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Ebook has 806 lines and 79346 words, and 17 pages

The method of procedure adopted by the Council, and the temper in which its business was conducted, were no less favorable to the Papacy than the authoritative sanction which it gave to dogmas. From the first, the presidency and right of initiative in its sessions were conceded to the Papal Legates; and it soon became customary to refer decrees, before they were promulgated, to his Holiness in Rome for approval. The decrees themselves were elaborated in three congregations, one appointed for theological questions, the second for reforms, the third for supervision and ratification. They were then proposed for discussion and acceptance in general sessions of the Council. Here each vote told; and as there was a standing majority of Italian prelates, it required but little dexterity to secure the passing of any measure upon which the Court of Rome insisted. The most formidable opposition to the Papal prerogatives during these manoeuvres proceeded from the Spanish bishops, who urged the introduction of reforms securing the independence of the episcopacy.

Paul's ambition to expel the Spaniards from Italy exposed him to the worst abuses of that Papal nepotism which he had denounced in others. He judged it necessary to surround himself with trusty and powerful agents of his own kindred.

Carafla, ipocrita infingardo, Che tien per coscienza spirituale Quando si mette del pepe in sul cardo.

At his death the people rose in revolt, broke into the dungeons of the Inquisition, released the prisoners, and destroyed the archives. The Holy Office was restored, however; and its higher posts of trust soon came to be regarded as stepping-stones to the Pontifical dignity.

Without advancing the same arrogant claims to spiritual supremacy as Paul had made, Pius was by no means a feeble Pontiff. He knew that the temper of the times demanded wise concessions; but he also knew how to win through these concessions the reality of power. It was he who initiated boy in seasons of relief. Deftly he swung himself back into this alcove till the other men had passed and the boy had clashed the steel door of his car shut and whirled away into the upper regions for another load. For a brief instant the coast was clear, and he glided to the doorway and was about to pass out into the sunshine, regardless of the fact that he was hatless. A second more and he could have drawn a full breath of relief, dashed around a corner and speeded up till he was somewhere out of town in the wide-open country.

But in that instant's passing he came face to face with Jane, smartly coated and hatted in green, with brown fur around her neck, the color of her eyes and hair, and unmistakable joy in her eyes.

"Why, Allan Murray!" she cried. "Good-morning! Where are you going without your hat? You look as if you were running away from school."

He came to himself with a click in his heart that reminded him of prison bars and bolts, and stood to salute her.

Somehow he summoned a smile to his ashy lips.

"Not at all," he answered gaily, glancing back of him at the still empty hallway. "I was--ah--just looking for the postman." A door opened somewhere up the hall, and footsteps came out briskly.

"Excuse me," he said to the lingering girl, "I must go back. We're very busy this morning. I can't stop!"

He turned and dashed back again, coming suddenly face to face with Elliot Harper, who surveyed him in a mild surprise.

"Oh, is that you, Murray? I was just going back for you! I must have missed you somehow."

"Yes," said nimble Murray, "I just stepped to the door to get my bearings! I always like to know how the land lies, that is, the building I'm in, you know."

"Well, we'll go right in now. McCutcheon is ready to show you your duties. We go through this side door."

Murray followed him because there was nothing else he dared do, and the steel gateway swung to with a click behind him as he entered the inner precincts of the bank proper. And once more he heard dimly the echo of bolts and bars and approaching prison walls about him. He walked to the little grated window that was to be his, so cell-like with its heavy grill, and saw an open drawer with piles of clean money lying ready for his unskilled hand. He felt almost frightened as he stood and listened, but he kept his calm exterior. It was part of his noble heritage that he could be calm under trying circumstances. He was even jaunty with a feeble joke upon his mobile lips and a pleasant grin toward the man who was endeavoring to teach him what he had to do. The trouble was the man seemed to take it for granted that he already knew a great deal about the matter, and he had to assent and act as if he did. Here he was, a new man, new name, new station, new portion in life. Yet the odds were so against him, the chances so great that he would soon be caught and put under lock and key for an impostor, that he would have given anything just then even to be back riding on the trucks of the freight train, and dodging policemen at every turn of his way.

The day that Bessie Chapparelle had met her old playmate, Murray Van Rensselaer, for the first time in seven years had been her birthday. She was twenty-one years old, and feeling very staid indeed. It is odd how very old twenty-one can make itself seem when one reaches that mile-post in the walk of life. A girl never feels half so grown-up at twenty-five as when she reaches twenty-one. And Bessie was counting back over the years in the way a girl will, thinking of the bright and sad epochs, and looking ahead eagerly to what she still hoped to attain. She was wondering how long it would be before she could give her beloved mother some of the luxuries she longed for her to have, and as she stood on the street corner waiting for a trolley, she watched the shining wheels of a new car come flashing down the street, and wished she were well enough off to begin to buy a car. Just a little Ford roadster, of course, or maybe a coup?. A second-hand one, too, but there were plenty of nice cheap second-hand ones. It would be so nice to take mother for a ride in the Park evenings, when she got home from her work. They could put up a lunch and eat it on the way in the long summer twilights. What wonderful times they could have together! Mother needed to get out more. She was just stuck in the house sewing, sewing, sewing all the time. Pretty soon she would be able to earn enough so that mother would not have to sew so much, perhaps not at all. Mother was getting to the age when she ought to rest more and have leisure for reading. The housework was really all she ought to be doing. If only she could get a raise within a year and manage to buy some kind of a car so they could take rides!

Bessie Chapparelle had been tremendously busy during those seven years since she and Murray Van Rensselaer used to play games together in the evenings and listen to the books her mother read aloud to them, when they grew tired of chess and "Authors" and crokinole. Murray had gone off to Prep. School, and Bessie had studied hard in High School. She had not even seen him at vacations. He had been away at a camp somewhere in the West, or visiting with some schoolmate. He had remembered her graduating day, for they had talked about it before he left, and he had sent back a great sheaf of roses, which were brought up to her on the platform after she read her essay. Everybody wondered and exclaimed over the beauty and quantity of those roses, telegraphed across the continent, with a characteristic greeting tied on the card, "Hello, Pal, I knew you'd win out! Murray."

The roses had brought other roses to her cheeks and a starry look to her eyes as she came forward with wonder in her face and received the two tributes of flowers, one of tiny sweetheart rosebuds and forget-me-nots, small and exquisite, and this other great armful of seashell-pink roses with hearts of gold. She was almost smothered behind their lavish glory, and her little white dress, simple and lovely, made by her mother, looked like a princess' robe as she stood with simple grace and bowed with gravely pleased smile toward the audience. She took the roses over her arm and looked out from above them, a fitting setting for her happy face, but the little nosegay of sweethearts and forget-me-nots she held close to her lips with a motion of caressing, for she knew they came from her mother. They were like the flowers her mother had received from her father long ago when he was courting her, and they meant much to the girl, who had listened, fascinated by the tales of her mother's girlhood, and treasured every story and incident as if it had been a part of her very own life-story. Oh, she knew who sent the forget-me-nots and sweetheart rosebuds! No one but her dear, toiling mother could have done that, and it filled her heart with tender joy to get them, for she knew they meant much sacrifice, and many hours' overwork, far into the night, perhaps, to get the price for those costly little blossoms. She knew how much they cost, too, for she had often wanted to buy some for her mother, and had not dared. But she did not know nor guess who had sent the larger mass of roses, not till she got by herself in the dressing-room for a second and read the brief inscription on the card, and Murray's name. Then something glowed in her face that had not been there before, a dreamy, lovely wonder, the foreshadowing of something she could not name and did not understand--a great gladness that Murray, her playmate, had not forgotten her after all this time, a revelling in the lavishness of his gift, and the wonder of the rare flowers, which she knew were more costly than anything else she had ever had in her life before. Not that she estimated gifts by costliness, or prized them more for that, but her life had been full of anxious planning to make a penny go as far as possible for the dear mother who toiled so hard to give her education and all that she needed, and money to her meant toil and self-sacrifice and love. She would not have been a girl if it had not given her a thrill to know that her flowers were more wonderful than any flowers that had been sent up to that platform that day. Not that she was proud or jealous, but it was so nice to have them all see that somebody cared.

It was only a moment she had for such reflection, and then the girls came trooping in, and she had barely time to secrete the little white card in the folds of her dress before they all demanded to know who sent them. They had not expected her to have such flowers. They were almost jealous of her. She was a brilliant scholar, was not that enough?

She had been popular enough, though too busy to form the friendships that make for many flowers at such a time. They had conceded her right to the place of honor because of her scholarship, but they felt it their right to shine before the public in other ways.

But Bessie was radiantly happy, and gave them each a rose, such wonderful roses! They all openly declared there had never been such roses at a high-school commencement before in all their knowledge. And she went her way without ever having told them the name of the sender, just vaguely saying: "Oh, from a friend away out West!" and they looked at one another wonderingly as she passed out of the dressing-room and into the cool dusk of the night, where her mother waited in the shadow of the hedge for her. Then she had friends out West! Strange she never mentioned any one before! Yet when they stopped to think they realized Bessie never talked about herself. She was always quietly interested in the others, when she was not too busy studying to give attention to their chatter. And perhaps they had not given her much opportunity to talk, either. They never realized it before.

Then she passed from their knowledge, except for an occasional greeting on the street. They were fluttering off to the seashore and the mountains, and later on to college. But Bessie went to work.

Her first job was as a substitute in an office where a valued stenographer had to be away for several months with an invalid mother.

She did not know short-hand, and had only as much skill on the typewriter as one can acquire in high school, and with no machine of one's own, but she worked so diligently at night school and applied herself so carefully to the typewriter in the office that long before the absent secretary returned she had become a valued asset to that office.

As fast as a helper in an office can climb she had climbed, working evenings on a business course, and getting in a little culture also by the way. But she had not had time nor money for parties and the good times other young people had. One cannot study hard in the evening and take courses at a night school, then get up early and work conscientiously all day, and yet go out to dances and theatres.

Moreover, her life interest was not in such things. She had been brought up in an old-fashioned way, in the way that is condescendingly referred to today as "Victorian." She still believed in the Bible and honored her mother. She still believed in keeping the laws of the land, and the law of purity and self-respect. She had not bobbed her hair nor painted her face, nor gone to any extreme in dress.

And yet, when Murray Van Rensselaer saw her standing on that corner that morning of her twenty-first birthday, waiting for her car, she was sufficiently attractive to make him look twice and slow down his speed, even before he recognized her for the playmate of his childhood's days.

There had been no more roses, no letters even passing between them, and Bessie had come to look back upon her memory of him as a thing of the past, over forever. She still kept the crumpled rose-leaves folded away in tissue paper in her handkerchief box, and smiled at them now and then as she took her best handkerchiefs out for some state occasion, drawing a breath of their old fragrance, like dried spices, whose strength was so nearly gone that it was scarcely recognizable. Just sweet and old, and dear, like all the pleasant things of her little girlhood. Life had been too real and serious for her to regret the absence of her former friend, or even to feel hurt at his forgetfulness of her. He had passed into college life and travels abroad. Now and then his name was in the paper in connection with college sports, and later, as a guest of some young prince or lord abroad. She and her mother read these items with interest and a pleasant smile, but there was no bitterness nor jealousy in their thought of the boy who used to find a refuge in their kitchen on many a stormy evening when his family had left him alone with servants, and he had stolen away for a little real pleasure in their cosey home. It was what was to have been expected when he grew up. Was he not Murray Van Rensselaer? He would have no time now, of course, for cosey pancake suppers and simple stories read aloud. His world expected other things of him. He was theirs no longer. But they had loved the little boy who had loved them, and for his sake they were interested in the young man he had become, and now and then talked of him as they turned out their own lights and looked across the intervening alley to the blazing lights in the big house where his mother entertained the great ones of the city.

His coming back to his own city had been heralded in the papers, of course, and often his name was mentioned in the society columns, yet never had it happened that they had met until this morning. And Bessie was heart-whole and happy, not expecting young millionaire princes to drop down on her doorstep and continue a friendship begun in lonely babyhood. She was much too sane and sensible a girl to expect or even wish for such a thing. Her mind now was set upon success in her business world, and her ambition to put her mother into more comfortable circumstances.

She met him with a smile of real pleasure, because he had cared to stop and recognize her for old times' sake, yet there was just the least tinge of reserve about her that set a wall between them from the start. He had recognized her with a blaze of unmistakable joy and surprise on his face, and brought his car to such an abrupt stop that a taxi behind him very nearly ran up on the top of his car and climbed over him, its driver reproaching him loudly in no uncertain terms. But Murray had sprung from his car and taken her by the hand, his eyes devouring her lovely face, taking in every detail of her expression. Clear, unspoiled eyes, with the old glad light in them, fresh, healthy skin, like velvet, flushed softly at the unexpected meeting, lips that were red enough without the help of lipstick, and hair coiled low and arranged modishly, yet without the mannish ugliness affected by so many girls of the day, trim lines of a plain tailored suit, unconscious grace, truth, and goodness in her looks. To look at her was like going into the glory of a summer day after the garishness of a night in a cabaret.

He would have stood a long time holding her hand and finding out all that had been happening to her during the interval while they had been separated, but the traffic officer appeared on the scene and demanded that he move his car at once. He was not allowed to park in that particular spot where he had chosen to stop and spring to the pavement.

"Where are you going? Can't I take you there?" he pleaded, with one foot on the running-board and his eyes still upon her face.

She tried to say she would wait for the trolley, it was not far away now, but he waved her excuses aside, said he had nothing in the world to do that morning, and before she realized it she was seated in the beautiful car whose approach she had watched so short a time before. As she sank down upon the cushions she thought how wonderful it would be if sometime she could buy a car like this. Not with such wonderful finish, perhaps, but just as good springs and just as fine mechanism. How her mother would enjoy it!

The car moved swiftly out of the traffic into a side street, where they had comparatively a free course, and then the young man had turned to look at her again with that deep approval that had marked his first recognition.

"Where did you say you wanted to go?" he asked, watching the play of expression on her face and wondering about it. She did not seem like the girls he knew. She was so utterly like herself as he used to know her when they were children, that it seemed impossible.

"You don't have to get somewhere right immediately, do you?" he asked eagerly. "Couldn't we have a little spin first?"

She hesitated, her better judgment warning her against it. Already she was reproaching herself for having got into the car. She knew her mother would have felt it was not wise. They were not of the same walk of life. It would be better to let him go his way. Yet he had been so insistent, and the traffic officer so urgent to clear the way. There seemed nothing else to do.

"Why, I was going to the Library for a book I need this evening in my study," she said pleasantly. "My employer is out of town and gave me a holiday. I'm making use of it doing some little things I never have time for."

"I see," said Murray, with his pleasant, easy smile that took everything for granted. "Then I'm sure I'm one of the things you haven't taken time for in a good many years. You'll just give me a little of your time, won't you? Suppose we go toward the Park, where we'll have more room."

That had been the last time he had seen Bessie. They told him the next day that he was to go to a summer camp, and from there he was sent to boarding school in the far West. It had all been very exciting at first, and he had never connected his mother's talk with his sudden migration. Perhaps the thought only vaguely shadowed itself in his mind now as a link in the chain of his life. He was not given to analyzing things, just drifting with the tide and getting as much fun out of it all as possible. But now, with Bessie before him, he wondered why it was that he had allowed seven whole years to drift by apart from her. Here she had been ripening into this perfect peach of a girl, and he might have been enjoying her company all this time. Instead he had solaced his idle hours with any one who happened to drift his way. Bah! What a lot they had been, some of them! Something in him knew that this girl was never like those. Something she had had as a little girl that he admired and enjoyed had stayed with her yet. He was not like that. He was sure he was not. He was quite certain he had been rather a fine chap in those early days before the evil of life had been revealed to him. A faint little wish that he might have stayed as he was then faltered through his gay mind, only he flippantly felt that of course that would have been impossible as life was.

Bessie was enjoying her ride. She exclaimed over the beauty of the foliage, where some of autumn's tints were still left clinging to the branches. She drank in the beauty of cloud and distant river, and her cheeks took on that delicate flush of delight that he had noticed in her long ago. He marvelled that a human cheek could vary in its coloring so exquisitely. He had unconsciously come to feel that such alive-looking flesh could only be on the face of a child. Every woman he knew wore her coloring stationary, like a mask, that never varied, no matter what emotion might cross her countenance. The mask was always there, smooth and creamy and delicate and unmoved. He had come to feel it was a state that came with maturity. But this girl's face was like a rose whose color came and went in delicate shadings and seemed to be a part of the vivid expression as she talked; as the petals of a rose showed deeper coloring at their base when the wind played with them and threw the lights and shadows in different curves and tintings.

Murray as a rule did little thinking, and he would have been surprised and thought it clever if some one had put this idea into words for him. But the impression was there in his mind as they talked. And then he fell to wondering how she would look in beautiful garments, rich silks and velvets and furs. She was simply and suitably dressed, and might be said to adorn her garments, but she would be superb in cloth of silver and jewels. How he would enjoy putting her in her right setting! Here was a girl who would adorn any garments, and whose face and figure warranted the very greatest designers in Fashion's world.

An idea came to Murray.

They often came that way by impulse, and sometimes they had their origin in the very best impulses. He leaned toward her with a quick, confidential air. They were on their way back now, for the girl had suggested that she had taken enough of his time.

"I wonder if you won't do something for me?" he said in his old boyish, pleasant tone that reminded her of other days together.

"Why, surely, if I can," she complied pleasantly.

"You certainly can," he answered gaily. "No one could do it better. I want you to come with me to a shop I know and help me to select something for a gift for a friend of mine. You are her figure to an inch, and you have her coloring too. I want to see how it will look on you before I buy it."

There was perhaps just the least shade of reserve in her voice as she graciously assented. Naturally she could not help wondering who the gift was for. Not his mother, or he would have said so. He had no sister, she knew. A cousin, perhaps? No, he would have called her cousin. Well, it was of no consequence, of course. It gave her just the least little bit of an embarrassed feeling. How could she select something for one in his station of life? But she could at least tell what she thought was pretty. It was on the whole quite exciting, come to think of it, to help in the selection of something where money did not have to be considered--just for once to let her taste rule. It would be wonderful!

Then they turned from the avenue into the quieter street, and drew up suddenly before Grevet's. She drew her breath with pleasure. Ah! Grevet's! She had often wondered what a shop like this was like inside, and now she was to know! It was like playing a game, to have a legitimate reason for inspecting some of the costly wares that were here exclusively displayed. She stepped from the car with quiet composure, however, and no one would have dreamed that this was her first entrance into these distinguished precincts.

In a little cottage on the outskirts of a straggling town about half a mile from the scene of the railroad wreck a sick man lay tossing on a hard little bed in a small room that could ill be spared from the needs of a numerous family. A white-capped nurse, imported by the railroad, stooped over him to straighten the coarse sheet and quilt spread over him, and tried to quiet his restless murmurings.

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