The Common Lot

VIII.

“ HELLO, Jackie! ”

Such familiarity of address on the part of Wright’s head draughtsman had long annoyed Hart, but this morning, instead of nodding curtly, he replied briskly, —

“ Hello, Cookey ! ”

The draughtsman winked at his neighbor and thrust out an elbow at a derisive angle, as he laid himself down on the linen plan he was carefully inking in. The man next to him snickered, and the stenographer just outside the door smiled. An office joke was in the air.

“ Mr. Hart looks as though something good had happened to him,” the stenographer remarked in a mincing tone. “ Perhaps some more of his folks have died and remembered him in their wills.”

But Cook dismissed the subject by calling out to one of the men, “ Say, Ed, come over here and tell me what you were trying to do with this old hencoop.”

He might take privileges with the august Jackson Hart, whose foreign training had rather oppressed the office force at times ; but he would not allow Gracie Bellows, the stenographer, to “ mix ” in his joke.

Cook was a spare, black-haired little man, with beady brown eyes, like a squirrel’s. He was a product of Wright’s Chicago office, having worked his way to the practical headship of the force. Although he permitted himself his little fling at Hart, he was the young architect’s warmest admirer, approving even those magnificent palaces of the French Renaissance type which the Beaux Arts man put forth during the first months of his connection with the firm.

The little man, who was as sharp as one of his own India ink lines, could see that Hart had something on his mind, and he was curious, in all friendliness, to find out what it was. But Hart did not emerge from his little box of an office for several hours. Then he sauntered by Cook’s table, pausing to look out of the window while he abstractedly lighted a cigarette.

Presently the stenographer came up to Hart and said : —

“ Mr. Graves is out there and wants to see you particular, Mr. Hart. Shall I show him into your office ? ”

“ Ask him to wait,” the young architect ordered.

After he had smoked and stared for a few moments longer, he turned to Cook.

“ What did we specify those I-beams on the Canostota ? Were they forty-twos or sixties ? ”

Without raising his hand from the minute lines of the linen sheet, the draughtsman grunted: —

“ Don’t remember just what. Were n’t forty-twos. Nothing less than sixties ever got out of this office, I guess. May be eighties.”

“ Um,” the architect reflected, knocking his cigarette against the table. “ It makes a difference in the sizes what make they are, does n’t it ? ”

“ It don’t make any difference about the weights ! ” And the draughtsman turned to his linen sheet with a shrug of the shoulders that said, “You ought to know that much ! ”

The architect continued to stare out of the murky window.

“ When is Harmon coming back?”

“ Ed lives out his way, and he says it’s long-term typhoid. You can’t tell when he ’ll be back.”

“ Has the old man wired anything new about his plans ? ”

“ You ’ll have to ask Miss Bellows.”

“ He said he’d be here next Wednesday or Thursday at the latest.”

The draughtsman stared hard at Hart, wondering what was in the man’s mind. But he made no answer to the last remark, and presently Hart sauntered to the next window.

As Hart well knew, Graves was waiting to close that arrangement which he had proposed for building an apartment house. The architect had intended to look up the Canostota specifications before he went further with Graves, but he had been distracted by other matters.

Jackson Hart was not given to undue speculation over matters of conduct. He had a serviceable code of business morals, which hitherto had met all the demands of his experience. He called this code “ professional etiquette.” In this case he was not clear how the code should be applied. The Canostota was not his affair. It was only by the merest accident that he had been sent there that day to help the electricians, and had seen that drill - hole which had led him to question the thickness of the I-beams, about which he might very well have been mistaken. If there were anything wrong with them, it was Wright’s business to see that the contractor was properly watched when the steel work was being run through the mill. And he did not feel any special sense of obligation toward Wright, who had never displayed any great confidence in him.

He wanted the contractor’s commission, now more than ever, with his engagement to Helen freshly pricking him to look for bread and butter; wanted it all the more because all thought of fighting his uncle’s will had gone when Helen had accepted him.

When he rang for the stenographer and told her to show Graves into his office, he had made up his mind. Closing his door, he turned and looked into the contractor’s heavy face with an air of alert determination. He was about to play his own game for the first time, and he felt the man’s excitement of it!

The two remained shut up in Hart’s cubby-hole for over an hour. When Cook had returned from the restaurant in the basement where he lunched, and the other men had taken their hats and coats from the lockers, Hart stepped out of his office and walked across the room to Cook’s table. He spread before the draughtsman a fresh sepia sketch, the water scarcely dried on it. It was the front elevation for a house, such a one as is described impressively in the newspapers as “ Mr. So-and-So’s handsome country residence.”

“ Now, that’s what I call a peach ! ” Cook whistled through his closed teeth, squinting at the sketch admiringly. “ Nothing like that residence has come out of this office for a good long time. The old man don’t favor houses as a rule. Is this for some magnate ? ”

“ This is n’t for the firm,” Hart answered.

“ Oh ! ” Cook received the news with evident disappointment. “ Just a fancy sketch ? ”

“ Not for a minute ! This is my own business. It’s for a Mrs. Phillips at Forest Park.”

Cook looked again at the elevation of the large house with admiring eyes. If he had ever penetrated beyond the confines of Cook County in the state of Illinois, he might have wondered less at Hart’s creation. But he was not familiar with the Loire châteaux, even in photograph, for Wright’s taste happened to be early English.

“ So you ’re going to shake us ? ” Cook asked regretfully.

“ Just as soon as I can have a word with Mr. Wright. This is n’t the only job I have on hand.”

“ Is that so ? ”

“ Don’t you want to come in ? ” Hart asked abruptly. “ I shall want a good practical man in the office. How would you like to run the new office ? ”

Cook’s manner froze into caution.

“ Oh, I don’t know. It’s pretty good up here looking after Wright’s business.”

Hart picked up his sketch and turned away.

“ I thought you might like the chance. Some of the men I knew in Paris may join me, and I shan’t have much trouble in making up a good team.”

Then he went out to his luncheon, and when he returned, he shut himself up in his box, stalking by Cook’s desk without a word. When he came forth again the day’s work was over, and the office force had left. Cook was still dawdling over his table.

“ Say, Hart! ” he called out to the architect. “ I don’t want you to have the wrong idea about my refusing that offer of yours. I don’t mind letting you know that I ain’t fixed like most of the boys. I ’ve got a family to look after, my mother and sister and two kid brothers. It is n’t easy for us to pull along on my pay, and I can’t afford to take any chances.”

“ Who’s asking you to take chances, Cookey ? ” Hart answered, mollified at once. “ Perhaps you might do well by yourself.”

“ You see,” Cook explained further, “ my sister’s being educated to teach, but she’s got two years more at the Normal. And Will’s just begun high school. Ed’s the only earner besides myself in the whole bunch, and what he gets don’t count.”

Thereupon the architect sat down on the edge of the draughting-table in friendly fashion and talked freely of his plans. He hinted at the work for Graves and at his prospects with the railroad.

“ I have ten thousand dollars in the bank, anyway. That will keep the office going some time. And I don’t mind telling you that I have something at stake, too,” he added in a burst of confidence. “ I am going to be married.”

Cook grinned sympathetically. It pleased him vastly to be told of Hart’s engagement in this confidential way. After some further talk the matter of the new office was arranged between them then and there. Cook agreed to look into a new building that had just pushed its head among the skyscrapers near the Maramanoc, to see if there was anything left that would answer their purposes. As they were leaving the office, Hart stopped, exclaiming, —

“ I ’ve got to telephone! Don’t wait.”

“ That’s always the way,” the draughtsman replied. “You’ll be telephoning most of the time, now, I expect ! ”

The architect did not telephone to Helen Spellman, however. He called up his cousin’s office to tell Wheeler that he had concluded not to contest the will.

“ And Everett,” he said frankly, “ I guess I have made rather an ass of myself, telling you I was going to kick up a row. I hope you won’t say anything about it.”

The lawyer wondered what had brought about this change of heart in his cousin. Later, when the news of the engagement reached him, he understood. For he knew Helen, in a way better than her lover did, — knew her as one knows the desired and unattainable.

A few days later Wright reached the office, and Hart told him of his plan to start for himself, asking for an early release because important business was waiting for his entire attention.

Wright had arrived only that morning ; he was seated before his broad desk, which was covered to the depth of several inches with blue prints, typewritten specifications, and unopened mail. He had been wrestling with contractors and clients every minute since he had entered the office, and it was now late in the afternoon.

“ So you are going to try it for yourself,” he commented, a new wrinkle gathering on his clouded brow. It occurred to him that Hart might be merely hinting politely for an advance in salary, but he dismissed the thought. “Have you had enough experience ? ” he asked bluntly.

“ I ’ll be likely to get some more ! ” Hart replied, irritated at the remark.

“ I mean of the actual conditions under which we have to build,—the contractors, the labor market, and so on ? Of course you can leave at once if you wish to. I should n’t want to stand in your light. It is rather a bad time with Harmon home sick. But we can manage somehow. Cook is a pretty good man for almost everything. And we can draw on the St. Paul office.”

Hart murmured his regret at the inconvenience of his departure, and Wright said nothing for a few minutes. He remembered now that some one had told him that Hart was drawing plans for Mrs. Phillips. That had probably made the young architect ambitious to start for himself. He felt that Hart should have asked his consent before undertaking this outside work. At least it would have been more delicate to do so. But Wright was a kindly man, and bore no malice. In what he said next to the young architect he was moved by pure good will.

“ I don’t want to discourage you, Hart, but I know what sort of luck young fellows, the best of them, have these days when they start a new office. It’s fierce work getting business, here especially.”

“ I suppose so,” Hart admitted conventionally.

“ The fine art side of the profession don’t count much with client or contractor. It’s just a tussle all the time! ” he sighed, reflecting how he had spent two hours of his morning in trying to convince a wealthy client of the folly of cutting down construction cost from fifty to thirty cents a cubic foot.

“ You young fellows just over from the other side don’t realize what it means to run an office. If you succeed, you have no time to think of your sketches, except after dinner or on the train, maybe. And if you don’t succeed, you have to grab at every little job to earn enough to pay office expenses.”

Hart’s blank face did not commit him to this wisdom.

“ The only time I ever had any real fun was when I was working for the old firm, in New York. God ! I did some pretty good things then. Old man Post used to trim me down when I got out of sight of the clients, but he let me have all the rope he could. And now, — why, it’s you who have the fun! ”

“ And you who trim me down ! ” Hart retorted, with a grim little smile.

“ Well, perhaps. I have to keep an eye on all you Paris fellows. You come over here well trained, damned well trained, — we can’t do anything like it in this country, — but it takes a few years for you to forget that you are n’t in la belle France. And some never get over their habit of making everything French Renaissance. You are n’t flexible. Some of you are n’t creative — I mean,” he said, getting warm on a favorite topic, “ you don’t feel the situation here. You copy. You try to express everything just as you were taught. You have got to feel things for yourself, by thunder!”

Hart kept his immobile face. It did not interest him to know what Wright thought of the Beaux Arts men. Yet he had no intention of falling out with Wright, who was one of the leading architects of the country, and whose connection might be valuable to him.

“ I see you don’t care to have me preach,” the older man concluded humorously. “ And you know your own business best.”

The Powers Jackson educational bequest meant that there would be a chance for some one to do a large public building. Probably the family interests had arranged to put this important piece of work into Hart’s hands. Wright hoped for the sake of his art that the trustees would put off building until the young architect had developed more independence and firmness of standard than he had yet shown.

“ I think I understand a little better than I did two years ago what it takes to succeed here in Chicago,” Hart remarked at last.

Wright shot a piercing glance at him out of his tired eyes.

“ It means a good many different kinds of things,” the older man said slowly. “ Just as many in architecture as elsewhere. It is n’t the firm that is putting up the most expensive buildings that is always making the biggest success, by a long shot.”

“ I suppose not,” Hart admitted.

And there the conversation lapsed. The older man felt the real impossibility of piercing the young architect’s manner, his imperturbability.

“ He does n’t like me,” he said to himself reproachfully.

For he would have liked to say something to the younger man out of his twenty years of experience, something concerning the eternal conflict there is in all the professions between a man’s ideals of his work and the practical possibilities in the world we have about us ; something, too, concerning the necessity of yielding to the brute facts of life and yet not yielding everything. But he had learned the great truth that talk never saves a man from his fate, especially that kind of talk. A man lives up to what there is in him, and Jackson Hart would follow the rule.

So he dug his hands into the letters on his desk, and said by way of conclusion : —

“ Perhaps we can throw some things your way. There’s a little job, now.” He held up a letter he had just glanced at. “ They want me to recommend some one to build a clubhouse at Oak Hills. There is n’t much in it. They can’t spend but seven thousand dollars. But I had rather take that than do some other things ! ”

“ Thank you,” Hart replied with considerable animation. “ Of course I want every chance I can get.”

He took the letter from Wright’s outstretched hand.

IX.

After the few swift months of spring and summer they were to be married, late in the fall.

Above the lake at Forest Park, in a broad, open field, Mrs. Phillips’s great house had already risen. It was judged variously by those who had seen it, but it altogether pleased the widow ; and the architect regarded it — the first work of his manhood — with complacency and pride. Helen had not seen it since the walls had passed the first story. Then, one day late in September, the architect and she made the little journey from the city, and walked over to the house from the Shoreham station, up the lake road.

It was a still, soft fall day, with all the mild charm of late summer that comes only in this region. The leaves still clung in bronzed masses to the little oaks ; a stray maple leaf dipped down, now and then, from a gaudy yellow tree, and sailed like a bird along their path. There was a benediction in the country, before the dissolution of winter. The girl’s heart was filled with joy.

“ If we could only live here, Francis ! ”

“ All the year ? ” he queried doubtfully.

“ Yes, always. Even the worst days I should not feel lonely. I shall never feel lonely again, anyway.”

As he drew her hand close to his breast, he said contentedly, with a large view of their future : —

“ Perhaps we can before long. But land is very dear. Then you have to keep horses and servants, if you want to live in the country.”

“ Oh ! I did n’t think of all that.”

They walked slowly, very close together, neither one anxious to reach the misty horizon, where, in a bed of opalescent gray, lay the beautiful lake. The sunshine and the fruity odors of the good earth, the tranquil vistas of bronze oaks, set the woman brooding on her nesting time, which was so close at hand. And the man was thinking likewise, in his way, of this coming event, anxiously, yet with confidence. The plans for the Graveland, the contractor’s big apartment house, were already nearly finished. New work must come to the office. There were the Rainbows, who had moved to Shoreham, having made a sudden fortune. And Raymond, the railroad man, on whose good will he counted, with Mrs. Phillips’s assistance.

Suddenly the house shot up before their eyes, big and new in all the rawness of fresh brick and stone. It towered blusteringly above the little oaks, a great red-brick château, with a row of little round windows in its massive, thick-tiled red roof.

Helen involuntarily stood still and caught her breath. So this was his !

“ Oh ! ” she murmured. “ Is n’t it big, Francis ! ”

“ It’s no three-room cottage,” he answered, with a little asperity.

Then he led her to the front, where she could get the effect of the two wings, the southerly terrace toward the lake, the sweeping drive, and the classic entrance.

“ I know I shall grow to like it, Francis,” the girl said loyally. “ It must be very pretty inside, with those lovely French windows; and the brick court is attractive, too.”

She felt that she was hurting her lover in his tenderest spot, and she tried anxiously to find better words, to show him that it was only her ignorance which limited her appreciation. They strolled about among the refuse heaps of the builders, viewing the place at every angle. Just as they were about to enter the house, there came from the Shoreham road the puffing of an automobile, and presently Mrs. Phillips arrived in a large touring car, with some people who had been lunching with her at the Shoreham Club. They came up to the house, talking and joking in a flutter of good-natured comment. The architect recognized the burly form of Colonel Raymond. He was speaking : —

“ Well, Louise, you will have to take us all in next season. I did n’t know you were putting up a hotel like this.”

“ Hotel! It is a perfect palace ! ” exclaimed a short, plump woman who was following close behind. “ I hope you are going to have a pergola. They ’re so nice. Every country house has a pergola nowadays.”

“ Why not an English garden and a yew hedge ? ” added a man who had on the red coat of the Hunt Club. “ I hope you have got your stabling up to this, Mrs. Phillips.”

Then they recognized the architect and Helen. Mrs. Phillips introduced them to her friends, and they all went inside to make a tour of the rooms. The painters, who were rubbing the woodwork, looked curiously at the invading party; then, with winks among themselves, turned indifferently to their tasks. The visitors burst into ripples of applause over the hall with its two lofty stone fireplaces, the long drawing-room that occupied the south wing of the house, the octagonal breakfast room and the dining-room in the other wing. The architect led them about, explaining the different effects he had tried to get. He did it modestly, touching lightly on architectural points with a well-bred assumption that the visitors knew all about such things. The plump little woman followed close at his heels, drinking in all that he said. Helen wondered who she might be, until, in an eddy of their progress, Hart found a chance to whisper to her, “It’s Mrs. Rainbow ; she’s thinking of building.”

He seemed very much excited about this, and the general good luck of being able to show these people over the house he had made. After the first floor had been exhausted, the party drifted upstairs in detachments. Helen could hear her lover’s pleasant voice as he led the way from suite to suite above. The voices finally centred in Mrs. Phillips’s bathroom, where the sunken marble bath, the walls of colored marble, caused much joking and laughter.

“ Can you tell me where Mrs. Phillips is ? ” a voice sounded from the door. Helen turned with a start. The young girl who asked the question was dressed in a riding habit. Outside on the drive a small party of people were standing with their horses. The girl spoke somewhat peremptorily, but before Helen had time to reply, she added : —

“ Are n’t you Miss Spellman ? I am Venetia Phillips.”

Then the two smiled at each other in the way of women who feel that they may be friends. “ I was off with my uncle the day you dined with mamma,” she continued, “ so I missed seeing you. Is n’t this a great — barn, I was going to say.” She laughed and caught herself. “ I did n’t remember ! We have just been out with the hounds, — the first run. It’s too early to have a real hunt yet. Do you ride ? ”

They sat down on the great staircase and were at once absorbed in each other. In the meantime the party of visitors had returned from the upper story by the rear stairs, and were penetrating the mysteries of the service quarters. Hart was showing them proudly all the little devices for which American architecture is famous, —the interior telephone service, the laundry shoots, the electric dumbwaiters, the electric driers. These devices aroused Colonel Raymond’s admiration. When the others came back to the hall he took the architect aside and discussed driers earnestly. From that they got to the heating system, which necessitated a visit to the basement.

Mrs. Phillips took this occasion to say to Helen: —

“ You can be proud of your young man, Miss Spellman. He’s done a very successful piece of work. Every one likes it. It’s all his, too,” she added generously.

Helen found nothing to say in reply. The widow was not an easy person for her to talk to. On that other occasion when they had met, in Mrs. Phillips’s city house, the two women had looked into each other’s eyes, and both had remained cold. The meeting had not been all that the architect had hoped for it.

So this time Mrs. Phillips examined the younger woman critically, saying to herself, “ She’s a cold piece. She won’t hold him long! ”

At last the party gathered itself together and left. The big touring car puffed up to the door, and the visitors climbed in, making little final comments of a flattering nature, to please the architect, who had charmed them all. He was assiduous to the very end, laughing at Mrs. Rainbow’s joke about the marble tub, which she repeated for the benefit of those who had not been upstairs.

After Hart had helped her to mount the steps of the car, she leaned over and gave him her hand.

“ So glad to have met you, Mr. Hart,” she said with plump impressiveness. “ I am sure if we build, we ’ll have to come to you. It’s just lovely, everything.”

“ I shall have to give that away to Rainbow,” the colonel joked. “ There ’s nothing so bad to eat up money as a good architect.”

Then he shook hands cordially with Hart, lit a cigarette, and swung himself to the seat beside Mrs. Phillips. After the car had started, the riders mounted. Hart helped Venetia Phillips to her seat, and slipped in a word about the hunt. But the girl leaned over on the other side toward Helen, with a sudden enthusiasm.

“ When you are married, can’t I see a lot of you ? ”

Helen laughed, and the two held hands for a moment, while the man in the red coat talked with the architect.

When they had all gone, Jackson turned to Helen, a happy smile of triumph on his face.

“ It seemed to take ! ”

There had not been one word of comment on the house itself, on the building as a home for generations of people. But Hart did not seem to notice that. He was flushed with the exhilaration of approval.

“Yes,” Helen answered, throwing all the animation she could into the words; “ I think they all liked it.”

She was silent, with many vague impressions from the little incident of the afternoon. There had been revealed to her a new side of her lover, a worldly side, which accorded with his alert air, his well-trimmed mustache, and careful attention to dress. He had been very much at home with all these people; while she had felt more or less out of her element. He knew how to talk to them, how to please them, just as he knew how to build a house after their taste for luxury and display. He could talk hunters or motor cars or bridge whist, as the occasion demanded. He was one of them in instinct!

She cast a timid look at the great façade above them, over which the cold shadows of the autumn evening were fast stealing, leaving it still more hard and new and raw. She was glad it was not to be her fate to live there in all its grandeur and stiff luxury.

The architect had to speak to the superintendent of the building, and Helen sat down on the stone balustrade of the terrace to wait. The painters were leaving their job, putting on their coats as they hurried from the house. They scarcely cast a glance her way as they passed, disappearing into the road, fleeing from the luxurious abode and the silent woods, which were not theirs, to the village and the city. . . . This great American château was so different from what she had always dreamed her lover would build, this caravansary for the rich, this toy where they could hide themselves in aristocratic seclusion and take their pleasures. And the thought stole into her mind that he liked it, this existence of the rich and prosperous, their sports and their luxuries, — and would want to earn with his life their pleasures, their housing, their automobiles, and hunters. It was all strange to her experience, to her dreams!

From the second floor there came the sound of voices : —

“ I tells you, Muster Hart, you got to rip the whoal dam piping out from roof to basement if you wants to have a good yob of it. I tole you that way back six weeks ago. It ware n’t specified right from the beginning.”

“ I ’ll speak to Rollings about it tomorrow and see what can be done.”

“ That’s what you say every time,” the Swede growled.

“ See here, Anderson ! Who’s running this job ? ” . . .

The girl strolled away from the voices toward the bluff, where she could see the gray bosom of the lake. The twilight trees, the waveless lake soothed her: they were real, her world. The house back there, the men and women of it, were shadows on the marge.

“ Nell! ” her lover called.

“ Coming, Francis.”

When he came up to her she rested her head on his shoulder, looking at him with vague longing, desiring to keep him from something not clearly defined in her own mind.

“ We must hurry to get that train. When we live out here we ’ll have to sport a motor car, won’t we ? ” he said buoyantly.

She answered slowly, “ I don’t know that I should want to live just here, after all.”

“ Why, I thought you were crazy about the country! And I’ve been thinking it might be the very thing for us to do. There’s such a lot of building in these places now. Mrs. Phillips has asked me several times why I didn’t move out here on the shore. Just before she left she asked me if I did n’t want to build a lodge for her and take it for a year or so. Of course that’s a joke. But I know she’s bought a lot of property on the bluff here, and might be willing to let me have a small bit on reasonable terms. She’s been so friendly all along ! ”

He was still in the flush of his triumph, and talked rapidly of all that opened out before his fervent ambition. Suddenly he took note of her mood and said sharply, “ Nell, you don’t like her.”

“ Why do you say that ? ” she exclaimed, surprised in her inner thoughts. “ I don’t really know.”

“ Why, it’s plain enough. You don’t talk to her. You are so cold ! And the same way with Mrs. Rainbow.”

“ O Francis! I did n’t mean to be cold. Ought I to like them if you are to do work for them ? ”

The architect laughed at her simplicity.

“ Rich people always puzzle me,” she continued apologetically. “ They always have, except uncle Powers, and you never thought of him as rich ! I don’t feel as if I knew what they liked. They are so much preoccupied with their own affairs. That other time when I met Mrs. Phillips she was so much worried over the breakfast room and the underbutler’s pantry ! What is an underbutler’s pantry, Francis ? ”

This raillery over the needs of the rich seemed almost anarchistic to the architect. They walked to the station silently in the gathering darkness. But after a time, on the train, he returned to the events of the afternoon.

“ She can do anything she likes with Raymond. It would be a big stroke to get that C. R. & N. business! ”

Helen made no reply to this observation, and they relapsed again into silent thought.

The night before their marriage the architect told her exultantly that he had been sent for by Raymond’s private secretary to talk over work for the railroad corporation.

“ That’s Mrs. Phillips’s doing,” he told Helen. “You must remember to say something to her about it to-morrow, if you get the chance. It’s likely to be the biggest wedding present we ’ll have! ”

“ I am glad,” Helen replied simply, without further comment.

He thought that she did not comprehend what this good fortune meant. And he was quite mystified when she refused to see him again before the ceremony of the following day. He could not realize that in some matters — a few small matters — he had bruised the woman’s ideal of him ; he could not understand why these last hours, before she took him to her arms forever, she wished to spend alone with her own soul in a kind of prayer. . . .

There were only a few people present at the marriage in the little Maple Street house the next day. Many of their fashionable friends were still away from the city. Mrs. Phillips had made a point of coming to the wedding, and after much insistence she had been made to bring Venetia, who had discovered a sudden enthusiasm for weddings. Pemberton, an old friend of the Spellmans who had recently been added to the Jackson trustees, was there, and also little Cook, who was the backbone of the new office. Everett Wheeler was the best man. He and Hollister had put off their yearly fishing trip to do honor to Jackson Hart, who had earned their approval, because the young man had swallowed his disappointment about the will and was going to marry a poor girl. Hollister and Pemberton had brought Judge Phillips with them, because he was in town and liked weddings, and ought to send the pair a goodly gift. Of the presence of all these and some others the young architect was pleasantly conscious that October morning.

Only that morning, on the way to the house, Everett had referred to the great school, a monumental affair, which the trustees would have to build some day. It was in the aroma of this new prospect, and of all the other good fortune that had been his since he had taken up his burden of poverty, that Jackson Hart was married.

But the girl walked up to him to be married, in a dream, unconscious of the whole world, with a mystery of love in her heart. When the ceremony was over, she looked up into her husband’s resolute face, which was slightly flushed with excitement. Venetia, standing by her uncle’s side a few steps away, could see tears in the bride’s eyes, and the girl wondered.

Did Helen know now that the man who stood there face to face with her, her husband, was yet a stranger to her soul ? She raised her lips swiftly to him, and he bowed his head to kiss her, there before all.

X.

After a winter in the city the Harts went to live at Shoreham, taking rooms for the season at the club. The new station which the railroad was building at Eversley Heights, and the Rainbows’ cottage on the ridge just west of the club, had brought the architect considerable reputation. His acquaintance was growing rapidly among the men who rode to and fro each day on the suburban trains of the C. R. & N. It was the kind of acquaintance which he realized might be very valuable to him in his profession.

Between Chicago and Shoreham, the northernmost of the long line of prosperous suburbs, there lay a considerable variety of American society. As the train got away from the sprawling outskirts of the city, each stop marked a pause in social progress. Each town gathered to itself its own class, which differed subtly, but positively, from that attracted by its neighbor. Shoreham was the home of the hunting set, its society centring in the large club. At Popover Plains there was a large summer hotel, and therefore the society of Popover Plains was considered by her neighbors as more or less “ mixed.” Eversley Heights was still undeveloped, the home of a number of young people, who were considered very pleasant, even incipiently smart. But of all the more distant and desirable settlements Forest Park had the greatest pride in itself, being comparatively old, and having large places and old-fashioned ugly houses in which lived some people of permanent wealth. All these suburban towns had one common characteristic: they were the homes of the prosperous, who had emerged from the close struggle in the city with ideals of rest and refreshment and an instinct for the society of their own kind. Except for a street of shops near the stations, to which was relegated the service element of life, the inhabitants got exclusively the society of their kind.

The architect went to the city by one of the earlier trains and came back very late. He had all the labor of superintending the construction of his buildings, for the work in the office did not warrant engaging a superintendent. He emerged from the city, after a day spent in running about here and there, with a kind of speechless listlessness, which the wife of a man in business soon becomes accustomed to. The dinner in the lively dining-room of the clubhouse, with the chatter about sport and the gossip, the cigar afterwards on the veranda overlooking the green, turfy valley golden in the afterglow of sunset, refreshed him quickly. He was always eager to accept any invitation, to go wherever they were asked, to have himself and his wife in the eyes of their little public as much as possible. His agreeable manners, his keen desire to please, his instinct for the conventional, the suitable, made him much more popular than his wife, who was considered shy, if not positively countrified. As the season progressed, Hart was sure that they had made a wise choice of a place to settle in, and they began to look for a house.

In spite of all the apparent prosperity which the little office enjoyed from the start, the profit for the first year was startlingly small. The commission from the Phillips house had long since been eaten; also as much of the fee from Graves as that close contractor could be induced to pay over before the building had been finished. The insatiable office was now devouring the profits from the railroad business. When Cook saw the figures, he spoke to the point: — “It’s just self-indulgence to build houses. We must quit.” If they were to succeed, they must do a larger business, — factories, mills, hotels, — work that could be handled on a large scale, roughly and rapidly.

The Harts were living beyond their means, not extravagantly, but with a constant deficit, which from the earliest weeks of their marriage had troubled Helen. Reared in the tradition of thrift, she held it to be a crime to spend money not actually earned. But she found that her husband had another theory of domestic economy. To attract money, he said, one must spend it. He insisted on her dressing as well as the other women who used the club, although they were for the most part wives and daughters of men who had many times his income. At the close of the first six months of their marriage venture Helen spoke authoritatively : —

“ At this rate we shall run behind at least two thousand dollars. We must go back to the city to live ! ”

They had been talking of renting a house in Forest Park. But she knew that in the city she could control the expenditure, the manner of living. The architect laughed at her scruples.

“ I ’11 see Bushfield to-day and find out when they are to get at the Popover station.”

She still looked grave, having in mind a precept that young married people, barring sickness, should save a fifth of their income.

“ And if that is n’t enough,” her husband added, “ why, we must pull out something else. There’s lots doing ! ”

He laughed again, and kissed her before going downstairs to take the club ’bus. His light-hearted philosophy did not reassure her. If one’s income was not enough for one’s wants, he said, — why, expand the income ! This hopeful, gambling American spirit was natural to him. He was too young to realize that the point of expansion for professional men was definitely limited. A lawyer, a doctor, an architect, had but his one brain, his one pair of hands, his own eyes, — and the scope of these organs was fixed by nature.

“ And we give so little ! ” she protested in her heart that morning. Her mother had given to their church and to certain charities always a tenth of their small income. That might be a mechanical, old-fashioned method of estimating one’s dues to mankind, but it was better than the careless way of giving when it occurred to one, or when some friend who could not be denied demanded help. . . .

The architect, as he rode to the early morning train in the club ’bus, was talking to Stephen Lane, a rich bachelor, who had a large house and was the chief promoter of the Hunt Club. Lane grumbled rather ostentatiously because he was obliged to take the early train, having had news that a mill he was interested in had burned down overnight.

“ You are going to rebuild ? ” the architect asked.

“ Begin as soon as we can get the plans done,” Lane replied laconically.

It shot into the architect’s mind that here was the opportunity which would go far to wipe out the deficit he and Helen had been talking about. With this idea in view he got into the smoking car with Lane, and the two men talked all the way to town. Hart did not like Stephen Lane; few at the club cared for the rich bachelor, whose manners carried a self-consciousness of wealth. But this morning the architect looked at him front a different angle, and condoned his tone of patronage. As the train neared the tangled network of the city terminal, he ventured to say, “ What architects do your work ? ”

He hated the sound of his voice as he said it, though he tried to make it impersonal and indifferent. Lane’s voice seemed to change its tone, something of suspicion creeping in.

“ I have always had the Stearns brothers. They do that sort of thing pretty well.”

As they mounted the station stairs, Lane asked casually, “ Do you ever do that kind of work ? It is n’t much in your line.”

“ I ’ve never tried it. But of course I should like the chance ! ”

Then Lane, one hand on the door of a waiting cab, remarked slowly, “Well, we ’ll talk it over, perhaps. Where do you lunch ? ” and gave the architect two fingers of his gloved hand.

He was thinking that Mrs. Hart was a pleasant woman, who always listened to him with a certain deference. And these Harts must be hard put to it, without old Jackson’s pile.

Hart went his way on foot, a taste of something little agreeable in his mouth. He had to stop at the railroad offices to see the purchasing agent.

The railroad did its own contracting, naturally, and it was through this man Bushfield that the specifications for the buildings had to pass. The architect had had. many dealings with the purchasing agent, and had found him always friendly. This morning Bushfield was already in his office, perspiring from the July heat, his coat off, a stenographer at his elbow. When Hart came in he looked up slowly, and nodded. After he had finished with the stenographer, he asked, —

“ Why do you specify Star cement at Eversley, Hart ? ”

“ Oh, it’s about the best. We always specify Star for outside work.”

“ How’s it any better than the Climax ? ” the purchasing agent asked insistently.

“ I don’t know anything about the Climax. What’s the matter with Star ? ” Bushfield scratched his chin thoughtfully for a moment.

“ I have n’t got anything against Star. What I want to know is what you have got against Climax ? ”

The smooth guttural tones of the purchasing agent gave the architect no cause for suspicion, and he was dull enough not to see what was in the air.

“ It would take time to try a new cement properly,” he answered.

The purchasing agent picked up his morning cigar, rolled it around in his mouth, and puffed before he replied: — “ I don’t mind telling you that it means something to me to have Climax used at Eversley. It’s just as good as any cement on the market. I give you my word for that. I take it you’re a good friend of mine. I wish you would see if you can’t use the Climax.”

Then they talked of other matters. When Hart got back to the office he looked up the Climax cement in a trade catalogue. There were hundreds of brands on the market, and the Climax was one of the newest. Horace Bushfield, he reflected, was Colonel Raymond’s son-inlaw. If he wished to do the Popover station, he should remain on good terms with the purchasing agent of the road. Some time that day he got out the typewritten specifications for the railroad work, and in the section on the cement work he inserted neatly in ink the words, “ Or a cement of equal quality approved by the architect.”

Not many days later the purchasing agent telephoned to him : —

“ Say, Hart, the Buckeye Hardware people have just had a man in here seeing me about the hardware for that building. I see you have specified the Forrest makes. Are n’t the Buckeye people first-class ? ”

The architect, who knew what was coming this time, waited a moment before replying. Then he answered coolly, “ I think they are, Bushfield.”

“ Well, the Buckeye people have always done our business, and they could n’t understand why they were shut out by your specifying the Forrest makes. You ’ll make that all right ? So long.”

As Hart hung up his telephone, he would have liked to write Raymond, the general manager, that he wanted nothing more to do with the railroad business. Some weeks later when he happened to glance over the Buckeye Company’s memoranda of sales for the Eversley station, and saw what the railroad had paid for its hardware, he knew that Horace Bushfield was a thief. But they were talking of the Popover station then.

Something similar had been his experience with the contractor Graves.

“ Put me up a good, showy building,” the contractor had said, when they discussed the design. “ That’s the kind that will take in that park neighborhood. People nowadays want a stylish home with elevator boys in uniform. . . . That court you ’ve got there between the wings, and the little fountain, and the grand entrance,—all just right. But they don’t want to pay nothin’ for their style. Flats don’t rent for anything near what they do in New York. Out here they want the earth for fifty, sixty dollars a month ; and we got to give ’em the nearest thing to it for their money.”

So, when it came to the structure of the building, the contractor ordered the architect to save expense in every line of the details. The woodwork was cut to the thinnest veneer ; partitions, even bearing-walls, were made of the cheapest studding the market offered; the large floors were hung from thin outside walls, without the brick bearing-walls provided by the architect. When Hart murmured Graves said frankly : —

“ This ain’t any investment proposition, my boy. I calculate to fill the Graveland in two months, and then I ’ll trade it off to some countryman who is looking for an investment. Put all the style you want into the finish. Have some of the flats Flemish, and others Colonial, and so on. Make ’em smart.”

The architect tried to swallow his disgust at being hired to put together such a flimsy shell of plaster and lath. But Cook, who had been trained in Wright’s office, where work of this grade was never accepted, was in open revolt.

“ If it gets known around that this is the style of work we do in this office, it ’ll put us in a class, and it ain’t a pleasant one, either. . . . Say, Jack, how’s this office to be run, — first-class or the other class ? ”

“ You know, man,” the architect replied, “ how I am fixed with Graves. I don’t like this business any better than you do, but we ’ll be through with it before long.”

He growled in his turn to the contractor, who received his protest with contemptuous good humor.

“ You ’d better take a look at what other men are doing, if you think I am making the Graveland such an awful cheap building. I tell you, there ain’t money in the other kind. Why, I worked for a man once who put up a first-class flat building, slow-burning construction, heavy woodwork, and all that. It’s oldfashioned by this time, and its rents are way down. And I saw by the paper the other day that it was sold at the sheriff’s sale for not more than what my bill came to! What have you got to say to that ? ”

Therefore the architect dismissed the Graveland from his mind as much as he could, and saw little of it while it was under construction, for the contractor did his own superintending. One day, however, he had occasion to go to the building, and took his wife with him. They drove down the vast waste of Grand Boulevard ; after passing through that wilderness of painful fancies, the lines of the Graveland made a very pleasant impression.

Hart had induced Graves to sacrifice part of his precious land to an interior court, around which he had thrown his building like a miniature château, thus shutting out the sandy lots, the ragged street, which looked like a jaw with teeth knocked out at irregular intervals. A heavy wall joined the two wings on the street side, and through the iron gates the Park could be seen, just across the street.

“ Lovely ! ” Helen exclaimed. “ I ’m so glad you did it! I like it so — so much more than the Phillips house.”

They studied it carefully from the carriage, and Hart pointed out all the little triumphs of design. It was, as Helen felt, much more genuine than the Phillips house. It was no bungling copy, but an honest answer to a modern problem, — an answer, to be sure, in the only language that the architect knew.

Helen wanted to see the interior, although Jackson displayed no enthusiasm over that part of the work. And in the inside came the disaster! The evidences of the contractor’s false, flimsy building darkened the architect’s brow.

“ The scamp ! ” he muttered, emerging from the basement. “ He’s propped the whole business on a dozen or so ‘ twoby-fours.’ And he’s put in the rottenest plumbing underground that I ever saw. I don’t believe it ever had an inspection.”

“ Show me what you mean,” Helen demanded.

He pointed out to her some of the devices used to skimp the building.

“ Even the men at work here know it. You can see it by the way they look at me. Why, the thing is a paper box ! ”

In some of the apartments the rough work was scarcely completed ; in others the plasterers were at work; but the story was the same everywhere.

“ I can’t see how he escaped the Building Department. He’s violated the ordinances again and again. But I suppose he’s got the inspectors in his pay ! ”

He remembered the Canostota : he had no manner of doubt, now, about those I-beams in the Canostota !

“ Francis ! ” Helen exclaimed with sudden passion; “you won’t stand it! You won’t let him do this kind of thing ? ”

The architect shrugged his shoulders.

“ It’s his building. He bought the plans and paid for them.”

She was silent, troubled in her mind by this business tangle, but convinced that some wrong was being done. A thing like this, a fraud upon the public, should be prevented in some way.

“ Can’t you tell him that you will report him to the Building Department ? ” she asked finally.

Hart smiled at her impetuous unpracticality.

“ That would hardly do, would it, to go back on a client like that ? It’s none of my business, really. Only one hates to feel that his ideas are wasted on such stuff as this is made of. The city should look after it. And it’s no worse than most of these flat buildings. Look at that one across the street. It’s the same cheap thing. I was in there the other day. . . . No, it’s the condition of things in this city, — the worst place for good building in the country. Every one says so. But God help the poor devils who come to live here, if a fire once gets started in this plaster-and-lath shell! ”

He turned to the entrance and kicked open the door. His wife’s face was pale and set, as if she could not dismiss the matter thus lightly.

“ I never thought of fire ! ” she murmured. “ Francis, if anything like that should happen ! To think that you had drawn the plans ! ”

“ Oh! it may last out its time,” he replied reassuringly. “ And it does n’t affect the appearance of the building at present. It’s real smart, as Mrs. Rainbow would say. Don’t you think so, Nell ? ”

She had turned her back to the pleasant façade of the Graveland, and was staring into the Park across the street. She turned around at his words and cast a swift, scrutinizing glance over the building.

“ It is n’t right! I see fraud looking out of every window. It’s just a skeleton covered with cloth.”

The architect laughed at her solemnity. He was disgusted with it himself ; it offended his workman’s conscience. But he was too modern, too practical, to allow merely ideal considerations to upset him. And, after all, in his art, as in most arts, the effect of the thing was two thirds the game. With her it was altogether different. Through all outward aspect, or cover, of things pierced their inner being, from which one could not escape by illusion.

As they were getting away from the building, the contractor drove up to the Graveland for his daily inspection. He came over to the architect, a most affable smile on his bearded face.

“ Mrs. Hart, I presume,” he said, smiling. “ Looking over your husband’s work ? It’s fine, fine, I tell you. Between ourselves it beats Wright all out.”

Helen’s stiffness of manner did not encourage cordiality. Graves, thinking her snobbish, bowed to them, and went into the building.

“ You ’ll never do anything for him again, will you, Francis ? Promise me ! ”

And he promised lightly enough, for he thought it highly improbable that the contractor ever would return to him, or that he should feel obliged to take his work if he offered it.

Nevertheless, the contractor did return to the office, and not long afterwards. It was toward the end of the summer, when the architect and his wife were still debating the question of taking a house in the country for the winter. One afternoon Hart returned from his luncheon to find Graves waiting for him in the outer office. The stenographer and Cook were hard at work in the room beyond, with an air of having nothing to say to the contractor. As Graves followed Hart into his private office, Cook looked up with a curl on his thin lips that expressed the fullness of his heart.

“ Say,” Graves called out as soon as Hart had closed the door to the outer room, “ I sold that Graveland a month ago, almost before the plaster was dry. A man from Detroit came in to see me one morning, and we made the deal that day.”

“ Is that so ? ” Hart remarked coolly.

“ It was a pretty building. I knew I should n’t have any trouble with it. Now I have something new in mind.”

Hart listened in a non-committal manner.

“ Part of that trade with the Detroit feller was for a big block of land out west here a couple of miles. I am thinking of putting up some tidy little houses to sell on the installment plan.”

“ What do you mean to put into them ? ” the architect asked bluntly.

“ Well, they’d ought to sell for not more than eight thousand dollars.”

“ And cost as much less as you can make them hold together for ? I don’t believe I can do anything for you, Mr. Graves,” the architect replied firmly.

“ Is that so? Well, you are the first architect I ever saw who was too busy to take on a paying piece of business.”

He sat down more firmly in the chair opposite Hart’s desk, and he began to describe his scheme. There was to be a double row of houses, three stories and basement, each one different in style, in a different kind of brick or terra cotta, with a distinguishing “ feature ” worked in somewhere in the design. They were to be bait for the thrifty clerk, who wanted to buy a permanent home on the installment plan rather than pay rent. There were many similar building schemes in different parts of the city, the advertisements of which one might read in the street cars.

“ Why do you want me to do the job ? ” Hart asked at last. “ Any boy just out of school could do what you are after.”

“ No, he could n’t. He has n’t the knack of giving a fresh face to each house. It won’t be hard work for you ! ”

This, the architect knew, was very true. It would be very easy to have Cook hunt up a lot of photographs from French and English architectural journals, which, with a little arrangement, would serve. With a few hours’ work he could turn out that individual façade that Graves prized commercially. Here was the large job that could be done easily and roughly, ready to hand.

“ I don’t like to have such work go through the office. That’s all there is about it ! ” he exclaimed at last.

“ Tony, eh ? Well, we won’t fight over that. Suppose you make the sketches and let another feller prepare the details ? ”

There were many objections to this mode of operation, but the contractor met every one. Hart himself thought of Van Meyer, a clever, drunken German, to whom he had given work now and then when the office was busy. He would do what he was told and say nothing about it. . . .

It was late when Graves left the office. Cook and the stenographer had already gone. Hart went down into the street with the contractor, and they nodded to each other when they parted, in the manner of men who have reached an understanding. On the way to the train, Hart dropped into his club for a drink. He stood staring into the street while he sipped his gin and bitters. The roar of the city as it came through the murky windows seemed to him more than commonly harsh and grating. The gray light of the summer evening filtered mournfully into the dingy room. . . . He was not a weak man ; he had no qualms of conscience for what he had made up his mind that afternoon to do. It was disagreeable, but he had weighed it against other disagreeable alternatives which might happen if he could not get the money he needed. By the time he had reached Shoreham he had entirely adjusted his mind to Graves, and he met his wife, who had walked over to the station, with his usual buoyant smile. And that evening he remarked : —

“ I guess we had better take the Loring place. It ’s the only fit one for rent. We ’ll have to keep a horse, — that’s all.”

They had been debating this matter of the Loring house for several weeks. It was a pleasant old house, near the lake, not far from Mrs. Phillips’s in Forest Park. It was Mrs. Phillips who had first called the architect’s attention to it. But, unfortunately, it was too far from either station of the railroad to be within walking distance. And it was a large establishment for two young persons to maintain, who were contemplating the advent of a baby and a nurse.

All this Helen had pointed out to her husband, and lately they had felt too poor to consider the Loring place.

“ What has happened, Francis ? ” she asked.

“ A lot more business has come in, — houses. They will be very profitable,” he answered vaguely, remembering Helen’s antipathy to the contractor. “ Did you lunch with Venetia? ”

XI.

The Bady Venetia de Phillips, as the young woman used to call herself in the doll age, had never set foot in a common street car, or, indeed, in anything more public than a day coach on the Forest Park suburban train ; and in that only because the C. R. & N. had not found it profitable to provide as yet a special coach for her class. Mrs. Phillips, who had known what it was to ride in an Ottumwa buggy, comfortably cushioned by the stout arm of an Ottumwa swain, understood the cardinal principle of class evolution, which is separation. She had educated her children according to that, principle.

So it happened shortly before Mrs. Phillips had taken possession of her new home that Miss Phillips, having to pay a visit on the North Side of the city, was driving in her mother’s victoria, in dignity, according to her estate. Beside her sat her favorite terrier, Pete, scanning the landscape of the dirty streets by which they were obliged to pass from the South to the North Side. Suddenly as the carriage turned a corner, Pete spied a long, lank wharf rat, of a kind that did not inhabit his own neighborhood. The terrier took one impulsive leap between the wheels of the victoria, and was off up Illinois Street after the rat. It was a good race; the Lady Venetia’s sporting blood rose, and she ordered the coachman to follow. Suddenly there dashed from an alley a light baker’s wagon, driven by a reckless youth. Pete, unmindful of the clattering wagon, intent upon his loping prey, was struck full in the middle of his body: two wheels passed diagonally across him, squeezing him to the pavement like an india-rubber ball. He dragged himself to the sidewalk, filling the street with hideous howls. The passers-by stopped, but the reckless youth in the baker’s wagon, having leaned out to see what damage had been done, grinned, shook his reins, and was off.

Before the coachman had brought the victoria to a full stop Venetia was out and across the street. Pete had crawled into an alley, where he lay in a little heap, moaning. “When his mistress tried to gather him into her skirt he whimpered and showed his teeth. Something was radically wrong! The small boys who had gathered advised throwing Pete into the river, and offered to do the deed. But Venetia, the tears falling from her eyes, turned back into the street to take counsel with the coachman. A young man who was hurrying by, swinging a little satchel and whistling to himself, stopped.

“ What’s up?” he asked, smiling at the girl’s tears.

Venetia pointed at the dog, and the stranger, pushing the small boys aside, leaned over Pete.

“ Gee ! He ’s pretty well mashed, ain’t he? Here, Miss, I’ll give him a smell of this and send him to by-by.”

He opened his little satchel and hunted for a bottle. Venetia timidly touched his arm.

“ Please don’t kill him ! ”

“ That’s just what I’m going to do, sure thing ! ” He paused, with the little vial in his hand, and looked coolly at the girl. “ You don’t want the pup to suffer like that ? ”

“ But can’t he be saved ? ”

The stranger looked again at Pete, then back at Venetia. Finally he tied a handkerchief over the dog’s mouth, and began to examine him carefully.

“ Let’s see what there’s left of you after the mix-up, Mr. Doggie. We ’ll give you the benefit of our best attention and skill, — more ’n most folks ever get in this world, — because you are the pet of a nice young lady. If you were just an alley-cat you would n’t even get the chloroform. Well, Miss, he’d have about one chance in a hundred, after he had that hind leg cut off.”

“ Could you cure him ? Mamma will be very glad to pay you for your services.”

“ Is that so ? ” the stranger remarked. “ How do you know that my services don’t come very high? Well, come on, pup! We’ll see what can be done for you.”

Drawing the improvised muzzle tighter, he gathered Pete up in a little bundle. Then he strode down the street to the west. The coachman drew up beside the curb and touched his hat.

“ Won’t you get in ? ” Venetia asked.

“ It’s only a step or so to my place,” he answered gruffly. “ You can follow me in the carriage.”

But she kept one hand on Pete, and walked beside the stranger until he stopped at an old, one-story, wooden cottage. Above the door was painted in large black letters, “ S. COBURN, M. D. PHYSICIAN AND SURGEON.”

“ May I come in ? ” the girl asked timidly.

“ Sure ! Why would I keep you sitting on the doorstep ? ”

Inside there was a little front room, apparently used as a waiting-room for patients. Back of this was a large bare room, into which the doctor led the way. It occupied all the rest of the cottage. A wooden bench extended the entire length of this room, underneath a row of rough windows, which had been cut in the wall to light the bench. Over in one corner was a cot, with the bedclothes negligently dragging on the floor. Near by was an iron sink. On a table in the centre of the room, carefully guarded by a glass case, was a complex piece of mechanism which looked to the girl like one of the tiresome machines her teacher of physics was wont to exhibit.

“ My laboratory,” the doctor explained somewhat grandly.

Venetia stepped gingerly across the dirty floor, glancing about with curiosity. The doctor placed the dog on the table, and turned on several electric lights.

“ You ’ll have to help at this performance,” the doctor remarked, taking off his coat.

Together they gave Pete an opiate and removed the muzzle. The doctor then turned him over and poked him here and there.

“ Well,” he pronounced, “Peter has a full bill. Compound fracture, broken rib, and mashed toes. And I don’t know what all on the inside. He has a slim chance of limping around on three legs. Shall I give him some more dope ? What do you say ? ”

“ Pete was a gamy dog,” Venetia replied thoughtfully. “ I think he would like all his chances.”

“ Good ! ” The doctor tossed aside the sponge that he had held ready to give Pete his farewell whiff. He told the girl how to hold the dog, and how to touch the sponge to his nose from time to time. They were absorbed in the operation when the coachman pushed his way into the room.

“ What shall I do, Miss, about the horses? Mis’ Phillips gave particler instructions I was n’t to stay out after five-thurty. It’s most that now.”

“ Tell him to go home,” the doctor ordered. “ We ’ll be an hour more.”

“ But how shall I get home ? ” the girl asked, perplexed.

“ On your feet, I guess, same as most folks,” the doctor answered, testing a knife on his finger. “ And the cars ain’t stopped running on the South Side, have they ? ”

“ I don’t know. I never use them,” Venetia replied helplessly.

The doctor put the knife down beside Pete, and looked at the girl from her head to her feet, a teasing smile creeping over his swarthy face.

“ Well, it’s just about time for you to find out what they ’re good for. I ’ll take you home myself just to see how you like them. You won’t get hurt, not a bit. You may go, Thomas! ” He waved his hand sarcastically to the coachman. “ And when you go out, be good enough to slip the latch. We have a little business to do here, and don’t want to be interrupted.”

When the coachman had left, Venetia turned to the doctor with a red face, and copying her mother’s most impressive tones, asked, —

“ What would you like me to do now, Dr. Coburn?”

“ Nothing special. Turn your back if you don t like to see me take a chop out of doggie.”

He laughed at her dignity; therefore she kept her face turned resolutely on poor Pete. She could not help being interested in the man as she watched his swift movements. He was stocky and short, black-haired, with a short black mustache that did not disguise the perpetual sardonic smile of his lips. She noticed that his trousers were very baggy and streaked at the bottoms with mud. They were the trousers of a man who, according to her experience, was not a gentleman. The frayed cravat, which showed its cotton filling, belonged to the same category as the trousers. But there was something in the fierce black eyes, the heavy jaw, the nervous grip of the lips when the man was thinking, that awed her. The more Venetia looked at him, the more she was afraid of him ; not afraid that he would do any harm to her, but vaguely afraid of his strength, his force. His bare arms were thick and hairy, although the fingers were supple, and he touched things lightly. Altogether he was a strange person in her little world, and somewhat terrifying.

Dr. Coburn talked all the time, while he worked swiftly over the dog, describing to the girl just what he was doing. Venetia watched him without flinching, though the tears would roll down her face. She put one hand under Pete’s limp head to hold it, as she would have liked to have her head held under the same circumstances. At last the doctor straightened himself and exclaimed : —

“ Correct! He’s done up in first-class style.” He went to the sink and washed his arms and hands. “Yes, Peter is as well patched as if the great Dr. Parks had done it himself and charged you ten thousand dollars for the job. I donno’ but it’s better done. And he would have charged you all right! ” He gave a loud ironical laugh, and swashed the water over his bare arms.

Then he came back to the operating table, wiping his hands and arms on a roller towel that was none too clean.

“ You can quit that sponge now, Miss, and I guess doggie won’t appreciate the little attention of holding his head yet a while. He has n’t got to the flower and fruit stage yet, have you, eh, purp ? ”

Venetia stood like a little girl, awkwardly waiting for orders.

“ What’s your name ? ” the doctor demanded abruptly.

“ Venetia, — Venetia Phillips.”

“ Well, Miss Venetia, you seem fond of animals. Would you like to see my collection ? ”

He strode to the farther end of the room and opened a trap door.

“ Come over here ! ”

The girl peeped through the trap door into the cellar. There, in a number of pens, were huddled a small menagerie of animals, — dogs, cats, guinea-pigs, rabbits.

“ What do you do with all of them? ” the girl asked, her heart sinking with foreboding.

“ Cut ’em up ! ”

“ Cut them up ? ”

“ Sure ! And dose ’em. This is an experimental laboratory.” The doctor waved his hand rather grandly over the dirty room. “ There are not many like it in the city of Chicago, I can tell you. I am conducting investigations, and I use these little fellers.”

“ It’s horrid ! ” the girl exclaimed, looking apprehensively at Pete.

“ Not a bit of it! ” The doctor reached his hand down and pulled up a rabbit, a little mangy object, which tottered a few steps and then fell down, as if dizzy.

“ Jack’s had fifteen minims of the solution of hydrochlorate of manganese this morning. He looks kind of dopy, don’t he ? He ’ll be as smart as a trivet tomorrow. But I guess he’s about reached his limit of hydrochlorate, eh, Jack ? ”

In spite of herself the girl’s curiosity was aroused. When the doctor had returned Jack to his pen, she asked, “ What’s that queer machine over there ? ”

“ That’s to pump things into your body, to squirt medicines into you, instead of dropping them into your tummy loose, as doctors usually do. See? When I stick this long needle into you and work this handle, a little stream of the thing I want to give you is pumped into your body at the right spot. Would you like to have me try it on you ? No! I thought not. That’s why Jack has to take his dose every morning.”

He went into his explanation more thoroughly, and they talked of many things that were as wonderful to Venetia, brought up in the modern city of Chicago, as if she had come out of Thibet.

“ I suppose I shall have to leave Pete. May I come to see him sometimes?” she said at last.

“ Sure ! As often as you like. I’m generally in afternoons. I ’ll telephone if the patient’s pulse gets feeble or his temperature goes up.”

“ You need n’t make fun of me. And I think I can find my way home alone,” she added, as the doctor took his hat from the table and jammed it on his head.

“ I said I’d see you home. I am not going to miss seeing you take that first ride on the cable, not much! Perhaps you won’t mind walking across the bridge and up the avenue to the cable line ? It’s a pretty evening, and it will do you good to take the air along the river.”

So the two started for the city and crossed the busy thoroughfare of the Rush Street Bridge just as the twilight was touching the murky waters of the river. The girl was uncomfortably conscious that the man by her side was a very shabbily dressed escort. She was glad that the uncertain light would hide her from any of her acquaintances that might be driving across the bridge at this hour. The doctor seemed to be in no hurry ; he paused on the bridge to watch a tug push a fat grainboat up the river, until they were almost caught by the turning draw.

“ That’s a fine sight! ” he remarked.

“ Yes, the sunset is beautiful,” she replied conventionally.

“ No ! I mean that big vessel loaded with grain. That’s what you live on : it’s what you are, — that and a lot of dirty cattle over in the pens of the stockyard. That’s you, Miss Venetia, — black hair, pink cheeks, and all! ”

“ What a very materialistic way of looking at life ! ” Venetia replied severely.

“ Lord, child ! ” the doctor exclaimed ironically. “Who taught you that horrid word ? ” He proceeded to give her a little lecture on physiology, which occupied her attention all the way to the cable car, so that she forgot her snobbish anxieties.

The car was crowded, and no one offered her a seat. She was obliged to stand crowded in a corner, swaying from a strap overhead, while the persistent doctor told her all about the car, the motive power, the operatives, the number of passengers carried daily, the dispute over the renewal of the franchise, and kindred matters of common concern.

“ Now, it’s likely enough some of your folks own a block of their watered stock,” he continued in his clear, high voice, that made itself felt above the rattle of the car. “And you are helping pay them their dividends. Some day, though, maybe the rest of us won’t want to go on paying five cents to ride in their old cars. Then your stock will go down, the water will dry up, and perhaps you ’ll have one or two dresses less. You ’ll remember then I told you the reason why.”

Venetia had heard enough about stocks and bonds to know that a good deal of the Phillips money was invested in the City Railway. But she had also learned that it was very vulgar for a man to discuss money matters with a girl. Furthermore, peering about the crowded conveyance, she had caught sight of Porter Howe, one of her brother Stanwood’s friends. He was looking at her and the doctor, and she began to feel uncomfortable again. It had never occurred to her that the young men of her class were in the habit of using the street cars, at least until they had reached those assured positions at the head of industry which awaited them.

So the novelty of the ride in the public car had something of torture in it, and she was glad enough to escape through the front door at Eighteenth Street.

“ Won’t you come in ? ” she asked the doctor politely when they came to the formidable pile of red brick where she lived.

“ Thanks. I don’t believe your folks will want me to stay to supper, and I am getting hungry. Hope you enjoyed your ride. Some day I ’ll come and take you for a trolley ride down towards the south.”

He shook her hand vigorously and laughed. Then he started briskly for the city, his hands thrust in his trousers’ pockets, his black felt hat drawn forward over his brows. Venetia had barely mounted the first bank of steps before she heard her name.

“ Say, Miss Venetia ! ”

The doctor was shouting back to her, one hand at the side of his mouth.

“ Don’t you worry about that pup! I think I can bring him round all right.”

She nodded, and stepped into the vestibule with a sense of relief from her companion. She knew that Dr. Coburn was what her brother called a “ mucker,” and her mother spoke of as a “ fellow.” Yet she recognized that there was something in the man to be respected, and this insight, it may be said, distinguished Venetia from her mother and her brother.

Robert Herrick.

(To be continued.)