The Count of Crow's Nest

Crow's Nest was an overcrowded boarding house on West Side, overcrowded because there one could obtain shelter and sustenance of a respectable nature cheaper than anywhere else in ante-Columbian Chicago.* Of course the real name of the place was not Crow's Nest; it had, indeed, a very euphuistic name; but a boarder once called it Crow's Nest, and the rest felt the fitness of the title, so after that the name clung to it. The cost of existing had been reduced to its minimum there, and it was for that reason that Harold Buchanan found the Count de Koch among the guests of the house. Buchanan himself was there from the same cause, a cause responsible for most of the disagreeable things in this world. For Buchanan was just out of college, an honor man of whom great things were expected, and was waiting about Chicago to find a drive wheel to which to apply his undisputed genius. He found this waiting to see what one is good for one of the most trying tasks allotted to the sons of men. He hung about studios, publishing houses and concert halls hunting a medium, an opportunity. He knew that he was gifted in more ways than one, but he knew equally well that he was painfully immature, and that between him and success of any kind lay an indefinable, intangible something which only time could dispose of. Once it had been a question of which of several professions he should concentrate his energies upon; now the problem was to find any one in which he could gain the slightest foothold. When he had begun his search it was a quest of the marvelous, of the pot of fairy gold at the rainbow's end; but now it was a quest for gold of another sort, just the ordinary prosaic gold of the work-a-day world that will buy a man his dinner and a coat to his back.

In the meantime, among the tragic disillusionments of his first hazard of fortune, Buchanan had to live, and this he did at Crow's Nest because existence was much simplified there, almost reduced to first principles, and one could dine in a sack coat and still hold up his head with assurance among his fellow men. So there he had his study, where he began pictures and tragedies that were never completed, and wrote comic operas that were never produced, and hated humanity as only a nervous sensitive man in a crowded boarding house can hate it. The rooms above his were occupied by a prima donna who practiced incessantly, a thin, pale, unhappy-looking woman with dark rings under her eyes, whose strength and salary were spent in endeavoring to force her voice up to a note which forever eluded her. On his left lived a discontented man bearded like a lion, who had intended to be a novelist and had ended by becoming a very ordinary reviewer, putting the reproach of his failure entirely upon a dull and unappreciative public.

The occupants of the house were mostly people of this sort, who had come short of their own expectations and thought that the world had treated them badly and that the time was out of joint. The atmosphere of failure and that peculiar rancor which it begets seemed to have settled down over the place. It seemed to have entered into the very walls; it was in the close reception room with its gloomy hangings, clammy wall paper, hard sofas and bad pictures. It was in the old grand piano, with the worn yellow keys that clicked like castanets as they gave out their wavering, tinny treble notes in an ineffectual staccato. It was in the long, dark dining room, where the gas was burning all day, in the reluctant chairs that were always dismembering themselves under one, in the inevitable wan chromo of the sad-eyed Cenci who is daily martyred anew at the bands of relentless copyists, in the very clock above the sideboard whose despairing, hopeless hands never reached the hour at the proper time, and which always struck plaintively, long after all the other clocks were through.

The prima donna sneered at the chilly style of the great Australian soprano** who was singing for a thousand dollars a night down at the Auditorium, the reviewer declared that literature had stopped with Thackeray, the art student railed day and night against all pictures but his own.

Buchanan sometimes wondered if this were a dark prophecy of his own future. Perhaps he, too, would some day be old and poor and disappointed, would have touched that wall which marks the limitations of men's lives, and would hate the name of a successful man as the dwarfs of the underworld hated the giants in the golden groves of Asgard. He felt it would be better to contrive to get capsized in the lake some night. Could there be any greater degradation than to learn to hate an art and its exponents merely because one had failed in it himself? He fervently hoped that some happy accident would carry him off before he reached that stage.

Day after day he sat down in that dining room that was so conducive to pessimistic reflection, with the same distasteful people: The blonde stenographer who giggled so that she often had to leave the table, the cadaverous art student who talked of originating a new school of landscape painting, and who meantime taught clay modeling in a design school to defray his modest expenses at the Nest, the reviewer, the prima donna, the languid old widow who wore lilacs in her false front and coquetted with the fat man with the ear trumpet. She had, in days gone by, made coy overtures to Buchanan and the surly reviewer, but as they were more than unresponsive and would have none of her, she now devoted herself exclusively to the deaf man, though undoubtedly ear trumpets are an impediment to coquetry. But as the deaf man could not hear her at all, he stood it very well. He might also be short sighted, Buchanan reflected.

In all that vista of faces, there were some twenty in all, there was but one which was not unpleasant; that of the courtly old gentleman who ate alone at a small table at the end of the dining room. He was only there at dinner, his breakfast and luncheon were always sent to his room. He had no acquaintances in the house and spoke to no one, yet every one knew that he was Paul, Count de Koch, and during breakfast and luncheon hours he and his possible history had furnished the pi�ce de r�sistance of conversation for some months. In that absorbing theme even the decadence of French art and English letters and the execution of the Australian soprano were forgotten. The stenographer called attention to the fact that his coat was of a prehistoric cut, though she acknowledged its fit was above criticism. The widow had learned from the landlady that he shaved himself and blacked his own boots. She was certain he had been a desperately wicked man and lost all his money at Monte Carlo, for unless Counts were very reprehensible indeed they were always rich. This scrutinizing gossip about a courteous and defenseless old gentleman was the most harassing of all Buchanan's table trials, and it savored altogether too much of the treatment of P�re Goriot in Madame Vanquar's "Pension Bourgeoise."

He was always glad at dinner when the Count's presence put a stop at least to audible queries, and his calm patrician face again made its strange contrast with the sordid unhappy ones about him. His clear gray eyes, his slight erect figure, and white, tapering hands seemed quite as anomalous there as his name. That gentlemanly figure made life at Crow’s Nest possible to Buchanan; it was like seeing a Vandyke portrait in the gallery of daubs. The Count's whole conduct, like his person, was simple, dignified and artistic. It was a cause for much indignation among the boarders, particularly so in the case of the widow and prima donna, that he met no one. Yet his manner was never one of superiority, simply of amiable and dignified reserve. He might at all times have stood the scrutiny of a court drawing room, yet he was perfectly unostentatious and unconscious. There was something regal about his gestures. When he held back the swinging door for the hurried maid with her groaning tray of dishes, you half expected to see the Empress Eugenie and her train sweep through, or gay old Ludwig with his padded calves and painted cheeks and enormous wig, his troupe of poets and dancers behind him. He drank his pale California claret as if it were Madeira of one of those priceless vintages of the last century.

In his college days Buchanan had been a good deal among well-bred people, but he had never seen any one so quietly and faultlessly correct. Sometimes he met him walking by the Lake Shore, and he thought he would have noticed his carriage and walk among a thousand. In watching him that phrase of Lang's, "A gentleman among canaille," constantly occurred to him.

One of the saddest defects of that ponderous machinery which we call society is the impenetrable wall which is built up between personalities; one of the saddest of our finite weaknesses is our incapacity to recognize and know and claim the people who are made for us. Every day we pass men who want us and whom we bitterly need, unknowing, unthinking, as friends pass each other at a masked ball: pursuing the tinkle of the harlequin's bells, not knowing that under the friar's hood is the camaraderie they seek. Following persistently the fluttering hem of the priestly gown, never dreaming that the heart of gold is under the spangled corsage of Folly there, sitting tired out on the stairway. It seems as if there ought to be a floor manager to arrange these things for us. However, given a close proximity and continue it long enough, and the right people will find each other out as certainly as the satellites know their proper suns. It was impossible that, in such a place as Crow's Nest, Buchanan's relations to the Count should continue the same as those of the other boarders. It was impossible that the Count should not notice that one respectful glance that was neither curious nor vulgar, only frankly interested and appreciative.

One evening as Buchanan sat in the reception room reading a volume of Gautier’s romances while waiting for the dinner that was always late, he glanced up and detected the Count looking over his shoulder.

"I must ask your pardon for my seeming discourtesy, but one so seldom sees those delightful romances read in this country, that for the moment I quite forgot myself. And as I caught the title 'La Morte Amoureuse,' an old favorite of mine, I could scarcely refrain from glancing a second time."

Buchanan decided that since chance had thrown this opportunity in his way, he had a right to make the most of it. He closed the book and turned, smiling.

"I am only too glad to meet some one who is familiar with it. I have met the idea before, it has been imitated in English, I think."

"Ah, yes, doubtless. Many of those things have been imitated in English, but—"

He shrugged his shoulders expressively. "Yes, I understand your hiatus. These things are quite impossible in English, especially the one we are speaking of. Some way we haven't the feeling for absolute and specific beauty of diction. We have no sense for the aroma of words as they have. We are never content with the effect of material beauty alone, we are always looking for something else. Of course we lose by it, it is like always thinking about one's dinner when one is invited out."

The Count nodded. "Yes, you look for the definite, whereas the domain of pure art is always the indefinite. You want the fact under the illusion, whereas the illusion is in itself the most wonderful of facts. It is a mistake not to be content with perfection and not find its sermon sufficient. As opposed to chaos, harmony was the original good, the first created virtue. And of course a great production of art must be the perfection of harmony. Even in the grotesque the harmony of the whole must be there. To be impervious to this indicates a certain bluntness toward the finer spiritual laws."

"And yet," said Buchanan, "we have been accustomed to look at all this as quite the opposite of spiritual. Our standpoint is certainly rather inconsistent, but I believe it is honest enough."

The Count smiled. "Certainly. It is a question of whether you want your sermon in a flower or in a Greek word, in poetry or in prose, whether you want the formula of goodness or goodness itself. So many of your authors write formulae. There was, however, one of your litt�rateurs who knew the distinction, even if he was something of a charlatan in using it. Poe surpassed even Gautier in using some effects of that character," pointing to the book in Buchanan's hand. "Perhaps under happier circumstances he might have done so in all. You had there a true stylist who knew the value of an effect; a master of single and graceful conceptions, who was content to leave them as such, unexplained and without apology."

"Perhaps that is the reason we say he was crazy," said Buchanan, sadly.

"Perhaps," said the Count as he lighted his cigar. "I hope to have the pleasure of discussing this again with you. You have read 'Fortunio'? No? When you have read 'Fortunio' I will wish to see you." He smiled and went out for his wintery walk on the Lake Shore.

After that Buchanan met the Count frequently, in the hallway, on the veranda, on his walks. They always had some conversation during these encounters, but their remarks were generally of a very casual nature. Buchanan felt some hesitancy about pushing the acquaintance lest he should exhaust it too soon. His tendency had always lain that way. In his intemperate youth he had plunged hotheaded and rapacious into friendship after friendship, giving more than any one cared to receive and exacting more than any one had leisure to give, only to reach that almost inevitable point where, independent of any volition of his own, the impetus slackened and stopped, the wells of sweet water were dry and the cisterns were broken. These promising oases that flourish among monotonous humanity dry up so quickly, most of them. They are verdant to us but a night. There are so few minds that are fitted to race side by side, to wrestle and rejoice together, even unto the paean. And after all that is the base of affinities, that mental brotherhood. The glamour of every other passion and enthusiasm fades like the brilliance of an afterglow, leaving shadow and chill and a nameless ennui.

One evening Buchanan stopped the Count in the hall.

"May I trouble you for a moment, sir? A friend of mine who is something of a bibliomaniac has sent me from Munich a copy of Rabelais stamped with the Bavarian arms. There is an autograph on the fly leaf, indeed, two of them, and he suspects that one of them may be Ludwig's."

The Count adjusted his eye glasses and looked thoughtfully at the faded writing: "Lola M.," and further down the page, "Ludwig."*** "You have certainly every reason for such a supposition. Ludwig was one of the few monarchs who really cared enough for books to put his name and in one Lola Montez' name, too, for that matter. However, in these autographs one can never tell. If you will step upstairs with me we can soon assure ourselves."

"O, I did not mean to trouble you; you were just going out, were you not?"

"It was nothing of importance, nothing that I would not gladly abandon for the prospect of your company."

Buchanan followed him up the stuffy stairway and down the narrow hall. He was conscious of a subdued thrill of quickened curiosity upon entering the Count's apartments. But as his host lit the gas one covert glance about him told him that he need not exercise rigid surveillance over his eyes. Beyond a number of books and pictures, portraits, most of them, there was little to distinguish the room from the ordinary furnished apartment. There was the usual faded moquette carpet, the same cheap rugs and the inevitable shiny oak furniture. The silver fittings of the writing table, engraved with a crest and monogram, were the only suggestions of the rank of the occupant.

"Be seated there, on the divan, and I will find a signature I know to be authentic. We will compare them." As he spoke he tugged at the unwilling drawers of a chiffonier in the corner.

"This furniture," he remarked apologetically, "partakes somewhat of the sullen nature of the house. There, we have it at last."

He lifted from the drawer a small steel chest and placed it upon the table. After opening it with a key attached to his watchguard, he drew out a pile of papers and began sorting them. Buchanan watched curiously the various documents as they passed through his hands. Some of them were on parchment and suggested venerable histories, some of them were encased in modern envelopes, and some were on tinted note paper with heavily embossed monograms, suggesting histories equally alluring if less venerable. If those notes could speak the import of their contents, what a roar of guttural bassos, soaring sopranos, and impassioned contraltos and tenors there would be! And would the dominant note of the chorus be of Ares or Eros, he wondered?

He was aroused from his speculations by the Count's slight exclamation when he found the paper he was hunting for. He unfolded a stiff sheet of note paper, and then folding it back so that only the signature was visible, sat down beside his guest. The signature, "Ludwig W.," stood out clearly from the paper he held.

"Not Ludwig's, evidently," said the Count, "now we will look as to the other. I am sorry to say we have that, too."

He opened the other paper he held, and folded it as he had done the first. The signature in this case was simply "Lola."

"They seem to be identical. I fancied as much. It was Madame Montez' custom to take whatever she wanted from the royal library, and she seldom troubled herself to return it. The second name is only another evidence of her inordinate vanity, and they are too numerous to be of especial interest. I must apologize for showing you the signatures in this singularly unsatisfactory manner, but the contents of these communications were strictly personal, and, of course, were not addressed to me. I remember very little of the reign of the first Ludwig myself. There are a number of names among those papers that might interest you, if you care to see them and will omit the body of the documents. They are, many of them, papers that should never have been written at all. Such things are inevitable in very old families, though I could never understand their motive for preserving them. There is only one way to handle such things, and that is with absolute and unvarying care. To show them even to an appreciative friend is a form of blackmail. I dislike the responsibility of knowing their contents myself. I have not read any of them for years."

"And yet you, too, keep them?"

"Certainly, inbred tradition, I suppose. I have often intended to destroy them, but I have always deferred the actual doing of it. Since they have enabled me to be of some service to you, I am glad I have delayed the holocaust."

The conventional ring of the last remark seemed to politely close all further serious discussion of the subject. Buchanan checked the question he had already mentally uttered, and taking a chair by the table, looked at the signatures his host selected. They were names that consumed him with an overwhelming curiosity and made his ears tingle and his checks burn; single names, most of them, those single names that Balzac said made the observer dream. As the Count took another package of documents from the box his fingers caught a small gold chain attached to some metallic object that rang sharply against the sides of the box as he lifted his hand.

"The iron cross!" cried Buchanan involuntarily, with a quick inward breath.

"Yes, it is one that I won on the field of Gravelotte years ago. It is my only contribution to this box. I have been a very ordinary man, Mr. Buchanan. In families like ours there must be some men who neither make nor break, but try to keep things together. That my efforts in that direction were somewhat futile was not entirely my fault. I had two brothers who bore the title before me; they were both talented men, and when my turn came there was very little left to save."

"I fancied you had been more of a student than a man of affairs."

"Student is too grave a word. I have always read; at one time I thought that of itself gave one a sufficient purpose, but like other things it fails one at last, at least the living interest of it. At present I am only a survivor. Here, where every one plays for some stake, I realize how nearly extinct is the class to which I belong, and that I am a sort of survival of the unfit, with no duty but to keep an escutcheon that is only a name and a sword that the world no longer needs. An old pagan back in Julian's time who still clung to a despoiled Olympus and a vain philosophy, dead as its own abstruse syllogisms, might have felt as I do when the new faith, throbbing with potentialities, was coming in. The life of my own father seems to be as far away as the lives of the ancient emperors. It is not a pleasant thing to be the last of one's kind. The tedium vitae descends heavily upon one."

As the Count was speaking, they heard a ripple of loud laughter on the stairs and a rustle of draperies in the hall, and a tall blonde woman, dressed in a tight-fitting tailor-made gown, with a pair of long lavender gloves lying jauntily over her shoulder, entered and bowed graciously to the Count.

"Bon soir, mon p�re, I was not aware you had company." There was in her voice that peculiarly hard throat tone that stage people so often use in conversation.

"Mr. Buchanan, my daughter, Helena."

Buchanan bowed and muttered a greeting, uncertain by just what title he should address her.

"No Countess, if you please, Mr. Buchanan. Just plain Helena de Koch. Titles are out of date, and more than absurd in our case. I come from a rehearsal of a concert where I sing for money, attired in a ready-made gown, botched over by a tailor, to visit my respected parent in a fourth-rate lodging house, and you call me Countess! Could anything be more innately funny? Titles only go in comic opera now. I have often tried to persuade my father to content himself with Paul de Koch."

The Count smiled. "My name was not mine to make, Helena, and I am not at all ashamed of it."

The young lady's keen but rather indifferent eyes had dwelt on Buchanan but a moment, but he felt as though he had been inspected by a drill sergeant, and that no detail of his person or attire had escaped her.

She glanced at the table and then at the Count. "So you have decided to become practical at last?"

A shade of extreme annoyance swept quickly over the Count’s face. He replied stiffly.

"I have merely been showing Mr. Buchanan an autograph he wished to see."

"O, so that is all! I might have known it. People do not recover from a mania in a day." She laughed rather unpleasantly and turned graciously to Buchanan. "Have you persuaded him to show you any of them? The contents are much more interesting than the autographs, rather side lights on history, you know." Her eyelid drooped a little with an insinuating glance, just enough to suggest a wink that did not come to pass, but he felt strangely repelled by even the suggestion. It must have been the connection that made it so objectionable, he reflected. She seemed to cheapen the Count and all his surroundings.

"No, my interest goes no further than the autographs."

"A polite prevarication, I imagine. You will have to get more in the shadow if you hide the curiosity in your eyes. I don't blame you, he found me reading them once, and all the old Koch temper came out. I never knew he had it until then. Our tempers and our title are the only remnants of our former glory. The one is quite as ridiculous as the other, since we have no one to get angry at but each other. Poverty has no right to indignation at all. I speak respectfully even to a cabman. Papa shows his superiority by having no cabman at all."

"I think neither of you need do anything at all to show that," said Buchanan, politely.

"O, come, you are all like impressarios, you Americans, and the further West one goes the worse it is. I never saw a manager who could resist a title; I only use mine on such occasions."

Buchanan saw that his host looked ill at ease, so he endeavored to change the subject.

"You sing, I believe?"

"O, yes, in oratorio and concert. Cher papa will not hear of the opera. Oratorio seems to be the special retreat of decayed gentility. I don't believe in those distinctions myself; I have found that a title dating from the foundation of the Empire does not buy one a spring bonnet, and that one of the oldest names in Europe will not keep one in gloves. One of your clever Frenchmen said there is nothing in the world but money, the gallows excepted. But His Excellency here never quotes that. Papa is an aristocrat, while I am bourgeoise to the tips of my fingers." She waved her highly polished nails toward Buchanan.

He thought that she could not have summarized herself better. The instinctive dislike he had always felt for her had been steadily growing into an aversion since she entered the room. It was by no means the first time he had seen her, she was almost a familiar figure about the boarding house, and often came to dine with the Count. Her florid coloring and elaborately blonde hair might have been said to be a general expression of her style. Under that yellow bang was a low straight forehead, and straight brows from behind which looked out a pair of blue eyes, large and full but utterly without depth, and cold as icicles, which seemed to be continually estimating the pecuniary value of the world. The cheeks were full and the chill decided in spite of its dimple. The upper lip was full and short and the nostril spare. They were scarcely the features one would expect to find in the descendant of an ancient house, seeming more accidental than formed by any perpetuated tendencies of blood. Her hands were broad and plump like her wrists.

Mademoiselle was on almost familiar terms with the landlady of Crow's Nest, and Buchanan fancied that she was responsible for the bits of gossip concerning the Count that floated about the house and were daily rehearsed by the languid widow. The widow had gone so far as to darkly express her doubts as to this effulgent blonde being the Count's daughter at all, and Buchanan had been guilty of rather hoping that she was right. It would be rather less of a reflection on the Count, he thought. But tonight's conversation left him no room for doubt, and in watching the contrast between her full, florid countenance and the chastened face across the table, he wondered if the materialists of this world were always hale and full-fed, while the idealists were pale and gray as the shadows that kept them company. But one did not find time to muse much about anything in Mademoiselle de Koch's presence.

"By the way, cher papa, you are coming tomorrow night to hear me sing that waltz song of Arditti’s?"

"Certainly, if you wish, but I am not fond of that style of music."

"O, certainly not, that's not to be expected or hoped for, nothing but mossbacks. But, seriously, one cannot sing Mendelssohn or Haydn forever, and all the modern classics are so abominably difficult," said Mademoiselle, beginning to draw on her gloves, which Buchanan noticed were several sizes too small and required a great deal of coaxing. Indeed everything that Mademoiselle wore fit her closely. She was of that peculiar type of blonde loveliness which impresses one as being always on the verge of embonpoint, and its possessor seems always to be in a state of nervous apprehension lest she should cross the dead line and openly and fearlessly be called stout.

At this juncture a gentle knock was heard at the door, and Mademoiselle remarked carelessly, "That's only Tony. Come in!"

A gentleman entered and bowed humbly to Mademoiselle. He was a little tenor whom Buchanan remembered having seen before, and whose mild dark eyes and swarthy skin had given him a pretext to adopt an Italian stage name. He was a slight, narrow chested man and [had] a receding chin and a generally "professional" and foreign air which was unmistakably cultivated.

"A charming evening, Count. Chicago weather is so seldom genial in the winter."

After presenting him to Buchanan the Count answered him, "I have not been out, but it seems so here."

"Doubtless, in Mademoiselle's society. But you are busy?"

He glanced inquiringly at Mademoiselle. Buchanan fancied that the question was addressed to her rather than to the Count, and thought he intercepted an answering glance.

"Not at all, we were merely amusing ourselves. Must you leave us already?"

"I think Mademoiselle has another rehearsal. You know what it means to presume to keep pace with an art, eternal vigilance. There is no rest for the weary in our profession—not, at least, in this world." This was said with a weighty sincerity that almost provoked a smile from Buchanan. There are two words which no Chicago singer can talk ten minutes without using: "art" and "Chicago," and this gentleman had already indulged in both.

"O, yes, we must be gone to practice the despised Arditti. Come tomorrow night if you can. Tony here will give you tickets. And if Mr. Buchanan should have nothing better to do, pray bring him with you."

Buchanan assured her that he could have nothing more agreeable at any rate, and would be delighted to go. She took possession of the tenor and departed.

Harold Buchanan accompanied the Count next evening, and his impressions of Mademoiselle Helena de Koch were only intensified. She sang floridly and with that peculiar confidence which always seems to attend uncertain execution. She had a peculiar trick of just seeming to catch a note by the skirts and then falling back from it, just touching it, as it were, but totally unable to sustain it. More than that, her very unconsciousness of this showed that she had absolutely no musical sense. Buchanan was inclined to think that, next to her coarse disappreciation of her father, her singing was rather the worst feature about her. To sing badly and not to have perception enough to know it was such a bad index of one's mental and aesthetic constitution.

After the concert they went up on the stage to see her, and she came forward to meet them, accompanied by the tenor, and greeted them graciously, bearing her blushing honors quite as thick upon her as if she had sung well.

"It was nice of you to come. Did you catch my eye?"

"I am still glowing with the pleasure of thinking I did so, but I was afraid perhaps it was only a delusion. One so often goes about puffed up over favors that were meant for the fellow back of him."

"O, I hoped mine were more intelligible than that. But now you shall be rewarded for your patience. Tony and I are going to have a little supper down at Kingsley's, and you must come, just us, you know. Papa may come to chaperone us, if it is not too late for him."

The Count hastily excused himself, and indeed he must have been very dense to have accepted such a hostile invitation, even from his own daughter. But Buchanan had already bowed his acceptance, and felt that it was too late to retreat. Reluctantly he accompanied Mademoiselle and the silent tenor, and saw the Count depart alone. And yet, he reflected, this merciful intervention would relieve him from the awkward necessity of discussing the concert with his friend.

When they were seated at Kingsley's and had given their orders, it struck him that Mademoiselle had some purpose in bringing him, for it soon became obvious that the tenor's charms were of that nature which one usually prefers to enjoy alone. What this might be, however, did not at once appear. She discussed current music and light opera in quite an amiable and disinterested manner, and for a time contented herself with this.

"You are a journalist, I believe, Mr. Buchanan?"

"Scarcely, yet. That is one of the many things I would like to be."

"You are a Chicago man, at any rate?" inquired the tenor.

"Well, one of the queer things about Chicago is that no one is really a native. I have lived here a good deal, off and on. My father used to be in business here before I went East to school. Just at present I want to get into something, and I think that lightning is about as likely to strike one here as any where."

"More likely! Chicago is the place for young talent. I have found so. They want new blood and new ideas. Success comes sooner and more directly here than elsewhere in your profession as in my own. I would rather sing to a Chicago audience than any other, and I think I have been before most of the best ones in this country." When the taciturn gentleman spoke at all it was of one all-important theme. Indeed, do tenors ever talk of anything else? Art et moi; L’art, c'est moi!

"O, Tony here takes things too seriously. 'Life is a plaything, life is a toy!' You have sung that often enough to believe it a little by this time. By the way, Mr. Buchanan, have you been down to hear the threadbare Robin Hood? O, no, I never go; there are no light operas worth hearing except those of the Viennese. Think of that odious waltz song, ta, ta, ta-ta-te, ta; ta-ta-te, ta, ta, ta!"

Buchanan looked apprehensively about at the other supper parties in the room, and wished she would not sing so loud. But she went merrily on.

"I can endure everything American except American music, and the less said of it the better. By the way, don't you think I have taken to your language rather kindly? Of course I learned English when I was a child, but I had to learn American after arriving, and I assure you that is quite another language."

"I was just thinking that you were quite wonderful in that respect. I should never know you were not one of us; you have all the sermo familiaris even to our local touches."

"O yes, I went at your slang as conscientiously as if it were grammar. That is the characteristic part of a language, anyway."

When their order arrived, the drift of the talk changed.

"You see a good deal of papa, Mr. Buchanan?"

"Not half so much as I want to."

"I am glad you like him; he is very lonely and has those antiquated class notions about mixing up with people."

"I have always felt that and have been a little bit backward. I don’t want to seem to intrude."

"O, you need never be afraid of that; he likes you immensely. We’ve heard lots about you, haven't we, Tony?"

"Most enthusiastic and flattering accounts," responded that gentleman, looking up a moment from his lobster.

We have thought about suggesting something, Mr. Buchanan, that might be immensely to your advantage. You are a young literary man, waiting to make a hit like all the rest of us. Now let me tell you something; if you can work papa, your fame is ready made for you."

"Well, if I could find any fame of that variety, I would be willing to pay pretty dearly for it. I had about decided that the virgin article was not lying about in very extensive deposits."

"Well, it is, just in chunks, inside of that box you saw the other night. He has hundreds of papers there that would turn the court history of Europe for the last century upside down. I know whereof I speak. His friends have urged him to publish them for the last twenty years, and I—but, of course, men never listen to their daughters. Of course he wouldn't care to edit them himself, his everlasting name, you know. But you are a practical literary man and know what fin de si�cle taste demands, and if you could sort of combine forces, I have an idea it would be a great thing for both of you."

"But," protested Buchanan, "your father assured me those documents were of a wholly private nature."

"Of course they are. That's the sort of history that goes now-a-days. It's the sort of thing that sells and that people read, 'something spicy,' they call it. You could edit them with historical notes to give tone to the thing, you know. Of course you would have to overcome innumerable scruples on papa's part. Go at it in the name of art and history and all that. He is unyielding in his notions about such things, but if there is any living man who can do it, you are the man!" She had quite forgotten now the calm indifference of her first method of attack; her lips were set and her eyes biting keen. Buchanan could not help noticing how she leaned forward and how tightly she held her fork. Evidently this plan was not a new one. There was a purpose in those hard eyes that could not be new. He shifted his position slightly.

"I would rather you would leave me and my interests out of the question, Miss de Koch, though don't think I don't appreciate your kindness in thinking of me. If there is anything in the papers themselves to justify their publication, why does your father object to it?"

"O, he considers people's feelings—much they've ever considered ours! Of course it would make big scandals all over Europe, and no end of a fuss. There would be answers, denials, refutations; the national museums would be ransacked for counter-proofs. That one book would bring out a dozen. Just think of it, a grand wholesale expos� of all the courts of Europe, hailing from image-breaking Chicago! It's your chance of fame, young man, and as for money, we'd all be throwing it at the birdies in six months."

She had dropped the pass word of the conspiracy. Buchanan began to feel less at sea.

"Of course there would be grave considerations attending the publication of such matter."

"Not a bit of it. This is an age of disillusionment. William Tell was a myth, Josephine only a Creole coquette, and Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare at all. This generation wants to get at the bottom of things. Now it's not the man who can invent a romance, but the man who can explode one who holds the winning card," she touched him lightly on the shoulder.

"It's a good deal as you say, undoubtedly. But I doubt the dignity, or even the decency of it."

She put her glass down impatiently. "That all may be, but when we are in Rome we must be either Romans or provincials. You must give the people what they want. Really, now, don't you like to get a tip on those old figurehead guys yourself, just to get even with them by shaking them off their pedestals a little? They were all very common clay like the rest of us."

Buchanan leaned back in his chair and decided to gain time and measure, if he could, the depth of the conspiracy sprung upon him. Mademoiselle was aglow with excitement, and even her gentleman-in-waiting had forgotten his supper, and his mild eyes were flashing with the first animation he had displayed.

"Well," he said, amused in spite of himself, "I have often thought I should like to get behind the scenes in history and see how all the great effects were really produced. How the tragic buskin is worn to make men look taller than they are, by what wires the angels are carried up to their apotheosis, and where the unfortunates go when they disappear through the trap. It would be a satisfaction to know just how often simpletons are cast for heroic parts, and great men for trivial ones, how often Hamlet and the grave digger ought to change places. I have even thought I would like to go into the dressing-room, and see just how the conventional historic puppets were made up; see the real head under the powdered wig and the real cheek under the rouge. And yet I am not anxious to be wholly disillusioned. If Caesar without his toga would not be Caesar, I would rather stay down in the orchestra chairs. I don't care to read a history of Napoleon written by his valet."

"Come, you know all this is moonshine. Nobody believes those things now-a-days. The more you take the halo from those fellows, the more popular you make them. A new scandal about Napoleon gives him a new lease of life. It revives the interest. Who would ever know anything about Rousseau, if it wasn't for his 'Confessions'? That keeps him popular; even my hairdresser reads it."

"Of course it is something to have immortality among hairdressers."

"It's very much better than having none at all, and being on the shelf all around. You are a young man with your mark to make, and you've got to meet the world on its own ground and give it what it wants, or it'll have none of you. If you take the people's money, you ought to cater to their tastes, that's fair enough. You cannot afford to be an old fogy, you have too much future. You see where it has put papa. Do you want to be stranded in Crow's Nest all your life, say fifty years of it? Chances to take the world by the horns do not occur every day; if you let them go by, you have a good long time for reflection, a lifetime, generally. One chance for one man, you know."

"I know that only too well, but I can't see that this is in any sense my chance. It's wholly your father's affair."

"Make it yours. Let's get to something definite; don't let him put you off with high sounding words; they aren't in the modern vocabulary and don't mean anything. Now you'll take up this matter? There is only one man in a thousand I would speak to openly in this way, but I have every faith in your ability. When things become definite, if papa is elusive about the business features of it, you and I can arrange that together."

Buchanan crumpled his napkin and threw it on the table.

"I am sorry, but I am afraid that you have misplaced your confidence; that is, you have expected too much of me. I am not an enterprising man, or a very practical one; if I were I would already have some legitimate occupation. I seem to be rather another case of the round block versus the square hole, and decidedly I can't fit into this. I could never propose such a thing to your father. If he ever speaks to me on the subject I will be frank enough, I promise you, but further than that I cannot pledge myself. Moreover, I doubt my own ability to either gauge the popular taste or fill its demands."

Mademoiselle's amiability at once disappeared, and she took no pains to conceal the fact that she considered him both ungracious and ungrateful, though she vented her displeasure principally upon her dusky minion, the tenor, who was struggling with her rubbers. From the dogged look on his face, Buchanan imagined that that silent gentleman would one day avenge the tyrannies of his apprenticeship. Feeling very much as though he had obtained a supper under false pretenses, he said good night.

As he lit his cigar in the street, and faced the cold wet wind that blew in from the lake, he muttered to himself, "Of all mercenary creatures! it's loathsome enough in a man, but in a woman-—bah, it's positively reptilian! I don't believe she has a drop of the old man's blood in her body."

Some way his very aversion to the daughter drew Buchanan's sympathies more than ever to the Count. He found himself in the evening instinctively pausing at the Count's door, and when he went out to hear music or to see a play he felt more at ease when the Count was with him. He was of that temperament which quickly learns to depend on others. During their talks and rambles about the theatres he learned a good deal of the Count's history. Not directly, as the old gentleman seldom talked about himself, but in scrappy fragments that he mentally sorted and expanded into a biography. He learned how Paul had been born in the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg, where his father had superintended the education of the Czar Nicholas' sons. He had been considered rather dull socially in his youth, and had been kept in the background in a military school at Leipsic, while his two elder brothers spent his substance and amassed colossal debts in a manner that demonstrated their social talents to the world. After a good deal of reckless living, William had been killed in a duel about some vague diplomatic matter, and Nicholas by some accident at the races. When Paul at last came in to his shorn and parceled patrimony, he did something that established all the charges of imbecility that had been made against him; he sold the Koch estates and paid the Koch debts, the first time they had been paid in three centuries. By such an unheard of proceeding he at once lost caste in the diplomatic circles of the continent. To part with his family estates, to sell the home of the Counts de Koch to pay tradespeople and laborers, it was really more than well conducted society could be expected to condone. So Paul drifted to America, not until after the death of his wife, though of his wife he never spoke except formally. When he considered the daughter, Buchanan could not wonder at his reticence.

The man’s quiet charm, his distinctive fineness of life and thought meant a great deal to a young man like Buchanan. They helped him to keep his standards and his tastes clean at a despondent age when that is sometimes difficult to do. It was certainly a strange thing to find this instinctive autocrat, this type of an effete nobility in that city of all cities, in Chicago, where the Present and the Practical are apotheosized and paid divine honors. But, then, what can one not find in Chicago? He never stepped, without feeling the contrast, from the hurried world of barter and trade into the quiet of that little room where memories and souvenirs of other times and another world were kept hidden, as, in the days of their far captivity in the city of Baal, the Jews kept the sacred vessels of their pillaged temple.

One night, as he was indulging in his reprehensible habit of reading in bed, Buchanan heard a hurried knock at his door. At his bidding the Count entered. He was still in street dress, hat in hand, pale and in evident excitement. His hair was disordered and his forehead shone with moisture. He would not sit down, but went straight up to the bed and grasped Buchanan's hand. Buchanan felt that his was trembling and cold.

"My friend," he spoke thickly, "I need you tonight, the letters... the box... it is gone."

"The box? O, yes, the steel chest, but how, where, what do you mean?"

"When I came to my rooms tonight, I opened the drawer of the chiffonier. It was a most unusual thing, it must have been instinct, those letters are the only things left to watch. They should have been in a vault, I know, but I kept delaying. When I opened the drawer they were gone."

"This is serious. What can you do?"

"I must go out at once. You have retired and I would not disturb you for any trivial matter, but this—this is the honor of my family! Great God! The descendants of those people are living in Europe today, living honorably and bearing great names. You hear me? Those letters must not get abroad. They would shake men's faith in God and make them curse their mothers."

Buchanan was already dressing. Suddenly he stopped short and dropped his shoe on the floor.

Who knew where you kept them? Do you suspect any one who was interested?"

The Count's voice was almost inaudible as he answered, "I think, Mr. Buchanan, we must first go to my daughter's rooms. It is with regret and shame that I drag you into this; it is terrible enough for me." He stood with his eyes downcast, like one in bitter shame. Buchanan had never noticed that he was so old a man before.

He felt that nothing could be said that would not be more than superfluous. When he finished dressing, the Count remarked, "Put on your ulster, it is cold."

They went softly downstairs and hailed a cab. During the drive the Count said nothing. Buchanan could see by the flash of the street lights as they passed them that his head was sunk on his breast. Only once he broke the silence by a sort of despairing groan. Buchanan guessed that some memory which bore immediately upon the grief of the moment had suddenly arisen before him. Perhaps it was one of those casual actions which we scatter so recklessly in our youth, and which, grown monstrous like the creature of Frankenstein, rise up to shame us in our age and spread desolation which we are powerless to check.

When they reached the house, Buchanan saw that the windows of the third floor were lighted, while the rest of the house was in darkness. It was easy to guess on which floor Mademoiselle de Koch resided. After repeated ringing, a sleepy servant maid opened the door. The Count asked no questions, but simply gave his name and passed upstairs, while the maid gathered her disheveled robes about her and stumbled down the hallway. The knock at Mademoiselle de Koch's door was greeted by a cheerful "Entrez!"

The open door revealed Mademoiselle attired in a traveling dress with a pile of letters on the desk before her, and a pen in her hand. A half packed valise lay open on the bed, and her trunks were strapped as though for sudden departure.

On seeing her visitors she gave a start of surprise, followed by a knowing glance, and then was quite at her ease. She would make a good defence, Buchanan suspected.

"Ah, it is you, cher papa, and you have brought company. Well, it is not exactly a conventional hour, but you are always welcome. I am delighted, Mr. Buchanan. Papa's chaperonage is certainly sufficient, even at three in the morning, so be seated."

The Count closed the door and met her. "Helena, you know why I have come and what you must do. There is no need of expletives."

"Not for you, perhaps, but I insist upon an explanation. What do you mean? I am at your service, as always, but I do not understand."

"This scene is disgraceful enough. I will allow you to spare yourself any explanations. I want the letters you took from my room. I will have them so make no ado about it."

"You speak to me, sir, as though I were a chambermaid; you accuse me of taking your letters. What letters? I did not know you had correspondence so delicate now. Fie, papa! D'Albert said you were in your dotage ten years ago, but I have done you the honor to think him mistaken. Please do not altogether destroy my faith in you, I have so few illusions left at best." The sneer in that last sentence made Buchanan shiver as with a chill.

"I have not come to bandy words with you, Helena, nor to sermonize. You have never known what honor means. That is a distinction which cannot be taught. Don’t try to act with me. I will take what I have come for, and leave you to your own felicitous philosophy of life, which I thank God is not mine. Give me the key of your trunk."

"Really, Your Excellency, this is quite too much. I shall do nothing of the sort. Come back tomorrow and I will do anything within reason. At present you are simply insane with anger, after the charming manner of your house."

"Then in just three minutes Mr. Buchanan will call an officer."

She started visibly, "You would not dare, pride—if nothing else—"

"I have no pride but the honor of my house. Quick, there is a law which can touch even you. Law was made for such as you."

The man of pale reflection was no more. This was the man of the iron cross who had led the charge on the field of Gravelotte.

Slowly, sullenly, she reached for her purse, and biting her lips handed him the key.

"Now, Mr. Buchanan, if you will assist me." He went quickly and deftly to the bottom of the trunk, almost without disturbing the clothing, and drew out the box, wrapped in numberless undergarments. After opening it and assuring himself as to the contents, he closed the trunk and Buchanan strapped it up.

Mademoiselle, who had returned to her seat and was making a pretense of writing, dropped her pen with a fierce exclamation.

"What is this honor you are always ranting about? Is it to leave your daughter to pick up her living as she may, to whine about beasts of managers, and go begging for fourth-rate engagements, when you might have supported her by the sale of a few scandalous letters? A fine sort of code to make all this racket about! Fine words will not conceal ugly facts.

The Count straightened himself as under a blow, "Stop! since you will drag out this whole ugly matter; you know that if you would have lived as I have had to live there would have been enough. As long as there was a picture, a vase, a jewel left, you know where they went. You took until there was no more to take. I simply have nothing but the pension. Even now my home is open to you, but I cannot keep you in yours. Will you never understand, I simply have no money! You know why I came here and why I must die here. When there was money what use did you make of it? Why is it that neither of us will ever dare to show our faces on the Continent again, that we tremble at the name of a continental newspaper? You remember that heading in Figaro? It will stare me in my grave! 'Adventuress!' Great God, it was true!"

His voice broke, and his white head sank on his breast in an attitude of abject shame and anguish. Buchanan put his hand before his eyes to shut out the sight of it. But again that rasping pitiless woman's voice broke on his ear.

"And who began it all, by selling my inheritance over my head? Was it yours to sell?"

The Count spoke quietly now and his voice was steady.

"For the moment you brought back the old shame, and I almost pitied you and myself again. Generally I simply forget it; you have exhausted my power to suffer. I never feel. Helena, there is nothing I can say to you, for we have no language in common. Words do not mean the same to us. Good night."

She sprang from her seat and stood with clenched hands. "Those papers do not belong to you. They are ancient history, and they belong to the world!"

"They are the follies of men, and they belong to God," said the Count as he closed the door. As they reached the cab he spoke heavily, "It was ungenerous of me to drag you into this, but I did not feel equal to it alone."

"I think that good friends need not explain why they need each other, even if they know themselves," said Buchanan gently.

When they were in the cab he felt as though he ought to speak of something. He was afraid that perhaps the Count had not noticed it. "Miss de Koch's trunks were packed. Is she going away?"

The Count sighed wearily and leaned back in his seat, speaking so low that Buchanan had to lean forward to catch his words above the rumble of the cab.

"Yes, I saw. It is probably an elopement—the tenor. But I am helpless. I have no money. What she said was true enough; I am no more successful as a father than I was as a nobleman. And I have been mad enough to wish that I had sons! It is a terrible thing, this degeneration of great families. You are very happy to see nothing of  it here. The rot begins inside and is hidden for a time, but it demonstrates itself even physically at last. My ancestors had the frames of giants, field marshals and generals, all of them. We were all dwarfs, exhausted physically from the first, frayed ends of the strands of a great skein. Even my father was a slight man, always ill. My brothers were men of no principle, but they at least preserved the traditions. Nicholas was killed at the races, like a common jockey. In me it showed itself in my marriage. Before that the men of our house had at least chosen gentlewomen as their wives; they acknowledged the obligation. But this, even I never thought it would come to this. My mother would have starved with my father, begged in the streets, even lived at Crow's Nest, but she would never have thought of this. The possibility would never have occurred to her. I am the last of them. Helena will hardly choose a domestic career. Our little comedy is over, it is time the lights were out; the fifth act has dragged out too long. I am in haste to give back to the earth this blood I carry and free the world from it. In it is inherent failure, germinal weakness, madness, and chaos. When all sense of honor dies utterly out of an old stock, there is nothing left but annihilation. It should be buried deep, deep as they bury victims of a plague, blotted out like the forgotten dynasties of history."

* The Chicago World's Fair of 1893 was officially known as the World's Columbian Exposition.

** Nellie Melba (1861-1931), Australian opera star.

*** Lola Montez, mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, controlled the Bavarian government in 1847. She was ousted by Austrian and Jesuit influences in 1848, and King Ludwig abdicated in favor of his son the same year.