tristrem descended the stair and hesitated a moment at the door of the smoking-room. near-by, at a small table, two men were drinking brandy. he caught a fragment of their speech: it was about a woman. beyond, another group was listening to that story of the eternal feminine which is everlastingly the same. within, the air was lifeless and heavy with the odor of cigars, but in the hall there came through the wide portals of the entrance the irresistible breath of a night in may.
tristrem turned and presently sauntered aimlessly out of the club and up the avenue. before him, a man was loitering with a girl; his arm was in hers, and he was whispering in her ear. a cab passed, bearing a couple that sat waist-encircled devouring each other with insatiate eyes. and at twenty-third street, a few shop-girls, young and very pretty, that were laughing conspicuously together, were joined by some clerks, with whom they paired off and disappeared. at the corner, through the intersecting thoroughfares came couple after couple, silent for the most part, as though oppressed by the invitations of the night. beyond, in the shadows of the square, the benches were filled with youths and maidens, who sat hand-in-hand, oblivious to the crowd that circled in indolent coils about them. the moon had not yet risen, but a leash of stars that night had loosed glowed and trembled with desire. the air was sentient with murmurs, redolent with promise. the avenues and the adjacent streets seemed to have forgotten their toil and to swoon unhushed in the bewitchments of a dream of love.
tristrem found himself straying through its mazes and convolutions. whichever way he turned there was some monition of its presence. from a street-car which had stayed his passage he saw the conductor blow a kiss to a hurrying form, and through an open window of delmonico's he saw a girl with summer in her eyes reach across the table at which she sat and give her companion's hand an abrupt yet deliberate caress.
tristrem continued his way, oppressed. he was beset by an insidious duscholia. he felt as one does who witnesses a festival in which there is no part for him. the town reeked with love as a brewery reeks with beer. the stars, the air, the very pavements told of it. it was omnipresent, and yet there was none for him.
he tried to put it from him and think of other things. of jones, for instance. why had he spoken of viola? and then, in the flight of fancies which surged through his mind, there was one that he stayed and detained. it was that he must see her again before she left town. he looked at his watch: it lacked twenty minutes to ten, and on the impulse of the moment he hailed a passing 'bus. it was inexplicable to him that the night before she should have let him go without a word as to her movements. it seemed to be understood that he was to come again to wish her a pleasant journey. and when was he to come if not that very evening? surely at the time she had forgotten this engagement with the wainwarings, and some note had been left for him at the door. and if no note had been left, then why should he not ask for her mother or wait till she returned? a bell rang sharply through the vehicle and aroused him from his reverie. he glanced up, and saw the driver eyeing him through the machicoulis of glass. it was the fare he wanted, and as tristrem deposited it in the box he noticed that the familiar street was reached.
in a few moments he was at the house. on the stoop a servant was occupied with the mat.
"is, eh, did——"
"yes, sir," the man answered, promptly. "miss raritan is in the parlor."
in the surprise at the unexpected, tristrem left his hat and coat, and pushing aside the portière, he entered the room unannounced. at first he fancied that the servant had been mistaken. miss raritan was not at her accustomed place, and he stood at the door-way gazing about in uncertainty. but in an instant, echoing from the room beyond, he caught the sound of her voice; yet in the voice was a tone which he had never heard before—a tone of smothered anger that carried with it the accent of hate.
moved by unconscious springs, he left the door-way and looked into the adjoining room. a man whom at first he did not recognize was standing by a lounge from which he had presumably arisen. and before him, with both her small hands clinched and pendent, and in her exquisite face an expression of relentless indignation, stood miss raritan. another might have thought them rehearsing a tableau for some theatricals of the melodramatic order, but not tristrem. he felt vaguely alarmed: there came to him that premonition without which no misfortune ever occurs; and suddenly the alarm changed to bewilderment. the man had turned: it was royal weldon. tristrem could not credit his senses. he raised his hand to his head: it did not seem possible that a felon could have told a more wanton lie than he had been told but little over an hour before; and yet the teller of that lie was his nearest friend. and still he did not understand; surely there was some mistake. he would have spoken, but weldon crossed the room to where he stood, and with set teeth and contracted muscles fronted him a second's space, and into his eyes he looked a defiance that was the more hideous in that it was mute. then, with a gesture that almost tore the portière from its rings, he passed out into the hall and let the curtain fall behind him.
as he passed on tristrem turned with the obedience of a subject under the influence of a mesmerist; and when the curtain fell again he started as subjects do when they awake from their trance.
the fairest, truest, and best may be stricken in the flush of health; yet after the grave has opened and closed again does not memory still subsist, and to the mourner may not the old dreams return? however acute the grief may be, is it not often better to know that affection is safe in the keeping of the dead than to feel it at the mercy of the living? we may prate as we will, but there are many things less endurable than the funeral of the best-beloved. death is by no means the worst that can come. whoso discovers that affection reposed has been given to an illusory representation; to one not as he is, but as fancy pictured him; to a trickster that has cheated the heart—in fact, to a phantom that has no real existence outside of the imagination, must experience a sinking more sickening than any corpse can convey. at the moment, the crack of doom that is to herald an eternal silence cannot more appal.
tristrem still stood gazing at the portière through which weldon had disappeared. he heard the front door close, and the sound of feet on the pavement. and presently he was back at st. paul's, hurrying from the upper school to intercede with the master. it was bitterly cold that morning, but in the afternoon the weather had moderated, and they had both gone to skate. and then the day he first came. he remembered his good looks, his patronizing, precocious ways; everything, even to the shirt he wore—blue, striped with white—and the watch with the crest and the motto well done, weldon. no, it was ill done, weldon, and the lie was ignoble. and why had he told it? their friendship, seemingly, had been so stanch, so unmarred by disagreement, that this lie was as a dash of blood on a white wall—an ineffaceable stain.
if there are years that count double, there are moments in which the hour-glass is transfixed. the entire scene, from tristrem's entrance to weldon's departure, was compassed in less than a minute, yet during that fragment of time there had been enacted a drama in epitome—a drama humdrum and ordinary indeed, but in which tristrem found himself bidding farewell to one whom he had never known.
he was broken in spirit, overwhelmed by the suddenness of the disaster, and presently, as though in search of sympathy, he turned to miss raritan. the girl had thrown herself in a chair, and sat, her face hidden in her hands. as tristrem approached her she looked up. her cheeks were blanched.
"he told me you were at the wainwaring's," tristrem began. "i don't see," he added, after a moment—"i don't understand why he should have done so. he knew you were here, yet he said——"
"did you hear what he said to me?"
tristrem for all response shook his head wonderingly.
the girl's cheeks from white had turned flame.
"he has not been to you the friend you think," she said, and raising her arm to her face, she made a gesture as though to brush from her some distasteful thing.
"but what has he done? what did he say?"
"don't ask me. don't mention him to me." she buried her face again in her hands and was silent.
tristrem turned uneasily and walked into the other room, and then back again to where she sat; but still she hid her face and was silent. and tristrem left her and continued his walk, this time to the dining-room and then back to the parlor which he had first entered. and after a while miss raritan stood up from her seat and as though impelled by the nervousness of her companion, she, too, began to pace the rooms, but in the contrary direction to that which tristrem had chosen. at last she stopped, and when tristrem approached her she beckoned him to her side.
"what did you say to me last night?" she asked.
"what did i say? i said—you asked me—i said it would be difficult."
"do you think so still?"
"always."
"tristrem, i will be your wife."
a cimmerian led out of darkness into sudden light could not marvel more at multicolored vistas than did tristrem, at this promise. truly they are most hopeless who have hoped the most. and tristrem, as he paced the rooms, had told himself it was done. his hopes had scattered before him like last year's leaves. he had groped in shadows and had been conscious only of a blind alley, with a dead wall, somewhere, near at hand. but now, abruptly, the shadows had gone, the blind alley had changed into a radiant avenue, the dead wall had parted like a curtain, and beyond was a new horizon, gold-barred and blue, and landscapes of asphodels and beckoning palms. he was as one who, overtaken by sleep on the banks of the styx, awakes in arcadia.
his face was so eloquent with the bewitchments through which he roamed that, for the first time that evening, miss raritan smiled. she raised a finger warningly.
"now, tristrem, if you say anything ridiculous i will take it back."
but the warning was needless. tristrem caught the finger, and kissed her hand with old-fashioned grace.
"viola," he said, at last, "i thank you. i do not know what i can do to show how i appreciate this gift of gifts. but yet, if it is anything, if it can bring any happiness to a girl to know that she fills a heart to fulfilment itself, that she dwells in thought as the substance of thought, that she animates each fibre of another's being, that she enriches a life with living springs, and feels that it will be never otherwise, then you will be happy, for so you will always be to me."
the speech, if pardonably incoherent, was not awkwardly made, and it was delivered with a seriousness that befitted the occasion. in a tone as serious as his own, she answered:
"i will be true to you, tristrem." that was all. but she looked in his face as she spoke.
they had been standing, but now they found seats near to each other. tristrem would not release her hand, and she let it lie unrebellious in his own. and in this fashion they sat and mapped the chartless future. had tristrem been allowed his way the marriage would have been an immediate one. but to this, of course, miss raritan would not listen.
"not before november," she said, with becoming decision.
"why, that is five months off!"
"and months are short, and then——"
"but, viola, think! five months! it is a kalpa of time. and besides," he added, with the cogent egotism of an accepted lover, "what shall i do with myself in the meantime?"
"if you are good you may come to the pier, and there we will talk edelweiss and myosotis, as all engaged people do." she said this so prettily that the sarcasm, if sarcasm there were, was lost.
to this programme tristrem was obliged to subscribe.
"well, then, afterward we will go abroad."
"don't you like this country?" the girl asked, all the stars and stripes fluttering in her voice, and in a tone which one might use in reciting, "breathes there the man, with soul so dead?"
"i think," he answered, apologetically, "that i do like this country. it is a great country. but new york is not a great city, at least not to my thinking. collectively it is great, i admit, but individually not, and that is to me the precise difference between it and paris. collectively the french amount to little, individually it is otherwise."
"but you told me once that paris was tiresome."
"i was not there with you. and should it become so when we are there together, we have the whole world to choose from. in germany we can have the middle ages over again. in london we can get the flush of the nineteenth century. there is all of italy, from the lakes to naples. we can take a doge's palace in venice, or a c?sar's villa on the baia. with a dahabieh we could float down into the dawn of history. you would look well in a dahabieh, viola."
"as aida?"
"better. and that reminds me, viola; tell me, you will give up all thought of the stage, will you not?"
"how foolish you are. fancy mrs. tristrem varick before the footlights. there are careers open to a girl that the acceptance of another's name must close. and the stage is one of them. i should have adopted it long ago, had it not been for mother. she seems to think that a raritan—but there, you know what mothers are. now, of course, i shall give it up. besides, italian opera is out of fashion. and even if it were otherwise, have i not now a lord, a master, whom i must obey?"
her eyes looked anything but obedience, yet her voice was melodious with caresses.
and so they sat and talked and made their plans, until it was long past the conventional hour, and tristrem felt that he should go. he had been afloat in unnavigated seas of happiness, but still in his heart he felt the burn of a red, round wound. the lie that weldon had told smarted still, yet with serener spirit he thought there might be some unexplained excuse.
"tell me," he asked, as he was about to leave, "what was it weldon said?"
miss raritan looked at him, and hesitated before she spoke. then catching his face in her two hands she drew it to her own.
"he said you were a goose," she whispered, and touched her lips to his.
with this answer tristrem was fain to be content. and presently, when he left the house, he reeled as though he had drunk beaker after flagon of the headiest wine.
