CHAPTER I.
What's In a Name?
To possess two distinctly alien red
corpuscles in one's blood, metaphor
ically if not in fact, two characters or
Individualities under one epidermis,
Is, In moat cases, a peculiar disadvan
tage. One hears of scoundrels and
ealnts striving to consume one an
other in one body, angels and har
pies; but ofttimes, quite the contrary
to being a curse, these two warring
temperaments become a maflb ulti
mate blessing: as in the case of
George P. A. Jones, of Mortimer &
Jones, the great metropolitan Oriental
rug and carpet company, all of which
has a dignified, sonorous sound.
George was divided within himself.
This he would not have confessed
even into the trusted if battered ear
of the Egyptian Sphynx. There was,
however, no demon-angel sparring for
points in George's soul. The difficulty
might be set forth In this manner:
On one side stood inherent common
sense; on the other, a boundless, ro
seate imagination which was like
wise inherent —a kind of quixote imag
ination of suitable modern pattern.
This alter ego terrified him whenever
it raised its beautiful head
and shouldered aside his guardian
angel (for that's what common sense
is, argue to what end you will) and
pleaded in that luminous rhetoric un
der the spell of which our old friend
Sancho often fell asleep.
P. A., as they called him behind the
counters, was but twenty-eight., and if
he was vice-president in his late fa
ther's shoes he didn't wabble round
in them to any great extent. In a
orowd he was not noticeable; he
didn't stand head and shoulders above
his fellow-men, nor would he have
been mistaken by near-sighted per
sons, the myopes, for the Vatican's
Apollo In the flesh. He was of me
dium height, beardless, slender, but
tough and wiry and enduring. You
may see his prototype on the streets
a dozen times a day, and you may
also pass him without turning round
for a second view. Young men like
P. A. must be Intimately known to
be admired; you did not throw your
arm across his neck, first-off. His
hair was brown and closely clipped
about a head that would have gained
the attention of the phrenologist, if
not that of the casual passer-by. His
bumps, in the phraseology of that
science, were good ones. For the rest.
,^i|s
He Haunted the Romantic Quarters of the Globe; He Wat Romantic.
fie observed the world through a pair
of kindly, shy, blue eyes.
Young girls, myopic through Igno
rance or silliness, s«elng nothing be
yond what the eyes see, seldom gave
him a second inspection; for he did
not know how to make himself at
tractive, and was mortally afraid of
the opposite, or opposing sex. He
could bullyrag a sheik out of his cam
els' saddle-bags, but petticoats and
laoe parasols and small Oxfords had
the same effect upon him that the
prodding stick of a small boy has
upon a retiring turtle. But many a
worldly-wise woman, drawing out with
tact and kindness tbs truly beautiful
thoughts of this young man's soul,
sadly demanded of fa'e why a sweet.
clean boy like this one had not been
sent to her In her youth. You see,
the worldly-wise woman knows that
It Is Invariably the lay-figure and not
Prince Charming that a woman mar
ries, and that matrimony is blind
man's buff in growr-ups.
Many of us lay the blame upon our
parents. We shift the burden of won
dering why we have this fault and
lack that grace to the shoulders of
our immediate forbears. We goto
the office each morning denying that
we have any responsibility; we let
the boss do the worrying. But George
never went prospecting in his soul for
any such droBS philosophy. He was
grateful for having had so beautiful
a mother; proud of having had so
honest a sire; and If either of them
had endued him with false weights he
did his best to even up the balance.
The mother had been as romantic
as any heroine out of Mrs. Radcliff's
novels, while the father had owned
to as much romance as one generally
finds in a thorough business man,
which is practically none at all. The
very name itself is a bulwark against
the intrusions of romance. One can
not lift the imagination to the pros
pect of picturing a Jones in ruffles
and highboots, pinking a varlet in the
midriff. It smells of sugar-barrels and
cotton-bales, of steamships and rail
roads, of stolid routine in the office
and of placid concern over the daily
news under the evening lamp.
Mrs. Jones, lovely, lettered yet not
worldly, had dreamed of her boy,
bayed and decorated, marrying the
most distinguished woman in all Eu
rope, whoever she might be. Mr.
Jones had had no dreams at all, and
had put the boy to work in the ship
ping department a little while after
the college threshold had been crossed,
outward bound. The mother, while
sweet and gentle, had a will, iron un
der velvet, and when she held out for
Percival Algernon and a decent knowl
edge of modern languages, the old
man agreed if, on the other hand,
the boy's first name should be George
and that he should learn the business
from the cellar up. There were sev
eral tilts over the matter, but at
length a truce was declared. It was
agreed that the boy himself ought to
have a word to say upon a subject
concerned him more vitally
than any one else. So, at the age of
fifteen, when he was starting off for
preparatory school, he was advised
to choose for himself. He was an obe
dient son, adoring his mother and idol-
ising his father. He wrote himself
down as George Percival Algernon
Jones, promised to become a linguist
and to learn the rug business from
the cellar up. On the face of it, it
looked like a big Job; It all depended
upon the boy.
The first day at school his misery
began. He had signed himself as
George P. A. Jones, no small diplo
macy for a lad; but the two initials,
standing up like dismantled pines i.i
the midßt of uninteresting landscape,
roused the curiosity of his school
mates. Boyg are boys the world over,
and possess a finest*' in cruelty that
only Indians can match; and It did
not take them long to unearth the fa
tal secret. For three years he was
M
AvrfW of HEARTS AND
DAe AIAN ON THE BOX ♦
Ilkistraliorvs by M.Q.Kettajesr- ♦ • ♦
COPYRIGHT 1911 bjr BOBBfI - /MERRILL COMPANY •
Percy Algy, and not only the boys
laughed, but the pretty girls snig
gered. Many a time he had returned
to his dormitory decorated (not in
acoord with the fond hopes of his
mother) with a swollen ear, or a
ruddy proboscis, or a green-brown
eye. There was a limit, and when
they stepped over that, why, he pro
ceeded to the best of his ability to
solve the difficulty with his fiats.
George was no milksop; but Percival
Algernon would have been the Old
Man of the Sea on broader shoulders
than his. He dimly realized that had
he been named George Henry William
Jones would have been many
diameters larger. There was a splen
did quality of pluck under his appar
ent timidity, and he stuck doggedly
to it. He never wrote home and com
plained. What was good enough for
his mother was good enough for him.
It seemed just an ordinary matter
of routine for him to pick up French
and German verbs. He was far from
being brilliant, but he was sensitive
and his memory was sound. Since
his mother's ambition was to see him
an accomplished linguist, he applied
himself to the task as if everything
in the world depended upon it, just
as he knew that when the time came
he would apply himself as thoroughly
to the question of rugs and carpets.
TTnder all this filial loyalty ran the
pure strain of golden romance, side
by side with the lesser metal of prac
ticality. When he began to read the
masters he preferred their romances
to their novels. He even wrote poetry
in secret, and when his mother discov
ered the fact she cried over the senti
mental verses. The father had to be
told. He laughed and declared that
the boy would some day develop into
a good writer of advertisements. This
quiet laughter, unburdened aB it was
with ridicule, was enough to set
George's muse a-winging, and she
never came back.
After leaving college he was given
I a modest letter of credit and told to
go where he pleased for a whole year.
George started out at once lfi quest
"of the Holy Grail, and there are more
roads to that than there are to Rome.
One may be reasonably sure of get
ting into Rome, whereas the Holy
Grail (diversified, variable, innumer
able) Is always the exact sum of a
bunch of hay hanging before old Dob
bin's nose. Nevertheless, George gal
loped his fancies with loose rein. He
haunted romance, burrowed and
plowed for it; and never his spade
clanged musically against the hidden
treasure, never a forlorn beauty in
distress, not so much as chapter one
of the Golden Book offered its <laz
zling first page. George lost some con
fidence.
Two or three times a woman looked
Into the young man's mind, and in his
guilelessness they effected sundry
holes in his letter of credit, but left
his soul singularly untouched. The
red corpuscle, his father's gift, though
it lay dormant, subconsciously erected
barriers. He was innocent, but he was
no fool. That one year taught liftn
the lesson, rather cheaply, too. If
there was any romance in life, it came
uninvited, and if courted and sought
was as quick on the wing as that erst
while poesy must.
The year passed, and while he had
not wholly given up the quest, the
practical George agreed with the ro
mantic Percival to shelve It indefi
nitely. He returned to New York
with thirty-two pounds sterling out of
the original thousand, a fact that reju
venated his paternal parent by some
ten years.
"Jane, that boy is all right. Perci
val Algernon could not kill a boy like
that."
"Do you mean to infer that it ever
could?" Sometimes a qualin wrinkled
her conscience. Her mother's heart
told her that her son ought not to be
shy and bashful, that It was not in
the nature of his blood to suspect
ridicule where there was none. Per
haps she had handicapped him with
those nunves; but it was too late now
to admit of this, and useless, since
it would not have remedied the evil.
Jones hemmed and hawed for a
space. "No," he answered; "but I
was afraid he might , try to live up
to it; and no Percival Algernon who
lived up to it could put his nose down
10 a Shah Abbas" and tell how many
knots it had to the square Inch. I'll
start him in on the job tomorrow."
Whereupon the mother sat back
dreamily. Now, where was the girl
worthy of her boy? Monumental ques
tion, besetting every mother, from Eve
down. Eve, whose trials in this direc
tion must have been hearirending!
George left the cellar Indue time,
and after that he went up the ladder
in bounds, on his own merit, mind
you. for his father never stirred a
hand to boost him. He took the In
terest in rugs that turns a buyer into
a collector; It became a fascinating
pleasure rather than a business. He
became Invaluable to the house, and
acquired some fame as a judge and
an appraiser. When the chief-buyer
retired George was given the position,
with an Itinerary that carried him half
way round the planet once a year, to
Greece, Turkey, Persia, Arabia, and
India, the lands of the genii and the
bottles, of arabesques, of temples and
tombs, of many-colored turbans and
flowing robes and distracting tongues.
He walked and always In a kind of
mental enchantment.
The suave and elusive Oriental,
with his sharp practices, found his
match In this pleasant young man,
who knew the history of the very
wools and cottons and silks woven
in a rug or carpet. So George pros
pered, became known in strange
places, by strange peoples; and saw
romance, light of foot and eager of
eye, pass and repass; learned that
romance did not essentially mean fall
ing in love or rescuing maidens from
burning houses and wrecks; that., on
the contrary, true romance was kalei
doscopic, having more brilliant facets
than a diamond; and that the man
who begins with nothing and ends
with something is more wonderful
than any excursion recounted by Sin
bad or any tale by Scheherazade. But
he sttM hoped that the iridescent god
dess would some day touch his shoul
der and lead him into that maze of
romance so peculiar to his own fancy.
And then into this little world of
business and pleasure came death
and death again, leaving him alone
and with a twisted heart. Riches
mattered little, and the sounding title
of vice-president still less. It was
with a distinct shock that he realized
the mother and the father had been
with him so long that he had forgot
ten to make other friends. From
one thing to another he turned in
hope to soothe the smart, to heal the
wound; and after a time he drifted,
as all shy, intelligent and imaginative
men drift who are friendless, into the
silent and intimate comradeship of in
animate things, such as jewels, ivories,
old metals, rare woods and ancient
embroideries, and perhaps more com
forting than all these, good books.
The proper tale of how the afore
said Iridescent goddess jostled (for It
scarce may be said that she led) him
into a romance lacking neither com
edy nor tragedy, now begins with a
trifling bit of retrospection. One of
those women who were not good and
who looked into the clear pool of the
boy's mind saw the harmless longing
there, and made note, hoping to find
profit by her knowledge when the per
tinent day arrived. She was a woman
so pleasing, so handsome, so adroit,
that many a man. older and wiser
than George, found her mesh too
strong for him. Her plan matured,
suddenly and brilliantly, as projects
of men and women of her class and
caliber without variation do.
Late one December afternoon (to
be precise, 1909), George sat on the
tea-veranda of the Hotel Semiramls
in Cairo. A book lay idly upon his
knees. It was one of those yarns
in which something was happening
every other minute. As adventures
go, George had never had a real one
in all his twenty-eight years, and he
believed that fate had treated him
rather shabbily. He dtdn't quite ap
preciate her reserve. No matter how
late he wandered through the mysteri
ous bazaars, either here in Egypt or
over yonder in India, nothing ever be
fell more exciting than an argument
with a carriage-driver. He never car
ried small-arms, for he would not
have known how to use them. The
only deadly things In his hands were
bass-rods and tennis-racquets. No,
nothing ever happened to him; yet
he never met a man in a ship's smoke
room who hadn't run the gamut of
thrilling experiences. As George
wasn't a liar himself, he believed all
he saw and most of what he heard.
Well, here he was, elght-and-twenty,
a pocket full of money, a heart full
of life, and as hopeless an outlook, so
far as romance and adventure were
concerned, as an old maid in a New
England village.
"George, you old fool, what's the
use?" he thought. "What's the use
of a desire that never goes In a
straight line, but always round and
round in a circle?"
He thrust aside his grievance and
surrendered to the never-ending won
der of the Egyptian sunset; the Nile
feluccas, riding upon perfect reflec
tions; the date-palms, blask and mo
tionless against the translucent blue
of the sky; the amethystine prisms of
the Pyramids, and the deepening gold
of the desert's brim. He loved the
Orient, always so new, always so
strange, yet ever BO old and familiar.
A carriage stopped in front, and his
gaze naturally shifted. There la cease
less attraction in speculating about
new-comers In a hotel, what they are,
what they do, where they come from,
and where they are going. A fine
elderly man of fifty got out. In the
square set of hla shoulders, the flow-
ing white mustache and imperial,
there -was a suggestion of militarism.
Ho was Immediately followed by a
young woman of twenty, certainly not
over that age. George sighed wist
fully. He envied those polo-playera
and gentleman-riders and bridge-ex
perts who were stopping at the hotel.
It wouldn't be an hour after dinner
before some one of them found out who
she was and spoke to her In that easy
style which he concluded must be a
gift rather than an accomplishment.
You mustn't suppose for a minute that
George wasn't well-born and well-bred,
simply because his name was Jones.
Many a Fitz-Hugh Maurice or Hugh
Fitz-Maurice might have been — But,
no matter. He knew instinctively,
then, what elegance was when he saw
it, and this girl was elegant, In dress,
in movement. He rather liked the
pallor of her skin, which hinted that
she wasn't one of those athletic girls
who bounced In and out of the din
ing-room, talking loudly and smoking
cigarettes and playing bridge for six
penny points. She was tall. He was
sure that her eyes were on the level
with Ills own. The grey veil that
drooped from the rim of her simple
Leghorn hat to the tip of her nose ob
scured her eyes, so he could not know
that they were large and brown and
Indefinably sad. They spoke not of
a weariness of travel, but of a weari
ness of the world, more precisely, of
the people who Inhabited it.
She and her companion passed on
into the hotel, and if George's eyes
veered again toward the desert over
which the stealthy purples of night
were creeping, the impulse was me
chanical; he saw nothing. In truth,
he was desperately lonesome, nud he
knew, moreover, that he had no busi
ness to be. He was young; he could
at a pinch tell a joke as well as the
next man; and if he had never had
what he called an adventure, he had
seen many strange and wonderful
things and could describe them with
that mental afterglow which still lin
gers over the sunset of our first ex
pressions in poetry. But there was
always that hydra-headed monster, for
ever getting about his feet, numbing
his voice, paralyzing his hands, and
never he lopped off a head that an
-1 other did not instantly grow in its
I
This Girl Was Elegant, In Dress, In Movement.
place. Even the sword of Perseus
could not have saved him, since one
has to get away from an object in
order to cut it down.
Had he really ever tried to over
come this monster? Had he not wait
ed for the propitious moment (which
you and I know never comes) to
throw off this species from Hades?
It Is all very well, when you are old
and dried up, to turn to Ivories and
metals and precious stones; but when
a fellow's young! You can't shake
hands with an Ivory replica of the Taj
Mahal, nor exchange pleasantries with
a Mandarin's ring, nor yet confide Joys
and 111b into a casket of rare emer
alds; Indeed, they do but emphasize
one's loneliness. If only lie had bad
a dog; but one can not carry a dog
half way round the world and back, at
least not with comfort. What with
all these new-fangled quarantine laws,
duties, and fussy ships' officers who
•wouldn't let you keep the animal in
your state-room, traveling with a four
footed friend was almost an impossi
bility. To be sure, women with
poodles. . . . And then, there was
the bitter of acid in the knowledge
that no one ever came up to and
slapped him on the shoulder with a—-
"Hel-10, Georgie, old sport; what's the
good word?" for the simple fact that
his shoulder was always bristling with
spikes, born of the fear that some one
was making fun of him.
Perchance his mother's spirit, hov
ering over him this evening, might
have been inclined to tears. For they
do say that the ghosts of the dear
ones are thus employed when we are
near to committing some folly, or to
exploring some forgotten chamber of
Pandora's box, or worse still, when
that lady intends emptying the whole
contents down upon our unfortunate
heads. If so be, they were futile
tears; Percival Algernon had accom
plished its deadly purpose.
Pandora? Well, then, for the bene
fit of the children. She was a lady
who was an intimate friend of the
mythological gods. They liked her ap
pearance so well that they one day
gave her a box, casket, chest, or what
ever it was, to guard. Hy some mar
velous method, known only of gods,
they had got together all the trials
and tribulations of mankind (ai)d some
of the joys) and locked them up in
this casket. It was the Golden Age,
aa you may surmise. You recall Eve
and the apple? Well, Pandora was a
forecast of Eve; she couldn't keep her
eyes off the latch, and at length her
hands —Fatal curiosity! Whirr! And
everything has been at sixes and at
sevens since that time. Pandora is
eternally recurring, now here, now
there; she Is a blonde sometimes, and
again she is a brunette; and you may
take It from George and me that there
Is always something left in the casket.
George closed the book and consult
ed his sailing-list. In a short time he
would leave for Port Said, thence to
Naples, Christmas there, and home in
January. Business had been ripping.
He would be Jolly glad to get home
again, to renew his comradeship with
his treasures. And, by Jove! there
was one man who slapped him on the
shoulder, and he was no less a person
than the genial president of the firm,
fila father's partner, at present hi#
own. If the old chap had had a daugh
ter now. . . . And here one cornea
at lasl to the bottom of the sack. He
had only one definite longing, a
healthy human longing, the only long
ing worth while In all this deep, wide,
round old top; to love ft woman and
by her be loved.
At exactly half after six the gentle
man with the reversible cuffs arrived;
and George missed his boat.
(TO BE CONTINUMXJt «