The Pelican

by Edith Wharton

　　She was very pretty when I first knew her, with the sweet straight noseand short upper lip of the cameo-brooch divinity, humanized by a dimplethat flowered in her cheek whenever anything was said possessing theoutward attributes of humor without its intrinsic quality. For the dearlady was providentially deficient in humor: the least hint of the realthing clouded her lovely eye like the hovering shadow of an algebraicproblem.

　　I don't think nature had meant her to be "intellectual;" but what can apoor thing do, whose husband has died of drink when her baby is hardly sixmonths old, and who finds her coral necklace and her grandfather's editionof the British Dramatists inadequate to the demands of the creditors?

　　Her mother, the celebrated Irene Astarte Pratt, had written a poem inblank verse on "The Fall of Man;" one of her aunts was dean of a girls'college; another had translated Euripides--with such a family, the poorchild's fate was sealed in advance. The only way of paying her husband'sdebts and keeping the baby clothed was to be intellectual; and, after somehesitation as to the form her mental activity was to take, it wasunanimously decided that she was to give lectures.

　　They began by being drawing-room lectures. The first time I saw her shewas standing by the piano, against a flippant background of Dresden chinaand photographs, telling a roomful of women preoccupied with their springbonnets all she thought she knew about Greek art. The ladies assembled tohear her had given me to understand that she was "doing it for the baby,"and this fact, together with the shortness of her upper lip and thebewildering co-operation of her dimple, disposed me to listen leniently toher dissertation. Happily, at that time Greek art was still, if I may usethe phrase, easily handled: it was as simple as walking down a museum-gallery lined with pleasant familiar Venuses and Apollos. All the latercomplications--the archaic and archaistic conundrums; the influences ofAssyria and Asia Minor; the conflicting attributions and the wrangles ofthe erudite--still slumbered in the bosom of the future "scientificcritic." Greek art in those days began with Phidias and ended with theApollo Belvedere; and a child could travel from one to the other withoutdanger of losing his way.

　　Mrs. Amyot had two fatal gifts: a capacious but inaccurate memory, and anextraordinary fluency of speech. There was nothing she did not remember--wrongly; but her halting facts were swathed in so many layers of rhetoricthat their infirmities were imperceptible to her friendly critics.Besides, she had been taught Greek by the aunt who had translatedEuripides; and the mere sound of the [Greek: ais] and [Greek: ois] thatshe now and then not unskilfully let slip (correcting herself, of course,with a start, and indulgently mistranslating the phrase), struck awe tothe hearts of ladies whose only "accomplishment" was French--if you didn'tspeak too quickly.

　　I had then but a momentary glimpse of Mrs. Amyot, but a few months later Icame upon her again in the New England university town where thecelebrated Irene Astarte Pratt lived on the summit of a local Parnassus,with lesser muses and college professors respectfully grouped on the lowerledges of the sacred declivity. Mrs. Amyot, who, after her husband'sdeath, had returned to the maternal roof (even during her father'slifetime the roof had been distinctively maternal), Mrs. Amyot, thanks toher upper lip, her dimple and her Greek, was already esconced in a snughollow of the Parnassian slope.

　　After the lecture was over it happened that I walked home with Mrs. Amyot.From the incensed glances of two or three learned gentlemen who werehovering on the door-step when we emerged, I inferred that Mrs. Amyot, atthat period, did not often walk home alone; but I doubt whether any of mydiscomfited rivals, whatever his claims to favor, was ever treated to soravishing a mixture of shyness and self-abandonment, of sham erudition andreal teeth and hair, as it was my privilege to enjoy. Even at the openingof her public career Mrs. Amyot had a tender eye for strangers, aspossible links with successive centres of culture to which in due coursethe torch of Greek art might be handed on.

　　She began by telling me that she had never been so frightened in her life.She knew, of course, how dreadfully learned I was, and when, just as shewas going to begin, her hostess had whispered to her that I was in theroom, she had felt ready to sink through the floor. Then (with a flyingdimple) she had remembered Emerson's line--wasn't it Emerson's?--thatbeauty is its own excuse for _seeing_, and that had made her feel a littlemore confident, since she was sure that no one _saw_ beauty more vividlythan she--as a child she used to sit for hours gazing at an Etruscan vaseon the bookcase in the library, while her sisters played with theirdolls--and if _seeing_ beauty was the only excuse one needed for talkingabout it, why, she was sure I would make allowances and not be _too_critical and sarcastic, especially if, as she thought probable, I hadheard of her having lost her poor husband, and how she had to do it forthe baby.

　　Being abundantly assured of my sympathy on these points, she went on tosay that she had always wanted so much to consult me about her lectures.Of course, one subject wasn't enough (this view of the limitations ofGreek art as a "subject" gave me a startling idea of the rate at which asuccessful lecturer might exhaust the universe); she must find others; shehad not ventured on any as yet, but she had thought of Tennyson--didn't I_love_ Tennyson? She _worshipped_ him so that she was sure she could helpothers to understand him; or what did I think of a "course" on Raphael orMichelangelo--or on the heroines of Shakespeare? There were some finesteel-engravings of Raphael's Madonnas and of the Sistine ceiling in hermother's library, and she had seen Miss Cushman in several Shakespearian_roles_, so that on these subjects also she felt qualified to speak withauthority.

　　When we reached her mother's door she begged me to come in and talk thematter over; she wanted me to see the baby--she felt as though I shouldunderstand her better if I saw the baby--and the dimple flashed through atear.

　　The fear of encountering the author of "The Fall of Man," combined withthe opportune recollection of a dinner engagement, made me evade thisappeal with the promise of returning on the morrow. On the morrow, I lefttoo early to redeem my promise; and for several years afterwards I saw nomore of Mrs. Amyot.

　　My calling at that time took me at irregular intervals from one to anotherof our larger cities, and as Mrs. Amyot was also peripatetic it wasinevitable that sooner or later we should cross each other's path. It wastherefore without surprise that, one snowy afternoon in Boston, I learnedfrom the lady with whom I chanced to be lunching that, as soon as the mealwas over, I was to be taken to hear Mrs. Amyot lecture.

　　"On Greek art?" I suggested.

　　"Oh, you've heard her then? No, this is one of the series called 'Homesand Haunts of the Poets.' Last week we had Wordsworth and the Lake Poets,to-day we are to have Goethe and Weimar. She is a wonderful creature--allthe women of her family are geniuses. You know, of course, that her motherwas Irene Astarte Pratt, who wrote a poem on 'The Fall of Man'; N.P.Willis called her the female Milton of America. One of Mrs. Amyot's auntshas translated Eurip--"

　　"And is she as pretty as ever?" I irrelevantly interposed.

　　My hostess looked shocked. "She is excessively modest and retiring. Shesays it is actual suffering for her to speak in public. You know she onlydoes it for the baby."

　　Punctually at the hour appointed, we took our seats in a lecture-hall fullof strenuous females in ulsters. Mrs. Amyot was evidently a favorite withthese austere sisters, for every corner was crowded, and as we entered apale usher with an educated mispronunciation was setting forth to severaldejected applicants the impossibility of supplying them with seats.

　　Our own were happily so near the front that when the curtains at the backof the platform parted, and Mrs. Amyot appeared, I was at once able toestablish a comparison between the lady placidly dimpling to the applauseof her public and the shrinking drawing-room orator of my earlierrecollections.

　　Mrs. Amyot was as pretty as ever, and there was the same curiousdiscrepancy between the freshness of her aspect and the stateness of hertheme, but something was gone of the blushing unsteadiness with which shehad fired her first random shots at Greek art. It was not that the shotswere less uncertain, but that she now had an air of assuming that, for herpurpose, the bull's-eye was everywhere, so that there was no need to beflustered in taking aim. This assurance had so facilitated the flow of hereloquence that she seemed to be performing a trick analogous to that ofthe conjuror who pulls hundreds of yards of white paper out of his mouth.From a large assortment of stock adjectives she chose, with unerringdeftness and rapidity, the one that taste and discrimination would mostsurely have rejected, fitting out her subject with a whole wardrobe ofslop-shop epithets irrelevant in cut and size. To the invaluable knack ofnot disturbing the association of ideas in her audience, she added thegift of what may be called a confidential manner--so that her fluentgeneralizations about Goethe and his place in literature (the lecture was,of course, manufactured out of Lewes's book) had the flavor of personalexperience, of views sympathetically exchanged with her audience on thebest way of knitting children's socks, or of putting up preserves for thewinter. It was, I am sure, to this personal accent--the moral equivalentof her dimple--that Mrs. Amyot owed her prodigious, her irrationalsuccess. It was her art of transposing second-hand ideas into first-handemotions that so endeared her to her feminine listeners.

　　To any one not in search of "documents" Mrs. Amyot's success was hardly ofa kind to make her more interesting, and my curiosity flagged with thegrowing conviction that the "suffering" entailed on her by public speakingwas at most a retrospective pang. I was sure that she had reached thepoint of measuring and enjoying her effects, of deliberately manipulatingher public; and there must indeed have been a certain exhilaration inattaining results so considerable by means involving so little consciouseffort. Mrs. Amyot's art was simply an extension of coquetry: she flirtedwith her audience.

　　In this mood of enlightened skepticism I responded but languidly to myhostess's suggestion that I should go with her that evening to see Mrs.Amyot. The aunt who had translated Euripides was at home on Saturdayevenings, and one met "thoughtful" people there, my hostess explained: itwas one of the intellectual centres of Boston. My mood remained distinctlyresentful of any connection between Mrs. Amyot and intellectuality, and Ideclined to go; but the next day I met Mrs. Amyot in the street.

　　She stopped me reproachfully. She had heard I was in Boston; why had I notcome last night? She had been told that I was at her lecture, and it hadfrightened her--yes, really, almost as much as years ago in Hillbridge.She never _could_ get over that stupid shyness, and the whole business wasas distasteful to her as ever; but what could she do? There was the baby--he was a big boy now, and boys were _so_ expensive! But did I really thinkshe had improved the least little bit? And why wouldn't I come home withher now, and see the boy, and tell her frankly what I had thought of thelecture? She had plenty of flattery--people were _so_ kind, and every oneknew that she did it for the baby--but what she felt the need of wascriticism, severe, discriminating criticism like mine--oh, she knew that Iwas dreadfully discriminating!

　　I went home with her and saw the boy. In the early heat of her Tennyson-worship Mrs. Amyot had christened him Lancelot, and he looked it. Perhaps,however, it was his black velvet dress and the exasperating length of hisyellow curls, together with the fact of his having been taught to reciteBrowning to visitors, that raised to fever-heat the itching of my palms inhis Infant-Samuel-like presence. I have since had reason to think that hewould have preferred to be called Billy, and to hunt cats with the otherboys in the block: his curls and his poetry were simply another outlet forMrs. Amyot's irrepressible coquetry.

　　But if Lancelot was not genuine, his mother's love for him was. Itjustified everything--the lectures _were_ for the baby, after all. I hadnot been ten minutes in the room before I was pledged to help Mrs. Amyotcarry out her triumphant fraud. If she wanted to lecture on Plato sheshould--Plato must take his chance like the rest of us! There was no use,of course, in being "discriminating." I preserved sufficient reason toavoid that pitfall, but I suggested "subjects" and made lists of books forher with a fatuity that became more obvious as time attenuated theremembrance of her smile; I even remember thinking that some men mighthave cut the knot by marrying her, but I handed over Plato as a hostageand escaped by the afternoon train.

　　The next time I saw her was in New York, when she had become sofashionable that it was a part of the whole duty of woman to be seen ather lectures. The lady who suggested that of course I ought to go and hearMrs. Amyot, was not very clear about anything except that she wasperfectly lovely, and had had a horrid husband, and was doing it tosupport her boy. The subject of the discourse (I think it was on Ruskin)was clearly of minor importance, not only to my friend, but to the throngof well-dressed and absent-minded ladies who rustled in late, droppedtheir muffs and pocket-books, and undisguisedly lost themselves in thestudy of each other's apparel. They received Mrs. Amyot with warmth, butshe evidently represented a social obligation like going to church, ratherthan any more personal interest; in fact, I suspect that every one of theladies would have remained away, had they been sure that none of theothers were coming.

　　Whether Mrs. Amyot was disheartened by the lack of sympathy betweenherself and her hearers, or whether the sport of arousing it had become atask, she certainly imparted her platitudes with less convincing warmththan of old. Her voice had the same confidential inflections, but it waslike a voice reproduced by a gramophone: the real woman seemed far away.She had grown stouter without losing her dewy freshness, and her smartgown might have been taken to show either the potentialities of a settledincome, or a politic concession to the taste of her hearers. As I listenedI reproached myself for ever having suspected her of self-deception insaying that she took no pleasure in her work. I was sure now that she didit only for Lancelot, and judging from the size of her audience and theprice of the tickets I concluded that Lancelot must be receiving a liberaleducation.

　　I was living in New York that winter, and in the rotation of dinners Ifound myself one evening at Mrs. Amyot's side. The dimple came out at mygreeting as punctually as a cuckoo in a Swiss clock, and I detected thesame automatic quality in the tone in which she made her usual prettydemand for advice. She was like a musical-box charged with popular airs.They succeeded one another with breathless rapidity, but there was amoment after each when the cylinders scraped and whizzed.

　　Mrs. Amyot, as I found when I called on her, was living in a sunny flat,with a sitting-room full of flowers and a tea-table that had the air ofexpecting visitors. She owned that she had been ridiculously successful.It was delightful, of course, on Lancelot's account. Lancelot had beensent to the best school in the country, and if things went well and peopledidn't tire of his silly mother he was to go to Harvard afterwards. Duringthe next two or three years Mrs. Amyot kept her flat in New York, andradiated art and literature upon the suburbs. I saw her now and then,always stouter, better dressed, more successful and more automatic: shehad become a lecturing-machine.

　　I went abroad for a year or two and when I came back she had disappeared.I asked several people about her, but life had closed over her. She hadbeen last heard of as lecturing--still lecturing--but no one seemed toknow when or where.

　　It was in Boston that I found her at last, forlornly swaying to theoscillations of an overhead strap in a crowded trolley-car. Her face hadso changed that I lost myself in a startled reckoning of the time that hadelapsed since our parting. She spoke to me shyly, as though aware of myhurried calculation, and conscious that in five years she ought not tohave altered so much as to upset my notion of time. Then she seemed to setit down to her dress, for she nervously gathered her cloak over a gownthat asked only to be concealed, and shrank into a seat behind the line ofprehensile bipeds blocking the aisle of the car.

　　It was perhaps because she so obviously avoided me that I felt for thefirst time that I might be of use to her; and when she left the car I madeno excuse for following her.

　　She said nothing of needing advice and did not ask me to walk home withher, concealing, as we talked, her transparent preoccupations under theguise of a sudden interest in all I had been doing since she had last seenme. Of what concerned her, I learned only that Lancelot was well and thatfor the present she was not lecturing--she was tired and her doctor hadordered her to rest. On the doorstep of a shabby house she paused and heldout her hand. She had been so glad to see me and perhaps if I were inBoston again--the tired dimple, as it were, bowed me out and closed thedoor on the conclusion of the phrase.

　　Two or three weeks later, at my club in New York, I found a letter fromher. In it she owned that she was troubled, that of late she had beenunsuccessful, and that, if I chanced to be coming back to Boston, andcould spare her a little of that invaluable advice which--. A few dayslater the advice was at her disposal. She told me frankly what hadhappened. Her public had grown tired of her. She had seen it coming on forsome time, and was shrewd enough in detecting the causes. She had morerivals than formerly--younger women, she admitted, with a smile that couldstill afford to be generous--and then her audiences had grown morecritical and consequently more exacting. Lecturing--as she understood it--used to be simple enough. You chose your topic--Raphael, Shakespeare,Gothic Architecture, or some such big familiar "subject"--and read upabout it for a week or so at the Athenaeum or the Astor Library, and thentold your audience what you had read. Now, it appeared, that simpleprocess was no longer adequate. People had tired of familiar "subjects";it was the fashion to be interested in things that one hadn't always knownabout--natural selection, animal magnetism, sociology and comparativefolk-lore; while, in literature, the demand had become equally difficultto meet, since Matthew Arnold had introduced the habit of studying the"influence" of one author on another. She had tried lecturing oninfluences, and had done very well as long as the public was satisfiedwith the tracing of such obvious influences as that of Turner on Ruskin,of Schiller on Goethe, of Shakespeare on English literature; but suchinvestigations had soon lost all charm for her too-sophisticatedaudiences, who now demanded either that the influence or the influencedshould be quite unknown, or that there should be no perceptible connectionbetween the two. The zest of the performance lay in the measure ofingenuity with which the lecturer established a relation between twopeople who had probably never heard of each other, much less read eachother's works. A pretty Miss Williams with red hair had, for instance,been lecturing with great success on the influence of the Rosicruciansupon the poetry of Keats, while somebody else had given a "course" on theinfluence of St. Thomas Aquinas upon Professor Huxley.

　　Mrs. Amyot, warmed by my participation in her distress, went on to saythat the growing demand for evolution was what most troubled her. Hergrandfather had been a pillar of the Presbyterian ministry, and the ideaof her lecturing on Darwin or Herbert Spencer was deeply shocking to hermother and aunts. In one sense the family had staked its literary as wellas its spiritual hopes on the literal inspiration of Genesis: what becameof "The Fall of Man" in the light of modern exegesis?

　　The upshot of it was that she had ceased to lecture because she could nolonger sell tickets enough to pay for the hire of a lecture-hall; and asfor the managers, they wouldn't look at her. She had tried her luck allthrough the Eastern States and as far south as Washington; but it was ofno use, and unless she could get hold of some new subjects--or, betterstill, of some new audiences--she must simply go out of the business. Thatwould mean the failure of all she had worked for, since Lancelot wouldhave to leave Harvard. She paused, and wept some of the unbecoming tearsthat spring from real grief. Lancelot, it appeared, was to be a genius. Hehad passed his opening examinations brilliantly; he had "literary gifts";he had written beautiful poetry, much of which his mother had copied out,in reverentially slanting characters, in a velvet-bound volume which shedrew from a locked drawer.

　　Lancelot's verse struck me as nothing more alarming than growing-pains;but it was not to learn this that she had summoned me. What she wanted wasto be assured that he was worth working for, an assurance which I managedto convey by the simple stratagem of remarking that the poems reminded meof Swinburne--and so they did, as well as of Browning, Tennyson, Rossetti,and all the other poets who supply young authors with originalinspirations.

　　This point being established, it remained to be decided by what means hismother was, in the French phrase, to pay herself the luxury of a poet. Itwas clear that this indulgence could be bought only with counterfeit coin,and that the one way of helping Mrs. Amyot was to become a party to thecirculation of such currency. My fetish of intellectual integrity wentdown like a ninepin before the appeal of a woman no longer young anddistinctly foolish, but full of those dear contradictions andirrelevancies that will always make flesh and blood prevail against asyllogism. When I took leave of Mrs. Amyot I had promised her a dozenletters to Western universities and had half pledged myself to sketch outa lecture on the reconciliation of science and religion.

　　In the West she achieved a success which for a year or more embittered myperusal of the morning papers. The fascination that lures the murdererback to the scene of his crime drew my eye to every paragraph celebratingMrs. Amyot's last brilliant lecture on the influence of something uponsomebody; and her own letters--she overwhelmed me with them--spared me nodetail of the entertainment given in her honor by the Palimpsest Club ofOmaha or of her reception at the University of Leadville. The collegeprofessors were especially kind: she assured me that she had never beforemet with such discriminating sympathy. I winced at the adjective, whichcast a sudden light on the vast machinery of fraud that I had set inmotion. All over my native land, men of hitherto unblemished integritywere conniving with me in urging their friends to go and hear Mrs. Amyotlecture on the reconciliation of science and religion! My only hope wasthat, somewhere among the number of my accomplices, Mrs. Amyot might findone who would marry her in the defense of his convictions.

　　None, apparently, resorted to such heroic measures; for about two yearslater I was startled by the announcement that Mrs. Amyot was lecturing inTrenton, New Jersey, on modern theosophy in the light of the Vedas. Thefollowing week she was at Newark, discussing Schopenhauer in the light ofrecent psychology. The week after that I was on the deck of an oceansteamer, reconsidering my share in Mrs. Amyot's triumphs with theimpartiality with which one views an episode that is being left behind atthe rate of twenty knots an hour. After all, I had been helping a motherto educate her son.

　　The next ten years of my life were spent in Europe, and when I came homethe recollection of Mrs. Amyot had become as inoffensive as one of thosepathetic ghosts who are said to strive in vain to make themselves visibleto the living. I did not even notice the fact that I no longer heard herspoken of; she had dropped like a dead leaf from the bough of memory.

　　A year or two after my return I was condemned to one of the worstpunishments a worker can undergo--an enforced holiday. The doctors whopronounced the inhuman sentence decreed that it should be worked out inthe South, and for a whole winter I carried my cough, my thermometer andmy idleness from one fashionable orange-grove to another. In the vast andmelancholy sea of my disoccupation I clutched like a drowning man at anyhuman driftwood within reach. I took a critical and depreciatory interestin the coughs, the thermometers and the idleness of my fellow-sufferers;but to the healthy, the occupied, the transient I clung withundiscriminating enthusiasm.

　　In no other way can I explain, as I look back on it, the importance Iattached to the leisurely confidences of a new arrival with a brown beardwho, tilted back at my side on a hotel veranda hung with roses, impartedto me one afternoon the simple annals of his past. There was nothing inthe tale to kindle the most inflammable imagination, and though the manhad a pleasant frank face and a voice differing agreeably from the shrillinflections of our fellow-lodgers, it is probable that under differentconditions his discursive history of successful business ventures in aWestern city would have affected me somewhat in the manner of a lullaby.

　　Even at the tune I was not sure I liked his agreeable voice: it had aself-importance out of keeping with the humdrum nature of his story, asthough a breeze engaged in shaking out a table-cloth should have fancieditself inflating a banner. But this criticism may have been a mere mark ofmy own fastidiousness, for the man seemed a simple fellow, satisfied withhis middling fortunes, and already (he was not much past thirty) deep-sunkin conjugal content.

　　He had just started on an anecdote connected with the cutting of hiseldest boy's teeth, when a lady I knew, returning from her late drive,paused before us for a moment in the twilight, with the smile which is thefeminine equivalent of beads to savages.

　　"Won't you take a ticket?" she said sweetly.

　　Of course I would take a ticket--but for what? I ventured to inquire.

　　"Oh, that's _so_ good of you--for the lecture this evening. You needn'tgo, you know; we're none of us going; most of us have been through italready at Aiken and at Saint Augustine and at Palm Beach. I've given awaymy tickets to some new people who've just come from the North, and some ofus are going to send our maids, just to fill up the room."

　　"And may I ask to whom you are going to pay this delicate attention?"

　　"Oh, I thought you knew--to poor Mrs. Amyot. She's been lecturing all overthe South this winter; she's simply _haunted_ me ever since I left NewYork--and we had six weeks of her at Bar Harbor last summer! One has totake tickets, you know, because she's a widow and does it for her son--topay for his education. She's so plucky and nice about it, and talks abouthim in such a touching unaffected way, that everybody is sorry for her,and we all simply ruin ourselves in tickets. I do hope that boy's nearlyeducated!"

　　"Mrs. Amyot? Mrs. Amyot?" I repeated. "Is she _still_ educating her son?"

　　"Oh, do you know about her? Has she been at it long? There's some comfortin that, for I suppose when the boy's provided for the poor thing will beable to take a rest--and give us one!"

　　She laughed and held out her hand.

　　"Here's your ticket. Did you say _tickets_--two? Oh, thanks. Of course youneedn't go."

　　"But I mean to go. Mrs. Amyot is an old friend of mine."

　　"Do you really? That's awfully good of you. Perhaps I'll go too if I canpersuade Charlie and the others to come. And I wonder"--in a well-directedaside--"if your friend--?"

　　I telegraphed her under cover of the dusk that my friend was of too recentstanding to be drawn into her charitable toils, and she masked her mistakeunder a rattle of friendly adjurations not to be late, and to be sure tokeep a seat for her, as she had quite made up her mind to go even ifCharlie and the others wouldn't.

　　The flutter of her skirts subsided in the distance, and my neighbor, whohad half turned away to light a cigar, made no effort to reopen theconversation. At length, fearing he might have overheard the allusion tohimself, I ventured to ask if he were going to the lecture that evening.

　　"Much obliged--I have a ticket," he said abruptly.

　　This struck me as in such bad taste that I made no answer; and it was hewho spoke next.

　　"Did I understand you to say that you were an old friend of Mrs. Amyot's?"

　　"I think I may claim to be, if it is the same Mrs. Amyot I had thepleasure of knowing many years ago. My Mrs. Amyot used to lecture too--"

　　"To pay for her son's education?"

　　"I believe so."

　　"Well--see you later."

　　He got up and walked into the house.

　　In the hotel drawing-room that evening there was but a meagre sprinklingof guests, among whom I saw my brown-bearded friend sitting alone on asofa, with his head against the wall. It could not have been curiosity tosee Mrs. Amyot that had impelled him to attend the performance, for itwould have been impossible for him, without changing his place, to commandthe improvised platform at the end of the room. When I looked at him heseemed lost in contemplation of the chandelier.

　　The lady from whom I had bought my tickets fluttered in late, unattendedby Charlie and the others, and assuring me that she would _scream_ if wehad the lecture on Ibsen--she had heard it three times already thatwinter. A glance at the programme reassured her: it informed us (in thelecturer's own slanting hand) that Mrs. Amyot was to lecture on theCosmogony.

　　After a long pause, during which the small audience coughed and moved itschairs and showed signs of regretting that it had come, the door opened,and Mrs. Amyot stepped upon the platform. Ah, poor lady!

　　Some one said "Hush!", the coughing and chair-shifting subsided, and shebegan.

　　It was like looking at one's self early in the morning in a crackedmirror. I had no idea I had grown so old. As for Lancelot, he must have abeard. A beard? The word struck me, and without knowing why I glancedacross the room at my bearded friend on the sofa. Oddly enough he waslooking at me, with a half-defiant, half-sullen expression; and as ourglances crossed, and his fell, the conviction came to me that _he wasLancelot_.

　　I don't remember a word of the lecture; and yet there were enough of themto have filled a good-sized dictionary. The stream of Mrs. Amyot'seloquence had become a flood: one had the despairing sense that she hadsprung a leak, and that until the plumber came there was nothing to bedone about it.

　　The plumber came at length, in the shape of a clock striking ten; mycompanion, with a sigh of relief, drifted away in search of Charlie andthe others; the audience scattered with the precipitation of people whohad discharged a duty; and, without surprise, I found the brown-beardedstranger at my elbow.

　　We stood alone in the bare-floored room, under the flaring chandelier.

　　"I think you told me this afternoon that you were an old friend of Mrs.Amyot's?" he began awkwardly.

　　I assented.

　　"Will you come in and see her?"

　　"Now? I shall be very glad to, if--"

　　"She's ready; she's expecting you," he interposed.

　　He offered no further explanation, and I followed him in silence. He ledme down the long corridor, and pushed open the door of a sitting-room.

　　"Mother," he said, closing the door after we had entered, "here's thegentleman who says he used to know you."

　　Mrs. Amyot, who sat in an easy-chair stirring a cup of bouillon, looked upwith a start. She had evidently not seen me in the audience, and her son'sdescription had failed to convey my identity. I saw a frightened look inher eyes; then, like a frost flower on a window-pane, the dimple expandedon her wrinkled cheek, and she held out her hand.

　　"I'm so glad," she said, "so glad!"

　　She turned to her son, who stood watching us. "You must have told Lancelotall about me--you've known me so long!"

　　"I haven't had time to talk to your son--since I knew he was your son," Iexplained.

　　Her brow cleared. "Then you haven't had time to say anything verydreadful?" she said with a laugh.

　　"It is he who has been saying dreadful things," I returned, trying to fallin with her tone.

　　I saw my mistake. "What things?" she faltered.

　　"Making me feel how old I am by telling me about his children."

　　"My grandchildren!" she exclaimed with a blush.

　　"Well, if you choose to put it so."

　　She laughed again, vaguely, and was silent. I hesitated a moment and thenput out my hand.

　　"I see you are tired. I shouldn't have ventured to come in at this hour ifyour son--"

　　The son stepped between us. "Yes, I asked him to come," he said to hismother, in his clear self-assertive voice. "_I_ haven't told him anythingyet; but you've got to--now. That's what I brought him for."

　　His mother straightened herself, but I saw her eye waver.

　　"Lancelot--" she began.

　　"Mr. Amyot," I said, turning to the young man, "if your mother will let mecome back to-morrow, I shall be very glad--"

　　He struck his hand hard against the table on which he was leaning.

　　"No, sir! It won't take long, but it's got to be said now."

　　He moved nearer to his mother, and I saw his lip twitch under his beard.After all, he was younger and less sure of himself than I had fancied.

　　"See here, mother," he went on, "there's something here that's got to becleared up, and as you say this gentleman is an old friend of yours it hadbetter be cleared up in his presence. Maybe he can help explain it--and ifhe can't, it's got to be explained to _him."_

　　Mrs. Amyot's lips moved, but she made no sound. She glanced at mehelplessly and sat down. My early inclination to thrash Lancelot wasbeginning to reassert itself. I took up my hat and moved toward the door.

　　"Mrs. Amyot is under no obligation to explain anything whatever to me," Isaid curtly.

　　"Well! She's under an obligation to me, then--to explain something in yourpresence." He turned to her again. "Do you know what the people in thishotel are saying? Do you know what he thinks--what they all think? Thatyou're doing this lecturing to support me--to pay for my education! Theysay you go round telling them so. That's what they buy the tickets for--they do it out of charity. Ask him if it isn't what they say--ask him ifthey weren't joking about it on the piazza before dinner. The others thinkI'm a little boy, but he's known you for years, and he must have known howold I was. _He_ must have known it wasn't to pay for my education!"

　　He stood before her with his hands clenched, the veins beating in histemples. She had grown very pale, and her cheeks looked hollow. When shespoke her voice had an odd click in it.

　　"If--if these ladies and gentlemen have been coming to my lectures out ofcharity, I see nothing to be ashamed of in that--" she faltered.

　　"If they've been coming out of charity to _me_," he retorted, "don't yousee you've been making me a party to a fraud? Isn't there any shame inthat?" His forehead reddened. "Mother! Can't you see the shame of lettingpeople think I was a d--beat, who sponged on you for my keep? Let alonemaking us both the laughing-stock of every place you go to!"

　　"I never did that, Lancelot!"

　　"Did what?"

　　"Made you a laughing-stock--"

　　He stepped close to her and caught her wrist.

　　"Will you look me in the face and swear you never told people you weredoing this lecturing business to support me?"

　　There was a long silence. He dropped her wrist and she lifted a limphandkerchief to her frightened eyes. "I did do it--to support you--toeducate you"--she sobbed.

　　"We're not talking about what you did when I was a boy. Everybody whoknows me knows I've been a grateful son. Have I ever taken a penny fromyou since I left college ten years ago?"

　　"I never said you had! How can you accuse your mother of such wickedness,Lancelot?"

　　"Have you never told anybody in this hotel--or anywhere else in the lastten years--that you were lecturing to support me? Answer me that!"

　　"How can you," she wept, "before a stranger?"

　　"Haven't you said such things about _me_ to strangers?" he retorted.

　　"Lancelot!"

　　"Well--answer me, then. Say you haven't, mother!" His voice brokeunexpectedly and he took her hand with a gentler touch. "I'll believeanything you tell me," he said almost humbly.

　　She mistook his tone and raised her head with a rash clutch at dignity.

　　"I think you'd better ask this gentleman to excuse you first."

　　"No, by God, I won't!" he cried. "This gentleman says he knows all aboutyou and I mean him to know all about me too. I don't mean that he oranybody else under this roof shall go on thinking for another twenty-fourhours that a cent of their money has ever gone into my pockets since I wasold enough to shift for myself. And he sha'n't leave this room till you'vemade that clear to him."

　　He stepped back as he spoke and put his shoulders against the door.

　　"My dear young gentleman," I said politely, "I shall leave this roomexactly when I see fit to do so--and that is now. I have already told youthat Mrs. Amyot owes me no explanation of her conduct."

　　"But I owe you an explanation of mine--you and every one who has bought asingle one of her lecture tickets. Do you suppose a man who's been throughwhat I went through while that woman was talking to you in the porchbefore dinner is going to hold his tongue, and not attempt to justifyhimself? No decent man is going to sit down under that sort of thing. It'senough to ruin his character. If you're my mother's friend, you owe it tome to hear what I've got to say."

　　He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

　　"Good God, mother!" he burst out suddenly, "what did you do it for?Haven't you had everything you wanted ever since I was able to pay for it?Haven't I paid you back every cent you spent on me when I was in college?Have I ever gone back on you since I was big enough to work?" He turned tome with a laugh. "I thought she did it to amuse herself--and because therewas such a demand for her lectures. _Such a demand!_ That's what shealways told me. When we asked her to come out and spend this winter withus in Minneapolis, she wrote back that she couldn't because she hadengagements all through the south, and her manager wouldn't let her off.That's the reason why I came all the way on here to see her. We thoughtshe was the most popular lecturer in the United States, my wife and I did!We were awfully proud of it too, I can tell you." He dropped into a chair,still laughing.

　　"How can you, Lancelot, how can you!" His mother, forgetful of mypresence, was clinging to him with tentative caresses. "When you didn'tneed the money any longer I spent it all on the children--you know I did."

　　"Yes, on lace christening dresses and life-size rocking-horses with realmanes! The kind of thing children can't do without."

　　"Oh, Lancelot, Lancelot--I loved them so! How can you believe suchfalsehoods about me?"

　　"What falsehoods about you?"

　　"That I ever told anybody such dreadful things?"

　　He put her back gently, keeping his eyes on hers. "Did you never tellanybody in this house that you were lecturing to support your son?"

　　Her hands dropped from his shoulders and she flashed round on me in suddenanger.

　　"I know what I think of people who call themselves friends and who comebetween a mother and her son!"

　　"Oh, mother, mother!" he groaned.

　　I went up to him and laid my hand on his shoulder.

　　"My dear man," I said, "don't you see the uselessness of prolonging this?"

　　"Yes, I do," he answered abruptly; and before I could forestall hismovement he rose and walked out of the room.

　　There was a long silence, measured by the lessening reverberations of hisfootsteps down the wooden floor of the corridor.

　　When they ceased I approached Mrs. Amyot, who had sunk into her chair. Iheld out my hand and she took it without a trace of resentment on herravaged face.

　　"I sent his wife a seal-skin jacket at Christmas!" she said, with thetears running down her cheeks.