and, hardly less probably, actually turn to account in a
way we do not perceive many which we seem to ourselves to squander. In
any event, others will come. A woman once said to me that the good in
her was not cultivated nor exercised with a view to _individual
immortality_. That seemed to me to mean so much that I've built up quite
a little creed on it. It's the principle, isn't it, upon which the whole
scheme of the world hinges? A million leaves fall and decay to enrich
the soil wherefrom two million more may spring. An infinity of little
shell-fish die, and the ages grind their shells to powder to make the
sands and the chalk cliffs. Countless raindrops sacrifice their identity
to maintain that of one great river. And why should it not be so with
us? If only we can contribute in the smallest degree to the uplifting of
our kind, to the advancement of the race, to the maintenance of what we
know to be right, what possible difference can it make whether, in the
effort to be of such service, we live or succumb? We were put here, it
seems to me, very much as separate notes are put into one great harmony.
Each note is struck at the proper time, serves its purpose, and goes
into nothingness. Each plays its part, however small. We can't all be
included in the wonderful final chords. Our place may seem trivial to
us, and yet in some sense we may be sure we are all contributors to the
unity and perfection of the whole. That ought to be enough. No one note
achieves individual immortality, but each does something to assure the
immortality of the composition of which it forms a part. If we don't
believe that, if we are not content to have it so, how is it possible to
believe in any divine purpose, any scheme of justice at all? Look at the
indescribable waste of life on all sides of us. If only in the case of
humanity, people are dying by hundreds every minute, unheeded,
unlamented, unrecorded. Human life is such a little thing!--as little as
the life of the leaf or the raindrop. And yet in the death of these last
we are able to perceive the working of a vast system which must be the
outcome of a direct purpose, and whereby the best interest of each
species is furthered. And so, the human race. Why should it be less
than lesser things? One man dies in order that two may live. A
confederacy--as in the case of our own Rebellion--perishes in order that
a nation may endure. Everywhere, in short, the individual sacrifices his
individual existence in order that it may contribute to and fertilize
the growth of his species. So far as I am concerned, I am perfectly
content to have it so. I should ask nothing better, when my own time
comes, than the assurance that, in one way or another, my death had a
significance,--that it was for a person or a principle, and not merely a
natural phenomenon. I may not be able to believe that; but there is one
belief possible to all of us,--I mean that, if not in death, then
assuredly in life, we have been of service to our race and time. We are
often told that the indispensable thing does not exist. I think the same
may be said of the useless one. I don't believe even the humblest of
God's creatures goes out of life without having been at one time or
another an influence for good. I even have hopes of Diogenes. Some day
there will be a scrap of refuse or an ugly little bug which mars the
symmetry of the pool, and Diogenes will eat it,--and perhaps die of
indigestion as a martyr to principle!"

The silence which followed her words was broken by a hoarse sob from Mr.
Rathbawne, and, turning, they saw that his head had fallen back against
the chair, with his eyes, wide and staring, fixed upon the glass roof,
and his breath coming in short, thick gasps from between his parted
lips. In an instant Natalie was on her knees by his side, with her arms
about him.

"Don't be frightened," she said, looking up at Cavendish with a brave
little smile. "It's his heart. He has had these attacks frequently of
late. Will you get me the whiskey decanter and a glass? You'll find them
in the dining-room--on the sideboard--to the left."

Decanter in hand, Cavendish stood watching her, as she tenderly poured a
little of the raw spirit between her father's lips. The effect was
almost instantaneous. Rathbawne choked, swallowed the restorative, and
presently raised his head and looked at her, patting her hand
tremulously with his own. They were so absorbed in each other that
neither noted a sudden, strange transformation in Cavendish's
expression. From the wide-mouthed decanter in his hand, the faint acrid
odor of Peter Rathbawne's fine old Scotch whiskey crept upward, stung
his nostrils, and, of a sudden, set him all a-quiver, like a startled
animal. The smell was almost that of pure alcohol, and set his mouth
watering, and drove his breath out in a little shuddering gasp that was
like a revulsion from some sickening medicine, just swallowed. But he
knew it, none the less, for something which belonged to and was part of
him. For weeks he had avoided it. Now it assailed him like that foe of
Hercules, of whom he had spoken to Barclay, whose strength was
multiplied a hundred-fold for every time his opponent trod him under
foot.

As he told the Lieutenant-Governor, at the moment when least he
expected it, the demon touched his arm. For a minute he fought
desperately against the suggestion, with his eyes closed, and his teeth
cutting into his inner lip. He clung madly to the thought of the
presence in which he was, conscious that the girl's words had
uplifted him immeasurably, given him a clearer insight into the
essential significance of life than he had ever known. It was
useless--useless--useless! There was nothing left in the world but the
smell of the liquor that he loathed and that he loved!

"If you were to leave us alone"--

At the suggestion, Cavendish bowed and went slowly back toward the
dining-room. Once out of sight of the others, he paused, glanced back
over his shoulder, and then, abruptly, supporting himself with one hand
against the side-post of the doorway, raised the decanter in the other
to his lips, and drank.




XIII

THE INSTRUMENT OF FATE


The day had been deliciously warm and still, one of those eloquent
heralds of spring that are touched with a peculiar beauty rivaling her
own. As Cavendish came out of the Rathbawne residence, Bradbury Avenue
was splashed with huge blotches of dazzling yellow, where the light of
the westwardly sun poured between the houses and was spilled upon the
smooth pavement. The man choked slightly at the after-taste of the raw
whiskey he had just swallowed, but almost immediately he smiled.

"I knew it would come," he said to himself as he turned out into the
avenue, "and here it is. I'm not surprised. I'm glad, God help me--I'm
_glad_!"

His mouth was watering, and he felt, as it were, every inch of the
stimulant's progress through his veins, warming him with its familiar
glow. When he had left the conservatory, he had been trembling
pitifully. Now he was calm, and as steady as if his nerves had been
cords of steel. Responsibility, resolution, remorse--they had fallen
from him like so many discarded garments. He was sharply alive to the
pleasure of the moment, keenly appreciative of the sunlight, the soft
air, the laughter of the children romping in the streets. Of a singular
languor which had been wont to come over him toward the close of each
busy day of the past six weeks there was now no hint. He walked rapidly,
with his shoulders thrown back, and his chin well elevated, but his
course was not in the direction of his home, nor yet in that of the
"Sentinel" office. Instinctively, he had turned toward that part of the
city where were the large restaurants, the playhouses, and the more
pretentious saloons.

At a corner, he wheeled abruptly into one of these last, and, seating
himself at a small table, called for an absinthe. The place was already
lighted, and each glass in the pyramids behind the bar twinkled with a
tiny brilliant reflection of the nearest incandescent globes. The air
was faintly redolent of lemon and the mingled odors of many liquors. To
Cavendish it was all very familiar, and all very pleasant. Again he told
himself that he was glad, glad that the restraint he had been exercising
was at an end. He was free, he thought, free to accomplish his own
inevitable damnation. He had no patience for the tedious operation of
dripping the water into his absinthe over a lump of sugar, but ordered
gum, and stirring the two rapidly together, filled the glass to the brim
from a little pitcher at his side. Then he drank, slowly but steadily,
barely touching the glass to the table between his sips.

Presently, he was conscious of a slight numbness at his wrists, a barely
perceptible tingling in his knees and knuckles. His heart was
fluttering, and his temples pulsed pleasurably. He glanced toward the
glittering pyramids of glasses, and for a fraction of time they seemed
to shift in unison a foot to the right, returning immediately to their
original position with a jerk. Then he rose, and went toward the door,
catching sight of his face in a mirror as he passed. It was very pale,
and he crinkled his nose at it derisively, and then smiled at the
whimsical oddity of his reflected expression. On the threshold he
paused, looking toward the west, blazing with the red and saffron of the
departed sun.

"Oof!" he said, with a downward tug at his waistcoat. "It comes quickly.
That's what it is to be out of practice."

He dined alone in a corner of an unfrequented restaurant, eating little,
but drinking steadily, absinthe at first, then whiskey, four
half-goblets of it, barely diluted with water. Then he found himself
once more in the streets, now brilliantly lighted, going on and on
without purpose, save when the blazing colored glass of a saloon swerved
him from his path. He knew that he was walking steadily, avoiding
obstacles as if by instinct, stepping from and on to kerbs without any
actual perception of them. Faces swam past him, staring. Men,
particularly those at the bars he leaned against, were talking loudly,
but, as it seemed to him, brilliantly. He often smiled involuntarily,
and sometimes spoke to one of them, drank with him, and presently was
alone again, walking on and on. Occasionally a white-faced clock bulged
at him out of the night; and then he noticed that time was galloping. It
was close upon one when he found himself in a quarter which his recent
employment had made familiar--the neighborhood of the Rathbawne Mills.

Here, suddenly, his mind emerged from a mist, and every detail of his
surroundings stood out sharp and clear-cut. The street was
insufficiently illuminated, but the light of a full moon cut across the
buildings on one side, half way between roof and sidewalk. Cavendish
perceived, with a kind of dull surprise, that the pavements were
thronged, and that almost every window framed a figure or two. A hoarse
murmur pulsed in the air, and his quickened ear was greeted on every
side by foul jests and grumbled oaths, broken now and again by drunken
imprecations, scuffles, or the shrill invective of women invisible in
the throng. Once a girl touched his arm, and he found her face close to
his, thin, haggard, and imploring. He shook her off, and turned
unsteadily into the doorway of a saloon; stumbling, as he did so, over a
little boy crying on the step.

Inside, the air was reeking with rank smoke and the fumes of stale beer.
The floor was strewn with sawdust, streaked and circled by shuffling
feet; the mirror backing the bar was covered with soiled gauze dotted
with tawdry roses, and an indescribable dinginess seemed to have laid
its sordid fingers on all the fittings.

The room was crowded, nevertheless--crowded not only with the men
themselves, but, to the stifling point, with their voices and their
gestures and the spirit of their unrest and discontent. Cavendish,
leaning against the end of the bar, looked wearily