An avenue — The Avenue — flows up hill,
northward, from the middle of Ailanthus Square.
Churm conducted me a few blocks along that
channel of wealth. He stopped in front of the
Minedurt, a hotel with restaurant attached. Respectable
could not have been more distinctly
stamped upon a building, if it had been written
up in a great label across the front, and in a
hundred little labels everywhere, like the big red
Ten and the little red tens on a bank-bill.

“Notice that large house across the street,”
said Churm, halting before this respectable establishment.

“I do. It is nearer civilization than anything
I have seen. A fine house. Happy the owner!
if he appreciates architecture.”

“Happy!” said Churm, bitterly. “It is Denman's
house! He had ancestral acres here, and
was one of the first to perceive that the cream
would settle in his grandfather's cow-pasture.”

“Stop a moment! The tragedy of my old
playmate gives the house a strange sanctity in
my eyes.”

“It is cursed,” said Churm. “No happiness
to its tenants, — only harm to its friends, until
the wrong done my child there has been expiated.”

“Has not her father's grief atoned for his
error?”

[figure description] Page 170.[end figure description]

“You cannot understand my feelings, Byng.
You did not know Clara Denman.”

I paused to inspect the mansion, sanctified to
me by death. Death sanctifies, birth consecrates
a home.

Sanctified? But the death here was perhaps
a suicide. So some alleged. Can a suicide sanctify?
Does it not desecrate? Do not some
churches deny the corpse, a self-slayer flung
away, its hiding-place in holy ground? No
suicide near the sleeping saints! A man may
strangle himself with good dinners, or poison
himself with fine old Madeira or coarse old Monongahela;
a bad conscience, gnawing day and
night, may eat away his heart; he may have
murdered the woman that once loved him, by
judicious slow torture; he may have murdered
the friend that trusted him, by a peevish No,
when it was help or death; no matter! He will
be allowed as comfortable a grave as a sexton can
dig, six feet by two in soft soil under green sod,
and the priest will dust his dust with all the
compliments in the burial service. But let him
have put a knife to his throat, or a bullet in his
brain, because he could not any longer face the
woman he had wronged, or the friend he had
betrayed, — what shudders then of sexton and
priest! No place for him beside the glutton and
the drunkard! The cruel husband or the false

[figure description] Page 171.[end figure description]

friend would shiver in his coffin at such propinquity.
Out with him! Out with the accursed
thing! To the dogs with the carrion!

Not sanctified, — saddened, I could, without
any one's protest, consider Mr. Denman's house.
Hundreds, no doubt, every day envied the happy
owner. How grand to possess that stately edifice
of contrasted freestones, purple and drab;
those well-cut pilasters; that dignified roof, in
the old chateau manner, fitly capping the whole;
that majestic portal; those great windows, heavily
draped, but allowing the inner magnificence
to peer through, conscious, but not ostentatious;—
how grand to stand and call this mine!

Hundreds, no doubt, envied Mr. Denman every
day. First in the morning, journeymen, hurrying
by with a poor dinner in a tin canister; next,
Tittlebat Titmouse, on his way to the counter;
then some clerk of higher degree, seller by the
piece instead of the yard, by the cargo instead of
the pound, bustling down town to his desk;
next the poor book-keeper, with twelve hundred
a year, and a mouth to every hundred; then the
broken-down merchant, who must show himself
on the Street, though the Street noted him no
more; and so on in order, the financial dignitary,
the club-man lounging to his late breakfast
or his morning stroll, the country cousin seeing
the lions, the woman of fashion driving up to

[figure description] Page 172.[end figure description]

drop a card; and then at sunset the pretty girl
walking up town with her lover; and then at
night the night-bird skulking by; — all these
envied the tenants of the Denman mansion, or
at least fancied them fortunate. And all houses
announce as little as that the miseries that may
dwell within!

“Come, Byng,” said my friend, “you cannot
see into the heart of that house by staring at it.”

We passed in to our breakfast. Over our
coffee we glided into cheerful talk. I consulted
Churm, and he frankly advised me as to my
future.

And so, speaking of my own prospects, we
spoke of the hopes and duties of my generation
to our country.

“We are the first,” said I, “who understand
what an absolute Republic means, and what it
can do.”

“The first as a generation. Individuals have
always comprehended it,” said Churm.

“And now, acting together, on a larger scale,
with a grander co-operation, we will inaugurate
the new era for the noblest manhood and the
purest womanhood the world has ever known.”

I had spoken ardently.

At once, as if in echo to my words, I heard
Densdeth's cynic laugh behind me.

My enthusiasm perished.

[figure description] Page 173.[end figure description]

I turned uneasily. Was Densdeth laughing
at my silly boyish fervors?

He was sitting two tables off, breakfasting with
a well-known man about town. Densdeth's companion
was one of those who have beauty which
they debase, talents which they bury, money
which they squander. He was a man of fine
genius, but genius under a murky cloud, flashing
out rarely in a sad or a scornful way. A
man sick of himself, sorry for himself. A wasted
life, hating itself for its waste, wearing itself out
with self-reproach that it was naught. Some
evil influence had clutched him after his first
success and his first sorrow. Thenceforth his
soul was paralyzed. The success had nurtured
a lazy pride, instead of an exalting ambition.
The sorrow had made him tender to himself and
hard to others. What was that evil influence?
Could it be in the dark face beside him?

Densdeth nodded to me familiarly, as I turned.

“Don't forget,” said he, “our appointment at
one. You know Raleigh, I believe.”

Mr. Raleigh and I bowed cordially.

We had met in Europe. We had sympathized
on art and nature. I had touched only his better
side, though I saw the worse. I liked Raleigh,
and fancied, as a boy fancies, that I had a certain
power over him, and that for good.

We all rose together after our breakfast.

[figure description] Page 174.[end figure description]

“Are you killing time, or nursing it, Byng?”
said Densdeth.

“Killing it for a day or two, until I acclimate
to the atmosphere of work.”

“Unless you have something better to do, drop
over with us to the club. You must know the
men. We will have a game of billiards until
one.”

“Yes, come, Byng,” invited Raleigh's sweet
voice.

“Thank you,” I said. “Business, in the form
of Mr. Churm, deserts me. Pleasure woos. I
yield.”

“Take care!” said Churm to me, as we walked
away. “I see you insist upon personal experience.”

“O yes! Nothing vicarious for me! I will
nibble at our friend. I 'll try not to bite, for fear
of the poison you threaten.”

Churm left us, and walked across Ailanthus
Square, on his way down town.

“I must look in at my quarters for a moment,”
said I to the others; “will you lounge on, and
let me overtake you, or honor me with a visit?”

“Let us drop in, Raleigh,” said Densdeth. “I
am curious to see how the old place looks, with
Stillfleet's breezes out and Byng's calms in.”

I did the honors, and then, establishing my
guests with cigars, I excused myself, and ran

[figure description] Page 175.[end figure description]

upstairs to give good morning to Cecil Dreeme.
Churm's presence and a lively appetite together
had delayed this duty. Besides, I had felt that
he ought not to be disturbed too early.

I knocked, and spoke my name. The recluse
might sport oak to the knock alone.

“Coming,” responded his gentle voice.

Presently the door opened enough to admit
me, but not to display the interior of the chamber
to any inquisitive passer.

I was struck, even more than last night, by the
singular, refined beauty of the youth. And then
his body was so worn and thin, that his soul
seemed to get very close to me.

His personal magnetism — that is, the touch
of his soul on mine — affected me more keenly
than before. It was having cumulative influence.
The mighty medicines for soul and body
always do.

And so do the poisons.

“You are looking quite vigorous and cheerful
this morning,” I said, exaggerating a little. “I
congratulate you on your leap out of death into
full life.”

“It is to you I owe it,” he said, with deep
feeling.

He grasped my hand, and then dropped it
suddenly again, as if he feared he was taking
a liberty.

[figure description] Page 176.[end figure description]

(How exactly I remember every word and
gesture of those first interviews! Ah, Cecil
Dreeme! how little I fancied then what salvage
you were to pay me for my succor!)

“You are hard at work again, I see.” I pointed
to his palette and brushes. “Be cautious!
Do not overdo it! You must be under my orders
for a while.”

I was conscious of claiming this power a
little timidly, such was the quiet dignity of the
young man.

“I will try to be wiser now, since I have a
friend who is willing to admonish me.”

“Now,” continued he, as if to turn attention
from himself, “look at my picture! I want
a slashing criticism. You cannot find faults
that I do not see myself.”

I stepped back to look at it. A work of
power! Crude, indeed; but with force enough
to justify any crudity.

Its deep tragedy struck me silent.

“Do not spare me,” said Dreeme. “Silence
is severer than blame. Say, at least, that it is
pretty well for a novice, — pretty well considing
my years and my practice.”

“What has happened to you?” said I, staring
at his pale, worn face. “What right have you,
in the happy days of youth, to the knowledge
that has taught you to paint tragedy thus?

[figure description] Page 177.[end figure description]

What unknown agony have you undergone?
Mr. Dreeme, your picture is a revelation. I
pity you from my heart.”

“You do not believe,” said he, evasively,
“that imagination can supply the want of experience?”

“Imagination must have experience to transfuse
into new facts. You, of course, have not
had an unjust father, like your Lear, nor a
disloyal sister, like your Goneril; nor have you
felt a withering curse, as your Cordelia does.
But tyranny and treachery must have touched
you. They have initiated you into their modes
of action and expression. Do not find inquisitiveness
implied in my criticism. I pity you
too much for the ability and impulse to paint
thus, to be curious how it came.”

“Believe, then,” said Dreeme, “and it may
help you to make allowances for me, that I
know in my own life what tragedy means.
That experience commands me to do violence
to my love of beauty and happy scenes, and
paint agony, as I have done there. And now,
pray let us be technical. That white drapery,—
how does it fall? Are the lines stiff? Is
there too much starch in the linen, or too little?”

“Technicality another time. I am uncivil
even in delaying so long. Two gentlemen are
waiting for me below.”

[figure description] Page 178.[end figure description]

“Your friend, Mr. Churm?” he asked, looking
away.

“No. Mr. Densdeth and Mr. Raleigh.”

“Densdeth!” said he, with a slight shudder.
“You see I have the susceptible nerves of an
artist. I tremble at the mere sound of such
an ill-omened name. Should you not naturally
avoid a person called Densdeth?” And as if
the sound fascinated him, he repeated, “Densdeth!
Densdeth!”

“Name and man are repulsive; but attractive
also. Attractive by repulsion.”

“Take my advice, and obey the repulsion.
Poisons are not made bitter that we may school
ourselves to like them. If this person, with a
boding name, repels you, do not taste him, as
one tastes opium. Curiosity may make you a
slave.”

“Odd, that you, a stranger, should have the
usual prejudice against Densdeth!”

“Consider that I am as one raised from the
dead, and so perhaps clairvoyant. I use my
power to warn you, as you have saved me.”

“Thank you,” said I; “I will see you this
evening, and tell you how far I am ruined by a
morning with this bête noir. If he spoils me, you
must repair the harm.”

I walked to the door. He released me with a
cautious glance into the hall. I ran down stairs
and apologized for my delay to my guests.

[figure description] Page 179.[end figure description]

“It is a privilege to wait, my dear fellow,”
said Densdeth, “in such a treasure-house. We
have been looking at these droll old tapestries of
Purgatory and a hotter place. Raleigh insists
that the seducing devil, wooing those revellers to
hell, is my precise image.”

“No doubt of it,” says Raleigh. “You must
be Mephistophiles himself. Those fifteenth-century
fellows have got your portrait to the life.
It seems you were at the same business then, as
now.”

Densdeth laughed. Raleigh and I laughed in
answer. Both had caught that mocking tone of
his.

“Not only are you the devil of the tapestry,”
said Raleigh, “but I see myself among your victims.”

“You flatter me,” said Densdeth, again with
his sinister laugh.

“Yes, and Byng too, and certain ladies we
know of. I really begin to be lazily superstitious.
Don't make it too hot for me, Densdeth,
when you get me below. I 've only been a negative
sinner in this world, — no man's enemy but
my own.”

Raleigh's jest was half earnest. That and the
demonish quality in Densdeth quickened my
glance at the old altar-cloth, which hung on the
wall, among Stillfleet's prints and pictures.

[figure description] Page 180.[end figure description]

Under these impressions, I did indeed identify
Densdeth with the cloven-hoofed tempter in this
characteristic bit of mediæval art. Raleigh was
surely there, in the guise of a languid Bacchanal,
crowned with drooping vine-leaves. I myself
was also there, — a youth, only half consenting,
dragged along by an irresistible attraction. And
continuing my observations, I recognized other
friends, faintly imaged in the throng on the tapestry.
An angel, looking sadly at the evil one's
triumph and my fall, was Cecil Dreeme's very
self. And up among the judges sat Churm, majestic
as a prophet of Michael Angelo.

“Come,” said Densdeth, — he was by chance
standing in the exact attitude of the Tempter in
the tapestry, — “come; we shall have but just
time for Byng's introduction and our game of
billiards.”

“Lead on, your majesty!” said Raleigh.
“We needs must follow, — to billiards or the
bottomless pit.”

We walked to the club. It was the crack club
then. Years ago it went to pieces. Its gentlemen
have joined better. Its legs and loafers
have sunk to bar-rooms.

The loungers there were languid when we entered.

No scandal had yet come up from Wall Street;
none down from Murray Hill.

[figure description] Page 181.[end figure description]

The morning was still virgin of any story of
disaster to character, financial or social.

The day had not done its duty, — a mere dies
non, and promising only to be dies perdita.

To be sure it was still a young day. It might
still ruin somebody, pocket or reputation. Somebody,
man or woman, might go to protest, and
shame every indorser, before three o'clock.

But everybody at the club had made it seven
bells; eight bells would presently strike, and no
sign of the day's ration of scandal. They could
not mumble all the afternoon over the stale crusts
of yesterday; they could not put bubble into
yesterday's heel-taps. Everybody was bored. Life
was a burden at the windows, by the fire, at the
billiard-tables, of that rotten institution.

Densdeth's arrival made a stir.

“See these gobemouches,” whispered Raleigh
to me. “They think Densdeth, the busy man,
would never come here at this hour in the morning,
unless some ill had happened, — unless there
were some new man to jeer, or woman to flout.
Now see how he will treat them.”

The languid loungers lost their air of nonchalance.
There was a general move toward
our party. The click of balls upon the tables
was still. The players came forward, cue in
hand. These unknightly knights of the Long
Table stood about us, with the blunted lances

[figure description] Page 182.[end figure description]

of a blunted chivalry, waiting to chuckle over
the fate of some comrade in the dust, of some
damsel soiled with scorn. Remember, that these
were only the baser sort of the members. Heroes
may sometimes lounge. Real heroes may play
billiards, like the Phelan, and be heroes still.

Densdeth's manner with his auditory was a
study.

“Pigs,” he seemed to say, “I suppose I must
feed you. Gobble up this and this, ye rabble
rout! Take your fare and my mental kicking
with it.”

Soon he tired of the herd, and led the way to
a billiard-table, apart.

“I wanted to show you, Byng,” said he, with
an air of weary disgust, “what kind of men will
be your associates among the idlers.”

“The busy men are nobler, I hope,” said I.

“You shall see. I will give you the entrée to
the other worlds, — the business world, the literary
world, the religious world, all of them. Possibly
you may not have quite outlived your
illusions. Possibly you may have fancied that
men are to be trusted on a new continent. Possibly
you may believe in the success of a society
and polity based on the assumption that mankind
is not an ass when he is not a villain, and
vice versa.”

“I had some such fancy.”

[figure description] Page 183.[end figure description]

“Better be disenchanted now, than disappointed
by and by. Apropos, don't suppose I
often degrade myself to the level of that swinish
multitude of scandal-mongers. But when I saw
them so greedy, I could not forbear giving them
diet, according to their stomachs.”

“What an infernal humbug you are, Densdeth!”
said Raleigh, marking a five-shot; “you
love to spoil those boys, and keep the men spoilt.
If you were out of the world, they would all
reform, and go to sucking honey, instead of
poison.”

“We are all humbugs,” rejoined Densdeth;
“I want to put Byng on his guard against me
and the rest. He might get some unhappy
notion, that in America men are brave and
women are pure.”

I kept my protest to myself, willing to study
Densdeth further.

Densdeth led the conversation, as indeed he
never failed to do. He was a keen, hard analyzer
of men, utterly sceptical to good motives. There
is always just such a proportion of selfishness in
every man's every act; there must be, because
there is a man in it. It may be the larger half,
the lesser half, a fraction, the mere dust of an
atom, that makes the scale descend. Densdeth
always discovered the selfish purpose, put it in
focus, held up a lens of his own before it. At

[figure description] Page 184.[end figure description]

once it grew, and spread, and seemed the
whole.

Densdeth was the Apostle of Disenchantment.
No paradisiacal innocence where he entered.
He revealed evil everywhere. That was at the
core, according to him, however smooth the surface
showed. Power over others consisted in
finding that out. And that power was the only
thing, except sensuality, worth having.

Thus I condense my impressions of him. I
did not know him, in and in, out and out, after
this first morning at the club, nor after many
such meetings. I learnt him slowly.

Yet I think I divined him from the first. I
did not state to my own mind, then, why he
captivated me, — why he sometimes terrified me,—
why I had a hateful love for his society. In
fact, the power of deeply analyzing character
comes with a maturity that I had not attained.
I was to pay price for my knowledge. Densdeth's
shadow was to fall upon me. My danger
with evil personified, in such a man as Densdeth,
was to sear into me a profound and saving horror
of evil. One does not read the moral, until the
tale is told.

We played our billiards. One o'clock struck.
We left Raleigh to be bored with the world and
sick of himself, to knock the balls about, and
wish he had been born a blacksmith or a hodcarrier.

[figure description] Page 185.[end figure description]

Densdeth and I walked to the Denmans.

“You will see a very captivating young lady,”
he said, with a sharp and rapid glance at me.

I was aware of a conscious look. He caught
it also.

“Aha, Byng! a little tenderness for the old
playmate! Well, perhaps she has been waiting
for you. She has looked coldly on scores of
lovers.”

There was a familiarity in his tone which
offended me. It seemed to sneer away the delicacy
I felt towards one with whom I had childish
passages of admiration ten years ago. I was
angry at his disposing of my destiny and hers at
once. In turn, I looked sharply at him, and said,
in the same careless tone, “How does Miss Denman
compare with her sister?”

Not a spark of emotion in his impassive face.
There might have been a slight smile, as if to
say, “This boy fancies that he is able to probe
me, and learn why I courted the less beautiful
sister, and what I did to drive her mad and to
death.” But the smile vanished, and he said,
quietly: “We will not speak of the dead, if you
please. Among the living, Miss Denman stands
alone. A great prize, Byng! People that pretend
to know say that Mr. Denman is a millionnaire.
See what a grand house he lives in!”

“Grand houses sometimes make millionnaires

[figure description] Page 186.[end figure description]

paupers,” I remarked, thinking of what Churm
had told me.

“I am quite sure no pauper owns this,” Densdeth
said, measuring it with a look, as we walked
up the steps.

I remembered what Churm had said, and
fancied I saw at least mortgagee, if not proprietor,
in my companion's eye. Was he inspecting
to see if his house needed a trowelful
of mortar, or a gutter repaired?

p751-192 CHAPTER XVI. EMMA DENMAN.

[figure description] Page 187.[end figure description]

Densdeth rang. We were admitted at once.
The footman introduced us into a parlor fronting
on the avenue. The interior of the house was
worthy of its stately architecture. I do not describe.
People, not things, passions, not objects,
are my topics.

Presently, in a mirror at the end of the long
suite of rooms, I was aware of the imaged figure
of a young lady approaching. Semblance before
substance, instead of preparing me for the interview,
it almost startled me. I half fancied that
shadowy reflection to be the spirit of the dead
sister watching. The living sister was coming in
the body; the presence of the sister dead tarried
in the background, curious to see what would
grow from the germ of a childish friendship revived.

In a moment the lady herself stepped forward.

No thought of shadows any more!

She, the substance, took a stand among the
foremost figures in my drama.

[figure description] Page 188.[end figure description]

The effect of the room where I sat was rich
and festal, almost to the verge of gorgeousness.
Had sorrow dared to intrude among such courtly
splendors? Carpets thick with the sunburnt
flowers of late summer, — had these felt the trailing
step that carries grief on to another moment
of grief? Heavy crimson curtains, — must these
have uttered muffled echoes when a sigh, out-ward
bound, drifted against their folds? And
deep-toned pictures, full of victory and jubilee, —
could they not outface the pale countenance of
mourning in that luxurious room? It made
the power of sorrow and the bitterness of death
seem far more giant in their strength, that they
had crowded in hither, and hung a dim film
of funereal black before all this magnificence.

Crimson was the chief color in carpet, curtains,
and walls. This deep, rich background
magically heightened the effect of the pale, elegant
figure in deep mourning who was approaching.

Emma Denman passed in front of the mirror,
erasing her own reflection there. She came
forward, and offered her hand to me with shy
cordiality. The shyness remembered the old
familiar playmate of the days of “little husband
and little wife”; the cordiality was for the
unforgotten friend.

I found no change, only development, in Emma

[figure description] Page 189.[end figure description]

Denman. Still the same fitful fascination that
had been her charm as a child. It seized me at
once. I lost my power of quiet discrimination.
I can hardly analyze her power even now. These
subtle influences refuse to be subject to my chemical
methods and my formulas.

It was not the power of beauty, alone. Physical
beauty she had, but something higher also.
Nor spiritual beauty alone, but something other.
The mere flesh-and-blood charms, lilies and
roses, the commonplace traits of commonplace
women, whose inventory describes the woman,
she could afford to disdain. It was a face that
forbade all formal criticism. No passport face.
Other women one names beautiful for a feature,
a smile, or a dimple, — that link between a
feature and a smile. Hers was a face suffused
with the fine essence of beauty. It seemed to
wrong the whole, if one let eyes or mind make
any part distinct.

Grace she had, — exquisite grace. Grace is
perhaps a more subtle charm than beauty. Beauty
is passive; grace is active. Beauty reveals
the nature; grace interprets it. Beauty wins;
grace woos.

Emma Denman's coloring did not classify her.
Her hair was in the indefinite shades between
light and dark. One would not expect from her
the steadiness of the fair temperaments, nor the

[figure description] Page 190.[end figure description]

ardor of their warmer counterparts in hue. No
dismissing her with the label of a well-known
type. I must have a new and composite thought
in my mind while I curiously studied her.

Her eyes wanted color. They were not blue
and constant, not black and passionate. Indeed,
but for their sparkle and vivacity, they would
have seemed expressionless. Restless eyes! they
might almost have taken a lesson from Densdeth's,
so rapid were they to come and go, so
evanescent and elusive was their glance. But
Densdeth's were chasing eyes; hers were flying.
Her swift eyes, her transitory smile, her motions,
soft as the bend of a branch, light as the spring
of a bird, lithe as the turn of a serpent, all were
elements in her singular fascination, — it was
almost elfin.

She was in deep mourning; and, partly because
mourning quickens sympathy, partly because
to a person of her doubtful coloring
positive contrasts are valuable, it seemed the
very dress to heighten her beauty. And yet,
as I saw her afterwards, I found that all costume
and scenery became thus tributary to her, and
all objects and people so disposed themselves,
and all lights and shades so fell, as to define
and intensify her charm.

Densdeth witnessed our recognition, and then
excused himself. “He had business with Mr.

[figure description] Page 191.[end figure description]

Denman in the library, and would join us by
and by.” We both breathed freer upon his
exit. It was impossible not to feel that he was
always reading every act and thought; and that
consciousness of a ruthless stare turned in upon
one's little innocencies of heart is abashing to
young people.

Miss Denman had seemed uneasy while Densdeth
stayed. She changed her seat, and with it
her manner, as he departed. The chair she
now took brought her again within range of
the distant mirror. Her shadow became a third
party in our interview. When I observed it,
its presence disturbed me. Sometimes, as before,
I fancied it the sprite of the sister dead, sometimes
the double of the person before me, — her
true self, or her false self, which she had dismissed
for this occasion, while she made her
impression upon me.

Strange fancies! faintly drifting across my
mind. But I did not often observe that dim
watcher in the mirror. My companion engaged
me too closely. Now that Densdeth was gone,
we sat in quiet mood, and let our old acquaintance
renew itself.

Our talk was hardly worth chronicling. Words
cannot convey the gleam of pleasure with which
our minds alighted together on the same memory
of days gone by, as we used to spring upon

[figure description] Page 192.[end figure description]

a flower in the field, or a golden butterfly by
the wayside.

“Ah! those sorrowless days of childhood!”
I said. “Not painless, — not quite painless!”

“There are never any painless days,” said she.

“No. Pain is the elder brother of Pleasure.
But the days when the sense of injury passed
away with the tears it compelled; when the
sense of wrong-doing vanished with the light
penance of a pang, with the brief penitence
of an hour, and left the heart untainted. Those
days were sorrowless.”

As I spoke thus, Emma Denman suddenly
burst into tears.

I had not suspected her of any such uncontrollable
emotion. She had seemed to me one
to smile and flash, hardly earnest enough for
an agony.

“Pardon me,” she said, quelling her tears,
“but since those bright days I have suffered
bitter sorrow. As you, my old playmate, speak,
all that has passed since we met comes up
newly.”

This was all she said, at the moment, of her
sister's death. I respected the recent wound.
I had no right to renew her distress even by
sympathy. I changed the subject.

“I find myself,” said I, “between two opposites,
as guardians for my second childhood at

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home. Mr. Churm is to launch me upon my
work. Mr. Densdeth introduces me at the
club. Which shall my boyship obey?”

“Such opposites will neutralize each other.
You will be left free for a guardian in my
sex. Have you sought one yet?”

“Destiny selects for me. I am thrust into
your hands. Will you take me in charge?”

The look she gave as I said this touched me
strangely. It seemed as if her double had suddenly
glided forward and peered at me through
her evasive eyes. A mysterious expression. I
could no more comprehend it from my present
shallow knowledge of the lady, than a novice
perceives why Titian's surface glows, until he has
scraped the surface and knows the undertones.

“Will I take you in charge?” she rejoined,
with this strange look, henceforth my controlling
memory of her face. “Will you trust me with
such grave office? What say the other guardians?
Do they recommend me? Does Mr.
Churm? Have you consulted him?”

“Churm has rather evaded forming a prejudice
in your favor in my mind. He gave me no ideal
to alter. I had no counter-charm of the fancy
to oppose to your actual charm.”

“Your other choice among mentors, Mr. Densdeth, —
has he offered you any light upon my
qualifications?”

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“Not a word! But he is not my choice. He
has chosen me, if our companionship is choice,
not chance.”

“You accept him?”

“I have not thought of rejecting a man of such
peculiar power.”

“Has he mastered you, too?”

“Mastered? I am my own master. He attracts
my curiosity greatly. I cannot resist the
desire to know him by heart.”

“To know him by heart!” she repeated, with
almost a shudder. “To know Densdeth by
heart! Study him, then, for yourself! I will
give you no help! No help from me! God forbid!”

I must have looked, as I felt, greatly surprised
at this outburst, for she recovered her usual
manner, with an effort, and said: “Pardon me,
again! Do not let me prejudice you against Mr.
Densdeth. He is our friend, our best friend;
but sometimes I suddenly have superstitious panics
when I think of him and my sister's death.”

She seemed to struggle now against a flood of
sorrowful recollections. The force of the struggle
carried her over to the side of gayety.

Smiles create smiles more surely than yawns
yawns. I yielded readily to Miss Denman's gay
mood. She threw off the depression of the early
moments of our interview. “This should be a

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merry hour,” her almost reckless manner said,
“be the next what it might.”

All the while, as we sat in the crimson dimness
of that luxurious room, — she eager, animated,
flashing from thought to thought, talking as an
old friend who has yearned for friendship and
sympathy might talk to an old friend who has
both to give, — all the while, as she held me
bound by her witchery, her shadow in the distant
mirror sat, a ghostly spy.

She was in the midst of a lively sketch of the
society I was to know under her auspices, when
all at once a blight came upon her spirits. She
paused. Her color faded. Her eyes became
flighty. Her smile changed to a look of pain.
She shivered slightly. These were almost imperceptible
tokens, felt rather than perceived.

Steps approached as I was regarding this
transformation with a certain vague alarm, such
as one feels at a doubtful sound, that may be a
cry for help, by night in a forest. In a moment
Densdeth entered the room. With him was a
large man, of somewhat majestic figure, a marked
contrast to the slender grace of Densdeth. This
new-comer was following, not leading, as if not
he, but Densdeth, were the master in the house.

Mr. Denman! As he came up the suite of
parlors, I could observe him, form, mien, and
manner.

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Without any foreknowledge of him, I might
have said, “An over-busy man, — a man over-weighted
with social responsibilities. Too many
banks choose him director. Too many companies
want his administrative power. Too many
charities must have him as trustee. One of the
Caryatides of society. No wonder that he looks
weary and his shoulders stoop. No wonder at
his air of uneasy patience, or perhaps impatient
endurance and eagerness to be free!”

But Churm had told me of other burdens this
proud, self-confident man must bear. I could
not be surprised that Mr. Denman looked old
beyond his years, and that as he spoke his eyes
wandered off, and stared vaguely into his own
perplexities.

He received me cordially. His manner had a
certain broken stateliness, as of a defeated sovereign,
to whom his heart says, “Abdicate and
die.” As he welcomed me to his house, he
glanced at Densdeth. Did he fear a smile on
that dark, cruel face, and a look which said, “O
yes! you may keep up the pretence of lordship
here a little longer, if you enjoy the lie!”

“You are an old friend, Mr. Byng. Robert, I
am happy to see you again,” said Mr. Denman.
“You must be at home with us. We dine at six.
You will always find a plate. Come to-day, if
you have no pleasanter engagement.”

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Miss Denman's look repeated the invitation.

I accepted. The old intimacy was renewed.
And renewed with a distincter purpose on my
part, because I said to myself, “Who knows but
I may, with my young force, aid this worn and
weary man to shake off the burden that oppresses
him, and frustrates or perverts his life, — be it
the mere dead weight of an old error, — be it
the lacerating grapple of a crime?”

And now the tale of my characters is complete.
This drama, short and sad, marches,
without much delay, to its close. If I have, in
any scene thus far, dallied with details that may
seem trivial, let me be pardoned! It may be
that I have flinched, as I looked down the vista of
my story, and discerned an ending of its path
within some sombre cavern, like a place of sepulture.
It may be that I have purposely halted to
pluck the few pale flowers which grew along my
road, and to listen a moment to the departing
laugh, and the departing echoes of the laugh, of
every merry comrade, as he went his way, and
left me to fare as I might along my own.

p751-203 CHAPTER XVII. A MORNING WITH CECIL DREEME.

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Through Churm's active friendship, I at once
found my place. I have mentioned my profession, —
chemistry. I was wanted in the world.
Better business came to me than a professorship
at the Terryhutte University, salary Muddefontaine
bonds, or a post at the Nolachucky Polytechnic,
salary Cumberland wild lands.

Churm only waited to establish me, and then
was off, north, south, east, and west. It was one
of those epochs when mankind is in a slough of
despond, and must have a lift from Hercules. It
was a time when society, that drowsy Diogenes,
was beginning to bestir itself after a careless
slumber, and, holding up the great lantern of
public opinion to find honest men, suddenly revealed
a mighty army of rogues. Rogues everywhere;
scurvy rogues in mean places, showy
rogues in high places; rogues cheating for cents
in cheap shops, rogues defrauding for millions in
splendid bank parlors; princely rogues, claiming
princely salaries for unprofitable services, and

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puny rogues, corrupted by such example, stealing
the last profits to eke out their puny pay and
give them their base pleasures; potent rogues,
buttoning up a million's worth of steamships or
locomotives in their fob, and rogues, as potent for
ill on a smaller scale, keeping back the widow's
mite, and storing the orphan's portion with the
usurer. Rogues everywhere! and the great,
stern, steady eye of public opinion, at last fully
open and detecting each rogue in the place he
had crept or strode into, marking him there in
his dastard shame or haughty bravado, and branding
him Thief, so that all mankind could know
him.

In this crisis, Society's great eye of Public
Opinion turned itself upon Churm, and demanded
him as The Honest Man. Society's unanimous
voice called upon him to put his shoulder
to the wheel. Society said, “Be Dictator! dethrone,
abolish, raze, redeem, restore, construct!
Condemn; forgive! Do what you please, — only
oust Roguery and instate Honesty.”

This gigantic task engaged Churm totally. I
lost him from my daily life.

It was a busy, practical life, — the life of one
who had his way to work; and yet not without
strange and unlooked-for excitements, in the
region of romance.

My comrades in Europe, countrymen and

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foreigners, had condoled with me on my departure
for home.

“Going back to America!” said they, “to
that matter-of-fact country, where everything is
in the newspapers.”

“You that have lived in Italy!” deplored my
romantic friends, — “in Italy, where skeletons in
closets are packed scores deep; where you can
scarcely step without treading on a murder-stain;
where if a man but sigh in his bedchamber, when
he loosens his waistcoat, the old slumbering sighs,
which chronicle old wrongs done in that palace,
awake and will not sleep until they have whispered
to each other and to the affrighted stranger
their tale of a misery; where the antique dagger
you use for a paper-cutter has rust-marks that
any chemist will say mean maiden's blood; where
the old chalice you buy at a bargain gives a mild
flavor of poison to your wine; — you that have
lived in richly historied Italy, where the magnificent
past overshadows the present, what will you
find to interest you in a country where there is
no past, no yesterday, and if no yesterday, no
to-day worth having, — but life one indefinitely
adjourned to-morrow?”

“Poor Byng! Romantic fellow! Why, unless
there should be a raid of Camanches or
Pawnees from the Ohio country,” said my European
friends, with a refreshing ignorance of

[figure description] Page 201.[end figure description]

geography, — “unless there should come a stampede
of the red-skinned gentry to snatch a
scalp or a squaw in the Broadway of New
York, you will positively pine away for lack of
adventures.”

“What a bore to dwell in a land where there
are no sbirri to whisk you off to black dungeons!
How tame! a life where no tyrannies exist to
whisper against always, to growl at on anniversaries,
to scream at when they pounce on you, to
roar at when you pounce on them. Yes, what
stupid business, existence in a city where nobody
has more and nobody less than fifteen hundred
dollars a year, paid quarterly in advance; where
there is such simple, easy, matter-of-fact prosperity
that no one is ever tempted to overstep
bounds and grasp a bigger share than his neighbors;
and so there is never any considerable
wrong done to any one; — no wrong, and consequently
hearts never break, and there can be
no need of mercy, pity, or pardon.”

“Why, Byng! life without shade, life all bald,
garish steady sunshine, may do to swell wheat
and puff cabbage-heads; but man needs something
other than monotony of comfort, something
keener than the stolid pleasures of deaconish
respectability. Byng,” said my Florentine,
Heidelberg, or Parisian comrades, each in their
own language and manner, “Byng, you will

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actually starve for poetry and romance in that
detestably new country.”

I confess that I had had some fears on this
subject, myself.

I had made up my mind to drop into systematic
existence, cut fancy, eschew romance, banish
dreams, and occupy my digestion solely on a
diet of commonplace facts.

I might have known that man cannot live on
corporeal, mundane facts alone, unless he can
persuade his immortality to forget him, and leave
him to crawl a mere earth-worm, dirt to dirt,
until he is dust to dust.

As to romance, I might have known, if I had
considered the subject, that wherever youth and
maiden are, there is the certainty of romance
and the chance of tragedy. I might have known
that the important thing in a drama is, what the
characters are, and what they do, not the scenes
where they stand while they are acting. In the
theatre, people are looking at the lover and the
lady, not at the balustrade and the tower.

But though I might have known that the story
of Life and Love is just as potent to create itself
a fitting background when it is acted anew on a
new stage, as when it is announced for repetition
with the old familiar, musty properties, I had,
indeed, been somewhat bullied by the unreflecting
talk just quoted. I had fancied that the

[figure description] Page 203.[end figure description]

play could not go on without antiquated stuff
to curtain it, dry-rotted boards for it to tread,
and a time-worn drop for it to stand out against.
I was sceptical as to the possibility of a novel
and beautiful development of romance under the
elms of a new land, in the streets of its new
cities. I had adopted the notion of Europe, and
Europe-tainted America, that my country was
indeed very big, very busy, very prosperous, but
monstrously dull, tame, and prosaic.

Error! Worse, — mere stupid blindness!

My first plunge into life at home proved it.
See how my very first day became over-crowded
with elements of interest and romance, — nay, of
mysterious and tragic excitement!

Even the ancient scenery, whether important
or not to the progress of the drama, had packed
itself up, and followed my travels. Stillfleet's
chambers were an epitome of the whole Past, —
that is to say, of the Past as leading to the Present
and interpreting it. Stillfleet had concentrated
the essence of all the ages in his informal
museum. I had but to glance about, and I had
travelled over all terrestrial space, and lived
through all human centuries. He had relics
from all the famous camps in the great march
of mankind. He had examples, typical objects,
to show what every age and every race had
contributed to the common stock. By art on

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his walls, by books in the library, by objects of
curious antiquity, even by the grotesque fabrics
and contrivances of savages and transitory tribes
of men, all distributed about in orderly disorder,
I could study history at a glance, or rather absorb
history with unconscious eyes.

Scenery! I need but to look into the Egyptian
corner of my chamber, and, if I took any
interest in the life of the Pharaohs, there it was
in a pictured slab from the Memnonium; or in
the dead Pharaoh, there himself was grinning
in a mummy-case, — a very lively corpse, — unpleasantly
lively, indeed, when nights were dark,
and matches flashed brimstone and refused to
burn.

Scenery! Greece and Rome, Dark Ages, Crusades,
Middle Ages, Moorish Conquest, '88 in
England, Renaissance, '89 in France, every old
era and the last new era, — all were so thoroughly
represented here, by model of temple,
cast of statue, vase, picture, tapestry, suit of
armor, Moslem scymitar, bundle of pikes, rusty
cross-bow or arquebuse, model of guillotine, — by
some object that showed what the age had most
admired, most used, or most desired, — that
there, restored before me, rose and spread the
age itself, and called its heroes and its caitiffs
forward in review.

If I preferred to live in the Past, I had only to

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shut myself up at home, and forget that eager
Present about me, — that stirring life of America,
urged on by the spirit of the Past, and unburdened
by its matter.

Romance, too! Romance had come to me,
whether I would or no. Without any permission
of mine, asked or granted, I was become an
actor, with my special part to play, perforce,
among mysteries.

Cecil Dreeme.

Emma Denman.

Densdeth.

My connection with these three characters
grew daily closer. I do not love mystery. Ignorance
I do not hate; for ignorance is the first
condition of knowledge. Mystery I recoil from.
It generally implies the concealment of something
that should not be concealed, for the sake
of delusion or deception; or if not for these,
because tragedy will follow its revelation.

Cecil Dreeme continued to me a profound
mystery. He kept himself utterly secluded by
day, working hard at his art. He knew no one
but myself. No one ever saw him except myself
and Locksley, or Locksley's children. Only at
night, wrapped in his cloak, did he emerge from
his seclusion, and wander over the dim city.

I became his companion in these walks whenever
my engagements allowed; but such night

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wandering seemed unhealthy for him in his delicate
state.

“Are you wise, Dreeme,” said I to him, one
morning, in his studio, after we had become intimate,
“to live this nocturnal life? Sunshine
and broad daylight are just as indispensable to
man as they are to flower or plant. I might give
you good chemical reasons for my statement.”

“There are night-blooming flowers, — the
Cereus, and others,” said he, avoiding my question.

“Yes, but they owe their blossom to the day's
accumulation of sunshine. Botany refuses to
protect you.”

“Plants grow by night.”

“In night that follows sunny day.”

“I accept the analogy. I have accumulated
sunshine enough, I hope, for growth, and perhaps
for a pallid kind of bloom, in my past
sunny days. My rank growth went on vigorously
enough in the daylight. I am conscious
of a finer development in the dark.”

“But I do not like this voluntary prison.”

“Few escape a forced imprisonment, longer
or shorter, in their lives. Illness or sorrow
shut us in away from the world's glare, that
we may see colors as they are, and know gold
from pinchbeck. Why should I not go to prison,
of my own accord, for such teaching, and other
reasons?”

[figure description] Page 207.[end figure description]

“And other reasons? Tell me, Dreeme, before
our friendship goes further, — before I
utterly and irrecoverably give you my confidence.”

“Go on.”

“No! I cannot go on.”

“I understand, and am not insulted. You
mean to ask whether I am hiding here because
I have picked a pocket, or pillaged a till, or
basely broken a heart, or perhaps because I
have a blood-stain to wear out.”

“My imagination had not put its suspicion,
if any existed, into any such crude charges.”

“So I saw, and stated the question blankly.
You could not connect me with vulgar or
devilish crime. At the same time, you had a
certain uneasiness about me, undefined and
misty, but real. You will not deny it,” and
he smiled as he spoke.

“No. Since you affront the fact with such
cheerful confidence, I will not deny the vague
dread.”

“Be at rest, then! There is not a man or
a woman in the world, whom I cannot look in
the eyes without blenching. You need not be
ashamed of me. You may trust me, without
any fear of that harshest of all the shocks our
life can feel, loss of faith in a friend's honor.”

“Well, we will never speak of this again.

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Live by your own laws, in the dark or the
light! I demand unquestioned freedom for myself.
I am the last man to refuse it to another.”

“Really,” said Dreeme, “since your projection
into my orbit, I no longer need personal
contact with the outer world.”

“You find me a good enough newsman.”

“The artistic temperament does not love to
bustle about in the crowd, to shoulder and
hustle for its facts. You give me the cream
of what the world says and does. But, by and
by, when you tire of the novelty of a tyro-artist's
society, you will drop me.”

“Never! so long as you consent to be my
in-door man. I often feel, now, as I stir about
among men, collecting my budget of daily facts,
that I only get them for the pleasure of hearing
your remarks when I unpack in the evening.”

“I must try to be a wiser and wittier critic.”

“You return me far more than I bring. I
train my mental muscle with other people. You
give me lessons in the gymnastics of finer forces.
My worldling nature shrivels, the immortal Me
expands under your artistic touch.”

“I am happy to be accused of such a power,”
Dreeme said, with his sweet, melancholy smile.
“It is the noblest one being can exercise over
another, and needed much in this low world of
ours.”

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