CHAPTER XIX.

The sun, glittering along the avenue, shimmering on the rustling gowns of the women and smoothing the coats of the horses, smote Orson Vane gently; the fairness of the day flooded his soul with a tide of well-being. In the air and on the town there seemed some subtle radiance, some glamour of enchantment. The smell of violets was all about him. The colors of new fashions dotted the vision like a painting by Hassam; a haze of warmth covered the town like a kiss.

His thoughts, keyed, in some strange, sweet way, to all the pleasant, happy, pretty things in life, brought him the vision of Jeannette Vanlief. How long, how far away seemed that day when she had been at his side, when her voice had enveloped him in its silver echoes!

As carriage after carriage passed him, he began to fancy Jeannette, in all her roseate beauty, driving toward him. He saw the curve of her ankle as she stepped into the carriage; he dreamed of her flower-like attitude as she leaned to the cushions.

Then the miracle happened; Jeannette, a little tired, a little pale, a little more fragile than when last he had seen her, was coming toward him. A smile, a gentle, tender, slightly sad--but yet so sweet, so sweet!--a smile was on her lips. He took her hand and held it and looked into her eyes, and the two souls in that instant kissed and became one.

"This time," he said--and as he spoke all that had happened since they had pretended, childishly, on the top of the old stage on the Avenue, seemed to slip away, to fade, to be forgotten--"it must be a real luncheon. You are fagged. So am I. You are like a breath of lilies-of-the-valley. Come!"

They took a table by an open window. The procession of the town nearly touched them, so close was it. To them both it seemed, to-day, a happy, joyous, fine procession.

"Will you tell me something?" asked the girl, presently, after they had laughed and chattered like two children for awhile.

"Anything in the world."

"Well, then--are you ever, ever going to face that dreadful mirror again?"

He smiled, as if there was nothing astonishing in her knowledge, her question.

"Do you want me not to?"

She nodded.

He put his hand across the table, on one of hers. "Jeannette," he whispered, "I promise. Why do you care? It is not possible that you care because, because--Jeannette, will you promise me something, too?"

They have excellent waiters at the Mayfair. They can be absolutely blind at times. This was such a time. The particular waiter who was serving Vane's table, took a sudden, rapt interest in the procession on the avenue.

Jeanette crumbled a macaroon with her free hand.

"You have my hand," she pouted.

"I need it," he said. "It is a very pretty hand. And very strong. I think it must have lifted all my ills from me to-day. I feel nothing but kindness toward the whole world. I could kiss--the whole world."

"Oh," said Jeannette, pulling her hand away a little, "you monster! You are worse than Nero."

"Do you think my kisses would be so awful, then? Or is it simply the piggishness of me that makes you call me a monster. That's not the right way to look at it. Think of all the dreadful people there are in the world; think how philanthropic you must make me feel if I want to kiss even those."

"Ah, but the world is full of beautiful women."

"I do not believe it," he vowed. "I do not think God had any beauty left after he fashioned--you."

He was not ashamed, not one iota of the grossness of that fable. He really felt so. Indeed, all his life he never felt otherwise than that toward Jeannette. And she took the shocking compliment quite serenely.

"You are absurd," she said, but she looked as if she loved absurdity. "Please, may I take my hand?"

"If you will be very good and promise--"

"What?"

"To give me something in exchange."

"Something in exchange?"

"Yes. The sweetest thing in the world, the best, and the dearest. You, dear, yourself. Oh! dearest, if I could tell you what I feel. Speech--what a silly thing speech is! It can only hint clumsily, futilely. If I could only tell you, for instance, how the world has suddenly taken on brightness for me since you smiled. I feel a tenderness to all nature. I believe at heart there is good in everyone, don't you? To-day I seem to see nothing but good. I could find you a lovable spot in the worst villain you might name. I suppose it is the stream of sweetness that comes from you, dear. Why can't this hour last forever. I want it to, oh, I want it to!"

"It is," she whispered, "an hour I shall always remember."

"Yes, but it must last, it can't die; it sha'n't! Jeannette, let us make this hour last us our lives! Can't we?"

"Our lives?" she whispered.

"Yes, our lives. This is only the first minute of our life. We must never part again. I seem to have been behind a cloud of doubt and distrust until this moment. I hardly realize what has happened to me. Is love so refining a thing as all this? Does it turn bitter into sweet, and make all the ups and downs of the world shine like one level, beautiful sea of tenderness? It can be nothing else, but that--my love, our--can I say our love, Jeannette?"

The sun streamed in at the window, kissing the tendrils of her hair and bringing to their copper shimmer a yet brighter blush. The day, with all its perfume, the splendor of its people, the riot of color of its gowns, the pride and pomp of its statues and its fountains, flushed the most secret rills of life.

"It is a marvel of a day," said Jeannette.

"A marvel? It is an impossible day; it is not a day at all--it is merely the hour of hours, the supreme instant, the melody so sweet that it must break or blind our hearts. You are right, dear, it is a marvelous hour. You make me repeat myself. Can we let this hour--escape, Jeannette?"

"It goes fast."

"Fast--fast as the wind. Fleet as air and fair as heaven are the instants that bring happiness to common mortals. But we must hold the hour, cage it, leash it to our lives."

"Do you think we can?"

She had used the "we!" Oh yes, and she had said it; she had said it; he sang the refrain over to himself in a swoon of bliss.

"I am sure of it," he urged. "Will you try?"

"You are so much the stronger," she mocked.

"Oh--if it depends on me--! Try? I shall succeed! I know it. Such love as mine cannot fail. If only you will let me try. That is all; just that.

"I wish you luck!" she smiled.

"You have said it," he jubilated, "you have said it!" And then, realizing that she had meant it all the time, he threatened her with a look, a shake of the head--oh, you would have said he wanted to punish her in some terrible way, some way that was filled with kisses.

"Jeannette," he whispered, "I have never heard you speak my name."

"A pretty name, too," she said. "I have wondered if I might not spoil it in my pronunciation."

"You beautiful bit of mockery, you," he said, "will you condescend to repeat a little sentence after me? You will say it far more prettily than I, but perhaps you will forgive my lack of music. I am only a man. You--ah, you are a goddess."

"For how long?" she asked. "Men marry goddesses and find them clay, don't they?"

"You are not clay, dear, you are star-dust, and flowers, and fragrance. There is not a thought in your dear head that is in tune with mere clay. But listen! You must say this after me: I--"

"I--"

"Love--"

"Love--"

"You--"

"You--"

"Jeannette--"

Her lips began to frame the consonant for her own name, but at sight of the pleading in his gaze she stilled the playfulness of her, and finished, shyly, but oh, so sweetly.

"Orson."

The dear, delightful absurdities of the hour when men and women tell each other they love, how silly, and how pathetic they must seem to the all-seeing force that flings our destinies back and forth at its will! Yet how fair, how ineffably fair, those moments are to their heroes and heroines; how vastly absurd the rest of the sad, serious world seems to such lovers, and how happy are the mortals, after all, who through fastnesses of doubt and darkness, come to the free spaces where the heart, in tenderness and grace, rules supreme over the intellect, and keeps in subjection, wisdom, ignorance and all the ills men plague their minds with!

When they left the Mayfair together their precious secret was anything but a secret. Their dream lay fair and open to the world; one must have been very blind not to see how much these two were in love with each other. They had gone over every incident of their friendship; they had stirred the embers of their earliest longings; they had touched their growing happiness at every point save where Orson's steps aside had hurt his sweetheart's memory. Those periods both avoided. All else they made subject for, oh, the tenderest, the most lovelorn conversation thinkable. It was enough, if overheard, to have sickened the whole day for any ordinary mortal.

One must, to repeat, have been very stupid not to see, when they issued upon the avenue, that they shared the secret that this world appears to have been created to keep alive. Love clothed them like a visible garment.

Luke Moncreith could never have been called blind or stupid. He saw the truth at once. The truth; it rushed over him like a salt, bitter, acrid sea. He swallowed it as a drowning man swallows what overwhelms him. One instant of terrible rage spun him as if he had been a top; he faced about and was for making, then and there, a scene with this shamelessly happy pair. But the futility of that struck him on the following second. He kept his way down the avenue, emotions surging in him; he felt that his passions were becoming visible and conspicuous; he took a turning into one of the streets leading eastward. A sign of a wineshop flashed across his dancing vision, and he clung to it as to an anchor or a poison. He found a table. He wanted nothing else, only rest, rest. The wine stood untasted on the bare wood before him. He peered, through it, into an unfathomable mystery. This chameleon, this fellow Vane--how was it possible that he had won this glorious, flower-like creature, Jeannette? This man had been, as the fancy took him, a court fool, a sporting nonentity, and a blatant mummer. And what was he now? By the looks of him, he was, to-day--and for how long, Moncreith wondered--a very essence of meekness and sweetness; butter would not think of melting in his mouth. What, in the devil's name, what was this riddle! He might have repeated that question to himself until the end of his life if the door had not opened then and let in Nevins.

Nevins ordered the strongest liquor in the place. The sideboard on Vanthuysen Square might be empty, but Nevins had still the money. As for the gloomy old Vane house, he really could not stand it any longer. He toasted himself, did Nevins, and he talked to himself.

"'An now," he murmured, thickly, "'ere's to the mirror. May I never see it again as long as I 'as breath in my body and wits in me 'ead. Which," he observed, with a fatuous grin, "aint for long. No, sir; me nerves is that a-shake I aint good for nothin' any more. And I asks you, is it any wonder? 'Ere's Mr. Vane, one day, pleasant as pie. Next day, comes in, takes a look at that dratted mirror of the Perfessor's, and takes to 'igh jinks. Yes, sir, 'igh jinks, very 'igh jinks. 'As pink tea-fights in his rooms, 'angs up pictures I wouldn't let me own father see--no, sir, not if 'e begged me on his bended knee, I wouldn't--and wears what you might call a tenor voice. Then--one day, while you says 'One for his Nob' 'e's 'imself again. An' it's always the mirror this, an' the mirror that. I must look out for it, an' it mustn't be touched, and nobody must come in. And what's the result of it all? Me nerves is gone, and me self-respect is gone, and I'm a poor miserable drunkard!"

He gulped down some of his misery.

"Join me," said a voice nearby, "in another of those things!"

Nevins turned, with a swaying motion, to note Moncreith, whose hand was pointing to the empty glass before Nevins.

"You are quite right," he went on, when the other's glass had been filled again, "Mr. Vane's conduct has been most scandalous of late. You say he has a mirror?"

All circumspection had long since passed from Nevins. He was simply an individual with a grievance. The many episodes that, in his filmy mind, seemed to center about that mirror, shifted and twisted in him to where they forced utterance. He began to talk, circuitously, wildly, rapidly, of the many things that rankled in him. He told all he knew, all he had observed. From out of the mass of inane, not pertinent ramblings, Moncreith caught a glimmer of the facts.

What a terrible power this must be that was in Orson Vane's possession! Moncreith shuddered at the thought. Why, the man might turn himself, in all but externals--and what, after all, was the husk, the shell, the body?--into the finest wit, the most lovable hero of his time; he might fare about the world wrecking now this, now that, happiness; he might win--perhaps he actually had, even now, won Jeannette Vanlief? If he had, if--perhaps there was yet time! There was need for sharp, desperate action.

He plunged out of the place and toward Vanthuysen Square. Then he remembered that he could not get in. He aroused Nevins from his brutish doze. He dragged him over the intervening space. Nevins gave him the key, and dropped into one of the hall chairs. Moncreith leaped upstairs, and entered the room where the mirror stood, white, silent, stately.

He contemplated everything for a time. He conjured up the picture he had been able to piece together from the rambling monologues of Nevins. He wondered whether to simply smash in the mirrors--he would destroy them all, to make sure--by taking a chair-leg to them, or whether he would carefully pour some acid over them.

The simpler plan appealed most to him. It was the quickest, the most thorough. He took a little wooden chair that stood by an ebon escritoire, swung it high in the air and brought it with a shattering crash upon the face of the Professor's mirror.

But there was more than a mere crash. A deadly, sickening, stifling fume arose from the space the clinking glass unbared; a flame burst out, leaped at Moncreith and seized him. The deadly white smoke flowed through the room; flame followed flame, curtains, hangings, screens went, one after the other, to feed the ravenous beast that Moncreith's blow had liberated. The room was presently a seething furnace that rattled in the cage of the walls and windows. Moncreith lay, choked with the horrid smoke, on the floor. The flames licked at him again and again; finally one took him on the tip of its tongue, twisted him about, and shriveled him to black, charred shapelessness.

The windows fell, finally, out upon the street below. The fire sneaked downward, laughing and leaping.

When the firemen came to save Orson Vane's house, they found a grinning, sodden creature in the hall.

It was Nevins. "That settles the mirror!" was all he kept repeating.