}S\ 'v 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THIS BOOK IS ONE OF A 
 COLLECTION MADE BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 1854-1919 
 
 AND BEQUEATHED TO 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PS 2752.P11 
 
 The pace that kllls:a chrpnicle by) Edga 
 
 3 1924 022 037 042 
 
M^ Cornell University 
 
 ^'' J Library 
 
 The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022037042 
 
THE PACE THAT KILLS 
 
3Bb tbe same author. 
 
 A Transaction in Hearts. 
 
 Eden. 
 
 The Truth about Tristrem Varick. 
 
 Mr. Incoul's Misadventure. 
 
 A Transient Guest. 
 
 The Anatomy of Negation. 
 
 The Philosophy of Disenchantment. 
 
THE PACE THAT KILLS 
 
 ^ €l)ronicle 
 
 EDGAR SALTUS 
 
 * Pourguoi la mortf Dites^piutdt^pourquoi la vie f^ 
 
 — Rabussom 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 BELFORD COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
 x8 TO 22 East i8th Street 
 
Copyright, 1889,^ 
 
 BY 
 
 Bdgak Saltus, 
 
TO 
 
 JOHN A. RUTHERFURD 
 
 New York, June lo, 18S9. 
 
PART I. 
 
THE PACE THAT KILLS. 
 
 I. 
 
 " r WISH you a happy New Year, sir." 
 
 It was the servant, green of livery, the 
 yellow waistcoat slashed-with black, bear- 
 ing the coffee and fruit. 
 
 " Put it there, please," Roland answered. 
 And then, in recognition of the salutation, 
 he added, " Thanks: the same to you." 
 
 " H'm," he mused, as the man withdrew, 
 " I ought to have tipped him, I suppose." 
 
 He leaned from the bed, poured some 
 milk into a cup, and for a second nibbled 
 at a slice of iced orange. Through the 
 transom came a faint odor of home-made 
 bread, and with it the rustle of a gown and 
 a girl's clear laugh. The room itself was 
 small. It was furnished in a fashion which 
 was unsuggestive of an hotel, and yet did 
 
 9 
 
lo The Pace that Kills. 
 
 not resemble that of a private house. The 
 curtain had been already drawn. Beyond 
 was a lake, very blue in the sunlight, bul- 
 warked by undulant hills. Below, on the 
 road, a dogcart fronted by a groom was 
 awaiting somebody's pleasure. 
 
 "It is late," he reflected, and raised a 
 napkin to his lips. As he did so he no- 
 ticed a package of letters which the napkin 
 must have concealed. He took up the 
 topmost and eyed it. It had been ad- 
 dressed to the Athenaeum Club, Fifth 
 Avenue ; but the original direction was 
 erased, and Tuxedo Park inserted in its 
 ■ stead. On the upper left-hand corner the 
 impress of a firm of tailors shone in blue. 
 Opposite was the engraving of a young 
 woman supported by 2\d. He put it down 
 again and glanced at the others. The 
 superscriptions were characterless enough; 
 each bore a foreign stamp, and to one as 
 practised as was he, each bore the token 
 of the dun. 
 
 " If they keep on bothering me like this," 
 
The Pace that Kills, 1 1 
 
 ne muttered, " I shall certainly place the 
 matter in the hands of my attorney." 
 And thereat, with the air of a man who 
 had said something insultingly original, 
 he laughed aloud, swallowed some coffee, 
 and dashed his head in the pillow. In and 
 out of the corners of his mouth a smile 
 still played; but presently his fancy must 
 have veered, for the muscles of his lips 
 compressed, and as he lay there, the arms 
 clasped behind the head, the pink silk of 
 his sleeves framing and tinting his face, 
 and in the eyes the expression of one pre- 
 pared to meet Fate and outwit it, a pos- 
 sible observer who could have chanced 
 that way would have sat himself down to 
 study and risen up perplexed. 
 
 Anyone who was at Columbia ten years 
 ago will remember Roland Mistrial, — Ro- 
 land Mistrial 3d, if you please, — and will re- 
 call the wave of bewilderment which swept 
 the campus when that young gentleman, on 
 the eve of graduation, popularity on one 
 side and honors on the other, suddenly, 
 
12 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 without so much as a p. p. c, left everything 
 where it was and betook himself to other 
 shores. The flight was indeed erratic, and 
 numerous were the rumors which it ex- 
 cited ; but Commencement was at hand, 
 other issues were to be considered, bewil- 
 derment subsided as bewilderment ever 
 does, the college dispersed, and when it 
 assembled again the Mistrial mystery, 
 though unelucidated, was practically for- 
 got. 
 
 In the neighborhood of Washington 
 Square, however, on the northwest corner 
 of Tenth Street and Fifth Avenue to be 
 exact, there were others whose memories 
 were more retentive. Among them was 
 Roland's grandfather, himself a graduate, 
 founder of the Mistrial fellowship, and 
 judge of the appellate court. And there 
 was Roland's father, a graduate too, a 
 gentleman widely respected, all the more 
 so perhaps because he had run for the 
 governorship and lost it. And again there 
 was Roland's aunt, a maiden lady of whom 
 
The Pace that Kills. 1 3 
 
 it is recorded that each day of her life 
 she got down on her knees and thanked 
 God he had made her a Mistrial. In addi- 
 tion to these, there were, scattered along 
 the Hudson, certain maternal relatives — 
 the Algaroths, the Baxters, and the Swifts ; 
 Bishop Algaroth in particular, who pos- 
 sessed such indomitable vigor that when 
 at the good old age of threescore and 
 ten he decided to depart this life, the im- 
 pression prevailed that he had died very 
 young for him. None of these people 
 readily forgot. They were a proud family 
 and an influential one — influential not 
 merely in the social sense, but influential 
 in political, legal, in church and university 
 circles as well ; a fact which may have had 
 weight with the Faculty when it was called 
 upon to deal with Roland Mistrial 3d. 
 But be that as it may, the cause of the 
 young man's disappearance was never 
 officially given. Among the rumors which 
 it created was one to the effect that his 
 health was affected ; in another his mind 
 
14 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 was implicated ; and in a third it was his 
 heart. Yet as not one of these rumors 
 had enough evidential value behind it to 
 concoct an anonymous letter on, they were 
 suffered to go their way undetained, very 
 much as Roland had already gone his own. 
 That way led him straight to the Golden 
 Gate and out of it to Japan. Before he 
 reached Yeddo his grandfather left the 
 planet and a round sum of money behind. 
 Of that round sum the grandson came in 
 for a portion. It was not fabulous in 
 dimensions, but in the East money goes 
 far. In this case it might have gone on 
 indefinitely had not the beneficiary seen 
 fit to abandon the languors of the Orient 
 for the breezier atmosphere of the west. 
 The Riviera has charms of its own. So, 
 too, have Paris and Vienna. Roland en- 
 joyed them to the best of his ability. He 
 even found London attractive, and became 
 acclimated in Pall Mall. In the latter 
 region he learned one day that his share 
 of the round sum had departed and his 
 
The Pace that Kills. 1 5 
 
 father as well. The conjunction of these 
 incidents was of such a character that he 
 at once took ship for New York. 
 
 It was not that he was impatient to 
 revisit the misgoverned city which he had 
 deserted ten years before. He had left 
 it willingly enough, and he had seldom 
 regretted it since. The pins and needles 
 on which he sat were those of another 
 make. He was uninformed of the dispo- 
 sition of his father's property, and he felt 
 that, were not every penny of it bequeathed 
 to him, he would be in a tight box indeed. 
 
 He was at that time just entering his 
 thirtieth year — that age in which a man who 
 has led a certain life begins to be particular 
 about the quality of his red pepper, and 
 anxious too that the supply of it shall not 
 tarry. Though meagre of late, the supply 
 had been sufficient. But at present the 
 palate was a trifle impaired. Where a 
 ten-pound note had sufficed for its excite- 
 ment, a hundred now were none too strong. 
 Roland Mistrial — 3d no longer— wanted 
 
l6 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 money, and he wanted plenty of it. He 
 had exact ideas as to its usefulness, and 
 none at all regarding its manufacture. 
 He held, as many have done and will con- 
 tinue to do, that the royal road to it leads 
 through a testament; and it was in view of 
 the opening vistas which that road dis- 
 played that he set sail for New York. 
 
 And now, six weeks later, on this fair 
 noonday of a newer year, as he lay out- 
 stretched in bed, you would have likened 
 him to one well qualified to keep a mother 
 awake and bring her daughter dreams. 
 Our canons of beauty may be relative, but, 
 such as they are, his features accorded 
 with them — disquietingly even ; for they 
 conveyed the irritating charm of things we 
 have hoped for, striven for, failed to get, 
 and then renounced, with thanksgiving. 
 They made you anxious about their pos- 
 sessor, and fearful too lest the one dearly- 
 beloved might chance to see them, and so 
 be subjugated by their spell. They were 
 features that represented good stock, good 
 
The Pace that Kills, 17 
 
 breeding, good taste, good looks — every 
 form of goodness, in fact, save, it may be, the 
 proper one. But the possible lack of that 
 particular characteristic was a matter over 
 which hesitation well might be. We have 
 all of us a trick of flattering ourselves with 
 the fancy that, however obtuse our neigh- 
 bor is, we at least are gifted with the in- 
 sight of a detective — a faculty so rare and 
 enviable that the blunders we make must 
 be committed with a view to its conceal- 
 ment ; yet, despite presumable shrewd- 
 ness, now and then a face will appear that 
 eludes cataloguing, and leaves the obser- 
 ver perplexed. Roland Mistrial's was one 
 of these. 
 
 And now, as the pink silk of his shirt- 
 sleeves tinted it, the expression aitered, 
 and behind his contracted brows hurried 
 processions of shifting scenes. There was 
 that initial catastrophe which awaited him 
 almost on the wharf — the discovery that his 
 father had left him nothing, and that for 
 no other reason in the world than because 
 
tS The Pace that Kills. 
 
 he had nothing whatever to leave — noth- 
 ing, in fact, save the hereditary decoration 
 of and right of enrolment in the Society 
 of the Cincinnati, the which, handed down 
 since Washingtonian days from one Mistrial 
 to another, he held, as his forefathers had 
 before him, in trust for the Mistrials to be. 
 No, he could not have disposed of that, 
 even had he so desired ; but everything 
 else, the house on Tenth Street,— burlt 
 originally for a country-seat, in times when 
 the Astor House was considered rather far 
 uptown, — bonds, scrip, and stocks, disap- 
 peared as utterly as had they never been ; 
 for Roland's father, stricken with that form 
 tsi dementia which, to the complete discour- 
 agement of virtue, battens on men that 
 have led the chastest lives, had, at that age 
 in which the typical rake is forced to haul 
 his standard down, surrendered himself to 
 senile debauchery, and in the lap of a fe- 
 male of uncertain attractions — of whose 
 mere existence no one had been previously 
 aware — placed title-deeds and certificates 
 
Tin Pace that Kills, ig 
 
 of stock. In a case such as this the appeal 
 of the rightful heir is listened to with 
 such patience that judge and jury too 
 have been known to pass away and leave 
 the tale unended. And Roland, when the 
 earliest dismay had in a measure subsided, 
 saw himself closeted with lawyers who 
 offered modicums of hope in return for 
 proportionate fees. Then came a run 
 up the Hudson, the welcomeless greeting 
 which waited him there, and the enervat- 
 ing imbecility of his great aunt, whose fin- 
 gers, mummified by gout, were tenacious 
 enough on the strings of her purse. That 
 episode flitted by, leaving on memory's 
 camera only the degrading tableau of 
 coin burrowed for and unobtained. And 
 through it all filtered torturesome uncer- 
 tainties, the knowledge of his entire ina- 
 bility to make money, the sense of strength 
 misspent, the perplexities that declined to 
 take themselves away, forebodings of the 
 morrow, nay of the day even as well, the 
 linbanishable dread of want.. 
 
20 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 But that for the moment had gone. He 
 turned on his elbow and glanced over at 
 a card-case which lay among the silver- 
 backed brushes beyond, and at once the 
 shock he had resummoned fled. Ah, yes ! 
 it had gone indeed, but at the moment it 
 had been appalling enough. The morrow 
 at least was secure ; and as he pondered 
 over its possibilities they faded before 
 certain episodes of the previous day — that 
 chance encounter with Alphabet Jones, 
 who had insisted he should pack a valise 
 and go down with Trement Yarde and him- 
 self to Tuxedo ; and at once the incidents 
 succeeding the arrival paraded through his 
 thoughts. There had been the late dinner 
 to begin with ; then the dance ; the girl to 
 whom some one had presented him, and 
 with whom he had sat it out ; the escape of 
 the year, the health that was drunk to the 
 new one, and afterwards the green baize in 
 the card-room ; the bank which Trement 
 Yarde had held , and finally the successful 
 operation that followed, and which con- 
 
The Pace that Kills. 21 
 
 sisted in cutting that cherub's throat to the 
 tune of three thousand dollars. It was all 
 there now in the card-case ; and though, as 
 sums of money go, it was hardly quotable, 
 yet in the abstract, forethought and econ- 
 omy aiding, it represented several months 
 of horizons solid and real. The day was 
 secure ; as for the future, who knew what it 
 might contain ? A grave perhaps, and in 
 it his aunt. 
 
22 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 II. 
 
 " If 1 had been killed in a duel I couldji't 
 be better." It was Jones the novelist de- 
 scribing the state of his health. " But how 
 is my friend and brother in virtue ?" 
 
 " Utterly ramoUescent,", Roland an- 
 swered, confidingly. " What the French 
 call gaga." 
 
 The mid-day meal was in progress, and 
 the two men, seated opposite each other, 
 were dividing a Demidorf salad. They 
 had been schoolmates at Concord, and de- 
 spite the fact that until the day before they 
 had not met for a decennium, the happy-go- 
 lucky intimacy of earlier days had eluded 
 Time and still survived. Throughout the 
 glass-enclosed piazza other people were 
 lunching, and every now and then Jones, 
 catching a wandering eye, would bend for- 
 ward a little and smile. Though it was but 
 the first of the year, the weather resembled 
 
The Pace that Kills. 23 
 
 that of May. One huge casement was wide 
 open. There was sunlight everywhere, 
 flowers too, and beyond you could see 
 the sky, a dome of opal and sapphire blent. 
 
 " Well," Jones replied, " I can't say you 
 have altered much. But then who does ? 
 You remember, don't you" — and Jones ran 
 on with some anecdote of earlier days. 
 
 But Roland had ceased to listen. It was 
 very pleasant here, he told himself. There 
 was a freedom about it that the English 
 country-house, however charming, lacked. 
 There was no one to suggest things for 
 you to do, there was no host or hostess 
 to exact attention, and the women were 
 prettier, better dressed, less conventional, 
 and yet more assured in manner than any 
 that he had encountered for years. The 
 men, too, were a good lot ; and given one 
 or two more little surprises, such as he had 
 found in the card-room, he felt willing to 
 linger on indefinitely — a week at least, a 
 month if the fare held out. His eyes 
 roamed through the glitter of the room. 
 
24 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 Presently, at a neighboring table, he no- 
 ticed the girl with whom he had seen the 
 old year depart : she was nodding to him ; 
 and Roland, with that courtesy that be- 
 tokens the foreigner a mile away, rose from 
 his seat as he bowed in return. 
 
 Jones, whom little escaped, glanced over 
 his shoulder. " By the way, are you on 
 this side for good ?" he asked ; and Ro- 
 land answering with the vague shrug the 
 undetermined give, he hastened to add — 
 " or for bad ?" 
 
 " That depends. I ran over to settle my 
 father's estate, but they seem to have set- 
 tled it for me. After all, this is no place 
 for a pauper, is it ?" 
 ~ " The wolf's at the door, is he ?" 
 
 Roland laughed shortly. "At the door ? 
 Good Lord ! I wish he were ! He's in the 
 room." 
 
 "There, dear boy, never mind. Wait 
 till spring comes and marry an heiress. 
 There are so many hereabouts that we use 
 them for export purposes. They are a 
 
The Pace that Kilts. 25 
 
 glut in the market. There's a fair speci- 
 men. Ever meet her before ?" 
 
 " Meet whom ?" 
 
 " That girl you just Ijowed to. They 
 call her father Honest Paul. Oh, if you 
 ask me why, I can't tell. It's a nick- 
 name, like another. It may be because he 
 says Amen so loud in church. A number 
 of people have made him trustee, but 
 whether on that account or not they never 
 told. However, he's a big man, owns a 
 mile or two up there near the Riverside. 
 I should rate him at not a penny less than 
 ten million." 
 
 " What did you say his name was ?" 
 
 " Dunellen— the Hon. Paul Dunellen. 
 At one time — " 
 
 Jones rambled on, and again Roland had 
 ceased to listen. But it was not the present 
 now that claimed him. At the mention of 
 the plutocrat something from the past 
 came back and called him there — a thing 
 so shadowy that, when he turned to inter- 
 rogate, it eluded him and disappeared. 
 
26 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 Then at once, without conscious effort, an 
 episode which he had long since, put from 
 him arose and detained his thought. But 
 what on earth, he wondered, had the name 
 of Dutiellen to do with that? And for the 
 moment dumbly perplexed, yet outwardly 
 attentive, he puzzled over the connection 
 and tried to find the link ; yet that too was 
 elusive : the name seemed to lose its sug- 
 gestiveness, and presently it sank behind 
 the episode it had evoked. 
 
 " Of course," Jones was saying, in refer- 
 ence,evidently, to what had gone before— 
 " of course as millionaires go he is not first 
 chop. Jerolomon could match him head 
 pr tail for all he has, and never miss it if he 
 lost. Ten million, though, is a tidy sum 
 ' — ^just enough to ientertain on. A penny 
 less and you are pinched. Why, you would 
 be surprised — " 
 
 " Has he any other children ?" 
 " Who ? Dunellen ? None that he has 
 acknowledged," 
 
The Pace that Kills. 27 
 
 " Then his daughter will come in for it 
 all." 
 
 " That's what I said. When she does, 
 she will probably hand it over to some 
 man who wont know how to spend it. 
 She's got a cousin — what's that beggar's 
 name ? However, he's a physician, makes 
 a specialty of nervous diseases, I believe ; 
 good enough fellow in his way, but an 
 everlasting bore — the sort of man you 
 would avoid in a club, and trust your sister 
 to. What the deuce is his name ?" 
 
 " Well, what of him ?" 
 
 " Ah, yes. I fancy he wants to get mar- 
 ried, and when he does, to entertain. He 
 is very devoted." 
 
 " But nowadays, barring royalty, no one 
 ever marries a cousin." 
 
 " Dear boy, you forget ; it isn't every 
 cousin that has ten million. When she has, 
 the attempt is invariable." And Jones 
 accentuated his remark with a nod. " Now," 
 he continued, " what do you say to a 
 look at the library ? They have a superb 
 
28 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 edition of Kirschwasser in there, and a full 
 set of the works of Chartreuse." 
 
 The novelist had arisen ; he was leaving 
 the room, and Roland was about to fol- 
 low him, when he noticed that Miss Dun- 
 ellen was preparing to leave it too. Before 
 she reached the hall he was at her side. 
 
 There is this about the New York girl — 
 her beauty is often bewildering, yet unless 
 a husband catch her in the nick of time 
 the bewilderment of that beauty fades. 
 At sixteen Justine Dunellen had been 
 enchanting, at twenty-three she was plain. 
 Her face still retained its oval, but 
 from it something had evaporated anc} 
 gone. Her mouth, too, had altered. In 
 place of the volatile brilliance of earlier 
 years, it was drawn a little ; it seemed res- 
 olute, and it also seemed subdued. But 
 one feature had not changed : her eyes, 
 which were of the color of snuff, en- 
 chanted still. They were large and clear, 
 and when you looked in them you saw 
 such possibilities of tenderness and sincer- 
 
The Pace that Kills. 39 
 
 ity that the escape of the transient was 
 unregretted; you forgot the girl that had 
 been, and loved the woman that was. 
 
 And lovable she was indeed. The world 
 is filled with charming people whom, par- 
 enthetically, many of us never meet ; yet, 
 however scant our list may be, there are 
 moments when from Memory's gardens a 
 vision issues we would fain detain. Who 
 is there to whom that vision has not come ? 
 Nay, who is there that has not intercepted 
 it, and, to the heart's perdition perhaps, 
 suffered it to retreat ? If there be any to 
 whom such apparitions are unvouchsafed, 
 let him evoke that woman whom he would 
 like his sister to resemble and his wife to 
 be. Then, if his intuitions are acute, there 
 will appear before him one who has turned 
 sympathy into a garment and taken refine- 
 ment for a wreath ; a woman just yet deb- 
 onair, thoughtful of others, true to herself; 
 a woman whose speech can weary no more 
 than can a star, whose mind is clean as 
 wholesome fruit, whose laugh is infre- 
 quent, and whose voice consoles ; a woman 
 
30 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 who makes the boor chivalrous, and the 
 chivalrous bend the knee. Such an one 
 did Justine Dunellen seem. In person she 
 was tall, slender, willowy of movement, 
 with just that shrinking graciousness that 
 the old masters gave to certain figures 
 which they wished to represent as floating 
 off the canvas into space. 
 
 And now, as Roland joined her, she 
 smiled and greeted him. With her was 
 a lady to whom she turned: 
 
 " Mrs. Metuchen, this is Mr. Mistrial." 
 And Roland found himself bowing to a 
 little old woman elaborately dressed. She 
 was, he presently discovered, a feather- 
 head person, who gave herself the airs of 
 a princesse en couches. But though not the 
 rose, at least she dwelt near by. Her 
 husband was Mr. Dunellen's partner; and 
 to Justine, particularly since the death of 
 her mother, she had become what the Ger- 
 mans, who have many a neat expression, 
 term a Wahlverwandtschaft — a relation not 
 of blood, but of choice. She was feather 
 headed, but she was a lady ; she was ab- 
 
The Pace that Kills^. 3 1 
 
 surd, but she was lovable ; and by Justine 
 she was evidently beloved. 
 
 Roland got her a seat, found a footstool 
 for her, and pleased her very much by the 
 interest which he displayed in her family 
 tree. 
 
 " I knew all your people," she announced 
 at last. And when she did so, her manner 
 was so gracious that Roland felt the hour 
 had not been thrown away. 
 
 During the rest of the day he managed 
 to be frequently in her vicinity. The 
 better part of the morrow he succeeded 
 in sharing with Justine. And in the even- 
 ing, when the latter bade him good-night, 
 it occurred to him that if what Jones had 
 said in regard to the cousin was true, then 
 was the cousin losing ground. 
 
 The nex't morning Mrs. Metuchen and 
 her charge returned to town. Roland fol- 
 lowed in a later train. As he crossed the 
 ferry he told himself he had much to do ; 
 and on reaching New York he picked up 
 his valise with the air of one who has no 
 time to lose. 
 
32 The Pace that Kills, 
 
 III. 
 
 In a city like New York it is not an easy 
 task, nor is it always a profitable one, to 
 besiege a young person that is fortressed 
 in her father's house. And when the 
 house' has a cousin for sentinel, and that 
 cousin is jealous, the diflBculty is increased. 
 But, time and tact aiding, what obstacle 
 may not be removed ? 
 
 Roland understood all this very thor- 
 oughly, and on the day succeeding his 
 return from Tuxedo he examined the di- 
 rectory, strolled into Wall Street, and 
 there, at the shingle of Dunellen, Me- 
 tuchen, & Such, sent in a card to the 
 senior member of the firm. 
 
 The Hon. Paul Dunellen — Honest Paul, 
 to the world in which he moved — was a 
 man who in his prime must have been of 
 glad and gallant appearance ; but latterly 
 he had shrunk : his back had bent almost 
 
The Pace that Kills. 33 
 
 into a hump, he held his head lower than 
 his shoulders, but with uplifted chin— a 
 habit which gave him the appearance of 
 being constantly occupied in peering at 
 something which he could not quite dis- 
 cern, an appearance that was heightened 
 by his eyes, which were restless, and by his 
 brows, which were tormented and bushy. 
 He had an ample mouth : when he spoke, 
 the furrows in his cheeks moved with it. 
 His nose was prominent ; all his features, 
 even to his ears, were larger than the aver- 
 age mould. When Roland was admitted 
 to the room in which he sat, the first im- 
 pression which he got from him was that 
 of massiveness in decay. 
 
 " Mr. Mistrial, I am glad to see you. I 
 knew your father, and I had the honor of 
 knowing your grandfather as well. Will 
 you not take a seat?" The old man had 
 half risen, and in this greeting made mani- 
 fest something of that courtesy which we 
 are learning to forget. 
 
 "You are very kind," Roland answered. 
 
34 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 " It is because of my father that I venture 
 to call. If I interrupt you, though" — and 
 Roland, apparently hesitant, occupied nim- 
 self in a study of his host — "if I do," he 
 continued, "I beg you will allow me to 
 come again." 
 
 To this suggestion Mr. Dunellen refused 
 to listen ; but during the moments that fol- 
 lowed, as Roland succinctly one after the 
 other enumerated the facts in the case of 
 his lost inheritance, the lawyer did listen ; 
 and he listened, moreover, with that air of 
 concentrated attention which is the surest 
 encouragement to him who has aught to 
 say. And when Roland had completed 
 the tale of his grievance, he nodded, and 
 stroked his chin. 
 
 "The matter is perfectly clear," he an- 
 nounced, " though I can't say as much for 
 the law. Undue influence is evident. The 
 trouble will be to invalidate a gift made 
 during the lifetime of the donor ; but — " 
 And Mr. Dunellen made a gesture as who 
 should say. It is for that that courts were 
 
The Pace that Kilk. 35 
 
 established. " Yet, tell me, why is it that 
 you have done nothing about it before?" 
 
 To this Roland made no immediate re- 
 ply. He lowered his eyes. " Paralysis is 
 written in your face," he mused. Then 
 aloud and rather sadly : " The fairest pat- 
 rimony is an honored name," he said. "It 
 is for me to guard my father's reputation. 
 It is only recently, stress of circumstances 
 aiding, I have thought that without pub- 
 licity some compromise might possibly be 
 effected.'' He looked up again, and as he 
 looked he assured himself that the old 
 man would not outlast the year. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Mistrial, you must let me 
 quote the speech a lord made to a com- 
 moner, 'You are not a noble, sir, but you 
 are worthy of being one.' " And Mr. Dun- 
 ellen reaching out caught Roland's hand 
 and shook it in his own. " I enter thor- 
 oughly into your delicacy the more readily 
 because I do not encounter it every day — • 
 no, nor every month. It does me good — 
 on my word it does. Now, if a com- 
 
36 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 promise can, as you suggest, be effected, 
 and you care to leave the matter in my 
 hands, I will do my best to serve you. It 
 may take some little time, we must seem 
 neither zealous nor impatient, and mean- 
 while — h'm — I understood you to say 
 something about your circumstances. Now 
 if I can be of any — " 
 
 This offer Roland interrupted. "You 
 are truly very kind, sir," he broke in, "and 
 I thank you with all my heart. All the 
 more so even because I must refuse. I 
 have been badly brought up, I know ; you 
 see, I never expected that it would be 
 necessary for me to earn my own living ; 
 yet if it is, I cannot begin too soon : but 
 what would the end be if I began by bor- 
 rowing money ?" 
 
 As Roland delivered this fine speech he 
 was the image of Honesty arrayed in a 
 Piccadilly coat. He rose from his seat, 
 "lam detaining you, I am sure. Let me 
 get the papers together and bring them to 
 you to-morrow." 
 
The Pace that Kills. %^ 
 
 "Do so, by all means," Mr. Dunellen an 
 swered, rising too. " Do so, by all means. 
 But wait : to-morrow I may be absent. 
 Could you not send them to my house 
 this evening, or better still, bring them 
 yourself ? It would give me pleasure to 
 have my daughter meet a man who is the 
 moral portrait of his grandfather." 
 
 " Your daughter !" Roland exclaimed. 
 " It is not possible that she is the Miss 
 Dunellen whom I saw the other day at 
 Tuxedo." , 
 
 " With Mrs. Metuchen i Why, of course 
 it is." And the lawyer looked as sur- 
 prised as his client. " This is indeed a 
 coincidence. But you will come, will you 
 not ?" 
 
 " I shall consider it a privilege to do so," 
 Roland, with a charming affectation of 
 modesty, replied ; and presently, when he 
 found himself in the street again, he saw, 
 stretching out into beckoning vistas, a 
 high-road paved with promises of prompt 
 success. 
 
38 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 And that evening, when the papers had 
 been delivered, and Mr. Dunellen, leaviilg 
 the guest to his daughter's care, had gone 
 with them to his study, Roland could not 
 help but feel that on that high-road his 
 footing was assured ; for, on entering the 
 drawing-room, Justine had greeted him as 
 one awaited and welcome, and now that 
 her father had gone she motioned him to 
 a seat at her side. 
 
 " Tell me," she said, " what is it you do 
 to people ? Thera is Mrs. Metuchen, who 
 pretends to abominate young men, and 
 openly admires you. To-day you cap- 
 tured my father ; by to-morrow you will 
 be friends with Guy." 
 
 "With Guy?" Mechanically Roland 
 repeated the phrase. Then at once into 
 the very core of memory entered the lan- 
 cinating pang of a nerve exposed. Dur- 
 ing the second that followed, in that tu- 
 mult of visions that visits him who awakes 
 from a swoon, there came to him the ef- 
 fort made in Tuxedo to recall in what 
 
The Pace that Kills. 39 
 
 manner the name of Dunellen was familiar 
 to his ears ; but that instantly departed, 
 and in its stead came a face one blur of 
 tears, and behind it a stripling livid with 
 hate. Could that be Guy ? If it were, 
 then indeed would the high-road narrow 
 into an alley, with a dead wall at the end. 
 Yet of the inward distress he gave no 
 outward sign. About his thin lips a smile 
 still played, and as he repeated the phrase 
 he looked, as he always did, confident and 
 self-possessed. 
 
 " Yes, I am sure you will like each 
 other," the girl answered ; " all the more 
 so perhaps because no two people could 
 be less alike. Guy, you see, is — " 
 
 But whatever description she may have 
 intended to give remained unexpressed. A 
 portiere had been drawn, and some one was 
 entering the room. Roland, whose back 
 was toward the door, turned obliquely and 
 looked. 
 
 " Why, there he is !" he heard Justine 
 exclaim; and in the man that stood there 
 
40 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 he saw the stripling he had just evoked. 
 Into the palms of his hands a moisture 
 came, yet as Justine proceeded with some 
 form of introduction he rose to his feet. 
 " So you are the cousin," he mused ; and 
 then, with a bow in which he put the com- 
 pletest indifference, he resumed his seat. 
 
 " We were just talking of you," Justine 
 continued. "Why didn't you come in last 
 night ?" 
 
 " It is snowing," the cousin remarked, 
 inconsequently, and sat himself down. 
 
 "Dr. Thorold, you know ;" and Justine, 
 turning to Mistrial, began to relate one 
 of those little anecdotes which are service- 
 able when conversation drags. 
 
 As she ran on, Roland, apparently at- 
 tentive, marked that one of Thorold's feet 
 was moving uneasily, and divined rather 
 than saw that the fingers of his hand 
 were clinched. " He is working himself 
 up," he reflected. " Well, let him ; it will 
 make it the easier for me." And as he 
 told himself this he turned on Thorold a 
 
The Pace that Kills. 41 
 
 glance which he was prepared to instant- 
 ly divert. But the physician was not 
 looking ; he sat bolt-upright, his eyes low- 
 ered, and about his mouth and forehead 
 the creases of a scowl. 
 
 Dr. Thorold was of that class of man 
 that women always like and never adore. 
 He was thoughtful of others, and consid- 
 erate. Physically he was well-favored, 
 and pleasant to the eye. He was some- 
 times dull, but rarely selfish ; by taste and 
 training he was a scholar — gifted at that ; 
 and yet through some accident of nature 
 he lacked that one fibre which differen- 
 tiates the hero from the herd. In the way 
 we live to-day the need of heroes is so 
 slight that the absence of that fibre is of 
 no moment at all — a circumstance which 
 may account for the fact that Justine ad- 
 mired him very much, trusted him entirely, 
 and had she been his sister instead of his 
 cousin could not have appreciated him 
 more. 
 
 And now, as Roland eyed him for one 
 
42 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 moment, through some of those indetecta- 
 ble currents that bring trivialities to the 
 mind that is most deeply engrossed he 
 noticed that though the physician was in 
 dress the shoes he wore were not veneered. 
 Then at once he entered into a perfect 
 understanding of the circumstances in 
 which he was placed. Though he lost the 
 game even as the cards were being dealt, 
 at least he would lose it well. " I'll teach 
 him a lesson," he decided ; and presently, 
 as Justine ceased speaking, he assumed his 
 gayest air. 
 
 " Yes, yes," he exclaimed, and gave a 
 twist to his light mustache. He had 
 caught her ultimate words, and with them 
 a cue. 
 " Yes, I remember in Nepal — " 
 And thereupon he carried his listener 
 through a series of scenes and adventures 
 which he made graphic by sheer dexterity 
 in the use of words. His speech, colored 
 and fluent, was of exactly that order 
 which must be heard, not read. It was 
 
The Pace that Kills. 43' 
 
 his intonation which gave it its charm , 
 the manner in which he eluded a detail 
 that might have wearied ; the expression 
 his face took on at the situations which 
 he saw before describing, and which he 
 made his auditor expect ; and also the 
 surety of his skill in transition — the art 
 with which he would pass from one idea 
 to another, connect them both with a ges- 
 ture, and complete the subject with a smile. 
 The raconteur is usually a bore. When he 
 is not, he is a wizard. And as Roland 
 passed from one peak of the Himalayas to 
 another, over one of the two that listened 
 he exerted a palpable spell. At last, the 
 end of his tether reached, he turned 
 to the cousin, and, without a hesitation 
 intervening, asked of him, as though the 
 question were one of really personal in- 
 terest, "Dr. Thorold, have you ever been 
 in the East ?" 
 
 Thorold, thrown off his guard, glared 
 for an instant, the scowl still manifest ; 
 then he stood up. *' No, sir ; I have not," 
 
44 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 he answered ; and each of the monosyl- 
 lables of his reply he seemed to propel 
 with tongue and teeth. " Good-night, Jus- 
 tine." And with a nod that was rather 
 small for two to divide, took himself from 
 the room. 
 
 He reached the portiere before Justine 
 fully grasped the discourtesy of his con- 
 duct. She stared after him wonderingly, 
 her lips half parted, her clear eyes dilated 
 and amazed, the color mounted to her 
 cheeks, and she made as though to leave 
 her seat. 
 
 But this Roland thought it wise to pre- 
 vent. " Miss Dunellen," he murmured, " I 
 am afraid Dr. Thorold was bored. It' is 
 my fault. I had no right — " 
 
 " Bored ! How could he have been ? 
 I am sure I don't see — " 
 
 " Yes, you do, my dear," thought Roland ; 
 "you think he was jealous, and you are 
 wrong ; but it is good for us that you 
 should." And in memory of the little 
 compliment her speech had unintention- 
 
The Pace that Kills. 45 
 
 ally conveyed he gave another twist to 
 his mustache. 
 
 The outer door closed with a jar that 
 reached him where he sat. " Thank God !" 
 he muttered ; and divining that if he now 
 went away the girl would regret his de- 
 parture, after another word or two, and 
 despite the protestation of her manner, he 
 bade her good-nighv. 
 
 It is one of the charms of our lovely cli- 
 mate that the temperature can fall twenty 
 degrees in as many minutes. When Roland 
 entered the Dunellen house he left spring 
 in the street ; when he came out again there 
 was snow. Across the way a lamp flick- 
 ered, beneath it a man was standing, from 
 beyond came a faint noise of passing 
 wheels, but the chance of rescue by cab or 
 hansom was too remote for anyone but a 
 foreigner to entertain. . Roland had omit- 
 ted to provide himself with any protection 
 against a storm, yet that omission af- 
 fected him but little. He had too many 
 things to think of to be anxious about his 
 
46 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 hat ; and, his hands in his pocket, his head 
 lowered, he descended the steps, prepared 
 to let the snow do its worst. 
 
 As he reached the pavement the man at 
 the lamp-post crossed the street. 
 
 " Mistrial," he called, for Roland was 
 hurrying on — "Mistrial, I want a word 
 with you." 
 
 In a moment he was at his side, and sim- 
 ultaneously Roland recognized the cousin. 
 He was buttoned up in a loose coat 
 faced with fur, and over his head he held 
 an umbrella. He seemed a little out of 
 breath. 
 
 " If," he began at once, " if I hear that 
 you ever presume to so much as speak to 
 Miss Dunellen again, I will break every 
 bone in your body." 
 
 The voice in which he made this threat 
 was gruff and aggressive. As he delivered 
 it, he closed his umbrella and swung it 
 like a club. 
 
 "A nous deux, maintenant" mused Ro- 
 land. 
 
The Pace that Kills, 47 
 
 " And not only that — if you ever dare to 
 enter that house again I will expose you." 
 
 " Oh, will you, though ?" answered Ro- 
 land. The tone he assumed was affectedly 
 civil. "Well now, my fat friend, let me 
 tell you this : I intend to enter that house, 
 as you call it, to-morrow at precisely five 
 o'clock. Let me pick you up on the way, 
 and we can go together." 
 
 " Roland Mistrial, as sure as there is a 
 God in heaven I will, have you in the 
 Tombs." 
 
 "See here, put up your umbrella. You 
 are not in a condition to expose yourself 
 — let alone anyone else. You are daft, 
 Thorold — that is what is the matter with 
 you. If you persist in chattering Tombs at 
 me in a snow-storm I will answer Bloom- 
 ingdale to you. You frightened me once, 
 I admit ; but I am ten years older now, and 
 ten years less easily scared. Besides, what 
 drivel you talk ! You haven't that much 
 to go on." 
 
 As Roland spoke his accent changed 
 
48 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 from affected suavity to open scorn. " Now 
 stop your bluster," he continued, " and lis- 
 ten to me. Because you happen to find 
 me in there, you think I have intentions on 
 the heiress^" 
 
 " It's a lie ! She—" 
 
 " There, don't be abusive. I know you 
 want her for yourself, and I hope you get 
 her. But please don't think that I mean 
 to stand in your way." 
 
 " I should say not." 
 
 " In the first place, I went there on busi- 
 ness." 
 
 " What business, I would like to know ?" 
 
 " So you shall. I took some papers for 
 Mr. Dunellen to examine — papers relative 
 to my father's estate. To-morrow I return 
 to learn his opinion. Next week I go 
 abroad again. When I leave I promise 
 you shall find your cousin still heart-whole 
 and fancy-free." 
 
 As Roland delivered this little stab he 
 paused a moment to note the effect. But 
 apparently it had passed unnoticed — Thor- 
 
The Pace that Kills 49 
 
 old seemingly was engrossed in the state- 
 ments that preceded it. The scowl was 
 still on his face, but it was a scowl into 
 which perplexity had entered, and which 
 in entering had modified the aggressive- 
 ness that had first been there. At the mo- 
 ment his eyes wandered, and Roland, who 
 was watching him, felt that he had scored 
 a point. 
 
 " You say you are going abroad ?" he 
 said, at last. 
 
 " Yes ; I have to join my wife." 
 
 At this announcement Thorold looked 
 up at him and then down at the umbrella. 
 Presently, with an abrupt gesture, he un- 
 furled it and raised it above his head. As 
 he did so, Roland smiled. For that night 
 at least the danger had gone. Of the mor- 
 row, however, he was unassured. 
 
 " Suppose we walk along," he said, en- 
 couragingly ; and before Thorold knew it, 
 he was sharing that umbrella with his foe. 
 " Yes," he continued, " my poor father left 
 his affairs in a muddle, but Mr. Dunellcn 
 
50 The Pace that Kills, 
 
 says he thinks he can straighten them out. 
 You can understand that if any inkling of 
 this thing were to reach him he would re- 
 turn the papers at once. You can under- 
 stand that, can't you ? After all, you must 
 know that I have suffered." 
 
 " Suffered !" Thorold cried. " What's 
 that to me ? It made my mother insane." 
 
 " God knows I nearly lost my reason too. 
 I can understand how you feel toward 
 me : it is only what I deserve. Yet though 
 you cannot forget, at least it can do you 
 no good to rake this matter up." 
 
 "It is because of — " and for a second 
 the cousin halted in his speech. 
 
 "Voildi.i" mused Roland. " Je te mis 
 venir. " 
 
 " However, if you are going abroad — " 
 
 "Most certainly I am. I never expect 
 to see Miss Dunellen again." 
 
 " In that case I will say nothing." 
 
 They had reached Fifth Avenue, and 
 for a moment both loitered on the curb. 
 Thorold seemed to have something to add, 
 
The Pace that Kills. 5 s 
 
 but he must have had difficulty in express- 
 ing it, for he nodded as though to reiterate 
 the promise. 
 
 " I can rely upon you then, can I ?" 
 Roland asked. 
 
 " Keep out of my way, sir, and I will try, 
 as I have tried, to forget." 
 
 A 'bus was passing, he hailed it, and dis- 
 appeared. ^ 
 
 Roland watched the conveyance, and 
 shook the snow-flakes from his coat. " Try, 
 and be damned," he muttered. " I haven't 
 done with you yet." 
 
 The disdain of a revenge at hand is ac- 
 counted the uniquest possible vengeance. 
 And it is quite possible that had Roland's 
 monetary affairs been in a better condition, 
 on a sound and solid basis, let us say, he 
 would willingly have put that paradox 
 into action. But on leaving Tuxedo he 
 happened to be extremely hungry — hungry, 
 first and foremost, for the possession of that 
 wealth which in this admirably conducted 
 country of ours lifts a man ;above the 
 
52 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 law, and, an adroit combination of scoun- 
 drelism and incompetence aiding, some- 
 times lands him high among the executives 
 of state. By political ambition, however, 
 it is only just to say he was uninspired. 
 In certain assemblies he had taken the 
 trouble to assert that our government is 
 one at which Abyssinia might sneer, but 
 the r61e of reformer was not one which he 
 had any inclination to attempt. Several 
 of his progenitors figured, and prominently 
 too, in abridgments of history ; and, if pos- 
 terity were not satisfied with that, he had a 
 very clear idea as to what posterity might 
 do. In so far as he was personally con- 
 cerned, the prpminence alluded to was a 
 thing which he accepted as a matter of 
 course : it was an integral part of himself ; 
 he would have missed it as he .would have 
 missed a leg or the point of his nose ; but 
 otherwise it left his pulse unstirred. No, 
 his hunger was not for preferment or place. 
 It was for the ten million which the Hon. 
 Paul Dunellen had gathered together, and 
 
The Pace that Kills. 53 
 
 whiclv the laws of gravitation would pre- 
 vent him from carrying away when he 
 died. That was the nature of Roland Mis- 
 trial's hunger, and as incidental thereto 
 was the thirst to adjust an outstanding 
 account. 
 
 Whatever the nature of that account may 
 have been, in a more ordinary case it might 
 have become outlawed through sheer lapse 
 of time. But during that lapse of time 
 Roland had been in exile because of it ; and 
 though even now he might have been will- 
 ing to let it drift back into the past where 
 it belonged, yet when the representative o( 
 it not only loomed between him and the 
 millions, but was even attempting to gath' 
 er them in for himself, the possibility of 
 retaliation was too complete to suffer dis- 
 dain. The injury, it is true, was one of his 
 own doing. But, curiously enough, when 
 a man injures another the more wanton 
 that injury is the less it incites to repent- 
 ance. In certain dispositions it becomes 
 a source of malignant hate. Deserve, a 
 
54 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 man's gratitude, and he may forgive you ; 
 but let him do you a wrong, and you have 
 an enemy for life. Such is the human 
 heart — or such at least was Roland Mis- 
 trial's. 
 
 And now, as the conveyance rumbled off 
 into the night, he shook the snow-flakes 
 /■rom his coat. 
 
 " Try, and -be damned," he repeated ; " I 
 haven't done with you yet." 
 
The Pace that Kills. 55 
 
 IV. 
 
 To the New Yorker March is the vilest 
 month of all the year. In the South it is 
 usually serene. Mrs. Metuchen, who gave 
 herself the airs of an invalid, and who pos- 
 sessed the invalid's dislike of vile weather, 
 was aware of this ; and while the first false 
 promises of February were being protested 
 she succeeded in persuading Miss Dunellen 
 to accompany her out of snow-drifts into 
 the sun. It was Aiken that she chose as 
 refuge ; and when the two ladies arrived 
 there they felt satisfied that their choice 
 had been a proper one — a satisfaction 
 which they did not share alone, for a few 
 days after their arrival Roland Mistrial 
 arrived there too. 
 
 During the intervening weeks he had 
 seemed idle ; but it is the thinker's charac- 
 teristic to appear unoccupied when he is 
 most busily engaged, and Roland, outward- 
 
$6 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 ly inactive, had in reality made the most of 
 his time. 
 
 On the morning succeeding the encoun- 
 ter with Thorold something kept coming 
 and whispering that he had undertaken a 
 task which was beyond his strength. To 
 many of us night is apt to .be more confi- 
 dent than are the earlier hours of the day, 
 and the courage which Roland had exhib- 
 ited spent itself and went. It is hard to 
 feel the flutter of a bird beneath one's fin- 
 gers, and, just when the fingers tighten, to 
 discover that the bird is no longer there. 
 Such a thing is disappointing, and the pe- 
 culiarity of a disappointment consists in 
 this — the victim of it is apt to question the 
 validity of his own intuitions. Thus far — 
 up to the looming of Thorold — eyerything 
 had be;en in Roland's favor. Without ap- 
 preciable effort he had achieved the impos- 
 sible. In three days he had run an heiress 
 to earth, gained her father^s liking, capti- 
 vated her chaperon, and, at the moment 
 when the air was sentient with success, 
 
The Pace that Kills. 57 
 
 the highway on which he strode became 
 suddenly tortuous and obscure. Do what 
 he might he could not discern so much as 
 a sign-post ; and as in perplexity he twirled 
 his thumbs, little by little he understood 
 that he must either turn back and hunt 
 another quarry, or stand where he was and 
 wait. Another step on th'at^narrowing road 
 and he might tumble into a gully. Did he 
 keep his word with Thorold he felt sure 
 that Thorold would keep his wcJrd with 
 him. But did he break it, and Thorold 
 learn he had done so, several consequences 
 were certain to ensue, and among them he 
 could hear from where he stood -the bang 
 with which Mr. Dunellen's door would 
 close. The only plank which drifted his 
 way threatened to break into bits. He 
 needed no one to tell him that Justine was 
 not a girl to receive him or anyone else in 
 the dark ; and even fortune favoring, if in 
 chance meetings he were able to fan her 
 spark of interest for him into flame, those 
 chance meetings would be mentioned by 
 
58 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 her to whomsoever they might concern. 
 No, that plank was rotten ; and yet in con- 
 sidering it, and in considering too the pos- 
 sibilities to which, were it a trifle stroi;ger, 
 it might serve as bridge, he passed that 
 morning, a number of subsequent morn- 
 ings. A month elapsed, and still he eyed 
 that plank. 
 
 Meanwhile he had seen Miss Dunellen 
 but once. She happened to be driving up 
 the Avenue, but he had passed her unob- 
 served. Then the weather became abomi- 
 nable, and he knew it was useless to look 
 for her in the Park ; and once he had vis- 
 ited her father's office and learned again, 
 what he already knew, that in regard to 
 the lost estate, eternity aiding, something 
 might be recovered, but that the chances 
 were vague as was it. And so February 
 came and found his hunger unappeased. 
 The alternate course which had suggested 
 itself came back, and he determined to 
 turn and hunt another quarry. During his 
 sojourn abroad he had generally managed 
 
The Pace that Kills. 59 
 
 a team of three. There was the gerun- 
 dive, as he termed the hindmost — the 
 woman he was about to leave ; there was 
 another into whose graces he had entered ; 
 and there was a third in training for future 
 use. This custom he had found most ser- 
 viceable. Whatever might happen in less 
 regulated establishments, his stable was 
 full. And. that custom, which had stood 
 him in good stead abroad, had nothing in it 
 to prevent adoption here. Indeed, he told 
 himself it was because of his negligence 
 in that particular that he found himself 
 where he was. Instead of centring his 
 attention on Miss Dunellen, it would have 
 been far better to wander in and out of the 
 glittering precincts of Fifth Avenue, and 
 see what else he could find. After all, 
 there was nothing like being properly 
 provisioned. If one comestible ran short, 
 there should be another to take its place. 
 "Moreover, if, as Jones had intimated, there 
 were heiresses enough for export pur- 
 
6o The Pace that Kills. 
 
 poses, there must surely be enough to 
 supply the home demand. 
 
 The alternate course alluded to he had 
 therefore determined to adopt, when an 
 incident occurred which materially altered 
 his plans. One particularly detestable 
 morning he read in public print that Mrs. 
 Metuchen and Miss Dunellen were num- 
 bered among the visitors to South Caro- 
 lina, and thereupon he proceeded to pack 
 his valise. A few days later he was in 
 Aiken, and on the forenoon of the third 
 day succeeding his arrival, as he strolled 
 down the verandah of the Mountain Glen 
 Hotel, he felt at peace with the world and 
 with hrimself. 
 
 It was a superb morning, half summer, 
 half spring. In the distance a forest 
 stretched indefinitely and lost itself in the 
 haze of the horizon beyond. The sky was 
 tenderly blue, and, beneath, a lawn green 
 as the baize on a roulette-table was circled 
 by a bright-red road. He had breakfasted 
 infamously on food that might have been. 
 
The Pace that Kills. 6i 
 
 cooked by a butcher to whom breakfast 
 is an odious thing. Yet its iniquity he ac- 
 cepted as a matter of course. He knew, as 
 we all do, that for bad food, bad service, 
 and for futility of complaint our country 
 hotels are unrivalled, even in Spain. He 
 was_ there not to enjoy himself, still less 
 for the pleasures a blue ribbon can cause : 
 he was there to fan into flame the interest 
 which Miss Dunellen had exhibited ; and 
 as he strolled down the verandah, a crop 
 under his arm, Jiis trousers strapped, he 
 had no intention of quarrelling with the 
 fare. Quite a number of people were 
 basking in the sunlight, and, as he passed, 
 some of them turned and looked ; for at 
 Aiken men that have more than one lung 
 are in demand, and, when Roland regis- 
 tered his -historic name, to the unattached 
 females a little flutter of anticipation 
 came. 
 
 But Roland was not in search of flirta- 
 tions : he moved by one group into an- 
 other until he reached a corner of the 
 
62 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 verandah in which Mrs. Metuchen and 
 Miss Dunellen sat. .Merely by the ex- 
 pression on the faces of those whom 
 he greeted it was patent to the others 
 that the trio were on familiar terms ; 
 and when presently he accompanied Miss 
 Dunellen off the verandah, aided her to 
 mount a horse that waited there, mounted 
 another himself, and cantered' off with the 
 girl, the unattached females declared that 
 the twain must be engaged. In that 
 they were in error. As yet Roland had 
 not said a word to the charge he might 
 not have said to, the matron. Both, 
 of these ladies had been surprised when 
 he reached Aiken, and both had been 
 pleased as well. In that surprise,' in that 
 pleasure, Roland had actively collaborated ; 
 and taking on himself to answer before 
 it was framed the question which his ad- 
 vent naturally prompted, he stated that in 
 journeying from Savannah to Asheville he 
 had stopped over at Aiken as at z. half- 
 way house, and that, too, without an idea 
 
The Pace that Kills. 63 
 
 of encountering anyone whom he knew. 
 Thereafter for several days he ^managed to 
 make himself indispensable to the matron, 
 companionate to her charge ; but now, on 
 this particular morning, as he rattled down 
 the red road, the courage which had de- 
 serted him returned ; and a few hours 
 later, when before a mirror in his bedroom 
 he stood arranging his cravat, he caught 
 a reflection of Hyperion, son-in-law of 
 Croesus. 
 
64 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 V, 
 
 In a fortnight that reflection was framed 
 with a promise. Justine had put her hand 
 in his. The threads by which he suc- 
 ceeded in binding her to him are needless 
 to describe. He understood that prime 
 secret in the art of coercing affection 
 which consists in making one's self de- 
 sired. He was never inopportune. More- 
 over, he saw that Justine, accustomed ^to 
 the devotion of other men, accepted such 
 devotion as a matter of course ; in conse- 
 quence he took another tack, and bullied 
 her — a treatment which- was new to her, 
 and, being new, attractive. He found 
 fault with her openly, criticised the man- 
 ner in which she sat her horse, contra- 
 dicted her whenever the opportunity came, 
 and jeered — civilly, it is true, but the jeer 
 was there and all the sharper because it 
 was blunted — at any enthusiasm she 
 
The Pace that Kills. 65 
 
 chanced to express. And then, when she 
 expected it least, he would be enthusi- 
 astic himself, and enthusiastic over noth- 
 ing at all — some mythical deed canned in 
 history, the beauty of a child, or the flush 
 of the arbutus which they gathered on 
 their rides. To others whom he encoun- 
 tered in her presence he showed himself 
 so self-abnegatory, so readily pleased, 
 sweet-tempered, and indulgent, so stu- 
 dious even of their susceptibilities and 
 appreciative of what they liked and what 
 they did not, that in comparing his manner 
 to her and his manner to them the girl 
 grew vexed, and one evening she told him 
 so. 
 
 They happened to be sitting alone in a 
 corner of the verandah. From within 
 came the rhythm of a waltz ; some dance 
 was in progress, affectioned by the few ; 
 Mrs. Metuchen was discussing family 
 trees with a party of Philadelphians ; the 
 air was sweet with the scent of pines and 
 
66 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 of jasmines ; just above and beyond, a star 
 was circumflexed by the moon. 
 
 " I am sorry if I have offended," he made 
 answer to her complaint. "Do you mind 
 if I smoke ?" Without waiting for her 
 consent he drew out a cigarette and lighted 
 it. " I have not intended to," he added. 
 " To-morrow I will go." 
 
 " But why ? You like it here. You told 
 me so to-day." 
 
 With a fillip of forefinger and thumb 
 Roland tossed the cigarette out into the 
 road. "Because I admire you," he an- 
 swered curtly, 
 
 " I am glad of that." 
 
 The reproof, if reproof there were, was 
 not in her speech, but in her voice. She 
 spoke as one does whose due is conceded 
 only after an effort. And for a while both 
 were mute. 
 
 " Come, children, it is time to go to bed." 
 Mrs. Metuchen in her fantastic fashion was 
 hailing them from the door. Already the- 
 
The Pace that Kills. 67 
 
 waltz had ceased, and as Mrs. Metuchen 
 spoke, Justine rose from her seat. 
 
 "Good-night, Don Quichotte," the old 
 lady added ; and as the girl approached 
 she continued in an audible undertone, 
 " I call him Don Quichotte because he 
 looks like the Chevalier Bayard." 
 
 " Good-night, Mrs. Metuchen, and the 
 pleasantest of dreams." But the matron, 
 with a wave of her glove, had disappeared, 
 and Justine turned. 
 
 " At least you will not go until the after- 
 noon ?" 
 
 " Since you wish it, I will not." 
 
 She had stretched out her hand, but 
 Roland, affecting not to notice it, raised his 
 hat and turned away. Presently, and al- 
 though, in spite of many a vice, he was 
 little given to drink, he found himself at 
 the bar superintending the blending of 
 gin, of lemon-peel, and of soda ; and as he 
 swallowed it and put the goblet down he 
 seemed so satisfied that the barkeeper, 
 
68 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 with the affectionate familiarity of his 
 class, nodded and smiled. 
 
 "It takes a Remsen Cooler to do the 
 trick, don't it ?" he said. 
 
 And Roland, assenting remotely, left the 
 bar and sought his room. 
 
 The next morning, as through different 
 groups he sought for matron and for maid, 
 he had a crop under his arm and in his 
 hand a paper. 
 
 " I have been settling my bill," he an- 
 nounced. 
 
 " But are you going ?" exclaimed Mrs. 
 Metuchen. 
 
 " I can hardly take up a permanent resi- 
 dence here, can I ?" he replied." 
 
 " Oh, Justine," the old lady cried, and 
 clutched the girl by the arm, " persuade 
 him not to." And fixing him with her 
 glittering eyes, she added, " If you go, sir, 
 you leave an Aiken void." 
 
 The jest passed him unnoticed. He felt 
 that something had been said which called 
 ^or applause, for Mrs. Metuchen was laugh- 
 
The Pace that Kills. 69 
 
 ing immoderately. But his eyes were in 
 Justine's as were hers in his. 
 
 " You will ride, will you not ? I see you 
 have your habit on." And with that, Jus- 
 tine assenting, he led her down the steps 
 and aided her to the saddle. 
 
 There are numberless tentative things in 
 life, and among them an amble through 
 green, deserted lanes, where only birds and 
 flowers are, has witcheries of its own. How- 
 ever perturbed the spirit may have been, 
 there is that in the glow of the morning 
 and the gait of a horse that can make it 
 wholly serene. The traveller from Sicily 
 will, if you let him, tell of hours so fair 
 that even the bandits are coerced. Man 
 cannot always be centred in self ; and when 
 to the influence of nature is added the 
 companionship of one whose presence al- 
 lures, the charm is complete. And Roland, 
 to whom such things hitherto had been 
 as accessories, this morning felt their 
 spell. The roomy squalor of the village 
 had been passed long since. They had 
 
70 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 entered a road where the trees arched and 
 nearly hid the sky, but through the 
 branches an eager sunlight found its way. 
 Now and then in a clearing they would 
 happen on some shabby, silent house, the 
 garden gay with the tender pink of blos- 
 soming peach ; and at times, from behind a 
 log or straight from the earth, a diminu- 
 tive negro would start like a kobold in a 
 dream and offer, in an abashed, uncertain 
 way, a bunch of white violets in exchange 
 for coin. And once an old man, trudging 
 along, saluted them with a fine parabola of 
 hat and hand ; and once they encountered 
 a slatternly negress, very fat and pompous, 
 seated behind a donkey she could have 
 carried in her arms. But practically the 
 road was deserted, fragrant, and still. 
 
 And now, as they rode on, interchanging 
 only haphazard remarks, Roland swung 
 himself from his horse, and, plucking a 
 spray of arbutus, handed it to the girl. 
 ~" Take it," he said ; " it is all I have!" 
 
 His horse had wandered on a step and 
 
The Pace that Kills. "JX 
 
 was nibbling at the grass, and, as he stood 
 looking up at her, for the first time it 
 occurred to him that she was fair. How- 
 ever a girl may seem in a ball-room, if she 
 ever looks well she looks best in the saddle ; 
 and Justine, in spite of his criticism, did 
 not sit her horse badly. Her gray habit, 
 the high white collar and open vest, 
 brought out the snuff-color of her eyes 
 and hair. Her cheeks, too, this morning 
 must have recovered some of the flush 
 they had lost, or else the sun had been 
 using its palette, for in them was the hue 
 of the flower he had gathered and held. 
 
 She took it and inserted the stem in the 
 lapel of her coat. 
 
 "Are you going?" she asked. 
 
 "What would you think of me if I re- 
 mained ?" 
 
 " What would I ? I would think-^" 
 
 As she hesitated she turned. He could 
 see now it was not the sun alone that had 
 been at work upon her face. 
 
 "Let me tell. You would think that a 
 
•J2 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 man with two arms for sole income has no 
 right to linger in the neighborhood of a 
 girl such as you. That is what you would 
 think-, what anyone would think ; and 
 while I care little enough about the exist- 
 ence which' I lead in the minds of other 
 people, yet I do care for your esteem. If 
 I stay, I lose it. I should lose, too, my 
 own ; let me keep them both and go." 
 
 " I do not yet see why ?" 
 
 " You don't !" The answer was so abrupt 
 in tone that you would have said he was 
 irritated at her remark, judging it un- 
 necessary and ill-timed. " You don't !" he 
 repeated. " Go back a bit, and perhaps 
 you will remember that after I saw you 
 at your house I did not come back again." 
 
 "I do indeed remember." 
 
 " The next day I saw you in the Park ; I 
 was careful not to return." 
 
 " But what have I done ? You said last 
 night—" 
 
 " Why do you question ? You know it 
 is because I love you." 
 
The Pace that Kills. 73 
 
 " Then you shall not go." 
 
 " I must." 
 
 "You shall not, I say." 
 
 "And I shall take with me the knowl- 
 edge that the one woman I have loved is 
 the one woman I have been forced to 
 leave." 
 
 " Roland Mistrial, how can you bear the 
 name you do and yet be so unjust ? If you 
 leave me now it is because you care more 
 for yourself than you ever could for me. It 
 is not on my account you go : it is because 
 you fear the world. There were heroes 
 once that faced it." 
 
 "Yes, and there were Circes then, as 
 now." 
 
 As he made that trite reply his face re- 
 laxed, and into it came an expression of 
 such abandonment that the girl could see 
 the day was won. 
 
 " Tell me — you will not go ?" 
 
 Roland caught her hand in his, and, 
 drawing back the gauntlet of kid, he 
 kissed her on the wrist. "I will never 
 
74 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 leave you now," he answered ; " only prom- 
 ise you will not regret." 
 
 "Regret!" She smiled at the speech — 
 or was it a smile? Her lips had moved, 
 but it was as though they had done so in 
 answer to some prompting of her soul, 
 "Regret! Do you remember you asked 
 me what I would think if you remained ? 
 Well, I thought, if you did, there were 
 dreams which do come true." 
 
 At this avowal she was so radiant yet so 
 troubled that Roland detained her hand. 
 " She really loves," he mused ; " and so do 
 I." And it maybe, the forest aiding, that, 
 in the answering pressure which he gave, 
 such heart as he had went out and min- 
 gled with her own. 
 
 "Between us now," he murmured, "it 
 is for all of time." 
 
 " Roland, how I waited for you !" 
 
 Again her lips moved and she seemed to 
 smile, but now her eyes were no longer in 
 his, they were fixed on some vista visible 
 only to herself. She looked rapt, but she 
 
The Pace that Kills. ;S 
 
 looked startled as well. When a girl first 
 stands face to face with love it allures and 
 it frightens too. 
 
 Roland dropped her hand ; he caught 
 his horse and mounted it. In a moment 
 he was at her side again. 
 
 "Justine !" 
 
 And the girl turning to him let her fresh 
 lips meet and rest upon his own. Slowly 
 he disengaged the arm with which he had 
 steadied himself on her waist. 
 
 " If I lose you now — " he began. 
 
 "There can be no question of losing," 
 she interrupted. " Have we not come into 
 our own ?" 
 
 " But others may dispute our right. 
 There is your cousin, to whom I thought 
 you were engaged ; and there is your 
 father." 
 
 " Oh, as for Guy — " and she made a ges- 
 ture. "Father, it is true, may object; but 
 let him. I am satisfied; in the end he will 
 be satisfied also. Why, only the other day 
 I wrote him you were here." 
 
•jS The Pace that Kills. 
 
 " H'm !" At the intelligence he wheeled 
 abruptly. 
 
 Already Justine had turned, and lower- 
 ing her crop she gave her horse a little 
 tap. The beast was willing enough ; in a 
 moment the two were on a run, and as 
 Roland's horse, a broncho, by-the-way, one 
 of those eager animals that decline to re- 
 main behind, rushed forward and took the 
 lead, " Remember !" she cried, " you are 
 not to leave me now." 
 
 But the broncho was self-willed, and this 
 injunction Roland found or pretended it 
 difficult to obey ; and together, through 
 the green lane and out of it, by long, dis- 
 mal fields of rice, into the roomy squalor 
 of the village and on to the hotel, they flew 
 as though some fate pursued. Justine 
 never forgot that ride, nor did Roland 
 either. 
 
 At the verandah steps Mrs. Metuchen was 
 in waiting. " I have a telegram from your 
 father," she called to Justine, " He wishes 
 you to return to-morrow." 
 
The Pace that Kills. JJ 
 
 " To-morrow ?" the girl exclaimed. 
 
 "Thorold has learned I am here, and 
 has told," her lover reflected. And swing- 
 ing from his saddle he aided the girl to 
 alight. 
 
 "To-morrow," Mrs. Metuchen with 
 large assumption of resignation replied ; 
 "and we may be thankful he did not say 
 to-day." 
 
 And as Roland listened to the varying 
 interpretations of the summons which, 
 during the absence of her charge, Mrs. 
 Metuchen's riotous imagination had found 
 time to conceive, " Thorold has told," he 
 repeated to himself, " but he has told too 
 late." 
 
 After a morning such as that, an after- 
 noon on a piazza is apt to drag. Of this 
 Roland was conscious. Moreover, he had 
 become aware that his opportunities were 
 now narrowly limited ; and presently, as 
 Mrs. Metuchen's imaginings subsided and 
 ceased, he asked the girl whether, when 
 
78 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 dinner was over, she would care to take a 
 drive. 
 
 Protest who may, at heart every woman 
 is a match-maker ; and Mrs. Metuchen was 
 not an exception. In addition to this, she 
 liked family-trees, she was in cordial sym- 
 pathy with good-breeding, and Roland, 
 who possessed both, had, through atten- 
 tions which women of her age appreciate 
 most, succeeded in detaining her regard. 
 In conversation, whenever Justine hap- 
 pened to be mentioned, she had a habit oi 
 extolling that young woman — not beyond 
 her deserts, it is true, but with the atti- 
 tude of one aware that the girl had done 
 something which she ought to be ashamed 
 of, yet to which no one was permitted to 
 allude. This attitude was due to the fact 
 that she suspected her, and suspected that 
 everyone else suspected her, of an attach- 
 ment for her cousin Guy. Now Guy 
 Thorold had never appealed to Mrs. Me- 
 tuchen. He was not prompt with a chair ; 
 when she unrolled her little spangle of 
 
The Pace that Kills. 79 
 
 resonant names he displayed no eagerness 
 in face or look. Such things affect a 
 woman. They ruffle her flounces and be- 
 little her in her own esteem. As a conse- 
 quence, she disliked Guy Thorold ; from 
 the heights of that dislike she was even 
 wont to describe him as a Poke — a word 
 she could not have defined had she tried, 
 but which suggested to her all the attri- 
 butes of that which is stupid and under- 
 bred. Roland, on the other hand, seemed 
 to her the embodiment of just those things 
 which Thorold lacked, and in the hope 
 that he might cut the cousin out she ex- 
 tolled him to her charge in indirect and 
 subtle ways. You young man who read 
 this page mind you of this : if you would 
 succeed in love or war, be considerate of 
 women who are no longer young. They 
 ask but an attention, a moment of your 
 bountiful days, some little act of deference, 
 and in exchange they sound your praises 
 more deftly than ever trumpeter or beat 
 of drums could do. 
 
8o The Pace that Kills. 
 
 But because Mrs. Metuchen had an axe 
 of her own to grind was not to her mind a 
 reason why she should countenance a dis- 
 regard of the Satanic pomps of that which 
 the Western press terms Etiquette, And 
 so it happened that, when Roland asked 
 Justine whether she would -care to drive, 
 before the girl could answer, the matron 
 stuck her oar in : 
 
 " Surely, Mr. Mistrial, you cannot think 
 Miss Dunellen could go with you alone. 
 Not that / see any impropriety in her do- 
 ing so, but there is the world." 
 
 The world at that moment consisted of 
 a handful of sturdy consumptives impati- 
 ently waiting the opening of the dining- 
 room doors. And as Roland considered 
 that world, he mentally explored the 
 stable. 
 
 " Of course not," he answered ; " if Miss 
 Dunellen cares to go, I will have a dogcart 
 and a groom." 
 
 With that sacrifice to conventionality 
 Mrs. Metuchen was content. For Justine 
 
The Pace that Kills. 8 1 
 
 to ride unchaperoned was one thing, but 
 driving was another matter. And later 
 on, in the cool of the afternoon, as Ro- 
 land bowled the girl over the yielding 
 sand, straight to the sunset beyond, he 
 began again on the duo which they had 
 already rehearsed, and when Justine called 
 his attention to the groom, he laughed a 
 little, and well he might. " Don't mind 
 him," he murmured ; "he is deaf." 
 
 In earlier conversations he had rarely 
 spoken of himself, and, when he had, it 
 had been in that remote fashion which 
 leaves the personal pronoun at the door. 
 There is nothing better qualified to weary 
 the indifferent than the speech in which 
 the I jumps out; and knowing this, he 
 knew too that that very self-effacement 
 before one whose interest is aroused ex- 
 cites that interest to still higher degrees. 
 The Mot seul est haissable is an old maxim, 
 one that we apprehend more or less to our 
 cost no doubt, and after many a sin of 
 egotism ; but when it. is learned by rote, 
 
82 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 few others serve us in better stead. In 
 Roland's relations with Justine thus far 
 it had served him well. It had filled her 
 mind with questions which she did not 
 feel she had the right to ask, and in so 
 filling it had occupied her thoughts with 
 him. It was through arts of this kind that 
 Machiavelli earned his fame. 
 
 But at present circumstances had chang- 
 ed. She had placed her hand in his ; she 
 had avowed her love. The I could now 
 appear ; its welcome was assured. And as 
 they drove along the sand-hills she told 
 him of herself, and drew out confidences 
 in exchange. And such confidences ! Had 
 the groom not been deaf they might have 
 given him food for thought. But they 
 must have satisfied Justine, for when they 
 reached the hotel again her eyes were so 
 full of meaning that, had Mrs. Metuchen 
 met her in a pantry instead of on the ve- 
 randah, she could have seen unspectacled 
 that the girl was fairly intoxicated — 
 drunk with that headiest cup of love 
 
The Pace that Kills. 83 
 
 which is brewed not by the contact of 
 two epiderms, but through communion 
 of spirit and unison of heart. 
 
 That evening, when supper was done, 
 Mrs. Metuchen, to whom any breath of 
 night was synonymous with miasmas and 
 microbes, settled herself in the parlor, and 
 in the company of her friends from School 
 Lane discussed that inexhaustible topic — 
 Who Was and Who Was Not. 
 
 But the verandah, deserted at this hour 
 by the consumptives, had attractions for 
 Justine, for Roland as well ; and presently, 
 in a corner of it that leaned to the south, 
 both were seated, and, at the moment, 
 both were dumb. On the horizon, vague 
 now and undiscerned, the peach-blossoms 
 and ochres of sunset had long since disap- 
 peared ; but from above rained down the 
 light and messages of other worlds ; the 
 sky was populous with stars that seemed 
 larger and nearer than they do in the 
 north ; Venus in particular shone like a 
 neighborly sun that had strayed afar, and 
 
84 The Pace that Kills^ 
 
 in pursuit of her was a moon, a new one, 
 so slender and yellow you would have said, 
 a feather that a breath might, blow away. 
 In the air were the same inviting odors, 
 the scent of heliotrope and of violets, the 
 invocations of the woodlands, the whispers 
 of the pines. The musicians had been 
 hushed, or else dismissed, for no sound 
 came from them that night. 
 
 Roland had not sought the feverish 
 night to squander it in contemplation. 
 His hand moved and caught Justine's. 
 It resisted a little, then lay docile in his 
 own. For she was new to love. Like 
 every other girl that has passed into the 
 twenties, she had a romance in her life, 
 two perhaps, but romances immaterial as 
 children's dreams, and from which she had 
 awaked surprised, noting the rhythm yet 
 seeking the reason in vain. They had 
 passed from her as fancies do ; and, just as 
 she was settling down into leisurely accept- 
 ance of her cousin, Roland had appeared, 
 and when she saw him a bird within her. 
 
The Pace that Kills. 8$ 
 
 burst into song, and she knew that all her 
 life she had awaited his approach. To her 
 he was the fabulous prince that arouses the 
 sleeper to the truth, to the meaning, of love. 
 He had brought with him new currents, 
 wider vistas, and horizons solid and real. 
 He differed so from other men that her 
 mind was pleasured with the thought he 
 had descended from a larger sphere. She 
 idealized him as girls untrained in life will 
 do. He was the lover unawaited yet not 
 wholly undivined, tender-hearted, impec- 
 cable, magnificent, incapable of wrong — 
 the lover of whom she may never have 
 dreamed, yet who at last had come. And 
 into his keeping she gave her heart, and 
 was glad, regretting only it was not more 
 to give. She had no fears ; her confidence 
 was assured as Might, and had you or I or 
 any other logician passed that way and 
 demonstrated as clearly as « = a that she 
 was imbecile in her love, she would not have 
 thanked either of us for our pains. When a 
 woman loves — and whatever the cynic may 
 
86 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 affirm, civilization has made her monan- 
 drous — she differs from man in this : she 
 gives either the first-fruits of her affection, 
 or else the semblance of an after-growth. 
 There are men, there are husbands and 
 lovers even, who will accept that after- 
 growth and regard it as the verdure of an 
 enduring spring. But who, save a lover, 
 is ever as stupid as a husband ? Man, on 
 the other hand, is constant never. Civili- 
 zation has not improved him in the least, 
 And when on his honor he swears he has 
 never loved before, his honor goes un- 
 scathed, for he may never yet have loved a 
 woman as he loves the one to whom he 
 swears. 
 
 With Justine this was the primal verdure. 
 Had she not met Roland Mistrial, she might, 
 and in all probability would, have exhib- 
 ited constancy in affection, but love would 
 have been uncomprehended still. As it 
 was, she had come into her own ; she was 
 confident in it and secure ; and now, though 
 by nature she was rebellious enough, as 
 
The Pace that Kills. 87 
 
 he caught her hand her being went out to 
 him, and as it went it thrilled. 
 
 " I love you," he said ; and his voice was 
 so flexible that it would have been difficult 
 to deny that he really did. " I will love 
 you always, my whole life through." 
 
 The words caressed her so well she could 
 have pointed to the sky and repeated with 
 Dona Sol : 
 
 " Regarde : plusde feux, plus de bruit. Tout se tait. 
 La lune tout k I'heure it rhorizon montait : 
 Tandis que tu parlais, sa lumifere qui tremble 
 Et ta voix, toutes deux m'allaient au coeur ensemble : 
 Je me sentais joyeuse et calme, 6 men amant! 
 Et j'aurais bien voulu mourir en ce moment." 
 
 But at once some premonition seemed 
 to visit her. " Roland," she murmured, 
 " what if we leave our happiness here ?" 
 
 And Rolarid, bending toward her, whis- 
 pered sagely: "We shall know then where 
 to find it." 
 
The Pace that Kills. 
 
 VI. 
 
 New York meanwhile, in its effeminate- 
 ness, had forgotten the snow, and was 
 listening to the sun. And the day after 
 the return from Aiken, as Roland, in ac- 
 cordance with an agreement of which the 
 locus sigilli had a kiss for token, went 
 down to knock at Mr. Dunellen's office 
 door, the sky was as fair as it had been in 
 the South. Yet to him it was unobtrusive. 
 His mind was occupied with fancies that 
 had a birth, a little span of life, and which 
 in passing away were succeeded by others 
 as ephemeral as themselves — thoughts 
 about nothing at all that came and went 
 unnoticed ; a man he had met in Corfu, and 
 whom a face in the street recalled ; the 
 glisten of silk in a window that took him 
 back to Japan; — but beneath them was a 
 purpose settled and dominant, a resolution 
 to trick Fate and outwit it — one which, dur- 
 
The Pace that Kills. 89 
 
 ing the journey from Aiken, had so pos- 
 sessed him that, in attending to the wants of 
 Mrs. Metuchen or in ministering to Justine, 
 at times he had been quasi-somnambulistic, 
 at others wholly vague. But now, as he 
 gave his card to an office-boy, to all out- 
 ward intent he was coiifideht and at ease ; 
 he picked up a paper and affected to lose 
 himself in its columns. Presently the boy 
 returned, and he was ushered into the 
 room which he had previously visited. 
 On this occasion Mr. Dunellen was not 
 seated, but standing, his back to the door. 
 As Roland entered he turned, and the 
 young man stepped forward, his hand out- 
 stretched. 
 
 To his contentment, and a little also to 
 his surprise, in answer to that outstretched 
 hand Honest Paul extended his, and Ro- 
 land had the pleasure of holding three 
 apparently docile fingers in his own; but in 
 a moment they withdrew themselves, and 
 he felt called upon to speak. 
 
 " Mr, Dunellen," he began, with that 
 
90 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 confident air a creditor has who comes to 
 claim his due, " Mr. Dunellen, I have 
 ventured to interrupt you again. And 
 again I am a suppliant. But this time 
 it is of your daughter, not of my father, 
 that—" 
 
 He hesitated, and '.veil he might. Mr. 
 Dunellen, who had remained standing, 
 and who in so doing had prevented Ro- 
 land from sitting down, now assumed the 
 suspicious appearance of one who detects 
 an unpleasant smell ; his features contract- 
 ed, and for no other reason, apparently, 
 than that of intimidating the suppliant in 
 his prayer. 
 
 But Roland was not to be abashed ; he 
 recovered himself, and continued glibly 
 enough: "The matter is this. I am sin- 
 cerely attached to your daughter, and I 
 am come to ask your consent to our mar- 
 riage." 
 
 " That is the purpose of your visit, is 
 it?" 
 
 "It is." 
 
The Pace that Kills. 91 
 
 "My daughter is aware of it, I sup- 
 pose ?" 
 
 "She is." 
 
 " And she consented, did she ?" 
 
 « Perfectly." * 
 
 "H'm! My daughter has made a mis- 
 take. I told her as much last night. 
 There can be no question of marriage. 
 You will do me the favor to let the matter 
 drop." 
 
 "I am not a rich man, Mr. Dunellen, 
 but—" 
 
 "So I am informed. But that has noth- 
 ing to do with it. There are other things 
 that I take into consideration, and in view 
 of them I insist" that this mattfer be 
 dropped." 
 
 " Mr. Dunellen, I love your daughter ; I 
 have reason to believe that she cares for 
 me. We became engaged a few days ago. 
 I came here now to ask your consent. If 
 you refuse it, I have at least the right to 
 ask what your objection is." 
 
 " Rather unnecessary, don't you think >'* 
 
92 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 " I cannot imagine, sir, what you mean." 
 And Roland, holding himself unaffectedly 
 straight, without the symptom of a pose, 
 looked the old man in the eyes. 
 'That look Mr. Dunellen returned. 
 " Take a seat," he said ; and, motioning 
 Roland to a chair, he sat down himself. 
 
 " All this is needless," he announced ; 
 "but since you are anxious for an explana- 
 tion, I will give it. In the first place, when 
 you were at my house you remember that 
 my nephew Dr. Thorold happened in. 
 The other day I mentioned to him that you 
 were at Aiken. He then informed me of a 
 certain incident in your career, one which 
 you have not forgotten, and of which I do 
 not care to speak. I may say, however, 
 that it utterly precludes the possibility of 
 any further intercourse between my 
 daughter and yourself." 
 
 And the old man, still gazing at his 
 guest, added: " This explanation should, it. 
 seems to me, suffice." But he made no at- 
 tempt to rise, or to signify that the inter- 
 
The Pace that Kills. 93 
 
 view was at an end, and Roland, who was 
 shrewd, interpreted this in his own favor. 
 'He is not altogether positive," he re- 
 flected, " but he can be so to-morrow," and 
 with a show of shame that did him credit 
 he hung his head. 
 
 "I had thought the incident to which 
 you refer, was forgotten," he murmured, 
 penitently enough. 
 
 " Forgotten ? Do you suppose Thorold 
 forgets? Do you suppose any man could 
 forget a thing like that: — a sister's death, a 
 mother's insanity? No, you did not think 
 it was forgotten. What you thought was 
 this : you thought that my nephew would 
 hesitate to speak ; and indeed even to me 
 for ten years he has kept silent. But now 
 — there, you need not fear a criminal 
 charge. It was that you feared once, I 
 understand, and it was on that account you 
 went abroad. At this date, of course, no 
 proof is possible ; and, even were it other- 
 wise, a charge would not be brought. 
 
94 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 Linen of that kind is better washed at 
 home." 
 
 " Mr. Dunellen, if you could know ! It 
 is the regret of my life." 
 
 " That I can believe ; but I believe also 
 that our natures never vary. We may 
 mould and shape them to our uses, but 
 beneath the surface they remain un- 
 changed. I say this parenthetically. In 
 regard to this incident there are in one 
 particular certain excuses you might al- 
 lege — youth for instance, inexperience, 
 common attraction, love even. If you did, 
 I could enter into them. I have been 
 young myself, and I have no wish to imply 
 that through the temptations of youth I 
 passed unscathed. The man who asserts 
 he has reminds me of the horseman who 
 declares he has never been thrown. Nor 
 because your victim happened to be my 
 niece am I actuated by retrospective indig- 
 nation. I am too old for that ; and, more- 
 over, the incident is too stale. No : my 
 reason for forbidding my daughter to re- 
 
■ The Pace that Kills. 95 
 
 ceive you, as I have done, is this : the man 
 that can seduce a girl, and then, to conceal 
 the effect, permit her to be butchered by 
 a quack, especially when he could have 
 protected her by marriage — that man, Mr. 
 Mistrial, I tell you very plainly, is a scoun- 
 drel, and being a scoundrel will never be 
 anything else." And as Honest Paul made 
 this assertion he stood up. and nodded af- 
 firmatively at his guest. 
 
 " You are very hard, Mr. Dunellen." 
 
 " I may be, but so is justice." 
 
 " If I could tell you all. It was so sud- 
 den, so unpremeditated even, at the first 
 idea of a possibility of a catastrophe I lost 
 my head." 
 
 " It was your honor you lost." 
 
 " Yes, and for years I have tried to re- 
 cover it." 
 
 " That I am glad to learn, and I hope 
 you have succeeded ; but — " 
 
 " And will you not aid me ?" 
 
 " In my sight you can never appear an 
 honest man." 
 
g6 The Pace that Kills. ' 
 
 At this reproach, Roland, who had sat 
 like Abjection, one hand supporting his 
 head, his eyes lowered and his body bent, 
 sprang to his feet. 
 
 " There are several forms of honesty," 
 he exclaimed, " and frankness I believe is 
 counted among them. That you evidently 
 possess. Let me emulate you in it. I intend 
 that your daughter shall be my wife. If you 
 don't care to come to the wedding your 
 presence can be dispensed with." And 
 without any show of anger, but with an 
 inclination of the head that was insolent 
 in its deference, he picked up his hat and 
 left the room. 
 
 Presently he found himself in the street. 
 " Who is ever as stupid as a wise man ?" he 
 queried, and laughed a little to himself 
 — " unless " — and he feK to wondering 
 whether Dunellen could have told his 
 daughter all. On the corner a cab was 
 loitering ; he hailed and entered it. A little 
 later he was ringing at the door of Honest 
 Paul's abode. 
 
The Pace that Kills. 9; 
 
 Yes, Miss Dunellen was at home. And 
 ds the servant drew the portiere to the 
 drawing-room aside, Roland was visited 
 by that emotion the gambler knows who 
 waits the turning of a card. Another sec- 
 ond, and the expression of the girl's face 
 would tell him what the future held. The 
 drawing-room, however, happened to be 
 untenanted, and as he paced its spacious 
 splendors he still wondered was she or was 
 she not informed. In a corner was a land- 
 scape signed Courbet — a green ravine shut 
 down by bluest sky. The coloring was so 
 true, it jarred. In another was a statue — a 
 cloaked and hooded figure of Death sup- 
 porting a naked girl. As he contemplated 
 it, he heard the tinkle of the portiere 
 rings. It was she, he' knew ; he turned, 
 and at once his heart gave an exultant 
 throb ; in her eyes was an invitation ; he 
 put his arms about her, and for a moment 
 held her so. 
 She does not know, he told himself, and 
 
98 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 to her he murmured, " I have come to say 
 good-bye." 
 
 " Wait, Roland." She led him to a seat. 
 " Wait ; I spoke to father last night ; he 
 has some objection — '' 
 
 " I told you I was poor — " 
 
 " It is that, I suppose ; he did not say — " 
 
 " He will never consent, unless — " 
 
 "There, Roland. I know him best." 
 She closed her eyes, and as he gazed at 
 her it seemed to him she had done so to 
 shut some memory out. " It is money with 
 him always ; you do not know — " And 
 between her parted lips she drew a breath 
 he heard. " Last night he told me 1 
 must never see you again. Hitherto hij 
 will has ruled : it is my turn to-day." 
 
 With this there came a splendor to heif 
 he had never marked before ; she looked 
 defiant, and resolute as well. There was 
 strength in her face, and beauty too. 
 
 " He is unjust," she added. "It was my 
 duty to tell him, and there my duty ends. 
 I am not a school-girl. I know my mind; 
 
The Pace that Kills. 99 
 
 better, perhaps, than he knows his own. 
 I have obeyed him always. It is easy to 
 obey, but now I will act for myself." 
 
 " He will never give his consent," Ro- 
 land repeated. 
 
 " He may keep it, then." 
 
 Within her something seemed to rankle ; 
 and as Roland, mindful of the slightest 
 change in her expression, detected this, 
 he wondered what it could portend. 
 
 " Sweetheart," he ventured, " I have 
 these two arms ; they are all in all for you." 
 
 At this Justine awoke at once. " If I 
 did not know it — feel it; if I were not sure 
 of it, do you think I would speak to you as 
 I do ? No, Roland. I have something of 
 my own; when we are married, believe me, 
 his consent will come at once." 
 
 " It is not his consent I want — you know 
 that ; it is yours." 
 
 " You have it, Roland ; I gave it you 
 among the pines." 
 
 " Where is your hat, then ? Let us go." 
 
 He caught her to him again, then suf- 
 
lOO The Pace that Kills. 
 
 fered her to leave the room. And as the 
 portiere which he had drawn that she 
 might pass fell back into its former folds, 
 for a moment he stood perplexed. Some- 
 where a screw was loose, he could have 
 sworn. But where ? Could it be that 
 Honest Paul was supporting a separate 
 establishment ? or did Justine think he 
 wished to mate her to some plutocrat of 
 his choice ? The first supposition was 
 manifestly absurd ; the second troubled 
 him so little that he turned and occupied 
 himself with the naked girl swooning in 
 the arms of Death. 
 
 " I am ready, Roland." It was Justine, 
 bonneted and veiled, buttoning her glove. 
 
 " I have a cab," he answered, and fol- 
 lowed her to the door. 
 
The Pace that Kills, loi 
 
 VII. 
 
 When Roland and Justine re-entered the 
 drawing-room that afternoon they found 
 Mr. Dunellen there. With him was Guy 
 Thorold. 
 
 During the infant days of photography 
 family groups were so much in vogue that 
 anyone with an old album in reach can 
 find them there in plenty. They are faded, 
 no doubt ; the cut of the garments is ab- 
 surd ; even the faces seem to have that an- 
 tique look which is peculiar to the minia- 
 tures of people dead and departed: yet the 
 impression they convey is admirably ex- 
 alting. That gentleman in the wonderful 
 coat must have been magnificent in every 
 sphere of life : his mere pose, his attitude, 
 is convincing as a memoir. And that lady 
 in the camel's-hair shawl — how bewitch- 
 ingly lovable she surely was ! There is her 
 daughter, who might be her niece, so prat- 
 
I02 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 tily does she seem inclined to behave ; and 
 there is the son, a trifle effaced perhaps, 
 yet with the makings of a man manifest 
 even in that effacement. Oh, good peo- 
 ple ! let us hope you were really as ami- 
 able as you look : the picture is all we have 
 of you ; even your names are forgot ; and 
 truly it were discomforting to have the 
 impression you convey disturbed in its 
 slightest suggestion. We love you best as 
 you are ; we prefer you so. I, for one, will 
 have none of that cynicism which hints 
 that had a snap camera caught you unpre- 
 pared the charm would disappear. 
 
 Yet now, in the present instance, as Mr. 
 Dunellen and his nephew stood facing 
 Roland and Justine, a photographer who 
 had happened there could have taken a 
 family group which would in no manner 
 have resembled those which our albums 
 hold. 
 
 "T told you last night," Mr. Dunellen 
 was shrieking, " that I forbade you to see 
 that man." 
 
The Pace that Kills. 103 
 
 And Justine, raising her veil, answered, 
 *' He was not my husband then." 
 
 " Husband !" The old man stared at his 
 daughter, his face distorted and livid with 
 rage. " If you — " 
 
 But whatever threat he may have in- 
 tended to make, Thorold interrupted. 
 
 " He is married already," he cried ; " he 
 is no more your husband than I." 
 
 At this announcement Mr. Dunellen let 
 an arm he had outstretched fall to his side ; 
 he turned to Thorold, and Justine looked 
 wonderingly in Roland's face. 
 
 " What does he mean ?" she asked. 
 
 Roland shrugged his shoulders, " God 
 knows," he answered. " He must be 
 screwed." 
 
 "You are married," Thorold called out. 
 "You needn't attempt to deny it here." 
 
 "I don't in the least : this lady has just 
 done me the honor to become my wife." 
 
 " But you have another — you told me so 
 yourself." 
 
 Roland, who had been really perplexed. 
 
I04 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 could not now conceal a smile. He re- 
 membered that he had indeed told Thorold 
 he was married, but he had done so merely 
 as an easy way of diverting the suspicions 
 which that gentleman displayed. 
 
 Justine, still looking at him, caught the 
 smile. 
 
 " Why don't you speak ?" she asked. 
 
 "What is there to say ?" he answered.' 
 " It is false as an obituary." 
 
 " Then tell him so." 
 
 But for that there was no time. Mr. 
 Dunellen, trained in procedure, had already 
 questioned Thorold, and found that save 
 Mistrial's word he had nothing to grapple 
 on. 
 
 " Leave the house, sir," he shouted, and 
 pointed to the door. 
 
 " When he goes, father, I go too." 
 
 " Then go." And raising his arms above 
 his head as though to invoke the testimony 
 of heaven, he bawled at her, " I disown 
 you." 
 
 " There's Christian forbearance," mut- 
 
The Pace that Kills. 105 
 
 tered Mistrial ; and he might have asserted 
 as much, but Justine had lowered her veil. 
 
 " Come," she said. 
 
 And as she and her husband passed from 
 the room the old man roared impotently 
 ' I disinherit you — you are no longer my 
 child." 
 
 " Didn't you tell me he had been used to 
 having his own way ?" Roland asked, as he 
 put Justine in the cab ; and without wait- 
 ing for an answer he told the driver to go to 
 the Brunswick, and took a seat at her side. 
 
 In certain crises the beauty of an old 
 adage asserts itself even to the stupidest. 
 Roland had taken the bull by the horns 
 and got tossed for his pains ; yet even while 
 he was in the air he kept assuring himself 
 that he would land on his feet. The next 
 morning the memory of the old man's anger 
 affected him not at all. Passion, he knew, 
 burns itself out, and its threats subside into 
 ashes. The relentless parent was a spec- 
 tacle with which the stage had made him 
 so familiar that he needed no prompter's 
 
Io6 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 book to tell him that when the curtain fell 
 it would be on a tableau of awaited forgive- 
 ness. And even though Mr. Dunellen and 
 the traditional father might differ, yet on 
 the subject of wills and bequests he under- 
 stood that the legislature had in its wis- 
 dom prevented a testator from devising 
 more than one-half his property to the 
 detriment of kith and of kin. If things came 
 to the worst Justine would get five million 
 instead of ten ; and five million, though not 
 elastic enough, as Jones had said, to enter- 
 tain with, still represented an income that 
 sufficed for the necessaries of life. On 
 that score his mind was at rest. Moreover, 
 it was manifestly impossible for Justine's 
 father to live forever : there was an odor of 
 fresh earth about him which to his own 
 keen nostrils long since had betokened the 
 grave ; and if meanwhile he chose to keep 
 the purse-strings drawn, Justine had 
 enough from her mother's estate to last till 
 the strings were loosed. 
 
 Rents are high in New York, and to those 
 
The Pace that Kills. 107 
 
 bred in certain of its manors there is a 
 choice between urban palaces and suburban 
 flats. But Paris is less fastidious. In that 
 lovely city a thousand-franc note need not 
 be spent in a day; and in Italy the possi- 
 bilities of the lira are great. 
 
 In view of these things, Roland and his 
 wife one week later took ship and sailed 
 for France. 
 
PART II. 
 
To those that have suffered certain 
 things there are forms of entertainment 
 which neither amuse nor bore, but which 
 pain. And this evening, as Justine sat in 
 the stalls, the play which was being given, 
 and which, as plays go, was endurable 
 enough, caused her no pleasure, no weari- 
 ness even, only a longing to get away and 
 be alone. Now and then a shudder visited 
 her, her hand tightened on her fan, and at 
 times she would close her eyes, dull her 
 hearing, and try to fancy that her girlhood 
 was recovered, that she was free again, 
 that she was dead, that her husband was 
 — anything imaginable in fact, save the 
 knowledge that she was there, side-by-side 
 with him, and that presently they would 
 
1 1 2 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 return together to the hideousness of their 
 uptown flat. 
 
 She had been married now a little more 
 than two years, and during the latter por- 
 tion of that time life had held for her that 
 precise dose of misery which is just insuf- 
 ficient to produce uncertainties of thought 
 in a mind naturally exalted. There had 
 indeed been moments in which the possi- 
 bility of insanity had presented itself, and 
 there had been moments also in which 
 she would have welcomed that possibility 
 as a grateful release : but those moments 
 had passed, the possibifity with them ; and 
 this evening as she sat in the stalls her 
 outward appearance was much such as it 
 had been two years before. But within, 
 where her heart had been, was a cemetery. 
 Among our friends and acquaintances 
 there are always those who to our knowl- 
 edge have tombstones of their own. But 
 there are others that evolve a world — one 
 that glows, subsides, and dies away un- 
 known to any save themselves. The soli- 
 
The Pace that Kills. 1 1 3 
 
 tudes of space appall ; the solitudes of the 
 heart can be as endless as they. In those 
 which Justine concealed, a universe had 
 had its being and its subsidence ; a uni- 
 verse with gem-like hopes for stars — one 
 in which the sun had been so eager its rays 
 had made her blind. There had been 
 comets gorgeous and tangential as aspira- 
 tions ever are ; there had been the colorless 
 ether of which dreams are made ; and for 
 cosmic matter there was love. But now it 
 was all dispersed ; there was nothing left, 
 one altar merely — the petrefaction of a 
 prayer erected long since in the depths of 
 her distress, and which for conscience' sake 
 now and then she tended still. 
 
 And now, as the play at which she as- 
 sisted unrolled before her unseeing eyes, 
 one by one scenes from another drama 
 rose unsummoned in its stead. First was 
 the meeting with Mistrial at Tuxedo, then 
 the episode at Aiken, the marriage that 
 followed, and the banishment that ensued : 
 a banishment, parenthetically, which at the 
 
114 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 time being she was powerless to under- 
 stand. Her father's anger had indeed 
 weighed on her ; but it was not wholly 
 that — she was too much in love to let it 
 be more than a shadow on her delight ; nor 
 was it because of unfamiliar lands : it was 
 that little by little, through incidents orig- 
 inally misunderstood and then more com- 
 pletely grasped, the discovery, avoided yet 
 ever returning, came to her, stayed with 
 her, and made her its own — that the man 
 whom she had loved and the man whom 
 she had married were separate and dis- 
 tinct. 
 
 The psychologist of woman has yet to 
 appear, and if he keep us waiting may it 
 not ^be because every woman he analyzes 
 has a sister who differs from her ? The 
 moment he formulates a rule it is over- 
 weighted by exceptions. Woman often 
 varies, the old song says ; but not alone in 
 her affections does she do so : she varies in 
 temperament as well. And, after all, is it 
 not the temperament that makes or mars 
 
The Pace that Kills. 1 1 5 
 
 a life ? Justine, in discovering that the 
 man she married and the man whom she 
 loved were separate and distinct, instead 
 of being disgusted with herself and with 
 him, as you, madam, might have been, 
 tried her utmost to forget the lover and 
 love the husband that had come in his 
 place. In this effort she had pride for an 
 aid. The humiliation which the knowl- 
 edge of self-deception brings is great, but 
 when that knowledge becomes common 
 property the humiliation is increased. 
 The world — not the world that ought to 
 be, but the world as it is — is more apt to 
 smile than condole. There may be much 
 joy in heaven over the sinner that repents : 
 on earth the joy is at his downfall. And 
 according to the canons we have made for 
 ourselves, Justine, in listening to the dic- 
 tates of her heart instead of to those of 
 her father, had sinned, so grievously even 
 that that father had bid her begone from 
 his sight. She was aware of this, and in 
 consequence felt it needful to hold her 
 
1 1 6 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 head the higher. And so for a while she 
 made pride serve as fig-leaf to her naked- 
 ness. If abashed at heart, at least the 
 world should be uninformed of that abash- 
 ment. 
 
 This effort on her part Mistrial hindered 
 to the best of his ability. Whether or not 
 he loved her, whether save himself he was 
 capable of loving anyone, who shall say ? 
 Men too are difficult to decipher. There 
 were hours when after some ^cart he would 
 come to her so penitent, so pleasant to the 
 eye, and seemingly so afflicted at his own 
 misconduct, that Justine found the strength 
 ' — or the weakness, was it ? — to forgive and 
 to forget anew. 
 
 During this period they lived not sump- 
 tuously, perhaps, but in that large and 
 liberal fashion which requires a ponderable 
 rent-roll to support ; and at that time, how- 
 ever Mistrial comported himself elsewhere, 
 in her presence he had the decency to seem 
 considerate, and affectionate as well. But 
 meanwhile, through constant demands, the 
 
The Pace that Kills. 1 1 7 
 
 value of the letter of credit into which he had 
 converted the better part of her motlier's es- 
 tate became impaired. Retrenchment was 
 necessary, and that is never a pleasant 
 thing. The man that passes out of poverty 
 into wealth finds the passage so easy, so 
 Lethean even, that he is apt to forget what 
 poverty was ; but when, as sometimes hap- 
 pens, he is obliged to retrace his steps, he 
 walks bare of foot through a path of thorns. 
 To count gold, instead of strewing it, is 
 irritating to anyone not a sage. And Mis- 
 trial, who was not a sage, was irritated ; 
 and having a wife within beck and call 
 he vented that irritation on her. 
 
 It was at this time that Justine began to 
 feel the full force of the banishment. That 
 her husband was, and in all probability 
 would continue to be, unfaithful to her, was 
 a matter which she ended by accepting 
 with a degree of good sense which is more 
 common than is generally supposed. At 
 first she had been indeed indignant, and 
 when in that indignation her anger devel- 
 
1 8 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 oped into a heat that was white and sen- 
 tiable, Mistrial experienced no remorse 
 whatever, only a desire to applaud. He 
 liked the force and splendor of her arraign- 
 ment ; it took him out of himself ; it made 
 him feel that he was appreciated — feared 
 even ; that a word from him, and a tempest 
 was loosened or enchained. 
 
 But what is there to which we cannot 
 accustom ourselves? Justine ended, not 
 by a full understanding of the fact that 
 man is naturally polygamous ; but little by 
 littte, through channels undiscerned even 
 by herself, the idea came to her that, if the 
 man she loved could find pleasure in the 
 society of other women, it was because she 
 was less attractive than they. It was this 
 that brought her patience, the more readily 
 even in that, at her first paroxysm. Mis- 
 trial, a trifle alarmed lest she might leave 
 him, had caught her in his arms, and sworn 
 in a whisper breathed in her ear, that of all 
 the world he loved her best. 
 
 Madam, you who do the present writer 
 
The Pace that Kills. 1 19 
 
 the honor to read this page are convinced, 
 he is sure, that your husband would rather 
 his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth 
 than break the vow which bound you to 
 him. But you, madam, have married a 
 man faithful and tried. You know very 
 well with what dismay he tells you of Rob- 
 inson's scandalous conduct, and you know 
 also how he pities Robinson's poor little 
 wife ; yet when, in your sorrow at what that 
 poor little woman has to put up with, you 
 are tempted to go and condole with her, 
 pause, madam — Mrs. Robinson may be 
 equally tempted to condole with You. 
 
 There are — in Brooklyn, in Boston, and 
 in other recondite regions — a number of 
 clever people who have been brought up 
 with the idea that Divorce was instituted 
 for just such a thing as this. Yet in one 
 hundred cases out of a hundred-and-one 
 a woman who appeals to the law never 
 does so because her husband has broken a 
 certain commandment. If his derelictions 
 are confined to that particular offence she 
 
1 20 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 may bewail, and we all bewail with her ; 
 but if she wants the sympathy of judge, 
 of jury, and of newspaper-public too, she 
 must be prepared to allege other griev- 
 ances. She must show that her husband 
 is unkind, that he is sarcastic, that he is 
 given to big words and short sentences ; 
 in brief, that he has developed traits which 
 render life in common no longer to be en- 
 dured. 
 
 It was traits of this description that Mis- 
 trial unexpectedly developed, and it was 
 during their development that the sense of 
 banishment visited Justine. She was un- 
 able to make further transference of her af- 
 fections; the lover had disappeared; the hus- 
 band she had tried to love in his place had 
 gone as well. For sole companion she had 
 a man who had worn a mask and dropped 
 it i where he had been considerate, he was 
 selfish ; when he spoke, it was to find fault ; 
 now that he could no longer throw her 
 money out of the windows, he threw his, 
 amiability in its stead. By day he was 
 
The Pace that Kills. I2I 
 
 taciturn, insultingly dumb ; at night he was 
 drunk. 
 
 Mistrial had served his novitiate where 
 the pochard is rare. It is we that drink, 
 and with us the English, the Slavs, and 
 Teutons ; but in the East and among the 
 Latins sobriety is less a matter of habit than 
 of instinct. And in lands where man pre- 
 fers to keep his head clear. Mistrial, at that 
 age, which is one of the most impressiona- 
 able of all, had seen no reason to lose his 
 own. But presently the small irritations of 
 enforced economy affected his manners, and 
 his habits as well. He took to absinthe in 
 the morning,, and, as he happened to be 
 in France, he drank at night that brutal 
 brandy they give you there. Not continu- 
 ously, it is true. There were days when 
 the man for whom Justine had forsaken 
 her home returned so completely she could 
 almost fancy he had never gone. Then, 
 without a word of warning, at the very 
 moment when Faith was gaining fresh 
 foothold, the tragi-comedy would be re- 
 
122 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 newed ; he was off again, no one knew 
 whither, returning only when the candle 
 had been utterly consumed. 
 
 Such things are enough to affect any 
 woman's patience, and Justine's became 
 wholly warped. It was unaccountable to 
 her that he could treat her as he did.- She 
 watched the gradual transformation of the 
 perfect lover into the perfect beast with a 
 species of sorrow — a dual sorrow in whose 
 component parts there was pity for herself 
 and for him as well. 
 
 The idea that he had married her 
 uniquely because of her father's wealth, 
 that he was impatient to get it, and that 
 when he got it he would squander all he 
 could on other women, occurred to her 
 only in the remotest ways, and then only 
 through some expression which, in his ex- 
 asperation r\ the diminishing bank ac- 
 count and the unreasonable time which it 
 took her father to forgive her, fell from 
 him now and then by chance. For Mis- 
 trial had indeed counted on that forgive- 
 
The Pace that Kills. 1 23 
 
 nesi. He had even counted on receiving 
 it by cable, of finding that it had preceded 
 and awaited them before their ship reached 
 France. And when, to use an idiom of 
 that land, it made itself expected, he was 
 confident that the longer it delayed the 
 completer it would be. At the utmost he 
 had not dreamed that the old man would 
 detain it more than a few months ; but 
 when twenty-four went by, and not only 
 no forgiveness was inanifest, but through 
 his own improvidence the funds ran low, — 
 so low, in fact, that unless forgiveness were 
 presently forthcoming they would be in 
 straits indeed, — he dictated a letter, peni- 
 tent and humble, one in which impending 
 poverty stood out as clearly as though it 
 had been engraved, and which it revolted 
 her to send. Its inspiration, however, 
 must have been patent to Mr. Dunellen, for 
 that gentlemen's reply, expressed in the 
 third person, was to the effect that if his 
 daughter returned to him he would pro- 
 
124 "^h^ P"^*^^ th^^ Kills. 
 
 vide for her as he had always done, but in 
 no other circumstances could he assist. 
 
 Had Justine been anyone but herself 
 she might have acted on the invitation: 
 but the tone of it hurt her ; she was an- 
 noyed at having permitted herself to send 
 the letter Mistrial had dictated, and to 
 which this was the reply. Her pride was 
 up — all the more surely because she knew 
 her father had been right ; and there is just 
 this about pride — as a matter of penitence 
 it forces us to suffer those consequences 
 of our own wrongdping which through a 
 simple confession it were easy to escape. 
 To Justine such confession was impossible. 
 She had left her father in the full certainty 
 that he was wrong, and when she found he 
 was not, death to her were preferable to 
 any admission of the grievousness of her 
 own mistake. 
 
 At this juncture Mistrial's aunt assisted 
 at the funeral of a sister spinster, sat in a 
 draught, caught cold in her throat, and, 
 the glottis enlarging, strangled one night 
 
The Pace that Kills. 1 2 5 
 
 in her bed. By her will the St. Nicho- 
 las Hospital received the bulk of her prop- 
 erty. The rest of her estate was divided 
 among relatives ; to her nephew Roland 
 Mistrial — 3d no longer — was bequeathed 
 the princely sum of ten thousand dollars 
 in cash. At the news of this munificence 
 Roland swore and grit his teeth. Had his 
 circumstances been different it is probable 
 that the ten thousand, together with some 
 enduring insult, he would have flung after 
 her to the eternal purgatory where he 
 prayed she had gone. As it was, the mo- 
 dicity of the bequest sobered him. Through 
 some impalpable logic he had counted but 
 little on any inheritance at all ; he had in- 
 deed hoped vaguely that she might die 
 and leave him what she had ; and it may 
 even be that, had he learned that her will 
 was in his favor, and had a suitable oppor- 
 tunity presented itself, in some perfectly 
 decorous manner he would have hastened 
 his aunt's demise. But concerning her will 
 he had no^ information ; moreover, during 
 
12.6 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 his visit to the States the old lady saw as 
 little of him as she could help ; and when 
 she did see him, in spite of gout and the 
 ailments of advancing years there wa'fe 
 such a rigidity in her manner that the 
 nephew told himself she might live long- 
 enough to see him hanged. As a conse- 
 quence he had expected nothing. But 
 when the news of her death reached him, 
 together with the intelligence that instead 
 of the competence he might possibly have 
 had he was mentioned merely to the tune 
 of ten thousand dollars, — this outrage, in 
 conjunction with Dunellen's relentlessness, 
 sobered him to that degree, that for a day 
 and a night he gave himself to a debauch 
 of thought. From this orgy he issued 
 with clearer mind. It may be — though 
 the idea advanced is one that can only be 
 hazarded — it may be that had his aunt dis- 
 posed of her estate in his favor he would 
 there and then have washed his hands of 
 the job he had undertaken, and left his 
 wife to her own devices. As it was, he 
 
The Pace that Kills. 127 
 
 saw that, to keep his head above water, 
 the only possible plank was one that Mr. 
 Dunellen might send in his reach ; and 
 it was with the knowledge that before 
 the present scanty windfall disappeared 
 some conquest of Honest Paul's affection 
 should be attempted that he determined 
 to return to New York. Once there again, 
 who knew what might happen? Surely, 
 if the preceding year Mr. Dunellen had 
 strength for violence, to the naked eye he 
 was even then manifestly infirm. There 
 was no gainsaying the matter — he at least 
 would not live very long. As to the dis- 
 position of his property after death Mis- 
 trial was still assured. Whatever his atti- 
 tude might be for the present, in the end 
 he could not wholly disinherit Justine — at 
 least one-half the property must come to 
 her. On that fact Mistrial would have 
 staked his life ; after all, it was the one 
 hope he had left ; and an ultimate hope, we 
 all know, is the thing we part with last. 
 Thereupon he recovered himself. He 
 
138 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 became amiable and considerate — a change 
 of demeanor which gave Justine a chill. 
 She consented nevertheless to the return 
 trip, and the day after arriving called at 
 her father's house. When she got back 
 to the hotel where they had put up Mis- 
 trial was waiting for her. In answer to 
 his questions she told him that her father 
 was willing to receive her, but her alone, 
 "'You must take your choice," he had 
 said, she repeated — "You must take your 
 choice." 
 
 " And what is that choice ?" Mistrial had 
 asked. 
 
 "I have made it," she answered, "and 
 by it I will abide." 
 
 But at this he had expostulated ; and 
 when, seeing at last what he meant — un- 
 derstanding that he would have her feign 
 a compliance for the sake of coin which 
 at her father's death she could come back 
 and share with him — when, divining the 
 infamy of his thought, she refused, he had 
 struck her in the face. 
 
The Puce that Kills. I2g 
 
 Because a man is not Chesterfield, it 
 does not follow he is Sykes. Mistrial 
 had never struck a woman before, and in 
 this initial assault it is probable that he 
 was actuated less by a desire to punish 
 than by that force which overmasters htm 
 who has ceased to be master of himself. 
 By instinct he was not a gentleman ; for 
 some time past he had not even taken the 
 trouble to appear one ; yet at that moment, 
 dancing in derision before him, he saw the 
 letters that form the monosyllable Cad. 
 The sense of abasement he displayed was 
 so immediate and sincere, that Justine, 
 who, trembling with anger and disgust, 
 stood staring in his face, read it there and 
 understood. Instead of separating them 
 forever, the blow reunited their hands. 
 During the week that followed they were 
 nearer to each other than they had been 
 for months before. The reconciliation was 
 seemingly complete. Mistrial made him- 
 self the lover again, and Justine permitted 
 herself to be wooed. They left their hotel 
 
r 30 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 and found a flat — a furnished apartment 
 in the neighborhood of Central Park ; and 
 there the storm departing placed a tain- 
 bow in its stead. 
 
 A rainbow, however, is not a fixture, and 
 this one went its way. While Justine 
 closed her eyes Mistrial's were alert. He 
 had no intention of suffering her to be dis- 
 inherited, and though it was well enough 
 to rely on the courts it was better still not 
 to be forced to do so. Rather than run 
 ,an avoidable risk he would have aban- 
 doned his wife, and forced her through 
 that abandonment to return to her father's 
 house, convinced that afterwards he could 
 win her together with the estate back 
 again to him. Meanwhile another inter- 
 view could not in any way jeopardize the 
 chances to which he clung. On the con- 
 trary, it might be highly serviceable. Mr. 
 Dunellen, he had learned, was much 
 broken ; he had given up his practice, the 
 the world even, everything in fact save 
 perhaps the devil that was in him, and sat 
 
The Pace that Kills. 1 3 1 
 
 uncompanioned in the desolate and spa- 
 cious emptiness of his house. It was only 
 natural that he should wish to coerce his 
 daughter into obedience ; yet now that he 
 saw sl^e was steadfast, her pride unhum- 
 bled still, it was not improbable that he 
 would yield ; it was presumable even that 
 he was then waiting, weak of heart, pre- 
 pared at her next advance to welcome and 
 forgive. 
 
 Of these things Mistrial made his wife 
 aware, and it was then that the rainbow 
 departed. His arguments were as revolt- 
 ing as the cynicism they exhaled. But she 
 made no attempt to combat them. Since 
 she had seen her father she had felt a sorrow 
 for him that Mistrial's altered demeanor 
 had given her time to heed. She knew 
 that his attitude was due to her defiance 
 of his express commands, but she had no 
 reason to suppose that he had any other 
 objection to her husband than such as his 
 poverty might have caused or instinctive 
 antipathy might bring. But now, her own 
 
1 3? The Pace that Kills. 
 
 experience^ aiding, she knew that he had 
 been right ; and, as he seemed ""feeble and 
 dispassionate, in answer to Mistrial's argu- 
 ments she tied her bonnet-strings and 
 went. It was early in the afternoon when 
 she started, it was night when she re- 
 turned. 
 
 Mistrial had been waiting for her, and 
 when she entered the room in which he 
 sat he rose eagerly and aided her with her 
 wrap. He was impatient, she could see ; 
 and she was impatient also. 
 
 " Why did you not tell me of Guy's sis- 
 ter ?" she began, at once. 
 
 And as he answered nothing she con- 
 tinued : " Years ago I knew of what she 
 died ; it was only to-day I learned that it 
 was you who murdered her." 
 "It is a lie." 
 
 " Oh, protest. I knew you would." 
 " From whom is it you heard this thing ? 
 Not from your father, I am sure." As 
 Mistrial spoke he gazed at her inquisitori- 
 ally with shrewd, perplexing eyes. 
 
The Pace that Kills. 133 
 
 "What does it matter?" she answered. 
 Her head was thrown back, her lips com- 
 pressed. " What does it matter since the 
 charge is true ?" 
 
 " But it is false," he cried ; " it is a wan- 
 ton lie. Your father never could have 
 stated it." 
 
 " Ah, but he did, though ; and Guy was 
 there to substantiate what he said." 
 
 " Guy !" As he pronounced her cousin's 
 name there came into his face an expres- 
 sion which she knew and which she had 
 learned to dread. " Madam, you mean 
 your lover, I suppose. And it is his ipse 
 dixit you accept in preference to mine ?" 
 
 " Mistrial, you know he is not my lover." 
 
 " I know he was in love with you, and 
 you with him." 
 
 " So he was ; so he is, I think ; and it was 
 not until this night I saw my own mis- 
 take." 
 
 " Voila !" said Roland, suddenly calmed. 
 He paused a second, and after eying the 
 polish of his finger-nails, affected to flick 
 
1 34 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 a speck of dust from his sleeve. "Your 
 cousin is mad," he added. 
 
 " He is sane as — " and Justine Jiesitated 
 for a simile. 
 
 " His mothef, you mean. Were you 
 never aware that insanity is hereditary? 
 If his sister — presupposing that the accusa- 
 tion which he formulates against me was 
 originally advanced by her — if his sister — 
 whom, by the way, I never saw but once — 
 if his sister accused me of complicity, then 
 she suffered from the hereditary taint as 
 well. If I was guilty of what your cousin 
 charges, why was I not arrested, tried, and 
 sentenced ? But are you such a dolt you 
 cannot see that Guy is mad — mad not only 
 by nature, but crazed by jealousy as well. 
 You say you know he loves you. You 
 have even the candor to admit that you 
 love him ! Now ask yourself what would 
 any impartial hearer deduce ^from state- 
 ments such as yours ?" 
 
 " My father was an impartial hearer, and 
 he—" 
 
The Pace that Kills. 135 
 
 " But how is it possible to be so blind ? 
 Can you not see that your cousin has preju- 
 diced him against me ? I said, impartial 
 hearer. But let the matter drop. I tell 
 you the charge is false ; believe it or not, as 
 you prefer. There>is, however, just this in 
 the matter : if the charge is made again, I 
 will have your cousin under arrest. You 
 forget that there is such a thing as libel 
 still." 
 
 Again he paused, and strove to collect 
 himself ; there was a design in the carpet 
 which appeared to interest him very much, 
 but presently he looked up again. 
 
 "Now tell me," he said, "what did your 
 father say ?" 
 
 "Nothing, save what he said before." 
 
 " Nothing ? " 
 
 " Nothing that you would care to hear. " 
 Her eyes roamed from the neighbourly 
 ceiling over to him and back again. " He 
 said," she added, "that if I persisted in 
 living with you his money would go to my 
 
136 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 child, if I had one ; if I had none, then to 
 Guy." 
 
 " Were you alone with him when he said 
 this, or was Guy, as you call him, there ?" 
 
 " No, I was alone with him ; Guy came 
 later." 
 
 " And is he aware of this provision ?" 
 
 For all response Justine shrugged her 
 shoulders. 
 
 "Does he know it, I ask you !"' 
 
 " He does not," she answered. " Father 
 told me that he never would, until the will 
 was read." 
 
 "H'm." And for a moment Mistrial 
 mused. Then presently he smiled — ^yet 
 was it a smile ? — a look that an hallucinated 
 monk in a medieval abbey might have seen 
 on that imaginary demon who, flitting by 
 him, the forefinger outstretched, whispered 
 as he vanished through the wall, "Thou 
 art damned, dear friend ! thou art damned !'" 
 "H'm," he repeated ; "and in view of the 
 provisions of your father's will, will you tell 
 me why is it that you are without a child ?" 
 
The Pace that Kills. 137 
 
 As he spoke he had arisen, and, smiling 
 still, though now as were he questioning 
 her in regard to the state of the weather, 
 he looked into her eyes. She had drawn 
 yet further back into the chair in which 
 she sat ; a deadly sickness overcame her ; to 
 her head there mounted the nausea of each 
 one of his many misdeeds. The memory 
 of the blow of the week before, one which, 
 despite her seeming forbearance, had not 
 ceased to rankle, returned to her ; and with 
 it, one after another in swift succession, she 
 rememorated the offences of the past. But 
 soon she too was on her feet and fronted 
 him. "Why is it I am without a child?" 
 she repeated. Her voice was low and clear, 
 and between each word she permitted a 
 little pause to intervene. "Why is it?" 
 
 The subtlety of his reproach battening 
 on nerves already overwrought was excit-" 
 ing her as nothing had done before. " It 
 is you," she cried, "who are to blame. 
 What have you done with your youth ? 
 What have you done with your manhood ?■ 
 
138 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 Look at me, Roland Mistrial ! If I have 
 borne you no child it is because monsters 
 never engender." As she spoke, with one 
 gesture she tore her bodice down. Her 
 breast, palpitant with health and anger too, 
 heaving at the sheer injustice of his re- 
 proach, confronted and confuted him. " It 
 is there that women have their strength ; 
 tell me, if you can, what have you done 
 with yours ?" 
 
 And thereat, with a look a princess might 
 give to a lackey who had dared to question 
 her, she turned and left him where he 
 stood. 
 
 The next day he tried to make his peace 
 with her. In this he succeeded, or flattered 
 himself he had, for subsequently she con- 
 sented to accompany him to the play. 
 And as she sat in the stalls it was of these 
 things that she thought. 
 
The Pace that Kills. 139 
 
 II. 
 
 The information which Mistrial gleaned 
 cancerning the provisions of his father-in- 
 law's will was bitter in his mouth. On 
 the morrow he gave some time to thought 
 — he read too a little. The taunt which 
 Justine had flung at him, bit ; and with the 
 idea of dulling the hurt and of ministering 
 also to his own refreshment, he consulted 
 a book which treated of certain conditions 
 of the nervous system, and a work on med- 
 ical jurisprudence as well. But literature 
 of that kind is notoriously unsatisfactory. 
 It may suggest, yet the questions which it 
 prompts remain unanswered. Roland put 
 the volumes down : they were productions 
 of genius, no doubt, but to him they were 
 nothing more. From the pursuit of exact 
 knowledge he turned and looked out into 
 the street. 
 
I40 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 The hour then was midway in one of 
 those green afternoons which we are apt to 
 fancy the adjunct of lands we never see, 
 and as he looked he saw astride a bay 
 hunter a man ambling cautiously over the 
 stones. From the roofs opposite a breath 
 of lilacs came, and a bree/e that was 
 neither cool nor warm loitered on its way 
 from the river beyond. Mistrial let the 
 breeze, the fragrance, the fulfilment of 
 spring, pass unnoticed. The bay hunter 
 had caught his eye ; it seemed to him that 
 an argument with an imperative horse was 
 just the thing he needed most, and a little 
 later he secured a cob from a stable on the 
 street above. 
 
 The cob was docile enough, affecting 
 once only to regard a sewer-grating in the 
 bridle-path as a strange, unhallowed thing 
 which it was needful to avoid. But the 
 initial shy was the last. The spur gave him 
 such a nip that during the remainder of the 
 ride, whatever distasteful object he may 
 have encountered, he gave no outward evi- 
 
The Pace that Kills. 141 
 
 dence of abhorrence. He had an easy can- 
 ter, a long and swinging trot ; and now on 
 one, now on the other, they passed through 
 and out of the Park, and on beyond the 
 brand-new edifices that line Seventh Av- 
 enue, to that scantier outlying district 
 where the Harlem begins and the city ends. 
 And here as he was about to turn he no- 
 ticed a gig such as physicians affect. In it 
 was a negro driving, and at his side sat 
 Justine's cousin, Guy. 
 
 " H'm !" mused Mistrial ; " judging by 
 the locality, his patients must be the last 
 people in the city." At the moment the 
 feebleness of the jest pleasured him ; then 
 simultaneously the unforgotten hatred 
 crackled in his breast. At each one of the 
 important epochs of his life that man had 
 stood in his way. It was he that had 
 forced him from college at the moment 
 when honors were within his reach. It 
 was . he that had kept him from his fa- 
 ther's side at the time when he might 
 have saved his father's estate. It was 
 
142 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 he that had come between Dunellen and 
 himself at the hour when he could have 
 persuaded Justine's father to give him 
 Justine's hand. It was he that had forced 
 him to elope with her. It was because of 
 him that he was now enjoying the small 
 miseries of the shabby genteel. It was 
 he, unless Providence now intervened, who 
 would inherit the wealth he had toiled to 
 make his own. And it was he who the day 
 before had again crossed and halted in his 
 path. 
 
 These premises, however colored, were 
 logical enough in this — the natural deduc- 
 tion sprang out and greeted the eye. And, 
 as they flashed before him, Mistrial saw 
 himself rinsing out each one in blood 
 squeezed from Thorold's throat. In the 
 fury which suddenly beset him he could 
 have found the strength, the courage it 
 may be, to have torn him from the gig in 
 which he sat, to have trampled on him 
 with horse's hoo/s, bent over and beat him 
 as he writhed on the ground, and exulted 
 
The Pace that Kills. 143 
 
 and jubilated in the doing of it. Then in- 
 deed, though he swung for it, the ultimate 
 victory would be his. If he stamped Thor- 
 old out of existence, though his own went 
 with it, he would not have suffered wholly 
 in vain ; in facing the gallows he would 
 have the joy of knowing that even were 
 he prevented from bathing in the Dunellen 
 millions, so was Thorold too. 
 
 But when he looked out from himself 
 his enemy had disappeared. A woman in 
 an open landau passed and bowed. Me- 
 chanically Mistrial raised his hat. To 
 every intent and purpose he was self-pos- 
 sessed — occupied, if at all, but with those 
 threads of fancy that float in and out the 
 mind. As he raised his hat, he smiled ; 
 the woman might have thought herself 
 the one it gave him the -greatest pleasure 
 to salute. Her carriage had not advanced 
 the jump of a cat before he had forgotten 
 that she lived. But no one can turn his 
 brain into a stage, create for it, and feel a 
 drama such as he had without some out- 
 
144 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 ward manifestation, be it merely a stran- 
 gled oath. On the horse he rode his 
 knees had tightened, he gave a dig with 
 the spur, and went careering down the 
 street. In that part of New York you are 
 at liberty to cover a mile ii> two minutes, 
 Roland covered thirty squares at break- 
 neck speed. 
 
 " Presently he drew the animal in and 
 suffered him to walk. During the run he 
 had had no time to think ; he had been oc- 
 cupied only in keeping ihe horse he rode 
 out of the way of vehicles, and in prevent- 
 ing that possible cropper which comes 
 when we expect it least. , But as the cob 
 began to walk, the present returned to him 
 with a rush. About the animal's neck the 
 fretting of the reins had produced a lather ; 
 the breeze had died away. Mistrial felt 
 overheated too, and he drew out a hand- 
 kerchief and wiped his face. Even while 
 he drew it from his pocket an idea came 
 to him, fluttered for a second as ideas will, 
 and before he got the handkerchief back 
 
The Pace that Kills. 145 
 
 it had gone, leaving him just a trifled 
 dazed. But in a moment he called to it, 
 and at his bidding it returned. It was 
 minute, barely fledged as yet ; but as the 
 horse jogged on, little by little it expanded, 
 and to such an extent that before he 
 reached the park its pinions stretched 
 from earth to sky. Whoso is visited with 
 inspirations knows with what diabolical 
 swifness they can enlarge and grow. When 
 Mistrial put the horse back in the stable 
 the idea which at first he had but dimly 
 intercepted possessed him utterly. It 
 succeeded even in detaining his step : he 
 walked up the street instead of down ; at a 
 crossing he hesitated ; night had come, and 
 as he loitered there, suddenly the whole 
 avenue was bright as day. The vengeance 
 which not an hour before he could have 
 wreaked on Thorold seemed now remote 
 and paltry too. There need be no shedding 
 of blood, no scandal, no newspaper notori- 
 ety, no police, no coroner to sit upon a 
 corpse, no jury to bring a verdict in. There 
 
146 ' The Pace that Kills. 
 
 need be nothing of this : a revenge of that 
 order was in bad taste, ill-judged as well. 
 To make a man really suffer, sudden death 
 was as a balm in comparison to some sub- 
 tle torment that should gnaw at the 
 springs of life, retreat a moment, and then 
 returning make them ache again, and still 
 again, forever his whole life through. 
 The French woman is not so ill-advised 
 when she pitches a cup of vitriol in her be- 
 trayer's face. In Spain, in Italy even, they 
 stab ; the deed is done ; the culprit has had 
 no chance to experience anger, pain even, 
 or remorse. He is dead. The curtain 
 falls. But a revenge that blasts and cor- 
 rodes, one that leaves the victim living, 
 sound in body and in limb, and yet con- 
 sumed by an inextinguishable regret, burn- 
 ing with tortures from which he can 
 never escape— a thing like that is the 
 work, not of an apprentice, but of a mas- 
 ter in crime. Yet when the victim receives 
 that cup of vitriol, not from another's 
 hands, but from his own ; when he has 
 
The Pace that Kills. 147 
 
 been lured into devastating his own self ; — • 
 it is no longer a question of either appren- 
 tice or of master : it is the artist that has 
 been at work. To gain the Dunellen mil- 
 lions was to Mistrial a matter of para- 
 mount importance ; but to gain them 
 through the instrumentality of the man 
 whom he hated as no one ever hates to- 
 day, particularly when that man was the 
 one to whom those millions were provi- 
 sionally bequeathed, when he was one 
 whom Mistrial — justly or unjustly, it mat- 
 ters not — fancied and believed was plot- 
 ting for them ; to gain them, not only 
 through him, but through his unwitting, 
 unintentional agency, through an act which, 
 so soon as he learned its purport, all his 
 life through he would regret and curse ; — 
 no, that were indeed a revenge and a rep- 
 aration too. And as he thought of it there 
 entered his eyes a look perplexing and 
 enervating — that look which demons share 
 with sphinxes and the damned. 
 
148 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 III. 
 
 During the two years which Mistrial 
 had passed in the society of his wife, op- 
 portunities of studying. her there had been 
 in plenty. He knew her to be docile and 
 headstrong ; weak, if at all, but with that 
 weakness that comes of lassitude ; violent 
 when provoked, prone to forgive, sensi- 
 tive, impulsive, yet obdurate ; in brief, the 
 type of woman that may be entreated, but 
 never coerced. He knew her faults so 
 well he could have enumerated them 
 one after the other on his finger-tips : her 
 qualities, however, had impressed him less ; 
 it may be that he had accepted them as a 
 matter of course. He was aware that she 
 was honest ; he had noticed that she .was 
 capable of much self-sacrifice ; of other 
 characteristics he had given little heed. 
 It goes without the telling, that in regard 
 
^ 
 
 The Pace that Kills. I49 
 
 to what is known as jealousy he had not 
 suffered even an evanescent disquietude. 
 And that night and during the morning 
 that followed, as he occupied himself in 
 nursing the idea which had visited him on 
 horseback, that particular fact occurred 
 to him more than once. But one does not 
 need to be a conspirator to understand 
 that the steadiest virtue is as susceptible 
 of vice as iron is of rust. 
 
 Justine had announced that her cousin 
 was still in love with her ; she had an- 
 nounced with equal distinctness that she 
 recognized her own mistake ; while for 
 himself he was convinced that she no 
 longer cared. To these things he^ added 
 certain deductions which his experience of 
 men and women permitted him to draw ; 
 and had the result they presented been 
 made to order, it could not have fitted 
 more perfectly into the scheme which he 
 had devised. 
 
 It was then high noon. Through the 
 window came the irresistible breath of a 
 
150 The Pace that Kills 
 
 rose in bloom. As he left the house it 
 surrounded him in the street. He smiled 
 a greeting at it. "I have spring in my 
 favor," he mused, and presently boarded a 
 car. 
 
 The principles of successful enterprise 
 may be summarized as consisting of a 
 minute regard for details, and an apparent 
 absence of zeal. Mistrial's many mistakes 
 had taught him the one and trained him 
 in the other. When the car he had taken 
 reached the Gilsey House, he alighted, 
 hailed a four-wheeler, stationed it in such 
 a manner that it commanded a view of the 
 adjacent street, coached the driver in re- 
 gard to a signal he might give, entered 
 the cab, lit a cigarette, and prepared to 
 wait. 
 
 In that neighborhood there are four or 
 five basement houses of the style that is 
 affectioned by milliners, dentists, and phy- 
 sicians. One of these particularly claimed 
 Mistrial's attention. He saw a woman in 
 gray enter it, and almost simultaneously 
 
The Pace thai Kills. 1 5 1 
 
 a woman come out ; then a man leading a 
 child went in ; and in a little while the first 
 woman reappeared. Mistrial glanced at 
 his watch ; it lacked a minute of one. " He 
 has a larger practice than I thought," he 
 reflected. The woman in gray had now 
 nearly reached the cab in which he sat, 
 and from sheer force of habit he was pre- 
 paring to scrutinize her as she passed, 
 when the door of the house reopened and 
 Thorold appeared on the step. He looked 
 up the street, then down. He had his hat 
 on, and his every-day air. In a second 
 Mistrial had drawn the curtain and was 
 peering through the opening at the side. 
 He saw Thorold leave the step and turn 
 toward Fifth Avenue; he signalled to th; 
 driver, and the cab moved on. 
 
 At the corner Thorold turned again, the 
 cab at his heels, and Mistrial saw that the 
 physician was moving in the direction of 
 Madison Square. It occurred to him that 
 Thorold might be going to Mr. Dunellen's, 
 and on the block below, as the latter 
 
152 The Pace that Kilts. 
 
 crossed the asphalt, he made sure of it. 
 But opposite the Brunswick the cab 
 stopped ; Thorold was entering the restau- 
 rant. 
 
 Cold chicken looks attractive in print. 
 A minute or two later, as Mistrial exam- 
 ined the bill of fare, he ordered some for 
 himself ; he ordered also a Demidorf salad, 
 — a compound of artichokes' hearts and 
 truffles, familiarly known as Half-Mourn- 
 ing, — and until the waiter returned hid 
 himself behind a paper. Thorold mean- 
 while, who was seated at an adjoining 
 table, must have ordered something which 
 required longer preparation, for Mistrial 
 finished the salad before the physician 
 was served. But Mistrial was in no hurry ; 
 he had a pint of claret brought him, and 
 sipped it leisurely. Now and then he 
 glanced over at Thorold, and twice he 
 caught his eye. At last Thorold called for 
 his bill. Mistrial paid his own, and pres- 
 ently followed him out into the street. 
 When both reached the sidewalk. Mistrial, 
 
The Pace that Kills. 153 
 
 who was a trifle in the rear, touched him 
 on the arm. 
 
 "Thorold," he said; and the physician 
 turned, but there was nothing engaging in 
 his attitude : he held his head to one side, 
 about his lips was a compression, a con- 
 traction in his eyes; one arm was pendent, 
 the other pressed to his waistcoat, and the 
 shoulder of that arm was slightly raised. 
 He looked querulous and annoyed — a trifle 
 startled, too. 
 
 "Thorold," Mistrial repeated, "give me 
 a moment, will you ?" 
 
 The physician raised the arm that he 
 had pressed against his waistcoat, and, 
 with four fingers straightened and the 
 fifth askew, stroked an imaginary whisker. 
 
 "It is about Justine," Mistrial continued. 
 " She is out of sorts ; I want you to see 
 ner." 
 
 "Ah !" And Thorold looked down and 
 away. 
 
 "Yes, I had intended to speak to Dr. 
 McMasters ; but when by the merest 
 
154 1^^^ Pflt^ that Kills. 
 
 chance I saw you in there I told myselt 
 that, whatever our differences might be, 
 there was no one who would understand 
 the case more readily than you." 
 
 As Mistrial spoke he imitated the discre- 
 tion of his enemy; he looked down and 
 away. The next moment, however, both 
 were gazing into each other's face. 
 
 "H'm." Thorold, as he stared, seemed 
 to muse. "I saw her the other day," he 
 said, at last ; " she looked well enough 
 then." 
 
 "But can't a person look well and yet 
 be out of sorts ?" 
 
 Mistrial was becoming angry, and he 
 showed it. It was evident, however, that 
 his irritation was caused less by the man 
 to whom he sproke than by the physician 
 whom he was seeking to consult. This 
 Thorold seemed to grasp, for he answered 
 perplexedly : 
 
 "After what has happened I don't see 
 very well how I can go to your house." 
 
 " Look here, Thorold : the past is over 
 
The Pace that Kills. iJJ 
 
 and done with — ill done, you will say, and 
 I admit it. Be that as it may, it has gone. 
 At the same time there is no reason why 
 any shadow of it should fall on Justine. 
 She is really in need of some one's advice. 
 Can you not give it to her ?" 
 
 "Certainly," Thorold answered, "I can 
 do that ;" and he looked very sturdy as he 
 said it. " Only—" 
 
 " Only what ? If you can't go as a friend, 
 at least you might go as a physician." 
 
 Thorold's hand had slid from his cheek 
 to his chin, and he nibbled reflectively at a 
 finger-nail. 
 
 "Very good," he said; "I will go to her. 
 Is she to be at home this afternoon ?" 
 
 "The evening would be better, I think. 
 Unless, of course — " and Mistrial made a 
 gesture as though to imply that, if Thor- 
 old's evening were engaged, a visit in the 
 afternoon might be attempted. 
 
 But the suggestion presumably was ■ac- 
 ceptable. Thorold drew out a note-book, 
 at which he glanced. 
 
 "And I say," Mistrial continued, "I 
 
1 56 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 wish — you see, it is a delicate matter ; Jus- 
 tine is very sensitive — I wish you wouldn't 
 say you met me. Just act as though — " 
 
 " Give yourself no uneasiness, sir." Thor- 
 old had replaced the note-boot and looked 
 up again in Mistrial's face, "I never men- 
 tion your name." And thereat, with a toss 
 of the head, he dodged an omnibus and 
 crossed the street. 
 
 For a moment Mistrial gazed after him, 
 then he turned, and presently he was 
 ordering a glass of brandy at the Bruns- 
 wick bar. 
 
 It was late that night when he reached 
 his home. During the days that followed 
 he had no fixed hours at all. Several 
 times he entered the apartment with the 
 smallest amount of noise that was possible, 
 and listened at the sitting-room door. At 
 last he must have heard something that 
 pleased him,for as he sought his own room 
 he smiled. " Maintenant,mon cher,je te Hens." 
 
 The next day he surprised Justine by in- 
 forming her that he intended to pay a vi«t 
 to a relative. He was gone a week. 
 
The Pace that Kills. IS7 
 
 IV. 
 
 That night the stars, dim and distant, 
 were scattered like specks of frost on some 
 wide, blue window-piine. At intervals a 
 shiver of wheels crunching the resistant 
 snow stirred the lethargy of the street, and 
 at times a rumble accentuated by the chill 
 of winter mounted gradually, and passed 
 on in diminishing vibrations. Within, a 
 single light, burning scantily, diffused 
 through the room the drowsiness of a 
 spell. In the bed was Justine, her eyes 
 dilated, her face attenuated and pinched. 
 One hand that lay on the coverlid was 
 clinched so tightly that the nails must have 
 entered the flesh. Presently she moaned, 
 and a trim little woman issued from a cor- 
 ner with the noiseless wariness of a rat. 
 As she passed before the night-light, the 
 silhouette of a giantess, fabulously obese, 
 
158 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 jumped out and vanished from the wall. 
 For a moment she scrutinized her charge, 
 burrowing into her, as it were, with shrewd 
 yet kindly eyes. Again a moan escaped 
 the sufferer, the wail of one whose agony 
 is lancinating — one that ascended in cres- 
 cendos and terminated in a cry of such ut- 
 ter helplessness, and therewith of such in- 
 sistent pain, that the nurse caught the hand 
 that lay on the coverlid, and unlocking the 
 fingers stroked and held it in her own. 
 "There, dear heart — there, I know." 
 
 Ah, yes, she knew very well. She had 
 not passed ten years of her existence tend- 
 ing women in travail for the fun of it. 
 And as she took Justine's hand and stroked 
 it, she knew that in a little while the agony, 
 acuter still, would lower her charge into 
 that vestibule of death where Life appears. 
 Whether or not Justine was- to cross that 
 silent threshold, whether happily she would 
 find it barred, whether it would greet and 
 keep her and hold her there, whether in- 
 deed it would let the child go free, an hour 
 would tell, or two at most. 
 
The Pace that Kills. ijg 
 
 But there were preparations to be made. 
 The nurse left the bed and moved out into 
 the hall. In a room near by, Mistrial, oc- 
 cupied with some advertisements in the 
 Post^ sat companioned by a physician who 
 was reading a book which he had writ- 
 ten himself. At the footfall of the nurse 
 the latter left the room. Presently he re- 
 turned. " Everything is going nicely," he 
 announced, and placidly resumed his seat. 
 
 It was the fourth time in two hours that 
 he had made that same remark. Mistrial 
 said nothing. He was gazing through the 
 paper he held at the wall opposite, and out 
 of it into the future beyond. 
 
 Since that day, the previous spring, on 
 which he had set out to visit a relative, 
 many things had happened, yet but few 
 that were of importance to him. On his 
 return from the trip, during one fleeting 
 second, for the first time since he had 
 known Justine, it seemed to him that she 
 avoided his eyes. To this, in other cir- 
 cumstances, he would have given no 
 
i6o The Pace that Kills, 
 
 thought whatever; as matters were, it 
 made him feel that his excursion should 
 not be regarded as time ill-spent. Whether 
 it had been wholly serviceable to his proj- 
 ect, he could not at the time decide. He 
 waited, however, very patiently, but he 
 seldom waited within the apartment walls. 
 At that period he developed a curious fa- 
 cility for renewing relations with former 
 friends. Once he took a run to Chicago 
 with an Englishman he had known in 
 Japan ; and once, with the brother of a lady 
 who had married into the Baxter branch 
 of the house of Mistrial, he went on a fish- 
 ing trip to Canada. These people he did 
 not bring to call on his wife. He seemed 
 to act as though solitude were grateful to 
 her. Save Mrs. Metuchen, Thorold at 
 that time was her only visitor, and the vis- 
 its of that gentleman Mistrial encouraged 
 in every way that he could devise. Through 
 meetings that, parenthetically, were more 
 frequent on the stair or in the hallway than 
 anywhere else, the two men, through sheer 
 
The Pace that Kills. i6i 
 
 force of circumstances, dropped into an 
 exchange of salutations — remarks about 
 the weather, reciprocal inquiries on the 
 subject of each other's health, which, wholly 
 formal on Thorold's part, were from Mis- 
 trial always civil and aptly put. After all, 
 was he not the host ? and was it not for him 
 to show particular courtesy to anyone 
 whom his wife received ? 
 
 To her, meanwhile, his attitude was little 
 short of perfection itself. He was consid- 
 erate, foresighted, and unobtrusive — a 
 course of conduct which frightened her a 
 little. Two or three months after he had 
 struck her in the face she made — h propos 
 of nothing at all — an announcement which 
 brought a trace of color to her cheeks. 
 
 The following afternoon he happened to 
 be entering the house as Dr. Thorold was 
 leaving it. Instead of greeting him in the 
 nice and amiable fashion which he had 
 adopted, and which Thorold had ended by 
 accepting as a matter of course, he halted 
 and looked at the physician through half- 
 
1 62 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 closed eyes. Thorold nodded, cavalierly 
 enough it is true, and was about to pass 
 on; but this Mistrial prevented. He planted 
 himself squarely in his way, and stuck his 
 hands in his pockets. 
 
 " Mrs. Mistrial has no further need of 
 you," he said. " Send your bill to me." 
 
 He spoke from the tips of his lips, with 
 the air and manner of one dismissing a 
 lackey. At the moment nothing pertinent 
 coulihave occurred to Thorold. He stared 
 at Mistrial, dumbly perplexed, and plucked 
 at his cuff. Mistrial nodded as who should 
 say, " Put that in your pipe ;" and before 
 Thorold recovered his self-possession he 
 had passed up the stairs and on and out of 
 sight. 
 
 It was then that season in which July 
 has come and is going. The :ity was hot ; 
 torrid at noonday, sultry and enervating 
 at night. Fifth Avenue and the adjacent 
 precincts were empty. Each one of the 
 brown-stone houses had a Leah-like air of 
 desertion. The neighborhood of Madison 
 
The Pace that Kills. 163 
 
 and of Union Squares was peopled by men 
 with large eyes and small feet, by women 
 so deftly painted that, like Correggio, they 
 could have exclaimed, "AncK io son pittore." 
 In brief, the Southern invasion had begun, 
 and New York had ceased to be habit- 
 able. 
 
 But Newport has charms of its own ; and 
 to that lovely city by the water Mistrial 
 induced his wife ; and there, until summer 
 had departed, and autumn too, they rested 
 and waited. During those months he was 
 careful of her : so pleasantly so, so studious 
 of what she did and of what she ate, that 
 for the first time since the honeymoon she 
 might have, had she tried, felt at ease with 
 him again. But there were things that 
 prevented this — faith destroyed and the 
 regret of it. Oh, indeed she had regrets 
 in plenty ; some even for her father ; and, 
 unknown to Mistrial, once or twice she 
 wrote him such letters as a daughter may 
 write. She had never been in sympathy 
 with him ; as a child he had coerced her 
 
I ©4 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 needlessly ; when she was older he had 
 preached ; later, divining that lack of 
 sympathy, he had striven through kindlier 
 ways to counteract it. But he had failed ; 
 and Justine, aiding in the endeavor, had 
 failed as well. When father and child do 
 not stand hand-in-hand a fibre is wanting 
 that should be there. 
 
 In December Mistrial and his wife re- 
 turned to town. A date was approaching, 
 and there was the layette to be prepared. 
 Hour after hour Justine's fingers sped. 
 The apartment became a magazine of 
 swaddling-clothes. One costume in par- 
 ticular, a worsted sack that was not much 
 larger than a coachman's glove, duplicated 
 and repeated itself in varying and tender 
 hues. Occasionally Mistrial would pick 
 one up and examine it furtively. To his 
 vagabond fancy it suggested a bag in which 
 gold would be. 
 
 But now the hour was reached. And 
 as Mistrial sat staring into the future, 
 the goal to which he had striven kept 
 
The Pace that Kills. 165 
 
 looming nearer and ever nearer yet. 
 Only the day before he had learned that 
 Dunellen was failing. And what a luxury 
 it would be to him when the old man 
 died and the will was read ! Such a 
 luxury did it appear, that unconsciously 
 he manifested his contentment by that 
 sound the glutton makes at the mention 
 of delicious food. 
 
 His companion — the physician — turned 
 and nodded. "I know what you are think- 
 ing about," he announced ; and with the 
 rapt expression of a seer, half to Mis- 
 trial, half to the ceiling, " It is always the 
 case," he continued; "I never knew a 
 father yet that did not wonder what the 
 child would be ; and the mothers, oh ! the 
 mothers ! Some of them know all about 
 it beforehand : they want a girl, and a girl 
 It will be ; or they want a boy, and a boy 
 they are to have. I remember one dear, 
 good soul who. was so positive she was to 
 have a boy that she had all the linen 
 marked with the name she had chosen for 
 
1 66 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 him. H'm. It turned out to be twins — i 
 both girls. And I remember — " 
 
 But Mistrial had ceased to listen. He 
 was off again discounting the inheritance 
 in advance — discounting, too, the diabolism 
 of his revenge. The latter, indeed, was 
 unique, and withal so grateful, that now the 
 consummation was at hand it fluttered his 
 pulse like wine. He had ravened when 
 first he learned the tenour of the will, and 
 his soul had been bitter ; but no sooner had 
 this thing occurred to him than it resolved 
 itself into a delight. To his disordered 
 fancy its provisions held both vitriol and 
 opopanax — the one for Thorold, the other 
 for himself. 
 
 The doctor meanwhile was running on 
 as doctors do. "Yes," Mistrial heard him 
 say, " she was most unhappy ; no woman 
 likes a rival, and when that rival is her own 
 maid, matters are not improved. For my 
 part, the moment I saw how delicate she 
 was, I thought, though I didn't dare to say 
 so, I thought her husband had acted with 
 
77^1? Pace that Kills. 167 
 
 great forethought. The maid was strong 
 as an ox, and in putting her in the same 
 condition as his wife he had simply and 
 solely supplied her with a wet-nurse. But 
 then, at this time particularly, women are 
 so unreasonable. Not your good lady — a 
 sweeter disposition — " 
 
 Whatever encomium he intended to make 
 remained unfinished. From the room be- 
 yond a cry filtered ; he turned hastily and 
 disappeared. The cry subsided ; but pres- 
 ently, as though in the interval the sufferer 
 had found new strength or new torture, it 
 rose more stridently than before. And as 
 the rumor of it augmented and increased, 
 a phrase of the physician's returned to 
 Mistrial. " Everything is going very nice- 
 ly," he told himself, and began to pace the 
 floor. 
 
 A fraction of an hour passed, a second, 
 and a third. The cry now had changed 
 singularly ; it had lost its penetrating vol- 
 ume, it had sunk into the rasping moan of 
 one dreaming in a fever. Suddenly that 
 
1 68 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 ceased, the silence was complete, and Mis- 
 trial, a trifle puzzled, moved out into the 
 hall. There he caught again the murmur 
 of her voice. This time she was talking 
 very rapidly, in a continuous flow of words. 
 From where he stood Mistrial could not 
 hear what she was saying, and he groped 
 on tip-toe down the hall. As he reached 
 the door of the room in which she was, the 
 sweet and heavy odor of chloroform came 
 out and met him there ; but still the flow 
 of words continued uninterruptedly, one 
 after the other, with the incoherence of a 
 nightmare monologuing in a corpse. Then, 
 without transition, in the very middle of a 
 word, a cry of the supremest agony rang 
 out, drowning another, which was but a 
 vague complaint. 
 
 "It's a boy," the nurse exclaimed. 
 
 And Justine through a rift of conscious- 
 ness caught and detained the speech. " So 
 much the better," she moaned ; " he will 
 never give birth." 
 
The Pace that Kills. 165 
 
 V. 
 
 "We brought nothing into this world, 
 and it is certain we can carry nothing out. 
 The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken 
 away : blessed be the name of the Lord." 
 
 To this, Mistrial, garbed in black, re- 
 sponded discreetly, "Amen." 
 
 He was standing opposite the bier. At 
 his side was Justine. Before him Dr. 
 Gonfallon, rector of the Church of Geth- 
 semane, — of which the deceased had been 
 warden, — was conducting the funeral rites. 
 To the left was Thorold. Throughout the 
 length and breadth of the drawing-room 
 other people stood — a sprinkling of remote 
 connections, former constituents, members 
 of the bar and of the church, a few poli- 
 ticians ; these, together with a handful of 
 the helpless to whom the dead statesman 
 had been trustee, counsellor too, and guide, 
 
170 The Pace that Kills.. 
 
 had assembled there in honor of his mem- 
 ory. At the door, sharpening a pencil, was 
 a representative of the Associated Press. 
 
 For the past few days obituaries of the 
 Hon. Paul Dunellen varied from six inches 
 to a column in length. One journal alone 
 had been circumspect. No mention of the 
 deceased had appeared in its issues. But 
 in politics that journal had differed with 
 him — a fact which accounted sufficiently 
 for its silence. In the others, however, 
 through biographies more or less exact, 
 fitting tributes had been paid. The World 
 gave his picture. 
 
 Yet now, as Dr. Gonfallon, in words 
 well calculated to impress, dwelt on the 
 virtues of him that had gone, the tributes 
 of the newspapers seemed perfunctory and 
 trite. Decorously, as was his custom, he 
 began with a platitude. Death, that is 
 terrible to the sinner, radiant to the Chris- 
 tian, imposing to all, was here, he declared, 
 but the dusk of a beautiful day which in 
 departing disclosed cohorts of the Eternal 
 
The Pace that Kills. 171 
 
 beckoning from their glorious realm. Yet 
 soon he warmed to his work, and eulogies 
 of the deceased fell from him in sonorous 
 periods, round and empty. He spoke of 
 the nobility of his character, the loyalty 
 he displayed, not to friends alone, but to 
 foes as well. He spoke of that integrity 
 in every walk of life which had won for 
 him the title of Honest Paul — a title an 
 emperor might crave and get not. He 
 spoke too of the wealth he had acquired, 
 and drew a moral from the unostentatious- 
 ness of his charities, the simplicity of his 
 ways. He dwelt at length on the fact 
 that, however multiple the duties of his 
 station had been, his duty to his Maker 
 was ever first. Then, after a momentary 
 digression, in which he stated how great 
 was the loss of such as he, he alluded to 
 the daughter he had left, to that daugh- 
 ter's husband, sorely afiflicted himself, yet, 
 with a manliness worthy of his historic 
 name, comforting the orphan who needed 
 all his comfort now ; and immediately 
 
172 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 from these things he lured another moral — 
 an appeal to fortitude and courage ; and 
 winding up with the customary exordium, 
 asked of Death where was its sting. 
 
 Where was it indeed? A day or two 
 later Mistrial found time to think of that 
 question and of other matters as well. It 
 was then six weeks since the birth of the 
 child, and Justine, fairer than ever before, 
 was ministering to it in the adjacent room. 
 Now and again he caught the shrill vocif- 
 eration of its vague complaints. It was a 
 feeble infant, lacking in vitality, distress- 
 ingly hideous ; but it lived, and though it 
 died the next minute, its life had sufficed. 
 
 Already the will had been read — a terse 
 document, and to the point ; precisely such 
 an one as you would have expected a jurist 
 to make. By it the testator devised his 
 property, real and personal, of whatever na- 
 ture, kind, and description he died seized, 
 to his former partners in trust for the eld- 
 est child of his daughter Justine, to its 
 heirs, executors, and assigns forever. In 
 
The Pace that Kills. 173 
 
 the event of his daughter's demise without 
 issue, then over, to Guy Thorold, M.D. 
 
 No, the sting concerning which Dr. Gon- 
 fallon had inquired was to Mistrial undis- 
 cerned. There was indeed a prick of it in 
 the knowledge that if the old man had 
 lasted much longer it might have been 
 tough work to settle the. bills ; but that was 
 gone now : Honest Paul paid all his debts, 
 and he had not shirked at Nature's due. 
 He was safely and securely dead, six feet 
 under ground at that, and his millions 
 were absolute in his grandson. Yes, ab- 
 solute. At the thought of it Mistrial 
 laughed. The goal to which for years he 
 had striven was touched and exceeded. 
 He had thrown the vitriol, the opopanax 
 was his. 
 
 We all of us pretend to forgive, to over- 
 look, to condone, we pretend even to sym- 
 pathize with, our enemy. Nay, in refraining 
 from an act that could injure him who has 
 injured us, we are quite apt to consider our- 
 selves the superior of our foe, and not a little 
 
1 74 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 inclined to rise to the heights of self-lauda- 
 tory quotation too. It is an antique vir- 
 tue, that of forbearance ; it is Biblical, 
 nobly Arthurian, and chivalresque. But 
 when we smile at an injury, it is for. pol- 
 icy's sake — because we fear, rarely because 
 we truly forgive, more rarely yet because 
 of indifference. Our magnanimity is cow- 
 ardice. It takes a brave man to wreak a 
 brave revenge. 
 
 Mistrial made few pretensions to the 
 virtues which you and I possess. He was 
 relentless as a Sioux, and he was treacher- 
 ous as the savage is ; he had no taste for 
 fair and open fight. However his blood 
 had boiled at the tableau of imaginary 
 wrongs, however fitting the opportunity 
 might have been on the afternoon when 
 he met his enemy at the city's fringe, he 
 had the desire but not the courage to an- 
 nihilate him there. But later, when the 
 possibility which he had intercepted came, 
 he feted, he coaxed it ; and now that the 
 hour of triumph had rung, his heart was 
 
The Pace that Kills. 175 
 
 glad. In the disordered closets of his 
 brain he saw Thorold ravening at the trap 
 into which he had fallen, and into which, 
 in falling, he had lost the wherewithal to 
 call the world his own. Ten million in ex- 
 change for an embrace ! Verily, mused 
 Mistrial, he will account it exceeding 
 dear. And at the thought of what Thor- 
 old's frenzy must be, at the picture which 
 he drew of him cursing his own impru- 
 dence and telling himself again and again, 
 until the repetition turned into mania, 
 that that imprudence could never be un- 
 done, he exulted and laughed aloud. 
 
 Money,said Vespasian, has no odor. To 
 our acuter nostrils it has. : so nauseating 
 even can it be, that we would rather be flung 
 in the Potter's-field than catch the faint- 
 est whiff. But Mistrial, for all the sensi- 
 tiveness that ancestry is supposed to bring, 
 must have agreed with the Roman. To 
 him it was the woof of every hope ; what- 
 ever its provenance, it was an Open Sesame 
 to the paradise of the ideal. He would 
 
176 The Pace that Kills, 
 
 have drawn it with his teeth from a dung- 
 heap, only he would have done it at night. 
 
 There are men that can steal a fortune, 
 yet can never cheat at cards, and Mistrial 
 was one of their race ; he could not openly 
 dishonor himself in petty ways. Many a 
 scoundrel has a pride of his own. It is 
 both easy and difficult to compare a bandit 
 to a sneak-thief, Napoleon to Cartouche. 
 Mistrial had nothing of the Napoleon about 
 him, and he was lacking even in the 
 strength which Cartouche possessed. But 
 among carpet highwaymen commend me 
 to his peer. 
 
 And now, as he thought of the will, Gon- 
 fallon's query recurred to him, and he 
 asked himself where was that sting ? Not 
 in the present, surely — for that from a bit- 
 terness had changed to a delight; and as for 
 the future, each instant of it was sentient 
 with invocations, fulfilled to the tips with 
 the surprises of dream. The day he had 
 claimed but a share in ; the morrow was 
 wholly his. He could have a dwelling in 
 
The Pace that Kills. 177 
 
 Mayfair and a marble palace on the Medi 
 terranean Sea. For a scrap of paper he 
 would never miss there was a haunt of 
 ghosts dozing on the Grand Canal. In 
 spring, when Paris is at her headiest, there, 
 near that Triumphal Arch which over- 
 looks the Elysian Fields, stood, entre cour et 
 jardin, an hotel which he already viewed as 
 his own. And when he wearied of the 
 Old World, there was the larger and fuller 
 life of the New. There was Peru, there 
 was Mexico and Ecuador ; and in those 
 Italys of the Occident were girls whose lips 
 said, Drink me ; whose eyes were of chryso- 
 beryl and of jade. Ah, out, les femmes j tant 
 que le monde tournera il n 'y aura que (a. With 
 blithe anticipation he hummed the air and 
 snapped his fingers as Capoul was wont to 
 do. At last he saw himself the Roland 
 Mistrial that should have been, prodigal 
 of gold, sultanesque of manner, feted, 
 courted, welcomed, past-master in the lore 
 and art of love. 
 There were worlds still to be conquered; 
 
178 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 and before l}is hair grizzled and the fur- 
 rows came he felt conscious of the posses- 
 sion of a charm that should make those 
 worlds his own. He had waited indeed ; he 
 had toiled and manoeuvred ; but now the 
 great clock we call Opportunity had struck. 
 Let him but ask, and it would be given. 
 Wishes were spaniels ; he had but a finger 
 to raise, and they fawned at his feet. And 
 then, as those vistas of which we have all 
 caught a glimpse rose in melting splendor 
 and swooned again through sheer excesses 
 of their own delights, suddenly he be- 
 thought him of the multiples of one and of 
 two. 
 
 Heretofore he had taken it for granted 
 that if Dunellen left the estate to his 
 grandchild the income accruing therefrom 
 would, until the grandchild came of age, 
 pass through his own paternal hands. 
 And in taking this for granted he had re- 
 called the fable that deals not of the prodi- 
 gal son, but rather of the prodigal father. 
 That income should spin. By a simple 
 
The Pace that Kills. 179 
 
 mathematical process than with which no 
 one was more familiar, he calculated that, 
 at five per cent, ten million would represent 
 a rent-roll of five hundred thousand per 
 annum. Of that amount a fraction would 
 suffice to Justine and to her son. The rest 
 — well, the rest he knew of what uses he 
 could put it to. 
 
 But now, suddenly, with that abruptness 
 with which disaster looms, there came to 
 him a doubt. He rememorated the pro- 
 visions of the will, and in them he dis- 
 cerned unprompted some tenet of law or 
 of custom which, during the legal infancy 
 of the child, might inhibit the trustees from 
 paying over any larger amount than was 
 needful for its maintenance and support. 
 Then at once the fabric of his dreams dis- 
 solved. The vitriol had corroded, but the 
 savor of the opopanax had gone. For a 
 little while he tormented his mustache 
 and nibbled feverishly at a finger-nail. To 
 see one's self the dupe of one's own devices 
 is never a pleasant sight. Again he inter- 
 
1 80 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 rogated what smattering of law he pos- 
 sessed ; but the closer he looked, the clearer 
 it seemed to be that in its entirety the in- 
 come of the estate could not pass through 
 his hands. From five hundred thousand 
 the trustees might in their judgment di- 
 minish it to some such pocket-money as 
 ten ; they could even reduce it to five ; and, 
 barring an action, he might be unable to 
 persuade them that the sum was absurd. 
 The idea, nude and revolting as Truth 
 ever is, raised him to an unaccustomed 
 height of rage ; he would not be balked, he 
 declared to himself; he would have that 
 money or — 
 
 Or what? The Contingency which he 
 then interviewed, one which issued uhsum- 
 moned from some cavern in his mind, little 
 by little assumed a definite shape. He 
 needed no knowledge of the law to tell 
 him that he was that brat's heir. Did it 
 die at that very moment the estate became 
 absolute in him. There would be no trus- 
 tees then to dole the income out. The 
 
The Pace that Kills. 1 8 1 
 
 ten millions would be his own. As for the 
 trustees, they could deduct their commis- 
 sion and retire with it to New Jersey — to 
 hell if it pleased them more. But the 
 estate would be his. That there was no 
 gainsaying. Meanwhile, there was the brat. 
 He was a feeble child ; yet such, Mistrial 
 understood, had Methusaleh been. He 
 might live forever, or die on the morrow. 
 And why not that night? 
 
 As this query came to him, he eyed its 
 advance. It was yet some distance away, 
 but as it approached he considered it from 
 every side. And of sides, parenthetically, 
 it had many. And still it advanced :'when 
 it started, its movements were so slow they 
 had been hardly perceptible ; nevertheless 
 it had made some progress ; then surer on 
 its feet it tried to run ; it succeeded in the 
 effort ; at each step it grew sturdier, swifter 
 in speed ; and now that it reached him it 
 was with such a rush that he was over- 
 powered by its force. 
 
 He rose from his seat. For a moment 
 
1 82 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 he hesitated. To his forehead and about 
 his ears a moisture had come. He drew 
 out a handkerchief ; it was of silk, he no- 
 ticed-r-one that he brought from France. 
 Absently he drew it across his face ; its 
 texture had detained his thought. Then 
 on tiptoe he moved out into the corridor 
 and peered into the room at the end of the 
 hall. 
 
 It was dimly lighted, but soon he accu; 
 tomed himself to the shadows and fumbled 
 them with his eyes. On the bed Justine 
 lay ; sleep had overtaken her ; her head was 
 aslant on the pillow, her lips half closed ; 
 the fihgers of one hand cushioned her neck; 
 the other hand, outstretched, rested on the 
 edge of a cradle. She had been rocking it, 
 perhaps. From the floor above sank the 
 sauntering tremolo of a flute, very sweet 
 in the distance, muffled by the ceiling and 
 wholly subdued. In the street a dray was 
 passing, belated and clamorous on the 
 cobblestones. But now, as Mistrial ven- 
 tured in, these things must have lulled 
 
The Pace that Kills. 183 
 
 Justine into yet deeper sleep ; her breath 
 came and went with the semibreves a leaf 
 uses when it whispers to the night ; and as 
 he moved nearer and bent over her the 
 whiteness of her breast rose and fell in 
 unison with that breath. Yes, surely she 
 slept, but it was with that wary sleep that 
 dogs and mothers share. A movement of 
 that child's and she might awake, alert at 
 once, her senses wholly recovered, her mind 
 undazed. 
 
 Mistrial, assured of her slumber, turned 
 from the bed to the cradle, and for a min- 
 ute, two perhaps, he stood, the eyebrows 
 raised, the handkerchief pendent in his 
 hand, contemplating the occupant. And 
 it was this bundle of flesh and blood, this 
 lobster-hued animal, that lacked the intelli- 
 gence a sightless kitten has, — it was this 
 that should debar him ! Allans done ! 
 
 His face had grown livid, and his hand 
 shook just a little ; not with fear, however, 
 though if it were it must have been the 
 temerity of his own courage that fright- 
 
1 84 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 ened him. At the handkerchief which he 
 held he glanced again ; one twist of it 
 round that infant's throat, a minute in 
 which to hold it taut, and it would be back 
 in his pocket, leaving strangulation and 
 death bshind, yet not a mark to tell the 
 tale. One minute only he needed, two at 
 most; he bent nearer, and as he bent he 
 boked over at his wife ; but still she slept, 
 her breath coming and going with the same 
 regular cadence as before, the whiteness of 
 her breast still heaving ; then very gently, 
 with fingers that were nervously assured, 
 he ran the handkerchief under the infant's 
 neck : but however " deftly he had done it, 
 the chill of the silk must have troubled the 
 child ; its under lip quivered, then both 
 compressed, the flesh about the cheek- 
 bones furrowed, the mouth relaxed, and 
 from it issued the whimper of unconscious 
 plaint. The call may have stirred the 
 mother in some dream, for a smile hovered 
 in her features ; yet immediately her eyes 
 opened, she half rose, her hand fell to her 
 
The Pace that Kills. 185 
 
 side, and, reaching out, she caught and 
 held the infant to her. 
 
 " My darling," she murmured ; and as 
 the child, soothed already, drowsed back 
 again into slumber, she turned to where 
 her husband stood. " What is it ?" 
 
 From above, the tremolo of the flute 
 still descended ; but the dray long since 
 had passed, and the street now was quiet. 
 
 " What is it ?" she repeated. She 
 seemed more surprised than pleased to 
 see him there. 
 
 Mistrial, balked in the attempt, had 
 straightened himself ; he looked annoyed 
 and restless. 
 
 " Nothing," he answered, and thrust the 
 handkerchief back in his pocket, as a 
 bandit sheathes his dirk. "Nothing. I 
 heard that bastard bawling, and I came in 
 to make him stop." 
 
 " Bastard ? Is it in that way you speak 
 of your child ?" 
 
 As she said this she made no visible 
 movement ; yet something in her attitude, 
 
1 86 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 the manner in which she held herself, 
 seemed to bid him hold his peace, and 
 this he noticed, and in noticing resented. 
 "There," he muttered; "drop the Grand 
 Duchess, will you ? The brat is Thorold's ; 
 you know it, and so do I." 
 
 iFor a little space she stared as though 
 uncertain she had heard aright, but the 
 speech must have re-echoed in her ears; 
 she had been sitting up, yet now as the 
 echo reached her she drooped on the pil- 
 low and let her head fall back. In her 
 arms the child still drowsed. And pres- 
 ently a tear rolled down her face, then 
 another. 
 
 " Roland Mistrial, you have broken my 
 heart at last." 
 
 That was all ; the ultimate words even 
 tvere scarcely audible ; but the tears con- 
 tinued — the first succeeded by others, un- 
 stanched and undetained. Grief had 
 claimed her as its own. She made no 
 effort to rebel ; she lay as though an agony 
 had come from which no surcease can be. 
 
The Pace that Kills. 187 
 
 And as one tear after the other passed 
 down and seared her face there was a 
 silence so deathly, so tangible, and so con- 
 vincing, that he needed no further sign 
 from her to tell him that the charge was 
 false. In all his intercourse with her, 
 whatever cause of complaint there had 
 been, never had he seen her weep before ; 
 and now at this unawaited evidence of the 
 injustice and ignominy of his reproach he 
 wished she would be defiant again, that he 
 might argue and confute. But no word 
 came from her — barely a sob ; nothing, in 
 fact, save these tears, which he had never 
 seen before. And while he stood there, 
 visited by the perplexity of him to whom 
 the unawaited comes, unconsciously he 
 went back to the wooing of her : he saw 
 her clear eyes lifted in confidence to his 
 own, he heard again the sweet confession 
 of her love, he recalled the marks and 
 tokens of her trust, and when for him she 
 had left her father's house ; he saw her ever, 
 sweet by nature, tender-hearted, striving 
 
1 88 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 at each misdeed of his to show him that in 
 her arms there was forgiveness still. And 
 he recalled too the affronts he had put upon 
 her, the baseness of his calculations, the 
 selfishness of his life ; he saw the misery he 
 had inflicted, the affection he had beguiled, 
 the hope he had ^tricked, and for climax 
 there was this supreme reproach, of which 
 he knew now no woman in all the world 
 was less deserving than was she. And 
 still the tears unstanched and undetained 
 passed down and seared her cheeks ; in the 
 mortal wound he had aimed at her wom- 
 anhood all else seemingly was forgot. 
 She did not even move, and lay, her child 
 tight clasped, the image of Maternity in- 
 habited by Regret. 
 
 And such regret ! Mistrial, unprompted, 
 could divine it all. The regret of love 
 misplaced, of illusions spent, the regret of 
 harboring a ruffian and thinking him a 
 knight. Yes, he could divine it all ; and 
 then, as such things can be, he grieved a 
 moment for himself. 
 
The Pace that Kills. 1 89 
 
 But soon the present returned. Justine 
 still was weeping ; -he no longer saw her 
 tears, he heard them. Surely she would for- 
 give again. It could not be that everything 
 had gone for naught. He would speak to 
 her, plead if need were, and in the end she 
 would yield. She must do that, he told 
 himself, and he groped after some falsity 
 that should palliate the offence. He would 
 tell her that he had been drinking again; 
 he would deny his own words, or, if neces- 
 sary, he would insist she had not heard 
 them aright. Indeed, there was nothing 
 that might have weight with her which he 
 was not ready and anxious to affirm. If 
 she would but begin, if in some splendor 
 of indignation such as he had beheld be- 
 fore she would rise up and upbraid him, 
 his task would be diminished by half. Any- 
 thing, indeed, would be better than this, 
 and nothing could be worse ; it was not 
 Justine alone that the tears were carry- 
 ing from him, it was the Dunellen mill- 
 ions as well. Oh, abysses of the human 
 
I go The Pace that Kills. 
 
 heartJ As he queried with himself, at the 
 very moment he was experiencing his first 
 remorse, the old self returned, and it was 
 less of the injury he had inflicted that he 
 thought than of the counter-effect that in- 
 jury might have on him. In the attempt 
 to throttle the child he had been batked, 
 yet of that attempt he believed Justine to 
 be suspicionless. Other opportunities he 
 would have in plenty ; and even were it 
 otherwise, the child was weakly, and croup 
 might do its work. With the future for 
 which he had striven, there, in the very 
 palm of his hand, how was it possible that 
 he should have made this misstep? But 
 he could retrieve it, he told himself ; he 
 was a good actor, it was not too late. For 
 a little while yet he could still support the 
 mask, and, recalling the sentimental rev- 
 eries of a moment before, the forerunner 
 of a sneer came and loitered beneath the 
 fringes of his mustache. 
 
 "Justine !" He moved a step or two to 
 where she lay. " Justine — " 
 
The Pace that Kills. 191 
 
 His voice was very low and penitent, 
 but at the sound of it she seemed to shrink. 
 " Could she know?" he wondered. 
 
 Then immediately, through the scant"- 
 ness of the apartment, he heard the outer 
 bell resound. Enervated as he was, the 
 interruption affected him like a barb. 
 There was some one there whom he could 
 vent his irritation on. He hurried to the 
 hall, but a servant had preceded him. The 
 door was open, and on the threshold Thor- 
 old stood. 
 
 Mistrial nodded — the nod of one who is 
 about to throw his coat aside and roll his 
 shirt-sleeves up. " Is it for your bill you 
 come ?" he asked. 
 
 Thorold hesitated, and his face grew 
 very black. He affected, however, to ignore 
 the taunt. He turned to the servant that 
 still was waiting there. " Is my cousin at 
 home ?" he asked. 
 
 "She is," Mistrial announced, "but not 
 to you." 
 
192 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 "In that case," Thorold answered, "I 
 must speak to someone in her stead." 
 
 Mistrial made a gesture, and the servant 
 withdrew. 
 
 " I have to inform my cousin," Thorold 
 continued, "that Mr. Metuchen came to 
 me this evening and said that when my 
 uncle died he was in debt — " 
 
 " Stuff and nonsense !" 
 
 " He asked me to come and acquaint 
 Justine with the facts. They are here." 
 With this Thorold produced a roll of 
 papers. " Be good enough to explain to 
 her," he added, " that this is the inventory 
 of the estate." And, extending the docu- 
 ments to his host, he turned and disap- 
 peared. 
 
 In the cataleptic attitude of one stand- 
 ing to be photographed Mistrial listened 
 to the retreating steps ; he heard Thorold 
 descend the stairs, cross the vestibule, and 
 pass from the house. It seemed to him 
 even that he caught the sound of his foot- 
 fall on the pavement without. But pres- 
 
The Pace that Kills. 193 
 
 ently that, too, had gone. He turned and 
 looked down the hall. Justine's door was 
 closed. Then at once, without seeking a 
 seat, he fumbled through the papers that 
 he held. The gas-jet above his head fell 
 on the rigid lines. In the absence of collu- 
 sion — and from whence should such a thing 
 come ? — in the absence of that, they were 
 crystal in their clarity. 
 
 There were the assets. Shares in mines 
 that did not exist, bonds of railways that 
 were bankrupt, loans on Western swamps, 
 the house on Madison Avenue, mortgaged 
 to its utmost value, property on the River- 
 side, ditto. And so on and so forth till 
 the eye wearied and the heart sickened of 
 the catalogue. Then came the debit ac- 
 count. Amounts due to this estate, to that, 
 and to the other, a list of items extending 
 down an entire page of foolscap and ex- 
 tending over onto the next. There a bal- 
 ance had been struck. Instead of millions 
 Honest Paul had left dishonor. Swindled 
 by the living, he had swindled the dead. 
 
194 T^he Pace that Kills. 
 
 " So much for trusting a man that bawh 
 Amen in church," mused Mistrial. 
 
 As yet the completeness and amplitude 
 of the disaster had not reached him. While 
 he ran the papers over he feigned to him- 
 self that it was all some trick of Thorold's, 
 one that he would presently see through 
 and understand ; and even as he grasped 
 the fact that it was not a trick at all, that it 
 was truth duly signed and attested, even 
 then the disaster seemed remote, affecting 
 him only after the manner of that wound 
 which, received in the heat of battle, is un- 
 noticed by the victim until its gravity 
 makes him ^reel. Then at once in the dis- 
 tance the future on which he had counted __ 
 faded and grew blank. Where it had been 
 brilliant it was obscure, and that obscurity, 
 increasing, walled back the horizon and 
 reached up and extended from earth to 
 sky. The papers fell from his nerveless 
 hand, fright had visited him, and he wheeled 
 like a rat surprised. Surely, he reflected, 
 
The Pace that Kilis. 195 
 
 if safety there were or could be, that safety- 
 was with Justine. 
 
 In a moment he was at her door. He 
 tried it. It was locked. He beat upon it 
 and called aloud, " Justine." 
 
 No answer came. He bent his head and 
 listened. Through the woodwork he could 
 hear but the faintest rustle, and he called 
 again, " Justine." 
 
 Then from within came the melody of 
 her voice : "Who is it ? " 
 
 " It is I," he answered, and straightened 
 himself. It seemed odd to him she did not 
 open the door at once. " I want a word 
 with you," he added, after a pause. But 
 still the door was locked. 
 
 "Justine," he called again, "do you not 
 hear me ? I want to speak to you." 
 
 Then through the slender woodwork 
 at his side a whisper filtered, the dumb 
 voice of one whom madness may have in 
 charge. 
 
 "It is not to speak you come, it is to 
 kill." 
 
196 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 " Justine ! " he cried. All the agony of 
 his life he distilled into her name, " Jus- 
 tine!" 
 
 " You killed your child before, you shall 
 not kill another now." 
 
The Pace that Kills. 197 
 
 VI. 
 
 " City Hall!" 
 
 The brakemen were shouting the station 
 through the emptiness of the " Elevated." 
 
 In the car in which Mistrial sat a 
 drunken sailor lolled, and a pretty girl of 
 the Sixth Avenue type was eating a con- 
 fection. Above her, on a panel opposite, 
 the advertisement of a cough remedy shone 
 in blue ; beyond was a particolored notice 
 of tennis blazers : and, between them, a text 
 from Mark, in black letters, jumped out 
 from a background of white : 
 
 " What shall it profit a man, if he shall 
 gain the whole world, and lose his own 
 soul?" 
 
 During the journey from his home Mis- 
 trial had contemplated that text. Not 
 continuously, however. For a little space 
 his eyes had grazed the retreating throngs 
 
igS The Pace that Kills. 
 
 over which the train was hurrying, and had 
 rested on the insufferable ugliness of the 
 Bowery. Once, too, he had found himself 
 staring at the girl Who sat opposite, and 
 once he had detected within him some envy 
 of the sailor sprawling at her side. But, all 
 the while, that text was with him, and to 
 the jar of the car he repeated for refrain 
 a paraphrase of his own : " How shall it 
 damage a man if he lose his own soul and 
 gain the whole world ?" 
 
 How indeed? Surely he liad tried. For 
 three years the effort had been constant. 
 It was because of it he had married, it was 
 for this he had sought to throttle his child. 
 What his failure had been, Dunellen's post- 
 humous felony and Justine's ultimate 
 reproach indistinctly yet clearly conveyed. 
 No, the world was not gained ; he had 
 played, his best and he had lost : he could 
 never recover it now. 
 
 And as the brakeman bawled in his face, 
 the paraphrase of the text was with him. 
 He rose and passed from the car. Beneath 
 
The Pace that Kills. 199 
 
 he could discern a grass-plot of the City- 
 Park. In spite of the night it was visibly- 
 green. The sky -was leaden as a military 
 uniform that has been dragged through 
 the mud. From a -window of the Tribune 
 Building came a vomit of vapor. And 
 above in a steeple a clock marked twelve. 
 
 The stairway led him down to the street. 
 For a moment he hesitated; the locality 
 was unfamiliar. But a toll-gate attracted 
 him ; he approached it, paid a penny, and 
 moved onto the bridge. There, he dis- 
 covered that on either side of him were 
 iron fences and iron rails ; he was on the 
 middle of the bridge, not at the side. A 
 train shot by. He turned again and reis- 
 sued from the gate. 
 
 On the corner was another entrance, and 
 through it he saw a carriage pass. It was 
 that way, he knew ; and he would have 
 followed the carriage, but a policemaa 
 touched him on the arm. 
 
 " Got a permit ?" 
 
 Mistrial shook his head. Why should 
 
200 The Pace that Kills, 
 
 he have a permit? And, moved perhaps 
 by the mute surprise his face expressed, 
 the policeman explained that the ordinary 
 pedestrian was allowed to cross only 
 through the safeguards of the middle path. 
 
 "I will get a cab," he reflected, and for 
 his convenience he discerned one loitering 
 across the way. This he entered, gave an 
 order to the driver, and presently, after 
 paying another toll, rolled off the stone- 
 work on to wood. 
 
 He craned his neck. Just beyond, a col- 
 umn of stone rose inordinately to the low- 
 ering sky ; he could see the water-front of 
 the city ; opposite was Brooklyn, and in 
 front the lights of Staten Island glowed 
 distantly and dim. The cab was moving 
 slowly. He took some coin from his pocket, 
 placed it on the seat, opened the door, and, 
 stepping from the moving vehicle, looked 
 at the driver. The latter, however, had not 
 noticed him and was continuing his way 
 leisurely over the bridge and on and into 
 the night. Mistrial let him go undetained. 
 
The Pace that Kills. 201 
 
 He had work now to do, and it was neces- 
 sary for him to do it quickly ; at any mo- 
 ment another carriage might pass or some 
 one happen that way. 
 
 Beneath, far down, a barge was moving. 
 He could see the lights ; they approached 
 the bridge and vanished within it. The 
 railing, now, he saw was too high to vault, 
 and moreover there was a bar above i\ 
 that might interfere. He tossed his hal 
 aside and clambered on the iron rail. 
 
 "You'll get six months for that," som^ 
 one was crying. 
 
 But to the threat Mistrial paid no heed 
 He had crossed the rail, his hands relaxed, 
 and just as he dropped straight down to 
 the river below, he could see a policeman, 
 his club uplifted, hanging over the fence, 
 promising him the pleasures of imprison- 
 ment. Such was his last glimpse of earth. 
 A multitude of lights danced before his 
 eyes ; every nerve in his body tingled ; his 
 ears were filled with sudden sounds ; he felt 
 
202 The Pace that Kills. 
 
 himself incased in ice ; then something 
 snapped, and all was blank. 
 
 The next day a rumor of the suicide was 
 bruited through the clubs. 
 
 -• What do you think of it, Jones ?" Yarde 
 asked. 
 
 The novelist plucked at his beard. 
 There were times when he himself did not 
 know what he thought. In this instance, 
 however, he had already learned of the 
 disaster that had overtaken the Dunellen 
 estate, and weaving two and two saga- 
 ciously together, he answered with a shrug. 
 
 "What do I think of it? I think he died 
 like a man who knew how to live " — an 
 epitaph which pleased him so much that 
 he got his card-case out and wrote it down. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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