CHAPTER III. KING COPHETUA'S WIFE. "How much must go for naught! How many tears, Yet somewhere, somewhere, O, most tender Lord, Sure thou dost count them for us, treasure all; Life's futile toil, joy missed, the sweet, lost word, The love that loves in vain, the tears that fall." BEULAH ASCOT had been a girl of beauty and fine presence. I remember that I met her for the first time at a party, and, as boys of nineteen will, had made that party one of the most agreeable of my memories by what I then thought a desperate, and now know to have been a very mild, flirtation with Miss Ascot. She was a year or two older than I, and engaged to Hugh Beldon, both of which circumstances added not a little to my enjoy ment. Since her marriage, which occurred a year after my introduction to her, I had seen Mrs. Beldon but few times. She was a society woman, both by seeking and being sought for, and I a man of retired tastes. Perhaps, too, I had an innate feeling that I should not have liked my wife to enjoy so many flirtations, to have so many men on her list of friends. But of course Mrs. Beldon was circumspect, and I—I was always old-fashioned in thought and prejudice; and yet, much as I cared for Harry Ascot, I could not crush out of my heart an instinctive distrust of his sister, a distaste for the brightness of her quick wit, and a sense of sickness when the perfume of violets was brought over me, because Mrs. Beldon used it. please." And as he stirred the coffee, he gave a sharp look at me, and said, "Frank, you are wearing yourself out with work, and something else. What is it?" "I? Why I am as well as ever I wasstronger, too, than I have been for many a day. Perhaps I do look a trifle pale to you, who are apt to judge the health and strength of all men from your own robust standpoint; but I assure you that I am quite well, and as for work, I am doing nothing now but magazine articles, and these are not very wearing, as there is but one that I had to study up on. What made you think of my health just at this time ?" "Well, to be perfectly candid, I am going to New York, and want you to go with me. It is for only a fortnight-perhaps three weeks; but the change of cities, with consequent change of air and society, will do us both good. Come! Isn't he working too hard here, Mrs. Norton? Be perfectly frank with me, please." "Really now, Mr. Barras, I can't say that he does work so very hard: not what you would call working hard, to be sure. He does have a good many callers, and those is always wearing, you know, for they come, most of 'em, to bother him about reading their stories or verses, and that sort, or just to look at him and talk, so as they can go away and tell all he has said. Folks don't seem to think a man that writes books and things does have anything else in the world to do but talk and be pleasant; and then if he don't talk just like his books, they think he ain't a-doin' of 'em justice. To be sure, too, he smokes too much, according to my notion' (but I ain't any call to say what you ought or oughtn't to do, Mr. Eldridge, of course); and Neil came to my door one morning, just I think, Mr. Barras, it would be a real kindas I was sitting down to breakfast. "No, I can stop only a few minutes, Frank. Thank you, Mrs. Norton, I will take a cup of coffee-sugar, no milk, if you ness to make him go away and rest; and I should have such a nice chance to clean the library and fix up the house, for Mr. Eldridge won't let me do the least bit of clean in' up while he's around, you see, and we do get awful dirty sometimes, and no mistake." "There, Frank, now what can you say?" "I haven't been able to say a word yet, old fellow; you and Mrs. Norton seem to have settled the matter between you." "Then you will go?" "But I have promised 'The Aurora' and my friend Geoghegan of 'The Salamander'—" "O let the 'Aurora' and 'The Salamander' go! Be good and come. You always have so many reasons why you cannot do this or that. Once for all, will you go?" "I was about to say, when you interrupted, that these articles must be finished-" "Hang the articles! Will you go?" "I was about to say, when you interrupted, that I could take the manuscripts with me, and shall be very glad to go with you and Madge." a vein of sentiment that was not in keeping with the cold and concise handling I had meant to give the subject. I labored assiduously over what should have been an easy task, and found that something too discordant to be forgotten had jarred upon the tone of my mind. I laid the sheets away, lighted a fresh cigar, and went out into the streets. A halfdozen picture galleries, with their varied treasures, should have given a new color to my thoughts, but did not. There was a public rehearsal of exquisite concert music at noon, and I wandered into the hall, dropped listlessly into a seat, and listened; but the life, the soul of the music did not reach me. I found it all hard and commonplace, and started to come out. As I passed a row of seats, I caught sight of Harry Ascot, sitting drinking in eagerly every note of the orches "Then why the devil-excuse me, Mrs. tral part of the programme. The halfNorton-didn't you say so at once?" "Because you interrupted every sentence I began." parted lips, intent gaze, and bright flush on the cheeks, told me that there was life and soul to the melodies that I could not feel, but which had reached the heart of this ardent worshiper of a divine art. Nervously and without profit I passed through my day, and in the evening went over to Neil's house. "All right, then, we start to-morrow. But Madge isn't going. We are going alone-just you and I. I have taken a fancy to leave my wife at home and play at being old bachelor once more. And you, like a good boy, will help along the illusion." "Madge not going? I call that a down- Neil," said Madge; "how good you are to right shame!" him, and how glad I am that you will go; you will both be better for the trip, I am sure." "O, it's all right! Good by, come over this evening and we'll make the final arrangements. Bye-bye!" I wondered, as I walked into the library and lighted my morning cigar, what had prompted Neil to go off in this way, leaving his wife behind. It was his habit to do sudden and strange things, and he rarely cared to look at the other side of the affair and see how his actions might affect the feelings of another person; but he was almost newly married (so it seemed, at least), and I could not understand why a man with a wife —and such a wife—to make his home happy should care ever to leave it. I took up my pen, and began what needed to be a clean-cut and effective essay, but into the subject-matter of the article would creep "And you have consented to go with And as I looked into the bright, earnest face, I knew what had been the trouble of the day with me. A vague fancy formed itself into grim reality, and I felt that I loved Madge Barras as I had no right to love her; that I was breaking the tenth commandment, and coveted my neighbor's wife. The hot blood surged up into my head, a dull, meaningless sound rattled in my ears, my sight grew blank, my hands and feet cold and as if paralyzed. Then in a moment the sensation passed away, and I was in a normal state of feeling, barring the great pain at my heart that knowledge had brought, and which rose up until it lay, a bunch of agony, in my throat. How the evening passed I cannot at this distance of time tell. I only remember that the trivial plans were made, a multiplicity of tender charges laid upon us by Madge, and then I went home. Ah, my God! how I struggled with myself that night as I walked, almost unconsciously, up and down my bed-chamber! How I tried to crush out a knowledge that, strong as a Titan, had risen up, and would not be put down! What could I hope to gain by rebelling against fate? There was one thing only to be done. What could not be exterminated must be concealed, so I buried it under a gnawing pain, and the pain, in turn, beneath a mask of coldness. When one has a pet grief, known only to himself, how fond he is of bringing it out in the night-time and darkness, of turning it over and over, and gazing at every glint and gleam of its facetted surface, winding about the disinterred misery hundreds of tiny yet powerful chains that give the miserable, struggling thing new life and fresh vigor. Of what help is it to the man that he burdens no one else with his pain, since day by day it grows heavier and more poignant to himself? and yet, and yet what would that man be worth, in the years of life, who had no secret pain; who did not, by conquering himself in a measure, gain the power to help others, growing steadily more defiant of fate, more tender and loyal to all that is best in and around him? One cries aloud, and is fain to cast the clinging horror away when first its weight bears heavily upon his spiritual shoulders: but does it not at the last turn, through him, into a consolation to others; a beacon of strength upon a rock in the waste of overwhelming waters, that rage furiously about the battling swimmer in the sea of events that surges around. We went to New York, the little trip so often made and accounted nothing; and yet, out of all the journeys that I have taken before and since, this one that I am writing of stands before me, a thing the smallest details of which are never to be forgotten. CHAPTER IV. "Or light or dark, or short or tall, She sets a springe to snare them all; All's one to her-above her fan She'd make sweet eyes at Caliban." It was the evening of our first day at the hotel we had selected, and I stood talking with a friend in a corridor corner near to the elevator. A breath of perfume such as greets one on an early spring morning when the dew is heavy on the violets, and the sunshine lies warm on the moist blossoms, the soft rustle of draperies, a gleam of beautiful golden hair, and a carefully modulated laugh. These all came to me as I stood there, and Mrs. Beldon was before me. She knew my friend, and had a merry rebuke to give him for some fanciful sin of omission. "Ah, Mr. Jaquith! how could you treat me so rudely? I sat within a half-dozen seats of you at the matinee to-day, and, try as I would, I could not get a bow from you. I certainly never, in all my experience with men, made so many efforts to attract attention as I did to catch your eye; and when you did turn towards me you looked deliberately over my head. Now, frankly, did you look me straight in the eye-did you want to punish me because I wore Mr. Spear's jacque roses last night instead of the jonquils you sent me, and therefore use the opportunity that destiny and I so kindly gave you? Yes, you blush, I see you did. O cruel, heartless man!" Imagine a woman of absolute physical perfection as to form, and with a mobile. face, out of which the great eyes looked with the simulated expression of wounded feeling, and the red lips curving with laughter, and you have Beulah Beldon as she stood there in the lighted corridor of the fashionable hotel. There was a mocking apology from Jaquith, which yet did not conceal from me that he was somewhat more in earnest than his playful manner was intended to show; then, to change the current of the conversation, he turned: "But, my dear Mrs. Beldon, I have no chance to ask your permission—and I doubt if I need it in this case-to introduce my friend Mr. Eldridge, whom you ought to know personally as well as you must by reputation." "Mr. Eldridge needs no introduction to me"; and she put out her hand with a cordial gesture of greeting. "I met him for the first time many years ago, and it is of his own will and wish that he does not know me intimately by this time. You are a friend of my brother's, Mr. Eldridge: cannot you give Harry Ascot's sister a small share in your regard?" There was more in Mrs. Beldon's words than she meant to put there, or rather than she meant for me to find in them. It was my own fault that I did not know her and her husband very well, and I murmured some trite commonplace, in return for her pretty speech, that won its charm-as all of Mrs. Beldon's pretty speeches did-from the flexible mouth, and the large, fathomless eyes so skillfully trained to take on the look suited to the words that the moment called for. We started toward the elevator to descend to the dining-room, and Neil met us at the door. It took but a moment to do the courtesy that was the beginning of the end of my story, and I introduced my friend to Ascot's sister. Mr. Beldon joined us as we passed into the dining-room, and by a word to the waiter we four were placed at one table, Jaquith going over to another, at which a charming old lady with a fine French air about her dress and manner was sitting, the likeness of the two being in itself enough to show their relationship, even had the deferential courtesy that became Adam Jaquith so well not served to show that the round table separated mother and son. Hugh Beldon was a good fellow-one of the men who get through the world as if everything had been oiled for their especial slipping by the rough places. That he was a bit heavy in some ways, and caught the gist of a joke about as easily as he detected the root and basis of the graceful tricks of his beautiful wife, was nothing against him. A man to put his hand in his pocket for money to assist a friend at any moment if the friend would ask for it, but without the power to see that friend's need and make a tender of his generous liberality before its favor could be sought. He did not dance, but liked to see his wife figure in every waltz, quadrille, or German that might come up. Cared more for his cigar and the company of hard-headed men of business than for the opera or the pretty women of society; thought his brother-in-law effeminate because his talent led him to devote valuable time to drumming on piano-keys, when so many manly business interests were open to his money and his work; and finally, worshiped his wife, who was content to let him do exactly as he pleased about refusing invitations and selecting his own company, so long as he, in turn, had no complaints to make about the escorts she might choose or the hours of her goings and comings. "That was a good article of yours in 'The Cosmopolitan,' on the machinery of mills, Mr. Eldridge," said Beldon, over the soup. "You must have inspected the working of different systems very closely. How I wish you would go with me to the factories in " "O don't; please don't, Hugh! I always fancy I can smell leather, and oiled cotton, and all sorts of disagreeable things when you get on those topics. If you were to tell Mr. Eldridge that the poem of his in the last number of 'The Salamander' was exquisite, I should be willing to let you keep on the subject until we reached the ices; but mills-ugh! However, Mr. Eldridge, I want to thank you for that poem; it was beautiful; and, do you know? these four lines have been in my mind ever since I read them, they express so cleverly my sometime feeling: "I was tired of all the blunders That had filled my day with care, "It seems to me that an author must be very glad and proud of having even one |