The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lay Anthony, by Joseph Hergesheimer This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: The Lay Anthony A Romance Author: Joseph Hergesheimer Release Date: May 1, 2016 [EBook #51921] Last Updated: March 12, 2018 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAY ANTHONY *** Produced by David Widger from page images generously provided by Google Books THE LAY ANTHONY A Romance By Joseph Hergesheimer New York & London Mitchell Kennerley 1914 “... if in passing from this deceitful world into true life love is not forgotten,... I know that among the most joyous souls of the third heaven my Fiametta sees my pain. Pray her, if the sweet draught of Lethe has not robbed me of her,... to obtain my ascent to her.” —Giovanni Boccaccio TO DOROTHY THIS FIGMENT OF A PERPETUAL FLOWERING THE LAY ANTHONY CONTENTS I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV XXVI XXVII XXVIII XXIX XXX XXXI XXXII XXXIII XXXIV XXXV XXXVI N XXXVII XXXVIII XXXIX XL XLI XLII XLIII XLIV XLV XLVI XLVII XLVIII XLIX L LI LII LIII LIV LV LVI I—A ROMANCE OT for the honor of winning the Vanderbilt Cup, nor for the glory of pitching a major league baseball team into the world's championship, would Tony Ball have admitted to the familiar and derisive group in the drugstore that he was—in the exact, physical aspect of the word—pure. Secretly, and in an entirely natural and healthy manner, he was ashamed of his innocence. H e carefully concealed it in an elaborate assumption of wide worldly knowledge and experience, in an attitude of cynical comprehension, and indifference toward girls. But he might have spared himself the effort, the fictions, of his pose—had he proclaimed his ignorance aloud from the brilliantly lighted entrance to the drugstore no one who knew him in the midweek, night throng on Ellerton's main street would have credited Anthony with anything beyond a thin and surprising joke. He was, at twenty, the absolute, adventurous opposite of any conscious or cloistered virtue: the careless carriage of his big, loose frame; his frank, smiling grey eyes and ample mouth; his very, drawling voice— all marked him for a loiterer in the pleasant and sunny places of life, indifferent to the rigors of a mental or moral discipline. The accumulated facts of his existence fully bore this out: the number of schools from which, playing superlative baseball, he had been still obliged to leave, carrying with him the cordial good will of master and fellow, for an unconquerable, irresponsible laxity; the number and variety of occupations that had claimed him in the past three years, every one of which at their inception certain, he felt confident, to carry him beyond all dreams and necessity of avarice; and every one, in his rapidly diminishing interest, attention, or because of persistent, adverse conditions over which, he asseverated, he had no control, turning into a fallow field, a disastrous venture; and, conclusively, the group of familiars, the easy companions of idle hours, to which he had gravitated. He met his mates by appointment at Doctor Allhop's drugstore, or by an elaborate system of whistled formulas from the street, at which he would rise with a muttered excuse from the dinner table and disappear.—He was rarely if ever sought outright at his father's house; it was quite another sort of boy who met and discoursed easily with sisters, who unperturbed greeted mothers face to face. It would have been useless, had he known it, to protest his virtue inside the drugstore or out; a curious chain of coincidents had preserved it. Again and again he had been at the point of surrendering his involuntary Eden, and always the accident, the interruption, had befallen, always he had retired in a state of more or less orderly celibacy. On the occasion of one of those nocturnal, metropolitan escapades by which matured boys, in a warm, red veil of whiskey, assert their manhood and independence, he had been thrust in a drunken stupor into the baggage car of the “owl” train to Ellerton. Instances might be multiplied: life, in its haphazard manner, its uncharted tides and eddies sweeping arbitrarily up and down the world, had carelessly preserved in him that concrete ideal which myriads of heroic and agonized beings had striven terribly and in vain to ward. And so it happened, when Doctor Allhop turned with an elaborate impropriety from the pills he was compounding in a porcelain pestle, that Anthony's laugh was loudest, his gusto most marked, in the group gathered at the back of the drugstore. A wooden screen divided them, hid the shelves of bottles, the water sink, and the other properties and ingredients of the druggist's profession, from the glittering and public exhibition of the finished article, the marble slab and silver mouths of the sodawater fountain, the uninitiated throng. He was sitting on a case of prepared food, his legs thrust out before him, and a thread of smoke coiling bluely from the cigarette held in his broad, scarred hand. There was a little gay song on his lips, and a roving, gay glint in his direct gaze. At frequent intervals he surveyed with approbation maroon socks and a pair of new and shining pumps; the rest of his apparel was negligent. The sole chair was occupied by the plump bulk of Thomas Addington Meredith, to whom a sharp nose in a moonlike countenance lent an expression of constant inquiry and foxy caution. He was elaborately apparelled in a suit which boasted a waistcoat draped with the gold chain of an authentic timepiece; while, closing a silver cigarette case scrolled large with his initials, a fat finger bore a ruby that, rumor circulated, had been the gift of a married woman. Lounging against a shelf Alfred Craik gazed absently at his blackened and broken fingernails, his greasy palms. He was Anthony's partner in the current industry of a machine shop and garage, maintained in a dilapidated stable on the outskirts of Ellerton. It was a concern mainly upheld by a daily levy on the Ball family for necessary tools and accessories. He was, as always, silent, detached. But William Williams amply atoned for any taciturnity on the part of the others; he had returned a short while before from two checkered years in the West; and, a broad felt hat cinched with a carved leather hand pushed back from his brow, and waving the formidable stump of a cigar, he expiated excitedly on the pleasures of that far, liberal land. “Why,” he proclaimed, “I owe a saloon keeper in San Francisco sixty-five dollars for one round of drinks—the joint was full and it was up to me... nothing but champagne went, understand! He knows he'll get it. Why, I collared ten dollars a day overseeing sheep. I cleaned up three thousand in one little deal; it was in Butte City; it lasted nine days. But 'Frisco's the place—all the girls there are good sports, all the men spenders.” “What did you come back East for?” Alfred Craik demanded; “why didn't you stay right with it?” “I got up against it,” William grinned; “the old man wouldn't give me another stake.” The thought of the glories he had been forced to relinquish started him afresh. “I cleaned up enough in a week at billiards,” he boasted, “to keep me in Ellerton a year.” “Didn't Bert Dingley take four bits from you last night at Hinkle's?” Anthony lazily asked. “That farmer!” the other scoffed; “I had a rank cue; they are all rank at Hinkle's. I'll match him in a decent parlor for any amount.” “How much will you put up?” Meredith demanded; “I will back Bert.” “How much have you got?” William queried. “How much have you?” “If this was San Francisco I could get a hundred.” “What have you got in real coin, Bill?” Tony joined in. “Three nickles,” William Williams admitted moodily. “I've got thirty-five cents,” Thomas added. “I wish I could get a piece of change.” “How's the car?” Anthony turned to hiss partner in the lull that followed. The “car,” their sole professional charge, had been placed in their hands by an optimistic and benevolent connection of the Balls. “I had the differential apart again to-day,” Alfred responded, “but I can't find that grinding anywhere. It will have to be all torn down,” he announced with sombre enthusiasm. “You have had that dam' thing apart three times in the last four weeks, and every time you put it together it's worse,” Anthony protested; “the cylinder casing leaks, and God knows what you did to the gears.” “I wish I had a piece of change,” Thomas Meredith repeated, in a manner patently mysterious. “A temporary sacrifice of your tin shop—” Doctor Allhop suggested, tinning from the skilful moulding of the pills on a glass slab. “Not a chance! the family figurehead announced that he had taken my watch 'out' for the last time.” “He wants to plaster it on some Highschool skirt,” Alfred announced unexpectedly. “This robbing the nursery makes me ill,” William protested. “Out in Denver there are real queens with gold hair—” His period was lost in a yapping chorus from the west-wearied circle. “Take it to bed with you,” he was entreated. “Nothing in the Highschool can reach these,” Meredith assured them, “this is the real thing—an all night seance. They have just moved in by the slaughter house; a regular pipe—their father is dead, and the old woman's deaf. Two sisters... one has got red hair, and the other can kick higher'n you can hold your hand. The night I went I had to leave early, but they told me to come hack... any night after nine, and bring a friend.” “I'll walk around with you,” William Williams remarked negligently. “Not on three nickles. They told me to fetch around a couple of bottles of port wine, and have a genuine party.” Anthony Ball listened with rapidly growing attention, while he fingered three one dollar bills wadded into the bottom of his pocket. He felt his blood stir more rapidly, beating in his ears: vague pictures thronged his brain of girls with flaming hair, dexterous, flashing limbs, white frills, garters. With an elaborate air of unconcern he asked: “Are they goodlookers?” “Oh, Boy! they have got that hidden fascination.” L B Anthony made a swift reckoning of the price of port; it would wipe out the sum he was getting together for badly needed baseball shoes.—Red hair!—He could count on no further assistance from his father that month; the machine shop at present was an expense. “Got any coin?” Meredith demanded. “A few.” The other consulted with importance the ostentatious watch. “Just the minute,” he announced. “Come along; we can get the port at the Eagle; we'll have a Paris of a time.” Doctor Allhop offered an epigrammatic parallel between two celebrated planets. “I need new ball shoes,” Anthony temporized; “I ripped mine the last game.” Meredith rose impatiently. “Charge them to the family,” he ejaculated. “But if you don't want to get in on this, there are plenty of others. Two or three dollars are easy to raise in a good cause. Why, the last night I spent in the city cost me seventeen bucks.” “I guess I'll come.” Anthony instinctively barred his sudden eagerness from his voice. He rose, and was surprised to find that his knees were trembling. His face was hot too.—he wondered if it was red? if it would betray his inexperience? “If they hand me any Sundayschool stuff,” he proclaimed bigly, “I'll step right on it; I'm considerably wise to these dames.” “This is the real, ruffled goods.” Meredith settled a straw hat with a blue band on his sleek head, and Anthony dragged a faded cap from his pocket, which he drew far over his eyes. William Williams regarded them enviously. Craik's thoughts had wandered far, his lips moved silently. And Doctor Allhop had disappeared into the front of the drugstore. II. ET'S get along,” Anthony said in a a thick, strange voice. He stumbled forward; his eyes were hot, blurred; he tried in vain to wink clear his vision. Suddenly his elbow struck sharply against a shelf, and there was an answering crash, the splintering of glass smashing upon the floor. Doctor Allhop hurried in to the scene of the disaster. “You young bull among the bottles!” he exclaimed in exasperated tones; “a whole gross of perfume, all the white lilac, lost.” Anthony Ball stood motionless, embarrassed and annoyed by the accident; and great, heavy coils of the scent rose about him; they filled his nostrils with wave on wave of pungent odor, and stung his eyes so that he shut them. The scent seemed to press about him, to obstruct his breathing, weigh upon his heart; he put out a hand as if to ward it off. It seemed to him that great masses of the flower surrounded him, shutting him with a white, sweet wall from the world. He swayed dizzily; then vanquished the illusion with an expression of regret for the damage he had wrought. The Doctor was on his knees, brushing together the debris; William Williams guffawed; and Craik smiled idly. Meredith swore, tapping a cigarette on his silver case. “You're a parlor ornament, you are,” he told Anthony. A feeling of impotence enveloped the latter, a sullen resentment against an occurrence the inevitable result of which must descend like a shower of cold water upon his freshly-stirred desires. “I am sorry as hell, Doctor,” he repeated; “what did that box cost you?” “Six seventy,” Allhop shot impatiently over his shoulder. Anthony produced his three dollars, and, smoothing them, laid the sum on a table. “I will stop in with the rest to-morrow morning,” he said. The Doctor rose and turned, partly mollified; but, to avoid the argument which, he felt, might follow, Anthony strode quickly out into the drugstore. There at the white marble sodawater fountain a bevy of youth was consuming colorific cones of ice cream, drinking syrupy concoctions from tall, glistening glasses. They called him by name, but he passed them without a sign of recognition, still the victim of his jangling sensibilities. III AY STREET was thronged; the shops displayed broad, lighted windows filled with their various merchandise; in front of a produce store a row of chickens hung bare, bright blue and yellow, head down; from within came the grinding of a coffee machine, the acrid voices of women bargaining. The glass doors to the fire-engine house stood open, the machines glimmering behind a wide demilune of chairs holding a motley assemblage of men. Further along, from above, came the shuffle of dancing feet, the thin, wiry wail of violins. At the corners groups of youths congregated, obstructing the passerby, smirking and indulging in sudden, stridulous hursts of laughter. The sky was infinitely remote, intensely, tenderly blue, the stars white as milk; from the immediately surrounding countryside came the scented breaths of early summer—the trailing sweetness of locust blooms, of hidden hedges of honeysuckle, of June roses, and all H the pungent aroma of growing grasses, leaves, of fragile and momentary flowers. Anthony made his way brusquely through the throng, nodding shortly to the countless salutations that marked his progress. The youths all knew him, and the majority of the men; women stopped in their sharp haggling to smile at him; garlands of girls gay in muslins “Mistered” him with pretty propriety, or followed him more boldly over their shoulders with inviting eyes. He impatiently disregarded his facile popularity: the tumult within him settled into a dull, unreasoning anger against the universe at large. He still owed Doctor Allhop four dollars and seventy cents; he had told the Doctor that he would pay to-morrow; and he would have to go to his father. The latter was a rigorously just man, Anthony gladly recognized, the money would be instantly forthcoming; but he was not anxious to recall the deficiencies of his present position to his father just then. He had passed twenty, and—beyond his ability to cause a baseball to travel in certain unexpected tangents, and a limited comprehension of the conduct of automobiles—he was totally without assets, and without any light on the horizon. He had been willing to work, he reminded himself resentfully, but bad luck had overtaken him at every turn. The venture before the machine shop—a scheme of squabs, the profits of which, calculated from an advertisement, soared with the birthrate of those prolific birds, had been ruined by rats. The few occasions when he had neglected to feed the pigeons, despite the frank and censorious opinion of the family, had had little or nothing to do with that misfortune. And, before that, his kennel of rabbit dogs had met with an untimely fate when a favorite bitch had gone mad, and a careful commonwealth had decreed the death of the others. If his mother could but be won from the negative she had placed upon baseball as a professional occupation, he might easily rise through the minor leagues to a prideful position in the ranks of the national pastime—“Lonnie This” was paid fourteen hundred yearly for his prowess with the leather sphere, “Hans That's” removal from one to another club had involved thousands of dollars. He heard his name pronounced in a peremptory manner, and stopped to see the relative whose automobile had been placed in his care cross the street. “What in the name of the Lord have you young dunces done to my car?” the older man demanded. “We have been trying to locate that grinding,” Anthony told him in as conciliatory manner as he could assume. “Well,” the other proceeded angrily, “you have ruined it this time; the gears slid around like a plate of ice cream.” “It was nothing but a pile of junk when we took it,” Tony exploded; “why don't you loosen up and get a real car?” “I took it to Feedler's. You can send me a bill to-morrow.” “There will be no bill. I'm sorry you were not satisfied, Sam.” “You are the most shiftless young dog in the county,” the other told him in kindlier tones; “why don't you take hold of something, Anthony?” Anthony swung on his heel and abruptly departed. He had taken hold, he thought hotly, times without number, but everything broke in his grasp. The stores on Bay Street grew more infrequent, the rank of monotonous brick dwellings closed up, family groups occupied the steps that led to the open doors. The crowd grew less, dwindling to a few aimless couples, solitary pedestrians. He soon stopped, before his home. Opposite the gaunt skeleton of a building operation rose blackly against the pale stars. The aged lindens above him, lushly leaved, cast an intenser gloom, filled with the warm, musty odor of the sluiced pavement, about the white marble steps. The hall, open before him, was a cavern of coolness; beyond, from the garden shut from the street by an intricate, rusting iron fence, he heard the deliberate tones of his sister Ellie. Evidently there was a visitor, and he entered the hall noiselessly, intent upon passing without notice to his room above. But Ellie had been watching for him, and called before he had reached the foot of the stairs. IV E made his way diffidently through a long window to the lawn; where he saw his sister, a glimmering, whitish shape in the heavily overgrown garden, conversing with a figure without form or detail, by a trellis sagging beneath a verdurous weight. “Oh, Tony!” she called; “here's Mrs. Dreen.” He leaned forward awkwardly, and grasped a slim, jewelled hand. “I didn't know you were back from France,” he told the indistinct woman before him. “But you read that Mr. Dreen had resigned the consulship at Lyons,” a delicate, rounded voice rejoined, “and you should have guessed that we would come home to Ellerton. My dear Ellie,” she turned to the girl, “you have no idea how delighted James is at being here once more. He has given the farmer notice, and insists that he is going to cultivate his own acres. He was up this morning at six; fancy, after France and his late déjeuner. And Eliza adores it; she spends the day with a gardener, planning flowerbeds.” Anthony slipped into an easy posture on the thick, damp sod. Although he had not seen Mrs. James Dreen since his childhood, when she had accompanied her husband abroad to a consular post, he still retained a pleasant memory of her magnetic and precise charm, the memory of her harmonious personality, the beauty of her apparel and rings. “How is Eliza?” he asked politely, and with no inward interest; “she must be a regular beauty by now.” “No,” Mrs. Dreen returned crisply, “she is not particularly goodlooking, but she has always told me the truth. Eliza is a dear.” Anthony lit a cigarette, and flipped the match in a minute gold arc, extinguished in the night. A “I am decidedly uneasy about Eliza though,” she continued to Ellie; “to tell the truth, I am not sure how she will take over here. She is a serious child; I would say temperamental, but that's such an impossible word. She is absolutely and transparently honest and outspoken—it's ghastly at times. The most unworldly person alive; with her thought and action are one, and often as not her thoughts are appalling. All that, you know, doesn't spell wisdom for a girl.” “Yet James and I couldn't bear to... make her harder. A great deal of care... If she is my daughter, Ellie, she is exquisite—so sensitive, sympathetic...” Anthony, absorbed in the misfortune that had overtaken the machine shop, the impending, inevitable interview with his father, so justly rigorous, hardly gathered the sense of Mrs. Dreen's discourse. Occasional phrases, familiar and unfamiliar terms, pierced his abstraction.—“Colombin's.” “James' siatica.” “Camille Marchais.” Then her words, centering about a statement that had captured his attention, became coherent, significant. “Only a small affair,” Mrs. Dreen explained; “to introduce Eliza to Ellerton. Nothing on a large scale until winter.... Dancing, or rather what goes down for dancing to-day. I am asking our old intimates, and have written a few informal cards.” An automobile drew up smoothly before the Balls; its rear light winked like an angry red eye through the iron fence. Mrs. Dreen rose. In the gloom her face was girlish; there was a blur of lace at her throat, a glimmer of emeralds. “Mind you come,” she commanded Ellie. “And you too, without fail,” to Anthony. “Now that Hydrangea House is open again we must have our friends about us. Heavens! Howard Ball's children and mine grown up!” She moved gracefully across to a garden gate. Anthony assisted her into the motorcar; the door closed with a snap. Ellie had sunk back into her chair, and was idly twisting her fingers in the grass at her side. At her back the ivied wall of the house beyond stirred faintly with sparrows. A misshapen moon swung apparently up from and through the building frame opposite, and faint shadows unfolded on the grass. Anthony flung himself moodily by his sister. “Sam's taken his car from us,” he informed her; “that will about shut up the shop.” “Then perhaps you will bring back the screwdrivers.” “To-morrow.” “What are you going to do, Tony?” “Tell me.” “A big strong fellow... there mast be something.” “Mother won't let me play ball in the leagues.” “Perhaps she will; we'll talk to her; it's better than nothing.” “I broke a box of rotten perfume at the drugstore, and owe the Doctor four seventy.” “It's too bad—father is never free from little worries; you are always getting into difficulties. You are different from other boys, Anthony—there don't seem to be any place in life for you; or you don't make a place, I can't tell which. You have no constructive sense, and no feeling of responsibility. What do you want to do with yourself?” “I don't know, Ellie, honestly,” he confessed. “I try like the devil, make a thousand resolutions, and then—I go off fishing. Or if I don't things go to the rats just the same.” “Well,” she rose, “I'm going up. Don't bother father about that money, I'll let you have it. It's perfectly useless to tell you to return it.” “I swear you will get it next week,” he proclaimed gratefully. “The baseball association owes me for two games.” “Haven't you promised it?” “That's so!” he exclaimed ruefully. She laughed and disappeared into the house. V BLACK depression settled over him; life appeared a huge conspiracy against his success, his happiness. The future, propounded by Ellie, was suddenly stripped of all glamor, denuded of all optimistic dreams; he passed through one of those dismaying periods when the world, himself, his pretentions, were revealed in the clear and pitiless light of reality. His friends, his circumstances, his hopes, held out no promise, no thought of pleasure. Behind him his life lay revealed as a series of failures, before him it was plotted without security. The plan, the order, that others saw, or said that they saw, presented to him only a cloudy confusion. The rewards for which others struggled, aspired, which they found indispensable, had been ever meaningless to him—to money he never gave a thought; a society organized into calls, dancing, incomprehensible and petty values, never rose above his horizon. He was happiest in the freedom of the open, the woods; in the easy company of casual friends, black or white, kindly comment. He would spend a day with his dogs and gun, sitting on a stump in a snowy field, listening to the eager yelping in the distant, blue wood, shooting a rare rabbit. Or tramping tirelessly the leafy paths of autumn. Or, better still, swinging through the miry October swales, coonhunting after midnight with lantern and climbers. But now those pleasures, in anticipated retrospect, appeared bald, unprofitable. Prolonged indefinitely, he divined, they would pall; T they did not offer adequate material, aim, for the years. For a moment he saw, grinning hatefully at him, the spectre of what he might become; he passed such men, collarless and unshaven, on the street comers, flinging them a scornful salutation. He had paid for their drinks, hearkening negligently to their stereotyped stories, secretly gibing at their obvious goodfellowship, their eager, tremulous smiles. They had been, in their day, great rabbit hunters... detestable. The mood vanished, the present closed mercifully about him, leaving him merely defiant. The townclock announced the hour in slow, jarring notes. A light shone above from Ellie's room, and he heard his father's deliberate footsteps in the hall, returning from the Ellerton Club, where, as was his invariable nightly habit, he had played cooncan. The moon, freed from the towering beams, was without color. Anthony rose, and flung away a cold, stale cigarette; the world was just like that—stale and cold. He proceeded toward the house, when he heard footfalls on the pavement; in the obscurity he barely made out a man and woman, walking so closely as to be hardly distinguishably separate. They stopped by the fence, only a few feet from where he stood concealed in the shadows, and the man took the woman's hands in his own, bending over her. Then, suddenly, clasping her in his arms, he covered her upturned face with passionate kisses. With a little, frightened gasp she clung to his shoulders. The kisses ceased. Their strained, desperate embrace remained unbroken.—It seemed that each was the only reality for the other in a world of unsubstantial gloom, veiled in the shifting, silvery mist of a cold and removed planet. The woman breathed with a deep, sobbing inspiration; and, when she spoke, Anthony realized that he was eavesdropping, and walked swiftly and cautiously into the house. But the memory of that embrace; accompanied him up the stairs, into his room. It haunted him as he lay, cool and nearly bare, on his bed. It filled him with a profound and unreasoning melancholy, new to his customary, unconscious animal exuberance. All at once he thought of the redhaired girl who liked port wine; and, as he fell asleep, she stood before him, leering slyly at the side of that other broken shape which threatened him out of the future. VI HE shed that held the machine shop and garage fronted upon an informal lane skirting the verdurous border of the town. Beyond the fence opposite a broad pasturage dipped and rose to the blackened ruins of a considerable brick mansion, now tenanted by a provident colony of Italians; further hill topped green hill, the orchards drawn like silvery scarves about their shoulders, undulating to the sky. Back of the shed ranged the red roofs and tree-tops of the town. When Anthony arrived at the seat of his industry the grass was flashing with dew and the air a thrill with the buoyant piping of robins. He found the door open, and Alfred Craik awaiting him. “She's gone,” Alfred informed him. “Sam told me last night; it was your infernal tinkering... you can't let a machine alone,” Anthony dropped beside the other on the door sill. “Could we get another car, do you think?” Alfred demanded; “I had almost finished a humming experiment on Sam's.” “This garage is closed,” Anthony pronounced; “it's out of existence. The family are yelping for the screwdrivers. What do we owe?” “Three ninety to Feedler for 'gas,' and a month's rent.” “We're bankrupt,” the other immediately declared. He rose, and proceeded to collect the tools that littered the floor; then he removed the sign, “Ball and Craik. Machine Shop and Garage.”, from the door, and the shed relapsed into its nondescript, somnolent decay. “There's a game with Honeydale to-day,” Anthony resumed his seat; “I'm to pitch that, and another Saturday; and, hear me, boy, I need the money.” Alfred gazed over the orchards, beyond the hills, into the sky, and made no answer. It was evident that he was lost in a vision of gloriously disrupted machinery. His silence spread to Anthony, who settled back with a cigarette into the drowsy stillness. The minutes passed, hovering like bees, and merged into an hour. They could hear a horse champing in the pasture; the wail of an Italian infant came to them thinly across the green; behind them sounded mellow the tin horn of the shad vendor. Anthony roused himself reluctantly, recalling the debt he had to discharge at the drugstore. Elbe's crisp five dollar bill lay in his pocket. “Later,” he nodded, and made his way over the shady brick pavements, through the cool perspective of maple-lined streets, where summer dresses fluttered in spots of subdued, bright color, to Doctor Allhop's. The Doctor was absent, and Anthony tendered the money, with a short explanation, to the clerk. The latter smartly rang the amount on the cash register, and placed thirty cents on the counter. “Two packs of Dulcinas,” Anthony required, and dropped the cigarettes into his pocket. He made his way in a leisurely fashion toward home and the midday meal. At the table his mother's keen grey eyes regarded him with affectionate concern. “How do you feel, Tony?” she asked. “You were coughing last night... take such wretched care of yourself—” His father glanced up from the half- masted sheet of the Ellerton Bugle. He was a spare man, of few words, with a square-cut beard about the lower part of an austere countenance. “What's the matter with him?” he demanded crisply. “Nothing,” Anthony hastily protested; “you ought to know mother.” After lunch he extended himself smoking on the horsehair sofa in the front room. It was a spacious chamber, with a polished floor, A and well-worn, comfortable chairs; in a corner a lacquered table bore old blue Canton china; by the door a jar of roses dropped their pink petals; over the fireplace a tall mirror held all in silvery replica. “Thirty cents, please,” Ellie demanded; “I must get some stamps.” A wave of conscious guilt, angry self condemnation, swept over him. “I'm sorry, Ellie,” he admitted; “I haven't got it.” She stood regarding him for a moment with cold disapproval. She was a slender woman, past thirty, with dark, regular features and tranquil eyes; carelessly dressed, her hair slipped over her shoulder in a cool plait. “I am sorry,” he repeated, “I didn't think.” “But it wasn't yours.” “You'll get every pretty penny of it.” He rose and in orderly discretion sought his room, where he changed into his worn, grey playing flannels. VII HIGH board fence enclosed the grounds of the Ellerton Baseball Association; over one side rose the rude scaffolding of a grandstand, protected from sun and rain by a covering of tarred planks; a circular opening by a narrow entrance framed the ticket seller; while around the base of the fence, located convenient to a small boy's eye, ran a girdle of unnatural knotholes, highly improved cracks, through which an occasional fleeting form might be observed, a segment of torn sod, and the fence opposite. A shallow flood of spectators, drawn from the various quarters of the town, converged in a dense stream at the entrance to the Grounds; troops of girls with brightly-hued ribbands about their vivacious arms, boisterous or superior squads of young males, alternated with their more sober elders—shabby and dejected men, out at elbows and work, in search of the respite of the sun and the play; baseball enthusiasts, rotund individuals with ruddy countenances, saturnine experts with scorecards. Anthony observed the throng indifferently as he drew near the scene of his repeated, past triumphs, the metal plates in his shoes grinding into the pavement. A small procession followed him, led by a colored youth, to whose dilapidated garments clung the unmistakable straws and aroma of the stable, bearing aloft Anthony's glove, and “softing” it vigorously from a natural source; a boy as round and succulent as a boiled pudding, with Anthony's cap beneath his arm, leaving behind him a trail of peanut shells, brought up the rear of this democratic escort. There was little question in Anthony's mind of his ability to triumph that afternoon over his opponents from a near-by town; their “battery,” he told himself, was an open book to him—a slow, dropping ball here, a speedy one across the fingers of that red-haired fielder who habitually flinched... and yet he wished that it had not been so hot. He thought of the game without particular pleasure; he was conscious of a lack of energy; his thoughts, occupied with Elli's patent contempt, stung him waspishly. A throng of players and hangerson filled the contracted dressing quarters beneath the grandstand, and he was instantly surrounded by vociferous familiars. The captain of the Ellerton team drew him aside, and tersely outlined a policy of play, awaiting his opinion. Anthony nodded gravely: suddenly he found the other's earnestness a little absurd—the fate of a nation appeared to color his accents, to hang upon the result of his decision. “Sure,” he said absently, “keep the field in; they won't hit me.” The other regarded him with a slight frown. “Hate yourself to-day, don't you?” he remarked. “Lay that crowd cold on the plate, though,” he added; “there's a man here from the major league to look you over. Hinkle told my old man.” A quickening of interest took possession of Anthony; they had heard of him then in the cities, they had discovered him worthy of the journey to Ellerton, of investigation. A vision of his name acclaimed from coast to coast, his picture in the playing garb of a famous organization filling the Sunday sheets, occupied his mind as he turned toward the field. The captain called mysteriously, “Don't get patted up with any purple stuff handed you before the game.” The opposing team, widely scattered, were warming; a pitcher, assuming the attitudes of an agonising cramp, was indulging in a preliminary practice; the ball sped with a dull, regular thud into the catcher's mit. A ball was tossed to Anthony, a team mate backed against the fence, and, raising his hands on high, he apparently overcame all the natural laws of flight. He was conscious of Hinkle, prosperous proprietor of the Ellerton Pool Parlor, at his back with a stranger, an ungainly man, close lipped, keen of vision. There were intimations of approval. “A fine wing,” the stranger said. “He's got 'em all,” Hinkle declared. “Hundreds of lads can pitch a good game,” the other told him, “now and again, they are amatoors. One in a thousand, in ten thousand, can play ball all the time; they're professionals; they're worth money... I want to see him act...” they moved away. The players were called in from the field, the captains bent over a tossed coin; and, first to bat, the Ellerton team ranged itself on benches. Then, as the catcher was drawing on his mask, Hinkle and another familiar town figure, who dedicated his days to speeding weedy horses in red flannel anklets from a precarious wire vehicle, stepped forward from the grandstand. “Mr. Anthony Ball!” Hinkle called. A sudden, tense silence enveloped the spectators, the players stopped curiously. Anthony turned with mingled reluctance and surprise. Something shone in Hinkle's hand: he saw that it was a watch. “As a testimonial from your Ellerton friends,” the other commenced loudly. Anthony's confused mind lost part of the short oration which followed “... recognition of your sportsmanship and skill... happy disposition. The good fame of the Ellerton Baseball team... predict great future on the national diamond.” A storm of applause from the grandstand rippled away in opposite directions along the line sitting by the fence; boys with their mouths full of fingers whistled incredibly. Hinkle held out the watch, but Anthony's eyes were fixed upon the ground. He shook the substantial mark of Ellerton's approval, so that the ornate fob glittered in the sun, but Anthony's arms remained motionless at his sides. “Take it, you leatherkop,” a voice whispered fiercely in his ear. 'And with a start, he awkwardly grasped the gift. “Thank you,” he muttered, his voice inaudible five yards away. He wished with passionate resentment that the fiend who was yelling “speech!” would drop dead. He glanced up, and the sight of all those excited, kindly faces deepened his confusion until it rose in a lump in his throat, blurred his vision, in an idiotic, childish manner. “Ah, call the game, can't you,” he urged over his shoulder. The first half inning was soon over, without incident; and, as Anthony walked to the pitcher's “box,” the necessity to surpass all previous efforts was impressed upon him by the watch, by the presence of that spectator from a major league who had come to see him “act.” He wished again, in a passing irritation, that it had not been so hot. Behind the batter he could see the countenance of “Kag” Lippit staring through the wires of his mask. “Kag” executed a cabalistic signal with his left arm, and Anthony pitched. The umpire hoarsely informed the world at large that it had been a strike. A blast of derisive catcalls arose from the Ellerton partisans; another strike, shriller catcalls, and the batter retired after a third ineffectual lunge amid a tempest of banter. The second batter hit a feeble fly negligently attached by the third baseman, who “put it over to first” in the exuberance of his contempt. The third Anthony disposed of with equal brevity. He next faced the pitcher, and, succumbing to the pressure of extraordinary events, he swung the bat with a tremendous effort, and the flattened ball described a wide arc into the ready palms of the right fielder. “You're Out!” the umpire vociferated. The uncritical portion of the spectators voiced their pleasure in the homeric length of the hit, but the captain was contemptuously cold as Anthony returned to the bench. “The highschool hero,” he remarked; “little Willie the Wallop. If you don't bat to the game,” he added in a different tone, “if you were Eddie Plank I'd bench you.” That inning the Ellerton team scored a run: a youth hurtling headlong through the dust pressed his cheek affectionately upon the dingy square of marble dignified by the title of home, while a second hammered him violently in the groin with the ball; one chorus shrieked, “out by a block!” another, “safe! safe!” he was “safe as safe!” the girls declared. The umpire's voice rose authoritatively above the tumult. “Play ball! he's safe!” Anthony pitched that inning faultlessly; never had ball obeyed him so absolutely; it dropped, swung to the right, to the left, revolved or sped dead. The batters faded away like ice cream at a church supper. As he came in from the “box” the close-lipped stranger strode forward and grasped his shoulder. “I want to see you after the game,” he declared; “don't sign up with no one else. I'm from—” he whispered his persuasive source in Anthony's ear. The captain commended him pithily. “He's got 'em all,” Hinkle proclaimed to the assembled throng. When Anthony batted next it was with calculated nicety; he drove the ball between shortstop and second base, and, by dint of hard running, achieved a rapturously acclaimed “two bagger.” The captain then merely tapped the ball—breathlessly it was described as a “sacrifice”—and Anthony moved to the third base, and a succeeding hit sent him “home.” Another run was added to the Ellerton score, it now stood three to nothing in their favor, before Anthony returned to the dusty depression from which he pitched. He was suddenly and unaccountably tired; the cursed heat was worse than ever, he thought, wiping a wet palm on his grimy leg; above him the sky was an unbroken, blazing expanse of blue; short, sharp shadows shifted under the feet of the tense players; in the shade of the grandstand the dresses, mostly white, showed here and there a vivid note of yellow and violet, the crisp note of crimson. The throbbing song of a thrush floated from a far hedge... it stirred him with a new unrest, dissatisfaction... “Kag” looked like a damned fool grimacing at him through the wire mask—exactly like a monkey in a cage. The umpire in his inflated protector, crouching in a position of rigorous attention, resembled a turtle. He pitched, and a spurt of dust rose a yard before the plate. “Ball one!” That wouldn't do, he told himself, recalling the substantially expressed confidence, esteem, of Ellerton. The captain's sibilant “steady” was like the flick of a whip. With an effort which taxed his every resource he marshalled his relaxed muscles into an aching endeavor, centred his unstable thoughts upon the exigencies of the play, and retired the batter before him. But he struck the next upon the arm, sending him, nursing the bruise, to first base. He saw the captain grimly wave the outfielders farther back; and, determined, resentful, he struck out in machinelike order the remaining batters. But he was unconscionably weary; his arm felt as though he had been pitching for a week, a month; and he dropped limp and surly upon the sod at a distance from the players' bench. He batted once more, but a third “out” on the bases saved him from the fluke which, he had been certain, must inevitably follow. As he stood with the ball in his hand, facing the batter, he was conscious of an air of uncertainty spreading like a contagion through the Ellerton team; he recognized that it radiated from himself—his lack of confidence magnified to a promised panic. The centre fielder fumbled a fly directly in his hands; there was a shout from Ellerton's opponents, silence in the ranks of Ellerton. Anthony pitched with a tremendous effort, his arm felt brittle; it felt as though it was made of glass, and would break off. He could put no speed into the ball, his fingers seemed swollen, he was unable to grip it properly, control its direction. The red-haired player whom he had despised faced him, he who habitually flinched, and Anthony essayed to drive the ball across his fingers. The bat swung with a vicious crack upon the leather sphere, a fielder ran vainly back, back.... The runner passed first base, and, wildly urged by a small but adequately vocal group of wellwishers, scorned second base, repudiated third, from which another player tallied a run, and loafed magnificently “home.” From the fence some one called to Anthony, “what time is it?” and achieved a huge success among the opposition. His captain besought him desperately to “come back. Where's your pep' went? you're pitching like a dead man!” Confusion fell upon the team in the field, and, in its train, a series of blunders which cost five runs. After the inning Anthony stood with a lowered, moody countenance. “You're out of this game,” the captain shot at him; “go home and play with mother and the girls.” He left the field under a dropping fire of witticisms, feebly stemmed by half-hearted applause; Hinkle frowned heavily at him; the man from the major league had gone. Anthony proceeded directly through the gate and over the street toward home. The taste of profound Humiliation, of failure, was bitter in his mouth, that failure which seemed to lie at the heart of everything he attempted, which seemed to follow him like his shadow, like the malicious influence of a powerful spite, an enmity personal and unrelenting. The sun centred its heat upon his bared head with an especial fervor; the watch, thrust hastily in a pocket, swung against his leg mockingly; the H abrupt departure of that keeneyed spectator added its hurt to his self pride. VIII E maintained a surly silence throughout dinner; but later, on discovering a dress shirt laid in readiness on his bed, and recalling the purport of Mrs. James Dreen's call, he announced on the crest of an overwhelming exasperation that he would go to no condemmed dance. “Ellie can't go alone,” his mother told him from the landing below; “and do hurry, Tony, she's almost dressed.” The flaring gas jet seemed to coat his room with a heavy yellow dust; the night came in at the window as thickly purple as though it had been paint squeezed from a tube. He slowly assembled his formal clothes. An extended search failed to reveal the whereabouts of his studs, and he pressed into service the bone buttons inserted by the laundry. The shirt was intolerably hot and uncomfortable, his trousers tight, a white waistcoat badly shrunken; but a collar with a frayed and iron-like edge the crowning misery. When, finally, he was garbed, he felt as though he had been compressed into an iron boiler; a stream of perspiration coursed down the exact middle of his back; his tie hung in a limp knot. Fiery epithets escaped at frequent intervals. On the contrary, Ellie was delightfully cool, orderly; she waved a lacy fan in her long, delicate fingers. The public vehicle engaged to convey them to the Dreens, a mile or more beyond the town, drew up at the door with a clatter of hoofs. It was an aged hack, with complaining joints, and a loose iron tire. A musty smell rose from the threadbare cushions, the rotting leather. The horse's hoofs were now muffled in the dusty country road; shadowy hedges were passed, dim, white farmhouses with orange, lighted windows, the horizon outspread in a shimmering blue circle under the swimming stars. Anthony smoked a cigarette in acute misery; already his neck felt scraped raw; a button flew jubilantly from his waistcoat; and his improvised studs failed in their appointed task. “I'm having the hell of a good time, I am,” he told Ellie satirically. They turned between stone pillars supporting a lighted grill, advanced over a winding driveway to Hydrangea House, where they waited for a motor to move from the brilliantly-illuminated portal. A servant directed Anthony to the second floor, where he found a bedchamber temporarily in service as coat room, occupied by a number of men. Most of them he knew, and nodded shortly in return to their careless salutations. They belonged to a variety that he at once envied and disdained: here they were thoroughly at ease, their ties irreproachable, their shirts without a crease. Drawing on snowy gloves they discussed women and society with fluency, gusto, emanating an atmosphere of cocktails. Anthony produced his gloves in a crumpled wad from the tail of his coat and fought his way into them. He felt rather than saw the restrained amusement of his fellows. They spoke to him gravely, punctiliously proffered cigarettes; yet, in a vague but unmistakable manner, he was made to feel that he was outside their interests, ignorant of their shibboleth. In the matter of collars alone he was as a Patagonian to them. He recalled with regret the easy familiarity, the comfort, of Doctor Allhop's drugstore. Then, throwing aside cigarettes, patting waistcoats into position, they streamed down to the music. The others found partners immediately, and swung into a onestep, but Anthony stood irresolutely in the doorway. The girls disconcerted him with their formal smiles, their bright, ready chatter. But Ellie rescued him, drawing him into the dance. After which he sought the porch that, looped with rosevines, crossed the face of the long, low house. There, with his back against a pillar, he found a cool spot upon the tiles, and sought such comfort as he could command. Long windows opening from the ballroom were now segments of whirling color, now filled with gay streams, ebbing and returning. Fragmentary conversation, glowing cigarettes, surrounded him. Behind the pillar at his back a girl said, softly, “please don't.” Then he saw Ellie, obviously searching for...