The Project Gutenberg EBook of Max, by Katherine Cecil Thurston This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Max Author: Katherine Cecil Thurston Release Date: November 15, 2004 [EBook #14054] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAX *** Produced by Rick Niles, John Hagerson, Stephanie Fleck and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team. "I HAVE WAITED ALL MY LIFE FOR THIS" MAX A NOVEL BY KATHERINE CECIL THURSTON AUTHOR OF "THE MASQUERADER" "THE GAMBLER" ETC. ILLUSTRATED BY FRANK CRAIG HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON MCMX Published September, 1910. TABLE OF CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS PART I CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI PART II CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XVI CHAPTER XVII CHAPTER XVIII CHAPTER XIX CHAPTER XX CHAPTER XXI PART III CHAPTER XXII CHAPTER XXIII CHAPTER XXIV CHAPTER XXV CHAPTER XXVI CHAPTER XXVII CHAPTER XXVIII CHAPTER XXIX CHAPTER XXX CHAPTER XXXI CHAPTER XXXII CHAPTER XXXIII CHAPTER XXXIV CHAPTER XXXV PART IV CHAPTER XXXVI CHAPTER XXXVII CHAPTER XXXVIII CHAPTER XXXIX CHAPTER XL CHAPTER XLI ILLUSTRATIONS "I HAVE WAITED ALL MY LIFE FOR THIS" STANDING AGAIN IN THE OUTER COURT OF A HOUSE IN PETERSBURG TWO SOULS, DRAWN TOGETHER, TOUCHED IN A FIRST SUBTLE FUSION "WHY, BOY, THIS IS CLEVER—CLEVER—CLEVER!" THE IMPRESSION OF A MYSTERY FLOWED BACK UPON HIM "LOOK! THIS IS WHAT I SHALL DO. THIS!" THE COMPLETE SEMBLANCE OF THE WOMAN "C'EST LA VIE! L'ETERNELLE, LA TOUTE-PUISSANTE VIE!" PART I MAX CHAPTER I A NIGHT journey is essentially a thing of possibilities. To those who count it as mere transit, mere linking of experiences, it is, of course, a commonplace; but to the imaginative, who by gift divine see a picture in every cloud, a story behind every shadow, it suggests romance—romance in the very making. Such a vessel of inspiration was the powerful north express as it thundered over the sleeping plains of Germany and France on its night journey from Cologne to Paris. A thing of possibilities indeed, with its varying human freight—stolid Teutons, hard-headed Scandinavians, Slavs whom expediency or caprice had forced to descend upon Paris across the sea of ice. It was the month of January, and an unlikely and unlovely night for long and arduous travel. There were few pleasure-passengers on the express, and if one could have looked through the carriage windows, blurred with damp mist, one would have seen upon almost every face the look—resigned or resolute—of those who fare forth by necessity rather than by choice. In the sleeping-cars all the berths were occupied, but here and them throughout the length of the train an occasional traveller slept on the seat of his carriage, wrapped in coats and rugs, while in the dining-saloon a couple of sleepy waiters lurched to and fro in attendance upon a party of three men whose energy precluded the thought of wasting even the night hours and who were playing cards at one of the small tables. Up and down the whole overheated, swaying train there was the suggestion of mystery, of contrast and effect, and the twinkling eyes of the electric lamps seemed to wink from behind their drawn hoods as though they, worldly wise and watchful, saw the individuality—the inevitable story—behind the drowsy units who sat or lay or lounged unguarded beneath them. In one carriage, the fifth or sixth from the thundering engine, these lights winked and even laughed one to the other each time the train lurched over the points, and the dark, shrouding hoods quivered, allowing a glimpse at the occupant of the compartment. It was the figure of a boy upon which the twinkling lamp-eyes flickered—a boy who had as yet scarce passed the barrier of manhood, for the skin of the face was clean and smooth, and the limbs, seen vaguely under a rough overcoat, had the freedom and supple grace that belongs to early youth. He was sleeping, this solitary traveller—one hand under his head, the other instinctively guarding something that lay deep and snug in the pocket of his overcoat. His attitude was relaxed, but not entirely abandoned to the solace of repose; even in his sleep a something of self-consciousness seemed to cling to him—a need for caution that lay near to the surface of his drowsing senses—for once or twice he started, once or twice his straight, dark eyebrows twitched into a frown, once or twice his fingers tightened nervously upon their treasure. He was subconsciously aware that, deserted though the compartment was, it yet exhaled an alien suggestion, embodied in the rugs, the coats, the hand-baggage of the card-playing travellers, which was heaped upon the seat opposite. But, despite this physical uneasiness, he was dreaming as the train tore along through the damp, peaceful country—dreaming with that odd confusion of time and scene that follows upon keen excitement, stress of feeling or stress of circumstance. As he dreamed, he was standing again in the outer court of a house in Petersburg—a house to which he was debtor for one night's shelter; it was early morning and deadly cold. The whole picture was sharp as a cut crystal—the triple court-yard, the stone pavement, the gray well, and frozen pile of firewood. He saw, recognized, lost it, and knew himself to be skimming down the Nevskiy Prospekt and across the Winter Palace Square, where the great angel towers upon its rose-granite monument. Forward, forward he was carried, along the bank of the frozen Neva and over the Troitskiy bridge, the powdered snow stinging his face like pinpoints as it flew up from the nails in his little horse's shoes. Then followed a magnifying of the picture—massed buildings rising from the snow—buildings gold and turquoise-domed, that, even as they materialized, lost splendor and merged into the unpretentious frontage of the Finland station. The scroll of the dream unwound; the dreamer moved, easing his position, shaking back a lock of dark hair that had fallen across his forehead. He was no longer rocking to the power of the north express; he was standing on the platform at the end of a little train that puffed out of the Finland station— a primitive, miniature train, white with frost and powdered with the ashes of its wood fuel. The vision came and passed a sketch, not a picture—a suggestion of straight tracks, wide snow plains, and the blue, misty blur of fir woods. Then a shifting, a juggling of effects! Åbo, the Finnish port, painted itself upon his imagination, and he was embarked upon the lonely sledge-drive, to the harbor. He started in his sleep, shivered and sighed at that remembered drive. The train passed over new points, the hoods of the lamps swayed, the lights blinked and winked, and his mind swung onward in response to the physical jar. Åbo was obliterated. He was on board a ship—a ship ploughing her way through the ice-fields as she neared Stockholm; salt sea air flicked his nostrils, he heard the broken ice tearing the keel like a million files, he was sensible of the crucial sensation—the tremendous quiver—as the vessel slipped from her bondage into the cradle of the sea, a sentient thing welcoming her own element! The heart of the dreamer leaped to that strange sensation. He drew a long, sharp breath, and sat up, suddenly awake. It was over and done with—the coldness, the rigor, the region of ice bonds! The fingers of the future beckoned to him; the promises of the future lapped his ears as the waves had lapped the ship's sides. He looked about him, at first excitedly, then confusedly, then a little shamedfacedly, for we are always involuntarily shamed at being tricked by our emotions into a false conception. Drawing his hand from his coat-pocket, he stretched himself with an assumption of ease, as though he saw and recognized the twinkle in the electric lamps and spontaneously rose to its demands. The train was flying forward at unabated speed. Outside, the raw January air was clinging in a film to the carriage window; inside, the dim light and overheated air made an artificial atmosphere, enervating or stimulating according to the traveller's gifts. To this solitary voyager stimulation was obviously the effect produced, for, try as he might to cheat the inquisitive lamps, interest in every detail of his surroundings was portrayed in his face, in the poise of his head, the quickness of his glance as he gazed round the compartment, verifying the impression that he was alone. "STANDING AGAIN IN THE OUTER COURT OF A HOUSE IN PETERSBURG" Yes, he was absolutely alone! Everything was as it had been when he settled himself to sleep on the departure of the three strangers. There, on the opposite seat, were their rugs, their fur-lined coats, their illustrated papers—all the impedimenta of prosperous travellers; and there, on the rack above them, was his own modest hand-bag without initials or label—a common little bag that might have belonged to some poor Russian clerk or held the possessions of some needy Polish student. The owner's glance scanned and appraised it, then by suggestion fell to the plain rough overcoat that covered him from his neck to the tops of his high boots, and whose replica was to be seen any day in the meaner streets of Petersburg or Moscow. Like the bag, it was a little strange, a little incongruous in its comfortable surroundings—a little savoring of mystery. The traveller's pulses quickened, his being lifted to the moment, for in his soul was the spark of adventure, in his eyes the adventurous look—fearless, observant, questioning. In composition, in expression and essence, this boy was that free and fascinating creature, the born adventurer—high of courage, prodigal of emotion, capturer of the world's loot. The spirit within him shone out in the moment of solitude; he passed his hands down the front, of his coat, revelling in its coarse texture; he rose to his feet, turned to the sheet of gray, misted glass, and, letting down the window, leaned out into the night. The scene was vague and ghostly, but to eyes accustomed to northern whiteness it was full of suggestion, full of secrecy; to nostrils accustomed to keen, rarefied air there was something poignant and delicious in the scent of turned earth, the savor of vegetation. He could see little or nothing as the train rocked and the landscape tore past, but the atmosphere spoke to him as it speaks to blind men, penetrating his consciousness. Here were open spaces, tracts of country fructifying for the spring to come. A land of promise—of growth—of fulfilment! He closed his eyes, living in the suggestion, and his spirit sped forward with the onrush of the train. Somewhere beyond the darkness lay the land of his desires! Somewhere behind the veil shone the lights of Paris! With a quick, exulting excitement he laughed; but even as the laugh was caught and scattered to the winds by the thunder of the engine, his bearing changed, the excitement dropped from him, a mask of immobility fell upon his face, and he wheeled round from the window. The card-playing travellers had opened the door of the carriage. From his shadowy corner the boy eyed them; and they, alert from their game, slightly dazed by the darkness of the carriage, peered back at him, frankly curious. When they had left the compartment he had been a huddled figure demanding no attention; now he was awake and an individual, and human nature prompted interest. Each in turn looked at him, and at each new glance his coldness of demeanor deepened; until, as the eldest of the party came down the carriage and appropriated the seat beside him, he turned away, pulling up the window with resentful haste. "Don't do that!" said the third man, pausing in the doorway and speaking in French easily and pleasantly. "Don't do that—if you want the air!" The boy started and looked round. "I thank you! But I do not need the air!" The man smiled acquiescence, but as he stepped into the carriage he took a sharp look at the boy's clothes—the common Russian clothes—and a slightly questioning, slightly satirical expression crossed his face. He was a man who knew his world the globe over, and in his bearing lurked the toleration, the kindly scepticism that such knowledge breeds. "As you please!" he said, settling himself comfortably in the corner by the door, while the elder of his companions—a tall, spare American—crossed his long legs and lighted a thin black cigar, and the younger—a spruce young Englishman wearing an eye-glass and a small mustache—wrapped himself in his rugs, took a clean pocket-handkerchief from his dressing-case, and opened a large bundle of illustrated papers—French, German, and English. For a space the train rocked on. No one attempted to speak, and the Russian boy continued to stand by the window, pretending to look through the blurred panes, in reality wondering how he could with least commotion pass down the carriage to his own vacated place. At last the man with the long cigar broke the silence in a slow, cool voice that betrayed his nationality. "We're well on time, Blake," he remarked, drawing out his watch. The youth by the window shot an involuntary, fleeting glance at the two younger men, to see which would answer to the name; and the student of human nature noted the fact that he understood English. "Oh, it's a good service!" he acquiesced, the tolerant look—half sceptical, half humorous—- passing again over his face. "I don't know! I think we could do with another few kilometres to the hour." The thin man studied his flat gold watch with the loving interest of one to whom time is a sacred thing. At this point the youngest of the three raised his head. "Marvellous sight you have, McCutcheon! Wish I could see by this light!" McCutcheon leaned forward, replacing his watch. "What! Can't you see your picture-books? Let's have the blinkers off!" He rose, his long, spidery figure stretching up like a grotesque shadow, but as his arm went out to the nearest of the shrouded lamps he was compelled to draw back against the seat of the carriage, and an exclamation of surprise escaped him. Without warning or apology the Russian boy had turned from the window, and stepping down the carriage, had tumbled into his former seat, hunching himself up with his face to the cushions and his back to his fellow-travellers. It was a sudden and an uncivil proceeding. The man called Blake smiled; the Englishman shrugged his shoulders; the American, with a movement of quiet determination, drew back the lamp hoods. In the flood of light the carriage lost its air of mystery, and Blake, who had a fancy for the mysterious, dropped back into his corner and took out his cigar-case with a little feeling of regret. In traversing the world's pathways, beaten or wild, he always made a point of seeing the story behind the circumstance; and, had he realized it, a common instinct bound him in a triangular link to the peering, winking lamps, and to the Russian boy lying unsociably wrapped in his heavy coat. All three had an eye for an adventure. But the lights were up, and the curtain down—it was a theatre between the acts; and presently the calculating voice of McCutcheon broke forth again, as he relapsed into his original attitude, coiling up his long limbs and nursing his cigar to a glow. "I can't get over that 'four jacks,'" he said. "To think I could have been funked into seeing Billy at fifty!" Blake laughed. "'Twas the eye-glass did it, Mac! A man shouldn't be allowed to play poker with an eye-glass; it's taking an undue advantage." McCutcheon smiled his dry smile and shot a quizzical glance at the neat young Englishman, who had become absorbed in one of his papers. "Solid face, Blake!" he agreed. "Nothing so fine as an eye-glass for sheer bluff. What would Billy be without one? Well, perhaps we won't say. But with it you have no use for doubt—he's a diplomat all the time." The young man named Billy showed no irritation. With the composure which he wore as a garment, he went on with his occupation. For a time McCutcheon bore this aloofness, then he opened a new attack. "What are you reading, my son? Makes a man sort of want his breakfast to see that hungry look in your eyes. Share the provender, won't you?" Billy looked up sedately. "You fellows think my life's a game," he said. "But I tell you it takes some doing to keep in touch with things." Blake laughed chaffingly. "And the illustrated weekly papers are an excellent substitute for Blue- books?" Billy remained undisturbed. "It's all very well to scoff, but one may get a side-light anywhere. In diplomacy nothing's too insignificant to notice." Again Blake laughed. "The principle on which it offers you a living?" "Oh, come," said Billy, "that's rather rough! You know very well what I mean. 'Tisn't always in the serious reports you get the color of a fact, just as the gossip of a dinner-table is often more enlightening than a cabinet council." "Apropos?" "I was thinking of this Petersburg affair." "What? The everlasting Duma business?" McCutcheon drew in a long breath of smoke. Billy looked superior, as befitted a man who dealt in subtler matters than mere politics. "Not at all," he said. "The disappearance of the Princess Davorska." Here Blake made a murmur of impatience. "Oh, Billy, don't!" he said. "It's so frightfully banal." McCutcheon took his cigar from his mouth. "The woman who disappeared on the eve of her marriage?" "Yes," broke in Blake, "disappeared on the eve of her marriage to elope with some poet or painter, and set society by the ears. Thoroughly modern and banal!" The young diplomat glanced up once more. "I don't think there's any suggestion of a lover." "Fact is more potent than suggestion, Billy. Of course there is a lover. Princesses don't disappear alone." "You're a Socialist, Ned." Billy's eyes returned to his paper. "Like all good Socialists, crammed to the neck with class bigotry. Nobody is such an individualist as the man who advocates equality!" Blake smiled. "That seems to sound all right," he said; "but it doesn't remove the lover." The good-humored scepticism at last forced a way to Billy's susceptibilities. "Look here," he said, crossly, "if hearing's not believing, perhaps seeing is! Look at these pictures; they're not particularly modern or banal." He held out his paper, but Blake shook his head. "No! No, Billy, not for me. If it was some little Rumanian gypsy who had run away from her tribe I'd take her to my heart and welcome. But a Princess Davorska—no!" At this point McCutcheon stretched out his long arm and took the paper from Billy's hand. "Let's have a squint!" he said. "Lover or no lover, she must be a bit wide awake." And, curling himself up again, he began to read from the paper, in a monotonous murmuring voice: "'The Princess, as well as being a woman of artistic accomplishments, is an ardent sportswoman, having in her early girlhood hunted and shot with keen zest on her father's estates. The above picture shows her at the age of seventeen, carrying a gun.' By the Lord, she is wide awake!" he added, by way of comment. "She is wide awake carrying that gun, but I'd lay my money on the second picture. Say, Billy, she looks a queen in her court finery!" But here real disgust crossed Blake's face. "Oh, that'll do, Mac! Give us peace about the woman. I'm sick to death of all such nonsense. We're due in a couple of hours. I think I'll try for forty winks." He threw away his cigar and tucked his rug about him. McCutcheon glanced at him, and, seeing that he was in earnest, handed the paper back to Billy. "Thanks, Mac!" Blake murmured. "Sorry if I was a bear! Don't switch off the light, it won't bother me." He nodded, smiled, drew his rug closer about his knees, and settled himself to sleep with the ease of the accustomed traveller. For close upon an hour complete silence reigned in the heated carriage. Blake slept silently and peacefully; Billy went methodically through his papers, dropping them one by one at his feet as he finished with them; McCutcheon smoked, gazing into space with the blank expression of the strenuous man who has learned to utilize his momentary respites; while, stretched along the cushions of the carriage, his face hidden, his eyes wide open and attentive, lay the young Russian, his fingers tentatively caressing the treasure in the pocket of his coat. But at last the spell was broken. The diplomatic Englishman dropped his last paper, and McCutcheon stretched himself and looked once more at his watch. "Paris in an hour, Billy! Didn't those loafers in the dining-car promise us coffee somewhat about this time?" Billy looked up, unruffled of mind and body as in the first moment of the journey. "I believe they did," he said. "Tell you what! You jog their memories, while I go and wash. What about calling Ned?" At sound of his own name, Blake's eyes opened. His waking was characteristic of him. It was no slow recovery of the senses; he was asleep and then awake—fully, easily awake, with a complete consciousness of his position—a complete, assured grasp of time and place. "We're getting on, eh?" he said. "I suppose you're going to tub before those fat Belgians in the sleeping-car, Billy? If you are, keep a second place for me, like a good boy. There's nothing more fiendishly triumphant than taking a bath in the basin while the rest of the train is rattling the door-handle. Don't forget! Second place!" Then he turned to the American. "What about the coffee, Mac? I expect those poor devils of waiters have slept your order off." "I was just about to negotiate that coffee transaction." McCutcheon stood up. "You come too, my son! A little exercise will give you an appetite." He paused to stretch his long, lean body, and incidentally his glance fell upon their travelling companion, and he indicated the recumbent figure with a jerk of the head. "Say, Ned, ought we to wake our unsociable friend?" Blake cast one quick glance at the huddled form, then he answered, tersely: "Let him alone! He's not asleep—and, anyway, he understands English." At which McCutcheon made a comprehending grimace, and the two left the carriage. For many minutes the young Russian did not move; then, when positive certainty of his solitude had grown into his mind, he lifted himself on one elbow and looked cautiously about him. A change had passed over his face in the last hour—an interesting change. The smooth cheek that the night air had cooled to paleness was now flushed, and there was a spark of anger in the bright eyes. Unquestionably this boy had a temper and a spirit of his own, and both had been aroused. There was a certain arrogance, a certain contempt in his glance now as it swept the inoffensive coats and rugs of the departed travellers, a certain antagonism as he sat up, tossed back the lock of hair that had again fallen across his forehead, and turned his eyes to the heap of papers lying upon the carriage floor. For long he gazed upon these papers, as though they exercised a magnetic influence, and at last, with a swift impulse, extremely characteristic, he stretched out his arm and drew forth the lowest of the heap. He regained his former position with a quick, lithe movement of the body, and in an instant he was poring over the paper, the pages turning with incredible speed under the eagerness of his touch. At last he reached the page he sought, the page that had offered ground for discussion to the three voyagers an hour earlier. His eyes flashed, his fingers tightened, his dark head was bent lower over the paper. Two pictures confronted him. The first was of a woman in Russian court dress, who wore her jewels and her splendor of apparel with an air of pride and careless supremacy that had in it something magnificent, something semi-barbaric. The boy looked at this curious and arresting picture, but only for a moment; by some affinity, some subtle attraction, his eyes turned instantly to the second portrait—the girl carrying the gun —and as if in answer to some secret sympathy, some silent comprehension, the frown upon his brows relaxed and his lips parted. It was still the woman of the jewels and the splendid apparel, but it was a woman infinitely free, infinitely unhampered. The plain, serviceable clothes fitted the slight figure as though they had been long worn and loved; the hair was closely coiled, so that the young face looked out upon the world frank and unadorned as a boy's. Here, as in the first picture, the eyes looked forth with a curious, proud directness; but beneath the directness was a glint of humor, a flash of daring absent in the other face; the mouth smiled, seeming to anticipate life's secrets, the ungloved hand held the gun with a touch peculiarly caressing, peculiarly firm. The traveller looked, looked again, and then, with a deliberation odd in so slight a circumstance, folded the paper, rose, and stepped to the window of the carriage. The night mist beat in, still raw and cold, but somewhere behind the darkness was the stirring, the vague presage of the day to come. He leaned out, fingers close about the paper, lips and nostrils breathing in the suggestive, vaporous air. For a moment he stood, steadying himself to the motion of the train, palpitating to his secret thoughts; then, with a little theatricality all for his own edification, he opened his fingers and, freeing the paper, watched it swirl away, hang for a second like a moth against the lighted window, and vanish into the night. CHAPTER II 'JOURNEYS end in lovers' meeting.' The phrase conjures a picture. The court-yard of some inn, glowing ripe in the tints of the setting sun—open doors—an ancient coach disgorging its passengers! This —or, perhaps, some quay alive with sound and movement—cries of command in varying tongues— crowded gangways—rigging massed against the sky—all the paraphernalia of romance and travel. But the real journey—the journey of adventure itself—is frequently another matter: often gray, often loverless, often demanding from the secret soul of the adventurer spirit and inspiration, lest the blood turn cold in sick dismay, and the brain cloud under its weight of nostalgia. Paris in the dawn of a wet day is a sorry sight; the Gare du Nord in the hours of early morning is a place of infinite gloom. As the north express thundered into its recesses, waking strange and hollow echoes, the long sweep of the platform brought a shudder to more than one tired mind. A string of sleepy porters—gray silhouettes against a gray background—was the only sign of life. Colors there were none, lovers there were none, Parisian joy of living there was not one vestige. Paris! The murmur crept through the train, stirring the weariest to mechanical action. Paris! Heads were thrust through the windows, wraps and hand-bags passed out to the shadowy, mysterious porters who received them in a silence born of the godless hour and the penetrating, chilling dampness of the atmosphere. In the carriage fifth or sixth from the engine the three fellow-travellers greeted the arrival in the orthodox way. The tall American stretched his long limbs and groaned wearily as he got his belongings together, while the dapper young Englishman thrust his head out of the window and withdrew it as rapidly. "Beastly morning!" he announced. "Paris on a wet day is like a woman with draggled skirts." "Get rid of our belongings first, Billy, make epigrams after!" The man called Blake pushed him quietly aside and, stepping to the window, dropped a leather bag into the hands of a porter. Of the three, his manner was the most indifferent, his temper the most unruffled; and of the three, he alone remembered the fourth occupant of the carriage, for, being relieved of his bag, he turned with his hand still upon the window, and his eyes sought the youthful figure drawn with lonely isolation into its corner. "Do you want a porter?" he asked. The question was unexpected. The boy started and sat straighter in his seat. For one moment he seemed to sway between two impulses, then, with a new determination, he looked straight at his questioner with his clear eyes. "No," he said, speaking slowly and with a grave deliberation, "I do not need a porter. I have no luggage—but this." He rose, as if to prove the truth of his declaration, and lifted his valise from the rack. It was a simple movement, simple as the question and answer that had preceded it, but it held interest for Blake. He could not have analyzed the impression, but something in the boy's air touched him, something in the young figure so plainly clad, so aloof, stood out with sharp appeal in the grayness and unreality of the dawn. A feeling that was neither curiosity nor pity, and yet savored of both, urged him to further speech. As his two companions, anxious to be free of the train, passed out into the corridor, he glanced once more at the slight figure, at the high Russian boots, the long overcoat, the fur cap drawn down over the dark hair. "Look here! you aren't alone in Paris?" he asked in the easy, impersonal way that spoke his nationality. "You have people—friends to meet you?" For an instant the look that had possessed the boy's face during the journey—the look of suspicion akin to fear—leaped up, but on the moment it was conquered. The well-poised head was thrown back, and again the eyes met Blake's in a deliberate gaze. "Why do you ask, monsieur?" The words were clipped, the tone proud and a little cold. Another man might have hesitated to reply truthfully, but Blake was an Irishman and used to self- expression. "I ask," he said, simply, "because you are so young." A new expression—a new daring—swept the boy's mobile face. A spirit of raillery gleamed in his eyes, and he smiled for the first time. "How old, monsieur?" The question, the smile touched Blake anew. He laughed involuntarily with a sudden sense of friendliness. "Sixteen?—seventeen?" The boy, still smiling, shook his head. "Guess again, monsieur." Blake's interest flashed out. Here, in the gray station, in this damp hour of dawn, he had touched something magnetic—some force that drew and held him. A quality intangible and indescribable seemed to emanate from this unknown boy, some strange radiance of vitality that flooded his surroundings as with sunshine. "Eighteen, then!" He laughed once more, with a curious sense of pleasure. But from the corridor outside a slow voice was borne back on the damp, close air, forbidding further parley. "Blake! I say, Blake! For the Lord's sake, get a move on!" The spell was broken, the moment of companionship passed. Blake drifted toward the carriage door, the boy following. Outside in the corridor they were sucked into the stream of departing passengers—that odd medley of men and women, unadorned, jaded, careless, that a night train disgorges. Slowly, step by step, the procession made its way, each unit that composed it glancing involuntarily into the empty carriages that he passed—the carriages that, in their dimmed light, their airlessness, their débris of papers, seemed to be a reflection of his own exhausted condition; then a gust of chilly air told of the outer world, and one by one the travellers slid through the narrow doorway, each instinctively pausing to brace himself against the biting cold before stepping down upon the platform. At last it was Blake's turn. He, too, paused; then he, too, took the final plunge, shivered, glanced at where McCutcheon and the Englishman were talking to their porters, then turned to watch the Russian boy swing himself lithely down from the high step of the train. All about him was the consciousness of the awakening crowd, conveyed by the jostling of elbows, the deepening hum of voices. "Look here!" he said again, in response to his original impulse. "You have somebody to meet you?" The boy glanced up, a secret emotion burning in his eyes. "No, monsieur." "You are quite alone?" "Yes, monsieur." "And why are you here—to play or to work?" The question was unwarrantable, but an Irishman can dispense with warranty in a manner unknown to other men. It had ever been Blake's way to ask what he desired to know. This time no offence showed itself in the boy's face. "In part to work, in part to play, monsieur," he answered, gravely; "in part to learn life." The reply was strange to Blake's ears—strange in its grave sincerity, stranger still in its quiet fearlessness. "But you are such a child!" he cried, impulsively. "You—" Imperceptibly the slight figure stiffened, the proud look flashed again into the eyes. "Many thanks, monsieur, but I am older than you think—and very independent. I have the honor monsieur, to wish you good-bye." The tone was absolutely courteous, but it was final. He bowed with easy foreign grace, raised his fur cap, and, turning, swung down the platform and out of sight. Blake stood watching him—watching until the high head, the straight shoulders, the lithe, swinging body were but a memory; then he turned with a start, as a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and the pleasant, prosaic voice of the young Englishman assailed his ears. "My dear chap, what in the world are you doing? Not day-dreaming with the mercury at thirty?" "Foolish—but I was!" Blake answered, calmly. "I was watching that young Russian stalk away into the unknown, and I was wondering—" "What?" He smiled a little cynically. "I was wondering, Billy, what type of individual and what particular process fate will choose to let him break himself upon." The most splendid moment of an adventure is not always the moment of fulfilment, not even the moment of conception, but the moment of first accomplishment, when the adventurer deliberately sets his face toward the new road, knowing that his boats are burned. Nothing could have been less inspiring than the dreary Gare du Nord, nothing less inviting than the glimpse of Paris to be caught through its open doorways; but had the whole world laughed him a welcome, the young Russian's step could not have been more elastic, his courage higher, his heart more ready to pulse to the quick march of his thoughts, as he strode down the gray platform and out into the open. In the open he paused to study his surroundings. As yet the full tale of passengers had not emerged, and only an occasional wayfarer, devoid of baggage as himself, had fared forth into the gloom. Outside, the artificial light of the station ceased to do battle with nature, and only an occasional street lamp gave challenge to the gloomy dawn. The damp mist that all night had enshrouded Paris still clung about the streets like ragged grave-clothes, and at the edge of the pavement half a dozen fiacres were ranged in a melancholy line, the wretched horses dozing as they stood, the drivers huddled into their fur capes and numbed by the clinging cold. Everywhere was darkness and chill and the listless misery of a winter dawn, when vitality is at its lowest ebb and the passions of man are sunk in lethargy. Only a creature infinitely young could have held firm in face of such dejection, only eyes as alert and wakeful as those of this wayfaring boy could possibly have looked undaunted at the shabby streets with their flaunting travesty of joy exhibited in the dripping awnings of the deserted cafés, that offered Bière, Billard, and yet again Bière to an impassive world. But the eyes were wakeful, the soul of the adventurer was infinitely young. He looked at it all with a certain steadfastness that seemed to say, "Yes, I see you! You are hideous, slatternly, unfriendly; but through all the disguise I recognize you. Through the mask I trace the features—subtle, alluring, fascinating. You are Paris! Paris!" The idea quickened action as a draught of wine might quicken thought; his hand involuntarily tightened upon his valise, his body braced itself afresh, and, as if resigning himself finally to chance, that deity loved of all true adventurers, he stepped from the pavement into the greasy roadway. Seeing him move, a loafer, crouching in the shadow of the station, slunk reluctantly into the open and offered to procure him a fiacre; but the boy's shake of the head was determined, and, crossing the road, he turned to the left, gazing up with eager interest at the many hotels that rub shoulders in that uninteresting region. One after the other he reviewed and rejected them, moving onward with the excitement that is born of absolute uncertainty. Onward he went, without pause, until the pavement was intersected by a side- street, and peering up through the misty light he read the legend, "rue de Dunkerque." Rue de Dunkerque! It conveyed nothing to his mind. But was he not seeking the unknown? Again his head went up, again his shoulders stiffened, and, smiling to himself at some secret thought, he swung round the corner and plunged into the unexplored. Half way down the rue de Dunkerque stands the Hôtel Railleux. It is a tall and narrow house, somewhat dirty and entirely undistinguished; there is nothing to recommend it save perhaps an air of privacy, a certain insignificance that wedges it between the surrounding buildings in a manner tempting to one anxious to avoid his fellows. This quality it was that caught the boy's attention. He paused and studied the Hôtel Railleux with an attention that he had denied to the large and common hostelries that front the station. He looked at it long and meditatively, then very slowly and thoughtfully he walked to the end of the street. At the end of the street he turned, his mind made up, and, hurrying back, went straight into the hall of the hotel as though thirsting to pledge himself irrevocably to his decision. It is impossible for the sensible individual to see romance in this entry into a third-rate Parisian hotel —to see daring or to see danger—but the boy's heart was beating fast as the glass door swung behind him, and his tongue was dry as he stepped into the little office on the right of the poor hall. Here in the office the story of the streets was repeated. A dingy gas-jet shed a faint light, as though reluctantly awake; behind a small partition, half counter, half desk, a wan and sleepy—looking man was cowering over a stove. As the boy entered he looked up uncertainly, then he rose and smiled, for your Parisian is exhausted indeed when he fails to conjure up a smile. "Good-day, monsieur!" The words were a travesty in view of the miserable dawn, but the boy took heart. There was greeting in the tone. He moistened his lips, which felt dry as his tongue in his momentary nervousness, then he stepped closer to the counter. "Good-day, monsieur! I require a bedroom." "A bedroom? But certainly, monsieur!" The shrewd though tired eyes of the man passed over his visitor's clothes and the valise in his hand. "We can give you a most excellent room at"—he raised his eyebrows in tactful hesitation—"at five francs?" The boy's eyes opened in genuine, instant surprise. "For so little?" he exclaimed. Then, covered with confusion, he reddened furiously and stammered, "For—for so much, I mean?" The man in the office was all smooth, politeness, anxious to cover a foreigner's slip of speech. 'But certainly, no! If five francs was more than monsieur cared to pay, then for three francs there was a most charming, a most agreeable room on the fifth floor. True, it did not look upon the street, but then perhaps monsieur preferred quiet. If monsieur would give himself the trouble of mounting—' Monsieur, still confused by his own mistake, and nervously anxious to insist upon his position, repeated again that five francs was out of the question, and that, without giving himself the trouble of mounting, he would then and there decide upon the agreeable and quiet room at three francs. 'But certainly! It was understood!' The guardian of the office, now fully awake and aroused to interest in this princely transaction, disappeared from behind the counter into the back regions of the hotel, and could be heard calling "Jean! Jean!" in a high, insistent tone. After some moments of silence he returned, followed by a large and amiable individual in a dirty blue blouse, who had apparently but lately arisen from sleep. 'Now if monsieur would intrust his baggage to the valet—' The guardian of the office took a key from a nail in the wall. Jean stepped forward, pleased and self-conscious, and took the valise from the boy's hand. Then all three smiled and bowed. It was one of those foolish little comedies—utterly unnecessary, curiously pleasant—that occur twenty times a day in Parisian life. Involuntarily the adventurer's heart warmed to the pallid clerk and to the dirty hotel porter. He had arrived here without luggage, shabby, unrecommended, yet no princely compatriot of his own could have been made more sensible of welcome. He stepped out of the office and followed his guide, conscious that, if only for an instant, Paris had lifted her mask and smiled—the radiant, anticipated smile. There is no such unnecessary luxury as a lift in the Hôtel Railleux. At the back of the hall the spiral staircase begins its steep ascent, mounting to unimagined heights. Jean, breathing audibly, led the way, pausing at every landing to assure monsieur that the ascent was nothing—a mere nothing, and that before another thought could pass through monsieur's mind the fifth floor would be reached. The boy followed, climbing and ever climbing, until the meagre hand-rail appeared to lengthen into dream-like coils, and the threadbare, drab-hued carpet, with its vivid red border, to assume the proportions of some confusing scroll. But at length the end was reached, and Jean, beaming and triumphant, announced their goal. 'This way! If monsieur would have the goodness to take two steps in this direction!' He dived into a long, dark corridor, illuminated by a single flickering gas-jet, twin brother to that which lighted the office below; and, still eager, still breathing loudly, he ushered the guest toward what in his humble soul he believed to be the luxurious, the impressive bedroom supplied by the Hôtel Railleux at three francs a night. The boy looked about him as he passed down the dim corridor. Apparently he and Jean alone were awake in this gloomy maze of closed doors and sleeping passages. One sign of humanity—and one alone—came to his senses with a suggestion of sordid drama. On the floor, at the closed door of one of the rooms, stood a battered black tray on which reposed an empty champagne bottle and two soiled glasses. Life! His quick imagination conjured a picture—conjured and shrank from it. He turned away with a sense of sharp disgust and almost ran down the corridor to where Jean was fitting a key into the door of his prospective bedroom. "The room, monsieur!" Jean's voice was full of pride. He had lived for ten years in the Hôtel Railleux, working as six men and six women together would not have worked in the fashionable quarter, and he had never been shaken in his belief that Paris held no more inviting hostelry. The boy obediently stepped forward into the tiny apartment, in which a big wooden bedstead loomed out of all proportion. His movements were hasty, as though he desired to escape from some impression; his voice, when he spoke, was vague. "Very nice! Very nice!" he said. "And—and what is the view?" "The view? Oh, but monsieur will like the view!" Jean stepped to the window, drew back the heavy cretonne curtains, and threw open the long window, admitting a breath of chilling cold. "The court-yard! See, monsieur! The court-yard!" The boy came forward into the biting air and gazed down into the well-like depths of gloom, at the bottom of which could be discerned a small flagged court, ornamented by a couple of dwarfed and frost-bitten trees in painted tubs. Jean, watchful of the visitor's face, broke forth anew with inexhaustible tact. 'It was a fine view—monsieur would admit that! But, naturally, it was not the street! Now No. 107, across the corridor—at five francs—?' Monsieur was aroused. "No! No! certainly not. The view was of no consequence. The bed looked all right." 'The bed!' Here Jean spoke with deep feeling. 'There was no better bed in Paris. Had he not himself put clean sheets on it that day?' He turned from the window, and with the hand of an expert displayed the beauties of the sparse blankets, the cotton sheets, and the mountainous double mattress. 'But monsieur was anxious to retire? Doubtless monsieur would sleep until déjeuner? A most excellent déjeuner was served in the salle-à-manger on the second floor.' The words flowed forth in a stream—agreeable, monotonous, reminiscent of the far-away province that had long ago bred this good creature. Suddenly the exhaustion of the long journey, the sleep so long denied rose about the traveller like a misty vapor. He longed for solitude; he pined for rest. "I am satisfied with everything," he said, abruptly. "Leave me. I have not been in bed for two nights." A flood of sympathy overspread Jean's face: he threw up his hands. "Poor boy! Poor boy! What a terrible thing!" With a touch as light as a woman's his work-worn fingers smoothed the pillow invitingly, and, tiptoeing to the door, he disappeared in tactful and silent comprehension of the situation. Vaguely the boy was conscious of his departure. A great lassitude was falling upon him, making him value the isolation of his three-franc room with a deep gratitude, turning his gaze toward the unpromising bed with an indescribable longing. Mechanically, as the door closed, he threw off his heavy overcoat, kicked off his high boots, discarded his coat and trousers, and, without waiting to search in his bag for another garment, stepped into bed and curled himself up in the flannel shirt he had worn all day. The bed was uncomfortable with that extraordinary discomfort of the old-fashioned French bed, that feels as though it were padded with cotton wool of indescribable heaviness. The sheets were coarse, the multitudinous clothes were weighty without being warm, but no prince on his bed of roses ever rested with more luxury of repose than did this young adventurer as, drawing the blankets to his chin, he stretched his limbs with the slow, delicious enjoyment born of long travel. Jean had drawn the cretonne curtains, but through their chinks streaks of bluish, shadowy light presaged the coming day. From his lair the boy looked out at these ghostly fingers of the morning, then his eyes travelled round the dark room until at last they rested upon his clothes lying, as he had thrown them, on the floor. He looked at them—the boots, the coat and trousers, the heavy overcoat—and suddenly some imperative thought banished sleep from his eyes. He sat up in bed; he shivered as the cold air nipped his shoulder; then, unhesitatingly, he slipped from between the sheets and slid out upon the floor. The room was small; the clothes lay within an arm's length. He shivered again, stooped, and, picking up the overcoat, dived his hand into the deep pocket, and drew forth the packet that he had guarded so tenaciously in the train. For a moment he stood looking at it in the blue light of the dawn—a thick brown packet, seven or eight inches long, tied with string and sealed. Once or twice he looked at it, seemingly lost in reflection; once or twice he turned it about in his hand as if to make certain it was intact; then, with a deep sigh indicative of satisfaction, he stepped back into bed, slipped the packet under his pillow and, with his fingers faithfully enlaced in the string, fell asleep. CHAPTER III IT was eleven o'clock when the boy woke. All the excitement of the past days had culminated in the great exhaustion of the night before. He had slept as a child might sleep—dreamlessly, happily, unthinkingly. In that silent hour Nature had drawn him into her wide embrace, lulling him with a mother's gentleness; and now, in the moment of waking, it seemed that again the same beneficent agency was dispensing love and favor, for he opened his eyes upon a changed world. A magician's wand had been waved over the city during his hours of sleep; the mist and oppression of the night had disappeared with the darkness. Paris was under the dominion of the frost. Instinctively, even before his eyelids lifted, the northern soul within him apprised him of this change. He inhaled the crisp coldness of the air with a vague familiarity; he opened his eyes slowly and stared about the unknown room in an instant of hesitating doubt; then, with a great leap of the spirit, he recognized his position. Last night—the days and nights that had preceded it—flooded his consciousness, and in a moment he was out of bed and pulling back the drab-hued curtains that hid the window. Having freed the daylight, he leaned out, peering greedily down into the well-like court, where even the stunted trees in their painted tubs were coated white with rime; then, with another impulse, as quickly conceived, as quickly executed, he drew back into the room, fired with the desire to be out and about in this newly created world. By day, the details of the room stood out with a prominence that had been denied them in the dim candle-light of the night before, and he realized now, what had escaped him then, that there w...