

“I’m sorry, Mother,” replied Edward in German. “I remained to clean and lock up the shop. My father had an appointment with the minister, Mr. Yaeger, and they had matters to discuss.”

Maria regarded Edward oddly. She lifted the watch on her massive bosom and looked at the face with significance. There was something strange about her tonight and she had not stared at her son with her usual cold impatience and intolerance. She dropped the watch on her breast again, withdrew a white, lace-edged handkerchief from her tight black sleeve, and touched it to her fleshy nose. There was a hesitancy about her. She said in an abstracted tone: “All the others are in their beds. I, too, should have retired. Yet I waited for you.”

She turned her head, and Edward saw her profile outlined against the lamp. Her almost colorless eyes, in that position, protruded unpleasantly, the whites streaked with red veins, and the whole expression of them gelid and stiff. She had never at any time possessed any beauty, except for her hair and her voice, and the amazing smallness and delicacy of her arched feet, but her profile was less attractive even than her full face, and larger than ordinary profiles, with the nose shown in all its prominence, and the upper lip long and merciless.

“You should not have waited, Mother,” said Edward, intimidated and uneasy. He began to sidle toward the door that led into a tiny dank hall. His mother lifted her hand. “I have something to say to you, Edward. You will please sit opposite me in that chair.” She let her hand drop to the table, a big hand, as characterless as her body, but a hand scarred and reddened with work.

Edward seated himself and drew a deep breath and braced himself. He was suddenly conscious of being very tired, and there was a sense of defeat in him. He was wretchedly sure that he was to be kept in this kitchen until his father returned, when both of them would be subjected to a rigorous cross-examination to explain their lateness. It would end, as usual, with his father pretending to be angry with him, and then the anger becoming real out of frustration and fear of Maria, and out of some sick shame. Edward said hastily: “Please do not be annoyed with my father. There were customers at the last moment, and my father broke his rule for the women with children. Then there was much ordering to be done, with which I helped.”

“And there was the Herr Minister,” said Maria. “You have said it before.” But her voice was not hard, and Edward looked at her in perplexity. “I understand, Edward. I will discuss it no further.”

The cuckoo clock ticked loudly in the silence. The wind stirred the curtains at the windows. The mirror over the white sink winked and moved. Mother and son regarded each other without speaking. It was Maria who looked away first. She pointed to a chair, and Edward’s eyes followed the pointing. Little Ralph’s paintbox, black-enameled, lay there, and his pad of artist’s paper. “You will bring me the paper,” said Maria. Somewhat dazed, Edward rose wearily and lifted the pad in his hand. There was something painted on its top sheet, something stiffly painted in water colors in a full and lifeless brown, something that perched on a twig. Ralph had evidently attempted to paint—a hen.

“Betsy!” said Edward. “Is this, Mother, a painting of my Betsy?” He was touched, even though this creature did not express his pet, though it was drawn with painful exactness, every brown feather outlined with thick black paint. The wattles were an unnatural red, the legs and claws bright yellow, the brown eye dull. There was not a single smear on this neat parody of a living bird, this careful, unimaginative parody. For some mysterious reason he himself could not understand, Edward felt a twinge of pity for the child who had drawn and painted this. He turned to his mother; she was smiling sternly, as if pleased at his reaction and recognition.

“It is a gift to you from your brother, who will be a famous artist and greatly honored in the world,” she said.

“Well, thanks,” said Edward, awkwardly. He looked away from her to the painting. He could not understand why his youngest brother, the lusty and excitable Ralph, forever demanding, forever having artistic tantrums, should go to all this effort for a despised brother. Edward was very moved. But that eye; it was lifeless. He looked longingly at the paints forbidden him. “It is very good of Ralph. It is a very good likeness of Betsy.”

He heard, rather than saw, his mother shift in her chair. “It is a sacrifice to be an artist,” she said. “And others must sacrifice for those who are gifted.”

A sudden foreboding, a sudden horror, came to Edward. He came to the table and put the pad on it. He wet his lips. “Betsy?” he murmured. Betsy had somehow gotten free of her pen early tonight. “Betsy?” he repeated.

“Ralph permitted her out of the crude cage you made, Edward,” said Maria, with severity. “He is very young. And as an artist he constantly searches for objects to paint.”

“I put her back in her pen before I left for the shop,” said Edward.

“Yes, my son. And after you left, Ralph wished to continue with his work. He released the hen. Unfortunately she escaped from the yard.”

Edward turned impulsively toward the outer door, with the wild thought that he must find Betsy alone in the night, Betsy who was just a pullet, who was tame and trustful.

“Edward!” said Maria, sharply. “It is no use. You must be sensible. I know your attachment for the creature, which is ridiculous. It is no use at all. A cat caught her near the end of the street and carried her away.”

Edward sat down, his knees weak and trembling. He clutched them with his strong young hands. His breath came hard, and his gray eyes were stricken and terrible.

In spite of a tremendous effort, Maria could not look away from those eyes. “It is only a hen,” she said. “A mindless thing, a bird. It is true that you loved her, you, Edward, almost a man. One must have a sense of proportion in these matters. One must not be absurd. One can buy another hen for fifty cents, though it is a waste if one is not to think of eggs or the pot. If you are determined to be ridiculous again and fondle a soulless creature when you have a sister and brothers to love and serve, you may keep fifty cents extra from this day’s work and buy another chicken.”

Edward had no words. He could see Betsy vividly, in the cat’s bloody mouth, Betsy screaming for help when there was no help, Betsy whom he loved and who had loved him. He closed his eyes convulsively, and when he did so, Maria’s harsh mouth quivered and she could look away at last.

“I am sorry,” she said, stiffly.

Edward, in his suffering, did not remark to himself that he had never heard his mother say such a thing to anyone before. Betsy was dead. There would be no joyous flutter tomorrow when he went to the pen. There would be no eager scramble into his hands, no frantic pecking of delight and affection. An awful loneliness, an awful grief, ran over him like a black and smothering wave, and he sobbed aloud, without tears.

He opened his eyes on a swimming mist and then the mist cleared and he saw the excruciatingly neat and stiffened painting near his arm. He lifted it and stared at it and rubbed the back of his other hand against his tanned forehead. His mother sat in silence and watched him, and the gelid hardness between her lashes was less like glass than usual.

Edward swung his head aside, in his anguish, and dropped the pad on the table again. His eyes fell on Ralph’s paints, which he had bought. He stood up slowly, like an old man, and went to the chair. He opened the paints, gazed at them as if in a daze. Then he took up a brush, filled a glass with water, and carried the paints to the table. With great care he placed water and paints near together, wet the brush, and with amazing sureness he swirled the brush on a bright yellow plaque, added a small amount of white. He drew Ralph’s drawing to him. He bent his head over it. The dead eye, in a second or two, shone into life and fervor, brightened into intelligent love. Edward dipped the brush into the water again, swirled it into the brown plaque, then into the yellow and softened the unbending outlines of the bird’s body, so that it seemed to fluff into soft feathers and stand out from the paper. He muted the wattles, the yellow beak. He gentled the legs and claws. The painted bird arched its neck as if to call. The rigid twig curved, became a light green branch, bursting into living leaf.

And all this time Maria said nothing, and only watched, and saw the rough strands of her son’s shaggy hair as he bent over the pad. The cuckoo burst from its wooden nest and announced, with violent head bobbings, that it was half past ten. A polished copper tap dripped into the sink, with the faint sound of tears. The crickets shrilled violently, and there was a mutter of thunder in the sky.

At last Edward was finished. He had worked in a dreamlike state. He pushed the painting aside, drew it to him again, studied it, and then once more rejected it. It was not Betsy, after all. It lived and breathed, but it was not Betsy.

Not looking at his mother, not speaking, he left the kitchen, shambling as if exhausted.

Maria’s hands lay thickly in her lap. It was not for some time that she took up the painting. She looked at it long and thoughtfully. Her formidable eyes fogged and she was angry with herself. She was also frightened. She lifted her head indomitably and frowned. The strongest must be sacrificed for the best.… She studied the painting again, and shook her head as if in denial. It was not to be considered. It is Ralph’s painting, she silently and determinedly insisted.

She picked up the still wet and discarded brush. In the right-hand corner she printed the letter “R.” Then the brush felt weighted in her hand, and something squeezed in her breast. She made the “R” into an “E” and finished the name: “E. L. E. 1904.” She carried it into the tiny bedroom off the kitchen, which she shared with her husband, and covered the painting with sheets of tissue paper and hid it away.

When Heinrich fearfully and guiltily returned half an hour later, he found the light burning in the empty kitchen. His wife, in their big white bed, was apparently asleep. She did not stir when he let himself cautiously down beside her. And he never knew that she had been weeping. It would have been incredible to him that a Von Brunner would weep at all.

It was after breakfast the next day that Edward Enger’s reeducation began remorselessly. He had not slept all night, grieving over his pet. He wrestled with a cold rage when he thought of little Ralph, a fury which continued to surge up in spite of his reasoning that Ralph was only a child, and careless, and had meant no harm. However, toward dawn the rage subsided into the exhaustion of common sense. There was that cat I accidentally hit with a baseball bat and killed, he told himself. It was like that with Ralph. The fool kid didn’t know what could happen to a little hen when it got loose.

As usual Edward appeared in the kitchen before anyone else except Maria, who was at the stove. She gave her son a sidelong glance of commiseration, but her voice was without emotion when she greeted him. What was done was done. Only the stupid bewailed what could no longer be helped. She placed a large plate of pancakes before Edward and poured a cup of coffee for him. The house was quiet, the sunlight still on walls and floor, and the breeze cool and fresh as it gushed through the small windows.

Ralph came bounding into the kitchen, laughing his usual boisterous laugh and capering. He began to shout at his mother, then saw Edward. He stopped at once, staring at his brother, and blinking, his red underlip moving in and out warily. Edward avoided looking at him, for the fury boiled in his throat and he felt nauseated. Ralph sidled toward his mother and said, “Where’s my picture, huh, Ma? My picture of that ole hen?”

“I put it away,” said Maria, severely, and tried to silence her youngest child with a twitching gesture of her white apron. “Never mind. Sit down and have your breakfast.”

Edward neither turned his head nor spoke. He slowly drank his coffee, warning himself wearily that Ralph was “only a kid, and kids don’t mean harm.” His averted profile, the sternness of it, and his silence aroused the excitable Ralph, for, like all young children, he could not bear to be ignored. There was that silly ole Ed, pretending not to see nobody, pretending to be real grown up! Stingy ole Ed, fooling around with that silly ole hen! Ralph’s black eyes began to glow and flicker with malice. He capered to the table, seized a spoon, and banged it down hard beside Edward’s relaxed hand.

“Yah!” he screamed. “Your little ole stoopid hen! Ran away and got caught by the cat! Funniest thing you ever saw! I laughed and laughed—”

“Ralph!” exclaimed Maria, and her pallid face flushed. Ralph wheeled on her with rising excitement.

“I laughed and laughed!” he shouted, and stamped his foot. “I saw that ole cat—”

“Ralph,” said Maria again, and advanced toward him. He backed away, bursting into laughter and evading his mother’s hand. Edward sat up in his chair, his pale lips falling apart.

“I saw that ole cat!” Ralph shrieked. “Licking her ole mouth for a Sunday chicken dinner. Real ole hungry cat. And I shooed that silly hen at her, and the cat grabbed it by the neck, and it squawked like crazy—!” He clapped his hands with delight and jumped high once or twice as if in an ecstasy.

Edward stood up very slowly. He said, and his voice was very quiet, “You let the cat get my hen? You meant to do it?”

“No, Edward, no!” said Maria. “It is not true. He is always making up the stories; he is only a child and likes excitement.”

“I did so mean to do it,” said Ralph, and stamped his foot furiously. “He wouldn’t give me a nickel Saturday, but he bought that ole hen some stuff from the feed store! Bet it cost more’n a nickel, too, and I said I’d fix him!” He glared at Edward, and his eyes were dancing with hatred, and Edward saw that hatred. And it stunned him like a blow over his heart.

Why should his brother hate him? What had he done to arouse hatred? It seemed terribly necessary for Edward to know that; in the intensity of his desire he even forgot his pet. “Wait, Ma,” he said to Maria, who was reaching for Ralph again. His hand was lifted with new authority toward his mother, and Maria let her own hand drop. He regarded Ralph fixedly. “You’re not lying,” he said. “I know that. But I want to know why you’d hate me enough to hurt me. I’m not going to hit you, Ralph. I just want to know.”

The little boy blinked at him, and a curious smooth blandness moved over his face. He began to giggle. “Sure, I hate you,” he said, cheerfully. “Most everybody does. D’you have to have a reason to hate somebody except they’re that person?”

“You see, he speaks foolishly—like a child,” said Maria, disturbed by Edward’s expression. She moved between him and Ralph, not to protect the latter but with a vague thought of protecting Edward himself from some ugly knowledge.

Edward shook his head. “No, Ma. He isn’t speaking foolishly. He isn’t even speaking like a kid. He talks—why,” and Edward was stunned again, “just like everybody in the world. And I never knew it before! I was too dumb to know what I’d been hearing all my life, everywhere. I just couldn’t believe people would hate for no reason at all, no reason at all! But now I know. It’s the way people are made.”

Maria was silent, and Ralph was silent and no longer grinning.

“I don’t think I’ll ever like people again,” said Edward, in a low voice as if speaking to himself. “Why, they make me sick at the stomach.” He thought, his head bent. “I can see it now. People hate and then they’ve got to make up a reason for their hating. And all the time I thought it was the other way around. A reason first and then hate, but it isn’t. If there’s—God—He must feel something like I feel now, about people.”

“It’s wrong to hate. You mustn’t hate Ralph,” said Maria.

Edward looked at her with wonder. “I don’t hate him. I just understand,” he said with painful explanation. “I just know the facts now.”

He turned and went out of the kitchen. Maria could see the top of his dark head passing below the windows. Then for the first time she raised her hand and brought it with cold and determined anger against Ralph’s cheek, and the boy staggered and fell into a chair. He began to bawl loudly and eyed his mother with fright as she stood over him.

“Just because of that ole hen, you hit me! Just because that ole hen got killed—!”

“It wasn’t only the hen you killed,” she said, without emotion, moved away, and sat down at the table.

CHAPTER III

“What is this that makes Eddie not speak or explain to me why he is so quiet and stern?” Heinrich asked his wife. He was bewildered, for he thought he guessed or knew the reason for Edward’s occasional sulks, as Sylvia called them.

“It is nothing. Or it is only the hen he lost,” said Maria. But she said to herself, My son has the Weltschmerz, the pain of the world. No one knew that she also suffered this pain in silence, this strange and paralyzing pain which afflicted the spirit and silenced its very voice so that it could not pray or have joy or contentment, but only a depthless anguish without sound. One did not speak of suffering, as she and Edward understood.

Heinrich thought that she spoke indifferently, and he felt some small indignation. He faltered, “It was no small thing to him, that hen.” He had contradicted his wife, and he was amazed at his courage, and then he wilted. These aristocrats could never understand an earthy soul who had only love to offer, and who lived for love and duty, and so appeared gross to the patrician.

The family was impatiently accustomed to Edward’s infrequent silences and withdrawals, which baffled all but Maria, though Heinrich invariably believed that he knew the causes. These withdrawals usually lasted only a week at the very most. But now it was early December and he was still remote. He worked harder than ever; he drove himself. He had even taken on jobs after the shop closed at night. He silently gave the money to his mother, who as silently accepted it. Once she thought, It is not possible for him to understand that I love him and that I know what he truly is. It is good that he does not know. He is all the hope we have; in his withdrawals he gathers strength. If he knew he had love also, he would weaken and we should be lost.

“You have been despondent for many weeks, Eddie,” said Heinrich one day when the shop was empty. “You must not brood. It is very unkind. The mother feels it. I have seen her watching you. There is a very strange look in her eyes such as I have never seen before.”

Edward wiped up some shreds of ham from the spotless counter. Under the brownness of his skin he had a sallowness, and he had lost weight. He did not answer his father. Heinrich saw his profile, sharpened now, fixed in suffering. “Do not sulk,” Heinrich implored in German. “It is not well for the young to sulk, to have grievances.”

Edward looked at him then and tried to smile. “I do not have grievances,” he said. He said in English, “Pa, stop worrying. We’re almost out of ham. I’ll have to go to the market myself tomorrow and pick up a few pieces.”

Heinrich was cheered. “It comes Christmas soon,” he said. He blinked imploringly at his son. “I am thinking of a dog for you, Eddie. You have always wanted a dog. A loving puppy, perhaps?”

“No,” said Edward. He turned to his father and saw the humble, blinking eyes, and he felt a squeezing of his heart. Poor Pa. He was an awful worry to his father. “You know that Ma wouldn’t stand a dog. We’ve talked about that before. Never mind. I’ve just been in the dumps. We need some more corned beef and salami. How’s the English tongue going?”

“We’ve sold it all,” Heinrich said enthusiastically. “All but four tins. Such a genius at selling are you, Eddie. I have ordered another case.”

“We’ve got to get some Christmas specials soon,” said Edward. He opened a catalogue. “Let’s see. French artichokes in vinegar and oil. Um. A case, perhaps. Listen to this! Pâté de foi gras. Stuffed anchovies. Caviar, English chutney, Chinese teas. English marmalade, Seville oranges, smoked kippers, English biscuits, Dutch cheeses, Roquefort, Camembert, Swiss chocolate. Look at the pictures, Pa! Never tasted them in my life; bet they’re wonderful.” His young face lighted up with pleasure. “They’ll make you think of the countries they came from. Look, here’s some Italian pepperone. You can order them all from that place in New York. Things no one here ever dreamed of.”

“You are not serious,” said Heinrich, appalled and retreating. “That is all very well for New York or even Albany, where the senators are and the governor. But not for this city, this Waterford. Who would buy such delicacies?”

“Everybody,” said Edward, with a large gesture. The darkness left the smoky pupils of his eyes, and they were radiant again. “Who says people in Waterford or anywhere else can’t appreciate good things to eat? Why do we have to have just staples all the time? We can educate people to luxuries. We’ll be a success!”

“A success we are already!” cried Heinrich, very frightened.

Edward leaned his elbows on a counter and soberly contemplated his father. Heinrich nervously smoothed down the little black rim of hair around his skull. He tried to avoid Edward’s stare.

“Look, Pa,” said Edward quietly. “What are we? A delicatessen. Some good Wisconsin cheeses. Some better ham. Some better corned beef. A service to the neighborhood, yes. When the grocery stores are closed. How much did we net last year? Two thousand dollars. You were very pleased, weren’t you? How much do we have in the bank? About six thousand dollars. And here the kids are growing up. How’re you going to give them what they want, the advantages they want and must have? Ma knows they’re geniuses, but she isn’t going to part with that six thousand dollars and I don’t blame her. We have a separate account for the education of the kids. Two thousand dollars. That’s going to send Dave to New York, isn’t it, and Sylvia, too, and take care of Gregory, who wants to study medieval literature in Europe, and Ralph, who has to study in Rome and London. Where’s the money coming from?”

“I toss and toss on the bed at night,” said Heinrich, almost in tears.

“I can’t make enough with my Sunday jobs, and my work here, and the other jobs I have, to get the money for them,” said Edward. “It’s about time we faced facts. We need a lot of money.” He pointed at the window. “‘Delicatessen’. Why can’t it be just ‘Enger’s’? Look, there’s a store on each side of us, empty. Renting for almost nothing. We can break down the walls between us and them. Expand. Sell things people can’t get in other places in town. Enger’s! You’ve got to do more than toss and toss on the bed at night, Pa. You’ve got to do things.”

“This America,” groaned Heinrich, wringing his hands. “It gives the young people strange thoughts, unnatural, foolish thoughts. It gives dreams. They are wrong.”

“It gives us opportunities,” said Edward. He bent over the catalogue again. “Pa, we’d better have a talk with Ma. She understands things. She’s very worried about the kids. They’re growing up, fast.”

“The mother will swoon,” said Heinrich, with gloomy positiveness. “It will anger her, your dreams and foolishness. I will stand beside you, while you talk with her, and plead that it is only your youth and then we shall forget it all.”

Edward smiled. “We’ll talk to Ma tonight,” he said. He pulled out a large glossy piece of cardboard from under the counter and began to letter on it, carefully, “ENGER’S WITH THE FIRST! EXOTIC IMPORTATIONS FOR CHRISTMAS, AS GIFTS OR FOR FAMILY ENJOYMENT! TASTE DELIGHTS BEYOND COMPARE! AFTER DECEMBER FIFTEENTH! WATERFORD DESERVES THE BEST FOR THE BEST PALATES!”

He set the card on a prominent place near the English tongue and stood back to admire it. Heinrich peered at it with horror. Edward, wetting a pencil between his lips, began to make out an incredible order on some blanks. “We’ll get these in the mails tomorrow, and I’m marking the orders ‘Rush.’”

“The prices!” exclaimed Heinrich, wildly. “Who will pay those prices? Have you considered our neighbors? Working people, poor people! People who must buy our quarters of butter, or only a pound of flour, or half a pound of coffee, or a quarter pound of tea. Or must go on the ticket and pay next wages. Or must buy but two slices of ham.”

“I’m after the carriage trade,” said Edward, easily, printing his orders. “They go to Albany once a month for these very things or send to New York. Why should they? Why shouldn’t we have the money?”

Heinrich sat down abruptly on his stool. His dark little eyes sparkled with real anger on his son. “And the carriage trade, the ladies and gentlemen, will come to this small shop, their horses shining, and the livery and with the coachmen? And the silver bells sounding, perhaps, on their sleighs? To this shop, this delicatessen?”

“Why not?” said Edward calmly. “We’ve just got to advertise.” He pulled a small pad of paper toward him, wet his pencil again. “Here’s the ad for the two Waterford papers: ‘Why send to New York or Albany for the imported delicacies you love? Enger’s has them!’ Now I’ll list what I’ve ordered. Um. Now, Pa, wait a minute. You confuse me, whimpering like that. ‘Enger’s quaint Old World Shop. Sussex and Bradford Streets. Both phones. Deliveries made if desired.’”

“Ach, Mein Gott!” shrieked Heinrich, rolling his head in his hands. “You will ruin me, you will have us on the street, in the snow. Eddie, this you shall not do!”

“I’ll make the deliveries myself, and when business gets better, we’ll hire a couple of kids, too,” said Edward, ignoring his father’s frenzied hysterics. He had gone through this many times before, but not, he admitted to himself, over such a stupendous idea as this.

Without haste he picked up one of the two telephones on the counter and called the owner of the shops on each side of the delicatessen while Heinrich, blinking with stupefaction and despair, could only sit in paralysis. “Mr. Enreich?” said Edward in a deep voice. “This is Edward Enger, your tenant. My father and I have decided to rent those two stores next door to us. They’ve been empty for nearly a year. We’re willing to meet a fair rent, better than you had before, if you can give us a promise that you’ll break down the walls between and throw all three stores together, completely finished, before December fifteenth. We’re expanding.”

Mr. Enreich, a middle-aged and wealthy, childless man who greatly admired Edward and who knew him well, and had often dreamed that Edward was his son, chuckled. “Up to the fine old tricks again, eh, Eddie? One of these days, Eddie, and I shall help you. Did I not tell you many times that it is you who have the Enger brains? Ach, but you would not listen. All those geniuses. Ja. But the genius is you, the American genius. Who is it that made the delicatessen? It was Eddie.”

Edward smiled. “Thanks, Mr. Enreich. But about those stores.”

“So it is the expanding, hein? Good. It is what I suggested to the father six months ago.” He relapsed into “low” German. “The father did not tell you? That is to be understood, yes. He was very frightened, he has the timid soul. Eddie, I will break down the walls for you. I will make you a good rent. I will have it ready for Christmas, two weeks before. That English tongue—it is very good. Save me two tins. You are expanding on the imported delicacies?” He chuckled again. “Good luck again to you, my genius.”

Edward thoughtfully replaced the receiver. “He said no, is it not so?” asked Heinrich, eagerly. “The Herr Manager of the coke mills and such said no? That is to be expected. Ach, you should not have trespassed on his office, at his desk!”

“The Herr Manager said yes,” Edward replied. “He’s very pleased. He likes—us. He thinks everything’s fine.”

Heinrich moaned. “The Herr Manager is a burgher. He has no soul. He knows nothing of music. He is not impressed that the mother is a Von. He scoffs at geniuses. But he was born in Prussia, of no noble family, and we know those Prussians! He wishes to ruin us!”

He bowed his head dramatically, “It is enough. When the mother knows that the Herr Manager, the Prussian brute, the Prussian burgher, the man with no soul, approves of this nonsense, the mother will set her foot down firmly and we shall have peace.”

Edward did not reply. He was pacing the small floor now, frowning, planning. Heinrich watched him, more affrighted than ever. Edward said, “We’ll have one side given over to the imported canned meats and the bulk meats. Over here, we’ll have the other delicacies, on a special round table draped with a lace cloth. Only a few tins and cans at a time. Then we must buy one of those new glass counter iceboxes, for the tinned fish and caviar and the paté. Blocks of ice, the tins tossed among them. They don’t need ice, but it gives a clean fresh look, and people like that. A row of electric lights above them. We’ve got to get rid of this gaslight. Four big electric globes from the ceiling.” His intense gray eyes were sparkling brilliantly behind their thick black lashes. “No more sawdust on the floor. Blocked linoleum, black and white. Like in the catalogue of the big New York stores. A display.”

“My son is mad, mad,” whispered Heinrich with genuine terror. “What is this that my son would do?”

“I think a thousand dollars would do it all,” said Edward meditatively.

Heinrich lifted his head, cheered. “The mother will refuse,” he said. “The mother is wise. Ach, here are some customers.”

At noon Edward went home. He knew his mother would be alone, the children at school, including fifteen-year-old David, who was in second-year high. Maria was polishing the already glistening floor of the tiny dark parlor, with its navy-blue velvet draperies, its shining hard tables, its poisonous green settees and repulsively carved red velvet chairs. Her wonderful hair was wrapped in a big handkerchief and a huge white apron covered her brown woolen dress. A white handkerchief, with lace edge, peeped from her sleeve as usual. She said coldly, “You have left the father in the shop? You did not have your meal there?”

“I have to talk to you, Mother,” said Edward. “It is a matter of the necessity and I must have your advice.”

“You are careless with your syntax,” said Maria, but she formally removed her kerchief and her apron, put them out of sight, and sat down with her natural stately dignity. On these occasions, when she talked alone with Edward on business matters or matters concerning the family, a curious rapport and understanding rose immediately between them, and they conversed as respectful and self-respecting equals, having esteem for each other’s point of view. Edward did not wonder at this; he merely accepted it. When other more personal occasions arose, concerning Edward’s life or his infrequent controversies with his brothers and sister, Maria treated him sternly or impatiently and filled him with sheepish rage or dread or a silent resentment.

It was Edward, of all the children, who had the best command of formal German, and this sometimes irritated Maria—though she alone, of all the family including Heinrich, did not underestimate Edward. The boy had earnestly studied his parents’ native language, more to please them than to acquire perfect facility in it, and this Maria knew also, though she never spoke of it. The other children considered German “foreign” and inferior, and only spoke it at home, and then not often.

Edward sat stiffly upright in a chair, facing his mother, while a December blizzard began to lash the little windows with their heavy blue velvet draperies. The room was cold; Maria conserved on fuel during the day. The panes of glass became moist, and crystals of ice crept along the lower edges. Edward was careful not to shudder. He told his mother of his plans and his conversation with Mr. Enreich.

“There will be no money for the educations unless we expand, and very quickly,” he concluded. “In two years David will be ready for his serious music studies. In three years Sylvia will need theatrical education. We have not come, of course, to Gregory and Ralph, who are younger. Is this small shop to pour out gold easily? Or shall it be shown the older children that they must work for their educations, if possible—as others do, I have heard—waiting on the tables in the universities or working outside their classroom hours?”

“That is not to be considered,” said Maria. “My children are not vagabonds.”

“Then we must have some courage,” said Edward. “We must risk the one thousand dollars. We shall not fail.”

Maria thoughtfully smoothed her handkerchief on one massive knee. She had known great poverty and humiliation in her life, as the daughter of a Herr Professor in a very small school in Munich. She had come to her more affluent relatives in Dorfinger almost penniless, even after three years of being a Fräulein to an English family. She knew the value of money, and understood only too well that if poverty is not a crime it is treated by the world as such. The thousand dollars Edward spoke about now was the harvest of two years of very hard work. She glanced up and saw his young eyes and their inflexible surety.

“The father is afraid,” she said, and smiled her cold and infrequent smile.

“The father,” said Edward very gently, “is always afraid. He is very kind and very innocent. He is also worried.”

Again Maria gave that significant smile. “It does no good to worry. Worry is a waste, unless it is accompanied by a plan. Then, when one carries out a plan, there is no time to worry.”

Edward sighed and smiled. He had won. “You, Mother, will speak to him about it? He must not know that I have gone behind his back.”

“Do I do that?” asked Maria haughtily. “Such a thing is ill bred. I shall speak to him tonight as if it is my own suggestion.” She paused. “You said that the Herr Manager Enreich hinted of assistance to you. Why did you not suggest that he assist the geniuses, as a patron?”

Edward stood up, trying not to scowl. “The Herr Manager is businessman and not interested in geniuses. I do not think he would understand about being a patron.”

Again Maria was thoughtful, scrutinizing her son. She said, “In America it is a genius to be a good businessman. I think you are that genius, Edward.”

She had never complimented him before, and Edward’s eyes brightened. He took a step toward his mother, involuntarily, but was interrupted by the loud and furious banging of the kitchen door. A boy shouted, “Ma, where are you, Ma!”

“David,” said Maria with consternation. “Why is he home? Is he ill?” She rose quickly just as David charged vehemently into the parlor. He was taken aback at seeing Edward, then dismissed him and turned to his mother.

“The teacher’s an idiot,” he said in English. “I suggested Mozart for the Christmas theme and the play. Sylvia’s directing the play and she wants Mozart. And the teacher doesn’t want Mozart! She wants the silly little American Christmas songs! I said no. And she said that she’d choose somebody else for the piano. If that wouldn’t make a fellow dippy and go out of his mind, I’d like to know what would!”

Edward was interested. He said, “Look, Dave, the kids like the songs they know for Christmas. What does it matter to you what you play for them?”

David swung on him passionately. “What would a fool, smelling of pickles and garlic, know of anything?” he demanded. “Shut up, will you?”

David was taller than Edward, who was himself unusually tall for his age. But David was as thin as a long stalk of grass and very dark and very elegant and temperamental. His cheap, neat clothing hung on his elongated body as if the suit he wore had cost over a hundred dollars rather than fifteen, and his shoes were polished to an almost impossible glitter. Everything about him seemed “stretched out,” as Edward had said, from his narrow and mobile face, dark to extreme sallowness, from his wide, thin mouth with its sensitive and tremulous corners, from his slender nose with its aquiline hint and flaring nostrils, to his spare but jutting chin almost coming to a point. His fine black hair rolled back from a high forehead and was never disturbed, no matter what his temper. He gave a tubercular impression, but he was extremely sturdy as were all the Enger children. All his movements were quick and vivid and co-ordinated.

“If your teacher won’t have Mozart, are you going to bow out of the Christmas business?” asked Edward, undisturbed by his brother’s gibe.

“No!” cried David. “I need audiences!”

“Then why don’t you do what she wants?” said Edward reasonably. “She’s got a right to choose and so do the kids.”

“Quiet,” said Maria with icy anger. “What do you know of these things, Edward? Is my son, the pianist, to be insulted this way?”

Edward shrugged. “I don’t see what else he can do,” he remarked. He picked up his cap and worn overcoat, which he had inherited from David, nodded to his mother, and turned to go. But he was almost knocked down by the wild charge of a young girl who burst into the parlor in a mood almost as furious as David’s.

“I won’t, I won’t!” she shrieked. “I will not direct a play about fuzzy lambs and Christmas carols and silly babies bouncing around in hay! Where’s David—?” She saw her oldest brother and threw herself dramatically into a chair. “I’m through with that school. I’m not going back, and if Dave’s got a brain in his head, he won’t either!”

“There’s a matter of law,” said Edward anxiously. “You’re only thirteen, Sylvia.”

“Shut up, boob!” howled Sylvia, and burst into excitable tears. She bent her head on her black cotton knees and wept noisily. David came to her, walking with carefully dignified steps, and put a narrow hand on her bobbing head. Sylvia, at thirteen, was not particularly prepossessing, being all spindly arms and legs like a dark spider, her fine black hair pulled back from a white and bony face in two long pigtails, her tilted black eyes starting from their sockets in an aghast expression. Her white shirtwaist and plaid skirt only emphasized her general gauntness, and the little red ribbons at the end of her plaits seemed pathetically incongruous.

“What do you know about an artist’s soul?” asked David. He gave Edward a devastating look, then turned to his mother. “You see how it is,” he added.

“I see how it is,” said Maria sternly. “But this is America. What can an artist do?”

He can stop being a damn fool, thought Edward, irreverently. Then he crushed down the thought. Who was he to judge, who was not a genius? He was ashamed of himself. He walked slowly and despondently into the little dim dining room with its big oval table which reflected back the stark and shifting light that drifted through the one window. The eight rigid chairs were lined up against a latticed wall all somber crimson roses and twisting green leaves. The sideboard, pushed into a corner, seemed too frail for Maria’s family silver of a big German tea set, and its high shelves bulged with Bavarian china. The rugless floor was no less polished than the silver, and Edward, as usual, slid on it and caught his hip against the table. It was deathly cold in the room, for it had no means of heat except from the kitchen, and the kitchen door was closed. Edward shivered, for all his thick, rough clothes, and absently rubbed his hip as he looked through the crimson-draped windows at the blank, clapboarded wall of the house next door. Darkness was falling, as the snow fell. Edward could hear Sylvia’s wailing and David’s perorations and Maria’s indignant voice behind him. He went into the kitchen, held his hands over the stove lids, and warmed them. He shook his head as if talking to himself. The door opened and Maria walked solidly into the kitchen. She frowned. “I thought you had returned to the shop,” she said. The rapport and understanding between mother and son had gone, as it always went when others of the family were in the house.

“Ma,” said Edward, hopelessly. “I’d send Dave and Sylvia back to school right now if I were you.” He looked at the alarm clock on its little shelf near the sink, “If they hurry up, they’ll only be about five minutes late.”

“Were you asked?” said Maria.

Again Edward shook his head. He pulled on his woolen mittens and went out into the increasing storm. He walked slowly, his head bent. About his feet the sandlike snow whirled in miniature cyclones, boiling almost to his knees and sloping from the somber sky. The stiff and empty trees screamed and lashed; the snow was so fine that little rivers of it ran between the cobblestones, twisting and turning. The houses huddled together; drifts were already gathering on wooden steps and on the edges of porches. Chimneys fumed timorously, and roofs blew with white clouds. Edward’s face burned and stung and turned red. He rubbed his ears as he walked, thinking. David had missed school too much since September. There was no law that compelled a young man to attend school after his fourteenth birthday, but still he ought to take advantage of the opportunity, thought Edward. David “despised” school. It was filled with numbskulls of boys and girls and idiots of teachers. Yet, Edward reflected with worry, David’s report cards were very poor, though his deportment was listed as above average. Sylvia’s cards were as bad, except for English, and the younger children’s cards bore the lowest marks. Only he, Edward, had made an excellent record in school.

Edward spoke aloud, smiling grimly. “I suppose that proves something or other.” The city was engulfed in silence, except for the storm. His hurrying feet made no sound on the rising snow. He blinked his lashes free from clusters of flakes, turned up the collar of his coat. He wondered if Margaret, in the P’s, was walking in the storm as he was walking, and if she was warm, and if she had enough to eat, and if she went to school. She was living on a farm with the Baumers near Albany. There was a law that would force the Baumers to send her to school, Edward consoled himself, aching with loneliness. But still, he was apprehensive. At fourteen, approaching fifteen, he had already seen enough of the world to know its cruelty and its deformed viciousness and its relentless hatred for the undefended.

Heinrich glanced with hurt significance at the clock when Edward entered the store after carefully stamping off the layer of snow on his shoes. “It has been forty-five minutes, Eddie,” he said. “You take but half an hour for a walk after you have had your lunch.”

“Sorry, Pa.” Edward hung up his clothing.

Heinrich relented. “It is the worry that made you walk long,” he said. “You must not worry.” He brightened. “I, too, have been thinking of our problem with the gifted children. And,” he paused meaningfully, “I have come to the conclusion. The children must have scholarships to the universities, to the theatrical and music schools!”

What, on their marks in school now? asked Edward himself, incredulous. He turned to his father, amazed at this innocence which could constantly conjure up impossible dreams in the face of reality. He said, as kindly as possible, and knowing it was a lie, “But, Pa. You know very well that scholarships are given only to those who cannot afford higher education or those who have no parents to support them.”

Heinrich was crestfallen. He looked about the shop with mingled pride and mournfulness. “Ach, I can understand that, though in Europe it does not matter about parents or money. Scholarships are given without such consideration. But in America—ach, they do not care about these things. Eddie, what are we to do?”

“Some way will be found,” said Edward. “Don’t worry, Pa.”

Ways had been found before, and Edward had found them. Heinrich was cheered. He shook an arch finger at his son. “I am not going to speak to the mother about the wild and strange ideas you suggested this morning, Eddie! That would make her very angry with you, and her anger is very cold and long, and it is your birthday on Christmas Day. We must not spoil the birthday. Fifteen, my son! A man!”

“It’s also Christ’s birthday, Pa,” said Edward, narrowing his eyes at his father. He paused, a wet cloth in his hand. Heinrich became a little pinker; he looked aside and rubbed an eyebrow. “Ach, yes,” he murmured. “It is so. It is a folk festival, as I have told you. I am not the completely ignorant man. All religions have celebrated that time, before the Christ was born. It was to return the sun from his southern journey. A celebration. So it was with the Chaldeans, and the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans. The Romans with their Saturnalia in late December. It is an old custom.”

“Yes?” said Edward, and he leaned his elbows on a counter and watched his father with a dark smile.

“It is not that I am not a Christian,” said Heinrich. “But what is a Christian? He is an altruist. He admits, if he is a wise man, that the supernatural, if there is a supernatural, does not concern him. He must be concerned with man only, and the welfare of man in the—how is it said?—the concrete. He must be concerned with political ideas, the progressive, the welfare, the good working conditions.”

Edward’s smile became even darker. “Isn’t that putting the cart before the horse? First, shouldn’t a man be a good and practicing Christian? And then wouldn’t good ideas come of it as a result?”

Heinrich regarded him with tender pity. “Ach, you are almost a man but you do not understand. Christianity is old, but still we have the wars, and the sweatshops and the oppression of labor, and the big profits for a few, and governments, like this America who do not understand that the means of production should belong to the State.”

“Should they?” asked Edward. “Would you like the government to grab this shop and tell you what to buy and sell and how much money you could make? Eh, Pa?”

“This is different,” said Heinrich, stiffly. “I am only a small shopkeeper.”

Edward chuckled and shook his head. You’ve sure helled up religion for the whole family, Pa, he thought. You and your Socialism. Sure, you go to church and you make the others go. But that’s because you’re a proper father of the family. And then you tell us that Christianity’s only an “abstract”! That is, when Ma’s out of earshot.

The little fragrant shop was warm; the windows dripped with moisture. Edward shoveled more coal into the red maw of the hot little iron stove in the rear. “We won’t have many customers today,” he said. “With this storm. How about shutting up early, at half past five?”

“No,” said Heinrich, reproachfully. “We have established that we are open until seven every day but Wednesday and Saturday, and on those days we are open to eleven or later. We cannot break the rule.”

That’s right, thought Edward, cynically. Socialism and short hours don’t apply to me, or good working conditions.

The storm increased in its savage white intensity. The walls of snow shut off any view of the street, which was deserted. Edward, while his father was not watching, slipped his orders into an envelope, filched a stamp, and put the envelope in his pocket. Heinrich, humming absently to himself, was standing at the washbowl in the little closet, carefully scrubbing his celluloid collar under the running water. He did this, fastidiously, twice a day. He wiped off the collar, put it on again, secured it with a stud to his striped shirt, and neatly adjusted his black bowtie. He combed his fringe of black hair. Then he modestly closed the toilet door. I feel like a dog, thought Edward. Going behind his back. But I’ve had to do that for a long time. Poor Pa.

Sometimes one or two of the children stopped at the shop on the way home from school to fill their mother’s orders. It was half past three when David, Sylvia, and Gregory stamped in, groaning with cold. “Outside!” shouted Edward. “Shake off that snow and wipe your feet! I’ve just cleaned up the floor.”

“Honest?” said Sylvia, scornfully, taking off her red tam-o’-shanter and shaking the snow from it.

“Old Garlic and Pickles,” said Gregory, in his light, snickering voice. “What do you do, anyways, when you’re not washing floors?” He deliberately removed his snow-covered coat and swished it through the air. Hard pellets dropped on everything. Edward’s face darkened. David merely stood and watched, smiling slightly. One of these days, Edward thought, I’ll beat hell out of them. But Heinrich was coming out of the closet, beaming with love. He spoke to the children with delight, and in German. “Ach, it is the little ones, like sunlight! I have the new candy.” He pushed his hand under a counter and fished out three suckers and extended them. “I don’t like peppermint,” said Sylvia, scowling. “You know that, Pa. And talk English. Haven’t you got cherry?”

“We all like cherry,” said Gregory. “Give me a ham sandwich,” said David, leaning his elbow nonchalantly on the counter and staring at his brother. Edward saw this stare and frowned again. This was something new David had acquired, this thoughtful and unreadable contemplation of Edward, this peculiar calculation.

Do they hate me, as Ralph hates me, and for the same reason? Edward asked himself. Or for the same no-reason? And why? What’ve I done to them except work for them? Could that be the reason after all? A hard thrill of vengefulness suddenly ran through his heart, and he was appalled at himself, and then, a moment later, he was not appalled at all. A fellow had the right to get mad when all that he did was just snatched and no thanks, and just expected! I’m flesh and blood, too, aren’t I? What’s that damn Dave doing anyway, just staring at me like I was a specimen or something?

David said to him, as Edward roughly thrust the sandwich toward his elbow, “You know, this family has about as much mystery as this ham and bread. Except you, Ed.”

“Me? Mystery?” Edward scowled at him. “What’s mysterious about having to work every day that God sends, and never having any money of your own, and washing floors and keeping shop and minding the books?”

David smiled his slight smilei again and thoughtfully bit into the sandwich. “I wonder what you think,” he murmured. “What?” demanded Edward, not catching the words. But David only shook his head, and he did not smile.

Sylvia and Gregory’s eyes roved over the candies laid out in a glass case. “I want some of those licorice shoestrings,” Gregory said, with that chronic whine in his voice. “And I want two of those pink wax frying pans with the goo in it.” “And I want three of those chocolate bottles,” said Sylvia, arrogantly.

“You know Ma doesn’t want you to eat candy before dinner,” said Edward. But Heinrich was already eagerly obeying his children. They snatched the little striped bags as though starving. They filled their mouths and their eyes mocked their brother.

Gregory was a true Enger. At eleven, he had an extraordinary resemblance to Edward, and it was perhaps this resented fact which impelled him to imitate David. He was newly striving for that well-bred appearance, but he did not have David’s patrician face. He had Edward’s smoky-gray eyes, but without their steadfastness. His own were excitable and volatile and too acutely alert. Moreover, his expression was all knowing, all smug, all wise, and this invariably irritated Edward. What did a kid of eleven know about the world anyway, that he should look at it so distrustfully? Sure, he wrote wonderful stories, Edward supposed. At least so said his teachers, and his parents. He was intelligent, but beyond the subjects of English and history his school marks were deplorable. His favorite subjects were easy for him; where work was necessary he avoided it.

Gregory, sucking on his candy, began to inspect the pickles with a critical eye. “Why don’t you get more sour ones?” he asked discontentedly.

“Because we have more calls for dill and sweet,” said Edward.

Sylvia slapped her mother’s list before Edward. “Make it fast,” she said. “We’ve got to skedaddle. Can’t wait all day. The storm’s getting bad. Hurry up.”

“And what did my children do in their classes today?” asked Heinrich with fatuous adoration. “Do?” asked Slyvia in her sharp voice. “Why, what we always do in the dumb school. I want three white eggs, not those old browns,” she said to Edward. She closely watched her brother as he silently filled the order. She began to tap her narrow foot and hum under her breath. Her black eyes became keener, and there was an uncomfortable line of color under them. Then she tossed her head as if throwing off a disagreeable thought. Oh, what did it matter about old Ed, anyway? Why should a person feel funny this way, sometimes, about him? What was he made for, except to work? She wished she’d stop having these thoughts, which came often lately.

She said crossly, “I want those Norwegian sardines, not the American.”

“Dainty appetite, haven’t you?” asked Edward. “The Norwegian are too expensive. You’ll take the American or nothing.”

“If one has the dainty appetite, it should be encouraged. It is discriminating,” said Heinrich reproachfully. He smiled tenderly at his daughter, who did not smile in return, and dropped a tin of the expensive sardines into the big brown bag for her.

“Never mind! I don’t want them if he doesn’t want me to have them!” cried Sylvia, and was angrily amazed at herself. She snatched out the tin and almost threw it at Edward. “Eat them yourself, you greedy thing!”

“I’ll do that,” said Edward. “I haven’t tasted them yet.” But he put the tin back on its shelf.

“Greedy thing,” repeated Gregory. “Hey, I need a dime. Give me a dime, Ed. Your pockets’re always jingling. It won’t kill you.” He extended his slender palm imperiously.

Edward’s first impulse was to slap down that hand. And then he saw his father’s anxious and imploring expression. “All right, all right,” he said wearily and put his hand in his trouser pocket. Fifty cents there. He’d be able to put only forty cents on his bicycle tomorrow. He gave Gregory a shining silver dime, and Gregory gloated over it as if he had accomplished something triumphant. “And now go on home, all of you,” said Edward, shortly, controlling his temper. He was rarely angry as others were angry. His anger took the form of a dark and cold resentment, which built up steadily over days and weeks.

“How about a dime for me, too?” asked Sylvia. “I want to buy a new hair ribbon.”

“What is a dime?” murmured Heinrich, pleadingly.

“Yes,” said Edward, with an inward thrust of that cold rage. “What is a dime? Give Sylvia a dime, Pa.”

Never before had he embroiled his father in small arguments, but now there was a hard aching behind his eyes, and a pain under his breastbone. Heinrich, in bewilderment, began to protest, his hand on the till. And then he saw his son’s face, the wide cheekbones shining whitely under the sallow skin, the gray eyes fixed on him steadily. And he shrank. No one saw David’s watching face, or the delicate bunching of flesh between his eyes, as he regarded his brother.

Heinrich swallowed. “Dear children,” he implored. “A dime is a large sum of money. It is a profit on four pounds of tea, or two pounds of butter. It is hard work. As Eddie says, you must go home. See how the storm is. It is not good for children to be walking in it. There is the pneumonia.”

“Why should Greg get a dime and not me?” said Sylvia, and held out her own palm smartly. But this time it was directed at Heinrich, whose distress was growing.

David said languidly, “Why should Ed give two dimes? It’s up to you now, Pa.”

Edward was startled at this sudden championing, and uneasy and newly resentful. Dave was up to something. He and Sylvia had no right to badger their father and confuse him. A dime was a dime to Heinrich; it was a symbol of his work. So he raised his voice harshly, “Go on, now. Get out, all of you. If you don’t, I’ll throw you out.”

It was very seldom that he spoke with such mature authority, and his brothers and sister looked at him with amazement. Then David smiled to himself and nodded imperceptibly. But Sylvia, in umbrage, saw Edward’s clenched fists on the counter, and she suddenly decided that a dime was not worth the indignity of a blow.

“Aw, come on,” said Gregory. “Who wants a silly old dime, anyway?” He clutched his own tightly.

“Let’s go,” said David, and lifted his elbow from the counter, and shrugged his shoulders under his cheap coat so that it fell into elegant lines. He gave Sylvia an affectionate push, and handed her her red wool hat, which she adjusted while she glared at Edward. Then the three picked up the parcels and marched out of the shop in silence. “God be with you, my children,” Heinrich called after them, but they did not turn their heads. Gregory slammed the door and the bell tinkled violently. Heinrich sat down on his stool and looked before him with melancholy. Without speaking, Edward cleared up the mess his brothers and sister had left behind them. He washed and wiped the counter. He took a broom and swept up the wet and dirty sawdust. Heinrich, after a while, began to watch him.

“Eddie,” he said at last, and in a weak voice.

“Yes, Pa,” replied Edward, bending to sweep the sawdust into a pan.

“I am not well, Eddie. I am hurt by discordant voices and quarrels.”

Edward threw the fragments of bread and ham, and the dirty sawdust, into a galvanized pan and replaced the cover. There was a throbbing in his chest, a painful throbbing. When he had been twelve years old, he had had what Heinrich had called “the growing pains.” All his joints had been swollen and painful for a short time. Since then Edward had suffered these occasional throbbings in his chest, especially when he was angered or overworked or tired. Sometimes he could not sleep. It was like a knife in his chest.

“It is my heart,” said Heinrich, with a tentative and wounded reach for conciliation. There were times, these days, when Edward frightened him, with his strange new manner and the strange new look in his eyes. When had all this begun? It was sometime in the past—sometime in the summer.… Was it still that foolish hen?

“Sure, Pa,” said Edward. “Never mind. You mustn’t pay too much attention to the kids. I’m not mad. Honestly.”

Heinrich sighed with relief. “There are times when you are truly understanding, my son. One must be particularly understanding of the artistic temperament.”

“Sure,” repeated Edward. He was very tired.

“One cannot sacrifice too much for it,” Heinrich said, urgently. “The geniuses in Europe, they are honored, treated tenderly, served. It is understood that they serve man.”

“And not God?” Edward could not help himself. He stood up and looked at his father.

“Who is an abstract,” murmured Heinrich. “It is a word for good and service to the world.”

The lousy, damn world, thought Edward with unusual bitterness. He was taken aback by the thought, which was so new to him. What was the world but an aggregation of self-seeking and murderous sharkmouths? It didn’t deserve the prophets who had died for it in blood and torture; it didn’t deserve the heroic ones who had fought for it. It deserved neither liberty nor love, for it had no constant loyalties and no devotions. Edward did not believe that Christ was an abstract. And He had perished on a cross so that the world might live. For what? For what? thought Edward, with devoted anger. He remembered the history books he had concealed in his room at home. They were a long and dreadful tale of man’s inhumanity, of man’s hatred and malice, of man’s cruelty and lawlessness, of man’s rejection of all that was noble in living. The heroes stood out like a flash of light on the black pages. But at the end the heroes were always defeated. The lights were always extinguished.

Now Pa is a good man, Edward’s thoughts ran on. But his “abstracts” and his belief in man as a sort of super being had not done his children good service, in spite of his wife’s cold but steadfast faith. They had no heroic and religious values.

The storm bellowed at the door. The windows dripped. The day darkened. The globes of gas hissed from the ceiling. A lamplighter darted past the store, an old man with no topcoat, his battered hat layered with snow. Edward could dimly see him, with his lighted stick, turning on the street lamps. “Look, Pa,” he said. “It’s after four. Almost half past and the storm is getting worse. Why don’t you go home now? I’ll manage until seven. We won’t have many customers, anyway.”

“Eddie, you are sometimes very thoughtful,” Heinrich said with gratitude. Something had depressed him, had disheartened him. He peered at his son and moistened his lips. “I will go, Eddie, if it will please you.” He spoke as if granting a favor to an importunate person, in a surrendering tone.

“It’ll please me all right,” said Edward. “I won’t have to worry about you.”

He helped his father on with his coat. He wrapped his father’s woolen scarf about his short throat. He buttoned his father’s coat, bending his knees to do so. He put his father’s cap on the round bald head, and found his father’s gloves and rubbers. He felt he was assisting a child. Impulsively then, he bent and kissed his father’s cheek, which was still too pale. Tears came into Heinrich’s eyes, easy tears. “My heart,” he complained, humbly. “It is always my heart.”

Edward held the door open for him. The throbbing was really painful now, in his chest. “Good night, Pa,” he said, gently. “I’ll be home around eight after I’ve cleaned up a little. Tell Ma to leave something out for me. I can help myself.”

He watched his father plunge into the storm, a small rotund figure. Poor Pa. Edward closed the door, looked about the warm and silent shop, so brightly lighted, so good-smelling. It was wonderful to be alone, sometimes. He began to sing softly to himself. Then, without his volition, his voice soared out, a rich baritone which shook the walls and the shelves, like a triumphant paean.

“Silent Night, Holy Night!

All is calm, all is bright!

Round yon Virgin …”

The storm swirled around the shop. There was thunder at the windows. Edward’s spirits rose exultantly as he sang. The day of the Lord’s birth was also the day of his, Edward’s, birth. His Germanic heart found some mysterious message in that. He wished he knew more about Christ and His coming. There was the Bible at home, of course, but when he arrived at night the parlor was firmly closed, and icy.

Surprisingly, considering the storm, there were twelve customers in the next hour, and Edward waited on them briskly. He sold the rest of the tongue. All the customers were excited by his placard announcing the treats for Christmas. The till opened and shut with a heartwarming frequency, and the bills and silver mounted. The customers were fond of Edward. They told him their troubles and their difficulties as if he were a hoary man of much wisdom. He listened sympathetically. He knew them intimately, and was really concerned with them. He managed, deftly however, to increase their original orders. The slicer whirled, the bread diminished, the sardines dropped satisfactorily, the salami and baloney almost cut themselves to the butts. The pickles dwindled in the barrels. The women, grateful for the warmth after the cold outside, lingered, examined, recklessly bought more. The coffee mill ground on and on and filled the hot little shop with the most entrancing odors. When a customer bought more than a dollar’s worth, her child was rewarded with a sucker. The customers left the shop reluctantly, the women wrapping their wet shawls over their heads, the children sucking joyously. Everybody left messages for Heinrich.

And then they were gone, and Edward restored neatness. His father would be pleased. He was alone again, and again began to sing. The doorbell tinkled and a very squat, very stout man, in a black broadcloth coat with a fur collar, entered, his glasses immediately steaming. He took off his excellent derby hat and shook it, and stamped his feet, which were protected by elegant pearly spats.

“Mr. Enreich!” said Edward. Mr. Enreich frequently patronized his tenants, but always through his coachman. He rarely came himself. Then Edward saw the fine carriage outside, with the coachman on the high seat. Mr. Enreich smiled at Edward and showed a number of gold teeth between his pink lips. His tiny fat nose wrinkled and his shrewd greenish eyes looked on Edward with affection.

“I thought we’d better have a talk between ourselves,” he said. “Just you and me, Eddie. By the way, I saw your father stumbling through the snow and drove him home. That’s why I knew he wouldn’t be here.”

Edward smiled widely at him. “Now that’s awfully good of you, Mr. Enreich,” he said. “I worry about Pa and his heart.”

“Um,” said the older man. He removed a fur-lined glove and helped himself to a rosy slice of ham. “Let me make you a sandwich,” said Edward, impulsively. “And I’ve got some root beer on ice.” He never saw Mr. Enreich without pleasure. He looked at the gentleman warmly. Mr. Enreich had a square head with a stiff crop of red hair standing up on it like a bristling fence. Edward wished there were a chair for such a customer, and he pushed out his father’s stool to the other side of the counter. “Such ham,” said Mr. Enreich. “Yes, a sandwich, but not the root beer! Mein Gott, not the soft beer!” He heaved his fat haunches on the stool and wiped his glasses. He looked at the close walls of the shop and nodded.

“I can make you some coffee,” said Edward. “We’ve got a gas hot plate back there and a pot and some cups. Pa likes to drink his coffee several times during the day.”

“With his heart, of course,” said Mr. Enreich. “Make me some coffee, Eddie.” His English was gutteral but sure and often idiomatic.

Edward turned up the gas on the hot plate, rinsed out the granite coffee pot, and brought out the best coffee. He’ll probably buy at least five dollars’ worth, he thought contentedly. Pa might deprecate Mr. Enreich as a Prussian and not an elegant Bavarian, but Mr. Enreich invariably bought large quantities of foods and was not to be underestimated. Besides, the Herr Manager was a rich man and should be cultivated. He did not patronize Edward and this was a wonder to the boy. He treats me like a man, Edward said to himself, setting down two cups and spoons and sugar and cream. The screaming white storm outside, the night, the lights, and the clouded windows inside filled the boy with contentment and peace. And now the shop was permeated with the fragrance of coffee. Edward made a sandwich for Mr. Enreich and one for himself. During all this neither spoke or found reason for speaking.

Mr. Enreich, waiting, lit a fine Havana and puffed it. He had removed his fur-lined coat and had thrown it nonchalantly on a pile of cartons, and had crowned it with his derby and gloves. His black broadcloth suit was as rich as silk, and his stiff white collar gleamed about his huge red neck. A monstrous black pearl glimmered on his thin blue tie, and a heavy gold chain, swinging with seals and other impedimenta, shone on his paunch. He gave the impression of enormous strength and physical vitality, at which Edward marveled, considering that Mr. Enreich must have been at least forty-eight, a precariously elderly age in Edward’s youthful opinion.

Edward poured the coffee. Mr. Enreich set big gold teeth into a sandwich, nodded his head blissfully, drank deep of the liquid, which he had generously diluted with yellow cream and sweetened with four teaspoons of sugar. His glasses steamed again with delight. “Ach,” he said. “I say it now and will say it again, there is nothing like simple food and good fresh coffee off the fire. Another sandwich, Eddie. This time the mustard I will try.” His ruddy cheeks bulged.

Edward sat on the edge of the counter, and the two ate with contentment and drank another cup of coffee. Then, replete, Mr. George Enreich wiped his hands fastidiously on a big square of fine linen faintly perfumed with lemon verbena. “We shall now get down to business, Eddie, and you will tell me all your plans.”

He listened intently as Edward spoke with quiet enthusiasm, and occasionally he nodded and turned to look when Edward pointed to the spots where the new counters would stand. He read the placard Edward had printed, and smiled. “It is the advertisement that pays,” he said. “That is what they say in this country, and I have proved it. It is the better mousetrap, it is said. But no, it is the better advertising. My coke is not better, not different, from other cokes. How can cokes be different? Yet in the past four years I have sold four times what my competitors in Waterford have sold. That is advertising, in the streetcars, in the newspapers. So it goes with all things. This writer, this Harold Bell Wright. Does he compare with the great writers? But no. Yet the great writers from Europe, even from America, they starve in the attics. Mr. Wright grows rich. It is the public? No, it is his publisher who knows the cunning words, the big praise, the shout that Mr. Wright is the mighty genius.”

The word made Edward somewhat uneasy, and Mr. Enreich, who never missed anything, chuckled. “I have said you are the business genius, with the advertising, the new ideas, the knowing what the people want, the ability of the people to deceive themselves.” He put up his short, broad hand, which sprouted red hairs. “You will say you have a good clean shop, and that I admit. But you, my boy, have made your customers believe they can buy things here they can buy nowhere else. That is not lying! That is being a salesman, the subtle thing.”

He took out a gold toothpick and cleaned his teeth meditatively, his green eyes, like full marble agates, fixed on Eddie. He had a deep and purring voice, not in the least “refined” or “genteel.” “Eddie, I have said I will break down the walls and rent you the two stores. I will finish it twelve or fifteen days before Christmas. I have already called the workmen. They will begin tomorrow. How much are you going to invest in the expanding, hein?”

“I’m not investing, Pa is,” said Edward, a little uncomfortable.

Again Mr. Enreich chuckled. “Does he know?” he asked. “Ach, I thought not. But invest he will. Eddie, I will make you the proposition. Ten per cent of your increased sales when the shops are thrown together. Ten per cent gross.”

Edward frowned. He did not know whether it was a good offer or not. He said, “Mr. Enreich, I think rent would be better.”

“No.” Mr. Enreich slapped his hand on the counter. “I take the gamble. Maybe more than rent, maybe less. I am the businessman.”

“For how many years?” asked Edward, cautiously.

“Why, forever,” Mr. Enreich replied genially. “Unless you close up the shop. No leases; we gamble together. Yes?”

Edward reflected. He forgot he was not yet fifteen; he forgot that this was his father’s shop, not his. He folded his arms and stared into space. “All right,” he said. “We’ll make a contract, Mr. Enreich.”

“I have it already,” said Mr. Enreich, and drew out the papers from an inner pocket. “With the new fountain pen, the wonder, that holds all the ink so no one stands back and says, ‘I will sign it tonight, or tomorrow, at home, at the office, where I have the pen and ink.’ Eddie, when the customer is there is the time for the signature. Tomorrow never comes.”

“But my father is the one to sign,” said Edward, coming to himself. “I only work for him, for five dollars a week. And I won’t be fifteen until Christmas Day.”

“Sign, Eddie. Your signature is as good as gold to me. The father? Who writes and sends out the orders to New York and keeps the books? You. Yet under law, you have no right to do so. But you do it.”

“All right,” said Edward, and neatly wrote his signature below the few lines of agreement. His writing was small and firm and compact. Mr. Enreich nodded to himself as he watched. “I hope it stands up,” said Eddie.

“It will,” replied Mr. Enreich, cheerfully. Eddie was holding the gold pen in his hand. It was engraved with the letters G E. It felt very good in Edward’s big fingers. “You like it, hein? Well, Eddie, you will have a pen someday like this for yourself. You will not stay with the delicatessen all your life. No, no, I know men. You will be a rich man.”

“I hope so,” said Edward, returning the pen reluctantly. “I mean, I’ve got to be. All the kids, and Pa’s getting old. He’ll soon be thirty-five.” He colored when Mr. Enreich roared with laughter. Then Mr. Enreich became serious. He rested his elbows on the counter and studied Edward intently.

“You must tell me, Eddie. I am curious. How is it that you got into this, this belief in the geniuses, this belief that you must serve them? You are not a fool; you have the intelligence. They call you the fool, but you know they are wrong. So. What is it?”

“I’m not gifted,” Edward replied. “They are. My parents say so, and they know. The other kids knew from the beginning what they wanted. They showed their talents; they never had any doubts. That is the way with genius, my mother says, and she knew many geniuses in Munich. I didn’t have any talents.”

“So,” said Mr. Enreich, sardonically. “That is a matter of opinion.”

Again he studied Edward’s square, dark face with the resolute gray eyes, the good chin and short, sturdy nose. It is the son I should have had, had not my wife died, he thought. We shall see. “So,” he said, “you will give your life to your brothers and sister, your life that is not yours to give but which God gave you. You have not told me why. You have said only words.”

Edward considered, his color brightening. He bit his lip. Then he spoke quickly and impulsively. “It’s my father. He must not be—be—well, he must have his beliefs. It would just about kill him if they weren’t so. You see, Mr. Enreich? And maybe he’s right. I’ll do all I can, just for him, I kind of—kind of—”

Mr. Enreich smiled at him gently.

“Maybe he’s right,” Edward insisted. “He’s got to be right! The kids have talents. You should hear Dave play the piano, and Sylvia got a prize last year for the Christmas play, and she was only twelve then. And there’s Greg, he writes wonderful stories, everybody says so, and Ralph paints. They’ve got his paintings hanging all over the classroom. He got a prize, too. Nobody ever called me bright, except a couple of teachers, because I was good at mathematics—and things.”

Mr. Enreich still smiled at him gently.

Edward burst out, “They are geniuses! It’s a dream, for me. I’ll make the dreams come true.”

Mr. Enreich no longer smiled. He sighed. He said, “I want a lot of delicacies, Eddie. Get out the big bag and I’ll call Ellis in to take it to the carriage.”

He walked about the shop, puffing on his cigar, Edward following him alertly. Five dollars, six dollars, seven dollars! The bag bulged to the very top. Edward was elated. The coachman came in and carried the bag to the carriage, and Mr. Enreich put on his hat and coat and gloves, slowly and carefully. Then he went to the door. He turned and looked at Edward, his hand on the handle.

“It was Shakespeare who said something, in the Hamlet. The soliloquy. It is something for you to remember, Eddie. ‘… and all the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes …’”

He closed the door silently behind him. Edward stood still a long time, frowning, trying to understand. Then he shrugged. He would have to hurry, to close the shop by seven.

The snow was very deep now. Its drifts lay against the windows.

CHAPTER IV

Mr. George Enreich was one of the richest men in Waterford, and he might have been considered rich even in New York, as well as in a small city of some quarter of a million souls. Heinrich, who had read much of what he called, with mingled awe and envy (being a Socialist), “the robber barons,” had decided that Mr. Enreich was not to be numbered in that esoteric company. He did not resent Mr. Enreich much, for after all, the most dedicated of Socialists excluded the rich men of their acquaintance from an onerous company of faceless men with silk hats, diamonds on their fingers and in their ties, and with big stables full of blooded horses and magnificent carriages. The “robber barons” had mysterious and evil associations with something called Wall Street, and, as Heinrich said, he had never, heard that Mr. Enreich was committed to the inhabitants of the Street who “ground the faces of the poor.”

Yet Mr. Enreich was, and in his own genial and hard-handed way, a “robber baron” and entrepreneur. Over the years it had become his custom to enter a sound company in Waterford as a manager, and then, by manipulation, to become at least one of the directors of the board if not a vice-president. He was “interested” not only in the Walz Coke and Coal Company but in Waterford’s lumber mill, in a number of small and flourishing factories, in the Everingham Iron Works, in the one steel mill, and in a chemical plant. Many people in those companies hated him; they had forgotten that he had entered their industries as a manager or a superintendent and then had put them on their almost bankrupt feet, by his acumen, his sleepless shrewd tactics, and his money. He had done well. He had arrived in America as a clean but penniless immigrant when he had been eighteen. His father had been a poor baker and Maria Enger had imperiously delegated George to a humble place outside the pale of aristocracy. George Enreich did not know this. He had never met Maria Enger, which was fortunate.

He was outside a number of pales, for he was unfamous for his predilection for “loose women,” which meant, in Waterford, any lady of frivolous temperament or high fashion no matter whether married or single. Once he had been seen in the one good restaurant in the town in the company of a woman who smoked! To add to all this, he was rough, even brutal at times, contemptuous of almost everybody, and lived as he wished. When he gave parties, he rarely invited the “society” of Waterford. He preferred politicians from Albany, New York, and Washington, many of whom he regrettably influenced and bought. He thought it a very comfortable arrangement; politicians were not easy to buy in proper England and in stern Germany, and this often inhibited men with ideas. “Nothing like money to make a man zealous in the legislature,” he would say without shame. “Buy a man and your table will be full, and a lot of rich crumbs will inevitably fall to those under the table, and who can quarrel with that?” It was rumored with good foundation that he became boisterously drunk at his own parties. He paid his servants excellent wages, which did not prevent them from retailing vivid stories of what went on in his mansion. In a way, it added a number of cubits to their humble stature. It was not every day that a man or woman worked in a house where there were lots of “goings-on,” all scandalous.

George Enreich did not know that he had become a hero to the Engers, in the three weeks before Christmas, and that even Maria had condescended to remark that he may not have been so bad as reported and that in America, unfortunately, a man’s origins were not held against him. On no substance at all she had conjectured that it was very possible that somewhere in George’s remote past there may have been some noble blood. Her family solemnly nodded their heads in agreement—all but Edward, who secretly found this amusing.

Edward’s part in the “generosity” and the strange contract with Mr. Enreich passed notice. Maria it was who had “talked” with her husband about the expansion, and after a few such talks the whole family, except Edward, agreed that the mother had formulated the exciting new plan. Heinrich would even say to Edward, with trembling enthusiasm, “Is not the mother herself a genius? Alone in the house, she conceived this magnificence, at the dusting and over the stove and during the mending. There are those who believe that women are not entitled to the vote in this country and contend they are inferior creatures. This is not believed by the Socialists. How I wish my old friends in Germany could know the mother!”

In the odd way of humanity he had totally forgotten that it was Edward who had proposed the expansion, for he never knew of Edward’s talk with Maria. Edward alone worried about that ten per cent on the gross profits resulting from the expansion. Edward was no longer trustful of people, for all his pity for them; in fact, his pity rose out of his sad mistrust. He conservatively figured profits later, at odd moments, and sometimes the ten per cent appalled him, and sometimes he thought George’s proposition exceedingly ungenerous. Still, he would console himself, if we have big profits, the ten per cent will not hurt us. We won’t even miss it. It never occurred to him that George Enreich might have more than a casual interest in him. He was not the kind who attracted notice from the powerful and the wealthy. Only the geniuses could do that.

There were times when he smarted, during his family’s superior and patronizing eulogies of Mr. Enreich. They just took my contract I signed and put it in the tin box with the other papers and never look at my signature! How do they think the contract happened, anyway?

Nevertheless, he had, long moments of inner excitement and happiness. The walls were already torn down between the three little shops and he and his father had to wear coats and mittens to wait on the customers, for the small iron stove could not heat the gaping holes on each side. After the work was finished, there would be one big stove, adequate for heating the expanded shop. Then, to everyone’s awe, Mr. Enreich grandly had radiators installed, and a marvelous central heating system in the dank basement. Heinrich had qualms about this. The monstrous furnace would devour coal. “Not much more than the big stove, Pa,” Edward said. “Besides, Mr. Enreich wouldn’t do this unless he knew we’re going to be rich!” Heinrich, moistening his lips and blinking thoughtfully, agreed that Edward was right. “Besides,” he said largely, “it will give the prestige, the newness. It is not every shop which has a furnace.” He even forgave Mr. Enreich for preferring Theodore Roosevelt to La Follette, “though Roosevelt is not all my man,” George would say gloomily. “The Populists, Mein Gott!”

The small windows were removed and suddenly there was one big plate window and children and men and women often gathered to stare at its blaze of overwhelming crystal. And then, across it, in giant silvery letters which sparkled, “ENGER’S”. During lax moments both Edward and his father would step outside to look in speechless pride.

Big squares of black-and-white linoleum covered the old boards, gleaming like marble. The counters were beginning to arrive, and the dozens of exotic cartons of delicacies from New York. Edward inserted expensive advertisements in the local papers, designed to attract the carriage trade. There would be a “grand opening.” In the meantime the shop continued to serve staples and a few of the cheaper delicacies to the local customers. They no longer engaged Edward in accounts of unemployment, derelict husbands, “the drink,” the ailments of babies and children, the worries about adolescent daughters who wanted to put up their hair too soon and were showing signs of being flighty at seventeen, and about sons who at fourteen were obstinately pleading to be allowed to continue school for a year or two more when they should be at jobs to help the family. Edward vaguely and anxiously worried about this. He did not as yet know that the new big shop was already overawing the humble and the neighbors, and especially the big plate glass window. It was not his intention yet to frighten away the backbone of any business, the steady, small purchasers.

Mr. Enreich, though the hero, did not pay a return visit to the shop, though he sent his coachman for the new and expensive goods. Once Ellis said patronizingly to Edward as he disdainfully lifted big bags, “Mr. Enreich doesn’t buy from New York or Albany any more. You should thank your lucky stars. Twelve dollars this time.”

After the “grand opening” there was a constant parade of carriages on the street, which first intimidated the local customers. And then they were happy and preening to be allowed to brush elbows with ladies in sable coats and smelling of wonderful scents and wearing hats bobbing with long plumes, and gentlemen who had fur on their collars and who wore derby hats gleaming like hard silk. The mothers no longer sent children who would not appreciate this splendor; they themselves came in their head shawls and in their dragging coats and skirts and with Coarse hands, to stare, to pretend for a few moments that they were also fine ladies and that the carriages outside were their own. That made things all the better, for the ladies and the gentlemen smiled at them, and the gentlemen graciously permitted some poor woman to be served in her proper sequence rather than brushing her aside.

The neighborhood, conscious of its shabbiness in all this grandeur, decided to be worthy. Windows were washed frequently and shone. Curtains suddenly became white and stiff with starch. Walks, usually left covered with beaten snow and ice until spring suns melted them in due course were shoveled feverishly. The workingmen became particular about their dress and never entered the shop with dinner pails as they had done in the past. Children were protestingly scrubbed within an inch of their lives, and holes disappeared in their stockings and clothing. There was much talk of house-painting when the summer came.

To crown it all, the plank walks were removed and concrete poured before the big new shop and for some distance beyond it. Concrete carriage steps appeared. The ultimate occurred when, a few days before Christmas, at least four of the astounding automobiles chugged in clouds of smoke to Enger’s, all very big, very red, and very bright, and the occupants swathed in furs and scarves and wearing long leather gloves lined with fur. They brought all the children running.

New cartons from New York arrived daily. There was almost always a van before the door. Then Edward hired Billy Russell after school to help with the harder work in the back and the basement and to assist with the cleaning. Heinrich no longer went to the market even for staples and hams and corned beef and pickles. Edward took over, with Billy. “But a Negro boy!” Heinrich had protested at first. “He is my friend,” said Edward, and had looked at his father sternly. “Don’t Socialists say all men are equal?”

“That is true,” Heinrich admitted, with some uneasiness. “However, one draws lines.”

“What lines?” demanded Edward, with a new hard eye which disconcerted his father. To this, Heinrich had no reply. There was no use, sometimes, arguing with Edward. He had the stubborn, blind soul that refused to be sensible on occasion. The selfish soul that did not understand, Heinrich would think, not the selfish soul that does not give of its heart, but the soul that did not consider other points of view but its own. And what was this “friend” matter? Edward had no friends but this Negro boy. Heinrich discussed this with Maria. Edward invariably chose acquaintances among the inferior, but that was because he had inherited the full impact of the Enger blood. “One has only to consider that priest,” Heinrich would remark. “I understand Edward speaks with him often.”

In the meantime, in his spirit, Edward talked to God, gratefully, happily, as a child talks to its father in joy over gifts. God was not in His heaven alone. He was in a snowflake, in the bellow of the north wind, in a sudden glimpse of blue sky among ominous winter clouds, in an instantaneous smiting of the sun on a snowbank, in the majesty of the northern lights in the late black sky, in the goodness of bread and butter and milk, and in the drowsy pleasure a weary body experiences in a warm bed after a day of bitter labor. Sometimes at night, before falling to sleep, Edward said in his spirit, “Father?” And God always answered in a gentle and comforting voice, “My son.” It was enough. It was more than enough. It was, above all else, the only thing.

“At times,” Edward would say, concerned, “I get pretty impatient with Pa. He doesn’t have to grovel in front of our new customers. He doesn’t have to be so pigheaded sometimes. He doesn’t have to order Billy around like a dirty slave and say mean things to him. Then I get mad at Pa, and I yell at him—I’m not a very good person now—and I threaten the kids when they get out of hand, and I say things to my mother. What of that? Is it very bad?”

“Go to sleep, child,” God would answer. “It is enough that you try. Good night, child.” The Voice sounded as if it came from over vast spaces, echoing like muted thunder, but still it was very close, as close as breathing.

But there were times when God was mysteriously silent, and this was when Edward angrily or anxiously discussed his brothers and sister with him. Edward would say, “They don’t take advantage of what Pa and I are doing for them and plan to do for them. They’re geniuses, and I push them. Oh, they want the world, but they don’t seem to want to do the things to get the world. There’s Dave; he can play like an angel, but I’ve heard him play ragtime. That’s the new music, he told me one time. It’s cheap and silly and it isn’t music. Why does he play that stuff?”

But God was silent. Edward would continue, “And I’ve caught Sylvia, who can design stage sets at school and get the kids to learn their parts, looking in some store window at women’s and girls’ clothes, and she isn’t fourteen yet. She spends a lot of time fixing up her own clothes, and pushes the drama books she gets from the library off the table while she sews. A terrible waste of time. And there’s Ralph, getting lessons at the art gallery now, two dollars a lesson, every week, and I see his report cards, good in art but wonderful in mathematics. Sylvia brings him mathematic books from the library and he reads them as if they were the Bible or something, and when he should be painting and drawing, there he is filling his paper up with figures and mechanical drawings, not paintings or sketches at all, though he has his assignments. And Gregory writes joking stories no one can understand except Dave and Sylvia, and they laugh their heads off over them. He should be doing his serious writing.”

But God was silent, and Edward, to his bewilderment, thought he detected a stern if loving vibration in that silence. He would go to sleep, frowning. Perhaps God didn’t think he kept after the kids enough.

It was three nights to Christmas Eve, and during the last week Enger’s kept open until eleven at night. Heinrich, exhausted, would leave at eight, and it was Edward’s business to conduct the store’s affairs for the next three hours, with the help of Billy. Sometimes, however, the boys could not leave until much later, and they would walk part of the way home together, hardly speaking from weariness, but content. It had begun to snow again this last week and the white crispness would crunch dryly under their plodding feet, and the air, in the light of the golden street lamps, would sparkle and stream and blow with bits of diamonds. The boys would catch the tiny flakes on their sleeves and study the miraculous beauty and mystic wonderfulness of them with a kind of awe. “Look,” Edward would say, “they never have more than six points, any of them, and how do you suppose that happens?”

“Guess God told them not to make more than six, or something. Look at this one, Ed. Like lace or something. A design. Nobody could make anything like that.” Then Billy, as if he had seen a miracle, would be inspired to pull out his harmonica and play reverently as he walked along, the small but rolling organ notes rising above the wind and the fall of the patient snow. Edward, after a while, would sing with the music.

“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,

Nobody knows, but Jesus!”

Man, Billy would think with compassion, listening to the rich and youthful baritone, you ain’t seen anything yet of trouble! I’ve got it in my bones that you’ll see plenty, yes sir.

It was three nights to Christmas Eve, and it was on that night that Edward had his first serious and violent quarrel with his father.

Billy, who took care of the furnaces which supplied the fine new radiators with steam, always ate his evening sandwiches in the basement. At seven o’clock, as usual, he went downstairs with several sandwiches and a pint bottle of milk. Edward was very tired. He was suffering from what his parents called “one of his black moods.” He had worked steadily since six that morning. Resentment had a way of gathering in him long before he expressed it. It was like a low and diminished fire, breathing under the surface of his conscious mind, and then, after a considerable time, it would flare up into a devouring ferocity that silenced even his parents who had long ago forgotten the source of it. “He remembers the most trifling things,” Maria would say, vexed. “Why does he not speak of it when it happens? But no, he must hoard it in himself until no one remembers any longer and it is foolish to mention it.”

It was a slow time in the shop between six and seven, and Edward was cleaning up the broad new counters and polishing the wood of them. Heinrich, happily inspecting the till and unaware that his son had been quiet too long, remarked, “Is it not marvelous, Eddie? We have taken in this day twice which we took in a month ago in a week of days! We shall be rich, as the mother prophesied!”

“I prophesied that,” said Edward, in a loud, hard voice. Heinrich started apprehensively. “You’ve forgotten,” Edward added. He looked at his father’s blank face and shrugged with despair. “Never mind. Funny how people forget things.” He suddenly threw down his damp cloth. “Pa, I’ve got to talk to you before you go home. Billy’s been coming in here after school every day, at three o’clock, and working sometimes to midnight. Nine hours a day. And you pay him three dollars a week, and only charge him fifteen cents a day for a lunch at four o’clock and another sandwich or two at seven or eight! Now isn’t that wonderful? Ninety cents a week out of his three dollars! He can take home two dollars and ten cents. Wonderful!”

Heinrich blinked. He could not understand. He stared at Edward’s wrathful face, at the fiercely glittering gray eyes. He stammered, “You think fifteen cents is not enough, Eddie, for the meals?”

Edward’s large fist clenched on the counter. “Pa, I think it’s too much. That’s what I think. You shouldn’t charge him anything. And you should pay him at least five dollars a week. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to tell Billy to quit unless you give him his meals free and pay him five dollars.”

“What is this?” cried Heinrich. “Have you become mad, Eddie? The boy eats what he wishes, and it is worth more than fifteen cents, and two dollars and ten cents a week is very good! It would be a fortune in Bavaria for a boy, with the good ham and the corned beef and the milk and the cakes—”

“This isn’t Bavaria,” said Edward. He pushed aside a carton of English biscuits with a furious gesture. “This is America. Well, Pa? Does Billy quit or do you raise his pay and stop charging him for meals?”

“I do not understand you, Eddie,” faltered Heinrich, retreating before the cold blaze of his son’s eyes. “Do we not work and save only for the children? You would rob the children of their future?”

“What of Billy’s future, Pa?”

Heinrich, very frightened, stammered, “The boy—the Billy—he has no future.”

Edward’s big mouth became a whitened ridge in his face. “Who says that, Pa?” he asked after a moment or two. “You? How many others, besides you? Too many.”

Neither father nor son had seen Billy’s bronze face and thick black curls rise above the floor at the rear of the store, where the stairs descended to the basement. Neither ever knew that Billy had been listening from the start, caught unexpectedly by the sound of his own name.

“Maybe you haven’t heard, Pa,” Edward continued, in a voice growing progressively more inflexible and bitter. “We aren’t considered too much, either. We’re foreigners, even if all of us except you and Ma were born in this country. The people in this town, most of them, don’t think we’ve got any future to mention. We’re just the delicatessen keepers. Even people with our own ancestry look down their noses at us, because we’re new here. I heard Ma laugh about it one time, but I don’t laugh. And I’m not laughing now.”

Heinrich’s small plump stature seemed to dwindle. He shook his head feebly. “Well, it is to be expected of barbarians, my son. We do not think it of much importance.”

“Billy might think it important. For him. And that brings me to another suggestion. You’ve been giving me five dollars a week since June, when I left school. We’re making a fortune now. I’m not going to put four of my five dollars into the fund for educating the other kids any more unless you raise my pay to ten dollars a week. Ten dollars Pa. Maybe I’ve got a future, too. I’ve started to think about it.”

Now Heinrich was truly appalled at this blasphemy against the family. He wet his round, pink mouth and his eyes became big black circles in his face. “Eddie!” he whispered. “What is wrong with my son who has dedicated himself to the geniuses? He would exploit them, deprive them—When was it that he began these thoughts?”

Edward, almost as amazed as his father at what he had said, could have answered with truth, “Right this minute and not a second before.” He contemplated his own words, and then, before his inner eye, the past few months rose up before him clearly, and he thought, It all began the day Ralph killed Betsy, and it went on to Billy, and all the insults I’ve been taking lately from the kids, and Ma’s letting everyone think she thought up the idea of expanding. All of a sudden I’ve begun to think, and thinking of ten dollars for me, putting in all that work and never anything in sight just for me, sounds like a damn good idea! I’m willing to work the way I do, not getting any education, not asking much, just as anxious as Pa is and maybe more, for his sake, that the kids develop themselves, but I want a little justice for myself!

He looked at his father without speaking for some very long moments, and in those moments he stepped forever from boyhood into manhood. He could even say with gentleness, “Pa, maybe I’ve been thinking you ought to be just to me, too. I haven’t seen a vaudeville show since I was twelve, maybe eleven, years old, because I was always here after school. And what you gave me, mostly, went to the fund for the kids. I had that drummed into me all the time—for the kids. Ever since I can remember. Maybe I’m not a genius but I’m a human being. You and Ma take the kids to shows and you take them to the nickelodeon when it’s open, and to picnics in the summer, and to church socials. But I never go anywhere; I’m always here. I’ve got a right to something, after all my work. And I want a bicycle and some other things.”

Heinrich sat down heavily on his stool and rested his elbows on the center counter and held his face in his hands. He shook his head somberly, rolling it in his hands and sighing deeply. Once or twice he coughed and murmured half under his breath. Edward was freshly surprised at himself for not feeling his usual contrition whenever he disturbed his father. Neither did he feel a rush of eager and consoling words to his lips. There was only a hard emptiness in him, and a still bright anger.

“I’m going to make myself a couple of sandwiches and go down to eat with Billy,” he said. “And I’ve got to know if you’re going to be just to Billy, too, so I can give him the good news or tell him to quit. I hired him. He won’t stay just for you.”

Heinrich groaned. He thought of Maria and winced. “I do not know my son,” he muttered pathetically. “Over and over he has agreed with me that all must be for the geniuses and their education. He understood. And now, all at once, he does not understand, he refuses his burden, his destiny, his place in the world, his obedience. What is it, what is it!” he cried, lifting his head and showing easily brimming eyes and absolute bewilderment and innocent misery. “Tell me, Eddie! I am your father. I will try to understand.”

Edward straightened up and turned away and began to slice pink ham for his sandwiches. He said, almost as if to himself, “Who says it’s my burden, my destiny, my place, my obedience? I took it on myself. Maybe I’ve been wrong all the time. Maybe I’ve been right. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll find it out too late. But I’ve got to have a little justice for Billy even more than for myself.”

Heinrich, feeling that he was alone in the big shining shop with a stranger and feeling a fear of that stranger, sat and shook his head over and over. None of Edward’s plea for himself and Billy seemed comprehensible to him. A spark of indignation quivered in his misery. It was all so plain to him, the sacrifices for the geniuses. In a way, those sacrifices were noble and should be accepted almost with gratitude. Was it not Luther who had said, “To be singled out by Almighty God to carry the burden of service, yes, even of martyrdom, is an awesome sign of His favor”? He and Edward had been so singled out. Without them, the geniuses would languish in dark obscurity, and the world poorer for it.

Heinrich wanted to convey these thoughts to Edward, as he had conveyed them before, and he opened his mouth to speak. But suddenly he saw Edward’s profile, as formidable in its way as Maria’s, and he thought, Why, my son resembles his mother! Never did I see it before! He became even more frightened. He watched Edward neatly and carefully make up the sandwiches, and he heard the silence in the shop, a silence broken only by the slight hissing of the big gas globes hanging from the ceiling, and the winter wind outside.

Edward laid the sandwiches on a piece of butcher paper and turned to his father. He saw that Heinrich was very pale, almost gray, and for an instant his heart lurched weakly and he was remorseful. Then he thought of Billy. He said, “Well, Pa?”

Heinrich said faintly, “What of the mother? When it is a matter of money I always tell the mother.”

Edward smiled grimly. “Well, just don’t tell her this time. In fact, I absolutely insist you don’t tell her. If you do, I’ll tell Billy to go, and I won’t work here any longer.”

“Eddie!” wailed Heinrich. “What is this you are saying? But you are not serious! My God,” he added with simple horror, “it is not true that you think it!”

“About my quitting? Pa, I mean it. I’ll be fifteen on Christmas, and I can get a job somewhere in town, or maybe I’ll go to Albany. Anybody’d pay me twelve or fourteen dollars a week—anybody.” Edward was smiling, and it was a cold white smile. “I can pass for older than I am.” He leaned against the shelves and looked before him and not at his father. He wondered a little how he could feel this hollow emptiness, this peculiar lack of compassion, this imperviousness, in himself. Perhaps he was too tired; sometimes he was too tired to sleep. And lately he had not been able to speak to God or get an answer. There was a leaden resentment in him.

It was an effort to lift himself away from the shelves, and he moved slowly toward the rear and the stairway to the basement. He stopped at the head of the stairs and turned about and looked questioningly at his father. Heinrich was gazing at him as at something he found incredible. But his son’s eyes, when they met his, made him almost leap from his stool.

“Yes, yes!” he stuttered, throwing out his arms despairingly. “I agree! But Eddie—Eddie—!”

“What?” asked Edward, his voice remote and gentle.

I have lost my son, thought Heinrich. In these minutes, I have lost my son, and never until now did I know what the loss would mean to me.

He dropped his face into his hands in a gesture of real anguish. Edward, watching him, frowned again, thoughtfully. He said, “Now, Pa, don’t be dramatic, as Ma says.” He waited, but Heinrich seemed to have forgotten him in his misery and Edward was ashamed. He took a step or two toward his father, and then he halted. He had gone through these scenes before, though they had been lesser scenes of lesser importance, and always, when he capitulated out of tenderness for his father or anxiety for his father, not only did he not get any part of what he had demanded but a part of whatever he had was taken from him, by his willing surrender. A fellow had to make a stand, sometimes, and I’ve never made any real stand before, except for the tree, thought Edward.

“You’ve only agreed to the right thing, Pa,” said the boy. At that moment two women and three children entered through the wide doors of the shop, and Heinrich, still trembling and pale, automatically smiled his kind and naïve smile, got to his feet to wait upon them. Edward began to put down his sandwiches in order to help, then firmly took them up again. His father would be leaving very soon, and then he would have to work far past eleven o’clock. He went down the stairs, and his whole body was heavy and listless.

The basement was warm but dim, for only one or two jets of gas were burning. Billy was shoveling coal into the red mouth of the furnace, and he turned his head and greeted Edward with his ineffably sweet grin. “About giving up hope you’d be coming down, Ed,” he remarked. “Man, this furnace sure eats up the coal! Can’t hardly leave it for more than half an hour or the steam goes down.” He wiped his sweating forehead with the patched sleeve of his striped blue shirt, and rested, panting, on the shovel. He, too, was tired, tired to the point of shivering.

Edward laid his sandwiches beside Billy’s on one of the wooden chairs. “Here, let me help you for a minute,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t have time today to come down and help you, but we could have used two more hands up there. I’d better start to think of that before long.” He took the shovel from Billy, who was too weary to protest. The boy was sure he had opened “thousands” of cartons that day, and had carried “millions” of boxes up the stairs, and had swept out the store “hundreds” of times. He watched Edward thrust the heavy iron shovel into the big pile of coal near the furnace, and nodded. “Yes, you sure do need help up there. You been running your feet off. I could hear you. You plant those feet down hard, boy, real hard! Your pa, now, he sounds almost like a lady.”

Edward tossed the coals into the furnace, shoveled up more. His knees were shaking a little from exhaustion. Then suddenly they were shaking heavily and uncontrollably and there was an awful feeling of emptiness in his bowels and a curious sensation of collapse. He let the shovel slide out of his hands and he raised his head, looking about him blankly. Then there was the pain in his chest and his side again, but this time the pain was like the blow of a hatchet over his heart. He could not breathe, for every attempt to take his breath brought the hatchet blows to a pitch of unbearable intensity. He staggered and threw out his left arm to catch blindly at anything to prevent falling, and did not know that his body and arm sloped rapidly towards the very mouth of the big furnace. He was not conscious that Billy had caught him and had uttered a great, alarmed cry of terror, and he did not begin to recover from the reeling dizziness until Billy, half carrying him, half pushing him, had let him down on a chair.

His hands seized the sides of the seat, and Billy supported his upper body against his own. “Holy Jesus,” said Billy, softly and reverently, and he gulped. “You almost went into that furnace, Ed. Jesus. What if I hadn’t been here? You’d have died, burned up like a cinder.”

The basement was still a whirling darkness before Edward, but it was slowly coming into focus, slowly subsiding from its mad spiraling. The pain, too, began to recede like a red-crested sea. It was dull and threatening, but bearable, and now Edward could breathe. He did not know that his face was absolutely livid and that his lips were blue and that he was gasping weakly. He leaned his head against Billy and waited until the last throb of pain ebbed away.

Then he thought of death.

It was the first time that he had ever thought of death in connection with his own vital young life. It was something that happened to the old and the ill, the faceless ones, the people a person did not know. It never came to youth, to strength, to hope and courage. But now, all at once, Edward understood that it had cast its breath on him in dark passage and that he, like all the strangers, was in jeopardy. Never did he think it was his heart which had almost failed. It was still a mystery to him, but a most terrible one, and as the forces of his vitality surged in him again he was filled not with fear but with indignant wonder. He, too, could die mysteriously, and it was not fair that the young should die.

“Here,” Billy was saying. “Drink the cold milk from the bottle. Jesus, you sure scared me almost to death, Ed. What’s the matter?”

The cold milk in his dry mouth was revivifying, and he swallowed gratefully. “Guess it was all that rushing this week,” he said. “And all the work. Ten times the customers we usually have, and maybe I’ve got a cold. That makes you weak.”

“I don’t know what it was,” said Billy, still quivering with dread. “But you looked like you were dying for a couple of minutes. You got too tired today. Well, it’ll soon be over, all this Christmas buying and things, and then you can settle down. But don’t forget about hiring more help.” He sucked in his own breath through a tight throat. “Maybe I’d better get your pa, and he can call a doctor for you.”

“A doctor!” exclaimed Edward, sitting up straight. “What for? Don’t be dippy. Just for a cold or something! I remember, this morning, I could hardly get out of bed. Thought I was made of iron, stiff and heavy. Might be that grippe, la grippe, they talk about. Must be.”

Billy cautiously stepped back from him, but with his hands ready. However, Edward was smiling. “I’m fine now,” he said. He shook his head vigorously. He pressed his hand with caution on his chest. “Could be pneumonia, too. No, I guess not. I’d have a fever and chills. That’s what I heard. Let’s eat our sandwiches.”

Billy sat near him on the coal and they ate together. The Negro boy’s handsome face was very sober, and he kept glancing anxiously at his friend. He started when Edward suddenly laughed.

“Billy, I’ve got good news for you. Pa decided tonight that you’re worth five dollars a week and all the food you can eat, free. What do you think about that!”

Billy’s eyes glowed. “Honest? You mean that, Ed? Gee, your pa is a prince! I’ll go up right away and thank him. Five dollars! No taking out for the meals, either!” He jumped joyously to his feet, forgetting his weariness. Edward stopped him.

“Don’t bother Pa now. Can’t you hear those feet coming in and out? Thank him some other time. Look, I brought a cheesecake, half of one, anyway. Just for us.”

They ate the cheesecake happily. The furnace roared. It was warm and good to be here in the basement, resting and eating. It was better than anything Edward had ever known before. He looked about him and everything seemed more clear to him than at any other time, sharper, more exciting, more meaningful. He did not know how that was, but it was enough for him to know that it was.

CHAPTER V

Billy thanked Heinrich the next day, and Heinrich received the thanks with a stateliness that Edward found amusing. He had already forgiven his father, and his old tenderness, purged of anger, returned for Heinrich. He was unusually solicitous all that long and rushing day, and Heinrich, believing his son was repentant, became more dignified as the day went on. He was cheered that his appalling vision of the loss of his son had been only the result of a moment’s weariness. But still, Edward had been not only disrespectful but also threatening. One did not threaten his parents. It was commanded to honor thy father and thy mother. Had Edward been the slightest interested in religion, which he was not, Heinrich said to himself, he would have known that Commandment.

At five that night Heinrich decided he would use Edward’s remorse as he had used the boy’s remorse before, to bring him to understanding. There was a lull in customers, and the two were alone, Edward whistling abstractedly through his teeth as he worked briskly. “Eddie,” said Heinrich in a wounded voice.

“Yes, Pa,” the boy answered, the old brightness in his tone. Heinrich drew himself up to his diminutive height.

“Eddie, I have considered that you were just in asking that Billy receive the extra money, though I will reconsider again after the work of the holiday is over. But it cannot be you were serious about yourself—the ten dollars a week—which would deprive the children.” He shook his head admonishingly at his son, and with reserve. He waited for Edward’s sheepish smile. He, Heinrich, would not forgive immediately. Edward did not smile. To Heinrich’s astonishment Edward was looking at him with that strange hardness again and that glitter of gray eye.

“Five dollars extra a week won’t ‘deprive’ the kids,” said Edward. “Seven times that, or more, is being put into their fund every week. I know. I helped earn it. I don’t intend to be deprived myself, Pa.”

Heinrich shrank, not from what his son had said, but from the dismal terror of his knowing that the vision of loss had been true and not merely his imagination. Impulsively, to destroy that vision, he put up his small pink palms in a gesture of warding off, of denial, of supplication.

“Eddie!”

Edward, not understanding, was not moved. “That’s right, Pa. I don’t intend to be deprived myself. Not too much, anyway.”

“Eddie,” said Heinrich, and put his hand over his heart in an appealing gesture, such as a child would make. Now Edward smiled. “Oh, come on, Pa. What’s five dollars extra for me with all the money we’re making these days? It’s almost Christmas. Let’s forget everything and let things be as they always were?”

Heinrich flushed with joy. “Then it is not the five dollars you want?”

Edward still smiled. “Yes, Pa, it is the five dollars I want. The extra five dollars. Now where do we put these new smoked sardines from Denmark? They deserve a special place.”

Heinrich thought, I would give five times five if I could have my son again. I shall not speak of the money; it is a silence in my heart from this time on. Perhaps, then, he will be once more my son. I cannot endure that look in his eye, or that smile, as if he repudiated me or removed himself from me. I confess it to myself now that of all my children I love this son more than all the others.

He said, in a meek and faintly tremulous voice, “Eddie, it is you who always choose the best places, and the red and the green paper, and the little artificial berries, to make the nice display. It is the imagination you truly have.”

Edward was touched. He put his strong young arm about his father’s shoulders and squeezed them so vigorously that Heinrich gasped for breath, but it was a gasp that had the sound of weeping in it, and gratitude. He said, “You love your father, do you not, my son?”

Edward squeezed him again but said cautiously, “Why, Pa, sure I do. You know that.” That extra five dollars! How his father gripped onto it. Then he saw Heinrich’s face below his and he was troubled. He did not understand that pleading expression, that expression of hope, of asking. He patted his father’s shoulder.

“Eddie,” said Heinrich, “I am sorry about your bicycle. I know you are saving the money in the bank for it. And for Christmas I shall have the present for you.” He nodded like a child asking for love, and his eyes dimmed.

“Pa!” exclaimed Edward incredulously. “I only need about nine dollars more.”

Heinrich was full of mystery and importance. “We shall see, we shall see,” he answered, and moved away with a majestic tread while Edward followed him with his eyes and was troubled again.

It was not until he was almost fifty that he said to his wife, Margaret, “God, for His own reasons, which I don’t think are just, has deprived us of understanding those closest to us, or understanding anyone at all. And that is the real tragedy of man, that he never knows the motives of his brother, and never knows that his brother is asking for love when his lips say something else, usually foolish or stupid. But perhaps it’s not God’s doing. Perhaps it is man himself who never listens to his brother.”

It was two nights before Christmas. The shop was gay with streamers and festoons of twisted green and red paper. A huge wreath of holly hung at the big window. Tinsel twined itself around the displays on the several tables and counters. Oversize crepe-paper bells dangled everywhere. Edward had used extraordinary imagination. He had bought a very small fir tree and had prepared a mixture of flour and water, sprinkled with sparkles, and had carefully smeared it over the tree. He had then hung the tree with bright little globes of yellow, red, blue, silver, and green, and strips of tinsel he had cut from the tin foil of old cigarette wrappers. He had then set the tree in the window, where passers-by gathered to admire and exclaim. Heinrich was proud. He strutted about his gleaming shop and received compliments graciously. Edward did not mind. It pleased him to see his father so happy, for there were uncomfortable interludes between them when Edward intuitively guessed that his father was begging him for something in a poignant silence. But what it was his father was asking him he did not know.

Billy, too, noticed that Mr. Enger treated him with unusual kindness and pressed extra candies and cookies upon him. With the subconscious awareness of his race, Billy saw that when Mr. Enger gave him something unexpected Mr. Enger would glance at Edward as if for approval. Edward, sometimes noticing, would smile at his father, and Heinrich would beam happily. The old man wants something, thought Billy, but Ed doesn’t know what it is and neither do I. Yet Billy had his intuitions, stronger than Edward’s, and he began to feel sorry for his employer.

Edward decided to send his father home a little earlier than usual, for Heinrich was showing the effect of his enormously increased trade, which, though it sometimes stunned him, was very arduous. His son had not yet suggested more help, as he wished to see if the large holiday trade continued after the New Year. Heinrich was being assisted into his coat by Edward and the boy was just wrapping the mud-colored wool scarf carefully about his father’s throat when, to Edward’s pleasure, George Enreich entered the shop, stamping his feet and shaking his hat.

Heinrich, overwhelmed at this visit, ran forward, bowing agitatedly. But George held out his hand and Heinrich, after a startled moment, shyly accepted it. “I haven’t been around lately,” said George without condescension. “Too busy. Ellis has been doing my shopping for me.” He put his hands under his coat-tails and surveyed the big shop approvingly. “Looks as if we’re all going to make a lot of money,” he remarked. “Good boy, Ed. The imagination is here. I have been hearing of it, and so I came.” He smiled broadly at Edward and continued: “I wonder what my percentage will be on January first?”

“Too much,” responded Edward, laughing. His father gave him a horrified glance. One did not speak so casually, so almost impudently, to the powerful, to the benefactor, to the hero, even if he were only, as Goethe had said, with some contempt, “the thatched-headed Prussian.” George Enreich no longer seemed gross and brutal to Heinrich, the sensitive and more perceptive Bavarian. There could be good even in Prussians, thought Heinrich, palpitating with delight at this magnanimous visit of the great man. But he must talk to Edward about his casualness, about his raw youth, about his assumption of equality with Mr. Enreich.

To Heinrich’s sense of values it seemed incredible that Mr. Enreich was laughing at Edward’s remark. “To be certain, I shall demand that I examine the books myself,” he was saying jokingly.

Heinrich hastily relapsed into German. “It is the Herr Enreich’s privilege and right, and we shall welcome his examination.” He was agitated again. George regarded him with amused surprise. He said in his rougher gutterals, “I was speaking, Herr Enger, only in jest. I trust your son as if he were myself.”

“I hope that is a compliment, Herr Enreich,” said Edward, laughing again. In confusion, Heinrich blinked and looked anxiously from his son to the Herr Manager, and he was even more confused when George roared appreciatively and slapped Edward on his back. George said, in English, “Eddie, you have the sharp head and the sharp tongue, and it is fortunate that I have the sense of humor.”

Then he said, “I came tonight to give you a present, Eddie, as we are in a way, partners. And it is Christmas, is it not?”

Edward was no longer a man at this mention of a present. He was a boy again. “A present! That’s wonderful! I love presents.” He held out his hand eagerly. George fished in his pocket and pulled out a small thin parcel and shook it teasingly at the boy. “It is what you wanted,” he said, then gave it to Edward. Heinrich, freshly overcome by this benevolence, almost danced with obsequious impatience as Edward took his delicious time to unwrap the shiny white paper. A box covered with gray velvet was revealed and Edward paused to rub his thumb over the silken fabric. Now his heart was beating rapidly. He opened the box slowly, and there, on white satin, lay a gold pen.

Edward’s mouth opened but he could not speak. Heinrich bent over the pen in disbelief. A fountain pen! Of gold, gold! It was not to be believed that such magnificence should be given to only a boy! Heinrich involuntarily extended a trembling hand and Edward let his father lift the pen from its bed. Along its length there was an inscription in fine German script and Heinrich, in a hushed voice, read it aloud:

“‘To E. E. For the Stalwart.’”

Heinrich’s eyes suddenly swam with tears. He looked mutely at Edward and gave him the pen. He was deeply shaken; he tried to speak but his tongue felt thick and useless. Edward read the inscription aloud, wonderingly. The pen was smooth and glittering in his palm. He glanced at George with gratitude. Then he said, “But I am not so stalwart.” He thought of his mysterious attack last night when he had been aware of the dark passage of death near him.

George misunderstood. He wagged his head. “But you are,” he said. “I have no use for those who are not stalwart. It is first necessary that a man have courage, for courage is the greatest of the virtues. Without courage, even an angel is a weakling.”

Heinrich’s head had been swimming dazedly. He stared at the pen on Edward’s palm and moistened his lips. No boy should have such a gift; it was all a dream. The Herr Manager must be cruelly joking. Or the pen was only plated. That would be much better. Almost praying that the pen was only gold-washed, and thus bringing it into the realm of reality and propriety, Heinrich took the pen from Edward and peered at it. He caught his breath when he read in tiny print: “18-K.” There was no doubt of it. It was gold. It was worthy of a count, a duke, a prince, a kaiser! It was royal.

George watched Heinrich quizzically, his thick red eyebrows arched. At that moment three customers entered and Edward hurried to serve them. Glancing about him distractedly, Heinrich murmured to George, “The Herr Manager is more than generous. He intends to keep the pen until my son is old enough to have it?”

“No,” said George, a little hardly. “He is old enough. He was never, I think, a child. He never had time to be a child.”

Heinrich could not comprehend. “My son is a good boy,” he stammered.

“He is a good man,” said George. “Despite all he knows and understands, he is still a good man, and that is a miracle.” He took the pen gently from Heinrich and replaced it in the box and nonchalantly set the box on a counter. He added, “I am not a good man, and so it is that I can appreciate a good man, if he is stalwart and courageous. You are lucky in your son, Herr Enger.”

Heinrich was almost overcome again. “The Herr Manager is very kind. The Herr Manager has not seen my geniuses?”

George was silent a moment. Then he said, “I have seen Herr Enger’s genius.”

Heinrich flushed brightly. The word had a double meaning. He took it simply for himself. He said in a trembling voice, “The Herr Manager is very kind. I do only my best.” His whole body was warm and palpitating at this graciousness. Then, because he was so dazzled, so dazed, he whispered, “I have geniuses in my children. But I have learned that I love the one the most who is not a genius. He is simple, as I am simple, and unpretentious, as I am unpretentious, and humble, as I am humble. We are dedicated.”

“Excellent,” said George, ironically. Edward, having disposed of the customers, returned breezily. But he looked for his pen, and having found it on the counter, he put it into the pocket of his long white apron. “I shall keep it,” he said, “all the days of my life.”

George put his hand on the boy’s arm. “All the days of your life, Eddie. Remember that. They are your days and the days of no one else.” His voice was stern and Edward looked at him. His gray eyes narrowed, baffled. George leaned against the counter and there was a greenish flash from under his red lashes. “Eddie, I want you to do something for yourself. Tonight, or tomorrow, look at your family. Look closely, Eddie. You may see something you never saw before. There was a time when I considered you the victim. I am not so sure now.” He tapped his florid forehead. “On some occasions I can become quite mystic. I am not so certain now, among humanity, who is the victim and who the exploited and the weak. It is not my thought alone. Nietzsche has asked it.”

Edward was silent. He was thinking. Then he looked at his father and thought, He believes, he knows, they are geniuses! They had better be!

George said almost bashfully, though his eyes remained stern, “I never ask more of a man than he is capable of doing.”

It was not until he was almost fifty that Edward understood what had been said that night by George Enreich, just before Christmas, 1904. And then, in his agony, he thought, How was it I was so stupid?

But tonight he said to George, “I don’t think I’m weak or exploited.”

George shrugged. He turned to Heinrich and said, as if in pity, “My sleigh is outside. Permit me, Herr Enger, to put it at your service, for there is a storm. It will return for me when I have made my purchases.”

When Heinrich, still more overcome, had gone, George said to Edward, “You are a good man, Eddie. And that is sometimes a crime against others. Do not ask me what I mean. You will know someday; let us hope before it is too late. And now, I have my list thoughtfully written by Ellis.”

Edward waited on him, following him about with a basket on his arm. A crime against others—kindness. That was foolishness. Sometimes it was very hard to be kind, especially when a customer became oppressive or arrogant, or the children at home hurt their father with contemptuous words or laughed at his ponderous English or neglected the things they should do. It was hard to remember to be kind to the cruel or the thoughtless. But if a person wasn’t kind, he was not a human being; he had no understanding or pity. Edward shook his head as he thought of these things. He almost forgot the marvel of the gold pen in his pocket in his vexation with George Enreich, who tonight seemed to talk in puzzles.

“What’s wrong, Eddie?” asked Mr. Enreich, stopping suddenly. Edward started and colored. “I just don’t know what you meant, Mr. Enreich, when you said it was a crime to be kind.”

“I didn’t say that at all, Eddie. I said it was sometimes a crime against others to be a good man. Certainly a different thing.” He motioned to the basket and took out a cigar. “Take care of your customers. I can wait. I think I shall have the sandwich with you, as we did when we made our bargain.”

Highly pleased, Edward waited on his customers. Not one bought less than two dollars’ worth of delicacies. George nodded to himself, as if speaking inwardly and commenting on his thoughts. The boy is a natural merchant, he thought. We must have another talk about his plans for expansion, for he must have them. He has a great imagination, and boldness also, and courage, and these things are the raw material of an entrepreneur. I never make a mistake. He felt a deep affection for Edward, and he smiled to himself at the plans he had for the boy.

The shop was empty again, except for the boy and the man. Edward cut ham for the sandwiches, prepared the coffee in the rear. Then he hesitated and glanced over his shoulder at Mr. Enreich. Finally he laid down his knife and firmly marched up to his friend. “Mr. Enreich, when I’m alone, Billy, our helper, comes up from the basement to eat with me. He expects to come up tonight, and that’s why he didn’t take anything down to eat. I can’t disappoint him. We—well, we have talks. And he’s always afraid of being slighted. He’s got a sore spot about that.”

“Well,” said George, impatiently, “why do you not call him up? We can all have our sandwiches and coffee together.” He wondered why Edward appeared uncomfortable and why the boy eyed him dubiously. Then Edward said, “Billy is my friend. My best friend. The only friend I have.”

George detected something interesting here. “So? And why is it you have only one friend, Eddie? You have a genius for friendship. Have I not felt it myself?”

Edward looked at the long knife in his hand. “I don’t know why I haven’t more friends. I guess it’s because I never had the time. I always had to hurry home from school, since I was ten or abouts, to help Pa or help Ma. Never had time to play.”

“Then why is it you have made a friend of this Billy, you who never had time?”

“Billy’s different. In a way, we’re the same kind of people. Billy’s worked just the way I’ve worked. We met in the third grade at school, and he still goes to school, though I don’t, and he brings me his schoolbooks every afternoon and goes over the lessons with me. I’m right up to date on the work; I study when I have time, either here or at home. Billy plays the harmonica, too. He’s awfully bright; gets the best marks in school. You should hear him play! He’ll be a famous musician one of these days. He’s taught himself to read notes. He can play anything on the harmonica.”

George spoke in German, and very kindly, “This Billy must be a genius. Why do you hide this genius, Eddie, this other genius?”

“I don’t hide him,” said Eddie. Then he, too, spoke in German, and defiantly, looking at George with challenging eyes. “There’s something else about Billy. He is not a white boy. He is a Negro.”

George puffed on his cigar a moment. Then he said, “So?” and raised his eyebrows.

“You do not—” Eddie began, much relieved. Then he saw that George was sincerely annoyed. Mr. Enreich said, “Eddie, do not take prejudices for granted. I am a gross man, it is said. I am a man without sensitivities. I am not polite, not cultured. That is why, perhaps, I do not have the discriminations of the delicate and the well-bred.” He smiled. “Do not look so puzzled. You are more intelligent than that. Call your Billy, your friend, the wonder, the genius, who can play the harmonica with such ecstasy. And always remember this. I am no intellectual and so do not despise my humbler fellowman if he is worthy of respect.”

Edward laughed and called to Billy, who came up at once. When he saw George Enreich, he went down two steps precipitately, so that only his head and shoulders appeared above the stairway. George waved his hand to him genially. “I have been hearing about you, Billy. Join us with the sandwiches.”

“It’s Mr. Enreich,” Edward said. Billy bobbed down another step, and Edward called, “Come on, Billy. We’re all going to eat together.”

Billy came up diffidently, his soft brown eyes uncertain and disbelieving. The great Mr. Enreich! The rich and powerful Mr. Enreich! It must all be a mistake. He washed his hands in the closet and ran a comb through his black curls. He mistrusted “tolerance.” He and his race suffered more from the hypocritical “tolerance” of the North than they had ever suffered in the “lynching” South. Acceptance, in the North, meant the lowest and dirtiest and hardest of work, and an ostracism and rejection never encountered in the South, where there was a strict line of demarcation between the white man and the black. It meant an absolute barrier to friendship, to companionship, to kindliness, to the real acceptance and receiving of affection. It meant, at the last, less freedom in the North, for a man was not free when he was not loved, where he entered no house except as a servant, where he had no friends except his own race.

George, who had never lived in the South, understood these things. One of the few men he trusted was a Negro physician, who had been educated in a Southern university, built and maintained by white men, with white men’s taxes under white men’s laws. The physician lived in Albany. He frequently spoke of returning to North Carolina, where at least he would not be despised, and where if he admittedly could only treat his own people, he would receive a measure of respect as a clever doctor from his white friends, who had been proud of him as a product of their own affection.

So Billy slowly and mistrustfully came into the shop, warily regarding George. And then he saw at once that the geniality was not false but casual and warm. He relaxed, in wonderment, and when George smiled at him he smiled back, and George was moved by the sweetness of his smile and the brilliant intelligence in his eyes.

Edward had always liked and admired George Enreich but now he loved him. He took special care with the sandwiches, assisted by Billy. The damp snow was clotting in big blobs on the windows; a dank wind blew in even under the tight doors. It was half past eight.

Edward spread a white cloth on a counter. The shop, at Edward’s suggestion, had been supplied with imitation, but excellent imitation, Windsor chairs, so ladies need not stand while they awaited attention. Sometimes the “carriage trade” ladies would sit and gossip with friends, lulled by the shining lavishness and the celestial fragrances of the shop. Edward drew up a chair to the counter for Mr. Enreich and thought, with some cynicism, that the sight of Billy eating would be overlooked in the presence of a powerful man who, if he was not liked in Waterford, was respected and feared.

Edward and Mr. Enreich talked happily, but Billy was silent and awkward. He still could hardly believe in this. There was a lump of excitement in his throat, and for the first time since he had been a very young child, he felt hope. If a gentleman, a real gentleman like Mr. Enreich, could take his presence for granted, and eat with him, perhaps the North wasn’t so bad after all. His parents would tell him he was lying, though they knew he never lied. He would throw the whole neighborhood in a tizzy when he told them.

“Now,” said Mr. Enreich as he comfortably drank his coffee and permitted himself to enjoy some special Christmas strudel which Edward had ordered from New York. “You must tell me of your plans to expand again, Eddie, for you have the plans. That I know.”

Edward was surprised. “But I’ve only talked about them to Billy. How did you know?”

Billy said, “Mr. Enreich knows many things.” Then he was embarrassed. But George nodded at him. “And Billy is a very wise boy, not like this Dummkopf.”

Edward blazed with excitement. George became very familiar with that incandescent look in the years following, the sudden hot glaze of eye, the sudden flush, the sudden broadening of the wide mouth and the shine of big white teeth. “All right, sir!” Edward exclaimed. “I’ll tell you! I haven’t told Pa yet or even suggested it to him. I want to open another shop in the best part of town, where only the rich people shop and where it’ll be more convenient for most of them than this place. A bigger shop! More elegant. More expensive delicacies, more imports. Best shop outside of New York! People’ll drive from miles away! Why, they’ll come from Syracuse, maybe. We can advertise in the Albany papers, and customers can buy from us cheaper and quicker than they can buy the things from New York; we don’t have New York overhead. And we can send big orders by canal or by railroad. Five hours by rail for delivery on receipt of order! New York can’t do that. And clerks in the store, not in white canvas aprons like these. A head clerk, perhaps in a morning coat, and clerks in white jackets. An elegant store! An out-of-town department where we can send rush. Think of it. Isn’t it a grand idea?”

George studied that young and glistening face and smoked placidly. He said, “A grand idea. Of course it is many years too early even to think of it, this delicatessen Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company! Four—five—years too early.”

When Edward frowned, George went on imperturbably. “You were thinking that you are not too young, you who are barely fifteen. But I do not eat green fruit. I prefer it to ripen on the tree. Otherwise,” and he spread his hands with an eloquent if brutal gesture, “one gets the bellyache. I will tell you, my Eddie. I will give you books to read, and I will speak with you twice a month in my house, and I will teach you to be the entrepreneur it is fated for you to be. I recognize men of fate, even though they have just been elevated to the long trousers out of the knickers. And why am I so interested in this so raw fruit? Because I expect to make the large profit. One does not do things for charity, hein?”

Edward’s impatience vanished. He gazed at George Enreich with intense gratitude. This is the father I should have had, he thought. Affection replaced the hot glaze in his eyes. “You are very right, Herr Manager. I was just too enthusiastic.”

“Enthusiasm,” said George, “is very good. One admires it but not if it is without substance. We do not expect, naturally, to stop with one shop. Shall we begin the tutoring on January the tenth?”

“You will do all this for me?” said Edward, marveling.

“I have said, one does not do things for charity.” But George smiled, and all his gold teeth glittered.

Edward suddenly remembered Billy. He said, “Herr Manager Enreich, we are being discourteous. We are speaking German before my friend.”

Billy spoke with careful slow awkwardness but also with triumph, in German. “I have learned a little German from listening to you and your father and some of the other German people who come into this shop. And I have been learning it at school and in study at night.”

George turned to him, unsmiling, and gave him one of his long and penetrating regards. “It is a boy of intellect, this Billy. His syntax is perfect. His accent is admirable. We must discuss him later.”

Astonished and proud, Edward stared at his friend, while Billy beamed with importance. He managed to give the impression of strutting though he did not move his feet or body.

The door opened and young Father Jahle came in, in his thin coat, his face blue and pinched with cold. Edward went to him at once and shook his hand, and George, strangely interested now, watched. He knew of this earnest and youthful priest, though he had never seen him before. He made it his business to be interested in all priests. His expression became stiff and solid, and all his Prussian nature expressed itself in his ruddy jowls, set and unyielding, and in the little green pinpoint under his lashes. This priest made a nuisance of himself. He had a friend in the two local newspapers, and the newspapers never failed to give Father Jahle’s newest ideas of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man some prominence every Monday morning, much to the irritation of less shabby and more prosperous priests, and especially ministers with excellent parishes. Father Jahle’s ideas, it was believed, were very dangerous and provocative, and George had heard the invidious word “Socialism” on more than one occasion.

George did not think the priest’s ideas “Socialism,” which was much heard of in these days especially by the way of one Debs, but he never denied it to his friends. Dangerous men should have no champions lest they, in their purity and dedication, become a menace to the world.

Edward was drawing Father Jahle affectionately to George, who merely grunted at the timid words of greeting. He saw that the priest had no warm gloves; his worn hands were purplish. He was trying to repress shudders of cold. George noticed that this poverty-stricken, this starveling, priest, was not intimidated at learning who he was. He stood on his dignity, tired, beset, and raveled, as a man of God before whom the rich and the powerful were only as all men, to be enlightened and brought to the Lord.

The priest greeted Billy as a friend and then turned to Edward and said, “I only want a quarter of a pound of butter, Simon, and a quarter of a pound of cheese. And, yes, a quarter of a pound of ham. My mother likes your ham so much.”

His clerical collar was stiff but showed severe signs of wear as he loosened the black scarf which his mother had knitted for him. George said in a slow and brutal voice, “Your hands look frostbitten. No doubt—you gave your gloves away.”

It had been a contemptuous thrust, and he was surprised when the priest’s thin face colored. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Enreich, I did that this morning. My mother had knitted me gloves to match this scarf, but I saw a newsboy without gloves and he needed them more than I did.”

George’s face was expressionless. He moved his enormous shoulders in a gesture of repudiation and disgust. He half turned his back on the priest, who began to talk with Billy. Then George saw that Edward was trying to conceal what he was doing. He was slicing a large quantity of ham, probably more than a pound, and hurrying to wrap it, and then he was slipping a full pound of butter into a bag, three pieces of strudel, a good fine piece of cheese of excellent dimensions, and a tin of imported sardines. He was hesitating now, his eye scanning the shelves. A can of beans, fine quality, laced with rich pork. He crushed down the bag to make as inconspicuous a parcel as possible. George’s lips twitched, but not in a smile.

He turned to the priest again, slowly and arrogantly as one turns to a servant. “You have called Eddie ‘Simon,’—and why is this?”

The priest blushed again, bent his head, and said in a low voice, “It was St. Simon who helped carry Our Lord’s Cross.”

George stared, and his face seemed to swell. He looked at Edward and saw that the parcel was now fat and deceptively small. Edward was thrusting a piece of holly under the string.

Then George said to the priest, “I never make a mistake in things, and in ruthless men, and men who are equal with me. I know my humanity. I should not call Edward ‘Simon.’ I should call him one of the Atlantes. There are times when they hold up a useless arch. But am I to quarrel with humor?”

The priest regarded him with surprise. A gross and illiterate man, he had heard. A cruel and voracious man. An atheist. One of the worst type of German. The priest’s kind young eyes, so brown, so serious, so ingenuous, became humble. He must remember again that one never judged another by rumor or malice.

“However,” said George, “it may be you are wiser than I. It may be that in a distorted fashion Eddie is indeed ‘Simon,’ but it is a papier-mâché cross he is carrying, by his own will, and perhaps by his innocent ruthlessness.”

Edward came back to them, careful to set the parcel on the counter. Father Jahle was so absorbed in what George had said that he was abstracted. Edward thought he was suspicious. He said eagerly, “I’m sorry I had to use heavy and bulky paper tonight, Father, but we’re out of the lighter bags.”

“So,” murmured George. He said to Edward, “Will you call in Ellis for me—Simon?”

Edward grinned. “One of these days Father Jahle is going to tell me why he calls me that.” He missed Billy’s look of incredulity at this statement and then his following thoughtfulness. He ran to the door and called Ellis, who was gloomily stamping his cold feet up and down on the snow-covered sidewalk.

George fumbled in his breast pocket. There was a fifty-dollar gold bill there. Hastily he pulled it out and pressed it into the priest’s hand. The priest looked at it, stupefied. George said, “Say a prayer for me—a prayer for me—Father. God and I have a quarrel, a quarrel since I was an immigrant of eighteen. I have not been to Mass since, nor have made my confession. Nor,” and he scowled ferociously at the priest, who was suddenly pale and whose eyes were suddenly shining, “do I ever intend to do so. Let us say nothing about this.”

The priest’s lips trembled. “I shall pray that you return to the Church, Mr. Enreich,” and he leaned across the counter to the returned Edward and shook his hand, and then Billy’s hand. “Happy, holy Christmas to you both, boys,” he said hurriedly. And left with a flap of his long black coat. He paused at the door. “And to you, Mr. Enreich, a joyous journey home.”

George smoked as the boys, glancing at the clock, saw it was nearly ten. The cold air outside rang with the sweet sound of bells as sleighs raced past the shop. A child’s wan face pressed itself against the window to stare at the tree, and then was gone, like the face of a ghost.

“Slow night,” said Edward. “It usually is, two nights before Christmas. Then everybody comes in on Christmas Eve. Rush, rush, rush.”

George looked at Ellis, who had picked up the loaded bags of goods which his employer had bought. Ellis licked his lips. Let anybody talk about Mr. Enreich being greedy. The help in his house ate what he ate. There was no locking of cupboards nor any inspection of them. Ellis carried the bags out to the sleigh, and George lifted his bulky body from the chair.

He hesitated. It was at Billy he looked now. “I never make a promise I do not keep, my Billy. I shall remember you and your future.”

Suddenly Billy’s face, so handsome, so quick, became sullen. He mopped the counter. “I don’t have any future,” he said. He raised his eyes to George, and they were hard and flat. “What chance does a nigger have anywhere, sir?”

“He doesn’t if he is a ‘nigger,’ Billy,” said George, with cold disgust. “If he thinks he is a ‘nigger,’ so he is. But if he thinks he is a man, then he is a man, and no one can take his manhood from him, no matter his work or his circumstances or the contempt of fools, or even prison. If you do not learn that, then I cannot help you.”

Billy’s eyes filled with tears. Edward put his hand on his shoulder. George pulled on his coat and left without a word, though Edward called, “Merry Christmas!” after him.

Billy’s present to Edward for Christmas was a second-hand twenty-five-cent copy of the New Testament.

CHAPTER VI

But Christmas Eve was not busy, much to Edward’s surprise. On this night the shop closed promptly at half past eight, as there were only two customers from half past seven on. However, the day had been exceptionally busy. Now the people were preparing either for midnight church services or Christmas parties.

All of Edward’s family were in the parish house to see the Christmas play, the dialogue of which had been written by Gregory and the play itself produced by Sylvia. It was Sylvia, too, who had designed the sets with the assistance of young Ralph, and David had composed the music. It was a proud occasion for the Engers. Edward had been left with the shop.

It was customary, over any holiday, for Edward to carry the day’s receipts home, for Heinrich’s frugality had not as yet extended to a safe for the shop. The money was kept in a strongbox at home, to be deposited in the bank after the holiday. As there had been some robberies in the neighborhood, Billy insisted on accompanying Edward home as a bodyguard. Edward, for a reason he did not as yet understand, had bought Billy one of the new fountain pens, at a cost of three dollars. It was made of black bakelite and had Billy’s initials engraved on it in gold. Billy had accepted it with grave gratitude and then had gazed at Edward curiously. “I will use this pen all the time,” he said.

It was a fine night. The boys locked up, banked the furnace, left one light burning in the shop. Then they went out onto the street. The marble silence of the winter night surrounded them. The streets were almost empty. The lamps glimmered brilliantly in the clarified purity of the air. The snow crunched under their feet and the black skeletons of the trees cracked with the frost. No wind blew. The yellow rectangles of the houses showed spangled Christmas trees aglisten with ornaments and heavy with long peppermint canes. An occasional sleigh jingled by, filled with occupants covered with furs. The boys felt exhilarated. There would be no work tomorrow, except that Edward would remain home to keep the furnace fired well and watch the goose in the oven. The rest of the family would be at church services up to noon.

“They never think I might want to go, too,” Edward grumbled.

“You got the Bible I gave you,” said Billy, mildly. There was something in his voice that made Edward glance at him sharply. Billy continued: “You can read the whole thing yourself. Specially St. Luke. I like him best. He never saw the Lord but he wrote best about Him. He saw His Mother. She told him all about it. You can read it tonight or tomorrow.”

Edward was silent. For weeks now he had “heard” nothing from God. He talked with Him with humble if rising impatience. What did I do wrong? Are You mad because I stood up for Billy and wanted something for myself, too? Didn’t You like what I said to Pa? Haven’t I got rights as well as anybody else? Is that what You’re mad about? But God did not answer, and Edward uneasily felt that if God were angry it was not because He was angry for these things. However, Edward forced himself to believe this, for something dark and formidable lurked in the back of his mind, some truth which he would not face, some inexorable decision which he had made and on which he stood like a man stands on a battlement.

“I like the Magnificat,” Billy was saying. Still, Edward did not speak. Billy pulled out his harmonica and softly made it sing to the night, a song of reverence and beauty and young triumph and joy. Edward’s eyes angrily moistened and his heart trembled. I do love You, he said in himself. Even if You won’t speak to me any more. I’ll just go on loving You, though You don’t seem to love me now. He looked at Billy, whose face was withdrawn and full of peace, as he played his harmonica. There was no confusion, no doubt, no resentment, in his dreaming eyes. He sure lives a simple life, thought Edward with some vexation. He doesn’t have my problems and my worries. God didn’t suddenly shut him out of—things. Like He did me. And it all began with Betsy; it made me think.

He was not aware that Billy had stopped playing until the latter said gently, “Easy, boy.”

“What?” said Edward, and shrugged his big shoulders. How long had Billy been annoying him with his sudden insights, his sudden understanding which embarrassed him, Edward? “All I’m doing,” said Edward, “is just walking along, thinking.”

“Sure,” said Billy. “And what you’re thinking isn’t so good. Ed, you’ve changed since last summer. Not all at once but just steady. I don’t know what the change is but I’ve got a feeling it’s wrong for you.”

“I’ve got my problems,” said Edward curtly, and moved his neck against a sense of smothering.

“Maybe you made them,” said Billy, in that soft voice.

“Now look here!” exclaimed Edward angrily. But Billy began to play again, a Christmas carol, and Edward subsided. He listened with reluctant pleasure. Billy was a genius. He should have a violin, and he would be famous. Edward said, “One of these days, when I’m rich, I’ll give you a violin, and you can take music lessons.”

Billy said, “If God wants me to have a violin, He’ll get one for me. Didn’t He give me the harmonica? Sure, it was yours, but all at once He fixed it so I had it. You know something? God gives you what you ought to have, if you’ll just believe He will.”

Simple, repeated Edward inwardly. Very, very simple.

“Don’t push me,” said Billy, but he grinned at his friend affectionately and pranced forward in a little dance which prevented any reply from Edward.

They reached the Enger house. To Edward’s surprise the parlor was all lit up, though when the family was absent the whole house was frugally dark. Someone was playing the piano, and as the boys neared the icy wooden steps of the porch the music could be heard clearly in the quiet night.

“Listen to that!” said Edward, furiously. “It’s Dave. He’s supposed to be at the church party tonight. Does he call that music, the crazy, daffy noise, that ragtime? He always does that when he thinks nobody’s around! It makes me sick, after all the—”

The music was loud, gay, clamoring, full of frolic and rhythm and pleasure. It gamboled and ran up and down the keys in a dance of release and merriment. It strutted and stamped and whirled, sometimes with a bass like drums, sometimes with the lilting tinkle of the high octaves. In spite of himself and his own anger and outrage, Edward found his feet moving and his knees swaying. He came to himself when he heard Billy’s harmonica joining in the frenzied and abandoned melody that underlay the twinkles and the drummings. He caught Billy’s arm and stopped him. Billy stared at him and his eyes were very bright and fixed in the light of the street lamp.

“Boy,” said Billy, in a hushed voice. “He sure can make that piano roll!”

“You make me sick,” said Edward with disgust, and he ran up the stairs and flung open the door. Billy looked after him and hesitated. Then he forgot he was a Negro and that he had never been in this house before, and he followed his friend. Something had impelled him to do so, something instinctive and urgent. He stood in the doorway of the small hot parlor with its ugly, crowding furniture and with the piano between the two little windows. And he saw David. David’s dark and narrow face was alight with a kind of ecstasy and abandon, his eyes sparkling, his body swaying, his slender hands racing up and down the keys in a blur of dancing movement. “Boy, that’s music,” whispered Billy, and his hand went to his pocket and pulled out the harmonica. “Real happy music.”

David was unaware as yet of the entrance of his brother and Billy, for his back was to them. His elegant shoulders leaped up and down as his arms moved rapidly. The whole house was alive with unseen dancers.

“Shut up!” shouted Edward, and advanced into the room.

David’s hands stopped on the keys with a loud, discordant sound. He swung about on the stool and looked at his brother, and his distinguished features tightened.

Edward still advanced upon him, as if to strike him. “After all the goddamn money I’ve spent on that piano!” he said. “After all the lessons I’ve paid for, working like a dog in that goddamn store, and never going anywhere, and putting money in the fund for you! After all your genius, when you can play like a real concert pianist! And you’ve got to fool away your time, and my money, playing that trash!”

David sat on the stool, long and slim and graceful, and his black eyes flashed on his brother like dark fire. There was a sudden violence in the air, a sudden enraged silence. In spite of his natural diffidence, Billy came into the room, and David’s eye fell on him. He knew Billy slightly, and his mouth, open as if to snarl, closed.

“Look,” said Billy to the outraged Edward. He took Edward by the elbow. “There’s all kinds of music. It don’t mean that this isn’t music, too. There’s all kinds, and this is good.” He smiled at David gently. “Man, you sure can make that piano talk! Make a wooden Indian dance.”

Edward tore his elbow out of Billy’s grasp. He turned on the boy with an almost brutal gesture. But Billy was putting his harmonica to his lips, and to David’s amazement, and to Edward’s dazed fury, he began to play the melody which David himself had composed and which he had been playing. The harmonica sang out lightly and rapidly, romping, fairy notes of youthful dancing, and Billy rolled with its excitement, stamping his food on the red Brussels carpet to keep time, his shoulders twitching.

David laughed out, swung on his stool, and his hands fell on the keys in perfect harmony. The two played together, the harmonica soaring like a tiny violin in accompaniment, the keys of the piano rising and falling in a movement almost too fast to be seen. To Edward it was repulsive, discordant, and incredibly vulgar, for his rage was making a shrill humming in his ears. It was a repudiation of all his years of work, of all the loss of his youth. It was a disdainful rejection of his grief over Betsy, and the insults he had taken in silence, and of the denial of his own importance. Mixed with it all was a wild dismay, and a challenge to him, a challenge he would not acknowledge or permit.

He flung Billy’s newspaper-wrapped gift, the New Testament, on a nearby table, and he cried out to his friend, “Get out of here! Go on, get out of here!” And he struck Billy on the shoulder with his clenched fist.

The music stopped abruptly. David rose slowly from his stool and confronted his brother, and Billy stepped back, wincing with pain, his eyes somberly staring at Edward. “I said, get out,” repeated Edward, and his friend did not know his face.

“Now, see here,” said David.

But Billy, still staring at Edward as at a stranger, walked backward to the door. He opened it behind his back, stepped out, and closed the door. To the last, Edward could see his eyes, questioning, mournful, and compassionate, shining with still golden lights.

“That was a hell of a thing to do,” said David slowly, and there was no sneer in his voice. “Hitting him like that. Who do you think you are? Simon Legree?”

Edward turned from him and ran to the door and flung it open. But Billy was gone. There was not even a shadow of him on the street. A great pain pierced Edward’s chest. I’ll make it up to him, he thought confusedly. I shouldn’t have done that. He’s my friend. He’s all the friend I have. He called out, “Billy! Billy!”

His shout came back to him, with emptiness and desolation.

He slammed the door and turned to his brother with a dark face. “It was all your fault,” he said in a low tone full of passionate anger.

David shrugged. He was eying Edward queerly. “Was it?” he asked.

Edward was almost blind with that anger. “Wasting your time,” he said thickly. “Wasting my time. Wasting—all the days of my life. That’s what you’re doing. Since I was ten. I was willing to work because Pa says you’re a genius. And I’ve heard you play lots of times and I know he’s right. But you can’t go on wasting my life and my money and the work, all the goddamn work, I do! You hear me?”

David regarded him as if seeing him for the first time and as if what he saw frightened him. He felt Edward’s powerful strength, his iron determination, and it was as if the bars of a prison closed about him and there were the clang of a steel door. Edward, he saw, was no longer the despised and toiling numbskull of a brother, but someone to be feared, to be placated, to be restored to acceptance, for the things he could do, the nameless, implacable things he could do, the destroying things he could do. Edward’s gray eyes were distended and inexorable, glittering almost with malignance.

“Hey,” said David quietly. “What’s the matter with you, anyway? I know how you work. But you’ve got brains.” He paused. “Yes, you’ve got brains. You work because that’s what you want to do. You think it’s because—”

“Shut up!” cried Edward. “I do it all because you’re a genius, a concert pianist, a composer! I do it all for all of you! And you’re not going to waste your time or I’ll—I’ll do—something! You hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you,” said David. He bent his head and looked at his feet, brooding, and his thin face was closed and abstracted.

“I smell of pickles, do I?” said Edward, his wrath rising. “I smell of garlic, do I? I haven’t any intelligence, have I? That’s what you’re always saying, you and your sneers. I’m just fit only for work. That’s what you say. Maybe you’re right. But I’m smelling and working for you, and you’re not going to waste my life. None of you.”

David did not answer. Neither boy was aware that the back door to the parlor had opened and that the family was crowding on the threshold and listening with mute amazement and disbelief.

“You’re all going to develop yourselves, like Pa says.” Edward’s voice was the voice of a ruthless man now and not a youth. “I didn’t choose what Pa calls your futures. You did, all of you. You aren’t going to throw over his ambitions for you; I’ll take care of that!”

“Yes,” said David thoughtfully, still gazing at his feet. “I guess you will.” He raised his head and gave Edward another odd stare.

Maria Enger thought this the proper time to interfere. She came into the room, majestic for all her shapeless bulk, impelling in her authority, like a great Viking figurehead, her pale hair drooping under the wide black felt hat with its dilapidated blue plume. She spoke in German, and sternly. “What is this quarrel on Christmas Eve? What is the stupidity, and ugly conversation? Was it for this occasion, David, that you decided to remain home at the very last moment and practice, as you said?”

Edward swung to her, and Heinrich, blinking distressedly in the doorway, surrounded by his children, was struck again by the extraordinary resemblance between his second son and Maria, for all their physical differences. Edward said wrathfully, “I returned home, Mother, with the day’s receipts, and discovered David playing that ragtime—that clashing ragtime!—on the piano again. You did not know that when he is alone he plays nothing but that?”

Maria paused. In any quarrel between Edward and her other children she invariably decided in favor of the “gifted ones,” for they had “temperaments.” But this was serious. She turned formidably to her oldest son. “Is it so, David, the thing your brother says?”

It was usual for David to answer angrily and impatiently, when pressed, even by his mother. But now he only continued to gaze at Edward as he said without emotion, “Not always. There are some times when I must have relief from the classic music. It is unfortunate that Eddie has heard me then.”

“He’s just dumb,” said little Ralph, who was tall and plump, and whose distended bright black eyes looked on Edward with malice. He pulled off his wool cap and showed a thatch of brilliant auburn hair which curled almost girlishly about his big ears.

“Not too many brains,” said Gregory, with his knowing wink. He wore a new suit tonight, and he had tried for David’s elegance without success. His broad face, so like Edward’s, wrinkled with amused spite and intelligent malevolence. “He’s always fighting with somebody around here. Why can’t he sleep in the store with the pickles? Jeepers, Christmas Eve, and he’s got to raise a fuss around here!”

“Children, my children,” murmured Heinrich, full of misery. He peered at Edward and thought again, My son has changed, he has become like iron, he has lost his heart. Heinrich’s woolen scarf, as if reflecting his despondency, uncoiled itself and fell over his belly. He could always appeal to Edward with one eloquent look of pleading and Edward, however stirred or angered, would subside. But tonight Edward did not subside; his anger brightened at that meek and imploring glance. His throat felt thick, turgid with bitter emotion.

Sylvia followed her father into the room. She was not yet fourteen, and she was dark and thin and spindly and restless, and had no obvious beauty, but she possessed what Edward did not know was chic, a flair, a style. Her stark and bony face had an arresting distinction about it, her thin body moved with assured arrogance, and her gestures, though stiff and sometimes violent, were never awkward. She had made the simple dark-red woolen dress she wore, which outlined her adolescent figure. Not for Sylvia any frivolous berthas, or loops of braid wandering wildly about hems and necks and waists, or conspicuous buttons or mutton-leg sleeves or loose blouses. The dress flowed smoothly and with felicity from a narrow waist to a wide skirt, and the severe collar was fastened with Maria’s pearl and black-enameled pin, borrowed for tonight. She had refused to wear her high button shoes with this dress; she had insisted on her summer patent-leather slippers, narrow and shining, below stockings of mercerized black cotton. She had even made her dark-red woolen hat herself, crocheted deftly, hugging her head, and embellished by only a short, stiff black ornament designed by her from a scrap of black patent leather. Even the worn gray coat had an air, and she removed it with casual grace and placed it carefully on one of the green settees. Her hair, loosened tonight, flowed to her waist like spun black glass.

She looked at Edward with cool contempt. “I don’t know what’s the matter with him, since last summer,” she said. “He’s been acting dippy, as if he owned everybody around here, and he gives orders, and glares, and thinks he can scare us. You’d have expected, when we came in, that he’d have the decency to say, ‘Merry Christmas!’ and ask how the play was, and everything. But he doesn’t have that much politeness. All he thinks about is that smelly store and making money.”

Maria lifted one of her big and fleshy hands commandingly.

“One forgets that Edward is making money for us all, though I should prefer that it not become his obsession. Wait,” she said severely as Edward opened his mouth to speak. “I have not done. Edward has some justice on his side. David should not be wasting his time, for it is blasphemous to waste a gift.”

“I told you, Ma,” David said, replying to her in obstinate English. “I’ve got to have some relief sometimes. Like stretching your muscles.” But he colored.

“That is to be expected,” said Heinrich timidly, peeping apologetically at his wife. “It was that way with my flute. I did not always play the classics. I, at times, played for the dancers, at the Gasthaus, and it was relaxing and pleasant.”

“Genius cannot relax, as you say, Heinrich,” his wife remarked with haughty disdain. “You were not a genius. We were speaking of the gifted. David, I command you to play only what is right for you to play. There must be no more nonsense. No more relaxing. One destroys a gift when one desecrates it with cheapness and folly and what is called modern music. One wonders, David, where you hear this tawdriness.”

“I can tell you,” said Edward, bitterly. “He hears it in other houses, on the gramophone. He goes to the Witlocks’ and the McCarthys’ and the Bergers’, down the street, with all the kids and their records, and the Witlocks have a piano, and they dance and sing while Dave plays that trash. And then he comes home here saying he stayed after school! And we’re paying two dollars a lesson for him at Miss Taylor’s! He even composes the stuff himself!”

“Is it true?” Maria asked David.

The boy colored again. “Well, yes. But I’ve got to have some recreation. It doesn’t hurt—anything. And though you’d never believe it of anybody raised in this house, I happen to like people. That’s funny, isn’t it, to like people? I like to play for the kids I know, and I like to see them dance, and I like to dance, too.” He said the last defiantly, and everyone listened aghast, except Sylvia, whose thin lips smiled in sympathy.

“Do you call that jumping, dancing?” asked Maria. Her pouched, pale face became frozen. “That American leaping and prancing? That most unelegant clutching of a girl by a man? That stamping and shrilling? You would call that the dance?”

“It is Christmas Eve,” said Heinrich piteously. “We must remember the occasion.” But no one heard him.

“It is all vile and common,” Maria continued. “It is not expected of a Von Brunner. It is expected only of the base and the stupid and the vulgar.”

“That’s not all,” Edward interrupted. No one had ever dared to interrupt Maria before, but Maria did not express any outrage now, much to the astonishment of her family. In fact, she turned majestically to Edward and said, “Speak, my son.”

Edward pointed at Sylvia. “She made those clothes she’s wearing, wasting her time, when she should have been studying her drama. And we pay three dollars a week for her lessons with Madam Bilinski!”

Sylvia glared at him. “What’s the difference if you design clothes as well as stage sets, and learn how to make your own hats as well as to direct plays?”

“I do not object to the thrift which leads one to make one’s clothes,” said Maria. “But I, too, have observed that too much time is spent on this, Sylvia. You are endlessly altering your frocks or changing the style of your hats, when you should be studying. I will allot to you, hereafter, only three hours a week on the clothing.”

A scarlet stain appeared on Sylvia’s white cheekbones, and she gave Edward a glance charged with hatred.

“She spends hours looking in store windows at dresses and hats, and I’ve seen her sketching them on her school paper, outside the windows,” said Edward.

“This will cease,” said Maria, with icy finality. “Sylvia will return from school by the clock.”

Edward stood in the center of the hot and crowded room, yet there seemed to be a space about him like the space given a dangerous chieftain. He dominated the room, and his gray eyes were like smoke filled with fire.

He looked at Gregory and Ralph, who shrank and tried to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible. “These other kids,” said Edward, pointing to them mercilessly. “Greg writes what he thinks are funny stories, and you should hear them scream down in the basement, or in the parlor, when you and Pa aren’t around. And he’s supposed to be learning to do serious writing, novels and biographies!”

Gregory straightened up. It was significant, now, that he spoke to Edward and not his mother. “Gosh darn it, anyway!” he cried. “You got to have some fun sometimes! I’m not an old man, like Pa, and not a dummy like you! You never hear anybody laugh around here; it’s all work and study, and I’m only eleven years old, not even twelve yet, and if I play I’m a murderer or something, I’m wasting my time! What if I do write funny stories for Dave and Sylvia and Ralph? They like to laugh, too. It’s like a funeral around here all the time, and you’re the undertaker, you dummy!”

Ralph had begun to sniffle, knowing that he was next. Edward, ignoring Gregory’s outburst, fulfilled Ralph’s apprehension. “And here we’ve got the artist, the one who’s going to be the famous artist. Money put out every week for his special art lessons. Money given him for carfare to the museum. And what does he do, every chance he gets? He studies higher mathematics, things I never heard of, though I like math and wanted to be—” Edward paused, and white ridges sprang out about his mouth. “And he draws geometry pictures, and he’s got a slide rule from somewheres. And he only paints real things when he’s afraid someone will know what he’s doing on the sly.”

“Wait,” said Maria. “Here I must intervene. Sylvia designed the sets for the Sunday-school play, and very excellently, and Ralph was most original in the painting of them, and Gregory’s work brought much appreciation. However,” and she paused formidably again, “this does not expiate the hours wasted on foolishness, about which I have now just learned. There will be no more of it. Gregory will confine himself to serious literature, Ralph will do mathematics only with his school work. Life is too short for frivolities and uselessness.”

“A funeral parlor,” said Gregory hopelessly.

Edward looked at them all with a darkling smile. “I had no time to play,” he said. “I had no time to study, to dance. I never learned to play the piano or paint or read books. I didn’t have the money to go to the nickelodeon. Why, we had a ball team on this street and I could run better, hit better, and throw better than anybody else! But there wasn’t time, after I was ten. There was the store. And all of you.”

David gazed at him, and his slender face became moved and tremulous. “Edward has justice on his side,” said Maria. “If he works so hard, then it must be appreciated. But I do not like his tone. He will never join—”

“Merry Christmas!” said Edward ironically. And he went to the door and for the first time a passage was made for him. He could feel the disturbed eyes of his brothers and sister on his back, and he straightened his shoulders and he was no longer tired.

“Merry Christmas, my son!” said Heinrich imploringly, but Edward did not answer.

Maria watched him go. She thought, My son has removed himself from us. He removed himself a long time ago, though doubtless he believes we have rejected him. Is it possible that the rejected have, in reality, rejected others first? Who is, in reality, the destroyer, Cain or Abel? Was Cain goaded beyond his strength by his brother? Were their mother and father truly the guilty ones? Who can tell, in this terrible and most confusing life? I know only one thing with surety: Edward is the reflection of myself, and I know my weaknesses, and he shall not suffer from his own, if I can prevent it. He is too strong to expire into nothing, as I expired.

She moved ponderously toward the kitchen, and her expression was remote and determined. Edward’s lonely door, in the attic, banged behind him, and Maria winced. It is the eve of his birthday, she thought as she removed her coat. He thinks we have forgotten—that I, his mother, have forgotten. He does not know that each man must travel a lonely way to himself, and that the journey is frightful, but at the end is God. This, he will learn, and no one can help him but the Father. The road is more terrible, but more rewarding at the last, for the strong than the sheltered way of the weak.

Edward lit his one oil lamp, which was unshaded but whose chimney he himself had brightly polished. It stood on an old round oak table, discarded from the parlor, and it was scarred by the years, having been second-hand in the first place. Neatly arranged about the lamp were a number of Edward’s books on physics and three copies of the Retail Merchant. After lighting the lamp, Edward lit his meager second-hand oil stove, a round small affair like a cylinder. It gave little heat; he stood over it and tried to warm hands which remained cold and stiff and trembling.

He looked about his attic room. He alone occupied it. He could have shared a room with David, but would not, and had given no explanation. “He is so obstinate,” Maria would say, after she had urged her second son to move in with his brother in the larger, warmer, and more comfortable room on the middle floor. “A recluse. If he were an artist, one would understand.”

The room was very narrow but ran the full length of the house. Only the part occupied by Edward’s old iron bed was walled and papered in a sleazy fashion. It had been so prepared four years ago when he had demanded the attic for himself. There was no ceiling, however, except the steep and slanting roof, all its rafters bare, all its nails revealed. Accordingly, the attic was fearfully hot in summer, paralyzingly cold in winter. Against one beaverboard wall with its paper of leprous purple flowers and venomous green leaves stood an ancient and lopsided dresser with a marble top and a blurred mirror. Against another wall had been hung a horizontal rod, concealed by a chintz curtain, which held Edward’s few clothes. There was one discarded kitchen chair near the table, and there were no other furnishings. The sagging bed was covered by an old patchwork quilt, thriftily bought by Maria in a church rummage sale. Beyond the uncertainly improvised walls lay the shadowy body of the attic, where baggage was stored, and abandoned furniture and numerous crates containing the family’s castoff apparel and books. Edward cared for his attic himself, and a broom stood in a distant corner.

Once, three years ago, when Edward had had bronchitis and a doctor had had to be called after long family consultation, the doctor had glanced indignantly about the “room” and the rest of the attic. But young Edward had smiled and had said, “I could have a room downstairs with my brother, a nice room. But I like this. I made them give it to me.”

Here he could be alone; here he could think; here no one could intrude. Here he could dream and read and study. Here was silence. Until a few months ago the attic had been filled with peace and tranquillity for him. Now there was no peace. The horrible purple and green wallpaper had a way, lately, of seeming to crawl before his eyes, and so he avoided looking at it as much as possible. The shapes of his furniture, once friendly and homely, had taken on firm and inimical outlines, as if withdrawing from him. The distant mounds of baggage and crates lurked and lost compactness, as if denying him their reality. There was grit on his books now, though once they had been tenderly dusted by him every day. Only the Retail Merchant, well read and constantly reread, showed evidence of being part of him. Passages were marked with pencil, and he referred to them often. The golden-lit dreams of his near past had gone, with all their entrancement and bemusement and happiness. They had been replaced by a hard sureness, like a blueprint.

Well, Edward would say to himself with some misery, I guess it’s because I’m a man now, and not a kid, and I know what I want. I’m on my way. I suppose you have to pay something for that.

Where had he heard that Spanish proverb? “Take what you want, says God. But pay for it!” He could not remember. However, he repeated it to himself several times a day, and it gave him a bitter courage. He was ready to pay. He was certain that he knew what it was that required so awesome a price from God.

The attic seemed particularly cold and dingy and repellent tonight. It was the sleeping place of a stranger whom he did not know, though once he had known very well. The coldness of his hands was in his body, too; even his bones felt cold and tremulous, and the pit of his stomach. His face was dark and as fixed as granite, and there was an arctic grimness in his mind and a feeling of triumph which gave him no pleasure. He was too young, as yet, to know the source of all this. He only knew that where there had once been a softness and sweetness in him, in spite of all his work and strength and worry, a gentle yet powerfully urgent love for life and bright excitement, there was this as yet nameless rigidity and glacial induration, this icy objectivity. He did not regret the loss of what once had been his. He did not regret it until he was nearly fifty. On this Christmas Eve he could almost rejoice that he had lost what now seemed his “babyishness and silly ideas.” He did not know that what he was feeling was largely mixed with hatred, for hatred heretofore had been unknown to him and only a perplexing word.

No sound came to him from downstairs; the family was still in the kitchen lingering over their coffee and cake. Edward lifted his head stiffly, and the frail lamplight fell on his clenched face. Mr. Enreich had told him to take a long look at his family. Well, he had taken that look tonight. Weaklings! David, Sylvia, Gregory, Ralph—all of them! Having been given gifts, they trifled with them. There was no dedication in their spirits, no determination, no drive. Well, thought Edward, I’m the boy who can drive them! They’ll toe the mark and make all the days of my life count, They’d better! I’m not giving up my life for nothing.

These were new thoughts for Edward Enger, and some chill uneasiness came to him a moment later, some mysterious warning, some stern if voiceless admonition. He shook his head, as if denying. He did not understand. His whole body became like one co-ordinated muscle, bent like a bow for one target. For one instant his startled and alarmed soul sent him a message from an old Greek story which he had once read. “I shot my arrow at random, yet perhaps it was not at random, and I discovered it later in the dead heart of my brother.” Again Edward shook his head and this time as if shaking off the unearthly wing of a butterfly which had flown to him from an unknown place, once familiar to him but now lost forever.

He walked up and down the uncarpeted and rough boards of the floor, and his footsteps were a slow and heavy drumming. He could control his thoughts now. Until last August he would let his thoughts, sometimes gilded and odd and secret and sweet, rove at their will, filling him with delight. He was over that “weakness,” since August. He could concentrate his thoughts and force them where he willed. He thought of George Enreich and his peculiar and reflective staring. He would be “tutored” by this successful man, he said to himself firmly and pushed that long staring out of his mind. He put his hand in his pocket and withdrew the velvet box which contained the golden pen. He looked at the pen. Gold. It was a wonderful color, Gold. Gold was all that mattered; you could see that on Pa’s face. You could see it in his reverence. For one instant Edward’s hand involuntarily lifted as if to throw the pen furiously from him. The next instant he had controlled himself and he rubbed the pen lovingly in his fingers. Nevertheless, he took box and pen to his dresser and put them away, far under his small supply of underwear. Something of that night remained in him. He never used the pen. For the Stalwart. Years later he understood why the pen remained locked away by him, by his own will.

Suddenly his thoughts, escaping from him like lighted and determined birds, blew away from his control. Billy. Oh, he thought impatiently, I’ll make it up to him! But Billy had betrayed him in a way; he had revealed a frivolous and very worthless facet of his character to his friend, who had believed in his genius. He had stood up for David. He had played with David. He had acted like—like—an ape. Jumping up and down as he played the harmonica in that ragtime. My harmonica, thought Edward bitterly. He used to play beautiful music on it. Billy’s cheap, too. Well, Billy’s only a … Now the stern and voiceless admonition resounded in Edward’s inner ear, and he quelled his thought. But the poisonous residue remained, like a drop of vitriol in the cells of his spirit.

(He forgot the battered New Testament Billy had given him. Maria, discovering it in its newspaper wrappings, believed it of no value and later stored it in the attic with all the other discarded things.)

Billy fluttered in his mind, a ghost which would not be laid. Edward’s heart lurched, and the granite fixity left his face. I ought to be ashamed, he said to himself, even if Billy’s cheap now. But still, he shouldn’t have encouraged Dave. Oh, I’ll make it up to him! I shouldn’t have hit him. He’s my friend.

Edward went to the one tiny oval window in the attic and leaned his forehead against the frost-encrusted glass. He rolled his head against it with a masochistic pleasure in his own penitential discomfort. Goddamn it, he suddenly thought, why don’t You speak to me any more? Well, I’ll go on loving You anyway. Remember me? I share Your birthday. All at once there were tears in his young eyes, and he sobbed dryly a few times. Look, he said silently in himself, they’re all down there celebrating and they never invited me. I’ve never sung Christmas carols with them since I was ten years old. I was always too tired. Me? Oh, I’m the one who isn’t interested in religion! Just a workhorse. I wouldn’t understand! Maybe You blame me for that, too, like the rest of them. Maybe You’re on their side and You don’t like me for trying to help them develop what You gave them.

Like a soft and tender strain of music, little Margaret, almost forgotten Margaret, crept into the boy’s agonized thoughts. What was her last name? He could not remember. Something beginning with P or perhaps it was B. Never mind. She was only a kid.

A cold wind blew in through the thin rafters, and the light of the lamp wavered and Edward shivered involuntarily. His thoughts ran away from him again. Where had he read something else? “Died at fifteen, buried at seventy-five.” Stupid thought. He wasn’t dead. He was alive for perhaps the first time in his life. He shook his head once more as if in denial. It was only because he would be fifteen tomorrow, fifteen in half an hour. That’s why he’d thought that silly thing.

The snow was falling heavily outside; the little oval window blurred with fluffy whiteness, like shining moths in the lamplight. Now the harsh voice of the rising winter gale sounded against the rafters and thundered in the bricks of the chimney which rose through the attic. Loneliness, like a gaunt presence, haunted the long shadows, blew in Edward’s face, moved over his flesh. I should be in bed, Christmas Eve or not, thought Edward, glancing at the roundness of the feather bed under the quilt. But still he could not get undressed. It was as if he were waiting.

The family came out of the kitchen, replete and warm. It was time for the Christmas carols, in German, and David sat down at the piano and the family settled in the light of the oil lamps on the unforgiving settees and carved chairs. They began to sing. It is too bad, thought Heinrich, that we do not have a tree, but the mother considers it plebeian. He remembered the gay little trees of his youth, sighed, sang louder to conceal his sigh. He was very tired, in all his short, plump limbs. The church party had seemed drearier than usual, with the children reciting in their shrill and precise voices, and the Christmas play had been disappointing for all Sylvia’s skill, Ralph’s brilliant painting, and David’s music. I do not understand this American way, said Heinrich to himself. It was not so in Germany. We had carolers on the snowy streets, and there were cakes and hot spiced wine in one’s home beside one’s fire or near the porcelain stove. And there were visitors to the home, carrying parcels tied with colored ribbon and much kissing and cold rosy cheeks presented to one’s lips, and the tinkling of bells in the clear white night. This was after church, of course, during which the minister spoke simply and joyously and the people’s eyes filled with happy and grateful tears. Now, it seemed, one had church parties during which everyone was bored except the parents of the particular child who was reciting at a given moment. Heinrich sighed again. It was so very barren here.

There was so much talk in the newspapers and at patriotic celebrations of America’s “youth.” But America was not really young. She had no gaiety, no solidity, no laughter of friends, no love that extended beyond the house to strangers. The American “dream”? There was no dream if the dream concerned itself only with money and materialism. Yet, thought Heinrich sadly, it is such a wonderful country if only it would sing the old songs and laugh and kiss and greet even strangers courteously and wish them Godspeed when encountered in a beer garden or a crowded place or in a shop. Heinrich thought of the men of the Tyrol in their short leather trousers and the feathers in their hats and their gentle, polite manners and their eyes that danced. He thought of the girls in their bright skirts and their white lace-edged petticoats, and their full pink cheeks, and the children who did not look like sharp and wizened old men and women with wary eyes as flat as buttons:

David had suddenly stopped playing, and Maria and her children sang the balance of “Stille Nacht” without his music. David, to Maria’s umbrage, was rising restlessly and was walking about as if uncertain, his lean head bent. Then he went to the short uncarpeted stairway at the side of the room which led upstairs. He looked upward, and his mouth drew together in a thin line that was not hard but only thoughtful. As if he had decided something, he returned to the piano and began to play something he always practiced when alone: Bach-Gounod’s “Ave Maria.”

“What is this pagan song, this Popish song?” demanded Heinrich in consternation. But David played on, and the glorious and solemn music soared in the triumphant and reverent salutation to a Queen. Maria turned in her chair, smiling. What if it was not a Lutheran song and only a “Roman” song? It was a salutation, an angelic salutation, to a young girl who bore God under her childish breast. Ah, thought Maria, there is so little beauty on this earth, among men! Where and when it comes, it should be saluted, should be cherished, should be adored.

Edward heard the song, for David played it with the sound of quiet thunder and passion, and he knew it, for he had, known to David, heard the practicing. He ran to his door and flung it open, and then as the great “Ave Maria!” rose like the voice of an archangel, he sat down abruptly on his narrow stairway and bent his head on his knees. He did not know that David was playing it for him, that his brother, the arrogant, impatient, and contemptuous David, was offering it to him in simple penance, a penance David did not quite understand himself.

The other children were suddenly and strangely moved, without their own comprehension. Tears rolled down Sylvia’s stark and colorless face, Gregory was frankly weeping, and little Ralph cried silently. Maria glanced at them, and her mouth shook. She stared at David piercingly with her large pale eyes, and understood what he did not understand.

David’s face lifted, his eyes closed in still rapture. He had a clear strong tenor and he sang the angelic salutation each time it occurred in the song. There are times when I do not know my children, thought Maria, and was sternly touched. Edward was too easily forgotten, but then he always seemed to wish to stand apart from the family, and especially so for the last few months. He should have been invited to sing and eat and drink with us, she told herself, though it is probable that he is already asleep. But last year, and the year before, he refused, saying he was tired.

Edward’s head remained on his knees, and tears seeped down a face no longer embittered. His tears were the last tears of his childhood. But even he did not know that David was playing for him, was lifting his voice to his brother. He felt himself an outcast, thrown beyond close hearing, close companionship, permitted only to sit here in the darkness and listen, unknown, unseen.

The bells of the Catholic churches in Waterford began to ring at midnight, and they took up the chorus of joy and good tidings and salutation when David’s music murmured away into silence. Edward heard them and they were voices behind him in exile, in an ecstasy he could no longer share, and he did not know why he could not share.

When the shop opened after Christmas, Billy was not there. But a letter for Edward lay on the counter. Billy had written:

“Maybe I should have told you, Eddie, that I can’t come back. It’s been on my mind for a long time and it’s got nothing to do with you, or anything. My folks won’t miss me. I’m going down to New Orleans. They’ve got little bands and things down there and maybe I’ll get myself a job playing the harmonica. And I can dance and sing, too. I can send my folks more money. There’s no future for me in Waterford. Eddie, I hope you miss me a little. I’m going to keep your pen all my life, and use it, too, and maybe we’ll see each other again, sometime. That’ll be bully. I got tired of the North and all that damn snow and the people not liking me for nothing that’s my fault, anyways. New Orleans is a dandy city. I got a second cousin down there and he’s been asking me to come down all the time. He plays a trumpet in a restaurant or something on Bourbon Street, that’s what they call it, and he makes a lot of money. I’m going to make myself some, too. When you’re a rich man, come down and look me up. I’m going to fix myself a real good fancy name and get a little band of my own and maybe I’ll get rich like you, one of these days. I’m your real friend, Eddie, and I’m not going to forget you, honest, and think of me like I’ll think of you. You can keep my books, and you study them, and get more out of the public library. I read a French book called Les Miserables, and it sure made me cry. There’s an archbishop in it, and a thief who stole his candles, and then the archbishop told the police he gave the thief his candles, and I don’t know why, but I cried all over the pages about it. You’re just like the archbishop, honest. You read that book. Your friend, B. Russell.”

There was a postscript. “P.S. Now, don’t you go thinking that anything you did or said made me make up my mind. It didn’t. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“An ungrateful boy,” said Heinrich. “And it was you, my son, who insisted I raise his wages and give him meals without payment. Eddie, why do you weep? Billy was only a colored boy and he showed you no gratitude. Ah, that is the way’ of friends! Dry your eyes, my son. There are two customers entering. I do not know why you are so affected, and you must forget.”

CHAPTER VII

“It is well, now,” said George Enreich. “I have taught you all I know these four years. We shall proceed to establish the fine shop of which you spoke.”

“I have already chosen the place,” said Edward. “A large store. It hasn’t been doing well since the panic last year, and the man and his wife are old, and their sons are indifferent. They won’t work; they think nine hours a day is enough, and only half a day Saturday. When did a man ever succeed if he watched the clock? Clocks are for lazy people. I can buy the store at a bargain, and the stock, too. I’ve talked with the owners, and they haven’t any choice but to sell to me or go into bankruptcy. Do you know what they asked me to do, Mr. Enreich? Lend them the money to get back on their feet, as they say! The banks won’t lend them a cent.”

“Ah,” said George thoughtfully, looking at his cigar. “That would not be the Goeltzes, would it?”

“Yes,” said Edward, his features hardening. “It would.” He watched George warily.

“They did well until a year or so ago. I remember them. What did you offer for the shop and the stock, my Eddie?”

Edward hesitated. “They bought the shop, and the flat above, in 1895. They paid four thousand dollars for the whole thing. I offered them five thousand dollars for the building and all the stock. They refused, of course. They said they had put three thousand dollars extra into the shop and the flat, plumbing, new flooring, counters, storeroom, a heating plant, not including the stock.”

“So,” said George, his small green eyes still on his cigar. “I should guess that they want at least nine thousand dollars, pleading that prices are going up and that their location is centered in the best shopping streets.”

“Ten thousand,” replied Edward. He shifted his big and muscular body in his chair, and there was an edge to his voice. “I told them that they could take my five thousand dollars or leave it. If they don’t sell to me, and there aren’t any other prospects, they’ll lose it all, anyway. I know that. And they know it, too.”

“They owe the banks two thousand dollars,” said George. “A mortgage. This they borrowed when the panic began.”

Edward had ceased to be surprised at the extent of George’s vast knowledge of the city and its inhabitants and history. His uneasiness arose from another source. “Yes,” he said flatly. “That would leave them three thousand dollars. The old folks are in their late sixties or early seventies. Their sons can get jobs somewhere else. In fact, the younger one, Walter, could have a job with me, though he’d have to learn how to work, and he’s in his early forties, I think.” He rolled a cigarette for himself from a pack of Bull Durham and a sheaf of rice papers, and George watched his large hands do this with delicacy and neatness. George himself took out his gold match case and struck a light for the young man, who accepted the courtesy with a curt “Thanks.” His mind was still pursuing the Goeltzes.

“With that three thousand dollars, old Goeltz could open a smaller delicatessen somewhere else,” suggested George. “Perhaps nearby. After all, they have friends in the neighborhood.”

Edward squinted through the smoke of his cigarette. “I took care of that, too. I said I wouldn’t buy if they did not sign an ironclad agreement that neither they nor their sons would open a delicatessen within five miles of this one, and not even that for two years.”

“So,” said George again. “No doubt you have visited the bank and discovered that the mortgage falls due in three months.”

Edward’s broad dark cheeks colored slightly; then he smiled and shrugged. “Yes, of course.”

“And you have offered to buy the premises from the bank at a slightly smaller figure in the event it is seized by them for the mortgage?”

“Yes,” said Edward with no inflection in his voice. “That’s business.”

Once on a time, thought George, you would not have considered that “business,” my Eddie. You have gone a long way and I am not certain as to where you have gone. In my direction? It is possible. But I did not tutor you in these things, these expedient things. Were they latent in you all the years of your youth, or has life corrupted you as it corrupted me? I look at your face and if it is harder and too old for your nineteen years, and if your eyes are cold, there is no hypocrisy there, no cruelty for the sake of cruelty, no meanness or ugliness. You are driven, and only the great God can know what drives you.

George, who unconsciously relapsed into German whenever he was disturbed, said, “Father Jahle often speaks to me of your enormous generosity to him, Eddie. Ah, you are blushing like a girl. Do not blush for good acts, though I suspect you do not blush for exigent acts. You repaired his house, and I know it came from no large allowance you permit yourself, for you have no such an allowance. You thought, of course, that I would lend you the five thousand dollars, and you have reason to expect that. You have no five thousand dollars of your own. Will you tell me what you have?”

“Five hundred,” said Edward, curtly, and again that stain of color appeared on his wide cheekbones. “After all, the kids are growing up and the fund has to grow accordingly. Will you lend me the money for the Goeltz property? If I have it in my hand, how can those old people resist, in spite of their sons?”

George meditated, his red eyebrows drawn together. Four years had increased his girth but had not lessened his thatch of coarse red hair or added more than a few lines to his ruddy face. Then he slapped his hand on the counter. “You have a partner, Eddie. I will lend, as a partner. Five thousand dollars is my investment.”

“I don’t want a partner, Mr. Enreich.” Edward’s voice was colder than before.

“A partner you have, or you have nothing.” George’s voice became rough with brutality. “And do not think, my Eddie, that you can go to the bank for a loan. On your merits, yes, you could get a loan of five thousand dollars from any bank here, and on your statements. But, my Eddie, I would forestall that. That would be my business.”

Edward was both amazed and aghast. “You can say that to me, Herr Enreich, after all these years of your teaching?”

“My Eddie, you are still young and do not as yet know men. When George Enreich goes into any business, George Enreich makes a profit and not a small one. Yes, I taught you, but that, too, was my investment.” George suppressed a smile at Edward’s expression.

The store was closed, for it was after ten, and the two clerks and Heinrich had gone home, and Edward and George were alone in the shining expanse of counters, polished nickel, gleaming linoleum and glass. Enger’s had grown these past four years: one other shop had been added at the left. But beyond this expansion and the necessary two clerks, Enger’s had remained what it was, a fine delicatessen, extremely prosperous even during the panic of ’07, the year before. It had, indeed, as Edward would say, “spruced up the whole neighborhood,” and property values had increased. There was no better delicatessen this side of New York, and it did a good business as far as Albany, to which many packages and cartons were sent as a consequence of Edward’s skillful and luring advertisements in the Albany papers. It also did an excellent business with Syracuse and even Elmira, and there were special German delicacies imported by Edward in great demand in Buffalo, where Edward also advertised in the Buffalo Evening News and The Express, and in the local German-language paper. He had just recently imported a most unusual item—Polish ham—and the growing Polish population of Buffalo, learning of it in their own newspaper, sent in very satisfactory orders.

The Engers, according to the standards of Waterford, were rich. But greedy, envious competitors would say, sourly, “Look at them! They live in that old shack on School Street, and they don’t even have a carriage, and Ed Enger rides all over town on a bicycle his dad gave him years ago. Save all their money; dress like working people; never go anywhere. That’s the German! Save every penny, even if it comes out of their own hides!”

Edward, for some reason, was not popular except among customers, and even they now preferred the kindly and timid Heinrich, who still had an eye for children and kept a large box filled with lollipops for them at Christmas. But few poor people came any longer to Enger’s. The prices were too high, even for staples. Carriages lined the street all day long. Heinrich, walking home in his old coat or in his shirtsleeves in hot weather, could always spare the time for a gentle conversation with a long acquaintance who lived in the neighborhood. But Edward had forgotten that art, or had decided that those who did not spend money in the shop were not worth the spending of his time in acknowledging them. The smiling and generous boy of over four years ago had been replaced by an alert, quick-eyed, stern-lipped young man, with a fast frown and an authoritative voice for delivery men and clerks and an occasional shabby stranger who wandered into the shop. It was not that he was “mean,” as the neighborhood said, and he was just to employees for all his demands on them, and he had forced his father to pay them unbelievably high wages, and no money was ever deducted from their wages when they were ill or late. He had also insisted upon granting them two weeks’ vacation with pay every summer—and this had occasioned a furious battle with his parents who had been aghast at the very suggestion—and a small bonus at Christmas in accordance with their sales for the year. He was, at this very time in March, 1908, plotting to set aside a regular fund for the two clerks and the janitor in case of their deaths, in order that their families would have enough for a decent funeral and a little over. Edward thought these wild innovations secret from everyone except his father, but George Enreich, who knew everything that happened in Waterford, knew of this also, though he did not speak of it to his protégé. There were times when George thought of these things, these silent, hidden generosities of Edward’s, and they consoled him mysteriously.

It was unfortunate that the employees were firmly convinced that Heinrich himself was responsible for their high wages, their bonus, their vacations, and their steady income during illness. Heinrich never disillusioned them, not because he wished them to believe these things of him, but simply because it had not occurred to him that they believed them. He accepted their humble thanks in the name of Enger’s, graciously and with kindness. He was not aware that his employees gave him all the credit in the neighborhood. He was not aware that his old acquaintances pitied him and had affection for him, and hated his son Edward for his brusque ways, his impatience, his silence as he rode home on his bicycle, his air of ignoring those who once supported the shop with their small purchases. No one, of course, was perceptive enough to understand that Edward had his hard material dreams and ambitions for his family and himself, and was preoccupied with them with a kind of unshaking ferocity. No one knew of his bouts of pain and weary bitterness, of lonely nights and exhausting days. No one knew but George Enreich, and George spoke of it to no one.

It was only during especially crowded periods that Edward now waited upon customers. He left this to his father and the clerks. He had built an office at the rear of the fourth shop added to the other three, and here he made out his orders, kept his books, planned new imports. He was often in the shop to supervise, to watch, to greet a favorite, distinguished customer, to mutter a short and severe admonition to a lagging clerk, to let his rapid eyes run over the shelves, to inspect for absolute cleanliness, to encourage his father, who was complaining more and more of his heart. He had a typewriter on his desk on which to compose enticing advertisements, write letters, and do other needed work. He was the powerful spring that kept the clock of Enger’s ticking constantly and prosperously, and his energy seemed limitless. But there was one place to which he never descended, and that was the basement.

George Enreich, on this unusually mild March night, thought of all these things as he sat and smoked his cigar and ate the sandwich and drank the coffee Edward had prepared for him. He continued, tranquilly, to enjoy all this, waiting for Edward to recover from his indignation.

“You didn’t lose anything by your ‘investment,’ Mr. Enreich,” said Edward. He straightened up the full length of his six feet of height, and he squared his broad shoulders. “You get your percentage of our gross profits, and they’re about ten times what you would have received in rents.”

“Not to mention my free lunches,” said George, placidly chewing. “This Polish ham, my Eddie. It is remarkable. What was I saying? Yes. I would prevail on the banks not to lend you the five thousand dollars to buy that shop. No. I am your partner, or you have nothing, hein?”

“What’s your proposition, then?” asked Edward, folding his muscular arms over his wide chest. His gray eyes sparkled with anger.

“Remarkable ham,” George repeated. “Ah, yes, my proposition. But you have not told me what you will do with the Goeltz shop—if I am greatly persuaded into investing.”

Edward was too vexed to see the twinkle in George’s little eyes or the faint smile on his gross mouth. “All right,” he said, “I’ll go over it again with you. I told you about it years ago, and I’ve been telling you all along. A big shop, elegant, more expensive delicacies and imports, in the best shopping part of town. A shop that’ll send orders all over New York State, and maybe into Pennsylvania and Connecticut, too. We can undersell New York City; we don’t have the overhead they have there, and we’re more central. But I’ve told you all that! There’s one thing I haven’t told you, though. I intend to open an office in New York and call it the Enger Importing Company. Imports, direct. Not through New York dealers. I can use the money myself.”

George nodded approvingly. “That, of course, is what I expected. We shall make the lot of money, is it not? Ja. The father, of course, is not to be part of the new shop. Hein?” He lifted his eyes and guilelessly fixed them on Edward’s face.

Edward glanced aside. “Hein,” he said bluntly. “A year ago I talked it over with Pa and Ma, and you’d have thought I’d proposed to blow this shop off its foundations. So I knew I had to go it alone. There’s fifteen thousand in the fund for the education of my brothers and sister, and though Dave and the others draw on it all the time, the money is always replaced fast. And my parents have twenty-five thousand dollars in their own name. I have five hundred.” His lips curved in a hard line.

“I’m going to call the new big shop the Fine Food Market. And then I plan branches of it, in Waterford and in other cities. We’re getting a big middle class in America now; no more of this business of just the very rich and then the working people! We’re becoming more like England, more bourgeois.” He paused. George nodded again.

“Ah, it is the French we are acquiring, Eddie. That is from the teacher you visit twice a week late at night. The poor old Frenchman from the Waterford School for Girls, who is starving. You did not know I knew? My Eddie, I know many things.” He was amused at Edward’s expression. “I also know that without your very generous payment for the French lessons, and other lessons also, the sad old gentleman would long ago have perished in his garret. What is it that that haughty school pays him? Yes, fifteen dollars a week. It is fifteen more that you pay him, and so he has coal for his little fire, and a cane with a silver knob, and a broadcloth suit for Sundays, and imported wax for his mustaches, and wine for his cooking and his palate. And he has a flourish and is respected, and the school is held in high esteem for acquiring so elegant a teacher, who is now called professor. There is even a young lady or two from Albany, because of the reputation Monsieur Faure has bestowed on the school.”

“You know too much,” said Edward, more and more annoyed. He hated to be caught in his generosities. “May I ask what else you know, sir?”

George shook his head. “It is not a weakness to be kind, my Eddie, though sometimes it is dangerous as I have said before. But let us continue. What will happen to this shop?”

Edward looked about him and for a moment there was nostalgia in his eyes. “My father will have it, and he can manage it, with the aid of another clerk. I will retain my interest in it, of course. Supervision. Once or twice a week. Pa will pay me for it. I will do all the ordering, myself, and it will be easier when I have that importing office in New York. Pa will get the goods from me for what I pay for them. He won’t have any complaint there. And he’ll still pay me my salary of twenty-two dollars a week, which I’ll put in the fund as usual.” He looked at George grimly. “I could pull out entirely, but Pa couldn’t manage without me. And I’ve got to run it right, or he’ll learn that without me he must fail or go down to what he was before I made it what it is today. So I’ll keep my interest and get my salary. But Pa won’t be part of the new shop, though I’ll be part of this. I have my obligations, and my brothers and sister will need all the money they can get. And I am the one who can get it for them.”

“You have never considered letting them get it for themselves, my Eddie?” George’s voice was deceptively mild. “You have never considered the character that would strengthen in them?”

Edward stared at him incredulously.

George’s big nostrils expanded as he returned Edward’s stare inexorably.

“No one helped me when I came to this America, a greenhorn, at the age of eighteen, my Eddie, and for that I thank the great God, in Whom I do not believe, of course. I do not believe in Him because of what I suffered in the old country and in this country. I do not speak to Him. He can wait forever for my speaking. But that is of no consequence. I was speaking of the character of your brothers and sister. Without character a man is nothing. You would deprive them of their character? You would make them weaklings?”

Edward blurted, “They have no character, they are weaklings!” And then his face was suffused with a dark wash of blood. He walked down the length of the counter as if escaping from the shrewd point of a rapier presented near his heart. He stood at the end of the counter, in profile. He drew a deep breath, and the color left his face, leaving it very pale and harsh and quiet. “I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t think it. Dave’s doing wonderfully in his music in New York; his teacher has confirmed that he is a genius. He takes three lessons a week and practices at least eight hours a day in that little apartment I rented for him. He’s only twenty, but he’ll be able to begin a tour in about three years, the teacher said. A limited tour at first, and then all over the country. And then he’ll study in Europe. I’m thinking of sending him to Europe next year and not letting him stay in New York.”

The gas globes hissed warmly in the shining stillness of the shop. George did not speak.

Edward went on, “And Sylvia’s doing fine in her drama and stage-art school here, and she’ll be ready for New York next year, and she’s only eighteen now. And Greg’s in that expensive boy’s school in Pennsylvania, and he gets good marks, especially in literature and composition, and he’s only fourteen. And Ralph will be going to Greg’s school in two years; he’s only twelve.”

Edward came back along the counter and faced George. “Do you think they’d do better working in this shop for wages, or in factories, and then studying at night, and paying for their own educations?” His voice was very loud and furious, and there was a quality of breathlessness in it.

George spread out his hands. “I have known you were emotional, my Eddie, but not this emotional. Nein. It is as if I have attacked you.” He narrowed his eyes. “Have I attacked you, my Eddie? It is not necessary to answer. But I will say this: I have known great men who have worked for their ambition, and have studied in attics, and have struggled, and have succeeded. Because they had character, and character is not a commodity which you can buy. It is not a quality you can acquire in your best schools.”

Edward, so careful these past few years, lost his temper. His anger rose from some enormous and secret wound in himself, which he sensed with an endless pain but which was consciously not known to him. “You have character, sir,” he said rudely. “And—”

“It is not the sort of character you prefer for your brothers and sister?” George smiled oddly. “That is what you would say, and it would not be the truth. You will not speak truth to yourself and that is the flaw I find in you. My Eddie, have you studied Bismarck with Monsieur Faure? No? Then you must ask him of Bismarck. I have noticed that he limps. He must know of Bismarck intimately, from the Franco-Prussian War. He can enlighten you, and then, perhaps, one of these days you will no longer lie to yourself.”

Edward frowned darkly. “I never always understand you, Mr. Enreich.”

“You will, my Eddie, you will. One of these days. One of the very somber days. Perhaps not until it is too late. For you, for your brothers and sister.”

He wiped his fat hands, which were covered with rings, on the white napkin which Edward had given him. Edward said, “I’d rather not discuss my brothers and sister. I am doing my very best for them and I intend to do a lot more. I can’t do it here. That’s why I want the Fine Food Markets. What is your proposition, Mr. Enreich?”

“Ah, it is a realist, this Eddie,” said George. “Well, this is so: twenty-five per cent of the net profits, and I will assume the responsibility of all future financing in the expansion of the business. Am I not generous? Am I not reckless in this investing? But I was always so.” He smiled with mock ruefulness. “Too, I have much trust in your ability or I would not propose it.”

Edward was appalled. “Twenty-five per cent!” he exclaimed. “You aren’t really serious, Mr. Enreich? You can’t be! I’d considered offering you six per cent interest until I could pay you back your money.”

“I am no banker, Eddie. I do not need to lend you five thousand dollars and help you to expand, for six per cent. My investments pay me that now. I do not take risks for nothing. You are not yet twenty. You are not yet of age. I violate the law, I think, by negotiating a contract with you before you are twenty-one. But, you must understand, I am investing, if I invest, not just in the shops. I am investing in that quality which you have repudiated with such anger—character. Your character, my Eddie. And that is where I am generous. For you have that flaw which some men would call strength but which I call weakness. A most terrible and devastating weakness, and it has caused all the world’s greater agonies.”

“What weakness?” Edward demanded, amazed and affronted.

George sighed. “I again recommend that you study Bismarck.”

Edward was baffled. “All right, I’ll study him, if you insist! Didn’t he take Marx’s socialism away from him and give it to Germany? Do you think I’m a Socialist like my father?”

“What is a Socialist?” murmured George, cynically. “A luster for power. A benefactor with a whip. The keeper of a prison where the captives are well fed.”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Enreich. I didn’t hear you.”

“It is of no importance. You would not understand, and I do not discuss matters which are not understood by others. It is a waste of time. They must get their enlightenment from other sources, such as the experience. It is always final—experience, and it is often too late. I shall have the contract ready for you tomorrow, Eddie. You will, naturally, sign it.”

He grunted as he shifted his weight from the stool to the floor. “I am to expect you at my home tomorrow, Saturday night, for the usual discussions? The contract will be there. And now good night to you, my Eddie. I suggest you sleep a little more. There are times when I am not pleased with your color.”

He began to walk weightily to the door, then wheeled like a behemoth. Edward was still standing at his counter, wrathful and fuming over the “proposition,” and it was several moments before he realized that George had not left the shop. He started when he saw the older man, who was gazing at him formidably.

“No, I am not pleased with your color. It could not be because of one or two of the trollops of the town, hein?”

Edward stiffened at this intrusion into his private affairs, and his pride was outraged. He said, in formal German, “Herr Manager Enreich, I am a man and not a child caught in some small and obscene act. Nor am I your son who needs chastisement. The Herr Manager has eyes in the back of his head, it is evident, and I request that his eyes do not remain on me constantly.”

George perversely replied in English, “Your words are a man’s words, my Eddie, but your annoyance is a child’s annoyance.” He grinned broadly. “You should have said, ‘George, mind your own business,’ and laughed. My Eddie, let me give you advice about women. Let them alone. That is not to say you must be a monk, no. But involve yourself in them not, with your heart and your emotions. I have heard you are attached to that particular trollop, one Annabelle, who has a very sensitive face and is a waitress to hide what she is.”

Edward colored. “I know what Annie is. Well, sir, mind your own business. Quotes. Annie takes her—I mean, I give her half a ham or some delicacies once in a while, besides money.”

For some reason utterly bewildering to Edward, George burst out laughing with such an uproar that all his jowls and his big belly shook as if with an ague. He was still roaring with mirth when he left the shop. Now Edward, his face still warm and flushed, was angrier than ever. He finished cleaning up George’s cup and plate and emptying the coffee pot. Then the doorbell rang and a mildly chill and fragrant breath of the March night flowed in as the door opened. Edward said impatiently, “The shop is closed. I’m sorry.”

He looked up and saw a very shabby but neat man of about thirty-five approaching him, a slight and wiry man wearing a workman’s cap on a mass of curling sandy hair. Edward scowled. “I said—” he began. The man airily waved his hand with a gesture of peculiar flair and grace. “It is not the food I am after, young sir,” he said, with a brogue unfamiliar to Edward. “It is a job.”

Edward thought of the stout safe in his office and the gun he was permitted to keep in a drawer in his desk. He eyed the man closely, concluded that even if he were an armed robber he, Edward, had the advantage over him in size and youth.

“Funny time to come in asking for a job,” he said. “It’s after eleven. How about tomorrow?”

The stranger came easily to the counter and sat on George’s stool and regarded Edward with dancing hazel eyes, so bright, so vivid, so full of laughter and intelligence, that they gave a shine to an otherwise nondescript face, yellowish and sprinkled lavishly with brown freckles. It was a pointed, foxlike face, almost cunning, with a tilted nose and a mobile mouth, thick sandy eyelashes and brows, and a forehead so lined and dry that it was evident that he had spent the major part of his life under the sun. He took off his cap, smoothed his hands over his light curls, then laid the cap on the counter.

“What does it matter when a man looks for a job?” he asked reasonably. “I just dropped into town only half an hour ago.” He coughed. “Inadvertently, as it were. By no will of my own. However, it is an axiom that railroad men have no hearts.”

In spite of his wariness and annoyance, Edward found himself smiling. A tramp. He was also intrigued by the stranger’s manner and his evident air of culture and his language. Here was no ordinary man. Among other things it was apparent that he found life amusing, and Edward was invariably attracted to those who found life amusing. They satisfied a lack in himself.

He studied the man a little closer. The body, for all its slightness, showed strength and agility even under the shabby brown suit. The hands were long and the fingers flexible and the nails well kept. The stranger shrugged his coat down into place with the instinctive movement of a gentleman, and showed a real linen collar and a striped pink-and-white shirt with a knotted black tie. The clothing was all very cheap and worn. Nevertheless, he gave polish to it.

In his turn the stranger studied Edward with those lilting eyes of his and nodded to himself. “It is, indeed, an odd time to be looking for work,” he said, and Edward was pleased at the deep inflections of the brogue. “I might add, if you please, that just at this moment I am also looking for a place to spend the night. I saw the lights in this shop,” and he glanced about the shop approvingly, “and you at the counter, and so tested my luck, which has been abominable lately. If the accommodations, young sir, are worthy, I will consider a position with you.”

Edward laughed involuntarily. He was more and more fascinated by this peculiar stranger. He leaned his elbows on the counter. “It couldn’t be that you’d consider a couple of ham sandwiches with Swiss cheese and English mustard, with a piece of cheesecake on the side, and a big cup of coffee, too?”

The stranger made so comical a face of mock gravity that Edward laughed again. “Young sir, if you insist, I will join you in that slight repast. To tell you the truth I haven’t eaten for three days, with the exception of a can of beans.” He made a grimace. “Beans are, no question, redoubtable food, but I have a delicate digestion. That, too, was good luck, for the beans kept me from feeling hungry for the past two days.”

He scrutinized the deep shelves behind Edward and coughed again. “Ham, too, has its merits. But I see you have Madras curry, there, pâté de foi gras, English smoked chicken, and an excellent chutney. Not to mention some tins of savory. English biscuits, too, and some delightful jasmine tea.”

“I thought you were hungry,” said Edward.

“That I am,” said the stranger. “But a wise man respects his palate and never insults it. Even when he is hungry. Better starvation than plebeian food.”

“Oh, rats,” said Edward, with good humor. Nevertheless, he took down the tins the stranger had indicated, and found a can opener. “You would not have a sherry, a Bristol cream, perchance?” asked the engaging intruder.

“I perchance would not,” said Edward, setting out a plate. “We’re not a saloon.”

The stranger sighed. “A saloon,” he said, meditatively. “What a perversion of language! Salon—saloon! A whole culture and world of difference, yet these two words have merged in a frightful miscegenation. Ah, well. The world decays, elegance is abandoned, life is dusty. Après moi le déluge.”

“The only deluge I can see coming after you is just plain working for a living,” said Edward. “When did you last indulge in that awful thing?”

The stranger was delighted. “Now, then, I thought at first you were an unlettered churl,” he said. “My apologies, my boy. Sometimes, to my chagrin, I am not always perceptive.”

“Let’s stop the fancy language,” said Edward, setting out the contents of the cans with careful appreciation. “Who are you, what do you do for a living, and what do you want?”

The stranger waited until Edward put a kettle on the hot plate in the rear. “Enough water, please,” he said, “so that the teapot can be heated by it. No American knows how to brew tea properly. You have a teapot?” he asked apprehensively.

“Sure we have,” said Edward. “We keep it for the swell customers who pretend they like tea better than coffee.” He found the teapot under the counter and wiped it off. “We aren’t a restaurant, though. This is just one of those touches for customers we appreciate.”

“I have,” said the stranger, “exactly fifteen cents.”

“You’re still a customer,” said Edward. He forgot time. He was enjoying himself for the first time in years. “By the way, what’s your name? Mine’s Ed Enger.”

The stranger bowed profoundly from the waist. “I, young sir, am William Montgomery Percival Chauncey MacFadden, of the MacFaddens of London and Belfast, and regrettably, of County Cork. Perhaps not so regrettably after all. Those of my family in County Cork had a genius for living, sadly lacking in London and Belfast. There is something in the air of London and Belfast that inhibits joy. I have been thinking of writing a small book on the subject. Very provocative.”

He pulled down his face in a risible expression, for he was an actor at heart. “However, just call me Bill,” he said, woefully. “Just plain Bill.”

“No,” said Edward. “You aren’t a Bill. You’re a William. Are you a writer?”

“Very perspicacious,” answered William, with an eloquent glance at his frayed cuffs and worn trousers. “The garb of those born with a pen in their hands. My last book sold exactly two hundred and twenty-one copies. The first two hundred and twenty were purchased by the loyal relatives. The extra one remains, to this day, a profound mystery.”

“What was the name of the book?”

“The book? Ah, yes, the book. It was a treatise on that old fraud Plutarch. A snob. I flayed him from pillar to post. Somehow no one particularly cared, least of all Plutarch.”

Feeling lighthearted for the first time in many months, Edward carefully brewed the tea under the anxious and strained scrutiny of his guest. He was often to say in the future, “William told so many stories that you could never know whether or not he was ever telling the truth. At any rate, he was entertaining. And a good story is a good story.”

Edward ceremoniously spread a fresh white napkin on the counter and elaborately polished the plain silver. William, his eyes clenched shut, daintily sampled the various delicacies on his plate. “Ah,” he said of the Madras curry, “truly authentic. I ate it last in Delhi. Odd to say, the chef was an Englishman. That in itself was a miracle. Have you ever partaken of English cooking?” He gave an elaborate shudder, drew up his shoulders, winced, and rapidly blinked his eyes, giving the impression of a man presented with a frightful dish. Even his freckles gave the impression of flinching.

“What were you doing in Delhi?” asked Edward, folding his arms on the counter.

“I was a younger son, Edward. And younger sons have a reputation to maintain, a reputation for debauchery and recklessness inflicted on them by lady novelists. Being gallant by nature, and never one to refute a lady, I was debauched, I was reckless. A bore, and very expensive. So I became a remittance man. What? Oh, a remittance man is a poor creature exiled by his loving kin with a certain regular income. The income is to insure the kin that the younger son will never again darken their thresholds. Unless, of course, his older brother, or brothers, are providentially murdered or die of overeating or are killed by their horses. Then he has the title and the entailed property and can return in style to the affectionate arms of all his old aunts, cousins, envious, still younger brothers, and uncles with the gout. Unfortunately for me, I have three older brothers and they are still in excellent health. God keep them,” he added piously. “And may all their children be colleens.”

“Are you Irish?” asked Edward, more and more enchanted.

“I am that strange manifestation known as a Scots-Irishman, my lad. Neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring. My sainted mother was of the Doyles of County Cork, and never without her rosary. My father, not so sainted, was the Scot MacFadden, and he was an Orangeman. To turn an Orangeman into a Catholic is only a little more difficult than to turn granite into flesh, but my mother prayed. Holy Saint Francis, how she prayed! And the Blessed Mother performed the miracle for her.”

“You must meet a very good friend of mine, Father Jahle,” said Edward. William immediately became Mephisto shrinking in terror from the Archangel Michael, cowering on his stool, protecting his head with his thin arms and freckled, clever hands, shivering violently, and knocking his knees together. Entranced by this realistic performance, Edward laughed aloud, throwing back his head.

“Priests affect me that way,” said William, immediately becoming the connoisseur of excellent food again. “Three cousins. Priests are usually jolly souls, good-naturedly cynical—they know about humanity by instinct—and ready with a pleasant joke. When they are off duty. But, sadly, my cousins are Scots-Irish, too, and they are what we call dour. Calvins in Roman collars. None become even a monsignor. They lacked sufficient tact or intellect to bring joy into their religion, and surely religion should be suffused with joy. They preferred brimstone and hell-fire, and they loathed everybody. That takes considerable insight but is frowned upon by the hierarchy. To loathe is bad enough, but a gentleman conceals it. But to loathe, and making the loathing obvious, is not only vulgar but inspires the displeasure of the bishop. Inspiring the displeasure of a bishop means an obscure parish with at least three tight-fisted old maids in it, who put buttons in the plates and one small lump of peat in the fire at a time, and at least a hundred children all with running noses. Speak of no priests to me, laddie. I have had my cousins.”

The telephone rang shrilly and abruptly, and both men jumped. Edward answered somewhat irritably. It was Heinrich. It was typical that Heinrich was worried over his son’s long delay because of the large amount of cash in the safe. “What is it, Eddie?” he asked. “Why is the lateness? It is the safe that causes me anxiety. In these days there are many robbers.”

“No robbers,” said Edward, curtly. “But what if there was and I’d just had my head shot off?”

Heinrich laughed feebly. “My Eddie can take care of himself. You have closed the safe?”

Edward glanced over his shoulder at his appreciative guest. “Yes,” he answered. “Don’t worry. Just some late customers. I’ll be home after a while.” He hung up the receiver and frowned at it, and William, the keen-eyed, watched him. Edward returned to the counter, and his youthful face was eager again for fresh stories. It is a hungry face, thought William compassionately. What little pleasure there must be in that young life!

“Well, if you had a remittance, why did you sneak a ride on a train?” asked Edward. “And why are you looking for a job?”

“It is a painful story,” said William, discreetly. “I prefer not to speak of it. Suffice to say, there is no longer a remittance, no love and kisses in letters, for I receive no letters. I am a vagabond on the face of the earth. I have committed no crimes, though some would be boorish enough to disagree. There is a judge or two … That is irrelevant. I wandered to this remarkable country when I was twenty-five, ten years ago. The streets are paved with gold. I have not found gold. My occupation? Frankly, I am a jack of all trades. And I never stole but three quid in my life. Honest William.”

He sipped the tea with the absorbed and critical air of a winetaster. “Nectar,” he said reverently. “The jasmine flowers are abloom in it. It takes a knowing hand to brew tea like this. I was born in Belfast, laddie. My father had a large stable of horses. He hunted with the hounds. A damned hullabaloo every autumn. Stupid animals, horses. The hounds are only a little better. The hunters are the most stupid of them all, in their pink coats, and their ruddy faces swelled and red and boarish. It is quite a spectacle; you must enjoy it someday. You will never be the same again. My sympathies were always with the fox.”

He looked more foxlike than ever. Hypnotized, Edward could actually see pricked-up ears, the nose sharpening to a point, the bright hazel eyes startlingly wild and excited, the sandy hair gleaming like a pelt.

“Nevertheless, I like horses,” said William. “They are malicious people and not innocently so. I am malicious myself. Consequently, they knew I was their master. I have attended horses all over the damn world, race horses. I firmly believe they decide among themselves, in the paddock, who shall win the day’s race, and they have their small joke, which disconcerts their masters. We’ve had many a laugh together, the horses and I. What fool said that only man has the gift of laughter? I have seen the fox laugh, as well as other animals. And all animals are cynics. Yet they enjoy life. They understand that the green garden of the world was made for joy and frolic. Only man never learned that. So, he is serious. And being serious he is murderous. Frankly, I detest people.”

This made Edward uneasy, with a nameless uneasiness. He drummed on the counter with the fingers of his right hand and stared into space. “What else can you do besides joking with horses, William?”

“Anything,” said William, with a dramatic spreading of his arms. “Name it. I’m your man.”

Edward thought. Then he told William of the Fine Food Market, and William listened to him with as much fascination as Edward had listened to his own stories, and his head was tilted courteously.

“I will need help in my first shop,” Edward concluded. “Someone I can trust.” He studied Honest William warily.

William nodded. “No sticky hand in the till. It so happens that I have managed a haberdashery about four years ago. I increased the volume of customers and I received ten dollars a week at the end of the first year. Unhappily there was only that one year. There was the matter of the daughter of the owner of the shop. She insisted upon marrying me, and I recoil in horror at the idea of marriage. So I departed in a dust.”

Edward scrutinized him openly. “You’ll make a wonderful clerk,” he said. “But it’ll be some weeks before I have that first shop. In the meantime you can help the janitor here. He’s an old man and overworked. He sleeps at home, mostly, but sometimes he sleeps here. We’ve got quite a comfortable room walled off in the basement, with a cot and clean blankets and a lavatory. Fritz is very neat. He’s home tonight, and you can sleep down there. It’s warm. And help yourself to breakfast early in the morning. We open at half past seven.” He paused. “I’ll give you fifteen dollars a week as helper to our janitor, and twenty-five dollars a week to start when I open my new shop. And all you want to eat, free.”

There is considerable here that I don’t as yet know, thought William. He smiled, and his yellow teeth were the teeth of a pleased fox. “A fortune,” he commented. “I never made so much except when I was gambling. Just among friends, you see. Don’t be disturbed. I gamble with my own money.” All at once he was the gambler, seemingly careless but intent, his hand cupped over dice, his shoulder lifted to throw, his eyes gleaming fixedly.

Edward gave him a key to the room in the basement. “Open the door in the morning. You’ll have to explain to old Fritz when he arrives, and explain quick. He carries a night stick all the time. He was a policeman until some thief shot his right leg off; he’s got a wooden leg. And no pension. He was off duty when he saw the thief running out of a house with a bag. So, no pension.”

“It’s a drab world,” said William with pity. “Increasingly drab. We must talk about that someday. I find it appalling. It is all Victoria’s fault. Strange how the Widow of Windsor could so have influenced the world that it lost color. But good night. I am suddenly desirous of testing that bed, laddie.”

CHAPTER VIII

“Damn these old oil lamps, anyway!” Sylvia said aloud. “You can go blind trying to read under them. But Ma and Ed like them and the rest of us can get ourselves white canes in a few years.” She took the chimney off the lamp and poked at the black wick disconsolately with a hairpin. It spluttered and stank, and a blue smoke rose from it to circle about the room. Sylvia hastily replaced the chimney.

Her bedroom was small and ugly, with a crazed wallpaper of green lattices and bulging, bloody roses, with, here and there and incongruously, little bunches of strawberries growing as nature never permitted them to grow. Sylvia never looked at the walls without shuddering. The huge brass bed took up nearly half the room and swelled with a feather mattress and a feather quilt, the latter in a dull navy-blue color. It spilled almost to the red Brussels rug, which always smelled dusty in spite of Maria’s endless brushing, and it hurt Sylvia’s thin white feet when she walked on it. “Like walking on a washboard,” she would say. An old tall chest of drawers, bought in a second-hand store, then crudely varnished so that the original soft cherry was hidden under a stain of mahogany, leaned against a wall surmounted by a cheap, pine-framed little mirror which had cost twenty-five cents and which distorted the young face now scowling into it. Only two feet from the foot of the bed stood a round oak Mission table, dark brown and hideous, which held schoolbooks and the bleak kitchen oil lamp. Two kitchen chairs had been as brilliantly and crudely varnished as the chest of drawers, and were supremely uncomfortable. Sylvia, grumbling under her breath, sat down in one of them, a magazine on her knee, her lacquer-black and brilliant hair pouring straightly over her shoulders and far below her waist.

Everything’s terrible around here, she thought bitterly. Then her bony face, which had a white luminosity in the lamplight, became dreamily and intensely absorbed as she bent over the fashion magazine. Now here was an elegant blue linen suit! Draped skirt, tapering down to nothing at the ankles. Peg-top. A flat tucking over the hips would be better than those little pleats. The jacket could be flared a little more, the bodice tightened, and crystal buttons instead of those pink ones. And that white lawn shirtwaist wuld be stunning without all that lace jabot and the fussy pin. Stunning!

I can make it up in blue cotton, cheap, Sylvia said to herself. But how I’d like to have linen, a fine handkerchief linen! And a hat like this, big yellow straw like a cartwheel, the brim overflowing with blue water lilies and flat green leaves. And those real patent leather slippers! And the French heels and spats! We can afford it, too, just once. But oh no! You mustn’t waste money. It’s sacred.

She lifted her eyes and fixed them on space. Then she turned her head aside, away from the lovely picture, and brooded. A clean-cut angle appeared sharply under her white chin, a tricornered angle as clear as if painted by a black brush. Her distinct and narrow profile had a look of desolation, and her hair fell away from it bleakly. She let the magazine slip from her knee with a rustle. She listened to the disembodied voices of the house, her attenuated shadow high and bent on the wall and the ceiling. The lamp burned with a repulsive odor, and the room grew colder moment by moment as the banked furnace sent up no heat. The rug smelled of dust, though the strong and ardent spring wind flapped at the little window. Maria and Heinrich were already in bed, and little Ralph slept like a rosy cherub in his own room. The nickel alarm clock on the chest moved its arms to midnight.

We’ll never get out of here, never, Sylvia thought, her desolation increasing. But no one wants to but me and perhaps Dave. Nothing must be spent to make life nicer and more beautiful; it must all go into the bank. “For the future.” What if there’s no future for any of us? What if we get sick and die? What good will the money be then, except to get us a funeral, cut-rate of course. Pa and Ma have probably fixed that, too! Oh, my God! I’d give years of my life just to get out of Waterford just for one week. Just to see something else, to get out of this house, out of this street, out of this family!

She clenched her white fists on her knees and tears ran around the rims of her eyes. I’m eighteen, she said to herself. I’m not a child any longer. I’m a woman. I could go away, perhaps to Albany, even to New York; I’ve fifty dollars of my own saved. I could work for some modiste.… I could …

Her forehead was damp. But no, her dreary thoughts went on. I couldn’t do that. Why not? Because I’m weak. We’re all weak, all of us. But Ma. And Ed. She shivered, hugged her long thin arms about her flannel bathrobe which she had made herself of a material only she could find—wool in a streaked pattern of blue and blue-black and clear red on white. It fitted her with elegance. She stood up and went to the window and put aside the cotton scrim curtains and looked at a far and indifferent moon shining down on the dark and silent earth. Chimneys threw sharp shadows on steep roofs, turned walls to silver, made the sidewalks look like stiff lengths of light.

There’s got to be a way out for me, Sylvia implored the unanswering sky. She no longer prayed to anything. Maria insisted on church, and, her children obeyed, but none of them believed in the God spoken of by the minister. Nor did they believe in the god of their father—the heroic masses of which he spoke so fervently and with such a glow in his eyes. Sylvia leaned on the window sill and said aloud, “I wish there was really someone you could pray to. Someone who could hear you and promise you things and give you hope. Pa’s ‘masses’?” She laughed thinly. “He wouldn’t recognize a ‘mass’ if he saw one. He thinks they live up in the blue, blue sky, somewhere. The men on the street, with their dinner pails and their overalls, aren’t masses to Pa. He’s so damned innocent. But I can’t forgive him for getting rid of God for us and replacing Him with something he calls man. Oh, he’s not an atheist, the way Ingersoll is; he believes in what he calls an abstract, but it’s just as bad.”

She became aware that she was speaking aloud, and laughed again. “I think I’m going crazy,” she remarked. “Don’t crazy people talk out loud to themselves?”

Black despondency closed about her. There’s a way out for me, she thought. I know it. Why don’t I go? Who’s to stop me, when I’m eighteen? I’m my own mistress now. But I know I can’t go. Not because of Ma and Pa and Ed. No, not because of Ed. Just because of me.

This sudden confession terrified her. She put her hands to her cheeks and pressed fiercely. She mustn’t think those thoughts! They weren’t true! It was everything that imprisoned her. Mostly, it was Ed. Ed, the jailer, the monster, who pushed her remorselessly through the empty days.

Someone was coming down the street, footsteps echoing. It was Edward. Sylvia looked down at him and now her face turned sharp with malevolence. She did not hesitate. She ran, her carpet slippers flopping, to the door, opened it swiftly and silently, and raced down the stairs, to meet Edward at the foot of them. He started back at this white-faced vision with the swinging lengths of black hair, and Sylvia pushed by him. The lower floors were unlighted except for a gas jet near the stairs.

“Hey,” said Edward, in a low voice. “What’s the matter?”

Sylvia turned and faced him. “You,” she said.

“Me?” A dull flush passed over Edward’s drawn face. “Are you dippy? What’ve I done?”

“Everything. But you’re too stupid to understand.” Then she stared at him narrowly and her mouth twitched. “No,” she said, slowly, “you’re not stupid. You never were. I just found that out, right this minute. You’re brighter than anybody else in this house!”

She came closer to him. His gray eyes were gleaming oddly, and though he did not give the impression of smiling, Sylvia knew that he was secretly amused. There was something terrible and yet defenseless in Sylvia’s piercing regard of him. The gas jet sent eerie, flickering shadows over the stark bones of her face and in the hollows of her eyes. She was peering at him now, her head thrust forward, and the intensity of her expression quelled his amusement.

“Is it just because of Pa?” she asked. “You’ve got to tell me.”

Edward put his hand on the newel post. He turned his head and gazed at his sister in a silence she confusedly thought was threatening.

“No,” she said, softly and thickly, “it isn’t just Pa, is it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sylvia. Why aren’t you in bed?” The dull flush had deepened on his cheekbones. “I’ve been working since seven this morning. I’m not going to stand here and talk to you. Good night.”

But she put out her almost fleshless white hand and caught his big arm. She was trembling. “Why don’t you let us go?” she demanded.

He shook her off. He stood there, large and powerful and dominant, like a young man carved from immutable rock.

“Who’s keeping you?” he said. He no longer pretended to misunderstand her. “Are any of you prisoners?”

Her hand dropped from his arm and hung at her side as if exhausted. “I could forgive you if it was just for Pa. But it’s for you, not Pa. When did it begin? Years ago. It was in a summer. That’s the time you began to think, wasn’t it, and began to hate us?”

“Hate you?” he repeated, meditatively. “Haven’t I worked for all of you?”

Sylvia was too young to grasp the immensity of the instinctive thoughts she was thinking, the thoughts that rose from a kind of helpless terror—out of the deeps of her soul.

“You’re not just working for us,” she stammered, intimidated by her brother for the first time in her life. “What are you working for?”

Edward smiled, and it was not a youthful smile. “You can think what you want, Sylvia. You’re a genius, aren’t you? Can’t geniuses think?”

She was stammering more than before. “I’ll tell—I’ll talk to Ma, to Pa—I’ll talk to Dave—”

“Go ahead, Sylvia. Talk to them all. But just what’ll you say?”

“That you—that you—”

“Yes?”

Sylvia was silent. Her brother was looking at her with adult indulgence, but his eyes were like granite struck by light.

Then he said, “You’re not going to ruin what I started out to do, what I’m doing, what I’ll be doing. For all of you.”

Sylvia was trembling violently. “You think we are geniuses?”

He studied her. Then he said, with hard sincerity, “Yes. And you’d better be!” For an instant, an instant only, there was a sick quailing in him.

He left her then, going up the stairs and not looking back. He walked weightily, in his weariness, and each of his footsteps fell on Sylvia’s heart like a doomful drum. She waited until he had disappeared, then sat weakly down on the steps, and tears ran down her face.

He acts—as if he wants revenge, thought the young girl. Revenge on whom? Revenge for—what? Oh, I’m silly. How can I think those things? He works awfully hard, and what’s he getting out of it? Poor Ed.

She started. Poor Ed! She pressed her hands tightly against her temples and rocked mournfully as she sat on the stairs and the gas jet flickered. Poor us, she thought vehemently. And then again—poor Ed. She cried soundlessly. She did not know why she cried now.

“The Chopin,” said Professor Emilio Autori. “That is not the way we play the Chopin. Not so fast, not with the lilt. It is blasphemy. It is most the blasphemy with a young man with your gifts.” He blew his pallid old nose on a soiled silk handkerchief on which a red-and-blue crest had been embroidered. Then he smiled. “But it is not the so bad. It is gay. There is no gaiety in this country. Tell me, my young friend, why is there no gaiety in a country which calls itself young?”

David smiled briefly and fleetingly at his teacher and ran a trill of light and flexible notes on the great piano. “Who says we’re young?” he asked. “I’ve been thinking. We’re barbarians. Millions of barbarians, born into America all these years. The Goths. The Visigoths. I’ve been thinking. Man isn’t really created equal. The ancient savages are born in every generation, totally incapable of culture, just healthy, war-making, simple savages with a primitive inborn code of their own. Thing-worshipers. Not idea-worshipers. A man who worships things can’t ever be taught to worship abstractions. It’s a waste of time to try. And barbarians aren’t ever gay. Only a civilized man, born of civilized ancestors, can really laugh at—things. And even life. Barbarians can only get drunk, and fight, and they’re serious as all hell, like other animals.”

“You have no high regard for humanity, David?” asked the old man, gently.

David shrugged, ran his beautiful hands tenderly over the keys. “I accept it,” he said. “I don’t anguish over it. A conductor doesn’t despise the drums, and the barbarians are the drums—in the symphony. It’s just that I don’t think the drums should dominate the orchestra, and that’s what they’re doing in this country.”

Signor Autori sat down very slowly on an old plush chair and contemplated his young pupil with amazement. “Ah, so it is!” he murmured. “It did not come to me before. We Italians, we are an old and cultured race, full of laughter and art and music and philosophy. We have given the world our civilization. But among us, in every generation, are born some bear-eyed barbarians who cannot comprehend music or the philosophic laughter or the noble tenets of Christianity. As among other nations, so are the barbarians born among the civilized Italians. I have often marveled that in some of these fellow Italians of mine there is not the multicolored Italian soul.”

David again smiled. “I guess that’s true of all other nations. The civilized man has a restless mind, but he doesn’t have a restless body. Barbarians are physically restless. They’re the explorers, the adventurers. The civilized man stays at home. You know something, Professor? Kant, the great German philosopher, never traveled more than eighty miles from the place where he was born! Spinoza stayed at home, in Amsterdam. They ranged the world and the universe with their minds. But the barbarians must range it with their bodies. Hunters. Change, all the time. But they never stop to reflect on the new scenery. Anyway, we shouldn’t condemn or detest them, I suppose. They open territory for the man of mind.”

“They make tracks in the terrible jungle with their pounding feet,” said the old teacher excitedly. “Their bare feet. And so at last it is safe for civilized men to walk among the dangers and bring his culture with him. Ah! That will be good for America!”

“Generations,” said David. “But wasn’t that the history of Greece and Rome, too? The barbarians first, and then the scholars later, after things were calmed down and the forest cleared.”

The professor rested his veined and spotted hands on his knees, which were covered by broadcloth so old and worn that it gave off a greenish shimmer. He shook his head. “The barbarians make war. That is the danger. And they are so strong, so vital, that cultivated man cannot control them, not with polished epigrams or the wisdom of the ages. Who has ever turned aside a wild beast with a quotation from II Philosophus? What argument can reach a reddened brain, crowned with horns? Can you touch a man restrainingly who wears the skins of animals? He longs for the arena.”

“The barbarian has his place, and it’s important, too,” said David uneasily. “You can get so damned polished and civilized that you become corrupt. Covered with algae. Stinking, like an unfed pond. The barbarians open up fresh springs. They’re—why, they’re an elemental force, I suppose. The trouble is, people sometimes think the elemental force is the only valuable one. You never, hardly, get proportion in people’s thinking. It’s all barbarism, or all decadent culture. We ought to get together, maybe, and think things out. Look, it’s almost seven o’clock, Professor. Time to eat, isn’t it?”

The old teacher laughed silently, his wrinkled mouth widening to show two rows of mottled teeth. He said, “It is good to be young and long for the fragrance of excellent food and the taste of it. But it is also good to be old, when digestion is more important.” He stood up, and all at once he was grave. “You have heard of Karl Marx? The god of the barbarians. I have his work, in Italian. You are able to read Italian now. Then you will see that the barbarians can devastate the world, in their physical restlessness. The elemental force can be as destructive as a cosmic storm. But it is the mind, the soul, which finally tempers the hurricane. Our Divine Lord walked on the waters to demonstrate that the spirit is more powerful than the elements.”

“Not always, not very often,” said David, gloomily. “My pa has an idea that we’re doomed to wars in this century. No sign of it that I can see. But maybe the universal barbarians will think up something soon.”

“It is possible that we press the barbarians too rigorously,” said Signor Autori sadly. “Then they must escape from our restraints. Or they smother.”

“And kill us while they’re escaping.” David stood up. “Pa often talked to us about Bismarck. He admires Bismarck. I’ll borrow your book tonight, Professor.”

His lean face darkened. There was a curious haunting in his mind, amorphous, which he could not embody nor give substance. There was someone … He shrugged, touched the keys again, and they sent up a frail and melancholy sound of distress.

A glimmering evening light, colorless and sad, filtered through the two tall thin windows near the piano. There was one tree on the miniature lawn outside the three-story gaunt house, which had a spindly look between two wider houses, for it was only twenty-five feet wide and of dull gray brick. But its ceilings were grotesquely tall and molded of faded white plaster, and this room possessed a black marble fireplace in which a fire sullenly muttered to the voice of the wind in the chimney. An old, old room, with darkly polished parquet floors covered by dimmed and ancient rugs whose pattern was almost obliterated by time, with high antique furniture of carved mahogany and crimson plush seats, with a Florentine mirror, octagon-shaped and blurred, over the mantelpiece which held bronze candlesticks dripping with crystal prisms and a marble head of the Madonna. Between the two windows stood a high ebony stand bearing a cloisonné vase, all dark red and blue and black enamel and gilt traceries. Against one streaked white wall had been placed a Florentine chest of mahogany, its carvings flaking with gold, green, and dying scarlet.

Yet it was an august room, and David loved it for all its majestic bleakness and age. He loved the whole house, this Italian house on West Fourth Street, and he especially loved his tiny apartment on the third floor which enclosed rather than contained his own piano for practice after his lessons in the parlor below, and his severe white bed and the Italian chest of drawers and minute fire. He liked to listen to the sound of the spring rain on the roof, and the motley voices of the Village in the evening. He loved the two rooms below, the crowded dining rooms with their red-checkered tablecloths on round little tables and their lofty carved ebony sideboards which the professor and his wife had brought from Italy. The shelves were full of cheerful plates and platters and bowls; the professor affected to deplore them, calling them “peasant,” and would give a loving glance at his fat and laughing wife, nearly twenty years his junior. “But her father, from Milano, manufactured shoes, and made it possible for me to teach music,” he would say to his pupils, with pretended apology for his Antonia’s bouncing figure and deeply dimpled pink cheeks and mounds of shining black hair. “Ah, it is always the fate of an artist to espouse the exuberant lower orders if he is to live and have his wine. Too, Antonia cooks well, but not in the Roman fashion, which is more subtle and cosmopolitan. Unfortunately, her mother was from Napoli.”

“Poof! Roma!” Antonia would cry happily. “These are not Italians, in Roma. My husband, he is from Roma, and the men of Roma have no bellies and no laughing, and they talk. Santa Maria, do they not talk!” She would slap her husband’s broadcloth shoulder vigorously and with love, and he would look at his pupils, gathered about the tables, with a glance imploring charity and pity, and they would laugh delightedly, and he would be pleased and would nod to himself, grateful for the laughter of these ten young men who had so little merriment in their dedicated and too-serious lives. Ah, these Americans, the professor would remark inwardly. They have no true laughter, and it is possible that it is because they are too young.

Antonia cooked in the basement, from which floated upwards all day long, and far into the night, ineffable odors and song and loud feminine voices, for Antonia employed a countrywoman as an assistant. At first David had alarmedly believed that these voices, emphatic and ululating and somewhat hoarse, were engaged in a perpetual quarrel which imminently threatened to break out into physical violence and destruction. Later, learning Italian, he gathered that the arguments were merely discussions of the weather, neighbors, laundry, and menus, all affable and affectionate. Antonia was temperamentally incapable of quarreling, as was her very short, very fat, and very sallow assistant. But do they have to throw such emotion into a discussion as to whether or not there should be more beans, or less, in the minestrone? thought David at first.

Only David lived in the house, for only David could afford the rent of the little apartment on the third floor. The other piano students lived in wretched tiny rooms in the neighborhood, working as waiters or scrubbers or dish washers in restaurants in the Village to pay the very modest fees of Professor Autori. They received no meals during their work, and it was Antonia’s pleasure to feed them so luxuriously at night (their one meal) that it was enough to satisfy their stomachs for twenty-four hours. Too, when they arrived for their lessons, there was sometimes a pot of coffee for them, or an unpretentious wine, and a dish of rich little cakes, and sometimes a small platter of ham or a mound of hot tetrazzini.

“Why did you and Mrs. Autori come to America, Professor?” David had once asked. The old man had given him a peculiar and quizzical glance and had coughed. “It was a slight affair of politics,” he had murmured. “You are surprised, my David? In this America a man does not leave his home for politics, which are regarded with humor and which are not too dangerous. And that is good, very good. There are many other excellent things in your country, even if it does laugh too easily and without true laughter. But that again may be good, for it is laughter without malice or cruel subtlety. It is all very paradoxical.”

David remembered this remark this cold spring evening as he looked at the one bare elm outside, its bark running with sooty rain, its branches dripping. Paradoxical. He was learning of paradoxes for the first time in his twenty years. There were never any paradoxes at home, in Waterford. Only stringencies, severe and harsh, which rose from the nature of the Engers. For some reason, he thought of his brother Edward. He put his hands on his narrow hips and wondered why he was disturbed.

Professor Autori joined him at the window. He was so tall an old man that he was even taller than David, and he seemed all bone and string under his greenish broadcloth coat and slender trousers. Even his face, long, furrowed, and pale, appeared fleshless beneath a rolling mass of silver hair like a mane. His sunken eyes glowed impetuously under enormous silvery brows, and his wise old mouth was etched into a pattern of skeptical drollery. The corners twitched meditatively as he, too, thought of Edward Enger, who had brought his brother to this house and who had bargained smartly with him about the rent of the miniature apartment but not about the fees. “My friend, Mr. George Enreich, has told me about you,” Edward had said, without unnecessary preamble and with a straight gleaming of his gray eyes directed at the professor. “He recommended you highly. He says that you conducted in the La Scala Opera in Milan and that you’ve forgotten what the ordinary conductor knows. And so here is my brother David, and he is a genius, and I want the best for him.”

The professor coughed now and said to David, “It has come to me that I am thinking of your brother. Eduardo? That is the name?”

David started and smiled moodily. “Funny. I was just thinking of him myself.”

“I have been told that I have the perception,” said the professor gravely. He regarded David tentatively and without apology. “It is not often that you speak of your family, though when you do speak of them you speak almost always of Eduardo.”

For a moment David, who had been brought up in an atmosphere where one did not inquire into the affairs of a family, paused. But the professor was smiling at him with bland inquisitiveness. David shifted in his narrow and polished boots. “I suppose,” he said with irritable candor, “that the whole family is really Ed. I’ve suspected that for a long time. Maybe Ed knows that and maybe he doesn’t, but he sure acts that way! I remember when he brought me here. That’s funny, too. He’s about a year younger than I am, but he brought me here. I didn’t bring him. I think that sums up Ed.” He paused again. “Genius,” he continued reflectively. “I don’t know about myself, but Ed’s a genius. Sometimes he scares the hell out of me, and I don’t know why. He sacrifices himself all the time for all of us, but—”

He thought of the Christmas Eve when he had played Bach-Gounod’s “Ave Maria” for his brother, and his heart, so volatile, so easily annoyed, so strangely distressed, softened. “You can live in the same house with a brother and not know him at all. I thought I knew Ed. We used to call him the Dummy.”

“The Dummy,” repeated the old man. “And what is the Dummy?”

David’s fine-boned face colored. He ran one of his extraordinarily elegant hands over his smooth black hair. “A fool,” he said ashamedly. “That’s how stupid we are, my brothers and sister and me. And my father,” he added. He thought again. “You know, Professor, though my mother always says that Ed doesn’t have any genius and that he’s not gifted, I don’t believe she thinks that. And now I don’t, either. There’s something—well—something terrible about Ed. It’s impossible to explain.”

“But he sacrifices his life for the family,” said the professor.

David was silent. Then he nodded slowly. “Yes. He reminds us of that all the time.” He laughed faintly. “And he reminds us we’re geniuses; he never lets us forget it for a single minute. It’s gotten to the point where I’m—I’m frightened. And it’s not Ed’s fault. He’s had it drummed in him all his life that we’re gifted, and he believes it as much as we do, maybe more so.”

The professor turned thoughtfully to the piano and touched the keys with love. “You do not believe you are a genius, David?”

David followed him with anxiety. “Do you, Professor? I’ve been with you since last September. You ought to know by now. I’ve been afraid to ask.”

Or, perhaps, thought the professor with compassion, you have been hoping that I would reply no. He danced his fingers over the keys and the most fragile and delicate notes answered him, like a harp.

He said, in Italian, “We must speak in Italian, for it is necessary for you to be proficient. A cultured man knows several languages; with only one he is like a man who knows but one song. Yes, David, you are a genius.” He smiled at the young man with a deeper compassion. But not as you think, not as your brother thinks, he thought.

He put his hand on David’s tense shoulder. Ah, nerves. This is a youth of nerves. He is never at rest. The old man smiled. “So I have told you, and I would not deceive you. We must pray for you, must we not? When I was young,” he said with a musing and dreaming expression, “I was the agnostic, the atheist. There are years of youth when it is in rebellion. It becomes daring, bold, to announce that God does not exist. It shocks the parents; it outrages the clergy, who are more simple. It is exhilarating. But the intelligent youth knows he lies, while he rejoices in his lies. He is the man now, the knowing man, the emancipated man, and he swaggers, with his books under his arm. He is the scientist, the youthful Darwin, the man of the Age of Enlightenment, free of superstition. He is also a child. With the years comes wisdom, and it is not the wisdom of fear but the wisdom of knowledge. So we must pray.”

A bell clanged from the depths of the rich-smelling house. “Ah, that is my wonderful Antonia. I believe it is veal cacciatore tonight, and a rosa wine to embellish it.” He took David’s arm like a grandfather. “And there is another thing, my child. Do not deprecate man’s nobility, nor must you underestimate his villainy. You stare. You do not understand, but there will be a bitter morning when you will see.”

With this mysterious remark, he piloted David out of the room and down the dark and curving stairway. They passed a large oval niche in the wall. A candle burned there under an alabaster statue of the Virgin. The old man crossed himself reverently. “One wonders what she thought,” he said. “It is recorded that she pondered. When man knows those ponderings he will know the whole world!”

It was Edward who had taken over the management of what he sometimes, and bitterly, stigmatized, to himself, as the Fund for Fools. It was he who decided how much should be spent for his brothers’ and sister’s clothing, and their tuition, except where there were fixed fees. Now that David was in New York, his music fees and board provided, it was necessary, according to Edward, that he dress the part. Therefore, David had a good if limited wardrobe, Edward instinctively understanding that a poorly dressed man is handicapped. Too, Edward had a secret but powerful pride, daily growing more obsessive, and as David was an Enger, and a student of a famous teacher, Edward wished him to surpass the other students in dress, thus impressing upon teacher, acquaintances, possible “interests,” and students, that here was an important personage. But pocket money, “for foolishness,” was strictly doled out.

“What do you need a lot of money for?” Edward had demanded of David. “You have good clothing, better than I have or ever will have, an apartment, a piano, your fees paid, your music bought, concert tickets provided whenever you want them, opera tickets, money for books. Besides, you’ll be studying and practicing most of the time. So where, and when, could you spend a lot of money? I’m not working my head off so you can swagger around. New York like a millionaire.”

So David, affluent in every other way, was miserably circumscribed in any spending for pure pleasure, and this to a young man going on twenty-one was intolerable. There were little cabarets in the Village, little restaurants, which he would have liked to visit. There were a few young “serious” ladies also studying art in the neighborhood of West Fourth Street whom he would have liked to have known, and to have treated to an opera or concert they could not afford. At first, he was so happy to be away from the crowded household in Waterford that he rejoiced in his solitary life under the eaves of the Autori home and hardly stirred from the house at all except for a short walk at night. But as he was young and, under his irritability and arrogance, of an intense if reserved temperament, he soon began to explore the neighborhood with increasing pleasure and interest. The lack of money stood in his way, however, so far as the intimate pleasures of the area were concerned. He began to think of his brother with ire and resentment, and his compunction, born on a Christmas Eve nearly five years ago, withered and twisted and became pity for himself, and humiliation.

His conversation with Professor Autori this afternoon had stirred him deeply. He was unusually quiet during the boisterous and argumentative dinner that night. He was not a favorite among his fellow students in that house, who thought him haughty and supercilious, and who envied his natural tall elegance and gentlemanly dignity. They also envied his musical ability. One or two had heard him ragtiming classics when he thought the house was empty and the Autoris asleep in their little bedroom behind the dining rooms. This was blasphemy, according to the students, who were fascinated by the rollicking and somewhat ribald parodies. They reported the matter to the professor, who solemnly shook his head and promised to halt such obscenity. He never spoke of it to David, however, and sometimes listened with smiling pleasure. “Who would dream,” he would murmur to his wife, “that under that Florentine composure there is a diabolical vein of fire and the sound of dancing in the streets?” The old man was intrigued by the effects that David contrived on the piano, an incredible slurring of some notes, a rapid syncopation here and there, the condensation of a lofty phrase. The piano laughs and sings with him, thought the professor. It, too, is making fun of too much gravity. Or, is it rebelling with him? It is the melody of youth.

David ate little tonight. He was somewhat moody and restless. The soft and sooty rain had stopped, and there was a quickening movement in the spring night, a promise that danced over brick and concrete and brightened the yellow street lamps. David decided that the house was unbearable, and that he must walk endlessly. He had received his monthly check today from his brother, and recklessly he considered spending most of it if the opportunity offered.

He put on his short but costly broadcloth overcoat with its narrow velvet collar over his well-cut black suit, and adjusted his glimmering derby hat. He put on pearl-gray spats over his polished boots and drew on pearl-gray gloves, and took up a small and shining black cane with an ivory head. He looked at himself in the old Venetian mirror and was pleased. He had little personal vanity, for, though he was unusually handsome now, he was strangely indifferent to the fact. Perhaps it was because he had never needed to contrive an effect laboriously and carefully. Then he set off with a feeling of excitement.

He glanced with covert eagerness at some of the girls who passed him in the mild March night. But he was disappointed to see that they were not the kind he had seen before. Most of them were dowdy and preoccupied, their skirts not lifted in a gloved hand but dragging on the damp pavements. Their faces were white and worried and plain, under wide felt hats of the poorest quality, and their coats and suits were frowsy. They looked furtively, and with admiration, at David, but he looked away. Working girls, seamstresses or office girls, on the way home from work. David had had enough drabness in his life to be repelled by it now. Perhaps if he went by the Brevoort or Lafayette Hotels he would encounter more appetizing specimens.

Most of those who lived in the neighborhood were at supper, and David soon found himself practically alone in the narrow and winding streets, whose lamps reflected back from the wet cobblestones. He heard the distant rumbling of traffic, but here it was quiet. Now he was coming to the neighborhood of the little restaurants and cabarets, and he walked with more intensification of his mysterious excitement. He imagined he felt hungry. He would find a restaurant, dark and small and lighted with candles, where he would treat himself to an exotic dish and a bottle of expensive French wine. He would sit among “people,” and watch, and think of himself as a man of the world, a suave and polished stranger, condescending to visit the Village. A Frenchman, perhaps. Or a French-Italian. Better the Italian; he knew that language more fluently.

He found a restaurant he had never seen before, and he stopped on the sidewalk to study its exterior, thoughtfully twirling his cane. The curtains were drawn across the steamed windows, but it had a respectable look slyly hinting of raffishness, like a well-bred girl who could be naughty. There was a poster on one of the windows, a noisy poster lettered in green and red: “Prince Emory! Two weeks’ engagement! Just Returned from the Mardi Gras in New Orleans! New Music, New Rhythms, Extraordinary Effects from Dixie! From Ten to Two!”

David glanced at his pocket watch. It was hardly nine. He hesitated. The restaurant would be empty. But he knew that it was open, for there were shadows on the curtains moving rapidly back and forth. Then he heard music, the sudden brilliant flare of a trumpet, like a joyful cry of delight, the sudden clamor of a piano, the sudden ripple of a drum, teasing and audacious. He had never heard such music before, and his flesh tingled ecstatically. The music stopped. They were practicing, apparently. Then a violin sang alone, with a voice and with music which sounded like a dusky girl on some hot mountain with hibiscus in her hair, her skirts flashing and whirling. David was enchanted; he breathed lightly, so as not to miss that wild singing that cried of palm trees and shining Southern oceans and islands, green as jade, haloed in warm golden beaches, and people who lived to love and to laugh, far from concrete and gaslights.

David pushed open the door. As he suspected, there were no customers in the restaurant, which was not very large but was very intimate, with bare wooden tables and candles stuck in wine bottles, and with a bare floor. The candlelight flickered on wooden walls on which were tacked small samples of local artists’ work, fierce blues and reds and yellows and clamoring blacks. On a dais, against one wall in the middle of the restaurant, two young Negroes were practicing at a piano and at a drum while two others stood near them, one with a violin, one with a silver trumpet. They turned their heads, startled, as David entered, and one of them said in a liquid and courteous voice, “Not open yet, Mister. Not till ten.” Their eyes were curious, roaming over his clothing and face, and their expressions took on constraint.

“That’s all right,” said David. He stood near the door. There was not a waiter in sight. He hesitated. “I think I’ll sit down anyway, and wait, and listen to you practice.” He felt exposed and annoyed as they merely looked at him in silence. “No harm in my listening, is there? I’m a—a musician myself and I heard you practicing, outside.” He tried to smile in a friendly fashion but only succeeded in looking haughty and patronizing. The young Negroes glanced at each other, shrugged, and turned back to their instruments. David seated himself at a table near them. He brought out a package of cigarettes and lit one, and though he did not know it, his every gesture was that of a grand seigneur, and antagonizing.

Then one of the young Negroes, exceptionally handsome and tall and slight, and possessing a smooth face the color and texture of finely polished bronze, and with features of unusual clarity, suddenly swung about and stared intently at David. David was pretending, in his shyness, to be absorbed in intellectual thought, and he studied the burning end of his cigarette with an aloof expression. He was deciding to be a Fifth Avenue gentleman waiting for a mysterious feminine companion. The companion would not come; he would sit alone. But he would be interesting.

The young Negro who was staring at him lifted a hand to silence the other musicians, and put his silver trumpet on the top of the piano. He stepped down from the dais, and his companions watched with curiosity, their hands on their instruments. He walked with a feline grace to David, who had now definitely decided on impersonating a young man from Fifth Avenue, a lonely and haunted young man seeking forgetfulness. He started when a shadow fell across his table, and he looked up, the clear whites of his vehement eyes shining like porcelain in the candlelight.

“Excuse me,” said the young Negro, and his beautiful voice trembled a little. “I kind of thought I knew you from somewhere. I’m Prince Emory, and this is my band, a new kind of band, just come from N’Orleans.”

David colored with embarrassment; then he said awkwardly, “Sit down, Mr.—Emory. Guess we can have some wine if we can find a waiter. I don’t seem to know you. Who did you think I was?”

Prince Emory sat down after a brief hesitation. He studied David earnestly, moving his head to catch a different angle of David’s warm face. Then, to David’s astonishment, those soft brown eyes filled with tears, and he smiled tremulously. “I know you!” he said gently. “You’re Dave Enger!” He, too, was astonished. “I’d know you anywhere! Dave Enger!” Now his eyes shone with happiness.

“Yes, I’m Dave Enger,” David replied. “But I don’t seem to—” Then he stared fixedly, and slowly he smiled, a young and touchingly inhibited smile. “Why, for God’s sake, you’re Billy Russell from Waterford! Ed said you’d gone to New Orleans years ago.” He stretched out his hand enthusiastically to Billy, and Billy, after another brief hesitation, took it and shook it with delight.

“What do you know?” marveled David, suddenly at ease at finding someone who knew him in this enormous city where he was so lonely. “Prince Emory! What’ve you been doing all this time, Billy?”

“I’ve been in N’Orleans,” said Billy, accepting one of David’s cigarettes. “Learning. New music, wonderful music. I’m making money,” he added proudly. “Lots of money. I guess you could call me rich now. I get five hundred a week anywhere I go; can keep half of it for myself, the rest goes to the other fellows.”

“Honestly?” said David, incredulous. He looked about the small and somewhat dank little restaurant. “Here, too? Five hundred dollars a week!”

“Sure,” said Billy with a contented smile. “Don’t let this place fool you, Dave. All the rich folks from uptown come to this restaurant all the time; you can’t get in, even on Monday nights. And it’s been crowded every night I have been here. This is my second week. I got notices in the big newspapers in New York; theatrical fellows been here almost every night. One’s a music publisher; he’s going to publish some of my music. We’re a sensation, first time they ever heard our kind of music in New York.” He flourished the cigarette with an air of modest pride and assurance.

Then he said, “What’re you doing in New York, Dave?” His astute eye had noticed the expensive clothing, the elegance, the watch chain.

“I’m studying with Professor Autori. Piano. I’ve been here almost a year. Concert music. I live on West Fourth Street, an apartment of my own. We’re doing very well in Waterford, Billy,” and his mouth, suddenly expressive, jerked a little.

A small silence fell between them. They were remembering the very young Edward of almost five years ago, who had struck Billy and who had upbraided and denounced his brother.

“Professor Autori,” said Billy in an awed voice. He had never heard of Professor Autori, but he was too natively polite to reveal that fact. “A real genius. You’re lucky.” Then they both thought of how David has played the piano in the hot little parlor in the house on School Street, and of how Billy had spontaneously accompanied him. Billy’s eyes flinched with pain. “You’ll be a concert pianist, too, I guess. One of these days. Not my kind of music, though. Mine’s special.”

“I like it,” said David, gloomily. He shifted on his wooden chair. He said, “I like it a damned lot better than I do mine! I understand it. I—” And he was silent.

An elderly waiter in a long white apron appeared from the rear shadows of the empty restaurant. He came to the table and looked at “Prince Emory” with an expression of mixed superiority and resentful respect. “Want something, Prince?” he asked.

“Yes.” Billy regarded David’s drooping face acutely. “No wine. Maybe two ryes and water. Not the water in the same glass with the whisky, Hugo.” The waiter sniffed antagonistically and trundled away. It sure was funny, he thought, how the tony upper crust hobnobbed with that nigger, sitting down at the same table with him, like he was as good as anybody, while they were mighty careful, mighty careful, yes sir, about their tips! The waiter, who was a Socialist, spent his free hours in Union Park, listening to rabid speakers on soap boxes, and cheered for “the rights of man” and the “oppressed masses” and the equality of mankind.

“If you don’t watch them,” said Billy, “they’ll put a quarter inch of whisky in the bottom of the glass and fill it way up with water.” He was concerned that David appeared to have sunken into brooding gloom. When he was like this, he resembled Edward, and Billy sighed. He did not want to be the first to mention his old friend, for the memory of that last night was still like a wound in him.

“I suppose so,” said David, absently.

Billy was silently praying that David would speak of Edward, so he adroitly led the conversation in that direction. “Why shouldn’t you like my kind of music, Dave? What’s wrong with it? I tell you, you’ve got to be just as much of a genius to play it as you have to be to play your kind.” He paused. “Or, maybe it isn’t your kind. Remember how you played—that night—and I came in with my harmonica and pitched right in with you? Man, we made it roll!”

David moved uneasily. He lit another cigarette. Billy put his hand in the rear pocket of his trousers—he was in shirtsleeves, rolled to the elbow—and placed Edward’s harmonica on the table between himself and David. The two young men gazed at it with sadness. It was worn, at the mouthpiece, down to the underlying brass. “I carry it with me all the time,” said Billy gently. “It’s my luck piece. I play it; I can still make it sing like all get-out. Tried other harmonicas, costing, up to a hundred dollars, but this here thing runs away from ’em.” He paused again. “Ed gave it to me.”

“I know,” said David. He glanced up at Billy, and his eyes were vivid. “Poor Ed. He wanted Pa’s flute, but Pa wouldn’t let him have it, so he bought the harmonica for two dollars. Nobody ever heard him play it except me. He wasn’t allowed to practice in the house. You see, he wasn’t a genius.” David smiled wryly.

He folded his thin arms on the bare table, and Billy admiringly noticed that the sleek broadcloth fell back from his wrists in perfect lines, revealing stiff white cuffs with real gold cuff links, a present from his father. He said musingly, “It’s funny but I’ve remembered something. It was a long time ago, when Ed was about fourteen. Maybe thirteen. We’d all gone to the park on a Sunday for a picnic, and Ed had to stay at home to open and run the store at six o’clock. My mother asked me to stop in on the way back and pick up some sliced boiled ham. The door of the shop was open, and Ed was all alone in it, sitting on the counter, with his back to the door. And he was playing the harmonica.”

He snuffed out his cigarette with a strong and twisting movement. “Well, I stood there in the doorway and listened, and it was like a little organ, that harmonica. Ed was improvising on a theme he had heard me play on the piano. A phrase from Beethoven’s Fifth. I couldn’t believe it, Billy! It seemed impossible to believe it myself. And would you believe this?” He looked at Billy with gleaming self-contempt and regret. “I was angry. I was the musical genius. I felt that Ed was insulting me! I didn’t know at the time that he could play circles around me. He’s the genius of the family. The rest of us are just fakes.” He laughed shortly and bitterly. “Fakes! Farces! Oh, I’m not saying we don’t have—something, but I’ve got the idea it’s mediocre and that what we are really fitted for is the thing we are not learning. We’re caught on something, like an insane carousel that never stops and which won’t let us off, and it’s not Ed’s fault. It’s ours.”

Billy nodded soberly. “I guessed all that a long time ago. He’d talk about stage art, from looking at Sylvia’s books on it, and about music like a professional, and he used to sneak in a couple of hours a month at the art gallery and describe the pictures to me like a painter himself, and he’d get books from the public library on medicine and read them in the basement, and physics books with all kinds of jargon and charts in them, and when he talked, it looked like he was on fire, just burning up. You couldn’t stop listening to him; it was like listening to somebody hypnotizing you. I guess you’re right. He could have been anything he wanted to be. But he runs the store and he’s sure making something out of it! Yes, sir! A real genius at selling and plans. Maybe he decided, all by himself, that he was best at that.”

Tonight, to his astonishment, in that little restaurant in the Village, David was hearing fully about his brother, and he could not help it, in his youth and jealousy and resentment against Edward, that he discounted almost everything Billy was saying. The music, yes. But not all the rest! It was impossible. Billy was just enlarging his friend, in his affection, to the dimensions of a god. David smiled indulgently, and Billy stiffened.

“Ed’s a first-class merchant,” said David. “We’re getting rich out of the delicatessen, and getting what we want. Perhaps we’ll never know what it is we really want, but that’s our own fault.”

The waiter brought the whisky. David had never drunk whisky before, and he watched covertly as Billy dealt with it like a man. Then he sipped. It nauseated him, but he controlled his affronted expression.

Billy subsided in thought. He watched the candlelight shining on the gold cuff links. Then he asked, as if idly, “How’s Ed? I mean, how’s he feeling?”

“Ed? Why, Ed’s an ox! He never gets tired; he can lift a hundred pounds as easily as I can lift ten. He’s like a wrestler, all broad muscles and limber as a snake. Make two of me, though I’m a little taller. He lives in the shop, though we’ve got two clerks now. Pa has to stay home a great deal, with his heart.”

Billy pursed his finely carved lips. “Maybe Ed’s big and ambitious but I don’t think he’s very healthy. He almost fainted in the basement one time and almost fell in the furnace. Caught him on the way in. He looked like he was dying.”

“Ed?” repeated David, incredulously. “Why, Ed was never sick a day in his life! He must have just tired himself out. Fainted? Ed?”

Billy changed the subject. He said earnestly, “Look, Dave, I want you to promise me something. Here’s my card; it’s got my agent’s name and address on it, right here in New York. I’m traveling around the country now, but if you write me I’ll get your letter, if you send it to my agent. Dave, don’t tell Ed you saw me or anything about me. Promise?”

David took the card and carefully put it in his flat wallet, which, if it contained only a few bills, was of the finest morocco. He was puzzled. “Why, Billy? Ed would want to know how well you’re doing.”

Billy shook his head. “Maybe. But do you know something? I bet he’s still mad at me for leaving him. And,” and now Billy smiled inscrutably, “if he found out about me he’d—well, he’d try to do something for me. Ed’s like that. I’m doing good and I’ll do better, but I don’t want Ed pushing in and trying to help me! I need fresh air.”

Now his eyes began to kindle. “Dave, in about twenty minutes people’ll start coming in. I’ve got an idea! I’ve composed a couple of pieces myself. A new one, I call it ‘The Royal Street Blues.’ It’s just been published in a place down in N’Orleans. I’m trying it out tonight.” He became very excited. “Wait! I’ll get it off the piano and I want you to run your eyes over it.”

He ran to the piano, where his musicians were straining to hear the conversation. He snatched a sheet of music from the piano and ran back to David, who was suddenly feeling the whisky. There was a golden haze shifting before his eyes, yet everything appeared preternaturally acute and clear, and there was a rising lightness and pleasure in him. “There,” said Billy proudly. “You just read it! You can follow it while we run it off for you.”

He returned to the dais and picked up his trumpet, and his musicians prepared to play. He put the trumpet to his mouth and made it sound as David had never heard a trumpet sound before. The other instruments joined in, and David, following the music with his eyes, was enchanted and dazzled. He listened intently as he read. Why, this was something new, something never heard before, something so exciting that it made a man’s heart jump!

That tonal color! Tones sounding with infinite variety between flat and natural, themes involving those tones as chord components. Mobile third and seventh with the diatonic. Lilting slurs, glissandi, tones pure and singing, then brazen. Percussive accents, like jungle drums. Sudden changes of pitch. Three-over-four polyrhythmic superimpositions. And over it all, the bright silver shouting and seductive glimmerings of the trumpet, like a living voice, an exultant voice. Yet, while leading the other instruments, it blended them, echoed them, soared above them. The pianist’s dark fingers danced over the keys in a blur, the violin wailed and skipped, the drum beat like a fevered man’s heart.

Billy put down the trumpet and began to sing in a rich baritone:

“I got the blues, I got the Royal Street Blues!

I got the mis’ries, yes, sir, I got the mis-er-ies!

I ain’t got my girl,

Somebody’s got my girl,

Somewhere, somebody’s got my girl,

And I got the blues, I got the Royal Street Blues!”

David, entranced though he was, had begun furiously to edit the sheet of music. His face was flushed and damp, and his pencil raced. He would lift his head, listen intently, his mouth parted and smiling; then he would bend his head again and scribble faster than ever. His heart pounded. He was uplifted, carried away. The trumpet blazed again, and it was voluptuous. This was music he could understand! This was his own kind, his own music! The other musicians now sang the song, dolefully, movingly, and the trumpet now followed them as if mourning, in notes David would have thought before tonight as utterly impossible with that instrument.

It was the whisky, of course, and his own suddenly released youth, and his rapture, that made him seize the sheet of music and Billy’s harmonica and run to the dais. The musicians grinned at him, and Billy laughed around the mouth of the trumpet as if utterly content. He nodded. David put the harmonica to his lips and followed the music, and after a few notes the musicians eyed him with joyful respect. Their heads jerked in time. Then David threw the harmonica on the top of the piano, pushed the pianist fiercely aside, and took his place. The piano, to the amazement of everyone but Billy, took on new expression, new depth, new feeling. Billy softened the trumpet, the violinist let his notes sink, the drum murmured, and the piano rolled out triumphantly. David was now scarlet; he looked drugged yet fervid and ebullient, lost in his music. He played plaintively, flatting the notes, crying in his notes, tinkling, racing, darting, his long body swaying back and forth as his hands danced. His face streamed with sweat. He was alive as he had never been alive before.

The waiters crowded at the back to listen, and their eyes glazed, and their feet tapped. They rolled in unison. One or two hummed the melody. When the music came to a wild end, they clapped without their own volition and stamped their feet. The musicians rose and screamed a passionate hosannah, and beat David’s shoulders in a frenzy, and they all shrieked at once.

David sat now, in silence, and grinned, all his white teeth glittering. He could feel the blood rushing in his body, the tingling of his flesh. He shook hands with all the four young Negroes and accepted their accolades.

“You’re for us!” cried Billy. He turned to his musicians. “I’ve known him since we were kids. I knew all the time what he could do, yes sir! Yes sir, yes sir! Did you hear that piano? Man, that piano! It’ll never be the same!”

“Oh, now,” said David, and he was a little hoarse. He gave Billy the sheet of music. “I’ve made some corrections. You dragged here and there. Hurry it up; slide there, see? Drag it out in that quick phrase, move it along here. Then it’ll be perfect.” He looked at his hands in wonder, his “blasphemous” hands. But he was not remorseful. “And the lyrics aren’t so good. I made corrections here and there. Billy, you’ve got a wonderful voice.”

Billy took the music, squinted his eyes doubtfully, then became very excited. “You got it, Dave, you got it! This’ll have ’em sobbing in their beer and wine and whisky, and make ’em twirl. Yes, man!”

He looked at David, and though his bronze face still glowed, he became sober. “Man, you got a job with us anytime you want! Anytime! Two pianos! That’ll do something to ’em. What’re you wasting your time for? Classical music! You’re wasting your time.” He looked at the music on which David had scribbled, and he was transported. “I got the name for you, too, Dave! Davey—Jones. Davey—Jones. You’re white. You can wear a mask. Mystery stuff. What you say, Dave? Man, we’ll make a team, we’ll make a band that’ll send ’em out of their heads! We’ll be famous.”

David was suddenly sobered, and a chill settled on him. He looked at the piano wistfully, and all his soul longed for it.

“Tell you what, Dave,” said the sensitive Billy. “You just keep my card. You think about it. I’ll be waiting for you. I’ll never stop waiting for you. No sir. And you’ll get around to this; it’s in you. You can’t keep it out. Davey Jones!”

David whispered, and he was trembling: “I—I can’t, Billy. Not yet, Billy.” Then he lifted his head and his eyes sparkled. “But maybe sometime, Billy. Sometime, Billy!”

He stood up. He stammered, “There’s Ed, Billy. He’s been working for me—all the days of his life.” And his face paled, then darkened.

“You got your own life,” said Billy, with pity and obstinacy. “Dave, you got your own life.”

But David left the dais and began to walk to the door. Customers were beginning to enter, and they stared at the dazed and elegant young man curiously as he pushed through them.

Billy called after him, urgently, “You come back, Davey. Davey Jones. Someday, you come back! You got my agent’s card.”

But David did not reply. He vanished through the door.

CHAPTER IX

The spring sun very gently washed the low and scattered red brick cottages of the Englebert Boys School in the suburbs of the small city of Andersburg, Pennsylvania. Mr. Englebert was quite an innovation among schoolmasters. He did not believe that schools, public or private, should be grim and cold and compact and as repellent as prisons. “Learning,” he would say, “should be a joy and full of excitement. It is life’s greatest adventure; it is an illustrated excursion into the minds of noble and learned men, not a conducted tour through a jail. So its surroundings should be as gracious as possible, to complement it.”

Thirty years before, in 1878, he had bought twenty acres of land in what was then only farm acreage, and had built his school upon them, all of warm and rosy brick with white casement windows and white doors and shutters, in the Virginia manner, for Mr. Englebert had come from that state. The school building itself was four stories high, with a handsome bell tower which chimed the hours and the half-hours. A little nonsectarian chapel adjoined it, and each Sunday a minister of a different denomination came to conduct the services, another innovation not entirely approved by the people of Andersburg, who thought that only ministers who were Lutherans or Episcopalians should be invited. When Mr. Englebert invited priests, who came, most of Andersburg was totally shocked. “I love Christians,” Mr. Englebert would say genially. “They detest everybody not of their particular sect. How they can read their Bible and hate afterwards is one of the more jovial paradoxes, and also the most tragic. But then it is almost impossible to find a Christian among Christians.”

The cottages were the dormitories, each with a pleasant little living room, complete with fireplace, a study hall, and happy bedrooms, each one single. “Gregariousness is splendid,” said Mr. Englebert. “But I have never heard of anything worthwhile or creative accomplished in the midst of a crowd, or by a crowd. Barracks, I have heard, are always the scenes of hate and animosity and quarrels. When a man is alone, he is truly himself, and if he fights, he fights with his own soul, or with God, and that is excellent. Better solitariness in a bleak cell than sleep in a palace chamber with a number of your fellows.”

He chose his teachers from all over the country, with extreme care. They were all men of sound learning and with a reverence for the liberal arts. “I do not object to vocational training,” he would explain. “What would we do without manual workers? But industry alone should have its own vocational schools. It is not in the province of the State or of private schools to teach trades.”

He was so short and so rubicund and so fat that his boys irreverently called him Santa Claus. He was genial but adamant when it came to scholarship. He was just except when injustice had been done, and then he was intolerant. He believed in mankind except when it went to war or—accursed word!—when it became “enthused.” He was gay, but never gay about learning. He trusted discreetly, but only discreetly, being an elderly man of much experience. “You know where your enemy is and what he is up to,” he would say. “Your friends are a different matter, of course. Never let a friend out of eye-range, or you’ll smart for it.”

He had, in short, only two reverences: his God and his country. “One does not question the Absolute,” he would tell his boys. “As for America, she has her most grievous faults, but she is less faulty than other nations, and she is founded on a Constitution which must have been inspired by God, it is so without flaw. No man could have conceived it. I worry only about the Amendments, which are the work of men. Thank the Almighty that no one attempts to amend the Bible!”

When some troubled teacher called upon him in his big and untidy house on the campus, Mr. Englebert would first press a drink upon him and first talk of trivial or amusing matters. It usually ended by the teacher deciding that he could handle his problem himself, or that it was too petty to be mentioned to Mr. Englebert. Mr. Englebert invariably agreed, and the teacher would depart confident and with increased stature. “When a man solves his own problems, his belly muscles are tightened,” Mr. Englebert would think, somewhat vulgarly. “More universal problems should be referred to God, who invented them Himself. He has the shoulders for them.”

Edward Enger had chosen the school on the recommendation of George Enreich, who was a friend of Mr. Englebert. He had visited the schoolmaster some months before sending Gregory to the school. Mr. Englebert had listened politely to Edward’s taut and direct remarks about his brother and his “genius.” But Mr. Englebert was less interested in his prospective boy than in Edward, who fascinated him and worried him. This was unusual; Mr. Englebert rarely worried about anything. He told George, “I am sorry for your young friend. He believes absolutely in too many things, but probably never in the right ones.”

Young Mr. Struthers, this mild spring Saturday afternoon, walked across the campus toward Mr. Englebert’s house, near the chapel.

The boys were enjoying the good weather, wandering about under the stark trees and looking at the distant amethyst mountains, sitting on the white stone steps of their various dormitories, boxing, skylarking, laughing, or happily doing nothing whatever. Mr. Englebert believed in long periods of idleness, during which a youth could contemplate his soul or nothing, “which often amounts to the same thing in some of these rascals.” There was no gymnasium on the premises, which always horrified the parents of new students. “They’ll get their exercise,” Mr. Englebert promised them. And they did. They shoveled snow, washed all the windows of the school, painted woodwork inside and out, mowed grass, had individual gardens which were strictly patrolled once a week, polished interior floors, made desks and chairs, and, in short, worked so hard on these things that the school had but two janitors. Many of the boys were wealthy, some would never be wise, but they had abundant health in common. They did not complain that there was no football or baseball team. They were familiar with Mr. Englebert’s saying, “History, as they say, was made on the playing fields of Eton, but so were a good many damnable wars. When my boys leave my school, they’ll have so much respect for the work a man can do, and the thoughts he can think, that war which destroys men will seem the unpardonable sin to them.”

Mr. Struthers found Mr. Englebert drowsing contentedly by his cindery fire, his ugly black tomcat sleeping on his knee, a tray—containing coffee cups and a steaming coffee pot for whoever might be inclined to disturb him on Saturday afternoon—waiting on a round table at his side, and a big cigar in his mouth. For a man who carefully avoided all physical effort and who had an aversion for too much fresh air, Mr. Englebert was remarkably rosy and glossy, from his bald skull to the last of his three chins, which rested abruptly on his great chest, apparently dispensing with the need of a neck. He opened one brilliant blue eye, very small and clear, when Mr. Struthers entered, murmured sleepily, “Coffee, help yourself,” and shut his eye again. Mr. Struthers seated himself, filled a cup, munched at a small cake, got up and tended the fire, hesitated, tentatively stroked the tomcat, which snarled, and sat down again. Mr. Englebert’s eye opened again. “Tom’s got a sixth sense,” he remarked. “He knows that you’re going to talk about some damned boy or other. Make it brief.”

The room was dusty and disorderly, for the old housekeeper was as contented as her employer and put first things first, to wit, excellent cooking. But Mr. Struthers, as did the other teachers and all the boys, thought the parlor the most comfortable and serene room in the world, in spite of red rep draperies which sagged and old furniture which did likewise, and a rug that always crunched underfoot with crumbs or fine soot or plain, honest soil. “It’s about a boy, Mr. Englebert,” said young Mr. Struthers. “I’m worried about him.”

“Take a dose of baking soda,” murmured Mr. Englebert, waving a fat hand in the direction of the kitchen. He opened both his eyes after a moment. “What is the hellion up to now?”

“He’s not up to anything, sir,” said the teacher, startled. He was practically new at the school, and so did not know that it was part of his employer’s philosophy that when a teacher was worried about a student that student had been engaged in malicious mischief, a theory that usually proved correct. “He’s an exceptionally good boy in many ways.”

Mr. Englebert, grunting, sat upright with considerable suddenness. “A good boy, eh? What’s wrong with the rascal? Never saw a good boy yet who wasn’t a limb of Satan and a potential danger to his fellow men. Don’t stare at me. And,” he added, in a sinister tone, “if you were a good boy yourself, you’d better resign.”

Mr. Struthers, who was very earnest and, very serious, colored and laughed sheepishly. “Now,” said Mr. Englebert, “I can tell you of real deviltry boys can do, especially boys with imagination. I ought to know. I did it, myself.”

He then told Mr. Struthers some of the more appalling acts of his boyhood, thus deftly putting to work his theory that a man should solve his own problems. Mr. Struthers was entranced by the stories but secretly aghast. “And we used to get hell whaled out of us,” said Mr. Englebert with immense satisfaction. “It did us good. None of this New Progress nonsense you’re beginning to hear about, and the delicate natures of children. Children are barbarians, and tanning their hides, instead of ‘understanding’ them, does more for their immortal souls than all the milky lectures you can pour on their nasty heads. They don’t listen, anyway; they just think you’re a fool if you don’t take direct action on direct transgressions of the law. All right. All right. What’s bothering you, boy?” He sighed; he would have to listen, after all.

“It’s Gregory Enger, who’s fourteen, you may remember.”

Mr. Englebert was all interest now. He nodded, and his three pink chins nodded also. He thought of Edward. He puffed at his cigar.

“Gregory’s a lively, vigorous boy,” said Mr. Struthers. “He’s assistant editor, as you know, on the school magazine.”

Mr. Englebert chuckled. “I think I remember some of those sketches and jokes of his. Damned clever. There was one about me, I believe. I clipped it out. Damned clever.”

Mr. Struthers sighed with relief. “Yes. He tells me he’s supposed to be concentrating on serious literature, majoring in it. And there isn’t a serious sinew in his soul. Full of fun. And he can write! Perhaps his stories are what some people would call trivial, but I call them witty. Why wit isn’t considered as valuable as serious writing is something I never knew. You know, sir, you don’t hear much real laughter, even among children. Europeans call us frivolous, but I don’t know of a more serious country—”

Mr. Englebert nodded. “And that makes us sinister, in the most awfully innocent sense. Remember the Puritans? I’ve just been thinking about them, and how, in spite of the Founding Fathers, they’ve come damn close to ruining America. Funny,” he said reflectively. “You’re beginning to hear more and more about the separation of Church and State, these days, and people clamoring to take God out of the public schools, even a little prayer once in a while. Seems like they think the separation-of-Church-and-State clause was put in the Bill of Rights to protect Protestants from Catholics. But it was just the reverse. Maryland and the Carolinas were mostly settled by Catholics, and then the Puritan influence began to seep down from the New England States, and the Catholics got all alarmed, and why not? They saw a grim Puritan State descending on them, and persecuting ’em, and depriving them of their rights. So they got the old boys in Philadelphia, framing the Constitution, to put in that Article, as their defense against the fellows with the zeal. I always did hate zeal. It’s burned more witches, razed more churches, and started more wars than anything else in the world. You try to civilize men and suggest that they stop killing their brothers with fists and guns and murderous tongues and oppression, and then up come the zealots, all afire, with some goddamn mystique or other, and hell breaks loose. Well, about this Gregory Enger who’s putting lines in your forehead, eh?”

“Well, sir, the boy has a comic and satirical gift, and it’s precious. In my opinion, if you’ll pardon me—”

“Why should I pardon you?” demanded Mr. Englebert, roundly. “Why should a teacher grovel and beg for pardons, when he dares to express his own opinion? He’s got a right, too, hasn’t he? To his own opinion?”

Mr. Struthers remembered another school where the opinions of teachers were regarded with scorn and were repressed. He smiled at Mr. Englebert with gratitude and took a deep breath and sat up.

“I’ll make it short, sir. I’ve talked with Gregory. He’s told me that his brother Edward and his parents think he is a budding Dante or Hugo or Tolstoy. Especially his brother.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Englebert. “Y’know, I’m beginning to be sorry for that big Edward.”

“I never met him,” said Mr. Struthers, flatly.

“A sort of Colossus of Rhodes with nothing to straddle, and that’s a tragedy. There’s an old friend of mine in Waterford, name of George Enreich, who recommended this school to Eddie Enger for his brother. He tells me that if there was ever a man dedicated to an illusion, Eddie Enger is that man, and there’s nothing more pathetic.”

“I think Gregory Enger is pathetic,” said Mr. Struthers, resolutely. “From what he says, that brother of his must be a combination Torquemada and Oliver Cromwell.”

“Tut, tut, my boy. Children are naturally liars, most deliberately so. And they’re whiners, too. They want to stand as shining little creatures always oppressed by unfeeling parents, or teachers, or somebody. Truth is, most of the time they’re monsters, and they want to get away with being monsters, so they look for a shoulder to weep on. Only fools believe them for a minute.”

“Well,” said Mr. Struthers, “I usually take what the boys say with a handful of salt. After all,” he added, with a shy smile, “I remember my own childhood very well and the well-deserved beltings I used to get. But I think, in this case, that Gregory’s complaints have some verity. I persuaded him to show me one of his brother’s letters. The boy was particularly proud of a jocular poem he had written for the school paper. He has quite a sense of humor, mature, too. So he sent the poem to his family, and his brother wrote him in reply. A brutal letter. He was to stop that nonsense and get down to serious work at once. A threat was implied. Gregory loves this school; his brother threatens that if he hears any more of Gregory ‘wasting his time,’ he’ll remove him from here and send him to a better school.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Englebert, “I’m beginning to feel sorry for Edward.” He smoked thoughtfully. “People a-mussin’ in other people’s lives.” He stroked his cat. “Making them better or making them worse: hard to tell apart. Why can’t we leave each other alone, eh, Tom? But that’s too much to expect; that requires intelligence, and some decent respect for others.”

He was much disturbed. He did not slide contentedly back into his drowse. He drank some coffee, muttering again. “No use calling that Enger fella in and telling him what he’s doing to young Gregory. He told me himself that Gregory was a genius, and he said it with a sort of vengefulness—ah, well, send Gregory in to see me at once. I’d like to find out what the whole thing means.”

Gregory, dark and alert and conspicuously neat if not elegant, entered soon afterward, alone. Mr. Englebert studied him. He saw Gregory’s keen and lively eyes, his broad yet somehow evasive face, his features which subtly just missed the lines of strength. But there was a look of gay malice about this fourteen-year-old boy, and a volatility, and, thought Mr. Englebert, an air of dependence in spite of the knowingness. Mr. Englebert was very wary of dependent and knowing people; he believed them to be dangerous, for their weakness and cunning could be used against others, and by others.

“Sit down, boy,” said Mr. Englebert, waving at the coffee tray and cups. “Cakes, too. Don’t eat ’em all, though. You fellows have no floors to your bellies.”

His manner was so kind, so genial, that Gregory forgot his apprehension at being summoned here, and employed himself eagerly at the trays.

“I thought we’d have a talk,” said the schoolmaster, watching the youth. “Oh, not about your high or low marks. They don’t signify much, one way or another. Remember my own school days; the brightest boys turned out to be bookkeepers or clerks later; the dull boys, or the boys the teachers thought were dull, are the ones now splashing around in golden fountains, or writing the great books or painting the fine pictures or managing big corporations. There was our mathematical genius—but no, I won’t tell you about him. Makes me wince, even after all these years. All right, now. Sit down and let’s have a talk. I hear your family thinks you’re going to write the great American novel one of these days. Somewhat in the manner of Tolstoy, I understand. I never did get through War and Peace. Well? You’re another Tolstoy, eh?”

Gregory’s face became darkly sullen. He murmured, “Yes, sir.”

“Now, where would they get that idea, boy?”

Gregory considered, and slowly his cheeks became suffused. Mr. Englebert shook a finger at him, when he remained silent. “Could be you, eh?”

The youth tried to shrug in his discomfiture. “Well—no. I can write, sir. Mr. Struthers says I can, and so did my other teachers. I was always scribbling, since I first started to write, as a little kid. I was in the second grade when my teacher told my mother I was a natural writer. But to my mother a writer means a Goethe or a Dostoievski. Not what she’d call a scribbler. She doesn’t read magazines or any light books. Just the heavy kind. So to her a writer—is a writer. It’s very complicated,” he added dismally. “You just couldn’t explain to my mother. She’s not the kind you can explain things to. She takes her family very seriously. You see, she was a Von Brunner. If I could write, and the teachers told her I could, I was a Writer, with a capital W, sir.”

“Um,” said Mr. Englebert. “Did she ever read some of your writing recently? The kind you publish in our paper?”

Gregory was puzzled. He stared at Mr. Englebert as if in surprise. “Why, yes, sir, sure she did! And that’s funny, too. She didn’t write me that I was wasting my time, as my brother Ed did. I never thought of that before! It’s Ed that’s the trouble. He’s down on all of us—”

The nostrils of his big nose flared with resentment, and his eyes became vivid with spite. But Mr. Englebert said with great quietness, “How old is your brother? Only nineteen? Now, a man, and particularly such a young man, does not wake up one bright morning and announce firmly to his brother, namely you, that that brother is going to be a famous novelist in the grand manner. No. Someone gave him those opinions of you. The point is, who was it? We won’t discuss your mother’s belief that all writing must be deadly ‘serious.’ Boys never listen to their mothers, anyway, so we won’t accuse Ma right at this minute. Go on.”

Gregory suddenly laughed with ruefulness. “All right, sir. After what my teachers said, there was a family talk. But Ma does believe her family has more brains than—well, than our neighbors’ families. She hates mediocrity. Then Pa gets all enthusiastic. ‘It’s in the Von Brunner blood, to be a genius,’ he says, and looks at Ma in the kind of foolish proud way he has. And Ma goes on sewing or knitting, or whatever she’s always doing. Like she takes things for granted. But you never know what Ma thinks.”

He drew a deep breath. His color was higher. “I remember all about it. We had that discussion; I got the school prize for this composition, you see. Ma read it and said, ‘It is very good. It is very original.’ And Pa stands up and reads it aloud. With gestures. With tears in his eyes. He’s always getting tears in his eyes. And he turns to Ed and says, ‘And so, we have another genius, my Eddie, as well as David and Sylvia.’ Dave and Sylvia are older than me. My younger brother, Ralph, is the youngest, and he hadn’t begun to paint yet.”

Gregory paused. He laced his fingers together, and stared at them with discomfiture. “I guess I got the idea then and there that I was someone special. Well, maybe I am; I can write better than other people; I know that, and I don’t mean to be modest about it. So, I was someone special, to the whole family. They all got excited, except Ma, who kept on sewing or knitting, and Ed, who’s sort of lumpy. Then Ma said, ‘Certainly, our Gregory is talented, but he must work to become truly so.’ And Pa said, ‘Yes, he must study, and be dedicated!’ ‘Dedicated’ is one of Pa’s favorite words, sir.”

“I see,” said Mr. Englebert, wryly. “But I am wondering if he didn’t mean your brother was to be dedicated.”

“What, sir? Please?” asked Gregory, baffled.

Mr. Englebert waved his hand. “Never mind. Go on. I’m beginning to understand, a little. The mother, convinced her son has a gift—if he is willing to develop it. The father convinced that all the Von Brunners are geniuses, not just gifted. They can’t help but be! What a history of meek frustration.”

Gregory eyed him doubtfully. “Well, sir, anyway, it was a lot of fun, and excitement, feeling important. Besides, being geniuses got us a lot of privileges. We didn’t have to do the dirty chores and things. We just had to study, and Ma kept after us there.”

“And your brother, Ed, believed you were all geniuses?”

“Ed? Oh, Ed. Sure he did.” Gregory’s voice rose on a vindictive note. “He says to Ma, and I can just hear it now as if he was saying it this minute, ‘You think Greg is a genius?’ You see, sir, they’re awfully much alike—Ma and Ed—though I didn’t see it until right now. And Ma says, ‘He is very talented.’ And Pa screams I’m a genius. So there it was. And old Garlic and Pickles gets after us, then, and he won’t ever leave us alone. He won’t let us forget we’re geniuses, the kind Pa thinks we are. It isn’t as if he’s our father, or something. We used to call him the Dummy. I’m kind of ashamed of that, now. I guess he isn’t a dummy—” But Gregory’s expression was still vindictive.

“Hardly,” said Mr. Englebert, dryly. “It is your brother Ed, I believe, who is paying your fees in this school and supporting all the rest of the family, too.”

Gregory was vexed, obscurely. “All he can do is make money—”

“A most remarkable and most useful talent, and eminently respectable and admirable,” said Mr. Englebert. “I hope you are not going to add to your—shall we call it stupidity?—by sneering at money and the men who have the genius to make it. After all, you are living on that genius. Or do you think being a parasite is meritorious?”

Gregory, smarting, exclaimed, “But I am—talented, sir! I don’t intend to be a parasite. I can write; Mr. Struthers said I can, and all sorts of things.”

“And I believe Mr. Struthers,” said the schoolmaster gravely. “Though I’m not sure I believe you entirely. I believe you believe you are telling the truth, but there’s something missing out of the whole picture. The missing quantity that I can’t see very clearly, though I feel it is there. Have you anything else to say?”

Gregory became very excited. “Ed rubs it in every chance he gets! ‘I’ve been working for you all my life,’ he says, ‘and you’re not going to fritter away my work and your gift.’ He keeps on saying it all the time. It’s become a sort of—a sort of—threat—”

“A threat?” asked Mr. Englebert, gently.

“Yes, sir! That’s what it is. A threat! But what threat?” He pondered, and his mobile hands twitched. “I’ve just thought of something. I think Ed hates us. What he thought about us never seemed important before, but now it does, and I don’t know why.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if he did hate you,” said Mr. Englebert, and sighed. He reflected. “I don’t know what we can do about all this. You’ve done more than help to convince your brother you are a genius. And so I gather that nothing would seem so catastrophic as informing your brother of your real, if lesser, talent. He would think your talent meaner than what he’s now convinced it is—genius. He wouldn’t consider your authentic and sprightly gift a gift at all.” He regarded the boy and thought, Volatile, but no valor. He would not fight silently and strongly for himself or for anyone. His fight would be in the dark, and slyly, and there would be no large abstraction in it but only a personal malice.

“I think, Gregory, that you should become full editor of the school magazine when Johnson is graduated in June. That is all I can do for you. The rest you must do for yourself.”

Gregory stood up, feeling dismissed. “There’s something you don’t know, sir, about Ed. There’s something terrible about him. I don’t know how, but there is.”

“I have no doubt at all,” said Mr. Englebert. “I have no doubt. A man who insists on giving another what he says he wants is truly terrible. Good-by.”

CHAPTER X

The small public library on Winston Street in Waterford closed promptly at six on Saturdays, and it was now fifteen minutes to the hour. Most of the men and women and children had already left; the tired librarians and their assistants were gathering up books left on the long, splintered oak tables. “The salaries are bad enough,” one elderly lady said to another, “and it’s a calamity when you tear a three-cornered rip in your second best white lawn shirtwaist sleeve, catching it on a splinter at the edge of the tables.”

“Put the shirtwaist on the altar as another sacrifice in the service of humanity,” replied the other weary woman, sardonically. “Well, anyway, we do help, just like the teachers. Wonder if we’ll ever have enough money for two silk waists and perhaps a pair of French-kid button boots, and perhaps a pair of silk stockings for Sunday?”

The library’s narrow confines had dingy, white-plastered walls and ceilings, and brown wainscoting running four feet up the sides of the walls. Everything was clean and dreadfully poor, from hissing gas globes hanging from the ceilings to the bare floors so dingy with age that they appeared black, in spite of frequent waxings. The shelves, in many cases, had been built by the two male librarians themselves, out of odd pieces of wood salvaged from house-building or bought by starved, saved dollars. “After all, you can’t keep books in piles on the floor,” they would plead as if begging someone’s pardon. “We would have gotten new shelves, and perhaps a new library, if those New Progress men in the city government hadn’t suddenly decided that all the playgrounds should be renovated with millionaire’s toys for the illiterate kiddies, who wouldn’t know a library from a chicken coop. At that, there’s considerable resemblance!”

An ancient wooden clock ticked from a wall over the checking-out desk. The librarian was an elderly woman, Miss Clare Sullivan, and her salary was ten dollars a week. She was a scholar. It was also true that she spent all day Sunday baking a huge pot of beans and pork, which would last her for five meager dinners. Friday was no problem: having little to spend for fish, she merely fasted as did the early Christians; and though her lined face was wan, it also had a curious alabaster translucence from mingled starvation and piety. She supported an antique aunt with arthritis. At confession, she was not quite sure as to whether or not she should confess that she often slipped slender religious books between volumes of Keynes, Engels, Leibnich, and Marx, which were having such an interesting run these days, much to her bafflement. Sometimes, quite by accident, the furtive little books on the lives of saints or religious exercises were withdrawn, too. This gave Miss Sullivan a joyful satisfaction. She decided not to confess; Father Mangan was rather strict, though whether he would be outraged at the cheek-by-jowl arrangement on the shelves, or be censorious at her sneakiness, she did not know.

The last borrower had trailed out. It was ten minutes to six now. Miss Sullivan glanced up and was happy to see that “little Ralph Enger” was still studying with the assistance of Miss Butterfield of Benton High, advanced mathematics teacher. “Little Ralph Enger” was at least five inches taller than Miss Sullivan, who was not particularly short, but she had known him for six of his twelve years. It was she, intrigued by the books he borrowed, who had at first investigated and then had excitedly enlisted the interest of Miss Butterfield, who was seventy and nearly six feet tall and who possessed a head of magnificent if somewhat spurious jet-black hair wrapped in braids about her leonine head. Miss Butterfield might have a granite exterior, but “she’s all gold inside,” her friend, Miss Sullivan, would say. That had been six months ago.

“That boy, with the remarkable shining auburn hair, is a little weak in English, and weaker in grammar, and practically nonexistent about geography, and he doesn’t know the Supreme Court from a police station, but he’s a genius at mathematics,” Miss Butterfield reported, her gray eyes gleaming exaltedly. “He’s a born mathematician. But his parents insist he is a great painter, and they must be absolute fools. I must talk with them. As far as mathematics are concerned, he could pose some difficult questions for a college senior.”

Miss Sullivan, who knew Ralph’s story, was alarmed. “Never,” she cried, “but really never, must you talk with his parents, Cynthia! They’d forbid Ralph ever to come here again. In fact, they don’t know he comes at all. He is taking time off from the art gallery. His father is a meek little chub of a man, but his mother! Brünnehilde gone to fat and dressed in cotton shirtwaists with straining buttons and with dragging serge skirts. But, Ralph told me, she’s a Von Brunner, and you’re practically supposed to genuflect when you hear that name. I’ve looked in the Book of European Nobility, and there they are, but they’re just yeoman nobility; you’d think, to hear Ralph talk, that they’re directly related to the Kaiser. He believes it, poor lamb.”

“He’s not such a lamb, he has quite wicked black eyes,” said Miss Butterfield, with approval. “Quite wicked eyes. Don’t have a fit, Clare. I’ll take him on every other Saturday afternoon, if he can come, and meet him here. So intelligent. Colorful character. I will try.”

Months later she reported again. “It’s that delicatessen shop,” she said with disdain. “It’s the family altar, the Holy of Holies to them, or at least to the parents and perfect ogre of an older brother. It is that ogre who is really trying to destroy Ralph by his attempts to make him a painter or something. I never go into a delicatessen; what teacher could afford those delicacies, and what stringent teacher’s stomach could absorb them? But I went into the shop yesterday; Enger’s, they call it. All porcelain and steel and wood and shiny floor and pretensions. And the ogre in charge of two slave-clerks. A big brute of a young man. A stevedore. Hands that could strangle a donkey. Though I must admit,” she added thoughtfully, “that he has fine gray eyes. I am now convinced, after seven decades of life, that you cannot truly judge a man by his eyes.”

“You didn’t mention Ralph to him?” asked Miss Sullivan apprehensively. “That would be the end!”

“You can surely trust me to lie adequately, I hope, Clare,” replied Miss Butterfield with some dignity. “I’ve been lying to parents for fifty years with considerable success. I merely told this young Mr. Enger that I wished half a pound of boiled ham—he personally cut it for me himself, and must be most careless; he had given me a pound, I discovered when I got home. I wanted to return the half-pound or at least pay for it, though it is very expensive, and then I remembered poor little martyred Ralph and hardened my heart. This, of course, was after I—shall I say—gave him the impression that I was the older cousin of one of Ralph’s teachers at School 12. It is possible that he was trying to bribe me to influence my ‘cousin.’”

“Quite possible, dear Cynthia, if he is such an ogre.”

“While I was speaking, he had a distinctly insolent way of studying my clothing. It is true it was wet weather—and what is worse than spring in Waterford?—and I was wearing my gray worsted skirt with the raveled edges to save my good skirt, and my coat is not very fine and has a tendency to sag in the wrong places, and my hat was water-soaked in spite of my umbrella. However, it was very insolent of him to notice these things; he is not a gentleman. And when I mentioned that I was a teacher myself, he said in an insinuatingly and very false gentle voice, ‘I am sorry to hear that, Miss Butterfield.’ I could feel my face actually blushing and I haven’t blushed for over half a century. I wanted to reprimand him for his impertinence, but he was slicing the ham then, and though I wished for a moment that he would cut his finger, I realized it was not a Christian thought.”

“Father Mangan often reminds us, or tries to remind us, that God loves our enemies as much as He does us, or even people who insult or wound us, for they are God’s children also,” said Miss Sullivan sadly. “It’s a very disconcerting thought.”

“Very disconcerting; it doesn’t do to dwell on it,” said Miss Butterfield. “Too upsetting.” (Miss Butterfield was partial to English novels.) She continued, “I mentioned that Ralph was doing excellently in school, which is an exaggeration except for mathematics, and then I introduced the idea that Ralph might make an excellent teacher himself. Of mathematics. You should have seen the ogre then! He is so absentminded that he was about to drop two cans of Campbell’s Soup into my bag, and then he came to himself and put them back on the shelf. And his eyes! They positively glared at me. He said, ‘My brother is a genius, an artist; his teachers have reported that for years. And an artist he is going to be. My God, a teacher!’”

“He swore at you!” cried Miss Sullivan, horrified.

“It’s very strange,” said Miss Butterfield. “It sounded less like an imprecation than a sound of distress and sympathy. He conducted me to the door himself, and bowed me out, and he looked after me after the door was closed, and bowed again. It was only my imagination, of course, but he appeared to be pitying me. Me, Cynthia Butterfield, a lady, a teacher!”

“Such impertinence. But, of course, he is a boor, according to poor little Ralph. No refinement, no culture. No touch of the Von Brunner blood.”

Miss Butterfield nodded, but she became lost in thought. On this second Saturday in March, a fine mild day fervid with awakening life, she had a talk with Ralph at their usual table in the library.

The dusty windows had been opened, and there was the fragrance and movement and voices of a city suddenly uplifted by the promise of the spring, and Miss Butterfield, though seventy years old, felt the never-failing thrill of youth along her arthritic spine, and her tired body responded with a throb of hope. Timid shafts of pale sunlight struck the shabby tables, the mildewed walls and ceiling, the books on the shelves. Miss Butterfield’s jet hair looked more meretricious than ever in that light, yet, oddly, it also looked jaunty and indomitable. There was even a flush on her gray cheeks.

She studied young Ralph and admired, as always, the splendor of his auburn hair, which appeared like spun-copper filaments, severely brushed over the top of his skull and then irrepressibly curling behind his somewhat overlarge ears. (“Artists almost always have small close ears,” Miss Butterfield would say, firmly. “But scientists are apt to have big, flaring ears, well fleshed and vigorous.”) Ralph’s small, upturned nose had an impudent tilt, and his black and restless eyes glittered with anticipation of his lesson. A big, rather plump boy, giving off an aura of virility and ardor, and with pink firm cheeks and a wicked smile, he had become very dear to Miss Butterfield, who had longed for a houseful of children. She pushed down the curls behind his ears with a severe glance but with a gentle hand.

She came to the point at once, closing the book Ralph had already opened. “I have had a talk with your brother—Edward, is it?”

Ralph gave her a ribald wink. “Yes, I know, ma’am. He mentioned it the other night. He was mad that you said I could be a professor of mathematics in some university, or an engineer. The whole family’s set on me being a painter; I told you that before. Glad you didn’t give me away.” He paused, and his expression became sulky. “Guess being a university professor or an engineer is every bit as good as being a painter, and I told. Ed that, and he got madder than ever and said I was going to be what I started to be, and that he hadn’t worked all the days of his life for nothing. Pooh! Who cares about him, Old Garlic and Pickles!”

Miss Butterfield surveyed Ralph’s clothing, which, though not ostentatious, was neat, well made, and of good quality. The fact that it shone, here and there, testifying to frugality, did not minimize its intrinsic excellence. She tapped her pursed lips with her pencil and suddenly remembered Edward’s “fine gray eyes,” and she was disturbed.

“Your brother’s life is every bit as valuable as anyone else’s life,” she said. “And from what you’ve told me, and from what I have heard from others, he’s been sacrificing his life since he was much younger than you, Ralph. And for you, and his brothers and sister. I have an old friend, Professor Faure, of the Waterford School for Girls, and he told me only yesterday, upon my inquiries about your family, that Edward has been studying with him for a long time—all the things he had been forced to miss at school because he was working for you.”

“What else is he good for except working for us?” Ralph asked carelessly, ignoring, in a common human fashion, the things he did not want to hear and which might make him uneasy. “That’s what he was born for, Pa says.”

“And your father is an oracle? Infallible?”

Ralph glanced swiftly at the grim old woman. He said nothing.

She fingered the old silver watch pinned to her clean but very cheap white shirtwaist. “I am wondering if Edward is not a victim of his family.”

Ralph colored angrily. “Gosh darn it, Miss Butterfield, if anyone’s a victim, we all are! Of Ed. He scares me to death sometimes. Pounding, pounding, pounding. Why can’t he leave us alone?”

Miss Butterfield considered this a long time. A family of weaklings except for Edward. I must help this child, Ralph, not only for his own sake but for his brother’s, she thought, and she suddenly remembered Edward’s words when she had told him she was a teacher: “I am sorry to hear that.” Her stern eyes moistened. He had not been impertinent at all! She opened a book briskly. “We are wasting time,” she said. “Let us get on with it.”

But Ralph was staring at her oddly, and blinking. He respected Miss Butterfield more than he had ever respected anyone before, more than he would ever again respect another fellow human. She’d talked very funny about old Ed, and not with contempt. Ralph was uneasy again, and he put the end of his pencil in his mouth.

“He insults us all the time,” he said resentfully. “Why, when Mr. Yaeger, our minister, had dinner with us a couple of Sundays ago and was congratulating old Ed on what he was doing for us, Ed looks at him and sneers out loud, ‘Oh, you mean the Fund for Fools.’ Has anyone got a right to call his brothers and sister fools, Miss Butterfield?”

Only a victim, replied Miss Butterfield inwardly. Who was it that had said, “Beware of the wrath of a patient man”? Such wrath, breaking out uncontrollably at last, could devastate a city or a nation. She said to Ralph ambiguously, “One should so treat another that there is no provocation.”

CHAPTER XI

“You are certain, my Eddie, that you do not wish me to be present when you tell your parents of our new plans and our partnership?” asked George Enreich on the telephone.

Edward smiled. “You mean, you think I might need moral support?” His smile became unpleasant. “I’m not that delicate. I can handle things myself. No thanks, Mr. Enreich.”

Over the past few years he had frequently called “conferences” between his parents and himself, and both Maria and Heinrich, upon being told by Edward tonight that he wanted to talk with them, were pleased. Edward’s talks inevitably were the prelude to larger income. Sylvia and Ralph were banished to their rooms, and Maria took up her endless knitting and Heinrich loosened the buttons of his vest as they sat in the parlor with Edward. Too, in order to produce a proper and “cultured” atmosphere, the conversations were invariably conducted in German rather than in frivolous and “formless” English. “One must have precision during important discussions,” Maria would always say. “There must be no room for ambiguous meanings, which could cause trouble later.” To Maria, German was like a legal document, embellished with red seals and firm signatures.

Edward did not sit down. Heinrich lit his pipe and looked anxious and meek as usual, waiting to take all his cues from Maria. His wife knitted with massive serenity and patience, not lifting her eyes from her work. It was always so, from the beginning, thought Heinrich with uneasy surprise. Maria has respected Eddie, not despised him. Ach, they are alike, these ones!

Edward glanced about the tiny parlor. It was warm, this spring night, but the windows were not open—to conserve the heat for cooler hours. He looked at the gas globes. He was done with this place! It enclosed him like a constricting shell which was now too small for him.

“I do not speak,” he began, “until I have made up my mind, until I have closed all contingencies, all retreats, and there is no turning back. I must have this understood from the beginning.”

“Yes,” said Maria, with a nod, indicating that all sensible and intelligent people proceed in that way, while only fools discuss plans before resolving them into action. Her needles clicked decisively. “Ach, yes,” murmured Heinrich.

Edward put his hands in his pockets. “We have come a long way. We’ve taken several steps. Small steps. Now we must take the large step. And I must warn you, my parents, that nothing you can say can cause me to turn back. We go on together or,” and he paused, “I go on alone.”

Maria lifted her bulbous blue eyes and fixed them on her son. For an instant the large impassiveness of her face became intent. “You have threatened that before,” she said. “I do not believe for a moment that you make idle threats. But why is it necessary to threaten? Have I not always been reasonable?”

Edward smiled that unpleasant smile which more and more had a habit of dislodging his former agreeable expression. “You have been reasonable, Mother, when all my plans indicated that my brothers and sister, and yourselves, would be the ones mainly to profit from my ideas.”

Maria knitted in silence for a few moments. Heinrich pulled himself up in his chair. He did not like this! Then Maria was saying calmly, “It is a strange thing about humanity. It considers its sacrifices solely for the benefit of others. But altruism, as a great philosopher has said, is deeply rooted in a desire, an egotistic desire, to benefit the altruist first of all and himself enormously more than others. However, where is the man who is honest with himself? Edward, you have not reached understanding yet. No one can give you that understanding. Time alone can accomplish that.”

Now she’s talking like George Enreich, thought Edward, angrily. I’m a simple person, an American, and I don’t like these oblique references. It’s impossible for Germans to think or talk without mysticism.

Maria continued in that same calm and detached manner. “I, too, your mother, have an existence apart from my children, though perhaps it has never occurred to you.”

Edward pondered on this, then shook his head irritably. It was so like his mother to get away from the subject. She was exhibiting no curiosity. She was never in a hurry or eager. Her son had no doubt that she would be willing, now, to discuss philosophy for quite a while and delay discussion of the momentous thing in his mind and will.

“All right!” he said shortly. “I have had a talk with Mr. Enreich this evening.”

“Ach,” said Heinrich, with mingled pleasure and apprehension. “One can always be certain that the Herr Manager never speaks lightly.”

“Not when it comes to profits for himself,” Edward agreed, sullenly. He drew a deep breath. Now he addressed his mother alone, and he talked for a full ten minutes without interruption. The gas hissed in its yellow globes; the spring wind felt along the edges of the windows. Maria knitted inexorably. Heinrich’s face began to take on a look of shock and disbelief and terror. He kept on moistening his full pink lips and sometimes, frantically, he chewed on a hangnail. But he never glanced away from his son; he gazed at him as one gazes at a fascinating and appalling spectacle.

There was a long silence when Edward had finished, broken only by the click of Maria’s needles, the hiss of the gas, the restless rising of the night wind, and the creakings of the little old house. Heinrich suddenly leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes on a faintness. It was not possible that his son Edward was proposing this, in such a hard and implacable voice. It was a dream; one had only to keep quiet and one would awake.

Then Maria was speaking, without raising her tone and almost dispassionately. “You have considered your father’s health, no doubt.”

“I’ve told you,” said Edward. “He keeps his clerks; I will supervise. In an emergency I will be there. After all, I’m not going to the moon.”

Maria put down her knitting and folded her hands in her lap. She regarded Edward with cool and detached curiosity. Inwardly she smiled, recognizing her own irresistible force of character in Edward. “You will say that this new—venture—will increase the fund for the others. Yes, I admit that. If Herr Enreich believes in it, then it cannot fail. In reality, however, you are separating yourself from us. You are like the eagle who, though preserving its nest and what lies in it, is unrestrained in the unreachable air, a flying shadow on a mountaintop, always hovering, always alert, but free in itself.” Ah, yes, she thought, and that was I, too, but I did not know until it was too late.

Heinrich came to himself. He was aghast at his wife, appalled at his son. The old awful loneliness came to him again: I have lost my Eddie. He was more shaken at this than at Edward’s proposals or decisions.

“What are you saying, Maria?” he cried. “You are not agreeing to this?”

His wife slowly turned her head to him and considered him. “Agree?” she asked. “I believe we have no other alternative but to agree. As that man, Goeltz, has no other alternative.”

“I can’t see the comparison between us and Goeltz,” said Edward, and he flushed.

“Can you not?” said Maria, with cold surprise. “But then perhaps it is fortunate that we are your family, unlike Herr Goeltz. We shall not suffer; we shall profit. That, I know. But still Herr Goeltz and your father and I have much in common.”

Edward was deeply angered.

“There was a time,” Maria continued, “when I considered you, Edward, incapable of hatred. That was unwise and stupid of me. It was latent in you from the beginning. I have nothing against hatred when it is righteous and directed against evil. But it is a dangerous thing when one hates humanity and not evils.”

“Eddie was always so loving,” said Heinrich feebly. “I do not understand—” He wiped his face, as if perspiring, but in reality it was only a cover to dry his stinging tears.

Maria nodded. “True. But he has not found love yet.”

She picked up her knitting again. “You have not told us all, Edward.”

“No,” said her son. “I have not. And when I do, you will not be so sure that I hate my family.”

Maria smiled faintly. She again lifted her eyes and scrutinized the young man. “Did I say you hated your family? No. It is you who have suggested it.”

Edward furiously thought of all that he had done, in benefits not only to his family but to many others. However, there was no use arguing with his mother. She had what Mr. Faure called an “idée fixe.” Let a fellow think of himself occasionally and she immediately accused him of “hating” his family! But it was like her to be unjust and narrow. He was tired of being accused, of being put on the defensive, of having motives ascribed to him which had never entered his mind! An eagle, God damn it! A German couldn’t speak without getting poetic.

“Coming back to your allegory about the eagle and the nest,” Edward said contemptuously. “Very good. And now I want to tell you that this nest, right here, this house, doesn’t suit me any longer. We live like beggars, when we are rich. I’ve been thinking of building a house. Herr Enreich has offered me eighteen acres three miles outside of this town, at only forty dollars an acre. A manufacturing company, beer, I think, has offered him one hundred fifty dollars an acre for the land. I am going to buy that property.”

Now Maria was disturbed for the first time, and Heinrich was speechless, looking at his son with his mouth dropping open idiotically.

“And,” said Edward, inexorably, “we are going to think about building on it. Perhaps not this year or next, or even in the next five years. But we are going to have a decent home, an estate.”

For an instant Maria thought of her family’s Schloss and she was struck with nostalgia. Then she said, “On the profits of the shops, I assume.”

“No. That would be impossible, then, for a long time. I am going to invest in some of the stocks and bonds Herr Enreich has suggested. I am going to put considerable of my own profits into them. A man cannot get rich merely by working. And I am going to be rich.”

“Stocks? Bonds?” exclaimed Heinrich, with the despair of one confronting a madman. Horror distended his eyes. “Do you mean, Eddie, Wall Street? Wall Street! Have I not taught you about Wall Street? That bloated organization of wicked men, who exploit the wretched and driven and starving masses for the benefit of a few greedy families?”

Edward looked at him in contempt. “Socialism, again. Accursed industry, again. Haven’t you ever learned what the Industrial Revolution has done for what you call the masses, and what it will continue to do as it expands? It’s made life tolerable, and even easy, for the masses, given them access to mass-produced goods, rescued them from the famine of an old aristocratic oligarchy which once ruled the world. It’s given them work in factories and mills, a wage, freedom, roofs over their heads. It’s released them from services, the meanest, drudging and starving services to nobility and royalty. It’s abolished serfdom. Certainly that wasn’t the original idea of the industrialists, but it has happened, and is happening. The masses have only just begun to prosper in this country, and you can talk all you want about exploitation and long hours and low wages. They’ll go, too. It’s in the nature of things. And I’m going to buy those stocks and bonds with every penny I have left for myself.”

Maria listened with deep interest. She did not share her husband’s fetish about Socialism. Her eyes softened with a dreaming expression. She did not like, in particular, those whom her husband called the masses. In fact, she did not believe in their actual existence. America was in a state of flux, the “classes” constantly changing. One had only to think of Rockefeller and Carnegie. In Europe these men would not have had their opportunities. They would have remained servants or farmers or unresisting employees of small factories and mills and mines, without hope. In America, one had to admit, there was no limit a determined man could draw for himself. However, if Socialism ever came to America, as it had come to a few other nations, then the power of America would die and the “classes” would actually come into existence.

Socialism, she said to herself, was only the revenge the inadequate could inflict upon the strong. She spoke with more warmth than usual. “Let us have no foolish discussion about what does not exist. Wall Street is merely a trading place, a marketplace. I have no doubt that shrewd men can profit there, though I know so little about it. However, if Herr Enreich is committed there, then it cannot be a stupid thing to do.”

Ach, if they would only read! Heinrich wailed in himself. He thought of his many books on Socialism. Only Gregory had shown any interest in them and had listened to his father. Gregory would be the great writer, the great novelist, about Socialism! Heinrich glowed for an instant.

The masses, to Heinrich, did not include his own employees. These masses were an amorphous mass, a heroic mass, which lived in some mysterious Götterdämmerung of the theorists, full-throated, brown-armed, strong-faced, the illuminated air resounding with their voices, which were like the voices of a multitude of Siegfrieds. Heinrich, in his vague fashion, believed himself, but not his employees, one of this invincible, volting host. Bemused by his valiant dream, he only slowly became aware that Maria was watching him with an odd smile, and that Edward’s smile, if it was like Maria’s, did not carry her own compassion.

Though he had been steadily losing to Edward over the past few years, Heinrich stubbornly tried again to exert his authority over this granite-eyed young man. “I cannot permit the gambling, the Wall Street gambling, over the lives and souls of oppressed humanity,” he said, raising his voice futilely as a wave lifts against a cliff. His throat trembled; he clenched his small fists on the arms of his chair. “And I shall give long consideration, my Eddie, to your other proposals. I cannot guarantee,” he added, shaking his head, “that I will accede.”

“Certainly you will,” said Maria. “You have no other choice, my husband. Let us not be absurd. As for the stocks and bonds, Edward is to be the judge about his own money.”

Edward was not grateful to his mother for her practicality. He thought, with cynicism, She always knows where her own advantage lies. As for Pa, I don’t have to consider him. All I need to do is to show him the bankbooks and stop him from trying to reduce the clerks’ wages and get more than a decent amount of work out of them.

Edward, with more than a youth’s arrogance and more than a youth’s ardent and uncompromising simplicity, did not understand that men were often more, or less, than they seemed, and that they had a secret and powerful existence of their own, locked in the yellowish cell of their skulls and in the dark corridors of their hearts. He was not even aware of these things in himself. He thought of himself only as a driving force, single-minded and uncomplex.

He was getting ready for bed when his mother, puffing from her ascent up the attic stairs, knocked on his door. He admitted her grudgingly, and she sat down, without invitation, and fanned herself with her handkerchief. Edward snapped off his tie, ignoring her, though he wondered why she had come. He could feel her eyes on his back, and finally, as he unbuttoned his shirt, he was irritated and uneasy. “Well?” he demanded. “What more is there to say?”

Maria fanned herself. “Much. But I am wondering how to say it. No,” and she lifted her hand. “Do not frown, my son. I am not here to discuss the conversation of this evening. I should like to talk with you about your brothers and sister.”

“Don’t you think I can get tired of the subject?” he suddenly shouted in English. “What more do you want of me than what I’m doing?”

Maria folded her damp handkerchief neatly and put it into her sleeve before replying. Then she fixed her pale blue eyes on her son’s. She saw that Edward’s eyes seemed full of sparkling steel fragments. She began to speak, slowly. “I have had some experience in the world; I have not lived a cloistered life. When I say my children are—talented—it is not vanity which makes me say so. It is a fact. I am only wondering if we could possibly have misunderstood something. It is very possible that they are talented in another direction.”

“What!” exclaimed Edward, wrathfully. He clenched his fists at his side. “What are you talking about? Isn’t Dave a musician? Isn’t Sylvia gifted in the theater arts? Isn’t Gregory a writer? Isn’t Ralph an artist?”

Then even Maria was amazed, for she saw stark terror on Edward’s face, and a powerful rage. What is my son afraid of? she asked herself. What does he fear to lose? For, surely, he is frightened that he is about to lose something. She shook her head, dismayed. It would be impossible to explain to a frantic man so he could understand and be reasonable. How could she say, “My children are showing a puny mastery of what they are doing. They are desperately unhappy; I see this now. Out of mercy, let us discover what it is they are really fitted for, so they will not hate you and in their hatred try to destroy you. It is you, my Edward, who occupies my thoughts. Your life is dedicated to the less strong, yes; but still, there is your life. Even the strong should live, and not only for the weak. I must beg your forgiveness; in your childhood I did not lift a voice to prevent your exploitation, but now I comprehend many things. I do not believe in adjustment for adjustment’s sake; there is the coward’s way, the bloodless way, the way of the feeble. But there are inevitabilities, few but inexorable, which we must accept. Let us explore now, for your sake, what your brothers and sister need and where their greater talents lie. After all, art goes through phases until it finally is crystalized into its final form.”

But that, she considered, would make Edward’s past life meaningless to him, and one does not destroy a man’s past without destroying a vital part of him, perhaps forever, perhaps even crippling his future. The future could not be crippled. The family needed Edward’s strength as never before, and would need it with greater emphasis in the years to come. The Strong One must never be shown that even once his strength had been wasted, that even one step had been out of the way, and futile.

But then the others must be sacrificed to some extent. Maria sighed with despair. This was an inevitability that she herself must face. Her face became stern. She prayed inwardly that her other children would find their own way, at last, out of the iron mold of Edward’s conviction—and grim determination. There were so many things which one could not say.

She stood up. “You are quite right, Edward,” she said. “I had only thought that perhaps your brothers and sister might develop talents—in addition—in addition to what they have.”

“You can’t scatter yourself,” said Edward, angrily, but the terror subsided on his face, leaving it with an ebbed and relieved expression. “No,” said Maria, turning to the door. “You can’t scatter yourself, my son.”

“And they are geniuses,” Edward called after her, and there was power in his voice. “They had better be!”

Edward and William Montgomery Percival Chauncey MacFadden were alone in the glistening and glittering shop. Heinrich had felt “unwell” today, he had piteously pleaded that morning. He had stayed home, to recover from his “shock.” The clerks scuttled home to their suppers; they would not be needed tonight, for the shop now closed on Wednesdays at six.

The spring evening was still light, a study in luminous grays. Even the houses opposite were washed with that mute warmth. Through alleys the western sky could be seen as a rosy-grisaille, quiet as thought. Few people passed the lighted shop, and these few walked as if musing. Far in the distance a trolley clanged and rang its bell, but it only increased the evening silence. For some reason this air of expectant contemplation, this gentle call for creative communion, only depressed Edward.

He looked at William irritably. “Don’t polish that nickel too much,” he said. “You’ll rub off the plate.”

William, clad in a striped pink shirt which was pushed up to the elbows, and with the neckband unfastened about his lean, foxlike throat, rubbed his hands on his long white apron. He turned with a smile and an inclination of his head. “Always did like things neat, laddie,” he murmured. “By the way, did you tell your dadda I’m on the employed list?”

“Yes,” said Edward, and his depression lifted a little as he grinned. “He had a conniption. I had to promise to pay your wages out of my own pocket until we move into my own store. I gave him that concession. After all,” and he paused.

William nodded, as if all was explained, and in fact it had been explained to him by intuition. “You can sleep downstairs until you get your first pay or you can get an advance from me and find a room of your own at once,” said Edward.

“I’d prefer to save my first few wages,” said William, loftily. “I have reached the age of discretion. I will provide for my elderly years. I will become a solid citizen and wear a white linen weskit on Sundays. I will buy a cane and, eventually, spats. I will consider concerts again. You have concerts in this benighted town, don’t you?” He looked at Edward with the eager expectancy of the animal he so resembled.

Edward laughed. “We have band concerts in the park on Sundays in the summer. Fine banging, smashing, thundering Wagner, mostly, and Sousa. Heavy on the brass. ‘Wedding March’ from Lohengrin. ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ And waltzes. Of course no one can dance on Sunday.”

William shuddered. “Victoria!” he exclaimed. “You should visit the Continent very soon and learn how the civilized half lives. Or, perhaps, Catholic Canada. ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,’ he piously quoted. He leaned against a counter dreamily and crossed his neat ankles. “How well I remember Paris Sunday evenings in the spring! I’ve frolicked there, boyo. Even Berlin is gay then. And Vienna! A man hasn’t lived until he has spent a spring in Vienna. But London!” He shuddered again, crouched, made himself a sanctimonious ball, shuffled his feet quietly, pulled down his face into a long and sniveling mask. He held his hands before him as if holding an edifying book. He sniffled loudly, and twisted his pointed nose, and hollowed his eyes. Edward watched him, entranced. William straightened up and shivered. “If there is a hell, surely it is London on Sunday. The abomination of desolation, as spoken of by Daniel the prophet. How do I know? I was once a Sunday-school teacher. I can quote scripture with the facility of the Devil, though why he should, when there is much more engaging literature, I don’t know.”

“The Bible has some pretty spicy stuff in it,” said Edward. “At least I remember some of it when I was a kid.”

“But no finesse! A sinewy, masculine, brutal sort of ‘spicy stuff,’ as you say. No subtlety. No titillation. No awakening of ardor, of curiosity. Here is the bed, here is the whore, here is the pit, says the Bible. No details, if you gather what I mean. It would deter a man, and not arouse him, and I fancy that’s the whole idea, though I imagine the old boys licked their lips when writing all about it.”

“Sin isn’t supposed to be gay,” said Edward, smiling.

William shook his head. “The truth about it is that it is. That’s its fascination. You should see the South Sea Islands, laddie. Innocent sin. Gaiety. Joy. Dancing.” His hands flew about, and immediately Edward could see the warm green palms against a copper sunset, and could hear the sound of warm green seas surging gently against a coral beach and the ring of laughter and the lilt of music. He could see flashing eyes and golden naked bodies and wreaths of flowers and whirling feet. He could smell the fragrant jungle and hear night cries of strange birds. He shook his head in bemusement.

“You’ve gotten around,” he said. “Where haven’t you been?”

William was leaning on a broom now. He rubbed his chin on the top of the handle. “I can’t think,” he said. “I’ve even met Gauguin. The world well lost for joy and fulfillment.”

Edward did not know of Gauguin. He was emptying the cash register, preparing to put the money in the big safe in the office. It was six o’clock. He looked up, after an interval, to see that William was watching him with a strange expression. “Yes?” he said.

“I didn’t speak,” said William, thoughtfully. “But I was thinking. It is spring, lad, spring! Why no prancing in the wildwood? Hounds of spring and all that? Cloven hoofs on the grass?” He dexterously put his prehensile hand on his head and extended two fingers like horns. He lifted his knees high and danced and whirled. He whistled, and it was like the sound of distant pipes. He breathed out an aura of wild gaiety and abandon and lasciviousness, all delicate but bold. He rolled his eyes, and the light above caught their vivid gleaming, their hazel passion. “Why no nymphs and gamboling in the moonlight, and no rustling in the bushes?” He was Pan, exquisitely obscene, obsessed with joy and delirium. And then, all at once, he was William, inquisitively smiling.

“What do you think I am? A kid?” said Edward scornfully, but he was breathing a little fast. “I know all about that. Did you think I was a virgin or something?”

William shook his head sadly. “I don’t call it joy to dash, wallow, then run,” he said shrewdly. “There is an art to it. Without art, a lass is only a furtive partner, pulling up her drawers quickly and scuttling away, with a dollar or two in her purse. That’s not art. That’s depravity.” He snapped his fingers. “It is the difference between gobbling at the Greasy Spoon and a dinner with wine, while looking through the windows at the Seine glimmering with lamplight and starlight. Ah, it’s sad, I am thinking, to be content with corned beef and cabbage or not to know that the world’s table is not set with only corned beef and cabbage.”

“You’ve got a fine opinion of me,” said Edward with rising annoyance. “I’m young yet and one of these days I’m going to visit those fine places you talk about. Give me time.”

William studied him shrewdly. “Time? Is that all you need?”

“What do you think I need?”

“Why, boyo, it is very simple. You need yourself.”

Here was another who talked in riddles. “There’s nothing I dislike so much,” said Edward, “as elusive talkers. Impractical talkers. Oh, it’s all jump-up and away we go—the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la! There’s such a thing as work. Or maybe you never heard of it?”

“Never really liked it,” said William, solemnly.

“We can’t all be tramps,” said Edward, with brutality. “Someone must do the world’s work.”

“That is the trouble,” said William. “People doing the world’s work. Now I believe in letting the world do its own work. Noninterference. No management. No exhortations. No demands that other folk be the same as we are. No arrogance. No pushing. Why is a man born? To find himself, not to find others. Now mind. I’m no theologian, like my dour Belfast cousins. Yet I mind me of my catechism. Why is a man born? To love God, to serve Him in this world—and a lovely world it is!—and to be happy with Him forever after death. An old aphorism: you cannot serve God and Mammon. You cannot serve God and mind your neighbor’s business, either. If you have a soul, I’m thinking, then your business it is to save your soul. ‘A whole life’s tasking.’ Or, it could be, you do not know the poets.”

“What’re you doing to save your soul, William?”

“Now that you remind me, I am doing a bloody lot. I make you laugh, occasionally, and making the Sphinx laugh is an easy job in comparison.”

Edward laughed, and William elaborately applauded. “Hear, hear!” he shouted ironically.

Edward, shaking his head indulgently, took the money into his office, counted it, entered it in his books, then put it in the safe. When he returned to the shop, William had finished polishing the inside of the windows. Now a soft darkness had invaded the street like a silent tide.

“I’d like to invite you home to dinner,” said Edward.

William immediately covered his head with a convulsively defensive movement. “God, no! I haven’t met your dadda, but if you are an example of your home, I am not wanting it, I am thinking.”

Edward took no offense. “My father isn’t like me. He’s a Socialist.”

William regarded him with utter horror. “A Socialist? God spare us from the hurriers, the rushers, the men who would save souls in the name of materialism, control of the means of production, a quart of milk for every savage, whether the bugger wants it or not, and cutting off the faces of the people! I have my own theory. A Socialist is a man who hates every other man. At least he is honest. He knows what he is about. He wants to be the man with the knout.”

Edward frowned. “You go off on tangents,” he said. “Pa is the meekest man alive and the gentlest.”

“I have heard that of almost every man who’s been hanged,” said William. “All homebodies. All gentle bastards who wouldn’t kill a fly. Good providers, love children and animals. Potter around the gardens on weekends. Raise prize flowers. Then one dark night,” and he made a loathsome, sucking sound, “a knife in somebody’s guts. Spare me your Socialists, laddie. For further information, read Karl Marx or Engels.”

“You can’t change human nature by fiat,” said Edward.

“Not an original conclusion, but you’d be surprised, my bucko, to know how few Socialists know that. ‘Love your fellow man and give him all your substance or we’ll bash your blasted skull in,’ they say. ‘Or better still, give us the cash. We know how to use it better than you do. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.’ That’s Marx’s manifesto, for the destruction of free, capitalistic society. It means income taxes,” he explained when Edward looked baffled.

“Oh, we’d never stand for that,” said Edward, complacently.

“Ah, now, you wouldn’t, eh?” said William. He shook a finger at Edward. “When I travel, it’s my ears I keep open. I mingle. Converse. I’m the élégant when I have clothes. I am at home in the capitals, the fulminating capitals. I know the boys from Harvard, the Fabians from Oxford, the bubble-heads in Germany, the big-eyed rascals in Washington. And these wee creatures are all for big income tax, to ‘distribute the wealth,’ they say, smacking their chops and mentally rubbing their hands. Sure, and it’s the wealth they want themselves, and the fine carriages, and the new automobiles, and the whips and the power. But not the girls. Ah, never the girls! They are too dainty for that.”

He saw Edward was puzzled, and clucked. “Ah, well, it is the innocent you are. But mark my words, it will not be long before we see the deluge.”

“We have freedom in this country,” said Edward uneasily.

“Do you now?” answered William. “Take a look at it, laddie, take a long look. You may not see it tomorrow, nor your children, nor your children’s children. The road to perdition is already greased by rascals, and is a long way down. No nation ever came back after sliding down that road on its imbecile ass. Look at ancient Rome.”

Edward as yet had not “looked” at ancient Rome. He began to roll down the shades on the windows. “You’re morbid,” he said. He yawned. “There’s a lot of ham out for you, and some of your delicacies. Don’t eat up the profits. And make yourself a gallon of tea.”

“Eat up the profits, the spalpeen says,” muttered William morosely. “It won’t be long before there’s no profits you can stuff—Have you thought of wars? The darlings have that in mind, to destroy civilized nations.”

He helped himself to a gay cardboard box of special Turkish cigarettes in which Enger’s specialized. “Take it out of my wages, when I earn them,” he said. “Two bob, my God!” He lighted one. He did not become aware, for a moment or two, that Edward had abruptly turned to him and that his face was sharply alive. “What? Have a cigarette. It is my treat.”

Edward took the cigarette, and William struck a match on the seat of his shabby trousers and lit it for him. “What did you say? Wars?” he asked, in a disquieted tone.

“How else can a nation be shattered, a capitalist nation?” asked William reasonably. “I was in London. There’re rumors. Germany, they whisper, is getting ‘too strong.’ She’s running away with England’s sanctified markets. Nothing makes an Englishman so enraged as to threaten his profits. But he’s not unique. Germany is the devil; she can produce faster, and better, than England. It’s outrageous. ‘Cheeky beggars,’ they say in England, and they Germans themselves. Mark my words, there’s going to be trouble. And America right in the midst of the whole ruddy mess, with banners.” He paused. “But, of course, the real reason won’t be shown. The banners and the drums and the fifes will be the shop-dressing. The cause will be hidden. Socialism.”

“We have a tradition about entangling alliances. Washington,” said Edward.

“Hah, hah,” said William somberly. “And what has Washington got to do with the quiet Socialists who genuflect before the altar of Karl Marx three times a day, like a blasted Arab bending toward Mecca? There’s Russia. Ever heard of the Eastern Question? It’s old, almost as old as hell. Come death, come ruin, come change of government, old Mother Russia eats away at the shingle of the world, like a black sea. Siberia for the Socialists? Hah! You can’t keep a religion down, and this is the religion of the Devil himself. That’s because you’ll rarely find a Christian, I’m thinking.”

It was nearly seven. Edward had forgotten. He leaned against a counter, scowling. “My father talks confidently of wars. I’ve thought him a windbag for years. You really mean it?”

William surveyed him, like a recruiting officer. “You are a braw boyo,” he said in his curious mixture of Scots and Irish idioms. “Better take shooting lessons. You’ll just be in time. Dadda’s right. He may never have heard about the Eastern Question, but diplomats lie awake nights mulling over it, everywhere. Old imperialistic Russia. Wait until she gets Socialism, and she will! We’ll give it, free, to her. Then you’ll really see the damned fireworks. And the knout. Since Peter the Great, or perhaps it’s Ivan the Terrible, Russia’s had but one dream—the conquest of the world. Medieval man still strong in the traces. Never knew the Renaissance or the Age of Enlightenment. I’ll send for my books. They’re stowed away in Boston, somewhere. Take the hair right off your scalp.”

Edward jingled his keys. William was a whole new source of education to him, and though he attempted to be incredulous, he was not. The store felt suddenly cold.

“In the meantime we must exist. We must pretend the whole bloody world is not about to plunge down into the abyss. We must think of the shops. You are an amateur, I am thinking, in spite of the Herr Enreich; I think I heard you calling him on the telephone. The Herr Enreich may not be so informed as I. Shall we discuss the shops?”

“I’m tired. I’m an hour late.”

“No doubt for the spareribs and sauerkraut.”

“My mother’s cooking is the best of German cooking, and she also, sometimes, uses French recipes,” said Edward, irritated. “She was a Von Brunner. What about the shops?”

“‘Fine Food Shops.’ What a brilliant name. You need elegance. A flair. A polish. Some name with sophistication. I have a suggestion. Shall we call it—let me see—something with initials, too. C. C. Chauncey’s? That’s the ticket! You will gather I am offering, modestly, the use of part of my name. Have you heard of S. S. Pierce’s in Boston? A name that sticks. Unusual. Simple yet not so simple. C. C. Chauncey’s. What could be better?”

“People will laugh. They’ll know who it is all the time.” But Edward was intrigued.

“People never laugh at pretentiousness. They adore it. They only laugh at humility and simplicity, and why not? That is all they deserve, for they are a sort of affectation in themselves. C. C. Chauncey’s.” He rolled the name deliciously on his tongue. “And you must import the best wines and put your own labels on it.”

He scratched his chin, and his lean tongue rubbed the corner of his mouth. His expression grew brighter and brighter. “Aha,” he said triumphantly. “There’s this new slogan: ‘It pays to advertise.’ Excellent. Do we remain snobbish delicatessens for a few or do we reach for the sky? I have another man for you.”

Edward forgot his dinner again. He picked up a fragment of ham and chewed it. “Go on,” he said. “Who’s the man? One of your fellow tramps?”

William looked hurt. “What is a tramp? A man who refuses to obey the mores of marrying, dancing off to a shack, and breeding a brood of brats. On three quid a week, if he’s lucky. An individualist, the tramp. A free man. A man choicy about what he will do. The chap I am speaking of is Padraig Devoe. Not Paddy, mind. Padraig. There’s not a man living who would dare to call him Paddy. He is not a man who can be bought, like any churl. I must send the word along the bally railroad chaps, and when I can reach him, I will try to persuade him.”

“I hope he’ll condescend,” said Edward, “after he’s eaten his mulligan.”

“It doesn’t pay to be patronizing, laddie. Curious chap, Padraig. Contrasted, that is, with mankind as a whole. An anachronism. If he likes you and feels a job will be interesting, it will be a bit of luck for you.” He paused. “Have you, now, ever seen a conchie? Come, come, don’t look so blank. The ladies put the shells, the conch shells, on the mantelpieces and the kiddies listen to the sea roaring in them, or so they say. Lovely shells; murderous people who take them from the warm, soft blue waters of the summer seas.”

“Padraig looks like a conch shell?” asked Edward, laughing, as he thought of the big shells with their great, thick, rosy lips, veined with delicate pearl, and the beautiful serrated turrets behind them.

“St. Patrick, how you lack imagination! I am speaking of the creatures who inhabit the shells on the coral floors of the oceans. You thought they hadn’t been inhabited? I have seen the shells dragged up to the surface, on pleasure or fishing boats in the Caribbean, to be sold for a shilling to some pie-faced drab. I’ve seen them being killed, the living creatures inside, thrown into buckets to die—ravishment that should call down the wrath of God. And then the shell left, the empty, miserable shell, washed and cold. The empty shell that will never live again or hold a beating heart.”

There was a sudden glistening in the foxlike eyes. “Ah, if the poor creatures were to be used as food for the hungry, then it would not be a crime, for man and the lesser animals must sustain themselves. But murder for sport, or murder to obtain shells or other trophies—that is unpardonable. I am speaking of Padraig. He and I were on a commercial fishing boat, out of Jamaica—a hot, hellish place in the summer. We were down to our last few bob, and a man must earn a living sometime.”

William swung himself up lightly to sit on a counter. He lit another cigarette, and his face was intent with remembrance. “It was very fine, to fish, to throw the nets, in spite of the blasted, everlasting sun that seared the hide. It was not sport; it was serious business. Man must eat. Still, a man’s heart must misgive him to watch the poor creatures struggling, the big fish glittering like gold and silver as they throw themselves in the air and try to live and escape. It is not too bad if one doesn’t look into their eyes. It was very bad for Padraig, for like all philosophers he detests mankind and has the tenderest heart for the innocent ones. ‘Don’t look at their eyes, Padraig,’ I would say. ‘We have three bob left.’ You see, boyo, I knew Padraig.”

“How did you get all the way to Jamaica?” asked Edward.

“That is a long story, in more ways than one, and I will not bore you with it. That Montego Bay! Beautiful but evil. The natives say there is a curse upon it. But the sunsets are the ones a man would choose to see when he is dying, the brilliant coppery path of the sun cutting across the purple water like a flaming sword, dividing. It was one sunset when some diver chaps got us into shallow waters and went down for the conchies. Dangerous stuff, that, with the sharkies nosing around. Unfortunately they were not around that sunset to settle the worldly affairs of the divers. It was not I who suffered the most; it was Padraig. He disappeared from my ken for three years shortly after that.

“Well, and now. Up come the diver chappies with the conchies, big shells with the sand and the water running off them, with the lovely wide lips spreading from the noble turrets where the creatures live, like knights in a blasted old castle. Yes, and they are noble, those creatures, for you shall know any living thing by what it creates, and beauty is not born in blindness. ‘And what would they be, and what is it you would be doing?’ asks Padraig. ‘We sells ’em to the lady trippers and to the market,’ says a Sassenach. A Sassenach always sells anything. These were no darky divers. The darkies have more intelligence than gallivanting around sharks.

“So they get out their buckets and their scrubbing brushes and kneel on the deck, dripping the water off them and shaking it out of their hair. And they take a spike and hammer it through the turrets of the conchies, to kill them or loosen them. Stubborn, poor creatures, trying to hide in their turrets, dark, liver-colored creatures, shrinking from the death and no one to pray for them or ask their pardon.

“Padraig, now, is a still man, and that is enough to make a man a stranger in a shouting world. But never have I seen him so still. There were ten shells. A diver hammers away, and then he reaches in the turret and he drags out the conchie, a big poor soul about sixteen inches long, all liver-spots and white patches and helpless head. It was then that Padraig gives a start, like a convulsion. He turns away his eyes as the conchie is plopped into the bucket to die. One of the divers said sometimes it takes a full twenty-four hours for them to die, in agony, and who is there to care?

“Then Padraig drops on his knees and stares at the waiting shells, and leans over them. The diver chappies begin to laugh, for it is that Padraig is protecting them with his long body, and his clothing patched like the bodies of the conchies themselves, whitish and black. I can see it as clear as if it is happening now. Padraig had thick black hair, all bristles, on that narrow head of his, and that sinister copper light from the sun lit up the ends like fire. He has a suffering face, by nature, but now it was all anguish.

“And then a conchie looks out from his turret, and the heart in me flopped like a fish itself. A gray, leatherish head with big, wrinkled, leatherish eyes, in gray folds. And it looks straight at Padraig, and damn it! you could feel they were talking to each other, and you could feel the fear of the conchie, and the pleading. He had come to the right man,” added William ruefully.

Edward, listening, could see the dark and flowing ocean, the broken path of the dropping sun, the depths of the burning sky, the distant glimpse of palms rising above the waters. He could hear the hot silence, the murmur of waves against the boat. But most of all he could see the tragic figure of Padraig, thin almost to death, and his tragic face, and the baffled crew and divers.

William sighed. “He looks at the conchie and the conchie looks at him, and it was like big brother and little brother, and he says, ‘How much for the whole damned lot?’ And the divers laugh and stamp their wet legs, and Padraig repeats himself in that muted voice of his, like a harp murmuring to itself. ‘A pound will do it, Irish,’ one of them says. ‘Setting up business?’

“And there kneels Padraig on his hands and knees over the conchies and their shells, and I know there isn’t a pound between us. Is Padraig going to fight for the conchies? Never a man was born who could best Padraig in a fair fight, though he looks like a lath. But Padraig is a just man. The conch shells are the divers’ way of making a living, and it is a Sassenach’s ill fortune that he has no heart. Then Padraig heaves a huge breath, and without looking up he pulls a ring from his finger, all that he has in the world, a big gold ring with a ruby set in it, and never did he tell me who gave it to him.

“‘This is worth a hundred pounds or more,’ he says. ‘Take it for the poor creatures.’

“They pounce on the ring, slavering. And while they’re shouting how much they can sell it for, Padraig picks up the conchies, one by one, and drops them back into the sea. He’s got just three left when the divers come to themselves, and they screech. But Padraig throws the conchies into their waters and wipes off his hands and stands up, and by the Blessed Mother, if he isn’t smiling and full of peace, like a man who’s just taken Holy Communion.

“You should have seen the gaping divers, Eddie. Big eyes and falling mouths. It’s a madman they’ve been dealing with, they are thinking. And they run off and tell the captain. And the captain gives us both the sack, on the spot. And we with three bob in Jamaica.”

William looked at Edward, who was trying to smile. Edward said, “I think I can understand why he did it. But still, he’s impractical. How did you get away from Jamaica?”

“We worked in the sugar canes for over three accursed months and then we shipped out.” William slipped off the counter and the telephone rang angrily. “It’s only Pa,” said Edward, in bemusement, and answered the telephone impatiently. He said over his shoulder, “I suppose Padraig never thought that the divers would probably pick up the same conchies the next day.”

“What was that to him, then? They had another lease on their lives. And he’d spaced them, in deeper waters. If they crawled home, it would take them some time. And if there is a God, it is possible that He would remember Padraig’s ring, which even when we were starving he would not sell, but cherished it with love, and He would protect the conchies for Padraig’s sake. A man does not give his heart, and God not knowing.”

Edward picked up his coat, and his face was dark and brooding. William watched him keenly. Then Edward was staring at the clean and empty counters. “What makes you think he’d make a good man, William?”

“There are very few things or people in which Padraig believes. I think, Eddie, that he will believe in you. And when Padraig believes, God or man cannot stop him. He has a way with him and an eloquence, when he wills, that can move stones.”

Edward glanced up quickly, and he could not understand William’s shrewd but compassionate smile.

“Aye, laddie, he will believe in you.” He will, it is possible, be your conscience, William added to himself.

PART TWO

“It is difficult for power to avoid despotism.”

GASPARIN

CHAPTER I

Mrs. William McNulty, the internationally famous American actress, “never moved,” as she put it, unless she “first consulted the stars.” To skeptics, she would recall Montaigne’s aphorism that a leaf on this planet cannot move without disturbing the most distant galaxies in their august courses.

The stars were unpropitious about her new tour, but ambiguously so. She had been a widow for five years, and the astrologer had hinted that she would meet “a dark and taciturn stranger of great tragedy, male,” and obscure men and women whose lives she would affect. Mrs. McNulty, who cared nothing for people, brushed that aside impatiently, but she was intrigued by the “dark and taciturn stranger of great tragedy, male.” Almost puritanical in her private life, she had not comforted herself since Mr. McNulty’s death in the conventional stage fashion, and as love to her meant marriage—with one at least as wealthy as herself, she would think prudently—she was stirred by the astrologer’s mysterious message. Men of tragedy, she had discovered, were usually men who could afford to be tragic. Gentlemen who worked hard for a living were necessarily cheerful, or, at least, they had no time to indulge themselves.

The tour, this early March of 1914, did not appeal to her particularly. She had just closed her latest play, A Woman of Morality, in New York. The play was a bad one but had been saved triumphantly by her superb and majestically emotional acting. She had managed to keep the play alive and prosperous for four months. When diminishing returns had set in, she had immediately closed it, for she was a partner.

She had been invited to appear, solo, in Buffalo, Detroit, and Chicago, for she had her own repertoire apart from large plays. As a woman who never spurned a dollar, and as she was not to appear in London until June, and as she hated idleness, she had accepted the offer, after doubling the amount of the original offers. She, though never a sentimentalist, had a love for what the New Yorkers disdainfully called “the hinterland.” She had, in fact, been born in Buffalo, on the east side, née Maggie Regan, and had been the pride of the amateur theatricals in St. Boniface’s parish. The mother superior, a very “advanced” woman, had written to a producer she mysteriously knew in New York, and thus had launched Maggie’s career. Maggie, if ever lovingly conscious of Mother M. Francis, and ever generous, through the redoubtable nun, to the needs of her old parish, had not seen her friend for many years. Now she had the opportunity. “I doubt the ‘dark and taciturn stranger of great tragedy, male,’ is Father Dougherty, though God knows he was always groaning about something or another, and striking desperate poses, and raising hell generally with everybody,” she confided to her friend, the equally famous French modiste, Madame Honora DelaFontaine, née Mary Garrity of Brooklyn.

“Priests!” replied Madame DelaFontaine, who attended Mass every morning, went to confession every Saturday, and took Holy Communion religiously. She spoke with eloquence and rolled up her black Irish eyes in a very Latin expressiveness. She had adopted a French accent several years ago, but occasionally lapsed, especially when with her friend. The “Madame” was purely for effect. She was a spinster, nominally so, to her confessor’s distress. “I remember the priest at St. Luke’s—miserable parish, half-starving—and we needed a lot of comforting. And what does he do? He keeps threatening us all with hell-fire and utter damnation and herds us, really herds us, to confession, like we were a bunch of sheep and not human beings. And makes sarcastic remarks about the contents of the collection plate. He had a case on foreign missions, though he himself could have used some of the clothing we donated.” She meditated. “He died of what the doctors called malnutrition. Poor Father Fisher.”

Mrs. William McNulty was thirty-eight years old. She was advertised as thirty-two. She was a “fine figure of a woman,” buxom, tall, commanding, theatrical in appearance and manner, and was thoroughly “black Irish,” with a mass of hair as black as Satan, blue eyes as intense as an autumn sky, and a skin as white as foam. Her friend, Mary Garrity, alias Madame DelaFontaine, had increased the drama of Maggie’s appearance by designing for her dresses and gowns and coats of the utmost grace and in a classic manner. Mary detested lavishness, in a very lavish age. “I’m not austere,” she would say coldly. “I’m just against vulgarity. The present styles are really vulgar, you know. It is not a matter of being puritanical. It is a matter of the woman setting off the clothes. I never design a dress for an average personality. What is there to display? If a woman has character and distinction, classic clothing will enhance them. If a woman has nothing, then she is nothing but a hanger, and I refuse to design clothes for her and have my efforts made into dowdy caricatures or dummies.”

Mary Garrity, alias Madame Honora DelaFontaine, was petite, vivid, acrimonious, and full of humor. She had finished with her spring showing in New York. On invitation, she had decided to accompany Mrs. McNulty on this dubious tour. “One never knows where one will get ideas,” she had said. Moreover, Mrs. McNulty had offered to pay all expenses. Moreover, Madame DelaFontaine would be conspicuously mentioned on the programs as New York’s “foremost designer and modiste.” It never hurt to consider future markets, even among “the barbarians” across the Hudson. The fact that Mary Garrity had just invested in a pioneering firm which promised mass production on “original models” had nothing to do with the case, of course, even though the “original models” had been designed by Mary Garrity.

There were no secrets between these two devoted friends. Their conversation together was secretive, hilarious, and sometimes lewd. They had no other confidantes. They were also fond of whisky, though each pretended, to others, that sherry was a “lady’s drink.” In short, they were women full of the lust for life, vital and eager, and ever ready for new experiences.

So, on an early March day in 1914, these robust two set out on the tour, leaving New York on a dank morning adrift with fog and wind. They were accompanied only by Mrs. McNulty’s maid and manager, two meek people who shared a Pullman seat in the coach that carried the actress’s drawing room. Maggie and Mary, after a brief shudder at the weather, opened a golden bottle and prepared to exchange confidences, scandal, and laughter. “I don’t know why I’m going with you, Maggie,” said Mary as she dashed the pungent liquor into a glass and disdained offered water.

“Except you want a little publicity yourself,” said Maggie McNulty, with a glass at her own lips. “My God! Look, it’s snowing. And do I remember the snows! Listen to that wind.”

Mary, who had never been west of the Hudson before, regarded the ominous and rolling skies with equanimity. “Let it snow,” she said in a voice remarkably deep and hoarse for so diminutive a woman. “Where are we now?”

“We’re leaving Albany,” replied Maggie, in a foreboding tone, straining at the windows and pulling aside the red velvet curtains to see more clearly. The heating system clanked with a melancholy sound, and Maggie shivered. “Winter Monday mornings at school,” she mourned. “Will I ever forget that noise!”

“Pull your sables over your shoulders,” said Mary. “I always said there’s nothing better than Irish whisky. I hope our trunks got aboard safely.”

Maggie patted the mounds of curls over her head and ears and tried to forget the snow. “I didn’t tell you,” she said. “Vitagraph wants me to do a three-reeler.”

“Oh, no,” groaned Mary. “Leave that kind of thing to the Mary Pickfords. And the other little girls with pinched-up little mouths and thin legs. Are you a woman or are you a squirt?” She contemplated her glass. “But there might be money in it.”

Maggie brightened. “They offer me fifteen thousand dollars,” she said. “It’ll take me only three weeks.”

“What are you waiting for then?”

“I’m not waiting,” replied Maggie, smugly. “I’ve already accepted.”

By the time their lunch was served in the drawing room they were very gay. And the snow lunged at the windows so heavily that no landscape could be seen, and the wind howled at the smallest crack in a banshee voice. It was very cosy in the drawing room. Mary, the spinster, sang some very disreputable songs in her masculine voice, and Maggie accompanied her in the choruses. Their lively faces had flushed deeply, and their eyes sparkled. Later they dozed. At twilight they awakened to discover that the train had stopped and rushing white curtains veiled the windows.

“Where the hell are we?” asked Madame DelaFontaine, rubbing her eyes.

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“You ought to know this territory. What’re we stopping for?”

“Look at that snow,” said Maggie, uneasily. “I remember we always had the worst snows in March.”

She rubbed the steamed window with a froth of real lace and peered through the glass, at which the wind and the snow pounded furiously. “We’ve stopped at some station, I think,” she said. “But I can’t see any sign.” She rang the bell for the porter, who came in almost immediately. “Where are we?” she demanded imperiously. “What are we stopping for? I thought our next stop was Buffalo.”

But the conductor pushed the porter aside and looked at the two ladies with worried anxiety. “I’m sorry, but the train is stalled, ma’am,” he said to Maggie, who appeared to him to be the most imposing woman in the drawing room, and therefore in command. “At Waterford. We can’t go on until tomorrow, if then. All trains are stopping at the nearest stations. The weather is getting worse to the west, all the way to Chicago. We are going on a sidetrack, and I’m afraid you ladies will have to spend a day or two in Waterford.”

“In where?” boomed Mary, incredulously.

“The man says Waterford,” said Maggie. “I’ve heard of it.”

The conductor saw the nearly empty bottle of whisky, and his Yankee face became remote. No wonder that little woman there had such a voice, like a man’s. Whisky voice; her cords must all be cobbled. She was glaring at him in outrage. “Two good hotels in Waterford,” he said, stiffly, and replaced his cap. Women who drank were no ladies and it wasn’t necessary for a man to remove his hat for them. “The Whitney House’s the best. We’re in the station now, and you can get a hack. See them standing out there now, waiting.”

Maggie sighed with resignation. “Nothing for it but to gather ourselves up, call Eloise and the jackass who calls himself my manager, or something,” she said. Her voice, the conductor heard approvingly, was both sonorous and velvety. A lady’s voice. The little woman was probably her maid.

“I’m not going to leave this damned train,” said Mary, positively, pulling her own sables over her neat little shoulders. “Why, it’s death out there. Waterford! Where in hell is that?”

“You’ll stay a couple of days in here then,” said the conductor, with happy gloom. “Better hurry, ladies, or the hacks’ll all be gone, and then you’ll have to walk three miles.” His lanky face glowed at the prospect.

“Let’s go. Don’t be a fool, Mary,” said Maggie, rising, and in so doing inadvertently upsetting the bottle of whisky on the floor. The compartment was immediately flooded with the fumes of alcohol. Maggie went to the door and shouted, “Eloise! Harry! Come on in here!” The conductor retreated.

“But your engagements!” said Mary.

“It stands to reason I can’t walk to them,” replied her friend. “We’ll send telegrams. People in Buffalo understand about snows, and there won’t be any hysteria if I’m a day or two late. Not like New York.”

“Maggie McNulty and DelaFontaine holed up at the end of the world,” protested Mary. She stood up, chic in her black broadcloth suit and white lace shirtwaist and small black sailor hat of the finest beaver. Beside her, in crimson velvet and lace, with a wide crimson velvet hat, Maggie towered like a rather lush goddess. She swung her sable cape expertly over her round and well-nourished shoulders as her maid and manager came rushing in, aghast at what they had just heard from the porter. “Don’t look like carp,” said Maggie, annoyed. “Perhaps you’d both like to take shovels and clear off the tracks in front of the train. Gather things up, Eloise. Where’re my gloves?”

The two ladies emerged into the coach, and Maggie, looking for her gloves up her sleeve, where she usually kept them, dropped her purse. It was immediately picked up by a man even taller than herself, who returned the article to her with a slight and formal bow. “Thank you,” she said, and then looked at him again. “A dark and taciturn stranger of great tragedy, male.” He had not spoken, he had not even smiled at her, and he certainly had a tragic face, all somber lean angles and muted handsomeness and still grave eyes, black as faintly gleaming coal. He was narrow and almost fleshless under his excellently tailored clothing, Maggie saw at a glance. His thick black hair was cut shorter than the fashion, and he had fine ears, seemingly without blood, so pale they were. Even his mouth, wide and stern, had no color. A wave of excitement ran over Maggie.

“Thank you,” she repeated. (He could not be over forty.) “I am Mrs. William McNulty—”

“I know, Mrs. McNulty,” he replied, and his voice was so gentle and yet so resonant that Maggie was thrilled to the heart. “My name is Padraig Devoe.”

Little Mary was peering at them inquisitively, and then when they did not appear to know that she was present, she discreetly pinched her friend on a vulnerable and highly improper spot. “Ouch,” said Maggie, absentmindedly. “Oh, Mary. Mary, this is Mr. Padraig Devoe. Mr. Devoe, my friend, the famous modiste, Madame DelaFontaine.”

Padraig bowed again but he looked at Maggie. “I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you several times on the stage, Mrs. McNulty,” he said, and Maggie felt as young as a girl. Her fair cheeks colored entrancingly, and her blue eyes deepened in color. “How kind,” she said, and her voice trembled. She caught her breath as Padraig half turned away to leave her. “Oh, Mr. Devoe. Isn’t this terrible to be stalled here in Waterford?”

“It isn’t so bad for me,” he said. “I am stopping at Waterford for a few days or a week.”

“One of your businesses?” she asked, eagerly. Surely he must be someone important, she thought, noticing his clothing again, his handmade boots, his English gloves, his broadcloth coat with the French velvet collar.

“I am the advertising manager of C. C. Chauncey’s,” he replied, and seemed reluctantly pleased at being detained.

Maggie’s eyes became big with delight. “C. C. Chauncey’s!” she cried, ecstatically. “Who doesn’t know them in New York and Boston and Chicago and Philadelphia! Mary! C. C. Chauncey’s!” she almost sang, turning to Mary, who displayed great interest and pleasure. “Why, the original shop is right here in Waterford, isn’t it, Mr. Devoe?”

He smiled faintly and inclined his head. “I should have remembered,” Maggie breathed. “I’ve heard that dozens of times.”

“Yes,” said Padraig. He had forgotten that a woman could be so beautiful. He had never really looked at a woman since Norah had been killed by his horse, and she only seventeen. Little Norah Bellamy, with the dark blue eyes and golden hair and a smile like the sun itself.

“Aren’t you Irish?” blurted Maggie, desperate to keep him. The coach was emptying rapidly of its disgruntled passengers. “I am, too. And so is Mary—Mary Garrity.” She looked down at Mary and was annoyed, unreasonably, by her friend’s trim and immaculate appearance. Her own crimson velvet was sprinkled with cigarette ashes, as usual, and she was conscious of her size and the wrinkles in her clothing as she had never been conscious before. If only she had had the sense to leave Mary in New York, as her astrologer had hinted darkly. What had the astrologer said? “The journey you are about to take will have its unpleasant aspects.” Madame DelaFontaine, at this moment, seemed to Maggie to appear to be a most unpleasant aspect, and definitely a nuisance and a drag.

“Yes, I am,” said Padraig. He hesitated. He never involved himself with people, but another look into Maggie’s intensely blue eyes undid him, and the sensation brought back a pang of anguished memory. “May I help you ladies to a hack? They seem to be disappearing very fast out there.”

“We’ll need two,” said Maggie, suddenly remembering Eloise and Harry. She turned to Mary, who shook her head in silent negation. Maggie’s hope that Mary could be induced to ride to the hotel with the maid and the manager, leaving her, Maggie, to ride alone with Mr. Devoe, disappeared dismally. The unpleasant aspect of Mary was becoming clearer every moment. Then Mary relented at the speechless plea on her friend’s face, and, remembering her role, she gave a Latin shrug. “We’re going to a place called the Whitney House,” she said to Padraig. “I’ll go along with Eloise and Harry, Maggie. If Mr. Devoe can get us two hacks.” Good heavens, was Maggie, the distant and virtuous, going to get herself entangled with a perfect stranger, who wore such a shadowy air of impenetrable sadness? He probably had a wife who was a perfect horror, blowsy and without an ounce of taste, and a dozen brats besides.

“I hope we won’t be taking you out of your way—home,” said Mary, the loyal and loving, with immense tact. “Perhaps Mrs. Devoe will wonder what’s delaying you.”

Maggie’s mouth opened soundlessly. She had never considered a wife. Her heart beat with sudden rapidity as she waited for Padraig to speak. He said quietly, “It happens that I am staying at the Whitney House myself.” He paused. He did not know what made him add, “And there’s no Mrs. Devoe.” He rarely made gratuitous remarks except when doing business.

Maggie shut her eyes quickly and passionately, and when she opened them again, they were the color of Irish skies in the spring, moist and with a violet overcast on the blueness. She put her fingers, long, white, plump, on Padraig’s thin arm, and said gaily, “Oh, let us go, let us go!” And her lovely voice was a song.

“I wouldn’t go out even if St. Michael called me, in person, not in this damned snow and wind,” said Mary later. “What a night, what a town! And you accepting an invitation to see some amateur two-cent show put on by yokels! You, Mrs. William McNulty! Are you out of your mind, Maggie? Why can’t you stay in this drummer’s dream of a hotel, where it’s at least warm?” She looked about her at the tiny “suite” which was the best the hotel afforded. It had a brown rug, brown velvet draperies at the tall and slitlike windows, brown plush furniture, and two depressing marble-topped tables. The brown and yellow walls boasted gas globes, which offended Mary more than anything else. “Not even electricity. And going out with a man you practically picked up on the train. He didn’t even have the manners to invite you to dinner first.”

“He’s the reserved kind,” said Maggie. She glowed. She appeared even more incandescent than in her best roles. She shines all over, thought Mary with disquiet. “Besides,” said Maggie, “he’s having dinner with his employer and his family. And his employer’s sister, Padraig says, is putting on the show. Why, it’s one of my old ones and I get a royalty on it! What the hell is the name of it? Yes, Lady in Waiting.”

“It stank. Highly,” said Mary. “Not one of your best inspirations, Maggie darling.”

Maggie shrugged. “Oh, that was eighteen years ago. Don’t belittle, Mary. What’s the man’s name? Yes. Enger. Where did he get the Chauncey? It doesn’t matter. They’re rich as dirt. I understand Mr. Enger subsidizes his sister’s shows. You know,” Maggie added, happily, “the girl may have talent.”

“Don’t get involved, dearie,” said the discouraging Mary.

“I believe in encouraging young talent,” said Maggie, with a superb gesture.

“That’s not what I mean,” answered Mary, darkly.

She suddenly resolved to go with Maggie. After all, the man had thrown the invitation casually to the both of them, not Maggie alone. And Maggie, in this dithering state, so very apparent and so unique, could not be trusted with this man. He was such a strange person, and Mary, who had a very compelling imagination, could see her friend lying strangled, somewhere, in the snow, probably not to be found until summer, if it ever got to be summer here.

Mary stood up. “If you insist upon going, and making a fine high fool of yourself, Maggie Regan McNulty, then I’m going, too,” she said. “As your guardian.”

“Oh, no!” wailed Maggie, the regal, to Mary, the doll-like.

“We’ll both be fools together,” said Mary, and there was nothing to be done with her when her small and piquant face took on that particular expression. “And we’ll both get pneumonia together,” Mary added. “By the saints, you’re not going to wear your black lace, are you? All that bosom and shoulders! Maggie, your lungs will freeze solid!”

But Maggie wore the black lace, and her friend, in a desperate attempt to nullify that grandeur, in this small city, wore her most severe suit which did not become her at all, to Maggie’s secret gratification. Never had her own shoulders and bosom taken on such a sheen and luminousness before. Never had her cheeks been so blooming, not even in early youth. Maggie was in love, passionately in love.

CHAPTER II

“I just can’t believe that Mrs. William McNulty—the Mrs. William McNulty, is actually coming to our Little Theater tonight,” said twenty-four-year-old Sylvia Enger. Her spare white face, so angular and so distinguished, almost softened with pleasure. It softened even more, it almost gleamed, when she turned it to Padraig Devoe across the rich damask of the tablecloth. Her intensely black eyes dimmed moistly in the candlelight. A pulse beat in her long white throat, and her pale lips trembled. He was smiling at her, that infrequent smile which could so charm, and her heart leapt.

“These stage people will do anything for publicity,” said Edward, twenty-five years old. “Didn’t her manager or agent, or something, call up the newspapers tonight? There’ll be headlines tomorrow, and that’s what she wants. I never heard of her before.” This was not true. He had seen her three times in New York and had admired her immensely. He had always sat in the first row, and when he had caught the brilliant blue flash of her eyes in the lights, something had stirred in him, like a quick current under ice, disturbing and moving. Somewhere he had seen eyes like hers, large and radiant, but he could not remember. The blueness was so all-pervading that it seemed to tint the very whites themselves and fill the eye sockets with enchanting color.

“Don’t be disagreeable, as usual,” said Sylvia, bitterly. “What kind of publicity can she get in Waterford? This horrible city. What would it mean to an actress as famous as she is? You have no sense of proportion, Ed.”

“You could be in New York if you wanted to,” said Edward, and his gray eyes were like stone. “But no. You preferred to stay in this ‘horrible city,’ though you never exactly explained why.”

“I did. New York’s full of stage producers. I’m no dilettante,” Sylvia said, her voice growing more bitter. She could never tell him, though now she knew beyond self-deception, that she had no inspiration, no feeling for the stage at all. She could not even admit it freely to herself. She had attended many plays in New York and had understood her own inadequacy. Too, there had been those two years she had spent in New York, studying, and her teachers’ verdict, given privately to her, out of pity, and not to her brother.

“I was willing to—what do they call it?—angel a play for you,” said Edward.

Sylvia drew a deep breath. She was terrified that he would guess. She threw up her small head, crowned with its Grecian coronet of glassy black braids. She was terrified that she might be forced, one awful day, to confess what she had not thoroughly confessed to herself. That would be the end of her pride. She needed to hate her brother in order to survive. She had nothing else now but her deception, nothing in the world.

“You’ve never thought,” she said in a patient voice, “that the theater isn’t confined to New York. We do good plays here. People come from miles around. I think it’s my duty to stay here, considering that not even third-rate stock from New York ever patronizes this place. Our Little Theater is the only center of culture in Waterford.”

Padraig watched her from under his short thick lashes. He was full of pity for Sylvia. It was his compassion for all that lived that kept him apart from people, a compassion that was partly composed of a silent anger. Mankind was stupid, and there was no excuse for stupidity, for mankind possessed reason, and its stupidity was an obstinate determination to be blind. The “lesser animals” were different. They had innocence, because they had no reason, and only their instincts.

“And Ralph, when he’s home, does an excellent job painting the sets,” Sylvia added.

Edward frowned at the mention of his brother’s name. Ralph was in Paris now, studying under the best masters in the art of portraiture. But he was costing a devil of a lot of money, far beyond his tuition, far more than a young man of nineteen should spend even in Paris. One of these days I’ll go over there and see for myself, Edward thought. But he knew he would not. He did not often leave Waterford, and then only on business, and he did not know why he felt this reluctance. Waterford had become his cocoon, which he had spun about himself as if in protection.

There were only these three at dinner tonight, Sylvia, Edward, and Padraig. Heinrich, who disapproved of “the late dinners,” had his meal with Maria in his own suite in this fine new mansion, just completed eight weeks ago. He was also “unwell.” More and more, as time passed, his periods of indisposition increased. There seemed to be some unknowable spiritual sickness in him, and during the past few years an unconfessed but total estrangement had developed between him and Edward. On many occasions poor Heinrich, in anxious despair, had tried to cross that abysmal crevice to his son, but Edward retreated more and more. He was the considerate son, kind and thoughtful. But he was a stranger. He stood alone. Once Maria had said to her husband, “Edward always stood alone. It was your illusion, Heinrich, though never mine, that he was ever close to you or to anybody.”

“You are wrong, Maria! When he was a child, he was as close as my own flesh. He was my only companion.”

Maria had studied him thoughtfully. And then in a tone of unusual gentleness she had said, “He was a child. Now he is a man.”

For Maria, who accepted everything calmly and with Teutonic fatality, the years had gone like months. David was on tour for the past eighteen months, after his studies in Paris under a famous maestro. No one but Edward knew that the agent who handled him did not receive large fees for David’s appearances in the smaller cities and towns. It was Edward who, through the agent, had added an equal amount to the mediocre fees. The agent was happy. He collected his ten per cent on the bolstered fees, and it remained a secret between him and Edward. He had told Edward, in the very beginning, with careful tact, that it would be some years before David would actually be in what he called “the big time,” such as Carnegie Hall and appearances before “important” audiences in Chicago and Philadelphia and Boston and San Francisco. Edward, during this private interview, had said nothing but had kept his eyes fixed in a most disturbing way on the agent’s bland face. “An artist must creep before he walks, and walk before he can run,” the agent had said. “David must build up a reputation in the smaller places. But one of these days—!”

But Edward had thought, with hatred and anger like metal in his mouth: David had wasted himself, both in New York and Paris. He had not been dedicated; his chronic attitude was one of sullenness. He played brilliantly but without passion. There had been times when Edward, hearing him in some small dank hall in a distant city, had felt a surge of furious pain in himself and had cried out to his brother in his heart, “Emphasize it there! Lift it there! Soften it there, slow it, increase it! God, don’t you have any feeling for it, damn you?”

He was like a man whose whole being urges him to sing, but who is mute. He knew what was missing in David’s musicianship. He believed that David knew it also and was too indifferent to try, to care, or, in malice, was deliberately restraining himself. “How are you ever going to be a pianist of importance and fame?” he had asked David once, in a rage. “Don’t you care?”

“I’m technically perfect,” David had replied, with an inscrutable glance at his brother’s suffused face. “Even Paderewski told me that, and you know it. You can’t go beyond perfection.”

“But the missing thing, the—the—feeling, the power, the emotion—why don’t you have it?”

Ask God, David had thought. He was always so tired. His life was a weariness. The only time when he came to life was when he played the music he really loved, in secret, apart from his expensive coach, apart from everybody but himself. When in New York, where he had never been asked to play, he visited the cabarets in which he could listen to the music that delighted him and filled him with fervor and a sense of youth. A few times he had come upon Prince Emory and his Dukes and had spent many evenings, far in a shadowy background, listening and rejoicing, full of the excitement and passion and emotion so absent in his classical performances. They could call it cheap, the infernal fools, but it wasn’t cheap. It was a new music, perfect in itself, expressive of its own vitality. It brought a fleeting vitality to David, but also a growing misery.

“You could do a lot with your stupid ragtime,” Edward had said. “You could make it ‘roll,’ somebody said, once. The piano almost jumped off its legs. Deafening. If you could do that with worthless music, if you want to call that music, why can’t you do it with something worthwhile?”

David had not answered. Years later he knew that he should have lashed out to Edward then and told the truth. But, like Sylvia, he had his pride. Where she had her hatred, too, he had his confused commiseration for his brother. But we were all cowards, he was to think far in the future. And, in a way, Ed was the biggest coward of any of us. One of us, at least, should have had some courage, and we might have saved Ed years of suffering and frustration. Not to speak of ourselves.

Sometimes Maria and Heinrich went to hear their oldest son play in one of the nearer towns. Heinrich was invariably enraptured. But Maria was silent. She kept her perturbation to herself, and forced herself to believe that perhaps the years had dulled her keener sensibilities.

Edward was deeply in debt, in spite of his incredibly flourishing shops. On George Enreich’s suggestion, over the past few years he had invested all his spare cash, and what he could borrow, in munitions, steel, mines, woolen mills, and sugar. “Why munitions?” he had asked, obscurely afraid and irritated. But George had only laughed at him silently, all his gold teeth shining. The stock had been picked up very cheaply, just after the depression of 1913, but the amount of stock was enormous. It carried a huge margin, also. Then the mansion, built on the eighteen acres of land Edward had bought from his old friend, had cost more than originally expected, though Mr. Enreich had managed to get most of the materials at cost for Edward. There was a large mortgage on the house, and Edward, the prudent, felt that the house would never truly be his unless he owned it free and clear. In the meantime, at George’s insistence, he became more and more involved in the stock market.

Edward’s brothers and sister were a gigantic drain on his resources. And were they grateful for all his work, all his guidance? They were not. On holidays, at home, here in the resplendent mansion he had built for them, for their enjoyment and pride, they were sullen, irritable, secretive, and uncommunicative. His questions about their progress were met with monosyllables, and when he pressed them, their eyes would become congested and they would leave him without further words. “If they’d had to work for their education, it might have been better for them,” he had once said explosively to William, now the head of his purchasing department.

“Aye, and that it would,” William had replied, with a side-wise glance at his employer, an unreadable glance. Edward had paused; he was disturbed by what he believed to be an elliptical intonation in William’s voice.

“There is not one thing they are doing that I wouldn’t have given half my life to have had the opportunity to do,” Edward had said with deep resentment. “Music, painting, the stage, writing. I felt them all, inside me. But there wasn’t time for my own development. I had to work!”

He could not understand, then, why the almost always merry William had suddenly looked grave, and why his foxy hazel eyes had sparkled so mysteriously on his friend. But William, at last, had only shaken his head and had murmured something about “it’s a pity.”

“I had no genius. They have. They clamored to develop their genius, and so I worked and sacrificed myself. And all they can do is to glower at me when they’re home. Contempt for me, and I paying their damned bills!”

The grounds about the mansion had not yet been developed, though many mighty trees were scattered over the eighteen acres. This spring a score of gardeners would place flower beds and gravel walks, plant fruit trees, create arbors. The house stood in the midst of heaps of snow-covered earth; it had been built of grayish-white stone, in the English manner, all chimneys, severe porticoes, small latticed windows, stone steps, and white doors. There were twelve bedrooms, each with its big marble bath, and three with private sitting rooms. The servants’ quarters, five rooms, were on the third floor. On the first floor there was what the architect had called “an informal morning room,” a grand library full of leather furniture and mahogany tables, a dining room of impressive proportions, a drawing room of even more impressive proportions, two large kitchens and pantries, and a reception room. There was also a small music room for David.

Each was furnished well, with imported objets d’art, Oriental rugs, French chandeliers fitted with electricity, paneled walls of the finest mahogany, or walls covered with gold or rose silk damask. Nothing had been spared. Edward winced sometimes, thinking of his debts.

“There is a saying, an English saying,” George Enreich had said contentedly, “to the effect, my boy wonder, that one should not bite off more than he can chew. It has been my experience that one should bite off more than he can chew, and chew it.”

“I’ve certainly got a mouthful,” Edward had replied apprehensively. “I just hope those damned stocks you recommended to me will pay off. Otherwise, I’ll go bankrupt.”

“They will pay off,” said George. “Be patient. Rome was not, I have heard, built in a day.”

“Tell the banks that,” Edward had retorted. There were times when he felt that he was walking on a very thin crust over a flood that might break through at any time. Sometimes he thought that he had come too far too fast. His personal life was ascetic. He spent little or nothing on himself. He had but four suits and six pairs of shoes, and only one overcoat, three years old. The income from the shops, though almost unbelievable, was not sufficient to pay all the expenses. Often his nights were sleepless. He was living beyond his immediate income, and this violated all his inborn instincts. It was fine to take chances; he had taken many chances, audaciously in his life, but they had been chances backed up by solid probabilities and his own sense of immediate control. Now he was dissipated over numerous enterprises in the stock market. He spent much time going over reports and scowling at the sluggish stocks he had bought. Up a point, down a point. He could not control the stock market, and what he could not control he distrusted.

Munitions, for God’s sake! Who wanted munitions in this peaceful world? Sometimes he hated George Enreich for this stupidity. And George, of course, collected his twenty-five per cent of the profits with serene regularity. Nothing disturbed George, who was a multimillionaire. Edward owed him, on personal notes, over seventy thousand dollars. For this infernal house, which no one appreciated but himself and which no one loved but himself. In believing this, Edward was wrong. His family gloated over the house, but they would not give him the satisfaction of betraying their pride and their arrogant elation.

Edward did not reply to Sylvia’s remark, tonight, on the subject of her Little Theater being the “sole center of culture in Waterford.” His silence was contemptuous. But he was thinking. This Mrs. McNulty, the famous actress—it would not hurt for her to see Lady in Waiting. Perhaps she would be able to inspire Sylvia to take the woodenness out of the play. Like David’s music, Sylvia’s stage direction, choice of amateur talent, and timing, were flawless. It was a silly play, a tragi-comedy, but the exasperating thing about it was that it was never quite tragic and never quite funny. Once Edward had seen the leading lady, a charming girl of nineteen, in tears, and he had asked her the trouble. She had burst out, sobbing, “Oh, Miss Enger insists on restraint where there shouldn’t be any. The second act—why, Mr. Enger, an actress should let herself go! I’ve tried it and almost got thrown out. Miss Enger said it was cheap.”

Edward said to his sister, “Padraig’s invited her. She might be able to give you some tips—”

“She’s too emphatic,” Sylvia protested, “even if famous.” Her pride smarted. “Too exaggerated, though I suppose that sort of thing goes in New York.” She looked at the gold watch pinned to her very chic, very severe, black silk dress, which she herself had designed, and had made. The dress gave her an austere and modish appearance, very smart though unfashionable by Waterford standards. “Heavens! It’s almost eight, half an hour to curtain time. I must go, if the sleigh can get through the drifts.” She smiled, and her smile was like sudden moonlight on her face as she glanced at Padraig. “It’ll be warm under the rugs, though.”

Padraig hesitated. “I promised to call for Mrs. McNulty and possibly her friend.”

“I intend to go with you,” said Edward. “I want to hear what she thinks of the play. It’s one of her earlier ones, isn’t it? So we’ll get out the new Pierce-Arrow which seats seven, with the chauffeur. Ring for him, Sylvia. We’ll pick up the ladies.”

This was not pleasing to Sylvia, who had pictured herself being alone with Padraig under the fur rugs as she had never been alone with him before. Her white face tensed, and seeing this, Edward smiled to himself. He, too, had his hopes. He could conceive of nothing more gratifying than a marriage between Sylvia and Padraig, for Padraig was not only a gentleman but his advertising manager, with an impressive salary, and worth every penny of it, too. Padraig was also his, Edward’s, friend. In this house Padraig appeared less melancholy. Sometimes he breached his withdrawn silences enough to enter into a conversation that was both wise and entertaining, spoken in a very pleasant brogue that, in its lilt, was expressive and musical. He was a man who could be trusted, and if he spoke in a friendly manner, it was with sincerity. Edward knew of no one of his acquaintance like this, not even William or George Enreich. Padraig never “spoke in riddles,” as they did, nor was he frequently oblique or mystifying.

Full of cold resentment, Sylvia, in her fine large bedroom which she had insisted upon furnishing, studied herself in the long, silver-framed pier mirror. She had designed a most unusual black velvet hat, small where the pervading mode was large and wide, and it was almost bonnet-shaped in order to accommodate her classic coronet of braids. It hugged her head in jet severity, relieved only by a pearl-and-rhinestone pin in the exact center of her marble forehead, on which the sharp widow’s peak was very startling. The combination of the pin and the peak gave a Tudor effect to her carved and patrician face, with its tilted dark eyes and white planes. Her coat, of black velvet with great erm ne cuffs and collar, had also been designed and made by herself.

Why had Edward decided to come tonight, instead of sitting in his library surrounded by books? He spoiled everything, as usual. He was spiteful and malicious. Angrily, as she pulled her gloves over her slender hands, Sylvia paced the room, which was all crystal and silver and ivory, and not ponderous and magnificently gilded and inlaid and dully colored as were most of the other rooms in the house. Her cool nature was reflected in her choice of smooth pale woods, light gray carpets, and ivory damask walls, a combination much disapproved of by Maria, who preferred grandeur and pomp. Sylvia, pacing, could see her reflection in the many narrow glasses of her dressing table and dresser and pier mirror. She stopped suddenly and stared at herself again. She never “painted” her face, not only because it was coarse and suspect to do so, but because beyond her clothing she gave little heed to her appearance. Now her full attention was on her extreme pallor, which, though luminous, suddenly seemed unpleasant to her. She rubbed her wide thin mouth with a handkerchief and bit her lips. There was no rush of warm blood to them. She thought. She remembered a red silk handkerchief she sometimes used with a black suit, and darted for it in a drawer. She wet a corner and rubbed it briskly over her mouth. A little delicate color was immediately imparted to it, and she smiled, showing her perfect teeth. It looked very natural, and she threw up her head in its customary proud arching.

She ran down the broad white staircase with a sense of excitement, her feet hardly touching the dark red carpet that covered the steps. The baronial hall below was warm, and a fire burned in the black marble fireplace. (Though the house was well and centrally heated, Edward, remembering the cold days and nights of his attic, insisted on fires everywhere.) Large black walnut and mahogany chairs, upholstered in crimson and deep blue velvet, stood near the fire. An immense crystal chandelier, imported from France, swung down from the second story, ablaze with electric candles. Old Pierre, once a teacher at the Waterford School for Girls, was now Edward’s butler, receiving twice the customary wages, and he stood in the hall expectantly. Sylvia did not like the tiny and aged Frenchman, who was nearly eighty. It had been stupid of Edward to take him in when the school decided that he was too frail and old to continue teaching, and too deaf. Charity was all right, Sylvia supposed, but it ought to begin at home.

“Where are the gentlemen?” she asked Pierre peremptorily. He was anxiously watching her lips. He bowed gracefully, in spite of his age. “They will be here almost at once, Mademoiselle,” he said in his soft voice.

She hated to have her mouth gazed at so intently. Then she was ashamed. She knew her own temperamental rigidity in which she took pride as a rule; it ought not to extend, however, to those afflicted in any sense or crippled in body. I just can’t help it, though, she would think. I demand perfection. She began to pace restlessly up and down the deep-colored Oriental rug which covered the floor, shifting her hands with impatience in her ermine muff. Surely Padraig, after all these years, knew that she loved him! And surely she was not wrong in believing that he was less remote and quiet when he visited this house. Her heart felt hot and choking in her unfashionably small breast, and the palms of her hands sweated with love and longing. She wanted to put them on his face, and hold it, while she pressed her lips vehemently to his mouth. She wanted him to forget—what was he remembering? He had never told, but it was evident that some agony in him kept him so still, so withdrawn, his eyes shrinking, sometimes, under his bushy black eyebrows, so that they almost disappeared. His very mystery intrigued her, while it repulsed and angered her; it was like a door shut in the face of the world and, more importantly, in her face.

Pierre was watching her discreetly near the cloakroom. In her restlessness she paced even faster, her frail silk skirts rustling against the slim ankles in their black silk stockings. She kept glancing, in her impatience, at the large and opulent and excellent paintings on the walnut walls. Everything was opulent in this house, huge and dim and muted in an Old World splendor, except for her own room. But she did not really dislike the furnishings; there was something solid and rooted in them, something which gave her a sense of safety, though she affected, in Edward’s hearing, to depreciate his taste. Oh, when she and Padraig were married, they would have one of the suites upstairs and they would be so happy! The tautness in her would dissolve away; she would do as she wished. She would go with him on his travels to all those shops, and while he also visited the many stores in the many cities which carried C. C. Chauncey’s fine wines and delicacies (all with their distinctive gold, blue, and scarlet label) she would visit the fashionable places to see the new styles, she would attend concerts, she would buy. Then there would be the evenings alone, in expensive hotels and in this house, she and Padraig together, and it would be enough for her, more than all the world enough, just to sit beside him and smile at him as he read.

She wanted to give him all she had, her austerely virginal soul and body, the sweetness he could arouse in her, the yearning tenderness that often seemed to ignite her cool heart to a conflagration. She had loved him from the moment she had seen him, six years ago; she had not, then at eighteen, ever dreamed of being married one day. She had dreamed, since, of being married to Padraig, and he was never out of her mind, even when she slept.

Edward and Padraig entered the hall, Edward smoking one of George Enreich’s cigars, Padraig attentive as he listened to his employer’s new ideas. They both seemed startled at seeing Sylvia. Can’t he dress, even for one evening? thought Sylvia, scornfully, as she looked at her brother. He was so big and uncouth and bulky, to her, in his worn clothing, his stiff collar, his undistinguished tie. Beside him, Padraig was a British gentleman, moving with grace and ease. Edward’s dark hair, which needed barbering, his big shoulders, his heavy legs and arms, his looming height, his broad features and granite-colored eyes, and even the way he walked, setting his feet down hard, antagonized his sister more than ordinarily. The famous Mrs. McNulty would have nothing but disdain for him, and Sylvia was mortified.

“Oh, there you are,” said Edward, without apology for his delay. “Well, Pierre, is the automobile waiting?” The old man assisted Edward first with his shabby overcoat, and a look of paternal adoration stood on the delicate and wizened face. Edward, seeing it, patted his butler and mentor’s shoulder affectionately. Padraig waited, and there was a gentle spark in his eyes as he watched.

The snow had stopped; the air rang with clarity; the alabaster drifts glimmered and sparkled under a fresh moon. “I don’t suppose the theater will be half full, after that storm,” said Edward, smoking busily. (He did not like tobacco, but George had given him some of his special cigars for Christmas and he supposed he should smoke them. He was considering adding them as a speciality of C. C. Chauncey’s.)

“Why not?” demanded Sylvia, but her voice was not as acid as usual, for she was sitting between the two men and her arm leaned on Padraig’s. The contact made her feel exquisitely happy and content. “We’ve had worse, and people came. Besides, I shouldn’t wonder if the whole town knows that Mrs. McNulty is here—”

“Were they the newspapers you were calling tonight?” asked Edward, in a disagreeably amused voice. “I thought I caught a few words through the door of the library. It’s too late for the newspapers, until tomorrow.”

Sylvia’s face was hot; her eyelids felt touched with flame. Padraig said with unusual quickness, “Mrs. McNulty, as an actress, would be grateful for any publicity. After all, we have news services. Besides, she said she would have to telegraph, and the hotel would pick up the information. I wonder if her friend is coming, too.”

“Her friend?” Sylvia swallowed over the burning lump of rage in her throat.

“Yes. You may have forgotten that I mentioned her,” said Padraig. But Sylvia had spoken only in her desperation to change the subject. “I don’t think I told you her name, though. It’s Madame DelaFontaine, of New York. At least Mrs. McNulty explained that’s her professional name.”

Sylvia forgot her rage in this new wonder. “Madame DelaFontaine! Why, I read she designs all Mrs. McNulty’s clothes! Everything! She’s the most famous designer in the whole country, and people who can afford to go to Paris for their gowns and coats and hats go to her!” The limousine was passing a street lamp, and Sylvia’s face was lustrous with joy and excitement. Padraig smiled down at her with kind understanding, and then he sighed.

“A dressmaker,” said Edward, in an uninflected voice.

“A modiste, a coutourière!” cried Sylvia. “You’ve been taking French lessons for years, Ed, and I supposed you’d had a little French culture rubbed off on you or had acquired it through osmosis. I see I was mistaken.” She turned her head to Padraig. “‘Her professional name?’ Isn’t she French?”

Padraig hesitated. If Mary Garrity wanted to reveal her real identity, that was her affair. “I’m not sure,” he said quietly. “She’s a very interesting woman, though.”

Sylvia jealously mulled over his last words. Had they been admiring? But then Madame DelaFontaine must be old, very old. She’d been famous for years. When the limousine, which had lumbered majestically through the snow, drew up before the dimly lit entrance to the Whitney House, Sylvia leaned forward avidly. Padraig and Edward left the limousine and went into the lobby. In a few moments they emerged with two ladies, one tall and swathed in sables, with a glittering scarf over her head, and one very small and vivacious. Sylvia recognized Mrs. McNulty and dismissed her after a brief glance. Handsome but florid, and entirely too big, bigger than she appeared on the stage. The small woman—and how stylish she seemed even in that brown suit she was wearing and that short sealskin jacket!—had a little impudent face which Sylvia happily designated as monkeyish. Sylvia was not a girl to like people on sight, or even to like people, but suddenly, without warning, she liked Mary Garrity, and smiled at the flash of striking and animated eyes as Mary said something amusing to Edward. So engrossed with Mary was Sylvia that she missed Maggie’s intimate hand on Padraig’s arm, and the smile he gave her as he bent his head a trifle.

The two ladies were tucked in beside Sylvia, after the introduction, and the two gentlemen sat on the unfolded seats in front of them. Sylvia had hoped to sit by her secret idol, Madame DelaFontaine, but Maggie sat in the middle. Her perfume was rich and subtle, and her profile, Sylvia thought disinterestedly and with reluctance, was the profile of a Roman goddess. Her only desire was to discover what gown Maggie was wearing. She had lost interest in her as an actress. Her answers to Maggie’s warm and generous questions were brief almost to the point of curtness. What a fascinating face, thought the kindhearted Maggie. Not beautiful, but distinguée, really extraordinary. And so young, too. But as Sylvia seemed not to wish to talk, Maggie gave her attention to the back of Padraig’s head and shoulders. She was sure now. She was truly in love, and, if she knew men at all, he was attracted to her. She giggled happily in herself. Just before their escorts had arrived, Mary Garrity had said with vexation, “If that damned astrologer of yours ever advised you to sleep with a particular man, you’d immediately jump into his bed, you idiot.” Maggie thrilled to the very tips of her fingers at this idea in connection with Padraig.

Mary, who had no aversion for money, had been duly pleased by the big limousine, the fur rugs, and the chauffeur. She had expected to sleep tonight in Buffalo, and here she was in some out of the way little city which could boast of a man with enough money for one of the finest automobiles she had ever seen. She had been much impressed by Edward, a fact which would have astounded Sylvia. A man, she had thought, really a man! The forceful kind, not exactly homespun, and certainly not the yokel she had expected. There was a power in him, steadfast and exigent. Of course he’s at least ten years younger than I am, she thought wistfully. And tomorrow she and Maggie would be leaving. Ah, well, ships that pass in the night … She had glanced only briefly at Sylvia. She did not like these intense people, and the girl was not old enough for that intensity. Mary hoped that Sylvia was not going to be tiresome and cling to Maggie, in the hope of acquiring her influence on the stage. The world was full of these hopeful young people, yearning to leave the hinterland.

“I’m not an actress,” said Sylvia, shortly, to Maggie, after another polite question. “I put on plays.”

“Oh,” said Maggie, absently, wondering what she had asked the girl in an effort to make conversation.

Mary gave Sylvia another glance, and waited for a street lamp. Then she was caught by that wonderfully original Tudor hat. Was it possible the girl sometimes went to Paris? A beautiful, a marvelous, a unique hat. She leaned across Maggie’s heroic bosom and said, “I’ve been admiring your hat, Miss Enger. Did you buy it in New York? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Her voice, to Edward, was “tough” and inelegant, with its masculine huskiness. But to Sylvia, it was alluring and delightful, because of the question. She said, with shy eagerness, “I made it myself. I design and make all my clothes, when I have time.” She paused, with a furtive glance at the back of Edward’s head. “And I design all the women’s clothes in my plays.”

“That’s what makes them so infernally stark,” said Edward, ruthlessly.

“I don’t think this luscious hat is stark,” said Mary, suddenly disliking him. “I’d like to look at it close at hand.” Then she was astonished. How was it possible for a backwoods girl to have this genius? She could scarcely wait to see the dress and the coat Sylvia wore, and the dresses of the amateur actresses. She sometimes had these intuitions that something exciting was about to happen. Now her sixth sense was quivering. Only once or twice before had she had this anticipatory awareness.

Sylvia said, almost without volition, “Madame, if you’d like this hat—as a—as a—model, I’d be glad to—give—it to you.” Her voice trembled a little, humbly.

“I’ll take it,” said Mary, promptly. “Tonight. And if I can make it go among my clientele, I’ll send you a royalty.” She did not see Sylvia clasping her gloved hands convulsively, but she felt it, and she smiled with sympathy.

Both Maggie and Mary were struck by the good taste and impressiveness of the Little Theater, into which Edward had poured thousands of dollars. Small, yes, but perfect, thought Maggie, surprised. A crowd had already gathered in front, among them a number of newspaper photographers. Maggie lifted her head; she became the famous White Way actress again. She accepted Padraig’s hand, when alighting, like a queen condescending to a courtier, but the smile she gave him resembled noonday. The photographers lifted their sticks, filled with powder, and there was a flare of light while the cameras clicked. A small cheer went up from the spectators, who had hurriedly bought tickets. Edward marveled at the subtle and unseen power of publicity, which had brought out these people, without previous newspaper columns, despite the snow-filled streets and the tiger-toothed cold. The theater would be filled, no matter that damned silly play, which had been thoroughly assassinated by the two local newspaper critics.

Moving grandly on Padraig’s arm, Maggie sailed into the theater, bowing and beaming at her admirers, who gazed at her with awe. The others in the party followed unnoticed. Maggie was surrounded in the lobby by reporters. “Yes, yes indeed,” she was saying, all charm. “Lady in Waiting was one of my earlier plays. Delightful. I simply had to stop off tonight to see it, in this delicious theater. It brings back lovely memories. Charming. Charming. Yes, indeed.” She stood there, with her sables thrown back and revealing her noble white shoulders and bosom, to the entrancement of the reporters. Mary, in the meantime, was not wasting time in cynicism. She was examining Sylvia’s coat and dress, and again she was quivering with excitement. “My dear,” she murmured to the bemused Sylvia, “you and I must have a little talk.” She lifted part of the velvet coat and sighed with deep pleasure. “Between the first and second acts? At intermission?”

The Enger box was in a royal position and filled with plush chairs. The play began, but the eyes of the audience were fixed stolidly, and almost without blinking, on Maggie. In spite of her preoccupation with Padraig, Maggie was not insensible to this adoration. While she talked with him, she preened, turned her head so that the fullness of her white throat was revealed, drew deep breaths which enhanced her bosom, and smiled radiantly. The black silk lace on her breasts fluttered. She fanned herself occasionally so that her large white arm was displayed in all its famous perfection. She inclined her face and let the dim light play on her glossy curls and waves. The audience sighed at each fresh revelation. And Padraig gazed at her and thought, This is a dear child, as Norah was dear, and she is innocent and kind and warm as a fire, and her smile is Norah’s smile. In all these years since Norah’s death he had never reached for a woman’s hand, but now he did, and he held it so tightly that Maggie closed her eyes on a spasm of joy and peace. She did not move; she knew that the gesture had been instinctive, and not gallant or contrived, and she was moved to fresher paroxysms of love and desire and compassion.

The play, thought Edward with anger and shame, was appalling. Or, rather, the actors and actresses were abominable. They moved perfectly, spoke perfectly, timed themselves perfectly, but they were wooden figures without accentuation or life. It was, though a slim play, filled with possibilities. But one wouldn’t know that from these people on the stage. Where was the vitality, the lightness, the sudden change of mood, the originality, the fire, the color, the sentiment? They had been washed from the words, the actions, so that all hues and nuances had faded into dull blacks and whites and uninspired lethargy. They were not even good etchings of what should have been chromatic. Edward had read the script; it had had a sort of youthful freshness. The youth and the freshness had been hopelessly vitiated to mechanism and rote, Sylvia, the dramatic genius, had diabolically contrived this parody of what should have been living, Edward thought, his shame becoming a heat in his face and neck. She had done this out of malice, in order to spite him and frustrate him.

Come on! he silently shouted to the actors. Move faster there, speak louder, lift your hand like a man, or a woman, smile there, laugh so that the balcony can hear, damn you! You, with the tinny voice—put emphasis in it. You aren’t talking to yourself!

No one in the box but himself was studying the play. That New York actress was “showing off.” Padraig looked fatuous, almost foolish; Edward, in his rage, did not deduce anything from this then. Sylvia, of course, was down in the wings. And that little woman with the disgusting masculine voice was looking at—what? She did not smile at the arch lines, did not show any gravity at the dramatic ones. She sat absolutely still. Edward did not know that she was scrutinizing the miraculously beautiful and original gowns the actresses were wearing, the subtle lines, the perfect sophistication of the neck designs and the chic draping of the sleeves. To Edward, the clothing was without lure or attractiveness. He thought of George Enreich’s female friends from the big cities, whom he had met in George’s house, and he had been pleased by the richness and lavishness of their dress, the plumes, the flowers, the extensive draperies, the jewels, the satins that glowed, the silks that sparkled, the slippers that had twinkled with gemmed buckles, the boas of fur and feathers, the big hats all ruchings and tucks and color.

But Mary was thinking, What subdued worldliness, what ingenious understatement, what refinement, what aristocracy! She’s taken the best we have to offer and removed the flamboyance and the vulgarity. It’s royal, that’s what it is! I just can’t believe it! The girl’s an absolute genius, and I must have her at once.

Edward was so bitterly engrossed with his fury and humiliation that he was not aware, for a few moments, that the curtain had fallen on the first act. When he turned about, to confront eyes he was sure would be derisive, he found that he was alone in the box. He was too mortified, for some time, to move. Then he went looking for his companions. He did not find them, to his relief. He did not even wonder where they were.

Padraig and Maggie had discovered a little dim corridor off one of the exits, and they paced there together, undisturbed, Maggie’s arm closely entwined with Padraig’s. She was smoking one of her little gold-tipped cigarettes. There was no need for her to speak, she knew. It was enough to exchange serious glances and faint smiles.

Then Maggie said softly, “I’ll be in Buffalo tomorrow.”

“I’ll be there,” replied Padraig.

“And then Detroit, and Chicago.”

“I’ll be there.”

Maggie squeezed her eyelids together, then looked at him with all the blueness of her eyes so vivid that, hypnotized, he could not glance away. “I know,” she whispered.

They walked up and down slowly, the warmth of their bodies mingling.

“I must go back to Ireland someday,” said Padraig. He paused. “I can never be an American citizen.”

Maggie did not care. She was not even curious. The circumstances connected with Padraig were of no importance to her. If he had suddenly confessed to the darkest of dark pasts she would have smiled at him serenely.

“But you are an American citizen—Maggie,” he said. “You may lose that citizenship.”

Maggie, the proudest American patriot of them all, pressed her cheek to his tenderly. They had known each other only a few hours; marriage had not been mentioned. Yet it was understood that they had always known each other, that marriage was as inevitable as tomorrow. Padraig put his thin hands on her shoulders and regarded her gravely. “I know who you are, Maggie, my darling, but you don’t know who I am.”

“You are my heart’s treasure,” murmured Maggie. “That’s enough for me.”

He tried to smile. His angular face sank into melancholy. “You didn’t really hear me,” he said. “I must go back to Ireland someday. To County Mayo. You didn’t ask why. I have a duty, Mavourneen,” and now his voice strengthened, and his brogue slowed his words.

“Yes,” said Maggie, dazed with happiness, and she nodded. “You’ll always have a duty, Padraig.”

He sighed, released her. “A duty I’ll not be wanting, Maggie. You must listen; you mustn’t look at me while I tell you. My father—he is Sean Lord Devoe. I’m his only son, his only heir.”

The buzzer, announcing the rise of the second-act curtain, was unheard by them. Maggie tried to understand; her winged eyebrows drew together in an obedient attempt. She said brightly, “Sean. That was my father’s name, may his soul rest in peace near the Blessed Mother. Sean Lord Devoe. I like it, Padraig.”

He had to laugh his short and reluctant laugh. “Maggie. My father is a peer. A lord. An Irish lord. One of the few with money. He could sit in the British House of Lords, if he wished, which he does not and never will, himself hating the English more than the devils in hell. He’s almost seventy now. One day I will be Padraig Lord Devoe. And you, my darling, will be Lady Maggie.”

Maggie’s black eyelashes trembled, and her fine color faded. “You—” she began, then swallowed. “And I—”

He put his arms about her and pulled her to him. “You’ll not be saying it, Maggie, now or ever.” He put his mouth against the top of her head and closed his eyes on a spasm of pain. “I was tried for murder, Maggie.” He waited, but she did not stir in his arms. “It was my horse, and it was I riding the fiend, that killed the child I was to marry, Norah Bellamy. A cruel beast, a stallion, and himself had told me not to ride the animal, but I was willful, and I rode him, and Norah came running out of the paddock, hearing the commotion, and he wheeled and struck her down with his forelegs. It was her head, Maggie, her golden head, which he crushed, and the hair like sunlight, and the blood—I was twenty years old, Maggie.”

She put her arms around his waist tightly and moaned.

“Murder, the judge called it, though the jury would not convict me. And it was so, Maggie, because I had always been an arrogant lad, the only son, the spoiled and selfish son, who cared only for his pleasure. But I loved Norah, and for twenty years I’ve wandered the world trying to forget, not taking money from my father and doing penance. Maggie, and do you think I have repented enough?”

She leaned back in his arms to look at him, and her eyes were crystalline with tears. “Oh, Padraig, and you could not go home, and that poor old lonely man, your father, and all the pain—”

“Surely God has forgiven me,” he said. “If He had not, I should never have known you.”

“But, my dear child, you haven’t a bit of feeling for the stage!” Mary Garrity repeated again and again in despair to Sylvia as they sat together in Sylvia’s private room near the dressing rooms. “You are a genius, though, in something just as important or even more so. And you’ve been telling me what it is that you’ve always wanted. Don’t cry. Just give me a reason why you refuse. Just one sensible damn reason that I can understand, why you won’t come with me in New York.”

“I can’t, I can’t!” cried Sylvia, full of nameless terror and shrinking. “No, you can’t understand, Madame. My mother is a Von Brunner. It was always this way—it isn’t something I can explain.”

“Is there a man?” asked Mary with cold flatness.

“Yes, yes. But that isn’t the reason. Believe me. He—he wouldn’t mind my doing what you want me to do. He’d even like it, I think.” Sylvia sobbed dryly. “No, no, you can’t understand. You’ve seen my brother, Ed?”

“Not a very agreeable character, though attractive,” conceded Mary. “What’s he got to do with all this?”

Sylvia crouched on her chair in the raw electric light, and she wrung her slender fingers together. “I—I am afraid,” she stammered.

“Of Ed?”

“He has all the money. He has the house, our new house—Oh, I can’t explain!” She jumped to her feet distractedly.

“You’re afraid of your brother, and you a woman?” said Mary, incredulous.

Sylvia stared before her emptily. “I hate him,” she said.

“Well, good,” responded Mary with vigor. “Then pull away from him, from this awful town, from your family, and assert yourself, be free, independent.”

Sylvia swung to her, and her white face expressed such utter horror that Mary rose involuntarily. “You can’t run away and leave your whole life—” Sylvia groaned. “It isn’t that easy.”

“Why not? I did,” said Mary, and now her eyes narrowed with a wondering contempt. “And I was only seventeen. Seven years younger than you. My girl, could it be you haven’t any guts?”

She was sorry for Sylvia, who seemed to her much younger than her years. But all that genius, that wonderful, artistic genius, that find of a century! It was a sin against God to waste it.

The vulgar last word brought a stain to Sylvia’s wide cheekbones. “You don’t understand! I can’t possibly make you understand.” Her small breast was fiercely agitated, and her eyes glittered at her visitor’s obtuseness.

Mary picked up her gloves and purse. “I’m afraid,” she said, “that you yourself don’t understand, or are afraid to let yourself understand. Well.” She paused. Then she opened her purse, took out a card case, and removed a card. She put it on the table before the stark mirror. “There’s my address, my telephone number. One of these days, I hope to God, you’ll stiffen your backbone and you’ll come to New York and you’ll call me. I’m eleven years older than you, and the world isn’t as frightful—not quite as frightful—as I suspect you think it is.”

She waited. Sylvia’s hard breathing filled the little room. Then Mary shrugged and walked out, muttering profanely. Sylvia watched her leave, heard the hard banging of the door.

“Oh!” she cried aloud in anguish. “I—I’ll make him pay for this! I’ll make him pay!”

Edward sat alone in his box for a full ten minutes before he was joined by Padraig, Maggie, and Mary. He stood up slowly while the ladies seated themselves. The actors jabbered listlessly on the stage. The audience yawned, gave up the struggle, and stared at Maggie again. Then even Edward, angered and humiliated though he was at this fiasco, saw that both ladies appeared disturbed. Maggie was pale, though she smiled constantly. Mary was scowling. “Is there something wrong?” asked Edward, mortified at their distrait air.

Maggie took up the cue at once. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “I have a terrible headache. And we must catch the early train to Buffalo tomorrow. Six o’clock—in the morning! Perhaps—perhaps Mr. Devoe—”

Padraig rose at once, with an eagerness Edward found more humiliating than ever. “I’ll be glad to take Mrs. McNulty and Madame DelaFontaine back to their hotel,” he said.

Maggie put her hand coaxingly on Edward’s stiff arm and managed to summon a wan expression. “You will forgive us, won’t you, Mr. Enger? It’s been charming—charming—really exciting. One of my own plays, you know. I’ve always loved it. Do tell your sister—the theater is a gem. It’s all been such an unexpected pleasure—”

Edward wanted to pull away rudely, but he restrained himself. “After all, they’re only amateurs,” he said. “I thought, though, that my sister had done pretty well, considering.”

Maggie was distressed. Even in that dim light from the stage she could see the cold inflexibility of his eyes. She hated to hurt anyone; he was offended. But Mary said in a loud and positive voice, “I’m really dying for some sleep.” She hesitated. “Your sister is a genius, Mr. Enger.”

He smiled at her for the first time. “I know,” he said. “It’s just that stupid play.”

Maggie’s mouth opened soundlessly with affront. But Mary said, “I don’t mean about the stage.” She stared at him. “I mean her creations. She could make a fortune, with me.”

She had often heard the phrase “his face blackened” among Maggie’s theatrical friends, and had been mocking about it. But now she knew that it was an actual phenomenon, and it scared her for all her stout spirit. She pushed her chair back, as if preparing for flight.

“You mean, as a dressmaker?” Edward demanded, insulted. “My sister?”

Mary rose abruptly. “My head is aching worse than yours, Maggie,” she said, and the hoarse boom of her voice attracted interested stares from the orchestra.

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Edward began.

Maggie smiled at him sweetly and again touched his arm. “Why, of course you didn’t, Mr. Enger. But you will excuse us, won’t you? And give your sister our congratulations? She’s really—” Maggie glanced at Padraig with helplessness, and he helped her rise and put on her sable cloak. Maggie, her warm heart still feeling for Edward, continued, “She’s really a genius, and I should know, Mr. Enger. Thank you, thank you for thinking of us. If your sister ever comes to New York—”

Edward, not standing now though the ladies were standing, looked at Padraig over his solid shoulder. “Call for the limousine,” he said, and his voice was pent. “Then send it back, please, for us, Padraig.”

“I’ve never seen such a brute,” said Mary when they were rolling and heaving over the snow on the way to the hotel. “He’s got that gifted sister of his frightened out of her wits.” She had explained, briefly, her preoccupation with Sylvia.

“No,” said Padraig, sadly, “he isn’t a brute. It isn’t his fault at all. That is, not entirely. I’ve known the family for at least six years now. No, it isn’t his fault. It’s hard to explain.”

“Don’t begin that, too,” said Mary, laughing.

“There are intangibles,” Padraig offered. He was so at ease. He could not remember ever having been at ease before in all those long and twenty years. He had forgotten what it meant to be at peace and the meaning of happiness. He could think of Norah without pain, and could pray for her without agony. It was a long time ago. It was a dream.

“Intangibles, hell,” said Mary, with fervor. “How can you stand him?”

“You don’t know Ed,” said Padraig.

“And I don’t want to. I just want that stupid girl.”

When they reached the hotel, Mary, who knew that Maggie was now committed beyond recall and that Padraig, though “mysterious”—and she disliked mysteries—was a man to win your heart if you weren’t careful, and was all respectability, discreetly retired into the bedroom leaving the lovers alone. She had her own melancholy. She was frustrated and hot with anger against Edward and “that stupid girl.”

She had left her card with Sylvia. One of these days, she was certain, Sylvia would appear suddenly at her salon, and life would become sensible again.

“And now,” said Maggie, in the brown little parlor, and coming at once into Padraig’s arms, “you must tell me how much you love me. You haven’t said a word about love at all, and we engaged to be married!”

“When will you marry me, my darling?” asked Padraig.

“What a ridiculous question. In Buffalo, of course. We’ll be there three days. Father Dougherty will marry us. You’ll have to give him a big fee. He’s building a new parochial school—he’s got an obsession on parochial schools. And you must meet Mother M. Francis. You’ll adore her.”

CHAPTER III

Whistling cheerfully, though his sandy brows were knotted in thought, William MacFadden, purchasing manager for the C. C. Chauncey’s shops, climbed the steps to Ralph Enger’s pleasant little apartment and studio in a pension in the Latin Quarter.

It was a beautiful spring day, and there was nothing like Paris in the spring, in spite of the ominous and uneasy mutters these days in the streets, cafés and restaurants. William had listened to them all, and had understood, and had been concerned. Then he had shrugged. If mankind wanted to die and suffer and be ruined for a bally thing called “markets”—though, of course, markets were never mentioned—then let it commit suicide and be damned to it. America would, perhaps, not be so stupid. Still, you could not discount the long and secret plot of the enemies of men, which had nothing to do with “markets” at all. In any event, it was a bloody nuisance. However, when had men not been stupid? They were conceived in ignorance, lived in ignorance, and died in ignorance. The fact that ignorance was not necessary had nothing to do with the case, tra-la!

A fragrance of delightful herbs and sauces filled the winding and gloomy wooden staircase as William climbed. He sniffed approvingly. This was no poverty-stricken pension, no La Bohème series of garrets; those artists who lived here had plenty of money for good wines, excellent fowl and fish and meats. No doubt they were, in the main, Americans, young dilettantes spending the family fortunes because they were too delicate to earn a living. Not that I consider earning a living the most estimable thing in the world, thought William, though it has its advantages, such as cash in the pockets and plenty of quid in the bank. But if the whole blooming world, without exception, adopted the American perversion about the necessity of everybody working? What, then, of grace, of civilization, of the arts, of the splendor that only unlimited money could give the world in the way of architecture and music? Gold was not merely gold; it had a way of rubbing itself off on men and burnishing them.

Number five. William knocked on the door; he heard, with sly approval; a slight scuffling inside, a girl’s muffled giggle, something upsetting, and then the scrape of a chair. Ah, what it was to be nineteen, in Paris in the spring, and all the money to spend, and an excellent dinner cooking, and flowers, and a nice piece of twist on the side. The door opened, and Ralph Enger, somewhat flushed, his handsome auburn hair disheveled, and carrying a paintbrush ostentatiously in his hand, stood on the threshold. “What?” he said. Then, recognizing William, he smiled a little sullenly and said, “Oh, it’s you again. I thought you weren’t coming until tomorrow evening.”

He was tall and plump and he exuded an immense and earthy vitality. His dark eyes were exceptionally quick and restless, his color ruddy, his features a little too fleshy. He was naked to the waist, and his body had a strong pinkish tone and was warmly damp. His body scent, young and lustful, was not unpleasant.

“I have other plans for tomorrow, I found,” said William. Ralph stood aside and William entered the large studio with its north window, its view of roofs and chimney pots and pigeons fluttering, and balconies, and wisps of smoke curling along a chaos of eaves and tiled roofs. Ralph’s studio consisted not only of this room where he painted, but an agreeable living room, a bedroom, and a kitchen, all in precise order—the order, William thought, of a mathematician who detested confusion. There was nothing “artistic” in the studio but the window, the neat stacks of canvases against the walls, the easel, and the young naked girl sitting demurely on a small platform and trying to control a curiously rapid breathing. Trust him not to have a model who’s blowsy or too highly colored, thought William, smiling to himself. This is a neat little piece, compact and clear-cut and well laid out, like a blasted theorem, with no extra flourishes or any scribblings or vagueness or corrections. The girl, small, dark and exquisitely formed, gazed at him from under long black lashes, and drew in generous rosy lips to quiet her impulse to giggle again. Her nose was carved to a pure tilt, her eyes were oval and full of mischief, and her dark chestnut hair was coiled on her nape without a curl to distract its smoothness and order. Even her breasts were trim and distinct, and her legs and arms, though not long, were firmly molded. A sum, well added up and complete, thought William approvingly.

“Mademoiselle Violette Carré,” said Ralph, with some sheepishness. He added, “My model.”

“I didn’t think she was here just for a cup of tea,” said William artlessly, with a pointed glance at the damsel’s nakedness.

Ralph laughed loudly, and the girl tittered. She was utterly at ease. She crossed one leg over the other, and William, with more approval, saw that her knees were dimpled. “All right, honey,” said Ralph to Violette. “Throw something on. She’ speaks English,” he said to William.

“There’s nothing like conducting business in one’s native tongue,” said William, as Ralph helped him off with his English topcoat. He rubbed his freckled hands, smoothed his sandy curls, wiggled his foxy nose, and smiled at the girl with his bright hazel eyes. She was tossing a plain blue kimono over her nudity; she lit a cigarette and regarded William impudently.

“Better see how that ragoût is doing, Vi,” said Ralph, and the girl whisked off behind a curtain into the kitchen. “Go easy on the wine,” he called after her, “and the garlic. Never could stand garlic much, after the shop,” Ralph explained to his visitor. “Old Garlic and Pickles, you know.”

He, too, lit a cigarette. “Finished with your buying in Paris?” he asked.

“Yes,” said William, thoughtfully, “and for a long time, I’m thinking.”

“What? Business bad?” For a moment Ralph frowned.

William pretended not to notice the sudden concern. “Not our business,” he replied. “The world’s business. Where are your bally ears? It’s not been using them, you have. Don’t your professors talk, or are they up to their ears in their dusty books all the time? The students? Drinking too much wine and coffee in the cafés, I’ll wager.”

Ralph scratched his pink cheek and frowned again. “Oh. You mean the rumors of war? Nonsense. What for?”

“Sure, and that’s a good question,” said William, sitting down on a low, chintz-covered sofa, which he suspected had been used diligently just before his arrival. He glanced again around the studio, at its comfortable but not ugly furniture. The casement windows stood open, and a warm breeze blew in, filled with the lovely odors of Paris.

“Who’d fight?” demanded Ralph, belligerently. “And with whom?”

“My child,” said William, in a bored voice, “does that really matter? Perhaps Germany will be fighting somebody, and blasted old England somebody else, and the Balkans are always cheering for a fight, and there’s France itching. Worst of all, there’s Imperial Russia, always Imperial Russia, no matter who squats in the Kremlin. Always Russia, swelling out through the centuries like a bloody, oozing octopus, pulling in with her slimy tentacles and eating like a cannibal. It’s’ not your history you’ve been learning in Paris.”

“I don’t believe any of it,” said Ralph, uneasily. He looked at the tranquil early evening scene beyond his windows. He loved Paris; he loved this sheltered freedom. Here, he could do what he wished.

“My advice to you, boyo, is to clear out as fast as you can,” said William, and he was not smiling. “First boat, bag and baggage. Dust off the heels. Clutching the wallet. I’ve ordered enough tins and glasses to last at least three years, back home, though your brother will not be convinced until it happens. But it’s happening even now in the Bourse and the Reichbank and in London City, and God knows where else.”

“You and your plots and counterplots,” said Ralph. “You’re just an amateur Machiavelli.”

William shrugged. “I’ve given you my advice, laddie. Ease my conscience a bit and at least buy a ticket.”

Ralph sat down abruptly and rested his bare elbows on his knees, and stared at William through the cigarette smoke. “Enger,” said William, musingly. “It’s not a name that’ll long be popular in France. But you’re an American, too, my lad. Clear out. There’ll be a rush for the boats, and you mark my words.”

“What’ll be the percentage if anybody fights anybody?” argued Ralph.

William rounded his eyes in astonishment. “Good God! Why the factories, and the ruddy munitions mills, and the bustling employment, and the profits, and the banks! And the shifting of balances of power. And always the sinful men, waiting, waiting for the past two centuries, to take the world in their bleeding hands and squeeze it to the shape they desire. Laddie, you’ll be seeing terrible things in the world in your lifetime, I’m thinking. It was all planned, a long time ago. And you’ve never read Marx and Engels and the whole blasted tribe?”

“Yes, I’ve read them,” said Ralph, in a sultry voice. “Crazy as all hell. Who’d listen to them? Who ever listened to them?”

“Bismarck did,” said William. “And there’ll be millions listening in the near future.”

He held out his thin freckled wrists, yanked them tightly together; he squeezed up his face; he crouched forward in a desolate attitude; he dropped his head on his chest and groaned. He was a hopeless and abandoned prisoner, with chained hands. He suddenly cowered; he sniveled; he dodged an invisible and crushing blow, caught it on the side of his head, and howled softly. Violette immediately, and in consternation, popped from behind the curtain, her kimono flying open. “It is something wrong?” she exclaimed.

“Only William being an actor again,” said Ralph. But the demonstration had disturbed him. “Go back to the soup, Vi.” He said to William, “We have the International Red Cross, and even if one of your fantasies about war came true, nobody would treat prisoners that way.”

“And who’s been talking of the Red Cross and war prisoners?” asked William, rearranging his tie and shooting his glistening cuffs. “I’m talking about all mankind, boyo. When I spoke to your brother about the Sixteenth Amendment, the Internal Revenue Act, in America, a few years ago, he scoffed. But now we have it. That’s the beginning. ‘The power to tax is the power to destroy.’ And perhaps you’ve noticed that only the great Republic of the United States of America has adopted Karl Marx’s prescription for the liquidation of capitalistic society, the graduated income tax. A fine success for the enemies of America and the world! Socialism rampant. Chains beginning to rattle.” He put his hand behind his ear and took on an alert listening attitude. “Damn me if I don’t hear them rattling all over the world this very minute.”

Ralph yawned. “I don’t believe any of it,” he repeated. “Let’s change the subject. You’re giving me the willies.” He paused and stared at William.

William leaned back on the sofa. Then he stood up and went to the easel and gazed at it contemplatively for a long time. He cocked his head, mused, hummed to himself, stepped back, stepped forward, screwed up his eyes. Well, now, a wonderful mathematical painting of the little trollop, perfectly executed. But where were her color, her saucy hussiness, her sparkle, her naughty eyes with their dancing mischief, her living flesh? This was a painted photograph of her, lifeless and unexciting. Good painting, good lines, but only a photograph after all, with no warmth or vibrancy.

“Well, what do you think of it?” asked Ralph, aggressively, as he came to stand beside William.

“What do you think of it?” countered William. “Honestly?”

Ralph bent forward from the hips and regarded his own work. “Everything’s there,” he said, trying for lightness.

“So it is. Just like a calculation in logarithms. But where’s the soul, man? Where’s the girl as well as her flesh? Where’s her light and vivacity? You’ve put everything in, just like a blasted professor teaching mathematics, but you’ve left out the spirit. I am not complaining, for you’re a mathematician. They can call mathematics the Apollonian art, but it doesn’t have Apollo’s blazing light and life-giving heat. No chariots dashing across the sky, no thundering of the horses of the sun, no rays from the shining hoofs, no track of fire. But have we not talked of this before?”

“All right,” said Ralph, impatiently, and his ruddy color deepened. “I’ve trusted you; I’ve told you everything. I’ve been studying at the Sorbonne and paying for it with the measly pocket money Old Garlic and Pickles has been squeezing out to me. I’m a qualified engineer; I can design bridges. I can stop this damned painting.” His voice rose. “Don’t you think I know I’m no real artist?”

“At least you’re honest, and that’s more than the others are,” muttered William. “Poor old Ed.”

“What?”

“I was talking to myself, a bad habit of the elderly,” said William, and his soft brogue deepened.

“I hate it,” said Ralph, with passion. “But Ed insisted I was an artist. What could I do, with him and his ambitions?”

William looked at him and his hazel eyes danced with quiet wrath. “I made a mistake,” he said. “Another bad habit of the elderly.” He pushed his hands into his trousers pockets, bent his head, and ruminated while Ralph watched him irascibly. William began to speak. “Your teacher has said he can teach you no more; very ambiguous of him, what? Ed showed me the letter. You’ve sucked the toffy. Now it’s off to New York you want, in two years, says you, in your last letter. Two years more of Paris. So that is why I’m here, to talk with you. Eddie thinks, and may the saints have pity on him, that you know best.” William looked up with the keen and sudden swiftness of a fox. “And that will be what you’re wanting?”

“A year, two years, more at the Sorbonne, and then I’ll be a portrait painter, too,” said Ralph. His high color had paled; he walked up and down the studio, striking the palm of his left hand with his right fist.

“It’s not the truth you are speaking,” said William. “It is not the engineering you want, not at the expense of a breech with your brother, and his money.” He shook his head. “It is the easy safe life you want. You know that in your heart. Two years more of lolling, of not being a man—that is what you want, laddie. And then perhaps two more, and two more, pretending to be the artist. But time has run out; the world is exploding. Crash. Boom. And never the same thereafter. The end of life as we know it. You must take your chance like a man; you must do as you were created by Our Lord to do. Or be damned to you forever!”

Ralph stopped his pacing. He confronted William with a kind of overwhelming terror. He thought of his old teacher, Miss Butterfield, who had taught him secretly in the library and in her miserable little rooms. Just before she had died, when he was sixteen, she had asked for him and he had come and she had said pleadingly, “You must stand on your own feet, Ralph. I see it so plain, now. No one can live your life for you; you haven’t any right to expect that. You must have courage—”

“Why the hell don’t you mind your own business?” shouted Ralph, more in reply to his teacher than to William. He was distracted. He pushed his auburn hair into a tangled mane over his head. His life, as he had made it, so gay, so irresponsible, so pleasant, was being threatened as Miss Butterfield had once threatened his existence by telling him that God angrily rejected any pusillanimous plea that another was ever guilty of a man’s own sins.

Ralph looked at his big hands, the sensitive finger tips: the hands of an engineer who could throw glittering steel arches across rivers. Who was stopping him? The single pronoun stood in ruthless fire before his inner eye, but he shut his vision against it. It was all Ed’s fault, he said in a desperate litany to himself. All his fault, the smug black bastard, the slave driver, the dreamer of silly dreams. All his fault, all his fault. He tried to smile placatingly after his outburst, and he said, “I can’t. You know I can’t. I can’t disappoint Ed. Why, we’ve been all his life.”

“Don’t be afraid I’ll tell him what you’ve said,” William remarked. (How was it possible for a man to lie to himself?) “I won’t tell him his brother is a coward.”

“I’m an artist!” said Ralph, and he turned red with shame and rage.

“And now it’s lying you are,” said William, and he went away.

Ralph watched him go, clenching and unclenching his meaty hands. His plump face became the violent color of a pomegranate, and sweat burst over his flesh. Curse it; curse all of them; curse the whole damn world, and particularly Ed, who hovered in the background like an avenging terror. Why couldn’t he, Ralph, spend his life as he loved it, playing happily at painting but working secretly as he wished to work? He wanted money! Was there anything wrong with a man wanting lots of money? And getting it, and keeping it, for himself? The whole bitching world was against a man who only wanted happiness the way he wanted it. “The pursuit of happiness!” And everything, and everybody, conspired to halt that pursuit.

Particularly Ed, who had no happiness and was damn well going to see that no one else would ever have it, either, if he could prevent it! Ralph saw his brother’s face, and he made a vicious motion with his palette knife as if disembowling, and his face took on a coarse and most lustful look of furious pleasure, a sadist’s lascivious look.

“But I’ll have it!” said Ralph. “In spite of him. And he’ll pay for it, too! Violette!” he screamed suddenly.

CHAPTER IV

The City, New York’s newest and smartest and most sophisticatedly ribald magazine, had been a success since its birth two years ago. It had protested from its beginning that it was a “New York magazine for New Yorkers,” but to the surprise, or perhaps not to the surprise, of its owner and editors, it had become immensely popular in the despised hinterland. Its smoothly urbane articles, its short but clever stories, its “news of the world,” and other features, were an innovation in a world of facile magazines with their wordy and flowery and diffuse offerings. The subtle cartoons held up a mirror to mankind, and mankind, professing to be shocked, laughed at the gently lewd reflections of itself. The people were beginning to tire of drawings of Gibson and Dana girls, and crude humor and sentimental stories. The City, etched, as someone said, in pure gall and acid urine, and conceived in mannerly contempt, was entirely mature, entirely impertinent, and had convinced New Yorkers that they were as sauve, worldly and knowing as itself. (It would give The New Yorker some uneasy moments in future years.)

The owner, Harry Suffolk, was not a Manhattanite. He had been born and bred in Idaho. He was forty-one years old now, had published three novels which had been stupendous failures, had worked on several newspapers, had eaten irregularly and slept where he could, and had persuaded, two years ago, and by God only knew what means, a wealthy backer for his projected The City. He had selected his staff for these qualifications: lack of reverence, a light and nimble touch, a thorough knowledge of New York, unorthodox imagination, an impudent disdain of the simple and naïve, a flair for drollery and facetiousness, and a gay scorn for the dull and established mores. “Never kick people in the teeth, no matter how stupid,” Harry had told his staff. “Just stick them in the behind with a poisoned needle, and do it so artistically that they’ll think it was their neighbor who got stuck and not themselves.” It was rumored that when a cartoon appeared satirizing President Wilson, and even the backer was shocked, it was President Wilson himself (and he rumored to possess no sense of humor at all) who led the shout of laughter that went up all over the country. Harry sent him the original drawing and framed the grateful letter which came in reply.

Harry, as editor-in-chief, passed on the lightest paragraph, the smallest cartoon, the most minute “squib,” as well as the major features. He was a fat, gross man, untidy and ink-stained, and had a voice like a Minotaur. He boasted that he never combed his hair, that he shaved his black beard only twice a week and took only one bath a month. Nobody questioned these statements, for obvious reasons. The City was his darling; the small offices, rarely swept out and in a constant state of disorder, hummed like a nest of hornets. The staff, indeed, resembled hornets themselves: lean, slight young men with sallow complexions, fast-moving but precise, sharp of speech and sharper of pen, and their stings were not without toxic results. Harry had only two words to express approval or disapproval of any manuscript or cartoon: “O.K.” or—“Stinks.”

The City did not despise unknown cartoonists and authors; in fact, it encouraged them. The most famous writers were often outraged to have their drawings or stories returned to them with Harry’s succinct rejecting word, while unknowns, later to become famous themselves, were dazed to receive checks.

Harry’s office was so small that he seemed to fill it to the very corners, as he sprawled in his battered chair or slumped over his splintery desk, which was heaped, always, with masses of material. “You have to edge around his bulges,” his editors would say. One of them edged around the bulges on this warm day in March. Harry snarled as usual, and wiped his inky hands on his hair. The editor said, “That young writer, Gil Enderson—you know, the one we bought three stories from and that article on Wilson’s New Freedoms, is here with your letter.”

“Send the yokel in,” said Harry irritably.

The editor coughed. “He doesn’t look like a yokel, Harry, even if he’s from New Haven. And his stuff isn’t yokelish, either, or you wouldn’t have bought it, and you wouldn’t have written him that letter.”

“What letter?” exclaimed Harry, in outrage. “I said, send him in!” He thrust a cigarette in his thick mouth, and it appeared as small as a match in the mound of his face. His coarse black eyebrows twitched. Gil Enderson. Harry did not believe in encouraging anyone, even his best writers. He prepared to demolish the artful young man, and then repeat his offer. New Haven, by God! What was he doing there if he could write such stuff for The City?

Gil Enderson, even in those three stories which The City had bought, had become a Name for his risible lampooning of tycoons and robber barons, not with the heavy hand of the current “muckrakers” who used indignation and polysyllable words and thunderings to denounce those they envied, but with a deft and sprightly touch that was much more devastating than all the moral screams of the deadly serious. He had created a character called Mr. Thor, and the subscribers had demanded more, and subscriptions had gone up gratifyingly. Harry suspected that Mr. Thor was an actual person, though caricatured, and that Enderson secretly admired him while he hated him. There was a distinct impression of a feline licking-of-wounds in the debonair tales.

The creaking door opened and a shaft of sunlight tried to penetrate the dusty windows. A young man entered, and to Harry’s secret surprise, he seemed hardly more than twenty-one, though he was tall and with a largish frame. The frame, Harry noticed, was excellently clad in excellent tweeds and just managed to miss elegance imperceptibly, though considerable endeavor had been made to achieve that effect. There was an impression of a deliberate struggle to attain ease and grace of movement and assurance and even hauteur.

But Gil Enderson had an engaging air, and his broad face, dark and alert, had an expression of lively pugnacity and vivid intelligence. His nervous eyebrows were quirked over small gray eyes, and they gave a look of animation to the rest of his features, which inclined to weak bluntness. There was something familiar about him, and Harry frowned, trying to remember. “Where’d I see you before?” Harry grunted. He waved his soiled hand. “Never mind. You’re Gil Enderson. Sit down, unless you don’t want to dirty the seat of those Irish tweeds.”

Gil laughed, and it was a laugh of pure humor. He sat down. “I brought your letter, Mr. Suffolk. I want to talk with you about it.”

Harry took the letter, grunted again, turned it over in his hands, staring at Gil with his round brown eyes. “New Haven, eh?” he said almost with loathing. “What’re you doing there?”

“Yale,” said Gil.

“A student?” said Harry, aghast.

“Senior,” replied Gil. His voice was as quick as his eyes. He colored a little. “My last semester.”

“I’ll be damned,” said Harry, more and more aghast. “I thought you’d be older and—” He paused. “How old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-one.”

Harry combed his hair with his fingers again. He reread his letter. “I am offering you a job as editor for The City—one hundred seventy-five dollars a week—you’ll have to live in New York, of course. You can write your stories about Mr. Thor in your spare time—they’ve attracted some slight notice—”

Harry studied the young man again, more narrowly this time. Just his meat. This kid could be trained into fine editorial work; he had the touch, the lightness, the awareness. There was no use, of course, in praising his stories too much; that led to egotism and egotism led to dullness. The editor whom Harry wished Gil to replace had just had what Harry called “a rush of respectability to the head.” And there was nothing like respectability to ruin a writer or an editor.

“What makes you think you could fit in here?” demanded Harry.

Gil raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t. You did, Mr. Suffolk. That’s why I came.”

Harry tossed his letter aside with taurian contempt. “Some damn clerk must have written it, and I signed it without reading it.”

Skepticism gleamed in Gil’s eyes. He laid an envelope on the cluttered desk. “I brought you two more stories about Mr. Thor,” he said. Now his face took on gloom and sullenness. “I can’t take the job, sir. Not even when I am graduated.”

“You can’t, eh? Maybe I’m not offering you one. This is just a discussion. Never thought I’d be discussing anything with a damned schoolboy, at my age! But just suppose I was offering you that job, why wouldn’t you take it?”

“I can’t.” The words were flat and vicious. “It’d be a risk—”

“Well, what in hell isn’t? From the look of you, though, I wouldn’t say that you’d ever suffered any privation. And you’re young. And I’ve a faint idea I’ve read one of your scrawls, or a few paragraphs, anyway. School assignment?” he added tauntingly, though he knew better.

“No,” said Gil, almost angrily.

Harry leaned back in his chair. “Um. Somebody you know. Now,” he went on, observing Gil’s flush, “you could write maybe ten or twelve or fourteen more stories about Mr. Thor. I’m not saying you haven’t some small talent, you know. Then maybe you could get the stories together and publish them. Maybe. I’ve seen, though, the best stories we’ve published shoved together in a book and they’ve made just about as much sound as a pancake falling on a carpet. Books are different. And there’ll come a time when our readers will get tired of Mr. Thor. They’ll want something different. You’re callow. You’ve got yourself a character you know, somebody you hate, somebody you’ve caricatured. You can write the way you do about him because you despise his guts, and admire him, and are scared to death of him—”

Gil’s color had so increased that he looked inflamed. Harry shook a rocklike finger at him. “I know,” he said. “And I repeat, you’ve got a talent. But you’re going to run out of characters, because you haven’t lived long enough or experienced enough, and you’re just writing biography, now. If you come here—and I haven’t offered you the job yet—you’ll learn, you’ll meet people in New York, you’ll listen, you’ll get experience—and your gift for satire will develop naturally in a natural environment. Some people have the genius for invention; you haven’t. You write as you see a man, and that’s both good and bad. And I’m not saying that your Mr. Thor does Mr. Thor justice. There’s just too much malice in your things. People are sons of bitches, sure. And Mr. Thor is a prize one. But I don’t think he’s as mean or as stupid or impervious a son of a bitch as you write. He wouldn’t have made all his money if he were. Some people are so superbly stupid that they can’t help succeeding in anything they do, but Mr. Thor isn’t that stupid. It leaks out here and there in your work, that he’s got a mind, though you probably wrote that subconsciously. When you get tired of Mr. Thor, or bored with him, or you’ve written him out, what’re you going to do?”

“There’s my whole fam—” began Gil, and stopped, flaming again. He considered, his head bent, his eyebrows drawn almost down to his eyes. What did he really know about his family, except Ed? Gil was too intelligent to deceive himself in this matter. What did he know about anyone else, either? He had to be aroused, to hate, to envy, to resentment, to anger, to write vividly and with scarifying malevolence.

“It takes a lot of loving and hating, and experience, to be an all-around writer,” said Harry astutely, watching the young man. “Well. You’re graduated. Then what do you do, in June?”

What do I do? Gil asked himself. Go home to Waterford? Well, it was cozy there; there was money; there was that house; there was leisure. This old fool was wrong. He, Gil, had a book in mind. He certainly could invent people! He wasn’t a reporter. But even if the book didn’t amount to anything, there was safety in Waterford, security, and he could travel. A couple of years in Paris, a year in England, a year in Rome, a year, another year, still another year. There was money, and old Ed would always put it out, in the name of “study.” A pleasant life.

And, if I come here, where’s the guarantee I’d have a job in six months? I’ve heard about The City. Big turnover. This fat Satan uses up people like a grinding machine. You’re high this year, low next year, out the following year. What could I do then? Newspapers? Look for a job? Work like a woolen-headed laborer in some office? In Waterford, he was the genius, the great writer. Being a great and misunderstood and unpublished Writer in Waterford—with all that money and with all that travel—was something only an idiot would reject.

Yet … Gil looked about the office, heard the distant beat of a press, heard the hurrying footsteps outside this room, the bark of laughter, the short and pungent words, the mutter of the monster city. Everything in him suddenly yearned and hungered for this life, and it seemed to him that his very heart twisted. For one instant he said to himself, I’ll take it! This is what I’m fitted for; this is what I love!

Then fear struck him. No. He’d lose everything if he came here. He’d never be able to go back to Waterford. No more money, no more good clothing, no more surety, no more pampering. He’d have to stand alone and lose everything. Even if he were a success, he’d never make a real fortune. He’d be cut off. In a whole lifetime of work he’d never make as much money as he had right now, and which he would eventually inherit someday, from his parents, and from that damnable Ed.

He looked up at Harry, whose eyes had squeezed together in the intensity of his study of the young man. Gil said desperately, “It’s hard to explain. My family—they’re not poor—”

“Look, son,” said the intuitive Harry, in a rough and brutal voice. “I can read you like a book. I wouldn’t be where I am now if I didn’t understand people without a lot of footnotes. You’re scared as hell. You’d like to be here but you’re afraid to be. You’re afraid you wouldn’t make it. And you’re afraid you’d have to be on your own. You like the nice downy nest you’ve got somewhere. If you come here, you’d be kicked out of the nest? Am I right? Looks like it, the way your face is boiling up.

“Let’s be honest. You’ve got a real genius for light satire, with malignance seeping around its dancing edges. You could develop that, and amount to something. If you wanted to put in the time and the study. But there’s a limited market for the best of satire; we’ve got practically all the market there is. You’re no Mark Twain, one of the real humorists. Satire and humor are two different things: satire is like high piquant seasoning; humor’s got love and compassion and depth in it, as well as laughter. You’d never be a humorist. Frankly, you haven’t got the soul. So satire is your business. You’d be quite valuable here sorting it out of the stuff that pours in here. And you can go on from Mr. Thor to other characters as you meet them.”

He half threw himself across the desk so abruptly and with such savagery that Gil involuntarily pushed back his chair. “Why in hell can’t you make up your mind?”

Gil said, and his voice almost trembled, “My family believe—want—me to be a famous, serious writer.”

Harry slowly straightened up. He stared at Gil with bullish antagonism. “And you don’t believe a word of what they say. You know better. You know what you are and what you can do. It isn’t enough, eh? You’re not scared of your family; you’re scared of yourself. You haven’t any belly.”

He creaked in his chair. “You’re not a solid, really serious writer. You’re no Tolstoy. Or London, or Balzac or Dickens or Conrad, or Thackeray. When you learn that, and if it isn’t too late, write me a letter. In the meantime we’ll look over these new stories.”

His eyes were points of fury. “Good-by,” he said.

Gil stood up. He felt an answering fury and a deathly shame. He started out of the room just as an editor, with a green eyeshade, entered. The editor blinked at him uncertainly. “Oh, hello,” he said. But Gil pushed by him and was gone.

“D’you know that young bastard?” asked Harry, lighting a cigarette with fingers that enraged him by trembling a little.

“I’ve seen his picture, somewhere,” said the editor, puzzled. He pushed up his eyeshade. “Yes, I’m sure of it!” He snapped his fingers, frowned. “Why, that’s Edward Enger, the delicacy prince! C. C. Chauncey’s! What do you know about that? There’s an article about him this month in Harper’s! What’s he doing here? Trying to buy the magazine?” and he laughed.

“You’re crazy,” said Harry. “He’s only twenty-one; he’s at Yale. Student. Get me a copy of Harper’s!”

The magazine was brought, and the two bent over it with excitement. The article was admiring but acute. They studied the photograph, the older face, the harder, more powerful face, the more intellectual face, the sterner and more bitter face. But the strong resemblance was there, though the resolution and force were not. “Portrait in iron,” said Harry, “copied in wax.”

They rapidly skimmed the article. The names of brothers and sister—“David Enger, famous pianist; Sylvia, promising director and producer of plays; Ralph, studying in Paris; and Gregory Enger, at Yale, majoring in English, editor of the university paper …”

“Gregory Enger! Gil Enderson!” said Harry, and swore with mingled amusement, regret, and disgust. “I wondered why he had a box number!”

“Shall we run a piece about him?” asked the editor. “Gil Enderson, really Gregory Enger, brother of Edward Enger? Scoop!”

Harry considered, with deep concentration. Then he shook his head. “Hell,” he said with pity. “Want the kid to be thrown out on the street? Out of his nice warm downy nest? What’d he ever do to us?”

Gregory, dazedly wandering in the streets in the warm New York sunshine, felt that he had drunk something too acrid for endurance. His heart beat painfully. There had been the smell and the life in The City’s offices. There was where he belonged! But he could never be there, never know it. The risk was too great—because of Ed. Ed had the money. He, Gregory, hated those who had money, the bastards!

CHAPTER V

When men were proud of what they had created, it was rare to find jealousy among them.

So Edward Enger had found with S. S. Pierce’s of Boston. Years ago, when he had bought the Goeltz property, he had visited S. S. Pierce’s almost humbly. He was received with the utmost courtesy and was compelled to take many notes, so profuse and generous were the suggestions, so patient and kind were the executives, buyers, advertising men, managers, and the clerks themselves. Young, he had been despairing that he could ever approach this perfection, this influence, this pride, and the absolute faith lavished on S. S. Pierce’s by their customers. “We buy and sell nothing but the excellent,” said one of the gentlemen whom Edward interviewed. “Anything else wouldn’t be worthy of us, and it would be an offense to our friends. Quality. That’s the keynote. Customers must trust you absolutely.”

“Caveat emptor,” Edward discovered, had no place at S. S. Pierce’s. He also found that these busy gentlemen could spare the time to sit down with him and discuss his problems and his ambitions with the most attentive sympathy. If they thought he was wrong, they said so; if he had an original idea, they applauded. He returned to Waterford with his bundle of notes and spent months studying them, to his great advantage. His pride was not hurt when customers in various big cities told him enthusiastically, “C. C. Chauncey’s reminds me so much of S. S. Pierce’s.” Rather, he was highly pleased.

He did not want to start as modestly as his mentors had started, and therefore, after long study of the Pierce methods of merchandising, he approached George Enreich for much more than had been originally agreed upon. George had said nothing; he had gone, unknown to Edward, for his own scrutiny of the establishment in Boston. Then he had advanced the money. “You are in competition with them, my Eddie, but I have the conviction that this will not alarm or annoy them.”

The Goeltz property had been bought. Then, to the astonishment of the people of Waterford and their ominous predictions, Edward had rebuilt the property entirely. There were six floors now, in this April of 1914, and the shop and its departments covered an area of half a block. Small old houses adjacent had been purchased, removed, and the shop extended.

In an era of small shops and small windows Edward introduced, in Waterford, huge expanses of plate glass. He invented his distinctive labels for his shops in other cities, and for the outlets in other stores who would carry some of his products. The Waterford shop, however, was what William called The Home. It serviced all of New York State, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Ohio. Customers came from Albany and from New York City, from Buffalo and Cleveland, from Newark and Pittsburgh.

The vast store in Waterford ran from Gelston Street to the rear on Kingman Street, and it was the wonder and pride of the city. Glass, beautiful lighting, clerks in white jackets, managers in frock coats and striped trousers, carpeting and scattered chairs for weary customers, and rest rooms “like palaces,” all mingled together to make a trip to C. C. Chauncey’s an event. There was no dark wood anywhere or dark counters or dim spots. The areas—“acres,” some people said in awe—of counters glowed with glass and light. Islands stood in inviting places, heaped with esoteric imports. There was a special “wine cellar” downstairs in a cool basement, where customers could linger over cobwebbed bottles and champagnes and liqueurs and whiskies, with a deferential and knowing clerk in attendance to advise or discreetly suggest. Big wagons stood in line at the rear, loading and unloading, and motor vans busied themselves at the many doors. There was a special candy shop carrying only the best imported of “Chauncey brand” sweets, glacés and brittles, a honey shop, a special meats shop, a coffee shop, a tea shop, all small and beautifully decorated, off the main shop and reached through arches.

The executive offices were on the third floor. Here business was done not only for local purchasing but for business abroad. Here letters flowed in a steady river to the C. C. Chauncey warehouse in New York, and to outlets and to out-of-town Chauncey shops. Here conferences were held between Padraig Devoe and his assistants and advertisers, and William MacFadden and his own circle. Here was the board room where Edward met with his officers once a month. Here, in offices, typewriters clacked and files slammed and clerks and stenographers bustled. Here was the heart of the enterprise. On the fourth floor was the experimental kitchen, to which visitors were invited. The other top floors were storerooms.

Edward’s office was larger than that of his officers and was furnished in the style of his home: rich Oriental carpets, heavy velvet, and leather furniture, two chandeliers, brocaded draperies. He often worked till midnight, his big windows lighted brilliantly, while the only sounds were that of men unloading the wagons and the vans. Sometimes he would go downstairs to the silent shops, light them here and there, and simply wander, looking at everything, occasionally making reproving notes, investigating, studying. He lived only two lives, that of his family and that of his enterprise. He liked to pick up a porcelain pot of honey, with his impressive label upon it, and open it and taste it, and put it on a plain English biscuit. Sometimes he went into the kitchens and brewed himself a cup of coffee, and ate a sandwich made of his best imported English or Polish ham. He would sit, then, on a table and eat contentedly. During the day he would only descend to the shops when his buzzer sounded to indicate that a valued customer needed special attention or pampering. Otherwise, his peaceful and agreeable moments were spent alone.

There had always been a restlessness, a seeking, an insistent quality, in him which had prevented what ordinary men fatuously called happiness. When the interviewer from Harper’s had asked him naïvely if he had had a happy childhood, he had stared at the man with amusement and irritation. “What do you mean by happy? It’s as hard, as impossible, to define as truth. If you mean, was my childhood a mélange of lollipops and ice-cream cones and picnics and songfests and children’s games and cakes and playgrounds and circuses and jumping and laughing and running aimlessly and shouting like a wild animal, and living like a wild animal instead of a human being, then I must say no. Happiness, as you define it, perhaps, can only be enjoyed by mindless creatures, by foxes and squirrels and deer and birds, and, most probably, by worms. It’s a dream world and one possibly inhabited by the feeble-minded. No thinking and reasoning creature, even a young child, would find anything stimulating in such a world. Oh, I’ve been reading the new magazines, with their insistence on ‘happy childhoods.’ What do the fools mean? There’s something wrong about this unhealthy and morbid preoccupation with children. Children are adults in the making, and they have harsh minds as well as emotions and little bodies.”

He had paused then, and had continued. “I should say that I had an interesting childhood. I worked hard. I never regretted it; in fact, I’m grateful.”

He believed this now, with absolute surety. He himself did not understand the heavy sense of depression that fell on him when he spent a few brief moments with his parents, or heard the voices of his brothers and sister, or caught the laughter, the shrill meaningless laughter, of children playing on the streets. He occasionally suffered from what he had designated as “stomach trouble,” and would impatiently swallow soda mints (a specialty of C. C. Chauncey’s) or aspirin tablets. Sometimes the pain in the region of his chest became almost unbearable. He never consulted a doctor.

The interviewer from Harper’s asked about his lack of a wife. Edward had smiled. “I’m too busy,” he had replied. He did not speak, of course, of the current lady who lived in the best hotel in New York and whose expenses he paid and for whom he bought jewelry and furs. She sometimes met him in Albany, but never in Waterford. He was getting tired of her, though she was young, entertaining, and pretty. She had been his friend for almost six months now, and it was time for a change.

He was alone, this warm late April night, in his office. It was nearly ten o’clock. The broad windows stood open, and the air was like balm, sweet and languishing. Edward’s big mahogany desk was neatly piled with letters and pamphlets. The chandeliers moved and swayed gently in the gusts of a fresh breeze. They cast reflections, like pale ghosts of themselves, on the paneled walls. A wagon or two rumbled on the way home. Street lights blinked outside. Then there was a far complaining of approaching thunder, and all at once lightning flashed and the sound of the breeze quickened to wind.

Edward never could recall at what precise instant he thought suddenly of suicide, not vaguely, but with power and compelling force.

The instant before he had been preoccupied with an important decision. He had made the decision and he had known it was good. He had also known that he was hungry, even after the plenteous dinner at home. He had decided to visit the experimental kitchens and treat himself to his best brand of coffee and some spiced imported meat in a sandwich. He had contemplated the idea with pleasure.

And then, without warning, he had thought of suicide, and had leaned back in his chair and had considered it simply. Why? he asked himself curiously. The impulse became more demanding. It was like a command which must be obeyed. Objectively, he examined the idea, coldly and analytically. Debts? Of course, they were mountainous, but they could be overcome in time. Health? It was superb. Disappointments? No. David’s agent had just jubilantly written him that the Carnegie engagement was assured, and that David had just received an offer from Albany, where he would play on April twenty-third, tomorrow. The rest of the family? With the exception of Sylvia, all was well. Business? It had never been better, even in these days when there was an uneasy feeling abroad, everywhere, a kind of formless premonition of disaster. Within a month he would open two new shops in other cities. He came back, in his thoughts, to his family.

Sylvia, whom he disliked more than he disliked the other members of the family, could not be the cause of this command to die, a command not accompanied by any despondency or despair or hopelessness. He considered Sylvia for a moment. Only he knew the real cause of her sudden illness and collapse, and he would not speak of it even to her. Padraig Devoe had married Mrs. Maggie McNulty in Buffalo over a month ago. Damn it, he had been disappointed, but it was Padraig’s business and not his. He was positive, too, that Padraig had never once suspected that Sylvia loved him. There was no guile in Padraig. After the marriage, upon which Padraig had sent him a quiet telegram, Padraig had completed his business and had returned to his apartment in New York, and his offices in the importing branch of C. C. Chauncey’s. Edward had wired his congratulations and had ordered an expensive gift for the couple. But Sylvia had suddenly collapsed and had been forced to go to bed. A specialist from Albany had been called for her. He could not understand that mute white anguish, that silent torment, that speechless misery. He had concluded that Sylvia was too thin, that her health was frail, that she had been working too hard, that she must rest and then travel.

Edward had proposed a trip to Europe. Sylvia, whose face was as white as her pillows, had only moved her head weakly in refusal, had then turned her face to her brother. The agonized and malign accusation had stood like a fire, for a few moments, in her dark eyes. You! said her eyes. You! You’ve done this to me! Edward had understood the accusation. His first impulse had been to curse, deride, and turn away with contempt. He wanted to say to his sister, “What have you, you wretched scrawny thing, you egotistic thing, in comparison with Maggie McNulty, who looks and acts and speaks and laughs like a woman? She has importance, presence, fame. But more than anything else she’s a woman, a warm armful, a woman who loves to live.”

He had lived all his life in an atmosphere in which his parents and his brothers and sister had either silently or openly accused him. He had felt defensive until he was fourteen. Then the accusations had alternately angered and amused him. They had become insignificant, finally. He had come to the true conviction that the strong are invariably accused by the weak, and that such accusations arose from a sense of guilt or inadequacy, and that to understand this was to destroy pride and self-love, intolerable to a man’s spirit, even if that man was a weakling. To bear the guilt or inadequacy at all, men must find a scapegoat on whom to heap their faults of character, or their secret flaws of personality or performance or sin.

Edward had not said or done what he had been impelled to say and do, because he had suddenly pitied Sylvia as well as despised her. It had been a long time since he had pitied anyone, for the years had contracted his warmth and emotional responses to a small nugget of iron, impervious and resistive. So his pity for Sylvia had so surprised him that he had left her room hastily. He was afraid that he might relent, might offer sympathy. That would be disastrous for Sylvia. So long as she believed no one was aware of her love for Padraig she would survive. “Men have died, and worms have eaten them,” thought Edward cynically, “but not for love!”

In the last few days Sylvia had begun to listen to her parents’ urging that she go to Europe “for a rest.” She had commenced to eat again, and even to read. When Edward visited her room, she spoke to him curtly and averted her eyes, but her words were polite if listless. Padraig was due in town in a few days, and he must be prevented from coming to this house. It was a nuisance, but there it was.

It was not Sylvia, or anyone else, or anything else, which had commanded Edward to die. It had surged inexorably up in him like an imperious mandate, without sound or pain or desolation. It was simply there, a fact. He was not afraid of it, and did not shrink from it. All at once it seemed the completely sensible and intelligent thing to do. Everything else in the world became two-dimensioned, faceless, colorless, without flavor. It was not that he felt distaste or repugnance or weariness for his life. He liked his life. But in comparison it was nothing to this darkly secret urge to die.

Now he could be entertained by the idea. He played with a pencil and examined it from every angle, looked at every facet. Once, when he had been young—and he could not remember just when—he had been afraid he was dying and had been appalled by the thought. There was no fear in him now, no aversion. There was, suddenly, no longer any appetite in him for living. It was gone, and he did not know why or how.

He began to wonder about those who had killed themselves. Illness, hopelessness, tiredness, loss? They probably were factors in some cases. But perhaps there were more like himself—men and women who, without warning, simply wanted to die. It was an interesting thought. Could it be that the wish to die was as potent as the wish to live? And as irresistible, sometimes? And as mysterious?

It’s a good thing I don’t have a gun at hand! thought Edward, and then he laughed. The impulse for death blew away on his laughter, and life rushed in on him. Shaking his head and laughing again, he began to rise from his desk. It was then that an awful trembling seized him, an intense sickness of the spirit, a passionate recoil, as if he had just confronted a most terrible danger. Sweat broke out on his body; his hands were nerveless. Tremors ran over him. His affrighted body, aware of the escaped destruction, clamored in all its cells. Quiet, he said sternly in himself. Quiet, quiet. A knife seemed to flash through his heart, and then it was gone.

The carved clock on the wall struck a melodious eleven. He started. Somehow he had lost an hour and had not been aware of it. I must have been insane for an hour, he thought. Well, I’ll never have such an idea again. Damn fool.

Edward ate his breakfast alone in his lofty dining room, for Heinrich and Maria did not rise so early. Since Heinrich, or, rather, Edward, had engaged an excellent manager for Enger’s, Heinrich preferred to arrive at his own shop about ten in the morning. There was a silent malaise about him lately, a slackening of energy, though he was only past his midforties. When he complained that he was an old man, in a very piteous voice, no one contradicted him, for Heinrich was indeed old. He felt abandoned, lost, and ill, and would look about him, when spoken to, with a seeking expression, like a blind child. Maria would sit with him in their rooms and read to him, in sonorous German, all the sentimental poems and stories which he remembered from his youth and which would fill his eyes with tears. He clung to Maria now and whenever possible avoided coming downstairs. He was the only one who shrank from this house, though occasionally he was aroused to a feeble pride in it.

No one wondered at the spiritual dependence he had developed for Maria. No one noticed her new gentleness with him, her new patience. When with her family she spoke with her old cold authority, and was respected by her children and acquaintances and all who came to the mansion. She was Heinrich’s substitute for a mother, and no longer the honored Maria Von Brunner, who had lived in a Schloss, a noble Fräulein whom one approached with deference and awe. He would reach dumbly for her hand in the night, as they lay side by side in the great carved bed which Edward had imported from Italy. Often he would timidly raise his head and rest it on her shoulder or bosom, and she would stroke his thin and graying hair tenderly and maternally. She had no need to ask questions. She understood, and he knew that she understood. He did not marvel at all this, in his simplicity. He had sought comfort and had found it, and it was enough for him.

On this particular morning, after Edward’s inexplicable urge to death, Maria came downstairs alone for breakfast. Edward glanced up in surprise, then rose. “Early, aren’t you, Ma?” he asked. He liked to be alone. The hunger for solitude was growing in him, like a lonely but heavily rooted tree.

Maria sat down, as formidable and massive as ever, and as dominant. There was some gray in her hair, but it blended so perfectly with the lengths of silver-gilt that it was perceptible only as a silver shine in certain lights. She was dressed as formally as if she were about to leave the house, in a brown satin dress which enhanced the size of her great body. She spoke in German to Edward, gazing at him with an odd penetration, as she shook out the big square of white linen beside her plate.

“It may appear strange to you, my son, but a mother has her intuitions. I felt, this morning, that all was not well with you.”

“Nonsense,” said Edward. Embarrassed, he looked at the windows. They were mullioned rectangles of gray mist and shallow green, as the damp morning slanted through the new trees. “I was just thinking about those two adjoining acres. I’d like to get them.”

Maria’s protruding and glassy eyes fixed themselves intently on him with new searching. “There is an old saying: ‘How much land does a man need?’”

Edward laughed. His broad face had a slight ashen overcast. He had eaten very little this morning. It was that confounded stomach trouble again, he thought. The sharp but fleeting spasms of pain irritated him. He swallowed another soda mint, and Maria watched him gravely. “I need those two acres,” he said. “I don’t want a farm, but those two acres are on the highway and there’s no real zoning law in Waterford, and it’s possible that someone will build a blacksmith shop or a meat market on the land. Another road borders it, and that will end any threat to my property.”

Maria nodded. “That is understandable, your apprehension,” she said. “But I was not speaking literally. I was speaking in a symbol.”

Edward frowned. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Enlighten me.”

“It does not matter. Allusions are for scholars and not always in good taste. You must forgive me.”

Old Pierre brought in fresh coffee. He glanced at Maria and bent his head to listen to her order. When he had gone, Edward said, “‘How much land does a man need?’ Meaning what?”

But Maria shook her head and ate her dish of fine imported figs, a specialty of C. C. Chauncey’s. It was baffling, but Edward thought of his impulse last night. Then he suddenly understood. How much land does a man need? Only enough to make him a grave, and a grave, finally, was all he had. He pushed back his chair abruptly.

“Yes?” said Maria. “The acres again?” Her gaze was inscrutable.

“That’s right, Ma.” Edward’s hands were on the table, and they had closed into fists. Maria saw them and put down her coffee cup. She saw that he had flushed. He was speaking rapidly, as if to drive away a terrible thought. “I’ve been hounding the bank to get in touch with the person who owns that land, without any result at all. She lives in Albany; her name is Baumer. That’s all they can tell me, they say. Probably some old hag who’s waiting for me to raise my price.”

He added, before his mother could answer, “How’s Pa? Going to the shop this morning?”

“I do not know, Edward. He did not sleep well.”

What is she waiting for? Edward asked himself, exasperated. Why does she look like that? And what a hell of a thing to say to a man who has built this house for her and her family! His anger had always been a slow thing; he had noticed, lately, that it was quicker to flare, and when it did so his “stomach” flashed its brief but searing pain. He stood up.

“You will do me a favor, please,” said Maria.

“What?” he asked impatiently.

“You will see a doctor. At once.”

He stared at her, astounded. He could not remember any solicitude on her part for him before.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m heavily insured. There’s plenty of money. Even if I dropped dead, Chauncey’s would go on.”

“You speak bitterly,” said Maria, replying to his English in German. “Did you think I meant what you imply?”

“What else can I think?” His heart was beating too fast; he could hear it in his ears, could feel the throb of its pulse in his temples and throat. It was ridiculous to be so infuriated. “Never mind, Ma. We understand each other—”

“Do you?” asked Maria. “Did you ever, Edward?”

“Did you, Ma?”

Maria broke a piece of toast. Her voice was calm and low when she said, “I believe so. I am but human but I am not a fool. You will do me the favor?”

“No,” said Edward. The room was suddenly stifling and too small for him, though it was over twenty-five feet long and twenty feet wide. The ponderous sideboard, mahogany and laden with silver, seemed to approach him; the high glass-and-wood cabinets loomed over him; the chairs lumbered about him. His feet had the sensation of sinking into the rich carpet as if into a bog. He had to make a real physical effort to move, and to leave, and he said nothing else to his mother.

By the time his limousine had taken him to the shop he had forgotten his mother, his anger, his depression. His mind was busy again, as it was always busy, planning, thinking, weighing. There was to be a board meeting this afternoon.

There was, among all the messages waiting for him, one that was interesting. The bank manager had called. Edward’s secretary made a call to the bank, and the manager said respectfully, “Mr. Enger? The lady, Miss Baumer, who owns those two acres, will be in my office at ten o’clock. I think she is willing to sell that land now—”

“For how much?”

The manager approved of rich men’s caution. Only bankrupts never asked the price. “At what you offered. To tell you the truth, Mr. Enger, she hasn’t been in the country for nearly a year. She found my letter with your offer a few days ago, when she returned home to Albany. She wrote me, and I honestly think she didn’t even remember she had those two acres here!”

“She must be very wealthy,” said Edward, with wryness.

“Not extremely so, Mr. Enger. I should say—comfortable.” The banker coughed. “Her parents owned a farm near Albany, and when the city expanded they sold a large section of it to a manufacturer for a factory. Then the rest was divided up into lots for houses for workingmen. The land you want was bought by her parents at least twenty years ago, when they lived in Waterford. They’re dead now, I understand. About five years ago.”

Some old spinster who had finally inherited, thought Edward. “I’ll be in your office at ten,” he said. “I hope the old—lady really wants to sell.”

He was pleased. The small piece of land had been a real threat to his estate. At ten o’clock he called for his limousine and was driven to the bank. He did not deal here. It was neither impressive nor very prosperous. The manager greeted him effusively and led him into his dingy office. Edward was oppressed because of the meager size, and there was a constriction in his chest. He sat down, refused one of Mr. Erhlich’s eagerly proffered cigars. Mr. Erhlich noted Edward’s worn clothing, and he approved. Only bankrupts dressed to the hilt, he thought. A rich man could afford to be shabby. He studied Edward out of the corner of his eye; he had caught glimpses of Edward occasionally, but he had not remembered that he was so tall, so broad, and so harsh and obdurate of expression. It was said he was still in his twenties; he looked much older. But then all that responsibility, all that money! Mr. Erhlich wistfully wondered if Edward would ever do any business with his bank. He doubted it.

He did not know what to say to Edward. The young man sat there, his long right leg impatiently swinging over the other. He glanced at his watch. “Miss Baumer should be here,” he said apologetically. “But ladies, you know, aren’t very punctual.”

The door opened and a clerk said with obsequiousness, “Miss Baumer, Mr. Erhlich.” The banker rose and Edward rose, reluctantly as always, for he had no great reverence for women and only impatience or contempt. He especially disliked elderly women who, he had discovered long ago, objected to parting with cash and liked to haggle for the sheer sense of importance it gave them when browbeating clerks or asserting their faded personalities, or pretending to be very shrewd indeed.

The clerk stood aside and a young woman entered, a pretty girl not more than twenty-one or two. “Miss Baumer!” exclaimed Mr. Erhlich with delight. “And how was Europe?” He took her hand, which was covered with a white kid glove.

“Oh, I came back from Europe some weeks ago. I’ve been touring America since then.” She had a sweet voice, not thin, not particularly clear, but gently strong and firm. She let Mr. Ehrlich lead her to a chair, and then looked up at Edward, who was standing near the desk and staring at her with what she considered brutal forwardness. What an unpleasant-looking young man! she thought. And so this is David’s brother. Poor David. Now I’m beginning to understand a little.

Edward was thinking, I’ve seen her before! But where, where? Why, she’s as familiar to me as my own hands. I couldn’t have forgotten her!

He had seen she was tall but very slight, and that her figure, though not as buxom as fashion preferred, was perfect. The blue silk suit, with the long tight skirt reaching to her ankles, had not been bought “off the hook.” Even Edward could see that. The hat, broad velvet the color of her suit, was loaded with coral velvet roses, the exact hue of her smooth coral cheeks and full coral lips. The froth of white lace at her neckline was no whiter than her throat and temples and brow and chin and hands. Edward remembered it all but could not remember where and when. He thought this girl the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. There was no flaw in her, in his excited mind. That pointed face, that delicate chin with the clefting dimple, that fine nose, those wide cheekbones, that air of womanly strength, and those extraordinarily lovely blue eyes, so expressive, so radiant—how could he have forgotten them! She was regarding him gravely and steadily from under gilded lashes and gilded eyebrows. It was as if she were affronted that he did not know her. She moved her head a little, and a beam of sunlight struck her coiling and waving masses of light brown hair, and gilded the crests. He hardly heard Mr. Erhlich performing the introductions. He sat down and faced the girl, and she still gazed at him in that peculiar steadfast way in which there was much reserve and a slight coldness. She smiled mechanically at him, and her small white teeth flashed for an instant. A dimple appeared in her cheek, then faded.

Edward forgot Mr. Erhlich. He said bluntly, “I think we’ve met before, haven’t we, Miss Baumer?” He leaned toward the girl; in a moment he would know where and when, and this powerful urgency and longing in him would be satisfied.

She shook her head slightly. “No. I don’t think so. Unless you were at one of David’s concerts, in a little town in Illinois a month ago.”

“David? You know my brother David?” He did not know that his voice had risen. The girl sat back in her chair. What a rough voice he had, strained and thrusting out at a person. David had been reticent about his brother, but she had caught undertones in his conversation. How could David have such a brother, shabby, almost uncouth, coarse and primitive, David who was so elegant and so dignified? He was worse than she had suspected.

“Yes, Mr. Enger. I know David.” The coral in her cheeks deepened, and Edward’s powers of observation, always acute, became preternaturally sharp. His heart gave a deep thump as he looked fiercely—she thought—into her eyes. She dropped her eyelashes coldly, and the whole vital shine of her face was obscured. “I think he is a wonderful artist.”

No, no, said Edward in himself, and again there was that searing tear in his chest, and he felt suddenly ill and full of compressed fury. Not David; not this girl. Outrage constricted his throat; he was wild with a sense of deception and insult, like a husband who had been betrayed, whose rights had been transgressed to the insuperable point. He forgot Mr. Erhlich; his face had flushed heavily; the muscles of his face had hardened, and there was a swollen and discolored area about his mouth. Now Miss Baumer looked at him and almost shrank. She glanced at Mr. Erhlich, who was looking at Edward with openmouthed astonishment, as much disconcerted as the girl. Why, the man seemed as if he were about to have a stroke!

“It’s a small world,” said Mr. Erhlich, feebly, and attempted to chuckle.

“Too small,” said Edward. His eyes had become bits of steel under his thick black lashes.

Miss Baumer stared at him, affronted, and she paled. She finally turned her shoulder to him and said quietly, “Mr. Erhlich, I have an appointment almost immediately. Can we conclude this business at once?” Her slender shoulder, her sweetly rounded breast, visibly trembled. “Too small,” he had said, implying that she had had no right to know any member of his precious family! Her hands clenched over her purse.

“Why, certainly, certainly!” said Mr. Erhlich, relieved. There was something very singular in this atmosphere. Young Mr. Enger was still fixedly glowering at this nice, pretty young woman, as if he wanted to hit her or shout, or overturn things, and Miss Baumer appeared to be about to dissolve into tears. The necessary papers were all on Mr. Erhlich’s desk, but it perhaps would be best if he pretended they were not and left the room for a few moments. Then, probably, when he returned, the bursting tension in the air would be gone. He excused himself with haste, and went out.

“You—you can’t possibly—” Edward began in a pent and almost stifled voice.

“I can’t what, Mr. Enger?” asked the girl, still half turned from him.

“You can’t—I mean,” said Edward, and his congested throat made him cough. “Dave. My brother—”

She blushed angrily. “David is a friend of mine,” she said. She swung to him suddenly, and the blueness of her eyes flashed in a blaze of offense. “Have you any objections, Mr. Enger? What do you know about me, anyway?”

To her amazement his voice dropped, became very slow and quiet. “I’ve known you all my life. I’ve never forgotten you. I’ve—” He stopped.

Her blush brightened. She lifted her head proudly. “I don’t remember you. As far as I know, I’ve never seen you in my life. I lived in Waterford until I was about ten, with—with—my parents, and then we moved to Albany. That was a long time ago.”

Why, the man must be insane! His eyes were absolutely mad! He was leaning over the desk at her, and his brows were one slash of black. Miss Baumer was frightened. She grasped her gloves and purse and moved to the edge of her chair, as if gathering herself for flight.

“Where did you live in Waterford?” Edward asked. All his faculties were concentrated on the girl; he forgot even where he was.

“I think it was Sherwood Street. I only lived there a little while.” The color suddenly went from the girl’s cheeks and mouth, and she was absolutely white. “Oh, I see. You’ve found out something about me. David must have written, and so you investigated.” Her voice curved out loud and clear with scorn. “Don’t worry, Mr. Enger. I’m not serious about David—yet. But when I am, you won’t matter at all!”

“You can’t—want—Dave,” said Edward, and he stood up, and his air of wrath terrified her. His big body, his massive shoulders, bulked over her like a rock.

But she spoke as clearly as before. “Because I was brought up in the orphan asylum here? Because I don’t know who my parents were? Mr. Enger, the Baumers adopted me when I was fifteen. They left me everything they had; they educated me. I’m a decent person.” She caught her breath. “And I’m going to write David, tonight, that I’ll marry him just as soon as he wants!”

She looked at him with cold blue defiance, though her lips trembled. Then she was again astonished. He was approaching her. Now he was standing beside her. He was a very queer ashen color, but he was smiling.

“Margaret—in the P’s,” he said, and his voice was low and shaken, and marveling.

Her mouth opened on a little gasp. He was bending over her. His stiff arm was supported by the hand he had placed on the desk and she saw the tight fist. “I just remembered,” he was saying. “I remember where and when we saw each other. Just one time. Try and remember.” His voice had fallen even lower, and it was desperately pleading, and even the startled girl recognized there was no threat in it. “We had a small delicatessen store. My father and I. It was a hot day. I can see and feel and smell it right now, just as if it was yesterday. You came in; you were just a little girl. The Baumers weren’t good people; they’d taken you from the asylum to work for them. You hadn’t had any dinner. I made a ham sandwich for you and gave you a glass of milk—”

“I don’t remember,” the girl faltered.

Edward did not seem to hear her. He gently took one of her hands, though she shrank again. “I remember your hands that day. They were all cut and bruised. You said you weren’t afraid of work; you used to wash all the floors in the orphanage. You said you didn’t want charity, as you chewed the sandwich. You were hungry. I never forgot you, though I thought I did. I didn’t know who I was looking for, since then. I was looking for you, all these years.”

She was afraid to pull away her hand. Her fingers were rigid in his. She blinked her gilt eyelashes and moistened her lips. She was more frightened than ever. She repeated, “I don’t remember.”

“You were only ten,” he said. “Margaret, in the P’s.”

The rigidity went out of her fingers. She looked at him as if hypnotized. Something was forming before her: a small shop, the glitter of glass counters, a little rotund man, a tall and lanky boy giving her something to eat, the sputter of gaslight. Faint, far off, distant, almost a dream. That was just before the Baumers had taken her to Albany, because she had satisfied them that she could work. There was the sweet taste of bread and ham and milk in her mouth, and the pungent odor of garlic and vinegar in her nostrils, and the dingy, dismal past was all about her, including the clamor of the orphan asylum, the endless floors to be scoured, the harsh smell of soapsuds and dirty water in pails, the ugly feel of a scrubbrush against her fingers.

Tears ran around the edges of her eyelids. She smiled unsteadily. “Why, yes,” she said. “I do remember now. You were awfully good to a little girl.” Her eyes widened. “And you had a tree! And there was the tree they cut down at the orphanage! Eddie!”

They did not see Mr. Erhlich in the doorway, gaping at them, stupefied. Mr. Erhlich was in confusion. He had left this room in haste, because of the huge hostility in it, the baffling hostility, and here they were now, smiling at each other and holding hands and the girl had just cried, “Eddie!”

“You said I was an Eddie,” Edward was saying.

“It was a long time ago,” said the girl. “I never thought of it after we left here. I didn’t want to remember anything about Waterford.” Her voice was stammering. “When we lived in Albany, near Albany on a farm, the Baumers were nicer to me. I worked awfully hard. Mr. Baumer was nicer than—Anyway, they adopted me years later. They left me a lot of money—” Her hand clung to Edward’s involuntarily, and she was looking up into his eyes like a child. “I must have remembered a little, though. When I met David, I—I liked him. He seemed to remind me of somebody, somebody who—I know, now, it was you. You were the first person who had ever been kind to me—”

A pool of pure light shone under her chin, the reflection of the sun. But, to Edward, it seemed like a thing belonging to her alone, an emanation of her, just as the full blueness of her eyes were hers, shining on him behind a mist of tears. He could not look away from her. He stroked her hand and she leaned a little toward him.

“I never forgot, I never forgot,” he said, and he was young again and buoyant and full of joy. “I’ve looked for you in every woman I’ve seen.” Quite simply he raised his free hand and touched her cheek, and it was the hand of a loving husband whose wife had returned from a long journey.

Well, thought Mr. Erhlich. Well. This is very curious, very.

He was quite dumfounded when Edward put his hand under Margaret’s elbow and she rose with implicit obedience and sweetness and walked out with him. They passed Mr. Erhlich as if he were not there. They were looking only at each other.

CHAPTER VI

“But what shall I do about David?” asked Margaret, troubled. “How can we keep from hurting him?”

She set David’s last letter to her on the stiffly white and glimmering tablecloth in the dining room of the Whitney House. Edward and she had been sitting there having lunch for over two hours, Edward completely forgetting, for the first time, that he had a board meeting which had already been in session for half an hour without his presence. Most of the midday diners had gone, and with them their long and inquisitive stares at the engrossed man and young woman who occupied this table in a far corner. The spring sun filled the big dining room, melted brownly on its paneled walls, sifted on its thick crimson rug, sparkled on its silver and chandeliers, and enameled the edges of chairs and plates.

It had been understood from the moment that Edward and Margaret had left the bank together that they were not only in love but loved each other, had always loved each other, and that they would be married very soon. It had been understood without declarations, questions, or doubts. It was love at its most tranquil yet most sensual; it was embedded in them like their own hearts; it was a fact that neither questioned nor hesitated over; it was not a marvel or a miracle. It had existed from all time. If Margaret’s face suddenly shone with radiance and shyness, it was not because of discovery but of fulfillment and consummated happiness. From the moment she had finally recognized Edward he had become as familiar to her as her own face, and she knew him as she knew herself. She did not speak shyly, as to a loved stranger, but with confidence and trust, as to one known all her life, from whom she had been briefly parted.

And so it was with Edward. He had wondered, a little contemptuously, at the precipitousness of Padraig’s marriage to Maggie McNulty. Now he understood. Love had its own instant recognition, its own decisions, its own mysterious acceptances. It did not need years for growth; that was only affection. Love was never astonished at itself.

Never before in all his life had Edward spoken to another in absolute faith that he would be understood, that he had no need for explanations or wariness, that he need not withdraw before some imminent incomprehension. Margaret knew exactly what he meant when he spoke, and he knew exactly what she meant by a glance, a smile, or a word. He was released from a confinement of spirit which had always been with him from his first consciousness of his self. He now possessed a freedom he had not known existed. His mother, Maria, had made only one comment when she had learned of Padraig’s marriage: “And so he is free.” He had thought it a ridiculous remark; marriage was bondage, not liberty. Now he saw that to love was to have freedom in its most mystic sense, and that a man who did not love was a prisoner.

They had talked with each other for two hours, and they did not remember of what they talked. The communication had been perfect, serene and content. Edward felt an enormous sense of well-being, buoyancy, and health. He had not known that he was lonely. Now he understood that he had always been lonely, and waiting, and deprived, until today. Sometimes he would touch Margaret’s hand across the table, and she would smile at him with simple delight, and he would think, I knew all the time that she was somewhere. Why, I prayed for her a long time.

It was when Margaret had extended David’s letter to Edward that the first discord appeared. But it was not a discord between him and Margaret. It was an intrusion and a problem that both must settle. Edward frowned at the letter and hesitated. “You’re sure you want me to read this, Margaret?”

“That is why I’m giving it to you,” she answered, surprised. “You have to know everything. I met him in New York before I left for Europe. It was at a party given me by a friend, the lawyer who manages my—parents’—estate. David had been invited to play. There were a lot of people there. He played beautifully.”

She sighed. “I thought, and still think, that David is one of the most interesting and handsome men I’ve ever met.” She looked up and twinkled at Edward. “Outside of you, of course, you shaggy brute. Stop glowering. And I think David is extremely sensitive. And unhappy.”

Edward settled back in his chair. His face had hardened. “Unhappy? Why should he be unhappy? I’ve worked for him all the days of my life; he’s never been denied anything. He’s had the best money can buy in the way of teachers and clothing. He has what he wants.”

Margaret’s gilt brows drew together in anxious sympathy. “I don’t know if that’s what he wants, Ed. I think he wants something else.”

Edward, for the first time in over two hours, felt the old hot constriction in his throat and chest. “Then why didn’t he say so, for God’s sake? I would have worked just as hard to give him what he wanted—if he had wanted something else.”

You believe that, my darling, thought Margaret, sadly, with the wisdom of love. But it is not true. I can see it in your face.

“He was the musical genius of the family,” Edward went on, in a tight voice. “I bought his first piano. I gave up all my youth for him and the others. I suppose he never mentioned that to you?”

“Yes,” said Margaret, with deepening sadness. “He told me all about it. Ed, David has a strong—affection for you—and pity.”

“Pity?” exclaimed Edward, with strong violence and humiliation. “For what?” He had darkly flushed. “Because I’m a success and have made his success possible?”

“It’s hard to explain,” said Margaret, in a low tone. “David didn’t quite explain it, himself. Perhaps he couldn’t. Please don’t be angry with him, Ed. Perhaps I was wrong; he wasn’t pitying himself, and he wasn’t insulting you with his compassion for you. I got the idea, somehow, that he felt that you had been deprived in some way. And he was sorry.”

“He was always a fragile soul,” said Edward contemptuously.

He had forgotten, for two hours, that David was in love with Margaret and that David wanted to marry her. Now he remembered, and he was betrayed again.

He added, “What do you think he wanted, if he wanted something else besides the thing he said he always wanted, as long as I remember?” His light eyes jumped with inner rage.

“He didn’t say,” replied Margaret. “Perhaps I just imagined it. I only know that he seemed unhappy and that he didn’t mingle much with the people. We began to talk together; he looked familiar to me in a way, and, as I said before, it was because of my memory of you. I—I was drawn to him. He’s very silent, isn’t he? I did most of the talking. After that night, I met him in other places. He always sent me notices of his concerts, and I went, of course. I liked him very much,” she added with simplicity.

Edward said nothing. He did not look at Margaret; he stared at the silver knife in his hand. He did not know that he was holding it by the handle and that he was making small stabbing motions with it. But Margaret saw and understood, and she was alarmed. Her new and total peace ripped apart.

“I never loved David,” she said quickly. “I was fond of him, yes. And I’ve been terribly lonely all my life. When I knew that David was beginning to love me, I was grateful; no one ever did before. I asked him for time. And that’s why I want you to read his letter, Ed dear. After all, he is your brother.”

The taste of hatred was like a corrosion in Edward’s mouth. Again, watching him, Margaret was afraid, and again she shrank. Then Edward pushed away David’s letter with the point of his knife, and it was so quick and so violent a movement that it was like a deadly attack. “I don’t want to read it,” he said.

“Have I said something to offend you?” she asked, in consternation. “I didn’t mean it. I gave you the letter and you didn’t mind reading it, and then all of a sudden you’ve turned like this.”

Edward looked at her and saw her distress. “Never mind,” he said, trying to smile. How to explain to this girl that he felt like a cuckolded husband or a husband whose wife had been grossly insulted? “I just think that reading Dave’s letter to you would be an invasion of his privacy.”

She was relieved. His smile was not reassuring, but his words were. “You’re probably right,” she said. “It was bad taste on my part to give you the letter. I just thought that we shouldn’t have any secrets between us. You see, David knew I was coming to Waterford to sell the last property here of my parents. He asked me to get in touch with his family; he wanted me to know them all. Including you,” and she smiled gently. “Particularly you. He sends you all his regards.” She watched Edward and hesitated. The unhealthy flush on his broad and heavy face alarmed her. “He mentions he’s going to play in Carnegie Hall in a week. He’s arriving here tomorrow for a visit. He wanted me to tell you that. I had already told him that you wanted my two acres next to your house, and he said, ‘Then you’ll see old Ed right away, by himself. And that’s very good. He’s different when he’s with the family.’ You see, dear, he wanted me to like you.”

Edward threw the knife from him. “He didn’t tell you, of course, that it’s costing me a fortune to have him play at Carnegie Hall, at a benefit performance for a charity to which I’m contributing? And that it costs me a fortune in supplementary fees wherever he appears—because his agent can’t get him important engagements? And that he and his agent couldn’t survive on what he really gets?”

Margaret was stunned. “No, he didn’t tell me,” she stammered. What was wrong with Edward? What had she said to him to give him that murderous expression, and to light up his pale eyes with such fury? Then the mysterious intuition of love explained it all to her. She leaned toward him and said with quiet sternness, “Ed, does he himself know?”

He did not answer. But she understood. That anger, that exaggerated emotion, rose from bitter disappointment and mortification. She meditated. She remembered David’s performances with sudden clarity. He had played so perfectly, so brilliantly. But with no warmth, no real power, no color. It had troubled her. She had concluded that she really did not understand music very well.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, mournfully. “So terribly sorry.”

“For Dave?” His voice was loaded with affront.

“For both of you. But, perhaps, a little more for David. I think he knows his—limitations.”

“He hasn’t any! I’ve talked with his teachers. It’s his own deliberate doing that he’s a perfect mechanic. It’s his way of frustrating me. Just as the others do. Weaklings! That’s the only way, they think, of revenging themselves on me.”

“Revenge for what?” Her words were gentle but insistent, and her blue eyes fixed themselves on him.

“For giving them what they’ve always wanted, for them having been dependent on me.”

Then she, too, was angered, but not at Edward. He had given all his life to his brothers and sister. She had learned that from David himself. And in return they had given him ingratitude and frustration and contempt. Her compassion for David vanished in the fierce loyalty of love. Again she saw Edward’s shabbiness, and she erroneously concluded that he felt he could afford nothing for himself. The frayed edges of his cuffs, the limp condition of his old tie, stung her heart with grief. He had given of himself, and all his work, and had received nothing from anyone. Margaret’s hand reached out quickly, and her eyes filled with tears as she grasped his tense hand.

“Never mind, dear,” she said. “Never mind. You have me now. And we’ll never be lonely again, will we?”

He had deceived her, and he knew it, but in what way he had deceived he was not quite sure. At any rate, he had revenged himself on David. He took her hand and forgot everyone else but Margaret, and when he smiled it was a smile of rich exaltation again.

“Do you realize, Margaret, that we’re going to be married and we haven’t even kissed each other yet?”

It had been agreed between them that Margaret would tell David the next night that she could not marry him, but that she would not speak to him of Edward. Margaret had had doubts about this; it seemed like an unnecessary falseness to her.

“It’s not falseness or deception,” Edward had said before they had parted. He spoke reasonably and with an air of fairness, though there was something about his smile which disturbed Margaret. “Just think about it a minute, darling. He comes to you for a definite answer, and you blurt out you’re going to marry his brother. When did you meet his brother? Oh, just yesterday. Dave’s not a complete fool. You wouldn’t be able to blame him for not understanding. So we’ll wait a month or so and then be quietly married. Perhaps in Albany, perhaps in New York.”

“Without your family being present at all?”

“Why should they be?”

Margaret had a few answers to this, but she was now so bemused and enthralled and joyous that the answers immediately seemed foolish.

She was occupying the very same suite that Maggie McNulty and Mary Garrity had occupied, and it was in the little brown parlor that she received David when he came to get his answer the next night. He entered the room, and again she was struck with admiration for his elegance, poise, and grace. Yet, at the same time, he appeared too tenuous to her, in comparison with Edward, too polished, too without virility. And she resented his fine clothing, his jeweled cuff links, the pearl-and-diamond pin in his excellent tie, his narrow handmade boots. These Edward denied for himself, in order that his family might have luxuries, she thought, bitterly.

David, the extremely sensitive, felt this elusiveness, this withdrawal. He was bewildered, and his spirits sank and his whole impressionable nature was disturbed. He took Margaret’s hand and felt its unresponsiveness. She had never seemed so beautiful and so desirable to him, and he had come to her for the warmth and gentleness and sympathy he remembered and which had alleviated the awful loneliness which he always suffered. Yet now her eyes were half averted, her coral lips set, her manner distant. She’s decided not to marry me, thought David, and he was overwhelmed with sorrow and despair.

“Do sit down, David,” she said. “I’ve ordered tea.”

David sat down. He had come in smiling with that half-shy, half-haughty eagerness of his which had originally attracted and moved her. Now he was looking at her, she saw, with pleading concentration. The taut skin over his fine cheekbones had become very pale under its darkness. In turn, he was apprehensively studying her tender mouth and her lovely coloring and the gleam of blue under her gilt lashes. A soft spring rain was falling outside, and the scent of living fragrance blew in through the opened windows, and it seemed to David that that fragrance was part of this girl he loved. He said to himself, Why, I’ve never loved anyone before. He wanted to stop the words he dreaded to hear from her, and so in pathetic haste he said, “I’ve been thinking of you every minute, Margaret, and counting the time until I could see you again.”

She was touched, and vexed with herself that she was touched. She began, “David.” He broke in, “I’ve told my parents about you. I have a note here from my mother, asking you to have dinner with us tomorrow night. Margaret, will you come?”

She suddenly blushed. The pink tide rose from her throat and covered her face. She stammered, “What did you tell your family about me?”

“That I loved you and wanted to marry you,” he replied, and moved to the edge of his chair as if to get up. She looked fully at him now, in distress. “Do you mind? Was I too hasty?”

But Margaret was preoccupied with her rapid thoughts. “You say your family, David. You mean, just your parents know?”

“No. I told them all at dinner last night. My sister Sylvia, my brother Ed, and my parents.”

Margaret looked down at the hands she had clenched together in her lap. She wore a dress of light blue silk lace and it moved agitatedly over her breast. She had never seemed so beautiful and so precious to the lonely David. “Your—sister—and your—brother—what did they say?” she asked faintly.

She hadn’t protested, she hadn’t said no! Hope lifted again in David. “Well,” he said, with his reluctant half-laugh, “Sylvia’s been ill, as I told you, and it’s made her bitter and cynical. It must have been a nervous breakdown. She made some flippant remark and then apologized. You see, Sylvia and I have always had a lot in common and have understood each other. My father looked happy but uncertain. He was never very certain about anything as long as I remember. He’s always been overawed by Mother and her—pretensions. And then Ed had bullied him all his life. Mother? I’ve never understood my mother, except that she’s ambitious and has pride of family. She was interested; she asked me a number of questions about you. She—”

The blush had intensified on Margaret’s face. She interrupted, “And your brother Ed. What did he say?”

David frowned, trying to remember. His black eyes narrowed. “I don’t think he said anything, and that’s odd, for he always has an opinion and it’s usually dogmatic. He just looked at me as if he was very interested. Yes. And he smiled. Ed rarely smiles pleasantly. And this wasn’t one of the exceptions.”

“And he didn’t say anything?”

“No. Does it matter?”

Margaret was silent. She swallowed against a lump of dry anger, and this anger was directed against Edward for the first time. He had had his opportunity, then, to speak for himself, but he had not spoken. She tried to control her emotions. After all, Edward probably had had some consideration for his brother, she told herself, struggling against her indignation. Yes, yes, that was it. She sighed in relief.

“Does he know about your mother’s invitation to me, David?”

“Yes. In fact, he did say something after I had finished telling the family about you, dear. It was the first and last remark he made.” David was all at once agreeably surprised. “To be perfectly truthful, it was Ed who suggested to Mother that she invite you tomorrow night.”

“No!” cried Margaret, and she stood up in her agitation at this enormity and implied cruelty. She was struck with pain and confusion. How was it possible for a man to do this to his brother? Her eyes shimmered with tears. But of one thing she was sure: she would not meet Edward’s family the next night. No, not so soon!

David rose, bewildered. “‘No,’ what, Margaret? Won’t you come?” He was full of dread and sorrow again. “I’d hoped you would. Ed said nothing about meeting you today, but he’s always so busy.”

I never want to see Ed again! the girl thought passionately, gazing through her tears at David and feeling the hurt of compassion at her heart. But she knew she was lying to herself. She pressed her lips together, and again looked for an excuse for Edward, as she would look for excuses the rest of her life. He was a direct man. He wanted her to meet his parents. In some way he was planning to clear the situation between her and David once and for all. Yes, that must be it, there could be no other explanation! Yet how blunt he was, how impatient! She found herself smiling a little. He hoped, apparently, that she would play her part, too. But she did not know what her part was to be.

“I’ll come, David,” she said.

He smiled happily and his tired face shone. He took her hand and did not feel the slight resistance. Before he could speak she continued rapidly, “I’m sorry, though, that you made any—announcement—about—about us. I don’t know you well enough, David. You were awfully premature. I haven’t given you much encouragement, have I? You should have asked me first.”

But David was certain now. Margaret was only showing a woman’s natural modesty and reticence. He waited until she sat down again, and he saw the soft silk mold itself around her body in exquisite lines. The lamplight glittered on her curling, light brown hair, and lay along the curve of her chin and cheek radiantly. Then he said, “Perhaps I did speak too fast, dear. But, you see, I can’t imagine living without you.”

She turned her head quickly toward him. “David! You mustn’t say that!”

Her color left her face, and the blueness of her eyes became intense with a return of her distress. “I never told you I’d marry you. We’ve been very good friends. I listened when you suggested marriage—”

He was shaken again. “You didn’t refuse me, Margaret.” He looked into her eyes, bending over her to hold her attention. “You know you didn’t. You asked for time. Perhaps I haven’t given you enough time.” He wanted to touch her, to hold her, to kiss her, and the desire was almost more than he could endure. “It’s just that I haven’t given you enough time, isn’t it? That’s all it is, isn’t it, Margaret? You do like me, don’t you?” His voice broke.

She was sick with her compassion and her guilt. She put out her hand impulsively and rested it on the black broadcloth of his sleeve. She could feel the thinness of his bones and flesh under the material, and she bit her lip to keep from bursting out crying. “Yes, David, I do like you. I’ll always like you. But,” and she began to stammer, “I don’t think I love you, David. I don’t think I ever will.”

He moved away from her slowly, and she saw his misery and anguish. He stood in profile to her, his head bent, his mouth drawn and pale and sunken. She wanted to console him, and cried out, “Don’t look like that, David! I’ll go and meet your parents tomorrow. I want to meet them. Oh, sit down, David. Let’s talk, at least, as we always did, as friends.”

He turned quickly and saw the tears on her lashes, and he hoped again. “I’ve frightened you, dear, haven’t I? But I loved you from the very first time we met, in New York. I’ve been pretty wretched most of my life, and then there you were, and I had a friend. I felt I’d known you forever. No, please let me finish, and then we’ll talk about other things. I’m willing to give you as much time as you want, Margaret, if you’ll just give me a little encouragement.”

“I can’t,” she whispered, and twisted her hands together in her lap. “I honestly can’t, David.”

“I’ll wait,” he pleaded. “Years, if necessary.” Then he paused, ill with a powerful premonition. “Margaret, there isn’t anyone else, is there? You told me, weeks ago, that there wasn’t.”

“There is,” she said, despairingly. “I’m terribly sorry, David, but there is. I met him—recently.”

He sat down abruptly. “I can’t believe it, Margaret! I got your last letter only a week ago. You didn’t mention it then. You couldn’t just have met another man in the last few days—”

“I did.”

“But you’ve accepted my mother’s invitation!”

What did Ed want her to do? He knew his brother was visiting her tonight. He knew that David would speak urgently. She put her hand to her forehead and rubbed it in a stronger agitation than before. David was staring at her, disbelieving, and waiting.

“We’ve been good friends,” she faltered. “And I thought—I thought perhaps I’d like to meet your family. I think I’ve made a mistake in accepting.”

There was something here he did not understand, David reflected. Something too baffling to understand. “Do I know the man?” he asked, and his face was full of suffering.

Margaret was quiet. She dropped her eyes, for she could not bear looking at David. If she lied to him now, that would be unpardonable. He would hate her all his life, afterwards. She did not want him to hate her, not Edward’s brother! Such a thing could cause bitter enmity in a family forever. So she said, “Yes, you know him. But do we have to talk about this now, please?”

“I think so,” he said. He still could not believe it. It was true that he had loved Margaret from the first moment he had seen her, and he did not reject the idea that another man might have the same reaction. But Margaret was reserved, he remembered. It hardly seemed possible that she would have an overwhelming passion for anyone met so recently. He had detected, in the very beginning, a kind of fear and remoteness in her, a shyness and unsurety, such as were in himself and which had originally drawn them together in mute comprehension.

“I don’t know many people in spite of my touring,” he said, pleadingly. “I can’t remember any man we’ve met together who might interest you, Margaret. You always seemed so distant and uninterested in people.”

“I told you I met him recently!” Margaret cried. “David, do let me alone.”

But his love and grief made him relentless. “Someone I know. Do I know him well? You owe that much to me, to tell me, Margaret.”

Yes, she owed him that, she acknowledged, dejectedly. Her meetings with him, the long hours she had spent with him in pleasant affection, her implied acceptance of him, though hesitant, in all her letters, the hope she had given him, the comfort she had offered him when he was most dispirited, were debts of the utmost urgency.

“Yes, David, you know him well. No, I can’t tell you his name, not yet.”

“Why not?”

She was silent. She did not know that tears were running over her pale cheeks. She did not move or start when he gently took her hand. “Don’t cry, dear,” he said, with great tenderness and with pity for her misery. He wanted only to comfort her now. “If you don’t want to tell me, it’s all right. But I can’t believe it, Margaret. It’s probably only a passing infatuation. You aren’t the kind to fall in love with someone all at once, without knowing everything about him. And so I’ll go on hoping, if you’ll let me, and I’ll go on hoping, even if you won’t let me.”

She looked at his hand, the long sensitive fingers, the whitened knuckles, and she could feel his love for her and his desire to console and protect her from her own pain.

He could hardly hear her when she spoke. “David, I’ve not just met him. I’ve known him almost all my life, since I was ten years old. I must tell you that. He was the first person who was ever kind to me. You know I lived in Waterford until the Baumers took me to that farm near Albany. I never forgot—him. I thought I did, but now I know I’ve been looking for him for over ten years. I did forget his name, except the first one, and when I saw him—I didn’t know him at first. But he remembered me.”

“A boy from the orphanage, Margaret?” His voice was very kind and steady.

“No, David. Not from the orphanage.”

“But if he remembered you, and you didn’t remember him, he must be too old for you. He must have been a man, even when you were a child.”

Her throat felt thick and stiff, and she was crying again. But honesty was one of her strongest characteristics. “He is about four or five years older than I am, David.” She closed her wet eyes. “And he told me that though he’d forgotten my name, too, he hadn’t forgotten me and had been looking for me everywhere. You mustn’t hate him, David. It’s terribly necessary for you not to hate him.”

“Why, Margaret?” he asked, quietly.

She did not answer him. Her hand lay in his like the hand of a desolate child. He began to think. Margaret had arrived in Waterford this morning. She had told him that she had never returned to this city before. The man lived in Waterford. Who had Margaret seen today? She had written him that she was to be here to settle her affairs and sell her two acres of land—the land his brother Edward had wanted.

A sudden and intolerable blow struck at David’s heart. A sudden and intolerable knowledge which made him open his mouth in an expression of agony. He dropped her hand, and both his hands fell slackly between his knees. Not Ed! Oh, God, not Ed, his brother! Anyone else but Ed, please God, anyone else but Ed! He swallowed convulsively. He had the wildest thought that his head was flying apart in splinters and that each splinter was a fragment of anguish. No, no! Ed was not the only person she had met today. She could have seen, encountered, dozens of men. He, David, could stand anyone but Ed, anyone at all, and feel that he had escaped some terror. He would be grieved, but grief would be a relief, if it was someone else but his brother.

Margaret opened her eyes and she knew at once what he suspected, and she was overcome. She jumped to her feet as if to run, to run from the sight of this young and stricken man who loved her and who had guessed. She even caught up her skirts in the instinct for flight. And so when David raised his eyes and saw her in that position, saw her fear and her pallor, her desperate expression, he knew without any doubt.

He stood slowly. He stretched out his hands and took her shoulders in them. She was trembling, and the trembling passed from his hands to his arms and then to his whole body, and he trembled in reply.

“Where did you meet Ed for the first time, Margaret?”

She tried to pull away from him, but he tightened his hands, and she had no strength to resist or struggle. He was looking at her with a most terrible intensity, and his eyes were stark and bright.

“In your father’s shop,” she whispered. “When I was ten years old. He gave me something to eat. I was hungry.”

She had betrayed Ed after all, and he would never forgive her. She sobbed weakly and felt almost crushed under the weight of David’s gripping hands. Even when he dropped his hands and turned away from her, she could still feel that weight.

“I didn’t want to hurt you, David, believe me, I didn’t want to hurt you!” she cried. “Please believe me.”

“And he knew all the time, all the time, while I was talking tonight,” said David in a sick and wondering tone. “And he never said a word. And he suggested that you come to dinner. Why? Why did he do that to me? Why didn’t he say something about you and him? That you’d met today?”

So, in spite of all that she had done, David hated her and his brother. The hatred would last forever. David would forget what he owed Edward; David would forget a lifetime of sacrifice in his behalf. To spite Edward, he might repudiate him and go his own way, and destroy all Edward’s work. Margaret’s frantic thoughts were like a scattering of terrorized birds.

“You’re unfair, you’re cruel!” Margaret exclaimed in frenzy. “Do you think he wanted to do this to you? We talked it over for hours today! I gave him your letter, but he wouldn’t read it. He asked me not to tell you about us; he just wanted me to discourage you, and then after a while we would be married quietly, after you had forgotten all about me. That’s why he didn’t speak tonight. It was you he was thinking about!”

David stared down at his feet. He was sick to the point of violent nausea. “I suppose you believe that, Margaret. Yes, I suppose you believe that. I’m sorry, but I don’t. You see, I know all about Ed now. I think I always knew, and that’s why I am sorry for him.”

“You never knew anything about him, none of you!” Margaret was scarlet with anger and resentment. “You never even tried to know! He gave all of you his whole life, and you repaid him with contempt, and took all he had to give!”

David raised his eyes and looked at her with a strange, long look. “I suppose you believe that, Margaret,” he repeated. “For, you see, he believes that himself. We weren’t angels; we were worse than he was. I’m not condoning anything. But now we’re his prisoners, and we can’t get away, because we haven’t any courage. None of us. He took our courage away from us.”

Her face was high and colored with indignation and scorn. He shook his head. “You don’t understand yet, Margaret. Perhaps you’ll never understand. I hope you won’t, anyway.”

He took his mother’s invitation from his pocket and tore it up, with absorbed concentration. Then he neatly deposited the fragments on the table and lifted his coat and hat from a chair. “He wanted you to come tomorrow night. I see that now. He wanted to gloat in himself. Don’t come, Margaret. I’ll go away the day after tomorrow. Don’t come for some time. You owe that to me, at the very least.”

He walked to the door, graceful and outwardly poised as always, in spite of the livid bitterness, on his face and the poignancy in his eyes. He stopped at the door and the lamplight glimmered on his smooth black hair as he turned his head.

“What Ed has done to me shows how much he despises me. But he doesn’t despise me as much as I despise myself. I hope that’ll be some comfort to you in the future, Margaret.”

CHAPTER VII

William MacFadden sat with his employer in Edward’s extravagant office. His shoulders were shrugged up in his expensive brown suit, which he had bought on Saville Row in London. The suit was shaggy, and he resembled a fox more than ever as he fixed his vital hazel eyes on Edward and rumpled his tawny hair with his lean fingers.

“Time is running out, boyo,” he said. “You see the shadows all over Europe. My M.P. friend is right. War. Bally marching feet. You hear them against the music in Vienna and the silly laughing of the blooming dancers. Gamboling’s over. Prancing in the moonlight. Cavorting around the Maypoles. Picking the damned daisies in the fields. Picnics under the oaks. Peace, and beer in the gardens of the Gasthaus. Nights at the opera and ladies calling the next day with cards, rolling around in their carriages. Thatched roofs in the sun, and manor houses filled with graciousness. Freedom. Kids running. Leisure. Good will to men. The workingman coming home at sunset, swinging his basket or his pail, and waiting to buss the missus. The peasant in his fields, lifting his back and listening to the Angelus. It’s all over, laddie. Over, I’m thinking, forever.”

Edward listened gloomily and with resistance. “Why should the world give up order for war, and freedom for slavery, as you’ve said? The world isn’t populated by idiots.”

“That, my innocent, is an error. A ruddy error. The world’s got more idiots in it now than ever before in history. Modern medicine keeps the idiots alive, to perpetuate themselves. The plagues used to clear ’em out, and the germy dirt. Now they beget, they with their blind eyes and their deaf ears. Century of the Idiots. Man’s historical enemy, his government—ah, and it’ll be riding to the hounds very soon! With a heigh-ho and away we go! And the multitudes of the idiots stumbling along behind, rattling their chains meekly, giving up their liberty, which they didn’t want anyway, for something the Engels and the Marxes call security. What was it your Benjamin Franklin said, to the effect that a man who gives up his freedom for a little temporary security deserves neither freedom nor security? His race is dead, laddie, dead as a turnip in the soup. Now you have the Common Man, and may the saints help us!”

Edward said stubbornly, “You Europeans are all alike. The status quo. There has to be progress—”

“Progress to what?” asked William, shaking his vulpine head. “If a man goes on a journey, he knows where he is going. Sure, and the murderers know where they are going! Europeans, you say. No. America, too, America of the baseball and the football and the peaceful band concerts on Sunday evenings and the new jazz and the restricted government and the supreme faith in every blinking thing. The murderers are here, too, in your blessed country, boyo. How the hell, otherwise, did it happen that America is the only country in the world that adopted Marx’s prescription for the overthrow of capitalistic society—the graduated income tax? Oh, and it’s saying you are that the tax is small! But wait a bit! The government, that bloody enemy of men, gets its sticky fingers in your pocket and takes a farthing one day, a bob the next, a quid the next, and then all your cash, and then all your freedom’s gone and it’s bars and bolted doors for you if you try to keep your property. Property’s tied up with liberty; read your own Constitution! Property goes,” and he threw out his hands, “and liberty goes. Cotton-wool cells for the idiots, in the name of security. And confiscation and jails for the men of freedom. An old story, old as death. Reaction. Jacobins. Guillotines, the hangman’s rope. Despotism. Liberty’s new in the world, and the plotters are afraid of it. Government is ancient, and it takes its directives from hell.

“And now the curtain goes up, today, tomorrow, on the last push of the despots. War. Been too much confounded liberty in the world; mankind’s feeling its oats. It’s got to be stopped. The Common Man. He’s got to be put in his place, and he’ll go there, with the carrot dangled before his nose. Willingly. So it’s war and taxes and the end of property and freedom, and the despots are chortling in advance, now, in every bloody capital in the world.”

“If it’s that simple, the people will know.”

“And how’ll they know?” asked William, cunningly, leaning forward like a fox sniffing game. “Oh, it’s the fine high slogans they’ll be given, the words of angels used by devils. Defending the homeland. Freedom. Patriotism. Rescue of the enslaved. Destruction of tyrants. And the drums and the fifes and the banners aflying! Don’t forget them, lad. They’re potent. Let a man hear a drum and it’s off to any cursed war at all. Jungle instincts. The despots know about those instincts. They’re scoundrels, but they’ve got the wisdom of Satan in their black hearts.”

He lit a cigarette and rolled it between his nicotine-stained fingers and narrowed his eyes on Edward. “The straw men are already up. The Kaiser, the Tsar, your President Wilson, the nobs in their country houses, the bad industrialist who grinds the faces of the poor, the vested interests—all the straw men. But who’s peering through the false faces? The old, old despots, licking their lips and slavering.”

Edward was silent. Watching him, William smoked rapidly. He said, “You’ve heard of President Wilson’s New Freedoms. A man of mind, but a scholar with his head in the rosebushes and his hands full of pansies. Who invented the New Freedoms? Not Squire Wilson, who loves essays and Plato and the odor of learning and books in leather covers, and dreams that mankind stands on its hind legs. It was invented by the same men who invented Germanitum and Socialism and Fabianism. Ah, they’ve got no quarrel among themselves, the fiends! They know what they’re after, and they’re one together, whether they speak German or French or Russian or English. No quarrels in hell.”

“All right,” said Edward, impatiently. “What can I do about it?”

William reflected, wrinkling his eyes together. “You’ve got cash. Get in politics with it, standing behind the few men who already know the plot. Subsidize men who write for peace. Help others who’ll come up, crying they want no war for America. There’ll be societies of thinking men; join ’em. Fight for America with the bankbook. There’ll be exposures of the plot; give the exposers the quid with both hands. You can’t go out in the marketplace yourself; help those who can. I’m not saying, mind you, that it’ll keep America out of wars. But it will, though I doubt it, keep Americans aware of what’s really happening in the world, and perhaps it will move the naïve idiots to put manacles on their government. But I doubt it. However, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you’ve done what you could, and the hope that someday there’ll be liberty again. Casting seed, you’ll be doing, for future generations.”

Edward suddenly thought of the vast amounts of munitions stock he held. George Enreich had known a long time ago, and had urged this stock on his protégé. Edward frowned. He rubbed his lips with his fingers.

“I’ve seen Ralph,” said William, still watching his employer. “I’ve told him to run for it. Better put the clamps on the checkbook. Bring him home. Can’t be too soon. Hell will explode this summer. And isn’t Dave in Berlin? Bring him home.”

“Stop crying havoc,” said Edward, but he leaned across his desk and made a note in his sharp and angular handwriting. William nodded, satisfied. He noticed that the mention of David’s name had cleft two deep lines between Edward’s thick black eyebrows. Edward said, abstractedly, “I’ve been reading a lot lately about Eugene Debs and Victor Berger. And Patterson and Lawrence.”

William nodded. “Sure, and they know. Put on the armor, boyo. Drop the visor. Rub up the steel. Sound the trumpets from the battlements. The legions of hell are on the move.” He seemed to lose his alert tawniness, his freckles, his dry facial lines, and his gaiety. With a few eloquent and deft gestures he was suddenly a knight in armor, tall and heroic, plumed and horsed, with a lance in his mailed fist, a lance tipped with a bright standard and blowing in an unheard wind.

Edward shook his head and laughed. “What an actor,” he said. “For a moment there I could see you digging in your spurs and hear the trumpets. But I want to know about Ralph. You saw him. How’s his painting progressing?”

William gave him a shrewd glance. “Beefy,” he said. “Pink as a damned rosebud. Painting. Nice little bit of twist he’s got for a model now. Violette. No flaws; excellent lines; good colors.” He made a smacking sound.

“The model or the painting?”

“Both,” said William. “That’s the trouble. No flaws. Where’s there a painter chappie without flaws? It makes an artist.”

Edward flung his pen from him with a clatter. He drew in his heavy lips. “That’s the matter with all of them. As you say, no flaws. Perfection. Technique. No accent. No vitality. Goddamn it! Craftsmen, that’s what they are. And absolutely stupid.”

“They haven’t lived yet,” said William, not liking the sudden and dusky color on Edward’s face. “Give them time. Give everybody time.”

Edward furiously opened his desk drawer and brought out his checkbook and struck it with a hard fist. “Time! Time’s my life, my money. How long do I have to support these parasites?”

William stood up. “Only as long as you want, laddie, only as long as you want. And you’ll be wanting it forever, I’m thinking. You’ll not be letting them get away from you.” He lifted up a lean and prehensile hand. “I refuse to be sacked. You’ve sacked me every time I gave you my opinion, and then there’s been a few more quid in my pocket afterwards. You can’t afford it. So I’ll be off talking to your manager just now, and you won’t think. No, laddie, you won’t think.”

Edward was driven in his limousine through the cobbled streets of Waterford in the late May sunset. Even in his dull and intense preoccupation and chronic anger he was aware of the softness of the early evening, of the sweetness of lilacs and honeysuckle drifting from lush backyards and the fragrance of cut grass. Children were playing on the streets, under the new green trees. Hopscotch. Ball. Jumping rope. Jacks. Marbles. The braids and ribbons of the little girls plopped on their active backs. The little boys ran and shrilled. Wistaria was climbing in purple plumes over old porches. The thick white candles of chestnuts blew in a gentle wind. Men were coming home in work clothes, carrying pails, and they moved quicker in spite of their weariness, and smiled or shouted at the children, or stopped to study their small patches of lawn. Women talked on stoops, aprons tucked over their plump arms. Beyond the trees the western sky burned in scarlet and gold and magenta, and above the conflagration a silver star pulsed alone.

It was on such a street that he had known his early childhood and youth. For the first time in all the years since, he felt nostalgia instead of his usual anger. He forgot, for a moment or two, the crowded years of his young life, the bitterness, the weary days, the suppressed rage and depressions, the silent revolts. He could even imagine that his boyhood had been rich and carefree, filled with promise, and that he had played as these children now played, blithe and joyous and content. Now he was a man, anxious and uneasy and filled with premonitions and angry doubts. But then, he thought, in those days I didn’t carry such a burden as I’m carrying now. I had time to be an entity.

The streets were peaceful. It was impossible to believe that anything menaced this peace, this freedom, this American contentment, this American hope and virility. Nothing sinister lay in the long red beams of the sun as it illuminated the boughs and coppered the leaves of the trees. The little lawns seemed to quiver with green vitality. Kitchen windows lit up, one by one. There was an odor of corned beef and cabbage, of roasting pork, of good soup, drifting out of open doors. Someone was playing a gramophone, and the metallic music and lilting voice clamored on the warm air. A train wailed in the distance, and a streetcar rattled and rang. Peace had a power greater than war. America lay in peace as a happy man lay in summer waters, dreaming.

“To hell with William, the damned male Cassandra,” said Edward, aloud, to the glass which separated him from his chauffeur. “Who would we fight, and why?”

He suddenly rapped on the glass, and it slid aside. “Henry, stop at that next corner for a few minutes. In front of the church and parsonage.”

The car slowly wheeled to a halt and Edward got out. He gazed at the church critically, and was pleased. His gifts to Father Jahle had made an enormous improvement in the building, a small church but fine and secure in its little lawns. He thought of the altar he had bought for the priest, and the statues, and the red carpet in the aisles. He guessed that the great gilded cross on the steeple had been bought by George Enreich, and that William MacFadden had had a hand in the purchasing of the new pews and the bells. But the parsonage remained cramped and drab and badly in need of repairs. Gifts of money were invariably spent by Father Jahle on the parochial school and the playground adjoining. It was useless to demand that he spend the money on his rectory or for good food for himself or on even necessary clothing. As a result, one of the vans of C. C. Chauncey’s stopped every Monday with a huge load of groceries and delicacies, and even then Edward vexedly guessed that much of this fine offering went to “the more deserving” in Father Jahle’s parish.

Edward fumed, thinking of all this, and then he climbed the scabrous steps of the little parsonage and pulled the bell rope. Mrs. Jahle, the priest’s mother, as tall, thin, and starved as himself, and with the very emaciated but shining face of her son and his own large and tender eyes, smiled joyously as she saw Edward. Her gray gingham dress was the color of her thin hair and hung on her slatlike body in folds. Her white apron was stiff and spotless. She shyly gave Edward her hand. The Father was in the garden, tending his precious roses, which he cultivated for the altars. She would call him. Edward sat down in the dark and narrow little parlor, with its horsehair furniture, its cold and tiny fireplace, its dimmed windows over which patched white curtains had been drawn. The old house had a dank and chilly atmosphere and gave off an odor of dust and age. The worn red carpet had been neatly darned, but it was as thin as paper. Edward was depressed; he had forgotten how wretched the parsonage was.

Father Jahle, whose clothing had been covered with a workman’s blue denim apron, came in, drying his thin hands on a towel. He was happily surprised to see Edward, who stood up and shook hands with him. Edward was not so happy. The priest had a hectic flush on his gaunt cheekbones, and his eyes were too bright, and his air of being beset and everlastingly tired had increased over the years. He was only forty, but his lank hair was gray. “Eddie!” he exclaimed. “I haven’t seen you for almost a year!” He held off the younger man and studied him, and still smiled, though he sighed. “You look well, thank God.”

He sat down and began to fill a very charred pipe with cheap tobacco. His eyes fixed themselves affectionately on his visitor, who was frowning.

“I wrote you about seeing a doctor, about six months ago,” said Edward. “Well?”

The priest blushed like a boy. “That was Christmas,” he said. “I couldn’t go then. And before I knew it, it was Easter. There’s nothing wrong with me, Eddie.”

“Nothing except starvation and overwork and worry,” replied Edward. “Now you listen to me. I don’t like that cough of yours. You’ll go to my doctor tomorrow or we won’t be friends any more. Is that understood?”

“Tomorrow there are confessions,” protested the priest.

“Then you’ll go tonight. Here’s my card. He has office hours between seven and nine. Give him my card. He’ll take care of you.”

The priest turned the card about in his fingers and looked troubled. He hesitated. Then he lifted his eyes and they were filmed with tears. He said simply, “Eddie, I can’t leave my church. If your doctor should find—if he should say I need a rest—it would be impossible. I am feeling much stronger.”

“Seven to nine, tonight,” replied Edward, inexorably. “Is that a promise?”

The priest was silent. He looked about the little parlor, where he had heard so much grief, so much despair, so much seeking, so much anguish. He could hear the faint and broken voices of those he had comforted, exhorted and brought into the light. He could not endure the thought of leaving this place even for his health, even for a little while.

“You might have something contagious, and that isn’t fair to your people,” said Edward. “It, isn’t fair to your church. What if what you have kills you? Then you won’t be coming back at all. Be sensible.”

“All right,” the priest said. His people came first, and then there were the children whom he might be endangering. Too, his bishop, a few months ago, had sternly asked him about his health. He had evaded his bishop. He had only a bad winter cough. He closed his eyes convulsively. What if it was tuberculosis? That would mean months in bed, endless treatment. Would his replacement understand his “children”? Would he be kind and forebearing and everlastingly patient?

Now that he had the priest’s promise, Edward stood up and restlessly prowled up and down the room. His bigness made it seem smaller and more confining than ever. Something is troubling him, thought the priest with anxiety. He remembered the young and buoyant Edward, who had been sure and hopeful and eager with sympathy. The priest, unlike others, did not believe that Edward’s basic personality had changed. He did feel certain that Edward’s burdens were too overpowering, that Edward was unknowingly ill in spite of his powerful physique, that Edward was full of chronic pain and frustration. His expression had hardened over the years; his eyes were no longer quick and interested, his voice lively. He looked somber now and almost brutal, and his gestures and voice had blunted and stiffened. Still, he has not changed in his soul, thought the priest. The world has just encrusted him with the stony calcium of responsibility and ingratitude and exigencies and unremitting work.

“Father,” said Edward abruptly, stopping in front of the priest. “I’m going to be married four weeks from today. To a girl I’ve known since I was fourteen.”

The priest brightened with pleasure. He seized Edward’s hand and pressed it. “God bless you both!” he said fervently. But Edward’s brooding expression did not change, and Father Jahle comprehended that Edward was only abstractedly thinking of his marriage and that he had come here today for some other reason than this announcement. “Do I know the young lady?” he asked.

Edward shook his head impatiently. “No. But you will when I bring her home from Albany. That isn’t why I came today, though. Father Jahle, you know George Enreich and William MacFadden well. They’ve been telling me there is going to be a war soon and that it will involve America. What do you think?”

Father Jahle dropped his eyes and poked at the bowl of his pipe with a match. He seemed distressed. “There is little in the papers,” he answered. “There is always some mention of the Balkans. But the Balkans are always seething.” He paused. Then he said, “I think there will be a war. I’ve been reading many books. There are the Secret Masters. But why should there be a war that will involve America?” he cried. “We’re too far away from Europe!” There was no conviction in his desperate cry.

Edward nodded gloomily. “I did hope that you’d laugh at the idea,” he said. He took up his hat and cane. “Father Jahle, the Church must know something. The Pope must know something. Why aren’t they doing what they can about this?”

“They are, Eddie. But if men overwhelmingly choose evil, what can the clergy do? Besides, there are always the liars, and the liars speak louder than God, and men prefer lies to truth. Eddie, if and when the grand assault comes, the Church will be the target of the sinister men, for so long as the Church endures, the spirit of men will endure, and a measure of virtue and faith and justice and a will to resist tyrants. That is why, in the conviction of the murderers, the Church must be destroyed.” He stood up, and his gaunt face glowed. “But the Church will never be destroyed! The destruction has been attempted before, and it never succeeded. Out of the ruins and the darkness the faithful men emerged with candles of everlasting love and confidence, and civilization rose again and the murderers were silenced. For a little while.”

“This time may be the end,” said Edward.

The priest shook his head. “No, it will never be the end. For God lives.”

He seemed invigorated and trembling with life and exaltation. Edward regarded him with dull amazement. He could not understand that unshaken confidence, the light of supernatural glory which was leaping in the priest’s eyes. He himself preferred facts. The thought of America engaging in planned wars was horrifying and unacceptable to him. He said, “I’m thinking about my country, not about—God. I happen to love my country. I want to see her remain free.”

“All countries belong to God,” said the priest. “Not only America. Not only the white men but the brown and the black and the yellow. It’s selfish to think only of America.”

Edward said with hard simplicity, “The hell with the rest of the world.”

The priest sighed. He put his hands on Edward’s shoulders. “It was Lincoln who said a country cannot endure half-slave, half-free. Neither can the world. All men must be free or all men will be slaves. It is of the freedom of the world that we must think, and it is the enemies of the world that all of us must fight. With every spiritual and just weapon at our command.”

“So,” said Edward, pulling away, “we must get into wars to ‘free’ others, whoever they are?”

“No,” said the priest. “If America becomes involved in a war, she will be following the blueprints of the murderers. She must keep herself in peace, to help a torn world to heal itself. Wars inevitably lead to slavery. There must not be a war for America.”

“I’m sorry, but you’re too ambiguous for me,” said Edward, and he smiled. “You talk about weapons in the same breath that you talk about peace.”

“We use the same words,” said the priest, sadly, “but not the same meaning.”

“I know, I know!” said Edward, irascibly. “I never ‘understand.’ I’ve heard that all my life and I’m tired of it. A man who opposes anything that everyone else accepts is stupid. I know, I know!”

He went out of the parsonage quickly, and he was boiling with anger. The clear scarlet of the western skies had dimmed to a foreboding crimson, a lake of blood motionless in the heavens. The streets lay in dusky shadow, as if crouching before some imminent terror. And there was a profound silence in the air, like a caught breath. Edward said to himself, It’s funny how a man projects his own emotions on the rest of creation. These are just shabby, quiet little streets, and the houses are full of tired but contented people eating their dinners! The premonition is in me, not in them. I’m catching at nightmares.

The hidden gramophone was whining a song popular eight years ago:

“Everybody works but father, and he sits around all day,

Feet in front of the fire, smoking his pipe of clay;

Mother takes in washing, so does Sister Ann,

Everybody works at our house but my old man!”

Hah, thought Edward. Nobody works but the old man, me. And he thought again of his enormous debts and the profligacy of his brothers and sister. His ire began to grind in him. He tapped on the glass window and directed his chauffeur to the house of George Enreich. The limousine was driven rapidly now through the silent streets, and arc lamps began to splutter on the street corners and early moths flew toward them like winged snowflakes. The light was ugly and bluish there, throwing black and awkward shadows on the sidewalks, skeletonizing the trees.

The streets became progressively more expensive and formal, set back on cultured lawns and among pruned bushes and evergreens. Once Edward could see the distant canal, quiet and dark as some Old World narrow river, with the last fire of the sun streaking its silence, its banks dusky and without movement. He thought of the few days of his boyhood when he had swum there, and he was again seized with bitter nostalgia for those days of uncomplex living and simple hope and peace.

Then the limousine was moving over the winding gravel drive to George’s house, a huge and monstrous affair of purplish gray wood with many false towers, false balconies, false thin turrets and “candle-snuffers” and battlements, and wide verandas. Here the evergreens had been shaped into cones, squares, and balls, but there were no flowers. A green gloom hung over the house and darkened the brown roofs. It was, thought Edward, the ugliest mansion in Waterford, which was not distinguished for lovely architecture. He saw a distant light through one of the long thin windows and he knew that George was in his library, indulging himself in his usual brandy and soda before his dinner.

But the library was breezy and cheerful, if ponderous with old-fashioned furniture. Rows of books mounted to the ceiling on all four walls, books which George had read through the years, and a small fire crackled cozily on the black marble hearth. George greeted Edward with his usual shrewd and expansive affection, invited him to a drink, which Edward accepted. The older man saw at once that Edward was in a bad mood, and he wrinkled his reddish brows thoughtfully. The years had planted gray tufts in his bristling red hair, had fattened his bulky body and given him a paunch, but had not taken the keen light from his green eyes. When Edward had settled himself in a brown leather chair, George said, “It is a fine evening, hein? One to give pleasure to the soul after the long winter.”

Edward replied in German, “I never noticed. I don’t have time to notice these things lately. I have been talking with William, who never convinced me before that he is a prophet of doom.”

“So,” said George, and lit a fat cigar and leaned back in his chair. A big diamond glittered on one of his thick fingers. “Will you have a cigar? No? The cigarettes, they are for the youths, not the men. Nevertheless, smoke them. What is it that William wails of today?”

So Edward told him, in brief harsh sentences, and George listened without a change of expression. Then when Edward had finished, he puffed contemplatively and stared at a wall. He said finally, “So? It will surprise you to learn that I am also convinced and that I know? But I have told you before, a little.”

“Who would we fight?” asked Edward, angrily.

George shrugged with eloquence. “Who? Ja, who. Perhaps England, perhaps Russia, perhaps Germany. It does not matter. We will fight. That was decided long ago. The President Wilson? He will have nothing to say. The Kaiser will have nothing to say, nor the King of England, nor the Tsar. No man will have a voice, except the sinister man whose plans were laid in the past. You have heard of one Nicolai Lenin? Of one Trotsky? Then you will hear more of them, not too far in the future. Lenin is the Russian aristocrat who hates mankind and has absorbed the evil of the plotters against the world. My Eddie, he is a man of intelligence, and men of intelligence who hate wisely and well and coldly are dangerous as fire. He has said, and written, that the capitalistic world must be destroyed, and it can only be destroyed through wars, through taxes, through the advance of Socialism. You will understand, now, that he is a Socialist. Who can resist such men, who are sleepless, who are not disturbed by human emotions, who are without soul, who are dedicated to death and hate and the lust for power? Their armies are everywhere in the world, secret armies armed even now with strength and determination and foul philosophies and awareness. They do not hide, for there is no need for them to hide. They are in the universities and the schools, in governments and in factories. They are teachers and students; they are masters and men. They are ready.”

Edward looked at him with incredulous astonishment. “Russians? What has Russia to do with us?”

“I did not say only Russians. I implied that out of Russia will come the hot red bursting of the despotism which will enslave the world. The old despotism. It will be the first open manifestation of the fire which smolders under every nation today. And when the fire flames up from Russia, the answering fires will crackle out in other nations. So it was planned long ago.”

He stood up and removed a book from one of the shelves, and held it in his hand, balancing it, while he fixed his small, fiercely green eyes on Edward. “I have given you much to read of Bismarck. Now you will read of Socialism, of the Communist Manifesto of 1848, of Karl Marx. This is called Das Capital.” He gave the book to Edward, who looked at it, glanced through its German script, then closed it. The younger man frowned, lit another cigarette. Then he said, “I do not believe this will come to America. What have we to do with Europe?”

But George, seating himself, only smiled wryly.

“What can we do to stop it, in America?” Edward demanded, full of a solid if uncomprehending wrath.

“Nothing, my Eddie. We have already lost the fight, in the darkness, in the silence, bloodlessly. There will be much talk of Washington, of foreign entanglements, of being neutral, of peace. But the talk will be only the frantic sounds of men who know they have already lost, of patriots who know they have already been disarmed.”

“Then, we can only cut our throats? Is that what you are implying?” asked Edward irascibly.

George shook his head. “Nein. That is a foolish question. We can make much money, and inevitably the men of evil compromise with men of wealth, and men of wealth inevitably compromise with evil. That is entitled expediency or common sense, in the name of what the French call le fait accompli.”

Edward was silent, smoking. He stared at the book on the arm of his chair. His face slowly swelled and became suffused with dark color. He turned the glare of his light gray eyes on George, and it was inimical. “I came to tell you tonight that I want to sell you my munitions stocks, at the market price. I do not want any part of murder if there is going to be murder.”

“So,” murmured George. He carefully deposited the ash of his cigar in a silver ashtray, and as he turned his body, he exuded compact potency. He said, “I did not think you a fool, my Eddie. What will it profit you to sell those stocks? Will it save the world, your selling? You are going to speak to me of principle? Who can afford principle, in the days to come, which are already reddening the eastern skies? If I buy your stocks, or you throw them on the market, you can wash your hands as did Pontius Pilate, who, I have heard, died a miserable and agonized death. He did not prevent the Crucifixion of Christ, and you will not prevent the crucifixion of man. It is a quixote gesture, this you contemplate.”

“I am going to fight as William suggested, and I need money,” said Edward.

George laughed softly. “Then you will need the munitions stocks, which will bring you the great, the very great, profit.” He smiled at Edward with irony. “More money than what you will amass with what, perhaps, you would call innocent investments.”

Edward fumed to himself. Then George became grave. “It is a dangerous task you set yourself. You will conflict with your own government, when it has made its decision, which it did not truly make but was made for it long ago. You would speak of freedom? It has already begun to die in America, and there will be your government to confront, your strengthening central government. William was correct in saying that governments are the historical enemies of men. You will, in your work, finally face that enemy.”

Edward stood up. “I should like to,” he said. “I intend to, if what you have said is true.”

George shrugged and spread out his hands. “If a man is determined to destroy himself, how is it possible to interfere?”

Edward picked up Das Capital and went to the door. George followed him. In spite of his casualness he was disturbed by the set grimness on Edward’s face, the pent fury in his eyes. He tried for lightness. “And the wedding?” he said. “You have said in four weeks? You have told the family?”

“Not yet. But tonight,” said Edward shortly. “Margaret now insists that she will not marry me until I have told them first.”

“Ah, the young lady has steel and honor. It is good.”

Edward looked at him with directness and cold fixity. He was thinking, I’ve got to get you out. I need that twenty-five per cent you’re getting out of the shops. I have steel, too. George smiled, cocked his head as though he had heard Edward’s thoughts, and was amused.

The Reverend Mr. Ernest Yaeger had prospered under the benign and generous power of the rich Engers. He was no longer bowed and shabby, and he had lost his elderly appearance. His new parish was prosperous. Security, under the Engers, had given him pompousness, a benevolent air, and ease of manner; it had also cost him much of his tender humanity and his compassion and his understanding of the devious background of sin. Security, while conferring unctuousness upon him, and a comfortable urbanity, had dulled his awareness of suffering and had made him intolerant of the self-wrought miseries of his people. He presided over many banquets now, with himself frequently the guest of honor or chairman, and his sermons, once sincere and simple and moving, now were very polished and obscure, which was just what his new parish wanted on a pleasant Sunday morning full of peace, and anticipations of good dinners waiting at home and presided over by correct servants. He considered himself “advanced.” He had, in short, advanced to being a nonentity full of rounded phrases which meant nothing. His decay as a pastor had proceeded in precise ratio to his prosperity. “Not the first man to be ruined by mahogany furniture, good rugs, a maid in the kitchen, and lace curtains,” William had commented to Edward, who had snorted with contempt.

The Reverend Mr. Yaeger now affected the finest black broadcloth summer and winter, and had ventured on a clerical collar and gold cuff links. He had also developed a rounded paunch which looked ludicrous on his lanky frame. From somewhere he had acquired an English accent, which pleased his parishioners. All this was unfortunate. He was intrinsically a simple and kindly man, full of a deep sympathy which he now suppressed with a vague idea that it was vulgar. One advised; one did not console.

Edward cursed on this crimson and purple twilight when his limousine was driven up the graveled and circular drive before his impressive English-style house, for he saw that the Reverend Mr. Yaeger’s carriage was standing before the door, with a coachman yawning on the high seat. Mr. Yaeger was a frequent visitor to the Enger house to see Heinrich, who was “unwell,” and particularly to see Sylvia, whose health remained frail, according to her mother. Edward harshly suspected that he came because he owed so much to the Engers and expected still more.

The vast house of stone and timber stood against a background of immense trees, through which a tarnished silver light gleamed from the east. The new grass was brilliantly green; the flower beds, formal in shape, broke up the smooth grass in rectangles, squares and circles and triangles, some filled with yellow pansies, some with purple or white pansies, and others with various flowers of various hues. It was a painted lawn with painted color, and though Edward admired it and was proud of it, he had an uneasy feeling that in some way it was artificial and had no connection with him at all. Even the mansion was progressively withdrawing from him, and this frightened him mysteriously, for all his ambitions were here, and all their culmination. He could feel pride and sometimes a sense of accomplishment, and even a quiet gloating. But he could not feel that he belonged here and that this was his home. He stepped out of his limousine and looked at the somber façade for a long moment, and let his eye wander over the grass and the flowers. The evening was warm, yet he felt curiously cold and remote. Perhaps, he told himself, as he always told himself, it’s because of my debts, and the mortgage prevents me from feeling the thing belongs to me.

His wandering eye roamed over the sloping lawns and gardens and paths and heroic stands of ancient trees and little low fences of stone, all of which now covered twenty acres about his house. It was an estate, yes. It was the finest in all of Waterford; people drove or walked past it on Sunday evenings, full of envy and admiration and malice. They paused to look at the flower beds and the trees and the silk-shrouded leaded windows and the summer house and the grottoes and the conservatories and the barn and the big garage. It was fabulous to the observers. It was rumored that there was a big fountain hidden in the rear gardens, which was quite true.

The scene tonight, in the growing twilight, was serene and silent, but there was neither serenity nor peace in Edward. He would have to wait until the visitor left before breaking the news of his coming marriage to Margaret Baumer to his family. He walked up the dim staircase to the second floor and entered the suite which his parents occupied. There, in the pleasant sitting room, sat Maria and Heinrich and Sylvia, who in spite of the warm air had a white lacy shawl over her shoulders. For some reason this irritated Edward more than the presence of the Reverend Mr. Yaeger. Sylvia was no invalid yet it pleased her to pretend to this melancholy state, especially when Edward was present. There she sat, near the open casement, all sharp black and white, and all viciousness, according to her brother. She was the first to look at him, and her dark tilted eyes pointed at him with the umbrage one usually reserves for an unwelcome intruder. She was thinner than ever, and her pale face more planed, more angular, more intense.

Maria was knitting comfortably, bulging grossly in her black silk dress, her pouched face unbecomingly flushed in the warmth of the evening. She lifted her protuberant eyes when Edward entered, nodded with stern affability. Heinrich, in a big chintz chair, seemed too small, like a fat and sorrowful child. His expression, now always so sad, so timid, so eager to please, so pathetic, frequently vexed Edward to the point of outbursts of unreasoning anger. He was convinced that his father existed in a state of passive reproach, all directed at himself, though why his father should feel injured was beyond him. He did not know his father’s sense of terrible loss, his loneliness, his conviction that he was no longer either needed or useful.

Mr. Yaeger, delicately sipping a glass of sherry, sat near Maria and confined most of his conversation to this redoubtable woman. Heinrich was too simple and confused for him; his remarks, Mr. Yaeger thought, were never pertinent or astute. He had a way of gently stammering when his opinion was asked about anything, and looking at Maria imploringly, as if begging her to relieve him of the necessity for answering. She invariably complied. As for Sylvia, her sharpness, her cynicism, her sudden changes of mood, her brooding air, her way of, all at once and for no perceptible reason, turning her bitter eyes on the speaker and smiling slightly and even more bitterly, disconcerted Mr. Yaeger. He suspected that Sylvia was very intellectual and keen, and ladies had no business having these attributes. She seemed very antipathetic to him, and without any physical beauty, and he was afraid of her. But Maria, with her air of vast composure, her common sense, her aristocracy in spite of her huge and shapeless body, her patience and wise remarks, soothed the minister. He even thought her beautiful, overlooking everything because of her wonderful hair and her largess.

No one heard Heinrich’s pleading, “Eddie!” It was uttered in such a feeble and crying little voice. Maria indicated a chair for her son and he sat down, glowering at the minister, who suddenly gulped his sherry and murmured that he must leave at once. Edward smiled disagreeably. “Don’t go because of me,” he said. “What was the conversation?”

He appeared very big and shabby and uncouth in his chair, his legs crossed, his large foot beginning a restless swinging. Mr. Yaeger strived for calm dignity. “We were discussing Ecclesiastes,” he said. “12:1.” He paused. Edward never came to church, never called on his family’s pastor. Mr. Yaeger believed all the good that had happened to him over these years proceeded from the benevolence of Maria Enger. He did not know that the money which had built him a new parsonage of some luxury and had redecorated his church had come almost entirely from Edward’s pocket. Both he and Edward would have been extremely puzzled as to how to explain this, particularly Edward, who had considerable scorn, now, for the minister.

“Yes? And what’s the quotation?” asked Edward. The minister’s prosperous face colored a little, as he remembered that Edward had no “religion.” He disliked Edward as much as a man of his inherent mild disposition could dislike anyone, and he feared him for what he believed was coarseness and brashness and greed. He cleared his throat tentatively. “It is this, Edward: ‘Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.’”

The twilight deepened in the room, and silence lay in it like dim water. But the nervous minister did not see Edward’s face change strongly and become saturnine and tight. No one saw his hands clench on the arms of his chair.

The minister cleared his throat again. He felt some singular change in the atmosphere, as if someone had made a violent and terrible gesture which was more powerful than any speech. He was more nervous than ever. “We were applying it to the present-day youth,” he went on, wishing fervently that he had left half an hour ago. “Children are so heedless and disrespectful these days. It is all pleasure and jazz.” He uttered the last word apologetically, as if he had said something obscene. “There is no more modesty in girls, no more responsibility in youths, no obedience or respect or honor for elders. And the—the dress of the ladies!” He coughed. There was the slightest sound from Sylvia, the very spectral ghost of a mocking laugh which only Edward heard.

“It was the subject of my last Sunday’s sermon,” said Mr. Yaeger. (Why was everyone so still? Why did no servant come in to turn on the lamps? The sensation that someone had gestured savagely, and with enormous pain, lingered in the air.)

“And you think that that passage from Ecclesiastes is concerned with proper behavior on the part of young people, do you?” asked Edward. His voice, though quiet, was strangely charged and constrained. Maria turned her head quickly, and her eyes became thoughtful as they rested on her son’s face in the dusk.

“May I ask what else?” said Mr. Yaeger. He moved forward in his chair, preparatory to rising.

“It doesn’t have any spiritual meaning, then?”

Mr. Yaeger was baffled. “Yes, indeed, Edward. Purely spiritual. It rebukes the modern world of pleasure-seeking, superficiality, movies, ragtime, materialism, scorn of authority—” His voice dwindled helplessly. “And drinking.”

“I don’t think it means that at all,” said Edward.

“What do you think it means, my son?” asked Maria, tranquilly. She was not smiling; she tried to see Edward in the dimness, and her search was concentrated.

“Never mind,” said Edward. “Oh, you are leaving so soon, Mr. Yaeger?” He got up and pulled the bell rope vigorously, and Pierre Faure, the old butler, came in almost at once. He turned on the lamps, moving like a small shadow, and the room bloomed into light, and all was normal and pleasant again to Mr. Yaeger’s relief.

He left after effusively shaking hands with Maria and then with Sylvia. He overlooked poor Heinrich entirely, and avoided coming close enough to Edward to shake his hand. He was conducted downstairs by Faure, who had been ordered by Edward to “bring in the whisky and soda.” This loud command was not lost on Mr. Yaeger.

No one spoke after the minister had left. Edward went to the second window, far from Sylvia, and he stared out at the somber darkening of the great estate. He saw the thick shadows under his trees; the flower beds were ghostly, their color lost. A crescent moon was rising palely against a still, cobalt sky. Maria continued to knit; Sylvia took up a book. Only Heinrich watched his son’s back; there was a crying in his heart.

Then Edward turned abruptly. “I sent a cable to Dave and Ralph today. I’ve ordered them to come home at once.”

“What for?” demanded Sylvia, in her edged and bodiless voice.

But Edward said only to his mother, “I’ve been hearing rumors that there’s going to be a war in Europe. It’ll be no place for Americans.”

Sylvia laughed scornfully. Heinrich pulled himself up in his chair. He said feebly, “Is it not what I have said for years, my Eddie? And so it comes.”

Maria said, as she knitted, “I have respect for your judgment. If you think it necessary, then it is necessary. It is unfortunate for my sons, however.”

“Just when they’re doing so well!” exclaimed Sylvia, malevolently. “Could that be your real reason, Ed?” She twitched her shawl closer about her, and her thin hands trembled.

“Why should it be?” asked Edward, with contempt.

“I know! You want them under your thumb again!” cried Sylvia. “They’re free in Europe, free of you!”

Edward sat down slowly and smoked a cigarette. Faure came in with his tray of soda and whisky. Everyone fell into silence, but the old man glanced with anxiety at Edward, whom he loved dearly and devotedly. There was something very wrong with Edward, he thought; he recognized that pentness, that grim stillness, on his face. But Edward merely thanked him and waited until Faure had left the room. Then he sipped at his drink and looked at his sister with quiet loathing.

“Free?” he repeated. “Free of me? What is holding any of you here? Have you any idea of what you are all costing me and what my debts are? Even my house isn’t my own. What is to prevent you, for instance, leaving this house and going where you want to go? This is Greg’s last year at Yale. He chatters now of writing ‘his book,’ right here, of course, at my expense, living in my house. Dave can manage to get engagements on his own and pay his own agent, and as for Ralph, he can go to New York and make his own way as a portrait painter.”

He sipped his drink again; his big hand shook with suppressed wrath. His gray eyes became points of fire under his thick black brows. “Well, why don’t all of you do what you want to do? You’ve been costing me a fortune, in time and money, all the days of my life. And you speak of freedom for yourselves!”

“Edward,” said Maria.

But Edward looked at his sister and did not hear his father’s faint and desperate murmur, “But the geniuses! It is expected that they have a patron—”

Sylvia had turned whiter than before, and she shrank in her chair. She moistened her pale lips. Edward must never know of the hats she designed for Madame DelaFontaine. If he did, he would evict his sister from this house, insist on her going to New York on her own. She would have to live in some cramped apartment in the city; she would lose her security, the luxurious, effortless luxury of her home. She shivered, feeling the coldness of freedom, the uncertain and shifting footing of freedom, and she was swept with terror.

“We have a right—!” she cried, in her fear.

“A right to what? And who are you to talk of rights?” asked Edward, and a thrill of caustic triumph shook him. “You don’t have any rights except those I give you and have given you. I’ve noticed that those who take finally believe they have a right to take—at someone else’s expense. For weeks now, you’ve sat here in your shawl, and have had your meals carried up to you, and a doctor dancing attendance on you. Are those your ‘rights’? What’ve you done to earn them? You haven’t even taken an interest in the theater I bought for you, for months now.”

Sylvia’s terror disappeared in hatred and helplessness. She saw Edward’s eyes and shrank again. She opened her mouth to speak, but he went on in that damning slow voice of his: “You’re like this whole country since Wilson got in with his New Freedoms. Now men speak of a ‘right’ to a living, as if they have any rights just because they’ve been born and have settled themselves down to the world’s trough. A man has a right to earn a living, but no other rights at the expense of his neighbor. No right to eat what he hasn’t earned; no right to shelter he hasn’t provided for himself; not even a right to freedom unless he deserves it. But now they have a new song. Uninvited, they came into the world, and uninvited, they demand that the world support them. Why? When you give me that answer, Sylvia, you won’t speak of ‘rights’ any longer. You’ll have the answer yourself.”

Maria broke in calmly. “Why should the takers be blamed, when the givers tell them they are taking only what they deserve and what they have a right to expect?”

Her son and daughter turned their heads to her, but neither understood. The mother knitted steadily. “A slave is not a slave until the moment he accepts his slavery. And the master commits the crime when he offers slavery to kill the responsibility of free men to provide for themselves. Who are so strong as to prefer liberty and the hardships of living, when an easy thralldom is offered them which demands neither thinking nor manhood?”

A glimmer of understanding came to Edward, and he flushed duskily. “I’m offering freedom,” he said.

Maria shook her head. “To those already in chains?”

Edward surged with rage. He stood up. “You didn’t sing that song years ago, Ma. You sang the songs of the ‘geniuses.’ Everything for the geniuses, remember? You’ve changed your tune. When did the change begin?”

Maria put her knitting in her lap and gazed at her son contemplatively. “There is a great difference between assistance and enslavement. When the one who assists becomes suddenly obsessed with power, then he has committed a great crime against those to whom he first extended help. I am convinced,” she went on, “that a man and a law become evil when they begin to oppress those who have offered themselves for oppression. You see,” and she smiled inscrutably, “as I grow older I become wiser. But then I was never a Socialist, and I never hated my fellow men enough to believe that I knew what was best for them.”

“You’re too subtle for me, Ma,” said Edward, with new contempt.

Maria nodded. She picked up her knitting again. “But someday it will be clear to you. That will be a sad day. Edward, I have noticed that you have studied much about Bismarck through these years. And you have begun to love liberty more than anything else. Yet you have denied liberty to others. Is that paradoxical? No. Not in good men, and you are a good man. And as a good man, you feel guilty in your heart.”

“I feel guilty because I’ve let myself be exploited!” said Edward. “And not because I wanted power. Power over whom? A pack of weaklings and spenders?”

Maria said nothing. She continued to knit impassively.

Edward made a furious gesture. “Why don’t they get the hell out and make their own way and leave my house?”

Maria said quietly, “Do you think they can, now?”

“That doesn’t even deserve an answer, Ma.”

Edward turned to his sister. “You’ve heard,” he said to her taut white face. “This’s been a very interesting discussion. Perhaps you’ve got enough intelligence to understand it. So you tell Ma why you don’t stand on your own legs and amount to something. You tell her what’s keeping you here, you who are going on twenty-five years of age.”

But Maria said, “How can she answer you when she doesn’t dare answer?”

Sylvia drew her shawl more tightly about her and her very lips were icy. Edward said, “What I’ve done for myself, they can do for themselves. They’re old enough.”

“But no longer free enough, in their spirits,” said Maria. She turned her profile to her family and it was heavy with sadness. “Why have I not interfered before? That is what I ask myself all through the nights. And now I know there’s a terrible inevitability in the affairs of men. Not even God can interfere, for it is by their own wills that men become despots or slaves. And who is the victim? The despot or the slave? One can only have compassion.”

“I’m a fine despot!” said Edward with irony. “I’ve worked ever since I can remember. I’ve sacrificed everything I could have had. I work sixteen hours a day. I take nothing for myself. I only give.”

Maria nodded. “There was never a tyrant who did not say the same thing, never in the history of the world. Before they died, either naturally or by violence, they cried out that they sacrificed themselves endlessly and worked endlessly. And so they did. Most of them lived austerely, wanting nothing of pleasure. They worked to their deaths for their people, and one cannot doubt their sincerity. But still they were despots and murderers. For they took away liberty and gave slavery. They destroyed souls, and there is no greater sin than that.”

A great darkness and sickness welled up in Edward. Then, with renewed fury, he turned on Sylvia. “Have I destroyed your soul?” he asked.

Yes, thought the terrified girl, simply. But I helped. I didn’t have any real courage.

But she shut off the bleak horror of her silent confession, for she could not bear it. She looked about her quickly, like a threatened animal seeking escape from death. She clasped her hands together in a convulsive movement. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, either of you,” she said hoarsely. She could not stop herself from glancing at Edward, and she hated him.

Edward laughed, and his laugh was ugly. “You see, Ma,” he said.

Heinrich, as was common these days, had fallen into a sickish doze. But he started when he heard Edward’s laugh, and woke. “Is it dinner?” he said hopefully, for he found comfort in his meals. His belly would warm from the wine, and he could believe once more that he was a man and a father and the master of the home, and was loved and needed.

“Not yet,” said Edward, noticing him for the first time. He did not know why he rarely, in these past years, ever looked directly at his father or why he never talked with him alone, or easily, in the presence of others.

“I’ve got something to tell all of you,” he went on, for Heinrich’s eyes, so childlike, so mournful, so seeking, unnerved him. He was dimly aware that his father wanted something, and was even more dimly aware that the giving could only come from him. But what it was his father begged, and what he himself could give, he never knew.

“I’m going to be married soon,” he said, shortly.

“Married?” said Maria, putting down her knitting again. “Is this not sudden, Edward?” Now even Sylvia and Heinrich sat erect, in astonishment.

“No,” said Edward. “I’ve known the girl since I was fourteen.” He spoke carefully and slowly and avoided looking at them. “She was about ten then. Pa, you knew her, too.”

Heinrich, overjoyed that his son had spoken to him and had seen him at last, exclaimed: “I? It is I of whom you are speaking, my Eddie?”

“Yes.” Edward snuffed out his cigarette. This was going to be very bad, but it had to be faced. “She came into the old delicatessen when she was a little girl. It was a Sunday night. She was hungry. The—the people she lived with didn’t believe in feeding children too much. And you—we—fed her. You gave her a lollipop, and some ice cream, too.”

“Oh, the poor little one,” said Heinrich, and his eyes filled with easy tears. “But I fed many of the poor children, and it is hard to remember.”

“She left Waterford with her—parents,” said Edward. “And I didn’t see her again until some time ago. I recognized her, and she recognized me.”

“And you both fell in love!” said Sylvia, scornful and sure again. “How romantic. Naturally, she didn’t mind recognizing you again, since you’re a rich man! What is she doing now? Working in a shop, perhaps? Or somebody’s kitchen?” It was like her brother to be attracted to the coarse and the vulgar and the cheap! “And we’re supposed to receive some pauper or shopgirl and make her welcome! Don’t rely on me, Ed, to be the loving sister-in-law. After all, I have my standards.”

“Which I made it possible for you to have,” said Edward in a deadly voice.

“It does not matter what the young lady does to earn a living that is honest,” said Maria, the aristocrat. But Heinrich cried out feebly, “My Eddie, one must think, one must ponder. We have few friends, but their opinion must be considered. One must think of the Bullocks and the Fosters and the Freudhoffs—One must think of the position of the family, and the brothers and the sister.”

“But this is democracy,” said Sylvia with sober derision.

“What is the young lady’s name?” asked Maria, ignoring her daughter.

“I don’t know, and neither does she,” said Edward, and now he was coldly beginning to enjoy himself. “She was an orphan in the asylum here.”

“An orphan?” Sylvia gasped. “She doesn’t know who she is? Why she might even be—be—” She paused, and her pallor was relieved by a flush.

“Illegitimate?” said Edward, with fine carelessness. “Perhaps. Probably. She was left in the orphanage when she was a baby.”

“Oh, you can’t, you can’t!” Sylvia cried, in real and horrified despair. “Not a woman without a background or family or money or anything! You can’t do this to us!”

“I’m going to do it,” said Edward. (It wasn’t going to be so bad after all. In fact, it was going to be pleasant.)

“Tell us,” said Maria, not disturbed at all. She did not look at her daughter, who had begun to cry.

“I told you. We recognized each other. And I asked her to marry me about two hours later. I never forgot her. The people who adopted her had taken her to a farm near Albany. She didn’t return to Waterford until this year, when she came to dispose of some property her adopted parents had left her.”

“Property?” repeated Heinrich, with some hope.

“Property.” Edward nodded. “You see, her parents became almost rich when they sold off parts of their farm to real-estate men for new houses. She inherited their money when they died.”

Heinrich beamed. Maria gave her whole attention to her son, and even Sylvia abruptly stopped crying. “Ah, it is property,” murmured Heinrich. “It is not so bad, with property.”

“What is her adopted name?” asked Maria, quietly.

“Pa’s heard it; he heard it years ago. He knew the people.” Edward paused. “Her name is Margaret Baumer.”

Maria’s hands stopped knitting; Sylvia’s mouth opened soundlessly; Heinrich stared at his son and blinked. The dinner gong rang through the house but no one heard it.

“Baumer?” said Heinrich, faintly. “That Baumer. I have heard it before. Yes, yes, I have heard it before, and not in the long ago.”

Maria’s large, pouched face became rigid and stiff. “Baumer,” she said slowly. “I have heard it in this house. Margaret Baumer.”

Then her pale blue eyes shone with a hard light. “Yes. I have heard it. I have written it down.”

Her hands closed tightly over her knitting, and she drew a deep breath and bent her head.

It was then that Sylvia jumped to her feet with a muffled cry. Her black hair, though neatly braided in her Tudor style, gave the impression of dishevelment. She pointed a trembling hand at Edward.

“Margaret Baumer! But she was the girl Dave was going to marry! He told us so, when Ma invited her—Margaret Baumer! Oh, God, it can’t be the same woman, it can’t, it can’t!”

She was overwhelmed with agony. She thought of David, whom she loved. She wrung her hands together. Now her agony centered on herself. So she had suffered when the man she wanted had suddenly married another woman, a stranger. She could not endure her pain. She pressed her hands against her small breasts. Edward had been responsible for that marriage, she knew! Edward had done that awful thing to her! David’s pain was her pain; she even forgot her brother. She was freshly wounded, freshly mortally injured. She cried out again, and bent over, as if struck in the heart.

“Why all the damned dramatics?” said Edward, in a loud voice, but he had colored. “Yes, she’s the girl Dave thought he was going to marry. But she didn’t want him; she never gave him any encouragement. She was only a friend of his, as far as she was concerned. If he had any stupid ideas, they weren’t hers.”

Sylvia groped for her chair, fell into it, and covered her face with her hands. She sobbed raggedly, her thin shoulders heaving, her grief unutterable.

“Don’t be a goddamn fool,” said Edward. “What’s it to you?” But he knew, and the pang of pleasure the knowledge gave him was involuntary. He was immediately ashamed, in spite of his detestation for his sister.

Maria gazed at her daughter and understood suddenly. Sylvia was weeping for herself, not for David. How had she, Maria, forgotten the dark stars in Sylvia’s eyes when she had looked at Padraig Devoe, and the trembling voice, and the sweetness of her face? But she had forgotten, and had not remembered until now. Maria paled. So this was the explanation of Sylvia’s illness and the long weeks of her invalidism. Maria stretched out her hand and took one of Sylvia’s gaunt wrists in her fingers, in an unusual gesture of maternal gentleness. “Hush,” she said softly. “Hush, my daughter. Let us be calm.”

Heinrich was gaping at his son. “It is the girl David loved?” he stammered. “The girl who was invited to this house and who did not come? My Eddie, this is not possible.”

“I suppose you think I should be miserable, or feel guilty, or something,” said Edward. “But I’m not. These things happen. I’m sorry for Dave, but he’s probably forgotten Margaret by now. She told him about us.”

“And that is why he suddenly went to Europe,” said Maria, and looked at her son straightly.

“Ma, be reasonable,” said Edward. “It isn’t my fault and it isn’t Margaret’s. Do you think I like it this way?”

Maria continued to gaze at him. Then she shook her head. “I do not know, I do not know,” she said slowly. “I do not think you planned it; no, Edward, I do not think so. But I also do not think you regret it.”

“It doesn’t make me happy!” said Edward, angrily. And believed it.

Sylvia raised her deathly face with its running tears. “It does, it does!” she exclaimed. “You’d rather have it this way than any other! I know!” She gulped desperately. “How can you do this to Dave, your brother?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” said Edward. “Do you think that if I didn’t marry her, she’d want Dave?”

“What a dreadful person she must be!” said Sylvia brokenly. “What a dreadful, conscienceless, hateful person! Dave wouldn’t have told us he was going to marry her unless he was sure. And then—and then—” her voice failed for a moment, “she meets you, understands that you have the money, and throws Dave over for you!” (As Padraig, with Ed’s encouragement, had married a rich woman in preference to Sylvia Enger, who had to rely upon her brother for her support!)

Edward’s hands clenched into fists. “She didn’t throw Dave over, you fool. She never accepted him. Get that into your stupid head.”

He was suddenly sick of them all, sick of his mother’s gleaming stare, his father’s tear-filled eyes, his sister’s hysterics. This was his house; they were his dependents. The food they ate, the roof that sheltered them, the clothing they wore, the money they spent, were the things he had given them freely. They could sit there, looking stricken and wounded or accusing, because for the first time in his life he wished something for himself and had taken it!

He spoke to them all, very quietly but with malignance burning the edges of his words, “If it’s so terrible to you, Ma, Pa, Sylvia, and you can’t stand it, you don’t have to stay here when I marry Margaret in a few weeks. You’ll have time. You can get ready to leave. You don’t have to receive her. I’ll look for a house for you.” He smiled somberly. “I hear our old house on School Street is for sale again. I’ll buy it for you.”

“This is all unnecessary,” said Maria with hard coldness. “It is no occasion for threats.”

“I’m not threatening,” said Edward. “I’m just not going to have my wife embarrassed. This is going to be Margaret’s home; she is going to be mistress here. I want decent behavior toward her. If any of you think you can’t give it to her, then you can leave.”

Maria ignored this. But Sylvia had stopped crying. She was looking affrightedly at her brother and blinking her wet lashes. Maria said, “You have considered what David will think, how he will feel?”

“Yes, I have,” said Edward, flatly. “And that’s why I wanted to marry Margaret before telling you. Do you think I enjoy all this? But Dave will have to get over it, if he hasn’t already gotten over it by now.” Then his anger flared again, and he said with new violence, “But if he hasn’t, and no matter how he feels, I can’t help it. It’s happened. It’s got to be accepted. If any of you feel you can’t accept it, I’ve offered you an alternative. It’s the best I can do.”

“I just can’t receive her!” Sylvia sobbed.

“You don’t have to,” said Edward. All at once he was exhausted.

Maria said, “Naturally, we will accept her. Naturally, she will be my daughter. We must be sensible.” She smiled wryly. “Have we any other choice?”

She rose and went to Edward, for she was deeply concerned for him because of the dark color on his cheekbones and the sudden hollowness of his eyes. She put her hand on his arm. She could feel the throbbing of some large artery under the shabby cloth of his coat, and was alarmed. She tried to smile.

“But if I am to be the welcoming mother, I must make a request, Edward. I must request that you see a physician. It is only just that you find if your health is good. It is only just for—Margaret.”

He wanted to shake off her hand, then was caught by her expression, which was almost tender. He had never seen it before. And he was grateful.

“All right, Ma,” he said, smiling. But he had no intention of complying.

The dinner gong rang again, with impatience.

“It is dinner,” said Maria. “We must descend.”

“I don’t want dinner, I won’t go down, I can’t bear it!” Sylvia groaned. “I’m going to my room, I’m going to bed.”

Maria said, “You will be sensible, you will join us at dinner. I am still mistress in this house, and this is my command.”

CHAPTER VIII

Maria was convinced that English was a vulgar language. Or, rather, those who spoke English were self-consciously vulgar. Only the poets and a few writers used English with all its sonorous potentialities, all its possible richness of phrasing, all its grand architecture of power, subtlety and allusions. It could be a pillared temple of many arches, but only a few understand that. All others preferred dull brick mortared with clichés common to the masses. There seemed a perverse fashion, lately, for all that was written to be short-phrased, without the clarity of French, without the grandeur of German. Symbolism, formality, sophistication, had vanished from American English.

Therefore, when writing in English, she felt constrained. She wondered if Miss Margaret Baumer would understand if she wrote to her in German. The Baumers had been Saxon-Germans; they had, no doubt, taught Margaret their native tongue. And it was possible that in school Margaret had acquired more facility with the language. But Maria pondered. The formality of Maria’s cultured German might frighten the girl, and she might consider it cold or repellent. Maria sighed, and her vast breast rose tightly against the black silk and restrained it. She decided to write to Margaret in English, but in the English she had learned so many years ago and not in the modern half-literate fashion.

Heinrich was dozing feverishly in the bedroom, and Maria had carefully closed the door after a long anxious glance at his miserable face. She sat down at her big mahogany desk in her sitting room and wrote to Margaret Baumer.

“My son Edward and I have had a quiet discussion of your coming marriage, my dear Margaret, though we have not as yet met you. It was his first intention, and so he told me, for you to be married in Albany, with only strange witnesses present and a brief appearance before public officials. I have now convinced him that this would be an injustice to you and would leave you with no memories. A young lady, on her wedding day, is entitled to her memories of that most important occasion in her life, and to pleasant and happy recollections of which she will tell her children.

“The young lady is also entitled to know and become intimate with the members of her husband’s family, and to acquire a familiarity with her new home where she will pass her life. I have also convinced Edward of this, and he has suggested that I write you. However, had he not made this suggestion, I should have written in any event. To do otherwise would be an injustice to you.

“It is fortunate that you will be married on June 28th, in your new home, and under the auspices of our minister, the Reverend Mr. Yaeger. For by that time my other children will be in residence, Gregory from Yale and Ralph from Paris, where he has been studying art. My daughter, Sylvia, who is much gifted in the theater arts, has not left home and her health is delicate. My son David, whom you knew slightly, I believe, will not be present, though he has just returned from Berlin. He has many piano-recital engagements to which he agreed some months ago, and is compelled by the terms of his contracts to fulfill these engagements.”

Maria paused, and her stern, light blue eyes bulged with tears. She gazed through the windows at the sun-struck lawns and flower beds beyond. A gardener or two was mowing the grass, and she could smell the sweetness of the cut blades and the scent of roses from the rose gardens. A small cloud of white butterflies blew up against the screen of the opened casement, and a warm wind whispered in the trees. Then Maria resolutely wrote again:

“My son Ralph is at present spending a few days in New York, consulting with the establishment where he will study again beginning in September. He has paid us a short visit, bringing with him his bride, the former Violette Carré, a young French lady of distinguished family.…”

Maria took her lace handkerchief from her sleeve and pressed it against her lips. How silly and stupid it was of Ralph to tell his mother that fiction! She had known at once that Violette was a cocotte and that she had probably been Ralph’s mistress as well as model. Still, it had been a con cession to his mother, and a tribute to her sensibilities, and her aristocracy, when he had lied. This, however, did not mitigate her silent horror and contempt and agitation that her son had actually married such a creature, impudent and saucy and uncultured and without delicacy and morals. The rest of the family had received Violette without adverse comment, having been charmed by her humor, her accent, her prettiness and style. Sylvia, in particular, and this was amazing in the aloof and bitter young woman, had shown great interest in Violette and had spent animated hours with her discussing fashion. Violette had displayed much respect for Ralph’s family and had ingratiated herself with everyone but Maria. From the first the astute girl had understood that she had not deceived her husband’s mother. This had not given her any uneasiness. Fear or undue apprehension was not part of her nature; she accepted life with the gay nonchalance of a naughty child and the cynical awareness of a worldly woman who was determined that nothing must injure her enjoyment or her prospects.

I trust, thought Maria, that Margaret’s knowledge of French is too limited to detect the grossness of Violette’s patois, her paucity of education. Maria was too intelligent, too subtle a woman, to believe that because Margaret Baumer’s birth was clouded, because she had been an inmate of a public orphan asylum and she had been adopted by mean people, she would be a young woman of Violette’s type. For Maria knew her son Edward too well to fear that he would be drawn to vulgarity or cheapness or mediocrity. Moreover, Edward had given his mother a small photograph of Margaret, and Maria had immediately, if silently, approved of that fine young face, those candid and beautiful eyes, the circumspect dress, and the lovely sensitive mouth. Whoever Margaret’s parents had been, there was the signature of patrician birth upon her features.

The blow of Ralph’s marriage had been one of the worst calamities of Maria’s life. But as she was an indomitable woman, she had neither cried out nor protested nor rejected Violette. There were matters one must accept. This catastrophe was one of them. Ralph was married and appeared much enchanted by his young wife, and Violette seemed to have an amused and sardonic affection for him, and a humorous tolerance. Too, she understood perfectly that if she were to prosper she must continue to seduce and ostensibly adore him, and defer to his comfort and complacency. She also comprehended art and artists, and her knowledge, in this respect, commanded even Maria’s admiration. Violette, who thought only of herself, could be trusted to encourage Ralph in anything which would react pleasantly in her behalf. She had, in addition, the intuitive Frenchwoman’s training in the art of pleasing men and making their lives agreeable. It could be much worse, thought Maria, sighing again as she picked up her pen to continue her letter to Margaret. Violette, though uneducated except in art, which she had picked up from her numerous affairs with artists, was a realist, and had much charm and an impertinent prettiness. Maria hoped that Margaret would accept Violette’s better attributes without searching further.

“Ralph,” Maria wrote, “will be home with Violette for the wedding.” Maria turned the pen in her big fat fingers. “I wish at this time to extend to you, my dear Margaret, not only my affection but the affection of the family. Though we have not as yet had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with you, we know that we shall love you. You have brought to my son Edward an air of lightness and contentment which I have never discerned in him before, and I know that your gift to him at your wedding will be a lifetime of happiness and fulfillment. He is inclined to be too serious, too much devoted to his work and his family. It is well that he is marrying.

“Permit me, as your future mother, and the mother of your bridegroom, to urge that you come as soon as possible to our home, before the wedding. This will not be improper or indiscreet or without propriety! My daughter and I will act as your perfect chaperones. I am already preparing quarters for you and will wish to consult you as to the decorating of the suite which you and Edward will occupy.”

But what should she, Maria, tell this young and inexperienced girl about Edward, her tragic son, absorbed in his desperate and secret misery, his unconscious insistence that his brothers and his sister give him a meaning in life? And what should she tell her about the exploitation of his youth, because he was strong and must be the hand that lifted the weak and supported them?

How explain, so that her letter would be read in mercy and compassion? Could she tell Margaret of her own futile life, of the dreams that had died in a meager house in this city, of the renewed dreams when she had seen the strength and power of her second son, the frail gifts of her other children which must be cherished at any cost and be caused to bloom? Could she write, “He believes himself to be the victim of his family, and so he is vengeful and is determined to give his brothers and sister what they had insisted they wanted and which I am fraid they no longer want? In his deeper mind he understands they are now his prisoners, because they were weak, and he loathes the power he has over them because he is intrinsically a just man. He was deceived by his parents, but most of all by his father, who is good but very simple, and he was deceived by his brothers and sister. But now he will not let them go. He believes he is the victim, but in all truth, they are his victims”?

No, this she could not write. A young girl would find it incomprehensible. Life, to such a girl, must be an uncomplex thing; there was too much candor in her photographed eyes, too much softness in her mouth. She did not as yet know the dark and sinister things in the hearts of men, and the things of tragedy and complexity, which were one and the same thing.

To this girl things were either good or bad; it shone from her unblemished face, so tender, so frank. Maria sighed wearily. She finished her letter and thought, There are so many things that mere words cannot explain, but they are actual and terrible and real, even if imponderable. At the last, the imponderables are a man’s whole existence.

Margaret Baumer, though still very young, was well acquainted with the brief, unlit agony of life, and for this short time before she married Edward Enger she was still possessed of a lucid eye. She could still look at people objectively, with private reservations undistorted by unquestioning love and the fierce loyalty which was part of her nature.

And so she was troubled and thoughtful this golden June twenty-third, five days before she was to be married. Like Edward, she was of a solitary disposition. While his solitariness was invaded by cold and speechless resentments and colder anger, hers was contemplative, sometimes sad, and often an interlude which she used for summing-up. Her childhood had been drab and full of pain and hopelessness, until comparatively recently, and it was still too close to her not to be part of her life and to affect her thoughts. It had not left her bitter, only frequently depressed and mournful, and quite often compassionate. Though she loved Edward as she had never loved before, and would never love again, she understood that the years of his life had hardened and congealed him. He had given her his first full confidence, and she had listened for hours in mute consternation and pity, not for what he had endured and not for his struggles, but for what his life had done to him and what he had permitted life to do to him, even with his own abetting. Later she was to forget, in the very unfocusing of her devotion, the clarity with which she had first seen and understood.

She had been in his house for almost a week now, and at sunset, while the rest of the family gathered in Maria’s and Heinrich’s suite to talk and to drink coffee discontentedly, and to fill the warm evening air with malicious remarks and sometimes bickerings, she would quietly leave the house and wander in the gardens. She had found a favorite and hidden spot a long distance away, which Edward had preserved in a state of semiwildness of crowding great trees, thick grass, and wild flowers. Here, on a weathered wooden bench, out of sight of the house, and in a golden silence filled with bees, she would sit, her hands folded in her lap, her thoughtful gaze unseeing and quiet.

The bees hummed about her, catching little beams of light on their wings; the grass bent and changed color in the warm wind; the trees towered over her in heavy shade and their tops glittered and moved. Margaret was sad and uneasy. She was making up her mind how best to approach Edward on the subject of his family, not for the sake of the family but for his own salvation. Once or twice before she had attempted this tactfully, but he had looked at her with umbrage as if she had become a stranger who did not speak his language, and she had hurried to assure him that she understood, but … Once she had commented to herself, dryly, that if love overcame all things, it also blinded all things.

The grass, the trees, the sunlit insects, all moved gently and serenely on this June late afternoon, but Margaret was still. No one could see her, for her green linen dress, so simply made, short-sleeved, rounded of neck, and just reaching to her slender ankles, blended her into her surroundings. Her bright waving hair curved about her beautiful and serious face; the sunlight made blue jewels of her eyes under her gilt lashes; her mouth was both tender and sorrowful; her white hands were like carved marble on her knees. She was thinking of the contempt and derision with which Edward spoke of his family, and she was thinking of that family with concentration. She knew them all now.

She thought of Heinrich, so small, so rotund, so simple and childlike. She had sensed his misery from the first moment she had met him, when he had looked up at her with that eager and seeking expression in his round dark eyes. Here was not a father of a family, but a wounded child, bewildered by his own pain and as uncomplicated as a glass of milk. She had noticed that when Edward was in the room his father appeared to see no one else, and that he fixed his eyes imploringly on his son. She had also noticed that so far as the family was concerned he did not exist, except for Maria. He went unnoticed; no one spoke to him, and when he himself spoke, with that tentative and anxious voice of his, no one seemed to hear. He was endured as a small and timid dog might be endured. However, Margaret had seen that occasionally Edward’s eyes had narrowed if they had encountered his father unexpectedly. Why that cold anger, that aversion, for one who was so harmless and so pathetic and asked for nothing? Except … what was he asking for, and what was it that he begged for silently and with all his heart? Margaret did not know, but she felt an urgency to reply. And so it was that she was kind to this little man. But whenever she spoke to him, and if Edward was present, Heinrich might answer her, though she became aware that he did not really see her and that all his being was concentrated on his son in a kind of desperate waiting for an answer.

Margaret was not afraid of Maria, for she had long passed beyond fear in her own sufferings, but she was constrained with her. Maria was considerate, intellectual, and remote. She appeared to be completely detached from her family, not in coldness but in aristocratic reserve. She was much more complex, Margaret deduced, than any other member, and understood her own complexity and accepted it. Here was a woman capable of understanding everything, even forgiving everything, analyzing everything, yet remaining apart from everything. She was not easily moved nor disturbed. There was an indifferent majesty about her like a mountain, and this repelled Margaret. No tragedy would dishevel her spirit; it was impossible to think of her weeping untidily, with her soul exposed and visibly bleeding. She accepted life with her own inward comments, and Margaret felt certain that those comments would frighten her as a glacier would frighten her if it moved inexorably. Margaret was too wise to believe that Maria never had her hours of despair or regret or pain. It was Maria’s ability never to betray those hours in her voice or manner that made the girl uneasy. So much self-control, the girl thought, was inhuman. She could understand why Maria often infuriated Edward. The others in the family were merely afraid of the mother, alternately surly in her presence or silent, or placating with a resentment of their own placating.

I can never become friendly with her, thought Margaret, today. I can, and do, respect her. She’s terribly formidable, not because she wants to be but because of what she is.

The others were less complex, and all had aroused Margaret’s pity, if vexation, also. She knew at once that for some unknown reason Sylvia hated and secretly derided her. Sylvia never spoke to her without a cutting mockery, even after Margaret had made the simplest remark. Sylvia was excessively polite to her, and this was part of her taunting. Margaret would have liked to have been friendly with the older girl, but Sylvia’s manner, her sharp shrugs, her piercing eyes with their tilted stare, warned her off. Nevertheless, Margaret pitied her, pitied her illness, her air of silent anguish, her bitter frustration, her delicate ferocity, her subtle malice. Many things, Margaret concluded, had injured Sylvia, but all these things had emanated from herself. Margaret sighed, thinking. So intrinsically distinctive and pretty a young woman! But she was afraid and hated herself for her fear. Of what was she afraid?

The others were afraid, too. Margaret had sensed that almost immediately. She had thought at first that they were solely afraid of Edward, who could certainly be as formidable as his mother. Margaret smiled lovingly. Then her smile vanished. Edward merely represented something to them that inspired their fear, but she did not know what it was.

Margaret was still not quite sure that Edward’s explanation to her was correct—that his brothers and sister detested him because they were ungrateful. She was still able to suspect that their insulting way with him, and their fear, not open but to be easily discerned, rose from a secret detestation of themselves. She remembered David’s last words to her on that night in March. “He doesn’t despise me half as much as I despise myself.”

Margaret folded a tuck in her green skirt and shook her head despondently.

Gregory. Quick, mercurial, intelligent. Gregory, the potentially famous and distinguished writer. Gregory, the derisive and insufferable and egotistic and offensive. Margaret disliked him, and he had the smallest share of her pity. It annoyed her that he looked so much like Edward, without Edward’s crude power and decisiveness. She disliked his pretensions to elegance, and his mocking speech so like Sylvia’s. Yet he could be amusing and he could make even Edward laugh. He was not to be underestimated. There was an alert brain there, and a ruthless one. But he was without potency. He was like a sharp thin stick that could be easily broken in strong hands. That he hated Edward, and tried to despise him, was more evident in his manner than in any of the others. It was worse in Gregory, for he had the ability to understand himself. But what was there to understand? Margaret shook her head again.

Now there was Ralph, tall, plump, ruddy, and handsome, with his curling auburn hair and big, bold black eyes, his cunning eyes so without illusion, so full of greed and so often morose and angry. Margaret felt an aversion for him. He was lustful and he was coarse. It was odd that he had such strong and intelligent hands, and that there was a latent power in them. They were not the hands of the artist he was alleged to be. He had a loud voice, sometimes furious with demands, except in Edward’s presence, and a total lack of consideration for anyone except his little wife, Violette, who could manage him with a word or a glance.

Margaret still could not think of David without a sharp pain. She was glad he was not here. But inevitably he would return. She prayed that he would, by then, have forgotten he ever loved her.

It had become alarmingly clear to her that not even the probable marriages of Sylvia, Gregory, and David would relieve her of their presence. Edward had said, “This is their home. Even when they’re married, I’ll expect them to be here often or always. They understand this.”

Margaret had been incredulous. Why should Edward insist that his brothers and sister, who hated and feared him and whom he despised, be under his roof? It was beyond her comprehension.

She, too, had come to love this vast and beautiful house. She had come to think of it as her home, filled with her children and with affection and peace. But it was not to be really her home. It would be forever echoing with the voices of surly strangers who did not like her, who would not accept her, who spoke to her with smothered jeering, who had their secret loyalties among themselves which excluded others. They made of the house a sort of prison. But who was the jailer?

She turned her head and saw Edward approaching her across the tall thick grass, and, as always, her heart rose on a high crest of joy. He alone knew of this hiding place of hers. “The think-place,” he had teased her. “It’s mine, too.”

She stood up and held out her hands to him with a low happy cry. He took them. It was then that she saw that his dark broad face looked sick and tense, and that his eyes were sunken and that his whole big body expressed despair.

CHAPTER IX

“Tell me, darling,” said Margaret as she and Edward sat side by side on the bench, their hands together. She was frightened. He seemed ill and shattered and yet full of rage. “You went to see Hans Bohn today and Congressman Sheftel. And Senator Bonwit.”

And so he told her.

He had gone to see his friend, the prosperous newspaperman and publisher of the Waterford Evening News, who also published a newspaper in Albany and one in Rochester. Hans Bohn was known for his somewhat austere integrity, his publishing ethics, and his taciturn nature which rebuked too enthusiastic attempts at friendship from others. His deep cold passion was freedom of the press, truth, and fair play; he had a hatred for sensationalism. He was a friend, a close friend, of Edward Enger’s, though Edward would have laughed at the idea. A middle-aged man, he was as lean as a fleshless stick, and gave a uniform impression of grayness, from his hair, his eyes and the color of his skin to his controlled cool manner. He never indulged in conversation for conversation’s sake, and so was rarely seen in gayer society.

Edward had made an appointment with him a few days ago, and Hans received him in a large office as chill, gray and featureless as himself. He waited courteously until Edward had seated himself. On his smooth desk there was a pile of neat papers, and Edward saw that these were his own, which he had sent to the publisher. Hans put his long colorless hand on them as he saw Edward’s glance. “Smoke if you wish, Ed,” he said in his toneless voice, and Edward nervously lit a cigarette. “Well, Hans?” he demanded, and his strong voice sounded too loud in the quiet office.

Hans went to a file and brought out a small old newspaper, so old that its edges were rusty and crackling. “I have here,” he said without expression, “a copy of the Buffalo Courier & Republic, published in May 4, 1869. A good, sound newspaper. I sent for it, for I remember my father speaking particularly of this newspaper item, which was also published in other newspapers. The Buffalo Courier & Republic was kind enough to send me this issue, and I received it this morning.”

He paused. He found an immaculate tray for Edward’s cigarette. All his movements were controlled and quiet. “I will read it to you, Ed. ‘Commercially, as well as from a military point of view, Russia is soon to be our chief rival. We are both advancing toward the coveted regions of Asia, and the influence of our settlements along the Pacific coast will soon be powerfully felt on the opposite—to us the western—side of the ocean.’”

He looked at Edward with his reserved eyes. “You see, now, that what you have given me I have known for some time. Socialism has already been adopted by Sweden. Bismarck brought much of it to Germany. It remains for Russia to give it—ah, eh—bloody impetus. There is something else you do not know. The bankers of Europe, the bankers of America, have long been dissatisfied with the Tsarist regime in Russia. It has repulsed the Amsterdam-Frankfort-Paris-London-Vienna cartel of those interlocked bankers. No foreign banks, said the Tsars, could carry on their business in Russia if managed outside of Russia. In 1893, the Russian Minister of Finance advised all bankers in Russia that if they assisted speculative operations in the Russian ruble, it would be ‘considered as incompatible with their privileges.’ Because of this policy, the Russian banks are not as volatile, for instance, as the German banks, which are involved with politics.”

Edward sat and listened to this usually monosyllabic man give him information which stunned him. It was much worse, much more involved, much more terrible and sinister than what he had thought! The papers he had given Hans now seemed puerile and superficial. Hans turned his swivel chair with slow dignity and stared through his polished window. His profile was stern and quiet.

“But evil, Ed, has a thousand eyes and a thousand brains and a thousand hands. Evil men are the most loyal in the world—to other evil men. The foreign bankers have already made an opening in Russia. The Rothschilds have an agent, the Bleichroeder Company of Berlin. One Carl Fuerstenberg, of the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft, has already managed relations with the private Russian banking house, the Peters-burger Dissonto Bank. The director of that bank was a partner in the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft. So now there is a bank of this in Russia.”

A pattern, huge and malignant, though still vague, began to loom in Edward’s mind, like a gigantic weaving machine. The threads darted in and out, red and gold and black, manipulated by unseen hands.

Hans continued without a rise of voice or a gesture of agitated hand. He might have been discussing an editorial of no significance. But a spark began to glow under his shaggy gray eyelashes.

“The doors had been opened, but very softly and carefully at first. The Hamburg banking house, M. M. Warburg, is a family alliance. Another member of a private St. Petersburg bank is Ignati Manus. He is in communication, constantly, with Berlin, and Berlin intrigues in Russian economy. Still, in spite of these men, Russia is still powerful; she has seventeen hundred million rubles covered by gold, both in Russia and abroad. Russia is very active in world trade and is exporting prosperously. Finally it has come to the attention of the Russian government of what is transpiring. The Tsar is determined to stop the threatened undermining of the ruble, and to oust the foreign plotters who wish to take over control of Russia. The government is behind the Tsar.”

Edward’s cigarette died out in his hand. “I’ve been thinking, all the time, that it is Russian imperialism—”

Hans shook his head slowly. “No, not the present Tsar and his government. They know what is happening, and that is why they are desperate. They know that Lenin, the murderous and soulless Socialist, is in Switzerland, and the Swiss bankers are very friendly to him, and he has a powerful newspaper there called The Spark. Lenin is being financed by Savva Morozoff of Moscow, a textile merchant. Lenin is also being financed, in New York, by a Russian commodity speculator, Alexander Gumberg.

“Ed, the bankers cannot do business with the present Tsar and his government. So they turn to Lenin and his Socialists, and he will help them. He’s in exile. He is one of those terrible dedicated men of evil who can’t be turned from their courses, and his friends, the international bankers, know this. Therefore, they help him. He has promised them that when he brings Socialism to Russia, they can exploit his country. That is his promise!” Hans smiled tightly.

Edward, sick and shaken, looked at the dead cigarette in his fingers. “I’d thought it was just what the Socialists call the mass—and the people who want to use the mass—”

“True,” said Hans, in a low voice. “But for what will they use the mass? For their own power, their own glory, their own despotism. You see, it is not just the sans culottes. They’re only the weapon. And the international bankers are interlocked with many other men of wealth and power who wish to bring Socialism to the world. Let us not deceive ourselves. The Russian masses are still almost serfs. They are the most explosive possibility, and Lenin and his friends have much influence with them. Marx is not unknown to much of the Russian masses, and especially not to the Russian intellectuals. It is the intellectuals, also cleverly used by the men of power, who have been spreading Marxist Socialism among the Russian masses.”

He wove his fingers together, leaned back in his chair, and stared at Edward. “If the people of the world knew what Socialism really was, they would reject it; I will make a prophecy. When the whole world—and I mean America also—begins to accept Socialism, through the conscienceless politicians, who are also weapons of the men who lust for power—there will be universal horror. But not repudiation. By that time Socialism will be too strong; it will bring force and terror to the suppression of the people. It will bring murder and police and armies. Once the men of power rule, they will rule with steel and death. Socialism is not the enemy of bankers and munitions makers and other men of enormous wealth. The planned society of Lenin and Marx and Engels—the Socialism of these monsters—will be the society of the despots. Then there will be the Dark Ages again, even in America.”

“Then the Americans of wealth and power are not the enemies of Socialism, as they howl in the public press?” muttered Edward.

“No. Who will be the first to be destroyed, through death, alleged infamy, and economic excommunication, in the countries marked for death? The middle class, especially the middle classes of America, England, France, Italy, Germany. They have a love of freedom; freedom is a bourgeois tradition. It came from the hearts of the sturdy middle class, who are individualists, risk-takers, ambitious. They know that government is their historic enemy, and so they try to restrain it. They are like King Canute, who called to the ocean to retreat. On one hand are the enormous, lightless masses of Asia, who have profited and advanced considerably under the trade and judicious common sense of English, American, French, Italian and German middle-class traders and merchants. On the other hand are the masses of incompetents, malcontents and the greedy, in Europe and America, waiting like dough for the hellish leaven of Socialism, which will promise them everything for their bellies, at the expense of their industrious neighbors. Promise them these things out of the mouths of venal politicians, and their masters, the rich and the powerful.”

He moved slowly and quietly in his chair. “But there will come a terrible day. When America adopts Socialism, though she may call it by another name, to allay the alarms of the middle class, and Russia is Socialistic, which will come soon through planned wars, then America, the Socialist country, and Russia, the Socialist country, will face each other over the prostrate and stricken continents—which they have helped destroy. Then these two will engage for the control of a world already enslaved, corrupted and diseased from Socialism. That, Ed, may be the end of life as we know it now.”

Edward stood up. He thrust his shaking hands into his trousers pockets. His breath was shallow, because of the constricting heat and agony in his chest. He walked back and forth in the office, and Hans Bohn watched him with a still and expressionless face. Then Edward turned to him and said in a passionate voice:

“You know! How many men like you know, Hans?”

Hans sighed. “Thousands of us, Ed, tens of thousands of us, in every country in the world. But who would listen? Should I publish an editorial about this, who would listen? I would be laughed out of circulation. The only ones who would believe are those who know. I am a publisher of three newspapers but I am vulnerable. I could be stopped. You stare. Yes, I could be stopped in America. It would be simple. I happen to love my newspapers.”

“America!” said Edward, with anguish. “Surely not America!”

“Surely America,” said Hans. “Surely America, too. It has already begun. It has begun in our government, this year of Our Lord, 1914. In Wilson’s New Freedoms.”

“Then we can do nothing, Hans.”

The publisher smiled dryly. “We can try, Ed. We can have it for our spiritual salvation that we tried. And who knows? Finally our scattered voices may reach the captured masses of America and Europe and Asia. Remember, it took only a few resolute men, preferring death to slavery, to found this Republic.”

“But we have our Constitution to protect us,” said Edward in a weak voice.

Hans shrugged slightly. “How long can a Constitution resist the onslaughts of wicked men who years ago decided that American freedom should die?”

Edward sat down, crushed and overwhelmed.

Hans took up one of Edward’s pages and scanned it. “You wish to form a Save America Committee. People will ask: ‘Save America from what?’ You speak of wars. There is no war on the horizon—yet. I recommend that you begin to form that Committee after a war breaks out. It will not be long, I assure you. It was well planned, long ago—the war to enforce Socialism on the world. Who will we fight? people will ask. Perhaps England or Germany or Russia. It doesn’t matter. War is the thing, and continuing wars.”

He saw Edward’s face, and he, an older and wiser man, was sorry for him. He tried for a little dry and grayish lightness. “Ed, you perhaps can do some good. I don’t promise it or give you any encouragement. But you can try. And now I should like to ask you a question. You see that I’m calm and resigned. But you are in a terrible state of mind. You’re a businessman and a very prosperous one. Why does what I’ve told you, and what you already know, disturb you so much?”

Edward was about to say, “I love freedom above all other things.” But a strange thing happened. The words formed in his throat, then remained there like iron, and he did not know why. Suddenly before his mind’s eyes he saw a small red sun; no, it was a red and bloody hole—in something. He could not remember; he could only remember that he had seen it somewhere a long time ago. It had enormous significance for him, and he could not express it.

“I see it’s too big a thing for you,” Hans said with unusual kindness. “Well, let me see. You’ve asked me to go with you to see Congressman Sheftel at Senator Bonwit’s office. We must hurry. You made an appointment with them at eleven. It is almost that now.” He stood up and placed his hand on Edward’s shoulder. “I will not tell them all I know. Either they’re still provincial and unaware or they know too well. If naïve, they would laugh at me. If they know, they would also laugh at me, and I’d have two, powerful enemies. You will talk, and I will listen.”

They went out into the warm and brilliant June day. Edward paused on the sidewalk and looked up and down the busy street. Those young women in their white blouses and long, broad-striped tight skirts, those bustling young men with hard white collars and eager faces, those comfortable elderly women with string shopping bags, those children with ice-cream cones and skates and laughing mouths—all these pleasant and hopeful people, young and old, busy about their calm lives—did they realize what terrors already threw their dark gaunt shadows over their homes, shadows from London, Washington, Berlin, Vienna, Paris, St. Petersburg? Did they hear the whisperings and murmurs of evil men, thousands of miles away, the stir of documents, the muttered agreements? No. But one awful day they would perhaps understand. Those who could tell them and warn them were too afraid of reprisals or ridicule, or were already marked for vilification and destruction.

Hans watched Edward grimly scanning the crowds. He touched the younger man’s sleeve gently, understanding. “A beautiful day,” he said. “Polly and I are looking forward to your wedding.”

Congressman Henry Sheftel was a small and active man, young, ambitious, and absolutely innocent. He had not been in politics very long. He still believed that it was the duty of Congressmen to obey the wishes of the electorate and to represent them with honor, integrity, and devotion. His thick yellow curls crowned a slim and open face, like a boy’s, and he had small and sparkling blue eyes. He did not belong to Edward’s party, but the two young men had known each other from school days, and both had had a background of hard work and responsibility. He had wondered why Edward had asked him to go to the office of the Honorable Senator Thorne Bonwit, who was of the opposite party, very wealthy (he owned an apartment house in New York) and a man of devious mind, expedient and too suave. In Washington they called him Gentleman Bonwit, and he was much liked except by the few of Henry Sheftel’s caliber.

Henry was uneasy in the Senator’s rich law offices on Mandrell Street. His own little law office was shabby and usually filled with poor and desperate people. Henry had seen the well-dressed men in the Senator’s office, men with gold watch chains, spats and polished boots. He had not envied the Senator his clientele. He had not been in politics very long.

The Senator had been condescending but agreeable. A big and florid-faced, middle-aged man, full of jokes and ever tactful and amiable, he had large features which gave a meretricious impression of candor. His large fingers were manicured, and glittered pinkly. Seeing them, Henry hid his bitten fingernails in his pockets. He accepted one of the Senator’s excellent cigars and put it in his pocket for his father, who had a small shoe store and could only afford a cigar on Sundays.

“One of Eddie’s little mysteries,” said the Senator, affably.

Henry frowned, politely trying to understand. Ed was never mysterious. He was hard and blunt and thrusting, and he meant what he said when he said it.

“We’ve been friends all our lives, in a way,” murmured Henry. “And he did contribute something to my campaign two years ago, even though we don’t belong to the same party.”

“Friendship,” said the Senator genially, and nodding comprehendingly. He thought of the large contribution Edward had made to his own campaign. Yet Edward was no personal friend of his, and he did not believe that Edward, particularly liked him. The Senator, who called himself very democratic, had an aversion for people not of his own social stratum and who had made their own fortunes. But Edward was wealthy and he was a friend of George Enreich’s, and George Enreich called the tune in state politics. “Ah, here they are now, Ed and Hans,” said the Senator as, his secretary entered. “Now we’ll soon have the solution of this little mystery! Come in, come in, gentlemen! How are you, dear Ed and Hans? Hans, are you here in the capacity of a reporter? Hah! Fine day, isn’t it, fine day! Always happy to be home among my own friends. Sit down, sit down! Cigars? Why didn’t you ask me to be your best man, Ed? No, no, I was only joking; don’t take me seriously.”

Something’s wrong, he thought cunningly under his unctuous and bouncing chatter. What’s Hans doing here? Bill 1792? I’ll have to be careful and watch it. Never liked Hans, the cold gray fish; he gave me some bad days after that editorial of his last October. Never liked Ed, for that matter; you can’t trust men who have no subtlety and who never ask you for favors. They save up for the day when they have a definite and serious demand, and it’s hell trying to satisfy and deceive them at one and the same time.

Yes, it was serious. Hans was regarding him with his chilly eyes and Edward, the Senator thought distastefully, looked like a driver of a brewer’s big wagon. Why did he have to look so shabby and so bulking? “Yes, yes,” said the Senator, happily. “Henry and I have been wondering why you asked him to meet both of you here. Not the same party, hah, hah! But friends, yes, friends!”

“Stop babbling, Thorne,” said Hans, indifferently. “You never keep your big red mouth shut, and you don’t have to advertise the fact that you visit your dentist at least twice a year. I’m not here as a newspaper man; I’d have sent a reporter instead of coming myself, if I wanted an interview with you. I’m here as an American and a private citizen, and so is Ed.” He held up his hand, and the Senator’s loud gay laughter stopped abruptly. “For once, Thorne, listen and don’t talk. You’re wasting our time. All right, Ed, begin.”

Edward talked in short and precise sentences, with a kind of cool vehemence. He talked, without interruption, for over ten minutes, and his voice was the only sound in the room. And, as he spoke, Hans acutely watched the faces of the two politicians. Henry’s face expressed in turn, confusion, alarm, incomprehension, incredulity, and then greater alarm. He leaned forward in his chair, his fingers laced tensely together, and kept his eyes on Edward’s face as in a kind of appalled trance.

But Senator Bonwit’s face slowly took on the aspect of smooth pink marble, his handsome brown eyes expressionless and watchful. He smoked steadily and with an air of ease. He knows, thought Hans. Yes, he knows. But not poor little Henry. This is all news to him.

Edward had finished. Then Hans took up the story in his remote and unaccented voice, judicious and without passion. Henry gazed at him with mounting horror; the Senator was very still and curiously impassive, though wearing an air of polite interest.

“Well,” said Hans, finally, “you’ve heard us, both of you. We’re not hysterics; we’re businessmen and we’re well informed: We not only believe what we’ve told you; we know it to be the truth. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”

Henry looked at the Senator; his small features were squeezed together as if he were about to cry. The Senator took his cigar from his mouth and studied the glowing end and looked at Edward and Hans ruefully, and shook his head.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” he said, as if with wonder. “Oh, I’m not doubting that you believe what you’ve both told me. Now I’m in Washington. There isn’t even a rumor, and I give you my word of honor as your Senator! Everything’s calm and placid. It’s true that the President is an unworldly scholar and has strange ideas, but we have a sensible Congress. I assure you, boys, that if there was the slightest rumor—the very slightest, please understand—I’d be almost the first to know. Colonel House is a personal friend of mine. We dine frequently together.”

“We never said that President Wilson is part of the plot,” interrupted Hans, contemptuously. “He’ll probably be the last to know, if he ever knows.” He gazed at the Senator, who became ruddier than ever. “But you know, don’t you, Thorne? I know a lot about you; I understand you have about a million dollars’ worth of munitions stocks. Besides, you’d like to be President, wouldn’t you? I’ve heard rumors.”

He turned to Henry, kindly, while the Senator sat in speechlessness. “Well, Henry?”

The young man’s sensitive mouth trembled visibly. “Hans, if you are really convinced—I can’t believe these terrible things, but you know more than I do—Hans, you can count on me to vote against getting America into any war—”

The Senator suddenly turned his head to the youthful Congressman, and for an instant there was a malign flash in his eye. Then he gave his attention to Hans and laughed gently.

“Hans, I’m going to overlook your remarks about my munitions stocks and what you allege are my ambitions. I am going to ask you a hypothetical question, purely hypothetical. What if the British or German fleet should ever stand in New York harbor with guns trained on the city?”

Hans smiled slightly. “You know that’ll never happen, Thorne. And you also know that can be used as a lying threat to get America into some long-plotted war.”

The Senator assumed an expression of sadness and open dismay. “Hans! I honestly don’t understand you. You and Ed here have been talking about plots and counterplots and Socialism and wars, and, frankly, it sounds like Alice in Wonderland. I’ve not been contradicting anything either of you has said, for, to me, it has no meaning whatsoever. No basis, no reality. But I’ve been interested, as one would be interested in a new game. That’s why I asked you that hypothetical question, without real seriousness.

“But,” and now his face stiffened and he watched them, “would you not defend America, in the very improbable circumstance that we should be attacked? Would you be—pacifists?”

Pacifists. Hans pondered the word. It was new. And it was terribly dangerous. “Pacifists?” said Edward, in a loud and brutal voice. “Explain that.”

The Senator waved his hand largely. “I meant, isn’t America worth fighting for or even dying for? I think so.”

“Yes,” said Edward. “She is. I love my country. I want to keep her out of fighting and dying—permanently.”

Hans stood up and stretched his lean body. He seemed casual and relaxed, but the Senator watched him with sudden alertness. “I’m thinking of something the fourth President of the United States once said, James Madison: ‘Of all the evils to public liberty war is perhaps the most to be dreaded.… War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes, are the known instruments for bringing the many under the dominion of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended—and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people! No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.’

“That, Thorne, was said by President Madison generations on generations ago. And I suggest that you understand it all too well, too well for American peace. ‘Armies, and debts, and taxes, are the known instruments for bringing the many under the dominion of the few.’ You expect to be one of the few, don’t you, Thorne?”

The high color left the Senator’s face, and Edward, watching him, wondered if that hard white pallor meant guilt or anger or fear. It could be all of them. He was convinced this was true when the Senator lost his jocund manner, his affability, his genial air of tolerant appeasement, and replaced it with menace and quiet fury and threat. The time had come, the Senator had apparently decided, when the politician’s amiability was of no further use.

“Hans,” he said, “don’t use those remarks of yours in your newspapers. We still have libel laws. And in Washington—”

“Yes, I know,” said Hans with bitter coldness. “A word in Washington, from you. My newspapers are mortgaged. Somehow, through your banker friends and your friends in Washington, my loans could be suddenly called in. But I have friends, too. My newspapers almost defeated you last November. The next time I can really defeat you, even if I lose my newspapers. But do you know something, Thorne? I don’t believe you’ll move against me. Not yet, anyway. You wouldn’t dare.”

He turned to the Congressman, Henry Sheftel, who was much shaken after this exchange. “Henry,” said Hans, “let’s get out of here. There’s a stench in this place.”

“So, you see,” said Edward to Margaret, in the glowing green light of the early evening, as they sat side by side on the wooden bench, “Hans wasn’t sure about Bonwit. He wanted to be sure; he wanted to learn something. And he did. He learned about Sheftel, too. We talked about Sheftel later. We’re going to support him against Bonwit, at the next senatorial elections, though he isn’t of our party.”

Margaret looked at his worn and haggard face, and her heart squeezed together, and she put her head on his shoulder. She was deeply frightened and stricken. The vast gardens rose beyond the small hollow where they sat in isolation, and the last long rays of the sun flooded the grass with light and shadow. The warm wind blew stronger and lifted the scent of the earth into the air, like an overpowering perfume. The sky dreamed in a soft blue, and a few radiant clouds stood motionless in it. There was such peace here, such coolness. It was almost impossible to believe in hot if quiet plottings, and terrors, and unnamed wars, and the furious calculations of evil men. But Margaret believed Edward. However, she wanted to soothe and comfort him. Before she could speak, he went on drearily:

“Bonwit knows about my plans for expansion into large markets in most of the big cities. General grocery, meat, and vegetable stores, like the Atlantic & Pacific. Just before we left him—and he’d lost all that ruddy pleasantness of his by then—he said to me, ‘Ed, there’s some rumor in Washington of bringing an antitrust suit against the Atlantic & Pacific. It would be unpleasant, wouldn’t it, if a similar suiit were brought against you? Or an order of restraint?’”

“Oh, Ed, you’re not afraid of him!”

“No,” said Edward, grimly. “But there was another thing. At the door, he said, ‘You’re a German, aren’t you?’ And he looked at Hans from me. So Hans is now convinced that the war will be against Germany.”

“Impossible,” said Margaret, quietly. “At least a third of the American people are of German stock. And America and Germany have always been good friends, and the American people don’t like England.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Edward. “Nations like, or dislike, other countries whenever their rulers tell them to do so, with lies and libels.”

Margaret was silent for a few minutes. Then she said, “But, Ed, if there is an inevitability about all this, what can you do? What makes you so intense about it?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, slowly. “So help me God, I don’t know. But when I think of it, I almost lose my mind.”

He held her hand so tightly that it hurt her. “There’s something else. It might not be true, but Hans thinks it is. A friend of his just returned to New York from Europe. The friend said that two British men-of-war are riding in the middle of the Atlantic. He saw them through binoculars. It was as if they were waiting for something. They didn’t move; they just stood there.”

He rubbed his aching forehead until it was dark red. “What are they waiting for? What’s in the middle of the Atlantic?” He paused. He lifted his head and stared before him. “Cables from Germany to the United States.”

Then he looked at Margaret, at her sweet and valiant face, which was so troubled. He tried to smile, and he helped her to her feet.

“Let’s forget it, shall we, darling? As you said, there’s nothing I can do. Have you forgotten? Five days to our wedding!”

He held her in his arms and kissed her passionately, then rubbed his cheek against the top of her bright hair. She clung to him. He pushed aside a soft curl and saw her ear, and it struck him how young she was, for the ear was the ear of a loving and vulnerable child, so soft and small and innocent, curving against her head. She was gallant and had a tender strength, but for some reason the very contour of her ear, whiter and of a more fragile outline than the rest of her face, recalled to him the years of her own defenseless suffering and homelessness and unloved life. He sheltered her in his arms and kissed the ear, and it seemed to him that the layers of calcification which had relentlessly grown over his emotions had suddenly dissolved.

“You make me, even now, love life and have hope,” he said in a voice that none of his family ever heard. “As long as I have you, I won’t be completely desperate, Margaret.”

“Where there’s love there’s always hope,” she answered, and she leaned back in his arms to smile at him. Her ardent blue eyes were wet and shining. He kissed the gilded lashes and then her lips.

“I never had a friend but you,” he said.

“Oh, no, dear. You have William and Padraig and Mr. Enreich, too.”

He frowned, and his arms slackened about her a little. She gazed at him anxiously. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think they only like what I am.”

“But, Ed, that’s everything!”

“Not exactly. It’s hard to explain. If I became less than what I am, or what they think I am—and I’m not speaking of money or success—then they’d despise me. Well. Perhaps not Padraig. Still, I don’t know. I’m not making myself clear. It’s too subtle for me.”

They began to walk up the shallow slope that led to the great formal gardens. A sudden green rage struck the trees, and Margaret’s linen dress was molded about her body, and her hair blew back. She looked like some virginal nymph, filled with a frail heroism, and Edward thought to himself, How is it possible for anyone to love someone else as I love her? But he said gloomily, “George Enreich always talks in riddles. He quoted something from Macbeth: ‘Bloody instructions, which being taught, return to plague the inventor.’ I suppose he thought that relevant. He talks in riddles, like my mother, and William.”

“It’s not a riddle,” urged Margaret, timidly. “I think he meant that whatever wicked men do, whatever they persuade foolish men to do, will rebound on them.”

“After we’re all dead, or in prison, or sent to some Siberia,” said Edward with unusual and desperate force. “Well, never mind. I’ll do what I can. And what makes you so clever, child?” he added, trying to change his mood for young Margaret’s sake.

“Being about to marry you,” she said, with a look that held her heart. “And that reminds me. Your family is giving us a party tonight, inviting most of their friends. We must hurry.”

Edward was quite aware of his family’s reactions to Margaret. He stopped, but Margaret coaxingly locked her arm in his and laughed. “Your mother is really a most remarkable lady,” she said. “A grand lady. Your brothers and sister are spoiled, I admit, but they have possibilities. And your father is sweet. He told me this morning that he was coming down for the party.”

“There’s nothing wrong with him!” said Edward, with a violence that startled her. “Nothing! He’s just indulging himself. He can afford it. I made that possible for him. He has what he wanted, a mansion, money, servants, and people fawning on him and visiting him.”

But no one notices the poor thing, thought Margaret sadly. And what he wants isn’t what you’ve said, my darling.

Now they were out in the last long sunlight and approaching the formal gardens with their flower beds, their grottoes, their dusky paths and little glades. A fountain sang before them, a bowl of water in mossy stone. A marble child stood in the center, naked and laughing, with a big fish in his arms and from the fish’s mouth poured a sparkling stream. The child had a gay and mocking face, in spite of the chubby cheeks and the stony curls and the dimpled chin. Edward stood with Margaret to look at him.

“Somehow I don’t like it,” said Edward. “William picked it up in Italy. The face’s too wise, too knowing. Too—decadent.”

Margaret thought so, too, but she said, “I think it’s charming.”

She hugged his arm briefly, and they went on. They came in sight of the house at an angle; it loomed against a dark red sunset, all its windows cold. Edward said restlessly, “It’ll never be my own until I lift the mortgage. And lifting the mortgage is the first thing I’ll do when I can stop pouring money into the business and open my markets. I’m going to call them the Green and White Stores, and I’ve got ideas better than the Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company. I’ll give them some good competition.”

He seemed more vigorous. He lifted Margaret’s hand from his arm and kissed it. All at once he was buoyant. “Perhaps the things I know won’t happen in our lifetime. With you, darling, surely I’ll have some peace now, all the days of my life.”

“‘Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever,’” she quoted softly.

“What?” he said, annoyed.

“It’s the Twenty-third Psalm,” she said with surprise. “Didn’t you know what you’ve been quoting?”

“No,” he said shortly. “And I’m sorry I know now. And I’m going to forget it. I like it the way I thought it was.”

She knew his moods as well as she knew her own. She walked with him in silence. The air seemed to darken as they approached the mighty and solid house. There was a sudden flash of lightning in the east, and then a low rolling of thunder. A willow’s long hair suddenly lashed in the strengthening wind and blew against the red sky in green dishevelment. Margaret, oppressed all at once, hoped it wasn’t a bad omen. She looked at the eastern sky and saw new and looming clouds, as dark as Edward’s face and as unquiet. “Let us run!” cried Margaret, and there was an urgency in her voice which was not connected with the gathering storm at all.

CHAPTER X

The wedding day was dim and oppressively green, so that the gardens, where the marriage took place, lost color and, in spite of the smothering heat of the weather, held a kind of remote desolation and colorlessness. It was Sylvia who had designed the altar, near the fountain, and Margaret thought it perfection. Sylvia received this compliment haughtily and turned away in disdain. Did this shopgirl, this cheap creature, think she could please her, Sylvia Enger, with her superficial gratitude? It was actually an insult. Sylvia said ungraciously, “I’m glad you like it. It was the garden altar I designed last summer for our play The Golden Lady.”

The altar was in an arch painted soft green and covered with yellow roses, each one perfect, and seeming to shine vividly in the spectral light of the ominous afternoon. The arch itself was banked with Chinese jade-colored pots filled with towering ferns, and in its center was a low altar covered with a green and silver cloth, which glimmered dully. The sound of the fountain seemed unduly loud, almost crashing, in the hushed quiet, and drops of quicksilver water floated on the ferns closest to it. A green grass carpet stretched all the way from the house to the altar, which stood in wide isolation. At a considerable distance tables covered with white damask and bowls of flowers and glimmering silver were prepared for the bridal party.

There had been considerable scornful and derisive conversation between Edward’s brothers and sister because he had chosen William MacFadden to be his best man, and Margaret had chosen as her matron of honor Maggie McNulty Devoe. Sylvia and Violette were the bridesmaids, and Gregory and Ralph the ushers. Sylvia, who had spitefully hoped that rain would spoil the wedding, now was anxious that it would not, for she had designed not only Margaret’s wedding gown but the gowns for herself and Violette. Pride in her secret profession had prevented her from her first impulse to make Margaret seem dowdy and unattractive, and when she heard the sincere exclamations of delight from her sister-in-law, Maggie, and Margaret, she almost liked the bride.

But when Padraig had arrived two nights ago with his imposing and beautiful wife, Sylvia had been freshly devastated. She could not beg her mother to let these guests stay at the hotel in Waterford; that would be betraying herself. She hated Maggie; the very sight of her made Sylvia physically ill. She avoided Padraig, and did not see him until the day of the wedding. She detested William; his bright hazel eyes saw too much, and he had a sharper repartee than her own. Moreover, he was attached to Edward and that, in Sylvia’s estimation, branded him as a person of low taste. Her whole being, body and spirit, was in a state of tense and aching turmoil these days. She supervised the dressmakers, and her cutting voice could frequently be heard in the sewing rooms. But she would not come downstairs for her meals and lay for hours, sometimes, on her bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.

Violette was malicious; she had guessed that Sylvia loved Padraig. But she admired Maggie to Sylvia with such an air of absolute innocence that Sylvia was deceived. “I think Mrs. Devoe’s too lush,” said Sylvia. “But after all, she is quite old. Did you see the gown she is wearing to the wedding, Violette? I didn’t.” She paused. “Tell me.”

Violette described the blue silk lace with enthusiasm, and the wide garden hat to match, and the blue lace parasol. “The magnificent eyes: they will be—increased,” said Violette, in her uncertain but descriptive English. “I suggested a touch, an accent, one pink rose on the bosom, embossed on the lace. Ah! She kissed me. Like a mother,” added the clever Violette, seeing the sick darkness on Sylvia’s face.

Sylvia had designed a daring gown for Violette, her artistic eye guiding her to enhance the girl’s trig and impudent prettiness. The gown was of fresh golden silk, sophisticated in its lines, which brought out the firm young bosom, the short narrow waist, the swelling hips. It clung to the trim thighs, then flared from the knees to the floor. To Sylvia, Violette was the perfect model, though her figure certainly was not American. Sylvia also designed the golden silk little sailor hat, which Violette was to perch on her chestnut curls and chignon. All this brought out the amber lights of Violette’s skin, and the vivid oval eyes, and naturally red mouth with its naughtily pouting lower lip.

For herself Sylvia had designed a dress of mauve faille, demure yet unusual. Violette suggested padding for the bosom of Sylvia’s dress. “It is too thin, the figure,” said Violette. “It is—it is the virginal. One may be a virgin—non?—but one does not display it to the gentlemen. It is like fruit, the green fruit, hard like the stone, biting to the tongue.”

“I’m sure you never had to worry about that,” Sylvia had said, coloring angrily. But Violette had laughed with high merriment and had not been insulted in the least. She liked Sylvia very much, but she thought her naïve and provincial.

Sylvia did not attend the family dinner the night before the wedding. She was not only anguished and bereft; she was also exhausted from her work. She could not endure the thought of seeing Padraig in candlelight, at the very table where she had often gazed at him with secret and devouring love. She could not endure the thought of Maggie, his wife. The dinner was not a notable success, even with Maria indomitably serene at the foot of the table and Heinrich, for once, happy and excited. Edward somewhat rudely confined his conversation to William and Padraig, and the conversation was of business. Ralph had not yet convinced Edward that he should be allowed to study in South America, and so he was surly. Violette flirted disgustingly, Ralph thought, with Gregory, who was quite entranced. Heinrich frequently spoke, but no one heard him. The candles increased the heat of the dining room, and the scent of roses was oppressive. Margaret did not speak at all. She sat at Edward’s right hand but rarely saw his face, which was turned to his friends. For some reason she felt despondent and alone. It was only when the beautiful Maggie Devoe smiled at her across the table, with such affection and encouragement, that her spirits rose a little. After dinner Margaret went upstairs in accordance with custom. She would not see Edward until tomorrow.

No one was on the second floor, not even a servant. Margaret went silently to the newly decorated suite which she and Edward would occupy. She had timidly asked for ivory walls, with touches of gilt, a pale Aubusson rug in tints of blue and rose and yellow, for the sitting room. This had been done. She had suggested the decorations, for this was one of the few rooms filled with Parisian furniture: small gilt chairs in blue and rose brocade, small marble tables and crystal lamps, and love seats in light gold silk. She had chosen the draperies of blue and gold and rose brocade, with their silken fringes. Her bedroom was similarly furnished. Even Sylvia had grudgingly conceded that it was all very beautiful and perfect. The casement windows overlooked the gardens, and a small white marble fireplace was filled with white roses.

Edward’s bedroom was large and somewhat ponderously furnished, and all in heavy mahogany and dark rugs and draperies. A single lamp was lit, on a big table near the bed with its high and intricately carved mahogany headboard. Margaret entered the room and approached the bed. She touched the crimson velvet spread lovingly. She wandered to the chests of drawers, with their oval, wood-framed mirrors. Here were Edward’s leather cuff-link boxes, his silver brushes. She touched them shyly, and her heart trembled. No man had ever been born who could compare with dear Ed, she thought. Dear Ed, with his beset face, his tired gray eyes, his deep and gentle smile. She clasped her hands suddenly to her breast. She had almost nothing to give him, but her love and all her life and her devotion. So little to give!

The lamplight shimmered on her hair, on the pure curve of her cheek and chin, and on her white shoulders which rose from her pearl-colored gown. She caught a glimpse of a shadow and turned swiftly and fearfully. It was only Pierre, who was entering to turn down Edward’s bed. She smiled at the aged and bent old man, and he returned her smile. His ancient eyes had watched her for a full minute before she had seen him. It is a lovely lady, he had thought, a very tender and innocent child, who has suffered. It is a lady worthy of my Edward, for she has known pain and loneliness and it has not made her harsh.

“Good evening, Pierre,” said Margaret, blushing because he had found her here. “It’s lonely to be a bride on the night before the wedding.”

“Yes, Miss Baumer,” the old man replied. He turned down the velvet bedspread with deft hands, mottled and tendoned. “You will permit me to bring you a glass of wine? It is good for the sleep on a troubled night.”

Margaret accepted gratefully and went into the sitting room. The house was so hot and so very quiet. The clouded sky was streaked with dark veins, like vaulted marble. Margaret could hardly breathe. She sat in a chair near the casement and waited for the wine. It was brought to her soon, and she thanked Pierre. He hesitated.

“Miss Baumer will permit me to speak? She will not think me presumptuous?”

Margaret took the crystal glass from her lips. Her blue eyes widened kindly on the old man, but with some surprise. “I’d never think you presumptuous, Pierre,” she said. “Do say whatever you wish.”

“It is about my Edward,” he said, in the low voice of one who is seriously deafened. He looked at her anxiously. “He is my friend. He is not only my employer. I was lost and abandoned, and he took me into his heart and into his house. I regard him as my son, my dear, beloved son. Miss Baumer understands?”

“Yes,” she said, very moved. “I know how you love Ed, Pierre.”

He sighed and clasped his hands listlessly before him. “It is not easy to speak, for all is elusive. For my Edward’s sake, I ask Miss Baumer not to look with unseeing eyes. All is not what it seems, and I say this, who love him. The loyalty of love can deceive, when one is young. The old can be loyal, but they are not blind. For Edward’s sake, it is necessary for Miss Baumer to see clearly. Most necessary, for his sake.”

Margaret tried to understand. The old man was urgently trying to convey something very subtle but very important to her, and she was baffled. She said at last, while he waited, “I think I know what you mean, Pierre. He’s been exploited all his life. He’s given all his life to his family.” Her voice rose on a little crest of anger. “You want me to help stop the exploitation? That’s it, isn’t it?”

Pierre sighed again, as if his last hope had gone, and he half turned away. “He is destroying himself,” he murmured. “Because he is destroying others.”

Margaret caught the murmur but not the words. She watched the old man go to the door. He paused there and looked at her desolately. “Perhaps,” he said, “it is enough to love. Perhaps love will finally see, and save.”

How had he deceived himself that so young a woman, so innocent and unworldly a woman, so passionately loving a woman, could understand? “Good night, Miss Baumer,” he said mournfully and went away.

Margaret spent a restless night. Occasionally, waking from a doze, she heard the growl of thunder, the sudden lashing of trees. Her nightgown was damp and clammy, and she turned her pillows frequently. Occasionally she thought, I should have been married as Edward wanted to be married, alone in Albany. This family is so unfriendly to me; they’ll never like me. And I’ll never like them! How cruel they are, how absolutely cruel and unfeeling. Oh, if we could only live alone and never see them again. Never, never. Her braided hair felt too heavy on her neck and shoulders. Her whole body, mind, and spirit felt heavy and foreboding.

She was awake early in the morning and she saw the gloomy skies and felt the heat. Her foreboding was stronger and could not be shaken off. She ate alone in her room. Lassitude flowed through her, and a sense of unreality. The distant trees were cloudy and unreal, the grass too vivid in the dull light. She could see the waiting altar. For no reason that she knew, she cried a little.

Edward waited at the altar for his bride. Damn all this ceremony. He felt ridiculous. “Quiet, quiet, boyo,” William murmured at his side. “It’s committed you are, and did I not warn you?” “Shut up,” muttered Edward, out of the side of his mouth. “Don’t lose that ring.” William chuckled under his breath.

A portable organ had been set up nearby. It looked absurd to Edward, and so did the wife of the Sunday-school superintendent in her bunchy, apricot-colored dress. She sat on the bench, with a prim and reverent expression, and blinked her eyes behind her spectacles. Edward thought that the waiting minister, in his expensive black clerical garb, was too pompous, too grave, too important. It was enough to make a man laugh, Edward said to himself, to see him under that silly arch with all those roses. There was a strong scent in the air, like the scent of a coming storm, though the misty trees were absolutely still. The fountain, to Edward, positively clattered.

The wedding guests were waiting also, seated on little chairs in a semicircle facing the altar. Yes, Senator Bonwit was there, though Edward had hardly expected him, and Henry Sheftel and Hans Bohn, and all “the friends of the family.” His brothers hovered in the background, conducting late arrivals to seats. There sat his mother, regal and massive, in dark blue silk, and beside her was his father, round and plump and pale, and next to him, George Enreich with his square, cynical countenance and stiff red hair. There, too, was Padraig, kingly in his striped trousers and Prince Albert, his tragic face softened by the months of his marriage. When he caught Edward’s eye, he smiled slightly, the smile of an affectionate friend. The mayor of Waterford was there, with his wife. The waiting and expectant faces appalled Edward, whose body felt hot and uncomfortable and “foolish” in his formal clothing. There was no sound but the flutter of the ladies’ fans and the gush of the fountain. He visibly started when, at some unseen signal, the organ crashed into the wedding march and startled brooding birds out of the shadowy trees.

Maggie appeared on the grass cloth carpet, carrying, not wearing, a pink rose. Edward saw a tall blue blur, which excited admiring murmurs from the ladies, but Padraig saw his heart’s darling, his Maggie, the mother of his child, who would be born in six months. Then, walking slowly, came the bridesmaids. Everyone stared at Violette, shining like a figure of fluid gold against the background of the motionless trees, her pert face falsely demure. That was the French girl, of a hinted noble family. Too much bosom, thought some of the ladies with disapproval, and too accentuated. Sylvia, pacing her, was tall, and thin almost to emaciation, her feverish eyes and white face fixed and sightless; she moved as if all her muscles were rigid. Nevertheless, she was admired. The girl certainly had taste and style; if the mauve gown was not quite her color, she so dark and without vividness, it was exquisite. She walked with her head slightly bent under her yellow hat. The two girls carried yellow roses floating in lavender tulle.

All held their breath for the bride. And then she was there, a radiance in white lace, her lovely face half hidden by a veil. Maria still felt affronted. It was most improper for no one to give the bride away, but, for some peculiar and unexplained reason, Margaret had gently insisted that this must be so. She had refused Padraig’s kind offer, relayed through Edward. She had said to her groom, “I don’t know who my parents were or if I have relatives. I lived alone all my life, and I want to come to you, Ed, all alone. Maybe it isn’t just right. I can’t say what I mean. I want to walk to you, all by myself, giving what I am to you.”

The minister had disapproved at the rehearsal. “A lady doesn’t give herself away,” he had politely pointed out. “This lady does,” Margaret had said, her face suffused with light and joy. She was a gift to Edward, her whole gift in her hands, and no one would present that gift in the conventional manner. She was all she had. Let everyone misunderstand. It was enough for Edward that he knew.

The virginal veil showed only the color of her lips, the faint hint of her blue eyes. But the wedding gown was absolute artistry, and Sylvia, awakening from her trance of grief, felt a thrill of pride at the way the fabric outlined the tall and slender figure, the long slender waist, the girlish hips, the soft bosom. There was an air of eagerness about Margaret, an incandescence; she appeared to float, seeing only Edward. Her gloved hands held a mother-of-pearl Bible and nothing else. To some of the more romantic and easily affected ladies she looked like a vestal virgin, as untouched as a lily, as sweetly pure as a newly born child. To some of the elderly gentlemen who had classic tastes (so derided these days), she was a marble nymph come to life at the sound of a loved voice and hastening to answer it.

Edward had hardly seen the bridal attendants. He remembered what Margaret had said. “I want to walk to you, all by myself, giving what I am to you.” Neither he nor Margaret heard the swell of hushed admiration, nor saw handkerchiefs touched to sentimental mouths and eyes. She came to him in her dignity and her girlhood and all her beauty, her hands, with their Bible, already lifted toward him. In spite of a restraining gesture from William, he advanced a few steps to meet her, and they clasped hands and stood still a moment, looking at each other as if they were alone in one breathless and poignant moment. Then he drew her before the altar and the ceremony began, against a background of murmurous music. And the two gazed at each other and not at the minister.

He had had to dispense with the “Who gives this woman—” Pompously he asked the usual queries. He was startled at Margaret’s clearly heard “Yes!” and at Edward’s emphatic reply. They appeared not to be answering Mr. Yaeger’s questions; they were answering each other, in some secret dedication of their own, and some secret vows, something fervently promised forever.

Their kiss was less a clinging than a profound consecration.

Bemused, shaken, they were assailed by family and guests. But it was strange that no one demanded to kiss the bride. The guests had seen what had transpired between Margaret and Edward, and any boisterousness, they vaguely felt, would have been a violation. Those who had intimately questioned Margaret’s origins forgot their reservations against her. George Enreich and Padraig kissed her hand only, bowing over it as if in reverence. Even the ladies were content to touch her fingers. Not even Maria kissed her new daughter; she just approached her and gave her one of her inscrutable smiles and pressed her hand against the girl’s arm.

But Margaret gave one kiss only, other than that to Edward. She kissed Heinrich, who cried silently and mopped his eyes.

There was a gigantic cake at the bride’s table. The next few hours passed in a dream for Margaret and Edward. All the guests were only mouthing shadows. Their hands touched each other constantly. The veil thrown back, Margaret’s eyes were as blue and radiant as an effulgent sky. Edward’s face, usually so dark and blunt and cold, became the face of a young man, caught up in pulsing delight and rapture.

They never forgot that day. It lived in their memories as fresh and as deep-felt as at the first moment, in spite of the spectral tragedies that were almost upon them, even in those hours. “We were man and wife from the very beginning, perhaps from the instant we met,” Margaret would say. “The wedding was only the culmination.” To Edward it was the one day when he was young again, hopeful again, and full of gentleness, as he had been as a child.

After the bridal lunch they still clung together. The meal was excellent; they could not eat. They drank the champagne, and the sprightly liquid enhanced their enchantment and almost unbearable ecstasy. Hand in hand, they walked over the grass, speaking, smiling, accepting good wishes and congratulations, which they hardly heard. There was no dancing; it was Sunday, June twenty-eighth, and Mr. Yaeger had had to secure special permission from his superior to perform the ceremony then. “I will assent, if it is decorous,” the superior had said. “And no dancing, no hilarity, and, if possible, no spiritous refreshments.”

Hours went by in a dream. There was no hurry. There would be no honeymoon until next week, when Edward had to go to New York. More food was brought out by servants, who glanced apprehensively at the crepuscular sky and listened to the wind which was beginning to torment the trees. Candles appeared, though it was now only six o’clock. Thunder boomed like a drum in the background; no one heard it. Everyone was caught up in the spirit of the lovely marriage and its mysterious meaning. Glimpses of Margaret had the quality of hypnotism. Her face had regained its usual charming color; she appeared to sparkle; there was an iridescence about her. Even Sylvia, who had been almost overcome at the sight of Padraig, reluctantly conceded that Margaret was beautiful. “But a common beauty,” she had murmured to Violette, who had squinted her eyes humorously.

It was about seven o’clock when Hans Bohn was called to the telephone. The guests were still enjoying themselves at the table. He came back to Edward and said in a low voice, “Something has happened. I must go to the office. I know you’ll excuse me, Ed.”

Edward began to say something pleasant; his face was alive with his happiness. Then he saw the eyes of the publisher, and the hard cloven lines about his face, and the bitter significance of his manner. He stood up, dropping Margaret’s hand.

“What is it, Hans?” he asked quietly, and moved away from the table. “You look like a corpse. It’s not your family; they’re here. Some—catastrophe?”

Hans hesitated. He was resolved not to spoil this wedding day. And then he remembered that Edward was his friend, that Edward had a powerful right to know the news. He said, “Don’t say anything about this to anyone. Not that they’d care,” he added somberly. “Ed, it’s broken loose, at last. I didn’t expect it to come, not for a while, but it has.” He dropped his voice even lower.

“There’s been a cable just a few minutes ago. The Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, were murdered by an assassin in Slavic Bosnia. Today, at noon, in Europe. About dawn in America.”

Edward stared at him uncomprehending for a few seconds. Then his face thickened and reddened, and then suddenly paled. He glanced about for Senator Bonwit at one of the tables. The Senator had left. Edward then remembered the Senator passing his table a few moments ago, murmuring how delightful the wedding had been but that he had been summoned urgently to his office.

“So it’s begun,” said Edward, and his heart was a lump of hot iron.

“And our friend the Senator is probably getting ready to leave for Washington at this very moment,” said Hans. He was as pallid as paper.

Dazed, Edward looked at the peaceful gardens, sounding with laughter and lively voices. He saw the moving trees, smelled the rising passion of the disturbed earth. Margaret was looking at him from the bridal table, her lip caught between her teeth, her expression worried. Her veil floated in a gust, and her face was clear and pure in the ghostly light.

“All right,” said Edward, in a dead voice. “Go on, Hans. I’ll talk with you tomorrow. I can’t frighten Margaret today—tonight. That is one thing I can’t do.” And he smiled at Margaret reassuringly and lifted his hand.

A vein of fiery brillance darted through the murky skies, then exploded in a broad sheet of light. There was a long crash of thunder. The trees seemed to stand on tiptoe and throw their green arms desperately and fearfully to the heavens. The grass blanched in a white wind, and flowers blew from the tables.

The golden candles went out and a darkness fell on the face of the earth.

CHAPTER XI

Austria-Hungary was at war with Serbia. That was July twenty-eighth. On August first, the Kaiser declared that Germany was at war with Russia. On August third France was at war with Germany, and Germany was at war with Belgium, Great Britain with Germany on August fourth, Austria-Hungary with Russia, and Serbia with Germany, on August sixth. France went to war with Austria-Hungary, and Great Britain with Austria-Hungary, on August twelfth.

“The guns sounding in Europe are the guns aimed at the heart of all mankind,” William wrote to Edward. “But this is only the beginning. I’m not a religious chap, but this is Armageddon.… The nations aren’t fighting each other, though they think they are. They’re fighting the bloody fight for Socialism; nobody’s told them that yet.”

On a hot day in middle August Margaret called on Father Jahle. She had never met the priest before, and when she saw his face, so exalted, so suffering, and so kind, she felt she had not made a mistake in coming to him for help.

She looked about the little dank parlor. Milk bottles and cheap glass vases and bowls overflowed with zinnias, yellow daisies, late roses, and summer lilies. They possessed a colored light of their own in every corner, on every table, and masked, by their effulgence, the dull shabbiness and mildewed walls, on which they seemed to cast a living radiance. Their scent flowed over odors of decay and poverty. Margaret sat on a small horsehair chair, beautiful in her white linen suit and big blue hat, but her eyes were full of pain and set in dark circles. She had taken off her gloves, and unconsciously twisted them in her hands as she spoke.

“Father Jahle, I’m afraid you’ll think me presumptuous or silly in coming to talk with you,” she said in a low voice.

The priest smiled at her with tender encouragement. How many times he had heard those exact words in this room! “Presumptuous, silly,” the anguished souls called themselves as they cried out for succor in their despair. “Why should I, Mrs. Enger?” he asked gently. “What else is a priest for, except to help if he can?”

“Yes,” she said, faintly. “That’s what I’ve come for. Help.” She paused, and her eyes implored him. “Ed talks about you so much; you see each other so often, he’s so devoted—”

The priest said, with some sadness, “It’s true that I’ve known Eddie since he was a child, and that he has done so much for me, so much! I think I know Eddie almost more than anyone else does, except, of course, his wife.” (The pretty, loving young girl, the poor child!) He went on, looking at her earnestly, “But I don’t see Eddie very often, not in these past years. In fact, I haven’t seen him this time for several months, or many weeks, at least. I was just going to write him a letter. You see, the last time I saw him he insisted on me going to a doctor; he thought it was something very serious. But it wasn’t, thank God. I just have asthma; I’ve had it all my life. Perhaps you can reassure Eddie for me.”

“Oh, no,” said Margaret, dropping her head. “I don’t want him to know that I’ve been here.”

The priest waited, and Margaret, her face hidden, felt his large humanity, his compassion, and his profound innocence that was also wisdom. It was never good to urge confession or confidence, thought the priest. The seeking soul had its own tempo.

“It’s about Ed,” Margaret murmured at last.

“Yes. Of course,” said the priest.

Margaret lifted her eyes, and the pure blueness of them was magnified with tears.

“Since the war broke out, in Europe, he—he hasn’t been well,” she said, her voice breaking. “I mean, there’s a kind of dustiness, a dusty shadow, over his face. He told me, even before we were married, that there was a war coming, against the world, by men who had arranged it a long time ago. He seemed to be one of the few who knew—” She paused. “He seems ill. He doesn’t talk about it much any longer, even to me, but I know he is busy about something.

“But that isn’t just why I came. It’s—I’m afraid for him. He’s my husband. I love him. He’s tearing himself to pieces inside; you’d almost think the war meant something to him, personally, that it had a personal meaning for him. That’s what I can’t understand! When terrible things occur, it’s only right that a man should fight them, if he cares anything about other men at all.” She stopped and gazed at the priest despairingly. “But I don’t think that he—”

Father Jahle nodded sorrowfully. “Yes, I know. What you wish to say, and don’t wish to say as a loyal wife, is that Eddie dislikes people intensely and cares nothing about them. Mrs. Enger, it’s been my experience that when men begin to dislike people violently, and to give an impression that the fate of other men is not only not their concern, but that they derive pleasure from seeing calamity visited on others, it’s because they once loved their fellow men and cherished them and worried about them. And then they were terribly hurt. It isn’t possible for men like Eddie to become indifferent to their fellows, for they’ve been involved with the world too long. The dislike and the derision and the malice is the reverse side of the coin of their original love and hope and dedication.”

“Yes, yes!” said Margaret. “His family has disappointed him so much! They’re so detestable.”

But that’s not what I meant, or it’s only part of it, thought the priest. Yet how much, really, do I know of such a protean man as Eddie?

He was disturbed by the anger and indignation on Margaret’s face.

“I think,” faltered Margaret, “that in some way the war is tied up in his mind, though he doesn’t realize it, with his family. It’s just a guess on my part, a sort of intuition. I think it’s beginning to kill him, day by day. On the few times that he’s mentioned the war, and Socialism and the men behind Socialism, he never fails to speak of his brothers and sister right afterwards, as if it was a continuing theme in his thoughts, without his conscious knowledge. I know that sounds stupid, but—”

The priest was disturbed and greatly startled. He pondered over what Margaret had said, one thin finger pressed against his lips. He coughed, over and over, apparently having some difficulty with his breath. He thought, while trying to overcome his paroxysms, The child hasn’t spoken stupidly. There’s truth in what she’s said, but I never saw it before. I am the stupid one.

He said, “Only Our Lord understands the torturous and devious ways of the human soul and mind.” His voice was weak from his spasm. “Eddie is by nature a man of deep feeling and emotion. I don’t know his family well. At one time,” he said musingly, “I called him Simon.” He looked at Margaret questioningly, wondering if she was as little versed in religion as Edward. But Margaret nodded.

“He still is,” she said with some bitterness and vehemence.

Father Jahle sighed and shook his head. This girl wanted to help her husband; she could not help him if she believed what she had said. Her love and fierce loyalty would blind her. As gently as possible, the priest went on. “Mrs. Enger, I don’t call Eddie Simon any longer.”

She was puzzled. “I don’t understand,” she said.

He wondered if he could reach her, for Edward’s sake. He sat on the edge of his chair, his clasped hands between his thin black knees. He did not want to hurt her. He said, “Words are very inadequate; I find that out all the time. It’s a clumsy way to try to convey what you mean. At one time, Mrs. Enger, I believed Eddie was terribly exploited by his family, that he, the strong one, was being oppressed by the weak, and that he couldn’t escape. I don’t think that now. Oh, from what I’ve heard over the years, his brothers and sister are weak. And Eddie is very strong.”

He regarded her hopefully. But she was frowning a little. “You mean, they’re weak because they and their parents think they’re geniuses? But they do have gifts?”

“Yes,” said the priest. “They have. But I think that’s beside the point. I’ve said that Eddie is strong; he is. And he’s been exploited. Why? Because he believes in his family’s genius? Perhaps that’s part of it. But there’s an enormous resentment in him, even a kind of hatred for them.”

Margaret nodded. “How can he be blamed? They’ve disappointed him; they don’t use their capacities to the limit, in spite of all his work and his money. I—I know one of the brothers very well.” She colored, and the priest wondered why, anxiously. “It’s David. A wonderful pianist. He could do better; his technique is perfect, but it hasn’t any true color or brilliance. It’s mechanical. Ed knows; Ed could have been a pianist himself. He has the spirit for it, the feeling, the intensity. I think he could have been a painter, too; he knows all about painting. He’s haunted all the bigger galleries in this country, and he can talk about art like an artist himself. He speaks and writes eloquently; he knows literature. And he’s built that theater for Sylvia, and she’s no more interested in it than I am. Don’t you see why Ed should feel as he does about them?”

Again the priest shook his head. “I can see. On the surface. But I don’t think that’s the real reason, somehow.”

“But he was deprived so they could have the chance!” cried Margaret.

The priest stood up slowly and leaned his arm on the little mantelpiece near him. He dropped his face into his hand. Yes, he thought. That is a part of it, but only a part. But why did he let himself be exploited? That’s the dark and hidden answer to it all. He’s strong; he could have gone his own way. Why didn’t he? Was it because, in a kind of revenge …? I don’t know! And Eddie probably knows the least of all.

He often had these moments of absolute bafflement and pain. Even a priest could see only the surface, much of the time. A man’s soul lay hidden, like a creature in a shell, far below the bright roof of the ocean, dwelling to itself, known only to God.

Margaret’s shoulders dropped with weariness. The priest did not understand at all. She said lifelessly, “I know I’m right in thinking that the war is somehow tied up in Ed’s mind with his family. I sense it. But I haven’t a way of bringing it to his consciousness! What could I say? He would look at me as if I were insane.” She laughed drearily. “Perhaps I am, after all. What could that awful war have in common with Ed’s feeling about his family?”

“I don’t know. But I think you’re right, Mrs. Enger.”

She looked at him in astonishment. “You think so? Then what can we do to help him?”

“God will have to reveal it to him. You see, Mrs. Enger, God, like the sea, has His own tides, and nothing can hurry them. A man has first to understand himself, and feel contrition, and confess, and then ask for forgiveness, before he is free.”

Margaret was outraged. “You’re speaking of Ed? What has he to feel contrite about? What has he to confess? He’s given his life to his family!”

“So he has,” said Father Jahle, mournfully. “Or has he? I don’t know. There’s something here neither of us can understand. Men aren’t mathematical equations; they can’t be measured by scientific instruments. No man has the identical aims, emotions, passions, loves, and desires, as another man has. Every man is unique, because he is an immortal soul. He shares in God’s infinite variety, which is never duplicated. He is beyond science; only his body is the field of the biologist. The new psychology you read about, here and there, can never be a science, for science is exactness. Its experiments can be repeated over and over, with always the same results. But man’s soul is beyond science, for no man’s spirit can be analyzed by other men, because they have not experienced exactly the same thing he’s experienced, nor thought the same thoughts, nor loved or hated or suffered as he has.”

He half turned from Margaret. “There were the two thieves on their crosses, on each side of Our Lord. One of them reviled Him; the other recognized Him and loved Him. Yet they were both thieves, both miserable wretches, both abandoned creatures, in the sight of the crowd, both criminals caught in the same crime. But modern psychology would declare them to be the same, objects which could be measured scientifically, reacting identically. Part of a mass man. Yet one repented, the other did not. Was the repentance a sudden grace from God? Or was it a bursting into light of what had been cramped and chained and oppressed and was now suddenly released?”

Margaret twisted her gloves in her hands and regarded him steadily. Then she began to shake her head over and over, as if denying something in herself.

“Please, my child,” said the priest. “Try to help Eddie. You can do that by helping his brothers and sister, perhaps to—to free themselves—”

Margaret exclaimed indignantly, “Ed constantly urges them to stand on their own feet! He’s not imprisoning them! They haven’t any courage!”

“And you can’t help them to have courage?” asked the priest. “A new sister, a gentle sister, a sister with pity?”

“Pity them?” cried Margaret, jumping to her feet. “For exploiting Ed, for worrying him to death, for disappointing him? For frustrating him, for muttering ridicule of him behind his back? I’ve heard them when they thought I wasn’t there. Oh, they don’t dare to say anything to his face, except Sylvia, and then even she realizes she’s gone too far, and tries to appease him. Pity them! Grown people! Only Ralph’s younger than I am. How long should they be children?”

“Until God makes them adults,” said the priest, hopelessly.

Margaret went toward the door, then stopped and turned a mutinous face on Father Jahle. “And so you won’t help Ed?”

“What would you suggest, Mrs. Enger?”

“You could tell him not to get so emotional about that war. You could tell him to do what he can, objectively, even if it won’t help now. At least he’ll know he’s trying. But he can’t be objective, and that’s the awful part of it. Unless he’s helped.”

“And you can’t help him?”

“I’ve tried,” said Margaret, listless again. “But he gets too excited. Even violent. I’ve even asked him to talk it over with the family’s minister, Mr. Yaeger. But Ed doesn’t like religion—” She blushed awkwardly.

“I think,” said the priest, “that he believes that God’s estranged Himself from him. But Eddie has estranged himself from God. I don’t know when or how. I tried to get him to explain, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t. By nature he is deeply religious. Please believe that, Mrs. Enger. I knew him when he was a boy. And why would he do as much for me, as he’s done, and for Mr. Yaeger, too, if he were irreligious?

“The only hope Ed has for understanding himself is to come again into the presence of God. There, you can help. He won’t be on guard, as he is with me and his minister. Your love for him can lead him to God.” He paused, then continued urgently, “Mrs. Enger, you must help him. You must ask God to give you the wisdom and the strength and the fortitude. You must forget his family in relation to him, and think only of him, as an individual soul needing enlightenment, the enlightenment that only God can give him.”

“Forget his family?” Margaret was freshly outraged. “They’re the cause of his misery! Why should he need to be enlightened about his family? He knows too much about them as it is!”

The priest went to the door with her. He had hoped so much from Margaret. He had thought, for a moment or two, that he had reached her with subtle knowledge that could spring only from a loving soul. But Eddie was almost lost now, through love.

I had hoped so much from him, thought Margaret, with despair. But he’s like everyone else. He thinks the strong can take care of themselves; he never thinks for a minute that they are vulnerable, too. I can’t talk it over with Mr. Yaeger, either. He doesn’t know much about Ed, and he’s afraid of him, and he’s under the family’s influence. I did think that priest would be more understanding, for he’s known Ed for so many years. But he understands the least of everybody!

When she was settled in the gleaming black Victoria, she looked back at Father Jahle. He was going into his church, and he walked slowly, his head bent, as if in prayer. Pray! she cried wildly in herself. It won’t do any good at all!

“Is it enceinte?” asked Violette, with twinkling sympathy.

Margaret was annoyed. She felt that her sanctuary under the trees, so far from the English mansion, had been violated.

“I think that’s my own business, Violette,” said Margaret, shortly. Then she relented, though Violette did not appear in the least crushed. In fact, the smart little French girl sat down on the bench beside her and regarded her humorously. “It is a mistake,” she said with frankness. “This, having a child at once—is it? A lady does not know her husband very well, so soon, and there—voilà!—is a stranger, a stranger who is uncouth, a nasty stranger. But Americans are children, yes. They must cover themselves with children or they are the lonesome. American ladies are dull, dull. It is the children.”

“Thank you,” said Margaret, but she smiled. She liked Violette; she preferred villainy to be charming and adroit and gay. The villainy of Edward’s family was repulsive, in its sullen and selfish insistence on gratifying itself, its lightlessness, its childish petulance and greed.

Violette spread out her hands expressively. “The Americans—they have no élan, non. They are busy, busy, busy. Like the ant, like the bee. They confuse motion with the intellect,” and she tapped her golden-tinted forehead significantly.

“But you married Ralph,” said Margaret with human curiosity.

“Ah, Ralph! The child! It is the life he has, and a measure of élan. When,” added Violette thoughtfully, “he forgets to pretend he is the artist.”

Margaret stirred; the green leaves overshadowing the girl made a pattern of quick light and shade on her face. “You don’t think he is an artist, after all?”

Violette shrugged. “Certainment non. Not the great artist. The artisan. It is something else he wishes. But he must discover that himself; he must have the esprit. No man can say it to the other: ‘This shall you do and not this.’ A man must discover his own way.”

She sounds like Father Jahle, thought Margaret with some resentment.

“I think it is the wife’s business to help her husband discover, as you say, Violette.”

Violette shook her head so strongly that her mound of rolls and coils of hair vibrated. “No, no, no! It is the wife’s business—business?—to amuse, comfort and be the coquette. What is this business? Always, it is the business with Americans! Then if the gentleman fails, he is not mortified, for it is his secret. If he succeeds, then he shall say, ‘It is my wife, or my petite amie, who inspired me.’ And it is the truth.”

Margaret considered this thoughtfully. Violette watched her lovely face with inner compassion and some amusement. It is a child’s face, she thought, trusting, confiding, valorous but without understanding. She smoothed her very extreme but very chic frock over her tidy thighs and regarded her tiny feet, in their stilted shoes, with gratification. Her moods were like bubbles, but under them her nature was iron.

Margaret sighed. “It’s hard to know what to do,” she murmured.

“Then it is best to do nothing,” said Violette. Her pert face, her impudent eyes, smiled. She studied Margaret. “The trousseau, designed by Sylvia, is the delight. But reserved. It is the American style, with importance.”

Margaret was youthfully pleased. Her simple rosy dress, a long sheath reaching to her ankles, was devoid of all ornament, except for tucks under the breast. It cast a rosy reflection below her chin and on her throat. “It is all that soap,” said Violette. “All the American soap. Et bien. Why is all the soap and the water?”

“What? Oh, you mean our baths. We like to keep clean,” and Margaret smiled with a little malice.

Violette made a wise moue. “Then, it is not clean in the soul? All this washing of hands and so?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Margaret. She was not feeling well and she was troubled. She had visited a doctor that morning, and he had given her some disquieting news. In her childhood, he had told her, she must have had rickets because of malnutrition. It had not affected her limbs or her long slender body’s outline. But it had affected her pelvis, narrowing it dangerously. She must tell her husband, he had warned her. She was over three months pregnant, in this warm and winey October; the doctor anticipated a great deal of difficulty at the birth, if, in fact, she ever carried her child to term. Then a Caesarean section should be considered, and the mortality in such operations was high.

Margaret resolutely pulled her thoughts away from this subject. She was certainly not going to worry Edward until the time came. She turned again to the weary thought of the war.

“Aren’t you glad, Violette, that you and Ralph came home just in time?” she asked. She was surprised when Violette’s small and lively face hardened, became older.

“La guerre, the war? The vile Boche! Again and again and again! It is always the vile Boche! Ah, if I were a man! It is unfortunate that I have no brothers to inspire me, no brothers in France.”

Margaret was offended. She said, “But the Enger family is German, and they’re certainly not vile! Mother and Father Enger were born in Germany; they’re not even American citizens, Ed tells me. And your own husband, though an American, is of German stock. You don’t know what’s behind this war or you wouldn’t talk like that. And coming down to it,” Margaret continued with heat, “I’m probably of German stock, too.”

She was astonished to see that Violette was twinkling again.

“One’s husband, and his family, though Germans, are never the Boche,” she said. But the hardness lay about her large dark eyes and red pouting mouth. “One must be realistic. If one is not, he is the poet or the fool.”

She stretched out her dark little hand, with the quick, prehensile fingers, and took Margaret’s chin firmly in it. She studied the blue eyes, which seemed to fill their sockets with light, the delicate coral color, the long cleft chin, the gilded lashes and brows and the bright brown hair. “Non,” she said, thoughtfully. “It is not German. It is Swedish, perhaps, or English. Non, non! Not English, not Swedish! There is too much—what is it?—the vividness. The shine. There are Normans like this.” She nodded her head decisively. “It is definitely the Norman. And so we are sisters.”

Margaret laughed. “What does it matter? All people are the same.”

“That is wrong,” said Violette, and she was quite sober. “No people are the same, no men, no race, though the priests say we are all of God. I had the Chinese friend,” and she coughed delicately. “In Paris. At the Sorbonne. And this is what he said to me: ‘The Western man thinks of the world in relation to himself; he thinks of the family, the nation, the neighborhood, in relation to himself. But the Eastern man thinks of his relation to the family, the nation, the world. The Western man is the individual; the Eastern man is only part of the whole. The Western man wishes to discover what the world will mean to him; the Eastern man wishes to discover what he will mean to the world. The Western man stands alone before his God; the Eastern man comes to God only in the family.’” She made an expressive gesture. “Comprenez-vous? The Western man is individual; the Eastern man is a mass.”

Margaret considered this intently.

Violette continued, “And so it will be, as it has been said, that the East and the West will never know each other, and it is good, for then it is the variety, and the philosophies, and the interest. Bon Dieu! How most frightful if all men thought the same and lived the same and dressed the same! That is what alarms me about America.”

“Oh, don’t talk to me about the old European cliché that Americans are standardized and faceless,” said Margaret, impatiently. “We do produce mass goods, but that makes them cheaper, and so almost everybody can enjoy them. Look at France. Good and stylish clothing is only for the wealthy; the other women must make their own, with miserable results most of the time. In America a fine style can be copied in cheaper fabric, and so all American women can look smart.”

“And all the same,” said Violette. She stood up, and Margaret admired again the compact trimness and prettiness of her figure. Violette yawned, her small mouth opening to show a large expanse of very white and flaring teeth. Margaret disliked bold displays of dentistry. Women with big white teeth, and especially if their features were small, should not expose them so crudely.

“I find you charming, my Margaret,” said Violette, closing her mouth and immediately becoming pretty again. She waved her hand lightly and moved away through the tall thick grass, which cast off the autumnal odor of ripeness and harvest. Margaret watched the provocative swaying of her small and dainty figure. She reflected on Violette. Here was a girl not even her own age, a girl only nineteen or twenty. And yet she was old and wise and knowing … and, yes, thought Margaret uneasily, decadent—decadent as Americans could not imagine decadence. It was a matter of soul, and not even of morals or the lack of them, or virtue, or the lack of it. Though Violette did not resemble the marble child in the fountain in the least, there was a certain affinity between the girl and the statue.

Margaret sat alone and looked, troubled, about her. She was afraid of Violette as she was not afraid of the other members of the household, not even Maria. Edward’s brothers and sister could be disliked, but could be dealt with on their own ground, or so Margaret thought. They were rude, bad-tempered, grasping and exploiting, and full of selfishness and petulance. They were children in the bodies of men and women, and she could still almost pity them for their mystifying retardation of character. She, though still angry at Father Jahle, had come to the conclusion that she must help them, for Edward’s sake. Gregory was taking postgraduate work in English at Yale, for his master’s degree. Ralph would certainly go to New York for further study, if he did not succeed in nagging Edward into sending him to Mexico or Central America “for the color.” David had not yet returned home, and his promises to do so were still vague. That would leave only Sylvia.

Margaret decided to help Ralph persuade Edward to finance him far away from home. That would remove Violette also. I can stand open enemies, thought Margaret, but not smiling enemies who like me.

The great trees murmured in the autumn wind, ruffling their high mantles of russet, scarlet, green, and gold. A few leaves drifted down, crackling faintly, at Margaret’s feet, and for a moment or two she was diverted by her endless wonder over the world. She saw the dry veins which only recently had swum with life; she studied the intricacies of form and pattern and color, and involuntarily she clasped her hands. How marvelous, how exact, how awe-inspiring, was God! No detail escaped His notice; His laws were fulfilled as much in the shape of a leaf, the curve of a blade of grass, the contour of a flower, the movement of an insect, as they were fulfilled in the thunderous blaze of constellations and in the beat of a man’s heart. She looked at the high bright sky with its mounting and radiant clouds, and she thought, Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.…

She was suddenly no longer afraid or doubtful or anxious. Of what had man to be afraid? Only himself, his own passions, his own angers, his own vices, his own rejections, his own blindness. He needed only to stop for one moment and look about him to lose fear and hatred and depression, to be free from enemies, to be free from the hot ugliness of himself. If only I could hold to that thought, said Margaret inwardly. If I could only remember all the time! I’m not very good, I’m sure; I often forget to have faith, and to pray; I don’t try hard enough. It’s because I’m so frightened for Ed. He’s made me afraid of life, because I love him so much. I was never afraid before, not even in the orphanage, not even with the Baumers. Sad, yes, lost sometimes, yes. But never, never afraid! Not as I am now. I could be sorrowful about this war and pray for the poor boys who are dying in it—for what?—and for the mourning cities, and the terror of a whole world. But I wouldn’t be afraid if it weren’t for Ed.

She looked at the leaves again as they floated slowly down about her, and all at once, as suddenly as she had seen, she could see no more. Sighing, she stood up and left the small hollow for the higher terraces that led to the gardens and the house. She stopped at the fountain and musingly dipped her forefinger in the sparkling and living water, and looked up at the marble child who stood in the midst of it. The child was beautiful, in its depraved way; the marble face and shoulders and legs and arms ran with brilliant drops of water, like liquid diamonds. The laughing face looked down with human eloquence and mischief. The fountain splashed, as if speaking to the statue in an unhuman language which they both understood; the scales of the marble fish in the arms of the child flashed through the water prismatically. The nakedness of the child was not innocent, Margaret thought with part of her mind. It is even a little evil. The cool wetness flowed over her finger but could not cool her disquiet.

She turned her head and saw that Violette had paused beside Sylvia, who sat under the shade of a small clump of trees. Sylvia had a book on her thin knee; she was all delicate blackness and white shawl. Neither of the young women glanced at Margaret, poised at the fountain, but somehow she guessed that they were speaking of her and not with kindness. She could hear the murmurous sound of their voices but not the words. She wandered off through another section of the gardens, reluctant to return to the house, reluctant to remain outside, reluctant to speak to anyone.

“He’ll leave the major part of his money to that woman,” said Sylvia, bitingly. “Especially if they have a child, as you say they are going to have. Then we’ll get practically nothing but the leavings from Ma and Pa.”

“Then,” said Violette, in a gay voice, “we must busy ourselves, non? I shall have the child, too. And you must marry and have children.”

Sylvia elaborately shuddered. “I shall never marry,” she answered, her white cheekbones coloring a little. “Don’t smile, Violette. This is serious. I never did like that woman! She’s cheap and—anonymous. She doesn’t even have a name she can rightly call her own, except what Ed’s given her.” She bit her lip and frowned intently. “He should begin to settle money on us right away. After all! Ma should make him see his duty toward us—”

“After all!” Violette echoed, with a twinkle.

Sylvia gave her a sharp glance and was annoyed. “You really don’t understand, Violette. Everything is a joke to you.”

“It is so,” said Violette. “One must laugh or weep. It is a matter of temperament.”

“But this is very serious!” said Sylvia, more and more annoyed. “If he refuses to settle money on all of us, then we should try to get as much as we can, whenever we can, and put it quietly away. He does give us big allowances, after all those years of parsimony when we were younger. He likes to play the grand seigneur now, just to humiliate us.” She thought of the five thousand dollars already paid to her by Mary Garrity, and smiled her chill smile. No one knew of that account, no one ever would. She was awaiting another check for her autumn designs for three hats. There were ways of investing cash. Sylvia, unknown to anyone but Maria, who pretended not to see, sedulously read Edward’s discarded financial journals and magazines. The market was rising, even in these days of temporary depression, since Wilson had been elected two years ago. Steel. Copper. A dozen things. She would write to Mary Garrity about it.

“He provides the home, voilà—he is indeed the grand seigneur,” said Violette, refusing to be sober. “He provides the meat and the fish and the bread; he provides the servants. He provides the money. I am willing to be pleasant to the grand seigneur for these kindnesses.” But her merry eyes were thoughtful.

“Maybe he’ll stop being kind very soon!” said Sylvia. “She’s probably whining at him all the time to throw us out. But she won’t get her way. Ma is with us.” She laughed grimly. “Did you ever see such an unintelligent face? All eyes and chin and hair. Like a cow-maid. She resents us.”

“Certainment,” said the other girl. “And why not? Do we love her? Do we regard her as a sister? Yet I do not believe she is urging our Eddie to evict us. It is ‘evict,’ is it not? It would be the part of discretion to be pleasant to her, though she is not malicious.” She smiled down mischievously at the bright and febrile stare directed up at her from Sylvia’s tilted eyes. Ah, it was a naïve one, in spite of the cleverness with the clothes and the hats and the reading of many books!

“I will not play up to her!” said Sylvia, vehemently. “I have my pride. I was born an Enger, and my mother was a Von Brunner. I would rather starve than pretend to like her!”

Ah, you will never starve, my little one, thought Violette. You are naïve but you also know when you must stop. She waved her hand affectionately at Sylvia and went into the house, leaving the other girl wretched with uneasiness and apprehension.

Margaret, in the meantime, was continuing her slow wandering about the vast grounds, and with increasing unhappiness. She walked over the grass, feeling the cool and fragrant wind against her face. She paused to study, in assumed nonchalance, a bed of mauve, yellow, pink, and white mums, then a bed of crimson callas. She then approached the long Italian terrace which stretched from the house under a symmetrical line of trees. Two of the chauffeur’s children were playing there slyly, knowing that this was forbidden territory and enjoying their trespassing. They stopped abruptly when they saw Margaret, eying her alertly, their eyes as bright and wild as animals’. With the prescience of children, they well knew that Margaret was unwelcome in this grand house and in this family, for they had often seen her disturbed face, the snubs visited upon her, and her loneliness. They were very young, the boy about six, the girl but five, but they had heard their parents’ smothered comments and snickerings about Margaret, and they had understood.

Margaret hardly knew them, but she was aware that they should not be here. Nevertheless, she remembered her own deprived childhood and humiliations. She approached the children, smiling at them, thinking of the child she was carrying. She was ready to be tender to all young things. “Hello,” she said gently.

But the children’s eyes, bold and disingenuous as only children’s eyes can be, fixed themselves upon her with sparkling malice. They were not afraid of her as they were afraid of Sylvia and the others. She was nothing! Daddy and Mommy said so. They watched her approach, then backed away a little. The girl tittered evilly, and the boy made a face. Margaret stopped. Then the children, shrieking with meaningless mirth, ran off, looking back at the young woman over their shoulders.

How could I have forgotten how children really are? Margaret asked herself miserably. They have no real innocence or kindness. They have no gentleness or consideration of understanding. These are the things they must learn or pretend to learn. I suppose my own child will be as bad … She was freshly depressed.

She entered the house at its side and less formal door and passed the music room. Ralph was sitting at the pianola piano, gayly manipulating the mechanism, which mechanically rattled out the newest ragtime. Violette stood beside him, rapidly inclining her head from side to side in time with the blatant music and humming and snapping her fingers. Margaret slipped by the door rapidly, hoping that neither had noticed her. But Violette had. She closed the door, and Ralph stopped beating the pedals with his big feet. His wife ruffled his auburn hair, kissed his lips seductively, and said, “We must have an infant, mon petit. That Eddie is about to become a father. We must compete.” She made a distasteful moue.

“You mean that tinlizzie of a woman is going to be a mama, so that she can grab off our money better?” said Ralph, his ruddy face swelling with affront. He stared at his hands and pursed up his thick red lips. His drawings of a proposed bridge over a tributary of the Mississippi had been accepted. “A beautiful, engineering marvel,” the constructor had called it in a letter which contained a substantial check. The bridge would be small, of course, but it was Ralph’s first concrete effort. He had not told even his wife.

Margaret went silently down the wide and dusky hall, with its lofty furniture and vaulted ceiling and fine paintings on the paneled walls. She was just passing the door of the library when it opened quickly. Gregory was on the threshold, and he started when he saw her. Behind him the sun poured through the library windows, showering its autumn gold on red and blue and black leather, on mahogany tables and lines of books. He had been typewriting; the instrument was uncovered, and an ashtray smoked with rejected cigarettes. He was holding a sheaf of papers in his hands, and he half folded them guiltily.

“Ah, the lass with the delicate air,” he said with light mockery. Damn it, did she have to look both stupid and beautiful at the same time? She had, he commented, eyes like aquamarines as the slanting sunlight struck them, eyes like jewels. Why were most lovely women confounded idiots?

“Hello, Greg,” said Margaret. He was insufferable, but he had a certain gaiety and quickness, and he resembled Edward. “Have you started the great American novel yet?” She glanced at the sheaf of manuscript in his hands. Her tone was not Jaunting but interested, yet he colored with annoyance.

“Briefing it,” he said. “Writing’s the most hellish work in the world.”

Why did she linger? He couldn’t push by her rudely, though he wanted to, and he couldn’t slam the door in her face. She was looking at him wistfully, and all at once he was embarrassed. “I’m sure it is,” she was saying. Her color, he thought, was like a tearose. Under other circumstances, he might have fallen in love with her or, at least, greatly admired her. The thought startled him, and a page slipped from his hand to the long Oriental rug that ran the length of the hall. He bent down precipitously for it, but not before Margaret’s eye had caught the title: “Mr. Thor Takes a Wife, By Gil Enderson.”

Margaret was dumfounded. She read The City regularly. She knew the Thor series and had thought them amusingly and vividly done, but cruel and filled with malignance. Oh, it wasn’t possible that Gregory Enger was Gil Enderson! Her mind swam in rapids of confused and revolted thought. Yet the evidence had lain before her for an illuminated moment. She began to tremble, and ripples of cold ran over her flesh. I must get away at once and think, she said to herself. She made herself smile at Gregory, but her suddenly acute eye saw the guilty hand clenching the sheets of paper. “Everybody expects so much of you,” she murmured, and went down the hall, her knees trembling.

She didn’t see anything, and if she did, it wouldn’t matter, thought Gregory, watching the rose-colored retreating figure. She’s practically illiterate; I bet she never read a book in her life, not to mention The City. Pollyanna in person! Sweetness and light, enveloped in an aroma of Cashmere Bouquet!

Margaret ran up the stairs to her own suite. Her head was aching wildly. She sat down near a window, shivering, her clasped hands tight between her knees. Mr. Thor! Now she saw it clearly. Edward was Mr. Thor. He had been depicted as a brutish but animal-shrewd tycoon, without sensitivity except where money was concerned, a laughable buffoon and boor, a gross and lumbering creature, the butt of the clubs into which he had stormed his battering-ram way, a provincial whose pleasure it was to insult gracious gentlemen, and manipulate them so expertly that he ruined them out of revenge. She did not like The City. She read it for its cartoons, its comments on the theater and the opera, its foreign news, only. She found its stories pointless, its “moods” trivial, its sophistication shallow, its air that of a poseur who is very blasé and who has never been in contact with reality. Clever, yes, like a precocious adolescent, but never adult. It was like Gregory!

In this, Margaret was somewhat in error. If The City affronted her, it was because it was frequently malicious, and malice, to Margaret, was an evil thing, not to be excused by cleverness or wit or fine writing.

Her first impulse was to tell Edward when he came home. Then she shook her head. No. It would only infuriate him. He was so beset these days. Let Gregory write the libelous stories about his brother, if he wished. It was nothing to her. Mr. Thor Takes a Wife. Me, she thought dryly. It’ll be interesting, at any rate. All at once, she hated Gregory, the great American novelist, who exploited his brother and then derided that brother malignly, and kept his counsel and, naturally, the checks that he received for his stories. She had never hated in all her life before, and the power of this new emotion shook her and sickened her. She was appalled at the burning taste of it in her mouth, the clenching of her heart, the heat in her face, the surge in her mind.

I hate them all, she thought. All of them. And to think that I pitied them and wanted to help them! What a buttery imbecile I am! Well, they have a real enemy now, and I’ll stand between them and Ed—all the days of my life. Nobody understands but me, not even his friends, if they are friends, not even that priest who’s known him since he was a child. She began to cry, with mingled hatred, anger, and despair.

The door opened and Edward entered, a gray and thinner Edward, with lines cleft about his heavy mouth and with darker lines about his sunken eyes. Margaret jumped to her feet and ran to him, and put her arms about him, mutely, her head on his shoulder. There was a fierceness in her embrace, a protecting, a tumultuous protest against all the world which so badgered and oppressed him.

“Well, now!” said Edward, lifting her wet face from his shoulder. He was suddenly anxious. “What is it, darling? Has anybody been annoying you?” His eyes narrowed and pointed, and his mouth tightened.

“Oh, no, no,” she said, and tried to smile. “I was just lonely for you—”

“But you didn’t meet me downstairs, as usual, when I come home.”

“I forgot the time,” she faltered. She tugged at his hand. “Sit down, dear. You look so tired.” Her hand was feverish in his, and he restrained her tugging motion. “Margaret, there is something wrong. You’ve got to tell me.”

She thought distractedly. He must never guess how much she now hated his family, those “geniuses”! He must never know what she knew. It would break a heart already too burdened. She laughed shakily. “I’ve got something to tell you. And I hope it’ll make you happy. Sit down, dearest, do sit down. No, you’re not going to look at the newspaper, not tonight! We’re just going to be Mr. and Mrs. Ed Enger tonight, in a nice peaceful world, after a nice humdrum day, at sunset in a little house of our own.” She stopped, and her fingers touched her betraying lips.

Edward still stood and held her hand more tightly. “Margaret, don’t you like my house?”

“I love it!” she cried. “It’s beautiful. It’s your home and mine! Ed, I was just trying to amuse you, just trying to get you into an ordinary mood, so I could tell you.”

“Has anyone said anything to you today to make you look so wretched?” he demanded inexorably, his light eyes fixing themselves on her face. “That’s something I want to know.”

“No, no! In fact, Violette and I had a very interesting talk today. And everybody was so—pleasant. Please, Ed, sit down. Right near the window. And I’ll ring Pierre for a drink for you, and I think I’ll take sherry myself!” Her voice and manner were almost distraught in her false gaiety. She tugged at him more strongly. Her bright hair curled in moist tendrils about her face, and her imploring eyes were a blue largeness.

“If anyone ever says anything to you or annoys you,” he began, in a threatening and ugly tone.

“They wouldn’t,” she pleaded. “There, that’s right—Throw that newspaper aside. Now sit down.” She ran to the bell rope and jerked it, then ran to Edward and sat on his knee. She held his face in her hands and kissed his mouth ardently, over and over. She forced back her tears and swallowed them; the taste of them in her mouth was like salty blood. His big hand fondled her neck, her soft and vulnerable neck, which throbbed under his touch. His thumb rubbed the delicate flesh with rising passion and love.

“You’re all I have, Margaret,” he said, with unconscious desolation. He pressed his lips in the hollow of her throat.

Yes, all you have, my darling, she thought with hard ferocity and for the first time. No real friends, no real family.

Pierre came in with a silver tray. He looked at Edward and Margaret, and he saw the silvery wetness on Margaret’s cheek. But she smiled at him brightly. He put the tray on a table, bowed, and left.

“Poor tragic old man,” said Margaret, but no longer with any feeling. No one mattered but Ed. She got up and mixed whisky and soda for her husband.

“That reminds me,” said Edward. “About Padraig. He came in today.”

Margaret shook her head so violently that curls dashed against her cheeks. “No, no! Nobody but us tonight, nobody. I don’t want to hear. And I want dinner upstairs tonight, here, just the two of us. I’ve got such news for you!”

“Not dinner,” said Edward, but he smiled. “After all, most of them will be leaving soon, and I like having the family around me at dinnertime.”

“Then I’ll be here alone,” said Margaret, mutinously, pouring a small glass of sherry for herself. “In fact,” she added with a mysterious glance, “I think I’ll go to bed early.”

“What in hell’s the matter with you, pet?” he asked with tenderness. “All right; sit on my knee again.” He hugged her to him. “Now tell me the wonderful news. I suppose it’s news? You’re all excited.”

She drank a sip of sherry and smiled at him over the crystal rim of the glass. “Guess,” she said.

He thought. It couldn’t be bad news, though her eyes were moist and her color too high, her manner too artificially vivacious. She was pretending, she was hiding something. “All right,” he said. “I give up. I can’t imagine anything happening in this house that would make you so bouncy.”

She flung out a hand dramatically, and rolled up her eyes. “‘Mr. and Mrs. Edward Enger, of Waterford, New York, announce the birth of a son—or a daughter—on—on—perhaps March thirty-first or April first, 1915!’”

He caught her hand quickly and held it. “Margaret! Are you sure?” His face was suddenly young and ebullient and alive. “Who told you, and when?”

She laughed with real delight now. “I’m sure.” And she told him.

He cradled her in his arms as if she herself were a child. They sat together, her chin on his shoulder, her forehead pressed against his cheek. The autumn sunset, swift and golden and red, stood at the windows. They were silent for some time.

Then Edward said, “He, or she, will be a genius, of course.”

Margaret sat up, and her face was suddenly stern. She looked at Edward with direct fervor and simplicity. “Oh, God, no. Dear God, no. Anything but that. Anything but that!” And she clasped her hands together as if praying, and her face, turned to the sunset, was white and set.

“Do you want it to be a fool?” asked Edward, a little vexed.

“Ed, dear, there’s a middle way between being a genius and a fool. A person can be good and sound and gentle and intelligent and kind, without being gifted. In fact, goodness itself is genius, and there’s precious little of that sort in the world.”

She was frightened. She fervently prayed that her child would not be a “genius.” For Ed’s sake, for Ed’s dear sake. And for the sake of the child itself. If I see any sign of a “gift,” I’ll nip it right in the bud, I will, I will! she promised herself resolutely. And then she laughed.

“Ed, I want the baby to be exactly like you, for you are an authentic genius, though no one knows it but me!”

PART THREE

“Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

TWENTY-THIRD PSALM

CHAPTER I

David Enger sat, wrapped in his long, fur-lined broadcloth cape, in the little dressing room. It was very cold, this January night, and the room was not heated adequately, and even the blaze of lights around the mirror seemed glacial. He smoked and read the evening newspapers, his fine dark forehead puckered with gloomy anxiety, his aquiline profile sharp in the mirror, his sensitive mouth drawn in. Finally he threw the paper aside and lighted another cigarette from the one he had smoked down. He tapped his narrow foot on the gritty wooden floor, and shook his head as if throwing off some tormenting thoughts. His eye touched a large photograph on the dressing table; it was a sepia portrait of a young and very beautiful mulatto girl with a smile that appeared to illuminate her face with its own light. David involuntarily smiled. He knew Melinda Russell very well, and her two small children. She had introduced his last song on the program of her husband, Prince Emory, on Christmas Eve, and the sheet music had already sold over half a million copies. It was a “popular” song but very melodious, and everyone was singing it, in its minor key and smooth rhythm: “Song for a Sad Day.” Melinda had a voice like velvet, deep and rich, and vibrating with some natural melancholy which did not appear in her ordinary mood of cheerfulness.

David could faintly hear the insistent and rapturous applause from the stage of the theater. No one had expected that a band, even Prince Emory’s band, could fill a theater dedicated to “serious” plays and ballet or an occasional and “stupendous” five-reel picture from Hollywood or New York. Yet Prince Emory’s band had filled not only every seat in orchestra and balcony but every inch of standing room also, to the immense disgust of austere critics and those who professed to believe that Prince was a “desecration.” David reflected that here in New York he himself had drawn only one hundred men and women this week, but he was not inclined to cynicism, nor, indeed, inclined to any thought but satisfaction, considering the tremendous popularity of his six songs which his friend had introduced over the past three years. He had over forty thousand dollars in the bank now, and, as an Enger, he was not averse to money. He was considering investments.

The door blew open, and a gale of applause rushed in, even at this distance from the stage. Prince Emory, nee Billy Russell, bounded into the dressing room, his handsome face ashine with excitement and gratification. More than ever, David thought, he resembled animated bronze, even with his crown of thick black curls.

“Ho!” he cried to David, and he grasped David’s hand and slapped him on the shoulder. “How did it come along?”

“Fine. As usual,” said David. “I came away just as you started ‘Song for a Sad Day.’ As I hear it at least three times every twenty-four hours, I thought I’d miss it this time. Well? Do you think you can hold this theater for the next three days?” He smiled at his friend artlessly.

Billy lit a cigarette and began to pace up and down the room as if his excitement were a fire in him. He waved his arms. “Three days? The manager’s already asking me to stay at least another week! Do you know who was in the audience tonight? Irene Castle! She sent a note to me; she wants to see me tomorrow night!” He laughed joyously. “She and her husband probably want to adapt your song for their dances. More royalties, friend, more royalties for both of us.” He looked over his shoulder at David with pure delight.

He sat astride a chair; his vitality crackled about him. “I’m going to send Melinda a wire tonight.” He glowed at David; then his face changed. “I wanted to tell you I went to the Town Hall yesterday, to hear you. Dave—”

“Now don’t tell me I’m a genius. I’m just an excellent mechanic. We’ve gone over that before.” David flung his arm over the back of his chair and his expression was serene. “Anyway, it keeps me in practice, and what if I steal a theme or so from one of the masters? Bringing the classics to the masses.”

“Don’t put on that cynical pose,” said Billy, laughing. “Davey Jones is doing very well in the financial department, or am I mistaken?”

David looked solemn. “Davey Jones, popular song writer, couldn’t be doing better. Thanks for the last check. By the way, how long can we keep the press from poking around and discovering who Davey Jones is?”

“That’s a thought that keeps nagging at me,” said Billy. “So far, I’ve ducked out with a mysterious expression and a sly wink. That makes them dance tiptoe on hot coals, and slaver.”

David nodded. “I’m getting a little disturbed,” he said. “There’s my Negro opera, Samson Smith.”

Billy jumped to his feet again. “Man! That’s going to set the country to pounding and shouting and singing and whistling! The boys have been practicing it, just for their own enjoyment, and then they get up and sing and stamp and whirl around like tops. That aria for Delilah Brown in the second act: ‘One Wonderful Kiss.’ When Melinda hears that, I’m not going to keep her down on the farm; she’ll insist on being the prima donna.”

“Of course,” said David. He rocked one elegant leg over the other. “I had Melinda in mind all the time. Who else but Melinda?”

Billy chewed one fingernail thoughtfully and stared at David. “And now we come back to the press boys. Who’s going to play Davey Jones? Don’t you think it’s time you stopped impersonating a classical concert pianist, and be David Enger, composer of Samson Smith?” He sat down again and regarded his friend with eager demand.

“No,” said David shortly. “No.” His face darkened. Now Billy, for the first time, saw that David was even thinner than usual and that some heavy misery was shadowing his glittering and restless eyes. David turned his head aside from the penetrating study of his friend. “After all, I can’t do this to my parents and my brother this late in the day. The money, and even the fame, wouldn’t matter to them, if I stepped out of this damned cloak and let them see what I really am.”

“Hmm,” said Billy. He had discerned fear in David’s voice. Why should he fear? Forty thousand or more dollars already received for only six songs, and records, and a fortune to follow Samson Smith! The hectic ballet in the third act would become a classic in itself. Why should any man be afraid?

David stood up, long and poised and graceful. “Let’s go to Delmonico’s for a late supper, Billy,” he said, and took up his cane and gloves. Billy hesitated. “Well, now,” he said, and rested his chin on the arms he had folded on the back of his chair. “The last time I was there, there was some murmuring from the clientele.” He smiled ruefully. “Oh, I’m not insulted or anything. But I hate to hurt people by exploding one of their precious myths. In the North I’m an abused young Uncle Tom from the Deep lynching South. In the South I’m a colored gentleman and my white friends show me off proudly. After all, they helped me get started, you know. My friend in Raleigh was the first to suggest a theater for me, and he rounded up all his friends and spread the word, and it was a great success. That’s what made me try this theater in New York.”

He puffed at his cigarette and squinted thoughtfully, and with a smile, through the smoke. “I’m sure that my audience tonight and my Northern audiences in the cabarets think that after my men and I leave their lily-white presences we slink away meekly into some slum, where we sit and wail darky plantation songs and wipe away our tears. Even though they must know we get paid a fortune up here, I haven’t the slightest doubt that they believe that when we take off our striped trousers and Prince Alberts we put on rags. Who am I to destroy such a pathetic dream?”

He chuckled. “When they swarm around after a session, avoiding shaking my hand, of course, I have to talk what they think is darky talk. In a thick Southern accent. They feel very happy with themselves, congratulating me. Why should I take that pleasure away from them? So why don’t you come to my hotel and have a late supper in my suite, with some of the boys?”

“People are damn fools,” said David.

“Not very original. But who isn’t?” and Billy fixed his eyes meaningly on his friend.

“You couldn’t be referring to me, could you?” said David, smiling painfully. “See here, Billy, I struggled for three months, after writing my first song, before sending it to you.” He paused. “I suppose that makes me a fool.”

“Am I to judge any man?” asked Billy, with a pious expression. “Come on, Dave. The boys get hungry after all that playing.” He put on his fur-collared black broadcloth overcoat and shimmering top hat, pearly gloves, and a silk scarf. Dave thought, There’s some aristocratic ancestor in that woodpile, and he’s probably got some very patrician relatives in North Carolina. Billy inspected himself happily in the mirror. He arranged his scarf meticulously and gave his hat a debonair tilt. Still studying his reflection, he asked with transparent carelessness:

“How’s Ed?”

“All right, from my mother’s letters.” David’s voice was stifled. Billy looked at him furtively in the mirror. David’s fine-drawn features had become thin, almost wizened, with some secret pain, which Billy suspected did not arise from the thought of Edward. David drew a deep breath. “He’s opened ten new stores, the Green and White Markets, in the big cities.” His voice was more easy. “My mother says he’ll have at least eight more by the summer. There isn’t any end to his energy.”

“You wrote me he got married last June,” Billy said, fastening the buttons on his kid gloves. “But I read an item about it in a Chicago paper. Ed’s famous in his own right. I always thought he would be.” He had trouble with the last button and blinked.

“Billy, when you’re in Albany in February, why don’t you go to Waterford to see him?” David spoke impulsively, as he watched the suddenly clumsy manipulation of the refractory button.

“I don’t think so,” said Billy, quietly. “No, sir, I don’t think so. He probably knows who Prince Emory is. If he wanted to see me or know about me, he could write.”

“Sometimes you’re an idiot,” said David impatiently. “Ed thinks popular music is as degrading as opium smoking and just as much to be avoided. He probably never even looked at a sheet of modern music, so how would he see your photograph on it? I may be wrong but I think he never forgot you. I think the memory of you plagues him sometimes. My mother wrote me that he is one of the big supporters of that private settlement house for Negroes in New York.”

Billy’s head jerked up, and his smile was radiant. “You mean the Russell Home House? Was that for me, do you honestly think?”

“Who else? I’m sorry I never mentioned it before; I thought you knew. There’s no other Russell there.”

Tears sparkled in Billy’s beautiful black eyes. “I never knew,” he said, his voice trembling. “Honest to God, I never knew.” He paused. “And I have an idea he doesn’t know, either, that Russell is for me. Not consciously, anyway. He probably picked it out of the air.”

David considered this, then nodded. “Possibly. Ed’s the most complex person I ever knew. Protean. One moment he’s as dull as tarnished brass, and the next he’s mercurial. Volatile. I’m the only one in the family who knows that, except my mother. And now, after all these years, I’m beginning to suspect he was always her favorite child and that she knows he resembles her in character a good deal, and that’s why she was hard on him. She was punishing herself, in Ed. And determined that he’d make none of her own past mistakes.” He looked at the gold head of his cane. “Even now I’m sorry for Ed, though I haven’t seen him since last March, almost a year ago.” His mouth changed, became intensely mournful and sad. “At first—well, I thought I’d throw the whole thing up, my pretense of believing I was a pianist. And then I couldn’t hurt him.”

“What’s wrong, Dave?” asked Billy softly. Dave glanced up, startled, then saw his friend’s compassionate eyes. He had never confided in anyone fully in all his life, not even his old teacher in New York, not even Billy. But there was such an agony in his heart now, such a desire for surcease. He put his gloved hands over the top of his cane and leaned on it, and stared at the floor.

“Billy,” he began, then stopped. His head drooped. In a lower voice, he said, “Ed married the girl I thought loved me, the girl I thought was going to marry me. I never told you. Or anybody. It was impossible.”

“I see,” said Billy. He paused. “Did Ed know? Did you ever tell him?”

“He knew,” said David. “Yes, he knew. Don’t think he married her to thwart or injure me. He didn’t. He’d met her, the first time, when she was a child and apparently never forgot her, and then one day he met her again. That was all. I suppose it was as much a shock to him, knowing about me—”

“I see,” said Billy again. He took David’s arm. “Let’s go,” he added.

His touch, his sympathy, almost unnerved David. They left the theater together. The air was full of dark cold and snow. “I have to take a cab,” said Billy. “I don’t dare use my limousine openly. Uncle Tom, you know.” He was silent a moment. “I’m sorry, Dave. And that’s why you haven’t been home since last March.”

“That’s right,” said Dave. “But now I must. My father is very ill. I can’t avoid Ed—and Margaret—forever. By the way, I’m going to be an uncle soon.”

The newsboys were crying in the streets, holding up papers with black headlines:

“U.S. Protests English Interference with American Mail!

“Berlin Accuses France of Fresh Atrocities!

“Britain Seizes American Seamen on Neutral Ships!”

Billy bought a newspaper. The two young men scanned the various shouting headlines. Then Billy took a coin out of his pocket and tossed it in the air.

“Who do we fight, boys, who do we fight? Heads, England. Tails, Germany.” He threw the coin higher; it fell into the snow and its message was lost.

“And for what?” asked David, angrily. “And for what?”

“But my son should know,” objected Maria, calmly. “Why should anyone be spared the stresses of life, man or woman or child? Life is stress and fury and grief and pain, and there is little joy but much suffering. Why it should be I do not know.” She put down her knitting and looked thoughtfully at space. “It is an old question: who is the creator of man’s misery and uncertainty and sorrow, man himself or God?” She thought acutely of Edward.

The purplish-white February twilight stood at the windows of Margaret’s sitting room. The grounds below and beyond lay in ghostly mauve shadow as they swelled under the snow in waves like a small sea. A fire fluttered on the hearth in the ivory and gold room, threw its lancelike reflections on the ceiling. Margaret sat in a comfortable chair near the fire, her listless hands clasped in her lap, her swollen body heavy with life.

She had no affection for Maria, but only a profound respect and an absolute belief in her integrity. So she had confided her fears about the birth to Edward’s mother. She knew now that she would bear twins, and the doctor, sworn to silence, had been dubious about the children’s, or her own, survival.

“I don’t believe in worrying anyone until the time comes,” said Margaret. She looked down at the snow and the silence and the massed, empty trees, and she thought it all resembled a cemetery. She shivered. “He has enough to worry him,” she added with a touch of resentment.

Maria said nothing. She knew that Margaret was referring to Edward’s family. She, Maria, had hoped much from this marriage. Part of her hope had been fulfilled—Margaret had brought Edward the first real happiness he had ever known in his life. But it had been a narrow happiness; his understanding of his wife had not broadened to an understanding of others. His concern for her, his merging with her, his tender consideration and new subtlety about the thoughts of others, ended with his wife. In fact, in connection with other people, his perceptions had hardened and darkened, had even, at times, become ruthless. Love, thought Maria, while sometimes it can wear the wings of an angel, can also become a short chain in a hidden cell.

Maria said, in a tone of remote indifference, “Who does not have worry? Why do we have a tendency to look upon our neighbors’ smiling faces and say to ourselves: ‘There are the blessed of both the world and God, who are never tearful or oppressed or despairing.’ Why do we say, ‘He has never spent an anxious night or sighed in his sleep or contemplated death?’ We hide from each other, in a regard for manners or in pride or conceit.”

They were speaking in German. Maria had been pleased that Margaret spoke the language so well, with such careful diction and without idioms, which were vulgar.

What have you to worry about, and your children? Margaret asked her in her mind, with indignation. Ed’s given you all his life and all his work, and none of you have returned those gifts with affection or gratitude, but only with an air that all this is your right! You live a life of luxury and protection and safety; you never think of Ed, who’s so terribly worried constantly and who works so hard.

“I am not going to tell Ed,” said Margaret. “And it will probably be all right. I am in good health, and I have heard my doctor is too conservative. Why should I add to Ed’s burdens?” she asked meaningly.

But Maria could not be goaded when she knew silence was the best.

“He thinks about the war all the time,” Margaret said.

“So do I,” replied Maria, very quickly. “I have cousins and nephews in Germany. I have not heard from them. I write but receive no replies. That is because England is censoring and suppressing letters to and from Germany. She also cut the cable between America and Germany almost immediately.”

“I know, Mother Enger. That is why, among other things, we almost declared war on England last December. Only our ambassador to London and the President prevented the indignation of the American people from culminating in a war with the English.”

“Naturally,” said Maria, resuming her knitting. “It is not in the plan for America to fight the British. So the anger of the American people must be guided against Germany. So it is that the brave editor of Berlin’s greatest newspaper, who has been denouncing the war, has been imprisoned by that stupid German government, which does not understand. The Kaiser does not understand that he is only a puppet of those who have planned this monstrous thing over the years. He, too, is stupid. But where are the wise men? The Bible says that the children of darkness are wiser in their generation than the children of light. However, it is not necessary for good men to be stupid as well as virtuous.”

Margaret sat up, surprised. “Then you know also, Mother Enger?”

Maria smiled a little. “Did you think wisdom, or knowledge, begins and ends with Edward? When I was a girl, and young in my family’s Schloss, one of my cousins, who was a colonel in the Imperial Army, disclosed to us, with much anxiety, what he knew even in those days. For his presumption, in bringing this to the attention of his superiors, he was retired. Did they know all too well or did they think him mad? That, we shall never know.”

“Then,” said Margaret, hopelessly, “there is nothing we can do now.”

“I do not think so—not just now,” replied Maria, knitting faster. “Those who tried to warn us, from every country in the world, have been silenced or are heard no more. But is it necessary to discuss this? Edward is doing what he can, with his Save America Committee, and I suppose it is expensive and too much for him. It can even be dangerous, when so many are so determined that liberty must die, and reactionary primitiveness resume its old power, in the name of Socialism. However, a man must act in accordance with his principles, so I say nothing.”

Margaret lifted her weighted body with difficulty and went to a window. The evening light deepened more and more; now the snow dunes were carved in marble and dark purple and the cobalt sky pulsed with one quicksilver star. It was one of the last days of February, and Margaret wondered how she could endure another month of this semihelplessness and discomfort and apprehension. But the thought ran over her mind lightly as a ripple runs over a lake. She must tell Ed when he came home that his mother knew what was troubling him, and that she not only believed but was fully aware of the truth. She rubbed a finger on the leaded glass, and a little aura of warm moisture spread out from her flesh.

“It is not hard, having children,” said Maria from her seat near the fire. “Birth is the very least. It is the life of your children about you which is hard. Always, we conceive and bear strangers, and as the years pass those strangers rarely become friends of their parents. It is not unusual for hatred to grow between them. Shall the parents be blamed, or the children? That is impossible to know. If this were my wedding day, I would vow to myself that I would not bear children.”

Margaret’s eyes widened and she turned as swiftly as she could. She looked at Maria’s calm and placid face which showed no vehemence, no bitterness.

“It is not that my children are different in an important way from the children of other mothers,” said Maria. “They have not disappointed me more than the children of other women have disappointed them. But children inevitably bring sorrow and regret and sadness and fear, as they become men and women. She who denies this does not speak the truth.”

“What are you trying to tell me?” demanded Margaret in a rising voice.

Maria lifted her big head and smiled at the girl. “I am not a Catholic but often I think of Mary, the mother of Jesus, that young girl. Hers was a mortal’s pain and a mortal’s fear and a mortal’s love. Her Son’s were God’s. He suffered as God suffers, but still it was a divine suffering, not to be understood by us, not even by His mother. I think of her standing at the foot of the Cross and gazing up at her Son, and seeing the blood on His brow and in His side, and to her, I am certain, it was only her Son hanging there, the flesh of her flesh and the blood of her blood. Her knowledge of who He was was submerged, in those supreme moments, in the agony of a mother.”

“You are telling me not to forget Ed, in my children,” said Margaret, in a soft and trembling tone, and for a moment she almost loved Maria. “Do not be disturbed. Ed will always be first and last with his wife, for she loved him from the moment she met him as a child.”

Maria nodded vastly. “It is so. I am also warning you that when you are a mother you will never forget that you are a mother. But your children will forget they are your children. You must prepare for that day. It has been said in the Bible that a man and his wife are one flesh, but it has not been said that their children are their flesh.”

Margaret stared at her in humble wonder, as if seeing for the first time. What did she know of Maria, after all? The huge woman knitting so placidly and so surely by the fire was an enigma, and no questions Margaret might ask would be enlightening. Moreover, they could not be asked. All at once Margaret was afraid of the answers.

She felt a short and savage twinge in her side and put her hand hastily over the spot. The children moved in her, and it came to her that though she had conceived them and would bear them, and had given her blood and her life and the beating of her heart to them, they were mysteries. She could not imagine their faces. Even their sex was hidden from her. They knew themselves, in the vortex of her womb, but she did not know them. She was dazed by the thought, and vaguely frightened.

The telephone rang by her bedside and she lumbered to it. It was Edward, and his first question, rich with love, was about her health today. Her voice shook in answering. “When will you be home?” she asked. “I’ve been expecting you every minute.”

There was a slight pause, and his voice changed and seemed to fade a little. “I won’t be home until the day after tomorrow, darling. I am leaving for Cleveland in an hour.”

He usually kept a packed suitcase in his office, for in these days he was quite often away overnight in behalf of the Save America Committee or on sudden business concerned with his burgeoning new stores.

“Oh,” said Margaret, disappointed. She wondered if it was the fault of the line that he sounded so pent and yet so guarded. “When you go away, Ed, it seems that you’re away forever. Is it necessary—”

“Very necessary, Margaret.” He paused. “How’re Castor and Pollux getting along?”

“Lively. Your mother has been keeping me company this afternoon.”

There was a pause. Then he said a strange thing, as if involuntarily, “That’s good. My mother is a wise woman.” Apparently he was surprised at his own words, for he went on in a different tone, “That is, she isn’t as stupid as the rest of the family.”

Margaret smiled. “He who calls his brother a fool is in danger of hell-fire.” He was tired; she could hear it in his voice. She wanted to cheer him. But he said with grimness, “I’m in it already. Never mind, dear. Don’t worry.” He gave her the name of the hotel in which he usually stayed in Cleveland. “I’m within reach,” he added.

“I don’t expect you to be away for a month,” she said. “Is it one of the shops?”

“Two of them,” he said.

At four o’clock that afternoon he had called George Enreich. That was an hour ago. He had received a telegram from his local manager in Cleveland. Then he had called George Enreich.

“Two shops this time,” he had said, trying to keep his voice level though his heart was a sickening pain in his chest. “Cleveland. You can’t explain it away this time as you did the Pittsburgh shops, the Albany shops, and the Chicago shops. Jealous and frightened independent grocers and butchers, or hooligans, or thieves. No, no, not this time.”

George said coldly, “I never believed it myself, my Eddie. The first, yes, but not the others. However, I hoped it would not spread. It is your Committee, naturally.”

“I know it, but I can’t believe it, George. The Green and White Stores aren’t identified with me. My name doesn’t appear on the letterheads, I’m not known personally in Cleveland or the other cities, to anybody. No one knows we own those shops—”

“No?” said George, in that same cold voice. “Do not be naïve, Eddie. It is true that only we know the facts, and not even the newspapers. But, my Eddie, the enemy has a thousand eyes and a thousand ears. You are dangerous to them, in their time plan of involving America in that war. How much have you spent so far of your own money in newspaper advertisements, in the name of the Save America Committee? At least twenty-five thousand dollars, is it not? Yes. You have written the advertisements, yes, and they are eloquent. Many times they have been quoted in editorials, in anger or approval. Do you not think the sleepless enemy would make it their affair to discover who was the power behind the Save America Committee?”

“But I sent in those advertisements in that name, not mine!”

“So,” said George.

“Then, I have spies somewhere.”

“No,” said George. “You underestimate our foes. Who could tell them? I know and William knows, and that tragic Irishman, Padraig. Are you accusing one of us?” He chuckled sourly. “Your advertisements have been paid for in cash, by the banks, who are notoriously discreet, and who themselves do not know you are the donor. Yet eight shops, in different cities, have had their fine plate windows smashed, their products fouled, their tables overturned, the tins opened and emptied. It is a design; it is a warning to you that you can not stop them. Your insurance company has been unpleasant; you have been reimbursed only a fraction of your loss. Eddie, I did not approve of your Committee, though I gave you money. As a matter of friendship. Principle, have you said? But there are few men of principle; the enemy is ubiquitous. Are you to take my advice and desist?”

“No,” said Edward, wrathfully. “I can stand this. I am going to Cleveland tonight.”

Now George was alarmed. “It must not be so! You will finally lose concealment. It is true that the foe knows who you are, but do the populace? You will have boycotts to add to your loss.”

“The American people don’t want war and you know it, George. Most of the letters in the correspondence columns of the newspapers approve my advertisements. So do most of the editorials. It won’t matter if they know, at last.”

“It will,” said George. “For surely we will go to war with Germany. Tomorrow, next month, next year. But surely we will go. And in the meantime the press is being harassed by men in Washington. Has your Hans not told you? Yes. The press, in the main, is resisting. Newspapers are very jealous of their freedom. But in the end they will succumb, especially if there is a terrible incident. Be certain the incident is being prepared. I have seen signs of it. The German Embassy is pleading with Americans not to go to Europe on British boats, for it accuses the British of carrying contraband in the holds, for our so-neutral country, our so-peace-loving country, has men who manufacture that contraband for a profit, and other more powerful men who want war with Germany for their own ancient and sinister purposes. But do the Americans not sail? Ach, yes. ‘It is fun, it is exciting, it is bold and daring,’ say these fools. They love to be convoyed by British destroyers; they love shrieking that they have sighted a submarine, a U-boat, in the distance; they use binoculars; they prance in exuberance and pass the binoculars to their wives. And the British captains smile darkly. Tell me, my dear American Eddie, why are your countrymen so stupid?”

“They aren’t,” said Edward, doggedly. “Very few of them.”

“There is another thing,” said George, ignoring his remark. “When the incident comes, then you will not be an American at all. I have read a few hints in the more vociferous newspapers. There is a name they are calling: the hyphenated American, the German-American. That, you will be called, and your Committee remembered, and teachery attributed to you. Have you not been reading the national newspapers? Have you not seen some of the cartoons? The Kaiser is being depicted as a cannibal; Germans are being depicted as swine-headed monsters. Only here and there, tentatively. But there. It is called the new name—propaganda. But the thing is old, old as the ostrakismos of Greece. My Eddie, I am not a young man; I dislike the shell being placed against me.”

Now Edward could not contain his fury. “Perhaps,” he shouted, “you’d like not only to stop donating to the Committee, in the name of America, but would like to pull out of all the shops, too?”

An instant later he was sorry for losing his wild temper. And then, incredibly, he heard George say, “It is possible. Have you my quarter of a million dollars available at this time?”

Edward jerked the receiver from his ear and stared at it blankly. Then, with a suddenly wet hand, he put it back to his ear. He could only mouth stammering words incoherently. George went on, “It is more than a quarter of a million. There is my next quarter of profits, twenty-five per cent. Yet I am willing to lose future profits. You have only to return the money I have advanced.”

Edward was silent. He had been planning for a long time to get George out of the business. But the plans had been for the future. Not just now, when he was more heavily in debt than ever, because of the Green and White Stores. He had thought of ten years, fifteen years. Then he would manipulate cleverly. There was a thick congestion in his throat as if his heart had risen there and were bleeding. More than anything else that affected him was George’s ruthless repudiation of their friendship, his casting off of Edward as one would cast off something that had become perilous and noxious. A worthless acquaintance who was now unstable and held in contempt. (Edward forgot in his extremity the fact that he had been planning to relieve himself of the twenty-five per cent paid out to his old friend—in the possible future.) Worst of all, in repudiating Edward, he was repudiating America.

He said in a dwindled voice, “And you don’t care about helping my country at all?”

“No,” said George, emphatically. “No, I do not. And why, you will ask, when this country has been ‘good’ to me, as you might sentimentally say? I have worked; in my own fashion I have returned the benefits, if they were benefits. But America will be willingly, and joyfully, through propaganda, prepared to destroy me—as a hyphenated American. When the time comes. So I cannot any longer be connected with the Committee.” He paused. “And with you, Eddie! My quarter of a million dollars—”

Edward closed his eyes on a spasm. Then he said, “One time, long ago, you gave me a gold pen, engraved with the words ‘For the stalwart’—”

“Yes. But I am not ready to be destroyed with the stalwart. I have told you. I am not young. I love my life and what it gives me.” He laughed, a short harsh laugh. “For that, I will be the American patriot; I will hate the German when I am bidden to hate him. I am a man. I have worked hard. For the years that remain for me I will enjoy myself. Shall I destroy all this, fruitlessly, when America goes mad also? I am not a man to carry banners in a cause already dead.”

Enormously ill and trembling, Edward said weakly, “You believe the cause is dead. How can you believe that of America?”

“Because it is true. If not today, then tomorrow. You will see. Are Americans less vulnerable than other nations? No. They are even more vulnerable, because they lack cynicism. They never doubt the invincibility of truth; they are simple. And what they will believe, to them will be the truth. It is the mark of an innocent man. Yet innocent men can be destroyers—in the name of the truth which will be manufactured cunningly for them.”

Edward, out of his numb shock, could only say, “I love my country.”

“Love her, my Eddie. She will destroy you—in the name of truth. I have warned you. And so I ask, when may I have my money?”

Edward did not speak for a few moments. Then he said quietly, “When I am prepared to return it to you, and not a minute before. I am the one to decide that. There’s no clause in our contract that binds me to any specific date.”

George said, almost sadly, “But there is a clause which states that I, if I am not satisfied, may give you six months’ notice. I am giving you that notice now. I will withdraw it—if you halt your Committee.”

Edward clenched the receiver. His cold dry lips formed the words: “I will not halt the Committee. You may sue me, if you want to, but remember, if you do, I shall give the whole story to the press.”

“If I sue,” said George, “it will be at an appropriate moment. When the American people have absorbed enough lies, as they surely will. When did ever a people not prefer lies to truth?”

Edward’s head was shattering in a splintering thunder. “I can’t betray my country. You are asking too much. I have to live with myself.”

“A man can always live with himself when he has convinced himself that he had acted sensibly. It is a matter of delusion, and such a delusion is not hard. It is really very easy, my Eddie, as is all self-interest.”

Edward’s grief was almost too much for him, but he said steadily, almost imploringly—and the money did not matter now, “You have always been my friend, and for years you were the only friend I had, George. You have been like a father to me.”

George said, kindly, and his own voice changed, “I am still that, Eddie. My sole wish is that you do not destroy yourself, that you think of yourself. Do you think this is a matter of no moment to me?”

Edward’s eyes roved desperately and blindly about his office. Finally he said, “I shall some way find that money for you. And never again will I speak to you or think of you. I’ll wipe you out of my mind, George.”

He took the receiver from his ear and ignored George’s urgent voice that cried in it. He replaced the receiver, put his elbows on his desk and his hands over his eyes. He was so undone that his whole body felt paralyzed. He had broken with George Enreich, finally, irrevocably. He had done that for America, but still it was a thing too terrible to bear. Then he was full of terror. George would not have said what he had said if he had not been convinced of the truth. He would not have cut Edward off—if he had not tried to save him, and had failed. No, God, said Edward in the first prayer he had offered in many years. No, God. Preserve my country; save her. Give her peace; don’t take her hope and her belief in the moral law from her. She is good and generous and vast, and her simplicity is noble. Don’t abandon her to international plotters, who want to destroy her and overthrow her and enslave and corrupt her. I love my country; I would give my life for her, to preserve her. I would give my life to uphold her principles. I would give my life …

There was something from Shakespeare; he could not, just now, in his awful confusion and devastation, recall the source. It was something about an English general, pleading with his king that all was lost, and that their armies must retreat. But the king had remained on the battlefield and had won a great victory. The general returned in joy to congratulate him. The king had said with powerful loathing, “Hang yourself, brave Crillon. We fought at Arques. And you were not there.”

Edward said to himself, in a fainting, childish promise, I must look up the quotation. I must find it. It seemed of the most tremendous importance to him.

George, in his own office, wiped slow and unfamiliar tears from his cheeks and then cursed himself. After some moments of thought he called New York. There was a long and exasperating delay until he was connected with William MacFadden. George said, in a voice that was hoarse and halting, “William. Eddie must be stopped from going to the press.” He gave William a quick outline of’ what had been said between him and Edward, and William said, “The bucko is daft.”

George said, “He will call in the press and reveal himself and appeal to what he believes is the American conscience and American indignation—for he loves his country. I must ask you to go to Cleveland at once, in the name of our affection for him.… You sound cheerful. I assure you, my friend, that this is no occasion for cheerfulness. Ah, you have news? Good. But take it to Cleveland; I have made inquiries. There is a train at eleven o’clock; it will bring you from New York to Cleveland in time. He does not know that whatever he does now will do no good. In the end, if he destroys himself, it will do no good.”

Maria showed no signs of leaving Margaret alone, as usual, for her late afternoon coffee and little cakes. The house was very silent. Only Sylvia remained of the children. Ralph and Violette were in Mexico, a long way, Margaret would reflect complacently. Sylvia, at this moment, was brooding in her own room; she preferred tea and her own company. Since almost a year ago she had shown only the slightest interest in her theater, which Edward had bought for her at such expense. She had delegated her duties, in the name of invalidism, to a young and vigorous woman who was bringing successful plays to Waterford. But Margaret was puzzled by the fact that Sylvia was almost always engaged with mysterious large pads of paper, paint, and pencils. Was it possible that Sylvia was trying to attract the attention of prominent producers in New York? If so, Margaret would think, I hope she succeeds and will leave this house permanently.

Pierre brought in the silver tray which held a steaming coffee pot, cups and saucers, and a plate of dainty cakes. Margaret noticed the two cups. She had not requested the extra cup. But Maria was tranquilly pouring, a little to Margaret’s vexation. She liked this, twilight hour alone. Then she was ashamed of her annoyance. It had been very good of Maria, and most unusual for her, to devote all this afternoon to her daughter-in-law, leaving even her husband and not visiting Sylvia. Is it possible she really likes me? Margaret asked herself with discomfort. Is it possible that she likes anybody, coming down to it?

“The coffee is strong and hot,” Maria said approvingly. “Is it cream and sugar for you, Margaret?” Then she looked fully at the girl and said, “I have told nobody. But my mother’s name was Marguerite. It is a name I love. If the children are girls, perhaps you would consider naming one of them Marguerite Gertrude, my mother’s full name?”

Margaret was touched. “No one likes her own name,” she said frankly. “So I would not want to call a girl by mine. But Gertrude shall be the name of one, if both are girls.”

“My father’s name was Robert,” said Maria. “You will have this napoleon?”

I’m sure they know their sex, and who they are, thought Margaret, dreamily. But I, their mother, don’t know a thing about them. Oh, I’m getting mystical! The stab of pain in her side came again, and she winced and cowered a little, under Maria’s alert eyes. But the children were not expected for another month; this must just be another of the discomforts a mother must suffer. When a great pain seemed to crush her back for a moment or two, she trembled. It was a while before she could straighten up. Then her forehead was moist, and a trickle of water ran between her shoulder blades. The fire on the hearth seemed, suddenly, too hot, and the air in the room too oppressive.

Pierre entered the room silently, and the women started. “I am sorry, Madame,” he said to Maria. “I ought to have knocked. But Mr. David has returned. I have just conducted him to his room. He wishes to join the ladies, if they have no objection.”

“David!” exclaimed Maria, and her puffy face colored with pleasure. “He said nothing! He did not send a telegram!” She rose, and her black dress rustled. “Send him in at once, Pierre.”

David! Margaret was all sick confusion and embarrassment. But she thought, for all our sakes I must be casual and friendly. Besides, David has probably forgotten me entirely by this time. She set her face in an appearance of pleased and sisterly expectation, though her color rose, and her inner embarrassment moistened the palms of her hands. She was hardly aware of another wave of pain in her back.

David, smiling, came into the room, and his mother went to him and put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his face. “My son,” she said gently. She rarely, if ever, had kissed her children, even when they had been very young, and they did not expect it. But her eyes caught the slightest nuances of their expressions, the slightest involuntary gesture. David, in turn, put his hands on his mother’s arms, lightly. She was almost as tall as he, and they exchanged an eloquent glance in which everything was asked and everything answered, as much as David permitted himself to answer in that poignant silence.

Margaret’s first thought was that David seemed excessively thin and very haggard and that his once-arrogant profile with the aquiline nose had softened and matured. The girl felt a rush of sadness for him, remembering his kindness and devotion and his love, which had asked nothing of her but had only wanted to give. She was no longer much perturbed; she wished she knew what to do for this young man. Part of her feeling was based on his very faint resemblance to Edward, and part on her real affection for him. She did not resent, very much, his air of dignity and elegance, his quick but harmonious movements which came from some inner assurance.

“And now, our Margaret,” said Maria, calmly, turning to her daughter-in-law. Her early training had taught her that difficult situations could best be managed by ignoring the difficulty. “Edward has left her for a day or two under my care,” and she smiled briefly at Margaret.

David crossed the floor and held out his hand to Margaret and she took it. He pressed her hand. It was kind and comforting. He smiled down at her and said, “It’s been a long time since we saw each other, Margaret. I’m glad I’m here now.”

His dark eyes were still restless but not so restless as she remembered. Nor were they embarrassed. They expressed his love for her, but it was a gentled love, and an accepting one.

“I will ring for some more coffee and cakes,” said Maria. David sat down near Margaret and asked, “And how are you, Margaret?”

“Very well, David,” she answered. It was so natural for him to be here, and she felt an immense relief. She was grateful for his tact and his casualness. But then everything David did had the touch of the soigné about it; it was impossible for him to be either awkward or crude. She settled her tightened body back in her chair and returned his smile. He was studying her with a penetrating look, open and friendly, and she did not know that he was suffering.

“I thought I’d surprise everybody,” he said. “I can only stay two days, because I’ve an engagement in Philadelphia. You say Ed is out of town?”

“Yes, in Cleveland,” said Margaret. “He’ll be back day after tomorrow. You’ll see him, won’t you?” Because of David’s infinite tact, she could speak naturally of her husband.

He said, with real or assumed regret, “No, I’m afraid not. I’m leaving tomorrow night. Why, I haven’t seen old Ed for almost a year! But I’ll be back by the end of March for a week.” His face did not change as he spoke of his brother. It remained intent and kind. If his eyes retreated behind his eyelids, it was so quickly that Margaret did not catch the flicker.

He turned to his mother and gave her an amusing resume of his concerts. Yes, he had received some very good reviews. Of course concert pianists were a specialized breed and did not, as a rule, draw anyone except those with a real interest in classical music or an assumed one. “I think,” he said, “that the pretenders are in the majority.” He spoke without cynicism or bitterness. “Usually they’re the nouveau riche who want to impress their new friends. They have all the jargon down very pat. I’ve learned not to ask searching questions when I’m invited to dinner at some mansion, obviously new, after a recital.”

“Then what do you speak of?” asked Maria, interested.

“I take the embarrassment out of the situation by immediately beginning to admire some objet d’art on the premises. That takes their uncomfortable minds off me. I’ve found that the best way to be a good conversationalist, and popular, is just to ask questions. You don’t even have to listen to the answers.”

Again there was no cynicism in his voice, but only indulgence. The once intolerant David, through his own grief and despair, had learned to look at others with a large measure of compassion, even fools and rascals. He’s good, he’s kind, he’s a gentleman, thought Margaret, and began to enjoy his company as she could not remember having enjoyed it before. Ed was wrong about him, she said to herself, not in the least shocked by this treachery. I must tell him about David. He’s the only one in the family who has real character and depth. Still, she caught herself quickly, he also exploits Ed. She frowned a little, uneasily, unable to reconcile her two emotions.

David talked almost exclusively to his mother, contenting himself by smiling at Margaret frequently, as he made a point. His thin arm, in its black sleeve, was very near her. She could see the prominent veins on his narrow hand, the long and sensitive fingers, the ring, set with an emerald, on the third finger. Though in good taste, it was an expensive ring, she saw. If David could afford such an article, then he had no right to take money from his brother, with or without David’s knowledge that he was being subsidized. I really must speak to Ed, thought Margaret, annoyed, and this time her thought was not touched with kindness for David.

Then her musings vanished as a pain, like a pounding wave, struck her back once more and circled her body. She gasped, then compressed her mouth and lowered her head. David and his mother, talking animatedly, did not see her wince and shudder. Her forehead started with drops of water.

Pierre came in again to light the lamps and replenish the fire with large lumps of cannel coal. The fire spluttered and turned a brighter red. Night stood at the windows. Margaret clutched the arms of her chair and cried in terror in herself, Ed! Ed! But Edward was on a train, nearing Cleveland now. I’m afraid, she thought. I’m awfully afraid; something is going to happen. I suppose we could reach him at a station, with a telegram. But perhaps it’s too late for that. Or at his hotel when he arrives. No, no, I mustn’t worry him. I need him, but I mustn’t worry him! His voice—it was so strained and stifled this afternoon. Something is wrong, very wrong. And after all, it won’t be for a month or six weeks; the doctor said. This is just part of the whole thing; I can’t start to scream and be foolish.

The door flew open, violently, and Sylvia, with her everlasting lacy white shawl over her crimson wool frock, stood upon the threshold. She looked wild and breathless, and her black eyes were gleaming with rage and affront. She cried out in a furious voice. “You came home, Dave, but you never thought of seeing me or asking about me! Oh, no! I’m not important enough to my brother! I had to find out you were here through that damned old Pierre, who mentioned it casually when he brought my tea!”

“Sylvia,” said Maria, coldly. But David rose slowly and went to his sister. She stopped him halfway with a gesture which resembled the savage wielding of a steel whip. “Never mind, Dave. Just forget me, that’s all. Poor old Sylvia, the old maid, shut up in her room.” She laughed with sudden shrill scorn. “There’re other people here more important to you.” Her eyes flicked on Margaret, cowering in bemused pain in her chair.

“Sylvia,” said Maria again, and this time her daughter heard and was silent, only gazing at Margaret with steady loathing and repudiation. Her emaciated body shook with passion. Even David had never seen her so aroused, so wild. He said, “I’m sorry, Sylvia. I did ask about you immediately. But Pierre said you weren’t well and were resting, and I thought I’d wait until later.” He was greatly alarmed. He had guessed that his family was not cordial to Margaret, for his sake, and because she was Edward’s wife, but he had not expected such hatred, such rageful rejection, even from his sister. He was extremely concerned for Margaret.

Sylvia drew an audible breath; it was almost a hiss. She dared not attack her mother or Margaret now. So she attacked David, and acid tears spurted into her eyes.

“Always so tactful, aren’t you, Dave?” Her voice was taut and thin. “Always ready with the smooth explanation and excuse.” But even in her passion she saw how worn and haggard he was and she was struck with grief and fresh rage against Margaret. Her voice changed and shook when she had swallowed with difficulty and she could speak again. “But some people aren’t worth your kindness, Dave, believe me. Some people are low and detestable and coarse and cheap. You shouldn’t waste yourself on them, Dave!”

“I meet all kinds of people in my profession and travels,” said David, quietly, still hoping to save the situation which even his mother did not seem able to control. “Would you want me to insult them or treat them with contempt?”

“Yes, yes!” cried Sylvia. “Yes, yes! That’s all they deserve!”

Her voice broke in a sob, and she stood with her hands clenched at her sides, and looked only at Margaret, whose face was very pale and remote and whose head had fallen forward.

“Then,” said David, with a painful smile, “I’d soon have no engagements, Sylvia. Suppose we go to your room and have a little talk, alone together?”

She started back from him, and her white and angular face gleamed like bone in the lamplight. “Oh, no, Dave! I wouldn’t deprive you of your wonderful company—”

Maria stood up massively. “I think we should leave Margaret alone to rest until dinner,” she said. “Come, Sylvia. I believe it is time for your tonic.”

“Rest, rest!” exclaimed Sylvia, hysterically. “There’s nothing but damned rest in this accursed house! Pa rests; Sylvia rests; Ma rests. And she—” Her eyes were a fierce blaze on Margaret, an annihilating blaze. Her face became contorted, and the delicate lavender veins at her temples stood out.

Why, thought David, his consternation increasing, she acts as if she’s out of her mind. She’s lost all sense of decency. It isn’t all just because of me, either. It’s something deeper than that. He had known grief and despair as old acquaintances this past year, and he saw that they were also haunters of his sister. But why this was so he could not imagine. Sylvia had never mentioned, in her letters to him, any man she had met or known except Padraig Devoe, and then only in passing. She had stopped mentioning him when he had married that actress.

“It is time for your tonic,” said Maria inexorably, and took her daughter’s bony elbow firmly in her hand. “Also, there is something I wish to discuss with you, Sylvia. You are certainly not well.”

Sylvia snatched her arm from her mother’s grasp, tried to speak, then burst into a storm of weeping. She covered her face with her hands. David stood by helplessly, profoundly shocked and grieved and bewildered.

Shameful, shameful, thought Maria, with no pity at all. It is a plebeian’s outbreak, without reticence or pride. I cannot imagine any of my cousins or nephews or nieces losing self-control like this and forgetting themselves. She was full of umbrage and disdain for Sylvia. “You are a fool,” she said in a hard, low tone. “You are not a lady.” But Sylvia did not hear; she was lost in her agony and her sorrow and hatred, the tears splashing through her fingers.

David gave his mother a quelling glance, an appealing glance, and put his arm about his sister. His one desire was to remove her from this room, and the sight of Margaret, and the knowledge of Margaret. “All right, dear,” he said gently. “Come into your room with me and we’ll talk it over. Dear Sylvie,” he added, using his childhood nickname for her, in a last appeal.

Sylvia heard, dropped her hands from her ravished face, and leaned against her brother. “Oh, Dave,” she said brokenly. “You don’t know, you don’t know. Dave, I can’t stand it. Dave, I’ll lose my mind.”

Maria understood, but still a lady, an aristocrat, did not break under any sorrow or stress, except when alone. “I am afraid you do not have any mind,” she said with controlled harshness. “Or any manners. Go with your brother, Sylvia.”

She ventured a look at Margaret’s chair near the fire. But it was empty. Maria nodded her head with approval. A lady always removed herself from a shameless situation which she could not accept. Margaret had retired to her bedroom, and that was correct.

Then, even above Sylvia’s incoherent weeping, Maria heard a faint and agonized wailing, which dwindled almost immediately into silence as though a hand had been put forcefully over a tortured mouth. Forgetting even her daughter, Maria lumbered quickly to Margaret’s bedroom. Margaret was crouching on her bed like an animal, on her hands and knees, her head fallen between her stiffened arms. She did not look up as Maria closed the door. Drops of water dripped from her face, and her lower lip was caught between her teeth. A sudden spasm seized her, and her whole body shook as if a wave had struck it with powerful force. But she did not utter a sound now.

“So,” said Maria, softly, “it has come. Do not be afraid. We must send for the doctor at once.”

The wave of torment receded, and Margaret dropped on her side like a felled deer. Her face was glazed and blank, her eyes sightless. Maria rang for a maid.

“We must be calm,” said Maria, who was terribly concerned. The children would be premature; it was possible they would die. “We must find Edward and bring him home.”

Margaret said, and her voice was almost normal, “No. I must go through this alone. It would worry him—”

“It is his duty to be worried,” said Maria. But Margaret suddenly took her hand in a wet grip, and her eyes became alive once more. “No. He’s almost in Cleveland now. And there’s no train back here tonight. I know. So he’d be in misery all night, until tomorrow, at noon, when there is a train.” Her voice was weak and yet firm. “Don’t send him a telegram—until it’s all over. I can’t worry him; it wouldn’t do any good, you see.”

She was in enormous and relentless pain, even though the onslaught of the excruciating wave had receded. She tried to smile up into Maria’s sober face. “After all,” she said, “other women have children when their husbands are away. So I’ll have these.”

A maid came in and Maria briefly told her to call Margaret’s doctor. After the girl had left on swift feet, Maria said, “We must get undressed and comfortable in bed.” She approved of Margaret more and more; there was character here, and fortitude, and consideration for others. She could see the anguish in those strained blue eyes, yet Margaret was not crying or screaming. She even assisted Maria in her own undressing. Once, when her petticoat tangled about her knees, she could even laugh.

The maid, frightened and inquisitive, returned to say that the doctor could not be reached for at least four hours and that a message had been left for him. Maria hid her alarm. “It will not be for some time,” she said to Margaret, who now lay on her pillows spent and quiet. “The first is always long delayed.”

“Yes,” said Margaret, as if from experience. She was bracing herself against a new onslaught of the wave. She thought she could actually see the distant wave against a black horizon, and it was crested with threatening agony as red as blood. In a moment it would strike her, and she cringed in expectation. She turned her head into her pillow and caught the white slip between her teeth. Then the wave struck, and she writhed in silent and inhuman suffering. She watched the wave recede, behind her closed eyes; it went back, thundering, and she lay on some beach in the darkness, wounded and broken.

Hands were touching expertly, but she did not feel them. Even when she opened her eyes, she could hardly see. The room had tilted drunkenly; everything was too bright but too out of focus, like a nightmare. There was the taste of salt in her mouth; she did not know that her lip was bleeding. There was a tremendous bloated face bent over her, and she did not recognize Maria. A bubbling sound rose in her throat, and she did not know.

She was not conscious that David had just come into her bedroom. “I heard from the maid,” David said in a low voice to his mother. “Is it very bad?”

“Very bad,” replied Maria, straightening the silken quilt over Margaret’s collapsed body. “She is practically unconscious, the poor child.” With a tenderness she had never shown her own children, she smoothed Margaret’s disordered hair and touched the wet cheek. She could hardly endure the glazed stare fixed on the ceiling. “I do not like this,” said Maria. “A few moments ago she was aware and talking with me. And now she is not aware of anything except her pain. Her doctor has told her that she would be in great danger, that she might lose not only her children but her own life.”

Dave uttered an exclamation. “Oh, no,” he said feebly. He sat down beside Margaret and took the soft, flaccid hand. “Does Ed know?”

“No. She would not tell him. She is a lady of much character,” said Maria. “Where is Sylvia?”

Dave gave a short, miserable laugh. “Crying on her bed. But what are we going to do about Margaret?”

He did not hear his mother answer. Margaret was gripping his hand fiercely, and her body was slowly arching. Her stark face became livid; her staring eyes darkened. She uttered a long deep moaning, which, to David, was unendurable. Margaret’s whitening fingernails sank into his fingers, and he did not feel their piercing. He forgot that his mother was present. He said clearly, “Margaret. Margaret, my darling. I’m here. Margaret.”

He bent his head over her and kissed her forehead, and then pressed his cheek against hers. Her moaning faded away; she was still, as if listening. But her body quivered under the quilt. After a moment or two, she whispered, “Yes. Yes, dear.”

She spoke like an exhausted child, out of her half-delirium. Her bright hair was a fan about her face, which was so suddenly small and dwindled and of such a frightening color. The blueness of her eyes gleamed from between her half-closed gilt eyelashes.

“We must have another doctor. We cannot wait,” said Maria, and she rang the bell again. Her heart was hurting intolerably; she could not remember when she had last felt this sting of tears along her eyelids. She looked at the sleek narrowness of her son’s bent head, at his absorbed and passionate face, at the hand that held Margaret’s in a reassuring grip. “Ed, Ed,” whispered Margaret, and David replied with confident love, “Yes. I’m here. I won’t go away.”

Maria averted her head, and her big chin quivered beyond her control. She started when she saw that Sylvia stood in the doorway. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, without kindness. She noticed, with abstraction, that Sylvia was no longer wearing her shawl. The girl was looking, as if with fascination, at Margaret and David. She said dully, “The maid just told me. I—” She stopped and drew nearer the bed, wrapping her thin arms about her breast and shoulders. “Oh, my God,” she murmured. “She looks very ill. Dying.” Her own face, in the lamplight, had changed subtly.

“Do not be so sure,” said Maria, with coldness. Sylvia turned her head to her mother, and the tilted eyes widened in astonishment.

“Do you think I’m that base?” she asked, with deep shame and humility.

Maria shrugged her enormous shoulders, but her face softened. She said, “We have sent for another doctor. In the meantime we must do what we can. She is in a state of sudden shock.”

In an illimitable darkness Margaret thought, quite objectively, Pain isn’t hot. It’s cold—cold as death. Who is so cold? Who is crying? She floated above her agony, as if it were the agony of someone else. Yet she could not escape it. She tried to rush into the darkness, like one pursued, but it overtook her, a mangling beast that rolled her over and over, her body in its jaws. Then again she would be apart, half detached and wondering. Was that lightning in the sky, or in herself, or in someone she did not know but whose screams were banners blowing in some unseen wind, banners the color of blood? It was very strange. But she was not afraid; Ed was holding her hand and talking to her softly. She could not see him, but he was there. When the beast overtook her again and again, and she sank down in a whirling blackness, his hand became tighter and he drew her up from the abyss. I am having a nightmare, she thought. In a minute I’ll wake up, in just a minute. I’m very tired. If Ed should take his hand away, I’d just lie down, or let go, and die.

The anguish diminished, and then her coldness was warmed; she could feel the warmth against her flesh, and she sighed with pleasure. She felt hands moving her, and was relieved. But this, too, was strange. It was not Ed who had lifted her from her spasmodic position, for he was still holding her hand strongly. She could even hear his voice, comforting and soothing. Far off, in some space not to be known, she could hear other voices now, retreating, advancing, like the fringes of the sea. One of the voices was weeping, and she wanted to console the weeper. But she was voiceless. Suddenly, high above her, she saw a vast glittering. Stars. But that was impossible, she saw. The glittering shifted, formed a thousand dizzying patterns, flew together in a single ball so bright that her eyes ached—yet she could not close them—and then exploded into fragments which began to form their endless patterns of torture again.

Young Dr. Streit came into the pretty, lighted bedroom, carrying his bag. He had been practicing only a year, and though he knew of the Engers, they did not know of him. The distracted maid had called him, because he was nearer the mansion than any other physician. He was afraid of the wealthy Engers, but his fear disappeared at the remarkable sight before him. Maria, a very mountain of a woman, had rolled up her sleeves competently, and she was bending over the half-hidden girl on the bed, her hands expertly manipulating the prostrate body, her fingers wet with blood. A dark, very thin girl was assisting her, in silence, and with cleverness, her crimson dress spotted. Beside the bed sat a young man—the husband probably—holding a white and writhing hand with all his strength, and murmuring steadily, his head bent.

Maria gave the doctor one of her formidable glances over her shoulder. “It is an hour since we called,” she said, abruptly.

“I came as fast as possible,” said the young doctor, with apology. Was this some midwife, this great shapeless woman, and the girl her assistant? In these modern days—a midwife—and for the Engers? He advanced to the bed. David did not look up. The doctor stood at the foot of the bed and looked at the tortured and struggling girl upon it, the quilts and sheets thrown aside and red and wet and splashed with hemorrhage. After that one quick and competent glance, the doctor was horrified. This poor girl, this pretty thing, was in extremis. That overly swollen body indicated twins, which could not be delivered. He dropped his bag and ruthlessly shouldered Sylvia aside. “A minute,” he said tersely. Yes, a poor pretty thing, in spite of the sprawled white legs so purely formed and streaked with blood, in spite of the leaden face, the rolled-up blue eyes, in spite of the open mouth that panted and gasped and groaned.

He lifted the other twisted hand and felt the pulse, looking at his watch. The pulse bounded, faded, was tremulous, almost stopped, then tripped on too rapidly. The groaning was the only constant sound in the room, a groaning that became weaker and weaker every moment. “I’m Mrs. Enger, and this is my son’s wife,” said Maria. “You must do what you can; her own physician cannot be reached. The children are not expected for a month.”

“She must go to the hospital at once,” said Dr. Streit, who was a slender young man. “I’ll call the ambulance.”

Maria, not stopping her ministrations for a moment, said, “Nonsense. Can you not see that she will die if she is not helped almost immediately? Too, I do not believe in hospitals.”

The doctor was discomfited because he had mistaken Maria for some gross midwife, possibly called because the other doctor was unavailable. But he forgot this in a moment. He knelt beside Margaret, listened to her heart, which raced and pounded like a terrified animal, then sank away, to be almost inaudible, then to start again. Old Mrs. Enger was right. The girl would not survive long enough to be taken to the hospital. What could be done must be done now. Maria, in a few words, explained what she had already done, and the young physician spared her a glance of admiration. “I have had many children,” she said quietly. “My first was born alone. There was no one else in the house but me.”

The doctor continued his examinations. The girl in the crimson dress and Maria assisted him. Tears ran down the girl’s face, but she, too, was competent, her hands deft and light. “The head of the first child is in presentation,” he said as to colleagues. The groaning went on with every laboring breath, and the quality of it dwindled and hoarsened. Yet Margaret’s hand clutched the hand of David. Her husband certainly is a help now, thought the doctor; composed sort of fellow, able to talk to the girl like that, and hold her. Edward Enger; that was his name.

“Dr. Conover had said there must be an operation,” Maria remarked. She stripped back the tangled sheets and quilts and blankets, and threw them over the foot of the bed. Birth did not embarrass or dismay her, the doctor commented to himself. One of those earthy women, one of those dogged German peasants.

“An operation?” repeated Dr. Streit, with a pleased smile. He thought of himself relating this to his friends, who would laugh behind their hands at the prominent Dr. Conover and his infallible prognoses. “I don’t think so. This won’t be easy, but I think we’ll make it if we’re fast. Take away those hot-water bags, please. And now, if you’ll help me turn Mrs. Enger across the bed; I have the high forceps here. I won’t promise that I can save either or both the children, but I think we can save the mother.”

Maria watched him and approved. He might be young, but he knew what to do. She liked his quick movements, the sureness of his hands. “Certainly you will save the children also,” she said. “They are a month premature, but you will save them.”

I’m glad you think so, thought the doctor, ruefully. He glanced up sharply at the girl in the crimson dress. “I will need the forceps sterilized,” he said tersely. She seized the instrument at once, without a word, and ran from the room. Not a girl to be overwhelmed or hysterical, said the doctor to himself. Who was she? A friend, a nurse? “The young lady is a nurse?” he asked, flexing Margaret’s knees.

“My daughter,” said Maria, and there was pride in her voice. “My daughter, Sylvia. She has been of much help.”

The doctor gave Margaret a stimulant for her heart, plunging the needle deeply into her thigh. He began to sweat. The pelvis was narrow, dangerously narrow. The presented head was wedged. “Hold her still,” said the doctor to Maria. “Her struggles are complicating things, though she’s unconscious. Don’t let go her hand,” he said to David. The husband’s face was sunken with strain and fear, but he was calm. “I’ll never let go her hand,” he said. Never, never, he repeated to himself.

The bed was a bath of blood; Margaret wallowed in it, restrained only by Maria’s hands, which were so strong. Her chin pointed at the ceiling, her neck cords straining in her stretched throat. But her color was better now, her groaning stronger. If her heart holds out, we can make it, thought the doctor exultantly. And if we hurry. He pushed the filmy nightgown, with all that lace, under Margaret’s armpits, so that her body was fully exposed. Her breast rose and fell and heaved. Her mouth was badly bitten. Margaret’s head, near the side of the bed, dropped its weight of shining hair over the edge, in a cataract of light and color. She was so helpless, so tortured, so lovely. I will save her if it’s the last thing I do, the doctor promised himself. Over the hoarse groaning he could hear the flutter and crackle of a fire in the other room. “Yes, yes,” said David, in a strong voice. “I’m here, darling. Be patient, darling. It’ll soon be over.”

I wish I believed that, too, thought the doctor. I’m afraid I’ll have to crush the child’s head. And from the looks of her pelvis, she’ll never be able to have another child, Caesarean section or not. He regretted this; so lovely a poor creature, and so devoted and steadfast her husband. He was amazed that she had brought the children even to eight months.

Sylvia returned, the forceps not wrapped ignorantly in a towel but dripping and hot from their immersion in boiling water. “Now,” said Dr. Streit. “This is going to be very bad.” He inserted the forceps. He was amazed that they had room to grip the baby’s head. Suddenly he was elated. He might, after all, save at least one of the children. Sweat rolled down his back, wet his shirt, for he had thrown aside his coat. Intent, his eyes screwed together, he gently drew the baby’s head from its imprisoning cage. Slowly, slowly. Thank God, it wasn’t a breech presentation. That would have been hopeless.

Margaret’s child, a boy, was delivered eventually, a boy who immediately howled. “A blanket,” said the doctor, but Sylvia was ready with one of the warm small blankets she had found in a drawer in Margaret’s room. She took the child without fumbling, and wrapped it closely and with tender hands. What an awful, red, contorted little face! But a big one, and with a crown of pale silvery hair. “Take the child into another room,” said the doctor, his face streaming and exultant. “Don’t leave it. I haven’t time to do anything about it just now. If it begins to choke, call me. We can do other things when I’m ready.”

Margaret was suddenly still, not moving at all. The doctor watched her, then gave her another stimulant. She lay like one dead, one who had given up, had surrendered to death, her head fallen aside. The doctor examined her. “The next child,” he said, “probably won’t be born for an hour. I’ll attend to the first baby now. Don’t let Mrs. Enger struggle and waste her strength.” He looked up at Sylvia. “I think we’d better have nurses at once. Three of them. Will you call, Miss Enger? The Lutheran hospital; I’m on the staff. Tell them I’m here.” The hospital would be thrown into a flurry! By tomorrow all his friends would know that he’d saved the wealthy young Mrs. Enger’s life and at least one of the children.

He left Margaret in Maria and David’s care and went into Edward’s ponderous bedroom, where Sylvia was holding the baby and crooning over him. The baby was howling satisfactorily, throwing his tiny hands belligerently in the air over his blanket. “Now,” said Dr. Streit after a kind smile at Sylvia, “let’s look at this scoundrel. No obstruction in the throat; listen to him yell. Now I’ll examine the cord; tied it hastily, you know. Good. Big boy, considering he’s premature.”

He bent over the baby. Fortunate kid, fortunate to be alive, fortunate to be an Enger. “I don’t believe in washing babies right away,” he told Sylvia confidentially. “That’s heresy in the maternity wards. He’d better be oiled. Think you could find some vaseline somewhere, Miss Enger?”

Margaret, in her own bedroom, had begun to thresh again in her gory bed. Now she cried out for Edward, but was immediately soothed and quieted when her dull mind caught David’s urgent strong voice. Once she actually smiled, in her unconsciousness. She could even whisper, “Yes, dear, yes, Ed.” Then she writhed powerfully and groaned.

At ten o’clock her daughter was born with less difficulty than the boy. “Girls are always easier,” said Maria, cryptically. Her arms were reddened to the elbows. The girl howled as reassuringly as her brother, though she was smaller. Sylvia, at hand again, was ready with another blanket.

At eleven o’clock Margaret, without regaining consciousness, fell into a deep and exhausted sleep, the coral already faint in her cheeks in spite of the blood she had lost. Her hand still clutched David’s. He did not leave her until midnight, when the first nurse arrived. He did not want to leave her. Her blood was on his hand also.

No one had given the slightest thought to dinner. Maria, Sylvia, David, and Dr. Streit, utterly spent, gathered together in the big drawing room over coffee and cold roast beef and bread. They did not speak while they sluggishly ate and drank. The men had had a considerable glass of whisky first.

“Mr. Enger,” said the doctor at last, “your wife will live, of course, and the children. I didn’t think so in the beginning. And we owe a lot of it to you.”

Maria hesitated. But there was no help for it. “He is not her husband,” she said, keeping her voice neutral. “This is my oldest son, David. Margaret and he are friends of a long time.”

The young doctor colored, and he said, helplessly, “Of course.” He had seen too much. He diffidently glanced at David and thought, There’s something very funny here. Brothers-in-law did not usually show such solicitude for their brothers’ wives. The man looked absolutely undone, leaning back in his chair, very limp, very pale under his dark skin, his hands hanging over the sides. He did not appear to have heard. His face was remote and blank, his thin body long and almost sprawled.

Sylvia ate and drank very little. Tears ran over her cheeks; they were abstracted tears, and she did not know of them.

Dr. Conover, announced by Pierre, bustled importantly into the room, a tall and florid man with dignified silver hair and a genial manner. Then he stood in surprise, staring at the group around the blazing fireplace. Maria said, merely glancing at him, “It is too late, Dr. Conover. The children are born and the mother is asleep.”

But Dr. Streit stood up, thinking to himself, Hell, he’s an old man and all he has besides his money is his reputation. So the younger man said respectfully, “I delivered the children, doctor, as I’ve often watched you do, in the hospital. I used exactly your own methods.”

CHAPTER II

Edward could not sleep in his hotel in Cleveland. A blizzard shrieked outside, and he felt that he was entirely alone in the world with his desperate thoughts. Foreboding chilled him, though the large room was warm and comfortable. He lay in bed, smoking rapidly, the evening papers scattered about him. When he attempted to bring his thoughts to Margaret, she retreated from him like a dream. At three in the morning he was still formulating what he would say to the press. First of all, he would talk to his managers and their assistants. Nothing mattered any longer, not even George Enreich, but that the American people should know of the doom that had been prepared for them decades ago.

Finally he got up and went to the desk and wrote out a statement to be given to the press, after he had explained—but on what evidence? never mind—that his Green and White Stores had been wrecked because he was the founder and chief supporter of the Save America Committee. He would then discuss with the press his concrete knowledge of the Socialist plot against the people of the world, and here he would have his evidence. He would show that the mass revolutionary uprising of the poor, promised by Engels and Marx and many others, would be only an illusion when it happened, and that Socialism was a destructive ideology promoted and fostered by wealthy degenerates who lusted for power, in every nation on earth. Under the guise of social reforms and public welfare the people would be deluded into supporting the men who wished to dominate and enslave them. Wars would be used to destroy the stable currency of nations, create “emergencies” whereby tyrants could seize power and reduce the people to dependency on government.

The European war was the first gigantic move of the despots against humanity. It was necessary for America not to be enticed or forced into it, no matter the “provocation.”

Edward wrote on and on, while the blizzard increased in fury, and the first dull light of dawn stood in the east. He had just finished his statement, written in his small but cogent hand, when, without warning, he was struck again by an irresistible urge to die. He clenched his hands on the desk and resisted the relentless cold passion of the urge, and his body stiffened with the effort. Again and again a disembodied voice spoke to him in his mind. Why should a man live? For what am I living? To what end must I live? “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow …” The tomorrows stretched before him without a horizon, level and monotonous and infinitely weary and without profit or joy. A dark weight seemed to settle on the top of his head, like the lid of a coffin, and his heart pounded in terrified protest against the voice. An icy loneliness closed about him, like a shell, like a casing of stone, and he thought, It is better for a man to die than to live.

There was no reality for him in those awful minutes while he automatically resisted the urge. There was no sense of obligation, only a sense of surrender, a brittleness of perception, a sick void in his heart. He could not even summon up a clear memory of Margaret; his children, about to be born, had no substance to him. He leaned his elbows on the desk and dropped his head into his hands. His temples throbbed against his palms, and he was conscious of nausea both physical and spiritual, and a sinking desolation. Finally he got to his feet, swaying, and went to the window. The snow-shrouded streets, with their yellow paling lights and white emptiness and starkness, lay twelve stories below him. Without his will, his hands began to lift the window, and it was not until the freezing air blew onto his face that he came to himself. He discovered then that he was drenched with sweat and that he was gasping, and that the old crushing pain was constricting his chest.

“Well, now,” he muttered aloud, in a daze. He closed the window, and it took all his strength, and he went to the bed and fell on it, face down. He began to tremble violently and to retch. What is the matter with me? he asked himself savagely. It’s true that life doesn’t seem to have any purpose, or any goal, or any aim, or any satisfaction—at least none that I can see. Just now. But neither does death.

He remembered nothing else until he heard a loud knocking on his door. He pushed himself up on the bed and blinked. I must have slept, he thought. A lonely winter sun poured through the windows. The knocking increased in tempo. His mouth and throat were so dry and tight that it was a moment or two before he could demand who was knocking.

“Why, and it’s your old friend, William Montgomery Percival Chauncey MacFadden!” cried a cheery voice. “And a very good morning to you, sir. Open up!” The door knob rattled.

Edward was stupefied. He stared at the door and rubbed his eyes. Then he got up and opened the door. “Now what the hell brings you here?” he demanded, fastening his dressing gown around him. He still could not believe it was William there, jaunty as always, the hazel eyes dancing, the foxy face quivering in greeting. “How did you know I was here?”

William bounced lightly into the room. “Aha,” he said, tapping his brow. “It’s a little pixie I have up here who whispers to me.” He threw his bag on the bed and rubbed his freckled hands. “It’s starving I am, boyo. Shall we order a light refreshment, say several poached eggs and some good ham?”

He pushed his black derby hat to an acute angle or his sandy hair and laughed at Edward’s face and expression of disbelief. “The telephone, the blessed room service,” he said. “It’s nine o’clock, and I just disembarked from the Pullman. Blessed Pullman. Well I remember the days I rode under it and not in it, and you may take my word for it, laddie, there’s a bit of difference and a different point of view.”

He radiated zest and innocence as he pulled off his smart topcoat and gloves and hurled them after his bag.

“How did you know I was here?” demanded Edward again, wondering vaguely at the sudden rise of his spirits. He peered at William suspiciously.

William looked at him pleadingly. He clasped his hands in an attitude of prayer. “Let me have my delusions. The lovely, sprightly delusions. The pixie, chappie, the pixie.”

Edward went to the telephone and ordered a large breakfast for two, and he wondered why he was hungry after that night. “I don’t believe you,” he said.

William sighed. “Ah, let us be prosaic. Let us shatter the bright childhood dreams. Let us get down to the damned realities, and there is nothing so boring as a reality. Compact as a steel ball; no color, no rainbow shimmerings. And was it Aristotle who said reality was subjective? I wish it were. But the fact remains it is a Tuesday morning, nine o’clock and fifteen minutes, and a damned ruddy snow on the ground, and Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States of America, 1915. February.” He shuddered elaborately, and twitched his nose. “How did I know? There is the new-fangled thing called the telephone, and I had occasion to put in a call for you from New York, and it was gone you were, on the wings of the wind, to Cleveland. So I am here.”

“Why? What’s so important to bring you down here?”

“That, my dear young friend, is a gruesome story, one that will melt your heart and cause you to howl. No, no, there’s no new assaults on the holy shops. It is a personal matter, and damned if I’m going to break down and sob on your shoulder before I have my brekky.”

He pretended to be unaware of the grayness of Edward’s face and the stained and sunken pits about his eyes, and the purplish shadow on his lips. He pretended not to see the pile of paper neatly stacked on the desk. “Bloody close in here,” he said. “Let’s have a breath of fresh air.” He opened the window and took deep and audible breaths. Then he swung about alertly, sniffing. “I smell the breakfast, the dear, darling breakfast, and hear the musical clangor of dishes on a table. Let in the male equivalent of Hebe before I drown in my own saliva.”

They ate breakfast in warm contentment, and Edward was surprised at how spiritually satisfying good coffee was, and how food could lift the heart after agony. He leaned back in his chair and smoked a cigarette, and said, “Now, come on. What brought you here, and no lies, understand?”

William shook his head solemnly. “And so it’s the liar I am now. After all these years of servitude, during which I bled for you and toiled for you in a barren vineyard.”

“Not so barren,” said Edward, smiling for the first time. “Not with those munitions stocks, even in this Wilson depression. Not with that two-hundred-dollar broadcloth coat, with the fur collar, and the gold-headed cane, and those infernal spats, and that pearl tie pin. For a cowering slave, you’ve done well for yourself—in my service.”

Then he saw that William was not smiling and that he was staring at the bottom of the cup. “It’s Padraig,” he said. “I’m to bring you a message. He is leaving soon, with Maggie and the brat, Sean, for Ireland, and the old boy and the old sod.”

“What?” cried Edward. “What the devil for? Is he going to get himself in that war after all he’s said about it?”

William shook his head. “No, laddie. It’s not off to the wars for Padraig. It’s to save Ireland, he says. It’s to join the old society his dadda belongs to, with the object, he says, of getting free from the Sassenachs, and stopping the Irish lads from shouldering guns for England and making blasted dying fools of themselves for the Union Jack. Did I not tell you? His dadda just served two months in the prison for ‘insurrection,’ says they, and he’s an old man but full of ginger. ‘My country needs me, and this is the time for freedom,’ says Padraig, and it’s off he will be, with the lovely Maggie and the heir.”

Edward considered this. “Good God!” he exclaimed.

“And what blinking good is it if he gets his head shot off, or thrown into the paddy for ‘treason’? Knowing Padraig, it’ll be one or the other, and he knows it. ‘But they’ll have to find me first,’ says he. ‘And here I have a boy for the old dadda, and not a drop of blood in him that isn’t Irish. The old dadda will live a hundred years, but this fight is not for the old men. It is for me.’”

“Principles,” said Edward, pouring himself more coffee.

William studied him shrewdly, his sallow face wrinkling and thoughtful. He said, after a moment, “Life is short and principles are long, and I’m a man who doesn’t believe the mob is worth principles. Never shall it be said of a MacFadden that he was a Galahad and had the strength of ten because his heart was pure. Always shall it be said of a MacFadden that he believed the people deserved what they got, and no bally prophet ever lived out his days in peace or grew a gray beard. No locusts and honey in the desert for a MacFadden. It’s comfort I want, as long as I can get it. Principles! Do they put money in the bank or bring a man a comfortable old age, surrounded by the wet-nosed grandchildren and a garden? They do not.”

Edward was angry. “Yet you’ve been telling me for years what we are going to face! You’re the one who’s given me a lot of my information. Didn’t you warn me about the Federal income tax?”

“So I did. It was conversation, not warning. A comment, no more, no less. A discussion of the inevitable. A remark on the passing scene. Not an exhortation, laddie, to spurs and banners and a trumpet. I am a commentator, not a hero.”

“You were the one who suggested that I do something, and you contributed to the Save America Committee.” Edward’s anger was rising.

“Ah, there’s the touch of the Don Quixote in me, I must confess. And a faint hope—a very faint hope, mind you—that some of the good seed scattered by that hammy fist of yours will bear fruit in some far distant future, under the glitter of the police bayonets and under the sound of the chains. Not much of a hope. You must permit me my sentimentalities.”

“You call it sentimental to try to save your country from disaster and bankruptcy and slavery?”

William shrugged. Then he shook a lean and sallow finger under Edward’s nose. “Laddie. Hearken to words of wisdom. When a people are bent obstinately on enslaving themselves—and never was a people enslaved without its willing—then Our Lord Himself cannot stop them. They must bleed and die first, before the great enlightenment dawns in their noggins, and they get out the ropes and set up the scaffolds for the rascals.” He sighed nostalgically. “Ah, may the good God let me see the day when in America, and in all the world, that hour comes to pass. Damn me, if I won’t volunteer to be a hangman, though I’ll know in my heart that the people had deserved their oppression.”

He leaned back in his chair and pushed his hands into his trousers pockets and stared at the ceiling, and now his face, that lively and expressive face, was somber. “What did we do with Satan? He’s been banished from the modern churches, with a wave of an urbane and ‘civilized’ finger. Only old Mother Church and a few Protestant. Fundamentalist sects pound away at him with both hands. Do the others think that a little modern abracadabra caused him to be bottled up like a blasted genie or exploded into the air and lost forever? No, no. It’s on his black and fiery throne he is, chuckling over the damned world, his world. He’s murmuring over the shoulders of the coming tyrants; he’s thrown his red banner over the battlefields; he’s the familiar of the bankers and the madmen and the millionaires who want power, and the kings and the emperors and the presidents. Now is my time! says he. This is what I’ve been waiting for, and whispering for, ever since I was booted out of heaven. Now I’ll show Him who rules this bloody bit of mud He’s so fond of and what He died for. I’ll drown His cross in the blood of His precious people, and I’ll banish Him to the farthest reaches of the universe. I’ll close down His temples and His churches, and I’ll have my boys foul up His altars, all in the name of the people. A thousand years, says He, I’ll be bound. Not I, Lucifer, Star of the Morning. I’ve got a cleverer mind than He has, because I believe in nothing and hate everything. Let evil be unconfined! Let madness be unloosed, and all the whirlwinds. Isn’t that what the people want, and was there a day I didn’t serve the people?”

“You’re not serious, of course,” said Edward.

But William stared at him. “Serious? I was never more serious. Do I believe in the Devil? Why, laddie, of course I do. I am not a fool. Oh, I’ve listened to the holy men who say God is good and incapable of error. There I agree with them. But I depart from their company when they say that ignorance and error are only in the hearts of humanity, because of their imperfections. Now God created men, and as He created them, they were perfect. It is Satan who is bedeviling them and leading them into the abattoirs—by their own will, their own greed, their own evil, their own hatred of their fellow men, with which Lucifer inspired them. Could they be going down into the pit without him, they for whom God died?”

“You’re a priest at heart,” said Edward uncomfortably. “And a medieval one. Let’s not talk foolishness. You wanted to know why I was here. I’ll tell you.”

William listened as if this was news to him. He clouded his face with the smoke of Turkish cigarettes, to conceal any expression which might betray him.

When Edward had finished, William smoked out his last cigarette. Then he said, “Permit me a discourtesy. You are an idiot, my benighted young friend. You will call in the press and give your life away. Let me remind you. Millions of the American people are of German stock, as you have said. Yet I must tell you, out of my observation. When Washington gives the word to the American people that they must hate Germany, then they will hate Germany. They will chant the slogans of murder the government will give them. Even those with German fathers and grandfathers. Who can doubt any government? Isn’t it all wise, all knowing? God bless the State with its bloody bureaucrats! It’s well on the way to replacing God as the source of all knowledge, and all beneficence. Is that not what all people have been doing since they first set up governments? First God and the altars, then a stirring of compassion for more wretched men, then reforms. Not a man thinks of first reforming himself. No. He turns to the government, the slavering, hungry government, and says, ‘The job’s too big for me. You do it. If I’m only taxed within my capacities.’ And the government puts on a pious face and issues reams of slogans and homilies, and spits on its sword and slices off heads. It was always so. And so it will be in America, for men cannot delegate morality and compassion and justice to despots.”

Again he shook a finger in Edward’s frowning face. “And it is the government you would defy, who has already chosen the ‘enemy.’ It is the government you will try to control. You? You and a few other men? Too late, boyo, too late. What Georgie Enreich said to you was true, and you broke his heart with your nonsense. But it will be nothing to what the government will do to you! It’ll drive you into the ground, for your presumption. It will call you a traitor. It will set the blessed people against you; it will look at your income-tax returns and declare that you have cheated! And then will come boycotts and ruin. And where will you be? Economically excommunicated, you with your family, and your wife, and the childer who will be born. Will that make you happy? Will you look at the wreck of your life and say to yourself, ‘I tried. But it was no good’? Yes, that you will say, in your exile, and when you are eating your crumbs.”

“What do you think I should do?” shouted Edward furiously. “Just sit and collect profits, and work, and do nothing?”

“I just ask you not to tell the press who you are and what you are doing. Then you can keep on with your Save America Committee until the day war is declared against Germany. You can hide behind your mask. Prudence. Sense. A few will remember, later. And on that few, weak though you are, you may bank. They may grow into a chorus, that’ll defeat the murderers through the ballots, not tomorrow, not next year or next decade. But surely sometime. Not that I believe in the virtue of the people. No. But self-preservation’s a mighty thing, and God has hinted over and over that liberty is His gift. They’ll remember; they always do when the chains grow too heavy. And when that day comes, you’ll have your money as your sword, to fight, to publish, to help.”

“Maybe I won’t be alive then. Maybe it’ll be too late for my country. You want me to be a coward!” But Edward was desperately thinking, and as desperately despairing. “And in the meantime my shops will be sabotaged. I’ve heard from my managers in the other cities. The men who did that weren’t hooligans or thieves. It was a design, because our enemies know who I am.”

He got up and began to lunge about the room, walking faster and faster. William was composed. He covered a cold slice of toast with marmalade, as if unaware of the tramping going on around and about him. Then he said casually, “Sure, and it was a design. A Socialist design; the boys are out for blood. That reminds me of a stanza from Bobbie Burns, another lover of liberty like yourself. It was a poem about a louse, on a lady’s bonnet, but it is pertinent, I’m thinking, about the Socialists. And if you’ll stop that blooming riot about my chair, I’ll recite it for you.”

He chewed the toast with enjoyment, and then in his soft brogue he quoted:

“Now haud you there, ye’re out of sight,

Below the fatt’rils, snug and tight;

Na, faith ye yet! ye’ll no be right

Till ye’ve got on it,

The very tapmost, towering height

O’ Miss’s bonnet.”

Edward stopped, listening irately, catching the gist of the words. William poured some more coffee and sugared it. “No,” he said. “They’ll ‘no be right’ till they’ve got on it, the very tapmost. But in the meantime,” and he drank, “Socialism is a dirty word, since your fine Eugene Debs was indicted on a charge of conspiracy to kill, in 1895. Dirty word in America. You’ve got to capitalize on that in America now, my laddie. In ten years, or twenty years, it’ll be respectable. But not now.” He yawned. “I’ll not be relying on you to capitalize on it. It’s not in you. The Teutonic soul rushes out with a ghostly sword; it is all the Drachensgrab, the mysticism. Fighting intangible enemies at the gates of Valhalla.”

“What are you talking about?” Edward roared.

“When you talk with a German, it’s first the moat, and then the drawbridge pulled down, then the rattling of rusty chains, and then the cobbled courtyard teeming with the blasted specters. Now I, a Scot, with a laving of good sound Irish in me, am more practical. I get at roots. I dig. I stump around on the knees. I search the stems. I peer around for the wee louses. And there they are.”

“Meaning what?” asked Edward, with enraged impatience.

“I consult with the pixies in the dark of the moon while I’m grousing around on my knees. ‘Now what,’ I ask them, ‘do we do about the big laddie, the Senator Bonwit? For, gentlemen, I’ve smelled mice.’ When you have enemies, chappie, you look into their closets. Everybody has a closet. So I found the skeleton in Bonwit’s.”

Edward, glaring and bewildered, sat down abruptly in his chair, and threw his big arm over the back. “Bonwit?” he exclaimed. “Of course, Bonwit!”

“Ah, now you see. So, after the other shops are smashed to bits, I go to Washington, two days ago, smelling the mice. And with a top of the morning he greets me and slaps me on the back, the beefy bastard. ‘And how’s my good young friend Ed Enger?’ he asks, beaming like the blinking sun. And I look him in the eye and say, ‘Bad, very bad.’”

“That swine,” said Edward, not seeing, and his impatience growing.

William inclined his head in agreement. “But a swine with a closet that holds a big stout skeleton. That I found out. Twenty years ago he was a Socialist, one of Debs’s friends, a contributor; he furnished counsel for Debs, of dour reputation. And I know our Senator has ambitions; Vice-President or President, he wants, or perhaps the Supreme Court, or a little Cabinet job.

“So I says to him, says I, ‘And I’ve been an admirer of yours, dear boy. Your campaign manager in New York is closer to my heart than breathing,’ and that’s the God’s truth, Siegfried. ‘Always cuddle up to a political laddie,’ my old dadda told me. ‘Never know when it comes in handy.’

“So our Senator beams some more, though he blinks a little. And I says, ‘Your campaign manager whispers in my ear, and I nod, Senator.’”

William pursed up his lips and assumed an expression of great distress and trouble and doubt. “‘And what would be the matter, dear William?’ asks the Senator, seeing my near tears. ‘Oh,’ says I, ‘and it’s delighted I’d be to support you. With cash. With a word here and there. But there is something. Debs.’

“And he looks at me and clutches his chest, and almost strangles. Then he says, ‘I haven’t seen Debs—if I saw him at all—for years.’ And I shakes my head dolefully and says, ‘But if the word got around you’d be back on your ass, if you’ll pardon me, Senator, in your office in Albany, with nothing on but counting your dividends and attending pink teas. Now, Senator, what’re we to do?’ And me knowing, of course, and he knowing, that he’s still one of Them.”

“I still don’t see what it’s all about,” said Edward, glancing at his watch, which showed eleven o’clock. “You weren’t thinking of a spot of blackmail, were you, as you’d say? What for?”

“Now what would I be doing blackmailing that ham that walks like a man?” asked William, virtuously. “Not I. Let a man have a dozen skeletons in his closet and I’d respect them. A man’s skeletons are a private affair. No, laddie, not blackmail. Just a discussion between friends. Should I support a bloody Socialist?

“And now the Senator is eager for my advice. So I change the subject. I talk about you, my mutton-headed friend. I tell the Senator about your shops. And he squints up his eyes. But never does he ask questions. He knows. And I say, ‘Bad it is that a fine young lad like that has hooligans destroying his property, his sacred property, for which he worked so hard. Sad it is that no one can help him.’ And I look him straight in the eye and he shakes his head sadly, and after we smoke a cigar together, we shake hands and we part with mutual felicitations. And when I open the door a bit, there he is at the telephone, as red as a tomato.”

Edward glowered at him. William smiled gently. “And there’s a feeling in me that from this day on there’ll be no more clouting of your shops. All will be serene. Like a Sunday seen from Richmond Hill. Placid. Like aspic.”

Edward jumped up excitedly. “Why can’t we expose him? Now? Call in the press and tell them what you know!”

William lifted a mild hand. “And we’ll have the Senator on his buttocks in forty-eight hours; recalled. Sure, and that would help us. But what about the shops, eh? You wouldn’t have a penny left in a month. Perhaps not even a house. And that would suit you splendid, wouldn’t it?”

“But he’s a menace, it’s our duty—!”

“Never did I crave to be a martyr, lad. ‘’Twas a famous victory.’ And if we throw out the Senator, there’re twenty or more, rising up right in Washington, and it’s your blood they’d have very soon, one way or another. Duty? Now I’m a chap that loves duty, if you can do something with it. But not now. Too late. You should have started fifty years ago.”

Edward considered, biting his lips, fuming. Then he burst out, “So we’re to let Bonwit go on doing his dirty work! I’m to stop fighting! What has a man when he stops fighting something? What purpose does he have in living?”

William sighed patiently. “As for Bonwit, it’s too late, but you don’t listen. Washington’s full of them. Sure, and you can fight. You’ve got your Committee. That is your purpose. And you’ve got a bigger one. You can train up your children to respect America, and all her institutions. You can keep them uninfected from the red plague of Socialism. Cover them with armor. Teach them about America. Then, after the war, support the newspapers and magazines that call for peace. Shore up the ramparts; take an interest in politics. Shout your blasted head off, in the press, anywhere, about any blackguard who mouths Socialism, even in the wee way. There’ll be plenty of time, boyo, plenty of time, and plenty of work cut out for you. Did you think this fight was the beginning and the end?”

Someone knocked at the door, and Edward cursed and ordered the knocker to come in. It was a boy with a telegram, and Edward took it and said grimly, “You and your blackmail. This is probably to tell me I’ve lost another shop or two.” He began to read aloud:

“You have a son and daughter born last night, and Margaret is well and waiting for you.” It was signed by Maria.

Edward was stunned. Speechlessly he handed the telegram to William, and while William read it and nodded, Edward leaped for his suitcase, forgetting everything, forgetting his press conference at twelve.

The new generation, thought William. And what will we be doing with them? Teaching them law and order and the laws of God, or making scalawags and Socialists and traitors of them?

“We must talk,” said Maria, firmly, to Edward, grasping his arm and preventing him from rushing upstairs to Margaret. “There is much to say.”

She sat in the morning room but Edward stood and listened. “And so,” said Maria, “it is to your brother and your sister that we owe the lives of your wife and children, in great part. David has gone.” She paused. “But Sylvia is here.”

Edward, whose face had darkened gloomily while his mother had been speaking, said in a cold, hard voice, and with a disagreeable smile, “I will give them extra money.”

Maria looked down at her hands. “And you think money will repay them for their devotion?”

“Why not? Isn’t that all they ever wanted?”

“No,” said Maria.

“Let’s not be sentimental,” said Edward. “I know them better than you do.”

Maria raised her large light eyes and studied him. “There, I do not agree. I must ask you: do not insult David and Sylvia with money. Hatred, expressed through money, can never be forgiven.”

She stood up. “Let us not forget. Margaret is still under sedatives; she is not yet completely awake and aware. She believes you returned last night and that you were with her. The doctor is certain she struggled for life because of that belief, and because your brother, whom you would insult, never left her.”

They stared at each other fixedly. “It would be best,” said Maria, “for Margaret never to know it was David.”

Edward looked aside.

“Sylvia will never tell her,” Maria went on. “Nor will David. It will be our secret forever. You agree?”

“What else can I do?” said Edward, harshly. “It’s agreed then.” He started away from his mother, who smiled faintly. She called after him, “The boy is Robert, the girl is Gertrude. That was planned between Margaret and me.”

CHAPTER III

“I know, I know, all about principles!” Edward exclaimed to Padraig a few weeks later. “I talk about principles with William—”

“Then,” said Padraig with a gentle smile, “why do you object to my having them also?”

I don’t want to lose you; I don’t want to lose a friend because I have so few, thought Edward. And you’ve been my conscience, in your grave and stately way. He said, “I can’t explain it.” He looked at Padraig with dark restlessness. “I just have a feeling I’ll never see you again if you go back to Ireland. You and Maggie.”

They were sitting in Edward’s office, and Padraig gazed thoughtfully through the window at the cloud of snow blowing against the glass. “There’s the submarines, too,” said Edward. “What right do you have to expose Maggie and the child to the dangers of them?” His face changed. If he could persuade Padraig to leave Maggie and the boy in America, Padraig would return, or at least not expose himself to too much danger, or he might not even go at all. He said with indignation, “I see you haven’t considered the submarines.”

“That I have,” said Padraig, quietly. “And Maggie, also. I must go. She would not remain here without me. She is brave, my Maggie, and she remembers her marriage vows. I must go, Eddie. This is the opportunity for my people to be free.”

“Oh, damn,” said Edward. “The English aren’t oppressing the Irish now. Why—”

“We must be free,” said Padraig, and his somber face became even more somber. “We remember Cromwell; it is not a thing my people are forgetting. The wicked man who in the name of God murdered the Irish women and children as well as the men, the wicked man who darkened England herself for many years. But he was an Englishman; he was their own, and a people deserve their despots. He was not Ireland’s own. The bloody stain he spread on Ireland can be hidden only under the flag of national freedom. Is it hard for you, who love freedom for America, to understand an Irishman who loves freedom for his country?”

“I’m afraid for you,” said Edward, bluntly. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“One never loses a true friend, even if that friend dies,” said Padraig with affection. “I do not intend to die, Eddie. I intend to fight. If it is God’s will that I die then nothing can prevent it.”

Together, they thought of the long years they had worked together, Padraig first as a clerk in the shops, then as a manager, then his rise to his present position. The long hard years of all their work, with only the sprightly William to add comic relief during discouragement and debts and apprehension. They remembered the day they had first met, the first handclasp between the young Edward and the shabby and quiet Padraig with his tragic expression, the first sudden knowledge that they belonged together in work together, the first sure confidence and the relief of knowing they were friends at once. There had been no adjustment period; there had been faith from the beginning, and affection.

“I’ll never forget the day you first worked for me,” said Edward, “and when you put on the long white apron. Aprons always looked funny on William, like a clown’s getup. Hanging to his ankles; it always made me laugh. But when you put on one it—well, it acquired dignity. It became part of you. Everything,” said Edward, trying to smile, “becomes part of you and you dignify it, Padraig. You dignified even the dirtiest, hardest work.”

“Thank you,” said Padraig. “But I think you exaggerate.”

“Without words, you made me understand that work, in itself, is prideful, outside of the money,” Edward went on. “All my life, you see, I was regarded as the drudge of the family, and though I had my ambitions and liked the shops and the money they brought, still I thought of it as—drudgery, and not as important as—genius.”

“All work is important,” said Padraig, and he looked at Edward with compassion. “It is as important to men to lay bricks and mortar as it is to listen to a symphony or to read a book. To labor is to pray, no matter the labor. I am thinking that the Divine Lord in reality blessed men when He ‘condemned’ them to labor with the sweat of their brows. Does not He Himself labor endlessly, and His angels with Him? I do not believe that heaven is all tranquillity, containing nothing but light and song. It would not be heaven then.”

“You gave me a feeling of importance, the first I’d ever had,” said Edward. “In my own right. And because of that I’ve been able to stand—a lot of things.” His face became sullen and heavy. “So how can I let you go?”

“You will not lose your sense of importance if I am gone,” said Padraig. “If I did anything at all for you, Eddie, it was to bring to the surface of your good mind that thing you always knew instinctively: that you were important as a man, as a worker.”

You did more than that for me, thought Edward. You halted my ruthlessness, because, as I see it now, I wanted revenge on the whole damn world.

Then Padraig, who had never discussed theology with Edward before, said a strange and piercing thing. “I should like to have it in my heart, Eddie, when I have left America, that you have become reconciled with Our Divine Lord.”

Edward stared at him blankly. Then, very slowly, a derisive smile curled up his big mouth. “Well, another priest! You and William are a pair. Do you know what I’ve been taught all my life, by my father? That God is an abstract; that He is a symbol of the good in men. In men, hear that? That men themselves are really God, all by their filthy, contemptible, treacherous, malicious, and cruel selves! I learned all about Rousseau from my father—”

Padraig was silent.

“I know you always had a soft spot for humanity in you,” said Edward, smiling more widely.

“And you, also, Eddie,” said Padraig. “Why do you hide this from yourself?”

“You’re wrong! I care only for justice and freedom—!”

“‘Abstracts,’” murmured Padraig, with sad mockery.

“What? Oh, abstracts. Well, perhaps I do think that, and it’s probably right.” Edward paused. Then he said suddenly and strongly, “Don’t leave me, Padraig!” He was unaware of the despairing emotion in his voice.

Padraig regarded this beset and paradoxical man with sorrow. “There is an end to everything,” he said. “There must always be parting as well as meeting. It is inevitable. We have been together for a long time, and we have had that and we shall never forget. But now we must part, and you know I must do my duty as I see it, even when you protest that I must not do it.”

He stood up with finality. Then he paused. “Eddie, there is another thing. Your quarrel with your good friend, George Enreich. He has been like a father to you. Wait, please. I know the circumstances; William has told me. But George was thinking of you. Just,” he added, with his sad smile, “as you have been thinking of me and all the danger.”

Edward glared at him wrathfully. “You aren’t deserting me because of my principles, as he did. He threw me off with absolute cynicism. There wasn’t any question of principles on his part, believe me! He hasn’t any.”

Padraig pulled on his gloves. “A friend is not made in a day, but one can lose a friend in one instant. Life is long, but it can be lost in the blink of an eye.”

“I tell you, he threw me off! And demanded his money! Don’t be a sentimental fool, Padraig! Oh, you’re going, are you? All right, go.” Edward stood up, tight and shaken. “The hell with everything. I was alone for a long time. I can be alone again.”

Padraig held out his hand but Edward would not take it. Padraig dropped his hand with a sigh. “I’ll be leaving in three days,” he said. “We shall not meet again until Ireland is free.”

He walked to the door, tall and thin and stately, and Edward watched him go. He stopped on the threshold, and then, like a boy, Edward ran to him and caught him by the shoulders, tried to speak, and could not.

And as they stood together hands on each other’s shoulders, Padraig prayed silently for Edward, prayed that his awful confusion would someday leave him, and all his weariness and despair, and that he would finally understand the meaning for which he had been born and not the false one which had been forced upon him when he had been too young and too helpless to resist.

CHAPTER IV

“You don’t look at the top of form,” said William. “It’s fifty Green and White Stores you have now. Are the Washington blighters after you again for restraint of trade or monopoly or whatever?”

“No,” said Edward. “Not again. Not when they found we could kick out Bonwit and make Henry Sheftel Senator in his place. Just to show there’s no discrimination or pressure in it, they’ve turned their attention—again—to the Atlantic & Pacific. Just a small flurry, to clear themselves after Hans gave them a little exposure in his papers.” He laughed grimly. “Sometimes when I’m low in my mind I remember how they tried to get me by calling me in for the draft in late 1917, even though I had a wife and two children and other dependents. I still don’t know how I got out of that. A perfunctory examination by the doctors and I was out on the street. Another attempt to scare me, of course.”

“Hmm,” said William, eying him with concern. “Seems there was more to it than that. Didn’t they tell you to see your own doctor?”

“Probably. But they knew damn well I was in the best of health. My own doctor? What for? I haven’t had a doctor since I had pneumonia when I was a child, and those swollen joints that made me limp for a few weeks and kept me awake a few nights. Look at me. Ever see anyone in better condition? I play eighteen holes of golf without an effort, since Margaret made me join the Waterford Country Club. Waste of time, but she insists. But to please her I waddle around in the pool, too.”

William studied him. Edward was thirty-four yet he looked older; there were patches of random gray in his thick dark hair, and his broad face had a chronic expression of pent harassment and was lined with constant anger. It was only when with his wife and children that his face softened and became youthful, and the purplish tint in his wide mouth faded to a healthier color. His big body still moved with fast vitality, but there was a nervousness in him that betrayed itself in the trembling of his fingers when he struck a match or began to write.

“I’d go to one of those bally medicine chaps just the same,” said William. Edward shrugged, lifted and studied some papers on his desk. He was never without a cigarette. One hung in the corner of his mouth now.

“I haven’t time; don’t bother me,” said Edward, and then, as if without his volition, he struck his desk with a clenched fist. He threw aside his papers, and rested his chin in his palms. “I still can’t get over their killing Padraig in 1918. And hanging him with a silk rope because he was a peer! The only good thing about it was his father dying suddenly six months before that. A silk rope! What a concession!” He put his hands over his eyes. “And Maggie with two boys then, one just a baby. And it was all our ambassador could do to keep them from confiscating Padraig’s property because he was a ‘traitor’! Well, we gave them some publicity in the New York newspapers and got the Irish stirred up, and I suppose that’s the only reason Maggie still has the ancestral property or whatever they call it.”

“It was a good thing that you did,” said William, and his merry face was grave with sorrow. “Do not think that Padraig was murdered uselessly. No good man dies violently without Our Lord taking note of it.”

Edward uttered an obscene word in contempt. “And there weren’t good men dying in Europe for years, were there? Young men. And what was the result of it? The Bolshevik Revolution, and the active rise of Socialism all over Europe. How d’ye explain that, eh?”

“I told you once. Satan’s in it.”

Edward was profane again. “Don’t let’s talk imbecility, please. I’m tired.”

“I’ve been reading my Bible again, a book. I’ve ignored a number of years, laddie. It says the last battle will be between God and Satan for men’s souls. There’s all the signs of it. Not an actual bloody battle on battlefields, perhaps, but a battle in the minds and hearts and spirits of men—between good and evil. The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 was the opening engagement—the Communists are the bloody legions of hell.”

“At least, since 1920, we’ve stopped the advance of Socialism in the United States!” said Edward. “You’ve got to admit that.”

“I admit nothing,” said William, soberly. “The blasted devils are just gathering forces. Let there be a remittance in this wild prosperity we’re having now, and there they’ll be, waving their red flag with the hammer and sickle on it, and calling to the proletariat to throw off their chains. The devils never sleep; they never did. They’re a special breed of men, descended right from Cain, I’m thinking. Why, look at Cato, with his shrieks that Carthage must be destroyed. Look at ’em, all right down through history, legions of them. Now they’re ready to take over the world, five years, twenty years, forty years. If we let them.”

“And how do we stop them?” asked Edward, derisively. “Shoot them down in the streets?”

William nodded slowly. “It may come to that, laddie, it may come to that. I do hope. But before that, they’ll have the world, I’ll be thinking. Socialism, and the club and the bayonets and the prisons and the all-powerful government of murderous bureaucrats.”

He rubbed his lip with one freckled finger. He coughed. “And in your household—A man like you can start in his own house; every man can.”

Edward stared at him, frowning. He thought of his brother Gregory, who, after a very brief and safe billet in France, during his short Army service, had become one of the young men now grandiloquently called “the lost generation.” He had had one lurid novel published, The Sun Rises West. A very bad novel, purporting to be a story of the “oppressed” in America, the “submerged,” and their awakening since “the dawn” of Communism in Russia. It had sold two thousand copies in the United States, and the critics had jeered at it, in the main, with the exception of a few of the “progressives” in New York. These had been ecstatic. The novel had been published in 1922. Edward had written his brother: “Another such piece of trash and you’re on your own.” And Gregory had thought, I’ve got to be more subtle. That bastard doesn’t threaten emptily. Unknown to anyone in his family, Gregory was contributing, under a pseudonym, to various inflammatory pulp-paper journals in Europe and in the United States and was writing another novel of America which was more discreet but hardly less dangerous than his first. It was not in Gregory, as yet, to understand that in attacking orderly government and time-proved traditions, and in supporting chaos and ruin and death, he was actually assaulting his brother and all that he stood for.

Edward wrote to Gregory again. “I notice that in your foolish novel you speak reverently of Lincoln and his ‘humble’ beginnings and his love for the oppressed, as you call them. Well, let me quote something else to you that Lincoln said: ‘You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.’”

Gregory, on reading that, was much startled. Why, Lincoln sounded like the modern reactionary sons of bitches! (He had a real devotion to Lincoln, and for all of a week he was greatly disturbed and confused. A volatile and unstable man, he had reached the point in his life when he could have been given a firmer footing in life. Unfortunately Edward wrote him another letter so derisive and contemptuous that Gregory’s bewildered mind hardened again into the tiny and inflexible mold of iron, and he forgot the warning words of Lincoln and all the wisdom they contained.)

Sylvia was listlessly running her theater again, in Edward’s belief. But her assistants, enthusiastic young women, were in reality the true managers, the true producers, the true set designers. They listened to Sylvia respectfully, then did as they wished, and she was too indifferent to notice or to care. The theater was paying its way but no more. In the meantime Sylvia designed hats and frocks and gowns for Mary Garrity, and her private bank account in Albany was fast approaching respectable dimensions. Her large allowance from Edward joined that account regularly, while Edward paid her bills for clothing and other necessities and luxuries and trips to New York and to Paris.

Edward said to William, still frowning, “I don’t know what you mean by starting in my own house. My family’s settled down. Greg’s not writing his fool stuff any more. And he did show real genius even in that one stinking book; even his adverse critics said so. And whenever Ralph makes a sale, he tells me about it and suggests I cut down his allowance for the next quarter. So he isn’t robbing me, though I do send him money. Yes, they’re settling down. They’re not fly-by-nights. They do their best and they do it well.”

William said nothing. Though Edward was considered and rated an enormously rich man, he had not thrown off his debts, though he had cleared away the mortgage on his house. In fact, his debts were rising steadily. “His bloody family eats him like cannibals,” William would comment to himself. Whenever Edward was in sight of complete solvency, he opened new stores. He poured into them his huge dividends from stocks and bonds. He was deeply entangled in the speculative market. He was a driven man. He never stopped expanding. To him, the status quo was repugnant. He spent little on himself, nor did money in itself gratify him. He was like a ruddy top, William would think. Set spinning and then keeping on spinning, in its own inertia. But who knows what makes a man do the things that are killing him?

Edward was saying, “And I don’t have to subsidize Dave any longer. Funny, he’s the only one who won’t take money from me any more.” He did not like the thought, and his deep hostility for his brother grew in consequence. “I don’t know how he manages to support that apartment of his in New York, and his elegant clothes and his car and that valet of his. But I don’t care.”

“Thrifty, no doubt,” murmured William, with hidden irony. But he, too, wondered. David had numerous engagements all over the country; William doubted that they brought him much money. The chap probably had invested some of the money Edward had previously given him. Still, you had to give him credit. He was no longer a leech on his brother. He was unique in that damned family.

“It isn’t the fault of my brothers and sister that their genius isn’t widely acknowledged,” said Edward, gloomily. He repeated, “They do their best. After all, America isn’t exactly a cultured country, I’ve got to admit. I think of my family as trail breakers.” But his face was hard.

He picked up the papers on his desk again, and a tide of gray exhaustion washed over his face. “The three stores in Kansas City aren’t paying their way. I think you’d better run out there, William. Something’s wrong. I’m paying my managers top salaries, and the other employees, too, yet—”

That’s part of your damned trouble, thought William, compassionately. There’s not a chain or any other shop in the whole country which pays the wages you do. And pensions, too, by God, and sick benefits, and big holidays, and no pay taken out for anything. And yet you do have strikes, laddie, you do have strikes! Rum that your competitors don’t. God, people are the scaliest lot of dogs the Almighty ever created. Give them marmalade on their bread and butter and they’ll howl for caviar. And the farmers you buy your meats and vegetables from—you pay them over the market price. Are they grateful? They are not! If you can pay that much, they tell their black hearts, it’s because you’re the rich man you are, and they want to dig deeper into your pockets. But they don’t ask the same prices, or get them, from your competitors.

It had been a relief, William thought, when George Enreich had been paid off, at a tremendous sacrifice, by Edward. But George Enreich, in his fashion, had acted as a brake. Now that brake was gone. Nor had the friendship been resumed. George had made overtures many times, had actually humbled himself. But for some perverse reason Edward repeatedly repudiated his old friend. Edward explained it: “He pulled out when I most needed him, when I was working almost alone for my country. He has contempt for the American people—”

“He has contempt for all people,” William would say. But Edward would only shrug and change the subject.

“All right, go out to Kansas City,” Edward said. He rubbed his hands over his face, and the pressure put red streaks over the grayness. “One of these days,” he continued, “I’m going to take a vacation myself. A long rest.”

Margaret was chairwoman of the Ladies’ Lutheran League of the Enger Clinic, which Edward subsidized, and also a member of the Ladies’ Medical Auxiliary of the Enger Wing of the Waterford General Hospital, which was devoted to children ill of cancer. In these capacities she organized entertainment for the occupants of the fifty beds of the Enger Clinic, helped manage their disorganized domestic affairs during their hospitalization, and assisted in the procurement of nurses and other specialized technicians. She had, in these nine years of marriage to Edward Enger, become exceedingly popular with the leading ladies of the city, because of her beauty, delicacy, tact and modesty, and willingness to give of herself to any good charity. She was not often at home during the day; she had a little office of her own, and an assistant, in the Enger Clinic, where she conducted her humanitarian work.

This worried her. She was a passionately devoted mother to her two children, Robert and Gertrude. She wished she could spend more time with them. To her dismay, they hardly seemed to miss her, though they loved her with charming devotion. And to her greater consternation, they seemed extremely attached to their aunt, Sylvia. Often Margaret admitted her jealousy to Edward, half laughing. The love and tenderness and pampering Sylvia heaped upon the children was incredible to the parents, who did not know that Sylvia cherished the little ones because she was partly responsible for saving their lives. “She’s trying to usurp us, out of malice,” Edward would say angrily. “Turning our children against us.” But Margaret did not believe this in the least. She saw that Sylvia not only loved her son and daughter but that she was quite a disciplinarian and taught them to respect and honor Margaret and Edward, a fact that puzzled Margaret more than ever. When Margaret was with the children, Sylvia never interfered to any great extent.

Her former open hatred and contempt for Margaret had been strangely, to Margaret, replaced by a wary civility and curt politeness. There were even times when she talked to Margaret in her short, taut phrases, almost in a friendly manner. This, too, was because she had helped save Margaret’s life. Unobtrusively she had taken over the management of Margaret’s wardrobe; she designed Margaret’s clothing, to the younger woman’s confused gratitude, or she shopped for it in New York. Margaret did not know that her more fetching costumes, bought in the best shop in New York, Madame DelaFontaine’s, had been designed by Sylvia and made to her meticulous requirements in that establishment, in which she now owned a share. Sylvia could not resist beauty in hats and garments, and Margaret was a perfect model for her.

“She’s sometimes almost kind to me,” Margaret would confess to her husband. “But I do wish she’d get married!”

The family was becoming a weary obsession to her. They all lived, of course, in Edward’s mansion, including the little, quick son of Ralph and Violette, André, a sly, intelligent and ingratiating child of seven, a year younger than Robert and Gertrude. He appeared much younger, being at least half a head shorter than the tall twins, and he was very lively and gay and lied atrociously and winningly, and was very slight and active. He had a round hard head covered with a thin black fur, and sharp and diminutive features, except for his eyes, which were extraordinarily large and dark and shining, and fringed heavily, all around, with the thickest but shortest jet eyelashes his family had ever seen. This gave him, according to Sylvia, a “Hindoo” look. He was as foreign in that household as a gypsy. In addition to the odd appearance of his eyes themselves, his eyelids had a brownish stain, enhancing the shine and the peculiar expression. “He whirls,” Sylvia often said with cold disapproval, for she did not like the little boy and at times actually hated him. She thought him a bad influence on her darlings, Robert and Gertrude, whom she sometimes considered her own.

Margaret pitied the child, because he had last seen his parents nearly two years ago. She thought him pathetic. In truth, he was not pathetic at all. He was a compact person in his own right, sure of himself, careful of himself, subtle and wheedling, and caring for no one but André. He enjoyed life with an intense and cunning zest, had a high sense of humor, and considered himself, even in his few years, as a most remarkable person. He did not miss his parents at all. He hardly spoke of them. His existence was too interesting, and he had an alien handsomeness of his own which Margaret appreciated. His exploitation of everybody, which amounted to actual genius, kept him delightfully employed. His pretty eagerness about “presents,” a mention of which made him clap his dark and little prehensile hands so like his mother’s, induced even the somber Edward to gratify him. Edward was not without his own sentimentality in connection with this disingenuous child. Only Sylvia and Margaret and Maria were not deceived, and David, the few times he was at home.

Margaret, always hungry to be alone with her children and Edward, nevertheless did not urge him to establish another home either for his family or for herself. She did not understand his insistence that his brothers and sister be his dependents, in his Own house, for was he not always vehemently telling them they should stand on their own? He can’t, of course, force out his father and mother, at their age, I suppose, Margaret would think, nor Sylvia, either, seeing she’s unmarried, nor André, as his parents are always leaving him on everybody’s hands.

But they stick like flies in honey, Margaret would think, sighing. She had hopes that Gregory would marry someone in France, as Ralph had done, and never come back, except, perhaps, for a visit every year or so. She did not resent Dave much, for whom she had a cool regard, which was a mystery to her, except that he was so kind and thoughtful on his rare appearances and seemed to love the children. Besides, he had an apartment in New York and traveled all the time. Sylvia was a fixture; she showed no indication of marrying at all. Besides, Margaret told herself dolefully, even when they married they remained an incredible drain on their brother, Edward. They were like bloodsuckers, Margaret would think, with not much originality but with truth.

Edward was involved not only with the Clinic—a fine, square white structure of five stories—and the Waterford General Hospital but with many other charities, local, national, and international. He gave lavishly, to the detriment of his solvency. Margaret knew of his donations to Father Jahle’s church and parish and school, and his equally large contributions to the church his parents attended. Without quite knowing why, for Edward did not talk with her about his affairs, Margaret was afraid that he was overextending himself. He was exultant over the gaudy stock market, in which he was heavily invested; he was endlessly planning for new Green and White Stores. The headquarters for the Stores was in Waterford, but he went to New York very often to the offices of C. C. Chauncey’s, which remained his favorite. He would take Margaret, who found business very dull, though she had managed her own affairs competently enough.

Her greatest worry was that he had no friends but William. Padraig was dead; George Enreich repudiated. Father Jahle lived on a plane which was incomprehensible to Edward. As for Mr. Yaeger, Edward had nothing but contempt for him, which Margaret considered unfair. It was necessary for the minister to placate, appease, and cater to his congregation, she would tell Edward. Moreover, Mr. Yaeger, within his limits, was an intelligent and sincere man, in spite of his pomposity and his inability to grasp the subtleties of spirituality. “He’s afraid of you; that’s why he isn’t himself when you are around,” she would plead. To which Edward would reply, “The man hasn’t a ‘self’!”

For some reason, on this August 3, 1923, Margaret was more troubled than usual about Edward’s friendlessness. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, warm and golden, strident with cicadas, alive with hurrying bees, shining of hot sky and burning of wind. She had just returned from a meeting in behalf of the Clinic, and felt despondent and listless. She sat under the shade of a clump of glittering trees, in sight of the house, her short blue dress revealing her beautiful legs, her bright hair clipped about her pretty face. There was some coolness here; from a distance she could hear the sound of children’s voices and their vehement laughter. This enhanced her loneliness, but she did not particularly desire the company of the children just now. She thought only of Edward, who was more to her than her children, more to her than life. If only he had a confidant besides herself! If only he could relinquish his brusque and faintly derisive manner when among others! Surely, among the hundreds of people he knew in Waterford and in New York and Albany and in other cities, there was at least one man, besides William, who could give him honest friendship. He maintained that in essence humanity was vile, weak, stupid, and cruel. To a certain extent, yes, Margaret thought, but there is heroism and idealistic self-immolation and goodness in men, too.

She looked up, from her seat under the trees, and saw a nurse wheeling a wheel chair toward her. Margaret sighed in pity. The chair was occupied by Heinrich, who had suffered a paralytic stroke two years before. He sat in the chair, lolling, shrunken and as passive as an infant, his sparse hair white, his face smooth and blank and apparently at peace. His attempts at speech were incoherent, and when he timidly smiled, it was a grimace. He had utterly given up; there was no need now for him to struggle to be needed and important. His illness had settled, once and for all, his necessity to be the father of the family and a man of affairs, and Margaret suspected, in her compassion, that he was content with this, even happy, behind his helpless façade. He constantly wore silk pajamas and a light dressing robe and slippers, which enhanced his infantile appearance. He could lift his right hand and move his right leg slightly. Beyond that he could do nothing, not even feed himself. “But his mind and intellect have been little damaged,” the doctor had assured the family. This, to Margaret, was more pathetic than anything else.

“Ah, there we are!” the short and muscular nurse said cheerily. “We thought we saw you from the sunroom, and so we came out for a little airing.”

“Hello, Jane,” said Margaret. She helped the nurse place the chair near her own. Heinrich grimaced at her and uttered a few unintelligible words in a slow, grunting voice. “The children?” said Margaret, who seemed the only one able to understand him. Heinrich nodded with painful eagerness. “I’ll get the children,” said the nurse. “They’re playing around the conservatories. I do hope André hasn’t broken another window. The gardeners complain so, and with wages so high these days you have to keep them in a good temper.” She patted Heinrich’s fallen shoulder maternally and went off for the children.

Margaret reached out lightly and touched Heinrich’s cold and shriveled left hand. He turned his head to her. His round dark eyes were faintly clouded, but his soul implored her speechlessly. What is it he is always wanting? Margaret asked herself in distress. If I could only find out, the poor thing! She said, “Papa Enger, one of these days you must tell me what you want. I’ll try to understand. And I’ll get it for you.” His eyes brightened, continued their heartbreaking plea. He grunted, but this time she could not understand.

The three children came racing across the hot and radiant grass, André in the lead, as always. He did not shout, as Robert did, but he had an unpleasant voice, shrill and ringing like hard little bells, which irritated the ear. This was more insistent than the twins’ voices; Robert and Gertrude, when they spoke, spoke softly and seriously, though they could be noisy in play. It was André who reached Margaret first, and she patted that hard round head with its topping of thin black fur. She loved all children, even André.

Her favorite child was Gertrude, who resembled her father very closely. Tall and slender and usually quiet, she had fine, frank gray eyes, an olive complexion, a pretty smile, and a wide-boned face. Her straight dark hair was braided, and the braids hung down her back, which was as broad and upright as Edward’s. She was as incapable of guile as her father, but was as quick as he to anger when confronted by injustice. There was absolutely no compromise in her; a thing was wrong, or it was right, and she could comprehend, as little as Edward, a mercy which took many things into account.

Margaret thought this somewhat hard. It puzzled her in Gertrude as it invariably puzzled her in Edward. Edward’s treatment of David years ago had not been guileful; it had been brutal and deliberate and open, and sometimes Margaret was afraid that Gertrude, if she was ever maliciously injured, would develop this attitude. As for Robert, he was a little taller than his sister, more outspoken than Gertrude, more vigorous, sunnier, and even gentler in spite of his strength. He resembled his mother; he had her bright and curling hair, her absolutely blue eyes framed in gilt lashes, her delicate features, her quick smile, her cleft chin, her lovely coloring. He was his father’s favorite, yet he was not as intelligent as Gertrude.

“What’ve you been doing, dears?” asked Margaret tenderly. Robert threw himself down on the grass beside her; his fair skin was moist with sweat, his eyes shining. Gertrude kissed her grandfather on the forehead, then stood beside his chair. His poor head bent in her direction, and he smiled in content. André bounced about the group, shrilling. “It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair!” he cried. “We played ball and Gertrude always threw it to Robert, all the time! Never to me, and it wasn’t fair!” His peculiar black eyes glittered on Gertrude with an odd expression.

“You aren’t telling the truth,” said Gertrude disdainfully, leaning against her grandfather’s chair. “You’re a big liar, André.”

“Gertrude,” said Margaret, admonishingly.

“Well, he is,” said Gertrude, coldly. “I don’t like liars. He always wants to be first. We’ve got rules when we play ball, and he doesn’t want rules. He just wants what he wants.”

Margaret tried not to smile. André could deceive adults, except herself and Sylvia and Maria, but he could not deceive his peers.

“Gertrude’s right,” said Robert, soberly. “We play triangles. But André always jumps to get the ball first; he won’t wait his turn.”

“You’re so slow!” said André, still bouncing energetically. He was like a cricket. “Pokey.” He suddenly stopped and draped himself with a winning smile over the arm of Margaret’s chair. “Aunt Margaret, will you take us to the movies on Saturday? It’s a bang-bang Western, all full of guns and Indians.” He cocked his little dark hand in the shape of a gun, and shrieked.

“All right,” said Margaret. “Do stop making that noise, André.”

“I don’t like Westerns. I like Mary Pickford,” said Robert, frowning.

“I don’t like either,” said Gertrude. “Why can’t we see the new Pathé picture at the Globe? Les—Les Miseries?”

“Les Miserables,” said Margaret. She smoothed Gertrude’s pink cotton frock, which Sylvia had designed and made. “Isn’t that a little too grownup for you, Gertrude?” Gertrude was mortified at her mispronunciation, an error she did not often commit.

“I’ve read the book twice,” she said. It was quite true; though only eight, Gertrude’s taste in reading was adult and comprehending. She preferred study to play; she led her class at the Waterford School for Girls, while Robert, at his own private school, was quite content to be in the low middle. At eight, she could read and speak French competently. Until he had died six months ago, old Pierre had taught her the language, beginning when she was hardly five. He had adored the little girl, who so resembled her father. “In French,” Gertrude added, “and in English.”

André’s eyes sparkled on her maliciously. “My mama’s French. So I’m more French than you are—Gertie. I’m brighter, too. Mama said so. French people are brighter than Germans. Mama said so.”

“If you’re so bright, why does she leave you here?” asked Gertrude, cuttingly.

“Now,” said Margaret, with sternness. But André was grinning, showing all his predatory white teeth, so like his mother’s. “It’s cheaper,” he said. “Besides, you’re so dumb, and Robert, too, that somebody has to stay here to teach you anything.”

Robert, on the grass, raised his head. “You’re part German, too,” he remarked. André blithely thumbed his nose at him and began bouncing again.

“Suppose I take you to the Globe, Gertrude,” said Margaret. “And one of the maids can take you two boys to another movie.”

“Western,” said André.

“Oh, all right,” said Robert, the amiable compromiser.

“Here comes Skinny,” said André, dropping his voice. Sylvia was approaching across the grass, tall and thin and aloof her black hair closely bobbed about her white, planed, and distinguished face. Even in summer she wore dark colors, “as every cosmopolitan woman does.” Her navy-blue silk dress rustled about her knees and thin calves, for she considered the very short skirts then in fashion to be vulgar. Besides, as she usually pointed out, longer skirts were “coming in.” Only provincials were slow in following the trend. Her sole ornament, in her severe costume, was a string of real pearls about her long and stemlike neck.

Robert and Gertrude ran to meet her, racing. Her cold face softened; she bent from her height to put an arm about each of the twins. Margaret felt a pang of jealousy, then laughed at herself. “Skinny, Skinny,” muttered André, again leaning against Margaret’s chair. “Hush,” said Margaret, and frowned at him. Sylvia approached the group under the trees, her arms still about the shoulders of the twins. “I’ve been listening to the crystal set,” she told Margaret. “President Harding died today.”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Margaret, sitting up.

Sylvia smiled wryly. “And a good thing, too, with all that scandal.”

“He was a good, kind man,” protested Margaret. She and Edward had attended the President’s Inaugural. “You can’t blame him for his friends.”

“Why not?” said Sylvia. She looked at her father. She raised her voice, though he could hear well enough, and repeated the news. He gazed at her with blankness. “A man’s friends are a good indication of his tastes and his character,” Sylvia added. She sat down near Margaret and frowned into the distance, her aquiline profile, so like David’s, utterly set.

“Loyalty,” murmured Margaret. Sylvia shrugged. “A person shouldn’t have blind loyalty,” she said. “It distorts his vision.”

She seemed abstracted. Margaret said, “And so Mr. Coolidge is now the President. A very quiet man. We met him. I don’t remember ever hearing him say a word.”

“He has character,” said Sylvia. Her abstraction grew. She glanced at André. “Why do you have to jump so?” she asked, coldly.

“I like it,” said André, and jumped higher to displease her.

Sylvia ignored him. “Why don’t you children run off somewhere?” she asked. “I want to talk to an adult for a change.” But she smiled at the twins and for a moment her bony face was beautiful with affection. The children, even André, went away instantly, Gertrude admonishing André for something or other. “I can’t help it,” said Sylvia, following the children with her eyes, “but I detest that little boy.”

“It’s just that he’s so lively,” said Margaret, uneasily. “And so alone.”

Sylvia snorted. “Alone? He’s never alone. He’s got his own precious self, and that’s enough for him.”

Her almost fleshless fingers played with the string of pearls about her neck. Margaret detected that she was choosing words for what she wished to say. It must be important, thought Margaret. She’s so rarely at a loss. But when Sylvia spoke, it was on an old matter about which they invariably disagreed. “I’ve been reading another story of Gertrude’s,” said Sylvia. “It’s wonderful, almost good enough to be published. I do wish you’d encourage her, Margaret. But you hold her back; you don’t take her seriously. And she’s a genius.”

Margaret winced as usual. “I don’t believe in puffing children up,” she said and laced her fingers together tightly. “Gertrude gets enough encouragement. Yes, I know, I don’t let Ed praise her too much, and sometimes we quarrel about it. Genius! Gertrude’s still only a child. When she is eighteen or so, then we’ll see. By that time she’ll be mature and know what she really wants. Premature excitement on the part of parents can do children an awful lot of harm. Gertrude might decide to be a doctor or a lawyer or something, when she’s older, or perhaps get married as soon as possible. If we encourage her too much now, in writing, she’ll later feel guilty about disappointing us or something, or feel frustrated the rest of her life if her writing ability fades out. No, I want her to be as happy as possible and develop at her own rate. But we’ve gone over this before.”

Sylvia shrugged. “Of course I’m only her old-maid aunt and can’t be expected to know anything about genius,” she said spitefully. “You may think it will hurt her to encourage her, but I think your attitude may stifle her.”

Margaret said nothing. Sylvia went on, “And Robert plays beautifully on his flute. I do think he should have supplementary training, besides what he gets with the school band. He has a real genius for music.”

“Lots of children have,” said Margaret, keeping her voice level. “I noticed that, in the orphanage. Music comes naturally to most children. But later on, that faculty disappears. If Robert is really endowed, he will keep after it, with or without our encouragement. You can’t stop a real—talent. Then later, we’ll see, when he is more mature.”

“The twins have more than ‘talent,’” said Sylvia. “How you hate the word ‘genius,’ Margaret!”

I hate the damned word thought Margaret, and felt released by her silent profanity. She smiled. “We’ll see,” she said.

“The Engers have always been endowed,” Sylvia said. But Margaret refused to be goaded. She noticed again that Sylvia was playing with her beads. The nurse had returned and was now sitting next to her patient, embroidering, her glasses blinking in the sunshine. Heinrich, speechless, seemed to drowse in his chair.

Sylvia said abruptly, turning her stark face to Margaret, “I thought you ought to be first to know.” Margaret stared at her, puzzled.

Sylvia lowered her voice to escape the ears of the nurse. “You know Mr. Lang, the violinist with the theater? He’s been to dinner a few times.”

Margaret, still upset from the brush over her children and her regret at the death of the President, was momentarily confused. Sylvia frequently invited her artistic friends for dinner, and among them had been a series of very silent musicians from the theater. “Ellis Lang,” said Sylvia, impatiently. “He was here only two weeks ago.” Then Margaret remembered. Ellis Lang was an even more silent musician than the others, a bachelor in his middle forties, extremely colorless and humble, a tall man with a long meek face and shy eyes and a nervous manner. He had sat all through dinner murmuring faintly, laughing almost without sound, whenever addressed. “Oh, the violinist,” said Margaret. “A very nice man.” She wondered how Sylvia, the sharp and vibrant, had been able to tolerate such a pallid specimen of the human race. She looked at Sylvia and was astonished at the flutter of slight color in the other woman’s face.

Sylvia was smoothing her hands, one over the other, and staring at them. “I am going to marry Ellis,” she said. Then she looked up, and the color deepened under her cheekbones.

“Well,” said Margaret, helplessly. Then she was elated as well as amazed. Was it possible that one of the family would be leaving this house soon? She said, “Well, that’s wonderful. I didn’t know you were fond of him, Sylvia.”

Sylvia said, in a still cold voice, “I’m not. Very. But we have a lot in common.” Then her color faded, leaving her face starker than before. “I never cared for any man in my life, except one, and he is dead.” She made a short gesture. “Never mind; don’t pity me. It was a long time ago, and it doesn’t matter that I’ve never-forgotten him and never will. But Ellis needs me. Surely you’ve noticed Ellis at the theater, Margaret! He stands out, a virtuoso. Absolutely brilliant. But he’s always been poor and had to struggle. He never had a chance.”

Margaret was so bewildered at this stream of confidences that she could say nothing.

“I’ve not told anyone else yet,” Sylvia went on. “I expect to marry Ellis in two weeks, without fanfare or engagement parties or even an engagement ring. No publicity at all. A very quiet ceremony, in Mr. Yaeger’s study, with only our family present. Ellis hasn’t any living relatives.”

“I’m—happy for you, Sylvia.” Margaret was touched. Sylvia was sitting very upright and rigid in her chair and gazing at the distance. “I suppose he’s really a fine person,” Margaret added softly, “or you wouldn’t—I mean, you wouldn’t like him so much.”

“He hasn’t any money,” said Sylvia, flatly, as if Margaret had not spoken. “He barely makes a living at the theater, and playing, sometimes, at the hotels, or at private parties. But he never cared for money and doesn’t care for it now.” She repeated, “He needs me. And I hope to take him to New York for further study, at the Juilliard School of Music. Ellis is a genius.”

Margaret swallowed her rising elation. “We expect to leave for New York immediately after the ceremony,” Sylvia continued, “and I do hope we’ll never have to come back to this town! Except,” she added cautiously, “for visits.”

“Of course!” said Margaret, controlling her joy. “I understand perfectly!”

Sylvia eyed her curiously. “I wonder,” she said in a meditative voice, “if you do, Margaret. You see, we’ll need money. We’ll need an apartment there, a good apartment, not one of those places in the Village. Ellis is very sensitive, and he’s known only miserable rooming houses all his life, and that’s part of what has been inhibiting him. So he must have pleasant surroundings, and security, so he will feel free to develop himself.” She smiled tightly. “It will probably take at least four years, at the school of music, and all this will be very expensive. As you know,” and she paused, “all I have is my allowance from Ed, and I’ve spent it on clothing and on the few luxuries I have.”

Then Margaret understood, and her heart began a sudden indignant beating. Edward was to pay for all this; Edward was to have another parasite hung about his neck like an albatross. Four years at one of the most famous music schools in the world, for a miserable stranger no one hardly knew, except Sylvia! Four years in a luxurious apartment for Sylvia and her husband, four years of increased allowances for clothing not only for Sylvia but for Ellis Lang, and for their private spending in the most expensive city in the country! It was a matter, probably, of at least eight thousand dollars a year—out of Edward’s pocket. No, at least ten thousand dollars, in these days of wild inflation.

Sylvia turned in her chair and studied Margaret, saw the angry sparkle of her eyes and her compressed mouth. “Well, what am I to do?” she demanded. “Unless Ed helps us? Did you expect him to come here and live on us like a parasite? He has his pride, Margaret, even if perhaps you don’t believe that.”

“I’m not thinking of his pride,” said Margaret, her temper flaring. “I’m thinking of my husband.”

“Who is also my brother,” said Sylvia, lifting her chin. “Have you forgotten that? And after all, he owes me a great deal, more than you’ll ever know.”

Margaret clenched her teeth to hold back the bitter and tumultuous words that surged in her throat. For the first time in her life she wanted desperately to hit someone very hard, flat in the face, preferably Sylvia. Her mind ran on like a turbulent river. Ed would never be free from his family, never. Sylvia was still a young woman, just thirty-three. There would probably be children. Then the “genius” would have to study abroad. It would go on, everlastingly. There would never be freedom for Ed, who was so beset, and who had never taken a holiday in his life, and had only worked.

“What does Ed owe any of you?” asked Margaret, holding her voice down with a tremendous effort. It shook, however, with her struggles. “You’re all men and women, now. He educated you, provided a wonderful home for you, gave you large allowances, paid all your bills, indulged you in every fancy, built a theater for you, supports Greg and Ralph and Violette in Europe, takes care of André and his parents, and spares nothing and refuses nothing. And what has he gotten for his work, all the work he has done all the days of his life? Not even gratitude!”

The nurse overheard, and discreetly bent her head and listened avidly. Heinrich slept in his chair.

“I didn’t expect you to understand,” said Sylvia, stiffly.

“He owes none of you anything, now,” said Margaret, and furious tears rushed to her eyes. “Why, you’re not even young any more! How long does this have to go on, before any of you are self-supporting—in your genius?”

Sylvia smiled viciously. “Naturally, you are thinking of yourself and your children’s inheritances.”

Margaret restrained the hand that trembled to flash up and strike Sylvia. “I am thinking of my husband,” she said. “When it comes to him, I don’t mean anything. Nor do my children. Have you looked at Ed lately, any of you? Have you seen how exhausted he is? Does he indulge himself in anything? You have your own car, Sylvia, and your mother has hers, with the chauffeur. Why, Ed doesn’t have a chauffeur any longer and he’s the mainstay of all his relatives! What has he ever gotten out of life? Tell me!”

Sylvia said, “He has power, and that’s all he ever wanted.”

Margaret was shocked. “Power? Why, you’re out of your mind, Sylvia! Power!”

Sylvia stood up. Her face was without expression. “I’d hoped you would help me, by telling Ed and asking his help for Ellis and me. Of course, if Ed won’t help, then I’ll just have to persuade Ellis to come here, to our home, to live, and I’ll get a private teacher for him.”

Margaret was aghast. There was just no escape, no escape at all. Sylvia was smiling down at her again in that ugly fashion. “After all,” said Sylvia, “this was my home before it was yours, or have you forgotten?”

She swung about on her heel and left Margaret, who swallowed painfully against her tears and rage. She leaned back in her chair, her hands clenched on the arms, and tried to control herself. Ellis Lang in this house forever, with Sylvia and their children! The idea was unbearable. The alternative was even more unbearable. If only Ed could be persuaded to inform Sylvia that when she married she would have to establish a home of her own—Margaret closed her eyes and considered. If only he would be sensible! But this time surely he would. The situation was outrageous.

“Do you have a headache, Mrs. Enger?” asked the nurse. She was bending over Margaret solicitously. “Shall I get you an aspirin?”

“No, thank you,” said Margaret, opening her eyes. She glanced at her wrist watch, crusted with diamonds, which Edward had given her for Christmas. “Oh, dear, it’s after five, and Mr. Enger will be here any minute. I must go to meet him.”

She stood up. She found that her knees were trembling. She braced herself and walked to the far spot where Edward met her every evening.

“Yes,” said Edward as he sat beside his wife under the trees. “I know how you feel, dear. Lang! I just about remember him, but only just about. He’s like a fixture you overlook. But let’s be sensible.”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to get you to be!” cried Margaret, clutching his hand, her heart sinking, as it always did, at the sight of his weary face and haggard eyes. “This time you just have to set your foot down, Ed.”

“Let’s look at it this way then. I’m supporting Greg, Ralph, and Violette in Europe. Greg and Ralph, of course, will be self-supporting one of these days, I know. But look at it all from Sylvia’s point of view. Is she to be the only one to be thrown bag and baggage out of her home, without any help from me?”

Margaret was distracted. “You shouldn’t be supporting any of them, Ed! Not one of them, except your parents. And they have their own income from Enger’s. Never mind your parents, though. Do you actually think that that Lang will ever be able to take care of himself and Sylvia? Don’t be foolish, please, please! You’ll never get rid of any of them. They’ll take care of that.” She clutched Edward’s arm and wept. “You’ve got to start somewhere, Ed. You might as well start with Sylvia, as a hint to the rest of them. Do you know what she said about you? She said you have what you’ve always wanted—power. You!”

Edward’s face changed. “Power?” he said, in an odd voice. “I want power?” The ashen color ran under his dark skin. “I want power, I who hate men who want it, and who’ve fought such men for years?”

Margaret was frightened. “I shouldn’t have told you that, that cruel and stupid thing! Sylvia doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and I told her so. Ed, you look so ill. Oh, never mind your family, damn them! Nothing matters but you.” Her fright increased. Edward was staring at her blindly, as if she were not there, and his lips had a purplish tinge. He put his hand suddenly to his left side.

“Oh, what is it, Ed?” Margaret exclaimed with a terrible sense of foreboding, “What is it, Ed?”

“Nothing,” he said, weakly. “Nothing at all. What’s the matter with you, darling?” he managed a smile. “I never saw you so hysterical. Suppose we forget the family. I think I’d like a Scotch and soda; my bootlegger delivered some very good stuff last week. And I think I’ll mix you one, too. It’ll do you good. And we’ll drink to the new President, Mr. Coolidge.” He stood up and pulled Margaret to her feet. “Stop worrying, dear. Why, I’ve made over ten thousand dollars the last two days in the stock market. What is ten thousand dollars? Why does it worry you? What if it does cost that much a year to get Sylvia out of the house? Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted, even if you didn’t say so?”

And he kissed her and led her away, his arm about her waist.

CHAPTER V

All the family was at home, at Christmas, which made Maria contented, for though her children usually forgot their father even in his presence and rated him of no importance, she believed that they had some affection for him. Ralph and Violette and Gregory had returned from France a few days before, and David was between engagements. Ralph had had to return for a few weeks to discuss bridge designs with his clients, and Gregory had his completed book and was in search of a publisher. Ralph was the most practical member of the family, and this, with his earthiness, did not make him the most popular. However, he was the youngest, and he was amusing if vulgar, and Violette could bring deft gaiety in spite of the mistrust in which she was generally held.

With the exception of David, whom Sylvia declared she could no longer understand, there was an immediate and confiding solidarity against Edward, even more emphatic than usual. Now that none was very young any longer, their dislike and hostility were more mature, more directed, and, in their belief, more rationalized. However, perhaps because of some emanation from Sylvia, whom all respected, Edward’s children were great pets with their aunts and uncles, even with Violette. The brothers and sister spent hours bitterly discussing Robert’s and Gertrude’s “frustrations.” “Of course,” said Sylvia, “what can you expect of a man who knows nothing of genius and its needs and a woman who is absolutely stupid and ignorant?”

Violette made a moue and shook her head. “There you are wrong, my dears,” she said. “Ed is not a fool, and Margaret is very wise, though sometimes childish in the American manner.” She looked mysterious. “It is very wrong to underestimate the enemy.”

Everyone stared at her. The enemy. They had fear for Edward, and something close to hatred, and in spite of themselves they had a frightened respect for their puissant brother. But they had never, even during their angriest periods, ever actually considered him as an enemy. Now they gave thought to it, acknowledged it eagerly and excitedly, and their last vestige of conscience with regard to Edward vanished in a surge of relief. Violette’s statement had exonerated them from feeling obligated to Edward; he was now the open foe for whom there was no quarter. They smiled at Violette as at a deliverer. Later Sylvia, who seemed brighter than in years after this session, told David of the general conclusion. He had regarded her with that strange look which never failed to disconcert her.

“Enemy? Ed?” he had repeated, slowly. “It’s an unusual enemy who works himself to death for us. Yes, yes, I know your claim is that he always wanted power over us and power for himself. You know very well, Sylvie, that he’s not one of the typical rapacious tycoons you’re always talking about who think and live only for money. He’s neither gaudy nor grasping; he might complain often about our expenses, but he gives us whatever we want, and not out of love. Definitely not out of love. Perhaps because of power, but only a little because of power. It’s something more subtle and probably something more terrible, hidden even from him, and that’s why I pity him.” This so outraged Sylvia that when she reported this conversation to her brothers she betrayed David for the first time. “He’s not to be trusted,” she warned them. “Don’t discuss Ed with him. Why, he might even be reporting everything we say to Ed! Let’s change the subject when David’s around.”

So David, a little to his dismay, found himself a stranger in his home. His brothers and sister showed a cordial interest in his career and in himself, but there were no confidences any longer. He found the others overlaid with a bright and casual brittleness when he appeared. His loneliness increased. He spent most of his days at home with Maria and the twins. He tried, a few times, to be friendly toward Edward; he even strained himself in that direction. But the abysmal cleavage, dark and formless and without a name, which existed between them could never be bridged by words. Once he said to Edward, “I wish you’d rest. You look sick to me. And too tired.” His voice was honestly concerned and anxious, but Edward had given him a glance charged with what to David was inexplicable rejection and affront.

“It’s a little late in the day for any one of you to be interested in me, isn’t it?” he replied. “Let’s drop it.”

David spoke to Margaret of his growing concern for his brother. “Why, he gets grayer and grayer all the time,” he said. “Margaret, you’re his wife. In the name of God, what is it, what’s the matter with him?”

Margaret had become cold. “Why, you ought to know, David. So long as all of you exploit him and are such a burden on him and such dead weights, then he’ll never be free, he’ll never have any rest.”

“Don’t cry,” said David, with a tenderness he could not keep out of his voice. “I’m going to try to help him. I don’t know how, but I’m going to try.”

Two days before Christmas he went to see George Enreich in the latter’s home. George’s bristling hair was completely blanched now, his florid face paler, his body heavier and clumsier. But the green eyes were as vital as ever. He had come to have respect and even affection for David over the years, though he saw him rarely. He listened to David’s words thoughtfully, shifting his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other.

Then he said, “I have ways of finding things out, David. As you know, my good young friend, Edward is like a son to me though we speak no longer. It is not my doing. He does not know how I have helped him, and I will give you my confidence. You will remember the Save America Committee, which I told you he headed, and only you of the family know this. When America decided that Germany must be the enemy, against all the desires of the people, then Edward’s personal enemies in Washington prepared to ruin him. I was soon informed of the plot by means of several friends. Enough. I need not tell you of the months of efforts in his behalf on my part. I employed all and everything without restraint, and there was much money involved. Few politicians there are who can resist bribery. It is not something to deprecate or bewail, but only something to accept as in the nature of humanity, unfortunate though it is.

“Yes. I have my means of securing information. I am also not a stupid man. Nothing can make Eddie’s and existence blossom, only himself. His wife can do nothing for him, for she loves him too much and so cannot see him. And there has been a little estrangement growing between them this year, which I deplore but which I understand. The love is not injured, but the closeness is somewhat marred. It is because of the children. You seem astonished that I know so much, but Eddie is my business because of my affection. You did not know it? Margaret is a very sensitive and discreet woman, and is suspicious of what your family calls genius. She has reasons, as you know. She is not a deluded mother; she will never stand in her children’s way, but she considers them too young as yet to know what they really want and for what they are really fitted. Eddie is not so wise, so temperate, so tolerant. Some vague talents on the part of his children—and do not all children in early years show some talent which later withers naturally?—convinces him that his children are geniuses and that their genius must be developed immediately. My informants?”

George smiled. “I, too, have servants,” he said. “Do not be so annoyed. The consuming interest of servants is their employers, and I do nothing to discourage that interest and the reports, for I am concerned with Eddie.

“What is wrong with Eddie, you have asked. Many things, many dark and violent things, which are beyond him to comprehend. I do not believe in this Freud, who has insights, powerful insights, but only narrow insights, because he never truly loved anyone. However, I will bow to Freud this time, in connection with Eddie. I know the very year in which Eddie changed, not slowly but all at once. I know the time of the year. It was not long before Christmas of 1904. Something happened in his life, something which may seem insignificant to others, but was of terrible importance to him. I do not know what it is, and who is there to say what is significant or insignificant? He was injured; he suffered what is now called a trauma. He has forgotten it, in his conscious mind. But it brought out a hardness and a ruthlessness, and no doubt even a vengefulness, in him which possibly might have lain dormant—if that event had never happened. Or it is possible that he began to think, and thinking often leads to hatred as well as to enlightenment.”

“Nineteen-four,” repeated David, slowly. He shook his head. “We were only kids then. I can’t even remember that Christmas. Except one thing: I had a fight with Eddie over Billy Russell, that colored boy who used to work for my father. Yes, it was Christmas Eve! Wait, wait. Something’s stirring in my mind. Ed had begun to change long before that, though. I think the fight was only the culmination of something that was distorting him. He had always been very close to Pa; the closeness was gone by Christmas. Even then, Ed was showing hostility toward him, and contempt for him. Do you think it all has something to do with Pa? I can’t believe that. Pa has always been so simple and childlike and kind, and he’d be the last person in the world to hurt Ed, who was his favorite child.”

George considered. Then he said, “I think it is your father. How, or why, it is impossible for me to know. But there is a sureness in me about it.” He paused and looked at David, who was frowning in bafflement. “You have said, my David, that your sister has asserted that Eddie is the enemy of all of you. I believe that. I believe that he wants to retain power over you. I have always believed it. And is that not paradoxical in a man who loves freedom absolutely and who detests the power seekers? When we discover the nature of the paradox, which probably is not paradoxical at all, we will know what is wrong with your brother. But that will not help him. He himself must know.”

David was silent a long time, his handsome narrow head bent, his hands clasped between his thin and elegant knees. Then he spoke, without looking up. “I respect Ed. I can even say I love him. I understand him even more than Margaret does, though perhaps not as much as my mother. I would give anything, anything, to help him, for his own sake. You believe that?”

“Certainly,” said George, with kindness. He smiled mischievously. “And that is why you do not tell him who the famous composer of Samson Smith is, and who has been writing all those undeservedly popular songs? Ah, you are amazed, yet I have told you it is my business to know all’ about my Eddie and those surrounding him. I am glad that you have given me the occasion to congratulate you. It was my admiration for you which prompted me to give you the various tips on the stock market, and so to help you become a rich man. You are very ingenious and very clever, and you have found your métier, though I confess I do not understand this modern music. Nevertheless, it is your métier. I wonder,” he added artlessly, “if your brothers and sister have found theirs also. It does not matter. I am not much interested.”

He poured more wine into David’s glass. “I have this advice: continue as you are doing. I am growing old, and perhaps my German mysticism is increasing. I feel that someday Eddie is going to need you.”

David talked with Maria. She sat silently as he spoke, larger and more shapeless than ever, her pale hair now one drift of thick white, her pallid eyes inscrutable. “I’ve always thought you knew more about Ed than anyone,” said David. “And though no one else would believe it, I’ve always believed he was your favorite child.”

“I love all my children but I have loved Edward the best,” Maria said, in a voice without emotion. “And it is the tendency of love to oppress and demand. Though Edward is the only one who can help himself, I am partly guilty of his spiritual sickness and his suffering. Wait.” She lumbered to her feet, raising herself out of her chair with weighty effort, and went into her bedroom. She brought out a flat parcel tied with tissue paper covered with brown paper. She sat down and slowly unfastened it, while David watched. She then handed him a stiff sheet of drawing paper, brown at the edges, and brittle. David looked at it in wonderment. Even though many years had obviously passed since this water color had been painted, the colors were vehement and alive. It was a painting of a young hen, vigorously soft yet strong, lifted on her toes as if preparing to fly. “Why, this is the best thing Ralph has ever done!” said David admiringly. “Even if he must have done it when he was a child.” He suddenly frowned, trying to remember something. “Wasn’t it Ed’s chicken—Betsy? I seem to recall his having a chicken, a pet.”

Maria smiled slightly. “Yes.” The smile vanished. “Little Ralph let her out of her cage to paint her, and she was caught by a cat. Edward was heartbroken. I don’t think he ever forgave any of us; he began to change then. A small thing, a little hen, but a small door can imprison, or free, as well as a large door.” She paused. “Ralph painted the hen. But Edward, when he saw the painting, which I wished to give him, took up the paints himself and brought life to wood. You are astonished. Perhaps you do not know that your brother is a great genius, a strong and very vital genius.”

“I had a feeling about it,” said David, looking more closely at the picture.

“Good. But you and I are the only ones who know. He has an instinct for art, for science, for writing. For many things. In any of them, he would have acquired an imposing reputation and fame. None of you can match him in anything.”

David stared at her. Then suddenly his face kindled with a great black anger. “And you let him waste himself! You never helped him, as you helped us! We were the geniuses, we—”

“Were weak,” said Maria, interrupting. Her eyes were cold and fixed. “And I was cruel. But realistic. We needed money for our children, which we did not have, and which we would never have had, had it not been for my son, Edward. What talents you possess, and they are feeble, but still they are talents, were nurtured by the money Edward made. I am a Von Brunner; I could not bear for my children to be mediocrities.”

“But we are,” said David, bluntly. He was still blazing with quiet but enormous anger. “And you let—”

“Wait,” said Maria. She picked up her knitting, and her needles clicked for some moments, the fire crackling in the background. “A mother knows her children. I know much about all of you.”

David looked at her, stunned. She raised her eyes, and they were almost gentle.

“Without Edward’s help and money, what would you be now, my child? Perhaps a worker in a small delicatessen.”

David stood up and agitatedly began to pace the room, his tall and elegant body passing and repassing before the fire while his mother placidly knitted. Then he swung to her and exclaimed, “Yes! We didn’t deserve Ed. Why should he have been sacrificed for us? We’re weak. Why should the strong be sacrificed for us?”

Maria said thoughtfully, not looking up from her knitting, “In the history of the world the strong have always been apparently victimized for the weak. It is the weak who protect themselves from the strong, with more and more punitive laws and, at the last, by shrill violence. But the strong would never be violent; they pursue their way like the gods in Wagner’s operas, knowing only themselves, unaware of anything but their intrinsic power. And so they inspire the envy and resentment and hatred of the weak, who revenge themselves on what they cannot understand, and which is too great and lofty for their understanding. The historians ignore this, or do not know it, or are weaklings taking their own revenge. The strong are often magnanimous. They often permit themselves, in the name of humanity, to be tied by Lilliputian bonds. But strength constrained and bereft does not increase the stature of the weak.”

David said bitterly, “That’s all very nice. We’re Lilliputians and we’ve put ropes around Ed. I’ve known that since I was fifteen or sixteen. Do you think that’s fair?”

Maria’s hands rested on her knitting. “Edward is not magnanimous. You think you have tied him. But you are the tied, my son. All of you. That is Edward’s own revenge. He will never be free until you all go free, until you have escaped him. Why do you not escape him?”

David said, “I don’t know about the others. But I don’t exploit Ed now. And he’s so sure I’m a gifted concert pianist, and he’s satisfying himself vicariously in me, that I can’t tell him the truth—I won’t hurt him. I’ll never hurt him.” He spoke with quiet passion.

Maria nodded. “Not because of Margaret; he knows she did not love you. But because he would realize that you escaped him a long time ago. He dislikes you because his intuitive nature realizes that he never held you, though he was exploited for you.” She added, “There are the magnanimous strong, and there are the strong who are unforgiving. Edward is the last.”

David felt that they were speaking of cobwebs that could be felt chillingly but not seen. His mother said, “I early learned that Edward had a genius for business as well as other gifts. It was necessary that, for all your sakes, he develop the first. He is deluding himself. He could be happy if he could know himself.”

“There’s more to this damnable situation,” said David, with wrath. “It isn’t as simple as you say.”

“You are quite right, David. Nothing is ever as simple as any of us say.”

David picked up the old water color again, and the tints blurred before his eyes. “What a waste!” he said. “What a terrible waste!”

Maria looked at him. “Do you not know? Edward is doing what he wished to do, though he does not understand that. The strong are never really bound by the weak, even if they believe so. They always do what they want. Paternalism is always given, though the weak by their nature seem to demand it. They merely accept it after it is an accomplished fact.”

“But Ed knows he’s been exploited, and that’s why he hates us.”

“In part, yes. But he agreed to the exploitation, because it gave him power over you. His hatred is his private means of hiding the truth from himself. He is just; it would destroy him, perhaps, if he understood. He wanted what he has, and he also wanted more. Despite his ragings against all of you, he is satisfying the whole range of his genius. When you disappoint him, you are striking at his hunger for satisfaction.”

“There’s more to this,” David repeated. “There’s something else.”

“Certainly,” said Maria. “And it escapes me, though I have thought.”

She wrapped up the picture again and put it away.

On Christmas Eve the entire family, with the exception of Heinrich, gathered for a festive dinner before church. Edward sat at the head of the huge and gleaming table, the candlelight not softening his drawn and exhausted face and graying hair. He looked much older than his oldest brother, David, and his eyes were stained with the same purplish shadow that hovered over his broad lips. He seemed out of place in that ponderous but stately room, in his old clothing, creased shirt, and rumpled tie. Margaret, in blue velvet, sat at the foot of the table. She and Edward were the only silent ones, Edward abstracted and brutally remote, and Margaret thinking of no one but her husband and almost unaware of anyone else. The blue velvet made her flesh seem whiter and more translucent than usual, but David saw that she was also thinner and appeared sad. Her beautiful eyes fixed themselves frequently on Edward, almost imploringly.

Ralph ate heartily and amused his family with anecdotes about Paris. His strong auburn hair was like filaments of living wire, rising in a crest above his flushed forehead, which was always slightly damp. He was definitely becoming quite fat; his full and lustful features were a brighter pink than his forehead, and his full mouth was red. Violette sat beside him, trim and merry, in chic black velvet and diamonds. (David eyed the jewelry with suspicion.) Her black curls were modishly short, gaily poised on the top of her head. She was worldly and blithe and knowing in that company of “innocent” Americans. She was always highly amused by this innocence, which seemed to her stupid and childish and too redolent of soap, bath brushes, and rude health. Even little French children, she would think, are more sophisticated than American captains of industry. There is no subtlety in Americans, no true and polished ruthlessness. Ralph was very foolish; he said that it was just that Americans were not depraved.

Violette let her saucy eyes travel along the table. There was Sylvia, the artiste, the gifted modiste, in slim black silk, haughty and sharp-tongued and embittered, and so very thin, and beside her that most impossible dolt, her husband, the purported violinist, Ellis Lang. Violette laughed in herself, silently. He was a man made of unpainted wood, and he was the color of wood, and so very humble among the Engers! So fearful of offending them, so stammering, so meek. He is afraid to the heart, Violette thought, highly diverted, and he is more afraid of Sylvia than of anyone else. Violette and Ralph, on the way home from Paris, had visited the Langs in New York, and even Violette had been impressed by the suave magnificence of the apartment in which they lived. Ellis was at the Juilliard School of Music, but only precariously, Violette thought merrily. She was also annoyed; such a waste of money!

Gregory, with his assumption of the debonair, and his restless and merciless eyes, and his expensive clothing and jewelry, and his mocking voice, and his curious resemblance to Edward, and his painful attempt at David’s elegance: Violette had never heard of the editor of The City, but she would have agreed with his verdict on Edward and Gregory: “Portrait in iron, copied in wax.” Gregory was never kind or considerate or sympathetic; his eyes roved the table like predatory beetles, and as they touched any member of the family they seemed to jump in a jeering dance. He thinks himself very sophisticated, Violette thought, without rancor but only with amusement. On the contrary, he is a vicious little boy, with a limited if poisonous mind. A mind like a thin and cutting edge, which can carve small soft pieces of wood very cunningly but would break on marble. Why was he never still? His hands played with the silverware; his eyes roamed; his shoulders twitched.

David. Violette had a secret passion for David, whom she considered the only civilized member of the family. What grace, what black charm, what pent vehemence! One would almost believe he was French. He had such beautiful, nervous hands, yet he never moved them aimlessly, as did Gregory. Control, noble assurance. Violette was intrigued by the way David insistently watched Edward, as if trying to make his thoughts reach that big and somber man. Violette did not share the family’s derision about Edward. She recognized the man of power, and respected him, and often wondered how it would be to have such a man make love to a woman. She knew he could not tolerate her, and that he was barely polite to her, and that he seemed to know all about her. This did not vex the young Frenchwoman; rather, it excited her. She wondered what David was trying to say to his brother, who ignored him. She also wondered why Edward could not speak to David in a civil fashion.

Violette’s eyes moved to Margaret. So beautiful, she thought without envy. But beautiful as a statue is beautiful, not knowing its own perfection. If Margaret had been a Frenchwoman, she would have had a salon, and many lovers, and a charming and vivacious life. But she was content to stay here, in this dull city, in this very dull house, brooding like a hen over her chickens, with eyes for no one but her husband. How very lightless and uninspiring. But so typical of American women, who had no flair, no wit, no joy, no true intellect, no power to enjoy, and had such shrill and unpleasant voices, like the voices of immature children. However, Violette had to admit that Margaret’s voice was low and gentle and possessed of good diction. Violette’s English had improved remarkably, for she had taken lessons from an English lady in Paris. She could not understand why the vocabularies of American women, even those who were well educated, were so limited and colorless. They are worse than the English ladies, Violette commented. Have they taken the American idea of democracy too seriously?

Ralph was, as usual, too obtuse to feel the air of constraint about the dining table. He loved himself and his voice. He talked largely; he told crude and sometimes improper jokes. He even punned, which David thought unpardonable. He was like a big, red-faced, boisterous child. It was strange that such a hearty young man should have such fine and clever hands, nimble hands with the spatulate tips of an artist or a scientist. But he is no artist, thought David, bitterly, looking again at Edward.

The conversation, when not dominated by Ralph, was disjointed, as if everyone were speaking only to himself and not listening to anyone else. Violette was aware of the tensions in the room, which rose over the tinkle of silver on the best china, and the voices.

Margaret said to her, “Are you taking little André to midnight Mass, Violette?”

Violette stared at her, her eyes dancing. “No, no, my dear.” Her tongue flicked against her lips, as if with secret laughter. “I have never done so. It is strange you should ask me. Yes, I am Catholique. But I have a husband who is not dead. We are divorced. And then I married a Protestant, and that is against the Church, and most against because of the divorce and the living husband.” She laughed joyously. “I am not really married to this, my Ralph. It is only a civil marriage. I am living in naughtiness!”

Margaret smiled painfully. “But André was baptized by Father Jahle.”

Violette looked very demure. “Yes, yes. Shall I deprive him of baptism? No, no. But I shall not force him to church, to Mass, to the Sacraments, I am a heathen, yes?”

“Will you let us take him, then, to church with us tonight?”

Violette tossed her brisk curls in negation. “No, no. That would be a mortal sin. I must consider my son’s soul.” She smiled at Margaret’s puzzled face with pure enjoyment. How naïve were these Americans!

“Stop teasing, Vi,” said Ralph, annoyed not because of what his wife was saying but because Margaret’s interruption had destroyed the point of a joke he had been telling. It had escaped him that no one had been listening; it was enough for him to talk.

A blizzard had-begun half an hour ago. The gale pounded like a solid mass against the windows. Margaret worried about the children; Gertrude was recovering from a sore throat and Robert had been peevish tonight, unusual for the gentle and amiable boy. Margaret never permitted anyone to interfere with her about the children, except Maria, and that was only with regard to the attendance at church on Christmas Eve. It was a family occasion; only desperate illness could intervene. That was the law of the household, which only Edward dared disobey or question, or, occasionally, David, and, of course, Violette, who immediately became a “Catholique” whenever it served her purpose. During her absence the past two years little André had been taken to the Engers’ church regularly, something of which Margaret disapproved highly and over which she had quarreled with Maria. “The boy should be instructed in his baptized religion, Mother Enger,” she had said. “But he is never instructed,” Maria had replied, coldly. “Catholique” or not, Violette tactfully refrained on commenting on the situation.

“I do not envy you, my dears,” said Violette tonight as a particularly heavy wave of wind and snow assaulted the long dining-room windows. “I shall be snug and warm in my room; I shall read the good and inspiring book. And you will be in the cold. What a climate this is in America.” She shivered elaborately.

The family, with the exception of David, Edward, André, and Violette, left for church soon after the dinner. Violette sat with her son in her warm little sitting room, near a very agreeable fire. She spoke to him in French, grateful to Margaret that she had volunteered, with excellent results, to instruct the boy in his mother’s language.

André told his mother, whom he thought delightful and fascinating for all her neglect of him, about the affairs of the family over the past two years. He sat at her feet, like an elf perched on a footstool, his big eyes shining with malice and pleasure. Tante Margaret had taken him for catechism instruction a number of times, secretly, to that very old, and very foolish, Abbe Jahle. No, no! No one knew at all. André and Violette laughed together, clapping their small hands with glee. The poor Tante Margaret, who was so solemn about matters. André had given her his promise that he would tell no others of the family, and she had appeared most uncomfortable at having to extract the promise. “Their religion is so without charm,” said Violette, speaking to her son as to an equal in age. “No élan. No beauty. It is like the English suet pudding, heavy on the heart. I am pleased, my child, though one should never take religion seriously. It can interfere with a pleasant life.

“And now about the grandfather. It is well? You are certain, André?”

“Yes, Mama. Before he was stricken, I was the very good, the very loving grandson. There was the first year, before I went to school with Robert. The old man is lonely, because he is so stupid. But I noticed him and followed him, and sometimes went with him to that very unfragrant shop, and I sat on the counters and watched the money come in, and was much petted by the clerks. Grandfather sat in his office and did nothing, or he came into the shop, and the customers liked him, but he began to forget their names. Ah, yes, I was the good and loving grandson, and Grandfather patted my head. I was like Uncle Edward, he said. I had the heart and the feeling.”

Violette rolled up her eyes in mock horror. “I trust not, my dear. There is a man without joy, though I confess he is very potent. Where would we be if there was no Uncle Edward? It is terrifying to contemplate.” She looked at André intently. “You are just eight years old. How can one so young know if the grandfather was generous?”

André’s eyes took on a feral glow. “It is because the grandfather called me ‘Eddie’ very often, and said the shop would be mine, as he had promised. He was failing then.”

“Poof,” said Violette, frowning. “That is not enough, the slipping of an old man’s memory.”

André smiled. “He never called Robert ‘Eddie’ and never made him such promises and never invited him to the shop, though he loves Robert also, and, in particular, that silly Gertrude who considers she speaks French better than I. And when he gave them a dollar, he would give me two dollars and an extra smile.”

“That is encouraging,” Violette conceded. “He is dying, of course. We shall soon see. You are a most satisfying son, my dear.”

A maid brought them hot chocolate with whipped cream, which they drank together by the fire, listening to the storm. “You will take me to Paris this time, Mama?” suggested André. “It is very tiresome here.”

Violette had already given this some thought. She had come to the conclusion that André himself might be “tiresome” in Paris, a hindrance to the gay life his mother lived. Ralph hardly spoke of the child and was certainly never more than mildly interested in Maria’s dutiful accounts of his schooling and his health. Since the war it was very hard to obtain responsible women to care for children. Nanette would surely leave if André was imposed upon her, and not only was Nanette extremely discreet but she was an excellent cook and a frugal housekeeper. Violette said, “Paris is not the same as when I was a girl. You would not find it interesting, my dear.”

André shrugged, without disappointment. He said in English, “Okay.” He was shrewd far beyond his years, and he was fond of his pretty, smart little mother and did not wish to interfere with her. She bent and kissed him, and he could smell the enticing and heady bouquet of her perfume. She said approvingly, “You are a most understanding son. If you were truly an American boy, you would kick and scream and pout, not because you had been crossed but because I had given you an occasion to be disagreeable and intemperate. You will be a civilized man. When you are twelve, then you shall come to Paris.”

The house was absolutely silent, as if untenanted. Only the butler and one maid remained this evening, and they would soon leave for midnight Mass. Violette put André to bed, and she sang inappropriate songs to him as he lay under his blankets, and he laughed merrily. Later Violette, humming lightly, went in search of David. He was in the music room at the piano, but he was not playing. His elbow rested on the polished top of the great instrument, and his chin was in his palm, and he was apparently studying the beautiful Renoir hanging on the yellow damask wall. Violette paused on the threshold to admire her brother-in-law’s fine, aquiline profile. Ah, if he were not one of these puritanical Engers! A little dalliance, a little flirtation, was entirely innocent, but no Enger could understand that, not even Ralph after all those years in Paris.

Violette was about to enter the room when David sighed and dropped his head on his arm. With admirable tact, she understood that he would not be pleased to see her. There was a desolation about him; the golden lights on the walls shone on the sleekness of his narrow head. Had he been unfortunate in an affair? Violette remembered that once he had loved Margaret, his brother’s wife, but that was long ago and love was a moon-moth thing that lived only for a day. Violette could believe in the grande passion; she had believed in it many times. But it was only in novels for shopgirls that love lasted forever. Perhaps it was the matter of money. Violette could understand that perfectly. David was no longer young, and money was extremely important to men whose youth was passing rapidly. The young Frenchwoman was sympathetic. David was proud; doubtless it was onerous for him to be Edward’s dependent. (She did not know that David no longer received money from his brother.) These Americans! In Europe it would be taken for granted that the man with money should show a proper solicitude for his less endowed relatives. The relatives, in turn, felt not the slightest obligation. But Americans were very peculiar about money. They believed that even though they had a relative who was rich they should actually work for their own living! How very uncivilized and gauche. She was happy that Ralph had no such foolish convictions.

Violette withdrew noiselessly and went back to her rooms, passing up the white staircase and looking down, as she did so, at the baronial vista of hall and the dimly lit shadows of the great rooms on each side. It might be very dull in this house, but it was also reassuring. She went to bed, yawning contentedly, waiting for Ralph to return. As she dozed, she thought she heard the distant piano rolling in melancholy and muted thunder against the louder thunder of the storm. She also thought she heard a door open and close somewhere. Then she was fast asleep.

David was playing a Brahms concerto, and he was playing as he had never played before, not only with technical brilliance and faultlessness but with passion and grandeur and humanity. He was absorbed in the music; he was expressing, for the first time, in classical music, his grief and despair and loneliness, his hopeless love for Margaret, his love for his brother and his impotence to help that brother. The music flowed from under his fingers and hovered in the air like sorrowful and mourning echoes. The big music room was filled with the lament of rebellious and imploring phantoms. Sometimes their voices sank to a subdued supplication; then they rose wildly like souls that could not be comforted. The storm added its drums of dolorous power.

Now David, like one in a trance, passed from the personal anguish of a single man to a universal anguish, with majesty and tragic undertones filled with a prayerful resignation. It was as if an enlightened Job acknowledged not only the calamitous and unknowable fate of man, but the mighty dignity and mystery of God to Whom all was known. The conversation between man and the Divine seemed to fill not only this room but the thundering world outside, and to penetrate to the farthest star. It faded, at last, into reconciliation, into acceptance, into slow tender notes of mutual and confident love, into promise given and promise received, forever and forever.

David’s hands lay exhausted on the keys; drops of water stood on his dark forehead. His face was peaceful and calm.

“So you can play when you want to,” said a harsh voice from the doorway. David started and swung on the stool. Edward stood there, wrathful, his pale eyes violent. “You can play as you never play for an audience—if you want to.”

He seemed very excited and stirred, under the wrath and violence. He came into the room, walking with a heavy tread on the parquet floor. His breath was audible. “I’ve never heard such music,” he went on in a low and savage voice. “And no one else ever has, either, from you. You can create as I knew you could. But you never wanted to, did you? It was too much to ask of you, too much for me to ask! I was only Old Garlic and Pickles, never a man who knew music. Why—” He choked, and a terrible grayness washed over his face, and he caught the edge of the grand piano.

“Ed,” said David, getting up in deep alarm. But Edward waved him off, with greater savagery. “Shut up,” he said, and his voice was suddenly weak and gasping. His eyes remained violently on his brother. “God,” he whispered, “I could kill you!”

He stood there, and his rasping breath filled all the room, while David stood in agony and listened. There was nothing he could do under the glare of those raging and hating eyes, those condemning eyes. He could not explain, for there was no explanation for him. And Edward, seeing his brother so still, so pale, and so obdurate, as he thought, and so defiant, as he thought, really was possessed with the urge to murder. He might have moved upon David then and there, but the tearing horror in his chest was like an animal.

David shut his eyes suddenly. He could hear Edward’s ragged breath, the quick gasps. The storm rose in power and fury, and it seemed less to come from the chaotic world outside than in this room. What is wrong, what is wrong with him? David asked himself in terrified despair. He’s sick; he sounds as if he’s dying. If only I could reach him … David opened his eyes. Edward’s color was a little better, but his hand still clung to the piano. He was still staring fixedly at the older man as at an enemy both despised and repudiated.

David clenched his slender hands at his sides. “Ed,” he said, “you must listen to me. I don’t know how to say this. We never could talk. None of us could ever really talk to each other. I want to try now. I want to help you.”

Incredulity and affront leapt like a blaze across Edward’s face in a frightening flow of red. “Help me! You!” His voice was stronger, charged with renewed wrath. “You parasite! You’ve taken all I could give you, and you’ve never returned anything, until now, and it wasn’t for me! You, help me?”

“I think I can,” said David, and his voice broke. “If you’ll let me try. Do we have to be like this? Let’s sit down and talk—”

He came closer to Edward, his concern growing for his brother. “You look sick,” he said pleadingly. “Let’s sit down. I’ve a lot to say to you—help—”

Then Edward raised his hand and struck David furiously across the face, and David, overwhelmed both by the force of the blow and the dreadfulness of it, staggered back and fell against the piano. His hand reached for a hold and crashed on the keys and a discordant sound cried out. Then he stood there, his head bent, livid welts springing up on his assaulted cheek.

It was as if Edward had struck involuntarily, for he said with the same unchanged violence and with no satisfaction, “All the days of my life—all the days of my life—” And he turned and walked out of the room, his step heavier than before, and slower, like a man who had come to the end of his endurance. He stopped in the doorway, to hold his side for a moment. It was as if he had forgotten David.

Then David was alone again. He sat down on the piano stool, his head drooping. It was no use. There was nothing he could do. His cheek throbbed and he was only vaguely aware of it. There was a more torturous throbbing in his heart.

When Margaret returned home, cold and strangely disheartened as she was so often these days, she went at once to Edward’s room. But the room was dark. The shaded light in the sitting room filtered into the bedroom, and she saw the long mound of Edward’s body, very still. She sighed with relief. He too often remained up half the night reading. It was not yet midnight yet he was asleep. Somewhat cheered, she herself prepared for bed.

The bells of the churches sang faintly through the snow and the gale. And Edward lay in his bed and cried silently in himself, “Help. Help.” And did not know to Whom he cried.

There was a big and glittering tree for the children in the large living room. The storm had withdrawn in the night, and the world shone as if polished into marble, white on the earth, bluish gray in the sky. The adults gathered with the children, to be pleased with their pleasure. The aunts and uncles, remembering early rigorous lives, lived vicariously in the excitement and delight of André, Robert, and Gertrude. Margaret thought the gifts too lavish and expensive and too numerous. It wasn’t a wholesome thing for children to be satiated this way, as satiated they would later be. She had given Gertrude two dozen fine, but plain, linen handkerchiefs, and a silver wrist watch to Robert, and a similar watch to André. Sylvia, when Margaret was momentarily distracted, pointed out these gifts to the others with disdain.

But Gertrude, who was so understanding, and Robert, who was so good and amiable, gave their mother a sincere and loving kiss, and she was comforted. André, thanking his aunt with a politeness she thought excessive and a little mocking, put the watch aside, to rejoice in a gold watch from David, and other wonderful things. Edward had given each of the children a twenty-dollar gold piece. “All he can think of is money,” Sylvia whispered to her brothers. She had bought Robert a silver flute and Gertrude a small typewriter. André did not fare so well from her, however. She had given him a book of fairy tales, which highly diverted him. He showed it to his mother, who smothered a laugh.

Maria, who thought much as Margaret thought, had knitted the children sweaters and gloves.

“What is wrong with him—again?” Sylvia muttered to Gregory, as they knelt in a welter of gold and silver paper near the tree. Gregory, smirking contemptuously, glanced over his shoulder at Edward, who sat at the far end of the vast room reading his newspaper. “We’ve probably got a contagious and loathsome disease,” Gregory replied. “He looks like hell, though, doesn’t he? Ten years older than a year ago. Business bad or something?”

“Not that I know of,” said Sylvia, indifferently. “He’s just opened four more stores. What does he think of when he isn’t thinking of money? What a life that must be, narrow and sterile, with no intellectual or artistic resources! He can’t tell an opera apart from a symphony, or a water color from an oil, and I suppose he’s never read two books in his life. How did we ever get such an anomaly in this family?”

Gregory reached up to pat André as the child wandered by, his eyes inquisitive and his ears always awake to catch a morsel to be repeated to his mother. But Sylvia said coldly as André wandered on, “I don’t like that boy. He’s sly, and I don’t think he’s too bright.”

Gregory gave her a shrewd look. “Don’t underestimate—” he said. “By the way, Old Garlic and Pickles is reading my book in manuscript. Insists on it, since The Sun Rises West. Waves the old money club, which is all he has, but it’s potent, unfortunately. Don’t underestimate him, Sylvia.”

Sylvia shrugged. She smiled, however, when she saw her shy husband playing with Robert’s, toy railroad; Robert knelt beside him, laughing excitedly. Then Sylvia said, “And what’s wrong with Dave? His cheek is bruised; he said he slipped on the polished floor of the music room and hit his cheek against the piano. But he looks distracted today, and sick.”

“We’re a very mysterious family,” said Gregory, in a light and jeering voice. “Hello, sweetheart,” he said to Gertrude, who was approaching them. “How’s the typewriter? Thinking of putting your old uncle in the shade, eh?”

Ralph came up to them, frowning. “Just had a consultation with old Burns about Pa. He came in early on his daily call. He says Pa is definitely failing.”

“Oh?” said Gregory, without interest.

“He ought to be in the Clinic,” said Ralph. “But Ma insists he stay here.”

“Masochists, that’s what we are,” said Gregory. “What’s your opinion? Think the old man will last out the winter?”

Ralph said, grinning, “They have new methods at the Clinic. If Pa were there, they could do something challenging.”

Sylvia shuddered. “Don’t use that damned word. I hate it. Everything’s ‘challenging’ these days; right out of the mouth of Jung. It’s even a ‘challenge’ to sell soap.”

Gregory sat back on his heels, and his eyes, pale gray and penetrating, like Edward’s, fixed themselves on his brother and sister. “The old boy must have a pot,” he said thoughtfully. “And probably never spent a cent of it. Wonder who it goes to?”

“Why, Ma, of course, probably about half, and the rest divided among us,” said Sylvia. “Ellis and I could use our share. There’s a Strad he wants.”

Margaret went to Edward at the far and deserted end of the room. She saw at once that he was not really reading his newspaper; it was upside down. She bent and put her hand on his shoulder, for she had been overpoweringly shocked at his appearance that morning. “Dear,” she said, “why don’t you lie down before dinner? You look so tired.”

“Nonsense,” he said, smiling at her. His hand rose and smoothed her white wrist and hand. “I like to listen to the children having a good time with their presents. Gertrude’s fascinated with her typewriter, and Robert with his flute.”

Margaret’s face changed slightly. “It was awfully good of Sylvia,” she said, and straightened up.

“Now, now,” said Edward. “Let’s not start one of our little spats about the children again. It’s Christmas. By the way, I haven’t thanked you yet for the gold pen-and-pencil set.” To her bafflement he looked aside, and the shadow she dreaded fell over his eyes.

“Well, I hope you use them,” she said, trying for lightness. “I’m so tired of seeing you use that ancient set you have, with the chipped bakelite. And thank you again for the diamond bracelet. See? Isn’t it pretty?” She pushed up the sleeve of her white velvet dressing gown, and the blazing light of the winter sun struck the bauble into colored fire. Then she bent and kissed Edward full on the mouth with a desperate yearning and with a silent prayer for him.

That was one o’clock. Dinner was at three. The noise in the living room became more febrile as the children became more confused over the proliferation of gifts. “I really think that Gertrude and Robert should go to their rooms and rest,” said Margaret. “After all, they’ve just had an infection.”

“Leave them alone,” said Edward, abruptly. He was thinking of his desolate Christmases when he had been young. But Margaret was hurt at his tone and went without speaking. She saw Maria beckoning her from the doorway, and hurried to the older woman. Maria said, with no emotion showing on her large face, “Father Enger is restless. I am disturbed. I have been sitting with him for the past hour. A moment ago he turned his head to me and said one word, ‘Eddie.’ Very clear. Will you ask Edward to come upstairs at once?”

Margaret looked searchingly into Maria’s eyes and saw the withdrawn grief there in spite of Maria’s composure. “Of course,” she said and went back to Edward. His face was still shadowed and he glanced at her with some impatience. “Darling,” she said. “Please come. Your father is asking for you.”

The pupils of his eyes distended until they seemed to blacken the iris. “Asking for me?” he said incredulously. “Why, he hasn’t been able to do anything but grunt since he had his stroke. Who says he wants to see me?” He rattled his newspaper.

“Your mother. She’s just gone back upstairs.”

“Ridiculous,” said Edward. He dropped the newspaper. “Why don’t they let the old man alone, to sleep?”

“You’re not coming?” asked Margaret, disbelievingly.

“Of course not. It wears me out just to look at him. He died when he had his stroke. He’s just a vegetable now.”

“No, no, Ed,” said Margaret. “I can understand him, often. And you know his mind hasn’t been much affected. Please, dear. Go to see him. Your mother isn’t hysterical; she said your father distinctly asked for you and named you.”

He folded his big arms across his chest, and his eyes narrowed. “Funny,” he said with an unpleasant smile. “I’ve never been away from here. I’ve seen Pa hundreds of times since he was taken sick. And he never seemed to recognize me even when I spoke to him. He never even grunted at me as he does at others. And now, suddenly, all at once, he not only thinks of me but asks for me by name! Burns said he must be quiet.” The unpleasant smile broadened. “And quiet is what Pa is going to get. From me.”

Oh, God, thought Margaret, distractedly. What is it, what is it? I know his father exploited him for the others, but surely he can forgive now. Or is it something deeper? “Please, please,” she implored Edward. He took up his paper again. “Let him sleep,” he said in a tone that frightened his wife.

Margaret almost ran from the room, and up the stairway, stumbling once or twice on her long robe. She went into the elder Engers’ suite. Maria was sitting by her husband’s bed, holding his shriveled hand, and the nurse was taking the pulse in the other hand. Margaret approached the bed, and winced with pity at the sight of the old ashen face on the pillows. Heinrich’s eyes, so gentle and so childlike, fastened on her eagerly with full consciousness and knowledge. “Eddie?” he said, and his voice was clear and loud.

“Yes, yes, dear,” said Margaret, and bent and kissed his forehead. She was horrified at its damp coldness. “He’s coming. In just a minute.”

Heinrich gave her his painful and twisted smile. He said again, “Eddie.”

Margaret exchanged a desperate glance with Maria, whose face became expressionless. A question had been asked, an answer given. Maria sighed. The nurse said in a low voice, “His pulse is very weak. I think we should call Dr. Burns again.” She went off to make the call, and the two women sat side by side at Heinrich’s bed in hopeless silence. Margaret swallowed her tears. Her arm touched Maria’s comfortingly, but Maria appeared not to know. She saw only her dying husband. A fire fluttered on the hearth, and the bright chintz at the windows and on the chairs gleamed vividly in the winter sunlight.

“Eddie,” said Heinrich again. His face seemed to dwindle visibly.

“Yes, yes,” said Margaret. “He—he was away a few minutes. He will be here, dear Papa Enger.” But Heinrich was looking at the doorway, and his whole simple soul was in his eyes, pleadingly. Margaret could not bear to see this, and so she stared dryly at the foot of the bed.

The nurse returned with an anxious report that Dr. Burns was away for Christmas dinner and could not be reached for an hour. She felt Heinrich’s pulse again. “Why,” she said in a more cheerful voice, “it’s stronger. Now isn’t that nice?”

Margaret smoothed her short hair with her trembling hands. She prayed that Edward would come. She listened for footsteps in the corridor outside. It was unendurable to see that fixed bright stare of Heinrich’s directed at the door. Maria said nothing; she had begun to rock massively in her chair in the ancient movement of sorrow. The quiet was so complete that the ticking of the old clock downstairs could be heard above the crackle of the fire. Once or twice Margaret caught the excited shout of a child in the distant living room. A light wind lifted a veil of sunlit snow against the windows and left diamonds of it on the glass.

“He’s sleeping. That’s good,” said the nurse. The fixed eyes had closed, and Heinrich’s breath came unevenly. After a few moments Margaret stood up. She said in a shaken voice, “I’m going to my room. To lie down. And then I’ll dress. Call me, Mother Enger—if there’s any—change.”

Maria nodded, without looking at Margaret, and continued to sway in her chair.

Margaret went to her room and lay down, and suddenly she was crying. How was it possible for Edward not to go to his dying father? It was incredible that even years of bitterness and resentment could induce him to refuse that last call. It isn’t like Ed! thought Margaret. Oh, no, it isn’t like Ed, who is so good and gentle and tender. It isn’t like Ed, who gives everything and receives nothing. It’s just that he didn’t believe his father wanted or needed him or asked for him. After all, we’ve had a lot of alarms since Papa Enger took sick. Ed thinks it’s just another one of them.

But she could not convince herself of this. There had been something final and bitter and inexorable on Edward’s face, something cold and malign, as if he knew only too well. Margaret moved her head denyingly on the pillows. “No, no,” she whispered. “Ed isn’t like that.”

She shrank from the thought of the family dinner; she was tired, and her throat was sore. She fell asleep with tears on her cheeks.

She dreamed that she and Edward were alone in the mansion, and there was no one else there at all, not even the children. She was stitting beside Edward, who was asleep. She was conscious of some agony in herself which devoured her like a beast. It was night; no, it was dawn. There was a grayness at the windows, and a magenta slash in the grayness, like a wound. She called to Edward, but he did not awaken; her voice was an echo. And then Edward turned in the bed and his eyes were glazed and without life, and as she watched him with increasing terror and agony he rose out of the bed slowly, not seeing her. She called to him, and he did not hear. Slowly, slowly, moving like one in a trance, he left the bed and flitted like a ghost across the floor. He reached the doorway and went through it. Margaret tried to get up and follow, but she was paralyzed. She called, and her voice was snatched away in a sudden wind. The agony became a death in her, and she thought, I am dying.

“Wake up, wake up, darling,” said a strong voice, and she woke up to find Edward standing beside her bed. “What on earth’s wrong?” he said and bent to kiss her. “You were moaning. Bad dream?”

She stared at him incredulously, the dream with her, and then a frantic joy engulfed her and she knelt up in bed and threw herself into Edward’s arms and burst into wild sobbing. “I thought, I thought!” she cried.

He sat on the edge of the bed and held her. “What?” he asked indulgently.

But she could only sob. She could not tell him, for the very words were too terrible. The sunlight strode into the room and it was only Christmas Day, after all, and Edward was here, holding her, and her frenzied heart was slowing. She dropped her head on his shoulder and clutched the rough cloth of his coat in wet hands.

“It’s time,” Edward began, smoothing her pretty hair. But he did not finish his sentence. Maria had entered the room, and she stood near them like the figure of an aging Viking goddess, very calm, very still. She looked only at her son.

“Your father is dead,” she said, with no change in her voice.

“Oh, no,” Margaret cried, dropping her arms from Edward, who stood up and faced his mother.

“He asked for you, Edward,” said Maria, as if Margaret were not there at all. “You would not come.”

Edward said nothing. His face was a face carved from gray stone.

“No,” said Maria, beginning to turn away. “You would not come, though he asked for you, though it was the last thing he asked.” She stopped in her turning and gazed at her son with majestic condemnation.

“There is much that you have endured,” she said. “But there is even more that you do not understand. I wish only to say this: I shall never forgive you, no, not even to the day I die. Or you die.”

Heinrich’s will was very strange to all but Violette, and pleasing to none but herself and Ralph, and, though no one knew it, to Maria also. The old man had left his money, some four hundred thousand dollars, divided between his wife and André, his grandson.

“It is very good,” said Violette to André. “And very sensible. We must now invest it carefully. It is in what they call the blue chips and bonds. We must have consultations with very wise men who do not have the too eager spark in the eyes.”

CHAPTER VI

When I was a child, thought Margaret, listlessly, there was not all this excitement about weather, as if it were a new calamity every year, to be shrilled about in little indignant voices, by little shrill people—who perhaps should never have been born in the first place. Everybody clamored that “the government” should do something about everything, including the natural phenomena of nature. What a tiny little generation we are becoming!

Huddled in her fur coat, which could not keep her from shivering from some inner cold, she paced along the walks which circled the house. One blizzard had succeeded another since Heinrich’s death and final burial in the black and marble desolation of the cemetery. (She would never forget the stiff dark earth, the flailing snow and the bitter howl of the wind, the day of the funeral, and how, in some way terrible, the heaped flowers looked, in their dying color on the lifeless ground.) So high was the snow along the sides of the walks that it seemed to Margaret that she was walking through a white tunnel, a white hell of a tunnel. The grounds undulated away from her in their buried starkness, the spruces bearing on their branches broad white plumes of snow, which dissolved even while she looked at them into flying clouds of frozen spray. The house, at a little distance, appeared to have sunken into a vast mound of whiteness, a bog of whiteness, with chimneys futilely smoking, and the eaves drifting in mist, and the snow crushing down its great roof. Waterford had never known such snows, and it in what was called “the snow belt.” The papers clamored about the weather, the monstrous cold, the clogged roads, the zero temperatures, the isolation of the city. And in the clamor there was a mean petulance as though something or someone were responsible and should be punished.

A tiny little generation of tiny little people with shrill voices, thought Margaret in an effort to distract her sorrowful thoughts. They want everything soft and what they call “cozy” and protected; they look at weather with dismay, and shiver when the natural turbulence of this planet threatens their ugly little comforts or their trivial little ways of living. Sometimes I agree with Ed: men are less loyal than dogs, less innocent than wolves, less courageous than mice, less kind than tigers. Less worthy to be alive.

She was sick with the sickness of living. She could not bear to turn her thoughts to the stricken and blank faced family. With the exception of Maria, the family wore an air of outrage and bewilderment that one who had lived so long on the edge of the grave had finally toppled into it, with no sound, no voice, no protest, and no dramatics. What have we done that death should enter this house? they appeared to be saying. Even Edward. Even Ed, thought Margaret, with an acrid taste in her mouth. No one spoke of Heinrich. He had lived in that house for many, many years, and none had noticed him much except his wife. There was no room where any of them could say, “Here Pa stood, and this is what he said—and how he laughed. Or here he gave us this, or that. Or I remember there was one day, and he was sitting there at the head of the table, and he said something … Do you remember the time he trimmed the tree—or walked over there—it was the funniest remark.…”

No, there was not a room, and not even his deserted bed now, that spoke of Heinrich. There was not an ornament which he had bought. There was not a picture anyone could remember that he had admired. There was not a footprint of his, or a fingerprint, which marked his former presence. He had left the world as unostentatiously as he had been born and had lived. Yet the muffled indignation remained in the family, the silly, voiceless indignation, that death had dared to walk into that house and had, for a moment, brushed them with his dark and noiseless wings. There was a hideous selfishness in their bewilderment. And a furtive uneasiness. Was each remembering, vaguely and reluctantly, or at least trying to remember, the sound of that meek voice, the murmur of that ineffectual laughter, or recalling, or trying to recall, the father of their youth? Were they indignant and dimly ashamed that they could remember so little of him who had given them life?

The children were worse, in their way, than the adults. They had been briefly awed at the thought of death and its presence. Margaret—and she was embarrassed now at her juvenility—had hastily removed the children to upper rooms, and had prevented them from seeing their grandfather in his coffin. “Children should be happy,” she had said defensively to Violette, who had stared at her with open amusement. “Why?” Violette, the realist, had answered. “Who told you, ma petite, that anyone should be happy? Who informed you, chérie, that man was born for happiness? You do not want the children to have ‘nightmares’? That is what you have said: ‘nightmares.’ It is absurd. Life is a nightmare which we disperse with laughter, when we can laugh. We must not,” and Violette shook her wise head, “protect our children from life or give them the evil drug of happiness. They are not tender, these little ones. They are as hard as stone. It is perhaps because you have forgotten what children are, but I, I have not forgotten children, who are monsters. Everything is an occasion for them, these barbarians, no matter if it is death or birth or weeping or quarreling or hate. They revel—yes, it is revel—in drama and struggle. And you would deprive them of drama and their delight in tragedy!” She shook her head again. “You have deprived your Gertrude and your Robert of joy in terror and mystery.”

Violette was quite right, of course, Margaret thought dolefully as she paced her lonely way along the walks. Gertrude and Robert had protested, avidly, at her fluttering insistence that they not see their dead grandfather, that they not attend his funeral. Was that actually disappointment she had seen in their smooth young faces? Yes, it had been disappointment! Not grief, not subdued awareness—only disappointment and resentfulness that they had been robbed of excitement and the hungry satisfaction that all primitives feel at the calamity of others.

Young André had been conducted at once by his mother into the presence of his dead grandfather, and Violette had serenely answered his questions. “He is dead. What is dead?” “Mon petit, you have seen a dead bird, or a dead flower, or a dead insect. So is Grandpère dead, and he is no more now than these.” “And we all die, Maman?” “Surely, we all die, child, and this way shall we lie for a little time, and then the earth will cover us.”

André had peered up at his mother, at her slightly smiling face, so amber-colored, so pert, and from her calmness and casual manner he had derived considerable understanding. “But Tante Margaret has said we live again,” he had remarked, with an academic thoughtfulness. Violette had shrugged. “So it is taught, and who shall answer, my child? It is enough that for this while we live, that we can laugh, that we can love, that we can know.”

“Robert says Grandpère is in heaven,” André said. “Where do you think he is, Maman?”

Violette had replied, and her smile had disappeared, “That, mon petit, is a question for God to answer, and we are not God.” She had then taken his hand and had led him to her own room, where they had contentedly sipped hot chocolate and had eaten some eclairs, and had talked of life while Heinrich lay dead below them.

I am a fool, thought Margaret. Her children were discontented. They questioned André with that ugly avidity of children, and he had looked at them with the amused contempt which his mother reserved for the jejune. He had teased Gertrude and had called her “a baby,” and Gertrude, in return, had reproached her mother, who had no words to explain now. We protect our children when they only want to learn and live, she told herself miserably. Violette is quite right; we Americans are juveniles, not adults, and we treat our children as precious toys and not living creatures who just go about the business of life very soon.

She stopped and stood on tiptoe to look over the tunnels surrounding the walks. Then, as if in expurgation, she lifted her skirts and her coat and deliberately plunged into the snow and struggled against it as she had struggled as a child. It was exhilarating; it was wonderful to defy and oppose the elements, to live as a human being and not as a protected fish in a warm bowl. The snow bore heavily against her legs and her flesh, and she exulted, with fresh pleasure and strength, as she plowed against its resistance. Her heart felt strong and fearless; when she brushed against a spruce and it poured its shower of weighted snow on her head and shoulders, she laughed a little and was glad, as a child is glad. Now she was no longer cold, and she could forget that house, forget Edward’s dark closed face, his silence, the withdrawal of Maria, the sullen indignation against death which showed in the eyes of Edward’s brothers and sister.

When she emerged from the snow onto another cleared walk, the color glowed in her cheeks and lips and her eyes were washed clean of the wretchedness of the thoughts which had imprisoned her since Heinrich’s death ten days ago. She shook the dry snow from her coat and legs. She stamped her feet. She was alive! A person had only to realize that he was alive, to live again. Except …

She looked up to see David standing near her, looming dark and thin and silent against the bitter azure of the winter sky. She blushed, and now the old sickness and animosity against all of Edward’s family returned to her.

He smiled faintly. “I’d like to do that, too—walk in the snow,” he said.

“Well, why don’t you?” she asked, and half turned away from him. Her expanded heart contracted again into chill and tiredness. She began to walk away, but he caught up with her. The sun, colorless as glass and as bright, shone on the snow, and the skeletons of the trees etched themselves on the whiteness.

David said, “I know you don’t like us, Margaret, and I don’t blame you. You think we’re childish, and we are. You think we’re parasites, and we are. You think we’re worthless, and we are. All of us. But we’re also something else.”

“What else?” she said in a clear loud voice, stopping on the walk and looking at him with the merciless blue of her eyes.

“How can I tell you, Margaret?” His voice was gentle. “How can any man tell another what he really is? He himself doesn’t know.” They paced along together, Margaret reluctantly, David absorbed in his thoughts. He began to speak again. “You think we don’t care about Pa. We do. But we’ve thought so long about ourselves that it’s a shock when we’re called upon to think of somebody else, and we can’t escape thinking.”

He paused for a moment to rub his foot against the side of the white tunnel. “I’m trying to remember Pa, and what he was really like, when we were children.” Margaret paused involuntarily with him. “And there’s only a loving little ghost of him. Yes, he loved us, and we didn’t care whether he did or not. None of us attach enough importance to love, especially if the meek and undemanding offer it. Pa never refused us anything, except a little money, when he worked so hard to make it, and he was too anxious that we love him, too. A man should never be too anxious for love; he never gets it if he is. I’ve noticed that the least deserving of people receive the most affection. You see, they give others the idea that they’re superior, and as superiors they’re treated. Not a nice thing to think about, but it’s true just the same.”

The angry beat of Margaret’s head subsided. She said in a rush, “You don’t like people any more than Ed does, do you, Dave?”

He looked at her with a curious expression. “I don’t hate them,” he replied quietly.

She stood facing him, her color high and vibrant, her eyes like the eyes of a vigorous child, her soft hair escaping in waves from under her fur hat. He saw the fine lines about her lips, the tremulousness of her mouth, the innocence of her look, and he closed his eyes for an instant on a pang of pain long familiar to him.

“You think Ed hates people?” she challenged him. “And if he does, why not?”

“Why not, indeed?” he murmured inaudibly.

Without any voluntary decision, they walked along together, until the house sank behind the snow dunes and only its chimneys fumed against the sky. Insensibly, they left the brick walls, so wet and red in the sunshine, and plowed through more shallow snow, and were lost in a white wilderness broken by the stark black framework of frozen trees. As if by mutual consent they stopped and faced each other, and Margaret’s lips began to tremble, and she bit them. She was terribly alone; she had no confidant; in many ways, now, she had no husband and she was filled with a deep sense of loss and mournfulness.

My darling, thought David, sadly. My beautiful, innocent darling. What can I do to help you? Dear God, let me help her.

He said, at last, and in the gentlest voice, “Margaret, what is it? No, don’t answer; I think I know. You’re terribly worried about Ed. You don’t understand him. You only love him.”

“Isn’t that enough?” asked Margaret, trying to make her voice hard. Then, all at once, she was crying, as simply as a child, letting the tears run down her face without hiding them or wiping them away.

“Not always enough,” said David. “I’m sorry, but there it is. I’ve watched you for years. You are kind and good, valorous and—this sounds sentimental—but you’re pure-hearted. You’ve suffered; you told me about that years ago. But always you kept a single eye on the world, and you never really condemned anything with hatred, and you never pitied yourself. And,” he added, more slowly, “you never thought of revenge.”

“Oh, I’m not as good as that,” she said, trying to smile. She wanted someone strong and loving to put arms about her and hold her, and the longing was suddenly so intense that it was a passionate hunger in her. Then she was no longer smiling and the lines of her mouth became rigid and carved. “Are you trying to say that Ed is looking for ‘revenge’? On whom? All he wants—”

The tears were immobile drops of crystal on her face, and her eyes were large and strained and, to David, almost unbearably blue.

“Let us say that Ed isn’t like other men, or, he’s larger than other men,” David said, pretending not to see the tears. “He isn’t the average man, with average appetites or desires. Does that make him a monster? No. A giant cannot help his giantness. I know as well as you do that Ed is desperate, but I think I know a little more than you do why he is desperate. Because you don’t know he’s withdrawn from you to a great extent, not withdrawing his affection from you, but withdrawing because he’s afraid that you’ll find out how vulnerable he is. My mother even knows more than you. But I know the most. He won’t let me help him.”

“Have you tried?” asked Margaret, with hostility. She was deeply outraged that David could imply that she did not know her husband at all.

“Yes, I have tried,” he said, simply. “That may surprise you, but I’ve tried. And he—pushed—me away more furiously than he would ever push you away. His weakness has become his armor. Yes, Margaret, I said his weakness, or perhaps I should say his illusions.”

“Illusions! Because he thought you were all geniuses? Well, I never did, believe me!” Her voice rose. “I know exactly what all of you are, but I won’t tell Ed. Yes, I know what you are—!”

“Do you?” he said, with great compassion. “Do you know what Sylvia is, and Gregory, and Ralph, and I? In another woman I’d think that was arrogance. But I know that in you it’s only protectiveness, for Ed.”

She pressed her gloved hands together in a convulsive movement. “Oh, I don’t care about any of you! It’s just that I can’t stand Ed looking so terrible, so closed, so alone! I can’t get near him any longer. It isn’t just the children; he’s using the children to keep me at a distance; he’s using our quarrels to keep me off. Have you looked at him, really looked? It’s like looking at someone dying.” She moved closer to David, the longing for comfort stronger in her, and now her shoulder touched his arm. She cried out, “Help me, help Ed! I can’t bear it!”

It was the simplest matter in the world, the most natural thing in the world, for David to take her into his arms and hold her to him lovingly, and it was all simplicity, all grief, and all loneliness, which made her put her head on his shoulder and cling to him like a lost child.

She was sobbing drearily, her lips near his chin. “When his father died—he never said anything. He took care of all the funeral arrangements. I tried to talk to him—he wouldn’t go to his father when he was dying. I saw him standing near the casket and looking down—it was an awful thing to see. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. My husband, and I didn’t know what he was thinking. I’m afraid—I can’t stand it—I’m afraid—”

“Yes,” said David, and held her more closely to him. Her wet cheek was against his now, and she cried so passionately that her whole body shook. Her hands clutched him in agony.

“And after the funeral, he went up to his room and closed the door behind him. He never closed his bedroom door to me before! I—I tried to open it. It was locked, locked to me, his wife!”

“Yes,” said David. My darling, he said in himself again. My dearest child, my love. He stroked the glossy curls that escaped her hat at her nape. I would give my life for you, he continued in his mournful inner conversation. You were all I ever had. And the only thing I can do now is to hold you and listen to you cry about my brother, who is your husband, and who is tormented, and whom you can’t help. The bitterness of it was like a corrosion in his throat.

She was sobbing and gasping in her extremity. “If only something could be done! If only he and I were alone! Things are too much for him; there’s too big a burden on him. He can’t carry it any longer.”

He can’t carry himself any longer, said David sorrowfully. Leave him alone? That would deprive him of his perverted meaning in life.

Margaret pushed herself away from him. “I’m sorry,” she stammered. She wiped away her tears with the back of her glove. “I’m such a fool about Ed. But if he isn’t relieved, he’ll die. I know he will.”

David’s arms felt empty and bereft, and fell numbly at his sides. He had thought he was reconciled. He had believed that he had sublimated his love for Margaret in the loveliest amorous songs in Samson Smith. There was one which the critics enthusiastically had declared was a classic: “Wherever You Are.” Wherever you are, Margaret, he had thought while writing it. Living or dead, wherever you are, there I will be, too, though you’ll never see me or understand. For there was never anybody for me but you, from the very beginning, when you were a shy young girl timidly entering a room, and when you looked at me. And now he knew that he would never be reconciled. The old love was a devouring anguish in him.

She looked up into his eyes and she thought them obdurate and strange in their restless intensity. Nobody understands, she thought hopelessly.

“Can’t you all go away, all of you?” she said, stammering again in her extremity. “I suppose your mother will have to stay. But if you’d all leave us alone—”

He shook his head. “It isn’t possible, dear. Not possible. For his sake! That is, for his sake at this time.”

Now she was angered. “I don’t know what you mean! ‘For his sake!’ To take everything he has and give nothing—for his sake! Dave, you’re the best of them, yet you can talk like that. Dave, please go away!”

“I’m not here very much,” he said. “Does it bother you to have me here, Margaret, the few times I come?” He spoke with the heaviness of grief.

She was ashamed, because of his wondering, sad tone. “Well, David, perhaps not you. Though Ed seems to get worse when you come. But the others. Won’t you tell them leave, Gregory, Sylvia, Ellis, André, Ralph, Violette? You could explain it to them.”

He was silent. She thought he was considering. She put her hand pleadingly on his arm. “Please, Dave.”

He was still silent, pitying her, loving her. She dropped her hand. She exclaimed with incoherent despair, “No! You’ve got too much of a good thing here, at the cost of Ed’s life and health! You won’t go away. I hate you; I hate all of you!” Her eyes blazed at him.

She turned then and left him, running like a young girl, as if something were pursuing her.

All I ever had, thought David. But, for the first time, I held you, and you cried in my arms. That will have to do for me the rest of my life.

CHAPTER VII

Prince Emory, nee Billy Russell, stopped at the desk of the Waldorf-Astoria and gathered up a sheaf of mail. He glanced at it happily, for among the letters was one from Hollywood. He put the mail on the desk and asked the clerk to keep it for later. He went to the door, and people in the lobby paused to stare at him, to whisper about him, or to hail him loudly. He responded to greetings with a handsome smile and a wave of his light gray felt hat, and his step grew more buoyant so that he moved in one easy fluid motion like a bronze-colored cat. The new talkies! he thought. Now they’ll have my band on the screen, with sound! Good thing I invested in them.

The October day marched over the turreted city like a banner of blue light, and the brisk wind carried a sparkle with it. There was nothing like New York anywhere in the world! It was a southern city, gray, tan, white, and cream, and its topmost towers reflected the sun vivaciously. Billy stopped on the sidewalk to inhale the strongly masculine odor of the city, and he could feel the sinews of Manhattan move about him. Paris, he thought, was for women; London was for commerce and law. But New York was for men.

As he waited for his limousine he hummed the latest hit tune by Davey Jones. In a week, since he had introduced it last night, it would lead all other songs in the nation. Billy’s vigorous eyes roved over the crowds approvingly; he loved the quick movement of them. Then his eyes paused, hesitated, turned away, then turned again on a man who had followed him from the hotel and who was now hailing a cab.

The man was tall and broad and had a look of power about him. He was inconspicuously dressed, in that age of flaring lapels, wide-pinstriped suits and jaunty hats. His thick gray hair was half hidden by an old hat, and his shoes did not match his blue serge suit. Billy craned his head to look at his profile, which was strong and hard and impatient. Billy grinned. He strolled over to the man and said, “Ride, sir? My car’ll be here in a minute, and I’ll be glad to take you wherever you want to go.”

The man swung about; he frowned at Billy. “What? A ride? I’m waiting for a cab.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Billy in his rich and gentle voice. “How’re you—Ed?”

Edward Enger stared blankly, and then as blankly at Billy’s offer of his gloved hand. “Who are you?” he demanded, and his tone was an insult. His eyes roved significantly over Billy’s lavish suit and London topcoat and polished English boots. A Negro gangster, no doubt, or a bootlegger.

Billy dropped his hand. It was hard to maintain his smile. “You don’t remember me? Why, I’m Billy Russell. From the old days in Waterford, State of New York.” His smile definitely ached, but he kept it. “In the delicatessen. Remember?”

Edward’s face was still blank, and then it was suddenly amazed. “Billy Russell! I don’t believe it!” And now he thrust out his hand and forcibly shook Billy’s. He smiled, and his face, so like worn granite, became youthful. “Well, well, Billy Russell. How did you know me, Billy?”

“Your face in the paper, old pal. And on the cover of your Chauncey magazines.”

Edward threw back his head and laughed. He retained Billy’s hand, and people passed about them on the sidewalk, glancing at them curiously. Billy’s limousine drew up, and Billy said, “How about having lunch with me, at my club. The Ivory Club, here in town, with my own band. Prince Emory.”

“Who?” asked Edward, still laughing. “Who’s Prince Emory?”

Billy caricatured high dignity. “I am Prince Emory, sir, at your service. King of Jazz.”

“I don’t believe it!” exclaimed Edward, to whom the name Prince Emory meant nothing at all except an unpleasant vagueness connected with popular music. “I mean, I’d never have recognized you. Or maybe I would. You haven’t changed.”

“Neither have you, old Ed,” replied Billy. “And we’re nearly forty.”

“Not nearly. Just forty,” said Edward. His eye touched Billy’s excellent garb again, and a little reserve crept over his face. Was Billy a bootlegger or a gangster? “Live in town, Billy?” Probably in Harlem.

“When I’m in town. I’m staying right here at the Waldorf,” and Billy grandly indicated the hotel. “Where you’re staying. But here’s my limousine. Come on down to my club and have lunch with me. Unless,” and he paused, “you’re in a hurry.”

Edward was silent. He looked at the black and glassy limousine. He looked at Billy. Then he said, “Well, I was on my way to the warehouses and the offices. My wife and I are sailing for Europe tomorrow. Ireland, particularly, to see the wife of an old friend.” He hesitated. A club? One of those night clubs? Was Billy a waiter there? Edward was confused. Then he thought, It’s really Billy Russell, Billy with the harmonica, Billy whom he had struck and driven away, Billy for whom he had mourned for a long time! He said, “Never mind my own business. All right. Let’s go somewhere together and talk.”

The chauffeur had come around in a sharp, military fashion, and he bowed in the two men and clicked the door after them. The fittings inside the limousine were of heavy silver and rich black leather. There was a fine fur rug over the bar. The limousine glided away, and the uniformed chauffeur swung through the traffic. Edward began to feel a slight unreality in all this. Waiters did not own such vehicles; waiters were never conveyed in them. His dazed conviction that Billy was a bootlegger returned to him. He said, “How’s the Scotch and bourbon market these days?”

Billy heard this innocently insulting remark and did not change expression. He said, lightly, “Very good. My bootleggers are the best; no cut liquor, no fakes. My customers expect the best. In my club. The Ivory Club. I own it, you see.”

Edward’s sense of unreality increased. He considered what Billy had said. Then he asked, “In Harlem?”

Billy’s mouth tightened for a moment, but he said kindly, as one would say to an ignorant tourist, “No, Ed. In the East Fifties. Best and most exclusive club in town. Best floor show, too. Best band. Mine.”

Edward was embarrassed. He wanted to apologize. But he was still suspicious. How did a jazz player get such a limousine? A club, he had said, in the East Fifties. One of those colored clubs? Prince Emory … He said, “I’m sorry, Billy, but this is all news to me. Frankly, I still can’t believe it’s you. I’ll wake up in a minute. Who in hell is Prince Emory? You, you said. But what is it?”

Billy relented. His bronze profile smiled. “I see you’re an outlander, a foreigner. You’ve been wandering around the classical corridors, staring at busts of Beethoven and Brahms and Bach. Now, as the papers are nice enough to call me, I’m the king of Jazzland, the interpreter of blues, the joy of millions here and abroad. Last week I visited the White House, to which I had been invited by President Hoover, who doesn’t particularly care about jazz, either, but is too much of a gentleman to say so. But it’s the thing, as the English say, to invite me. I’ve been at Windsor Castle, too. So far, Mussolini’s been the only boy who hasn’t asked for my presence. My music is decadent, to the Fascists.”

Edward pushed his hat back on his head, stared at Billy again, then burst into another fit of laughter. But he was overjoyed as well as hilarious. “Damn it!” he shouted. “I’d never have believed it! Let me shake your hand again, Billy.” His eyes were the eyes of the boy in the delicatessen in Waterford on a cold Christmas Eve, and frank and affectionate. He struck Billy again and again on the shoulder. Then he flung his arm about that shoulder and hugged his old friend like a child who was filled with delight. “Old Billy,” he said, marveling. “I want to hear all about it.”

There was color in his seamed cheeks, and light in his pale gray eyes. Billy smiled at him, with an ache in his throat. Poor old Ed, poor old driven, bedeviled Ed. “And I want to hear all about your family, too,” he said, a little huskily. “How’s—everybody?”

Edward’s face changed. He looked away. “My father died six years ago this Christmas. You remember him?”

“Why, sure,” said Billy, slowly, as if he had never heard this before. “I’m sorry, Ed. He was a good man, a good simple man, and I think he loved you more than anything in the world, even his shop.”

Edward looked through the window, and he was old and hard again. Billy lit a cigarette. “Yes,” he said, “I want to know about everybody. I haven’t been in Waterford since I left there, a couple of days after Christmas—1904, wasn’t it? Twenty-five years ago. A long time.”

They went through the club, which was closed during the day, and dim and shadowy. Edward noted the rich appointments, the long bar, the heavy doors with their chains, the, excellent furniture, the bandstand with its silent instruments, the velvety carpet, the gaily painted walls, all bright green palms and purple mountains and dancing Negro girls and men in Latin costumes. “An open bar,” he commented. Billy smiled. “And expensive, too, and I don’t mean just the liquor.” He rubbed one finger on the palm of the other hand, significantly. “I hope you don’t obey the Prohibition laws. I hope you’re a good sound scofflaw.”

“Evil laws are meant to be broken, or they should be broken,” said Edward, following Billy down a long carpeted hall at the back of the club and looking with interest at the various shut doors of gleaming mahogany. “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God. Isn’t that what Jefferson said?”

Billy produced a very formidable key and unlocked one of the doors. “The American people don’t break laws,” he said. “Except Prohibition. And that’s what’s wrong with the country. We’ve lost spirit. Put totalitarianism on us, with police like Mussolini’s, and we’ll all be salaaming meekly. Don’t laugh. I mean it. You can feel the rottenness growing all over the country, and I’m not referring to gangsterism, either, which is only a symptom. Talk about Mussolini! We’re just waiting for a dictator ourselves, and we’ll get one eventually, for we’re asking for him. A Mussolini, or a Trotsky, or a Hitler, or a Stalin. Well, come in. This is my private dining room, and I’ll order lunch.”

He carefully shut the door and locked it. “I’ve got competition,” he said briefly, at Edward’s look of surprise. “I live and work and make my money honestly, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been shot at regularly. I won’t play with the boys. Not any more than I have to, anyway. How do you like all this?”

“All this” was a magnificent office furnished with authentic antiques, Oriental rugs, and heavy brocaded curtains drawn over barred windows, whose faint outlines could be seen through the material. There were excellent paintings on the walls, and Louis Fifteenth chairs, and a leather-covered desk tooled in gold. Beyond this office waited a small but exquisitely appointed dining room, with no windows at all; a soft indirect lighting filled it with a golden glow. “I eat here whenever I want to,” said Billy, proud of Edward’s admiration. “I’ve two singers auditioning in a couple of hours, a pretty girl from Harlem, a college graduate with a voice like black velvet. Man, can that child sing! And a boy who’s studying law at Columbia, working his way through. My fellows tell me they’re finds, but I want to see how they’ll sound in the club. Acoustics can be tricky.”

They went into the dining room, which had an Italian refectory table covered with handmade lace, and high, antique Italian chairs upholstered in old purple plush with tassels of gold thread. A bowl of yellow roses stood on the table. The walls were painted a soft gold, and the carpet was Aubusson. “A drink first,” Billy said. Edward saw him make no move, but a moment later a colored waiter entered carrying a silver tray on which was a pleasing bottle of genuine Scotch whisky, with soda, ice, and two glasses.

“Our speciality tonight is squab with chestnut dressing,” Billy told Edward. “I hope there’re two already cooked. And there’s a bottle of sauterne cooling in the kitchen. How does that suit you?”

He opened a golden box on a small nearby table, and Edward took a cigarette and examined it curiously. It was long and Turkish, and the thin white paper bore a gold embossed little crown, with the words “Prince Emory” written in gold script below it. “You’ve done well for yourself, Billy,” he said. “There must be more to this jazz than. I knew.”

Billy smoked carefully, blowing up the smoke to hide his eyes. “And that’s for sure,” he said. He paused. “Ever hear of Davey Jones, the composer of Samson Smith, the first American opera?”

“I think I did,” said Edward, with some distaste. “At least my children are everlastingly humming some song or other from it. Discordant. I’m sorry, Billy, but that’s how I feel about modern music, if you want to call it music.”

“I know how you feel,” said Billy, and Edward looked up with some quickness. There had been a cryptic note in Billy’s voice. Was he remembering that tragic night so long ago? But Billy was smiling at him affectionately. “Every man to his taste,” he said.

The lunch was excellent. During it Edward told Billy about his family while Billy, who knew the story only too well, listened politely, and smoked, and motioned, from time to time, to the silent colored waiter to pour more wine in the crystal glasses. He listened with real intentness, however, to Edward’s voice and its intonations, rather than to the words. He waited for Edward to speak of David, but he did not.

“Well,” he said at last, while they ate their pêche bombe, “you, too, have come a long way, and your family with you. But you haven’t mentioned old Dave. I remember him a little, and it seems to me that we’ve played the same cities sometimes. At least,” he added hastily, “I thought I’ve seen his name mentioned in the newspapers. Or am I wrong?”

“You’re not wrong,” said Edward. He put down his glass of wine. “He’s—the worst disappointment I’ve had, and I suppose you’ve understood that they’ve all disappointed me. Greg with his damned idiot book The Forgotten! All about the starving, noble, striving, voiceless working class. As if such a class exists in America! I read the book in manuscript, and I laughed as I hadn’t laughed in years. Greg wouldn’t know a working man if he saw one. He’s seen thousands, of course, but he’s never recognized them. They don’t fit into his Götterdämmerung idea, muscular, lighted eyes, heroic faces, marching into some illuminated future and stamping down, in their Valhalla passage, such grubs as me. The men he sees riding around in Fords or Buicks and such, and in silk shirts, aren’t recognizable to him as workingmen. It would kill him to know the truth. Well. His book was quite popular. I bet the working people who read it, if they hadn’t sense enough to avoid it, didn’t recognize themselves either, as those mighty heroes of his. But the critics here in New York loved the book. They postured about it. And none of them can afford dinners such as the American ‘working class’ eats every night.”

He drank another glass of wine, angrily. The unhealthy color was deep, under his cheekbones, and Billy watched him with some apprehension. He remembered that David had told him that Edward had had a “breakdown” six months after his father’s death. He had been in Chicago then, and in the hospital for some time.

“I’ve told you about Sylvia. Her precious Ellis had a heart attack, just on the eve of a concert tour, which I don’t believe in, not a damned word of it. They’re home, of course, living on me. Oh, I suppose the man has some talent; I’ve heard him play. Anything would sound good on a Stradivarius, which I had to buy for him. Ralph’s still with his wife, playing around all over the world, at my expense. Greg’s now writing the great American novel, and I’ve given him up, after The Forgotten.”

“I read The Forgotten,” said Billy. “Not bad writing. What the critics call taut and sensitive, and full of social significance, though what the hell that is I don’t know. They have a special jargon, especially in New York. Well, at least they’re all busy, aren’t they? But you haven’t told me about your children. Two, did you say?”

Edward’s dark face lightened. “Yes. Going on fifteen. They’re geniuses, both of them, though their mother won’t admit it. Gertrude writes; editor of her school paper. She’s sold two poems to a woman’s magazine, and wonderful ones, too. And Robert’s in his school band, at the Englebert School for Boys. He composed a new school song. Nice kids. Robert’s the handsomest, everybody says. Everybody says Gertrude looks like me, poor child. Robert resembles his mother; he grows more like her every day.” Edward’s voice softened with love.

“My two kids are in school, too,” said Billy. “They’re older than yours. They’re in the South.”

“Private school? In the South?” Edward was surprised.

“Sure. And the best, too.” Billy looked smoothly at his friend.

Edward pondered on this. Billy smiled. “Don’t believe everything you hear about the South,” he said indulgently. “I couldn’t get them in good schools in the North. Oh, they bleed up here about the poor oppressed darky in the cotton fields in Alabam’. They sob their hearts out over the Uncle Toms and the Aunt Susies. I’m not saying that everything is too lovely for words down South; it isn’t. But it’s getting better all the time, and even as it is now it’s better for the Negroes than up here. At least we have friends in the South who’re working their heads off for us. If fools in the North don’t start to agitate in Dixie—and I hear rumors they’re thinking of it—we’ll be all right in a couple of decades. They’re already inspecting the South, to see what they can stir up. But go on. Anything else you can tell me about your family and Waterford?”

“No. Except about Ralph’s boy, André. I didn’t tell you. He inherited two hundred thousand dollars from—my father. None of us ever understood it.” Edward’s expression became hard and almost livid. “The least my father could have done was to have repaid me, just a little, for everything I did for him and his children—Well. The boy’s in school in Paris. At least I make his father pay for him out of the allowance I send Ralph!”

Billy was disturbed. He had heard this before, from David, and he was distressed not at what David had told him but at Edward’s look of pent rage and hatred. “Why, that was wrong,” said Billy, sympathetically. “Is the boy that attractive, or something, so that your father could forget his own children, and your children, for his sake?”

“That’s something we could never understand, not even my mother, not even the meat-heads, my brothers and my sister. I didn’t dislike André, the way the others did; I thought he was amusing and lively. I like all kids, anyway, so perhaps I didn’t look at him too closely. Perhaps my—my father—thought that my children would have enough, and didn’t need his money, and André did. That’s the only explanation we can arrive at.”

He brooded on it. It had not yet occurred to him that he had been remiss in not showing as much interest in Billy’s family, and how he had arrived at all this obvious wealth, as Billy had shown in him. But Billy was not hurt. There is something of Heinrich’s simplicity in him, Billy thought. He accepts the obvious. Besides, he’s floundering along under a heavy burden. Why? Why doesn’t he kick all of them out? Poor old Ed.

Billy said, “You’ve never told me why you were so sick in Chicago. Was it pneumonia?” (David had thought it was, or a nervous breakdown.)

Edward looked at him, his eyes wrinkling under his frowning brows. “Who told you I was sick in Chicago?” he asked.

Billy cursed himself for this slip. He lit another cigarette with a light air. “Who told me? Why, there was an item in the newspapers. That’s where I must have read it. After all, you’re famous for your stores. Why wouldn’t you be newsworthy? That was three years ago, wasn’t it? Seems to me it was three years.”

“Five.” Edward was still frowning. He tapped his fingers on the lacy cloth. “I never told anyone in the family. No one would have been interested, except my wife, Margaret. And I especially kept it from her. Besides, the doctors were fools. I’d been working too hard. It could have happened to anyone.” He paused and grunted. “They said I’d had a heart attack. No, not coronary thrombosis. They said it was an old ailment; I must have had rheumatic fever at one time. Something to do with the valves. Well, I never had rheumatic fever. If I’d had compensation, they said, it’d broken down. I’ll never believe doctors after that. I’d been driving myself; I’d run into trouble with a new Congressional committee investigating monopolies. That’s the third time. Well, I’d had a cold, and it developed into bronchitis, and I couldn’t spare the time to take care of it. So one day, in my Chicago office, I collapsed. That was all there was to it. The doctors wanted to send for Margaret, but I put my foot down. Then, after I’d made them promise not to tell her their imbecile diagnosis, I had to let her come. I was in the hospital for two months, and that was fine for her!”

He thought of those nightmare months of pain, of gasping for air on high pillows, of oxygen, of nurses, of drugged dreams and swimming visions, of aching exhaustion, of feelings of impending death. Heart failure! Stupid bastards. If he’d been a poor man, they’d have dismissed him as suffering from bronchitis, aggravated by overwork. They’d have given him a bottle of cough sirup and sent him back to a factory. “I suppose I owe them something, though, over and above their gilt-edged bills. They told my wife I’d had a nervous collapse from influenza and too much responsibility. And that’s all it was, anyway, besides the bronchitis.”

Billy was silent. He was remembering the night in the basement of the Enger delicatessen, so many years ago. Old Ed had almost fallen into the furnace, and would have done so if Billy had not caught him. Then he had sat on the chair, shuddering and trembling and gasping for a long time. He had looked like death. He looked like death now.

“Look,” said Billy. “You’re probably right about the Chicago doctors. But we’re forty. Now I have an electrocardiogram every six months. Good insurance. We have the best doctors in the world right here in New York. I know a wonderful heart specialist. Let’s have you checked, just to reassure yourself.”

Edward laughed shortly. “No, thanks. I wouldn’t believe any doctor after Chicago.”

Billy was sick with his own anxiety. “You don’t look well,” he said. Edward waved that aside. “I feel fine,” he said. “We’re leaving tomorrow for Europe, Ireland first. We’d have left in September, but there was that flurry about the stock market. Stocks’re still down and unsteady, but we’re pulling out of it now. I’m the executor of the will of an old friend who used to work for me, Padraig Devoe.” He thought of Padraig, and his face squeezed into momentary anguish. “His American estate. He was an Irishman. We haven’t seen his wife, Maggie, and their boy, Sean, since they left for Ireland, shortly after the war started. He—died there.” He drummed his fingers again. “I’ve invested Padraig’s money here, and it has quadrupled or more. Maggie doesn’t need it, but we like her, and I want to report to her, and that’s our excuse for going.”

He smiled at Billy. “Here I’ve been unloading on you, and I haven’t asked you about this mysterious prosperity of yours. Now tell me. Billy,” and his voice dropped, “I never forgot you. It almost floored me when you left so suddenly.”

The waiter came in again, carrying a telephone. He plugged it into a socket and said respectfully, “It’s Mr. Rodgers, sir. Your stockbroker. He sounds sort of crazy. He said he’s got to talk to you.”

“I’ll call him back,” said Billy impatiently.

“But Mr. Emory. He says everything’s crashed.”

Simultaneously Billy and Edward jumped to their feet, and Billy seized the telephone. Slowly, as he listened, the bronze glisten of his face dimmed, and it became as rigid and lifeless as dimmed metal. He listened; he did not speak. Then he hung up the telephone and fell into his chair and looked at Edward with blind eyes.

It was that Black Friday of October, 1929. It was the end for many people, literally. It was the end of an era. Though no one heard it, the bloody curtain of revolution and death was rising all over the world. It rose on that Friday.

Billy said in a dwindled voice, “It’s ruin. I’ve just lost about every cent I have.” And in that same abstracted and distant voice, he told Edward.

Edward sat down, his own face dull and blank and shocked into an awful pallor. Sweat broke out on his forehead, on his temples. His lower jaw began to tremble uncontrollably. He swallowed over and over, and choked.

At last he said, in a far and wondering tone, as if in a dream, “I’m ruined. This is the end. I’ve lost two million dollars or more, all my reserves.”

Suddenly he dropped his head on the table and fainted.

“But I am a rich man,” David protested to his mother in early November. “I took George Enreich’s advice and sold out my stock last August—”

“And George Enreich has offered to lend Edward whatever he needs,” responded Maria wearily. “Yet Edward will take nothing except the money your father left to me. What do I need? How much land does a man need? I also have my insurance. Edward borrowed two hundred thousand dollars from me, and insists upon six per cent interest, to which I had to agree, otherwise he would not have taken my money. He immediately used that money, not to help himself but to reimburse Lady Devoe in Ireland, though she has declared that she did not wish it and that she had merely risked, through Edward’s investments for her, what a whole nation, her native land, had risked. But it is a point of honor with Edward.

“Nor will he reduce the wages and salaries of his employees as others are doing in a desperate necessity. How long can he continue all this? My son, how can you lend any money to your brother? The suggestion would drive him mad; nothing would make him consent. Your offer comes from your heart, but sometimes the heart gives foolish messages.”

“The situation in America is deteriorating very fast,” David said. “And Edward’s businesses will deteriorate with it. He listens to the foolish advice of ‘not selling America short.’ But America was sold short when she was entangled in the European war. Where’ve our pundits been in not pointing out to the American public that as European economy has been steadily collapsing since the war, it was inevitable that we’d suffer, too, from the world-wide depression and that we’d collapse sooner or later? Why didn’t the American politicians do something about Mussolini’s offer to unite in some sort of a strong alliance with England, France and Germany, to halt the spread of Russian Communism over Europe? That would have stopped the present rise of Hitler, too. Ed’s not the only one in this family who’s been watching events for years,” and David smiled drearily. “He isn’t the only one in the family, or the country at that, who’s terribly frightened, though he thinks he is. The collapse of European economy, and now ours, and the war that brought it on, were part of the master plan of worldwide Communism. Well, all this isn’t helping Ed. You did say, though, that he’s almost recovered from the collapse he had in New York a couple of weeks ago?”

“I said that he is working,” said Maria. “That is all I can say. He lives in a trance of despair, trying to salvage what he can. He will not mortgage the house, he says. That will be the last thing he will do. We can pray for him. Beyond that, we can do nothing.”

“Nor can America,” said David. “Ma, why doesn’t Ed put the family on its own? Cut off all the allowances and the free ride it is getting here at his expense?”

Maria gave him a cryptic smile. “Does one take power from a man who lives for power, even if it will save his life? No. That is why he is fighting.”

CHAPTER VIII

Gregory could feel the big living room of the penthouse filling up behind him with cocktail-hour guests. But he stood before the huge dark window gloomily, his hands in his pockets. Then he saw his reflection in the black glass, lighted by the lamps in the large warm room, and the firelight that twinkled far behind him. He was abominably startled. It was as if Edward were looking at him grimly from the other side of the glass. He knew that he resembled his brother in an extraordinary way, but, as he believed, in a more refined and delicately clear-cut way. Something had betrayed him momentarily, some deep and secret thing in himself which he had never suspected, to give his reflection the very embodiment of Edward’s strength, his crude outlines, his look of still violence and power. Gregory was revolted and outraged—he told himself. Yet when he turned his head quickly, in half-profile, and saw himself as he was, he was strangely bereft, as if part of him had become cloudy and unstable and pallid, no longer puissant, no longer certain.

His agent, who called himself LeCroix—no Christian name, just LeCroix—came scuttling up to him where he stood before the great window looking out at the mountain-blue façade of New York in the growing twilight. “Still brooding, Greg?” he asked in his intolerably amused voice, so thin and light. “How many times do I have to tell you that the reviews are raving? Why can’t you be happy about them? Look here, I have more of them—just came in this morning.”

“The book’s been out a month—no, six weeks,” said Gregory, sullenly. “How many copies have been sold? One thousand, and just dribbles of reorders. Reviews? It looks as if the people never read reviews. The critics tore Always Adorable apart—that little blonde housewife up in the Bronx—and it’s selling thousands a week, after six months. And Hollywood paid half a million for it, and it’s going to be a play.”

LeCroix shrugged. He was a tiny, black little man of undetermined racial origin, and Gregory had always thought he resembled a lizard, so quick and sharp and sinuous he was, so knowing and brilliantly black of eye. He hardly reached to Gregory’s tall shoulder. “It’s like I told you, Greg. It’s sex the people want—”

“It’s social significance you said they want,” Gregory interrupted rudely.

LeCroix scratched his waxy ear and shook his head humorously. “Greg, they want their social significance in the hay, too. The noble factory girl and the muscular machinist—all the details after the hanging electric light is off in the drab bedroom. The public doesn’t want the sex door slammed in its face; it wants to participate.”

The hubbub was increasing behind them. They stood in the shelter of massive draperies of white satin scrawled over with a livid green pattern. “I’m not going to give the bastards clinical details,” said Gregory. His whole Lutheran soul, against which he had long ago revolted but which still persisted like a stern and huge shadow in the background of his mind, seemed to nod its austere head.

“Anatomical details,” said LeCroix. “Sensations, so they can have a private orgasm by themselves. Even social significance, and—our line—has to have its trappings of hot breaths and sweatings and wrigglings. This book—even the burly workers behave as if they had morals and consciences, and God knows they don’t. They’re just animals.”

Gregory stared at him, his gray eyes diminishing to points under his thick black brows. He was not naïve; he knew the contempt in which the “workers” were held by their self-appointed saviors. He knew the power they wanted. But still there was some uneasy integrity in him, some atavistic principle, which kept him apart from the general hypocrisy. He thought, It used to be that people were religious hypocrites. Now they are “social” hypocrites. They must always believe, in spite of their own knowledge of themselves, that they were better than they were. It isn’t fashionable any longer to conceal your greed, your hatred, your lack of decency and compassion, your cruelty, under what used to be called “a religious cloak.” No. Now it must be a “social” one. If you shouted loudly enough, and long enough, that you were concerned with “social” problems, and that your heart bled for the “workers,” you could come to believe it yourself, and you could forget, could hide from, the awareness of your true motivations.

“What’s the matter, Greg?” asked LeCroix.

“At least,” said Gregory, following his own thoughts, “I’m not a hypocrite.”

LeCroix, who knew humanity very well indeed, smiled cunningly.

Gregory said, “I’ve read Always Adorable. I don’t care what the dainty literati say about it, and the obscene jokes they make about it. It’s a good book. It’s crude, in a way, but it’s a crude power. And it’s vivid and interesting. Its descriptions are excellent about the period—”

“Murky, turgid,” said LeCroix. “Ebullient. Violent. Rococco.”

“I know, I know! I read reviews, too!” Gregory’s face flushed with an anger he could not understand. “‘Sprawling. Undisciplined. Indiscriminate.’ So, as you’d say, the public gobbles it up, even in these times. Why? Because it’s alive. Because it has human emotions. Because it isn’t a ‘taut’ story; it isn’t ‘sensitive.’ My books are. That’s why the public leaves them alone, in spite of the logrolling.”

“It’s got sex,” LeCroix pleaded, still watching Gregory with those tight and cunning eyes, full of mistrust.

“I can’t write ‘sex,’” said Gregory. He was deeply startled. Why not? The austere shadow in the back of his mind nodded its head approvingly. He added lamely, “What I write about is too serious for these days.”

“But sex is life, too,” said LeCroix, his restless eyes roving constantly, a habit which irritated Gregory, who was a product of a disciplined family.

“So it is. So are the functions of the kidneys and the bowels,” said Gregory. All at once he could not stand his agent. “But no one but doctors write about those.” He paused, and flushed again. “Love is a different thing. I have love in my books, real love. Do I have to go into anatomical details and dissections?”

“That’s what the idiot public wants,” said LeCroix, indulgently. “Oh, cheer up. I think a book club is going to take your book as a free gift to get new subscribers, and there’ll be reprints.”

Gregory shifted on his big feet. “Don’t try to soothe me. You know damn well that no book club would take my book, and no reprint house, either. And not because there’s little or no ‘sex’ in it.”

LeCroix said smoothly, “Well, that’s because they’re too conservative. They’re doubtful about—our line. But there’ll come a day—” He coughed. “A day we’re all waiting for, Greg. Even in your old stories about Mr. Thor there isn’t any sex. Now, you could write a whole new novel about him, just as he is—and he does exist, I know—and let him have a few hot tussles in the hay, and a few thrilling lays, while he goes about his business of destroying the widows and orphans, and swallowing up small business, and beating down his rivals, and consolidating and expanding his financial empire.”

Gregory thought involuntarily, But that would be a lie about Ed! Ed’s as virtuous as a deacon … Oh, God damn him, anyway! He said hurriedly, “I’ve just been rereading War and Peace. It’s full of—of love and passionate scenes. Yet you and the rest of your boys wouldn’t call it ‘sex.’”

“Who reads War and Peace?” asked LeCroix, reasonably. “Do the movies buy it? Do the housewives thrill over it? Does the truckdriver slaver over it? Who reads Tolstoy?”

Gregory looked at him. But he did not see him. I’m a failure, he thought. I was never really a writer, in spite of the money I’ve made on the Thor series and other shorts for The City and other magazines, and inclusion in the anthologies. No, I’m wrong. I am a writer. But what’s wrong with me? Why don’t I make a success, the sort of solid success I want? I do my best; I’m up to my neck in this thing, this social significance and Communism, and nothing happens. God damn the stupid masses! I write for them, try to awaken them, stir them, get them to move—and they read Always Adorable!

The austere shadow whispered, But you have no courage. You really have no integrity. And you lie.

No, said Gregory in desperate answer, I do believe in what I write. Who could be worse than Ed?

He looked at his reflection in the window again, and once more he was bereft. Only Gregory Enger was reflected there, the pseudo-élégant, the shadow of a stronger man, and Gregory thought sharply of his brother and hated him with increasing hatred. He took my strength from me, he told himself. He chewed me until all my juices were gone.

Gregory turned, with a feeling of profound exhaustion, to the masses of people in the room. The host, a rotund and beaming little man of great wealth, was greeting everybody with much joviality. The butler was circulating with trays of cocktails. A maid followed with trays of hors d’oeuvres. The vast Oriental rug gleamed like flattened jewels in the lamplight and the firelight. Cabinets of priceless objets d’art stood along the gold and ivory walls. The French furniture, the pictures, the marble fireplace, the exquisite mirrors—all of it—had cost an enormous fortune. The host owned this penthouse. He had inherited such tremendous wealth that he could not spend his income, in spite of a palatial yacht, an island surmounted by a mansion off the coast of Florida, another mansion near Cape Cod, and in spite of the harem he kept unofficially. He was a Communist; he supported at least four Communist newspapers and other periodicals. He suborned Senators and other government officials. He had never worked a day in his life. He was a Communist. Gregory knew why. Money was not enough for men like himself—and there were many in this very room tonight. They wanted personal power over the masses they loathed, and whose freedom they loathed even more. They, simply, wanted the knout, the power of life and death. Power, reflected Gregory. Is that what I want, too? The power to destroy?

There was Thornton Greene over there, another such a one as the host. A tall and distinguished man, as elegant as David was elegant. A wealthy man. He boasted lightly of his tax-exempt securities, which he had bought when he had inherited his father’s money. And who had been his father? A sturdy bricklayer who had become a building contractor. The bricklayer may have been physically gritty from his honest mortar. But his son, in spite of the Saville Row clothing, in spite of the jewelry, in spite of the air of sophistication and quiet assurance, had a dusty look. His features appeared overlaid with a patina of drifting powder, such as the dead wear in their coffins. It usually surprised Gregory, and absurdly, when Greene spoke with vehemence, though still with that cultured lightness, and when his eyes actually gleamed. The dust was thick—thick …

There were no labor leaders present. They were too gross for this delicate company, who plotted their subjugation as well as the subjugation of their unions to the Universal State, as the cognicenti liked to call it euphemistically. Gregory thought, Why, any labor leader would gag at them! He hurriedly quelled the heretical thought. What was the matter with him tonight, for God’s sake?

You could really write—if you were an honest man, the rebuking shadow whispered to him. What are you doing here?

The bejeweled women, with their fierce, fanatical, and cruel eyes, moving about the room in their individual halos of perfume. The alert men, always watching, watching, and whispering and whispering. The discreet jokes; no robust and human laughter here! “I talked with Senator So-and-So this morning … in the palm of my hand—there’s this bill coming up … Serge Ovlov … wonderful, eloquent! Higher taxes, that’s the thing.… Lenin—he told me about Stalin—masses—re-education of the people—will not be easy, but it can be done.… Did you read what Molotov said yesterday?… the professor was thrown out; reactionary … a matter of indoctrination of the teachers; resistive … government ownership of the means of production … now Lenin said … it was in 1895 … the workers, the workers … Machiavelli of course, was the first.… Did you read—?”

The conversation was always the same. It was not, thought Gregory, that a man tired of it or thought it futile. It wasn’t futile; it was having results all over the world. But sometimes one would like a little lightness, a little humanness, a little warmth, a little gaiety, some boisterous jokes. The guests drank little. This was something which Gregory, who sometimes had a tendency to overdrink, could not understand. They also seemed to get very small joy out of life, in spite of their luxury and their money. “War,” somebody said. “Of course, war.” Gregory stood very still. Yes, he knew about the program for wars, but it had seemed not to be in the realm of reality; it was simply a theory. “I think about 1940,” said another voice. “Hitler should be ready then.” Expression of smug satisfaction. War. But war was murder. The Party hated war.…

Hitler? But he was a “reactionary.” Fascism was reactionary. Gregory’s head began to hum and ache. He looked about him desperately, from his sanctuary in the draperies.

His eye lighted on a young woman who was standing uneasily on the periphery of the massed guests—who drank so little and so cautiously and endlessly watched one another. A young woman, perhaps in the late twenties or early thirties. She stood out in this exotic and glittering company like an honest sunflower set among rich and poisonous blooms. She had a bold, full face, with bold blue eyes, and a very large red mouth, which she licked uncertainly as she grinned. Her very blonde hair was pulled back from her broad temples and wide cheekbones into a severe chignon, which looked like a gleaming ball of yellow light. She was very tall; there was an open sensuality about her, in spite of the discreet tailored suit of dark blue. But it was the sensuality of a female animal in heat, innocent and avid and unashamed. Her full figure appeared to be about to burst out of the rigid suit; her white silk blouse could hardly restrain the unaffected press of her breasts. Gregory saw her hands, big and rather coarse, and her big feet in the high-heeled slippers. She exuded vitality, earthy and demanding, in spite of her apparent attempts to be inconspicuous. It was evident that she was not one of this company; she was listening, and her impudent eyes had a bewildered cast over them. She was trying to understand, and sometimes her smooth white forehead, a little cowlike, wrinkled conscientiously. She was sipping at her glass with obvious enjoyment. Now it was empty. She glanced about her for another. The butler passed, and she eagerly seized on another glass and drank it down in one gulp.

LeCroix, bustling nearby with a lizard’s rapid movements, saw Gregory’s signal. He came at once. “Not drinking?” he asked. “What’s the matter, Greg? You usually—”

“Who’s that girl over there, the big, bad-eyed blonde?” asked Gregory. “One of us?”

“Who? Margo? That’s Margo Montgomery.” LeCroix grinned. “Née Mamie Elkins. From Ohio. A farm girl, now a model and a good one, too. Earns her keep.”

“Her keep?”

“Oh, not that way. A frigid piece of meat. You wouldn’t think it, would you? I know—personally, brother! All that—” and he continued his description, obscenely. For some reason Gregory winced and felt outraged. “She came with Greene,” the agent concluded. “Not that he’ll get anywhere with her. And she’s not a Lesbian, either. Likes the boys, in a hands-off way. I don’t know why Greene brought her; she’s as dull as milk. Not a Party member. He’s wasting his time, both ways.”

“I’d like to meet her,” said Gregory.

LeCroix shook his head with coy rebuke. “Not in your present funk. She’s the gay type. Likes to laugh a lot. You know, the typical stupid female. Tell her you’ll buy her a dinner, and dance with her in some hot night club, and that there’ll be no fumbling in a taxi, and you’ll kiss her chastely on the brow at her door, and that’s all, and she’ll roar off with you. Heard her voice? Big and husky, like herself; it grates on a chap’s ears. You wouldn’t like it. She wouldn’t appreciate your wit—when you’re witty, and you’re not witty tonight. Look for something more your type.”

Gregory studied the girl, and he became aware of a tremendous animal strength in her. He was always mysteriously drawn to strength; it had a fascination for him beyond his understanding. He was aware of this; he thought that it was because he was strong himself. He was drawn to these people in this room because they were strong, and so he was attracted to them. But LeCroix was thinking, candidly, You want her because you’re weak, and you’re here, not even knowing what it’s all about, because it gives you a feeling of power and fortitude that isn’t in you. But what would we do without the weak, anyway, even if you aren’t reliable? Darling boy, you’ll be the first to be liquidated! After we let you have your personal revenge, of course.

“I like her,” said Gregory; stubbornly. “Trot her over.”

LeCroix shrugged. “It’s your party,” he said. “First thing, she’ll tell you your tie is all wrong. The model-complex, you know.”

He scampered off and touched Margo on the arm. She glanced over at Gregory, and what she saw evidently pleased her, after LeCroix’s whispered comments. She arched golden brows, and simpered, and smoothed down the coat of her suit, and lifted her head in a model’s attitude, and arranged her legs in a model’s “stance,” as she listened to what was apparently a thumbnail sketch of Gregory. Her blue eyes never left him during the recital, and now Gregory could see the shrewdness and calculation in them. He did not like this; he concentrated on the dimples, strong and deep, that waxed and waned in her pink cheeks. Strong, strong, he said to himself. Strong as earth. A sound wench. LeCroix, standing near her, was like a black and lifeless twig stuck beside a flourishing tree.

They came to Gregory together, and LeCroix introduced them. “I’ve been telling Mamie—I mean Margo—that you’re a famous author, Greg. She’s read all your books. She says.” He winked at Gregory with malice.

“I subscribe to all the book clubs,” said Margo, with a wide, wet-lipped, and very scarlet smile, which enhanced her innocent lewdness. “I read everything. I sure liked your last book, Mr. Enger.”

Gregory, accustomed to this sort of thing, suppressed his usual sharp query: “My last? Or my next to the last? What did you like about it?” This would throw the unhappy man or woman into utter confusion, a state of affairs which Gregory would acidly enjoy. But now he said, caught in the overflow of the girl’s simple strength, “Did you? I’m glad.” He did not even remark that none of his books had been a book-club choice.

Margo did indeed have a loud and husky baritone of a voice. She beamed on him. “I thought your last book was better, even, than Always Adorable.”

LeCroix grinned at Gregory, who ignored him. Margo wet her lips again. They were really very large lips, and very full, and her teeth would have been enormous and too blazing in a smaller woman. She’s a lioness, thought Gregory, and let himself be drawn into the orbit of strapping potency. “Didn’t you just love Always Adorable?” Margo went on, determined to make an intellectual impression.

“I thought it adorable,” Gregory said gravely. LeCroix barked briefly and scuttled off. Gregory and Margo stared at each other, smiling. Then Gregory thought, She really isn’t stupid. She’s as bright as new tin foil. Cheap, yes. But aware, too. You could never really fool her. And she’d be loyal to anyone she trusted; you could tell her the damnedest lies and she’d believe them and follow you. If she loved you. But she has a greedy face; you’d better be ready to give her—things. Material things, not only affection and devotion. He looked again at her hands and thought their coarseness to have a quality of ruthlessness, and a seizing quality, open and unashamed. That bold face, so sensual, so large, was immune to subtlety, like an animal’s.

“Why do they serve cocktails that taste like witch hazel?” Margo was asking him, with humor. “Everywhere Thornton takes me it’s like this. And they just sip at the drinks, so they wouldn’t know they’re terrible. Me, I like good bootleg bourbon.”

“They’re intellectuals,” said Gregory. “Intellectuals sometimes go brawny and drink needled beer to be one of the proletariat boys, but they hate it. And bourbon’s too bourgeois.” After this witticism, he glanced about him uneasily, but they were still cloistered in the draperies.

Margo was vaguely disappointed after Gregory’s remark. He was going to talk just like old Thorn, and he looked different, somehow. Like the folks at home. Well, a writer. She beamed at him. Writers made millions, just millions. Besides, she liked him. He had a very cute face, and his gray eyes were nice.

“I guess my Dad is bourgeois,” she said, wondering if she knew just what that was. “He really likes beer, and he swills bourbon, when he can get it. Do you like bourbon, Mr. Enger?”

“I certainly do—Margo,” he said. Margo was pleased. Now, she could be intellectual, herself. “Thorn takes me around, and it’s always Martinis, with seven eighths bad vermouth and one eighth smuggled gin. What’s your first name? Oh, Gregory, Greg. Thanks. If they don’t like to drink, why do they drink anything? They could have Cokes.”

“They usually do. At home,” said Gregory. Then he was uneasy again. Why had he said “they”? After all, he was one of them.

“I don’t get it,” said Margo. “I’ve listened and listened. After all, a girl has to be sophisticated, doesn’t she? What does it matter if you were born on a farm? My folks aren’t sophisticated. Dad’s a farmer; he makes hardly anything these days. He thinks I’m living a life of sin. He lives with Mom in Ohio. He won’t even write to me. But he sure cashes the checks I send them.”

Gregory thought of the checks his brother sent him, and he frowned. Margo said hastily, seeing that frown, “Oh, I don’t mind! After all—”

“The poor deserve to be supported; the weak must be nurtured by the strong,” said Gregory. “That’s what they—we—are determined to bring about in this capitalistic country.”

“Sure, all these poor people in this depression,” said Margo, heartily. She pondered. “I came here without a cent, and I know what it’s like to be hungry. But I got a job as a model almost right off. It’s very interesting. And you get clothes at half price, too. You just have to take care of yourself and have some—some courage—and you get somewhere. You can’t expect other people, who’ve got their own troubles, to take care of you, if you don’t want to work or think the world owes you a living.”

For an instant Gregory, namelessly smarting, disliked her. Margo, believing that she had made an “intellectual” impression on this famous writer, went on cheerfully, “I just went to ninth grade. That doesn’t matter, though, if you’ve got sense.” (Yes, he was really very cute; there was something about him which more and more reminded her of the common-sense “folks” she had known in Ohio. He should be wearing tweeds, or something; that smooth broadcloth was all right for old Thorn. I bet, thought Margo, that even if he’s a famous writer he comes from people with their feet on the ground. I’ll find out!)

She continued frankly, “I don’t get it, do you?” She glanced over her broad shoulder at the others. “All these rich people. They talk and talk of the Common Man and the little fellow. Who do they mean, anyway? You know something, Greg? I bet anything they never give a cent to charity; they’re just the kind. And what’s this dialect materialism?”

Gregory smiled, wrapped in billows of strength and heartiness. “You mean dialectical materialism.”

“Well, it’s foreigners who speak that, isn’t it?”

Gregory shook his head, amused. “Well, in a way. Most people think it came from Russia, through Karl Marx. But it didn’t. It started in Western Europe. What’re you doing here with Thorn Greene?”

Her eyes, not too large, almost disappeared in a small twinkle between thick eyelashes. Her big red tongue licked at the corners of her mouth. “Oh, he thinks he’s making time with me. He isn’t, though; he’s got a wife. You can’t blame him for hoping, anyway, can you? Besides, he thinks I should be educated; get into the ‘movement.’”

Gregory said, “What movement?”

“Well, all this. He told me the intellectuals can’t carry it all; it has to be a Common Man movement, too. I’m common, you see.” Again the eyes twinkled shrewdly. “I’m not ritzy like these other dames here; just a farmer’s daughter. D’ever see Thorn’s wife? She’s in the movement. A real bitch. Oh, not because she’s in the movement. But I’ve started to wonder if bitches aren’t drawn to it—and I mean men-bitches, too—because they’re the kind of folks they are. I don’t know what it’s all about; sometimes it sounds crazy, but then, as I said, I only went to ninth grade.”

“And you’re not a bitch,” said Gregory gravely.

She laughed with much boisterousness, and she caught the annoyed attention of some of the ladies nearby, who gave her what she would call “a look.” “Yes, I am,” she said. “But in another kind of way. I take care of myself. You’ve got to do that in this man’s world. There was something our teacher told us in ninth grade: ‘The race to the swift, and the battle to the strong.’ Now that’s for me. You know how it is,” and Margo had a feeling that Gregory indeed knew how it was, and understood. “In every litter there’s a couple of runts. No good. And there’s scrub cattle. You just get rid of them. That is, if you want to raise good stock, without disease. You build up a fine herd that way.”

“People aren’t litters and scrubs,” said Gregory, and he flushed.

Margo shrugged. “Aren’t they?” she murmured archly. The shrug had pulled on the gauzy softness of her blouse, and Gregory could see the smooth roundness of her full breast, which needed no artificial aids of support and enhancement. Suddenly he wanted to lay his tired cheek against that breast and close his eyes and be at peace. Peace, he thought, forgetting his annoyance. A place to rest, to take stock, to regain or gain courage and strength.

Then he was angered. “The race to the swift, and the battle to the strong.” And he was frightened without knowing why. A stupid and ignorant and barbarous idea. It bred competition, individualism, independence, all harsh barbarisms. It was ox-cart, fit only for primitive societies. The New Order was collectivism. In collectivism there was the strength of “the group.” Man was nothing; the group, and then the State, was everything.

Corrupted, he must corrupt. That was the imperative. He did not express it to himself in that way; it was simply intolerable to him that this girl, a farm girl, a realistic model, should not be “educated” to the New Order. She was “one of the people.” (Like others of his kind, he never considered himself part of “the people.”) He was seized with the furious fanaticism of the corrupted, which cannot endure the presence of innocence and cannot refrain from seduction. The innocent were a menace to himself; there was always the danger that they would, in the power of their innocence, compel him to think, and such thinking was dangerous.

He turned abruptly and stared through the window. He looked out at the towering giant buildings around him. They were beginning to glitter like magic monuments with the blue-and-white rectangles of their windows; they stood against a murky reddish sky in an imperial majesty that even the things made by God could not surpass. Gregory’s temper subsided. Pigmy man, with his frail hands, his uncertain legs, his weak neck, his overweight head, his shortness of life and his certain death—he had built all this. Here was a crowd of Colossi, hewn from stone, standing high and motionless with the two rivers at their heroic feet. Man was everything! The people in this room were right. It was time for Man to be deified, and not some abstract, some absurdity, called God. He said, without looking at Margo, “See all that around and beside us? Man did that. And you call him a runt!”

Margo peered over his shoulder. She smiled, pleased. “That’s because he’s got a soul,” she said. “And where did he get a soul? From God, that’s where. People think things in their minds—they’ve got imagination, and that’s part of the soul—and then they use their hands to make the things come out so the rest of us can see them.”

Gregory was silent, he was enraged that this stupid girl could throw him into a whirlwind of inner turmoil. She was cutting the ground from under his feet. She was taking from him the only surety and sense of belonging that he possessed. He had been lonely for years; he had never “belonged.” His mother had regarded religion as a necessity, and his father had considered it a noble “abstract,” in the very nature of man. But religion, he thought, was no longer adequate enough (though it was a great lie, of course) to control the huge world of modern mankind, because it was based on free will and free choice, ideas valuable in a tiny society but too tenuous for a world grown monolithic. These friends of his now in this room, believed absolutely with the millions of their kind that only the State was adequate to control and direct, with force and coercion—ah, particularly force!—the vast chaotic condition of mankind. And who would be the State? The intellectuals, the innately powerful, with an army of bureaucrats to enforce their superior ideas and directives on the unthinking and mindless masses. He, Gregory Enger, was one of the powerful, the intellectual.

He suddenly thought of his father, the gentle and the meek. But Pa really had had some right ideas. Pa loved Christmas and Easter; he called them “folk festivals” when he was out of range of his wife’s massive and formidable stare. Once Gregory had asked him, when he himself had been only fifteen, “Pa, don’t you believe in God? You go to church and you pray.”

Heinrich had smiled with that pink uneasiness of his. “Ach, now, my son, God has His importance. It is concrete for the masses, hein? It is a symbol. Someday there will be men greater of mind than myself. They will take that symbol and make it into ultimate man, the hero of the ages, the master of life. You have not read Shaw? Ja? You must remember the Superman.”

Up to that very moment in his childhood, Gregory had possessed, in a small measure, a sense of belonging to something greater than himself, something which had reassured him, something which had given him courage and a secret rebelliousness. He had understood, even as a boy, that a man needs not only his own individuality and independence but also an affinity with, and a cohesiveness with, a Power stronger than his own spirit, a guidance filled with clarity and direction. For weeks after that short conversation with his father he had been filled with confusion and hopelessness, and what courage he had had deserted him. For years afterwards, until he had met these people, he had possessed no polar star, he had been overwhelmed with loneliness and a growing inadequacy of spirit, for which he had blamed his brother and not himself, and not his father. In truth, he had forgotten that conversation with Heinrich. Edward, in some strange twisted reasoning of a distressed soul, had become the cause of what he was enduring. Edward was the suppressor, the enemy of, the Superman.

These friends with their Marxist jargon had restored his self-confidence, had put his feet once more on rock, had given him a feeling of belonging, of fellowship. And Mamie Elkins, alias Margo Montgomery, was threatening all that he had gained. The stupid cow! She would take from him the only religion he knew.

The imperative to corrupt filled him with a cold and driving passion. He turned to Margo abruptly. “It was man, Superman, who built this city, Margo. Not some abstract God.”

He was cynically amused when she retreated a little and stared at him almost inimically. “Why, you sound like one of those Nazis,” she said. “Are you a Fascist, Greg? Are all these people here Nazis, too? And Thorn?”

For one moment, one terrible and blinding moment, he was struck with horror and complete understanding. For one whirling moment, filled with light and darkness and the sound of thunder, his soul came alive and aware, and shuddered. Then he was freshly terrified. No, no! he cried in himself. If I lose this, then I lose my foundations again, I lose my belonging, my power. I lose my hope of revenge …

Margo, startled at his expression, moved backwards uncertainly. “I guess I’d better go back to Thorn,” she murmured. But Gregory caught her arm, her warm full arm, pulsing with strength. “Of course we aren’t Fascists,” he said, trying to smile. “You don’t know very much, do you, Margo? We’re the antithesis of Nazism.”

“Well, you sounded just like a Nazi. My boss is a Nazi,” said Margo. “Always talking about the Superman. He’s one, he thinks. He’s just a miserable little squirt; he pinches us. Once I had to swat him. If he’s a Superman, then I’m—”

“Look, Margo, let’s get out of here. Forget Thorn. We’ll go somewhere and drink bourbon together. I have an apartment—”

Margo smiled broadly. “No, sir. I don’t go to apartments without a crowd. You’ll talk real intellectual to me, for maybe a couple of drinks, and then you’ll try to take my clothes off.” Her eyes sparkled, but her big mouth was severe. “The only fellow who’ll ever take my clothes off will be the fellow who’s put a wedding ring on my finger, and when I’ve put the wedding certificate in my bureau drawer. You see, I’ve been around. My minks, when I get them, are going to be legal.” Her face shone with wistful avarice. “Not even for a ten-thousand-dollar mink and God, how I’d love one of them! It’s not that I’m frigid,” and the lascivious bloom was on her lips again, “it’s just that Margo’s going to take care of Margo, because nobody else will.”

Gregory began to warm with pleasure and affection. “All right, Margo, we’ll go to a speakeasy I know of. And we’ll talk. There are things I’d like to tell you.”

She regarded him with responsive pleasure. He was really awfully good-looking, in a big, rugged sort of way, though when she saw his profile she was not certain of the ruggedness. And he was rich, too. Everybody here was rich, except Margo.

The great room hummed with voices. The butler circulated busily with his pale, weak Martinis, followed by the maid with her tasteless hors d’oeuvres. More and more people were arriving, obviously not “rich.” Quiet, tense-faced men in cheap clothing, vehement-eyed women in rough wool dresses and “sensible” shoes, their faces dark and watchful. Gregory knew them. They were the “leaders.” They pressed against the ermine, sable, and mink scarves, against the fine flannels, of the other people incongruously. They had brought with them a sense of power, of inexorable hatred and purpose.

“We can get out, now,” said Gregory. “We won’t be missed.”

“Sure,” said Margo. “Look, Thorn’s talking to those three women. Besides,” she added practically, “he’ll never get a divorce from his wife.”

Within fifteen minutes they were cozily harbored in a dimly lit bar, where there was no nonsense about food or a band, or other entertainment. After the first copious drink of straight bourbon Margo and Gregory smiled at each other with confidence. The girl’s strength embraced Gregory like warm arms, protectively. He ordered another drink, and then another. It was a relief to be with someone who knew nothing of books or music or “the dance,” or the State, and to whom intellectual jargon was incomprehensible. The bar became roseate. “Say,” said Margo, humorously, “are you ordering a fourth round? Not for me, brother. And you look a little high yourself. No, not for me. Go ahead for yourself if you want to.” She had been amusing Gregory for nearly an hour now with tales of her adventures as a model, and surprisingly he had enjoyed the anecdotes. His busy writer’s mind, fired rather than dulled by alcohol, was already evolving a series of sprightly stories for The City about a model’s experiences. “The Virgin Nude” series, or “The Brassière Set.” Why, it was only yesterday that someone had told him that he had made The City better than The New Yorker.

Margo went on. “Last week there was this guy from out West; buyer for girdles. I don’t do girdles, usually. Evening and cocktail dresses, usually. But this was a big account, biggest in the country. So there I was—” The story was outrageously indecent and full of humor. Gregory, released, roared with joy.

“You’re not having another?” asked Margo, suddenly, her eyes still bright with laughter. She tapped Gregory’s hand with a big finger. Abruptly he was horribly sober, and the imperative to corrupt was on him again. He began to talk of Edward. When he reached this state, he invariably talked of his brother, with hatred.

Margo, who had started to yawn with unaffected sleepiness, was suddenly interested. Why, those Green and White super markets! Why, Greg was not only a big writer, with millions; he was a brother to the owner of those big stores. And he was darling, too. All at once Margo loved him, quite sincerely. She had loved before, but the gentlemen sadly, and inevitably, were not rich, and she had parted from them with regret but with determination. Her mother had once told her, “It’s just as easy to love a rich man as a poor one; easier.”

Margo had a mind, and now that she loved Gregory, she was all sympathy and attention. A picture of Edward Enger was forming before her, and she was filled with indignation. Though shrewd, and usually forming her own opinions, she was carried away on the wave of Gregory’s thinning voice as he described his brother. She never doubted his word for an instant, for she loved him. What a bastard that Ed must be! A real bastard. Keeping everybody on his or her knees in front of him; taking the guts out of them. Everybody, of course, except Gregory. Greg was one of those knights, or something, riding against a dragon. A real dragon. He was right in taking Ed’s money, all of it he could get. And saving it, too. Margo’s eyes gleamed with mingled greed and powerful affection. She nodded her golden head over and over, emphatically.

“So you see, Margo, it’s his kind we’re fighting against,” said Gregory. “We’re going to take their wealth, their fat profits, away from them and share it. And why not?”

“Why not?” echoed Margo, bursting with her indignation.

The corruption was off to a fine start. Gregory could not help it. He must corrupt to blind the terrifying vision of himself.

Four weeks later, on April 10, 1933, Gregory made one of the few independent decisions he had made since he was fifteen. He married Margo in New York. As part of his wedding offerings were several modern books on Marxism, written simply “for the masses.” Margo was enthusiastic. (After all, a girl had to keep up with her husband, didn’t she?) She never quite related what she was reading to the world of reality. The objective was Edward Enger, the oppressor, the grinder of the faces of the poor, the profiteer. He was, in particular, the grinder of the face of Gregory Enger, whom she loved.

Gregory, with great fear, had had to notify Edward. He wrote, “I’d like you to meet my wife, Margo, who was a model, before anyone else in the family knows. You’ll like her. She’s strong and decent, though she hasn’t much education.”

So Edward, gloomy and enraged at this new calamity—a model, for God’s sake!—had come to New York at once, and to Gregory’s apartment. He had sent a telegram and the newly married pair were waiting for him. But when he entered the apartment, he had looked at once, not at his brother but at Margo, and he thought to himself with pleased surprise, Why, she’s not bad at all! She’s got health and strength, and there’s something clean-looking about her. It could be—it just could be—that she’ll be good for him.

Margo herself was surprised. She had expected, in a vague way, to be confronted by something monstrous in human form, something beetling and fierce and terrible. “Why,” she thought, “he looks just like Greg, except he’s bigger and stronger-looking and older.”

They shook hands gravely. It was an uneventful meeting after all. Edward asked the girl blunt questions, which she answered as bluntly, while Gregory winced. It was all right! Edward told himself. A farm girl, a hearty girl, a girl who looked honestly greedy and not sly.

Gregory had warned his wife. “Don’t tell him about—the movement. Keep it all very casual. You don’t know what he is!”

So during the hours Edward spent with Gregory and Margo nothing was said that might annoy Edward or arouse his suspicions. He went away the next morning considerably satisfied.

It took Gregory almost two weeks to convince his wife that Edward was a menace and a destroyer. It took him several months to make her hate Edward again.

CHAPTER IX

The day after Gertrude Enger’s graduation from the Waterford School for Girls she sat alone in the hot June sunlight where her parents used to meet, and talk, and where they never met, or talked, any longer. She rubbed the toe of her slipper in the coarse warm grass and watched the glitter of the strong green trees, the intent coming and going of honey bees, the light and shadow which ran over the earth as the huge and brilliant white clouds passed and repassed across the face of the golden sun. She heard, without really hearing, the distant splash of the fountain in the molten quiet, the conversation and quarrels of birds, the monotonous clatter of lawn mowers. She thought, There’re so many gardeners around here now, more than we ever had. More than we need. The servants’ quarters are just jammed with people. That’s Daddy’s contribution to fighting the depression. And he won’t close a single store; he says that the men need the work, even though we’ll probably all end up in the poorhouse if this goes on. Poor Daddy. What did Miss Thompson, who’s so sly and mean, anyway, say last winter? “This depression is the end of the capitalist system in this democracy!” I always thought this country was a republic; when did it get to be a democracy? Did President Wilson do that? Or was it really what Daddy says it was, that the words were put into Mr. Wilson’s mouth? Daddy says Mr. Wilson was always so suspicious of idealists, though he was sort of an idealist himself.

Gertrude sighed restlessly, feeling strangely oppressed and threatened. She was greatly worried about her father. She had no one to talk over her anxiety with except her mother, who was so apprehensive herself. Robert, her twin, was not one to worry overmuch, for his nature was sweet and amiable and full of trust in the goodness of man and the power of God. “Oh, Dad will be all right; he’s just worried about this depression,” he would say to Gertrude. It was odd that Robert, who had no conception of his father’s agonies and torments, and who preferred sports to studies, and who had an absolutely obtuse—according to Gertrude—attitude toward the ominous events occurring all over the world, should be the only effective consoler of his father. He had only to come into the room, smiling and serene, tall and masculine, and Edward would immediately brighten, turn from somber meditation and solitary misery, and greet his son with a lightening of his voice and a quick eagerness of expression. Was it because, the astute Gertrude asked herself, Robert brought to his father a sense of security, or reassurance, of unshakable health and hope in a world that was monstrously sick and in a state of savage and hopeless upheaval? Robert did not play particularly well on that fine violin his father had bought for him on his sixteenth birthday, but Edward would sit and listen to him with smiling pleasure, and would compliment him enthusiastically. And Daddy, thought Gertrude, with a rueful smile, really knows music, too!

Gertrude thought of the discussion she had had with Robert only a few days ago, when he had been graduated from the Englebert School. Robert showed no anxiety, but only confidence. “I want to study at a business-administration school,” he had told his sister. “Oh, I’ll go in for a dash of the liberal arts, too, but business is my meat. Besides, Dad can use me a little later. What? My music? Who cares for that? I’ve outgrown it. I’ve just been going along with Dad, because he likes to hear me play. But I’ll have a talk with him and get everything settled.”

Gertrude said, “But he’s settled it all that you’ll have four years of liberal arts, and intensive music training right along, and then a concert career after that!”

Robert smiled indulgently. “Don’t squint up your face as if I’m about to give the old man a body blow, Gertie. I’ll tell him what I really want, and that’s all there’ll be to it, with no fuss or screams, and he won’t mind a bit.”

The strange and confusing thing about it, thought Gertrude, is that Robert was probably right, with regard to himself, anyway. Gertrude was another matter. She was already entered at Wellesley, to major in literature. She had talked with her mother about Robert, and Margaret was of the same opinion. “Robert is the least devious person in the whole world,” Margaret had said. “He doesn’t know what hypocrisy is, or double-dealing, or maneuvering. He is just himself. He has only to ask your father for something, whether your father approves or not, and he gets it. Perhaps it’s because he is just himself, and is simple and kind and expects others to be the same. You and I, darling, are a little more complex and we expect trouble. And we usually get it, too!”

“I suppose Daddy will blow up when I tell him I want to enter the University of Syracuse’s School of Nursing,” Gertrude had said, anxiously. “He won’t understand that I’m not really a writer and don’t want to be a writer, and that the very idea frightens and bores me to death. Just because of all those silly poems I used to write, and the stories to amuse myself, when I was a kid! He really took Aunt Sylvia seriously, didn’t he?”

“That’s because he wanted to take her seriously,” Margaret had said with some anger.

“I never took myself seriously,” said Gertrude. “But Dad did.” Her olive face and gray eyes, her broad cheekbones and thick dark hair, her straight tall body and resolute movements, made her a young and feminine replica of her father. But Gertrude, unlike Edward, had few illusions about herself or others, and preferred, unlike Edward, to let others pursue their own way. She was by nature solitary and reticent and proud, while her brother was gregarious, open in personality, and had a high sense of humor which prohibited too much pride. He was deeply concerned with others, and generous-hearted.

“I never,” Gertrude had said to her mother, “deceived myself that I was a writer, but it pleased Daddy to think I was. I thought it would all pass later on. But he’s fixed on it. I don’t care! I’m going to be a nurse. I want to get into Dad’s Clinic.”

“You’re not exactly the tender and solicitous kind, dear,” Margaret had said, with one of the smiles which were becoming rarer and rarer with her. “So why the nursing fever?”

“Oh, I don’t expect to spend my life bending lovingly over beds and emptying bedpans,” Gertrude replied. “I’m interested in the scientific side. I want to do research. And nothing, and nobody, not even Daddy, is going to stop me. I want to be a laboratory technician, later.” She looked at her mother. “I want to get off Dad’s neck. I’m not a parasite.” Her face shone with sudden strong indignation. “Why doesn’t Dad throw them all out, all the uncles and aunts? Why, they’re eating him alive, and in these days, too!”

Margaret did not reply, and Gertrude had continued, “I love Daddy, I love him dearly. But he’s not going to manage my life.”

Margaret said, “You and Robert are good children. You are the only good things in this house. You are the only good things that ever happened to your father. He’ll realize that, one of these days. He doesn’t know yet that to give anybody everything that person thinks he wants is to do him the worst injury in the world.”

Gertrude burst out, “I hate my aunts and uncles, yes, I hate them! For what they are doing to Daddy.”

“And I do, too,” said Margaret, quietly. “Yes, and I do too.”

“I love Daddy too much to give him power over me,” Gertrude said.

Margaret was stunned and outraged. “What do you mean by power? Your father never wanted power over anybody! What a terrible thing to say, Gertrude! He has never wanted to do anything but help—”

“They’re the same thing, mostly,” said Gertrude. “But it’s very hard to explain. You help people when they should be helping themselves, and so you acquire power over them because they are weaker, and so they hate you, for their own weakness in putting themselves under your domination. And in turn, you despise them for their weakness, and you’re uncomfortable, if you’re a decent person like Daddy, because you have that power over them. I think all help, all charity, should be absolutely anonymous. Then the weak could develop pride, and the strong wouldn’t be humiliated by having to exert power they don’t want—if they’re decent people.”

“I simply don’t know what you’re talking about, Gertrude! All this talk of power!”

You can’t see, Mother, because you can’t take an objective view of Daddy and all the aunts and uncles, thought Gertrude, hopelessly.

As she sat under the trees now her sense of foreboding and distress increased. She knew the source of them clearly. Unlike her father, she had a stern sense of reality in personal and emotional matters and understood that though he derided mysticism he was thoroughly saturated with it. But Daddy is really an artist, with an artist’s temperament, she thought, in spite of his marvelous business instinct. I just see things levelly, and I don’t know whether or not that is so wonderful either. Grandma’s like me; that’s why we have so much in common. And all she’s gotten out of life is a philosophy of endurance, but for what purpose I don’t know. Life is surely something more than an endurance test; if it isn’t, then it’s a barren and fruitless thing. Yet Grandma doesn’t seem crushed, as Daddy does, Daddy who’s always looking for a meaning to things, even if he doesn’t know he’s looking.

And yet, and yet, she thought, if you stop looking for a mystical or religious meaning to life, then you live in a world of blacks and grays and whites, without color. You live in a world of despair and violence; a cold hell without values or escape or significance. I think Daddy has one foot in the world of meaning and one foot in hell. I wish I could help him as Robert does, Robert who cheerfully believes everything is very simple and kind and exciting.

“Aha,” said someone, and Gertrude started. “We sit and dream. About the graduation party Saturday night before we go off to get educated.”

“Oh, it’s you,” said Gertrude, coldly, looking up to see her cousin André. “Go away, child. I’m busy.”

André, with an indulgent and debonair wave of his hand, sat down beside her. She drew to the edge of the bench, then slipped forward, as if about to rise. André said, “You’re only a couple of months or so older than I am, and you’re terribly young—child. Chronologically a little older; mentally a lot my junior. You’re always worrying about people and trying to solve things about them in your own mind. I just accept them as amusing spectacles. They have a right to be idiotic if they want to, and it’s impudent of you to try to change them.”

Gertrude’s smooth olive face flushed, and André smiled at her approvingly. “You’re really a very handsome girl, Gertrude. Not pretty. Handsome. You’ll always be handsome, when only pretty girls have become dumpy and frowsy.”

Gertrude tried to retain her annoyance but she could not help smiling. She had no aversion for André, though she was sometimes afraid of his worldliness and what her father referred to as “spiritual depravity.” She disliked his detached objectivity; mankind was involved in itself and its own fate and its obscure reason for being. She did not believe that anyone was justified in standing apart, as at a theater, and watching the antics of others with pleasure and mercilessness and cynicism, as André and his mother did. Such an attitude implied inhumanity and heartlessness and a kind of outlook which was frightening. Yes, it was truly depraved.

She studied André with cold sternness, which hid her fear, not of him but of his kind of soul and philosophy. He had, at almost eighteen, grown to quite an impressive stature, leaving his little mother far behind and taking on the height of his father. But his look of “foreignness” had increased. His black eyes still had that peculiar shine of his childhood, the lids stained with “gypsy” brown; his features were delicate yet strong, and full of mature mischief. His movements, to Gertrude, were too quick, too alien in gesture and controlled vehemence. In spite of this, however, he was not emotional in the sense that Gertrude understood emotion. There was a knowingness about him, a disturbing sense of the absurd, and Gertrude found very few things absurd about the predicament of humanity. Her humor was the abstract kind; his was personal and without pity. Yet she enjoyed his company much of the time. He could frighten her, but he could sometimes give her inner vision clarity, and he could frequently inspire her and make her laugh.

She said, her hands still on the bench in the attitude of rising, “Why can’t you dress for the country the way everybody else does? Blazer or something? You always look as if you’re going to a funeral or about to attend a formal soirée.” But she thought, with charity, that he had something of Uncle David’s slim elegance about him, something of David’s impeccable air of poise and patrician surety. André was also ingratiating and had considerable charm. It’s the French in him, Gertrude thought. They’re calculating in even the smallest things. But then he’s been away in European schools ever since he was twelve, and it’s hard to think of him as an American with American ways. She tried to dislike him, very strongly, and never succeeded. Robert would sometimes say to her affectionately, “Oh, let him alone. He has as much a right to be what he is as you have, Sis. Besides, he isn’t complicated at all, though you think he is.” But then nothing was ever complicated for Robert.

“Why should I dress in the uniform of suburbia?” asked André. “I’m a gentleman, not a fake countryman, and I don’t play golf, stupid game, and I like wine better than bootleg whisky, and I prefer conversation to batting a tennis ball around, and I like music more than dirty stories which don’t have any subtlety. Why do Americans lack subtlety?”

“You’re an American yourself,” said Gertrude. “And you’re not even eighteen yet, and you’re giving yourself airs.”

“Have a cigarette,” said André, as an adult would offer a child a lollipop.

He opened a gold case, and Gertrude took a cigarette with reluctance. He lit it for her gracefully, and put one in his own mouth. He stared before him for a moment or two, the lighter in his hand, and Gertrude was uncomfortable again at the maturity of his profile and the unyouthful quirk of his lips. “I was never a child,” he said, as if speaking to himself humorously. “And, to a great extent, neither were you, Grandmother. That’s why I’m in love with you; of course we’ll get married in a few years, after you’ve completed that nursing course and I’m finished at the Sorbonne.”

Gertrude was mortified, as always, that she frequently and impulsively confided in André as she never confided in anyone else, not even her mother or Robert. She did not know why she gave André her deepest confidences, except that in some confused way she understood he would never betray her, in spite of his artfulness, his lack of conscience, and his perverted view of men and women, and his amused derision at the world.

She said with some heat, “Don’t be stupid. When I marry, if ever, it’ll be to someone as unlike you as possible—child. And someone a lot older. I don’t intend to be a nursemaid to a brat. Or to raise a husband for myself. Seventeen!”

“How you Americans use age as a yardstick,” said André, smiling now. “A man can have twice as much verve and zest for living at fifty than he had at twenty, but he’s old in the American opinion. He can be healthier, more alive, even gayer. But he’s old. And at twenty, a man can be dull and spiritless and sluggish and colorless, but he’s young, by God! The calendar is the measure of all things. Why, I know American girls in their teens who are actually middle-aged and lightless and without imagination and appetites, and about as sensual as a bowl of oatmeal, and just about as exhilarating. And I know European women, and some American ones, too, who are vivid and charming and diverting at forty, fifty, sixty. Even older.” He shook his head at Gertrude. “Oh, come on. You know better, even if you pretend not to. And I like the nursing idea. It’ll be helpful when we have our children, though of course we’ll have nursemaids for the little horrors.”

“On whose money?” asked Gertrude, trying for light contempt and adulthood.

André waved his hand, and a wisp of his cigarette smoke brightened in the sunlight. “Partly on yours, my dear. After all, as we French say, a girl must have a dot. And partly on mine; my father isn’t exactly poor.”

Gertrude’s face turned harsh and dark. “He hasn’t anything but what my father—my father!—gives him! And you—”

André gazed at her with a secret expression. He shrugged. He knew all about Ralph, his father, not that Ralph had ever confided in him. He had simply and cynically investigated his father two years ago, as he had investigated the others, too. It was his opinion that everyone could be a fruitful source of investigation; people always hid things, he had observed. What had been mere investigation, for the sole purpose of investigating, had become an adventure that had been most fruitful and enlightening. André could now name almost every bridge in America and in Europe which his father had designed and for which he had been richly paid. Any clever person, he had discovered, could acquire the knack of opening a drawer or locked bureau or desk, and could search without leaving evidence of the search behind.

“You forget I’m really a writer, unlike Uncle Greg,” he said now. “I expect to make a lot of money at it. I know what people like to read, and I can write well in three languages, and I understand men and women.”

“Oh, and so you, at seventeen, have found out how to write infallible best sellers?” said Gertrude, with hard ridicule.

“I wish you wouldn’t keep repeating that I’m seventeen,” said André, distastefully. “What a non sequitur. I’m not a child prodigy but I’m also not a child, either, and as I’ve said to you often, I never was. Yes, I think I know how to write best sellers. Dickens and Thackeray and London and Dreiser and Tolstoy and Sinclair Lewis—unlikely company though they are together—had the secret, even if they didn’t know they had it. It’s a matter of writing about the world as it is and people as they are. Reality, in other words, not some private notion of reality or the world as some writers think it ought to be. For instance, did you read that imbecile latest from the pen of Uncle Greg? Morning Before the Wind? All about a ‘sensitive’ child born in the slums. Uncle Greg never saw a slum in his life; I did; all over Europe and in New York and other American cities, too. And children are about as sensitive as concrete; murderous little realists, red in tooth and claw. How many copies did he sell? About five thousand, I think, in spite of the frantic radical critics trying their best to promote it.”

Gertrude was slightly appeased. She remembered her father’s irate comments on the book. She had also read it, and she had wondered where her uncle had gotten his odd ideas and where he had found such a child about whom he had written. Uncle Greg could write, but it was a sterile and twisted writing, with no base of actuality.

“Besides, he’s a Communist,” said André, casually. “And while it may be fashionable now, just at this very minute, to be a Communist, it won’t be for very long. Because Communism isn’t based on reality, but only the unreality of violent dreamers and madmen. And they have no contact with humanity as it is.”

“Uncle Greg a Communist!” cried Gertrude, aghast, thinking of her father. “I don’t believe it!”

“Oh, I don’t mean he goes around brandishing a card, or anything like that,” said André. “I only mean he’s taken on the fashionable gloss of it. Or the fashionable bloodstains, synthetic ones. Everything about him is synthetic, like his books. Synthetic emotions, synthetic ideas, second-hand thoughts, chewed-over ideology. He never had an original thought in his life, nor an inspiring or pungent one. That’s symptomatic of American Communists. Bloodless, pulseless fools, with hand-knitted ties, the latest hackneyed jargon, and swimming in dry Martinis made with synthetic gin. The only thing they have in common with the real Communists, the Russian ones, is an urge to violence and hatred, and even then it’s synthetic.”

Gertrude forgot that André was a child. She listened to him intensely, her gray eyes welling with distressed thoughts, just as the sunlight ebbed and flowed as the clouds crossed the bright sky. When André put one of his hands easily over hers, she was vaguely conscious of a strange deep thrill in her body, but only vaguely. She was too engrossed in what he was saying.

“I’m not an ardent anti-Communist,” André said. “I just prefer things as they are, and common sense and reality, and I hate people who delude themselves. I don’t bleed for the plight of the Russian people under Communism. People generally deserve their government, though that isn’t very original. It’s a fact, though. I hate Hitler just as I hate Stalin, not because they’re murderers but because their point of view isn’t based on facts and human verities and history.” He opened his case again. “Have a cigarette.”

“You smoke too much,” said Gertrude, abstractedly. For some reason there was a sense of relief in her. André’s realism touched her own, strongly.

“And now,” said André lightly, squeezing her fingers, “tell me what you were brooding about when I found you here.”

“I was thinking about my father,” said Gertrude, involuntarily.

André gave her a glance of sympathy, and he was suddenly grave. He smoked a moment without speaking, and Gertrude, watching him and seeing the thoughtful glint of his narrowed eyes, wondered how she had missed, before, the resemblance between the youth and her Uncle David. “Yes,” said André. “Poor Uncle Ed. I often wonder why he doesn’t kick all of us out, and then I don’t wonder.”

“What do you mean?” asked Gertrude, uneasily. André glanced at her again, and her color rose. So he was the only one who understood or wanted to understand. Tears smarted along her eyelids and she blinked and averted her head. For the first time she thought, If he weren’t so young!

“There isn’t one—and I’m including my father, too—who’s worth a cent of his money or one of his thoughts,” said André. “Except, perhaps, Uncle Dave. I’m not excluding myself, either, from the bloodsucking gang of us. There’s a lot I know, but I’m not a talebearer—Look at us! Uncles, aunts, children, and Grandma. But no one can rid Uncle Ed of us, except Uncle Ed—”

“I know,” said Gertrude in a low and faltering voice.

André took her hand again. “At least, dear,” he said kindly, “I won’t be a drag on him much longer, through my father. And you’ve forgotten something: I have two hundred thousand dollars in my own name, nicely gathering dividends from good sound investments, thanks to Mama. So we’ll have money, besides your dot.”

Gertrude tried to pull her hand away from his, but he laughed at her and held it more tightly. “You’re such a fool, just a precocious kid,” she said, and was angered at him, unreasonably, for his youth. A lump swelled in her throat and she wanted to cry. All at once he released her hand and stared at the distant glittering grass as if he had forgotten her.

I don’t know why I sit here and listen to his nonsense! thought Gertrude, wildly. I never liked him; he was a terrible child. He was a tease, and sly—we always fought.… He never liked me, no, he never liked me! He said I was stupid, and Robert, too. He’s only teasing me now, with his ridiculous talk of marrying me.

A bee, all iridescence and twinkling life, lighted on André’s hand. He lifted that hand slowly and gently, and said, “‘Fearfully and wonderfully made.’”

Gertrude was astonished at the tenderness in his voice, the sincere love and admiration, which were without his customary raillery and derision. She watched as André turned and twisted his head, the better to see the little creature which contentedly stroked its wings and stretched its minute legs as though it were sitting on a leaf and were utterly at ease.

“Look at it,” said André. “How innocent it is. How good it is. And how beautiful.”

The bee flickered its wings, lifted them, and blew away like a living jewel. André watched it go in bemusement.

“You mean,” said Gertrude, uncertainly, “that it isn’t like people, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course,” he said absently.

The lump was in Gertrude’s throat again. He turned to her and smiled. “You’re like that bee, dear. Even when you were a gawky and prickly little girl. Innocent and good, but not as people think of innocence and goodness. And you had a sting, too.”

He leaned toward her and kissed her mouth without touching her otherwise, and she sat there, shocked by her own confused passion of sweetness mingled with revolt. This was a man’s kiss, not the awkward kiss of a boy. She could see the closeness of his eyes now, wide and shining and unfathomable, and her heart jumped. The thick black lashes were so near her own that they almost touched.

Then she was pushing him from her violently, and in that same movement she rose from the bench and ran away. He watched her go, laughing a little to himself. Her black, rather long hair, as straight as an Indian’s but glimmering, floated behind her, drifted over her wide shoulders, touched her thin broad back which was covered with the light gray silk of her dress. She ran as swiftly and as compactly as a boy, not throwing out her legs in a womanish way, and her waist was strongly slender. “Dear child,” said André, aloud, and he spoke in the voice he had used to the bee.

Gertrude rushed into the house, high color staining her dark cheeks, her gray eyes wide and dilated. Compared with the brightness outside, the interior was cold and dim, like a prison, and Gertrude halted.

It was all spoiled; it was all ruined. The wild sweetness was gone, and the breathless fear, and the queer, surging delight, and the revulsion, which was itself a delight. Gertrude felt flat and drained and lonely. Why had she wanted to think and to be alone? A boy of seventeen had kissed her; her own cousin, the wicked André, had kissed her, she who had been kissed by young men at dances! He had only been mocking her, this schoolboy home from Paris for the summer. That child! She wanted to cry in her humiliation and her loss and pain.

Upstairs, everything was still and untenanted. It was evident that no one was at home except Maria, sitting quietly in her room and endlessly knitting. On an impulse, Gertrude went to her grandmother’s door and knocked, then entered. Yes, there sat Maria in the widow’s black she wore summer and winter, majestic as always, her hair a thick drift of snow around the old face. But the eyes were wise, remote and patient. She smiled at Gertrude with no question in the smile, for Maria no longer questioned anything, though she understood at once that her favorite grandchild was in some trouble. Maria knew many things, though she did not often descend from her room these days, as her heart was laboring and burdened with her mighty flesh. She continued to knit now, rocking slowly in her chair near the window. In all these years she had refused to let her suite be redecorated; the once-bright chintz had faded, the once-burnished rug had dimmed.

Gertrude closed the door behind her, then leaned against it, looking at her grandmother silently. And Maria waited, her needles clicking. Gertrude knew that it was a sweater for her, a lustrous white sweater to be used at college. For some reason she was touched at the thought, and she thought how terrible it must be to be old and to have nothing left in life but one’s thoughts and a busyness of the hands. She was suddenly rebellious. There must be something more to life than this, this meaninglessness, this inevitable dull end. And she was frightened.

“I—I do wish you wouldn’t work so hard. For me,” said Gertrude, still pressed against the door as if repelling something that threatened her. “It’s so nice outside. Grandma, you should be sitting on the terrace.”

Maria knitted, counted a few stitches, and a small smile hovered over the pouches around her lips. “Is that what you came to tell me, my child?” she asked.

But I never really tell anyone anything, not even Mother, not even Robert, or Daddy, thought Gertrude. Just André. And her eyes smarted again, and she was again bereft and angry. She said, “I didn’t want to tell you anything, really, Grandma.”

“No?” said Maria. But everyone had something to tell, if nothing to say. She glanced up at Gertrude, and saw the girl’s dark pallor, the gray suffering of her eyes, the stern young lips that quivered at the corners. It was certainly something of importance; at that age, it was certainly love or infatuation or the pure misery of discovering that the world was neither happy nor peaceful, neither safe nor sure. Maria said, “You are so like your father, Liebchen.”

Gertrude stood against the door, the whiteness of which outlined her feminine strength and slenderness and height, the width of her shoulders, the young leanness of her body. Her black hair was an almost Egyptian fall about her broad cheekbones, her stern forehead, vulnerable temples.

“Yes, so like him,” said Maria, in a strange and weary voice. She said in German, “There is a fatefulness about life, an inevitability. One is fixed in a mold even before birth. But circumstance can modify that mold or the mercy of God. I pray that it will be so for you, little one.”

“No one will ever hurt me,” said Gertrude, and her voice shook. “I’m not like Daddy in that, Grandma. I won’t let myself be hurt.”

Maria sighed. “And who has hurt you, Gertrude? Today, perhaps?”

Gertrude caught her lower lip between her teeth. Grandma saw too much; that was the penalty, or the reward, for becoming old, a terrible and barren penalty, or reward. It was coin which bought nothing; it was coin given for memory.

“You do not want to tell me?” asked Maria, and counted another row of stitches.

“There’s nothing to tell,” said Gertrude, coldly.

“Ah,” said Maria, and let her knitting drop. She fixed her eyes penetratingly on Gertrude. “You are very like your father. If he had a personal crest, it would not be inscribed, ‘Mollissima fandi tempora.’ It would also not be your crest, my child. He never found a favorable time for speaking.”

“No one ever listened to him except Mother!” Gertrude burst out furiously.

Maria shook her head but did not speak. Gertrude opened the door. She looked at her grandmother, but Maria seemed intent on her knitting again. “I’m sorry I bothered you,” said Gertrude, formally.

She went out and closed the door with firmness, though her eyes were filled with wretched tears. “The most favorable time for speaking!” But she never really spoke with all her heart to anyone except André, whom she hated! Life was no longer sane and clear to her. He had ruined it all.

“Boyo, you’re unrealistic, to use the ruddy new jargon,” said William earnestly. “The bleeding heart and the quivering soul are all very well—when a chap can afford it, though some of the rainbow-eyes in Washington just now say that some of us must jolly well afford it whether we can or not. But you’re paying your hundreds of lads and lassies in the shops everywhere what you paid them in the late twenties. Rot. Food’s down; every blinking thing is down, rents, clothes, boots. It’s like giving them, you are, a forty per cent raise in the wages. A dollar’s worth more than one hundred cents, this day; it was worth fifty-two cents before the crash. It buys more than twice as much. So down must go the wages, or out we go ourselves.

“Now listen to me. Sure, and men must eat and food must be bought, either on the dole or wages. But the lass with the market basket is buying less, and she’s buying inferior, and staples. Not two chickens in the pot every day; a chicken once a month. Not tinned, wined peaches from Argentina but potatoes. Not a rib roast but minced meat. Not Norwegian sardines in olive oil but tinned salmon. Prohibition knocked our wine cellars into lumber and wee stones; that was a blow. We survived it. We closed two of the Chauncey shops only last week. The clerks in the cutaways stand idle and polish their fingernails. The lads and lassies in the Green and White Stores yawn over the canned soup and the flour bins. But each and every week they carry home their quid, and it’s merry they are. At your expense. And our outlets have cut down on our stock, and some have eliminated it entirely.

“I’m not a man to call another a fool. But the wages must come down to the national base; at least a third of the employees must go. Or we go into bankruptcy and thank the saints there’s no debtors’ prisons any longer.”

Edward, in his office, answered him with rage, “And if we let a third go, what’ll they do in this depression?”

William shrugged. “I swear, and you should be in Washington, helping the President with his dreamer lads! And did I not tell you, laddie, they are swarming there, with their little hands red with revolution and their little black hearts full of Communism? And their little evil souls full of hate? No matter. We’ll face them in the future, and may the good God give us ropes and guns in time.

“And what’ll our employees do when we give them the sack? You’ve got a plan that gives them two months’ pay; they’ve tucked away the cash well in all these years, not having to fork out for the doctor chaps and hospital and insurance, which was at your expense. Out of your own pocket. The thrifty souls have the quid in the banks; let them live on it or find another job. Not easy. But by all that’s holy, what is? And are you the anointed who must roil yourself into a stroke over them? Did they bleed for you, in their blasted strikes, when you were paying them far above what their brothers and sisters were getting in other shops? They did not. You’re not an Atlas,” and William bent his shoulders ruggedly, panted, and lifted shaking arms over his head. “You’re only a man, though a bit of an ass, and I don’t apologize, and is it the world you’ll be saving, boyo?”

He pointed at Edward. “Look at you! Old before your time, white hair and you only forty-four. Lines in your face like erosions. Why, damn it, you can’t even drink to keep yourself from going mad! Look at your blinking color; lead with a gray shine on it. Did you bring on this depression? Did you drag America into that accursed war in chains? Did you smash Europe from end to end? No. But you would wear the hair shirt, or give it away to a chap who wore silk shirts when you wore cotton shirts, and you the master.

“A mortgage on the house, and the poor wife with the white face and the loving heart, signing away with you what you worked for. What is that bloody phrase of yours? All the days of your life. I’ve said enough. America blew a big wind into Europe; now the whirlwind’s on her. Listened to the liars and the murderers, that she did. Jumped in with both big feet. If she hadn’t done that, England and Germany would have signed a cozy negotiated peace, and little bits of real estate would have changed hands, and there’d have been a drop or two between friends, and back to work racing each other for profits, and everything forgotten, and love and kisses. But America must be the referee, only a referee with boxing gloves loaded with nuggets of iron, and slugging away at the enemy that’d been chosen for her back in 1905. And knocking friends out, too, in the wild way. Now the beggars are on their backs, thanks to America, and America’s plopped down beside them. It’ll not please you, lad with the shattered face, but your country’s been a blunderbuss to the world, and it’s not the end that’s in sight yet. If she’d kept her bally nose out of Europe, listening to George Washington instead of her bleeding Socialist traitors, there’d be no Hitler and Stalin now, and God knows where they’ll lead us to. War, no doubt. It’s making a grimace you are. But I’ve warned you.”

His small stature had diminished even more. His foxlike face was still alert and vigorous, the hazel eyes still brilliant and quick, but his sandy hair had blanched and his freckles stood out on parched skin like old paper. “I’m not a frolicsome lad any longer; I’m approaching sixty. Am I to stand by and see you die of your folly? Like an undertaker waiting for the corpse, and it’s a corpse you’ll be before long, I’m thinking.”

“I’ve paid back most of the one hundred thousand dollars you lent me, damn you,” said Edward, savagely, but the old power of his voice had weakened.

“And am I asking for the rest of the twenty thousand? I am not. I took no interest. I wanted to give you the blasted money. ‘Take it,’ I said, ‘and forget you ever took it.’ It’s there for you still. Pay off your mortgage with it; count it as a gift.

“And now that we’re at it, boot your family out of your house, all the leeches battening on you. Ah, no, and you’d not be doing that, like a sensible man instead of a Hamlet. That would lower your self-esteem; it’s a castle you have, and serfs—fat serfs who live better than the joyless baron.”

Edward’s ghastly face swelled with turgid color. “I’m not asking your advice,” he said, and he struck the desk with the flat of his hand.

William sighed. “No, but I’ve given it. The advice of a friend. I’ll not be leaving until you tell me you’re to be sensible. And if it’s not sensible, I’ll be leaving you forever. That’s my ultimatum. Wait a bit. Do you know of who you remind me? President Roosevelt, desperately looking for panaceas, trying every ruddy thing to get the country out of the depression. Trying to shield a nation from its crimes. But there’s retribution. You can be certain of that. A fine braw country once, a country of Washington and Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, a country with muscle and sinew and common sense and a hard head. But a country that fell into the hands of the murderers like a plum that was itching to be peeled and eaten. Better a nation that is wicked, and prudent, than a nation that is good and a bloody damn fool. There’s more men in hell led there by their own excellent intentions than by sin.”

Edward’s face became obdurate and settled into grim gray lines. “The President will find a way,” he said. “He’s not a Communist; he isn’t even a liberal. That’s what the Daily Worker says.”

“And who says he is a Communist, or a liberal, or a rainbow-brow? But what can he do? Who brought the murderers in droves to Washington? Was it he? But they’d gotten the signal; now is the time. The country’s up to her groin in misery and despair; it was planned that way, long years ago. They’d gotten the signal from Moscow. And it’ll kill the poor chap, mark my words. It’ll take the heart out of him. A few months in office and he’s aged twenty years. It’s too much for him; he hasn’t found that out yet. But he will! And he’ll die of it. Like a man dies when his house swarms with cobras,” and William made a sinuous motion with his arms and opened his mouth as if to strike.

He stood up. He leaned his hands and arms, stiff and straight on Edward’s desk. “And will you be taking my advice or seeing the last dust of me?”

Edward tried to smile, and the attempt was agonizing. “Where will you go?”

“I’ll be off to a small cozy island somewhere, with my cash, and I’ll buy palm trees and live on the fat of the land, with only the sea to watch and the lassies dancing, and a thatched roof over my head. Mark my words. There’ll be thousands like me, wishing they’d done it, in the years to come.”

“You can’t withdraw from the world—don’t be an idiot.”

“That I can. A man’s a right to a little peace in his old age, and there’s still enough life in me to cavort and eat the breadfruit that falls into my hand. Do I want to live in a world that’s spewed up a Hitler and a Stalin—with the fine braw help of America—when I can pull up my braces and run for it? I do not. Only one thing will keep me: you being sensible.”

Edward lighted a cigarette; his hand trembled violently.

William said, “And there’s another thing, though I’m not a man that asks for gratitude. The traitor laddies were out for your blood, with your Committee, and your German name, and your support of the newspapers against war—though what else could you have done and been a man and an American? It should be a consolation to you that you fought for your country in your own way. And it was only the mercy of God that kept you alive. Look what they did to poor Hans Bohn and others like him. Broke his office windows; called out his men, who left him with the sound of trumpets. Shut up his papers; crashed him down with boycotts. And he died of it, and others died of it with him. But you had better friends. You had Georgie Enreich; you had me; you had a dozen others. We kept the wolves from your throat.”

Edward stared at him blankly. The cigarette dropped limply from his fingers. William nodded dolorously. “Did you lose money? Were you hung in effigy? No. Was that a miracle? Only the miracle of having friends.”

“George Enreich?” Edward’s voice was hoarse and muffled; he coughed to get his breath.

“Sure, and it’s a Little Boy Blue you are. It cost him half a million dollars to drag you out of the teeth of the dragons. But a dragon likes cash. All the buggers like cash. They’d even become solid citizens, if they got their price, and would forget about the brave new world of Communism and Russia. Excepting the rich laddies rolling in it, who want power. You’ll not be telling Georgie. It’s his secret, among others.”

Edward leaned back in his chair. He clasped his hands tightly together on his desk, and he looked old and sick and broken. William looked at him compassionately. “Buck up,” he said. “Issue the orders. One third of the yawners out of the shops, poor devils. Give me your word.”

“All right,” said Edward, and he coughed again, rackingly, and the old familiar anguish squeezed his heart.

William put his hand on Edward’s shoulder, strongly. “And you’ll boot out the parasites in your house?”

“No,” said Edward. “It’s their home as well as mine. I built it for them. I’ll—manage to keep up the Clinic; it’s needed now more than ever, with decent people unable to pay regular medical fees. I can’t throw my family out. What would they do?”

George Enreich, sitting in his gray-green and gloomy garden with his two canes beside him, watched Edward crossing the dank and mossy grass toward him. They had seen each other, and only casually, once or twice during the past years, and then at the homes of mutual friends. George thought now, as he sat almost immobilized in the painful cage of his arthritic prison, My Eddie is a sick, old, and tormented man, and no man can deliver him except God—in Whom I do not believe, naturally—and himself.

Edward was near him now, and he laboriously held out his swollen left hand, which was the least affected, and said, “My Eddie, I am glad you are visiting me. I have been waiting a long time.” Edward was shocked, in spite of his fixed smile, at the change in his old friend. George had shrunken; his once-red hair was white and thin, though still bristling; his bulk had melted under the onslaught of his devouring disease. Only his greenish eyes, strenuous and alert, remained in their original power and strength.

Edward said, and was surprised and almost stunned at his own words, “But I’ve never been away.” He sat down near George on a rattan chair. He could smell the damp mustiness of the crowding trees and shrubs, the junglelike effluvia of too much vegetation. Not even insects clamored here; birds made no passage through the darkened air; there was no fragrance of flowers or lightness of blossoms. The intensely blue sky shone in fragments through branches of enveloping trees, like light seen at the bottom of a huge green cave.

The two old friends had nothing to say to each other, few questions to ask. Everything was known to them, or too little, or too much. George said, and his voice was dulled by long pain, and as if they had met only yesterday, “You will have a drink with me.” His butler came across the green and pallid shadows of the garden with a tray and prepared the whisky and soda. “It is forbidden me,” said George. “And also my cigars. The doctors would take from me the last consolations I have, and what is life without consolations?”

They drank together in silence, not peering inquisitively at each other but each thinking his own wretched or depressed thoughts. In this way they communicated, asking and answering questions. Do you remember when I was young and had hope? Edward asked George in his mind. And do you see now, what it has come to? But I was young once and had hope, too, George replied silently. And this is the end to which we are all destined. Unless—and I do not know what it is that makes the end less terrible, but surely there is an answer. In which, of course, I do not believe.

Their eyes met in a quick encounter of mutual commiseration. Edward said, “It’s a hot day, but it’s very cool here. Do you think the dampness is good for you?”

“Nothing is good for me any longer,” said George, and smiled. “But should I complain? I have had an interesting life, my Eddie. I have money and I have power, and these I have had for a long time. I have eaten and drunk and made love, and there is not a pleasure I have not sampled. There is no spot on earth which I have not visited. I have worn the best and I have seen the best. Where there has been the most glorious music, there I have been. Where there has been the highest laughter, there I have been. There is no luxury that I have not known. And yet it comes to this, in this chair, as if I had known nothing and experienced nothing. And do not tell me that memories are consolations. They are not. They are destroyers.”

He put a cigar in his mouth, and Edward stood up and lit it for him. The younger man did not immediately sit down again. He stood near his old friend and regarded him with sorrowful sympathy. George smoked, however, in long, serene enjoyment, looking across the garden. He said, “I have seen the photographs in the newspapers of your daughter’s debut. I regret that I could not be present.” He puffed again as Edward remained near him. “It is a maiden like her father, with a proud and resolute face. It is a woman, rather than a maiden.”

Edward’s worn face brightened with pleasure. “Gertrude isn’t my favorite child, but I love her very much. Everybody says she’s very much like me, not only in looks but in character. I hope not! I’ve messed up my life a lot—”

“And who has not?” asked George, as if in surprise at Edward’s words. “And shall your children escape?”

Edward’s sick heart skipped a beat in anxiety. “I’m doing my best. You’ve seen my son, Robert. He has a sunny disposition; nothing bothers him; he accepts everything and likes everything.”

George nodded slowly. And so, he thought, the boy will go through all his life and see nothing. Is that good or evil? Would I have preferred to live in a blind brightness or to have seen? I am sorry for that boy. He said, “But Gertrude is not like that. And so she will suffer much. She will also know more.”

Edward again felt that sharp skip of anxiety. “Is it necessary to suffer to know? Robert’s no fool; he isn’t a smiling idiot. He accepts life.”

And so does a tree or a bird, thought George. But that does not make them men. Acceptance is a passive thing. To struggle is to be vital. Never to accept without a question; never to conform; never to adjust when adjustment would smother. A man is a man, and acceptance is the death of a man.

Edward sat down again. And again there was a long silence between the two, a long exchange. Finally, in a far voice, without an accent; as if speaking only to himself, Edward said, “What have I accomplished? What is the meaning of my life?”

George looked at him quickly and with vividness. So, he thought.

“What is the meaning of anyone’s life?” he asked. “When I was a child, the priest in Prussia told me. I cannot remember. Or it was a foolish telling, which I rejected.”

“There should be a meaning,” said Edward. And suddenly the old black terror was on him again, a terror without a name. There were memories hovering like clouds on the antipodes of his soul, but he could not see them. His throat tightened and his chest constricted, and he moved in his chair as if preparing for flight. “If I could just remember—something,” he said almost inaudibly.

“Man will never find any meaning in himself,” said George. He closed his eyes in weariness. “But where else he will find it I do not know, though once I seemed to know. Does a tree or a flower or a dog ask for a meaning to its life? I am not certain that it does not. We are too anthropocentric. But let us talk of less weighty things. How is our friend, Billy Russell, with the bands and the cavorting?”

Edward frowned. “It’s a funny thing. Even right after the beginning of the depression his bands and he himself were always in constant demand. He never had to worry about engagements. He was the most popular band leader in the country. And then he attended the Republican convention in 1932 and spoke for Mr. Hoover. Since then, and it’s probably only a coincidence, his engagements get suddenly canceled or he doesn’t get them at all.”

“It is not a coincidence,” said George, slowly and emphatically.

“But this is America! A man’s political beliefs are his own private affair.”

“Naturally, until the Communists came to power in Washington,” George said. “You will see, my Eddie. You have had no trouble yourself?”

Edward frowned more darkly. “Yes. But probably only a coincidence, too. The Bureau of Internal Revenue is suddenly and almost exclusively interested in my business. They hound my offices in New York for weeks at a time and send out assessments which are frivolous. We always beat them, but it stops work, and my lawyers are busy, expensively busy. Good God, George! I’m a Democrat myself; I support the Democratic party. I supported Roosevelt—”

“It is not a matter of politics, Eddie. Your work to preserve America and her Constitution has not escaped the notice of our enemies. The evil days are on us, and when I contemplate them, I am glad that I am old and have only a little longer to live.”

“Roosevelt sneers at Communists,” said Edward distractedly. “He says that liberals are men whose feet are firmly planted in the air. The Communists attack him—”

“But he will not be able to prevail over them,” said George, sadly. “No single man can, not even the President of the United States. The wheel has turned, and the despotism of sinister men has made a full turn and is upon us. Do you think that Hitler and Stalin are in opposing camps? No, they serve but one master.”

“I believe in the American people,” protested Edward.

George laughed faintly. “I believe in nothing. When the masters call the tune, the American people will dance to it, in revolution and blood, or in war and blood. The Pied Piper of Hamlin never played a more seductive tune leading to oblivion and death.”

“We can play another tune—”

“Ah, but it will not be so attractive. It will not promise hatred and revenge and war and the satisfaction of greed, and power, and murder. Do you think men are civilized? No, it was only yesterday when they descended from the trees. The way to civilization is long and bloody and full of pain, and the journey has just begun.”

The fragments of shining sky above the topmost trees was suddenly darkened by a passing cloud, and the garden plunged into ghostly dimness. Edward stood up. “I’m going to hope for the best, and still work for it,” he said, glancing at his watch. George smiled again and said nothing. Edward looked at him, and their eyes held.

“I’ll come again. Soon,” he said, and took George’s hand.

George watched him go, then closed his eyes. He said in himself, I do not believe in You, naturally. But You are everywhere, and there is nothing that escapes You. And so I must ask You now: Give my young friend peace, even if he must die to attain it. Deliver him from evil.

At sunset, the warm June day suddenly darkened, the west swam in dulled gold, and shadow-based clouds strode into the sky. All at once thin veins of brilliant fire divided the heavens and the sound of thunder rolled over the earth. Edward Enger barely reached the great doors of his mansion when the storm crashed about him. There was an oppressive pressure in the air, and his laboring heart was further constricted. He passed through the hall, which seemed hollow and empty to him, and went upstairs to his suite. Margaret had shut the windows; the house was pervaded with heat and dimness; the rain rushed against the glass and glared as lightning struck it.

When Edward entered, Margaret got up and went to him and kissed him, after her usual long and searching look of anxiety and appraisal. She said, in the careful voice of a worrying wife, “How are you, darling?”

And in the voice of a husband automatically answering the question of love, he replied, “Well enough. What’ve you been doing with yourself?”

“I was at the Clinic,” she said. “I came home about an hour ago.”

They stood and looked at each other, and Margaret thought with pain, When did we start to move apart? We love each other with all our power. Yet it was the children who finally stood between us, the children who will not let their father direct their lives as he directed the lives of his brothers and sister. I’m glad I was able to help them stand against him, for his own dear sake, more than for theirs! But still there is that reserve between us, which he erected.

“I have your drink ready,” said Margaret, moving away to a table. Her figure was still tall and slight and girlish, her face hardly touched by her forty years, her hair only a little less bright. Her eyes were always anxious, but the blueness, as always, seemed to fill the entire socket with intense color. Edward sat down and waited. Oh, surely it’s only my imagination that he seems more tired than usual, and grayer! thought Margaret, and the thought was a desperate prayer. Dear God, don’t let him mind so much about the mortgage and dwindling business and all the other material things! Let him remember that love is more important than anything else, and cannot be bought and isn’t based on materialism, and is the very breath of life.

She gave Edward a very large drink of whisky, for this his physician had ordered. “Too much,” said Edward, but he put the glass to his lips and drank. Surely it was her imagination that the purplish color of his mouth was deeper today. “Why do you stand in front of me like that, with your hands clasped together as if you had a spasm or something?” asked Edward, with mingled affection and annoyance.

“You never tell me anything any more, dear,” she said in a low voice.

He shrugged. “What is there to tell? Business is getting worse. My debts are bigger. I’m struggling along.” He stared at the windows, which alternately flared and dimmed in the lightning. He’s thinking about that damned mortgage again! thought Margaret, despairingly. She pulled a chair close to him and said, “Please listen to me. Ed, you’re all my life. There’s nothing else. The children are nice children, but I’d give them up in an instant to save you. You’ve said I don’t sound like a mother. Ed, I was a wife before I was a mother, and I’m still a wife, first, last, and always. Children start to leave you the minute they’ve finished preparatory school; when they go off to college, they never come home again except for visits. They’re on their way to their own lives, and they’re only visitors after that.”

“So you’ve told me a hundred times.” said Edward, and frowned at her. “But this is their home. Even when they marry, this’ll be their home.”

Margaret looked at her hands. “Dear, I know you have terrible worries. I don’t want to add to them. When Gertrude and Robert marry, it’s very likely they won’t live in Waterford. They may marry people from distant cities. You can’t keep them forever. You can’t keep anyone forever!”

“What’re you talking about?” asked Edward, roughly. “Of course nobody can keep anybody! Who said he could?” She looked up with some sharpness and saw a sudden feverish terror in his eyes. I see, she thought sadly. You’ve always been afraid, my darling, but sometimes fear can save as well as destroy.

“All I ask of my children is that they fulfil themselves,” Edward went on in an accusing voice, as if Margaret were the enemy of his children or desired to frustrate them out of stupid selfishness. “And be happy.”

“Happy?” said Margaret, outraged at such puerility. “Are you serious? How can you guarantee happiness for anyone, Ed? You speak as if happiness were a commodity that can be dispensed by someone else and not come from yourself alone, with the help of God. You can’t give anyone happiness! You can’t legislate it; you can’t will it for yourself or anyone. You’ve always loved Dr. Samuel Johnson; you read and quote him by the hour. Don’t you remember what he said? ‘Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured—and little to be enjoyed.’ Yet you talk of making the children ‘happy,’ as if it is in your power to make them so!”

“Are you going to be hysterical—again?” asked Edward, with some cruelty—for whenever Margaret talked with him about the children now, her voice, to him, appeared to become too loud and raucous, too vehement, though in reality it was always quiet if often indignant these days. “You can’t talk calmly any more Margaret. We can’t discuss the children rationally. You fly up, as if I’m threatening them—”

Margaret lost her temper. “And so you are, in a way! Why do you expect so much of everybody, as much as you expect from yourself? Sometimes, when I’m not emotional about you, I think of your whole family, and sometimes I feel a vague pity for them, while I despise them. You hold on to everyone! Ed, you’re not going to hold on to the children as you’ve held on to your brothers and sister. Your grasp on the children may be love, but your grasp on the others—my God, Ed, it’s probably hate!”

He looked at her with intense and vengeful silence, and she thought despairingly, Do you think for a moment, my darling, that I care about anyone but you? In fighting to set the children free, I am trying to set you free. Force your family to be free—so you will be free of them.

“Yes,” said Edward, in a low and bitter voice, “you’re hysterical. There isn’t a sensible thought in what you’ve just said. I have a sense of responsibility. You haven’t.”

“Responsibility for your brothers and sister—now?” demanded Margaret, with a sense of growing sickness at the futility of this argument, which had been going on for the past few years intermittently. “In these days? Are they children? They’re men and women—”

But when, she asked herself, does a man so involved in others possess reason or understanding? Edward’s face became violent, and duskiness spread over it. She tried to reach him again, though hopelessly.

“Haven’t you any responsibility for me?” she cried. “Don’t you think how I know how deep in debt you are and how too hard you work? Don’t you think you owe me some peace of mind? Why can’t your brothers and sister get out and stay out, Greg and that Margo of his, here at least five or six months a year, and André, and Sylvia, and Ralph and Violette who ‘visit’ for months, and Dave who comes ‘between engagements,’ as he calls them, while staying for weeks and weeks—They have money. You’ve given them fortunes over the years, and are still giving them more than you can afford—they never spend anything; you pay for Greg’s apartment in New York, and there’s Sylvia, who must have a big bank account, and Ralph who does sell pictures and who never lets go a cent you give him—” Tears dashed down her cheeks, and she sobbed.

“You’ve always hated my family, haven’t you?” said Edward, with slow ruthlessness. “Perhaps you’d like me to throw my mother out, too. And close the doors in Ralph’s, Violette’s, and David’s faces when they come home—to their home. Perhaps you’d like our children to stay in a hotel when they’ll be on their vacations from college?” He stood up and slammed his glass on the table. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re remembering that you lent me your ninety thousand dollars two years ago. You want me to economize, so you can get it back. Well, don’t worry about it. I’ll get it for you within a month. Just give me a little time.”

Margaret gazed at him blankly, utterly appalled. Her heart squeezed in her breast. She faltered, “How can you talk like that? I didn’t ‘lend’ you that money. A man doesn’t have his own money, or a woman hers, not when they’re married. It’s all one thing; what belongs to one belongs to the other. The money I had was yours; I never gave it another thought. And you know it!”

He was ashamed, and angered at her because of his shame. “I’ll still get it for you,” he said, sullenly. Then he shook his finger almost in her face. “I’ve told you a thousand times. I built this house for my family; this is theirs as well as mine. I have a provision in my will, leaving the house to you on condition that my family have the use of it as long as they want to, and putting aside, in their names, the allowances I’ve always given them. But just the allowances. You’d like me to stop them, wouldn’t you, after I’m dead? It isn’t enough for you that I’ve left you the bulk of my estate and insurance in trust for you. You’d like everything.”

Margaret’s face became absolutely white. “I never asked you about your will. I never talked, it over with you. How dare you speak to me like that! I’ve always prayed that I’d die before you, Ed. I don’t want to live without you and I don’t think I will! And I don’t want this house, even if I decide to live, if your family is to live in it. I wouldn’t dream of living here with them.” She uttered a great dry sob of terror at the thought of Edward dying, and pressed her hands to her breast. A blaze of lightning struck her face and he could see the agony on it, the wideness of her eyes. “Leave it to them! I don’t want it, I never wanted it.”

Edward felt a passionate urge to take her in his arms and to hold her tightly, and to hide her agonized face and eyes against his shoulder. He wanted to say, “Forgive me. I’ve been hurting you because I’m so damned beset and afraid and worried. Everything I’ve said to you has been cruel and vicious and unpardonable, my darling, my wife. Forgive me. Because I don’t know, God help me, what to do!”

Margaret saw his change of expression, and held her breath and even began to smile piteously. And then Gertrude came in. Later, Margaret would think, Children always intrude; at the most supreme moments between a man and his wife they always intrude and ruin and destroy and change things beyond repair and beyond hope.

“Oh, go away, Gertrude!” Margaret almost screamed at her daughter in her anguish and frustration. “Your father and I are having a talk—”

But the moment of reconciliation and passionate coming together had gone. As Gertrude hovered uncertainly on the threshold, her whole sensitive nature understanding, Edward said, “Why should she go away, Margaret? She wants to tell us something. Come in, sweetheart.”

But Gertrude said, “It doesn’t matter. I’m awfully sorry. I should have knocked, Daddy. What I came to say can wait.” She glanced at her mother’s stiffly white and tear-stained face, and she wanted to beg for forgiveness. She had seen her father slowly begin to raise his arms, and she hated herself. “I—I’m not important,” she said to her mother imploringly.

“You’re not important?” exclaimed Edward, angrily, giving his wife a look of affront. “Who told you that?” he added accusingly, still looking at Margaret.

“Please,” murmured Gertrude, and prepared to retreat. But Edward was on her; he seized her shoulders in his big hands and pulled her into the room. Margaret sat down abruptly. She had almost hated her daughter, who was her darling, and she was sick at the thought, and most terribly sick at what her daughter had destroyed.

Edward, smiling fondly, pushed the resisting Gertrude into a chair. He sat down beside her and took her hand. “All right, sweetheart,” he said. “Tell me. Have you run over your allowance again?”

Gertrude sat up straight, and her pale gray eyes, so like her father’s, fixed themselves on him. “Daddy, do you think all I ever want is money? Don’t you ever think,” and her voice broke, “that I might love you sometime? And I’m not the one who runs over allowances. That’s Robert.”

Edward’s face tightened a little. “You’re always criticizing your brother, sweetheart. Boys usually spend more than girls; besides, he has to take his girls out, and that costs money. Did you come here to complain about your brother?”

This was so absurd to Gertrude, who never complained about anything, that she smiled in a tired way. Well, there was no help for it now; she had ruined something between her parents, so she had best go on with it. She waited until a particularly splintering crash of thunder had rumbled away before speaking, and then she said, “It really wasn’t important, honestly. I’ve just been thinking, Daddy. I don’t want to go to Wellesley, after all. I want to take up a nursing career; I’ve wanted that for years.”

Edward dropped her hand, almost in a gesture of throwing it away. “What’re you talking about? What’s this nonsense? Of course you’re going to Wellesley. What about your writing?”

He stared at her incredulously. “What did you say? Nursing?”

Gertrude looked at her mother, who had lifted her head, and who was regarding her with a strangely strong smile of encouragement. The girl was grateful, and so moved that she could not speak for a moment. Then her voice was steady. “Daddy, I’m not really a writer. Dozens of girls in my classes could write, too, and a few of them better than I. I haven’t taken the thought of writing seriously for years. But I’ve known what I really wanted. I want a nursing course; that’s all I can think of. I can get a bachelor-of-science degree in it; it’s a marvelous profession. Then I’ll go on to specialize in laboratory work; I want to be a technician.” She paused while Edward stared at her with complete disbelief. “I want to work in your Clinic.”

Edward jumped up and stood over her as if he would strike her. “Why, you damned young fool,” he said slowly. “With all your talent! With that gift of yours! Nursing! You’re out of your mind. It’s degrading even to speak of it. A drudge—my daughter!”

“Daddy.” Gertrude’s voice was still steadfast, and her eyes glowed. “Nursing’s a profession. Things have changed. You have to pay to learn to be a nurse these days. And only the best-qualified girls are admitted for study. If I have any gift at all, it’s a scientific gift. I’m not going to fritter away my life, like Uncle Gregory, pretending to be a writer when I’m not.”

“Shut up!” Edward shouted, knotting his fists. “Your uncle is a famous writer now, even if the illiterate public doesn’t realize it and even if I don’t approve of his subject matter! He’s made a name for himself; he’ll make a bigger name. And he didn’t have as much talent to begin with as you have! Why, you stupid little wretch! I never heard such arrogance, such imbecility! Did you know he just sold his last book to Hollywood for fifty thousand dollars?”

Gertrude stood up and faced him. “Daddy, I don’t know what’s the matter with you. Not entirely.” She flung up her head with a proud and fearless gesture. “I don’t know, and perhaps you don’t know, either, but it’s killing you. Daddy,” she went on, and the lightning seemed to encompass her, “I know what I want and I’m willing to sacrifice for it. I’m not going to Wellesley. I’m not going to waste all the days of my life. If you won’t help me—and it wouldn’t cost much, not near as much as Wellesley, I’ll manage someway, myself—”

It was that phrase, “All the days of my life,” which shattered and maddened Edward more than anything else. Such a chaos and a roaring opened up in him that he was not aware that he had slapped Gertrude full in the face and with all his strength, until he saw her stagger backward, catch at a chair, and then fall sideways on the floor. He stared at her, astounded, his hand still in the air. She lay there, sobbing, her black hair tumbled over her face and shoulders, and it seemed like an awful dream to him.

“Ed!” cried Margaret, running to him and seizing his arm. “Ed, what have you done?”

He thrust her from him violently, desperately ill with his crushed amazement and the horror of his blow, for he had never struck either of his children before. A huge nausea swelled up in him. “It’s your fault!” he shouted at his wife. “It’s all your fault! You’ve done this behind my back, treacherously! I’ll—I’ll—” He actually lifted his hand as if to hit Margaret herself. And Margaret stood and did not retreat, and the sound of thunder was all about them, like a magnification of their own passions.

Gertrude got to her feet. The impression of her father’s blow was red against the pallor of her cheek. But she did not put her hand to it. She moved backward toward the door. Her parents stood there and watched her, Edward in an attitude of violence, her mother straight and tall.

Then Gertrude turned and fled, not only down the echoing stairway and not only into the hall. She wrenched open the big doors of the house and ran out into the rain and the storm and the shrieking cries of the trees, and the tearing power of the winds.

André knocked lightly at Maria’s door, opened it, and entered her sitting room. The storm flashed and roared against the window, near which she sat, knitting. “You wished to see me, Grandma?” he asked in his perfect French. She replied calmly, “Yes, my dear. Will you sit beside me?” But André, made even more electric by the storm, preferred to stand near her chair where he had a view of the rain and the tumultuous trees in the furious green gloom and fiery light.

“I see much from this window,” said Maria, as if there was no booming of thunder and glare of lightning.

“So I would believe,” said André, politely. A red and brilliant vein snaked down the heavens, and it was followed by a deafening crash. “That was very close,” André added. “I think we have lost a tree.”

“Much is lost during any storm,” said Maria. “I have lived long enough to know that. And much is cleared away and illuminated.”

André smiled. He was accustomed to Maria’s enigmatic speech and enjoyed it. He knew that it was not some mere desire for his company which had made Maria send for him. While Maria distrusted him, she was also amused by him. Once, a few years ago, she had said, “André, you are a rascal and we both know it without illusion, but your rascality is open. However, you are extremely intelligent, and I prize intelligence above all other things.” They had, in this way, reached a modus vivendi, and they often had what Maria called “serious conversations.” She was the only one in the family who had not resented Heinrich’s will, which she understood was not inspired by a subtlety she would have appreciated, but only by his simple willingness to be deceived by artfulness if it came in the guise of affection. She had thought, It is very good, and though plotted, it will serve an excellent purpose in the years to come.

“You will be returning to France in September,” she said now, counting her stitches. “May I suggest you remain in this country and attend some university here?”

André slid a quick and shining glance down at her, but she was absorbed in her work. “Why?” he asked, teasingly. “Because I’m an American and should complete my education in America?”

“Shall we call it that?” said Maria. “It is as sensible an idea as anything else.” She paused, and it was extraordinary how her large and puffy features could flatten under an emotion she could control and keep out of her voice and manner. “You are not one of those whom my son Gregory calls the lost generation, which is a stupid appellation, is it not? What did those young men lose? They were egotistic and petulant and given to postures, and desired attention and admiration which only fools could give them. Men go to war for the pure sake of warring; it is the business of evil men, or imbeciles, to deceive them that they warred for a good purpose. My son’s generation was not protesting against war’s uselessness and disillusion. It was a protest against their own secretly acknowledged mediocrity. They hate the world for being what they are. Enough. I was speaking of you. You will be a truly great writer. I particularly admired your essay on man’s infinite capacity to delude himself. When will you have enough essays to publish them in a book?”

“In perhaps another three years,” said André. “You believe I cannot complete them in Europe?”

“A writer can write anywhere,” said Maria, reprovingly. “And that you know. Still, may I suggest that you remain in America?”

André lit a cigarette and studied the storm with increasing interest. “You have a reason, Grandmother,” he said.

“Naturally,” she replied. “And it is not concerned with you, of course.”

“That I understand,” he said, and turned his admiration from the storm to Maria. “There is little that escapes you.” He put his hand on her massive shoulder in a gesture of genuine affection. “When I was a child—if I ever was a child—I believed that you were the only member of this family who was truly civilized. But now I know it. May I ask you what, in particular, inspired your suggestion that I remain here?”

Maria knitted busily; then she looked at the window. “When a young girl who is all pride and innocence and integrity, who is all control usually, suddenly darts from a hidden distance with tears on her face, which is also flushed yet smiling timidly, and who is breathing with excitement and fear, and then runs into her home as if for a refuge she does not really want, it is obvious that something has occurred of considerable importance. And then when a young man studiously strolls, smoking as you are smoking now, from the very same spot from which the girl burst a moment or two ago, only a blind woman would fail to come to the proper conclusion.”

André patted her shoulder. “And what would you say of a girl who cries about age constantly and insists upon age, Grandmother?”

“I would say that that girl is a child and not a woman as yet. She is still without sight. Nevertheless, that, too, was only a protest against the strength of the heart, which has awakened and has destroyed the level order of her world, a world that did not really exist except in her determined and juvenile illusion that existence must be governed by reason always.”

“I admire reason,” said André. “But not what is generally called reason. I am a very logical person. However, there is still the matter of years, though not of age. My education is not complete; the young lady’s education is not complete. This would not interfere, so far as I am concerned. In a truly civilized world marriage would not interfere with education, which is a continuous thing. However, there are parents to consider and the small affair of law.”

“Absence from one loved frequently gives parents an opportunity to distort a girl’s life,” said Maria, nodding approvingly over what André had said. “A father in particular. The father we are now considering is as obdurate and as innocent as his daughter.” She sighed. “He has plans for her. She is resisting them, being possessed of some common sense. But she also loves him. He may succeed in ruining her life, with the very best intentions and out of some terror which possesses him. It is strange that a man can be a genius and a fool at the very same time. It is also tragic.”

“The father is indeed a genius,” André said.

“And geniuses frequently annihilate. They are elemental forces, like the storm outside. I have made my suggestion. Do you agree with it?”

André smoked intently. Then he said, “Grandmother, you are the wisest woman in the world. I would be stupid indeed not to listen to you. And I am happy that you approve, in the light of what you have called my rascality and in the light of the fact that the young lady is your favorite grandchild.”

He bent to kiss her smiling cheek. “Do you think I will make her the good bourgeois husband?”

She shook her head vigorously. “No. And that is why I approve. The girl is very profound; her profundity is still folded in her heart like a bud. It must be persuaded to flower into true wisdom. She must be rescued and taught and loved. Everything else is of no significance. And I—”

“Excuse me, please,” said André in a quick, changed voice. “I have seen something through this famous and enlightening window of yours.”

He turned swiftly and ran from the room. He ran down the dark stairway and hardly touched the stairs. A servant was beginning to turn on the lights in the hall, and she exclaimed as André fled by her, and almost screamed when he pulled open the doors and bolted outside. “What in the world!” she cried as wind and rain and lightning gushed into the hall. It was very difficult to close the doors after André. She shook her head. This was sure a very funny family. That boy, running out into the storm, bare-headed, not noticing anything, not even the rain. Well, he was French, and he was the funniest one in the whole house! Except for the old German lady who had a nasty, cold eye and just sat knitting or embroidering all the time.

André was momentarily caught and whirled by the wild gale and rain. They were like solid blows on his face and body, and he was blinded both by water and lightning. He put his hands over his mouth and drew in a breath protectingly. Then he bent his head and plowed into the storm. The soaked earth yielded under his running feet; sometimes the wind struck him aside and made him stagger; sometimes the lightning dazed him as it lit up and distorted the furious lashing world about him. Sometimes the ground rumbled under him, echoing the thunder. Once, his eyes streaming with rain, he collided with a tree.

Now he was running freely, and faster, over the sodden grass, toward the place where he and Gertrude had sat that afternoon. He was angry, alarmed, and frightened. It was dangerous under those huge trees now, with the leaping lightning hovering closely, waiting for a place to strike. But he did not call out. It was all he could do to breathe in this world of smothering water, which was illuminated by constant glares of fierce and unearthly light. He passed the fountain, which gushed over its bowl in silvery cataracts. The small naked statue of the boy which dominated it glistened with pale life, the laughing and depraved face flowing with bright water. André, even in those concerned moments, could give the statue a glance of appreciation.

Now it was behind him, and he was running down the long slow slope toward the trees. Once he slipped on the wet grass and sprawled upon it. He was up again in a moment, cursing quietly. The soft black hair of his head, cropped like fur, had picked up blades of grass as well as much rain. He was like a fleeing faun, tall and slender, his drenched clothing hanging on his body.

A particularly fiery and vicious blaze of lightning showed him Gertrude at last, crouching on the bench under the maddened trees, her face in her hands, her slight body bent and crushed in unseeing and unfeeling grief and despair, her gray dress blackened and flooded with water.

Someone called her name, and she started violently and dropped her hands. André was before her, holding out his arms and trying to make her understand. She stared at him with blank amazement. And then she uttered a deep and broken sob and sprang up and threw herself, like an abandoned and terrified child, into his arms and clung to him, and cried.

“There, there,” he said and held her tightly, and drew her away from the perilous trees to a safe spot where they had only wind and rain to battle. His arms became stronger about her. Her loose hair whipped about her contorted face, and the wet strands of it blew against his cheek. Her hands clutched his arms, his shoulders; even above the sound of the storm he could hear her incoherent cries, her piteous stammering.

“There, there,” he said again, understanding that something had driven the usually controlled Gertrude out into this primordial fury. But what did that matter? Her cold and trembling mouth, tasting of rain and the saltness of her tears, her innocent mouth, was pressing against his, and her arms were about his neck, in an utter abandon of sorrow and love.

Now her lips were at his ear, and she was crying, “Don’t go away, André! Don’t leave me!”

“Of course not, darling,” he said. “I’ll never go away. What made you think I would?”

CHAPTER X

The gray autumnal rain drizzled against the wide windows of Edward’s offices. The whole world was gray and still, a melancholy twilight though it was only three in the afternoon. Edward sat and looked at his papers, and the hushed blank stillness of the day ran like drowning water over his desperate thoughts. He struggled against this dolorous anesthesia; for, he told himself numbly, he must think! Think how to keep what he had; think how to fight against his monolithic debts; think how to prevent being plowed under the glacier of the increasing depression, which grew worse instead of better in this November of 1936. All the President had done, and was doing, could not overcome this leaden horror that flowed like lava over the country.

His secretary came in. “Mr. Standard is here,” she said listlessly, for the weather and her employer’s chronic mood of wretchedness disheartened her. She held the door aside, and Mr. Edgar Standard, of the huge Standard Super Markets entered, smiling. Edward got up to meet him with reserve, and they shook hands.

When they sat down again, Edward said abruptly, “I wrote you you were wasting your time, Mr. Standard. I’m not going to sell out to your chain. I can’t. I built my own smaller chain up myself, and it’s been my whole life.”

Mr. Standard nodded understandingly. He was a slender, quiet man with a shrewd and perspicacious face, a man about ten years Edward’s senior. “Yes, we had quite a discussion at the home office about your letter, Mr. Enger. And then I thought I ought to come and talk it over personally. We’ve gone over the whole thing in our letters, haven’t we?” His small brown eyes appeared to shine with sympathy on Edward. “But a personal interview can be more rewarding, and points gone over—”

He wore a perpetual air of benevolence, and there were humorous lines graven about his mouth. Though he was older than Edward, his hair was smooth and brown. He went on, “You’ve accused us of being buccaneers. We aren’t really, you know, Mr. Enger. We’re not even entrepreneurs, though, as you’ve written, we have absorbed independent business wherever we’ve opened new markets. The day of independent business is over—we can’t stop that ending. We’re a big country now—”

Edward leaned back in his chair with overwhelming tiredness. “I shouldn’t have said you were buccaneers. That was childish. You aren’t entrepreneurs, and that’s the sickening part of the whole thing. There’s no real vitality these days in most big businessmen, no power or force. Everything’s just the Organization, as if any organization has a life of its own, outside of the people who run it! You’re so benevolent, you businessmen today, and you insist on benevolence, that it’s sort of—suspect. You’re just as materialistic as the old robber barons—but you call this new materialism the ‘adjusted life.’ You’ve gone in for Freud, and you’ve taken away all adventure from your employees, and all meaning out of their lives, in the name of ‘security.’”

“Well,” said Mr. Standard, with a faint smile, “what is the mass of men, anyway? Clods. We treat them, in these days, as kindly as possible, and don’t exploit them as the old boys did. At least we’ve made them happy, and being happy is all they want, in their cretin way—beer, a two-bedroom house, a little adultery when they get tired of the old girl, and three kids in every kitchen, a used car that runs, and bowling every Wednesday. What more do clods want? In fact, they don’t want anything more.” He lit a cigarette. “Besides, isn’t our government trying to make people happy, too, especially the clods? And isn’t its spokesmen always talking of the ‘more abundant life’ and ‘security’?”

“Who made them clods?” asked Edward, flushing deeply. “A man isn’t born a clod, or, at least, he has some capacity to become more than a clod. Who sold them on security and the other nonsense? Government? Probably. But you helped, too, you know.”

“‘The more abundant life,’” quoted Mr. Standard, his smile widening. He had thick brown brows that were very mobile. He seemed to be enjoying himself. Here, he thought, is a very desperate and beset man, with old-fashioned ideas that the government will knock out of him if reality doesn’t.

“And what the hell does that mean?” exclaimed Edward, his passion rising. “Cocktails instead of beer, four bedrooms instead of two, a more expensive prostitute, a higher-priced car, a country-club membership instead of the Wednesday night bowling, and one child in the dining room instead of three in the kitchen! It’s still passive materialism, and it’s still meaningless and without purpose. It’s still a drug. A man can’t be just a belly in a pair of overalls or in a tailor-made suit. Industry and business can’t go on forever by taking conflict and victory and meaning out of men’s lives. You won’t always be able to take defeat from them; defeat’s the price men pay for being men and for their successes. One of these days your millions of ‘clods’ will suddenly wake up to the fact that they’re living in a benign desert, a blank monotony, and they’ll react! And somehow, when people react, they don’t do it peacefully; they do it with violence. You won’t succeed—”

“We’ve already succeeded,” said Mr. Standard, gently. “Our people in our chain are happy and contented.”

“So are the dead,” said Edward. To his own brief and savage amusement, he thought of Mr. Standard as an undertaker. “I know how you use psychiatrists in your personnel departments: smoothing out of people all that makes them men—ambition, hope, competition, struggle against environment, periods of exultation. Making them good adjusted organization men. Why, this is worse than the old grueling system of the old buccaneers. At least, even a ‘clod’ had his dreams then, and dreams for his children. But there’s no place for real dreams in the Organization. And no place for life, either. Life’s so damned untidy, isn’t it? So gross, too. Bursting out of all the tidy little strait jackets you modern employers force it into—you think the jacket will crush out all emotion, make life creamy and predictable, and so goddamned nice—!”

Mr. Standard shrugged. “You may be right. But you’re putting the cart before the horse, Mr. Enger. You seem to think we big organizations are some sort of Machiavellian villains, with a ‘plot’ against our thousands of employees. You think we thought up this benevolence and security all by ourselves. We didn’t. The people forced it on us. If there’s guilt in this, then the workingman is the guilty one, not the officers of a company. The workingman doesn’t want to struggle against his environment any longer; he doesn’t want to dream; he just wants his absolutely sure paycheck every week; he doesn’t want to risk anything; he wants shelter and food and a new radio and car and lots of sex excitement. Mr. Enger, to give our employees that has cut deeply into our profits, but we did it. It’s the New Order, the sociologists call it.” He no longer smiled. He glanced quickly about the office as if fearing an eavesdropper. “Don’t you think we’d prefer to advance men on their merits or fire those who haven’t the brains to hold a job? But we can’t—any longer. ‘Everybody has a right to be taken care of.’ That’s what they say, Mr. Enger.”

“Why don’t you have the guts to fight this—this deadliness—then?” shouted Edward. “Haven’t you any sense of responsibility—to men’s minds?”

“We can’t fight it,” replied Mr. Standard, gravely. “It’s the present trend. We’ve become a mediocre people, a spiritless people. All we want is safety. The clods never think of working for themselves in small businesses any longer. They don’t want risk, or the chance of failure. Everything guaranteed, so they can live their maggot lives in peace. Do you think these are the days of the Founding Fathers, when a man would bet his life and everything he had on just being free in his manhood? No.”

“Then we’re a sick country,” said Edward, in a stifled voice. “A very sick country.”

He seemed personally stricken. The graven lines in his face deepened. He rubbed his cheek with the knuckles of his right hand, and his weary eyes blinked in despondent thought. “But one of these days the maggots, as you call them, might want to grow wings again—”

Mr. Standard shook his head. “No. That’s not what history tells us. You’ve only to remember Rome and her housing developments, her bread and circuses, her lotteries, her steady alms to those who wouldn’t or couldn’t work because they were too unfitted for life, her free entertainments for the mobs, her securities for the mobs—well, you know the end of Rome. The healthy barbarians came in. Sometimes,” and he leaned closer to Edward and dropped his voice, “I’m frightened myself. I think of the Russian barbarians—and I think of the Visigoths. Governments, at the last, don’t make people weak. They were born that way and they have to pay the penalty eventually. Governments, at the last, give them what they want, because there’re so many damned millions of them!”

He sighed. He looked at Edward, waiting for his comments, but Edward was silent, furiously thinking, furiously despairing. He was no longer antagonistic toward Mr. Standard. Before them both lay a situation that was terrible for humanity, because humanity had created that terror out of its own cowardice and lack of courage—a deep flush of blood ran through Edward’s body, as if his very flesh were trying to call his attention to something in his own precarious life.

At last Edward said, “Well, I’m not going to pimp for the weakness in my own employees. I’m not going to cater to their lack of courage.” He suddenly brightened and brought his fist down on his desk. “Look! I don’t pay them what your chain pays its employees! I do give them a certain amount of sick leave, and I do give them a chance to invest in my chain, but I do insist that they put some of their own money into our private pension fund! I’m not an Organization, and my people stay with me. They aren’t clods, and there goes your argument!”

“But you do have strikes—and we don’t,” said Mr. Standard. He was a kind and realistic man at heart, and he was sorry for Edward. “And you do have debts and God knows what else, while we’re solvent. And so we’re prepared to make you a good price for your Green and White Stores, to clear up your debts and mortgages, to get rid of your outstanding commitments. If you agree to sell to us, you won’t have to worry about the future, yourself, Mr. Enger. Isn’t that a consideration?”

Edward was aghast. “What, then, shall I do with my life?” He swallowed in humiliation at this involuntary outburst, and he shook his head to conceal his humiliation. “No. No! I’ll struggle along some way. I don’t know how, but I will. I feel I owe it to my country to remain independent; I owe it to my employees to force them to be men, not secure ‘maggots.’ I don’t move them from city to city as you do. I employ managers for my stores right from their own community, after we’re satisfied they want to stay there. And our employees are local people, too. The clerks often quit to go into one of your stores. But the managers stay, in spite of what you can offer them! And that’s a gain—for America. It helps my managers to be independent, to make their own choices.”

Mr. Standard reluctantly knew this was the time to be ruthless. “We know what you owe, Mr. Enger. We know you are getting deeper into the hole every day. And perhaps next year, or the year after, or the year after that, you won’t be able to go on. You can’t compete in prices with us; the government won’t let you redeem its food stamps. Why? How long can you go on bucking the government, which wants to give people what they demand?”

He stood up. He looked down at Edward, but Edward seemed to have forgotten him. “Think it over, Mr. Enger,” he urged. “We’re always ready.”

A little later Edward looked about him with a start. He was alone. He had not even been aware that Mr. Standard had left him. The rain filtered against the windows, and there was no sound but the muffled clatter of distant typewriters. “Oh, God,” he muttered. He was surprised to see that it was nearly half past four. How long ago had his visitor left him? He could not remember. He looked at the piles of papers on his desk and shivered. He would go home—but to what? To the absence of his children, away at school, to the immured silence of his mother, to the scorns and barbs of his sister, Sylvia, to the anxious love of Margaret, from which he tried to run away? With the exception of Sylvia, Maria, and Margaret, there was no one in that big mansion today, and all its rooms rang with dull quiet as if life had permanently withdrawn from it.

His club? His club bored and wearied him. He could not drink as other men drank; his life had been too much of a gamble to be satisfied with little cards. His Lutheran life had been too austere for him now to take pleasure in foolish and ribald stories. The pursuits of his contemporaries disgusted him. Their talk of their mistresses revolted all his instincts of stern morality. It was all very well for a boy to caper in his youth, but a man with a wife did not caper. Besides, thought Edward, with a dreary smile, there was never anyone for me but Margaret, in spite of her probing eyes and the fear in her face for me. What would I do with a mistress? She’d bore me to death, and give me a bad taste. Friends? He had no friends, for he did not share the interests of other businessmen, who thought him straight-laced and dull. There was just no meaning in his life—a pang of terror so strong that it translated itself to a physical anguish made him start up from his chair.

His secretary came in with a look of inquisitive surprise on her angular face. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Enger, but there’s a—a priest—out here who wants to talk with you. It’s probably charity, though he says it isn’t. He says he’s an old friend—”

“Father Jahle!” Edward blurted with amazement. “Why—why, send him in, of course.” He sat down in his chair, and all his nerves twitched. He had not seen Father Jahle for years, and he was suddenly awkward and embarrassed.

Father Jahle, smiling gently and almost with supplication, came in, emaciated, old and worn, as always, but with that indomitable large brilliance of eye. Edward went to him, and in silence they shook hands, while the priest’s merciful and understanding eyes studied the younger man sorrowfully. Yes, yes, all that George Enreich had been telling him all these years was true. Edward was beset; he was distracted; he was lost. He needed the comfort of God; he needed to know that God was always with him, that he was not alone.

“Sit down, sit down, Father,” Edward urged, his awkwardness making him stammer. “It’s good to see you—it’s been a long time—terrible day isn’t it?—I’ve been very busy—should have gone to see you before this—”

“You never forgot me, Eddie,” said the priest, and clung for a moment to Edward’s hand. “I get your check every Christmas. It’s done so much—”

“It wasn’t anything,” said Edward. He removed his hand and hurried behind his desk, as behind a battlement. He tried to smile broadly. “Well, you seem all right. I was sorry about your mother, of course—”

“It was kind of you to donate a hospital room in the Clinic, in her name,” said the priest. “She was old, and died in her sleep. In the grace and mercy of God.”

Edward said nothing. His mind was blank and empty, and there was nothing in it but the sound of the whispering rain. The priest had suddenly lost reality for him, and his uneasiness increased. His skin itched; he almost scratched, ferociously. The priest’s eyes, so searching, so tender, unnerved him. What was there to speak about after all these years of silence and absence! A dull old priest with a child’s unclouded eyes; what did he know about the life of men and the world? All at once, while hot with a sudden resentment, there was envy in Edward. Not to be beset, not to lie sleepless, not to quarrel or argue, not to be despairing, never to be worried—a child’s life, but a peaceful one. While looking at the priest with that false, fixed smile, Edward was besieged again with that awful desire to die, and not to know, and not to be aware. Little drops of moisture appeared on his forehead and on his upper lip.

The priest waited. He understood that his appearance had done something violent to Edward and that the younger man was suffering. Then he said, “I’ve come to say good-by, Eddie. You see, I’m a monsignor now; I’ve been assigned to Detroit.”

“Good-by?” Edward echoed stupidly. He stared at the priest, and he was bereft. He had not seen him for years—yet he was bereft.

Father Jahle nodded. “I’m very sad at leaving Waterford, but when it is God’s will, a priest must obey.”

The rain quickened; now it was a pelting insistence like small stones against the glass. Edward did not turn on the office lamps. The big room lay steeped in deep grayness, like a cave.

“Well,” said Edward, lamely, “when you receive orders, you must go—”

Please help me to reach him, the priest prayed. He leaned toward Edward urgently. “I want you to know that you’re always in my prayers, Eddie,” he said. “You see, our old friend, George Enreich, tells me all about you, and I know what your struggles are, and all about your family. I haven’t left you alone, Eddie. There isn’t a day that I don’t remember you and pray for you. Eddie, what can I do to help you?”

What can you do to help me? thought Edward, incredulously. You, a priest? What do you know of my work, my business, my family, you who never had a business or a family, and who lived life at second-hand through your parishioners? He smiled with indulgence. “Why, there’s nothing, Father. I should be asking you that question, not you asking me.”

“Eddie.” The priest looked down at his thin clasped hands. “When you were a boy, you understood all about God. Don’t you remember how we used to talk together when I came into the old delicatessen? And the discussions we had? I would think then, Here is a soul that knows God deeply, and understands, and will never be overlaid with the heavy stones of the outer world.”

“That was a long time ago,” said Edward. “I was almost a child then. Now I have responsibilities.”

“The great responsibility is to God,” said the priest. “Eddie, have you forgotten that there is no reality but God?”

A foolish conversation, a silly, clerical conversation. Edward was really indulgent now, though there was a shocked sensation of loss in him.

“Of course,” he said smoothly. It was almost five. He wanted to go home, to get away, not to listen any longer to these medieval precepts. “We all understand that. But tell me about Detroit—”

I’ve failed, thought the priest with humility. There is something I should have said, but I don’t know what it is! His ears are closed, and perhaps it is all my fault. I shouldn’t have let him drift out of my sight so long. He said aloud, “Forgive me, Eddie. When you stayed away from me, I should have come to you. I might have been able to help.”

“I’ve done very well,” said Edward.

The priest sighed. “That isn’t what I meant, Eddie.”

Edward was impatient; he wanted to rise, take the priest by the hand, and let him out of the room. He could see the office without the priest: there would be the empty chair, but he would be alone with his frightful problems. Father Jahle was gazing at him with that compassionate and piercing regard which was intolerable.

Then Edward heard himself say simply, and with astonishment at his own words, “No one can help me, Father. No one at all. You know that. No, no. Don’t speak to me of God. I don’t believe—my father was right. God is only an abstract. In the light of that abstract, I’ve done all I could. You see, for a layman, life isn’t as simple as it is for you clergy. We have to deal with it with our bare hands.”

“Your hands are not the only hands which have bled in the world,” said the priest. “Remember that, Eddie. God lived as a man. He knows what it is to be a man. Won’t you give that some thought?”

It was imperative to Edward that the priest leave. He couldn’t endure his presence any longer. While the priest was here, there was such an agonized stirring in him, such a stretching—as if one were being crucified. Edward wiped the moisture from his upper lip with his handkerchief.

“Yes, yes,” he said, “I’ll give it some thought.” Go away! he shouted in himself. Don’t you know I want to die, and that every minute you’re here the impulse gets stronger?

The priest stood up, and thankfully Edward stood up also. The priest stood with bowed head, his hat in his hands. Then he said, “Eddie, I will be in Detroit, but I’ll be with you in my prayers and my thoughts. Someday, Eddie, you will know and understand.”

“I hope you’ll be happy with your larger responsibilities in Detroit,” said Edward, and took the old thin hand. “Keep in touch with me, won’t you? Let me know if you need anything.”

The priest was gone, and the room steadily darkened. Then Edward said aloud, “Don’t go away. Let me talk to you. Let me tell you—”

He suddenly fell asleep in his chair. The clerks left, and the secretary. When he awoke, the office was in utter blackness, and the blackness and emptiness were in himself.

CHAPTER XI

The view from the small upper bedroom in the sorority house showed only a quiet, snow-filled street, with students trudging under the twilight lamps. Sometimes they stopped in little groups to laugh and talk and brush the falling snow from their faces. It was very still; the snow fell patiently and inexorably, as if from eternity itself. In the corridor outside the dormitory room there was only an occasional footstep, only the occasional soft voice of a girl. The radiator hissed.

Gertrude returned her attention to the letter she was writing to André, and a sweet and gentle smile stood on her lips, for all the seriousness of her eyes.

“How can I thank you, dear, for the beautiful silver dresser set you sent me? It arrived today, right on time for my birthday. I feel terribly old at twenty-one. But I remember that you’ll be just as old in June, though twenty-one isn’t as bad for a boy as it is for a girl. Now don’t smile. See: I’m wearing the ring you gave me secretly for Christmas. I only dare wear it when I’m alone like this. I’m turning it now to catch the light of my lamp. I ask you again, how did you know that I loved dark blue sapphires more than anything else? The diamonds around it twinkle like white fire. I want to show it to everybody! Well, I will, in June, when I’m graduated from the nursing school.”

She lifted her left hand to her lips and kissed the large gleaming stone in its wreath of pure light. Then she held the ring against her cheek and her eyes dreamed in a mist of joy and contentment. It was several moments before she began to write again.

“I can’t wait until your book is published in September. And dedicated to me, too! I like to know it’s still only our secret. And the Yale University Press! I’m terribly, foolishly proud. I can hear you laugh at me, but I don’t care about that any longer. I’m not nearly as unsophisticated as you think I am. I’m really a very practical person. I’ve been thinking of that small neat apartment over the Clinic where Dr. Blenlow lives. He is retiring in July, and I’m determined to have it for you and me, when we are married in August. I think of August all the time. Of course, Daddy will want us to live in the house, but I simply can’t consider it.…”

I hate the house, the house where I was born, she thought with a sudden surge of revulsion. It’s filled with Daddy’s enemies, except for Grandma and Uncle David, when he’s there. You can feel the menace and discord in every room, and the savage rage under the controlled voices. It’s as if they’re deliberately punishing him for something, and, in turn, that he is punishing them. Why can’t human relationships be clear and defined, kind and honest? Why must we complicate not only our lives but the lives of others, until we all wallow in the mud of our own confusion? I detest undercurrents. Are we the only creatures who must distort living, and the meaning of living, so that all significance is lost in a welter of complex emotions?

I would love my home if only Daddy and Mother and Robert and André and I and Grandma could live there, free of that crowding and suffocating atmosphere of unspoken hates and resentments and contempt. It all seems to be concentrated around my father; he’s like the center of a hurricane which never blows itself out, never becomes violent enough to disperse itself. And yet how little he speaks these days. How little he speaks to me in particular. He was sorry he struck me, three years ago, and he tried to atone for it—as if Daddy would ever have to atone for anything he did to me!—by agreeing to let me come here to the School of Nursing. But still, something’s been broken between us; I’ve disappointed him. It’s better, though, that I disappointed him by insisting on my own life than to disillusion him later and make him even more desperate than he is now.

And how desperate he is, her sad thoughts ran on. Of course there is twice as much unemployment today than there was in 1933, in spite of what the President tries to do. Three years, and it is worse than ever. It almost kills my father when he has to dismiss more of his employees, but there’s nothing he can do. I can’t stand looking at him when I go home, thinking of his mountainous worries and his debts and his struggles. He’s only forty-seven, but he seems an old man too exhausted to speak much, too besieged to laugh or to have some recreation. Why, he’s almost never taken a vacation in all his life! But the aunts and uncles have a fine time, indeed they do—at his expense. Never once has any of them asked him how his affairs are, nor have they ever cared. Once I thought I understood, a little, but now I don’t know at all. And there’s Robert, who looks at me blankly when I ask questions about this, and then pats my cheek kindly and reassures me that I’m just using my imagination. Dear, good, sweet Robert, who looks at life serenely and contentedly, with good will toward everything and everybody, quite unaware that something very frightful is brewing in our house and must, someday, break out into destruction. What will Robert think then? I’m sure he’ll just believe that somebody lost his or her temper, and it will all blow over, and let’s all be nice again—as if anyone were ever really nice in that house!—and he’ll pull his neat shiny blinders over his eyes and smile at everybody happily. Is he stupid or just one of those incurable optimists who are so infuriating? But I did notice, Gertrude thought wryly, that he had no battle with Daddy at all when he beamingly announced he was going to a business-administration school. Daddy looked shocked for a few minutes, and Robert kept on beaming innocently and affectionately, just exuding confidence and assurance that Daddy would be pleased. Could it be that Robert is wiser than I and never forces an issue, and absolutely refuses to attach deep seriousness to anything, and is perfectly sure that everyone is innately reasonable and benevolent? The strange thing is that he projects that pretty opinion onto people, so that it never occurs to them to disillusion him of the lovely idea he has about them! At any rate, Daddy just stared at Robert and blinked, as if hypnotized, and then he said he deeply appreciated it that Robert wanted to study business administration in order to help him. And that was all there was to it. The violin was completely forgotten. Robert gives Daddy some comfort no one else can.

Gertrude thought of André’s parents, who were still in Paris and still traveling on the Continent at Edward’s expense. Ralph had become a very close friend of Picasso’s and was imitating the famous artist shamefully, and was selling a surprising number of his canvases, though at a cheap price. Poor André, thought Gertrude naïvely, with his foolish parents. At least my own parents didn’t abandon me when I was a child, as André was abandoned. For a moment or two André seemed very piteous to her, and then she laughed out loud at herself.

Gertrude thought of Gregory’s wife with her bold, coarsely beautiful face, expertly enhanced by cosmetics, and her laughing, lustful mouth, handsome nose and sensually smiling blue eyes. Margo had a fine figure, tall and marvelously curved, and though Sylvia spitefully and openly doubted it, the color of her heavy blonde hair was natural. In spite of herself, Gertrude liked Margo, for the latter had a tremendous animal magnetism, a high if lewd wit, and was extremely entertaining, and laughed always. She deceived no one, and never tried to deceive anyone, that she was not greedy and ambitious, and held mankind in very low esteem. Perhaps I like her, thought Gertrude, annoyed with herself, because she is absolutely honest about possessing no moral values and is honestly convinced that no one else has them, either.

“Did you know that Uncle Ellis had another slight heart attack last week? Just bad enough so he could lie cozily in bed attended by three nurses and Aunt Sylvia, who devotes all her time to him since Daddy had to sell ‘her’ theater because she had lost all interest in it. Why are you so indifferent to the family, darling, and why are you refusing to go there for your spring vacation? After all, I’ll be home, but it would seem I’m not much of an attraction, after all.”

She put the ring to her lips and kissed it again. She reread the section of André’s letter in which he had suggested that she meet him in New York rather than return to Waterford for the two weeks’ holiday. She believed she had refused very tactfully in the letter she was writing. After all, it was a somewhat shocking and unconventional thing he had suggested, even though it would be very innocent. She yearned, however, to see him again, and very soon; sometimes her whole body ached with that artless yearning. She shook her head with smiling negation at his letter.

Then she was no longer smiling. She thought of the letter her mother had written her and which she had received today with a substantial check for her birthday. Poor Mother, Gertrude thought, so pretty, so sweet, so tender, so loving, and so brave. Her young heart warmed with love as she thought of Margaret, who would never escape the miasma of that house which might have been a place of joy and contentment instead of a place of peril and misery.

The corridor outside the small snug room was alive with the laughter and voices of girls preparing for dinner and exchanging confidences. Gertrude felt a pang of loneliness. She was too proud and reticent to make friends easily, and though she was respected and admired and envied, she was rarely included in the warmth of room parties and other gatherings. True, she had been elected to the most desirable sorority, because of her brilliance and scholarship. But the girls made nothing more than the most casual advances to her. She had no words to express her longing to be included as one of them.

Someone knocked smartly on her door, and she started. A girl called out gaily that she was wanted on the telephone downstairs. Gertrude, with a twist of misgiving, ran down and snatched up the receiver, while happy girls milled about her talking excitedly to one another and shrilling with youthful mirth.

It was André, and at the sound of his voice her heart rose on a crest of joy and delight and trembling relief.

“Did you think I’d forget it was your birthday, dear little child?” he asked, and her eyes filled with tears. “Your twenty-first birthday! And now you are a woman. I hope.”

“Oh, André,” she murmured. “Oh, André!”

“I suppose your phone has been ringing all day with charming messages from home,” he said.

But no one ever called her from home. Even her twin had not called, though it was his birthday also. “Of course they called,” she said. “A girl isn’t twenty-one every day. André—”

“Yes, sweetness?”

But she could only say, out of her loneliness, and again, “Oh, André.”

Never had a winter seemed so dogged, so eternal, to Margaret Enger, nor the house so somber, nor herself so lonely, nor her life so hopeless and without meaning. She had believed, three years ago, that she would not miss her children too much, nor would she have missed them with this deep longing had Edward remained the grimly optimistic and vital man of their first period of marriage. She was annoyed with herself that she had to depend on letters from Gertrude and Robert for any comfort and brightening. A woman should find all she needs in her husband, she would say to herself with depression. It is a sad day for a woman when she must revert to her children, no matter how beloved, for engrossment with children is not too far akin from engrossment with strangers who must inevitably go when they come. In an effort not to become too involved with these strangers and travelers of her flesh, she did not write them more than once a week, nor, in spite of a desperate inner urging, did she call them on the telephone, not even on their birthdays. “I should be a more loving mother and more demonstrative,” she said to Maria on a colorless March day, “and without fear of attaching myself to them like an old woman of the sea, if I knew what to do with and about Ed.”

“But I have told you,” said Maria, gently, “that no one can do anything about my son except God and himself. It is presumptuous of any of us to believe we truly and permanently can influence others. Each soul has its way and its cross, and only its own feet can carry it, and only its own shoulders can bear that load.”

“Then, it’s a lonely road we travel,” said Margaret, despondently. “With no one at all.”

Maria shook her head. “No, we are never alone. But how often do we look up to see Who travels with us, and Whose Hand is ready to ease the weight of the Cross? Few of us speak to Him, Who can tell us of joy and the glory at the end of the journey, and few of us say to Him, ‘My burden is too heavy. Lift it from me for a moment.’”

Tears smarted Margaret’s eyes. She said humbly, “I always keep forgetting. Or I’m so afraid for Ed these days that I can’t look at God or speak to Him.” She put her hand out impulsively and laid it on the large, knotted hand of her mother-in-law. “What a fool and a wastrel I’ve been! I could have had you all these years!”

Maria wanted to say, But we have no one but God, and I had to learn that myself, and it was not an easy thing to learn. However, she could not speak this truth to Margaret, whose anxiety was daily lining her pretty face more deeply and who was so baffled and alone. She said, instead, and very quietly, “You have always had me. My daughter.”

“Yes, I know,” said Margaret, in a low voice. “I was just stupid. I thought you were in the conspiracy to rob and ruin and exploit Ed.”

And so I was, long ago, and may God forgive me, thought Maria. I overestimated my son’s strength until it was too late.

Robert’s letters, sunny and enthusiastic, if not very imaginative, never failed to make Edward smile, and never failed to arouse the old buoyant note in his voice when he discussed the letters with Margaret. My son isn’t stupid, Margaret would think. He’s what they call an extrovert these days—one who expects life to be kind and pleasant and objective, and so he finds it. But it still puzzled her that the intellectual Edward could be pleased and made a little happy by her son’s letters. Robert was everything Edward was not. Gertrude’s letters, introspective, serious, and thoughtful, had a dismaying way of arriving on the days when her brother’s letters arrived, and their tone subtly annoyed and disturbed Edward. Had he expected more of his daughter than of his son? Or did she echo himself? Sometimes he would say gloomily, “What a waste! And she had an authentic genius, too.” Then he would add in all naïveté, “I knew from the start that Robert was really a businessman at heart, and so I’m not disappointed.”

Between Margaret and the rest of the family at home there was now only bitterness and hatred and coldness. At least three nights a week she would have a dinner tray alone in her room, to Edward’s anger and accusations of asocial tendencies. But his own relations with his family had deteriorated to the point where the dining-room silence was rarely broken by an amiable voice or laughter. Sometimes, from upstairs, Margaret could hear Edward’s quick and violent words of disgust or disagreement or contempt. Afterwards he would go into the library and slam the door behind him, there to read far into the morning. Often he had but two or three hours of sleep. And more and more he went to New York and other cities on business.

To such a pass was Margaret arriving that she looked forward to Violette’s return from France tomorrow, Violette who was wickedly wise and humorous and who liked her. And there were even times when Margaret desperately longed for David and his gentle sympathy and his understanding and affection. It did not matter to her now that even a mention of David’s name could make Edward become almost savage in look and speech. Of course David’s concert engagements were few, and his notices brief, and his appearances only in the smaller towns and cities. He had disappointed Edward; but who had not? There was just no explanation.

One day in March Edward said to his wife, “I don’t know what’s the matter with you. Once you were gracious and friendly to everybody. Once you used to talk to me, and laugh, and wanted to spend time with me when I had it. Now you shut yourself away from everyone in the family and especially from me.”

Margaret did not reply, but she thought, It’s true I can’t stand your family any longer, and every time I see them I get sick. For what they’ve done to you and what they’re still doing. But it isn’t true that I’ve shut myself away from you, my darling. You yourself have turned from me, though I know how much you really love me. I just can’t stand seeing you getting more broken, grayer, more desperate, every day. It tears the heart out of me. Oh, my God, what can I do to help you?

She knew that business was extremely bad. Edward could have helped himself a little there, but he would not do it. His Green and White Stores were not permitted to undercut and undersell independent dealers in their vicinity. If an independent dealer had a sale in these dark and terrible days of depression, Edward would not allow a competing sale in that particular item. His stores would feature a different sale entirely. “This is not realistic,” William had protested. But Edward remembered the Goeltz family and would only become irritable. “I offer what the independents can’t offer, poor devils,” he would say. “Bigger, brighter stores, the better local help, and quicker access to goods. That’s fair competition. Murderous undercutting isn’t in my line. And don’t talk to me about bankruptcy!”

But he was close to it now, in March, 1936. He did not often think of this, however. He had a more frightful problem. It was clear to him, as it was to a few other thinking men, that Hitler was becoming an ominous power in Europe and that evil and plotting men in America were not halting him with threats of economic boycotts and moral quarantine, and were not heartening the German people with calls for resistance and freedom. Nor were these men in Washington denouncing Stalin. There was a curious silence in the Capitol about Russia, except when a newsman or a politician or a labor leader returned from a visit to Russia bubbling with eulogies and enthusiasm about the Soviet system. Then there was a general congratulation for Stalin, prophecies that Communism was turning into “a true democracy,” and hints that America “could well adopt some of the more dynamic aspects of Communism to overcome this depression.”

Nevertheless, it was becoming obvious that the atmosphere in Washington, in these appalling days, was definitely friendly to Communists and “liberals” and other fellow travelers. The depression had only precipitated the long plot of sinister men against the world, and now they were dominating the very spirit of America. Some newspapers even pointed out the “fact” that Communism was an enemy of Fascism, and the few newsmen who insisted that they were, in all truth, one and the same thing, and were inspired by the same people, were either ignored or found themselves without employment. When Senator Taft had courageously spoken of this, he was derided and attacked and denounced as a reactionary.

It was becoming clear, to a few men and some honorable Senators, that a war was developing in Europe. And now Edward had a more personal terror to haunt his days and nights. Robert was twenty-one. He might have to fight, not to “save the world for democracy,” if there had ever been such a war, but to save the world for approaching totalitarianism. He might have to die to consolidate the growing power of ancient despotism and the true reactionaries. America might have to die in order that her people could become slaves.

So Edward drew on his dwindling resources to finance men of wisdom and freedom to bring their views to the public means of communication. He financed two radio speakers, helped to support a number of newspapers and magazines who were fighting the losing battle of liberty in America. He backed Senators and Congressmen who endlessly warned the people against entangling themselves in any war in Europe, and it did not matter to Edward to what political party they belonged. It was enough for him to fight with them to save America from her enemies.

All this was profoundly exhausting to this beset and almost dying man. It seemed to him that life had degenerated into a most awful nightmare, where he struggled against unseen terrors with leaden arms and paralyzed legs. He could not talk of these things to Margaret. Once George Enreich had said to him, “There is an old couplet: ‘Things unspoken—spirit unbroken.’” Despite the claims of psychiatrists that a man was relieved of much of his pain when he talked of his troubles and fears, Edward instinctively knew that such discussions could plunge the soul into unrelieved and hopeless despair. The throwing open of a closet that contained a skeleton did not ameliorate instinctive dread, but increased it by displaying the terror in all its inexorable threat to life, all its inexorable promise that the living would one day be reduced to this. Silence frequently permitted the spirit to delude itself that all was not lost. The face of a confidant too often mirrored one’s own hopelessness.

There were times when his exhaustion numbed him, prevented him from thinking, and he lived for a while in a black and stony quietude where his own voice, in speaking, seemed to echo hollowly in his ears like the voice of someone else. And there were more times when he was assaulted by that passionate urge to die; there was scarcely a week when he did not suffer these agonizing urges.

When Margaret looked back to March eighteenth, 1937, she wondered why no guardian angel, no hovering spirit, gave her any warning on awakening of what she was about to suffer and endure on that day. It had begun as bleakly as any of the other winter days, motionless, half thawing, half snowing, with a sky the color of parchment. No sign of spring made tender the stiff, stark trees; the snow lay in heaps on the grounds like the swell of new graves. She felt especially dull and had a weary headache. It was one of her days to serve at the Clinic, but she decided that she would shop in order to lift her heavy spirits. Surely spring would come. Surely with the spring some hope would return to this hopeless world. A new hat, perhaps, or a new coat would act as an inspiration, she told her disbelieving heart.

She was about to go out when a maid informed her that “an old priest” wished to see her, and was waiting downstairs at that very moment. Margaret frowned. She knew no priests, old or young. Father Jahle had been transferred to Detroit and was now a monsignor there. “Are you sure he isn’t Mr. Hellar, our new minister?” she asked the maid. (Mr. Yaeger had died three years ago.) The maid was positive that the caller was a priest. So Margaret, sighing, picked up her checkbook, certain that this was a charity affair.

A tall old man with very white hair rose from his seat in the hall as she came downstairs, a man with a serene and gentle face and large and brilliant brown eyes. He was very thin in his clerical black, but his smile was radiant. “Is it Father Jahle?” she asked in surprise and uncertainty, hardly recognizing him. “I mean, Monsignor Jahle?” She gave him her hand and he shook it, and something warm and comforting enveloped her heart.

“Yes, Mrs. Enger. I’m glad you haven’t forgotten me,” he said.

“I never forgot you—Father,” she said, and without knowing why she was glad, almost happy, to see him. He glanced keenly, but with tenderness, at her pretty, anxious face. He thought how young she still appeared, in her light brown suit, her yellow blouse, and with her hair still bright and curling. He thought he had never seen such a pure blue in anyone’s eyes before, the purity of the blue in the Blessed Mother’s robe. “Do come into the living room,” Margaret said. It was ridiculous that she should feel suddenly safe in the presence of a friend, suddenly delivered from her pervading misery. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you!” she exclaimed, and was astonished at the ring in her own voice.

She led him into the dim drawing room; the sky was darkening; there would be a heavy snow. She turned on a light. “Have you had lunch?” she asked.

Yes, he had had lunch only an hour ago, at the home of the priest who had taken his place. “But you must have some coffee,” she said, and rang for a maid.

He had been in this house only once or twice, and that, many years before. He saw that Margaret’s influence was responsible for some of the lighter and less ponderous pieces; they were like her, delicate and graceful. There was a twinkle of crystal here and there, the curving line of a fine piece of silver; a glow of ruby or amber glass. Margaret, strangely lighthearted, knelt on the hearth and touched a match to a waiting fire.

They sat and drank coffee together, and ate a little cake, while a rising wind began to thud at the windows. “I’m so sorry that Ed won’t be back from New York until after dinner,” said Margaret. “Are you staying in town long?”

He hesitated. “Only until tomorrow morning.” He smiled at her, and all at once—and it was so absurd!—she wanted to sit closer to him and cry. “But I won’t go until I see Eddie.” He hesitated again. His hands, she saw, were so frail that they were almost translucent. “Eddie hasn’t written me for some time.”

Margaret looked at her cup. “I know,” she said. “Things haven’t been easy for Ed. You know how business is, Father. And then—well, there are—” She stopped. She could not tell him; there was too much to say; it would take days even to begin. She glanced up and saw that he was regarding her gravely, and that in some way he understood. He said, “But I often hear from my old friend, George Enreich.”

Then he did know. “Mr. Enreich and Ed,” she began. “I mean, they see each other—now. And I call on him a couple of times a month. It’s so sad that he’s bedridden, so strong and vital a man.”

“And not very patient,” said the priest, and smiled a little. “He’s been writing to me that he won’t return to the Church, and won’t have the Last Sacrament, and won’t leave a penny to the Church or any of her charities unless I hear his confession—which he hasn’t made for over fifty years.”

They laughed together, thinking affectionately of George Enreich, still virile in mind if not in body.

“So that is why you are here, to minister to him,” said Margaret.

Monsignor Jahle did not answer, and Margaret looked at him and saw that he was grave again, and that his pale face had colored slightly. “I’ll see him, of course,” he said. “But what really brought me right now is Eddie.”

Margaret was very surprised, then touched. “Perhaps,” she said, “Mr. Enreich has been worrying you too much. About Ed.”

He put down his empty cup and clasped his hands between his knees, and his eyes, suddenly fixed on her, were the eyes of a shy child. “Mrs. Enger, I hope you won’t think me foolish or superstitious. Superstition is forbidden us, you know. But I had to come today about Eddie. You see, I had a dream two nights ago about him, and it was so vivid and compelling that I was—I was—”

Panic tightened Margaret’s throat, and she put her hand to it. “What do you mean?” she faltered. “A dream? Everybody has dreams—” Her color left her face and even her lips. “What do you mean?” she cried. “What dream?”

“Please. I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he replied, concerned. “It was, after all, only a dream. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it. But I really wanted to know that Eddie was all right, that he wasn’t ill. Human and foolish of me, wasn’t it, to think that he might not be well?”

Margaret stood up, the panic quickening in her. “Of course he’s well!” she exclaimed. “That is, I don’t think he is any worse than usual. Tired. Worn out. Worried. But who isn’t these days?”

He got to his feet, his head bent. “Yes. Yes, of course, Mrs. Enger.” His voice was still hesitating and expressed his contrition. “You see, Eddie is someone special to me. I’ve known him since he was a little boy.”

“And I have, too,” said Margaret, trying to smile over the pain in her constricted throat. “And, I love him, too. I love him with all my heart. I couldn’t, wouldn’t live if anything happened to him.”

He glanced at her with gentle sternness. “You mustn’t say that, my child. Who is any of us to challenge, to defy God, to say ‘I will not’ to anything He demands of us?”

Now Margaret was distracted. She clenched her hands together and leaned toward him. “That’s clerical talk!” she cried. “What do you know of human love? I’ve never had anyone in my life but Ed! Don’t talk to me about my children! Do you think for a moment I wouldn’t sacrifice their lives to save their father’s life? That I wouldn’t agree to their life-long unhappiness if it would give him happiness?”

She was breathing very fast, for terror had struck her. “What is God to me without my husband? What is anything to me but him?” (What had he dreamt, this unworldly priest with a saint’s serene face? What had he dreamt about Ed? She wanted to know, but dared not know.)

He put his hand on her arm to quiet her. “Mrs. Enger, it was God who gave you your husband. Eddie is as dear to God as any other soul. Do you think He would injure Eddie? Or you? Please listen to me. I’ve known from the beginning that you and Eddie had a true marriage, that you were indeed of one flesh. God has greatly blessed you, in your husband, and Eddie, in his wife. As for what I’ve said, and I see now I have greatly offended you and perhaps have greatly offended God, it was because of George Enreich. He wrote me last week that Eddie was—well, he seemed very tired and distraught. I brooded on it, while I prayed for Eddie. And so my anxiety induced my dream. I should have just inquired about him or have waited to see him. You see, I called his office this morning, and they said he was away and did not know when he would be back. And so I thought I’d come to see you, for personal reassurance. My selfishness has caused you much concern. Please forgive me.”

Margaret sat down abruptly and put her hands over her face. Then she began to speak, in short phrases, her breath catching. “Dear God, I don’t know what to do! I’m almost out of my mind. I can’t even pray to God for Ed. I’m too frightened.” Her voice came muffled through her fingers, and sounded like a long and muted groaning. “And now I don’t believe any longer. Ed’s suffered so much; there’ll never be any relief for him. No one can deliver him from his—It’ll go on forever, until he dies of it and I die with him. It isn’t just his business. It’s everything else. It’s his whole life! It’s something terrible I don’t know about, and perhaps he doesn’t know, either. What can I do, what can I do!”

She dropped her hands and huddled in her chair, her head fallen, her face and eyes as dry as dust with her anguish.

Monsignor Jahle regarded her with deep sorrow and pain. Many years ago he had asked this pretty and frenzied woman to help her husband, but she had not understood. She still did not understand. But God was merciful. Perhaps He would give her understanding in time to save Edward from himself and his secret and fathomless agonies.

The priest wanted to say these things to Margaret, but he saw that if he spoke it would only increase her distraction and confusion. She was not ready. So he said, “You can pray, Mrs. Enger. You can, at the very least, try to pray. God hears every word. Believe me, I know it. Dark and furious though the world is, caught in its own darkness, and baffled though all men are, and terrified, even evil, and lost, they have only to lift up their voices and call, and God will know, and God will help.”

Margaret shook her head over and over, without sound. He put his hand gently on her arm. “Dear child,” he muttered, “don’t despair. Pray, out of your love. And my prayers will go up to God with yours.”

She did not look at him. And so he went alone out of the room and out of the house, torn with sympathy, his lips moving in supplication.

It was a long time before Margaret became aware that he had gone and that she was alone. The fire was bounding in red leaps on the hearth, and she was as cold as death.

Edward had not gone to New York but to Washington. He had stayed there a full day, and then the next morning he had left.

His train was approaching Waterford. He lay back in his chair, his eyes closed, and he looked like a man already dead, his face livid and sunken, his eyelids stony and smooth and purple. The porter passed and repassed him, glancing at him dubiously. That there gentleman sure was sick-looking. Hardly breathing. Once he paused by Edward’s chair and said, “You all right, mister?” And Edward, without stirring or opening his eyes, had replied very quietly, “Yes, I’m all right. Just resting.”

I won’t think of it until I get home, he said to himself. It won’t do any good, thinking. I can’t hurry the train; I can’t do anything but sit here. And try to breathe. God, this pain!

He must have slept. At any rate the sun was suddenly shining, and he heard the lively and rollicking strains of a brass band. An old German brass band which he had not heard since—since when was it? There was something about a war. That was funny; he couldn’t remember any war. The sun was hot on his head and on his face and the band was playing some happy Lieder, and people were singing and clapping and laughing. Why, of course, this was a Sunday afternoon in Stromburg Park. He could see the park now, the warm green grass, the dancing and glittering leaves on the scattered trees; he could smell the grass and the pleasant earth. Men and women and children were sitting in groups in the shade, the women in wide straw hats covered with ribbons and flowers, their full white dresses spread out all around them like flattened umbrellas, the men in stiff straw hats and in striped pink and blue shirts, their coats neatly folded across their knees, the boys in knickers, the little girls as gay as flowers in their summer dresses and hair ribbons. The children ran and played sucking on five-cent ice-cream cones and on penny suckers. Some of them played ball. A few little ones cried and pounded to their mothers. The air was full of voices, and the prancing of the brazen music. There was the bandstand at a little distance, the musicians playing away madly, the sun blazing on their instruments, lying like fire on the rim of the big horn, dancing on the flutes and the cymbals.

And, of course, it was the Fourth of July. Flags were flying around the bandstands. Some of the children waved smaller flags aimlessly as they ran about. Everything was so warm and bright and full of peace, ringing with mirth and childish shouts, the laughter of women, high and careless, the laughter of men, baritone and indulgent. The sky was carved out of single shining blueness, with puffs of illuminated clouds idling in the radiant depths.

Edward Enger was ten years old, and he was with his parents in the park. David and Gregory, dark and thin and discontented, had wandered away from the family group, to find something more interesting to occupy their young minds. Sylvia, nine, was minding little Ralph, who was four, and busily and fussily wiping his mouth after each suck at a dripping cone. Sylvia, thought Edward, was like a spider, with tight black braids, a sharp white face, and long legs in black stockings, and long arms pallid and full of movements as she crossly ministered to young, rosy Ralph, who had hair like a halo of curled copper about his babyish face. His mouth was a rose, streaked with the white drippings of his ice cream, and he was yelling at his sister.

And there was Edward’s mother. She seemed very old to him, and too fat and shapeless in her gray cambric dress with its bulging bodice and skirt. Her hair was like silver, puffed up into an immense pompadour over her pale forehead and shadowing her severe eyes. She appeared completely detached from the family group; she listened to the band with a neutral expression. She never glanced at neighbors under the same tree. There, too, was Edward’s father, pink, rotund and smiling simply and happily, rejoicing in the sunshine and in the sound of the band and in his family. His black hair was already thinning; there was a glistening spot on the top of his head. He kept turning that head from side to side, inviting friendliness and affection, and no one noticed that shy smile, that eager shining of eye. He wore a touching bowtie, red with blue polka dots on it, and his blue shirt was stiff with starch. His boots, old and cracked, had been sedulously polished, and he was careful of the dusty grass. His straw hat with the crimson ribbon lay beside him, yellowing.

Edward was bored. In his opinion the band was too noisy. There were too many people. There would be nothing at all when the sun went down, except the gathering up of baskets and children, who would then be crying with weariness. Then there would be the clanging and crowded streetcar, smelling of sweat and cheap perfume and filled with laughter too shrill. There would be the arrival at the house on School Street, the children trailing and whining and Sylvia scolding, and David dragging far behind and scuffing his feet. There would be a hasty cold dinner of ham and sausage and potato salad which had waited all day in the depths of the icebox, and beer for Heinrich. Then bed. It was a useless kind of day. Of course there had been firecrackers in the morning, ever since dawn, and probably there would be Roman candles to watch this evening, and sparklers in the early dark. The streets fumed with the scent of punk and gunpowder and burnt paper, ghosts of earlier celebrations. A useless, pointless day. Edward, seated at a short distance from his family, brooded on it. Why couldn’t days have some meaning? Why couldn’t they promise something, when the sun went down? But there was only tomorrow, and he would have to go to the store in the morning and scrub down the floor and the counters. He could already smell the pickles in the barrels and the pungent scent of ham being cut, and could already hear the constant slap of the screen door. He pulled up a handful of grass and put it to his nose, and all at once, without warning, he had a sense of excitement as the fragrance entered his nostrils, and everything, for a moment, was transformed and illuminated and there was a meaning after all, which he would find someday when he was grown up and not a boy any longer in dusty knickers buckled under his knees.

He glanced at his mother. And then at his father, his heart warming. Did they know about the meaning, which was still nameless and mysterious? No, they were too old. His father was thirty-one, his mother a little older. Too old. They thought about nothing but the kids and the delicatessen and putting some money in the bank. He had a secret!

The band struck a particularly loud and warning chord. Oh, here came the speeches, the boring, shouting, gesture-full speeches. The mayor would talk, the councilmen would talk, some young veterans of the Spanish-American War would talk, a judge would talk, and a man hoping for an office in November would talk. They would talk forever.

Now the band roared into the strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and the crowd got reluctantly to its feet. The speech-makers were already standing in the wooden box below the bandstand. Edward could see the creased uniforms of the young veterans. They had very rakish Rough Rider hats, and their faces were boyish and solemn. A late afternoon wind lifted the flags and held them against the sky in all their starry splendor, and then again Edward’s heart rose with excitement.

A preacher climbed up into the bandstand first, the band behind him. He droned on and on; the people bowed their heads when he prayed, a polite bowing. Edward frowned. He saw the bored and unlistening faces. This was wrong, somehow. But the preacher had a voice like a giant bee, buzzing and never changing inflection. He was done; he had lifted his hands in benediction and was climbing down the stairs to the box again.

The mayor, waddling and beaming, went up the stairs, and the people clapped gladly and with much noise, suddenly relieved of their crowd anonymity. They clapped harder, even those who had never voted for the mayor and did not know or like him, simply to call attention to themselves and cry out their individual significance as if in protest. Some of the men and boys shouted, and the mayor bowed and waved his straw hat. He began to talk. He was even duller than the preacher. He was followed by the other politicians. Edward yawned; he was suddenly sleepy. The flags had fallen into quiet folds as the wind died.

Then someone was helping a very young veteran up the stairs, and Edward got to his feet and moved nearer the bandstand the better to see. Why, the young soldier had a wooden leg! He pulled himself up on the stairs painfully. He had a boy’s face, but it was strained and pale and somber. He did not smile; he did not wave his hat at the sympathetic applause of the crowd. He just stood in silence and waited for the demonstration to stop, and his eyes, piercing and too bright, moved over the people searchingly. He lifted his hand, and the shouting and cheers subsided abruptly. The soldier leaned on the white railing of the bandstand and began to speak.

He had a good voice, not filled with the false ring of the politician’s voice. It was measured and calm, yet charged with passion, and it seemed to reach the farthest tree, the farthest ear.

“It’s very good to celebrate the Fourth of July with firecrackers and the shooting off of cannon and bonfires and picnics and speeches,” he said. He looked more searchingly at the crowd. “It’s nice to go out in rowboats and canoes on the lake, here in the park, and have a holiday. A holiday. I know you people work very hard, most of you twelve hours a day, six days a week. My dad does, too. You deserve a holiday, and pleasure, and the banging of firecrackers. But it shouldn’t be on the Fourth of July. Independence Day.”

A puzzled murmur rose from the crowd, and many looked at each other uncertainly. The young man lifted both his hands, and there was a simple but stark majesty about him, and the crowd fell into silence.

“But the Fourth of July should have something of a holy feeling about it. For on that day our nation was born, conceived in liberty, planned in reverence, and signed with the sacred honor and blood of noble men. This is a day for, prayer and remembrance, and the renewal of vows that this nation shall never forget the men who died and fought for it, and bought it not only with all their fortunes but with their lives and prayers. This is a day for the churches to be open and filled with all of you, a day of quiet respect and soberness and bravery and hope and dedication.”

Edward drew even nearer, and he was trembling with excitement. But the people, though respectful and pitying, did not understand. They pursed up their lips to show their polite attention, but their eyes were sheepish.

“You have been given a nation, a history, a tradition, a republic,” the young man went on. “You have been given a Constitution which could have come only from God, for it’s so perfect and so good and so heroic. For the first time in the world a document asserted that men were created equal before the face of God and law, that they were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, the right to live in freedom and to die in freedom, the right to worship God in their own way, the right to seek redress of wrongs on the part of evil men, the right to pursue happiness, the right to property, the right to be secure in their persons and not to be’ oppressed by the military and despots and ambitious men who might want to enslave them in the future, as the old tyrants once enslaved them. How could mere men, even the men who brought about the American Revolution, have conceived of such documents without the help and the voice of God? And how can we keep our republic without God’s help, without remembering what He has done for us, without praying that we must not forget?”

The people stirred and stood up straighter, and now their faces were living and strong and moved.

“We are at peace,” the veteran continued, and his young voice broke for a moment. “But how long shall we be at peace? Is there any group of men anywhere believing that we must die as a free nation, and that the mass of mankind is unworthy of liberty, and that liberty is the province of only the powerful and those who would oppress us? Be sure that there are such men. There always have been in all the history of the world. If you do not recognize them when they appear in government, then we shall all surely die, and our Constitution with us, and there will be no remembrance of it and no remembrance of Him who gave us a nation and gave us our freedom. They are not new in the world. They are as old as death and sin.”

The wind blew up again, more vehement this time as the sun sloped to the west, and the flags suddenly lifted in renewed grandeur and sailed against the sky. Edward saw them, and his young heart trembled and was filled with love and devotion.

The veteran’s voice dropped as if he were alone and praying to himself, and he looked at the flags. “Dear banners,” he said. “My dear country, my very dear country! God bless you and keep you forever, keep you vigorous in peace and valor and justice, unstained by the lust for power, untainted by the hands of ambitious and treacherous men, free from liars and thieves and murderers, who always lie in wait for the liberty-loving and the good and the peaceful, so that they can destroy them. God keep you strong in your virtue; do not war except to protect yourself. Do not search for what is not yours but other men’s.

“God keep you, God bless you, God help your people to remember what you have done for them. My dear country.”

My dear country, young Edward said in himself for the first time in his life. Why, I’d die for you! I love you to death, honest I do.

The people did not applaud. They were too filled with emotion and fervor. The band struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner” again, and everyone sang, deep-throated, their voices shaking with tears and passion, their eyes glowing. And the young veteran looked down at them, smiling and listening, his hand at his forehead in salute.

Edward heard a man’s voice at his ear. Or was it inside his head? A man’s voice tired but steadfast. “So that is how I came to love my country,” the voice said. “I never really remembered, I never really knew!”

The man’s voice died away. Heinrich was shaking young Edward’s arm with some petulance. “The mother is busy with the basket and the children,” he said. “You stand here with open mouth and do not help. Come.”

“Did you hear what that soldier said?” cried Edward. “Did you listen to him, Pa? Did you ever hear anything like it? Why, it makes you love America—like anything!”

“I have no time to listen to soldiers,” said Heinrich, tugging at his arm. “Besides, it is all chauvinism, and that is a bad thing. It is patriotism, and men make wars when they are patriotic. There are not just nations. There are only men in the world. One day we will learn that, through Socialism.”

Edward gaped at him. “Gee, you talk funny, Pa. You don’t have to look so mad. You didn’t listen to him!” And he was suddenly not only excited but enraged. “He was talking about America, not—not—what did you call it? What does it mean? I guess I don’t know, but it don’t mean America!”

“And it never will,” said the man’s voice in his ear. “It never will!”

“My dear country,” said Edward in reply. “I came to love you on that day, though I didn’t remember it.”

Someone was pumping his arm determinedly. “You best wake up, mister. We’re acoming into Waterford right now.”

The band died into silence. The veteran’s voice was lost. Edward opened his eyes, dazed and shivering, the pang of pain clawing at his beleaguered heart. He stared at the concerned face of the porter. He mumbled, “But still I don’t remember what the meaning was that I thought I was about to know.”

“What you say, sir?” asked the porter, his black face shining with gravity.

“Nothing,” replied Edward, struggling to rouse himself and stand up. “Nothing that I can remember.”

This time his car, driven by the chauffeur always in demand by others of the family, was waiting for him. He fell onto the seat, and the pain was huge in his chest.

CHAPTER XII

Margo sat with her husband, Gregory Enger, in their secluded suite at the far eastern side of the house. She was not smiling; her bold face had something harsh about it, for all its smooth coarseness. She sat at her dressing table and pulled a brush angrily through her straight blonde hair, and watched Gregory in her glass. Her large white arms flashed in and out of her blue velvet dressing gown.

“We can always get that friend of yours, that psychiatrist, what’s his name? Lorensen. Damn it, Greg, stop running up and down the room and listen to me!” She swung her big round thighs on her chair and twisted around the better to see Gregory.

“You know what they’re always saying in Washington, that people who disagree with progressive policies are mentally ill, that anyone who thinks the Constitution means anything in these days is insane, and that men like your brother, who hate the progressives, should be confined and treated in mental hospitals. Why, almost all the psychiatrists say that, and you know it! What more do you need?” She slapped her brush down on the glass top of the dressing table. “Damn! I’ve cracked it. Who cares? Well? You’ve talked to Lorensen about Ed, haven’t you? And didn’t he say that Ed must be out of his mind, always talking about this country getting in some war in Europe? Didn’t he say that Ed was crazy and mixed up, about Socialism? He should know Ed personally, and the booby wagon would be at the door before you could blink your eyes.

“God damn it, Greg! I want money, a lot of money. You can get a dozen psychiatrists to swear that Ed is out of his mind; why, you can buy them! Lawyers do when they’re defending criminals. You can get them to swear that it’s their opinion that a murderer is what he is because he came from a broken home, or something, or his dad spanked him for wetting his pants when he was five years old. Or he had a complex because his mother had red or green or bright blue-pink hair. It’s done every day. Get Ed certified and put where he belongs. Then we’ll all have money; we can sell out those damned stores, and divide it up, and we’ll be rich. Rich! My God, rich! A couple of the best cars. Clothes! Diamonds! Stop staring at me like that just because I have some common sense.”

Gregory stopped near her, his eyes screwed up tightly, his mouth puffing erratically at his cigarette. Margo went on: “Didn’t you say that the psychiatrists are getting up a symposium, or something, to say that reactionaries be given what they call ‘loving and tender care’ until they’re cured and get on the progressive band wagon? Didn’t Lorensen say that George Washington was mentally ill and must have hated his father, and that’s why he disliked the authority of England? Well! If he can publish that stuff, he can do something about Ed.”

Gregory said in a stifled voice, “Ed’s not crazy, and you know it. He’s just on to people like us, and he knows as well as we do what we want.”

“All the more reason he should be put in the booby hatch where he won’t be so dangerous. It won’t be long before there’ll be a showdown—remember that Martin Dies and his committee! How’d you like to have to testify before that—Texan, anyway? The White House couldn’t even scare him; he’s got the FBI behind him. Maybe they’ll get their own psychiatrists to say you are crazy. Don’t laugh.” Her loud hoarse voice rose to a brawling tone, and Gregory winced.

“Do you have to yell like a train caller? Let me think.”

“All right. Think! I’m not too sure about your brothers, either. You couldn’t pull Ralph in, or Dave. And Ralph and Violette will be here tomorrow. You’ll have to talk to them—Ralph and Violette. Cook up some story. Ed’s emotionally disturbed, and all that stuff. As for me, I’ll swear to anything, and you can, too. I’ll swear he pranced around naked every morning, at dawn, and doused himself regularly in that lousy fountain, even in the winter. Cut up paper dolls, too. Anything for a diamond necklace and a fourteen-carat emeraldcut ring and a big car of our own!”

Gregory glared at his wife in the mirror. There were patches of gray at his temples, and streaks of gray through his thick black hair. Margo glared back at him. Then, all at once, he was sick. She was a fool, of course, with that talk about certifying Ed. A big, coarse fool of a woman. He had looked for strength in her, for comfort. He remembered the night they had first met; she had been like a sunflower at the edge of a poisonous jungle.… He shook his head dazedly. But I was the one who corrupted her, he thought with sudden starkness. I put that jargon into her mouth, and she believed it and it was all truth to her. Because she loved me, I suppose. Ed liked her; he always did like her. I don’t suppose that he ever thought she was like me. What am I like? What am I, with all those articles for the Party’s papers and periodicals? Did I ever really believe it? Do I believe it now? What am I? What was I ever looking for?

It was too late now to ask himself these questions. He was committed. He had committed his wife, who had never really known what it was all about, not once in her simple, avaricious, trusting and—yes—her loving life. He had been able to corrupt her because she loved him. Did he love her now that she was corrupt?

“Look,” he said through his teeth and his sickness, “I’m not a real Communist, Margo. Did, you think I was? I just joined a number of fronts and wrote for them, and for—other magazines and papers. I was on the committees, sub rosa.” He paused, for she was staring at him in amazement, her eyes big and unbelieving.

“What’re you trying to tell me?” she cried.

That I didn’t, and don’t, believe a damned word I’ve been writing and saying all these years, he answered her in his wretched mind. That I’m scared to death now. That I was a coward, and hated Ed. That there wasn’t a stinking place in the world to which I belonged, and I had no moral values or morality, because my father had taken them from me with his “abstracts.” Because I’m weak and I needed to have an anchorage and a sense of belonging. Because I knew, deep down, that I was really nothing, only a trifling, vengeful fool. And Ed was handy for hating, for he always could make me despise myself, and because I had him fooled for a long time. Because I didn’t have the fortitude to stand on my own feet. A thousand “becauses.” And now I can look at myself, for I’m frightened to my very bones; they’re coming closer; they may even have my name by now and know everything I’ve done. Does a man have to be frightened to see himself for the first time?

“Margo,” he said through his sickness. He wanted her strong arms about him, he wanted a renewal of her simplicity, he wanted to be cleansed.… But he had corrupted her; he had given her hatred and lies. It had taken him months to make her believe what she now believed about his brother. Even then, during those years, she had doubted at times. She had laughed with Ed occasionally, and he, Gregory, had seen the wrinkle of doubt between her bold blue eyes. She had come to her husband to be reassured, to be convinced of the rightness of the “crusade.” Each time it had been easier. All that was intrinsically kind and honest in her had been silenced with the clamor of jargon and propaganda. Why had he, Gregory, wanted to corrupt her? What had been the imperative? He had forgotten. He hated himself; he hated those he knew in Washington and New York, the smirking, or the fanatical, or the cruel and zealous, or the benighted fools like himself. The hating, cowardly, snickering fools like himself! He hadn’t even sold himself for the legendary thirty pieces of silver, he thought drearily. He had sold himself only for hatred, when he could have been a man.

It was never Ed, he said to himself. It was only ourselves, my brothers and my sister—and I. Why do I have to know it now for the first time, without lies? All these years—and for the first time! When I feel I’m cornered, and there’s no one I can go to for help—not even my wife.

Margo, watching him, jumped to her feet affrightedly. “Greg! What’s the matter? Honey, what’s the matter?” She ran to him and put her arms about him, and her warm breast was against him. “You’re scared, honey. Don’t you be scared! Why should you be afraid of him when we’re right, when he’s our enemy? You’re tired; all that writing you’ve been doing; all those friends of yours called up before the subcommittee. But now it’s going to stop. You don’t have to be afraid any longer. Honey, don’t shake like that!”

Her arms were warm and strong; her lips were against his cheek; he could smell her robust perfume and feel the sturdiness of her body. Yes, he loved her, even if he had corrupted her. He wanted to say to her, “Margo, I’m a liar. I’ve been a liar all my life.” But Margo was not a liar; she would not understand. She would stand back from him and see him, and that would be the end.

She was standing back from him now, her hands still on his shoulders, and staring at him in puzzlement and concern and affection. Then the telephone rang, and she muttered an obscene word and reached for the instrument, her eyes still questioningly on her husband. She said sharply into the telephone, “All right, Fran.” She waited, and her face changed, the sockets of her eyes widening. “I have it,” she said at last. “Yes, yes. Yes, Arnold. Washington?” Her voice rose shrilly. “He was in Washington?” She listened again, and her pink cheeks whitened, and her eyes stared at Gregory with hard terror and consternation. Then she put the telephone down.

“What’s wrong?” cried Gregory. But he knew with all surety.

Margo looked down at the telephone without moving. “He—he’s been to Washington. To see some—friends. They asked him to come. That’s what Arnold told me. It’s that Senator, that old man, Sheftel. He told Ed—Arnold got it through someone in Sheftel’s office—that if you didn’t stop right away you’d be called before the subcommittee. Sheftel wanted Ed to do something, for Ed’s and the family’s sake.” She shivered and sucked at her lips. “Well,” she went on. “Well. Jesus Christ.”

Gregory’s lips turned as dry as stone. Margo looked at him now, and she saw his demoralization, his great terror. She sat down suddenly. “Well,” she said again. She leaned her cheek on her hand, putting her elbow on the dressing table. She tapped her foot. “Anyway,” she murmured, “they’re not going to do anything yet—not call you or anything. It’s just Ed we have to handle.”

The sleet and wintry wind pounded at the windows. Margo gnawed a hangnail. She was not afraid for herself. All the powers of her healthy body and her simple mind were gathering forces to protect her husband, who stood there and could not move and who could only stand and look at her desperately. She wanted to run to him again and to hide his face against her shoulder. But she had to think. For him. She swung her leg and pulled absently at a thread in her robe, dangled it, then let it fall to the floor.

Then she got up and forced a big smile onto her face, and went to Gregory and put her arms about him again. “Hell, honey. He’s your brother, though he’s a real bastard, and for his own sake and the family’s, he won’t let you be hurt. And what can he do to you? Anything he’d do he’d have to explain. And it’d be the worse for him, too. Him and his precious goddamn stores. He’d be more afraid of the newspapers than anything else. He’ll keep it quiet. He’ll even pay—somebody—to keep it quiet. You can buy almost anybody for money. Besides, didn’t that old fleabag of a Senator tell him? Would he have told him if they—they—had it all planned to call you? It was just a warning.”

“A warning,” repeated Gregory, in a dull and fainting voice. He was very cold; he leaned against the warmth of Margo’s arms.

“Sure, sure, honey.” She kissed him smackingly. “I’m here, aren’t I? I won’t let him—well, do anything to you. We’ll go away if that’s what he wants. But we won’t go away without money! We’ve got him there, by the short hairs!”

The sickness was on Gregory again. The necessity for cleansing was on him like a wild fury, and the awful necessity for confession. Margo would heal him; she loved him. It was possible, if he explained in simple words, that she would understand. But even while he tried to form the words there was a knock on the door, and a maid said, “Mrs. Enger? Mr. Enger just got home. He wants to see Mr. Gregory in the library right away.”

Margo spoke over her shoulder at the door. “All right,” she said impatiently. “He’ll be down in a minute.” She smiled deeply at Gregory. “Now, honey, you just be sure of yourself. You’ll have to talk to him. Here, help me off with this damned robe.” She showed herself in her glistening silk slip. Her breasts thrust against the soft fabric. “I’m going down with you, darling. He’s not going to bully you. He’s not very bright; you said that yourself. You can explain it all away. Laugh. We’ll both laugh. And we can tell him that some of the trouble he’s been having lately with the government is because you’ve got friends in Washington. You can promise him more, if he won’t listen to reason. There, now; just pull that over my right shoulder.” She patted his face lovingly and gave him another big smile.

What can I say to him? thought the gray-faced Gregory as he and Margo went out into the hall together. There’s nothing I can say now, nothing he can forgive or want to understand. “Look,” whispered Margo, pulling him back a little. “There’s Margaret going down the stairs. That’s good. She knows he’s home, too. She’ll help us calm him down. I think we’re just scaring ourselves to death.”

They let Margaret go far ahead of them. They did not move until she had run down the stairs. She had not seen Gregory and Margo, and she was smiling almost happily. Edward had not called to her to come, but she had been waiting, and she had heard the car return. It was not surprising to her that he had gone directly to the library. He often stopped there first to put papers into the safe and glance at his mail before going upstairs. He was safe! He was at home! That priest, with his superstitious dreams! She clutched Gertrude’s and Robert’s new letters in her hand; they had arrived this morning. She would mix Ed a drink; she would sit near him while he read the letters, and, for a while, for just a little while, they would laugh together as they used to do, and discuss the children.

She opened the library door. The room was full of lamplight. She still smiled. “Ed, darling,” she said. “I was waiting for you. I’m so glad you’re home! Here are—”

And then she stopped. Edward was standing behind a table and his face was terrible and fixed and his color was ghastly. He looked at her and said in a very quiet voice, “Go away, Margaret. I’m going to be busy for a few minutes. Go upstairs. Stay there until I can come up.”

She had never seen him like this, not even when business was at its worst, not even when he was most beset and distracted. She had never seen that expression on his face before, that frightful expression, that steady flare of the eyes. Her heart thumped; she was sick with fear. He was too still, too motionless.

“Oh, what is it?” she cried, overcome with her fear. “What is it, Ed? Tell me. I have a right to know. I’m your wife.” She held out her hands pleadingly. She prayed inwardly, Dear God, what is the matter? What is wrong?

“I said, go away, Margaret.” His voice did not change, did not become excitable or annoyed. “I don’t want you here.”

She stood in the middle of the room, transfixed with her awful dread. He is dying, she said to herself. Ed is dying. Absolute horror and panic shook her heart. She advanced a little into the room, and he held up his hand. She could see his eyes more clearly now in the lamplight, and they were brilliant and immobile. Yet his voice was still quiet when he repeated, “Go away. I don’t want you here just now.”

She swallowed dryly. Before she could move or speak again, the door opened and Gregory and Margo stood on the threshold. Margaret regarded them with wild confusion, but even in that confusion, and her fear, she saw with curious clarity that Gregory had a deathly look, that Margo, though smiling, was colorless, and that about them both was a disordered air of trepidation and shocked alarm and utter fright. They seemed to falter on the threshold rather than to stand on it. Margo’s arm was twined tightly around Gregory’s; she appeared to be holding him upright, and then she gave Edward a glance of fearful challenge, defiance, and fortitude.

“Well?” she said, and her bold voice was almost shrill. “You wanted to see Greg?”

Margaret moistened her lips; her eyes darted from the faces of Gregory and Margo to Edward, and her confusion made her head swim. She put her hand to her temple and frowned vaguely.

But Edward looked only at his wife. “Do you want me to put you out?” he asked.

Margo shouted, “Why? Why shouldn’t she stay? What do you mean, asking Greg to come down here like he was a servant or something? Why shouldn’t Margaret hear what you want to say? Are you afraid she wouldn’t love you any more?”

Her big mouth, stained with scarlet that only pointed up her pallor, sneered. In a wheedling and lowered voice she said to Margaret, “Don’t go, darling. He—he came back—from somewhere—and then like a slave driver or something he told a maid to send Greg down here—Don’t go,” she pleaded.

“Why, why?” muttered Margaret. “What is it?”

Margo held out her hand to Margaret, and Margaret involuntarily recoiled. A sensation of unreality fell over her; objects in the room, and those three faces, began to blur.

Margo, gathering passion again in her panic, and her anger against Edward, and her concern for Gregory, exclaimed, “What’s it all about? Greg, ask him. Don’t just stand here. He—he can’t kill you!” Still holding her husband by one arm, she reached across his chest and shook his shoulder with her left hand. “Oh, Jesus!” she exclaimed. “Be a man, honey, be a man!”

Margaret, dazed and with increasing confusion, faltered, “What is it? What have you done to Ed?”

Gregory came feebly to life. His voice croaked impotently once or twice before he could say in a very weak tone, “I don’t know. But just look at him! What is all this—a secret?” Something vital slipped inside of him, something that had never been very strong but which was completely demoralized now.

“Not any longer,” Edward replied to him. “And I think you know.”

Margaret said faintly, “I’m not going. There’s something wrong with my husband!” She took a blundering step toward Gregory. “What have you done to him? It’s something you’ve done! I can see it in your faces.” Her eyes shone on him, distraught.

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” said Gregory, in that weak voice. It was too unbearable now to look at his brother. “We don’t know,” said Margo. “He—sent for Greg. And then we came in—and he’s like this. Maybe he’s lost his mind,” she added, her tone rising almost hysterically.

Edward said to his wife, “I can’t throw you out bodily. And what I have to say won’t take but a minute.” He turned his eyes on his brother.

“I’ve been to Washington. A friend asked me to come—to save me and my family from disgrace.” He spoke almost in an uninterested fashion. “I know all about you now, you vicious half-wit. I know what you’ve been doing; I know about the people you’ve been associating with; I know the kind of writing you’ve been doing for years. Don’t speak. It won’t do you any good.”

He caught a sudden breath, harsh and loud in the quiet of the leathery library, and he quickly pressed a hand to his chest. Margaret, stunned, stared at Gregory and Margo. Edward looked at his watch. “It’s almost half past seven. I want you and your wife—your wife who I thought might put some sense and decency into that feeble brain of yours—out of this house before midnight. That’s nearly five hours.” He caught his breath again. He said, very simply, “And if you aren’t out of this house by then, I think I’ll kill you, not because you’ve been so important but because of the thing you are, and what you always were.”

Gregory straightened up rigidly as if shot, and as if at any moment he would fall heavily to the floor.

“How dare you talk to Greg like that!” Margo was shouting again in frenzy. “You’re all crazy, mixed up. You’re out of your mind! We’re not going out of this house like a pair of refugees, just because you’ve got a brainstorm. You’re not Hitler.” Her voice, in her panic, dropped to an incongruous note of threat, for she was shaking. “I think it’ll be more safe for us to stay, Ed. You’ve been having trouble with Washington for some time, Ed. Do you want more? Do you really want trouble, trouble that’ll put you out of business forever? Greg can do that to you, you see.”

There were blinding tears in her eyes. She had had to force Gregory against the doorjamb to hold him upright. What was the matter with him? Why didn’t he stand and talk and smile surely as he always did? He was always so brave—he could stand up to anybody—he could speak and make people just wilt.… Greg, Greg, she implored him silently, in her distracted mind. You know what to say!

Then Edward smiled, a strange faint smile, almost of compassion, and Margo blinked as she saw it turned on her. “I ought to have known he’d get around to corrupting you, Margo. I shouldn’t have been such a fool that I’d have overlooked that. I should have told you to go home, Margo, where you belong, among your own kind of people and not among diseased brains. Don’t you understand? He’s my brother, who’s lived on me all his life. He’s never earned a really honorable cent all the years he’s lived. Nothing will stop his kind except a rope or a gun. I ought to have known what he was, from the very beginning.”

Again and again that torn and ragged breath sounded harshly in the room, even against the sound of the wind.

“Nothing but a rope or a gun,” he repeated.

Margo’s eyes rounded and glared. “Really crazy!” she exclaimed. “I always said you were after what Greg told me about you. You’re nothing but a Hitler! Trying to scare people to death, trying to drive people out. Sometimes I thought maybe Greg was wrong; my dad never talked like Greg; my dad met Greg once and didn’t like him. But Dad’s an old reactionary fuddyduddy—” She swallowed visibly, and her tears overflowed her eyelids and fell over her firm round cheeks. “And now I see Greg’s right, and your kind don’t have the right to live, and I can say it to your face now!”

Margaret listened, and it was all clear to her. She pressed her clasped hands deeply into her breast. She looked at Gregory, and the blue of her eyes was like lightning.

Gregory, who gave the impression of groveling, whispered, “I’m not a Communist, Ed, if that’s what you mean. Margo, shut up, you and your idiotic bellowing. Don’t listen to her, Ed; listen to me.”

“What?” whimpered Margo, and her arms dropped from him.

“I’m a liberal, Ed,” Gregory went on, and his whine was louder. “I’m a progressive. I know your ideas and you know mine. We’ve argued with each other and have had some quarrels. But, as you’ve said, I’m your brother. Your brother, Ed. Do you think I would do anything to hurt you? What would that profit me?”

“Why, what d’you mean!” Margo shrieked. “All you’ve told me—!”

Edward closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, they were more terrible than ever. “Don’t lie any more, Greg,” he said. “You’ve lied all your life. Look at Margo and see what you’ve done. You parasite, you liar. And now you’re finished. I could let my friends in Washington do what they want to do. One call from me and you’ll wish you’d never been born. One call and that’s the end of you. I’m letting you go quietly. I don’t care where you go or how you’ll get there. But I warn you, if I hear anything more you’ve done—then I’ll find you, wherever you are.”

Now Margo was sure she knew! This was what they all did, these reactionaries! Scared people out of their minds! Browbeat them and murdered them and robbed them and chased them away! Greg was right. He’d been right all the time, and she’d argued with him sometimes. Poor Greg, poor Greg. She clenched her fists and leaned toward Edward, and shouted hoarsely:

“Don’t try to scare us, you Fascist! We don’t scare. Oh, we’ll go. But we want ten thousand dollars, right this minute, and an allowance, or you’ll be sorry all your life, and Greg’s going on with his work and you can’t stop him! Your friends? We got friends, too, and you’ll find out,” and she shook her head so passionately and vehemently at Edward that her smooth chignon loosened as if in a wind. “Look what you’ve done to him! Frustrating him and making him a prisoner, doling out money to him as if he was a beggar, scaring the pants off him all the time! I know! But you’re not going to do it any longer.” She caught her breath and began to cry furiously. “I’ll take care of Greg. He’s got a delicate, peaceful kind of temperament, but I’m here, and you’ll find out!”

Edward said to his brother, “Get out.”

And then they knew this was the end, even poor, betrayed Margo. She fell silent, moistening her lips, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand, like a big child. She turned with sturdy and pitying tenderness to her husband. “Let’s go, Greg, honey. We don’t want to stay in a house where there’s an insane fellow. You’d never know what he’d do. He’s absolutely out of his mind.” She took Gregory’s arm again, then started violently. Margaret had uttered a great and wailing cry, a cry of the deepest despair. Margo jumped and looked at Edward.

He was swaying behind his table. His eyes rolled up. He clutched blindly at papers, at wood, at a lamp, which tottered. His face became the color of clay. He made a strangling sound, fell against the table. And then he crashed to the floor.

Margaret ran to him, knelt beside him, raised his head in her arms, and held it tightly against her breast. Gregory, coming to life, flew to join her, but he stopped when he saw her eyes. “You’ve killed my husband,” she whispered. “You’ve murdered my husband.”

Wildly, Gregory looked about him. Margo uttered a high scream, and he ran at her and struck her across the mouth. “You did it!” he howled. “You killed my brother, you tramp!”

CHAPTER XIII

How long had he wallowed in that pain? Edward asked himself. A long time, a very long time, all the days of his life. But now it was over, and he was free and at peace, and he could breathe easily, and there was a lightness in him like the very essence of youth. He did not want to open his eyes; he lay in the soft darkness which seemed to strum with some gentle and triumphant music. If he opened his eyes, he would be assaulted by that pain again. The pain of living, he said to himself, the immeasurable pain of living. The endless, lightless, hopeless pain of being a man. He rested on billows of warmth and comfort, and sighed with pleasure that he had been delivered.

A woman spoke, close to him, a soft and groaning voice. “You’ll be kind, won’t You, God?” she prayed. He turned his head in the darkness. Who was speaking?

“Not Ed, God, not Ed—just anyone else in the world,” the voice prayed. “Me, for instance. Take my eyes, my life, give me an awful disease, strike me down, do anything to me, kill me now, give my strength to Ed.”

“I must go,” he said. “You must let me go. Don’t hold me.” And then, “Margaret? You are dreaming, darling,” he said. “Wake up. I’m here. I’m not in pain any longer. I only dreamt I had pain.” And then he opened his eyes.

The pain did not return. There was a dim light about him. It was like a gray shadow rather than a light. Very slowly, then, the shadow retreated like a wave and he could see, but it was as if he saw at a great distance. He was in the very smallest of rooms, almost like a coffin, and there stood Margaret at a window, but a Margaret as tiny as a doll near a window that was only the most minute of blurs. She resembled one of those diminutive Dresden figures his mother had brought from Germany.

He thought, surprised, How little life is, how infinitesimal, how fragile, how unimportant. And how little it really has to do with us. He could hear that soft, prayerful groaning of the woman at the window, who stood with her back to him, and he said, “Margaret, my darling, it isn’t worth praying about or crying about. Look at me. I am bigger than life, all of us are bigger than life. Here I am. I haven’t gone away. Turn around and look at me.”

But Margaret stood there, that most Lilliputian of figures, sharp and clear in color but still so very small. She could stand in the palm of his hand. Beyond her, he could see a faint slice of magenta in that minute blur of a window. He was in a doll’s house, breathing and seeing in a doll’s house. Or he was standing at an immense distance, not on Margaret’s level, not on any earthly level at all. He was profoundly interested in that fact. He was certain he was not dreaming; he could move and feel and know. Suddenly he was filled with tenderness for Margaret, his wife, the deepest of loves, moved by a love he had never felt before, so universal and yet so particular it was. And he was joyful and free. He called to Margaret again, in a loud and sonorous voice, but she did not turn. Her litany of agony continued, in the frailest of voices. “Not Ed, God, please not Ed. My life. Everything I have. Take them. Kill me. Just spare Ed.”

“But I have been spared,” he said. “I’m alive, dearest. Don’t suffer so. Look at me.” And he rose off his pillows, got out of bed, and stood up. He seemed to tower out of the doll’s house, to look down at Margaret’s tiny body. This confused him for a moment. Then he was impatient. Margaret had only to turn to see him, to see him strong and young and vital. To see him free. She would be happy then. He began to walk toward her. A voice called him, a man’s voice, and he turned sharply.

But he could see no one. The door stood open. He hesitated. He had to go through that door; he wanted, first, for Margaret to see and know him before he went away. You see, he argued with her lovingly and reprovingly, I can’t stay here. Someone’s calling me. You’d understand if you’d just turn around and see. I’m not going far, not too far to hear your voice. I’ll be waiting, just outside the door. Or not too far.

“Ed,” said the man’s voice, urgently and with a note of command in it. He could not, disobey. He walked across the floor; he was so light and so buoyant and he wanted to laugh with pleasure at his freedom of movement. At the door he paused, and for the last time he begged Margaret to look at him. But she would not. So he went through the door with the swiftness of a young child.

The hall swam in soft light and was very silent. He could feel it like a friendly presence. He went down the stairs. There were lights in the hall, and a fire on the hearth, and lights beyond in the living room. He could hear voices, far and muted voices, the voices of tiny creatures. He hesitated; then the man’s voice called to him again, and he said, in surprise, “Yes, Padraig. Where are you?”

“Here,” said Padraig. And there was Padraig, young and smiling, at the big hall doors. He had opened them. He stood in the aperture, and beyond him the world was all summer and moonlight, a world wide and illuminated and filled with the sweetest of perfumes. Padraig held out his hand and Edward went at once to him, and again he wanted to laugh with pleasure and delight. “I dreamt you were dead,” he said to Padraig, and Padraig laughed. “I was never dead,” he replied. “You were dreaming.”

But when Edward reached out to take his hand, Padraig said gently, “Not yet. Just follow me.” And he stepped into the sweet and luminous world of summer and moonlight and Edward followed. Everything had a luminosity of its own, as if shining softly from within. The leaves on the summer trees were pale jewels; each blade of grass was burnished. The stars were great spheres, burning in sapphire and ruby and emerald; they were so close that it was possible to see their majestic turning and to observe the flash of their ordered passage. The moon stood in the dark sky, an immense moon, giving out her own light and not the light of any sun. Edward saw flowers along his path that he could not remember. Roses and lilies so fair and so tall and so fragrant that he knew at once that they were not insensate plants but individuals who knew him and loved him, and stood proudly in their colored radiance. He saw the animals of the fields near them, not afraid but clothed in their shy and simple innocence. Their eyes glowed and regarded him with kindness.

Then he remembered that it was winter. He turned his head and looked back, and the winter was there, cold and stark and dead, the moon diminished, the patches of snow eroded and leprous. An icy wind struck his face. He saw the house, and it was indeed a doll’s house, shrunken, huddled close to the unliving earth.

“Do not look back,” said Padraig. “It is always winter when you look back.”

Full of wonder, Edward followed him. Padraig was so close, yet when Edward quickened his step he could not shorten the gap between them. Padraig was leading the way across the garden, which blossomed before them in that pure silver light. The fountain splashed in drops of mercurial brilliance, and the boy who stood in the midst of the bowl nodded his head at Edward in greeting. “I thought you were stone,” said Edward in surprise. The boy replied, “But nothing is stone. Everything lives.” His face was no longer depraved; it was the face of a blissful child.

Now Padraig was standing and waiting under the shadow of the grove of trees, and the trees were in full summer, their leaves plated with light and ever-turning in a soft wind. “Let us sit here and talk,” said Padraig in the deep and quiet voice Edward remembered. They sat on the bench together, but Padraig sat at a distance, and his face was smiling and peaceful. “They sent me for you,” he said. “And then you must decide whether to go with me or return.”

“Return to winter?” asked Edward, and it seemed to him that he diminished and became cold and frozen.

“You have forgotten,” said Padraig. “Love is there, in the winter.”

“We must go back for Margaret,” said Edward.

Padraig shook his head. “Not yet. It is not her time. It may not be yours.”

They looked at each other, and Padraig smiled with affection and serenity. “I have only a little time,” he said. “God has been good. He let me come to you. There is so much you do not know, Ed. I am permitted to show you.” He lifted his hand and pointed. “See, and then you must understand.”

Edward turned his head. It was still night. But a small and unlovely night now. He was looking at a street, lonely, narrow, the houses dark and mean. A summer night, with hammocks creaking on silent little porches. People were alive in the dusty darkness and heat. A boy was walking down the concrete sidewalk, and it was he himself. He could hear his own thoughts: “I wonder what people live for? What, for instance, am I living for?” There was an arc light spitting and sparkling on the corner, all starkness, all without merciful shadows. Clouds of blinded insects blew about the light, hurling themselves to a burning death, trying to extinguish themselves. “Why, they’re like those people on the porches and in the houses,” the young Edward said, and he was filled with pity. “Why were they born? Why was I born?”

“See,” said Padraig, and the street swirled, became mist, and was gone, and only the gemmed and moonlit summer darkness was there once more. “It was never real at all,” said Edward with relief. But something else was forming, and it became a small and narrow room, and Edward recognized it as the parlor of the house on School Street. There was David’s piano, and the oak settees with their poisonous green plush and the stiff lace curtains at the windows, and the smell of dust stifling in the hot close heat of the room. Kerosene lamps stood on a table near the wall, with its pattern of red roses crawling over green lattices. Edward’s breath stifled in his throat. And there he sat, in the oak rocking chair, and his father, young and anxious and very serious, was sitting near him. They were alone. “We sold over twenty dollars’ worth of stuff today,” Edward said, and his voice was like a memory, and it was tired.

“It is good,” said Heinrich, absently. Edward was very sorry for him. He said, “I didn’t believe you were dying. I thought you were just awake, and I was punishing you. Forgive me.”

But Heinrich did not appear to have heard him. He was gazing at Edward with the utmost earnestness. “You must listen to me, my son, for you are fourteen years old and it is time that you knew many things, for you are no longer a child but almost a man.” He spoke in German, and his voice, too, was an echo.

“Yes, Pa,” said Edward, wanting to soothe and placate him, for Heinrich was very serious. In a few moments Ma would come downstairs to ask why they were sitting there, at ten o’clock at night, and market day tomorrow.

“You have been saying, my son, that you were asking yourself what meaning there is to life. There is no meaning at all; the best philosophers have said so, and though we go to church, it is to listen politely. Certainly there is a God, but who shall ever know Him? It is not our concern. Our concern is men, and what all of us must do to change the world, to make it easier and more pleasant, to make days of work shorter, to make more luxuries available for the people, to give to the people their rights, which is the control of the means of production. There must be no profits, no rewards, no millionaires.”

Edward became uneasy. He wanted to say with bluntness, “What about me? I do nothing but work for the kids.” But his father looked so earnest, like an enthusiastic child.

He said to his father, “But I do think there’s some meaning to living. There’s got to be. What’ve people got to look forward to if there’s no meaning? They have kids and the kids grow up and get married, and then they have kids, too, and it’s all repeated, like a nightmare, and there’s nothing, no meaning. Just breeding, just working, just dying.”

He told his father, then, about the moths blowing themselves to a witless and unlamented death against the spluttering arc light, and Heinrich listened, looking somewhat confused and impatient. Then he said, “But, my son, we are not moths. They are not men.”

“But our life and our end seem the same,” said young Edward. He was very rebellious. He could not understand why his father’s expression was so blank. Heinrich began to blink his eyes, trying to form an answer.

He said at last, “But, Eddie, there is a meaning in your life and mine. The geniuses.”

A grim glow lighted the young Edward’s face. Yes, the geniuses. It was worthwhile to live and work to bring something bright and vivid to the drabness of life! Something greater, nobler, more passionate, than mere existence. And in that work, itself a satisfying answer, there was a promise of a larger answer. Man was no thoughtless mechanism, breeding more mechanisms for endless generations, for no heroic end greater than materialistic benefits which meant nothing in the face of expanding life, which meant nothing in the face of death. Man, indeed, was no moth. He had a reason for being born; his destiny was not in this world but in eternity. Not in his small animal gratifications but in God. God gave significance to life; God gave transfiguration to mere physical existence. That was the answer, the promise!

In working, and in hoping, and in labor and deprivation, the young Edward thought, I am contributing to that glory. I am developing something great in my brothers and sister, their genius, which comes from God. And so he nodded his head joyfully at his father and said, “Of course, the kids! It’s kind of—kind of—like offering yourself on an altar.” He smiled shyly. “Helping them to help God make the world more beautiful. When you do that, you show the power of God.”

“Yes, yes,” said Heinrich, without understanding. And then to Edward’s astonishment, Heinrich continued, “They will receive honors from men. They will become rich and famous. You and I will stand humbly in the background, unseen, unheard. You and I are nothing. We can only work.”

“You began to hate your father then,” said Padraig. “You began to remember that he was exploiting you, for all his conversation about the brotherhood of man. He was depriving you of your own dignity as a human being; he had relegated you to an inferior plane, where you had no importance of your own. Equality, the idealism of your father, did not apply to Edward Enger.”

Edward looked at the scene of himself and his father. Heinrich was slowly becoming flat and without color; the parlor was dissolving, the heat was blowing away. Then it was all gone, and the wide and jeweled summer night was all about Edward, and Padraig’s face was smiling sadly, and was so young and thoughtful and kind.

“Yes,” said Edward. “Now I know. But I know a number of other things, too. How Pa must have suffered. At the end, with all he had worked and dreamed for, he had nothing. He felt useless and without purpose and unneeded.”

“He knows, now, that you have forgiven him,” said Padraig. “He is very sorry; he could not be at peace until you forgave him.”

Edward said, “I am glad. I ought to have understood before. Our childhoods are like a library behind us; we have only to open the old books and read.”

Padraig continued, “And then, slowly but implacably, you began to hate your brothers and sister. You had many gifts and intuition. You knew, in your heart, as the slow years passed, that their own gifts were meager. So all your work and sacrifice and planning were coming to nothing. Your brothers and sister were depriving you of the significance of living. And as the meaning of life, the spirituality of existence, escaped you because of your brothers and sister, you lost the source of life and turned from Him, losing your own reason for existence.”

Padraig’s eyes shone on him with compassion. “You were desperate. Without your conscious knowledge you looked for revenge. They had called themselves geniuses; your parents had declared they were. You knew it was not so, though you still tried to believe it, for life would be intolerable without that belief. You would make them live up to their assumption of genius, not for their sake, no longer for the sake of God, but for your own sake. They would never escape you. They would have to justify your own being. It was not really power you wanted, though you deceived many that it was. You were in mortal error. You had built your meaning of life on men. Deprived at last, you took your vengeance not only for your spiritual damage but because your family had compelled you to dominate them.”

Edward was silent. He looked about him at the radiant trees and grass, at the incandescent light of the moon, at the splendor of the mysteriously looming stars.

Padraig spoke again. “One day a promise was made to you when you were a child. Your hatred and vengeance darkened the vision of it, though it was closer to you than breathing.

“You know now that the things of the world, desirable though they seem, are the things of the earth and its meaningless materialism. Life is nothing if it does not have a meaning. And its only meaning is God. Life has no verity outside the context of Our Lord. If men live without Him, they will eat the dust of the earth and it will give them no sustenance, though they have all else. Man must equate his being with God; without that equation his life is a sum that cannot be added, for the numbers of the sum are meaningless. We were born to know Him and love Him, to work with Him on earth, to join Him after the dissolution of our bodies. His is the truth and the life and the light. His is the illumination of our days. He is the answer you sought, and which you never found. Your father, in his terrible ignorance, kept you from the finding.”

Edward bent his head. He was silent and he was brokenhearted. He had lost the promise and the vision forever. Then he looked at Padraig and said, “It is too late now.”

Padraig smiled. “No, it is not too late. God is merciful. Your life has been bitter and full of pain and striving. You have had less joy in it than most men. You have done what you could in your chaos of living; you have been kind to the friendless; you have been just to all save your family. You have given of yourself and your money. You have been compassionate. Above all things, you have been compassionate. Has not Our Lord said that charity is greater than faith and hope? You may choose even now, for no soul is bound. You are not dead. Your spirit is still in your flesh. You have only to choose. Listen!”

Margaret’s wailing and agonized voice filled the warm and scented air. “Ed! Come back, come back! Dear Ed, you are all I have. Please, dear God, don’t let him leave me!”

He started to his feet. “I’m coming!” he called to her. “My darling, I’m coming! Wait for me.”

He turned his back to Padraig. The winter lay all about him, bleak and cold and lifeless. The snow glistened under a fainting moon, a small and frozen moon. The trees stood over him, stark and black and coated with ice. He took a step, then glanced back at Padraig. But Padraig was gone.

Edward ran over the snow and the wet and broken earth. Then the darkness was all about him, and he could see nothing. He opened his eyes.

He was in his bedroom, warm but with pain. A nurse hovered in the background; he was only just aware of her presence. He remembered everything. His dear Margaret was kneeling beside him, her face drawn and white and anguished. She was murmuring something like a litany.

It was an enormous effort even to whisper. He said, “Margaret? Darling?”

Her head lay like a stone on his pillow. He had her hand, which was as cold as death, and put it against his cheek.

“It’s all right,” he said in the faintest of voices. He smiled at her. “It’ll be all right—all the days of my life.”

She was crying and kissing his hand. “You’ve forgotten the rest of it,” she said, and she was trembling with her joy; he could see ripples of returning light on her poor face. He waited, and she faltered,

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life—and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.”

“Goodness and mercy,” he said. “Goodness and mercy.”

CHAPTER XIV

“I think, perhaps,” said Edward, “that in a way it all clarified when my hen, Betsy, was killed. I suppose that sounds ridiculous, but I think it is true.”

He could see the sky beyond his bedroom window; it shone with a patina like pale blue metal. An elm bough, faintly brown, stretched its arm across the window and the buds on it had become gold with returning life. The spring wind howled softly along the eaves, and the elm bough trembled. The fire on the hearth fluttered in hot tongues among the heaped-up logs. The room was very quiet. Maria sat near Edward, knitting as always, and she listened. She had listened a great deal during these long days. She looked at her son, high on his pillows, at his quiet gray face and his peaceful eyes and his thin hands crossed on the crimson quilt.

“It is said that a pebble can throw a giant,” she said.

Edward moved restlessly. “I don’t think I was ever a giant. In fact, I think that in many ways I was a pigmy. A strong spirit shouldn’t be thrown by a pebble.”

“But many pebbles heaped up become a wall, an obstacle,” said Maria. She put the knitting in her lap. “I have been guilty of many things, but the worst was that I never told you, my son, that I loved you. I also knew my strength, which was in you. My other children were weak; I wished to use your strength to shelter and guide them. Now I know that no man should be exploited for another. It is a crime against humanity and God. If the strong condescend to charity, out of greatness of heart and by an act of the will, then that is acceptable and most gracious to God. But force used against the strong for the benefit of the weak, who are often greedy, should not be accepted by the strong.”

Edward turned his head to her with an effort. “I injured my brothers and sister,” he said. “I ruined their lives.”

Maria nodded gravely. “It is always so. You narrowed their hearts and their souls by giving them what they demanded.”

Edward was silent. He looked at the bough against the window, and he thought how strong the tree was, because it had to battle the elements for its life and had to thrust its mighty roots into the earth, striking through stone and clay, in order to wear a crown in the sun. Then Edward said, “I’m not reproaching you, Ma,” and he smiled. “But Pa wasn’t the only one to blame, when I was a kid.”

“Have I not admitted it?” said Maria, calmly. A streak of sun moved across her thick white hair. “Do you think I was, and am, very wise, that I have not committed almost unpardonable crimes? I told you I would never forgive you when your father died and you would not go to him. I beg your forgiveness as I have begged it before. I do not think what you have told me was a dream.”

“I’d like to think it wasn’t,” said Edward.

“It was a vision perhaps. But you were dying; so the doctor told me. He would permit no one in your room but your wife.” She paused. “Who knows of the vastness of the human spirit? Is it confined only to flesh; is it concerned only with mundane things? No. Your dream was a vision, and it had a purpose, as you have seen. You have said that perhaps it was only the lucidity of approaching death which gave you an inner glimpse of yourself, of your motives. That is words without meaning. There can be no lucidity without a soul. There can be no soul without God.”

A nurse came briskly into the room with a glass of hot milk, and Edward drank it slowly and thought. He had lain in his bed like this for nearly three weeks. For five days he had been semiconscious, a life in death filled with nightmares. He said, “I’m fairly well now. I’ve been wondering why the family hasn’t at least come to the door to see me.”

Maria compressed her lips and took up her knitting again. She said, “The doctor advised against it for a few days more. You must not be disturbed too much.” She did not tell Edward that Margaret had passionately insisted that Edward must be told this, for she had declared that she would not permit her husband’s brothers and sister to see him without her express permission. She had flung this command into their silent faces, and they had obeyed.

“I have a lot to say to them,” said Edward.

“And they will have a lot to say to you,” replied his mother, ambiguously.

“I’m glad that Greg didn’t go away after all,” said Edward. But his face grew taut. “I want to talk to him.”

Maria said, “I think you will be interested in what he’ll have to say. He was a fool; he has explained. He has sent his wife away. That must say much to you, that he has driven her away.”

Margaret came into the room and stared at Maria coldly. “I think it’s time for Ed to rest, Mother Enger,” she said. She walked quickly across the floor and took one of Edward’s hands and kissed it with unashamed emotion, and she stood beside the bed as if to protect him. Maria rose ponderously, and she gave Margaret a kind but curious look, long and thoughtful. “Certainly,” she said.

“I’m not such an invalid,” Edward remarked with a smile. He moved his head to rest it against Margaret’s arm. He tried not to show concern for her, for that would worry her. But she was appallingly thin, almost gaunt. The coral had gone from her lips and cheeks, and the brightness of her hair only emphasized her pale and emaciated face, the tense cords in her throat. There was a quiet air of pentness about her, a stiff rigidity, born of the long anguish she had suffered and the terror that still haunted her nights. She had not been out of this house since the night of Edward’s heart attack. “You should have a little faith,” he had said to her. “You gave me what faith I had, yet you don’t have it now yourself.”

“I remember that you almost left me,” she had said, in that intense voice she had acquired lately. “And, according to what you call your dream, you didn’t care.” It was useless to explain to this poor and quietly frantic creature. Fear was still her twin, breathing with her when she breathed, lying with her when she lay. She did not entirely believe his doctors, that he would live. When she did sleep, under sedatives, it was with her door wide open and her lamp lighted beside her bed, and several times during the night, when he tossed uneasily and woke, it was to see not only the white and nodding cap of his nurse, but Margaret standing beside him in her nightgown.

Maria went to the door and then stopped there. “I should like you to join me in the living room in an hour—my daughter,” she said. Margaret stared at her harshly and unforgivingly. “I will see,” she answered.

Margaret sat beside the bed. There was a constant tic in the fine skin under her cheekbones, and this concerned Edward. “I’m not such an invalid, darling,” he repeated. He held her hand; his was warm, hers cold and dry. “Only this morning Dr. Bullitt said I could get out of bed for a little while next week, and probably you and I can go abroad in the summer. You mustn’t pamper me.”

Her pale lips quivered tightly. Edward knew as well as she that his condition was an old and chronic one, and that it had culminated, under stress, in a coronary thrombosis. He would never again be able to drive himself, to work without surcease, to excite and worry himself. Yet there were all those debts, and the never-ending depression, and the need for work, and more even than work—money. Margaret pondered on this. She tried to make up her distracted mind whether it would be more a shock for him to hear the news that had come three days ago than to let him suffer the anxiety she knew he suffered in spite of the new peace which was strengthening in him each day.

“I wish you wouldn’t see William so much,” she began cautiously, watching him. “He wears you out, and he comes without the doctor’s permission.”

“He’s only here for half an hour a day,” said Edward. “Besides, business must go on. Poor old William. I think I’ve robbed him of ten years of his life.” He patted Margaret’s hand and laughed feebly. “He’s running big telephone bills up, always in communication with New York. Dear, do you think it would be better for me to think and wonder what’s happening, and exciting myself, than to hear the truth about my affairs, daily?”

So she could tell him, and her throat swelled with a deep breath. “You don’t have to worry any longer about money,” she said rapidly. “Not ever again. And we’ll go abroad, as you said, and you’ll be able to keep your Green and White Stores out of the hands of that big chain which has been pressing you and trying to gobble you up.”

He half raised himself on his pillows in order to see her better. He wondered if she had finally broken. But she was looking at him with brilliant eyes, though her softened mouth was sad. “I think you can hear the news,” she said, and two tears slipped down her cheeks. “It’s bad and good news at the same time. But first, I’m going to give you one of your pills.”

“Damn the pill,” he said. Alarm colored his protruding cheekbones. “Come on. Tell me.”

So she said, “Now you’ve got to promise me to be calm and sensible.” She was really crying now. “In a way even the bad news is good. You remember how poor old George Enreich was suffering; he couldn’t get any relief—”

He interrupted quickly. “So that’s it. George is dead.” He lay back on his pillows, and Margaret snatched up his wrist and felt his pulse. It was somewhat rapid.

“Listen, listen!” she cried. (Had she done wrong? What if something happened to him?) “I wouldn’t have told you now, but his lawyers have been pestering me and your doctors! They’ve got to have your signature or something. I promised them to tell you when I could.”

He was caught up in grief. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I suppose he wondered why I didn’t come.” So George was gone; one of the fixtures of his life was gone forever.

Margaret knelt beside him, her face quivering with fright. “Darling, he knew. He knew right the next day. I sent him word, because his man had called about something. I forget why he called! It didn’t matter. Look, you must take your pill. I won’t say another word until you swallow it. Here’s your glass of water, too.”

He took the pill with listless abstraction. “Poor old George,” he murmured. “I hadn’t seen him for a month. There never seemed to be much time for anything, for anybody. Dear,” he said, looking at her and seeing the pallid fear on her face. “I’m all right. Don’t worry. Do you know you’re the chief cause of my worry these days?”

“Oh, don’t bother about me, Ed! What does it matter about me? You’ve got to listen. George was an old man. He was not far from eighty; you forget. And he had a long and very nice life, for many years. He was never sick a day until he got that arthritis. Do you think people can live forever?”

He tried to calm her. “Margaret, you must stop tearing yourself to pieces over me. I’m going to get well. Do you hear me? I’m going to get well.” But he himself knew that he would never have his old strength again, that never again would he be able to work as he had done, and what would happen then? This mortgaged house, the depression that never lifted, the debts, the waiting faces of those who wanted his Green and White Stores.

“You’re right about George, poor old man,” he said, putting a soothing note into his voice. “I remember the last time I saw him. He said if he had to wait much longer to die he’d just open his liquor cabinet and drink twenty bottles of whisky and get it over with. He was in awful pain all the time. Father Jahle was with him some of the time, wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” said Margaret. She put her head on his pillow. “The priest wouldn’t go away until the doctors said you were out of danger. Such a wonderful person. You don’t know, Ed, what a help he was to me. He had a premonition about you; he came the very day you got—sick.” A spasm ran over her body, and he felt it and put his hand strongly on the head beside his.

He kept his voice calm. “I suppose Father Jahle—buried—George?”

“Yes. He did. I should have gone to the funeral, but I couldn’t. Father Jahle asked me. But I couldn’t! I was too afraid to leave you. But I did send flowers,” she added, lifting her head and speaking like an earnest child. “In both our names.”

He smoothed her fingers, noting again, with sadness, how thin and transparent they were. “That’s good,” he murmured. He was suddenly very tired. He could not let Margaret see how charged with sorrow he was for George Enreich, in spite of George’s deliverance from pain. He thought of the years he had kept himself from his old friend, and he thought, What a waste not to forgive, not to try to understand. Do we think we’ll all live forever?

Then he remembered his experience on the night he was dying. His dream—had it been a dream after all? In what he called logical moments he tried to persuade himself that it had been a dream. But then he remembered things. He had not known that his family was in the living room, with the lights lit, yet he had heard them, he had seen the lamps. A small verification, but still it was a verification.

If it were true, and he was inclined to believe it was, then George was not dead, but living. Padraig’s voice came faintly to him from spaces not to be dreamed of: “For there is nothing but God.” So he said now, and was not so tired, “I’m sure George is all right, though he’s probably trying to organize heaven, if he’s there.” He laughed, for Margaret’s sake.

The pill began to act; he felt drowsy and content, and his grief became more bearable. Margaret was watching him with that new intenseness of hers, breathing as he breathed, relaxing as he relaxed. “Is Father Jahle coming later?” he asked.

“Yes, if you’re a good boy and won’t get excited again.” Margaret kissed his cheek passionately. “You don’t know how you worry me! And now I’ve got to tell you the rest. Hold my hand tight. Tight. You are stronger! George Enreich left over ten million dollars. And, Ed, darling, he left you five of them and the rest to the Church!”

The sedative was a warmth and a heaviness in Edward’s shrunken body. He felt only a faint surprise, a faint gratitude, a faint—after a moment—disbelieving jubilation. His drowsing eyes fixed themselves incredulously on Margaret, who was crying and nodding and smiling all at the same time.

“Five million dollars,” she stammered. “He had no relatives; you were all he had. The will was made out ten years ago, the last one. Five million dollars, Ed! And now we can pay off the mortgage, and you can rest and have no more worries. Oh, Ed!”

Edward closed his eyes. No more debts, no more despair, no more … Thanks, George, he said in his deepening drowse. Thanks, and God bless you.… He slept.

The nurse came in, with a smile for Margaret. Poor, pretty lady. She would have an attack one of these days soon if she didn’t relax. She bent over Edward. “Why,” she said happily, “we’ve got quite a nice color for the first time.” She felt Edward’s pulse while Margaret rigidly watched her. “And our pulse is doing fine,” said the nurse. “We’re going to be well before we know it.”

As Margaret reluctantly went downstairs to join Maria, tears still ran down her face. She had not cried since the night that Edward had been stricken; there had been an ice barrier in her, a barrier of fear, behind which she had crouched, tearless and mute. She did not know that she was weeping now, for the tears slid down her cheeks even though her expression had lost its rigidity and tightness, and her mouth was trembling. She met Monsignor Jahle on the stairs and did not see him for a moment. He put his hand on her arm, and she started and looked at him blankly before recognizing him. Then she gave a great, wordless sob and smiled at him. “It’s all right, Father,” she said. “He’s so much better. And I told him about George. You were right; he had to know.”

He regarded her with deep and paternal tenderness. It was possible that she had forgotten how he had sat with her for hours every day, in her speechless terror and agony. She had certainly not known or heard what he had said to her, over and over, as one speaks to a child. But she put her hand on his shoulder and said, “I’ll never forget how much you helped me, Father. Never. I was afraid to listen, but I did. You did not tell me to ‘resign’ myself to whatever God had willed; you told me that Ed would live. You said that, all the time. If it hadn’t been for you I think I would have lost my mind.”

The, staircase and lower hall were in shadow and silence. Only the voice of the big clock below strode through the quiet, relentless and unhurried, unconcerned with human agony. Margaret still smiled tremulously at the priest, unaware of her steadily falling tears. He took out his own handkerchief and gently dabbed them away, and she was surprised. “Am I crying?” she asked, and took a tear from her cheek and looked at it, startled. “I didn’t know. I haven’t cried for a long time.”

The ice barrier was melting in the sun of her release. She leaned against the balustrade and her breath was half sobbing, half laughing. “I am being such a fool,” she stammered. “But it wasn’t until today that I knew, for sure, that Ed wasn’t going to die.”

“I knew it all the time,” he said. She nodded soberly, then was embarrassed. “It’s strange that all my life, from the very time I could remember,” said Margaret, “I had the deepest faith and trust in God, even in the orphanage, even with the Baumers.”

Her wet eyes looked into his with shy earnestness. “And that’s why I don’t understand. When Ed became—sick—I didn’t trust God any longer. I lost my faith in Him. I—I even hated Him. I was frightened almost to death. He seemed—monstrous—to me. An enemy.”

“That is an old story,” said the priest, with sadness but with no reproach. “Even Our Lord cried to the Father, asking him why He had forsaken His Son. That was His human nature, calling out in sorrow and pain. Do you think He does not forgive you, dear child? He understands where no mortal could understand. In return, He asks us to understand others as best we can.” He hesitated. “Mrs. Enger spoke to me a moment or two ago. She and her children are waiting for you downstairs.”

Margaret lifted her head and her eyes flashed; then she saw the priest’s grave and tender and admonishing expression. “I’ll try to—understand,” she said, but her voice had hardened slightly. He sighed, smiled. “You must,” he said.

He started up the stairs. Margaret said, “Ed’s asleep, Father. He’ll probably sleep for about an hour; I gave him his sedative. I’d like to think you’ll be there when he wakes up. You can tell him about George, too.”

He nodded and continued up the stairs. She saw how old and weary he was; his hand clung to the balustrade, helping him climb. I’ll try, I’ll try, Father, she said to him silently. But you mustn’t expect too much from me.

As Margaret went slowly downstairs she began to remember, as if in a faint, dark nightmare, filled with one far and echoing voice, the hours Monsignor Jahle had spent with her. She remembered crouching in a chair, but in what room she could not recall. The calm and loving voice had gone on and on, and it had been like a steady hand holding her and preventing her from plunging into some black pit in which she would have been forever lost. Her children had come to her, Gertrude white and voiceless with grief, and Robert silent and pale, no longer sunny and smiling. They had meant nothing to her then. She could only sit and listen to the priest, without knowing what he said yet desperately holding to his voice. “He will live, he will live. I have heard God’s promise,” the priest had murmured endlessly.

Her steps became slower. Then she stood in the hall, thinking. The hardness did not completely go from her face, but the pale fixity of her mouth relaxed a little. She would, at least, listen to Mother Enger, though she would not be able to look at the others. They had brought Ed to the very edge of death; they were responsible for all his suffering and despair, the loss of his youth, his debts, the burden that had lain on him.

She entered the living room. Edward’s brothers and sister were there. And David, so worn and thin. It was David who came to her, smiling a little. But, you, too, exploited and deprived him for years, her accusing eyes told him. She brushed by his hand and stood before Maria and said in an emotionless voice, “Well, I’m here. What is it?”

Did she always knit? Margaret thought hysterically. She’s like those old women who knitted below the guillotine! Suddenly she hated Maria, and her hands clenched at her sides.

“Please sit down, Margaret,” said Maria, calmly. David had drawn a chair for Margaret, and without glancing at him she sat down. She resolutely would not look at him or his brothers and sister. There was silence in the huge room, only the splutter of the fire broke it. David, Ralph, and Gregory sat without speaking, scattered over the room; Sylvia was there, stiff and straight. The firelight caught a gleam of silver, a glow of amber glass, a side of a prism hanging from a lamp. The blue spring evening stood at the windows like colored medieval panels.

Then Maria let her knitting fall into her immense black lap. She regarded her children steadfastly, each in turn. They were no longer young. There was no peace in them, in their middle-age. Perhaps it was because of this that she thought of them as children, strengthless and rootless. And frightened. David, forty-eight, lean and elegant and polished, with the patches of white on his narrow temples. Sylvia, so very thin and unfruitful, her painted mouth a magenta slash in her stark and whitely gleaming face, her black straight hair without gray, though she was forty-six. Gregory, his restlessness stilled at last, his body diminished, looking like a weaker and smaller and blurred image of the sick man upstairs. And Ralph, not so ruddy now, not so lusty and assured now, staring down at his knees. Her children.

She thought of how silent they had been since their brother’s almost fatal illness, and of how quietly they had crept about his house, hardly speaking to each other, and how their eyes had avoided meeting each other’s eyes. The oak had been stricken; the birds that had perched so heedlessly in its branches, taking its shelter for granted, had been tremendously alarmed, terrified and distraught.

“I am an old woman,” said Maria, and now her tone was formidable and commanding. “I am also your mother. I must ask that none of you interrupt me while I speak. Today I am the accuser and the judge; I am also the accused.”

Her light blue eyes, veined and prominent, moved from one face to the other. Her children did not move, but they looked at their mother, and even Sylvia shrank a little in her chair before straightening herself again. Then Maria’s eyes touched Margaret. “Nor are you innocent, my child,” she said.

Margaret flushed, opened her mouth, but Maria lifted her hand. “I must speak without interruption,” she said. She picked up her knitting.

“My son lies upstairs,” she continued. “It is only three weeks ago that he was struck down, when we were told that he would probably die. Who struck him down? You? Or himself? His wife would say you and me. I would say all of us, and his dead father. And Edward himself. None of us is without guilt.

“To each man his brother presents a different aspect. Brothers and sister do not see their brother as their mother sees him, nor does she see him as they see him. To his wife, he is a different person; to his children, he is still another man. To God, he is still another. Which, then, is the true aspect?”

Maria paused. “I would say all of them are true, even the worst, even the most unflattering, even the most superb and selfless and kind. To all of us he presented a different face. And each face was his own. Nevertheless, we are not exonerated.”

She laced her great fat fingers together and looked into the distance. “I must ask you a question, Margaret. Did you know that my son was a true artist? A true and authentic genius?”

They all stirred. Margaret said, “I suspected it a long time ago.”

Maria nodded. “It is so,” she said. “From the time he was a child I knew. Why, then, did I insist that he sacrifice what he was, what he could have been, to my other children, who were so weak and uncertain and gifted so feebly in what I at first believed was their genius? Because Edward was strong; he had the soul of a giant. And I had pride. It was not enough for me that one of my children achieve greatness. I wished all of them to have a measure of it. By sacrificing the greater I had him as my ally, who would help me develop the gifts of the lesser. Too, I saw he was the only one who could obtain the money necessary for that developing of his brothers and sister. And money was desperately needed.

“I was not like your father, who believed that the strong should be ravished and even destroyed for the weak, and that they should be punished for their very strength, and be humbled. I did not believe, as he did, that men should be faceless, in a monotonous Eden, controlled by despots. He was never a very intelligent man, and I say this of him, who was his wife. It was a matter of politics to him, but he never, in his simplicity, understood reality. Edward was also a genius in the too little appreciated art of making money. I decided that this art would not only serve all of us but would also serve him. He had courage, as none of you had courage. He had power in himself, and there was no power or courage in any of you.”

Margaret, who was closer to Maria than any of the others, saw that the old woman’s eyes had filled with, tears, and for a moment there was a softening in her, a pity, for she had never seen tears in Maria’s eyes before. But when Maria spoke again to her silent children, her voice was as strong as before.

“I know this, that you disappointed your brother, when the gifts you had openly claimed you possessed did not materialize, or showed themselves as the mediocre ones they were. Nevertheless, he had no right to be so disappointed and show it so savagely. He had done a wrong thing; he had built his life on men, and when a man does this he builds his life on a bog which is without stability or fertility. True, he was working very hard, his youth devoured in that work. But who has not been disappointed and deceived? Edward looked at his work, his lost youth, and he could not reconcile himself that you were what you really were. He believed that you were deliberately frustrating him, that you could be greater than you are, and that out of cruelty and greed you would not be what he thought you should be. And so he revenged himself on you and took from you what small measure of strength and courage you possessed.”

Margaret cried out in bitter anger. “How dare you say that of Ed, Ed who gave all his life to these—to these wretches? Ed, who sacrificed himself and wanted nothing for himself?” Her eyes were blue fire in the dusk.

Maria held up her hand. “I have requested that no one interrupt, please.” She looked at her children, but none of them looked at her. They were very silent.

“You were his meaning for living,” she said. “But no man should choose another mortal for his reason for existence. That is blasphemous. I am certain that in God’s sight you are not held responsible for my son’s blasphemy, though you are guilty of other things, such as weakness and lack of courage and honesty and pride.”

They all looked up quickly at their mother then, startled, then hesitant and even ashamed.

Maria went on as if she did not see their glances. “Edward turned away from God when he looked for his reason for being not in God, but in you. He turned away from God when he exerted his power over you. This, too, he understands. Yet you, too, are not guiltless. You submitted to his power, and that is a crime against God. There is nothing so depraved as a slave, for a man is not a slave without his willing.”

She looked down at her clasped hands. “No, no man is ever enslaved without his will. There is always a moment when he can choose, even if the choice is death. In the sight of free men a slave is despicable, for a just reason.

“And now I must tell you that I have known, for many years, why you submitted to your brother’s power. You had wronged your deepest spirit, because you had no courage. And, knowing this, you revenged yourselves on him by forcing him to exert even more power over you, by forcing him to support you. I have known for many years what you have been doing, without his knowledge.” She smiled at David, faintly. “You and I have known this, but not the others. My children, look at your brother, David. He is that modern composer, called, in a somewhat vulgar manner, Davey Jones.”

Now everyone in the room moved and sat up in astonishment, and Gregory and Ralph smiled and even laughed. They stared at David. Ralph exclaimed, “Why, for God’s sake!” And Sylvia’s thin red mouth twisted with wry mirth.

Margaret said, with a loathing look at David, “So you’re a rich man! And you never once tried to help Ed, who was dying of overwork and debts and worry!”

Maria said sternly, “How little you know, Margaret. David has taken no money from his brother for many years. He did not tell Edward who he really was, because he did not wish to disappoint Edward, who surely would have been furious. Moreover, in 1929, David came to me and begged me to find a way to give his money to Edward. I knew it could not be done, for Edward hated his brother—for many reasons. But I must continue.

“I have known for too long a time that Sylvia is a wealthy designer of ladies’ gowns and hats, that Ralph is the engineer who has designed many fine bridges and was paid impressively for them, that Gregory has written many flippant stories and articles, for which he was amply recompensed, besides the books which so enraged his brother. You seem amazed, my children. But though I am only your mother, and therefore apparently not very intelligent, there is little a mother does not know about her children. There was too much smirking satisfaction about all of you, too much slyness, too much knowingness. And so I looked for the reasons. I was also helped,” and she paused and smiled to herself, “by a very intelligent young man whom I will not name at present. He does not believe in the surface; he looks for the secrets of others.”

All at once her face changed, became condemning and cold, as her eyes again moved from one shamefaced man or woman to another.

“Why did not all of you, when you became wealthy, have the courage to tell your brother, to face his anger and disappointment and humiliation and leave his house? Because you had betrayed yourselves in your lack of courage. You were also greedy. You wished to keep your money for yourselves. Yet you were self-betrayed and hated that betrayal, and blamed it all on your brother, to hide your guilt from your own eyes.”

Her slow look of denunciation passed over them. “There is one thing I do not understand. You have been kind to each other and loyal to each other, with the exception of my son, my strong son, Edward. You must have known that in these past years he was despairing, that he needed help, that his home was mortgaged. He never talked to you of business, but you must have known. Yet none of you came to his help, none of you offered, none of you even lied and said, ‘I saved the money you gave me, and here it is.’ You permitted him to reach the point of dying, without a word.”

Then Sylvia broke out in a faint cry. “We wanted him to fail, to be ruined!” she said. And she covered her face with her white and bony hands. She continued in a muffled and trembling voice. “We never really talked about it together. But that is what we meant, and may God forgive us.”

“Be sure I won’t, and Ed never will,” said Margaret in a low tone of hatred.

The medieval color against the windows drifted into gray and the room darkened. The fire alone lit the room and the figures themselves in it were like shadows, motionless and mute. Here a cheek was seen, without tint, or the outline of a head, or a fallen hand, or a still foot. Someone moved a heavy boot, as if in pain. A man muttered. Maria nodded to herself as she listened. “You are not evil, my children,” she said. “If you were, I should not have called you here today. Stupid and greedy and heartless, yes, blaming Edward when the blame was yours. Hiding yourselves from your own sight. Pettily vengeful, yes. But not evil.”

David spoke gently but with his mother’s own sternness. “You knew all the time, Ma. Why didn’t you talk to us years before?”

“A man’s salvation comes from God and from himself,” she replied. “Had I spoken before this extreme situation it would have been of no use.”

She looked at them formidably. “The strong inevitably take their revenge. Yes. But still that is not the only reason for what my son did to you. Who can know the labyrinths of the human spirit, the devious passages of the mind, the diversification of the soul? We are not actors upon a stage, or puppets who are motivated by only one emotion which can be explained. For no man can explain another. A man is known in all his parts only to God.”

She turned to Margaret, who was as still as stone and as obdurate. “Margaret,” she said, “you, too, failed your husband when he most needed you. I had hoped that your love for him would have saved and lifted him. It did not.”

“Are you speaking of me?” cried Margaret, with outrage and anger. “I would have given my life for my husband!”

“I do not doubt it,” said Maria, with sad patience. “But that was not enough. I know now, from my observation, that you never opposed him, except once. It was not you who rescued your children from Edward, after all. It was themselves. You would have sacrificed them to his delusion eventually, had the children not rebelled. Surely there were many times, in many years, when you could have said to my son, ‘You are wrong. Your brothers and your sister are not entirely fools and devils. Look at them.’ But perhaps you could not have said that, for you yourself did not see. You did not question; you did not doubt. Unquestioning love should be given only to God and not to any man, not even to a husband. There was no pity in you, because you loved unwisely and blindly. Instead of rescuing my son, you pushed him deeper into his illusions, you stimulated his indignation against his family, you cried injustice. Surely it was injustice, but there is never a complete injustice. There are occasions when even the deepest love must say, ‘Nay, nay,’ and not, ‘Aye, aye.’ For the sake of the loved one himself.”

Margaret was breathing very hard, and loudly, in her rage. She stood up. And then, without warning, she suddenly was struck with the memory of that day in Father Jahle’s home, when he had begged her to help Edward. She remembered old Pierre, so long dead, who had spoken to her so oddly the eve of her wedding. And she was sick and dazed with the glare of her sudden understanding, and she hated herself. But not as much as she hated the others in this room.

“Perhaps I was wrong!” she exclaimed brokenly. “Yes, I was wrong. But still I feel that if Ed was wrong, too, in lots of things, his family was so much more wrong that his faults were nothing at all.” She swung on Sylvia. “I think of them all, that you were the worst! You hated Ed—”

Sylvia stood up as if dragged violently from her chair, and in that increasing dimness there was a wild denial in the shape of her thin body. “Do you think I saved your life, and the lives of your children, just for you and them? God help me, I didn’t know then! But I know now. I saved the three of you for Ed, and so did Dave. Look at our hands! You won’t see your blood on them now, but it was there twenty-two years ago, Margaret!”

“What?” muttered Margaret, and put her hand to her cheek.

“It is so,” said Maria. “The doctor could not come. I worked, but I could have done very little alone. Perhaps I could have saved you or one of the children. But not all of you. It was Sylvia who after assisting me cared for your children and watched them, while David and I continued to struggle to keep you from dying. It was David whose voice you heard and who kept you from death, and not Edward’s, though you believed it was. If Edward has his wife and children now, he owes them to God and to my children and to me.”

“Oh!” cried Margaret, and her voice was a groan. “Why didn’t you tell us?” She began to shiver; she felt as if she had heard the most devastating news and had committed the most dreadful crime. “Why didn’t you tell Ed? It would have made such a difference.” She was shattered by the revelation, which still seemed to her unbelievable, and tears dashed down her face.

Maria said, without a rise in her voice, “But your husband knew. I told him on the morning of his return from Cleveland, after you and your children were safe.”

Margaret stared at her dumbly, trying to see her in the darkness, which flickered with the crimson of the fire. Then she whispered, “I can’t—I can’t—believe it. Ed would have—” Her forehead was icily wet, and she shivered again.

Maria said inexorably, “He told me he would give his brother and sister extra money.”

Margaret pressed her hands hard and suddenly against her cheeks. “Oh, no,” she murmured, appalled to her very heart. “Oh, no!” Her throat closed on a sick lump of nausea.

Maria nodded. “Yes, it is so. And that is what you must understand now.”

Margaret fell into her chair, and dropped her head to her shoulder and cried desperately. The sound of her weeping filled the room, a tearing and wretched and heartbroken sound of remorse and misery. She remembered the bright and horrible nightmares of her encounter with death. She remembered Edward’s voice—but it had been David’s—which had called to her valiantly and tenderly, and she remembered the hand which had withdrawn her from the abyss. She cried out in her extremity, “Oh, God forgive me! God forgive—us!”

Sylvia stood uncertainly, all the bitter repressions of her life stiffening her body, holding her back. And then they were gone in the first warm flooding of her heart with absolute compassion. It was as if she had been released, made airy, strong and strongly tender, free of resentment, free of fear, free of a long grief. She went to Margaret with the swift movements of a young girl and knelt beside her and took her in her arms, as a sister, and said in a sister’s loving voice, “It doesn’t matter—darling. We’re all stupid, even Ed. Don’t cry, dear. I love your children too, remember? I think I love you; I’m sure of it. We were friends for a while, weren’t we? We’ll be friends again. Don’t cry so. You’ll tear your heart out.” And then Sylvia, who had not wept since Padraig had married Maggie, was weeping with Margaret.

Dave came to them, and he put his hand gently on Margaret’s forehead. “What does it matter?” he asked. “We understand now. I think, in spite of our greed and cowardice, in spite of the badness of our objective motives, that we all really love Ed. We loved him even when we hated and were afraid of him. I think, under it all, that we didn’t want to disappoint him or were ashamed of disappointing him.”

His hand dropped to her shoulder, and Margaret turned her head to look at it mournfully. He had seen her as her husband had not seen her, in the dishevelment and abandon of approaching death. This hand had saved her. It had been spattered with her blood. It had smoothed her sweat-soaked hair. It had touched and soothed her body. And in return for his love—and she knew now it was utter love—she had snubbed and insulted him. Humbly she pressed her lips to his hand.

Finally, as Margaret’s sobs slackened and she let herself collapse in Sylvia’s arms, and held David’s hand with the desperate clutch of a child, Maria said, “There is an old poem. ‘In tragic life, God wot, no villain need be. Passion spins the plot. We are betrayed by what is false within.’ And so it was. We were false to the instinctive nobility God instills in every man. We betrayed Him, and ourselves.”

She turned to the only one silent in the room, her son Gregory. “You wished to say something,” she said, not questioning but only stating a fact.

“Yes,” he said. “I think I knew what Ed really was. I knew, even when I was a kid, that he was better in every way than myself. Once I read some old notebooks he had; things he’d written when he had a little time in the shop. And he was strong, and I was weak. I envied him. I took my revenge on him by caricaturing him in a magazine. I took my revenge by taking up—things—that I really hated and had contempt for. Because he despised them. That was my revenge, too.” He paused. “In one of his notebooks he had written about a Fourth of July when we were all kids. It was a poem and a damned good one, too. About what America meant to him. He really loved his country. Later it was enough for me to try to pull his country down and destroy it. It was like destroying Ed himself.”

His voice had a high shrillness and self-hatred in it. His unseen fist hit the arm of his chair, thuddingly. “God damn it,” he said, and now his voice deepened. “It’s too late for any of us to do anything for Ed. He hates us like poison and he has reason for it, too.”

“I do not think it is too late,” said Maria, and for the first time in her children’s memory her voice was trembling and changed. “If I had thought you would not respond this way, I would not have spoken. Edward is getting well. I suggest that each of you, one by one, go to see him alone, beginning tomorrow, and tell him what you have really accomplished—and what you have accomplished is good in its own right—and offer him all you have. He is a most terribly lonely man.”

Margaret lifted her head from Sylvia’s shoulder. “But, Mother Enger, he doesn’t—”

Maria overrode her voice quickly. She repeated, “You will confess to him and offer him all you have.” And Margaret kept her peace.

She rose ponderously and left the room. She moved heavily into the hall, then into the morning room, where Gertrude and André and Robert were waiting, where she had asked them to remain. Gertrude was crying, and André’s arm was about her. Robert sat in silence, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his palms.

“I am sorry I was late,” she said in her stately fashion as the young men rose. “But I was detained on important business.”

She smiled at André. “I believe your parents will be very happy. I believe that my son Edward and his wife, Margaret, will be happy. You will make our Gertrude a very good husband, but not in the way that term is accepted. She will never suffer from boredom. You may tell your father, Gertrude, tomorrow.”

Maria was very tired. Sometimes she believed that life was too wearying to be endured.

CHAPTER XV

Edward sat with Monsignor Jahle, near his opened window. He could see the brilliant tulips trooping through the warm dark earth of spring, and the white-and-green burst of the trees, and the long green undulations of the new grass. He said to the priest, “It’s very strange, but for the first time I can really see the world. It’s not because I almost died. It’s because there’s no hate in me now and I’m not afraid. Even without George’s money, I wouldn’t be afraid. Fear drives us to terrible things; I think that’s the explanation of all the agony in the world, and all the wars and hatred. All this would be ended if we didn’t fear each other. And coming down to it, why should anyone fear anyone else? We’re flesh and bone and spirit of every other man; we have the same passions and the same griefs and the same hopes and solitary miseries.”

“Yes,” said the priest. “But it was said centuries ago by Our Lord. Do you remember what He said, Eddie? ‘Little children, love one another.’ For He is our Father.”

He looked at Edward’s quiet and peaceful face, and, strangely, his younger face, in spite of the suffering, both mental and physical, which he had endured.

Edward said as if speaking to himself, “I thought, almost all my life, that my family had rejected me. I used to complain to myself that I was never asked to come down to Christmas Eve celebrations and that I was kept from any religious education. And never wanted. But now I see that it was I myself who rejected my family and rejected God. I’m not going to be maudlin and say it was all my fault and that no one else had a hand in it. And that I was not exploited. I was exploited, by my father, and I knew it, and I took my own revenge on the whole family. I, too, didn’t have courage. When even a child knows he is exploited and he has some courage, he shouldn’t allow the exploitation. It’s his own shame and fault when he does. And I think I knew it, and hated my family because I despised myself.”

“Only God knows all there is to know about a child or a man,” said the priest. “He never judges us by men’s standards. And by the way,” and the old man smiled, “I understand that you and your minister are good friends now. It’s too bad about Mr. Yaeger, but you can make it up to him someway, even though he’s dead.”

Edward laughed. “Poor old Yaeger. I think I used to scare him to death. But I do understand, now, why I helped him through my parents. I was ashamed of myself.”

After the priest had gone, Edward sat alone in contentment as the blue twilight began to fill the room. He thought of how all his brothers and sister had come to him, one by one, to offer him all they had, to tell him all they had done through those years of dark nightmare. They had spoken simply, and he had listened as simply, without hurt or resentment but with only regret that those years had been wasted and blasted. By all of us, he thought. It would be ridiculous if it weren’t so tragic. I’m not far from fifty; half a century! It took me this long to understand, and for them to understand. At that, we’re lucky!

When his nurse came in, he asked her to call his brother Gregory. There was something not yet resolved, which must be resolved now.

Gregory arrived almost immediately. He seemed crushed and much smaller in stature and bulk. “Well, how are we?” he asked. Edward smiled and said, “You saw me this morning. I haven’t changed. Sit down, won’t you, Greg? I want to talk to you.”

Gregory, suddenly nervous, sat down and lit a cigarette. His restless eyes had quieted these weeks, but they had a dull and lost expression. “Give me a cigarette,” said Edward, kindly. “Never mind. Damn the doctors. Thanks. That tastes good! I’ve sent for some drinks, too. I said, never mind!”

A maid brought in whisky and soda, and the two brothers sipped a little while in silence, while the blue at the windows turned to a gentle purple and the wind brought in the fragrance of earth and grass and trees.

Edward spoke as if idly, “You’re a writer, Greg, a damned good writer. Wait a minute; I’m talking now. And so I want your opinion. Is André—that gay jumping jack—a writer, too?”

Gregory moved and exhaled as if in relief. “I can tell you this: I’m a hack compared with him. I never liked him, and I love your kid, Gertrude, and he’ll lead her a hell of a life but a stimulating one, and I think that’ll be good for her. She takes life too seriously, but André makes her laugh, and that’s important.”

Edward looked thoughtfully at his cigarette. “Margo made you laugh, Greg.”

Gregory stirred, as though touched with pain. “Yes, she did,” he muttered. “But what does that matter?”

“And you love her,” said Edward, and turned his head to look at his brother. “She didn’t bring on my attack. I’d had warnings for years, but I wouldn’t go to any doctors. I had an idea what was wrong and what would happen. You see, I was grimly trying to kill myself. I often wanted to. Never mind.

“Let’s talk about Margo. She has the earthiness you need, and the common sense. And you love each other. When she jumped on me and hated me, it was for your sake. She was ‘protecting’ and ‘helping’ you, because she knew you needed her and she thought I was frustrating you—which I was, by the way.

“And I think she didn’t understand much about the indoctrination you’d been pounding into her all the time you were married.”

“No, she didn’t.” The film was lifting from Gregory’s eyes, and the sick dullness from his face.

“So,” said Edward, “why don’t you go to New York tonight and bring her home? After all, I’m going to build you a house on this land, and you’ll need a wife, and Margo refuses to divorce you. Ask her to forgive you. She will.”

Gregory stood up in wild agitation. He put his hands on Edward’s shoulders and said huskily, “You mean it? After all we did and said? After everything?”

“Don’t be emotional,” said Edward. “And give me another cigarette. Why shouldn’t I mean it? I’m naturally patriarchal, and I’ve got to have one member of the family near me. Sylvia’ll still be here, with her bread-pudding husband, though they’ll spend half their time in New York, and Dave spends most of his time with Billy Russell, down on that Alabama farm, writing their damned popular music. And Ralph and Violette are still batting around the world, with Ralph designing bridges all over the place and forgetting his ‘art.’

“Robert is going into the business after he’s graduated in June, and he’ll be in New York at least half his time while I manage things here with the help of old William. Gertrude’s marrying André in June, and they insist on that flat at the Clinic, and I hope they get sick of it and decide to come back home! But I don’t interfere any longer. Besides, they’ll probably end up in New York. What’s there for a writer in Waterford?

“So Margaret and Ma and I will be alone. I’d like to have you nearby for masculine company, though you, too, will be with Margo a lot of the time in New York. I’d like to give you a house, on this land, as a reconciliation present. You’ll have to have a quiet place to write, you know.”

Gregory, buoyant and excited, glanced at his watch. “I can just about make the Empire State Express!” he exclaimed. His broad face had flushed. He started for the door, then swung back and caught Edward’s hand.

“I said, don’t get emotional.” But Edward smiled. “Go on. Pack your bag. And don’t come back without Margo. I’ll bet she isn’t reading the Daily Worker any longer.”

Gregory ran out of the room, and Edward could hear the rapid pounding of his footsteps, and the sound was the sound of a young man.

Margaret came in briskly and kissed him. All the worn anguish of her face had gone, and it was blooming again. Her blue eyes sparkled, and she sank into a chair with a wide gesture of her arms, simulating exhaustion.

“That girl’s trousseau!” she said. “It’s killing me. I bought millions of sheets and other linens today. And she’ll have only two weeks when she comes home from school to do her personal shopping and get her wedding dress. This’ll be a madhouse. Darling, have you been very lonely while I was away?”

“I’m never lonely any longer,” Edward replied, and reached out and took her hand. They gazed at each other with deep happiness and eloquent silence. Then Margaret put the back of Edward’s hand against her cheek and held it for a long moment.

“Oh, darling,” she whispered at last. “I’m so happy these days. So terribly happy. It scares me.”

Her voice caught, and she kissed his hand before releasing it.

“Nothing scares me any longer,” said Edward. “By the way, I received our itinerary for our jaunt to Europe today. I want you to look it over. Now, darling, wipe your eyes. We have a lot of planning to do, not only for ourselves, but for the children. We’re going to be busy.”

Margaret dropped to her knees beside him and put her head on his chest and he held her to him, feeling the trembling in her slight body. She was still fearful for him; she was not getting over her terror, and he knew it. It was wrong that anyone should put a whole life into the keeping of another, and all that he had said to her in these weeks was as nothing to her. She had been stricken too deeply, and now for the first time since his illness he was afraid for her.

He looked at the deepening sky. A single star pulsed there in pure grandeur. The birds called and wove themselves in melodious patterns in the twilight, busy about life, joyful in life, innocent and delighting in life. But men were not birds, short of existence and memory. They were creatures of grief and despair, inheriting sorrow with soul, anguish with knowledge, torment with immortality. And terror, with God. For his spirit man paid with blood and tears, and for his happiness he paid with the knowing that happiness in the world was eternally threatened and must have an end.

Edward prayed. Dear Father, I know now that we are here to know and love and serve You in this life, and that there is nothing but You, and life has no meaning without You, and that we’ll join You after the death of our bodies. I know that as a part of You we’ll return to You, for it was out of You that we came and nothing can separate You from us.

This I know. But this dear wife of mine has forgotten, because she is afraid. Afraid for me. I don’t know the mystery of Your plans or how long I shall live, or whether or not I shall die tomorrow or a year from now or twenty years from now. So far as I am concerned, I’m content.

His arms tightened about Margaret, who was so very still and tense and who crouched against him, clutching him as a frightened child will clutch its father. He kissed the bright hair with its streaks of gray, and his heart beat strongly.

He continued his prayer. Yes, I am content, about myself. But I am praying to You now for only one concession.

Permit my wife to die before me, and give assurance to her that I will not leave her, not once, all the days of her life and mine.

The star flamed more radiantly as the sky darkened, and now the thin edge of the moon quivered in silver fire as it rose above the trees.

Margaret raised her head from Edward’s chest, and her eyes were shining. She drew a deep breath and smiled peacefully.

“Do you know something, darling?” she asked, and her voice shook. “All at once I’m not afraid any more. Not any more!”

A Biography of Taylor Caldwell

Taylor Caldwell was one of the most prolific and widely read American authors of the twentieth century. In a career that spanned five decades, she wrote forty novels, many of which were New York Times bestsellers.

Caldwell captivated readers with emotionally charged historical novels and family sagas such as Captains and the Kings, which sold 4.5 million copies and was made into a television miniseries in 1976. Her novels based on the lives of religious figures, Dear and Glorious Physician, a portrayal of the life of St. Luke, and Great Lion of God, a panoramic novel about the life and times of St. Paul, are among the bestselling religious novels of all time.

Born Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell in 1900 in Manchester, England, into a family of Scotch-Irish descent, she began attending an academically rigorous school at the age of four, studying Latin, French, history, and geography. At six, she won a national gold medal for her essay on novelist Charles Dickens. On weekends, she performed a long list of household chores and attended Sunday school and church twice a day. Caldwell often credited her Spartan childhood with making her a rugged individualist.

In 1907, Caldwell, her parents, and her younger brother immigrated to the United States, settling in Buffalo, New York, where she would live for most of her life. She started writing stories when she was eight years old and completed her first novel, The Romance of Atlantis, when she was twelve, although it was not published until 1975. Marriage at the age of eighteen to William Combs and the birth of her first child, Mary Margaret—Peggy—did not deter her from pursuing an education. While working as a stenographer and a court reporter to help support her family, she took college courses at night.

Upon receiving a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Buffalo in 1931, she divorced her husband and married Marcus Reback, her boss at the US Immigration Department office in Buffalo. Caldwell then dedicated herself to writing full time. Even as her family grew with the arrival of her second daughter, Judith, Caldwell’s unpublished manuscripts continued to pile up.

At the age of thirty-eight, she finally sold a novel, Dynasty of Death, to a major New York publisher. Convinced that a pre–World War I saga of two dynasties of munitions manufacturers would be better received if people thought it was written by a man, Maxwell Perkins, her editor at Scribner—who also discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway—advised her to use only part of her name—Taylor Caldwell—as her pen name. Dynasty of Death became a bestseller in 1938 and the saga continued with The Eagles Gather in 1940 and The Final Hour in 1944. Inevitably, a public stir ensued when people discovered Taylor Caldwell was a woman.

Over the next forty years, Caldwell often worked from midnight to early morning at her electric typewriter in her book-crammed study, producing a wide array of sagas (This Side of Innocence, Answer as a Man) and historical novels (Testimony of Two Men, Ceremony of the Innocent) that celebrated American values and passions.

She also produced novels set in the ancient world (A Pillar of Iron, Glory and the Lightning), dystopian fiction (The Devil’s Advocate, Your Sins and Mine), and spiritually themed novels (The Listener, No One Hears But Him, Dialogues with the Devil).

Apart from their across-the-board popularity with readers and their commercial success, which made Caldwell a wealthy woman, her long list of bestselling novels possessed common themes that were close to her heart: self-reliance and individualism, man’s struggle for justice, the government’s encroachment on personal freedoms, and the conflict between man’s desire for wealth and power and his need for love and family bonding.

The long hours spent at her typewriter did not keep Caldwell from enjoying life. She gave elegant parties at her grand house in Buffalo. One of her grandchildren recalls watching her hold the crowd in awe with her observations about life and politics. She embarked on annual worldwide cruises and was fond of a glass of good bourbon. Drina Fried recalls her grandmother confiding in her: “I vehemently believe that we should have as much fun as is possible in our dolorous life, if it does not injure ourselves or anyone else. The only thing is—be discreet. The world will forgive you anything but getting caught.”

Caldwell didn’t stop writing until she suffered a debilitating stroke at the age of eighty. Her last novel, Answer as a Man, was published in 1981 and hit the New York Times bestseller list before its official publication date. She died at her home in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1985.

William Combs, Taylor Caldwell’s first husband and father to Peggy, aboard a naval ship, circa 1926.

A portrait of Caldwell at the start of her career in the late 1930s.

A portrait of Caldwell taken before Scribner’s publication of Melissa on June 21, 1948.

Caldwell at her desk in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1949. She spent many winter months at Whitehall, a resort hotel on the property of Henry Flagler’s former estate, which is now the Flagler Museum.

Caldwell’s second daughter, Judith Ann Reback, during time with her mother at Whitehall in the 1940s.

Caldwell receiving an award in Los Angeles, California, for A Pillar of Iron after its publication in 1965.

Caldwell with her daughters, Peggy Fried and Judith Ann Reback (Goodman), and Ted Goodman in 1969 on the MS Bergensfjord.

Caldwell at a cocktail party with her daughter, Peggy, and the hostess of a research world cruise on the SS President Wilson in 1970.

Caldwell with her granddaughter, Drina Fried, at her home in Buffalo, New York, winter 1975. Soula Angelou, her personal assistant, insisted on taking this rare family picture.

An invitation from 1975 to one of Caldwell’s many cocktail parties. She hosted at least two parties a year in Buffalo, New York, before she moved to Connecticut.

Caldwell with her fourth husband, Robert Prestie, who cared for her in the last six years of her life in Connecticut.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1957 by Reback and Reback

Cover design by Connie Gabbert

ISBN: 978-1-5040-3904-8

This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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Table of Contents

- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph

- Part One

- Epilogue
- Chapter I
- Chapter II
- Chapter III
- Chapter IV
- Chapter V
- Chapter VI
- Chapter VII
- Chapter VIII
- Chapter IX
- Chapter X
- Chapter XI

- Part Two

- Chapter I
- Chapter II
- Chapter III
- Chapter IV
- Chapter V
- Chapter VI
- Chapter VII
- Chapter VIII
- Chapter IX
- Chapter X
- Chapter XI

- Part Three

- Chapter I
- Chapter II
- Chapter III
- Chapter IV
- Chapter V
- Chapter VI
- Chapter VII
- Chapter VIII
- Chapter IX
- Chapter X
- Chapter XI
- Chapter XII
- Chapter XIII
- Chapter XIV
- Chapter XV

- A Biography of Taylor Caldwell

- Copyright Page