TOM MALLORY'S REVENGE.

“IF

you want to wreak a thorough vengeance upon a woman, you must first make her love you. Without that preparation, you can't inflict a complete or very lasting torture. With it, you can gratify the devil's own malice."

This philosophical remark was uttered between two puffs of a cigar by a well-dressed man of about thirty, whose air and tones showed the tuition of good society, and whose face expressed intellectual culture. He was seated on a shaded bit of lonely river bank, in front of him a languid flow of clear brown water, above him the giant green plume of an elm, its uppermost sprays gently quivering, unheard, in a faint breeze of summer. His thoughtful eyes seemed to be spelling out the inmost feelings of a young man, not more than twenty-one, who was his only companion.

"Oh, the devil! And suppose you can't make her love you! suppose that's just the thing!" exclaimed the latter, impatiently.

He stood with his hands in his pockets, his broad-brimmed hat drawn over his brows, glaring at the stump of an elder which he was kicking with a sort of purposeless petulance. He was a tall, well-built youth, with keen gray eyes and regular features. He would have been remarkably handsome but for a certain rustic unfinish visible in his awkwardly-fitted clothing, in his long hair combed straight over his ears and greasing his coat-collar, in his careless stoop and lounging movements, and, above all, in a lack of that refined intellectuality which ennobled the otherwise inferior face of the smoker. Even his utterance, notwithstanding a naturally grand voice, was untuned, monotonous, and slightly nasal. Evidently he was the product of one of our New England country districts; yet you must not understand that he came from the lean lower soil which produces the Slicks and the Downings; his grammar was good, and he pronounced like a man who knows how to spell.

A violent flush covered his features after he had spoken. It seemed to him that he had confessed his secret with perfect clearness; and, although he did not look at his comrade's eyes, he felt that they were upon him. Dragging his hat completely over his face, he threw himself on the turf, and tore the short grass-blades with his fingers, while he muttered disconnectedly concerning the cause of his agitation, impelled by that desire for sympathy which coerces the unhappy :

"Yes, I've been talking about myself all this while. Revenge on a woman! It seems mean enough to you, I suppose. So it is. That depends, however. I wouldn't hurt one. I wouldn't lift my finger against one. I would die sooner. But-oh Lord! what can a man do? They entangle a fellow; they get round him and fool him; they make him think they'll have him; they are ever so sweet and loving. Then, when they've got him to offer his whole heart and soul, and all he is and ever will be, they push

him off like a dog. Oh, you mustn't touch 'em! They're women. They're the fair sex-the gentle sex. They break down all your hopes and ambition and self-respect; they do it coolly to your face, and laugh at you behind your back; they do it without the least pity; brag of it. Oh, it's all right! You mustn't wish 'em any harm. Lovely woman-consoling spirit, messenger from Heaven, and so forth. I don't growl at being refused. I'm man enough to bear that. It's being deceived beforehand and despised afterward that mads me. O Lord! I don't know what I would do if I could. I wouldn't see any harm happen to the girl that I'm talking about. It's as you say. I couldn't revenge myself on her without making her love me.

And that can't be; no, never can be. I've tried that thoroughly, God knows."

He paused a moment, tore his hat off, and looked the other in the face with an air of selfderision.

"I suppose you think I'm a cursed fool, Mr. Stuart. I know I talk like one. I've only been acquainted with you six weeks, and here I am wanting your pity. But you are the first I've told it to. You look as if you could understand a fellow. I know you can. You write books about just such things; you told my story before I knew it myself. You needn't say any thing. I don't want to bore you to get up good advice for me. But you comprehend now what I meant by talking for half an hour about revenge upon a woman. Revenge, I don't know whether I would take it if I could."

"I don't suppose you would, Mr. Mallory," said Stuart, continuing to study the discomposed face before him with a feeling which was not all compassion, but partly the professional interest of a novelist in the workings of human nature. "You are too much in love for that. A tear from this girl (whoever she may be) would put out your wrath in a second. In fact, setting to work to torment a woman and deliberately watching the process is a hard thing for any man to do. Not a nice thing to think of afterward either. Calculated to make a man brutal, and therefore unhappy. No, as I told you before, I don't know any proper and sufficient vengeance upon a jilt excepting making her love you."

"And what then?"

"Why then love her, and keep loving her and keep her loving you as long as life lasts." Mallory laughed outright, and then stopped with a groan. The suggestion gave him a momentary sense of exultation which turned to instant bitterness as he remembered that he was imagining the impossible.

"No, Sir; it can't be. And now-now I don't want it to be. I don't intend to demean myself again. No more begging and whimpering."

"Of course not. Generally useless, and always foolish. Attend to yourself now, and get cured of this. Go away from here. Go to work. Travel. Any thing to occupy your

profoundest injustice to them; but he had sense enough to see that his case was hopeless.

"I can't stay, Miss Ryder," said he, rising. "I'm not quite packed yet, and I start to-morrow. I wish you every happiness," he went on, with a choking voice. "Good-by."

She gave him her hand. He pressed it and bent down suddenly to kiss it. She drew it away from him before he could win that one small favor.

"No, no; you must not," she stammered. "I hope you will be happy. Good-by."

educated; to free himself from whatsoever moral bonds might interfere with his pleasures. His iron will and tireless perseverance were bent to this wicked purpose by a load of painful and mortifying recollections. There was a sullen desire in him-never expressed in words, not fully acknowledged in thought-to avenge all his anguish and insult upon the person who had tortured him, or, if that were not possible, upon humanity. His humiliation before Miss Ryder he recollected with rage, after he had half-forgotten the feelings which led him to it. wound in his affections healed sooner than the wound in his vanity.

The

Hardly a day passed that he was not haunted by her spiritual presence. While she was pic

"Not even that!" groaned the miserable Tom when he was out of hearing. "Not even kiss her hand-now-when I may never see her again! Haughty-conceited-insolent! Oh, too much! I will not be despised. I will remember."

Then the words, "If you want to wreak a thorough vengeance on a woman you must first make her love you," entered his memory and cast down every angry wish, every exultant expectation in hopeless ruin.

Three weeks later found him the lonely and unhappy tenant of an appartement de garçon in the Quartier Latin of Paris. But although a fellow may be very wretched, it is hard for him to continue very solitary when once established in that hive of boon companions, the regions of Parisian studentdom, surrounded by the youth of the most sociable nation under heaven, many of whom are under pressing necessity of making friends from whom they can borrow money. Look at the pictures in the Charivari and the Illustration de Paris if you want to see the jolly, reckless, spendthrift life of the Latin Quarter. If you are ever over the water go to the dancing gardens of that classic retreat and be astonished, perhaps grief-stricken, at the wild, unwatched boys and their affectionate enemies, the grisettes, cutting the extravagant pranks of the cancan, with the uniformed, cocked-hatted gens d'armes standing by on the watch for improprieties. And then imagine the succeeding supper and all that follows; only imagine it, for it will not bear your chaste investigation.

I think that he was a bad fellow during most of his Parisian life, and I believe that he has come to admit it himself. There was something worse in him than appeared on the surface. There was a deliberate, persistent self-perversion, not unlike that of the Hindoo fakir who takes an unnatural posture and keeps it until he grows misshapen. He sincerely tried to become hard-hearted; to crush the affectionate sensibilities which had made him suffer; to dull the delicate respect for woman in which he had been

Haven with the beaux of Yale College, she was also walking beside Tom Mallory in Paris, her soft hazel eyes perfectly visible to his stern gray ones, sometimes sending him home in sadness and tenderness from the wanton gardens, sometimes provoking him to a defiant plunge into dissoluteness. Then, from the dissolving fantasia of passion her image rose again, perhaps brought vividly to mind by the sight of some person who resembled her-and once more a restraining or an angering companion. One afternoon he thought he saw her in the great picture-gallery of the Louvre, and he felt at that moment as if a child could have knocked him down with a feather. Enraged to find how weak he still was, he deliberately drank himself drunk that night, for the first and last time in his life. Through all these alternations of passion, these fiery heatings and cruel chillings, the once soft heart was being steadily tempered to hardness.

After he had been three months in Paris he sent Stuart the four sample letters which he had promised.

"The tattle is good," wrote the author. "Keep it up; plenty of dialogue, plenty of private gossip, plenty of deviltry-a little medical news. I have got you a place as Occasional Correspondent of the Morning Spectator, you can send something once a week. You will have the regular price of five dollars a column. Hope you ac

and

cept. Meantime don't forget to become a good doctor. Don't get tickled with the idea of becoming a litterateur, and make a fool of yourself as did your now sagacious monitor. Be a tip-top sawbones first. By-the-way, have you obeyed the direction, Physician, heal thyself?" Got the arrow-head out of the heart before this, I suppose. I wish you joy of your success in that, and in winning the affections of the Morning Spectator. By-the-way, again, suppose you should pick up a few cheap engravings or

sketches, illustrative of Parisian life as you see it. Some publisher may think your letters worth collecting in volume form. Great asses-publishers! Shall be delighted to see you when you return! Yours cordially, etc."

Tom laughed outrageously over this letter, not because it was irresistibly witty, but because he felt as elated with his literary success as a child with a new plaything. He sat immediately down and wrote a long epistle of ardent thanks and unconscious boastings to Stuart, who grinned good-naturedly over it in his chamber, feeling immensely tempted to work it into his next novel.

Miss Nellie Ryder did her part toward creating Tom's excitement. In the literary career which he saw opening before him he seemed to discover the first promise of his desired revenge; for her father took the Morning Spectator, and she would read the weekly column of "NEMO." Would she not regret, now when it was all too late, that she had despised the love of a man who could fill so large a space in the public eye? Might not she yet be following him about with offerings of admiration?

Yes, Tom; the thing was possible, under the existent constitution of female nature. For this end, as well as for the applause of the great world, he labored mightily upon his letters, writing them twice over for greater perfection of style, and searching after curious matter in every nook of Paris. I believe that his ambition to be a crack correspondent led him into some new irregularities, causing him to frequent the Cyprian gardens more than ever, and to court the company of the wildest youths of the Latin Quarter. But he hit his mark. He sent home pages that made even proof-readers grin. His anecdotes were quoted with generous profusion by the country press. His fame as a frivolous but amusing gossip flitted the rounds of what was then the great republic. He even filled all Milford with wonder and laughter, more or less scandalized. For nearly two years the weekly letters went from the Latin Quarter to Nassau Street, and sent back the quarterly drafts from Nassau Street to the Latin Quarter. After a while the American aristocracy in Paris heard of him, and he got an invitation to the Consul's receptions, then to the Minister's receptions, and then to the Imperial balls, so that he became acquainted with traveling millionaires and statesmen from his own land, and walked familiarly among hosts of noble people dazzling with diamonds or august with decorations. You may be sure he worked all these items into his correspondence, dividing Milford into two factions, of the admiring and the incredulous.

Meantime, remembering the advice of Stuart, and acting upon it with that strong practical sense which he carried into every thing but love (and who carries it there?), he was rapidly mastering his profession. You have possibly suspected before this that he was a fellow who "could labor terribly," full of stubborn industry, of vim, of passion, with a brain like a steamengine-good works and plenty of boiler. He obtained prizes; he made a discovery or two; he was noticed at the examinations.

After two years of hard study he declared himself fitted for practice, and bade farewell to the Quartier Latin, not without a lost and lonesome feeling which showed that the heart within him was yet tender, and could love a place if not a person. He was somewhat thin and pale now, chiefly with overwork, let us hope; and he resolved to recruit himself with a year or so of lounging about the Continent, not caring to go with colorless cheeks and sunken eyes before the scornful beauty of Milford.

He had obtained permission from the office of the Spectator to become a Traveling Correspondent. The letters of introduction which he could now obtain in Paris enabled him to see not only the physical wonders, but something of the society of Spain, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. He returned from his tour flushed with health, with elated pride, and with as much happiness as his now hardened temper could absorb. A new source of triumph had opened to him in the publication of his first book, a copy of which, together with three or four papers containing favorable notices, met him in Paris, forwarded there by his publisher-yes, his own publisher. Before he started on his journey he had sent Stuart a package of sketches depicting wild and queer life at Paris. At Vienna he received the following letter in reply:

"I have hooked a gudgeon for you. He couldn't resist the pictures, and will publish a volume of the Correspondence, if I will select the best, which I will do immediately in anticipation of your consent. It won't trouble me. No need of much supervision; it is very easy printing from print. You will get twelve per cent. on the retail price,

which is the best that any body will do for a tyro."

Aft

And there was the wonderful volume. er Tom had read it through as though it were perfectly new to him, and got the favorable notices by heart, he felt that he was ready to meet Miss Nellie Ryder.

We must take a brief glance at that interesting young lady. She was neither married, nor engaged, nor in love, and she was as great an admirer of literary men, especially travelers, as ever. She had delighted in the letters of NEMO months before she knew who was their author. There were things in them which in her innocence she did not understand, and which knowing married ladies only half-explained to her by shaking their propriety-crowned noddles; but it is possible that the epistles interested her only the more for that, inasmuch as from the days of Eden until now the feminine soul has been hungry after forbidden mysteries. It gave her a start of some curious emotion, inexplicable to her and to myself also, when she read in one of the New Haven papers, "We learn that NEMO, the brilliant Occasional Correspondent of the Morning Spectator, is Mr. Thomas Mallory of Milford. Mr. Mallory graduated at Williams College three years ago, with high honors," etc., etc. Then the book came out, heralded by magniloquent advertisements, and followed by praise in high places. Nellie saw it in a New Haven bookstore, and gave up a love of a ribbon to buy it; excusing the folly to herself by saying that she wanted to see how those absurd letters could be illustrated. But she did not merely look at the pictures; she read, fragment by fragment, every word of the well-remembered context; she even noticed the absence of some of her favorite passages cut out by Stuart, and was vexed at the omission. A cross-sea of contending pain and pleasure at Tom's glory rippled through her spirit. It was agreeable to remember that she had had this "brilliant" being at her feet; but