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Blind Man's Holiday

Short Stories

"Fox-in-the-Morning"

A Bird of Bagdad

A Blackjack Bargainer

A Call Loan

A Chaparral Christmas Gift

A Chaparral Prince

A Comedy in Rubber

A Cosmopolite in a Cafe

A Departmental Case

A Dinner at--------*

A Double-Dyed Deceiver

A Fog in Santone

A Harlem Tragedy

A Lickpenny Lover

A Little Local Colour

A Little Talk about Mobs

A Madison Square Arabian Night

A Matter of Mean Elevation

A Midsummer Knight's Dream

A Midsummer Masquerade

A Municipal Report

A Newspaper Story

A Night in New Arabia

A Philistine in Bohemia

A Poor Rule

A Ramble in Aphasia

A Retrieved Reformation

A Ruler of Men

A Sacrifice Hit

A Service of Love

A Snapshot at the President

A Strange Story

A Technical Error

A Tempered Wind

According to Their Lights

After Twenty Years

An Adjustment of Nature

An Afternoon Miracle

An Apology

An Unfinished Christmas Story

An Unfinished Story

Aristocracy Versus Hash

Art and the Bronco

At Arms With Morpheus

Babes in the Jungle

Best-Seller

Between Rounds

Bexar Scrip No. 2692

Blind Man's Holiday

Brickdust Row

Buried Treasure

By Courier

Calloway's Code

Caught

Cherchez La Femme

Christmas by Injunction

Compliments of the Season

Confessions of a Humorist

Conscience in Art

Cupid a La Carte

Cupid's Exile Number Two

Dickey

Dougherty's Eye-Opener

Elsie in New York

Extradited from Bohemia

Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled

Friends in San Rosario

From Each According to His Ability

From the Cabby's Seat

Georgia's Ruling

Girl

He Also Serves

Hearts and Crosses

Hearts and Hands

Helping the Other Fellow

Holding Up a Train

Hostages to Momus

Hygeia at the Solito

Innocents of Broadway

Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet

Jimmy Hayes and Muriel

Law and Order

Let Me Feel Your Pulse

Little Speck in Garnered Fruit

Lord Oakhurst's Curse

Lost on Dress Parade

Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches

Makes the Whole World Kin

Mammon and the Archer

Man About Town

Masters of Arts

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

Modern Rural Sports

Money Maze

Nemesis and the Candy Man

New York by Camp Fire Light

Next to Reading Matter

No Story

October and June

On Behalf of the Management

One Dollar's Worth

One Thousand Dollars

Out of Nazareth

Past One at Rooney's

Phoebe

Proof of the Pudding

Psyche and the Pskyscraper

Queries and Answers

Roads of Destiny

Roses, Ruses and Romance

Rouge et Noir

Round the Circle

Rus in Urbe

Schools and Schools

Seats of the Haughty

Shearing the Wolf

Ships

Shoes

Sisters of the Golden Circle

Smith

Sociology in Serge and Straw

Sound and Fury

Springtime a La Carte

Squaring the Circle

Strictly Business

Strictly Business

Suite Homes and Their Romance

Telemachus, Friend

The Admiral

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

The Assessor of Success

The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear

The Badge of Policeman O'Roon

The Brief Debut of Tildy

The Buyer From Cactus City

The Caballero's Way

The Cactus

The Caliph and the Cad

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

The Call of the Tame

The Chair of Philanthromathematics

The Champion of the Weather

The Church with an Overshot-Wheel

The City of Dreadful Night

The Clarion Call

The Coming-Out of Maggie

The Complete Life of John Hopkins

The Cop and the Anthem

The Count and the Wedding Guest

The Country of Elusion

The Day Resurgent

The Day We Celebrate

The Defeat of the City

The Detective Detector

The Diamond of Kali

The Discounters of Money

The Dog and the Playlet

The Door of Unrest

The Dream

The Duel

The Duplicity of Hargraves

The Easter of the Soul

The Emancipation of Billy

The Enchanted Kiss

The Enchanted Profile

The Ethics of Pig

The Exact Science of Matrimony

The Ferry of Unfulfilment

The Fifth Wheel

The Flag Paramount

The Fool-Killer

The Foreign Policy of Company 99

The Fourth in Salvador

The Friendly Call

The Furnished Room

The Gift of the Magi

The Girl and the Graft

The Girl and the Habit

The Gold That Glittered

The Greater Coney

The Green Door

The Guardian of the Accolade

The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss

The Hand that Riles the World

The Handbook of Hymen

The Harbinger

The Head-Hunter

The Hiding of Black Bill

The Higher Abdication

The Higher Pragmatism

The Hypotheses of Failure

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson

The Lady Higher Up

The Last Leaf

The Last of the Troubadours

The Lonesome Road

The Lost Blend

The Lotus And The Bottle

The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein

The Making of a New Yorker

The Man Higher Up

The Marionettes

The Marquis and Miss Sally

The Marry Month of May

The Memento

The Missing Chord

The Moment of Victory

The Octopus Marooned

The Passing of Black Eagle

The Pendulum

The Phonograph and the Graft

The Pimienta Pancakes

The Plutonian Fire

The Poet and the Peasant

The Pride of the Cities

The Princess and the Puma

The Prisoner of Zembla

The Proem

The Purple Dress

The Ransom of Mack

The Ransom of Red Chief

The Rathskeller and the Rose

The Red Roses of Tonia

The Reformation of Calliope

The Remnants of the Code

The Renaissance at Charleroi

The Roads We Take

The Robe of Peace

The Romance of a Busy Broker

The Rose of Dixie

The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball

The Rubber Plant's Story

The Shamrock and the Palm

The Shocks of Doom

The Skylight Room

The Sleuths

The Snow Man

The Social Triangle

The Song and the Sergeant

The Sparrows in Madison Square

The Sphinx Apple

The Tale of a Tainted Tenner

The Theory and the Hound

The Thing's the Play

The Third Ingredient

The Trimmed Lamp

The Unknown Quantity

The Unprofitable Servant

The Venturers

The Vitagraphoscope

The Voice of the City

The Whirligig of Life

The World and the Door

Thimble, Thimble

Tictocq

To Him Who Waits

Tobin's Palm

Tommy's Burglar

Tracked to Doom

Transformation of Martin Burney

Transients in Arcadia

Two Recalls

Two Renegades

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

Ulysses and the Dogman

Vanity and Some Sables

What You Want

While the Auto Waits

Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking

Witches' Loaves







Alas for the man and for the artist with the shifting point of
perspective! Life shall be a confusion of ways to the one; the
landscape shall rise up and confound the other. Take the case of
Lorison. At one time he appeared to himself to be the feeblest of
fools; at another he conceived that he followed ideals so fine that
the world was not yet ready to accept them. During one mood he cursed
his folly; possessed by the other, he bore himself with a serene
grandeur akin to greatness: in neither did he attain the perspective.

Generations before, the name had been "Larsen." His race had
bequeathed him its fine-strung, melancholy temperament, its saving
balance of thrift and industry.

From his point of perspective he saw himself an outcast from society,
forever to be a shady skulker along the ragged edge of respectability;
a denizen _des trois-quartz de monde_, that pathetic spheroid lying
between the _haut_ and the _demi_, whose inhabitants envy each of their
neighbours, and are scorned by both. He was self-condemned to this
opinion, as he was self-exiled, through it, to this quaint Southern
city a thousand miles from his former home. Here he had dwelt for
longer than a year, knowing but few, keeping in a subjective world
of shadows which was invaded at times by the perplexing bulks of
jarring realities. Then he fell in love with a girl whom he met in a
cheap restaurant, and his story begins.


The Rue Chartres, in New Orleans, is a street of ghosts. It lies in
the quarter where the Frenchman, in his prime, set up his translated
pride and glory; where, also, the arrogant don had swaggered, and
dreamed of gold and grants and ladies' gloves. Every flagstone has
its grooves worn by footsteps going royally to the wooing and the
fighting. Every house has a princely heartbreak; each doorway its
untold tale of gallant promise and slow decay.

By night the Rue Chartres is now but a murky fissure, from which the
groping wayfarer sees, flung against the sky, the tangled filigree of
Moorish iron balconies. The old houses of monsieur stand yet,
indomitable against the century, but their essence is gone. The
street is one of ghosts to whosoever can see them.

A faint heartbeat of the street's ancient glory still survives in a
corner occupied by the Cafe Carabine d'Or. Once men gathered there to
plot against kings, and to warn presidents. They do so yet, but they
are not the same kind of men. A brass button will scatter these;
those would have set their faces against an army. Above the door
hangs the sign board, upon which has been depicted a vast animal of
unfamiliar species. In the act of firing upon this monster is
represented an unobtrusive human levelling an obtrusive gun, once the
colour of bright gold. Now the legend above the picture is faded
beyond conjecture; the gun's relation to the title is a matter of
faith; the menaced animal, wearied of the long aim of the hunter, has
resolved itself into a shapeless blot.

The place is known as "Antonio's," as the name, white upon the red-lit
transparency, and gilt upon the windows, attests. There is a promise
in "Antonio"; a justifiable expectancy of savoury things in oil and
pepper and wine, and perhaps an angel's whisper of garlic. But the
rest of the name is "O'Riley." Antonio O'Riley!

The Carabine d'Or is an ignominious ghost of the Rue Chartres. The
cafe where Bienville and Conti dined, where a prince has broken bread,
is become a "family ristaurant."

Its customers are working men and women, almost to a unit.
Occasionally you will see chorus girls from the cheaper theatres,
and men who follow avocations subject to quick vicissitudes; but at
Antonio's--name rich in Bohemian promise, but tame in fulfillment--
manners debonair and gay are toned down to the "family" standard.
Should you light a cigarette, mine host will touch you on the "arrum"
and remind you that the proprieties are menaced. "Antonio" entices
and beguiles from fiery legend without, but "O'Riley" teaches decorum
within.

It was at this restaurant that Lorison first saw the girl. A flashy
fellow with a predatory eye had followed her in, and had advanced to
take the other chair at the little table where she stopped, but
Lorison slipped into the seat before him. Their acquaintance began,
and grew, and now for two months they had sat at the same table each
evening, not meeting by appointment, but as if by a series of
fortuitous and happy accidents. After dining, they would take a walk
together in one of the little city parks, or among the panoramic
markets where exhibits a continuous vaudeville of sights and sounds.
Always at eight o'clock their steps led them to a certain street
corner, where she prettily but firmly bade him good night and left
him. "I do not live far from here," she frequently said, "and you
must let me go the rest of the way alone."

But now Lorison had discovered that he wanted to go the rest of the
way with her, or happiness would depart, leaving, him on a very lonely
corner of life. And at the same time that he made the discovery, the
secret of his banishment from the society of the good laid its finger
in his face and told him it must not be.

Man is too thoroughly an egoist not to be also an egotist; if he love,
the object shall know it. During a lifetime he may conceal it through
stress of expediency and honour, but it shall bubble from his dying
lips, though it disrupt a neighbourhood. It is known, however, that
most men do not wait so long to disclose their passion. In the case
of Lorison, his particular ethics positively forbade him to declare
his sentiments, but he must needs dally with the subject, and woo by
innuendo at least.

On this night, after the usual meal at the Carabine d'Or, he strolled
with his companion down the dim old street toward the river.

The Rue Chartres perishes in the old Place d'Armes. The ancient
Cabildo, where Spanish justice fell like hail, faces it, and the
Cathedral, another provincial ghost, overlooks it. Its centre is a
little, iron-railed park of flowers and immaculate gravelled walks,
where citizens take the air of evenings. Pedestalled high above it,
the general sits his cavorting steed, with his face turned stonily
down the river toward English Turn, whence come no more Britons to
bombard his cotton bales.

Often the two sat in this square, but to-night Lorison guided her past
the stone-stepped gate, and still riverward. As they walked, he smiled
to himself to think that all he knew of her--except that be loved
her--was her name, Norah Greenway, and that she lived with her
brother. They had talked about everything except themselves. Perhaps
her reticence had been caused by his.

They came, at length, upon the levee, and sat upon a great, prostrate
beam. The air was pungent with the dust of commerce. The great river
slipped yellowly past. Across it Algiers lay, a longitudinous black
bulk against a vibrant electric haze sprinkled with exact stars.

The girl was young and of the piquant order. A certain bright
melancholy pervaded her; she possessed an untarnished, pale prettiness
doomed to please. Her voice, when she spoke, dwarfed her theme. It
was the voice capable of investing little subjects with a large
interest. She sat at ease, bestowing her skirts with the little
womanly touch, serene as if the begrimed pier were a summer garden.
Lorison poked the rotting boards with his cane.

He began by telling her that he was in love with some one to whom he
durst not speak of it. "And why not?" she asked, accepting swiftly
his fatuous presentation of a third person of straw. "My place in the
world," he answered, "is none to ask a woman to share. I am an
outcast from honest people; I am wrongly accused of one crime, and am,
I believe, guilty of another."

Thence he plunged into the story of his abdication from society. The
story, pruned of his moral philosophy, deserves no more than the
slightest touch. It is no new tale, that of the gambler's declension.
During one night's sitting he lost, and then had imperilled a certain
amount of his employer's money, which, by accident, he carried with
him. He continued to lose, to the last wager, and then began to gain,
leaving the game winner to a somewhat formidable sum. The same night
his employer's safe was robbed. A search was had; the winnings of
Lorison were found in his room, their total forming an accusative
nearness to the sum purloined. He was taken, tried and, through
incomplete evidence, released, smutched with the sinister _devoirs_
of a disagreeing jury.

"It is not in the unjust accusation," he said to the girl, "that my
burden lies, but in the knowledge that from the moment I staked the
first dollar of the firm's money I was a criminal--no matter whether
I lost or won. You see why it is impossible for me to speak of love
to her."

"It is a sad thing," said Norah, after a little pause, "to think what
very good people there are in the world."

"Good?" said Lorison.

"I was thinking of this superior person whom you say you love. She
must be a very poor sort of creature."

"I do not understand."

"Nearly," she continued, "as poor a sort of creature as yourself."

"You do not understand," said Lorison, removing his hat and sweeping
back his fine, light hair. "Suppose she loved me in return, and
were willing to marry me. Think, if you can, what would follow. Never
a day would pass but she would be reminded of her sacrifice. I would
read a condescension in her smile, a pity even in her affection, that
would madden me. No. The thing would stand between us forever. Only
equals should mate. I could never ask her to come down upon my lower
plane."

An arc light faintly shone upon Lorison's face. An illumination from
within also pervaded it. The girl saw the rapt, ascetic look; it was
the face either of Sir Galahad or Sir Fool.

"Quite starlike," she said, "is this unapproachable angel. Really too
high to be grasped."

"By me, yes."

She faced him suddenly. "My dear friend, would you prefer your star
fallen?" Lorison made a wide gesture.

"You push me to the bald fact," he declared; "you are not in sympathy
with my argument. But I will answer you so. If I could reach my
particular star, to drag it down, I would not do it; but if it were
fallen, I would pick it up, and thank Heaven for the privilege."

They were silent for some minutes. Norah shivered, and thrust her
hands deep into the pockets of her jacket. Lorison uttered a
remorseful exclamation.

"I'm not cold," she said. "I was just thinking. I ought to tell you
something. You have selected a strange confidante. But you cannot
expect a chance acquaintance, picked up in a doubtful restaurant, to
be an angel."

"Norah!" cried Lorison.

"Let me go on. You have told me about yourself. We have been such
good friends. I must tell you now what I never wanted you to know.
I am--worse than you are. I was on the stage . . . I sang in the
chorus . . . I was pretty bad, I guess . . . I stole diamonds from
the prima donna . . . they arrested me . . . I gave most of them up,
and they let me go . . . I drank wine every night . . . a great
deal . . . I was very wicked, but--"

Lorison knelt quickly by her side and took her hands.

"Dear Norah!" he said, exultantly. "It is you, it is you I love!
You never guessed it, did you? 'Tis you I meant all the time. Now I
can speak. Let me make you forget the past. We have both suffered;
let us shut out the world, and live for each other. Norah, do you
hear me say I love you?"

"In spite of--"

"Rather say because of it. You have come out of your past noble and
good. Your heart is an angel's. Give it to me."

"A little while ago you feared the future too much to even speak."

"But for you; not for myself. Can you love me?"

She cast herself, wildly sobbing, upon his breast.

"Better than life--than truth itself--than everything."

"And my own past," said Lorison, with a note of solicitude--"can you
forgive and--"

"I answered you that," she whispered, "when I told you I loved you."
She leaned away, and looked thoughtfully at him. "If I had not told
you about myself, would you have--would you--"

"No," he interrupted; "I would never have let you know I loved you. I
would never have asked you this--Norah, will you be my wife?"

She wept again.

"Oh, believe me; I am good now--I am no longer wicked! I will be
the best wife in the world. Don't think I am--bad any more. If you
do I shall die, I shall die!"

While he was consoling, her, she brightened up, eager and impetuous.
"Will you marry me to-night?" she said. "Will you prove it that way.
I have a reason for wishing it to be to-night. Will you?"

Of one of two things was this exceeding frankness the outcome: either
of importunate brazenness or of utter innocence. The lover's
perspective contained only the one.

"The sooner," said Lorison, "the happier I shall be."

"What is there to do?" she asked. "What do you have to get? Come!
You should know."

Her energy stirred the dreamer to action.

"A city directory first," he cried, gayly, "to find where the man
lives who gives licenses to happiness. We will go together and rout
him out. Cabs, cars, policemen, telephones and ministers shall aid
us."

"Father Rogan shall marry us," said the girl, with ardour. "I will
take you to him."


An hour later the two stood at the open doorway of an immense, gloomy
brick building in a narrow and lonely street. The license was tight
in Norah's hand.

"Wait here a moment," she said, "till I find Father Rogan."

She plunged into the black hallway, and the lover was left standing,
as it were, on one leg, outside. His impatience was not greatly
taxed. Gazing curiously into what seemed the hallway to Erebus,
he was presently reassured by a stream of light that bisected the
darkness, far down the passage. Then he heard her call, and
fluttered lampward, like the moth. She beckoned him through a
doorway into the room whence emanated the light. The room was
bare of nearly everything except books, which had subjugated all
its space. Here and there little spots of territory had been
reconquered. An elderly, bald man, with a superlatively calm,
remote eye, stood by a table with a book in his hand, his finger
still marking a page. His dress was sombre and appertained to a
religious order. His eye denoted an acquaintance with the
perspective.

"Father Rogan," said Norah, "this is _he_."

"The two of ye," said Father Rogan, "want to get married?"

They did not deny it. He married them. The ceremony was quickly
done. One who could have witnessed it, and felt its scope, might have
trembled at the terrible inadequacy of it to rise to the dignity of
its endless chain of results.

Afterward the priest spake briefly, as if by rote, of certain other
civil and legal addenda that either might or should, at a later time,
cap the ceremony. Lorison tendered a fee, which was declined, and
before the door closed after the departing couple Father Rogan's book
popped open again where his finger marked it.

In the dark hall Norah whirled and clung to her companion, tearful.

"Will you never, never be sorry?"

At last she was reassured.

At the first light they reached upon the street, she asked the time,
just as she had each night. Lorison looked at his watch. Half-past
eight.

Lorison thought it was from habit that she guided their steps toward
the corner where they always parted. But, arrived there, she
hesitated, and then released his arm. A drug store stood on the
corner; its bright, soft light shone upon them.

"Please leave me here as usual to-night," said Norah, sweetly. "I
must--I would rather you would. You will not object? At six
to-morrow evening I will meet you at Antonio's. I want to sit with
you there once more. And then--I will go where you say." She gave
him a bewildering, bright smile, and walked swiftly away.

Surely it needed all the strength of her charm to carry off this
astounding behaviour. It was no discredit to Lorison's strength of
mind that his head began to whirl. Pocketing his hands, he rambled
vacuously over to the druggist's windows, and began assiduously to
spell over the names of the patent medicines therein displayed.

As soon as be had recovered his wits, he proceeded along the street in
an aimless fashion. After drifting for two or three squares, he
flowed into a somewhat more pretentious thoroughfare, a way much
frequented by him in his solitary ramblings. For here was a row of
shops devoted to traffic in goods of the widest range of choice--
handiworks of art, skill and fancy, products of nature and labour from
every zone.

Here, for a time, he loitered among the conspicuous windows, where was
set, emphasized by congested floods of light, the cunningest spoil of
the interiors. There were few passers, and of this Lorison was glad.
He was not of the world. For a long time he had touched his fellow
man only at the gear of a levelled cog-wheel--at right angles, and
upon a different axis. He had dropped into a distinctly new orbit.
The stroke of ill fortune had acted upon him, in effect, as a blow
delivered upon the apex of a certain ingenious toy, the musical top,
which, when thus buffeted while spinning, gives forth, with scarcely
retarded motion, a complete change of key and chord.

Strolling along the pacific avenue, he experienced singular,
supernatural calm, accompanied by an unusual a activity of brain.
Reflecting upon recent affairs, he assured himself of his happiness in
having won for a bride the one he had so greatly desired, yet he
wondered mildly at his dearth of active emotion. Her strange
behaviour in abandoning him without valid excuse on his bridal eve
aroused in him only a vague and curious speculation. Again, he found
himself contemplating, with complaisant serenity, the incidents of her
somewhat lively career. His perspective seemed to have been queerly
shifted.

As he stood before a window near a corner, his ears were assailed by a
waxing clamour and commotion. He stood close to the window to allow
passage to the cause of the hubbub--a procession of human beings,
which rounded the corner and headed in his direction. He perceived a
salient hue of blue and a glitter of brass about a central figure of
dazzling white and silver, and a ragged wake of black, bobbing
figures.

Two ponderous policemen were conducting between them a woman dressed
as if for the stage, in a short, white, satiny skirt reaching to the
knees, pink stockings, and a sort of sleeveless bodice bright with
relucent, armour-like scales. Upon her curly, light hair was perched,
at a rollicking angle, a shining tin helmet. The costume was to be
instantly recognized as one of those amazing conceptions to which
competition has harried the inventors of the spectacular ballet. One
of the officers bore a long cloak upon his arm, which, doubtless, had
been intended to veil the I candid attractions of their effulgent
prisoner, but, for some reason, it had not been called into use, to
the vociferous delight of the tail of the procession.

Compelled by a sudden and vigorous movement of the woman, the parade
halted before the window by which Lorison stood. He saw that she was
young, and, at the first glance, was deceived by a sophistical
prettiness of her face, which waned before a more judicious scrutiny.
Her look was bold and reckless, and upon her countenance, where yet
the contours of youth survived, were the finger-marks of old age's
credentialed courier, Late Hours.

The young woman fixed her unshrinking gaze upon Lorison, and called to
him in the voice of the wronged heroine in straits:

"Say! You look like a good fellow; come and put up the bail, won't
you? I've done nothing to get pinched for. It's all a mistake. See
how they're treating me! You won't be sorry, if you'll help me out of
this. Think of your sister or your girl being dragged along the
streets this way! I say, come along now, like a good fellow."

It may be that Lorison, in spite of the unconvincing bathos of this
appeal, showed a sympathetic face, for one of the officers left the
woman's side, and went over to him.

"It's all right, Sir," he said, in a husky, confidential tone; "she's
the right party. We took her after the first act at the Green Light
Theatre, on a wire from the chief of police of Chicago. It's only a
square or two to the station. Her rig's pretty bad, but she refused
to change clothes--or, rather," added the officer, with a smile, "to
put on some. I thought I'd explain matters to you so you wouldn't
think she was being imposed upon."

"What is the charge?" asked Lorison.

"Grand larceny. Diamonds. Her husband is a jeweller in Chicago. She
cleaned his show case of the sparklers, and skipped with a comic-opera
troupe."

The policeman, perceiving that the interest of the entire group of
spectators was centred upon himself and Lorison--their conference
being regarded as a possible new complication--was fain to prolong
the situation--which reflected his own importance--by a little
afterpiece of philosophical comment.

"A gentleman like you, Sir," he went on affably, "would never notice
it, but it comes in my line to observe what an immense amount of
trouble is made by that combination--I mean the stage, diamonds
and light-headed women who aren't satisfied with good homes. I tell
you, Sir, a man these days and nights wants to know what his women
folks are up to."

The policeman smiled a good night, and returned to the side of his
charge, who had been intently watching Lorison's face during the
conversation, no doubt for some indication of his intention to render
succour. Now, at the failure of the sign, and at the movement made to
continue the ignominious progress, she abandoned hope, and addressed
him thus, pointedly:

"You damn chalk-faced quitter! You was thinking of giving me a hand,
but you let the cop talk you out of it the first word. You're a dandy
to tie to. Say, if you ever get a girl, she'll have a picnic. Won't
she work you to the queen's taste! Oh, my!" She concluded with a
taunting, shrill laugh that rasped Lorison like a saw. The policemen
urged her forward; the delighted train of gaping followers closed up
the rear; and the captive Amazon, accepting her fate, extended the
scope of her maledictions so that none in hearing might seem to be
slighted.

Then there came upon Lorison an overwhelming revulsion of his
perspective. It may be that he had been ripe for it, that the
abnormal condition of mind in which he had for so long existed was
already about to revert to its balance; however, it is certain that
the events of the last few minutes had furnished the channel, if not
the impetus, for the change.

The initial determining influence had been so small a thing as the
fact and manner of his having been approached by the officer. That
agent had, by the style of his accost, restored the loiterer to his
former place in society. In an instant he had been transformed from a
somewhat rancid prowler along the fishy side streets of gentility into
an honest gentleman, with whom even so lordly a guardian of the peace
might agreeably exchange the compliments.

This, then, first broke the spell, and set thrilling in him a
resurrected longing for the fellowship of his kind, and the rewards of
the virtuous. To what end, he vehemently asked himself, was this
fanciful self-accusation, this empty renunciation, this moral
squeamishness through which he had been led to abandon what was his
heritage in life, and not beyond his deserts? Technically, he was
uncondemned; his sole guilty spot was in thought rather than deed, and
cognizance of it unshared by others. For what good, moral or
sentimental, did he slink, retreating like the hedgehog from his own
shadow, to and fro in this musty Bohemia that lacked even the
picturesque?

But the thing that struck home and set him raging was the part played
by the Amazonian prisoner. To the counterpart of that astounding
belligerent--identical at least, in the way of experience--to one,
by her own confession, thus far fallen, had he, not three hours since,
been united in marriage. How desirable and natural it had seemed to
him then, and how monstrous it seemed now! How the words of diamond
thief number two yet burned in his ears: "If you ever get a girl,
she'll have a picnic." What did that mean but that women instinctively
knew him for one they could hoodwink? Still again, there reverberated
the policeman's sapient contribution to his agony: "A man these days
and nights wants to know what his women folks are up to." Oh, yes, he
had been a fool; he had looked at things from the wrong standpoint.

But the wildest note in all the clamour was struck by pain's
forefinger, jealousy. Now, at least, he felt that keenest sting--a
mounting love unworthily bestowed. Whatever she might be, he loved
her; he bore in his own breast his doom. A grating, comic flavour to
his predicament struck him suddenly, and he laughed creakingly as he
swung down the echoing pavement. An impetuous desire to act, to
battle with his fate, seized him. He stopped upon his heel, and smote
his palms together triumphantly. His wife was--where? But there
was a tangible link; an outlet more or less navigable, through which
his derelict ship of matrimony might yet be safely towed--the
priest!

Like all imaginative men with pliable natures, Lorison was, when
thoroughly stirred, apt to become tempestuous. With a high and
stubborn indignation upon him, be retraced his steps to the
intersecting street by which he had come. Down this he hurried to the
corner where he had parted with--an astringent grimace tinctured the
thought--his wife. Thence still back he harked, following through
an unfamiliar district his stimulated recollections of the way they
had come from that preposterous wedding. Many times he went abroad,
and nosed his way back to the trail, furious.

At last, when he reached the dark, calamitous building in which his
madness had culminated, and found the black hallway, he dashed down
it, perceiving no light or sound. But he raised his voice, hailing
loudly; reckless of everything but that he should find the old
mischief-maker with the eyes that looked too far away to see the
disaster he had wrought. The door opened, and in the stream of light
Father Rogan stood, his book in hand, with his finger marking the
place.

"Ah!" cried Lorison. "You are the man I want. I had a wife of you a
few hours ago. I would not trouble you, but I neglected to note how
it was done. Will you oblige me with the information whether the
business is beyond remedy?"

"Come inside," said the priest; "there are other lodgers in the
house, who might prefer sleep to even a gratified curiosity."

Lorison entered the room and took the chair offered him. The priest's
eyes looked a courteous interrogation.

"I must apologize again," said the young man, "for so soon intruding
upon you with my marital infelicities, but, as my wife has neglected
to furnish me with her address, I am deprived of the legitimate
recourse of a family row."

"I am quite a plain man," said Father Rogan, pleasantly; "but I do
not see how I am to ask you questions."

"Pardon my indirectness," said Lorison; "I will ask one. In this room
to-night you pronounced me to be a husband. You afterward spoke of
additional rites or performances that either should or could be
effected. I paid little attention to your words then, but I am hungry
to hear them repeated now. As matters stand, am I married past all
help?"

"You are as legally and as firmly bound," said the priest, "as though
it had been done in a cathedral, in the presence of thousands. The
additional observances I referred to are not necessary to the
strictest legality of the act, but were advised as a precaution for
the future--for convenience of proof in such contingencies as wills,
inheritances and the like."

Lorison laughed harshly.

"Many thanks," he said. "Then there is no mistake, and I am the happy
benedict. I suppose I should go stand upon the bridal corner, and
when my wife gets through walking the streets she will look me up."

Father Rogan regarded him calmly.

"My son," he said, "when a man and woman come to me to be married I
always marry them. I do this for the sake of other people whom they
might go away and marry if they did not marry each other. As you see,
I do not seek your confidence; but your case seems to me to be one not
altogether devoid of interest. Very few marriages that have come to
my notice have brought such well-expressed regret within so short a
time. I will hazard one question: were you not under the impression
that you loved the lady you married, at the time you did so;"

"Loved her!" cried Lorison, wildly. "Never so well as now, though
she told me she deceived and sinned and stole. Never more than now,
when, perhaps, she is laughing at the fool she cajoled and left, with
scarcely a word, to return to God only knows what particular line of
her former folly."

Father Rogan answered nothing. During the silence that succeeded, he
sat with a quiet expectation beaming in his full, lambent eye.

"If you would listen--" began Lorison. The priest held up his hand.

"As I hoped," he said. "I thought you would trust me. Wait but a
moment." He brought a long clay pipe, filled and lighted it.

"Now, my son," he said.

Lorison poured a twelve month's accumulated confidence into Father
Rogan's ear. He told all; not sparing himself or omitting the facts
of his past, the events of the night, or his disturbing conjectures
and fears.

"The main point," said the priest, when he had concluded, "seems to
me to be this--are you reasonably sure that you love this woman whom
you have married?"

"Why," exclaimed Lorison, rising impulsively to his feet--"why
should I deny it? But look at me--am fish, flesh or fowl? That is
the main point to me, I assure you."

"I understand you," said the priest, also rising, and laying down his
pipe. "The situation is one that has taxed the endurance of much
older men than you--in fact, especially much older men than you. I
will try to relieve you from it, and this night. You shall see for
yourself into exactly what predicament you have fallen, and how you
shall, possibly, be extricated. There is no evidence so credible as
that of the eyesight."

Father Rogan moved about the room, and donned a soft black hat.
Buttoning his coat to his throat, he laid his hand on the doorknob.
"Let us walk," he said.

The two went out upon the street. The priest turned his face down it,
and Lorison walked with him through a squalid district, where the
houses loomed, awry and desolate-looking, high above them. Presently
they turned into a less dismal side street, where the houses were
smaller, and, though hinting of the most meagre comfort, lacked the
concentrated wretchedness of the more populous byways.

At a segregated, two-story house Father Rogan halted, and mounted the
steps with the confidence of a familiar visitor. He ushered Lorison
into a narrow hallway, faintly lighted by a cobwebbed hanging lamp.
Almost immediately a door to the right opened and a dingy Irishwoman
protruded her head.

"Good evening to ye, Mistress Geehan," said the priest, unconsciously,
it seemed, falling into a delicately flavoured brogue. "And is it
yourself can tell me if Norah has gone out again, the night, maybe?"

"Oh, it's yer blissid riverence! Sure and I can tell ye the same.
The purty darlin' wint out, as usual, but a bit later. And she says:
'Mother Geehan,' says she, 'it's me last noight out, praise the
saints, this noight is!' And, oh, yer riverence, the swate, beautiful
drame of a dress she had this toime! White satin and silk and
ribbons, and lace about the neck and arrums--'twas a sin, yer
reverence, the gold was spint upon it."

The priest heard Lorison catch his breath painfully, and a faint smile
flickered across his own clean-cut mouth.

"Well, then, Mistress Geehan," said he, "I'll just step upstairs and
see the bit boy for a minute, and I'll take this gentleman up with
me."

"He's awake, thin," said the woman. 'I've just come down from sitting
wid him the last hour, tilling him fine shtories of ould County
Tyrone. 'Tis a greedy gossoon, it is, yer riverence, for me
shtories."

"Small the doubt," said Father Rogan. "There's no rocking would put
him to slape the quicker, I'm thinking."

Amid the woman's shrill protest against the retort, the two men
ascended the steep stairway. The priest pushed open the door of a
room near its top.

"Is that you already, sister?" drawled a sweet, childish voice from
the darkness.

"It's only ould Father Denny come to see ye, darlin'; and a foine
gentleman I've brought to make ye a gr-r-and call. And ye resaves us
fast aslape in bed! Shame on yez manners!"

"Oh, Father Denny, is that you? I'm glad. And will you light the
lamp, please? It's on the table by the door. And quit talking like
Mother Geehan, Father Denny."

The priest lit the lamp, and Lorison saw a tiny, towsled-haired boy,
with a thin, delicate face, sitting up in a small bed in a corner.
Quickly, also, his rapid glance considered the room and its
contents. It was furnished with more than comfort, and its adornments
plainly indicated a woman's discerning taste. An open door beyond
revealed the blackness of an adjoining room's interior.

The boy clutched both of Father Rogan's hands. "I'm so glad you
came," he said; "but why did you come in the night? Did sister send
you?"

"Off wid ye! Am I to be sint about, at me age, as was Terence
McShane, of Ballymahone? I come on me own r-r-responsibility."

Lorison had also advanced to the boy's bedside. He was fond of
children; and the wee fellow, laying himself down to sleep alone in
that dark room, stirred-his heart.

"Aren't you afraid, little man?" he asked, stooping down beside him.

"Sometimes," answered the boy, with a shy smile, "when the rats make
too much noise. But nearly every night, when sister goes out, Mother
Geehan stays a while with me, and tells me funny stories. I'm not
often afraid, sir."

"This brave little gentleman," said Father Rogan, "is a scholar of
mine. Every day from half-past six to half-past eight--when sister
comes for him--he stops in my study, and we find out what's in the
inside of books. He knows multiplication, division and fractions; and
he's troubling me to begin wid the chronicles of Ciaran of
Clonmacnoise, Corurac McCullenan and Cuan O'Lochain, the gr-r-reat
Irish histhorians." The boy was evidently accustomed to the priest's
Celtic pleasantries. A little, appreciative grin was all the attention
the insinuation of pedantry received.

Lorison, to have saved his life, could not have put to the child one
of those vital questions that were wildly beating about, unanswered,
in his own brain. The little fellow was very like Norah; he had the
same shining hair and candid eyes.

"Oh, Father Denny," cried the boy, suddenly, "I forgot to tell you!
Sister is not going away at night any more! She told me so when she
kissed me good night as she was leaving. And she said she was so
happy, and then she cried. Wasn't that queer? But I'm glad; aren't
you?"

"Yes, lad. And now, ye omadhaun, go to sleep, and say good night; we
must be going."

"Which shall I do first, Father Denny?"

"Faith, he's caught me again! Wait till I get the sassenach into the
annals of Tageruach, the hagiographer; I'll give him enough of the
Irish idiom to make him more respectful."

The light was out, and the small, brave voice bidding them good night
from the dark room. They groped downstairs, and tore away from the
garrulity of Mother Geehan.

Again the priest steered them through the dim ways, but this time in
another direction. His conductor was serenely silent, and Lorison
followed his example to the extent of seldom speaking. Serene he
could not be. His heart beat suffocatingly in his breast. The
following of this blind, menacing trail was pregnant with he knew not
what humiliating revelation to be delivered at its end.

They came into a more pretentious street, where trade, it could be
surmised, flourished by day. And again the priest paused; this time
before a lofty building, whose great doors and windows in the lowest
floor were carefully shuttered and barred. Its higher apertures were
dark, save in the third story, the windows of which were brilliantly
lighted. Lorison's ear caught a distant, regular, pleasing thrumming,
as of music above. They stood at an angle of the building. Up, along
the side nearest them, mounted an iron stairway. At its top was an
upright, illuminated parallelogram. Father Rogan had stopped, and
stood, musing.

"I will say this much," he remarked, thoughtfully: "I believe you to
be a better man than you think yourself to be, and a better man than I
thought some hours ago. But do not take this," he added, with a smile,
"as much praise. I promised you a possible deliverance from an
unhappy perplexity. I will have to modify that promise. I can only
remove the mystery that enhanced that perplexity. Your deliverance
depends upon yourself. Come."

He led his companion up the stairway. Halfway up, Lorison caught him
by the sleeve. "Remember," he gasped, "I love that woman."

"You desired to know.

"I--Go on."

The priest reached the landing at the top of the stairway. Lorison,
behind him, saw that the illuminated space was the glass upper half of
a door opening into the lighted room. The rhythmic music increased as
they neared it; the stairs shook with the mellow vibrations.

Lorison stopped breathing when he set foot upon the highest step, for
the priest stood aside, and motioned him to look through the glass of
the door.

His eye, accustomed to the darkness, met first a blinding glare,
and then he made out the faces and forms of many people, amid
an extravagant display of splendid robings--billowy laces,
brilliant-hued finery, ribbons, silks and misty drapery. And then
he caught the meaning of that jarring hum, and he saw the tired,
pale, happy face of his wife, bending, as were a score of others,
over her sewing machine--toiling, toiling. Here was the folly she
pursued, and the end of his quest.

But not his deliverance, though even then remorse struck him. His
shamed soul fluttered once more before it retired to make room for the
other and better one. For, to temper his thrill of joy, the shine of
the satin and the glimmer of ornaments recalled the disturbing figure
of the bespangled Amazon, and the base duplicate histories lit by the
glare of footlights and stolen diamonds. It is past the wisdom of him
who only sets the scenes, either to praise or blame the man. But this
time his love overcame his scruples. He took a quick step, and
reached out his hand for the doorknob. Father Rogan was quicker to
arrest it and draw him back.

"You use my trust in you queerly," said the priest sternly. "What are
you about to do?"

"I am going to my wife," said Lorison. "Let me pass."

"Listen," said the priest, holding him firmly by the arm. "I am about
to put you in possession of a piece of knowledge of which, thus far,
you have scarcely proved deserving. I do not think you ever will; but
I will not dwell upon that. You see in that room the woman you
married, working for a frugal living for herself, and a generous
comfort for an idolized brother. This building belongs to the chief
costumer of the city. For months the advance orders for the coming
Mardi Gras festivals have kept the work going day and night. I myself
secured employment here for Norah. She toils here each night from
nine o'clock until daylight, and, besides, carries home with her some
of the finer costumes, requiring more delicate needlework, and works
there part of the day. Somehow, you two have remained strangely
ignorant of each other's lives. Are you convinced now that your wife
is not walking the streets?"

"Let me go to her," cried Lorison, again struggling, "and beg her
forgiveness!'

"Sir," said the priest, "do you owe me nothing? Be quiet. It seems
so often that Heaven lets fall its choicest gifts into hands that must
be taught to hold them. Listen again. You forgot that repentant sin
must not compromise, but look up, for redemption, to the purest and
best. You went to her with the fine-spun sophistry that peace could be
found in a mutual guilt; and she, fearful of losing what her heart so
craved, thought it worth the price to buy it with a desperate, pure,
beautiful lie. I have known her since the day she was born; she is as
innocent and unsullied in life and deed as a holy saint. In that
lowly street where she dwells she first saw the light, and she has
lived there ever since, spending her days in generous self-sacrifice
for others. Och, ye spalpeen!" continued Father Rogan, raising his
finger in kindly anger at Lorison. "What for, I wonder, could she be
after making a fool of hersilf, and shamin' her swate soul with lies,
for the like of you!"

"Sir," said Lorison, trembling, "say what you please of me. Doubt it
as you must, I will yet prove my gratitude to you, and my devotion to
her. But let me speak to her once now, let me kneel for just one
moment at her feet, and--"

"Tut, tut!" said the priest. "How many acts of a love drama do you
think an old bookworm like me capable of witnessing? Besides, what
kind of figures do we cut, spying upon the mysteries of midnight
millinery! Go to meet your wife to-morrow, as she ordered you, and
obey her thereafter, and maybe some time I shall get forgiveness for
the part I have played in this night's work. Off wid yez down the
shtairs, now! 'Tis late, and an ould man like me should be takin' his
rest."




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