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J. Robert Oppenheimer:
A Life

ABRAHAM PAIS

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

J.OBERT OPPENHEIMER
A Life
 ALSO BY ABRAHAM PAIS

The Genius of Science:

A Portrait Gallery of Twentieth-Century Physicists

A Tale of Two Continents:

A Physicist's Life in a Turbulent World

Einstein Lived Here

Niels Bohr's Times, in Physics, Philosophy, and Polity

Inward'Bound:
Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World

Subtle Is the Lord:

The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein

Twentieth Century Physics I—III

(eds. with Laurie K. Brown and Sir Brian Pippard)

ALSO BY ROBERT P. CREASE

The Prism and the Pendulum:

The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments in Science

Making Physics:
A biography of Brookhaven National Laboratory

Peace and War:

Reminiscences of a Life on the Frontiers of Science
(with Robert Serber)

The Play of Nature:

Experimentation as Performance

The Second Creation:

Makers of the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Science
(with Charles C. Mann)
J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER
A Life

ABRAHAM PAIS
WITH SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
BY ROBERT P. CREASE

OXTORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
2006
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that
further Oxford University's objective of excellence
in research, scholarship, and education.

Oxford New York

Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto

"With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Copyright © 2006 by Oxford University Press

Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.

198 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016
www.oup.com

Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pais, Abraham, 1918-
J. Robert Oppenheimer : a life / Abraham Pais ; with supplemental material
by Robert P. Crease.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-516673-6 ISBN-10: 0-19-516673-6
1. Oppenheimer,J. Robert, 1904-1967. 2. Atomic bomb—United States—History.
3. Physicists—United States—Biography. I. Crease, Robert P. II. Title.
QC16.O62P35 2005 530'.092-dc22 2005002173

Robert P. Crease and Oxford University Press gratefully acknowledge permission granted for the use
of material from the following sources: by Charles Weiner for Alice Kimball Smith and Charles
Weiner, eds. Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and "Recollections, originally published by Harvard
University Press in 1980. Reissued in paperback with a new foreword by Stanford University
Press in 1995; by Peter Goodchild, BBC books, and Watson, Little Ltd., for material from
Peter Goodchild's "Robert Oppenheimer: Shattterer of Worlds (BBC Books, 1980); from "Peace and War,
by Robert Serber with Robert P. Crease (Columbia University Press, 1998) reprinted with
permission of the publisher; by the Florida State University Libraries for material from an
unpublished interview with Paul Dirac, May 14, 1963; by Olke Uhlenbeck for permission to
print material from an unpublished interview with George Uhlenbeck, March 30, 1962; and by
Columbia University Oral History Office for permission to print material from an interview
with I. I. Rabi, "Reminiscences of I. I. Rabi," 11 January 1983.

987654321
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To my wife, Ida
This page intentionally left blank
 CONTENTS

Foreword by Ida Nicolaisen xiii

Preface by Robert P. Crease xvii
Introduction by Abraham Pais xix

CHAPTER 1 11
First Encounters /

CHAPTER
2
Background: Early Years 4

CHAPTER 3 3
University Studies 8

CHAPTER 4 4
4

Postdoctoral Studies 14
Harvard 14
Caltech 14
Leiden 15
Zurich 17

VII
viii CONTENTS

CHAPTER 5 55
The California Professor as Teacher 20

CHAPTER 0 6
The California Professor as Researcher 24
MoreonQED 24
Cosmic Rays 26
Electron-Positron Theory 28
Nuclear Physics 29
Shower Theory 29
Mesons 30
Astrophysics and Cosmology 31

CHAPTER 7 7
Oppenheimer's Opinion of His Own Teaching and Research in
California 33

CHEPTER 8
Personal Life in the 1930s 34

CHAPTER 9 9
"The Shatterer of Worlds" 39

CHAPTER 1 0 10
In Which Oppenheimer Enters the World Stage 45

CHAPTER 11
An Atomic Scientist's Credo 49

CHAPTER 12
The Institute Prior to Oppenheimer's Arrival 59
The Flexner Years 69
The Aydelotte Years 73
 CONTENTS ix

CHAPTER 13
In Which Oppenheimer Is Elected Director of the Institute and
Chairman of the General Advisory Committee 77

CHAPTER 14 14
Oppenheimer's Early Years as Institute Director 86

CHAPTER 15 15
Oppenheimer and the World of Physics: 1946-1954 96
"The Great Charismatic Figure" 96
Building Up Physics at the Institute 102
F. J. Dyson 103
C.N.Yang 104
T. D. Lee 105
Of Some Who Came and Some Who Went 106
Hideki Yukawa 106
Sin-itiro Tomonaga 106
David Joseph Bohm 107
John von Neumann 108
Oswald Veblen 109
Oppenheimer as Leader of Conferences 110
Shelter Island, June 1947 110
Pocono, March/April 1948 114
Solvay, September/October 1948 116
Old Stone, April 1949 117
Rochester I, December 1950 117
Rochester II (January) and III (December) 1952 118
IBM, April 1953 119
A Book Review, October 1953 121
Japan, September 1953 121
Rochester IV, January 1954 122

CHAPTER 16
Further on Oppenheimer the Man 123
Los Alamos Vignettes 123
Robert Wilson 123
x CONTENTS

Hans Bethe 125

Edward Teller 126
Enrico Fermi 129
Richard Feynman 130
Luis Alvarez 130
Robert Serber 130
Niels Bohr 131
Young Wives' Tales 134
Elsie McMillan 134
Bernice Brode 134
Robert Oppenheimer 136
More Personal Recollections 139

CHAPTER 17
Atomic Politics in the Early Postwar Years 144
1945-1946 144
October 3, 1945 144
August 1, 1946 144
October 1946 145
December 1946 145
The Acheson-Lilienthal Plan 146
The Baruch Plan 151
1946 as the Highest Point of Oppenheimer's Political
Contributions 155
Oppenheimer's Public Expressions on Atomic Policy:
1947-1948 157

CHAPTER 18
Of the First Serious Enemies and of the First Russian A-Bomb 163
In Which the First Clouds Appear 163
The First Soviet A-Bomb 166

CHAPTER 19
Of the Superbomb and of Spy Stories 168
Varia: 1947-1949 168
Shall the United States Develop the Super? 171
Emil Klaus Julius Fuchs et al. 177
 CONTENTS xi

CHAPTER 20
The New Super 183
The Teller-Ulam Invention 183
Oppenheimer's Views on the Super 187
Oppenheimer's Participation in Panels: 1950-1953 188
The Long Range Objectives Panel 188
Project Gabriel 189
Project Charles 189
Project Vista 189
Project Lincoln 190
1952: Oppenheimer Leaves the General Advisory Committee 191

CHAPTER 21
Atomic Politics in the Early 1950s 193
The Doctrine of Massive Retaliation 193
Operation Candor 194
The Opening Salvos of the Attackers 196
May 1953 197
June 5, 1953 198
June 20, 1953 198
July 3, 1953 198
July 7, 1953 198
July 1953 198
August 1953 198
August 20, 1953 198
November 12, 1953 198
November 1953 201
November-December 1953 201

CHAPTER 22
In Which the Excrement Hits the Ventilator 202
The Oppenheimer-Strauss Meeting, December 1953 202
Eisenhower Erects a "Blank Wall" 204
Preparations for the Hearings 208
Oppenheimer and McCarthy 212
xii CONTENTS

CHAPTER Z3 23
23

In Which the News of the Hearings Is Made Public 214

How Einstein and I First Heard 214
First Newspaper Comments 216

Supplemental Material by Robert P. Crease

CHAPTER 24
"Open Book": The Hearing in the Matter of
J. Robert Oppenheimer 227
The Hearing: April 12-May 6, 1954 232
Findings, Appeal, Decision: May 17-June 29 250

CHAPTER 25
No Final Judgment 259
First Judgments 259
Post-Mortems 264
Cultural Judgments 265
The Sense of Tragedy 268

CHAPTER 26
Insider in Exile 272
Institute Director 273
Science Impresario 278
Speaker and Author 285
St. John 292
Rehabilitation and Retirement 295

CHAPTER 27
Cloaked Mountain Peak 300

Notes 311

Principal Sources Used 335

Index 337
 FOREWORD

In spring 2000, at our home in Copenhagen, my husband Abraham Pais

presented me with the first copy of his new book, The Genius of Science, a
series of essays on the great scientists of the twentieth century. Typical of
Bram, as he was known to friends, there was no time to celebrate. Without
further ado, he excused himself to return to his writing. He was already
over twenty-chapters deep into his biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
He completed the draft of one more chapter before he succumbed to a heart
attack and subsequent complications on August 2. How he intended to com-
plete the manuscript, we only know from notes.
Bram began his second career, that of writing history of science, quite
late in life. He did so as a scientist who for decades had been in the forefront
of particle physics, taking part in seminal colloquia and seminars. He was a
colleague of such distinguished scientists of the twentieth century as Albert
Einstein, Paul Dirac, Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, Isidor Rabi, Tsung Dao
Lee, Chen Ning Yang, Oskar Klein, John Von Neumann, George Uhlen-
beck, Eugine Wigner and Mitchell Feigenbaum. His contributions to the
history of physics, Inmard Bound and Twentieth Century Physics I—III (as contribu-
tor and editor with Laurie Brown and Sir Brian Pippard), and his biogra-
phies and essays on the men and women who gave birth to modern science,
have been widely acknowledged. The American Physical Society and the
American Institute of Physics have co-sponsored The Abraham Pais Prize,
"for outstanding scholarly achievements in the history of physics," awarded
for the first time in April 2005, the World Year of Physics.

XIII
xiv FOREWORD

Over the years, Bram worked systematically on the intriguing life of Rob-
ert Oppenheimer, his complex personality and scientific contributions, and,
not least, the role he played in the history of the United States. Beginning in
the early 1970s, Bram conducted interviews and collected material about the
man and his work. Apart from keeping lists with abbreviated references to
sources, Bram made no preliminary outlines, not even in the form of a table
of contents. Having combed through relevant books, articles, scientific pa-
pers, newspaper clippings, etc., and underlined excerpts of almost two full
shelves of transcripts of the Oppenheimer hearings, Bram started head on by
weaving a largely chronological tale to be intercepted with chapters on themes
he found particularly important or illustrative of Oppenheimer and his time.
One such unfinished chapter, not included in this book, dealt with Oppen-
heimer's handling of language, which Bram admired. In that respect, he
was, in Bram's judgment, "without peer among scientists."
Bram had a distinct, crisp style of writing with clear ideas of how and
what he wanted to communicate to his readers. He read excessively—
history, biography, novels—not only for subject matter but for the sheer
pleasure of good writing. He was deeply interested in language, a passion he
shared with Oppenheimer, not only as a simple means of communication
but as a way of conveying information at a more profound level, as inti-
mated in his essay on the history of science entitled, The Power of the Word,
published in No Truth Except in the Details, edited by A. J. Knox and D. M.
Siegel (1995).
Bram wrote only a few hours a day, but those were concentrated ones.
After a brisk walk in the morning, he would sit down with a cup of coffee
and his beloved pipe in front of an open window, get his thoughts together
and then write on. Any disturbance during that time was painful to Bram,
almost physically so. He wrote only in longhand with his favorite Mont
Blanc pen (computers were out of the question): Big, roundish letters across
ruled yellow pads with paragraphs, footnotes and references meticulously
in place as he proceeded. Though Bram claimed that he worked slowly and
had to rewrite a good deal, most of his manuscripts, now in the Rockefeller
Archive Center, reveal that in reality little was changed once his thoughts
were committed to paper. What did consume his time, apart from the nor-
mal addition of phrases and paragraphs, was the insertion of new notes.
Bram stuck to a system of consecutive numbering in the manuscript, implying
that once a new note was added all subsequent ones had to be renumbered—all
again in longhand. This system has been maintained in the printed edition for
practical reasons.
 FOREWORD xv

As the work progressed, Bram would share his analyses with me and
give me chapters for comment. He told me of his decision, for instance, not
to weave his account around the Los Alamos period because so many writ-
ers, including eminent scientists who themselves had taken part in the Man-
hattan Project, had already dealt with this subject in depth.
When I reread Bram's manuscript, I found it so close to completion that
publication seemed possible. A devoted colleague of Bram, Dr. Frederick
Seitz, a former president of Rockefeller University, and Jeffrey Robbins, a
senior editor at Joseph Henry Press, kindly read the manuscript and sup-
ported this conclusion. Oxford University Press, Bram's main publisher,
suggested expanding the manuscipt with supplementary chapters to com-
plete the tale of Oppenheimer's life. Dr. Robert Crease willingly accepted
to write these and to review the draft manuscript. I wish to express my deep
gratitude for the time and care with which he completed this task.

In 1963, Bram joined Rockefeller University where he enjoyed ideal work-

ing conditions and outstanding colleagues for almost four decades. The gen-
erosity of this great institution has also been extended to me, granting me
ample time and space to deal with Bram's papers and manuscripts, for which
I am deeply grateful. I am particularly indebted to Dr. Nicholas Khuri and
Dr. Mitchell Feigenbaum at the Center for Studies in Physics and Biology
for facilitating my work in every possible respect. I also wish to express
appreciation to Jan Mair for her competent assistence in typing the manu-
script as she did so many others of Bram's over the years.
Since 1986, Bram worked part of the year at the Niels Bohr Archive,
Copenhagen University, Denmark. I wish to thank the director, Finn
Aaserud, and other staff members for their kind support of Bram's work.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation generously lent its support to this project
for which Bram, as well as I, have been most grateful.
Good friends have offered invaluable assistence and advice. I am particu-
larly grateful to Torsten Wiesel, the former president of Rockefeller Univer-
sity, and his wife Jean Stein; to the writer Wendy Gimbel; to Paula Deitz, the
editor of The Hudson Review, and to John Manger, who edited Bram's first book,
Subtk Is the ~Lord. Last but not least, I have had unwavering support from my
dear stepson, Joshua Pais, in the completion of Bram's last piece of writing.
Ida Nicolaisen
Senior researcher,
Nordic Institute of Asian Studies,
Copenhagen University
This page intentionally left blank
 PREFACE

When Abraham Pais passed away, his manuscript on Oppenheimer was

about three-quarters complete. It cut off on the morning of the first day of
Oppenheimer's hearing following the revocation of his security clearance.
Pais's widow, Ida Nicolaisen, and Kirk Jensen, an editor at Oxford University
Press, asked me to add just enough material to flesh out the story into a com-
plete biography, keeping my own contributions to a minimum and leaving Pais's
manuscript intact. I therefore composed short chapters on Oppenheimer's hear-
ing, on reactions to the hearing, on Oppenheimer's life and work after trial, and
on the year of his death. Wherever I could, I quoted from the notes Pais
made after his conversations. I tried to steer the narrative toward material
that Pais thought important, as indicated by markers or notes in the margins of
books, and folders with his handwritten thoughts and notes from interviews—
many on yellowing pages, some on the backs of pages which Pais, wearing
his physicist's hat, had scribbled equations. I tried to identify Pais's citations
of secondary sources, which were not always indicated in the draft manu-
script. I noted certain places where, in preparing this ambitious and de-
manding work, he had paraphrased the secondary literature he found most
valuable, passages that he would no doubt have rewritten in the final ver-
sion. I have attempted to locate and provide citations for each of these,
though some cases may have escaped notice. I would like to thank historian
Barton Bernstein for his inspiration and help in this effort. I would also like
to thank Freeman Dyson for allowing me to read and quote from his corre-
spondence; T. D. Lee, Silvan Schweber, and C. N. Yang for conversations

XVII
xviii PREFACE

about Oppenheimer. I worked on this book during part of my sabbatical

from Stony Brook University while at the Dibner Institute for the History
of Science and Technology, at MIT, and am indebted to its director, George
E. Smith, and to other members of its staff for help of various kinds.
In his autobiography, Pais observes that one of the major differences
between writing a research paper and writing a book is the necessity of
following, in the latter, the so-called "iceberg principle": "just show the tip
of the iceberg, yet convey—and this is a subtle task—that you are aware of
much more that lies beneath the surface." Under the circumstances, to best
complete Pais's trajectory I take the iceberg approach myself, being as spare
as possible—even when this means not addressing topics that Pais himself
clearly intended to discuss, such as Oppenheimer's performance as Institute
director, his relations with his children, and various topics in postwar phys-
ics; and even when it means seeming to slight subjects of which one would
anticipate more discussion in a contemporary biography of Oppenheimer,
such as his left-wing associations. There is a kind of unfortunate, dismaying
aptness that a biography of Oppenheimer should have to change course
abruptly and end up in a different place than expected.
Robert P. Crease
New York, February 2005
 INTRODUCTION

In 1991, after my biographies of Einstein and Niels Bohr had come out, and
I had also published a book on the twentieth-century history of particles
and fields, several friends urged me to do Oppenheimer next. That is a worth-
while idea, I would invariably reply.
That thought had in fact already occurred to me 20 years earlier, not
long after Oppenheimer's death, and well before I had begun writing the
book just mentioned. Already then I had interviewed a number of persons,
many long gone since, who had known Robert well: Ruth Cherniss, class-
mate from the days he was a boy at the Ethical Culture School in New
York City, and Harold, her husband, a close friend of his and mine, later a
professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton; Francis Fergus-
son, a lifelong friend of Robert's; Frank Oppenheimer, his brother; Melba
Phillips and Willis Lamb, students from the Berkeley years, later distin-
guished colleagues; Henry Smyth and Lloyd Garrison, member of the
Atomic Energy Commission and leading defense lawyer respectively, both
from the days of the Oppenheimer hearings; Philip Stern, author of a fine
book on the Oppenheimer case; Kay Russell and Verna Hobson, his secre-
taries from the Princeton years; and Tsung Dao Lee, Isidor Rabi, Robert
Serber, George Uhlenbeck, Frank Yang, physics colleagues and personal
friends. I had made copious notes of those encounters. At that time I was
still immersed in physics research, however, and was not yet prepared to
devote efforts at historical writing. So I put those interview records aside in
a safe place.

XIX
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Her mother sat down near the door. “You know so. I see you are
more sensible than I feared. You know he’s simply looking for
money.”
“You don’t understand me at all, mother.” Beatrice leaned toward her
mother across the arm of the sofa. “Haven’t you ever wanted
anything—wanted it so intensely, so—so fiercely—that you would
take it on any terms—would do anything to get it?”
“Beatrice—that is—shocking!” As the word shocking had lost its force
in the general emancipation from the narrow moralities that is part
of fashionable life, Mrs. Richmond decided to bolster it up with
something having real strength. “Also, it is ridiculous,” she added.
“Father would understand,” said the girl pensively. “He has that sort
of nature. I inherit it from him. You know, they’ve almost ruined and
jailed him several times because he got one of those cravings that
simply have to be satisfied.”
No loyal wife could have taken a better air and tone than did Daniel
Richmond’s wife as she rebuked: “You are talking of your father,
Beatrice!”
“Yes—and I love him—adore him—just because he does things. He’s
good—good as gold. But he isn’t afraid to be bad. He doesn’t
hesitate to take what he wants because he hasn’t the nerve.”
“Your father has been lied about—maligned—enviously slandered by
his enemies.”
“Don’t talk rot, mother,” interrupted the girl. “You know him as well
as I. You’re afraid of him. I’m not. He knows he can rule you through
your love of luxury—just as he makes Rhoda and her earl crawl and
fawn and lick his boots—and the boys—even Conny, who’s only
fourteen. Oh, I don’t blame him for making people cringe, when he
can. I like to do that, myself.”
The mother regarded this daughter, so mysterious to her, with
mingled admiration and terror. “You are frightful—frightful!”
Beatrice seemed to accept this as a rare, agreeable compliment.
“I’ve got the courage to say what I think. And—really, I’m not so
frightful. I used to imagine I was. But”—she paused, laughed softly,
a delightful change sweeping over her face—“just ask Chang!”
To Mrs. Richmond the words and the manner of them were like an
impudent defiance. They drove her almost beside herself with alarm
and anger. “Your father’ll soon bring you to terms! You’ll see, miss!
You’ll see.” And she nodded her head, laughing viciously, an insane
glitter in her bright, brown eyes. “Yes, you’ll find out!”
Beatrice was not in the least impressed.
“All father can do is to cut me off. I’ve got five thousand a year in
my own right—enough to keep body and soul together. So, he knows
he’s powerless with me.”
“What a fool he was,” cried her mother, “to give you that money.”
“It isn’t altogether the money,” pursued Beatrice. “You’ve got nearly
half a million put by out of the household allowances. And your
jewels make as much more. Yet you’re afraid of him.”
Instead of becoming furious, Mrs. Richmond sank weakly back in her
chair. “He’s my husband,” she said appealingly. “You don’t
understand how much that means—not yet.”
Beatrice laughed softly. “No, but I’m beginning to,” said she.
However, she did not pursue that branch of the subject—did not
force her mother into the corner of admission that the real source of
Richmond’s power over her was not wifely duty nor yet motherly
feeling, but love of the vast and costly luxury which being
Richmond’s indulged wife got for her. All the girl wished to
accomplish was to reduce her mother to that pliable state of mind in
which she would cease to be the active enemy of her projects. Mrs.
Richmond was now down to that meek weakness; through the rest
of their talk her manner toward her daughter was friendly, sisterly,
remonstrant rather than denunciatory.
“You don’t realize what is the matter with you, Beatrice,” said she.
“What is the matter with me?”
“You wouldn’t understand— I couldn’t explain— You have had no
experience. If you had, you’d realize and control yourself.”
“All I know is, I must have him.”
“That’s it, exactly,” cried her mother. “That’s the way it affects
anyone who gets possessed by it. If you married under a spell of
that sort you’d wonder at yourself afterwards—when you had got
enough.”
“But—I wouldn’t ‘get enough,’ as you call it.”
“Oh, yes, you would. They always do.”
“Always?”
Mrs. Richmond shifted ground. “You will never get your father to
consent—never!”
“That’s the least of my troubles,” said Beatrice confidently. “The only
question is: How could he help me to bring over Roger?”
“How can you be so silly, child!” exclaimed the mother. “That fellow
would jump at you just as soon as he found your father consenting.”
Mrs. Richmond smiled. “And when he did jump at you— Oh, I know
you so well! You’d laugh at him and turn your back on him then.”
“I wonder,” said Beatrice absently. “I wonder.”
“I’m sure of it,” cried her mother with energy.
“I—don’t—know,” replied the girl. “It isn’t a bit like me to marry out
of my own class. At first I laughed at myself for even imagining I’d
really marry Chang. I was fascinated by him—everything he said and
did—and the way he said or did it—the way his hair grew—the way
his clothes fit—the way he blew smoke out of his mouth—the way he
held his palette—and his long brushes— You see, mother, I was
infatuated with him. Isn’t he splendid to look at?”
“He certainly is strikingly handsome,” admitted Mrs. Richmond. “But
hardly more so than Peter.”
“Oh, mother!” laughed out Beatrice. “You are not that
undiscriminating. There’s all the difference between them that there
is between—between a god and a mere mortal.” Contrasting the two
men seemed to fire the girl afresh. “Yes, I do want Chang,” she
cried. “I’d be enormously proud to have such a man to exhibit as my
husband.”
“But think, my dear! He’s nobody!”
“You heard d’Artois——”
“Yes—but if he were to try to marry d’Artois’s sister——”
“I know. I understand,” said Beatrice impatiently. “I wish he were a
real somebody. Still, he probably comes of as good a family as we
do.” She rose and faced her mother. “When I’m with him I’m
ashamed of being so—so cheap. When I see him beside Peter I’d
laugh at anybody who talked such snobbishness. But— Oh, I’ve been
so rottenly brought up! No wonder he won’t have me! If he knew
me as I am he’d spurn me.” Her expression softened to loving
tenderness. “No, he wouldn’t. He’s big and broad. He’d understand
and sympathize—and try to help me to be worthy of him. And I will
be!”
Her mother looked at her with the uncertain expression one sees on
the faces of the deaf when they are making pretense of having
heard and understood. “You’re very queer, Beatrice,” said she.
“Ain’t I, though!” exclaimed the girl. “I guess you were right a while
ago. I guess I’m crazy.”
“Don’t you think we’d better go abroad right away, instead of waiting
till June?”
“I’ve thought of that. But the idea of getting out of reach of him sets
me wild. I’d not be able to stand it to Sandy Hook. I’d spring
overboard and swim back to see what he was about.... Were you
ever in love, mother?”
“Of course,” replied Mrs. Richmond. “But I didn’t fall in love with a
nobody with nothing—at least, a man with no prospects.”
“Then you don’t know what love is! Oh, it was delicious—caring
about him—crazy about him—trembling all over if he spoke—
shivering if he happened to look at me in that calm, big way of his—
and that when I felt he might be little more than a tramp, for all I
knew.”
There was no sympathy in the mother’s face, nothing but plain
aversion and dismay. Yet she dared not speak her opinion. She knew
Beatrice. “I’m afraid he’s very artful, dear,” she ventured to say. “He
seems to understand exactly how to lead you on.”
“I don’t think so,” replied Beatrice. “I may be wrong. I often doubt.
I’m like father—very suspicious by nature. Of course, it’s possible he
is playing with me. If he is, why, it’s the most daring, splendid game
a man ever played, and he deserves to win.... No, mother. He’s not
playing with me. I tried to win him when he thought I was a poor
nobody. It didn’t go. Then I thought he was holding back because he
was poor; and I tried to win him by showing him what he would be
getting. I’m still trying that. But it doesn’t seem to be working any
better than the other.”
“Beatrice, I’m amazed. What must he think of you?”
“Now, you know very well, mother, that a girl in my position has to
do the courting if the man’s poor and has any self-respect. In fact,
I’ve got a notion that the women, in any circumstances, do a lot
more courting than is generally supposed.”
“I don’t know how it is in this day,” said her mother stiffly. “But in my
day——”
“You wouldn’t own up, mother dear,” laughed the girl. “And your
manner is suspiciously like an attempt to hide guilt.”
“I’m sure of one thing,” said Mrs. Richmond tartly. “In my day
children did not insult their parents.”
“Now, don’t get cross at my joking, dear,” cajoled the daughter,
kissing her mother’s well-arranged, gray hair so lightly that there
could be no danger of disarranging it.
As if it had all suddenly come over her again Mrs. Richmond cried
despairingly, “What will your father say! He’ll blame me. He’ll say
things that will prostrate me.”
“If you’ll not mention it to him,” said Beatrice, “I’ll guarantee that
he’ll not blame you. Hank is going away in the morning. You and
Hector can pretend to know nothing. I’ll take it up with him.”
Her mother looked somewhat reassured, but said dubiously, “He’ll
give it to me for not having guarded you more closely.”
“I’ll fix all that,” said Beatrice with infectious confidence. “Trust me.”
Mrs. Richmond gave her a look of gratitude so deep that it was
almost loving. “If you’d only be sensible and put this foolishness out
of your mind,” she said plaintively.
Rix laughed gayly, then softly. “It isn’t in my mind,” said she. “It’s in
another place—one I didn’t know about until I met him.” She looked
at herself admiringly in a long mirror that happened to be at hand.
“Don’t you see how much better looking I’ve grown of late? You
understand why. Oh, I’m so happy!”
Her mother gave a sigh of helplessness. Rix laughed again and went
away to her own rooms—to try to write poetry!
 VI
THE GUILE OF INNOCENCE

The following morning it was not yet half past six and Chang had just
reached the lake when her canoe shot round the bend. He stood a
few yards from the water’s edge, observing her graceful
maneuverings. She controlled that canoe as perfectly as if it had
been part of her own body. He was too much the artist to be able to
keep a stern countenance in face of so enchanting a spectacle. Also,
her features—her yellow hair, the ever-changing, gray eyes, the
mobile and rosy mouth, the delicate skin—had too much of the soft
and dazzling loveliness of the morning. “If a man wished to let
himself be bewitched,” thought he, “there would be an ideal
enchantress.” She was one of the few women he had known who
had worn well—about the only one, indeed. When he first knew her
he had not thought that she was especially attractive, beyond the
freshness that is the almost universal birthright of youth. But as he
had studied her, as he had observed and felt her varied moods, her
charm had grown. Even things about her, in themselves unattractive,
were fascinating in the glow and throb of her naturally vivid
personality—not an intellectual personality, not at all, but redolent of
the fresh fragrance of the primal, the natural. “An ideal enchantress,”
he muttered, and the lot he had sternly marked out for himself
seemed bare and lonely, like a monk’s cell beside the glories of the
landscape beyond its narrow window.
“How can you be out of humor on such a morning?” cried she, as
the prow of her canoe slid gently out of the water and she rose to
her feet.
“On the contrary, I’m in a fine humor.” And his look and voice bore
him out. “Didn’t I tell you I was going to town to-day? I simply took
my walk here.”
She laughed. “Neither did I expect you. I simply took my outing
here.” And when he blushed in confusion and annoyance, she
laughed the more gayly.
“You are so amusing,” she said tenderly.
“I’ll admit,” said he, “that I thought there was a chance you might
come. And I thought, if you did, it would be the best opportunity to
have a plain talk with you.”
She seated herself, or, rather, balanced herself, on the forward curve
of her canoe. He occupied a big bowlder near the maple under
which he always painted. “I see,” observed she, “that you are
getting ready to say a lot of things you don’t mean. How you will
thank me some day for having been patient with you!” He averted
his eyes, muttered something incoherent, searched confusedly for
his cigarettes. “You always keep the case in your lower left-hand
waistcoat pocket,” said she. And sure enough, there it was—to his
increased confusion. But, when their glances met, the twinkle in her
gray eyes—merry as the sunbeams that were changing the yellow of
her hair to the reddish yellow of the finest gold—proved irresistible.
“It’s simply impossible to be serious with you,” cried he, in what he
would have liked to think a vexed tone.
“And why should you be?” inquired the girl. “You used to warn me
that I took everything, myself included, far too seriously. Now, you’re
getting into the habit of taking yourself, oh, so solemnly!—which is
far worse than seriously. You’re more like a dismal preacher, a man
with a mission, than an artist with the joy of living laughing in his
heart. You made a great hit last night.”
He, off his guard, looked as pleased as a boy that has just got a
present of a gun. “Glad I didn’t disgrace you. You remember how
nervous you were about it.”
“Your talk about that shirt was a little disturbing. It came out well. At
least, I think it did. People don’t notice your clothes. They look at
you.”
“Now, how am I to say what I’ve got to say, if you keep on like
that?” demanded he. “Oh, but you are crafty!”
“I don’t want to be lectured, Chang.”
He settled himself with an air of inflexible resolution. “I’m not going
to lecture,” said he. “I’m going to deliver myself of a few words of
good sense and then say good-by.”
She looked upon the ground, and her expression wrenched his
tender heart. In vain he told himself that he was an egotistical fool;
that the girl was probably more than half faking, to work upon him;
that the other half of the feeling in her expression was the flimsiest
youthful infatuation, certain to disappear in a few days, a few weeks
at most. There, before him, was the look of suffering. And when she
lifted her eyes for an instant they said more touchingly than her
voice could have said it: “Why don’t you strike and have done with
me? I am helpless.”
He got up, tossed his cigarette far into the lake. “This is too rotten!”
he cried. “How in the devil did I ever get into such a mess?”
She waited, meek, silent, pathetic.
“I’ve about decided to go away—to go back to Paris,” said he.
“Maybe we can cross together,” said she. “Mother and I are going
soon. She wants me to go right away—there, or anywhere, wherever
I wish.”
He dropped to the bowlder again, a sense of helplessness
weakening his backbone and his knees. Of what use to fly? This girl
was free—had the means to travel wherever she chose, to stay as
long as she liked. In his excitement he saw visions of himself being
pursued round and round the earth—till his money gave out, and he,
unable to fly farther, was overtaken and captured. He began to laugh
—laugh until the tears rolled down his cheeks.
“What is it?” asked she. “Tell me. I want to laugh.”
“You are making me into an imbecile,” replied he. “I was laughing at
myself. I’m glad I had that laugh. I think I can talk sensibly now—
without making myself ridiculous.” Once more he put on a highly
impressive, highly ominous air of sober resoluteness. He began: “A
short time ago you did me the honor of telling me you were in love
with me.”
“Yes. Do you—do you think poorly of me for having been frank?”
And the gray eyes looked innocent anxiety.
“No, I don’t,” confessed he. “As a general proposition, I think I
should have thought—well, queerly—of a girl who came out with
such a startler on no especial provocation. But in this case the effect
is puzzlingly different. Probably because I can’t in the least believe
you.”
“Oh, no—that’s not the reason,” cried she. “It was only right that I
should speak first. You see, when the girl’s poor, and marrying her is
going to put the man to great expense—it’d be—be—downright
impertinent for her to say such a thing. It’d be as if she asked him to
support her for life.”
“Maybe so,” said he. “The money side of it didn’t occur to me.
Naturally, you, who have much money, would think more about it
than I, who have little.”
“Would you be afraid to—to marry—a woman who had a lot more
money than you?”
“Not in the least,” declared he. “How ridiculous!”
A chill of suspicion crept into her face.
“I don’t want to marry, and I shan’t marry,” continued he. “But if I
did want to marry, and wanted the woman, I’d not care who she was
or what she was or what she had or hadn’t—so long as she was
what I wanted. And I don’t think even you, crazy as you are about
money, could suspect me of having the same mania.”
His tone and his manner would have convinced anyone. They
convinced her. She drew a huge sigh of relief. “I’m glad you said that
—in just that way,” said she.
“I’m sure I don’t see what difference it makes,” replied he. “You
don’t mean to say you’ve been suspecting me of wanting your
money?”
She hung her head foolishly. “I’ve got a horrid mind,” confessed she.
“It came to me that maybe you might be holding out for fear
father’d cut me off.”
“You have got your nerve!” ejaculated he. “I never heard of the like!
—never!”
“Now you’re disgusted with me,” cried she. “I know I oughtn’t to
have told you. But I can’t help telling you everything. It isn’t fair,
Chang, to think I’m worse than most girls, just because I let you see
into me. You know it isn’t fair.”
“You’re right, Rix,” said he impulsively; and the sense that he had
wronged her pushed him on to say, “It’s your frankness and your
courage that I admire so much. I wish you weren’t attractive. Then
it’d be easier for me to do what I’ve got to do.”
Her face became radiant. “Then you do care for me?”
“Why, of course I do,” said he heartily—but in a tone most
unsatisfactory to ears waiting to drink in what her ears longed for.
“Do you suppose I could stand so much of anyone I didn’t like?”
“You aren’t frank with me!” said she a little sullenly.
“Why not?”
“You’ve some reason why you won’t let yourself say you love me.
And you won’t tell me what it is.”
“How many times have I got to tell you,” cried he heatedly, “that I
don’t care for you in that way—any more than you care for me?”
She was all gentleness and freedom from guile. “But every time you
say that, you say it angrily—and then I know you don’t mean it.”
“But I do mean it!”
Her face looked stubbornly unconvinced.
“I tell you, I do mean it!” he repeated with angry energy.
“You are mad at yourself for liking me so much.”
He made a gesture of despair. “Well, have it your way—if it pleases
you better to think so.” He rose and stood before her, his hands
thrust deep into the outside pockets of his loose sack coat.
“Whatever I may or may not think of you, I am not going to marry
anybody. Do I make myself clear?”
“But everybody gets married,” said she innocently. “Oh, Chang, why
do you want to be eccentric?” And up into his gazed the childlike
eyes. “You told me yourself that eccentricity was a stupid caricature
of originality.”
“Eccentric—eccentric,” he muttered, for lack of anything else to say.
What an impossible creature to talk seriously with! She was always
flying off at a tangent. Controlling his exasperation he said in a low,
intense voice: “Eccentric or not, I am not going to marry. Do you
understand? I—am—not—going—to—marry.”
“Why do you get angry?” she pleaded sweetly. “It’s unreasonable. I
can’t make you marry me—can I? I don’t want to marry you if you
don’t want to marry me—do I?”
He strode away, back again to where she sat in graceful ease on the
end of her canoe. “I’m not so thundering sure of that!” he cried. “By
Jove, you sometimes make me feel as if I had a halter round my
neck. Where did you get this infernal insistence?”
“From my father,” said she, quiet and calm. “I can’t help it. When my
heart gets set on a thing I hold on like grim death.”
He looked round, like a man dreaming. “Am I awake? Am I really
awake?” he demanded of lake and trees and stones. Then he
addressed her, “What are you up to? I know you don’t love me. I
know you don’t want to marry me. Then why do you do it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just can’t help it. Sometimes when I’m
alone and think over things I’ve said to you I can’t believe it was
really I—or that such words really were uttered.... There can be only
one explanation.”
“And what is that? For Heaven’s sake, let’s have it.”
“That I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you love me.”
“Really!” exclaimed he, with a fantastic attempt at scornful irony;
and away he strode, to halt at his former seat, the big bowlder
under the tree. “Really!” he repeated.
“You must see it yourself,” urged she, serious and earnest. “Honestly,
Chang, could a girl talk to you as I have—a girl as proud and as
modest as I am—and with no experience—could she do it, unless
she were absolutely sure she was talking to a man who loved her?”
There was something akin to terror in his eyes—the terror of a man
who feels himself sinking in ocean or quicksand and looks about in
vain for aid. Down he sat, to stare out over the shining, sparkling
lake.
“You know I’m right,” said she with quiet conviction.
Up he started again in agitation. “I must be getting weak-minded!”
he cried. “Or are you hypnotizing me?”
“If anybody’s done any hypnotizing I guess it must be you that have
hypnotized me.”
“Maybe so,” said he, with a confused gesture. “Maybe so. Lord
knows. I don’t.”
“And now,” pursued she, “that it’s settled that we love each other
——”
“What!” he cried, with some of his former energy. But it subsided
before her calm, surprised gaze. He stared stupidly at her feet,
extended and crossed. “Is it settled?” he muttered. “Is it?” And then
he straightened himself—a kind of rearing, insurgent gesture—the
gesture of the last fierce stand in the last ditch.
“Yes, Chang, it’s settled,” said she soothingly. “You are such a big,
foolish dear! But—as I was about to say—” She hesitated.
“Go on,” he urged, with a large, ironic gesture matching the
boisterous irony of his tone. “Say anything you like. Only, don’t keep
me in suspense.”
“Have you had your breakfast?” she asked solicitously.
“I take only coffee. I had it.”
“But that’s not enough for such a long morning as you have,”
protested she.
“Isn’t it? All right. I’ll eat whatever you say—eat till you tell me to
stop.”
“It really isn’t enough,” said she, refusing to relax her seriousness.
“But, to go on—now that it’s settled that we love each other—the
question is: What shall we do about it?”
“Yes,” said he, nodding his head in solemn mockery. “That’s it. What
shall be done about it?”
“How queer your voice is, Chang,” observed she, with a look of
gentle, innocent worriment. “What’s the matter?”
“I had only coffee,” said he.
“You mustn’t do that again.... Have you any suggestion to make?”
“None. Have you?”
“Chang!” she said reproachfully. “You have a suggestion.”
“Have I? What is it?”
“The only possible suggestion. You know very well that the only
sensible thing to do is to get married.”
“I’m dreaming,” jeered he. “Yes, I’m dreaming.”
“You’re laughing at me, Chang!”
“Am I?”
“Oh, I don’t care. I’m so happy! The only thing that stands in the
way is father.”
“Oh, father! Yes; there is father!” And he nodded ironically,
repeating: “Father—there’s father.”
“But I’ll soon bring him round,” cried she. “His will’s very strong, but
mine’s much stronger.”
“I believe that!” said he with energy. “You’ve got the strongest will
we’ve had since Joshua ordered the sun to stand still and the sun
did it.”
“You’re laughing at me again!” reproached she with an injured air.
“No, no! How could I?” protested he. “But suppose father refuses his
consent. What then?”
“But he won’t,” she said with an emphatic little nod.
“But he might. He doesn’t know me as well and love me as dearly as
his daughter does.”
“Chang, I feel as if you were laughing at me!”
“How can you!” said he. “But let’s go back to father and stick to him.
Suppose he refuses—absolutely refuses! What then?”
“I hadn’t thought. It’s so unlikely.”
“Well—think now. You’d give up your romantic dream, wouldn’t
you?”
She beamed, happy, confident. “Oh, that won’t happen. He’s sure to
consent.”
“He’s sure not to consent,” said Roger, dropping his irony. “What
then?”
She was silent. Her face slowly paled. A drawn look came round her
eyes and mouth. He laughed—a sarcastic laugh—a sincere sound
that indicated to her acute ears an end of the irony she had been
pretending not to suspect. She glanced up quickly. Her eyes fell
before his.
“You see,” said he, a little disdain in his jocose mockery, “I’ve shown
you your own true self. Now, you will be sensible. Go back to your
Peter and let the poor artist alone.” He rose, came to her, held out
his hand. “Good-by, Rix. I must catch my train.”
She did not take his hand.
“Surely you’ll shake hands,” said he gently, friendlily. “I understand. I
like you for what you are, not for what you ought to be. Come, give
me your hand, my friend.”
She sighed, gazed up at him. “Suppose I said I’d give up everything
for you. What then?” she asked.
“Why, you’d be saying what isn’t true.”
“Chang,” she said earnestly, “I think I’d give up everything for you.
But since it is you who ask me—you to whom I feel I must tell the
exact truth—I had to be honest. And the honest truth is I don’t
know. And any girl, in the same circumstances, would say precisely
the same thing—if she weren’t lying—or just romancing.”
“You are a trump, Rix!” he exclaimed. There was a look in his eyes
that would have thrilled her, had she seen it. But before she turned
her gaze upon him again, he had controlled his impulsive self-
revelation. In his usual manner he went on: “I’m proud of your
friendship. It’s always good to be reminded that there are people of
the right sort on earth. But you see yourself now that I was right
from the beginning. We don’t belong in the same class. We couldn’t
comfortably travel the same road. We——”
“Would you marry me if I gave up everything for you?” she
interrupted.
“No,” was the prompt reply. “Any man who did that to your sort of
girl would be a fool—and worse. But don’t forget another fact, my
dear. I wouldn’t marry you in any circumstances. I’m not marrying.
I’m married already, as I told you before. I don’t believe in any other
kind of marriage—for my kind of man. I love my freedom. And I
shall keep it.”
There was no mistaking the ring of those decisive words. The girl
shrank a little. She began in a choked, uncertain voice: “But you said
——”
“Rix, my dear friend, I said nothing that contradicted what I’ve
always told you—what I believe in as I believe in my work. You knew
perfectly well that I was merely ironic a few minutes ago. I didn’t
want to part from you with you imagining you were broken-hearted.
That’s why I let you run on and on—until you came that fearful
cropper. Oh, what a cropper for romantic Rix!”
She laughed with a partial return of her old gayety. “I do feel cheap,”
said she—“dirt cheap.”
“Not at all. Just human. But—really I must be going,” said he briskly.
“When shall I see you again?” And she tried to speak steadily, with
smiling eyes.
“Let me see. I’ll be back in two or three days. In a week or ten days
I’ll have that picture about done. I suppose you’d like to see it. I’ll
send your mother a note, asking her to bring you. Well—good-by,
Rix.”
He took her hand, released it. She stood, paling and flushing and
trembling. “Is that—all?” she murmured. “Won’t you—” Voice failed
her.
He bent and kissed her hair at her temple. Suddenly she flung her
arms round his neck, kissed him passionately, her embrace tight;
and a shower of tears rained upon his cheek. With a hysterical cry
more like joy than like grief, yet like neither, she flung herself free,
sprang into the canoe and pushed off. And she went her way and he
his without either looking back.
 VII
MR. RICHMOND CALLS

Roger was working in the studio, with doors and windows wide. It
was fiercely hot. He had reduced his costume to outing shirt and old
flannel trousers—the kind they make in the Latin Quarter—baggy at
the hips, tapering to a close fit at the ankles and hanging with a
careless, comfortable, yet not ungraceful looseness. He was working
at the picture. He had not decided on a name for it. Should he call it
April?—or Dawn?—or The Water Witch? Or should he give it its
proper name—Rix? That title would mean nothing to anyone save
himself. But to him the picture meant nothing else. True, there was
landscape in it; the play of early morning light on foliage, on leaping
water, on placid water made it the best landscape he had ever done
—incomparably the best. The canoe, too, was a marvel in its way.
But the girl—there was the picture! He made another infinitesimal
change—it would have been impossible to count the number of
those changes he had made. Then he stood off at a little distance to
look again.
“Is it in the canvas—or is it in my mind?” said he aloud.
He could not tell. He rather feared he was largely imagining the
wonders he thought he saw in that pictured face and form.
“It may be rotten, and I a fool hypnotized by her and by my own
vanity, for all I know. But—what do I care? I am getting the
pleasure.”
Pleasure? Never before had he taken such deep, utter joy in his
work. Not merely joy in the doing—that was his invariable
experience—but joy in the completed work. Never before had he
brought anything so near to the finish without a feeling of
dissatisfaction, sense of failure, of having just missed his aim. He
viewed the picture from a dozen points. And each time he beheld in
it something new, something yet more wonderful.
“I’m damned if it’s there! It simply can’t be. Not the greatest genius
who ever lived could produce what I imagine I see.”
He took a dozen new positions, standing long at each view point.
But the illusion—it must be illusion!—refused to vanish. The work—
the figure part of it—persisted in appealing to him as a product of
transcendent genius.
“That business didn’t stop a minute too soon—not a minute! For it’s
evident I was on the verge of falling in love.”
“On the verge?”... What was the meaning of the illusion of a picture
greater than ever artist made?... On the verge?
“Why, hang it all, I’ve done nothing but think about her since we
kissed. I’m bewitched! I’m in love!”
The kiss was a week old now—ought to have lost its power long
ago; for there is power in a kiss from a pretty woman, even though
a man does not love her. But this kiss had an extraordinary, an
unprecedented quality. Other kisses—in days gone by—had given
their little sensation and had straightway drifted into the crowd of
impressions about the woman or about the general joyousness of life
when the senses are normal and responsive. But this kiss—it had
individuality, a body and soul of its own, a Jack’s bean-stalk kind of
vitality. It was more vigorous day by day. He could feel it much more
potently to-day than on the day it was given. Really, it did not make
a very powerful impression then. He had experienced much better
kisses. He had felt awkward—a little ridiculous—rather uneasy and
anxious to escape. Now——
“Not a minute too soon—not a minute! As it is, I’m going to have the
devil’s own time forgetting her.”
What had become of all his projects for a career, for rapid striding
into fame? Gone—quite gone. He simply wanted to stay at the studio
and work on and on and yet on at the one picture—at the one figure
in that picture. He had vaguely decided on a scheme for another
picture when this should be done. What was it? Why, a picture of a
woman sitting under a tree, her hands listless, her whole body
relaxed and inert—except her eyes. Her eyes were to be winging into
the depths of the infinite. He had planned out the contrast between
the eyes, so intensely, so swiftly alive, and the passive rest of her.
And who was this woman? Rix! He had still more vaguely planned a
third picture. Of what? Rix again.
“Not a minute too soon? By Heaven, a minute too late!”
“Well, what of it?” demanded he gloomily of his gloomy self. Why,
pay the bill. Pay like a man. “I couldn’t marry her if I would. I
wouldn’t marry her if I could. But I can pay the bill for making a fool
of myself.” He glowered savagely around. “The next time a good-
looking woman comes here,” he muttered, “I’ll take to my heels and
hide in the woods till she’s gone. I see I’m no longer to be trusted in
female society. At my age—with my plans—after all I’ve been
through—to make such an easy ass of myself!” He sat down
despondently on the bench—sprang up—for was it not there—lying
there—just where he had seated himself—that he had first seen her?
He glanced round the studio. He groaned. Everything in it reminded
him of her; and there, in the center, in the most favorable light, on
the easel—was she herself!
He rushed outdoors. Sunshine shimmering and sparkling on the
foliage—he could see her, the yellow hair aflame with sunbeams,
flitting gracefully through the aisles of the forest! A heavy bill it was
to be! But he set his teeth. “She is not for me, nor I for her. If she
were here now I’d talk to her just as I did. But, thank God, I didn’t
realize until I had done the only thing that’s sane and honorable. I
wonder how long it will be before I can begin to forget?”
Every morning he awoke vowing he would not touch or look at her
picture that day. Every morning he cut short his walk that he might
get to the studio earlier and busy himself at the picture. He partially
consoled himself with the reflection that at least he was improving it,
was not altogether wasting his time. And he found evidence of real
strength of purpose in the fact that he kept away from the waterfall.
For two weeks he daily feared—or hoped—whether fear or hope or
both he was not sure—that she would come to the studio. As the
days passed and she did not appear he felt that she was getting
over her infatuation; to stay away thus long unless her enthusiasm
had cooled was wholly unlike her impetuous and brave nature. This
thought did not make him happier exactly, but athwart its gloom
shot one sincerely generous gleam: “Anyhow, I’m paying alone,” said
he to himself. “And that’s as it should be. It was altogether my fault.
I am older, more experienced. I ought to have seen that the
strangeness and novelty of our meetings were appealing to her
young imagination—and I ought to have broken off at the very
outset. If she had been a poor girl leading a quiet, dull life the
consequences might have been serious. Yes, and I might have been
weak enough to marry her out of regret—and that would have been
misery for us both.”
He tried fighting against the desire to spend his days with that
picture. He tried yielding to the desire. But neither abstinence nor
excess availed. He tried savage, sneering criticism—found that he
loved her for her defects and her weaknesses. He tried absurd
extravagance of romancing—found that he had quite lost his sense
of humor where adulation of her was concerned. The kiss flamed on.
He decided to leave—to fly. But he discovered that if he went he
would surely take the picture; and of what use to go, if he lugged
his curse along with him?
One afternoon late he went to the door to get the full benefit of a
cool breeze that had sprung up. He saw, a few hundred yards away,
Rix and a man climbing up through the dense woods toward his
workshop. He wheeled round, rushed in and put the picture away—
far back in the depths of the closet, behind a lot of other pictures. In
its place on the easel he set a barely begun sketch—one of his
attempts to distract his mind. Then, with no alteration in his
appearance—his hair was mussed this way and that, and his
negligee shirt was open at the neck and rolled up to the elbows—he
lit a cigarette and sauntered to the door again. His not making any
effort to improve upon his appearance was characteristic and
significant; rarely indeed has there been a human being habitually
less self-conscious than he. It would take a very vain person to
continue to think of himself or herself on becoming suddenly a
spectator at some scene of tremendous interest. Roger was in that
state of mind all the time. His senses were so eager, his mind so
inquisitive, his powers of observation so acute that his thoughts
were like bees on a bright, summer day—always roving, and
returning home only to unload what had been gathered and quickly
depart again in quest of more from the outside.
As the ascent was steep he had ample time to compose his thoughts
and his expression. She must not see or feel anything that would
make it, however little, harder to pursue the road Fate had marked
out for her. The man beside her was obviously her father—obviously,
though there was no similarity of face or manner or figure. The
relationship was revealed in that evasive similarity called family favor
—a similarity which startlingly asserts itself even in dissimilarities, as
if the soul and the body had a faint aureole which appeared only at
certain angles and in certain lights. He was a little, thin man—dry
and dyspeptic—with one of those deceptive retreating chins of
insignificant size that indicate cunning instead of weakness. He had
a big, sharp nose, a rough skin and scraggly mustache, with restless,
gray-green eyes. He was very slouchily dressed in dusty gray. When
he took off his straw hat to wipe his brow Roger was astonished by
the sudden view of a really superb upper head which transformed
his aspect from merely sly to dangerously crafty—the man with the
nature of a fox and the intelligence to make that nature not simply a
local nuisance but a general scourge. “I’d like to paint him,” thought
Roger—and compliment could no further go in an artist who
detested portrait work.
As the two drew near Rix waved her sunshade at him and nodded.
He advanced, holding to his cigarette. When she extended her hand
—a gloved hand, for she was in a fashionable, white, walking
costume—her eyes did not lift and her color wavered and her short,
sensitive, upper lip trembled slightly. “Mr. Wade, I want you and
father to know each other,” said she. As her voice came the thrill
that shot through him dropped his cigarette from between the
fingers of his left hand. He and Richmond gave each other a
penetrating, seeing glance, followed by a smile of immediate
appreciation.
Richmond gave and took back his hand quickly—the hand shake of
the man who is impatient of meaningless formalities. “I’ve come to
look at the picture,” said he, in his voice the note of one who neither
wastes his own time nor suffers others to waste it.
Roger froze instantly. “I’m sorry you’ve had your journey for
nothing,” said he.
Richmond looked at him aggressively. Roger’s tone of the large, free
spirit that does as it wills was to Richmond, the autocrat, like a
challenging trumpet. “It’s here—isn’t it?” said he.
“But it’s not finished,” replied the big artist, gentle as the voice of a
great river flowing inevitably on its way.
“No matter,” said Richmond graciously. “We’ll take a look at it,
anyhow.”
“Oh, no, we shan’t,” said Beatrice, laughing. “He has a rule against
it, father. And he’s like iron where his rules are concerned. But you’ll
give us some chocolate, won’t you, Mr. Wade?”
“Delighted,” said Roger, with a gesture inviting them to precede him
into the studio.
Richmond looked round him scrutinizingly. “Nothing to distract your
mind from your work, I see. That’s the way my office is fitted up. I’m
always suspicious of chaps surrounded by elegant fittings.” And he
gave Roger an approving look that was flattering, if a trifle
suggestive of superiority.
“It’s not wise to judge a man by any exteriors,” said Roger. “What he
does—that is the only safe standard.”
Richmond reflected, nodded. “Yes,” said he. “Yes. Is that the
picture?” He pointed one brown, bony hand at the sketch on the
easel.
“No,” said Roger curtly, and he flung a drape over the sketch.
Turning to Beatrice with rather formal friendliness, he inquired, “How
is your mother?”
“Well—always well,” said Beatrice. “She sent you her best. But she’s
cross with you for not coming to call.”
Richmond grinned sardonically. “From what I’ve heard of Wade,” said
he, “he’s not the kind you find nestled among the petticoats with a
little cup in his hand.” He smiled upon Roger. “In America, at least,
you never see men who amount to anything at these social goings-
on. In five years I’ve been to only one party in my own house, and
to none in anybody else’s house.”
“May I help with the chocolate—Mr. Wade?” asked Beatrice.
“No. You two will sit quietly. I don’t mind being watched.”
While he made the closet give up the necessary utensils and
concocted the chocolate with the aid of spirit-lamp stove the three
talked in rambling fashion. Several times Richmond brought up the
subject of the picture; every time Roger abruptly led away from it,
Beatrice with increasing nervousness helping him. But Richmond was
not discouraged. It became evident that he had made up his mind to
see that picture and was only the more resolved because the artist
had his will set against it. Finally he said:
“It’s really necessary, Mr. Wade, that I see the picture. Your friend,
Count d’Artois, speaks highly of your work. But I always judge
everything for myself. And I must see before I decide about giving
you a commission—a dozen panels for an outing-club house I and
some of my friends are going to put something like half a million
into.”
“Why, father, you didn’t tell me anything about it!” exclaimed
Beatrice, flushed and agitated. And Roger understood that she,
nervous about his sensibilities, was letting him know that she had
not arranged this.
Her father’s amused laugh confirmed Roger’s impression that
Beatrice was telling the truth. “No, my dear, I did forget to ask your
permission,” said Richmond ironically. “I apologize. Now, Wade, you
see I’m not asking out of idle curiosity or merely because I’m
anxious to see what you’ve made of this girl of mine. So, don’t
bother with bashfulness. Trot out the picture.”
But Roger smilingly shook his head. “I couldn’t undertake any work
at present.”
“Honestly, Chang, I didn’t know a thing about this,” cried the girl.
Then, to her father: “He’s so peculiar that he wouldn’t——”
“Oh, no, I’m not such an ass as that,” interrupted Roger good-
naturedly. “Sugar in your chocolate, Mr. Richmond? No? When are
you sailing, Miss Richmond?”
Beatrice understood—abandoned the subject. “Perhaps we shan’t
go,” she replied.
And she went on to detail at length and with much vivacity the
merits and demerits of several plans for the summer she and her
mother were considering. Richmond’s frown deepened. After five
minutes he set down his empty cup and cut squarely across her
stream of lively talk.
“The panels will be a good thing—from the financial standpoint,” said
he, a note in his voice like a rap for undivided attention.
Beatrice glanced anxiously at Roger, said to her father: “Oh papa,
don’t let us talk business. This is a party.”
“I came on business,” retorted Richmond. “And I know Wade
wouldn’t thank us for coming if we were here just to fool away his
time.”
“I usually knock off for chocolate at this hour,” said Roger. “About the
panels, thank you very much, but I can’t do them.”
“Why not?” inquired Richmond, so much irritation in his tone that it
was scarcely polite.
Roger looked amused. “I haven’t thought of the reason yet,” said he
courteously. “If I change my mind later I’ll let you know.”
Richmond did not conceal his disgust with what seemed to him an
exhibition of youthful egotism bordering on impertinence. Beatrice,
eager for her father to get a favorable impression, looked woefully
depressed. “You misunderstood me, Mr. Wade,” said he, resuming
the Mr. to indicate his disapproval. “I did not offer you the
commission.”
“And I didn’t accept it,” said Roger, laughing. “So, there’s no harm
done. Let me give you some chocolate.”
“Thanks, no. We are going.” And the financier rose. “Come along,
Beatrice.”
The girl, pale, crestfallen, half rose, and reseated herself, looked
appealingly at Roger, who seemed not to see, then stood. “When
can we see the picture?” she asked, casting desperately about for an
excuse for lingering.
“We don’t want to see it at all,” her father put in, with a jovial,
sardonic laugh that revealed unpleasantly his strong, sallow,
crowded teeth. “Mr. Wade needn’t bother to complete it. I’ll send
him a check for whatever you settled as the price——”
“Father!” gasped Beatrice despairingly. Then, to Roger, with a
nervous attempt at a lively smile: “He doesn’t mean it. He’s simply
joking.”
“Your father and I understand each other,” said Roger tranquilly.
“The picture’ll be done in a few days. I’ll send it to Red Hill
immediately. I always like to get a finished job out of the place. I’ve
got a terrible habit of tinkering as long as a thing’s within reach. As
for the check”—he smiled pleasantly at Richmond, who looked—and
felt—small and shriveled before the large candor of the artist’s
expression—“your daughter is a poor business woman. She forgot to
make a bargain. So it lies between your generosity and mine.” Roger
made a courtly bow, with enough mockery in it to take away
affectation. “I’m sure mine will come nearer the value of the picture.
I’ll make you a present of it—with my compliments.”
“Can’t permit it!” said Richmond angrily.
But Roger remained suave. “I don’t see how you’re going to help
yourself,” said he. “I can send it back to you as often as you return it
to me, and if you can refuse to take it in, why, so can I. You can’t
make me ridiculous without my making you ridiculous also. You see,
you’re in my power, Mr. Richmond.” All this with the utmost good
humor and friendliness.
Richmond could think of nothing to say but a repetition of his curt
“Can’t permit it!” He glanced in the direction of his daughter, jerked
his head toward the door. “Come along, child. Good day, sir.” Roger’s
expression, from the height of his tall figure, was so compelling that
he put out his hand, which Roger took and shook with the cordiality
of a host to whom any guest is inviolable.
Beatrice and Roger shook hands—that is, Beatrice let her hand rest
lifelessly in Roger’s until he dropped it. He bowed them out into the
sunshine and stood in the doorway, watching them. At the edge of
the forest Beatrice turned suddenly and started back. Roger saw her
father wheel round—heard his sharp “Beatrice!”—saw his look of
furious amazement. The girl came almost running. Roger braced
himself, through his whole body a gripping sensation that might be
either terror or delight.
When she stood before him, her eyes down, her cheeks pale, her
bosom heaving, she said: “The other day you asked me whether I’d
give up everything for you. I didn’t know then. I do know now.”
“Pardon me, but I did not,” said Roger, calm and cold.
“However it was,” she rushed on, “that question came up. And I
didn’t know then whether I would or would not. Well, I know now.”
“Your father is impatient.”
“I’m sure I would,” she said, a fascinating haughty humility in her
face, in her voice. And she looked so brilliantly young and ardent.
Roger’s glance fled before hers. A brief electric silence, then he
laughed pleasantly. “And I’m sure you wouldn’t. And it doesn’t
matter whether you would or wouldn’t. Good-by, Rix. Your father’s
look is aimed to kill.”
“How cruel you are—and how blind!” she cried, eyes and cheeks
aflame. And as quickly as she had come she sped away to rejoin her
father.
Roger heaved a great sigh. “Now,” said he aloud, “I’ve seen the last
of her. I can resume.”
 VIII
AN INFURIATE FATHER

“I suppose you went back to apologize for me,” said her father as they
started on together.
“You don’t understand him,” replied she miserably. “Artists—great
artists—are different.”
“He is a good deal of a man. D’Artois was right. I’ll see that he does
those panels.” And Richmond gave the nod of a man who has money
and knows that money is all-powerful.
Beatrice stopped short, her eyes opened wide. “Why,” exclaimed
she, “I thought you disliked him!”
“Not at all—not at all,” replied her father. “He’s a disagreeable chap.
But all men who amount to anything are. A man who’s thoroughly
agreeable is invariably weak. An agreeable man’s rarely worth more
then twelve or fifteen a week. What this world needs is more people
like this friend of yours. I saw that he had built himself up solidly
from the ground. I wish I had a son like that! Your brothers are
pretty poor excuses, thanks to the vicious training your mother has
given them. ‘Be a gentleman—and make everybody comfortable—
don’t do anything to hurt anybody’s feelings or to make yourself
conspicuous.’ That is, be a cipher.” Richmond snorted. “A gentleman
is a cipher—and ciphers count for nothing unless they’re annexed
after a figure that stands for something. But I suppose a successful
man can’t expect to have strong sons. He has to be thankful if
they’re not imbecile or dissipated.”
Beatrice had been caught up and whirled all in a twinkling from
depth to height. The way down through the woods was rough and
toilsome. She flitted along as if it were smooth as a French high-
road. She beamed upon her father. “What a difference between the
ordinary young man, the sort we meet—and a man like Roger
Wade!” she cried.
“Those tailor’s dummies!” said Richmond contemptuously. “You can’t
compare a man with them.”
He was on his favorite topic for private and public addresses—the
topic that enabled him to express the views which had won for him
the name of being the most democratic of the big financiers. Like all
men of abounding mentality he was a huge talker; get him started
and the only thing to do, whether one wished or no, was to listen.
Usually, Beatrice, who was not fond of silence and soon reached the
limit of her capacity for listening, would imperiously interrupt these
monologues—and both would enjoy the tussle between their wills as
each tried to compel the other to listen. But this discourse—
composed though it was of commonplaces he had repeated and she
had heard scores of times—she drank in as if it had been the brand-
new thing her soul had long thirsted to hear. Like all fluent talkers
Richmond often fell victim—in conversation, never in action—to the
intoxication of bubbling ideas and phrases. Before they reached the
place where they had left the T cart to await their return, Richmond
had not merely committed himself finally and completely to the
gospel of the aristocracy of achievement, he had hailed that
aristocracy as the only one worthy of consideration, had ridiculed
and denounced all others as utterly contemptible.
Beatrice took advantage of his pause for getting the horses under
way. She gave his arm a loving squeeze. “I’m so proud of you!” she
said tenderly, gazing at him with sparkling eyes and delicately
flushed cheeks. “I knew you’d feel that way about him!”
“About whom?” said her father, whose flooding sermon had borne
him swiftly far from view, or remembrance even, of the text whence
it had sprung.
“About Chang.”
“Chang? What Chang? Who’s Chang?”